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Surely we can find a middle ground between ping pong and unzipped trousers. The boundaries are just not that complicated.

I'm all for encouraging women in tech and executive positions, but we shouldn't need women to tell us this is wrong or to police our behavior.

I hope none of that sounds too much like disagreement. I think we're mostly in alignment, except perhaps the suggestion that with a preponderance of men in executive positions and on boards this kind of behavior is inevitable. I have to believe that men can do better on their own if they want to, however much the help from women is welcome.

I applaud your point that harassment is largely a clear violation of norms, not a gradation on a spectrum of relaxed behavior.

May I respectfully take issue though with the turn of phrase "we shouldn't need women to tell us"? Does that wording illustrate a problem by assuming that women are outsiders?

I write "illustrate" because I doubt that you really make that assumption. I don't really mean to single you out. I just felt that this language throws light on one of the problems facing women in our computing workplaces.

The problem is that sacrificing the optics of "professionalism" is a dual edged sword.

The norms of professionalism are rightly considered arbitrary, but which norms are considered "professionalism" and which are "things people don't do" is not a universal constant.

I really hope that the tech scene can hold on to the fun parts of what makes it special, while getting rid of terrible things like this.

How do we as people, teams, businesses, industries, etc decide which norms of "professionalism" are OK to break. The interviewer asking for a date is pretty obvious to almost all of us (except that interviewer apparently), but how do we navigate the more middle ground? One person's "fun part" is another person's reason to feel excluded.

Alcohol at the office Friday afternoon is traditionally unprofessional but norms in tech mean it's largely accepted here, but your post takes issue with it.

It's gonna be a little bit ugly, especially in a culture that's tightly wound about policing eachother's behaviors. OR It's going to be a slightly more agreeable set of arbitrary norms.

> I actually think a big chunk of the industry encourages unprofessionalism, because professionals do really obnoxious things like negotiate compensation.

I don't approve of this situation, but I also don't buy your general argument (especially for things like ping pong tables and beer on tap). You seem to be referring to "professionalism" as some concrete normative standard, but in reality, what is considered "professionalism" changes over time and differs between people, industries, and geographic regions at any given time.

You are misunderstanding my point. I am fine with ping-pong tables and beer on tap, if they come with professionalism, where professionalism includes things like not sexually harassing women. Alcohol especially needs to be handled with care, and encouraging employees to have more than one drink is downright irresponsible. My point was that there is a contingent of business-types whose gameplan is to use the fun stuff as an excuse to drop professionalism, as in, why should you ask for a raise when you're having so much fun here? It's one big party!

The reason I say this is that I was recently job interviewing and I had one company that acted like this, and even brought me into a Friday happy hour as part of the interview process, where a bunch of young males were playing beer pong. First of all, how is that not a hostile environment for a woman? Secondly, I didn't want to drink, so was I supposed to look like I was no fun or bend my principles? Finally, when I complained to the recruiter, I was told they _only_ did that for engineers, and it was clear to me that it was a general strategy of indoctrination to avoid paying market rate, because it was all fun and games until we started talking compensation. And the company I most recently worked with before was more or less the same, the startup industry is filled with companies exactly like this.

We have a culture of brogrammers because the VCs create it to avoid paying engineers. And if you think programmers are all men, take a look at the VC and senior management gender diversity sometime.

Fair enough, although I think my point about variance in what is considered professionalism is conceptually separate from issues like sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is a crime (or tort, depending on severity). Illegal activity is obviously "unprofessional" in the broadest sense (like assaulting or stealing from a coworker or candidate), but I was using "professionalism" to refer specifically to things which are not blatant crimes/torts or even social mistakes in non-professional settings.

Your example of being invited to a bar after an interview is a perfect example. It's right on the edge of what could be considered professional, at least assuming you were in Silicon Valley where such things are presumably somewhat common. Many candidates might find this very appealing, while many might find it extremely off-putting or even hostile. Personally, I would be closer to the off-putting side, although that might not have been true 5 years ago. I'm not a female, but I can certainly imagine it feeling incredibly off-putting or hostile.

I agree there's some grey zone, and I was definitely a young brogrammer who it appealed to, but I'm now seeing the errors of my ways and I hope younger engineers listen to what I'm saying and avoid those cultures.

Women get harrased by men wearing suits and ties.

Is negotiating compensation the best example of something obnoxious? I don't see anything wrong with that at all.

I think you are missing his or her point a little. They mean that some management explicitly encourage a culture that believes that "free pizza" is worth as much as overtime, or that a ping pong table is worth as much a meaningful equity stake. You couldn't do this to lawyers or accountants or doctors or other "professionals" because they would see through it in a heartbeat.