> The tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination.
Talking about myth that needs to die. The tech industry is not rife with the aforementioned issues, they might exists, but not any more than other industries.
Talking about myth that needs to die. The tech industry is not rife with the aforementioned issues, they might exists, but not any more than other industries.
Because you've read testimonials of people who say they've been discriminated against and you haven't casually dismissed them all?
As a white, middle-class male developer who hasn't ever been discriminated against in my entire life I find it hard to empathise with people facing discrimination, but that doesn't mean anything as all the evidence makes it abundantly clear that they do. I hadn't seen it first hand until I heard a manager at a relatively big company talking about how he wouldn't hire women because they'd be a distraction to the rest of his team. If you can ignore the weight of all that then you're quite a big part of the problem. At some point you have to stop dismissing people and start trying to understand what's going on, and try to help make the industry better.
The thing is, I only interviewed 2 females during the whole 5 years. I interviewed 0 blacks or latinos the whole time too (Indians, Asians, other white males - plenty). I just have a hard time buying that it's an "attitude" problem among programmers, and that the core of the problem isn't a broader societal one, where for whatever reason, minorities and women just aren't pursuing programming, or they're being barred or discouraged by society. We should all do our part to help where we can, but continuously blaming other milquetoast white male programmers for this problem seems a) cheap and b) diverting attention from the real cause of the issue.
I think what's really going on is we don't have a way of addressing the problem ("broader societal change") or a very good way of defining it ("broader societal issue"), so people take the easy way out and just point fingers at a group.
I have known several people who were competent, professional, pleasant, open-minded, and kind in every interaction I ever witnessed--but who were eventually fired for well-documented abusive interactions with women or minorities. As one woman colleague said to me, "well of course he was always nice to you. You're a guy."
This comment is just to say: no one is omniscient. It's possible (I would argue likely) that there are negative interactions within the industry that you might not be aware of, because they don't happen around you.
There are a lot of stories available online from people who are women or minorities, documenting many implicit and overt problems they have faced in the tech industry. So, there is a way to learn about these things, but we have to be willing to believe that these people are honestly recounting what they have experienced, even if it is unfamiliar to us personally.
Sorry to be harsh, but your argument about secret evil behavior is ridiculous, as well as relies on a claim that I am naive. I don't know how old or social you are, but I've lived long enough, and being a lot more social than most, gotten to meaningfully know enough types of people to see good eggs from bad, and to tease out their political leanings and relations to "the other" pretty clearly. You obviously never know if someone is in fact a secretly 'abusive' person, but the # of people that are in fact secretly bad flying under the radar despite a full on appearance of sincere care for "the other," is extremely small.
(Your claim about secret evil behavior is probably 1-3 out of 100 at most.)
We need to have the tougher discussions about what political, socio-economic actions can be taken to bolster minorities in tech, not what "subjective changes" we can try to force onto milquetoast white males, which is actually a much "easier" discussion & more "appealing" narrative for a host of reasons, hence people gravitating towards the easy way out.
If you feel strongly that I am wrong, I encourage you to submit citations and data to back up your argument, that there is a huge contingent of oppressive white programmer males, and that such males are the root of the minorities in tech problem.
If you're interested in other perspectives, they are not hard to find. A Google search for something as simple as "experience of women in tech industry" will get you going.
I did say if you feel strongly about this, no doubt you have lots of sources to present which I am more than willing to look at. However, saying 'Just Google it' makes me think maybe you're being driven simply by intuition.
To use contrived numbers but a common example, if 90% of applications are male and 10% of applicants are female, hiring the women 5% of the time is probably a sign of some latent issue that can be addressed. It is not at all evidence of the same kind of rampant, malicious sexism that would be the case if the applicants were split 50/50 yet still hires were 95% male.
What other industry have you heard of that came up with such a sexist movement like that?
There definitely was a problem, though I think it's getting better. The big problem was that nerd culture, which was predominantly male until recently, was very closely tied to programming for several decades, making the industry fundamentally hostile to people not from that white/asian nerd male culture. Brogrammers were a bit of a backlash against that, but in a still male-orientated way.
EDIT: s/those/then/.
Women must demonstrate double the smarts of a male developer in order to be considered their peers. If a male developer is in a bad mood one day, that's annoying but understandable. If the same happens to a woman, "it's one of those days" -- which is infuriating. Women in most places I've worked are consistently thought of as naive, newbies and "not as good". The very few women who are unarguably good (and therefore assertive in their knowledge) are considered "bitchy".
Sorry, but tech jobs are pretty much boy's clubs, and women still have it pretty rough there.
PS: my anecdotal evidence includes my wife's experience. After three jobs in a row with bad experiences (which match what I see in my own job), it's hard to call this a coincidence. In one job she was the team leader of a small team, but whenever the CEO met with them, he looked at and spoke directly to the senior male developer of the team as if he was the lead, in some cases even "forgetting" to tell my wife he was calling a meeting at all.
Similarly you could argue the industry has a feminism problem, and I could point you out to various news articles of incidents.
I can only say this: I do not know anyone from my own work environment and friends in the tech industry who is male and has the same kind of problems as my wife. Conversely, I know plenty of women mistreated in similar ways. I only need to listen my coworkers ("so-and-so got the job by waving her ass at the boss"). I once had a transsexual coworker -- which is tremendously uncommon -- and all I ever heard about her were jokes about her sexual orientation. Not in her presence, of course. She later quit the job, and to this day I don't know if she was any good at it, because I never worked directly with her and I never heard anyone commenting on her technical skills... I guess they were not relevant to anyone.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I have to say it: the notion that our industry has a "feminism problem" is so ridiculous it leaves me speechless.
Point being I am male too, I don't think I or my coworkers suffers from any -ism, but I might be unaware of it.
I think us male gamers and techies are very insular, even when we think we're not. I'm not implying what we do is done out of malice; I think in many cases we have a cultural blind spot... but this is no reason to stop fighting against it.
In my opinion, the right reaction is to stop and think "well, maybe there is something we can do to make our environment less hostile to women and minorities. Maybe I don't see what's the big deal, but it's there anyway." And it'd be a huge win if we can think "this woman knows way more about $PROG_LANG than I do!" and not get defensive or think she's bitchy or bossy, especially when we would accept a similarly assertive personality from a male hacker.
The wrong reaction is to get all #GamerGate about it, think it's a feminist conspiracy, and get all outraged and defensive about it -- "well, I don't discriminate against women, so this cannot be true!" Unfortunately this reaction seems to be all too common.