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367 karma · joined March 20, 2012
As someone who forgets his passwords on a regular basis, I'm kind of glad that there's no such thing as perfect security...
I’ve emailed Nguyen to find out more and will update this post if I hear back.
Classic.
My hope is that they will implement some changes based on a. concern about their public image, and b. evidence that they are losing qualified candidates as a result of their imbalance. It is often the case with companies like this that many people on the inside would like to see a change but lack the evidence and support necessary to gain widespread support for it.
If it doesn't work it doesn't work, and yes I am involved in other activities to promote gender equality (both men and women's equality), both inside and outside work.
Hopefully the research linked in my email at the bottom of the original post might prompt you to reconsider your intuitive position (one that is unfortunately shared by many people).
In the 3 years I worked there, there was a lot that I disagreed with, but one thing they did well was their effort to drive towards greater gender equality.
[edit typo]
OP here. Good question. A long time ago I thought in a very similar way because I was strongly opposed to discrimination in all forms and because I think that there is often a backlash effect against affirmative action.
Between then and writing the linked article, what changed? Well 2 things:
1. Increasingly studies have shown that diversity or equality in itself contributes to the performance of a team more than just having lots of GOOD homogeneous employees - as per Natch's excellent comment (by GOOD here I'm using the study's metric of IQ. Link: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...
2. I have come to the realisation that some of these societal norms have a far more insidious effect of us than we often realise or accept. That is to say we will often judge "GOOD" through our own very polarised perception. Thus women are often told that if they want to succeed in business they are told that they need to act "more like men", just like how black people were (are?) told that they need to act "more like white people". The dominant culture creates the societal norms, but this has a negative impact on my first point because we lose the balance and discourse that comes from having a diverse organisation, so we miss an opportunity to improve the performance of our teams. To combat this there needs to be an artificial effort to challenge dominant norms and see greater diversity.
Finally notice how my article refers to gender equality, not Women's Rights. I believe the case for gender equality is as equally valid in Tech as it is in Consulting and HR.
Assuming there was as much in common politically and socially as suggested (there most certainly isn't) the US's stock is very much in decline while Canada's is very much in ascendancy.
The only way a merger could happen would be as a merger of equals necessitated by bigger global threats alongside dramatic social reform/normalisation in the US (I.e. The US starts to catch up with the rest of the Western world in terms of social maturity).
The thing that always strikes me about homelessness is not its remoteness, but rather how it seems that any one of us are only a few unfortunate events and wrong moves away being in the gutter, and how most people feel that it could never happen to them. I find David's account brutally honest, enjoyable and yes, uplifting because it shows that there is a real (albeit long and painful) route out of the damning poverty of homelessness, not because of any particularly joyful spin that he puts on his story.
Is he making it uplifting because he's desperate and he wants people to help him? I don't think that's the overriding reason, but maybe, who knows? At any rate, if he's managed to pull himself so far out of the lows that he's able to adopt that strategy rather than just accept a life of homelessness that just happens to him then fair play - he deserves every success he can find.
This is such a wonderful story that could warm even the coldest of hearts, and I really hope lots of people get behind this crowdtilt campaign :-)
Apple is being distroyed by the rumors that are being created. When they announce that they are going to have a new product, everyone thinks it's going to blow their worlds. Rumors start flooding in about even the most outragous products ( I even heard a few "sources" mention teleportion) This is getting plain stupid.
Apple is a normal company. Why does the public constantly expect them do the impossible?
I'll go and sit in the corner for my bad Magic puns then...
There are a number of factors why this is less of an issue in the UK than it is here in North America, including:
1. Brits fundamentally trust their government more - not politics, but the concept that a state government exists first and foremost for the good of the people is more prevalent in the UK.
2. The influence of special interest groups and corporate electioneering is much more muted in the UK.
3. As someone else mentioned, CCTV cameras in themselves are not bad - most are privately operated and NOT linked to a central government data store.
4. As someone mentions in the article comments, the UK has been a target of terrorism for much longer than the US.
5. Increased education levels in the British armed forces, garner more confidence in the military to do the morally correct thing given a tough decision.
6. Britain is institutionally far more liberal than the US with less interference in policy from religious extremists and a history of judges making activist decisions in order to preserve civil liberties where legislation threatens to undermine established convention tantamount to constitution (given the choice I'd rather have a country that is self-restraining and no constitution than a constitution that restrains, but a government that looks for ways to usurp it).
This is not to say that there is not a worry about civil liberties in the UK - you only have to look at the furore about the proposed introduction ID cards a couple of years back to see that the Brits care a lot about civil liberties, they just see the threats in different terms.
If this is something you suffer from, I suggest you ask your friends to all send you their CVs and spend a few hours going through them as if you were preparing to interview them...
The idea is that you put in a behaviour and tell the app whether it is bad or good, and then every evening you spend 10 seconds telling the app whether you did it or not. Very soon you have a red or green patchwork of your life's choices to stare at on a daily basis.
The bad: I've been pretty honest so my results aren't great (about 60:40 green to red).
The good: I've had many occasions where I'm at the tipping point of doing or not doing something and thinking about getting that green square for the day has nudged me to do the right thing. Which I figure means it's worth it.
Since buying the app, I've lost a few kilos, been to the gym twice as often, reduced my computer games usage, almost stopped biting my nails, and cut out 90% of the fizzy drinks in my diet. Stopping eating chocolate seems to be a persistent problem though...
I would love to debate with you. If I did I would point out studies that show the historical necessities of state intervention into laissez-faire capitalism to prevent abuse of asymmetrical relationships, I would point to monopolistic behaviour, and the tendency of an unrestrained capitalistic system to undermine the workings of its own free market. I would draw upon my own experiences of living in the Gulf, visiting labour camps, talking to migrant workers (mostly themselves also Muslim), and perhaps gently suggest that your armchair judgment of over 1.5 billion people (25% of the world's population) based on a couple of hastily googled sites from a fringe cleric and a single reported court case is not necessarily accurate or fair. I might ask you to compare the number of Muslims in the Gulf with the number of Muslims in India and Indonesia, and then tell you happy anecdotes of my many visits to these countries and the wonderful people I met. I might explain the difference between doctrinal theory and practical exigencies, and faulty interpretations based on fear and greed spread by power hungry clerics (I'd pause of course to muse at the irony drawn from the parallels with capitalism), and then discuss similar dichotomies evident in the practice of Christianity in the West. I'd conclude with the realisation that the problems inherent in the treatment of migrant workers are myriad and complex, and cannot be distiller into a simple judgment against any belief system.
I'd love to do all these things, but sadly I am a longtime believer in the maxim that "If you argue with a fool, then there are two fools arguing", so sadly I must decline.
While you're at it you can start by looking at how unrepresentative of the Muslim world (if you an even use that term) the Gulf countries are - India and Indonesia are both home to many times more Muslims than the Gulf but yet you continue to judge the adherents of a religion by the actions of a few small countries made significant by their oil and gas reserves.
How many of you have actually been to labour camps? I've been to a couple - I drove on (hardly a "prison") and was invited into the home of a worker, who bought me a juice. There were 6 guys living in a small space (about 10 feet by 20 feet), and they had a rota system for sleeping space. The place was clean and they had somehow managed to afford satellite TV.
Maybe don't be so quick to generalise next time?