399 karma · joined August 18, 2012
He has been incarcerated. He might have faced further incarceration by not disclosing. He was also hardly alone in his view.
Chelsea, meanwhile, knew that what she was doing had risks. She ended up having to face the consequences of her actions.
I'm glad she's released. But ultimately she is responsible for her actions and the outcome of her actions.
You can already build a home of that size for $4,000. The lack of permanent shelter for the world's poorest isn't a technology problem.
That said, women as a group are disproportionately on the receiving end of improper workplace behaviour overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.
And you can't address that dynamic without first acknowledging that it exists and putting words to it. And so, men as a group do this to women as a group and it has real-life ramifications for women. That doesn't mean we don't address what is happening to men. It's not a zero sum game. But it also means we can't ignore how gender is implicated in this discourse for women.
When that happens, along with a gazillion other little things women are disproportionately on the receiving end of, it has the effect of dissuading women from pursuing their career in the industry.
No space is being taken away. A new space is being created. This space is to give a voice to a population who reports, as a group, being silenced and undermined in other spaces by the dominant group.
This allows voices to be heard that weren't heard before. That's inclusion. Having those voices stay silent is exclusion.
There was an employee like that at my last job who would speak up. Not forcefully. I was really appreciative of what he was doing. He was treated pretty awfully, and ended up quitting.
A colleague was groped. She didn't report it. It would have likely diminished her future prospects. A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers. She just had to laugh it off. Women at a previous employment reported not being taken as seriously as men in meetings, and being passed over for promotions in favour of less qualified men. A friend reported sexualized posters of women up in the office. In the chat of my company, a sexualized video of women was passed around.
I'm trans, so my challenges are a bit different. I try to hide the fact that I'm trans during interviews. A lot of people are uncomfortable with trans people (26% of Canadian men are uncomfortable moving next to one), and with interviews to see if I'm socially a good fit, that can end it. I actually changed my name to an androgynous one as to not out myself. I get misgendered at work by people who do it on purpose. I also get touched inappropriately by a coworker.
In all cases, what can you do to challenge these things without being seen as "the crazy one", "too sensitive", "party pooper", or whatever? Without hurting my finances? It's shit.
I've definitely noticed a dynamic at play in male-dominated soft eng spaces online that silences women. It has to do with men's behaviour and shitty comments in those spaces. Not all men, of course, but enough men - and almost exclusively men. It's why I'm no longer on r/programming. I'm tired of having to put up with that and I'm glad you created this space.
I look forward to checking it out.
When I moved out from my parents place, I was pretty emotionally stunted, equivalent to a 13 year old. I was repeating the cycle of violence that I had experienced at home, displaying anger in the same abusive ways that I had known. At the same time, I was on the receiving end of a physically abusive relationship; not liking it, but not thinking I could do anything. It was just a continuation. I had pretty awful views on women and minorities as well, despite thinking of myself as progressive.
I wish I could say that I realized this and worked on it. I didn't. It took my ex-boyfriend to stand up to me. It took us seeking couple's therapy together. Only then did I start to open my eyes, and pro-actively work on my own shit. I've seen multiple therapists since. I've recognized how past trauma lives in my everyday, and how to manage it. I've grown tremendously and past what my parents will ever be capable of.
So what influenced my personal growth the most? That boyfriend who said no, what you're doing is wrong, and I won't let you do it. And the many times he had to say it to make it stick.
However, I'm saying there's a problem in terms of how women are treated in tech at a group level that create obstacles specific to them. That men, as a group, do not face these obstacles.
When it comes to hard numbers, even when other factors are taken into account, women as a group do indeed have it worse in tech. When it happens at a group level like this, it means there's group-level barriers that can be addressed to make the playing field less biased and closer to a meritocracy. Some of the solutions are simple - like removing names from resumes when initially reviewing them for new employees.
We've all got problems. Being a woman doesn't mean you automatically have it worse than a particular dude. But I'm not talking about individual circumstances, I'm looking at aggregate data, and there's data there that can't be ignored.
Take my previous job. Women were objectified on Slack. A woman was groped, though she didn't report it out of concern for the repercussions. In meetings execs, male execs would only address/look at the men, not the women. The company was 91% men, even though 24% of the workforce for those jobs in the area was female.
My friends in another high-profile company in the area were sexually harassed, though they felt like they couldn't report it. They simply left the job.
I've mentored young women in high school interested in STEM in a program specific for them. The content is the same, but there's value in having these to counter the obstacles specific to women that they'll face.
I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss. Not all women encounter these, but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles.
For me personally, personal growth has come from processing unfortunate experiences (getting beaten, being harassed on the street, having loved ones be beaten, having a partner overdose, being there for friends who deal with loss by suicide, etc.)
Last spring I mentored young women (high school age) who were interested in getting into STEM. Teams of students were basically making a mini-startup, including coding an MVP, business plan, etc.
The work I get most fulfilment from is working with trans/non-binary/gender-diverse individuals directly, in particular with workshops that discuss normalized attitudes that have a detrimental effect on well-being.
Has it helped me grow though? No, I wouldn't say so. It's just things I do because it has to be done.
People seem to think that poor people can't manage money; but the fact is that they're maximizing quality of life for the income level they have.
I don't believe that we change the world, or that we contribute to society any more than the person working behind the counter at a fast food join, the janitor, or other jobs that are so frequently devalued compared to ours. I believe that my job is far less valuable than someone doing social work or a nurse, for instance.
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard is a very different approach to storing applications on the filesystem than to how MS-DOS/Windows does it. There's a learning curve for Windows users and they do get confused. They conceive of all files for an application residing in a single directory dedicated to that application, whereas the FHS thinks of distributing files for an application according to purpose.
I agree - I find locate to be very useful, and failing that grep/find.
I neither like nor dislike my job. I like the people I work with, and I get to architect things and play with new technologies, but I'm not in love with my work. I accept that, I don't think I'd find any other work environment in this field to be that different.
Honestly, I was happier when I was serving coffee. My favourite job was when I was in the geophysics field and was sent all over the world on mapping projects. The mining/oil industry crashed though, and that's over for me unless I amp up my education. It wasn't the job itself I liked; it was being sent in these wonderful locations that I'd never get to travel to otherwise, free of charge.
Tracking time in-the-moment (as opposed to waiting until the end of the day) also helps.
And having a boss that's been a programmer and is aware of how context switching can hurt productivity.
Context switching bleeds time from the main tasks I'm assigned to. If I'm not tracking my time precisely, making a summary at the end of the day, I'll wonder how I was so unproductive in the span of the day for the given task.
If I measure it in the moment, I'll see all the little interactions that stopped me. This developer asking me a question. QA asking me to look in something that requires investigation. A little fire to put out over here. Things that are too short and resolved to remember.
Those who do not view her actions favourably use the wrong name and pronouns.
That suggests that there's overlap between those who do not view her favourably and people who do not view transgender people favourably.
The Python 2/3 divide isn't that big of a deal anymore. This is not 2010. Almost all of the important libraries support Python 3; thinking especially to scientific computing. More and more distros are offering Python 3 by default. Big projects, like Red Hat's package manager, have switched to Python 3 (in Yum's case, by its replacement DNF).
It's only a matter of time before Python 2 isn't something that will be encountered in mainstream projects, only legacy systems. Which is nothing new (there's still lots of Fortran projects out there.) For them, the old version still exists. It will always exist. Should they want to make the jump to Python 3, the resources required are much less as compared to making the jump to another language.
Python 3 fixes fundamental flaws collected over the first twenty years of its inception. For those that cannot use a newer version of the language at this time, the old version is available.
First I need to fill out a huge document in which I state why I need this. Then I wait. The wait time right now is two years to see someone, likely three by the time I get there as it keeps getting longer. Then I have to travel for five hours to a specific facility - there's only one in Ontario - to prove to someone that I need this. Then they'll either have me come back (more wait) to prove again that I need this. Or they'll set-up the surgery - which would then be maybe 3-6 months away.
They're paying a private medical facility to perform the work; if I have the means I could just as well skip the three years and pay for it myself. Or spend a fraction of the cost and do it overseas.
Note that this isn't for all things in Ontario, but is true for gender affirmation surgeries.
A few years ago I was looking to get out of my workplace where I also worked as a software developer. They had suffered five years of consecutive lay-offs and the environment had really suffered. Months of job hunting proved fruitless. So I made a return to university hoping to prop up my credentials. That's when I was making $1,000/mo (I was still working my other job - part time hours, full time load.) Fast forward a year, life events made it so I could no longer afford it, and I went back to work full-time.
A year later all the interviews came in. I changed companies, got a huge pay boost, and have been pretty happy since.