liedra

Wow, sorry, you really have no idea. It's not 80 hrs per week, sure, but it's certainly more than you're giving us credit for.

My percentages are base for what an early career should expect in their first couple of years with a permanent position (you'd call it "tenure track" in the US I believe). If I get a big grant, my teaching time would get bought out, so more of that time would go to research. It is possible to buy out of all teaching, though you would still be expected to supervise PhD students, so you'd still have some %age of teaching on your load.

Teaching isn't "easy", there's a lot more to it than "show up, explain stuff". Lecturing is easy. Preparing lectures, exams, dealing with students, marking, administration isn't "easy". If I could just lecture I'd be more than happy. It's the rest of it that's a complete drag of time.

Also, I had to laugh at your "real research" paragraph. You obviously have no idea how it works.

As a fellow academic I totally agree - people outside really don't know what it takes to run a successful course - it's not just wandering in and rambling for an hour about stuff you like, it's highly structured, requires a lot of preparation and thought, not to mention having to deal with exams, marking, organisation, and students' pastoral care. Sometimes I think our own universities don't know how long marking takes - my current workload says I should be able to mark a Masters dissertation in an hour! Hahahahaha yeah right.

The thing is you can kinda coast if you want to. But in the UK at least you have to churn out at least 4 high quality papers every 6 years to be included in the "Research Excellence Framework", the assessment of the research quality of the university. Although you don't have to be included in the REF, it was used as a weeding point for redundancies at one of my previous universities (i.e. those who had been in the previous REF were exempt from being included in the redundancy pool; everyone else had to reapply for their jobs). So it does tend to hang over you, even if it's not a direct reason you might get fired.

My university is an ex-polytechnic, so it focuses a lot on teaching as well. You can quite easily get by just teaching - we have a few "just teachers", though they tend to be the older employees. New fulltime employees are expected to do a bit of everything, which is actually a lot better, IMO. If teachers are doing research and contributing to their field, they're reading current stuff and can incorporate that into their teaching. etc. etc. Lots of good reasons for it to happen.

Interdisciplinarians are also rewarded - one of the reasons I got my job in a tough environment (I do computer ethics) was because I had a strong background in computer science vs. most comp ethicists who come from philosophy. So it helps to be able to cover a few different things rather than just one very niche specialty subject as well.

Ultimately though I love my job. It's highly flexible, stimulating, varied work, I have great benefits, especially holidays, and the university is very supportive of family life.

Wow, your hours on preparing lectures, grant proposal writing, dealing with students, etc. are all way underestimated. A solid grant proposal that is likely to get funded (often in a super competitive field with maybe 8% acceptance rate) can take well over 2 months of solid preparation. Of course we don't actually get 2 months of solid preparation time, what with all the other stuff we have to do. My workload as an early career academic is roughly 10% on a funded project, 20% "research", i.e. grant/paper writing, 5% on a couple of committees I am on, and the rest teaching, with roughly half of that supervisions of PhD/Masters students.

For my masters students that equates to about 6 hours of meetings and reviewing their stuff over 3 months of their project. Most of my colleagues and I burn through that in the first month. So what do we do for the other 2 months? Well it's not like we can shut up shop and say "welp, sorry, but you've used all your allotted time" because that'd be terrible. So we continue to give whatever amount of time we feel is necessary (within reason).

Anyway it's not as simple as you've broken it down to be. Things ebb and flow over the year too, students need more mentoring at certain times of the year than others. Grant proposals, conferences, special issues journals all have deadlines and calls. My week is extremely varied and I'm still working on juggling all the different hats and priorities I have. I have a full load right now over summer even without teaching; when teaching starts up again I'll have to do all the stuff I'm doing now (bar masters student supervision) while doing roughly 25% of my allotted time teaching undergraduates.

Anyway, just another perspective.

Once again, depends where you go. I've been in supermarkets where the self checkout registers mess up so frequently that the attendants basically rush over, swipe their card, whack something on the keypad, then disappear to the next red flashing light. They rarely check anything!

Perhaps some examples of licences could be good on the front page. I wasn't really sure what to search for, and all the ones I put in weren't found, and then I'm not a lawyer so I wouldn't be able to tl;dr very well.

This is a very culturally biased view of what "professional" means. You would probably get a different response if you were to go outside America. (this is more an argument against the "no exceptions" part of your point above)

There's no need to be rude. Everyone has different experiences. Not everyone is assertive or has the opportunity to learn to be assertive. Especially when social expectation is against them.

Just a point about this discussion point - just because a situation is worse elsewhere doesn't make it acceptable in tech.

I agree that sometimes it goes a little overboard. But there are also genuine moments when sexist bullshit should be called out for what it is. I don't know anything about the "gallery" tweet, but you need to consider a wide contextual impact of things you say and do, especially when it comes to minority groups. Having a gallery of people involved in the conference is fine, but why bring attractiveness into it? Why not just say "interesting" or "talented" instead? It strikes me as just being a bit thoughtless of the promoters, really.

Ahh, I see. Well, kudos for improving your life. Keep it up! :)

Yeah, to be fair, I am getting a bit better than I was 10 years ago about this stuff. I'm now far more likely to call someone out on bs than I was back then. But it's taken a long time and a lot of skin-thickening to get that courage up.

I'd like to know how you could have a full female perspective without being female. Let me know when that's possible! I'd love to be able to have a full male perspective about things!

Thanks, you've captured my thoughts absolutely. Some of the comments in this post make me really frustrated - it's almost a one step forward, two steps back type thing. Having to jump into the fray every time someone starts talking about the gender gap (and claiming it doesn't exist, or that all women have to do is just get more assertive/stop wearing sexy outfits/stop overreacting) does get very wearying - and it's really quite pathetic that we still have to do it.

Are you serious? There are many reasons why one mightn't speak out at the time. I'm going to jump to the major conclusion that you're male and have never encountered a situation like this before. If you were female, with all the different social expectations that have been embedded in you since childhood, you might have a different perspective.

You're very privileged to have grown up in a social setting that rewards you for your assertiveness. Not everyone, and especially women, has had the same environment and socio-cultural expectation of them. It'd be lovely to foster a culture in which these issues weren't issues - but for now we have to address the fundamental differences in how we treat women and girls, as far as assertiveness is concerned, from how we treat men and boys.

Sure, it's the right thing to do, that doesn't make it easy. And saying "well, you should have done this" when it's quite difficult to do is moving the responsibility for how the situation progressed to the victim.

The fact that these situations occur frequently in tech circles is indicative that things still need to be done about embedding the issues into the general consciousness of people in tech circles. If it were a one-off situation, and everyone were horrified by it, it would be easier to say "well, it was just that one guy". But the fact that it still happens frequently, and reading the comments here and elsewhere that shift the blame of the outcome to the victim... makes me think that we haven't quite got to that stage yet. Sadly.

I'm also terrible at doing this, too. I think you're right though - it is easier to do it for someone else! But when you're in a confrontational situation that you haven't sought (unlike a salary negotiation, which you have probably sought), it's more about the "seat of your pants" type stuff, in which I tend to try to avoid escalation and/or the confrontation itself. Of course it's always easy to come up with "well I should have said x" or "I should have kicked him in the y" after it's over.

I'm not really sure what you are talking about here but, uh, thanks? I think?

It can be really hard in a situation like that to stand up for yourself, especially if you don't want to cause a public fuss. I'm female, and at PAX East I was approached a couple of times (at social events, by attendees) and rather inappropriate things were said to me; it's hard to do anything other than just want to get out of that sort of a situation. Something inside you says "I can't believe he really means this", or "Did he really just say what I think he said?" - it is very much l'esprit d'escalier when it comes to standing up for yourself.

This is quite interesting. I did some archery a few years back (recurve bow) and picked up a second hand, 50lb bow, which, apparently, for a slender early 20s female would be "quite tough" to draw, but I managed it, and got quite good (and strong arms). I never really took it very seriously though, but it was lots of fun. I can only imagine how hard it would be to draw an 81+lb bow (though perhaps longbows distribute the force differently? Otherwise that's going to be some sore fingers!).

Thank you, seriously. The slippery slope argument is just so infuriating when really all that's necessary is a little human decency.

Nope, I definitely meant "ignorant". You have no idea what it's like to be a woman in technology, I'll bet, and your attitude is very indicative of this.

I didn't say anything about unwed mothers.

Once again, acceptance is not the same as acceptability. Just because sexist comments are accepted in India doesn't make such comments acceptable from a normative moral standpoint. The same thing can be said about your unwed mothers statement. Such a statement might be accepted somewhere, but shouldn't be acceptable.

I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make about cultural things - you seem to be advocating some sort of moral relativism, is that correct? If so, then okay, but then we need to look at the context for the original comments, which is at a Danish Dell professional event, not India, or anywhere else. It's an environment where sexism and racism is not generally accepted, and where it is considered unacceptable, which is a good thing, from a moral evolution standpoint.

Perhaps India and its casual acceptance of sexism and racism has something to learn from its more morally enlightened neighbours.

You're completely missing the point. Sexist and racist jokes shouldn't be acceptable anywhere, not in India, not in Europe, not in Sticksville, Stickscountry.

Acceptance is not the same as acceptability.

Well they clearly think it's acceptable or the site wouldn't exist in the first place.

Besides, I said "might". I probably should have said "some people", but the fact that I have to defend a site that points out abhorrent behaviour towards a minority group in an industry is pretty shocking to begin with.

It's not just in the US, and it's not a "funny cultural thing". Your whole post is extremely ignorant. It's attitudes like yours that make people think that racism and sexism is acceptable behaviour. It's not.

Are you serious?! This was a professional event. There is a known issue with lack of women in tech. Dell specifically has a site dedicated to encouraging women in tech. Women have come out again and again and said that these sorts of jokes are offensive and put other women off going into tech jobs. Why would anyone in their right mind deliberately go out of their way to make women uncomfortable?

I didn't say it was "all men". I said, deliberately, "some men". I know of many, very supportive, men in technology, who understand what it is to get this stuff right. It's a real shame that there are some who wilfully ignore the issue's existence, or who exacerbate it, or who think that women should just "lighten up" about it.

As a man in technology, you come with a whole heap of privilege, you need to understand what it's like from the other side. That tumblr rightly calls out people in tech who are dicks, particularly to women. Without sites like this, people might continue thinking that this sort of behaviour is acceptable.

So you don't think it was inappropriate in a professional setting to make women, which the company goes out of its way to actually attempt to encourage into the industry (they have a specific site for encouragement of women in technology on their official site: http://content.dell.com/us/en/business/women-powering-busine... ), feel like the only thing they're good for is being the butt of jokes?

Wow. For the record, I would, as a white person, feel similarly uncomfortable and disgusted by racist jokes in any setting really. It's one thing to make fun about yourself, it's another to poke fun at others' expense in an unkind manner.

This was theoretically a professional partner event. You wouldn't get a comedian on stage cracking racist jokes at those, so why should sexist jokes be acceptable?

Perhaps you should actually read the original report by the Danish blogger: http://elektronista.dk/kommentar/dresscode-blue-tie-and-male...

Then, perhaps, you should put yourself in women-in-tech's shoes and ask yourself why this might be offensive. We're a small minority which is, on the one hand, desperately in need of encouragement, yet, on the other hand, continually set back by the sexist, intimidating attitudes of some men in the industry.

For some other examples you might want to see http://programmersbeingdicks.tumblr.com/

I'll give you a piece of my mind if you keep going on about this! (not really, just giving an example :)