morgtheborg

> Independent person would probably say that conservative ideas are Perceived to be more controversial by other side then other way around.

I would argue said person isn't actually "independent" then.

> this person might be perceived as threat

Only by a hysterical person.

> they are sometimes harsher than the men as if to "prove" themselves or out of bitterness

Not out of bitterness, but rather because you are often assumed to be weak, emotional, and incompetent as a women and you need to overcome that negative bias. There's no such negative bias towards men in the role.

Offensive, interesting. Yes, I don't think it's offensive. I do think the attitude of "my time is worth more than yours" isn't one I particularly appreciate. When I was interviewing and got at-home coding challenges, I appreciated it when the assumption was I was going to get actual helpful feedback if I didn't pass to the next level. A solid code review, if you will.

At least then there's some sort of reciprocity in time.

Not a single person gave me that advice.

> people should be free to express themselves in whatever way they choose to, and this way of communication clearly works for certain groups of people

Sure. In non-professional capacities. But in professional areas, we expect a bit of blandness so everyone feels welcome.

While some groups might be comfortable mocking or using language that people deem derogatory towards minorities, women, different cultures, different sexual orientations, etc., we've decided that their preferred communication type does not trump the right of a person to feel safe and respected at work. If they'd like to be foul with their own sort outside of work, whatever, people who don't appreciate it can avoid them.

Quitting my job to avoid feeling attacked, on the other hand, is an unreasonable burden placed on someone just so some dude can say bitch, fggot, and/or ngger or comment on someone's physical appearance.

That woman is an Amazon, and I love her for it. I'm happy to celebrate a female that is uniquely physically excellent in terms of strength, coordination, etc.

There's hardly anything unique about a born male being physically more capable than a born female, however, and I have no interest in celebrating it within the context of female sporting events.

I'm cool with that as well. Happy as a clam if we want to start making a bunch of sport distinctions around advantages such as height, T, bone density, etc.

However, until we do so, the problem remains that there are clearly advantages physically to being a man and that is why we have male and female sporting events. That distinction doesn't magically go away because someone does not identify with their gender. The division isn't about gender, it's about sex.

Gender identity is one thing, power to you, but at the point we start to let males compete in females sport we've lost our minds.

How do we make it fair? Is it sufficient to lower T to get rid of the advantage? What about females who naturally have higher T levels?

What if, shockingly /s, bone density and height are relevant as an advantage in some sports?

God, I hate even thinking about it.

Transgender rights > Female rights, with the harm going to female athletes. How unsurprisingly sexist.

I wonder sometimes if I had Aspergers and just effectively trained myself out of it. All I did was read when I was a kid. At recess, at home, etc. I just read. I didn't really understand social interactions and when I left my family and went to boarding school for high school it became apparent I was extremely socially behind.

Sitting in conversations trying to figure out a) what the heck people say, how do they even come up with something to say on inane topics? and b) when am I allowed to say the one thing I managed to find relevant? was excruciating during my early years.

Being too literal, to this day, is a problem. Struggling with social norms around "honesty", another daily issue. The idea that lying is A-Okay (particularly in business) and that there are some thoughts/ideas I'm not supposed to share due to social norms hasn't come easy. I'm lucky I've opted into a career where it's assumed I'll be a little weird (software engineer), so it's given a pass when I'm too honest, literal, etc.

For me, the big turning point was when I joined acting class my Sophomore year of HS. I basically just thought, "Oh, this is convenient! I'll just ACT like someone who is <x> and it'll all work out!" And, yea, for the most part that's been true. The difficulty of quickly sliding in between "me" and a "social mask" at work hasn't been fun, but overall I feel like the "mask" has become me a solid 40% of any given day to great positive effect.

I still find a social situation to be a lot of work. If I allow myself to drink or do anything that fuzzes my brain at all so I stop DOING all that work of analyzing the room and figuring out how I'm allowed to engage appropriately while still being as much "me" as I can, well, then I spend probably the next 24 hours in a shame-cycle about how poorly I must've come off because I KNOW if I don't do that work then I'm dropping the ball in a million tiny ways.

Early in my relationship with my SO anytime I had caffeine we fought...because I just stopped reading him and went off on my own happy little zig-zagging butterfly path. If he didn't explicitly say he was unhappy, I was not going to pick it up.

It'd be nice to just be able to point to a diagnosis rather than have to blame myself for fucking up another social scene by letting my attention wander or drinking or whathaveyou. But, you know, I could just be a normal introvert who has to work at being social in an extroverted world...

I sort of assume it's the latter.

Yes, those pesky "females" always ruining the good times of people who just want them to shut the hell up.

I had RSI, chronic ankle pain after an injury, and back pain. I bought all sorts of ergonomic solutions. Some helped, but none completely. I was getting desperate since, as mentioned, typing is how I pay the bills. I can't just STOP.

I was scouring the net and ran across a developer who swore that The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by Sarno fixed his issues. I looked him up, proved to myself he was a dev and then basically said, fuck it, let's try it despite it seeming woo-woo to the extreme.

Little to no pain to this day. This was after MONTHS of PT and ergonomic changes that didn't solve the problem.

Anyway. Just my two cents.

*EDIT - one of these was the article (perhaps both), https://blog.evanweaver.com/2012/09/05/a-programmers-guide-t... and http://aaroniba.net/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain

That's pretty disingenuous. "You guys" is different than "software guys". You would totes say "you guys" to refer to two 70-year-old ladies, but if there were two women working on web development, you wouldn't refer to them as the "web dev guys".

My sister did this. Not cheaper. Or at least St. Andrews wasn't :)

> I have zero sympathy for junior who goes to some 150,000 a year liberal arts college and gets a degree that makes no money or requires another 2-4 years of school.

An 18 year old assured by their parents this is the "right" move deserves sympathy when it all blows up in their face 150k down the road.

My Mother told me she would throw me out of the house if I took a job rather than going to graduate school. She also said all the loans I took out for undergrad that she claimed she'd pay she'd stop paying if I got a job rather than going to grad school.

The reality is some parents are so damn convinced that education is the magical key to a good life they'll go to some pretty intense lengths to get you to sign on the dotted line.

Many people who could afford something won't buy it unless it's in a range they consider reasonable...or they need it. The market for airplane seats at that price going that distance is usually zero. But given the disaster, the market grows quite a bit. Not because they "can afford it", they could afford it before, but because they need it.

That is hilariously accurate.

My entire family speaks of what they'll do with my money when the startup I work at "makes it big". I think they're 90% joking.

But that's still 10%.

I have literally gotten into fights with my Mom where she wants a GUARANTEE that if I make over x amount I will give her y amount. I just keep repeating, "This is all hypothetical, let's not discuss it" as she gets more and more upset about not locking me in.

Extraordinary.

I often think the bias occurs before the interview in terms of the pipeline. For me, that's my largest self-correcting area. There are groups of people or people who present themselves in a certain way that I simply don't want to interview because it feels like 'wasting my time'. Clearly that's bullshit and I make an active effort to overcome those biases and, if anything, now am overcorrecting (a better mistake to make imo). Once they're in the room, you're outline seems like a solid way to measure they're abilities.

Of course I'm not saying there isn't opportunity for bias here as well (mainly in the selection of the question), but you've offset it magnificently by having written down the correct answer and (hopefully) prioritizing getting said answer rather than the manner in which it was conveyed ("I think..", questions rather than statements ("It's x, right?"), "Maybe it's..", etc. since those types of self-effacing comments are often seen and presented as polite forms of communicating for women).

> My point is that a lot of engineers get very annoyed when the topic of "sexism in Silicon Valley" is brought up, because anybody who is in a hiring position for specifically engineering knows exactly how utilitarian the hiring process is.

To me, that shows a stunning lack of personal awareness. I've done hiring in tech. I'm an engineer. I'm also a woman. And I know I'm biased against certain groups. I purposefully offset that by making sure there is some sort of measurement (usually a coding exercise) with as objective as possible metrics for judgement (I explicitly state the criteria they'll be judged on so they're aware) that dictates whether they move on to the next stage or not.

If I need to offset my subconscious biases as a woman in tech who spent many of her formative years living in different African countries, than I can only imagine the types of biases a white man who has lived primarily in the suburbs will need to be combatting.

For such a man to be "annoyed" because "anybody who is in a hiring position for specifically engineering knows exactly how utilitarian the hiring process is" is a major part of the problem. You can't correct for biases (often subconscious or quite subtle) you're refusing to acknowledge.

I assume it means they didn't want to work the hours and/or play games at work with their co-workers.

Yea, I tend to be rather literal :)

If you take one sentence and dissect it then it's easy to conclude it would have been better to phrase it in a different way assuming your goal is my goal.

But I was making a movement from a point made in the Google document that inspired visceral reactions and then leading FROM that point TO a more nuanced point which becomes apparent when the rest of my post is included:

> And I think that's really what was missing from his piece; why do these differences exist and isn't it possible they are constructed rather than innate? He lists a few reasons he is convinced they are not, including their consistency across cultures, but I remain unconvinced all of his list of differences can be explained in this way.

> Particularly leading. There are way too many studies that show the biases women have to deal with in that regard and assuming they have no impact on behavior is silly.

The context is relevant to understanding any sentence.

> natural to think stuff like this is completely trivial and the tactic of people who are "looking for excuses to be offended" or "looking to play the victim"

Yes, particularly when the rest of a three paragraph response clarifies any confusion that might have occurred.

> in this context, men are (largely) the ones who have trouble with assertiveness in women when it comes to leadership

Inaccurate if you're trying to say men respond more poorly to assertive women than other women. Accurate if you're saying in this context the demographics mean more men are present to respond. Seems relevant since you want to say

> men are worse employees because they can't handle a women being assertive

Which is definitely NOT what I am trying to communicate and is honestly offensive and not backed by data. Feel free to reference studies if you disagree and think men are particularly prone to respond to assertive women in the office more poorly than other women.

> But the difference is that my sentence emphasizes the fact that men are the problem, whereas your sentences emphasizes the fact that women are the victim of the problem.

I don't think men are the problem. I think society is the problem, and, possibly, biology to a degree. What degree? I haven't the foggiest.

> sexism exists

Sexism exist in everyone in every culture. Every woman is sexist. Every man is sexist. Agreed. The question is degrees and how aware people are of their biases so they can compensate for them.

> "intent is irrelevant"

We'll just have to agree to disagree. Intent is never irrelevant.

> I'm sure you didn't mean to do all the stuff I've pinned on you here, and maybe you still disagree that you have done it.

I did it. I'm happy to have done it. If I had agreed with your premise that men were the problem, I would still have disagreed with your changes to my paragraph since it lacks the movement of meeting people where they are and then moving to add nuance/clarification. Regardless, I don't agree with your premise.

> But many people will feel that you have done these things when they read your sentence, and you should at least treat their feelings as valid, try to understand why they feel that way, and consider some changes to how you phrase things.

Thanks for sharing. Your feelings are definitely valid in the sense you are feeling them. I've engaged pretty thoroughly with your comment. I simply disagree and, after considering changing how I phrase things in the future, have concluded that would be contrary to my goals.

Though I do appreciate you sharing your perspective. It's good to stand up for you believe in and promote your perspective on how people should act and behave. I'll continue to do the same.

And this is partially why people got so upset at that Googler. You understood what I said, but you're somehow displeased I didn't phrase it in the way you would have and are reading a direction of duty/responsibility that isn't in my comment nor in my thoughts.

> in no way was impolite

The reality is impolite is in the eye of the beholder (or culture). And in the Bay Area, that would be considered an impolite way of communicating considering the topic.

I'm not applying a value judgement here.

That was my point. You can find sex "differences" but unless you somehow raised men and women separately, you'll be hard pressed to know which ones are innate and which ones are created through outside pressures.

Not in all cases, of course, but in terms of behavior.

I agree with you the reaction is insane.

But "polite memo" is not how anyone I know would describe this.

Conclusions, particularly conclusions on sensitive subjects, baldly stated without a bunch of qualifiers don't tend to be considered polite.

Sucks, but there it is.

Also, women DO have a harder time leading because their assertiveness is perceived significantly worse than similar assertiveness is men. I'll find the study if you'd like.

And I think that's really what was missing from his piece; why do these differences exist and isn't it possible they are constructed rather than innate? He lists a few reasons he is convinced they are not, including their consistency across cultures, but I remain unconvinced all of his list of differences can be explained in this way.

Particularly leading. There are way too many studies that show the biases women have to deal with in that regard and assuming they have no impact on behavior is silly.

> Should the company just say "well this guy made some good points maybe we should reconsider our diversity programs."

Only if they had been so close-minded to not consider that possibility before and are now convinced when this new evidence is presented after doing their due diligence to verify it (good luck with that). Seems more likely the truth of the guy's points are irrelevant and the programs the company provides to minorities exist for a bottom line that takes into account the company's reputation (which, in this case, he seems naively unaware of as a relevant component to decision-making).

> Should they tell all the black employees at the company that they should be more open minded to that opinion?

Open minded in what way? Open minded as in "engage with it", well, probably. There are explanations for studies that show differences between races (and women) that aren't biological. It's worth it to look at the studies and ask yourself what you think the most plausible explanation is based the available data if you haven't already.

> As a black guy at that company I would be really unhappy about that and I'd probably quit. I genuinely don't understand how that's supposed to work and would love to hear some suggestions.

As a woman in tech who has also lived extensively overseas in cultures where women are considered inferior (at worst) and "separate but equal" in terms of domain at best, I find the best way to engage with these kinds of thoughts/opinions is directly.

Sure, there is indeed a marked difference when you look at men and women. Fact. I don't want to be someone who turns my head from facts. However, who knows what amount of that difference is nature vs nurture. Nature leaves us little room for improvement, nurture leaves a lot; why would we choose, because it would indeed be a choice, to assume the gaps are intrinsic to the sexes and limit our ability to close what are unfair gaps when it comes to prestige and pay? Further, if they ARE nature, then the few women who do have that interest + talent are entering into a profession that wasn't really designed for them and it makes sense they'd benefit from more support. Why would we deny them that? What, exactly, is the problem with the diversity programs even given the assumption a group as a whole tends to on aggregate not be as well suited?

Anyway. As someone who holds a fair amount of opinions that aren't PC, if I want to not be fired for them then I need to give other people the same right to offend with opinions as long as their actions are appropriate.

I lost interest as a kid for the same reason. I thought I'd learn outdoorsy, Boy Scout activities. Instead I was bored to death.

Eh romance books are hardly new or uniquely overwhelming now.

Social media, yes.