I've heard that argument, but recently I've started to disagree with it. I can only speak to my limited experience, but my three prior gigs have all wanted some amount of "passion", but never once was I expected to work 50/60+ hour weeks as a result. There was crunch time once where we came in on a Sunday and the company paid for lunch and dinner, but that was it.
Anyway, now when I see that companies want "passionate" people, I interpret it to mean "convince us you're enthusiastic enough during the interview". It's all a game of how much you can bullshit. I like to believe that most managers, and especially most developers, realize that most code isn't "sexy", because most software isn't "sexy" and most developers are working on most software.
Caveat: I work in the Midwest. Maybe things are different in Silicon Valley, where every startup seems to fancy itself as changing the world.
I don't like how they buried what I consider the lede.
"For the authors of this article, each negative story is overshadowed by dozens of positive experiences, where someone went out of their way to offer support, provide opportunities, and encourage us."
I think this matters to encouraging both women and men. Yes, jerks exist. Sometimes its good people having bad days, some people are monsters hiding under a veneer (ex Hollywood's Weinstein).
We need to stop dehumanizing each other, and understand all humans have the full expanse of positive and negative emotions.
Most people in technology are not bros, sjws, ceos, and whatever.
Does it matter to a woman whether their harasser is a "real" bad guy or they're just accidentally doing a good job at playing one? The idea that us 'good' men can have a bad day, misstep, or misinterpret things is definitely true, but the following idea that it some how disqualifies the action as harassment is very much not. If you don't want to be put in a bucket with Harvey Weinstein, then you need to realize that everyone has the capability to be the villain sometimes, and if you've found yourself toeing that line, you need to strongly consider what brought you there and you need to make amends in the right way.
I believe parent comment's point was that there's a difference between "Every man in comparch (or insert field here) is Harvey Weinstein" and "x% of men in comparch are y% of Harvey Weinstein" realities.
With substantially different suggestions on how to make things better for each. (Respectively, 'murder all the men' and 'be aware of and active against misogyny and sexism around you')
I really do not consider that the lede. It’s not even 95% of what the story is about.
It was literally a collection of very negative experiences that women in tech faced because of their gender by men. It’s many examples of things men would never experience. It doesn’t matter if they’ve had many positive experiences — the consistent negatives are prevalent across most women in tech (and probably non-tech), not just isolated examples of a few.
Most of these jerks probably don’t even understand what they’re doing or the impact they’re having. It’s important to raise awareness to prevent as much of this as possible, and I applaud the author for sticking her neck out and being willing to put her name on it.
"We are sharing these experiences in part because of encouragement by male colleagues who found them shocking. We are all still here because the rewards and great colleagues out weigh the bad experiences. However, we want to raise community awareness and instigate change."
And, the support of their male colleagues exercising what should be common human decency is not the lede of this article.
I agree with everything you said but it still leaves me with nowhere to go in terms of combating the pervasive culture that results in sexist violence. Sure, everyone has struggles in their lives but certain groups have added difficulties that cant be fought without solidarity.
Not sure we can have this conversation productively on HN but I will say that I'd encourage you not to read what I'm saying as "all men are rapists," but more that we live in a culture that does many subtle things that encourage behaviors and thinkings that leads to violence against women.
First, if you peruse the crime statistics, you will find that the vast majority of victims of violent crime are male.
Second, if you actually look a bit more closely, you will find that our culture is vastly predisposed towards protecting women. So much so, in fact, that our perception is warped sufficiently that we think there is more violence towards women when in fact it is the other way around, by a large margin.
And of course the public narrative is almost exclusively "violence against women", and again, this is taken as gospel so much that even mentioning that there might be men who are victims is viewed as offensive.
Just as small illustrations (not "proof"), think back if you will of the story of Boko Haram kidnapping 200 girls.
It caused a huge outcry and activism from all quarters. Since there was no reporting, you might think that the boys were unharmed. Not so. The boys were actually either burned alive or forced into military service. This happened repeatedly, whereas the incident with the girls was a one-off. Media? Silence. Nobody cares. It's not a story.
There have also been numerous experiments comparing public reaction to violence man vs. woman. If a woman is being abusive towards a man, there will usually be bemusement or laughter, and comments along the lines of "I wonder what he did to deserve it". If it's the other way around, people will intervene. Quickly and fairly decisively. For example:
This is actually even more skewed as she abuses him (no reaction) and when he starts to defend himself, people immediately intervene.
So in our culture that is supposedly so supportive of violence towards women, a man isn't even allowed to defend himself against an abusive woman.
Closer to home, the whole idea of "what happens to us does not happen to you" is actually wrong. Sure, it's not the same things, we don't get asked about our pregnancies, but horrible bosses and working environment affect men just as much as women, and quite probably more, but when it's men that are affected nobody gives a crap.
Case in point, if I told you the things that happened to me over my career and told you that they happened to a woman, you'd be appalled at the horrible treatment women receive and see it as definitive proof of the misogyny of the industry.
In our highly globalized world. A civil war in China, India, Europe, Russia, or America is almost guaranteed to spill out due vast amount of global resources already being fought over in light skirmishes, proxy wars, and shows of power at various borders.
In China's specific case, India and China are fighting over borders. China and the US (allies) are running into issues over resources in the South China Sea. Also Russia and the US both are increasingly their navy presence in the Pacific. It's a powder keg waiting to go off for sure.
Maybe in the western cultures, but I've been hearing variations of the "nail that sticks out gets hammered down" from my korean family for a long time.
That sentiment comes from the Confucianism, Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism which shaped Korea. I think that sits alongside with the points the article is making.
Similar to the McDonalds in Milan example in the article, Korea has LotteMart everywhere, and people do sometimes eat there instead of a local joint.
Koreans also study English just like other countries. The annual 수능 exam taken by students is considered to be extremely important for college applications. It has a section on English.
I don't think it's an old phenomenon for Western cultures either. Kafka's novels and stories, for example, are all about the outcasts being pushed away and ostracised from society.
I remember reading an article somewhere discussing the difference between the US saying of "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," and the East-Asian (I think specifically focused on Japan in that article) saying of "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."
Which is an interesting point as I've wondered what final effects people from community/family oriented societies (like Shame/Honor cultures) will have on independent/self-centered western culture and vis-versa.
If the taste is good and the price matches the taste quality, I'll be eating fake burgers for sure. Don't forget the destruction of natural habitats and global climate change!
My big fear is in our rush to optimize labor/workers for computer science we will make them obsolete soon like most of the other workers in the face of automation and ai.
I feel good about what technology can do, but not for the next generation of computer science or tech workers.
This is a poll done by Pew Research Center, not a registry of guns that the government knows about. Obviously there is still a possibility that people are lying to pollsters, but there are extremely frequent speculations about things like that (e.g. the "Shy Tory Effect") that almost never end up skewing things by more than a few percent.
I think President Trump proved people are lying to pollsters more than ever. Also Americans lie about guns quite a bit. I've even meet some who don't consider handguns as real guns or call them baby guns.
It should be a 100%. They also need to get armed security.
My alma mater had its own police force, and it was really helped. It reduced not just shootings, but violent crime in general.
EDIT: Also the FBI needs to be investigated. Apparently they were warned several times about that Florida shooter. It's just utterly unbelievable, Wray should be fired, and a special counsel set up to investigate this unbelievable failure. Ex. The Fbi said it couldn't verify the shooter, who used his own name on youtube with death threats. Unbelievable!
You realize that most countries in the world have neither armed security, police, or even metal detectors in -any- of their schools and don't have these issues?
And yet as an EMS responder, I've seen and heard personally of the challenges that come with it.
There are cases where shooters have been brought down by "a good guy with a gun".
There are others where there have been plenty of armed security around, even police, and it's done nothing to stop things.
And there's been cases where now you have a bunch of inconsistently trained people running around an active shooter scene, confused and terrified, possibly injuring bystanders or each other. "Hey, are you the shooter?" Shooter: "no, i'm just like you, hunting him too!" (if indeed the reaction is not "see gun, shoot").
If we went this route, I'd probably rather have the military (though I know that comes with even more 'concerns' for our 'freedom') - more tightly controlled rules of engagement, more experience with and training with respect to returning fire, compared to law enforcement, who only do active shooter exercises themselves a couple of times a year, if that.
Active shooter scenarios are terrifying, to state the obvious. I've been involved in training at a school here in Washington where even as a medic, we go in while the shooter is still active, covered by a SWAT team, for pulling victims out of the hot zone, and it is loud, it is confusing.
I appreciate that you're trying to be realistic to the culture here, and I agree that 'yes, there would most likely be civil uprising if we attempted to claw back firearm ownership', so then the only alternative is an escalating arms race.
Which the NRA, which long ago ceased to be a sportsman's club and is now "by with and for" the gun manufacture industry, can't fail to be happy about.
The defining moment for me was Sandy Hook, when it was "decided" that the murder of 20 six to seven year olds was an acceptable "but regrettable" price for the freedom to bear arms.
It makes me genuinely depressing sad, but its completely true.. the right to bear arms, is deemed worth having children shot regularly. Breaks my heart.
They can apply for the privilege of having a gun. Just like the rest of the world.
An automobile is hundred times more essential than a hunting rifle for most Americans, yet America has no problem making driving a privilege. Somehow nobody's worried about evil government confiscating everyone's vehicles so that they will be forced to march on foot...
Yes. Here en Denmark hunters can own rifles etc. But you need a hunting permit, that requires training in gun handling, safety, shooting etc. It also consists of an actual test. You need to keep the rifle safely stored, I believe it needs to be locked away, with the firing pin, kept in a different place, away from the rifle.
There are millions of black-market firearms available in the United States that may be acquired by a motivated killer with relative ease. I'm not entirely convinced they can "unfry that egg", so to speak.
For now, in the short-term, I think the suggestion that we could harden these soft-targets with on-site security is an idea worth examining. Perhaps, even staff with pertinent experience, training, and the trust of the faculty, could volunteer as "sheepdogs" and are permitted access to weapons on-site, during such emergencies?
By no means to I want you to take the above as a complete solution, but neither is simply banning guns. What does that even mean, anyway? Why not ban murder? Crime-stats make it clear that illegally-owned handguns are most-often used to commit violent crimes, after all. Criminals don't seem to care what the laws are.
As always, it is important to note that this issue is highly politicised, to a maddening degree.
