And meritocracy should mean none of that matters. Tech has a long traditional preference for leftist, anarchist and liberal politics and "non-conformist" behavior, but those are more about tribalism and value signaling and, ironically, conformity than merit. You can be a hoodie wearing, blue-haired transgendered commie and still write terrible code.
And I think using "backward ass beliefs" to describe Republicans seems pretty bigoted to me. It certainly doesn't win over the 40% who do support gay marriage from working with you and it excludes half of the country.
Just because tech doesn't tolerate neo-nazis doesn't mean it's not inclusive. Being inclusive, in my opinion, does not mean that one needs to tolerate every belief and every opinion and treat them as equal. IMO inclusivity has more to do with being accepting of people regardless of their unchangeable aspects (skin color, age, orientation, gender, etc.)
> It certainly doesn't win over the 40% who do support gay marriage from working with you and it excludes half of the country.
We're not trying to convince bigoted people to not be bigoted here. We're trying to cultivate a work place that doesn't discriminate against most people, and that _probably_ means that we can't tolerate certain bigoted beliefs. In my mind, not hiring someone who doesn't like gay people is quite similar to not hiring a jerk.
I'm confused. Are you saying that a company should not hire a Republicans because some Republicans are anti-gay?
The OP called Republicans "backward ass belie[vers]" for not supporting gay marriage. I responded by saying that was a bigoted statement and doesn't make sense because 40% of Republicans do support gay marriage. The OP's larger point was basically that we should shun Republicans because of their "backward ass beliefs". I never mentioned that we should include anti gay workers, I didn't even mention gays. I just said we should be inclusive of Republicans. Are you agreeing with the OP's original assertion that we should shun Republicans?
Let me give another example. I am a male and I am not attracted to overweight / obese females. So I actively discriminate against overweight people in my dating life. It does not affect how I treat overweight people in any other aspect of my life, including my workplace. If I had a public dating profile which says I preferred petite females would that be grounds to not hire me? Or to give another equivalent scenario, if I was a female who discriminated against short males in dating would that be grounds to not hire me?
Or to go further, would you think its fine for the tech community to blacklist people who voted for Trump?
There's something deeply troubling to me about going down that rabbit hole. That people can make such blanket statements about an entire political party, esp the party of Abraham Lincoln.
To me as a Bengali, it's no different from my parents stating "Well Pakistanis want us dead. They conducted a genocide of us 50 years ago and they feel no different. Don't cultivate relationships with them"
NO. You don't do that. You judge individuals by the individual. Not by the their political affiliation, not by their race, not by their sexuality, gender, etc.
You don't say "let's not hire this person because they are Republican and Republicans hate gays". You evaluate the individual and if you think the individual would not create a good environment for your gay workers you don't hire them. But you do that regardless of their party. I know plenty of Democrats who are bigoted, racist, or homophobic.
Seriously, this feels like a liberal version of McCarthyism.
> Or to go further, would you think its fine for the tech community to blacklist people who voted for Trump?
It depends. If you wear a MAGA hat to work at this point, I wouldn't mind if you were fired for it. Keep that bigoted shit to yourself. If you wear that hat at this point, you're, in my mind, actively discriminating against certain parts of our population and deserve 0 respect from peers. I would want you out of my workplace. If you voted for him and keep to yourself, whatever. The important part is that all of my coworkers who traditionally have dealt with such discrimination don't have to feel it from you.
The other response to you basically the rest covered my point.
> That people can make such blanket statements about an entire political party, esp the party of Abraham Lincoln.
lol. What does the Republican party of today have in common with the republican party of Abe Lincoln? Seriously, I'd love to hear it. The Republican party of today is so far from what it was even 40 years ago, let alone 150.
> Not by the their political affiliation, not by their race, not by their sexuality, gender, etc.
If you were a member of the neo-nazi party, I would not want you in my workplace either. No political affiliation deserves respect merely because of its existence. If you align yourself with bigots, even if you aren't necessarily one yourself, be prepared to be treated as one.
I say this as someone who is independent; I think both parties suck. But if you're going to be a Republican who thinks that gays shouldn't get married, get the fuck out of my workplace. I don't want you here, and I'd guess most of my coworkers wouldn't want you here either.
The original point was that inclusion means accepting everyone and their beliefs. Regardless of how bigoted they are.
And that is ridiculous.
No one is saying don't hire republicans because they are anti-gay, anti-womens rights, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-muslim.
What we are saying is that if you have an bigoted opinion (such as homophobia), keep it to yourself, or you will be shunned (in tech).
You want limited government, guns in the classroom, no government medical care, trickle-down economics, fine, we can debate those policies all day long and never agree.
But sorry, no, you can't get to be a bigot and expect us to accept it.
It's still not at all clear to me if you believe it is possible for a Republican to not hate gays, or if it is possible for you to not hate Republicans.
Depending on which poll you believe, a significant portion of Muslims support a whole bunch of unequal policies. Should we accept that? Or is that different?
Its only as inclusive as the market demands. If someone is poor enough at decision making that will hold non-sense beliefs like hating a group of people because of what they do with their genitals in privacy away from the office, then chances are they didn't have much to contribute to tech.
If someone holds well reasoned and logical beliefs for hating the gay-hater that person can at least suss out some amount of logic.
I am not saying that all homophic are stupid or that all haters of the homophobic are smart, but one of these uses evidence and logic and that correlates at loosely with intelligence.
Brenden Eich felt compelled to step down as Mozilla CEO because he supported a ban on Gay marriage and parts of the tech community criticized him for it (including OkCupid which ran a special banner for Firefox users).
If that means Tech is not inclusive--then you're right.
I don't think that any of these examples show that Bay Area tech is a meritocracy or inclusive. The truth is the tech community has a culture and almost all the things you mentioned are almost stereotypical parts of it. These all fit within the tech culture:
* Going to burning man
* Going to SXSW
* Working with the LGBT community
* Tattoos / Dyed hair
* Pole dancing
* Wearing Stan Smiths
* Being obsessed with high end coffee
You shouldn't be patting yourself on the back that tech accepts these things. I've seen terrible examples of the community not accepting:
* Those who believe in gun rights
* Those who are strongly religious
* Those who are homeless
* Those who are lower class
* Those who are H-1Bs (Indian outsourcing bias)
* Those who are Republican
* Those who are black
* Those who are old / have grey hair
Being inclusive and meritocratic doesn't mean accepting things that are within your culture. It means accepting those that are outside. I remember a colleague talking about a Dropbox all hands meeting where every one was patting themselves on the backs because the recruiting team had hired many from the LGBT community. He looked at me and said "Why the f* is everyone so happy? We literally have 1 black person in a company of almost 1,000"
Seriously, if you think that having colleagues having dyed hair or going to Burning man is proof that you are meritocratic or inclusive you are in a huge bubble.
:[ I'm a gun-shooting libertarian. Don't assume my Tribe.
You're right, the "tech tribe" does have improvements to make in inclusivity, but at least it's a home for some people who would otherwise be outcasts in socially conservative businesses.
As for a few things:
- I think we're just as accepting of blacks, our high school education system has just utterly failed them so much that we don't have a good pipeline for getting black people into tech.
- There are a different set of values in India that cause some clash between them and Americans/Westerns. There's the culture of following the letter of the request/task, rather than the spirit of the request/task. (Similarly but differently, mainland Chinese suck at asking questions when they don't understand something.) But my overall biggest complaints with outsourced contractors is a culture of "get shit done fast, and do any hacks to get it done". Because contractors don't stay with projects for the long-term, it's not surprising.
- The homeless and lower class are, almost by definition, not people who are achieving a ton. Tech is a meritocracy, we respect getting shit done, and we're not a jobs program.
I agree that tech has been a haven for some who would be outcasts in other areas. Specifically the LGBT community.
To address your other points:
* I don't buy the pipeline argument. I've seen huge bias is how the tech community treats blacks. For example, I've seen a few black colleagues try to transfer into software engineering and get huge amounts of push back. Ironically I did the same thing (transfer from product management to dev) and I was supported. Why was I treated differently? Probably because I'm Indian so I am supposed to be a developer. In all the interviews I do, people assume I have a CS degree and lots of experience even though my resume says the complete opposite. I benefit a lot from the assumptions around my skin color while a black person gets the opposite experience.
* I get why people don't like offshore centers but that doesn't mean they should assume there aren't some very talented H1B developers. I have seen many. India has some of the best computer science programs in the world.
* I don't understand your comment on the homeless but the point I was trying to make was that verbally insulting poor people, the homeless, or old people is not inclusive or meritocratic. I've seen many examples of that in the tech community. I'm not asking people in tech to give free jobs to the homeless I'm asking people not to verbally insult them.
Some homelessness is due to untreated mental illness. Some homeless is due to other factors I am largely ignoring that, intentionally.
Tech is all about mental aptitude. Some mental health issues interfere with the required skills and some do not. Someone with ADD, bipolar or impostor syndrome is not strongly adversely affected, while someone with dissociative schizophrenia and cannot make decisions that keep sheltered will not succeed in tech and might not even with proper treatment.
What can tech do to better reach out to people who are homeless because they have mental issues that impact their decision making so much as to destroy their ability to maintain shelter? This problem is too big for a company to handle we need cultural and government change to address that.
I don't know what is up with your black colleagure, could you expand on that? I went from being a shitty programmer to a decent because a black programmer taught me a few key lessons about how to think, so there are at least a few mixed in with us.
I think tech is about as inclusive as it can be barring isolated exceptions.
What does it even mean to respond to the criticism of how the tech industry treats black people to say "the high school system is failing them"? Aren't you describing, and excusing in yourself, the essence of prejudice? Individual black people who are being mistreated in our industry are not stand-ins for whatever phenomenon of all black life in America we happen to believe in.
> Being inclusive and meritocratic doesn't mean accepting things that are within your culture.
I think there's some subtle definition creep in the word "inclusive" these days. It's starting to mean "cosmopolitan". I recall the recent STEM girl scouts story. One of the commenters called the initiative "inclusive", which isn't quite the right. It's the same girls scouts doing something different, so it's not more inclusive, really. Beneficial? Sure. Eclectic? Yeah. Progressive? OK. Inclusive? I'm not following.
> It's the same girls scouts doing something different
Alternatively, it's a change by scout leadership which broadens the set of interests to which the Girl Scouts appeal, increasing the diversity of the population the scouts will be able to recruit and retain.
Hmmm... maybe. There's a sense of immediacy to 'inclusive', though. Like someone is already included. What you're describing is more like 'hospitable' or 'inviting' or, again, 'eclectic'.
> There's a sense of immediacy to 'inclusive', though.
Perhals, but there's no reason the recruitment and retention effect on people with the interests it addresses would not be, at least to some extent, immediate.
I work in a software development and we have someone with every item on the 2nd list except someone who is homeless (we might, but I would have expected that to come up).
Tech is hugely accepting. It is too easy to be punished by putting out bad products, so people put aside that which doesn't matter for the product and get to work. Skipping people for any of these reasons could mean not hiring the right person. Any team without enough of the right talent fails in the marketplace.
I would contend that whether a group is more or less inclusive does not solely depend on whether they have failed to include the homeless, black people, old people, religious people, etc.
It depends on whether the parameters of your group accepts more people, and another measure might look at whether or not your group accepts more kinds of people, or some weighted balance.
Also, if we were to add in some choice examples, I'd look at how the teaching profession treats LGBT people. Such people are under risk of being considered pedophiles. It's probably a career-killer, and any administration that backs that teacher would need strength to resist parents.
Personally, I think this article title is clickbait. Nowhere does the author show that it's the best industry for women, only that in her experience, it was a better industry than medicine and a biology lab. And then some fluff about meritocracy. No exhaustive comparison across all the industry areas, no dive into data beyond one singular experience.
I'm tired of titles that don't explain what the article is about. Something like "Why the tech industry is a good industry for women" would be a more accurate reflection of the content.
We've been conditioned by clickbait farms to sensationalize our personal blog posts.
Agreed that this was clickbait. I was hoping to read insightful, personal anecdotes. She didn't offer any support for her claims other than: "I'm a pole dancer! And people still take me seriously in tech!" Not to mention the blatant self promotion throughout the piece.
And as a result, people clicked on it. And then they voted on it. And then it got to the top of Hacker News. And then it'll probably go on to get 10k+ reads.
Now, remind me why we shouldn't use smart headlines?
It's so weird, this community's obsession with article titles. What is the purpose of a link title, if not to interest someone and convince them to click it?
I guess I'm contrasting it to Susan Fowler's piece "A very, very strange year at Uber" which if she wanted to could have been titled "Why Uber is the worst place to work at in the entire tech industry".
I really respect her for letting the facts and content of her article speak for itself. I wish more would do the same.
However, to be fair, headline writers have been writing "clickbait" headlines for far longer than there have been clicks. Headlines in magazines and newspapers have never been scientific journal titles.
It's understandable why they do that, but it can put journalists/writers of articles with clickbaity headlines in a tough spot, as they are often forced to defend headlines they never wrote in the first place!
Tell me about it :-) I do the headlines for pieces I write and obviously no one's going to change them on my own blog. But I do write for other venues as well--and I admit I'm not the world's snappiest headline writer--and they do sometimes get changed to things that don't quite match the content of the article.
Well shucks I'm not sure, I clicked on this article hoping to get some insight on that exact question.
But my hypothesis would be social services and hospitality because both those industries have a high percentage of women advancing from entry level to management roles and I think a track record of career progression is probably a decent proxy for it being a good industry for a demographic.
But I'm definitely not going to write a blog post saying "Social services it the best industry for women" until I did a lot more research into it.
Most ketoers eat high fiber, low carb, nutrient dense vegetables. Non-digestible fiber is listed on the food label as a carbohydrate, though it doesn't enter the blood stream - so ketoers are concerned with 'net carbs', not total carbs.
If you keep your incidental carbs low enough, they will be burned off without taking you out of the ketogenic, fat-burning state.
It is not the incidental carbs in these vegetables for which we might have a nutritional need, but the vitamins and minerals.
Here's a real life example. It's like Credit Karma who prepares your tax return for free, but then uses the info to help target you for ads on credit cards, loans, etc.
I'm also getting frustrated from Gitlab. My company has been on gitlab EE for over a year, and while they have pushed out features quite quickly, their UX is still way behind github. I think they don't have a laser focus on the user and spread themselves thin. There are basic user flows that lack the polish; for example merge requests actually are a pain to edit. If you click the edit button, it does a full page load (instead of doing it using ajax) and the page takes a few seconds to load. So trivial things like fixing the title because of a typo or changing the assignee are actually quite painful. They've hacked a solution by allowing you to some changes through back slash commands but it's still a hack that doesn't address the core problem. Even things like finding all the merge requests where you are listed as an approver is a pain. We have an internal Q&A site and the running joke is that every new hire during onboarding asks the same question "How do I find all open merge requests where I'm the approver" and the answer is always "we don't know". If took them a while to even notify you when your merge request was approved (so you could merge it). Just basic, basic UX is completely unaddressed while they roll out big features like burn down charts, todos, boards. Keep is simple stupid.
It's sad because I want gitlab to win (I believe in both their remote and open source approach) but Github's UX is so much better. We just acquired a company that uses Github so now we have a few engineers using both tools side by side and they all prefer Github's UX at this point so we might switch.
> their UX is still way behind github. I think they don't have a laser focus on the user and spread themselves thin. There are basic user flows that lack the polish
Using both regularly, the whole create issue 1234-> autocreate branch+MR -> git fetch+checkout 1234<TAB> -> code -> git push -> review -> resolve discussions+open issues for unresolved -> merge+autoclose+autoremove branch -> git fetch --prune flow is downright awesome† and really acted as a catalyst. GitHub just feels so antiquated and cranky compared to that so depending on what you're looking for this frustration can definitely go both ways.
† and it'll be even more awesome when we will soon enable per-branch review deployments which get auto-destroyed on branch removal, followed by auto-deploy of master in staging + manual in production, all neatly tracked in the environments tab.
Our UX team has grown considerably recently and this is a big area of focus for us.
In addition to small UX improvements all over the product, we are also doing a massive overhaul to the overall navigation of GitLab starting in 9.4. This work will continue behind a feature toggle for a couple of releases. You can see the work here (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/32794) and, as always we'd love to hear your thoughts on it, free to ping me directly in that issue on @mydigitalself to discuss.
Thank you for the feedback. We are actively working on making the merge request flow faster and easier to use. We have set up a round of user research to get insight into what works, doesn't work, and how we can make it better. Questions like: >"How do I find all open merge requests where I'm the approver" should be easy to answer and we are working on making that happen.
I would love to have your insights as part of our ongoing research. If you are interested, you can sign up to participate here:
Thanks for the feedback regarding editing merge requests. In this release, we brought inline editing to issues. (So you don't have to do a full page load, like you mentioned.) So we will definitely bring this concept to merge requests at a later release.
Inline editing is important design direction we are heading toward. The benefit is that you don't have to reload the entire page. And of course you can do single tasks, like updating labels / milestones / titles / descriptions all independently and separately, providing a more web-app-like experience, instead of a website experience. Ultimately, it's more usable and efficient.
In particular for the issue / merge request description areas, we want to get to a more collaborative design in the future when you can see other users making changes in super near-real-time, almost like Google docs. Currently, our issue descriptions already are updated in real-time, but it takes a few seconds for you to see updates. So we are working hard in this direction and we appreciate the validation that inline editing makes sense.
