I love the tech industry. I've been in it professionally since 1997, and I've run tech startups as a CEO for the past 13 years. And if there's one thing I can count on, it's the consistent, pervasive assumption that I'm not technical.

I hate going to tech events with my fiance (or for that matter, any man), because people will come up to us, acknowledge me, and then ask him brightly: "So why are you here?"

I once thought it would be funny to time it and see how long another person could go talking to only him and not making eye contact with me, even when he mentioned that he was at the event because of me. Current record? 13 minutes. 13 minutes of not looking at me, saying a word, or acknowledging that I was there.

Every male that I've ever told this story to can't believe it until they go to parties and see it in action. It's so consistent, yet it's unbelievable until you see it.

This is what it's like to be a woman in tech, even when you're a technical one. It's assumed that you're non-technical. But don't take that into account and lead with your credentials--whoops, no, that's "aggressive" and you shouldn't do that. Don't go to tech parties with a guy because you're assumed to be "the girlfriend." Don't go alone because you'll get hit on. But don't NOT go to tech parties, because that's where you'll meet investors and other potential contacts.

Being a woman in tech is like walking through a maze with minefields at every turn and never knowing which one you'll hit. I'm here because I love this industry and I couldn't imagine doing anything else. But I hate that my physical appearance and gender connotes so many (invalid and ridiculous) assumptions.

It did occur to me that a correcting mechanism for trade shows would be a gender balance in attendees. Maybe you're working different type of trade shows, but that was my recent experience.

Not according to Spencer Chen.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/

I have to navigate a mental minefield of "don't say this" "don't say that too much" or "don't be overly aggressive", otherwise I get screamed about on twitter, labeled as a misogynist, and possibly fired from my job. (Uh-oh, I said dongle! Or...[1]meritocracy!)

I'm not saying women in tech don't have problems, they do, but I'm really sick of hearing this like it's a completely one-sided problem. The stupid evil men are holding the women down and keeping them from succeeding!

Gender dynamics are hard, for EVERYBODY. Men are having to deal with the fact that suddenly (or maybe not suddenly?) doing things like getting beer after conferences is bad, telling jokes to one another is bad, thinking certain thoughts is bad, using certain words[2] is bad.

I'm sorry if you come to a conference and I don't behave in the ultra-narrowly-defined way that you have determined makes me not part of the problem (although I recently found out that asking if I did it wrong makes me part of the problem).

I don't have a context for this! And it seems like everything I, and other men like me, try to do to make you feel included is WRONG, and we're BAD for doing it!

Invite you to beers after a conference? Hitting on you!

Compliment you on what you're wearing? Hitting on you! Objectifying you! Noticing that you are a partially-physical entity! THE HORROR!

Ask you about your projects? Flirting with you!

Make a suggestion about your project? Mansplaining at you!

Men have to navigate a constantly changing, and VERY hazardous minefield every time we talk to you. I'm really sorry (really, genuinely, that is not sarcasm) that sometimes we get it wrong, or sometimes we just forego trying at all and stay quite around you. A lot of it is really just because we don't want to mess it up and make you angry. Women have a LOT of power over men in these situations, and if we screw up even a tiny tiny bit, it can ruin our lives.

[1]:http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug#awesm...

[2]:http://banbossy.com

Remember, you hear about the worst incidents online. The things that make it to the news do so because they're newsworthy, not because they're commonplace.

Since many of us are socially awkward nerds here, let me give you a few hints:

Inviting someone for beers after a conference is not hitting on them. But if you're really worried it appearing that way, make sure you invite more than one person; it feels much more like an after-conference beer than an invitation to a date if there's a group of people.

Complementing someone on what they're wearing? I complement my male coworkers on their new sneakers or spiffy new jackets sometimes; it's no more creepy to do the same for a female coworker. But I wouldn't do that to some guy I just met, only someone I've known for a while and already have a professional relationship with. If the first thing I said to a guy was a complement on his shoes, that would sound a little weird, wouldn't it, like I might be hitting on him? Same rule goes. Don't make a complement on a woman's clothes or appearance be the first thing you say to her, that makes it sound like you're hitting on her. But if you've known her a while and you notice that she's gotten a new haircut or new jacket, it's not a problem to mention it.

Asking about someone's projects? How would you imagine that would sound like flirting? Just make sure you're actually interested in someone's projects, and not just using it as a "get to know you" before trying to ask them on a date.

Inviting somebody for beers isn't hitting on them, but I have been told by women exactly why this is not okay. (In conversations like this one. This sort of "hey that's not okay" doesn't ever seem to actually come up in real life)

I agree that it's totally normal to compliment people on what they're wearing, and I, like you, do this to my coworkers all the time.

Except, again, there are lots of vocal people screaming how this is not okay.

That's my point. "Normal" human interactions are being cast as not okay by some vocal tech writers, which is what can create a mental minefield.

That's not true. It can be hitting on them, or it can not be. If you think you might be in a grey area, maybe err on the side of making it feel safer by making it a group outing rather than putting them on the spot. Don't use that doubt about the grey area as an excuse for avoiding talking to women at all, however.

> Except, again, there are lots of vocal people screaming how this is not okay.

I have never heard someone scream such a thing. Jesus, if I complimented someone and they screamed at me, I'd think they were crazy. Do people really scream about that at you?

Remember, don't confuse vocal debate on Twitter or HN with screaming. It's really not the same. People are frequently more blunt online than they are in real life. This happens in all directions. But don't act like it's the end of the world when a few people are overly vocal on the internet.

Also, don't respond to legitimate, reasonable complaints, like "I'm the technical person coming to this conference and people ignore me and talk to my fiance instead" with "well yeah, but this other thing over here blew up way out of proportion on the internet, so I can't treat you like a normal person in real life."

Yes, there is occasional overreaction that has real life consequences, like the unfortunate PyCon "dongle" incident. That's really the exception rather than the rule, however, and the real-life consequences happened in both directions. Note that many, many prominent feminist writers came out against both Adria Richard's actions and those of the the company that fired the guy making the joke.

Isn't that the point of many beer invites? It's a chance to socialize, and if you don't have an established relationship, it's a chance to establish one.

> If you think you might be in a grey area, maybe err on the side of making it feel safer by making it a group outing rather than putting them on the spot.

Safer?

I'm sorry, are we talking about children or adults? If someone can't manage a potentially ambiguous beer invite -- for instance, by inviting other people along themselves -- they ought to keep it to themselves and just say "no thanks"

> That's really the exception rather than the rule, however, and the real-life consequences happened in both directions.

Yes, it is the exception, but angry rhetorical baseball bats like "mansplaining" and "privilege" are being plastered all over the tech community these days, and it stops seeming like the exception.

I already feel uncomfortable attending an event that has adopted Ada Initiative-derived code of conduct, or otherwise aligned themselves with that vocal sector of the technology community.

It's clear that focus is being redirected to politics, and when people start using hostile language to describe my gender and race in broad strokes, I'm clearly in the cross-hairs for a small, vocal, and highly volatile minority; there are safer and more comfortable places for me to be.

> I'm sorry, are we talking about children or adults? If someone can't manage a potentially ambiguous beer invite -- for instance, by inviting other people along -- they ought to keep it to themselves and just say "no thanks"

I was responding to someone who was acting as if he had to be on his toes any time he invited a woman for a beer, as if he'd be immediately be branded a sexist for ever thinking about inviting her for beer.

Yes, I'm making this sound childish, because his complaint was childish. I was giving him some advice, in case he actually believed that there was a risk of being branded a sexist for inviting someone to a beer, for how to resolve such situations that he seems to be so afraid of safely, without any potential hint of ambiguity. I was only half serious. It is fine advice if you really are so socially inept as to not know where that line is; however, I suspect that his argument was more of a strawman, built up so he could complain about some perceived wrong online, rather than an actual legitimate explanation for why he thinks that men frequently ignore women at technical conferences.

> Yes, it is the exception, but angry rhetorical baseball bats like "mansplaining" and "privilege" are being plastered all over the tech community these days, and it stops seeming like the exception.

Hm? The fact that people are bigger assholes online than they are in real life is news to you? I was pointing out that real life consequences are relatively rare, while online rhetoric can be much more heated, so your response about heated online rhetoric doesn't really contradict what I was saying.

And think about this for a minute. People who are criticizing sexism online and go over the line use such horrible "rhetorical baseball bats" as "mansplaining" and "privilege", while those who criticize perceived over-sensitivity to sexism use things like murder and rape threats: http://www.dailydot.com/news/adria-richards-fired-sendgrid-v... If you are going to complain about "rhetorical basebal bats", I think that death threats are a bit more severe than being accused of "mansplaining."

> I already feel uncomfortable attending an event that has adopted Ada Initiative-derived code of conduct

Really? This code of conduct makes you feel uncomfortable?

https://us.pycon.org/2012/codeofconduct/

What part of that makes you feel uncomfortable? I think it's pretty unobjectionable.

> when people start using hostile language to describe my gender and race in broad strokes, I'm clearly in the cross-hairs for a small, vocal, and highly volatile minority

No, you really aren't in any cross hairs. Come on. Unless you are actively harassing people, or making inappropriate jokes in professional venues, there is no one who is against you or out to get you.

None of the people proposing these codes of conduct are against white men at all (I'm assuming that's the "gender and race" you are referring to, please correct me if I'm wrong); if they were, why would they be going to programming conferences in the first place, which are full of white men? What they are looking for is recognition that there are other people at the conference, who may not feel the same sense of safety as you do.

One problem is that without a code of conduct, it can be hard to know where to draw the line, or hard to adequately enforce that line as there is no written guideline for how to deal with such situations. With the code of conduct, it becomes more clear; blatantly sexual language is over the line, and it can be dealt with by expulsion from the conference. It's simple, and it lets you not worry about it; as a conference organizer, you don't have to worry about how prominent in the community someone is when they make a porn-based presentation, you can just firmly say "no."

That's extremely open ended, based on perception rather than objectivity, and how we got donglegate.

As for physically threatening language online -- that's not being codified as a cultural ideal.

Also, trigger warnings? Really? The amount of coddling of easily bruised egos here is mindboggling.

Every race, creed, gender, and nation has members who have seen events that are a burden on the psyche and could "trigger" on any number of imaginable things. You, however, are focused on first world, tech industry, mostly white women.

Are you going to also post trigger warnings for discussions of Soviet era politics? Lots of people lived through some pretty horrendous stuff. What about apartheid? Rwanda? Serbia? Growing up with a single parent? Childhood bullying? Poverty? Substance abuse? Where does it end? How do you even keep track of it all?

You don't. You're selfishly focused on a comparatively wealthy, privileged subgroup that apparently has nothing better to do -- despite a world filled with real problems, including sexism -- than bludgeon people for failing to highlight "triggers".

This sort of disproportionate nonsense is exactly why I can't feel safe or comfortable around your segment of the tech industry. Your sense of ethics and rectitude is skewed far outside the norm, objectively unsupportable and irrational.

You realize that the PyCon organizers talked to the attendee in question to let him know that some of his comments had cause offense and left it at that, right? It was the internet hate machine (on both sides), his employer, and her employer, who took any actions. You can't really blame the policy for what happened; as far as I can tell, the conference did everything right, it's everyone else who overreacted.

> As for threatening language online -- that's not being codified as a cultural ideal.

I have no idea what you're talking about. What are you saying is being "codified as a cultural ideal"? What are you saying isn't?

> Also, trigger warnings? Really? The amount of coddling of easily bruised egos here is mindboggling.

And yet you're so afraid that someone might accuse you of mansplaining? I can't imagine how you can complain about a thin skin while in the same breath complaining about that term. If your mind boggles at coddling, maybe you should complain about such terms being used as rhetorical baseball bats; because all you're really doing there is asking for the same coddling in return.

By the way, I had added the trigger warning when I had originally planned on actually including some of the rape and death threats in my post; I then decided against it, and to only mention them, but neglected to remove the warning.

> Every race, creed, gender, and nation has members who have seen events that are a burden on the psyche and could "trigger" on any number of imaginable things. You, however, are focused on first world, tech industry, mostly white women.

Um, we're talking about first world tech industry stuff, among a first world tech industry audience, about topics that are more likely to be sensitive for such an audience as they involve rape and death threats against members of the first world tech industry. I don't know why the fact that other groups have other triggers has anything to do with this; it's something that's generally considered polite to do in these kinds of discussions, as someone following the discussion may be someone fairly directly affected by the topics discussed.

The comments I was considering quoting are not things that I would likely repeat in person to a group of people without knowing who was around and listening, as there are some people who are more sensitive to such things than others (I've had a friend faint at a graphic description of a medical procedure before; you never know when someone will be more affected by your words than you had expected). On the internet, you can never know who will be listening, so it's polite to provide at least a warning so those people who may be affected can skip over it or prepare themselves if necessary.

> This sort of disproportionate nonsense is exactly why I can't feel safe or comfortable around your segment of the tech industry.

Exactly what makes you feel unsafe? That I'm trying to show a certain amount of respect for other people? Or that you're being asked by the code of conduct to act in a polite and professional manner? I'm not really sure how that's supposed to make you feel unsafe.

So do you adjust your trigger warnings for all contexts and all people? Stay up-to-date so you can avoid the "trigger" du jour?

Or do you accept that nannying people in all contexts and all subjects is beyond any reasonable ken, and people are responsible for their own welfare?

> I have no idea what you're talking about. What are you saying is being "codified as a cultural ideal"? What are you saying isn't?

Rape and death threats are not being codified into conference codes of conduct, are not considered to be, by any rational observer, acceptable behavior, and -- let's be perfectly honest -- are not actually strong threats. Public figures receive hateful correspondence, often from unbalanced or broken people, and especially regarding more controversial topics.

That occurrence is not representative of the population at large, nor is it representative of the industry, and occurring outside the bounds of the industry and without any acceptance as part of our culture, it's certainly not relevant to the conversation other than as a footnote on the broader lack of cultural civility.

On the other hand, when members of the industry, with their name attached, with a large following, who participate in conferences by setting or helping form codes of conduct, women-only conference services, and otherwise inhabit a privileged industry position that gives them the opportunity for discrimination, use sexist, racist, and exclusionary words, terms, and language, then I'd say it's being codified in industry culture.

> On the internet, you can never know who will be listening, so it's polite to provide at least a warning so those people who may be affected can skip over it or prepare themselves if necessary.

That's ridiculous. You can never know what will be a "trigger", either, and you're myopically focused on a narrow and selfish definition.

> Exactly what makes you feel unsafe? That I'm trying to show a certain amount of respect for other people? Or that you're being asked by the code of conduct to act in a polite and professional manner? I'm not really sure how that's supposed to make you feel unsafe.

That perceived offensive is now more important than objective truth, and alone is enough to cause one to be pulled aside at a conference, lose your job, or libel a company or person publicly.

That's more than enough to be made to feel unsafe and unwelcome, and "trigger" warnings only serve to reinforce the appearance of Orwellian groupthink, with-us-or-against-us, that your position embodies.

I know. But they're probably harder when you're also making less money and having your credentials questioned.

No one is saying that getting a beer after work is bad, or telling jokes is bad, or that thinking is bad. this is hand waving. We're asking you, again, to a) understand that lots of drinking leads to situations where women are harassed; b) telling sexist, racist, homophobic jokes is not appropriate in any professional context, and that you should be human enough to override your animal instincts.

To be frank, your post comes off as irrational, and immature. You sound very young, and very entitled.

Well, first: my best friend is a woman. And could you please enumerate for me what constitutes a sexist joke?

My aforementioned best friend (who I have had this conversation with) as well as most of the women friends I've had this conversation with agree that things like "dongle" jokes are hilarious.

So are racist jokes (do you seriously not tell any racist jokes? Ever? Do you avoid all of contemporary stand up and sketch comedy while you're at it?)

And very young. Huh? Like how young? Possibly right around the age of most of the people who are attending conferences and hackathons? Right around that 20-30 year old range that constantly gets touted as the age of startup founders on hacker news?

I'm 29. Old by HN standards, but you're right: young.

You forgot entitled.

Also - racist jokes, really? Tell us a good one.

(Pause)

looks over both shoulders

When you actively avoid mocking someone because they have a visibly different skin tone, subconsciously you believe this is something they should be ashamed of. Racist, qed.

It is as ok to mock someone for being "african-american" as it is mocking someone for their closed Texan accent. And it is ok. Mock away, and take it in stride when it's your turn to be the target.

And while you're at it: why is okay for Louis CK to make a racist joke, but not okay for you?

If the joke is hurtful, then shouldn't you be against Louis CK telling it? Why are you okay with that? Why are you giving him support for doing something hurtful?

And I didn't say I wasn't capable of being sexist because my best friend is a woman. I said that if I treated a woman at a conference the same way that I treated my best friend, I would probably come across as a creepy asshole.

Similarly, if I treated some guy walking down the street the same way that I treat my best friend, I'd probably get labeled as a creepy asshole.

I've known my best friend for over a decade. I'm close enough with her to have a shorthand for jokes, or mannerisms, that doesn't exist with random people I've just met.

My point was that your post is using some extremely faulty reasoning.

No I'm 12: who cares? What does it matter how old I am? Maybe I am a woman! Then what?

Does what I'm saying depend on my age, or its content?

Do you apply the same logic when assigning validity to things that men and women say? The content doesn't matter, just the person saying it?

That's...dare I say it? Possibly pretty sexist of you.

Why it is ok for the jester to mock the king, but not for the king to mock the jester?

On a related note, Louis CK is Mexican, as in a Mexican citizen born in Mexico. Spanish is his first language and he came to the US as a little kid.

The subject was race, not nationality.

So how does his audience being ignorant of something, aid him in his comedy? How can it help him if people don't know of it?

Assume that they think he is a white American - then he looks like a typical white guy, making racist jokes (presumably, I've never seen them). The fact that he's really Mexican is not known to most people, so people will just think of him as a typical white American.

The fault, is not in my logic, but your dogged insistence on reductionist thinking to the absurd. Most of the men around me know how not to be a creep, so I an assure it is possible to tell funny jokes, have beers with coworkers without harassment, and other such things. They will ask if they aren't certain, and they listen if I ask them to stop doing something.

That's what it's all about. Not reducing people to stereotypes. Giving respect immediately and willingly. At least until the other person demonstrates they aren't worth it.

So all this handwaving about not knowing how to behave in the world because the girls send mixed signals? Horseshit. my tribe of male friends, coworkers, mentors, advisors, and family is living proof that men do know how to behave honorably and respectfully in Silicon Valley, even Stanford trained engineers.

So instead of putting your questions at me, put them at yourself, why have you not yet learned what so many other successful men have learned?

Since there are less women in tech, technical people assume they are boring most people with technical jargon including most women (probabilistically). I bet if you dropped some technical info early it would knock it out of that mode quickly. I know when a women knows or doesn't know about tech I do change how I talk but I do this with anyone that is technical/non-technical. The old Feynman tune it to your crowd when you educate/market type of steward.

Also since there are so few women in tech, men don't usually work with them during the day and aren't the most alpha, lots of them could be shy or even have difficulty with eye contact at all. If they are introverted even moreso like many programmers are. Many are also young and not married which leads to awkwardness at times with ladies.

I think there are lots of opportunities for really skilled women but these intricacies should be stated more often so people understand and correct their assumptions. People need examples like this to learn how subtle it can be because just hearing 'sexism' doesn't help educate, more women with more examples as it is eye opening and helps understanding of this problem.

I'm not sure history suggests that this is the way to go. There's no easy, smooth social change, and self-described "moderates" should give more room for people to be angry. Your post, instead of giving some "advice" on how to help tell the message, should just be doing that instead. Skip this condescending explanation! Stop making it about shy males!

More importantly though, many people think they want to be convinced by cause-effect arguments A, B, and C, and they advocate for that kind of context-less discussion forum, but really what they need is to be allowed to discover A, B, and C on their own terms after being presented with a persuasive experience D. But to make it really connect, you need to get the person involved. Calls of sexism help with that. As an intellectually confident person, people calling me out bluntly and confidently about my sexism got way further with me than people trying to sell me some sanitized variant designed for socially stunted males.

I don't mean to blow up on you or anything, but seriously it's every day on HN that someone who gives the impression that "he sees both sides" and has got it all figured out seems to be taking some awkward position as mediating sage instead of following their own advice and helping craft the message. The overall impression is, of course, one of endless condescension.

But living in a world with 99% of people not being technical (unless you are at work) you have to assume most people are not and talk to them in that way, nothing to do with gender really. In that aspect talking in a way that a person understands is polite (completely ignoring is another thing entirely -- a good speaker involves all). Once that person lets it be known that they are technical then a new door opens up and you can drop some acronyms. Any person will tune their message to their assumed crowd otherwise they waste alot of air. If you go up to 100 people (or women) and just start talking in programmer/technical jargon most of them will look at you funny. I talk to dudes I work with differently that are in business and programming as well. I don't talk down to them in any way, I communicate. If they get it, all engines ahead, if not, they ask for a simplified version, same deal with aspects of the business on the flipside.

What I see is also a problem in the sexism journey is that sometimes people that are understanding and do see the problem get pulled into it in ways that make them look bad. I almost didn't post the message above because I knew I'd get some of this even though I 100% agree. So they stay away from it, just because there may be gender issues doesn't mean there isn't some give and pull on both sides to help it along.

But, ericabiz, I recommend going to events solo - you'll meet more people that way. If you get hit on, bring the topic back to software. They'll get the point. Or, alternatively bring one or two female software friends with you. Couples going to events don't work so well, in my experience - regardless of who's the technical one.

Alternatively, wear something that only a coder would wear. Put some technical stickers on your laptop. Give some kind of sign to differentiate yourself.

You mean a dress? I am a coder and that's what I wear.

Yeah, you should definitely wear that next time.

Clothing is signalling; that's almost its entire purpose at this stage. If 95% of people who wear outfit A are marketers, and you wear outfit A, you're going to (initially) be treated like a marketer. Surprise!

I sometimes have to act the role of 'business guy', and in those cases, to be most effective, I wear 'business clothes'. However, sometimes I have to act the role of coder. And, in those cases, I wear 'coder clothes'. I don't know what coder clothes are for women, but for guys it's something quite relaxed and laid back. Most coders that I know try to make a statement that 'they're not the business guy'.

But let's play by your set of rules. What would be something nobody but a coder would wear?

Bonus question. If "clothing is signalling", what does a typical coder's outfit say about their ability to come up with non copy-paste solutions?

Double bonus question. What do you think of black coders, who are even less common than female coders? Do you presume they are at a tech event to play basketball? Would you advise them to come in white face so they could provide the right "signalling"?

Also, let's get the numbers straight. Women comprise about 30% of computing workforce, a far cry from 5% that you made up to justify sexist stereotyping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Statistics_i...).

T-shirt with a programming joke is the easy answer.

> Bonus question. If "clothing is signalling", what does a typical coder's outfit say about their ability to come up with non copy-paste solutions?

What are you trying to say here? An outfit tells you what someone's into, not how good they are at it.

> Double bonus question. What do you think of black coders, who are even less common than female coders? Do you presume they are at a tech event to play basketball? Would you advise them to come in white face so they could provide the right "signalling"?

If someone's dressed in basketball gear then I'm going to assume they're into basketball yeah. But most black programmers I've met dressed like programmers. And while there aren't that many black programmers, it's the ratio that matters. At a typical tech event, most of the black people you meet are programmers. Most of the women you meet aren't. Most people wearing a suit or dress aren't.

If you want people to think you're a business person, dress like a business person. If you want people to think you're a coder, dress like a coder. If you enjoy dressing as a punk but you're actually politically authoritarian, fine, more power to you, but don't complain when people make reasonable inferences from what you've chosen to wear.

I go to tech events and I never ever see anyone dressed in t-shirts with programming jokes on them (1). It's mostly the same ole sloppy t-shirt with jeans or chinos. So no, I am not going to wear the dorky scarlet letter all by my lonesome, thank you very much.

An outfit tells you what someone's into, not how good they are at it.

You mean, like, someone in a sloppy t-shirt and jeans is into complete and utter conformity?

At a typical tech event, most of the black people you meet are programmers. Most of the women you meet aren't.

Oh please. Most black people you see at a typical tech event are security and catering. As for the 2nd part of your statement, holy guacamole confirmation bias!

(1) For science, I just googled images for pycon, disrupt nyc, def con and finally just "hackathon" and nope, not a single programming joke t-shirt in sight. So your "easy answer" is anything but - you are asking women, and women only, to jump through extra hoops in order to get a seat at the proverbial table. Talk about a privileged, entitled stance.

My friends wife is an F16 fighter pilot. I was surprised to find that out. Truth is I should not have been surprised, but it went against the patterns I'm used to seeing.

I wonder if that's at play here?

Awful lot of words you used to avoid typing "sexism". Hide behind whatever phrasing you prefer, but automatically assigning a person gender roles out of intellectual laziness embodies sexism.

It's thoughtful, and while he's using different language, describing his approach here as "hiding" is pretty ungenerous. I'd guess that you're used to people being kinda shitty about this stuff, and so you saw someone say something that could be part of some ugly apologetics and just went with your heuristics.

(edit) Also, let me add, sometimes it's easier to talk about the mechanisms of sexism rather than the phenomenon. Ideologically I'm super anti-racist/homophobic/sexist/patriarchy/capitalist blah blah blah but talking about those things straight out often feels like the worst place to have a productive conversation from. Compare "The prison industrial complex is a function of white supremacy", vs, "dang, it's messed up that people of color on average get way harsher sentences for the same crime." Context is very important, of course, but sometimes using a lot of words is better communication.

Like it or not, our brains are wired to be able to ignore unusual cases and save complete analysis of each and every situation. This course of evolution may be why you and I are able to post on this website, after all. Sexism, racism an any other form of discrimination are made of this. That's very sad, yes.

I want to make another point. Sexism is refusing to aknowledge the possibility for a woman to be technical, for exemple. Assuming she probably isn't is not sexism, it is an often-correct assumption. This doesn't make the man (or the woman) who makes this assumption a monster.

So I understand women's frustrations very well as I can be the one discriminated in various other situations, but don't blame it too quickly on people. Blame it first on evolution, the same evolution that allows you to not think to much about it when you have to breathe.

It's both.

related - one of the things I hate about hn is people whining "that's an appeal to authority, that's a logical fallacy, how dare you say you would believe a 50 year old hr manager about workplace customs over my 13 year old sister!" Technically they're correct, if I were invested in the argument I should follow up both proposals equally and not just dismiss one. But in real life, ain't nobody got time for that, and we use heuristics instead. The trick is identifying the biases I'm using as a heuristic, and also identofying which of these heuristics are hurting other people and when it is worth doing the long route of checking each argument - for the cocktail party example, would it kill people to just ask a woman what she does, even if they probably aren't in tech?

Having intent behind it just makes it worse, really. And "intent" is difficult to define.

https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/8178b2794...

Here, I'll even save you the trouble of clicking:

To be direct: Pattern recognition is bullshit voodoo pseudo-science masquerading as objectivity and meritocracy. It’s sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia dressed up as science. It sickens me.

"So pattern recognition is a useless heuristic made up by a group of rich white men as a way to quantify something"

If that statement isn't racist, biased, and, well, just quite mean really, then I'm not sure what is.

Racism (sexism/classism/etc) is not about race (sex/class/etc). It's about power. For this reason alone (let alone all the other good ones), there is no symmetry in these biases (e.g. the false equivalence of misogyny and misandry).

That's pretty much exactly the case! Thanks for the great quote.

The popular, and dictionary, definition of "racism" is "hatred or intolerance of another race or other races".

there is no symmetry in these biases (e.g. the false equivalence of misogyny and misandry)

It does not mean that there is never a case of sexism against men or racism against whites. What it means is that you cannot simply flip mysogyny and misandry, or racism against minorities and racism against majority. One major reason is the power imbalance - you can read more about it online but the simplest example I can offer is that of sexual harassment where the power imbalance is essential to the problem, i.e. a lowly employee asking for a date with their boss is a fundamentally different problem than a powerful boss asking for a date with their employee. Another reason is systemic vs. individual discrimination - again, other people explain it better than I ever could but a very simple example would be that everyone across the board, meaning men and women both, discriminate against equally-qualified resumes with female names on them, evidencing that our whole culture is systemically sexist in one direction.

And if you read carefully what that parent was responding to, it will make even more sense.

It never goes well because it goes into a corner of academia, takes a relatively new and by no means universally accepted redefinition and decides to not only add that definition to the word "racism" society-wide, but replace the existing definition entirely.

My personal opinion on the terms has gone back and forth so much that I don't even care about this pissing match anymore, but it's become clear to me why people aren't getting on board.

As if redefining instead of just adding a 2nd definition wasn't enough, what it attempts to define is already better known as "institutional racism," a subset of racism (where racism is just racial prejudice). If you don't see a new category being defined, it's hard to see the purpose of splitting these hairs as anything other than to redefine racial-prejudice-minus-power as something without the baggage the term "racism" carries around. It smacks of conversation re-framing through linguistic prescriptivism.

Or, occasionally it is interpreted less charitably. Someone does see a new category being codified, just not the one you want. They see it as a category of below-"racism" racism emerging that gives a pass to expressions of racism from traditionally disadvantaged groups, even in circumstances where the institutional racism isn't at play.

That's, frankly, bullshit. It about allocating power by race, etc., and is, therefore, necessarily about race (or whatever else defines the -ism in question) and power.

> there is no symmetry in these biases

There is a difference in effect (in a short time window, but see below) between whether the group favored is the currently in-power group or whether its an out-of-power group.

But there is a symmetry in essence. And, furthermore, the long-time-window effect of accepting racism (etc.) from below (or redefining the terms to exclude it) is a reversal in power structure in which the group whose bias has been licensed becomes the power group -- and is unlikely to suddenly renounce the bias that established that position in favor of the formerly-dominant and now subjected group.

What motivates this toxic revanchist mindset that every single white man has homogenous and equally distributed power, simply due to being part of a group due to their skin color?

This type of identity politics is no different than Luce Irigaray claiming E = mc^2 is a "sexed equation" and that it privileges the speed of light. It is postmodern, Western-centric and extremist lunacy.

Ultimately though, most distressing is your sociopathy.

The same was true for Bill Gates. If you read his biography, when he was really young, people didn't even shake his hand when they met to talk. They didn't find out he was the CEO until like an hour into the meeting. And when they did, they were surprised.

Most rude people don't mean to be rude. They're just thoughtless. That doesn't make their behavior less rude.

For example, the zillion people who, upon learning I'm a computer guy, bust out their computer questions and put me on the spot to diagnose and possibly fix their issues. Are they just pattern matching? Sure. But are they also being thoughtless and self-centered? Definitely.

The problem isn't the pattern matching. Anything with neurons does that. It's the lack of consideration about how other people will feel.

For some reason those same men cry out for "rational discussion" unless it's about their own behavior, of course. They can somehow override most of their animal instincts to steal, fight, or fuck indiscriminately, but can't somehow find a way to overcome thinking a woman at a trade show booth can't possibly be an engineer.

So we're saying, either the person can overcome that thinking or they can't.

If they can, but choose not to, they're deliberately discriminatory.

If they can't overcome that thinking, we might want to have them institutionalized for anti social behavior, because what other animal instincts are they not able to overcome?

The point is to try to overcome making that match.

https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/8178b2794...

To be direct: Pattern recognition is bullshit voodoo pseudo-science masquerading as objectivity and meritocracy. It’s sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia dressed up as science. It sickens me.

Nice job in raising the level of discourse here.

Hrm...sure it's not that you're trying to reply to a new comment (there is a delay before you can reply)

I understand your point. Unfortunately the way you made it makes you come across as an irrational individual.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+profiling&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...

> especially coming from someone with "balls" in the name

Considering that's my name...

> i'm now not being allowed to reply.

Did someone prevent you from replying? Did your comment get deleted?

No one is preventing you from replying. You disagree with the above commented, I disagreed with how you came across.

> NOTHING about pattern matching is rational. So you have no right to expect rationality as a response.

How so?

Think that it's okay for TSA agents to search a 82 year old women, instead of say me (a dark ass dude who looks like a terrorist)? Should their sampling of passengers should be completely random?

People shouldn't denigrate anyone: women, men, minorities, or majorities.

Agreed, mostly. What if it was a women who was dressed provocatively, i.e. a booth babe? Would that change the circumstance.

In the case of the main article, the woman at the trade show WASNT and engineer.

But that's beside the point.

Slight semantics here--I think it's okay to make assumptions. I don't think it's okay to make assumptions and then act upon them as if they're fact. Like, asking a women if she's in HR.

For example: if you saw two guys at a company booth, one guy who was slightly overweight, had a unkept beard, and wore a t-shirt that had the Perl deCSS code, and standing next to him, was someone in dockers, a button up shirt, and had a blackberry, you might make some snap assumptions.

> Anger is a valid and rational response to continued discrimination.

How so? Does it end the discrimination? Does it further your point?

I think being angry is a valid and healthy emotional response, but not a rational one.

I think the point here is that even if you (internally) make those assumptions, you shouldn't externalize them. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, so to speak.

Though I agree with you. "Better for others to think you're an idiot, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Regarding the two men, as I've said repeatedly on this thread, it's not the assumptions I'm making, it's the actions I take as a result. What I might do is look at both of them, for example, and say, "Who's the right person to talk to me about your APIs?"

Now regarding your question vis a vis the booth babe: booth babes are a terrible invention. they are a huge part of the problem. But I'll ask it this way: wouldn't you rather be known as a man who treats a booth babe like an engineer, than the douchebag who treats an engineer like a booth babe?

In general, when it comes to women (ahem and all other humans too) you're much more likely to get along with them if you treat them as if they have brains first.

Fair enough, I understand what you are getting at with labeling. When I say that, however it has nothing to do with you being a woman, and more to do with my fascination with irrational behavior in humans (as described by economists), and formal reasoning.

> wouldn't you rather be known as a man who treats a booth babe like an engineer, than the douchebag who treats an engineer like a booth babe?

Boom. Headshot.

I'm tired of hearing the same old excuses for discrimination, namely "pattern matching." It's bullshit. It's everywhere on this thread as it so often is when posts about discrimination and harassment reach any level of awareness on Hacker News. And while most of the time I generally ignore it, rolling my eyes and occasionally just become depressed as hell, sometimes I just get fed up and decide to call it out. Then I vent it out and get back to work. I don't care what you label it as, in fact the whole concept of labeling is precisely the issue.

Treat people with respect. That's all any of us want. But when we say that nicely we get ignored. When we say it strongly, we get labeled everything from bitch, to sociopath, to irrational, to whatever. There's no win. So I just say what I think and let the chips fall where they may. Upvote me, downvote me, I honestly do not give a shit.

If you really don't care, why even say this?

If someone just posted something, there is a cool down period before you can reply. Maybe that was the case.

Now tell me that you're so awesome that you'll not think what you are thinking right now.

Exactly.

People use stereotypes to save time. Many stereotypes are wrong, because you'll get them from CNN or Fox. People don't get on the news for being normal.

When you're in a hurry, you don't want to change. You don't have that luxury because you want the result now. You're not in "experimenting, expanding comfort zone, increasing awareness" mode. You're in "Getting it done" mode with as few new parameters.

Usual is better than confusing.

Besides, some stereotypes are true so one can understand people behaviour.

Black people go to jail more, geeks don't do well with girls, etc.

And I know that some people will be butt-hurt and cry foul and it's 2014 and how it's a stone age thinking, but the stats are there.

http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

(I don't have stats on the sex life of geeks, though).

Someone might be offended at first, but there's a reason for these stereotypes to have had such a long, established life: If they don't represent the truth, they at least reflect it in some distorted way.

The person coming to a booth has probably had a long life where, comparatively, he's met really fewer females in tech and come on, it's not like us humans are so pure that we'll go: Hmm, this is the first time I meet a female in tech. I'll speak to her in spite of being in a hurry, in spite of my question being complex, in spite of being used to talk with dudes all my life and this one comes out now.

When you're in a hurry, you don't want to change, you don't want surprises: Usual is better than confusing.

A lot of time, people won't deal with you simply because they don't like you. A lot of times, people won't deal with you simply because they don't know you.

People who'll talk to you and give you the benefit of the doubt are giving you the benefit of the doubt. Meaning it's a privilege they're granting you, so having an entiteled attitude about it goes against the meaning of the words.

The TL;DR version is that everyone creates some "filters" as shortcuts for efficiently analyzing situations (paradigms).

transcript of the video here:

http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/3298/course/section/11...

Kuhn's work expanded:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#3

>Now tell me that you're so awesome that you'll not think what you are thinking right now.

Before that second line my mental image was close to Mr. Rogers, after that line it's a huge guy in a prison jumpsuit covered in tattoos. I don't think either one is what you were going for. Maybe a pedophile? I don't have a stereotype for those.

Neither is accurate. Both are exaggerations. Comparing crime between blacks and non-blacks may seem like it's useful data, the rates are pretty significantly different. But it's not, because the majority of people, white, black, whatever, aren't criminals. So if you use that "data" to treat people differently you'll be making an error far more often than being right. That's the danger of stereotypes, because they are so seductive from a confirmation bias perspective. There are no stereotypes that aren't backed by some kernel of "truth". But stereotypes lead to more bad behavior, more ill-treatment of others than they avoid.

The point of the knowledge isn't to just "treat people differently", its to recognize something is broken, identify root causes and change them.

I'd be very curious to better understand the motivation for your perspective.

[0]: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html

[1]: http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarcerati...

[2] : http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/...

[3]: http://www.hrw.org/news/2002/02/26/us-incarceration-rates-re...

[4]: http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

[5]: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/20133267193...

My point was, that one can understand how people think and stereotype given the data, as long as the data isn't corrupted.

But coming back to the data: Sure, the majority of people aren't criminals, but the few who are, belong to a certain category. I'm not talking absolute, I'm talking relative. I'm not talking "divine truth", I'm talking correlation.

And you can be a sunflower all you want, you can't deny it.

You can deny it if you want, but that doesn't make it any less true, and that doesn't solve the problems in urban areas, poverty, lack of education, etc.

So: One can either say it's not true and be liked by people as an open mind and non racist (that doesn't fix the root problems), or one acknowledges the problem and think about solutions (at the risk of being called names).

I do feature extraction and classification of data, can't go against such stats.

That's why I asked the commenter to put herself in their shoes: She's got a kid, between a 45 year old dude and a more usual nanny, she'll choose the nanny every single time (from the 60%).

To be closer to her experience: She'll do an ad, a couple comes, she'll acknowledge the guy and ask the woman how much experience she's had with kids .. While it's the guy who came for the job.

http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/

She could hack it. In the 19th century. You mean to tell me that women back then had more rights than they do now ?

I am saying that if you are an exception, don't be surprised people assume you belong to the norm.

If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a dug, it's probably not a shark.

If someone has had to deal with 100 people from a certain category, and 2 of them were good at their stuff.. Do you think that the human mind will make up a rule based on those 2% who were good ?

That's statistics, that's what the odds are for. You calculate the odds, and make up your mind. You can be wrong, but you are more likely to be right.

If I present to you two games of lottery. One where you have 30% of winning. One where you have 0.1% of winning.. Don't tell me you'll choose the 0.1% game.

If you are in a class, and a kid comes and is presented to you as your teacher, don't tell me that your first reaction will be to embrace that and be totally confident in his abilities. Until the kid opens his mouth and proves himself.

Do you think Muggsy Bogues had it easy, with his 5 ft 3 in the NBA ?.

What do you think he had to overcome to even get a chance to talk with a coach.

People would laugh at him until he proved himself. And he expected to have to prove himself, he's a 5 ft 3 player after all, and it's not like we see them every day.

People who are good are an exception. Women in tech are an exception. Combine the two: Women who are in tech and who are good, and you got yourself a 3 sigma std or something.

Pull the records and make lists:

First list: Of all programmers.

Second list: Of all programmers, how many are good (list getting thin, right?).

Third list: Of all programmers, how many are men ?

Fourth list: Of all programmers, how many are women ? (that was is thinner than the above).

Fifth list: Of all programmers who are great, how many are women ?

Sixth list: Of all programmers who are great, how many are men ?

Now, some may say it's caused by discrimination .. But it's not. How many women are on technical anonymous forums about programming ?

Not that much. Nobody knows what anyone looks like, whether it's a dude or not.. But I'm willing to bet everything I have that most of the most members are men. And of those members, from those who are really good, almost none of them is a woman.

If there was a betting game with these odds, I'd play it.

If I'm going to get a new job, I won't expect people to trust me that I know my stuff(because the odds are that most people suck, it has nothing to do with me). I expect to be tested. I expect to earn their confidence. That's what "Earning your stripes" means. There's the word earning. Demanding it to be any other way is being a cry-baby.

When you go to an internet forum and your status is a Newbie, people don't expect you are an expert, and this in an anonymous world where no one can pull this bullshit discrimination whether based on gender or color.

When you talk with hackers, you have to earn their technical respect, whether you're a guy or a girl (if anybody was on a forum).

When you get to the army, you are expected to show your stamina and courage and prove yourself worthy. That's what initiation rituals are for. That's what "showing your scars" is for: Show us you belong here.

In any field, you frigging earn the respect, it's not handed to you. It has always been that way and I don't see dudes bitching about that.

Why don't we hear about that bullshit in teaching, medicine, etc ? Why don't we even think about women teaching ? Because there are a lot more women teaching than women coding and they didn't get there by some bullshit rule that says that 30% of chairs belong to women just because they basically are women. This* -allow someone to do something just because they belong to a minority- is the true face of discrimination.

I'd rather have a racist insult me because of where I'm from, than getting hired just because I'm from a certain country and they're too afraid to hurt my little ego (and the law protects my little, poor me, ego).

I've had interesting discussions with racists. I don't have a problem with them, at all. They're free to have their opinion of me, and they're free to hate my frigging guts. I'd have more respect for someone tell it to my face, than someone wanting to be cool by hanging out with a different nationality.

So you make a rule that forces businesses to hire a certain category is the real discrimination. The fact you're even talking gender means there's something shady in it.

So for these women (link article, and comment I replied to) being surprised people assume they're not into technical things, I think it's a little bit being thin skinned: Most women don't code. Someone might argue that most men don't, either, so I'll rephrase it (because people love getting into arguments): Of those who code, women are a minority. Any arguing on this point is wanting to please a minority by distorting the facts. I tell it straight, if anyone is hurt, sue me.

And it's getting trendy now. That girl who quit her job at GitHub. GitHub replacing their rug that says United Meritocracy of GitHub (which is weak and wimpy).

If there is anyone who loves women, it's me. I have 5 sisters whom I love and cherish. But I'm intolerant to bullshit. I'm intolerant to political correctness.

Now there are quotas to be respected in politics: 30% women. So if it's a 100 person membership, you'll have to make sure there are 30 women. So if there are some people you really like, you have to sacrifice them because you wouldn't be legal or something.

And if the number of men grows, you have to increase the number of women even though it adds no value, just to comply. This is wrong and I find it disrespecting to women.

Imagine you're a woman being used as a hole plug. We don't really need you, but we'll have you because we have to. I'd die of shame if I accepted.

Anti-discrimination laws only demand fair treatment. Nothing more. Positive discrimination only happens if organisations choose to follow such a policy. Most organisations actually don't want horribly unqualified people, so it's not as big a deal as you make out.

In political arenas having a percentage quota of women actually makes more sense, because political bodies are supposed to represent the people and 50% of people are women. This is predicated on the notion that everyone is more inclined and better able to represent their own gender's perspective. It doesn't seem too controversial to me, it just seems like an extension of the ideas of proportional representation. Where I've seen it, these quotas are on the list of candidates that political parties nominate, not on the list of elected politicians. It's not that people can't vote in who they like, it's about who the party puts up for election, which is something regular people never have a say in anyway.

Cultural expectations are self-fulfilling prophecies. A hundred years ago, a lot of people had very low expectations about what women (or black people) were capable of. They were wrong, but it took a lot of time and effort to make that change. That is what political correctness is about. Political correctness demands superficial changes to how cultural expectation are expressed. It's a case of "fake it 'til you make it". Even if people deep down feel differently, they are asked to suppress it and treat individuals fairly. That way, the next generation of children grow up with a different view of the world than their parents. With each generation we take a step closer to fairness and equality. People like you know just enough to see that political correctness is superficial, but not quite enough to understand why. So you call it out as hypocritical bullshit, even though it has real, practical, achievable aims. Children pick up on the superficial values of the world around them, and that has a deep effect on them. Check out the Clark experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqvJp2gXJI0

Simple. The grand parent herself says that it's unusual for a male to make eye contact with her at a conference, except when somebody is trying to hit on her.

Is it because I'm sexist? No! I'm not a very extroverted or social person and I find it personally very difficult to make initial contact with anyone I don't already know. Given that I'm already talking to your fiance, we can infer that something or someone has broken the ice and hence we are engaged in a conversation.

If you were the person with whom the ice was broken with first, it would be your fiance who would be seemingly "snubbed" by me, unless introduced explicitly by yourself. Maybe non-extroverts, shy, or just socially awkward individuals need to wear a public service announcement or something to make this clear to everyone.

"Disclaimer: I'm not sexist; I'm just socially awkward. Please break the ice and say hello to me!"

I'd also like to add, for your consideration, that some people are better at one-on-ones than navigating the social jungle that is multi-person conversations. I have no idea how to engage multiple persons at once outside of the context of a formal or informal presentation of some sort. This could be that the topics of conversation that I usually engage in with others are not usually of the anecdotal variety, which I imagine are amenable to group conversation, where others can more easily "participate" passively.

Finally, I'd like to point out that I think your social party experiment as you framed it will always generate results that are biased toward your assumption. Just because a phenomena has been observed to exist (in this case the phenomena, according to your testimony, is "men in a technical environment are more inclined to strike up technical conversations with men to the exclusion of the women also present") does not actually tell us anything about -why- this is so.

You can come up with any number of anecdotally reasonable hypotheses, but until you actually test these hypotheses in a well defined and scientific manner with an experiment designed to eliminate all of the potential biases, your experiment is no better (rhetorically speaking) at proving anything than a sexist diatribe along the lines of "why my ex-{girlfriend or wife}'s {anecdotally negative conduct} proves women are {some universal claim about all women}".

I feel off-kilter speaking with strangers that I find attractive in a professional setting; I have to keep telling my brain to ignore itself and act normally. This isn't unique to any gender -- the other day I was ordering lunch in the neighborhood, and the person behind the counter was mooning at me to a degree that actually made the interaction uncomfortable.

I don't take it personally; that's how people are, myself included. I know it can be slightly uncomfortable, but as long as we're trying to be professional with and understanding of each other, things generally work out.

It really feels terrible to be insulted when I was trying to contribute a thoughtful comment.

Just like everybody assumed I am boring when I was young and nerdish, same would happen to gals in tech. I bet that if instead of waiting for 13 minutes you would join conversation whoever approached you and your fiance would happily continue conversation with you two. Yes, his initial assumptions were incorrect, but they are based on current expectations. As soon as there will be close to 50/50 female/male ration in tech I bet these assumptions will disappear.

Don't try hard to find samples of sexism. Just join a conversation.

I've seen the lack of eye contact problem happen many times, with a mix of genders/races/etc. Sometimes I'm the one being ignored (I'm male); sometimes I feel weird because the person talking is only looking at me and ignoring everyone else in the group. It feels random to me.

IMHO, it points more to a general lack of social skills than a sexist/racist thing. I try not to take it personally. And I try, in my own conversations, to always be very inclusive (e.g. eye contact with everyone, even if I'm answering one particular person's question) and encourage others to be inclusive as well (e.g. deliberately introducing people, asking questions, or simply giving others in the group eye contact even when I'm on the listening end). I think steps like these can go a long way.

In that context I have experienced similar issues but I chalk it up to people simply not being exposed enough to oddities like me. I am guilty of it too towards people I come across who break my mental image of how something "is."

For example, I live near Austin, Texas. I recently saw a really tall, very handsome black man wearing a cowboy hat and full-length duster. Certainly that's not the norm for me to see but not too incredibly odd either. That is until I heard him speak with the most refined British accent I'd ever heard in my life. I completely lost my composure and started viewing him if he were a novelty act. I have no doubt I was at least as much of an ass as the men you describe.

As other commenters have pondered, I wonder if these situations will actually start to decrease as the commonality of females in tech starts to increase.

On the other hand i see nothing wrong with you being aggressive and it would be extremely hilarious if you were to go with your boyfriend to an event and just whisper in his ear what he needs to say every time he gets asked something technical he might not know.

I always enjoy playing on peoples assumptions and making them feel awkward for making them.

P.S. There's no gender neutral interactions so make the most of your gender's image and strengths.

If you want to be treated for who you are and not just a member of your gender you will have to show a strong personality and don't be afraid of being assertive or slightly aggressive sometimes. It gets you respect.

It's not your fault, and it's a horrible situation that many people would love to see changed. I love talking about technology, and it's unfortunate the culture is the way it is where it alienates part of the community for discussion.

However, with all such things -- while it is worthwhile to push for change -- they must be taken in stride and seen as obstacles to overcome.

Take what you think is a weakness in your situation: that you're underestimated, or maybe ignored, as your strength.

I don't mean that you ought to shoulder the burden of conditioning all the males; or that its fair. Mostly the world isn't fair. But its the current state of affairs.

I once observed a Japanese subsidiary of an American firm. They gave women the same career opportunities as men. As a result, they could get highly competent women from top schools (who wouldn't want to be office ladies at traditional Japanese firms) even though they couldn't get as competent men. As a result, the women at the subsidiary substantially outperformed the men at every level.

Also complaining about getting hit on? Really? A person finds you attractive and wants to talk to you. What a monster.

"But I hate that my physical appearance and gender connotes so many (invalid and ridiculous) assumptions."

What is ridiculous about an assumption that is 95% correct in today's world? Perhaps it will be a ridiculous assumption in 5 years, and definitely 10, but it's not far-fetched to run into guys at these events who don't interact with women ever in their day-to-day work lives.

I'm a male. I'm now an engineer but before I switched careers I was a ballet dancer.

I've heard the phrase "Are you waiting for your girlfriend?" or "Is your girlfriend a dancer?" or some variation of that, countless times when I was at theater/ballet company events/auditions. I hated that, but I couldn't really blame anyone. 90% of other males there were usually just waiting for their girlfriends.

The article's author is simply a victim of statistics. If at the conference there is 150 "booth babies" and 300 male engineers, but in one booth there is a female engineer, people make educated guess, based on statistical inference, that this must be 151 booth baby.

I think nobody is to blame here. And, in fact, articles author might turn that whole confusion to her advantage (out of 150 other booths, that one surely will be remembered by potential customers). As a matter of fact it has happened already, I guess it is not that easy to hit top rank on Hacker News.

Not that I wouldn't like to see a booth baby - a toddler with a mini Python shirt would be adorable and would certainly drive more traffic to your booth.

An industry who employs women as booth babes, apparently because staring at a booth babe sells tech better? Stinks.

PS: Not saying all women are to blame! But you smart intellectual ladies gotta agree that they contribute to the problem (just as the people who employ them)

[1] techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/

As for the industry: seemingly the industry thinks that showing ass and tits on a booth is worth it. That alone says enough. It is not about the ones who are earning their money there but the ones who think that their industry needs that. No discussion of "choice" needed.

So while being a technical female has a lot of positives (we are more rare and stand out and people might find us pretty and want to talk to us), there are legitimate issues regarding professionalism in work and conferences. No one is saying men are monsters...well, I'm certainly not.

That's unlikely. If you were a guy they wouldn't be talking to you at all. Even less likely they'd do so with genuine interest. That is the experience most males have in such conferences. Few men get any kind of attention from anyone without putting in a lot of effort.

Having men lose interest in you after your fiancée is mentioned doesn't tell you anything about the likelihood of them seeing you only as a sexual object. Could just as well be a human object they want to love.

* 93% of prisoners are male: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_rates_1...

* 92% of all occupational deaths are male: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality

* 84% of homeless people are male: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/may/07/men-gen...

The general statistical consensus is actually that men have higher variance in general. You're more likely as a man to be rich and famous, but you're also more likely to end up in a ditch.

It's a matter of probability. The more you drive, the more you are likely to have an accident at some point.

Match total men mileage and get the ratio accident/man.mile .. Then do the same for women.

More accident for less driving. Numbers say another thing.

If someone's a truck driver and spends basically his whole day driving and has driven hundred of thousands of miles and he's been in 5 accidents.. And I've been in 1 accident.. What do the numbers say ?

I love it when people want to bend numbers to make them say what they want, yet completely take them out of context.

Oh:

84% of homeless people are male ?

Okay, find each one of them. Ask if he was married before. If yes, ask him where is his wife..

I'm willing to bet she's not inside that card-board box:)

That was actually part of my point. I am not saying men are inferior, I am saying men are more likely to be in jobs where they have higher workplace hazards.

Amusingly enough, I was just reading an article by a woman, complaining that not enough men hit on her in SF.

SF is full of sexist men making unwelcome advances on women

SF dating scene is dead, men won't make a move

Do you not see the slightest humor in that?

Actually, having written it out like that, I wonder if one thread begot the other.

People complained my shit stinks when I shit in the bathroom. People complained when I took a shit on my grandmother's dining room rug. I get so confused about where to take a shit!

Are they, really? I dated multiple women from work before I met my wife. It's not earth shattering -- we spend 8 hours a day with these people, and there's bound to be some level of attraction between some of them.

Not everyone thinks exactly the way you do. Things go more smoothly when you aim to be understanding of those differences.

Anyway, I'll find humor wherever I please, and you'll just have to live with that.

And what exactly are you defending here? If you're in a professional situation (which includes work related social events) then you shouldn't make unwelcome sexual advances. That's how you avoid sexual harassment lawsuits. If you don't have the social awareness required to know whether or not someone else is attracted to you, then that's very sad, but it's your problem. You have to work on it in your own time. Don't flail around at work making everyone else uncomfortable, hoping to get lucky.

Also, I can't believe you're defending the right to make patronising snap judgements about people based on statistical correlations. You don't need to prejudge the people you meet in a professional context. Just be polite and pay attention.

Cultural filters are unfair to a minority who break the mold. But the trouble is, they work very, very well most of the time. Call it by any bad name you like; but its here to stay, because it works.

That a utilitarian argument I know; but in my experience the free market respects no other kind.

What I always noticed was that my advisor, who is rather famous in our niche of science, never dismissed a person for their history or pet interpretations. He would listen to everyone equally and dismiss ideas or concepts as they were presented. Because of this he was able to glean amazing insight from people that were outright dismissed by almost everyone else in the field.

Everyone can be put in one conceptual box, but all of us also pour over into others. You are not so busy that you can't evaluate people based on their current and real merit, instead of racial profiling or dismissing people that made a mistake in the past.

tldr; your false filters are holding you back.

They'd much rather be wrong on one case and save a hole lot of time, than make sure they get all the cases and finally find nothing. They could find a gem, but what are the odds, it's a gem after all.

And srsly? The continuing trope that it's "men who are sexist pigs" who are the problem rather than "people who persist in employing infantile pattern-matching in the face of conflicting evidence"? Who said anything about only men making this mistake, anyway? Sensitive much?

And complaining about getting hit on in work situations -- been covered enough on the internet, but I just want to say I need to be paid a f(*&load more to add that to my job description. It is not in my job description.

Which is understandable because administrator != higher level nurse. Most hospital administrators are MBAs, occasional MDs and RNs.

English, do you speak it?

>And complaining about getting hit on in work situations

The grandparent was talking about at social events. Not work situations.

As a single man I have to say it's a tough balance between women being offended by getting hit on (it's a numbers game, if there is one woman for every ten men in a work place, guess who gets hit on the most) and not doing any dating. I know that on occasion woman have felt offended by my "approach/hitting on" or whatever and I wasn't even aware I was hitting on them. Good/honest intentions just don't cut it in these situations.

I do believe we as men should be more sensitive about this, but it's probably not going to happen. Regulating social behavior and skills is difficult.

To kaitai: I do suggest that you write out the full word instead of abbreviating it to "srsly" - since that makes the comment a lot less interesting and distracts the otherwise insightful comment.

Simple pattern matching tells me you must have used car parts where your brain should be, so I guess we're all susceptible to this sort of mistake. And I'll be damned if I don't feel at least as confident in my assessment as you are in yours. I don't even know anything about cars! Now I feel like a hypocrite.

Almost always, the divide is right along the profit center/cost center line. In finance, traders are revered and engineers are their support staff. In the Air Force, pilots run the show all the way up the chain of command and engineers -- as critical to mission success as they may be -- are support. That's okay. Those jobs can be even more rewarding than working in "tech".

Remember, the same reason you might choose to work as an engineer in $awesome_field is why your ops/admin/qa team came to your company.

That doesn't really sound like a non-technical employee to me. Maybe a question of terminology, or the primary focus of the person's role, but a person who is coding sample apps using the company's API sounds pretty damn technical.

Are they good at what they do? Yes. Does what they do require that type of abstract thinking and computer skills? Not that I have seen, they seem effective at what they do, the lights are on, the place runs smoothly.

Edit: too old to edit! But still, thanks for the info.

On HN, I believe that people are trying to make a positive contribution when the post, and while correcting people on the internet can seem pedantic, I take it to be a positive contribution and an opportunity to learn something.

Hopefully I don't make the same mistake twice!

Perhaps "non-SE" or "non-Programmer" or "non-Engineer" might be closest to what we're trying to say here.

It's unfortunate that some technical people look down on others in these kind of roles.

I think all this really depends on the where the startup is in timeframe. A larger company will have more specialised employees who do only one thing, but a smaller one would have a single employee doing multiple roles even if in both cases their titles were exactly the same.

That one.

A implies B does not necessarily mean that B implies A. She's just saying that it's possible for a person to have skills beyond those required for their role. The examples you quoted aren't listed as what should be expectations of her role, they're examples of how she often pulls in her not-in-the-job-req skills in the service of her official duties.

It harks back to a belief of "Build it and they will come" that pervades the industry (and yes, I do know the actual quote is "Build it, and HE will come"). There are many successful products that solve a problem or do something. If no-one ever knows about it or works out how to pay you for it, then the business will never be a success. You need all parts of a business (selling, marketing, ops, banking the cheques, making payroll, taking out the garbage) for it to work ... the naivety of some devs about the processes that go on to make that work and their lack of engagement in the wider business is a wake-up call many need to hear.

We have different roles to play in the success of an organization; at different times each role has different values, but as people we're all valuable.

Of course your side of the house is always out of the office by 5p =)

If you want to compare two sides of a founding partnership, the facts is the technical cofounder, early on, is more valuable member of the founding team.

Two non-technical co-founders, vs two technical co-founders. Which will have a higher outcome of success?

"I've built a prototype, I need help getting customers." "I've got customers, I need help building a product."

Even in just market terms--how many people will try to recruit the non-technical founder vs the technical founder for a position?

As a techincal co-founder, I could do the non-technical portion: get customers, do market validation, read termsheets, talk with investors, recruit, manage payroll AND do my job: build awesome product. There isn't a hard science to being the non-technical founder--Y Combinator is what, a 3-month bootcamp to teach founders what they need to know about running a startup. Try learning everything you need to know to be a technical cofounder in 3-months.

You can learn a lot about being the non-technical founder by trying your hand at starting a company. The same is not true about writing product.

Again, the founder relationship is important, and you need both halves to succeed, but if you want to pick who is more valuable to the organization, and who has the harder job, it is the technical co-founder.

This rant assumes the non-technical person has little to no coding abilities, and these are "first time" founders with no prior successful exits.

Hmm. Let's try this on: "if you want to compare two sides of a marriage, the facts are that the wife early on in the more valuable member of the founding team." Nope, doesn't work. There are way, way too many dead "great products" for me to buy that argument.

>-Y Combinator is what, a 3-month bootcamp to teach founders what they need to know about running a startup.

If Y combinator were doing such a fantabulous job of giving technical co founders the basics, their success rate would be much, much higher.

>You can learn a lot about being the non-technical founder by trying your hand at starting a company. The same is not true about writing product.

You can learn a lot about running a company by running one. But you're going to waste a lot of time and money if you've never done it before.

There are also a lot of YC graduates looking for heads of marketing because they've completely cocked it up. If you only knew the kinds of basic dumb ass questions about marketing they don't understand.

I'm not saying it's not possible to do both or that business can't be learned. I am saying the lack of respect towards anyone not a programmer will be the end of the silicon valley species. That's what pushes all new blood out, and what will cause your own downfall.

If you think you will continue to have market power, given that pretty much every VC is begging the government to fix immigration (aka hire more cheap labor), you're delusional. Perhaps having a business co founder who understands economics might be useful at that point.

- Said by no one, ever.

--You only take a job in business operations if you aren’t smart enough to be an engineer (or designer, or product manager, or…)

--If your role isn’t technical, you don’t actually understand the product.

I don't think many people actually say or believe this. Maybe these were common thoughts in 1999, but as an SF-based ops guy, I've never heard this.

In fact, I would argue that good business operators have it just as good, if not better, than most engineers right now. Startups like Uber, Postmates, Airbnb, Dropbox, etc. are killing it, and they all have really talented (and highly paid) people in sales, ops, marketing, support, etc.

I think most of us are aware that it takes more than engineers to build a company:

http://blog.42floors.com/year-operations-startups/

http://www.cdixon.org/2014/03/15/full-stack-startups/

http://justinkan.com/exec-errands-post-mortem

My first technical job was working for my university. I learned early on that the admin people were the backbone of the place. They were smart, competent, and hardworking, and a lot of people treated them like furniture. They were used to it, but I found it rage-inducing.

I've definitely seen a lot of stuff like that here. A number of times I've had words with fellow engineers who apparently thought they were too good to get their hands dirty. I've had engineering managers explicitly tell me that engineers were too expensive or important a resource to do anything but code. It doesn't take a lot of that for an implicit caste system to develop.

- You're only (still) an engineer because you lack the ability to move into a product management role.

- If your role is technical, your job is to code up the vision of someone who understands the product.

This is changing, rapidly, in some segments of the tech world But keep in mind, the "developer-driven culture" may be far more prevalent among the kind of organizations represented on HN than the business world at large.

One nit, you admonish (rightly) people for thinking just because you are a nontechy that you don't understand the product. But then you make a similar mistake by accusing the young nerdy male engineer who is devouring the beef jerky of not being street wise enough to be able to order lunch.

Simpler explanation: you've set up the expectation that he can eat on the company dime so he's going to take full advantage of that. He can order lunch just fine he just doesn't want to pay for it.

Give him the company credit card (or a company seamless account) and 'problem solved'. Except it's not really a problem since it's better for the company if you can have him working around the company catering times.

Maintaining a good company culture™ was very important to me and the other founders and we were very aware of how much our early hires would contribute to it. An important part of that culture was only hiring the best and smartest people (yes, it's cliché, I know). It did not even cross our minds to hire an operations manager (or any other role) who could not understand and comfortably explain our product, for instance. I think that did a lot to set a tone that no one should have lower expectations set for them nor was somehow in a "second-class" role.

P.S. In my defense, it was darn good beef jerky.

EDIT: English is hard.

I've seen this so many times its tragic, and it comes down to largely one thing IMHO... the arrogance of extremely intelligent people with specialties in maths/physics or other numeracy focused backgrounds over other people.

How about an office move where developers sat around and bitched because network cables hadn't been moved across yet? Young office admin girl shows initiative and drives to old office and gets all the network cables. They now see her as their runner as they know that she's paid less so therefore its optimal.

Its crunch time and a ScrumMaster who goes and gets coffee for the team before a release so they stick to working is then perpetually told "We're busy, coffee needed", and is slowly reduced to Team Mom, or worse Janitor.

A startup's CTO and part shareholder overrules the Head of Marketing and lead designers on their design choice because he's read an article saying how Arial is optimal for reading, and then gets involved in every decision. Only once the CTO is moved on does the sales and marketing team really start performing and the company is saved.

I've seen numerous friends who are extremely technically capable Java developers create excellent technical solutions in the finance space to problems that people won't pay for, or don't need solving, or that they don't know how to market or keep running 24/7. They see MBA's as a waste despite their MBA friend saying "Look at the market segmentation, and consider your positioning to see if you can compete" - A valid point that could have answered the question before the £80K in lost wages.

I've had conversations where I've quoted a previous stand-in lecturer who was worth £110m from 3 different startups who told of the importance of a well rounded team including sales, finance etc. to young developers who think that DHH is basically a prophet, they only need tech guys and if you build it they will come, and their answers to me were words to the effect of "I disagree because HN said so".

I'd rather put £1000 of investment money in the hands of a proven sales guy's startup than a proven back-end developer, as I've seen first hand that a great sales guy can sell crap and make money.

(In my experience, HR is the vastly-female role, and always-useless to employee; sometimes useful to companies for compliance reasons, but rarely. HR's worthlessness has nothing to do with female employees; in dev and product roles where some companies have 20-30% females, they're generally in the upper half of contributors, and in design, which is often somewhat majority female, they're often the key to a company's success. Actual receptionists are also usually female, but rarely do I see those in <100 person tech companies, unless provided by the building management.)

Generally I've just seen founders handle most of these things (taking out trash, ordering lunch, etc.) at the early stage, and then contract it out entirely (use a meal delivery service, office cleaners, etc.) This might be specific to silicon valley tech startups; the other environment I know about, USG/DOD/DOE, has 10x as many people for any role in general, and a clear hierarchy for who does what, but it's based on overt rank or grade, and not gender, age, whatever.

Even in stuff like pharma, you have people who want to do manual physical inspection and handling recalls, vs. people who want to build statistical controls. Somewhere in between there are human-executed procedure development.

Design seems like a clear case of the "designer pipeline" not having big roadblocks to women anywhere from birth to being a competent designer, unlike (until the past 10 years) some more math-based fields. Pure print design and art are fairly gender balanced, so there was a pool of people there when computer design became a thing; it's probably more likely a great generalist designer early in career would learn about computers and become a computer designer, vs. a math programmer becoming a designer.

Manager, no idea.

There are a lot of smart people you can groom into good ops people. There are also a lot of seasoned ops people looking for jobs, if you look outside silicon valley and bring someone here from a business in another city.

Whereas, we can't for the fucking life of us get good mobile developers, programmers with machine learning experience, or robotics experience ... unless we pay large sums and offer great perks.

That's why nobody talks much about, or pays much attention to Ops.

I've been an Ops guy.

http://qz.com/47154/tech-companies-stop-hiring-women-to-be-t...

I like the reference to the fact that for a large part of history, many women worked completely without pay doing empathy & ops work full time (mothering families and running ops for households and community groups). As a culture maybe we have some residual beliefs about this type of work (and women's time) being basically free/cheap.

> let's focus on the other assumption: that because a person has a non-technical role, she is fundamentally incapable of assessing whether she is able to answer your question.

> While we’re at it, I’d like to dispel the notion that people in non-technical roles don’t have technical skills. From the VBScript and complex spreadsheet wrangling required to perform analysis of key organizational metrics to mastery of numerous different specialized softwares and systems in order to perform basic functions of the job ranging from accounting to people operations, non-technical employees must have a bevy of technical skills at the ready every single day.

It's difficult to recognize what you don't know. As an engineer, I feel like I didn't understand jack a year ago. A year from now, I'll feel the same way about my current level of understanding & skill. Between now and then, I'll speak with confidence about topics I think I understand but probably don't fully grok.

Earlier in my career, I was "semi-technical" with more [technical] experience than the OP. Looking back, I really didn't understand the product to the extent I thought I did.

A little knowledge can be dangerous. YMMV.

edit : if you down voted, care to explain?

I'm not sure I can empathize with this. People within the company should be grateful for the work being done by office managers, but why would anyone outside the company be particularly concerned about it? Some work is glamorous. Some isn't. That's life.

Having worked at better shops, I realized this was only going to lead to dismal failure, so I started asking around for real information on what was going on. And guess what: There was a support team, 90% female, who nobody actually consulted for anything, and was paid peanuts. And yet, they actually had more information about the practical uses of the application, and where to take it, than the PhD totting analysts. After a few weeks talking to said support team, and explaining how to actually make sense of what we were doing, I was seen as some kind of Messiah by management, when all I actually did was actually pay attention to the people that had the actual knowledge.

As far as sexism, yes, it's very sad that most of us view so few females that are even put in a position to succeed that it's easy to make assumptions about people's knowledge. I've been lucky to have worked with a couple of extremely good female programmers, and about a dozen women doing support work, so that I am at least not astounded when a woman at a user group isn't just a recruiter. But that doesn't mean I won't make wrong assumptions. The best most of us can do is recover quickly, and remember that while there are few women in the industry, their skill and knowledge is no different than the one of men.

I co-founded an engineering startup that works on high-heat machinery. I have degrees in mathematics and information analysis, I fully understand the technical aspect as I contributed to a lot of the work, yet I refuse to answer tech questions. I serve in an operations role right now and don't spend my entire day developing the technology; thus I am not the best qualified to answer any tech questions.

You are right that tech companies can only afford to hire the smartest, but that doesn't mean you have to be a jack-of-all-trades - that applies to co-founders. Do the job you were hired to do and do it better then any one else can.

http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Don%27...

Then I'm going to ask the programmer/engineer to flip the model around and ask that they look at Operations in the same way they wish management see them.

An employee like that shouldn't be spending much time ordering food and cleaning. Those things can be outsourced to people who can do them at scale for many companies at once, at a much lower rate.

At my startup we've used ZeroCater (Food for events), HomeJoy (Cleaning), TaskRabbit (Odd tasks), Zirtual (Scheduling meetings, booking flights), and Advsor (Accounting & Billing).

We also have a full time remote assistant that does things like coordinating team outings, ordering new tshirts, researching stuff, spreadsheet jocky-ing, etc, etc. They would also order food for us if we didn't have it provided at our co-working space.

I hope this comment was helpful and not condescending. I do some business ops work myself in addition to writing code and consulting. As the longtime only-female, I too had to deal with the assumptions about my role (outside the company, not inside).

All of these tasks are important and need to happen for a company to run successfully, but they don't all need to be done by an "Office Manager" just because that's how it works at some startups.

It's only a matter of time until the tech industry is a much more women-friendly place. And frankly I can't wait - there's a lot of pain in the world, and we need the brightest minds on them.

http://alexisohanian.com/on-being-a-proud-non-technical-foun...

Selection bias. Women who have ordinary experiences don't write angry blog posts about them, or don't get upvotes.

If your role isn’t technical, you don’t actually understand the product.

We should remember that some great founders like Steve Jobs were also not writing any code and still added lots of value. IMHO understanding the product mostly mean understanding how users interact with it, not understanding how to code it.

As far a job titles go, I read an article a day ago where the author suggested that when it comes to salary negotiation and you are not quite happy with the monetary part of the offer, you should at least demand a title that would show progress when put on your resume.

I'm sorry that they haven't captivated people the way a rogue engineer can, but an ops or HR person isn't likely to start a company from a dorm room, garage or basement that makes its way to a multi billion dollar IPO.

As to the office mom thing; I haven't encountered that much, maybe it varies from office to office. I don't doubt it exists, I've just never seen it personally. Anyone know if that's a really common thing?

https://37signals.com/remote/

Having someone manage operations is just as essential in a remote company as it is in an in-person one.

I do agree that the crappy snacks management / trash organization facet goes away to a large extent in a remote environment, but I certainly don't think that makes the role described in the article any less essential.

Ask yourself this question. Do you really want to be the one that has to call the building manager every time the toilet gets blocked ?

Even though it is everybody putting their shoulder to the grindstone every day that really moves the company forward.