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Software Engineer Liz Bennett Talks About Being a Woman in a Nearly All Male Workplace (Video)
This conversation was generated by a post Eric S. Raymond published on his "Armed and Dangerous" blog that said, "...if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a 'women in tech' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp." Eric later wrote a post about how Social Justice Warriors may be more of a problem than the problems they complain about.
Whoa! Predatory women in tech trying to entrap people like (and including) Linus Torvalds the way an old-time private eye got the goods on an errant husband as part of a divorce case? Scary! And worrying about thoughtcrime, too? Oh my! But Liz Bennett is an actual software engineer who works at Loggly in San Francisco. She writes for her company's blog when she's not writing Java code, has a (not very active) GitHub account, and plays bassoon. And her attitude is similar to the one espoused by ESR in the second post (above): write great code -- and if you do, they (for any value of they) have no right to be negative about you, period. And, she says, before you take a job you should be sure the company is a good "fit" for you and doesn't harbor people who will work to bring you down -- which is great advice for anyone, in any field of endeavor.
Whoa! Predatory women in tech trying to entrap people like (and including) Linus Torvalds the way an old-time private eye got the goods on an errant husband as part of a divorce case? Scary! And worrying about thoughtcrime, too? Oh my! But Liz Bennett is an actual software engineer who works at Loggly in San Francisco. She writes for her company's blog when she's not writing Java code, has a (not very active) GitHub account, and plays bassoon. And her attitude is similar to the one espoused by ESR in the second post (above): write great code -- and if you do, they (for any value of they) have no right to be negative about you, period. And, she says, before you take a job you should be sure the company is a good "fit" for you and doesn't harbor people who will work to bring you down -- which is great advice for anyone, in any field of endeavor.
Shitstorm in 3... 2... 1...
Tuesday is about as far from Friday as you can get.
Also, first post (normalising for gender, social class and shoe size)
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What was the purpose of the first paragraph? And yes, I am very sorry and feel directly responsible for something Eric Raymond said.
love is just extroverted narcissism
That term is reserved for those who have accountability for what they create and in most of the civilized world have gone through a certification process.
What she is, is a software developer. Part of that process is design and testing, but that alone does not make her an engineer.
Fuck all these people who think otherwise and dilute the word because they want to have a way to place themselves from their peers, because they can't do it with their work.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I could talk about being a man in a nearly all female workplace if you want to discuss holiday retail. There's drama, favoritism, struggle, feeling alienated, eye-rape when I'm bending over to pick up boxes, the skimpy tee-shirt and blue jeans that's my uniform when they get to wear whatever they want, etc....
But I won't because it's a job like anything else and I'm there to work, not discuss my interpersonal feelings like this is some sort of dear diary episode of the gilmore girls.
Stop hazing us dice. We're just nerds. We're not bad people. We and our industries aren't hostile to women, or minorities, or transgenders, or disabled people.
Stop hazing us. We're not like those sour hipsters who work for/with your offices. We're just nerds. Stop injecting sex and politics and religion into our jobs and pastimes and pursuits. Many of us chose these fields in part to get away from that. Stop labeling programmers as "men", "women", "[RACE HERE]", etc, etc and telling us how we opressed everybody simply by existing. We have usernames and handles to escape our meatspace identities.
This has to stop. These stories have to stop. The politics and the propaganda has to stop.
Tech doesn't have a problem. The media has a problem with tech. This hazing has to stop.
Anytime it is you and one other the risk is increased for both of you that there could be a "they said, they said" situation.
Well, to throw in the "sexual harassment comment of the week" and play a bit of devil's advocate:
She is attractive. Her male coworkers probably manipulate themselves into making sure she's happy, and she either doesn't see it or has actively sought an environment in which it happens (her advice leads me to believe it's some of both).
Interesting, when you talk to the women engineers vs women management, the experienced sexism is at different levels.
I can only give anecdotal personal experience from working in the internet/software field for 20+ years, I think management gets more news since people always complain about their managers. So women managers will also face the negative employee gossip and talk. I think it also has the political vs technical aspects of the job. I've had many women managers work their way up, and being a mid level manager was only a step towards director and higher. The best managers had the technical skills and concentrated on the job. The worst I've had and received the worst feedback was procedural and political. Team mates definitely (women and men) treated the political managers way worse.
TLDR, I think its a disservice to lump women engineers in with management oriented women in the discussion about sexism in the technical industry, since management is always judged harder.
This conversation was generated by a post Eric S. Raymond published on his "Armed and Dangerous" blog that said, "...if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a 'women in tech' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp."
Yeah, I think it's a fair fear.
Women are a subset of people, and a subset of people are malicious. There's a sexist idea out there that "women are never malicious," or "women are malicious far less than men," but if what my daughter tells me about the social antics of girls are true, then I suspect that the real situation is equality: There are just as many malicious women out there as there are malicious men out there.
It's not women, or "people" if you like, like the one interviewed that are a concern. No: They are treasures. Rather, it's the kind of woman who is actively looking to take offense and play drama queen -- who are at issue.
I think not being alone with women at a technical conference is a VERY good idea for any many. It's nothing against women; It IS recognizing that we are in a super-charged politicized climate right now. I think women should be very happy with this kind of rule as well: If something happens, there will be witnesses. Win-win for everybody.
Who wold have thought. Women in IT want to be treated like people. Not with some special care or preferential treatment, want to be judged on their professional merits rather than having privileges for being the "oppressed sex". They don't want to feel offended, and they don't want to be defended, but it seems they want to, ya know, do their effin' WORK.
Dear SJWs. It's really awesome what you want to do, but maybe, just maybe, try to find out first whether what you fight for actually WANTS you to fight for them? You remind me a lot of those "foreign aid" workers who "helped" those "poor, poor Africans" by sending food there until the local farmers had to shut down production because they couldn't compete with your free food anymore. they were not poor. You made them poor. And I fear the same development here.
There are good and hard working women in IT. No, they are not numerous, but they exist. And they are far from being marginalized. They are part of great teams and they are good at what they're doing. I had the fortune that I managed to work with some of them. They are not here because of their looks, they can easily pull their weight as anyone else. And you will notice that they are usually at the very least a little bit embarrassed by all the shit going down about this "women in IT" thing. Because it does harm their reputation.
A friend of mine recently complained about the problem. She has been in IT for about 15 years now, we worked together before and she is a very good programmer. With more and more women being signed up on no other merit than being a women, stereotypes are starting to grow. Because these women cannot code well. They would not have gotten that job were they men, simply because their skills are lacking. The main reason they were hired is (in HER words, please note that!) to be the "quota bitch".
And that casts a shadow on HER reputation. Because stereotypes are a powerful thing. Just ponder the following scenario and tell me honestly and truthfully what you would think:
The former situation was that the women:men ratio was maybe 1:10, maybe even only 1:20 in IT. Of course, all of these 20, 19 men one woman, would know their trade. That's because they were hired. Now, that "affirmative action" bull takes place and women are hired based more on the fact that they're women than their actual skill levels. You'll probably end up with a 1:1 ratio, even, but that would probably also mean that you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel because there simply are not as many women as there are men in IT.
So that means you have one "good" women and about 10 mediocre to bad programmers of the female gender.
Question for 100 points: What would you think of "the female coworkers"?
And do you really think that this would aid those women in IT that are really good in their job?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
She's pretty hot.
The very best thing you could have done with that particular posting of Eric's would have been to ignore it, and run the story about that nice woman without mentioning it. She can stand on her own and nobody but Eric should be held to account for what he said.
Bruce Perens.
and if you do, they (for any value of they) have no right to be negative about you, period.
Duh, but what does that say about moving up in the world, promotions, career path, opportunities? NOTHING. In the end, no one cares about writing good code--ends do justify the means--it's WORK. Especially if the code goes obsolete (like COBOL apps).
And, she says, before you take a job you should be sure the company is a good "fit" for you and doesn't harbor people who will work to bring you down -- which is great advice for anyone, in any field of endeavor.
Fit is subjective. great advice, but very hard to practice. Especially if you're a millennial looking to be the next Zuckerberg.
TFA summary sure screams flamebait for the bro-crowd/MRAs.
So quite why you had to qualify her with being one unless
a) this is considered unusual enough to be noteworthy
or
b) Eric isn't considered one,unlike Liz here
And the problem isn't that it's liable to happen, but that if ever it does, you are going to be fucked in the worst colloquial sense, because you're supposed to listen and believe, and it's *so* easy to believe that those neckbeard unsociable nerds who live in their mom's basement and have never touched a real woman are bad. After all, they don't look pretty.
Eric Raymond said that? *THE* Eric Raymond? FUUUUUUUCK! My first thought was to feel like I just learned that the inventor my very efficient compact German automobile has some unorthodox political views...
RTFA though he talks about Social Justice Warriors. Some of these people are zealots who believe the end justifies the means. Not wanting to look them in the eye can make you a target.
Ok... but then Raymond spouted this: "a seething hatred of djangoconcardiff’s “white straight male”, who recently hounded Nobel laureate Tim Hunt out of his job with a fraudulent accusation of sexist remarks."
FUUUUUUUCK! Who is the Social Justice Warrior now?
Moral of the story is if you do have a point, don't lace it with hyperbole the way Raymond has, because it makes you look like a fucktard hypocrite.
The problem is that for so many women, they have to write BETTER code than their male peers to be considered on the same level. They are put upon to bust stereo-types. And that may be harder for some women to do in work environs which, many times, cater explicitly to male employees.
Yes, this is an indirect response to the video, but the summary and the slant of the question suggest that the interview is as much about grinding a particular axe as interviewing Liz Bennett.
Just lost a reader.
I'm done.
I give up.
I cannot waste any more of my time on you.
Enjoy being a hollow relic on the internet because we're all leaving.
Why is nearly every Google chat video I see around the web such shitty quality? It's 2015, why is online video conferencing still so bad? Also ooyala.com (the site hosting the video) is slower than a tranquilised sloth. I haven't experienced that much buffering in years. Why not just post it on YouTube? It was also kind of weird not seeing the person conducting the interview.
Anyway, after reading about all the supposed problems with misogyny in the tech industry I think it's good that stuff like this gets posted. It's easy to forget that a lot of this nonsense that gets so much attention online actually doesn't occur very often in the real world. Most people just want to be treated fairly, regardless of the shape of their genitalia.
I hired a woman one time who was just simply the best candidate. I also interviewed women who know what they were doing, but were quite beautiful to the point of almost being distracting during the interview (unfortunately she had a different skillset than was required).
This was a serious non-conversation. She never encountered sexism on the work-floor nor has the need to profile herself by causing a shitstorm against a big name in the development world. Actually, she states she'd rather stay distant from those polemics in like the first 2 minutes and her co-workers are cool and supportive. Why keep on hammering on that subject?
Loggly seems like an interesting SaaS platform, with probably cool technology behind it. Cloud based, big data, data mining, load balancing, noSQL databases, web development, etc...
Maybe it would have been more interesting to know what she's actually working on, how that relates to the big Loggly picture and where her interests lay in the development realm.
Engineering is:
1) That branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures.
2) The action of working artfully to bring something about.
3) Work done by an engineer.
Those of us who do software work create structure; we (if we do hardware as well, create and) use and empower machines; we work artfully to bring the desired outcome about; we are therefore, in every sense of the word, doing engineering, and we are engineers. Many are artists as well, in the domain of the very same pursuits.
As far as a license goes, that's in no way a guarantee of competence (any more than a college degree is), nor is the presumptive ability to sue a worthy indirect guarantee. All you have to look at to understand that is take a look at the incredibly incompetent RF systems put in place at a very large number of radio stations by the system designers, and further, at the incredibly incompetent rules and regulations the engineers at the FCC have put in place both to specify the requirements, and to validate the results of said designs. Oh, and WRT RFI as well. (The idiots at the FCC decided that high speed networking over power lines (BPL) was a reasonable idea. In the realm of undertakings that clearly show government licensed engineers up as complete buffoons, that is surely in the running for number one.)
It is perfectly valid to say that professional software types aren't "licensed engineers." But that in no way is the same thing as saying that software engineers aren't engineers at all. Or that they aren't professionals. They are quite often both. And within that context, there are good ones, bad ones, terrific ones, utterly incompetent ones - but still engineers, doing engineering.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Substitute "man" for "woman", and you've just described Raymond
All that other stuff is okay - but playing the bassoon is simply unforgivable.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sorry Eric, the rest of us are just fine in that situation.
As expected from the guy that put politically motivated insults such as "Fisking" into the jargon file.
They only cause trouble. Straight White Males for the win!
Women being forced and duped into thinking that they have to work in order to be a person is entirely socially generated hysteria and stigma. 40 years ago women did not have "careers" in a workplace because there was little in the way of formula. Meaning if the woman did not stay home and feed the kid, they died of starvation. Since the woman is the only parent with the ability to make milk it made sense for her to make her career in the home. It used to be normal for a woman to help the family save money by being a good cook and manage the budget at home, to sew and knit when time allowed, and to keep the family healthy by keeping the house in good shape. Paying people to cook for you, clean for you, and raise your kids for you COSTS MONEY.
In the last 40 years we there has been a social transition brought about by mass marketing campaigns filled to overflowing with psychological manipulation (we used to call this brain washing). In the 1960s a woman was working because she either could not attract a husband or because her husband could not provide what the family needed. There was sympathy for that poor woman forced into the workplace. Her poor kids would be forced on other people and lack responsible parents at home.
Look where we are today. A society which is slowly crumbling around your feet. Population is declining, wealth disparity is growing at an amazing rate, and people can't tell the truth from a lie. It is trendy to neglect your kids and make them someone else's problem, because family has become disposable.
Women have choice, but have not had choice for as long as idiots like to pretend in order to fill an agenda.. You disliking what they choose does not in any way indicate that they have no choice it indicates that you are simply an ignorant tool.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This was terrible interview, absolutely weird questions. Thank you for making sure I will visit Slashdot even less now.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
What benefit is there for men to interact with women at technical conferences? The risk that you say something that gets a feminist angry is pretty high, and there are plenty of men you can network with and avoid these problems.
I mean, what is this? Do you not see what has happened to Slashdot? Every post is like a landmine waiting for someone to tie something to 'millennials', 'hipsters', 'SJWs' as it is. And now this?
Are you running a website, or a daycare facility for the cognitively inferior, or what? (both?)
This was actually my first Slashdot TV video. And it'll be my last. The interviewer's an absolute idiot. Kept asking the same question over and over again.
Thanks for four minutes of my life I'll never get back. And no, I had to stop at the four-minute mark.
The guy interviewing her sounds like a pedophile. What the F is wrong with him.
If during high school, the attractive scene girl would like the geek who is unkept because he spent all night playing his favourite game then there wouldn't be such a divide in tech.
No, it doesn't indicate a problem. If you think it does, name it, but make sure that it also explains why most car salesmen being male is a problem, and most realtors being female. Be sure that the suggested cure is also applied to remove the gender imbalance in teaching and nursing (mostly female), and in auto repair and roofing (mostly male).
The problem is all-male summer camp. Put a bunch of guys together and their guyism can become exaggerated. This, in turn, can make girls feel or actually be excluded.
Clear boundaries with clear consequences (and proportional responses to boundary violations) are the solution, but in real life people are messy. Some are afraid of reporting boundary violations because of the risk of retaliation, others are stupid enough to retaliate, the lack of discussing simple boundary violations leads to more egregious ones as people don't learn where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are.
several concepts will be introduced involving nike tn requin. the size of the Euro-dollar market, the factors responsible for the growth of the Euro-dollar market, and a brief history of international finance, looking at the historical perspective from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. As it seems that these very concepts has important implications for how factors are interpreted when considering the ?actual? origins of its early development. B. A ?brief history? of the Euro-dollar Market Many developments in the 1960s-1970s coincided with the birth and expansion of the Euro-markets. This had became a key means through which the City of London could sustain its position as an international financial centre, as well as a means for US banks to develop their international business and avoid many of the capital controls imposed in the USA in the 1960s. The Euro-markets were the first relatively free international capital and money markets, to be created after the Second World War, and the emergence of the market has been crucial to the internationalisation of money capital.
... at a company that has some of the highest percentage of women in the industry, as well as the highest retention rate.
The key to both is ample benefits that allow for good life balance, and raising a family even if you are a single mom.
People here often complain about agism, and temporary work visas, not realizing that it all flows from the same source: The disregard for the "human resource" in tech.
Divide and conquer, turning the women in tech issue in yet another culture war, is exactly what the industry wants.
that a single man in possession of a large fortune is in a need of a wife. I wonder how many times she's heard that one.
Rob. What an asshole. He's trying to hard to put her in a situation where she'll say something that supports the narrative he's hoping for. He should be fired. This wasn't so much an interview as it was an attempted ambush.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
ESR went batshit after 9/11; he should be ignored and left to masturbate with his guns.
His is an argument by anecdote and rumor. Murky at best. There's something a little creepy about his "raw power and responsibility of the uber coder" act as well. Ladies, I'd watch out for this guy one on one unless you want to get kinky with a flailing power mad nerd. I'm not saying ... I'm just saying ...
Sorry when the interviewer says in the first sentence "Loggly that's a cute name" he just came over a sleaze, like some groomer hanging out at the kidz park. I didn't watch the rest.
BTW Loggly isn't cute, it sounds like it has something to do with human waste monitoring.
Is that also "constantly worrying that any man who ends up alone with you in a room could be planning to rape you will soon find you have trouble being around all men. Paranoia is not a good way to live."? Or is that absolutely fine?
Hell, it's even joked about (PMITA Prison ring a bell). And there's no "Listen and believe" for men when they claim rape. See how Richard Dawkins was not able to know what rape was when it happened to him because he is now old and was white and privileged.
So you're much MUCH less likely to be falsely accused, because the man would have to have proof first to be believed.
You're more likely (only about 2:1 or less, though) to be assaulted physically by a man, but that usually ends up with obvious marks and again would require more proof it wasn't self inflicted if it were male:male and the man accusing was saying they were assaulted, since it would be assumed they both fought, it won't be assumed that the woman would start a fight.
And if the woman did, many women would be cheering them on (a minority, but still a lot of them), and most would assume it was warranted violence.
What it's like being a total group thinker who dislikes individual rights cucklord in a media machine that always agrees with your group
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So I gotta be honest. She's a brainy beauty and I could help but thinking about sex during most of the interview. Am I sick or just a typical guy?
Why is the video quality so shit on /.?
Roblimo is an embarrassment to Slashdot, the tech industry, journalism.
His cringingly awkward interviews just awful. He's so clueless and out of place in this day and age. And he doesn't seem to be able to even operate Skype and edit/encode a video without all of the deficiencies of 1998.
Seriously, it's way past time to put Roblimo out to pasture.
her cunt should have as much to do with doing her job, as my cock has doing mine.
it really is that simple.
I see a lot of posts here about how "women just don't want to go into IT/software/etc" or "once working at a company, many women whine [blah blah blah personal biases blah blah blah]" so, uh, maybe it's not the women. Perhaps, it's really YOUR issues when accused of being inappropriate toward women. Again, everyone has biases, and, in this day and age, we should be questioning our own biases more and more. It has nothing to do with the dreaded "SJWs" and more to do with not being a sexist ass.
...you're an African-American male in any job that requires thinking. Welcome to the club, here's a cookie.
A casual look at LinkedIn shows that Loggly isn't "nearly all male". Of 39 current employees, 30 are male and 9 are female: so 77% -- high, but not "nearly all". Another stat on Loggly: Liz is the sole female among 20 engineering/QA/Support people. And reasonable people in the field will agree with the statement "software engineering is male dominated". Step outside of engineering and you'll see women often dominate HR, PR, Marketing, and Sales. That's not the case at Loggly, but women are certainly better represented here: of 14 the Loggly employees in those roles, 6 of them (43%) are female. So why is tech culture male-biased? Rather than saying "tech companies are male dominated", the more accurate and nuanced answer is that (a) smaller tech companies are engineering dominated, and (b) engineering is male-dominated.
Roblimo does all of his own stunts as well as his own recording/editing. But, he sucks at it. He seems to feel that his leet Windows 95 skillz translate to today's tech and is thus incapable of operating Skype. Don't even get me started on his atrocious interview skills.
My guess is that he works cheap/free, so Dice won't fire him.
Political Correctness ruins good jokes. Do you realize how many good jokes there are about "bassoon players" and "double reeds"?
Posted anonymous, cause I play a proper single reed saxophone.
First he does not know the name of the company she works with, and then he calls it a 'cute name'. The first is rather impolite, and the whole subject of the talk made me wonder if he would have used the word cute if she had been a guy.
This leads to a sidenote:
I'm in holland myself, and I've always though the whole 'sexism in IT' stuff was way overblown, but the more americans I speak about it (or see speaking on teh youtubes) the more it seems like it's a real problem over there! Not that the guys mean any harm most of the time, they don't even notice themselves that their tone of voice and attitude changes to protective-fatherly as soon as they speak to a woman. Rather strange and rather interesting to see from the viewpoint of a different culture. (I had always assumed the dutch/american culture were largely the same, but is seems the SUA is stuck in the 50s/60s in some areas)
Not to say *all* american males behave that way, just a minority. But still, it seems a way larger minority than I would expect.
Interviewer brings up gamergate. She doesn't care about it. Most people in the real world don't care about stuff like that
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Females are angry that they're no longer special! You're only somebody anymore if you're a trans-transgender stuck in a triple-divorce semi-time-share road tripping for anti-beneficial LBGT soliciting monkey researchers!!
(haha, the captcha is 'ladylike')
And here for a moment I thought that Bennet Hasselton had moved to video.
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