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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.
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.
Male, I.T. Support, 13 4E Wide
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.
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.
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.
And paid more. Higher pay means higher bars and harsher judgement. Don't feel sad for them.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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.
I don't think so, the OP is too confusing: I'm having trouble figuring out what I should be outraged about here. Someone help, please?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My takeaway was don't work with ESR.
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.
Higher pay means higher bars and harsher judgement.
Where do you work such that management is put to a higher standard and face harsher penalties when they fail to live up to it? I would like to submit a resume, since I've never seen such a magical place.
I can 100% correlate this type of staff appraisal with the successful companies I have worked at.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
... 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.
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.
The web, including Slashdot, became commercialized. Slashdot makes money from ads. Ads are more valuable if Slashdot gets more traffic. Slashdot figured out that more people read and comment on inflammatory stories. Stories about some geek building a tricorder/kidney dialysis machine/warp drive in his basement aren't inflammatory (okay, maybe the last one....)
Complaining about it is like complaining that the news only shows violence, while watching the news.
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why is the video quality so shit on /.?
Shitstorm in 3... 2... 1...
I don't think so. Miss Bennett is above that, especially now that she's beginning to recognize her feelings for Mr. Darcy. As long as they manage to sort out her sister Lydia and her unhealthy relationship with Mr. Wickham things should calm down.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
My takeaway was don't work with ESR.
That's not hard; when has that guy ever worked at a normal company?
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.
Political Correctness ruins good Everything.
Fixed that for you.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And here for a moment I thought that Bennet Hasselton had moved to video.