Right - I get having a *bad* social media presence can harm you. Companies can be expected to use whatever information they can find out about you. I also get that having a social media presence may get you offers that you might not have otherwise received.
But my question is whether NOT having a profile will *actively* hurt you, and this article mentioned nothing about that.
I strongly suspect that we're not quite at the point where you are expected to provide your FaceBook identity on your resume. I don't think not having a social media presence is considered a statement about you. HR may simply assume your lack of presence simply means they didn't find you.
However, I am willing to be convinced otherwise. I don't know I'm right, but I'll assume I'm right until I see at least some evidence to the contrary.
FB, et al has made it more convenient to socialize, and if I'm the hold out (and I am), it's because I'm deliberately choosing to make it less convenient for all my friends to socialize with me.
I'd complain, but it comes across to me as being the only one who hasn't moved downtown from the suburbs, and then me whining that no-one drops in.
As with everything, it's weighing the costs vs. the benefits. The costs are the same for everyone who joins, but the benefit for those who, like me, are rather less social, are far smaller than for my less social peers.
What is changing is that as FB absorbs more of my social circle and there are fewer non-FB-mediated social contacts, the benefit of joining increases. The benefit of 1 social contact a week to 50 social contacts a week was not worth the cost. The benefit of 1 social contact every 8 weeks to 50 social contacts a week may well be worth the cost.
(Also, not being on FB is beginning to be like not having an email address. It paints you as old and cranky, which I am but would prefer not to be painted that way.)
> Most HR offices will trash your resume if they can't find your facebook page.
Is there *anyone* who works in HR who can actually confirm a resume trashed for lack of social media contacts? This sounds like a folk-tale to me, but then perhaps the world has changed.
I know people who've been approached via Linked-In to good effect, but I've never heard of anyone whose failed to get an interview because they don't have a Linked-In (or FB) profile (and I work in tech).
At least until they start implementing real security measures that start affecting voters. What do you mean there's an extra $50 on the loan or vehicle processing charge. What do you mean that they need an extra week to verify my identity? I need that money *now*!
In every single case outside of "they stole my credit card last week", I've never seen more than a tiny minority of North American consumers opt for security over convenience. Every single time.
As a businesses, you don't want to be in the bottom 10th percentile of security. But dear God will your customers crucify you if your product costs more, or even worse, is less convenient, than your competitors. It's got the point that I feel security improvements beyond the minimal only come if you have a monopoly and can inflict better security against your customers will.
(Latest example - why does EMV in the States mostly use signature rather than PIN? Because there's enough competition in the US that consumer's preferences for less security couldn't be ignored, unlike, for example, Canada that has better security now only because the ATM cartel (Interac) made sure they had no choice.)
it spooked the other players in the market enough that one of them brought Gigbit fiber to my house and charged me the same rate google charges in their service area.
That's exactly what Google was hoping would happen. Everyone I knew from Google (although no one involved in the project, so no inside knowledge) indicated that Google wants high speed Internet everywhere, because as far as they're concerned, more Internet = more Google.
The incumbents were dragging their feet, so Google Fiber was created mostly as a project to spook the incumbents into doing their own Fiber faster.
Unfortunately, I suspect Google found out *why* the incumbents were dragging their feet. Just providing fiber as a utility service is *enormously* expensive, with a massively slow payback.
Anyway, if the incumbents can get their fiber act together, that would remove any reason for Google to continue supporting a Google Fiber project at all. As it is, it seems they've mostly shelved it anyway. Kind of sad, but unless Americans and Canadians are willing to be packed into the same density as Koreans, super-high speed Internet is going to be mostly restricted to a few enclaves for the foreseeable future.
Every category of person contains "difficult" people.
But I have to say that while difficult people will cause damage wherever they go, the scale of damage they can cause depends immensely on whether the group they belong to has power or not and simply how numerous they are.
So no, while I'm pretty certain that the damage done to me by being stereotyped by women and minorities will be *personally* more costly than the damage to me by male stereotyping, the over-all cost to society (in tech) by white male stereotyping is *vastly* higher because they have the numbers and the power to act on such stereotypes. (Yes, the reverse is true in female dominated fields - try being a male kindergarten teacher.)
Anyway, not only is the damage caused by difficult people from the out-groups a lot smaller, but they're often noisy enough that they can actually get general society to focus on a topic (and then are generally ignored in favour of the moderates). So, do I agree with the radicals? Not with their words, but they'll end up causing a lot more good (and be bitterly disappointed when they only get a tiny portion of what they think needs to happen) than I ever will with my "reasonable" approach.
> Shouting 'I feel threatened here please hire more people like me/put me somewhere with others of my kind so I can feel safe" does not solve the issue.
Agreed. However, the original poster wasn't shouting. Her quote was "you probably don't realize how threatening a room full of strange men feels to many women", which is something I suspect we both agree upon.
As for the effectiveness of shouting, on an individual basis, I think you're completely correct. But for making a global difference? Well, history is pretty replete with examples of discrimination that has lasted centuries, so just going with the flow doesn't really cut it for the less than patient (along with the fact that our brains also want us to believe that if someone is abused, they must deserve it). So I believe actually calling out the problems *is* called for.
Now you might claim it's only the 'radicals' with unreasonable demands that really cause annoyance, but if history is any guide, it pretty much always takes some radicals to shake things up enough so that people pay attention and the moderates actually get listened to.
And honestly, as a geek male, I've had enough other males confide to me how "we both understand how women can't *really* do science, math or programming", that I can understand a fair number of them being just a wee bit irritated. It irritated me (especially the high school teacher) and I wasn't the one being victimized (except by having capable candidates leave the field, which damages us all).
There is a difference between being a "junior member of the group" and not "one of the group".
The human brain has a tendency to cast to boolean. Once our brain has decided the pattern for what is an X on the basis of a bias in numbers, there's a strong tendency for it to try and toss out anything not part of the larger group. It's part of our brain make-up and requires no misogyny, racism, or anything else.
Not everyone succumbs, but enough do so that you can be certain in any of a certain size group where you stand-out for some reason that people's brains have clicked on, there are going to be some who are listening to that inner voice telling then you aren't really an X, and whose confirmation bias will ignore successes as coincidence and note failures as proof.
All because they are human - the shortcuts the brain uses to allow us to survive do not lead to fairness.
So, no, if you are the one person in the room that people's brains have decided stands out, there's a reason to feel threatened. (Or if their brains have decided you are already competent, the other way around - I've constantly noted that because I code "senior geek", my advice on technical aspects is taken far more seriously by a few people than the identical advice by someone who doesn't trigger the same stereotype).
> Equality of opportunity should be the goal, not equality of results (which can never actually happen).
Except that given how humans work via generalization, we know that any natural bias in results will be heavily exaggerated by our brains. Then we add in cultural effects - naturally a culture grows around the the biggest group that differs from the cultural preferences of the minority, and then we're exaggerating the bias even more.
It's how 60/40 splits become 95/5 splits - and it doesn't require malice at all - just humans being human.
The assumption that there should be equality of outcome may be wrong - but like a tug of war, you don't achieve balance by not pulling, and this does act as a counter-bias towards the naturally occurring bias, and helps do the job. It would be nice if it wasn't necessary, but hey, we're human.
Because the human brain has a strong tendency to cast to boolean. It knows what a programmer looks like, and those aren't them.
Now of course, you, personally, don't suffer from this bias, but the vast majority of humans do. A ratio of hires that might be "naturally" 65/35 becomes 95/5 (all number made up for illustration purposes).
Moreover, we then build an environment for those programmers, which *also* discourages women and minorities because their cultural preferences differ.
So, all that's being asked is to tilt the board a little the other way to counteract the natural occurring biases against them.
And note, this doesn't require evil racists or misogynists. The human brain and efficiency gains naturally act to re-enforce small biases, making them large biases. It's the network effect writ large.
We can try and minimize them, and we should, but we're not going to succeed. So we throw some counter-biases in.
The only thing I think we can do without is the ferocity of attacks from all sides. "Just" outcomes are not natural - which means that an "unjust" outcome is not evidence of malice, in and of itself. The idea that it must infects both sides, as it requires those seeing an injustice to find a villain rather than look at the best way to achieve justice, and just as poisonous, allows those operating in an unjust environment to truthfully see no malice, and assume therefor there can be no injustice.
In the physical world, if someone is determined to kill me, I will die. There are no practical measures I can take that will protect myself against the threat of a sufficiently determined attacker.
The electronic world is not much different. Unless I want to seal myself in my electronic basement, I will be hacked by someone who is interested in doing so, and the cost of doing so becomes cheaper every day.
By far the cheapest solution is to offer our would be attackers the opportunity to make a decent living, and, to no surprise, enrich ourselves as well. (The nice thing about economies - they are positive sum games.)
In much of the West, crime doesn't pay, or at least pay well. Your average street thug probably makes less than minimum wage. Sure, there are a few that make a lot of money, but it's like trying to make a money as a rock band. Only the 0.1% make a middle-class income, and only the 0.001% make the money you see in movies. Plus, you're likely to wind up dead or in jail.
Consequently, for the most part, only the badly educated or stupid become criminals. There's the odd smart criminal, but having a legit job (if that's available) is simply superior in every way.
And then you have the former Soviet Union, with a ton of really smart, very well-educated, very talented engineers, with virtually no decent job prospects at all, but still fairly good virtual contact with the West.
And suddenly, given a lack of options, you have smart criminals.
And that is a recipe for total disaster.
As a matter of survival of the Western world, we need to open immigration from Russia so that these smart, talented engineers can find decent jobs that benefit us before they find ill-paying jobs that cost us terribly.
(Many of my most capable co-workers have been Russians who were able to leave, and man, we their talent working for us, rather than against us, for both our sakes.)
I'm glad that someone here recognizes this fact. I don't know how many companies I've seen that did things "right" went under or were bought by companies that took every software shortcut known to man.
The basic fact is that if the customer is ignorant of the intangibles like quality, they'll prioritize reputation and then price. If you're a smaller company, you won't survive long enough to get a reputation for excellence if you don't go cheap enough to allow you to undercut all your competitors. And (in general) going cheap means sacrificing quality.
Not sure how to get out of this cycle without inventing a better, more knowledgeable customer...
So how could you possibly even get into hot waters, no matter what might be considered common decency?
Okay,let's take one example. I come from a pretty hard-core geek background and worked for a while with a small group of geeks in software development. We were a mono-culture. Meetings used an extremely efficient unwritten code. When you thought you understood a point someone was making and you either understood or disagreed, you cut them off, and raised your voice slightly. They instantly evaluated whether they thought you had understood them and either continued, raising their voice, or ceded control of the conversation. This could go back and forth for a second or two, with both sides evaluating the strength of their point and the other's point until someone backed down (which usually took maybe 2-3 seconds at most. Failing to cede to a stronger point made you look like an idiot, so there was enough incentive to realistically evaluate.)
As long as everyone was understood this verbal ballet, you could have a 2 hour meeting with barely a single sentence carried to completion. It was an intricate dance with everyone participating, barely a wasted word, and it would also last about 30 minutes instead of the two hours.
It also utterly excluded anyone who wasn't raised middle-class white male geek. The idea that interrupting people was horribly rude, that people who had something vital to say would never speak up because they were raised to not interrupt didn't occur to anyone in the group. The idea that people felt dismissed, demeaned and generally devalued wasn't even on my radar.
Now in this case, no one went to HR. What it took was for me to get ever so slightly annoyed that one of our best programmers (a woman) let us waste half an hour walking into the swamp that she was well aware of. She explained (with far more patience that I would have shown if the roles were reversed) why she did not feel comfortable speaking. She'd never been asked for her opinion. She was usually cut off after a sentence or two, etc., etc.
From my cultural background, it was *her* responsibility to barge in, interrupt us, and if we didn't catch on immediately, raise her voice to indicate this was a "real" point.
Anyway, we did get straightened out, adjusted our meeting culture to take into account the reality that a modern high-tech workforce is probably only 20% standard middle-class white male geek, and that the cultural standards that I assumed were default were anything but.
A code of conduct would have acted as a reminder that one doesn't have to be a jerk to end up being a jerk...
I find people who hate arbitrary codes of conduct to be the most pleasurable to work with. I know that they have a sense of humour, and can get into a heated argument without throwing around words like sexism, racism, and discrimination.
Like you, I'm a middle-class, straight, white male. I'm never going to be the subject or sexism, racism or discrimination, and there's certainly freedom in excluding anyone who doesn't share my cultural context. Indeed, it's often pleasant to work in a monoculture where I can assume that everyone takes things in exactly the way I meant them. Where, because I'm not a raging jerk, it's automatically someone else's fault if they're offended by by anything I say or do.
However, in the real world, I am expected to be a grown up and deal with people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. I am expected to be mature enough to understand that just because I didn't mean to be racist or sexist doesn't mean my words or actions weren't offensive.
Sure, there are jerks of all stripes. But I find that if I've decided that everyone who I've offended is a "social justice snowflakes who go whining to the boss and/or media at the slightest perceived provocation", then one of those jerks is me.
Unreasonable people won't need a code of conduct to be unreasonable. Then again, if someone was genuinely offended by my use of a term, I'm happy to switch it to something less upsetting. That's just basic consideration.
But a code of conduct can help define minimal expectations from a culturally diverse crowd that might otherwise offend each other without intention of doing so.
> the non-written laws of common courtesy have left the building ages ago.
I get where you are coming from, but the reality of a very diverse bunch of contributors means that what is considered common courtesy (and thus what can be considered acceptable behaviour) can be shockingly different, depending on cultural upbringing (class, geography, gender, etc.)
What I consider minimal professional behaviour can be considered stick-up-one's-butt political correctness by others (and not necessarily just male others, either).
A code of conduct helps an informal organization make it clear what "common courtesy" means to all its members. A useful thing as the monoculture many of us grew up with disappears.
The trouble is that for a sizable segment of society, their privacy+eyeballs is the only asset they have to sell.
Making Microsoft, Google, et al start charging for everything (or raise their prices in order to make up for the loss of revenue) is going to flat out deny services to those who can't afford them (or are unbanked and have no access to credit cards).
Sure, adding $100-$200 a month to my bills (in the form of micro-transactions, subscriptions, etc.) to protect my privacy (and only have anonymous ads shown) would easily be worthwhile trade for me and my ilk. Add in another $100-$200 a month to get rid of ads altogether.
And in the end, I'd be a happier camper, down maybe $5K a year (at worst) to replace all the 'free' or discounted services I currently enjoy.
But there are a hell of a lot of people for whom a $5K annual expense is not an option. Should they essentially be cut off from the Internet?
Kim fires all his nukes at *China*. China, losing Beijing and most of its government, then launches its hundreds of ICBMs at Russia and the US to ensure they do not rule after China's demise. Russia (and maybe the US) then launch their thousands of ICBMs at *everybody*.
"World War IV will be fought with stones and spears."
I have a usage pattern where I end up pairing them with enums and it simplifies so many things (e.g. You practically never need a switch statement ever again).
Care to share the pattern (or a reference)? I googled a bit, but there didn't seem to be one stand-out pattern and I'm quite curious (if you have the time)
I suspect that's the idea. If you have something that's cheap and "weaponizable", then society often ends up restricting them in one fashion or another. What's different about the Internet is that the damage one can do isn't geographically restricted, making control a lot harder.
At least in the mind of its creator, something like "BrickerBot" may be the only way to raise the cost of ownership high enough to prevent destruction of the Internet.
I'm constantly amazed that in a flash of misanthropy, someone hasn't built a "BrickerBot" for PCs. These machines are unlikely to be restored (they're generally owned by non-techies with very limited resources) and the maker could easily use the same justification as BrickerBot.
Just to be clear, I still strongly disapprove of BrickerBot.
Indeed, I spent $1789 of my hard-earned summer job money to buy my Apple ][ in 1979 and was the first person in our residence with a computer in their room.
A fact I was rewarded for by having people in my room day an night playing Dave's Midnight Magic. I learned to sleep through having three people yelling at the screen in my residence room at 2am.
I also ended up having to replace the bloody joystick every six months for my entire tenure at university. I still boggle how someone managed to depress one of the fire buttons *through* the plastic housing on one of them...
Slashdot Mirror
Right - I get having a *bad* social media presence can harm you. Companies can be expected to use whatever information they can find out about you. I also get that having a social media presence may get you offers that you might not have otherwise received.
But my question is whether NOT having a profile will *actively* hurt you, and this article mentioned nothing about that.
I strongly suspect that we're not quite at the point where you are expected to provide your FaceBook identity on your resume. I don't think not having a social media presence is considered a statement about you. HR may simply assume your lack of presence simply means they didn't find you.
However, I am willing to be convinced otherwise. I don't know I'm right, but I'll assume I'm right until I see at least some evidence to the contrary.
Convenience always wins.
FB, et al has made it more convenient to socialize, and if I'm the hold out (and I am), it's because I'm deliberately choosing to make it less convenient for all my friends to socialize with me.
I'd complain, but it comes across to me as being the only one who hasn't moved downtown from the suburbs, and then me whining that no-one drops in.
As with everything, it's weighing the costs vs. the benefits. The costs are the same for everyone who joins, but the benefit for those who, like me, are rather less social, are far smaller than for my less social peers.
What is changing is that as FB absorbs more of my social circle and there are fewer non-FB-mediated social contacts, the benefit of joining increases. The benefit of 1 social contact a week to 50 social contacts a week was not worth the cost. The benefit of 1 social contact every 8 weeks to 50 social contacts a week may well be worth the cost.
(Also, not being on FB is beginning to be like not having an email address. It paints you as old and cranky, which I am but would prefer not to be painted that way.)
> Most HR offices will trash your resume if they can't find your facebook page.
Is there *anyone* who works in HR who can actually confirm a resume trashed for lack of social media contacts? This sounds like a folk-tale to me, but then perhaps the world has changed.
I know people who've been approached via Linked-In to good effect, but I've never heard of anyone whose failed to get an interview because they don't have a Linked-In (or FB) profile (and I work in tech).
At least until they start implementing real security measures that start affecting voters. What do you mean there's an extra $50 on the loan or vehicle processing charge. What do you mean that they need an extra week to verify my identity? I need that money *now*!
In every single case outside of "they stole my credit card last week", I've never seen more than a tiny minority of North American consumers opt for security over convenience. Every single time.
As a businesses, you don't want to be in the bottom 10th percentile of security. But dear God will your customers crucify you if your product costs more, or even worse, is less convenient, than your competitors. It's got the point that I feel security improvements beyond the minimal only come if you have a monopoly and can inflict better security against your customers will.
(Latest example - why does EMV in the States mostly use signature rather than PIN? Because there's enough competition in the US that consumer's preferences for less security couldn't be ignored, unlike, for example, Canada that has better security now only because the ATM cartel (Interac) made sure they had no choice.)
it spooked the other players in the market enough that one of them brought Gigbit fiber to my house and charged me the same rate google charges in their service area.
That's exactly what Google was hoping would happen. Everyone I knew from Google (although no one involved in the project, so no inside knowledge) indicated that Google wants high speed Internet everywhere, because as far as they're concerned, more Internet = more Google.
The incumbents were dragging their feet, so Google Fiber was created mostly as a project to spook the incumbents into doing their own Fiber faster.
Unfortunately, I suspect Google found out *why* the incumbents were dragging their feet. Just providing fiber as a utility service is *enormously* expensive, with a massively slow payback.
Anyway, if the incumbents can get their fiber act together, that would remove any reason for Google to continue supporting a Google Fiber project at all. As it is, it seems they've mostly shelved it anyway. Kind of sad, but unless Americans and Canadians are willing to be packed into the same density as Koreans, super-high speed Internet is going to be mostly restricted to a few enclaves for the foreseeable future.
Every category of person contains "difficult" people.
But I have to say that while difficult people will cause damage wherever they go, the scale of damage they can cause depends immensely on whether the group they belong to has power or not and simply how numerous they are.
So no, while I'm pretty certain that the damage done to me by being stereotyped by women and minorities will be *personally* more costly than the damage to me by male stereotyping, the over-all cost to society (in tech) by white male stereotyping is *vastly* higher because they have the numbers and the power to act on such stereotypes. (Yes, the reverse is true in female dominated fields - try being a male kindergarten teacher.)
Anyway, not only is the damage caused by difficult people from the out-groups a lot smaller, but they're often noisy enough that they can actually get general society to focus on a topic (and then are generally ignored in favour of the moderates). So, do I agree with the radicals? Not with their words, but they'll end up causing a lot more good (and be bitterly disappointed when they only get a tiny portion of what they think needs to happen) than I ever will with my "reasonable" approach.
> Shouting 'I feel threatened here please hire more people like me/put me somewhere with others of my kind so I can feel safe" does not solve the issue.
Agreed. However, the original poster wasn't shouting. Her quote was "you probably don't realize how threatening a room full of strange men feels to many women", which is something I suspect we both agree upon.
As for the effectiveness of shouting, on an individual basis, I think you're completely correct. But for making a global difference? Well, history is pretty replete with examples of discrimination that has lasted centuries, so just going with the flow doesn't really cut it for the less than patient (along with the fact that our brains also want us to believe that if someone is abused, they must deserve it). So I believe actually calling out the problems *is* called for.
Now you might claim it's only the 'radicals' with unreasonable demands that really cause annoyance, but if history is any guide, it pretty much always takes some radicals to shake things up enough so that people pay attention and the moderates actually get listened to.
And honestly, as a geek male, I've had enough other males confide to me how "we both understand how women can't *really* do science, math or programming", that I can understand a fair number of them being just a wee bit irritated. It irritated me (especially the high school teacher) and I wasn't the one being victimized (except by having capable candidates leave the field, which damages us all).
There is a difference between being a "junior member of the group" and not "one of the group".
The human brain has a tendency to cast to boolean. Once our brain has decided the pattern for what is an X on the basis of a bias in numbers, there's a strong tendency for it to try and toss out anything not part of the larger group. It's part of our brain make-up and requires no misogyny, racism, or anything else.
Not everyone succumbs, but enough do so that you can be certain in any of a certain size group where you stand-out for some reason that people's brains have clicked on, there are going to be some who are listening to that inner voice telling then you aren't really an X, and whose confirmation bias will ignore successes as coincidence and note failures as proof.
All because they are human - the shortcuts the brain uses to allow us to survive do not lead to fairness.
So, no, if you are the one person in the room that people's brains have decided stands out, there's a reason to feel threatened. (Or if their brains have decided you are already competent, the other way around - I've constantly noted that because I code "senior geek", my advice on technical aspects is taken far more seriously by a few people than the identical advice by someone who doesn't trigger the same stereotype).
> Equality of opportunity should be the goal, not equality of results (which can never actually happen).
Except that given how humans work via generalization, we know that any natural bias in results will be heavily exaggerated by our brains. Then we add in cultural effects - naturally a culture grows around the the biggest group that differs from the cultural preferences of the minority, and then we're exaggerating the bias even more.
It's how 60/40 splits become 95/5 splits - and it doesn't require malice at all - just humans being human.
The assumption that there should be equality of outcome may be wrong - but like a tug of war, you don't achieve balance by not pulling, and this does act as a counter-bias towards the naturally occurring bias, and helps do the job. It would be nice if it wasn't necessary, but hey, we're human.
Because the human brain has a strong tendency to cast to boolean. It knows what a programmer looks like, and those aren't them.
Now of course, you, personally, don't suffer from this bias, but the vast majority of humans do. A ratio of hires that might be "naturally" 65/35 becomes 95/5 (all number made up for illustration purposes).
Moreover, we then build an environment for those programmers, which *also* discourages women and minorities because their cultural preferences differ.
So, all that's being asked is to tilt the board a little the other way to counteract the natural occurring biases against them.
And note, this doesn't require evil racists or misogynists. The human brain and efficiency gains naturally act to re-enforce small biases, making them large biases. It's the network effect writ large.
We can try and minimize them, and we should, but we're not going to succeed. So we throw some counter-biases in.
The only thing I think we can do without is the ferocity of attacks from all sides. "Just" outcomes are not natural - which means that an "unjust" outcome is not evidence of malice, in and of itself. The idea that it must infects both sides, as it requires those seeing an injustice to find a villain rather than look at the best way to achieve justice, and just as poisonous, allows those operating in an unjust environment to truthfully see no malice, and assume therefor there can be no injustice.
In the physical world, if someone is determined to kill me, I will die. There are no practical measures I can take that will protect myself against the threat of a sufficiently determined attacker.
The electronic world is not much different. Unless I want to seal myself in my electronic basement, I will be hacked by someone who is interested in doing so, and the cost of doing so becomes cheaper every day.
By far the cheapest solution is to offer our would be attackers the opportunity to make a decent living, and, to no surprise, enrich ourselves as well. (The nice thing about economies - they are positive sum games.)
Awkward phrasing on my part. "us" includes them.
In much of the West, crime doesn't pay, or at least pay well. Your average street thug probably makes less than minimum wage. Sure, there are a few that make a lot of money, but it's like trying to make a money as a rock band. Only the 0.1% make a middle-class income, and only the 0.001% make the money you see in movies. Plus, you're likely to wind up dead or in jail.
Consequently, for the most part, only the badly educated or stupid become criminals. There's the odd smart criminal, but having a legit job (if that's available) is simply superior in every way.
And then you have the former Soviet Union, with a ton of really smart, very well-educated, very talented engineers, with virtually no decent job prospects at all, but still fairly good virtual contact with the West.
And suddenly, given a lack of options, you have smart criminals.
And that is a recipe for total disaster.
As a matter of survival of the Western world, we need to open immigration from Russia so that these smart, talented engineers can find decent jobs that benefit us before they find ill-paying jobs that cost us terribly.
(Many of my most capable co-workers have been Russians who were able to leave, and man, we their talent working for us, rather than against us, for both our sakes.)
I'm glad that someone here recognizes this fact. I don't know how many companies I've seen that did things "right" went under or were bought by companies that took every software shortcut known to man.
The basic fact is that if the customer is ignorant of the intangibles like quality, they'll prioritize reputation and then price. If you're a smaller company, you won't survive long enough to get a reputation for excellence if you don't go cheap enough to allow you to undercut all your competitors. And (in general) going cheap means sacrificing quality.
Not sure how to get out of this cycle without inventing a better, more knowledgeable customer...
So how could you possibly even get into hot waters, no matter what might be considered common decency?
Okay,let's take one example. I come from a pretty hard-core geek background and worked for a while with a small group of geeks in software development. We were a mono-culture. Meetings used an extremely efficient unwritten code. When you thought you understood a point someone was making and you either understood or disagreed, you cut them off, and raised your voice slightly. They instantly evaluated whether they thought you had understood them and either continued, raising their voice, or ceded control of the conversation. This could go back and forth for a second or two, with both sides evaluating the strength of their point and the other's point until someone backed down (which usually took maybe 2-3 seconds at most. Failing to cede to a stronger point made you look like an idiot, so there was enough incentive to realistically evaluate.)
As long as everyone was understood this verbal ballet, you could have a 2 hour meeting with barely a single sentence carried to completion. It was an intricate dance with everyone participating, barely a wasted word, and it would also last about 30 minutes instead of the two hours.
It also utterly excluded anyone who wasn't raised middle-class white male geek. The idea that interrupting people was horribly rude, that people who had something vital to say would never speak up because they were raised to not interrupt didn't occur to anyone in the group. The idea that people felt dismissed, demeaned and generally devalued wasn't even on my radar.
Now in this case, no one went to HR. What it took was for me to get ever so slightly annoyed that one of our best programmers (a woman) let us waste half an hour walking into the swamp that she was well aware of. She explained (with far more patience that I would have shown if the roles were reversed) why she did not feel comfortable speaking. She'd never been asked for her opinion. She was usually cut off after a sentence or two, etc., etc.
From my cultural background, it was *her* responsibility to barge in, interrupt us, and if we didn't catch on immediately, raise her voice to indicate this was a "real" point.
Anyway, we did get straightened out, adjusted our meeting culture to take into account the reality that a modern high-tech workforce is probably only 20% standard middle-class white male geek, and that the cultural standards that I assumed were default were anything but.
A code of conduct would have acted as a reminder that one doesn't have to be a jerk to end up being a jerk...
I find people who hate arbitrary codes of conduct to be the most pleasurable to work with. I know that they have a sense of humour, and can get into a heated argument without throwing around words like sexism, racism, and discrimination.
Like you, I'm a middle-class, straight, white male. I'm never going to be the subject or sexism, racism or discrimination, and there's certainly freedom in excluding anyone who doesn't share my cultural context. Indeed, it's often pleasant to work in a monoculture where I can assume that everyone takes things in exactly the way I meant them. Where, because I'm not a raging jerk, it's automatically someone else's fault if they're offended by by anything I say or do.
However, in the real world, I am expected to be a grown up and deal with people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. I am expected to be mature enough to understand that just because I didn't mean to be racist or sexist doesn't mean my words or actions weren't offensive.
Sure, there are jerks of all stripes. But I find that if I've decided that everyone who I've offended is a "social justice snowflakes who go whining to the boss and/or media at the slightest perceived provocation", then one of those jerks is me.
Unreasonable people won't need a code of conduct to be unreasonable. Then again, if someone was genuinely offended by my use of a term, I'm happy to switch it to something less upsetting. That's just basic consideration.
But a code of conduct can help define minimal expectations from a culturally diverse crowd that might otherwise offend each other without intention of doing so.
> the non-written laws of common courtesy have left the building ages ago.
I get where you are coming from, but the reality of a very diverse bunch of contributors means that what is considered common courtesy (and thus what can be considered acceptable behaviour) can be shockingly different, depending on cultural upbringing (class, geography, gender, etc.)
What I consider minimal professional behaviour can be considered stick-up-one's-butt political correctness by others (and not necessarily just male others, either).
A code of conduct helps an informal organization make it clear what "common courtesy" means to all its members. A useful thing as the monoculture many of us grew up with disappears.
> If a project needs a Code of Conduct, I don't want to be part of that project.
If you find the very existence of a Code of Conduct objectionable, then not being part of the project is probably best for both you and the project.
But no whining if there's a dearth of co-members who are actually pleasant to work with.
The trouble is that for a sizable segment of society, their privacy+eyeballs is the only asset they have to sell.
Making Microsoft, Google, et al start charging for everything (or raise their prices in order to make up for the loss of revenue) is going to flat out deny services to those who can't afford them (or are unbanked and have no access to credit cards).
Sure, adding $100-$200 a month to my bills (in the form of micro-transactions, subscriptions, etc.) to protect my privacy (and only have anonymous ads shown) would easily be worthwhile trade for me and my ilk. Add in another $100-$200 a month to get rid of ads altogether.
And in the end, I'd be a happier camper, down maybe $5K a year (at worst) to replace all the 'free' or discounted services I currently enjoy.
But there are a hell of a lot of people for whom a $5K annual expense is not an option. Should they essentially be cut off from the Internet?
nope, nope, nope.
Kim fires all his nukes at *China*. China, losing Beijing and most of its government, then launches its hundreds of ICBMs at Russia and the US to ensure they do not rule after China's demise. Russia (and maybe the US) then launch their thousands of ICBMs at *everybody*.
"World War IV will be fought with stones and spears."
I have a usage pattern where I end up pairing them with enums and it simplifies so many things (e.g. You practically never need a switch statement ever again).
Care to share the pattern (or a reference)? I googled a bit, but there didn't seem to be one stand-out pattern and I'm quite curious (if you have the time)
Thanks.
Which may effectively doom IoT for consumers.
I suspect that's the idea. If you have something that's cheap and "weaponizable", then society often ends up restricting them in one fashion or another. What's different about the Internet is that the damage one can do isn't geographically restricted, making control a lot harder.
At least in the mind of its creator, something like "BrickerBot" may be the only way to raise the cost of ownership high enough to prevent destruction of the Internet.
I'm constantly amazed that in a flash of misanthropy, someone hasn't built a "BrickerBot" for PCs. These machines are unlikely to be restored (they're generally owned by non-techies with very limited resources) and the maker could easily use the same justification as BrickerBot.
Just to be clear, I still strongly disapprove of BrickerBot.
Indeed, I spent $1789 of my hard-earned summer job money to buy my Apple ][ in 1979 and was the first person in our residence with a computer in their room.
A fact I was rewarded for by having people in my room day an night playing Dave's Midnight Magic. I learned to sleep through having three people yelling at the screen in my residence room at 2am.
I also ended up having to replace the bloody joystick every six months for my entire tenure at university. I still boggle how someone managed to depress one of the fire buttons *through* the plastic housing on one of them...
Well, if there is anything Apple is good at, it's taking a bunch of "almost there" technologies, and turning them into something that hits the mark.
Here's hoping they manage to do it again.