> Notice which of those things is not like the others? That’s right, number eight appears to be placing female employees on roughly the same level a jar of chocolate eclairs.
Well - no.
You could interpret it as signaling that it is a fun and diverse work place. But that wouldn't make for good Two Minutes Hate.
Interpreting this to mean that it's a "fun and diverse work place" is pretty tortured exegesis.
The reason this is a problem is that it's alienating to women to describe them as job perks. Like, look. Empathize a little. What if you're a straight lady dev looking for a job? Why would "female" devs be a job perk? Many women take being massive issue with being described as "female." Further, describing them by nationality has an element of exoticizing them. More fundamentally though, the line signals that this environment is a male environment. Its boys club signaling, even if you don't want it to be. Even if it doesn't bother you personally.
What if you're a straight lady dev looking for a job?
Are you suggesting that women don't like with other women?
Most tech shops have much less men then women, which is boring. This ad wanted to highlight that this place has more diversity.
As with all language, the wording is a little ambiguous. The article (and many commenters) choose to interpret the line in the worst possible way and think the company is a misogynist hellhole and probably think that the four women working there are kept on leashes.
I doubt that Richard Green had any malicious intentions in his comments; it was probably an innocent mistake. If you look at the literal meaning of what he wrote, you can see that he probably wanted to highlight the diversity. But I don't think you can deny that the wording he chose has unfortunate connotations and I think it's worth pointing that out because those connotations, while subtle and subjective, are real and they can be harmful. I think at the very least we can agree that they have harmed the image of evvnt, which is the opposite of what he intended.
No one is suggesting that women don't like to work together. It's that we don't want to work in a place where the men subconsciously think of us as a temptation, a reward, a decoration, or a commodity. That's the impression that Green's post gives, even though I'm sure that's not what he intended. Does that make sense? I can try to explain better if you have questions.
> What if you're a straight lady dev looking for a job? Why would "female" devs be a job perk?
Because many women are sick of always being the only woman on a development team. I think the line can be read to either signal that the environment is female-dominated ("There are lots of women here to work with!") or male-dominated ("There are lots of women here to objectify!"). Whatever their intent, it's a terribly awkward line.
A diverse workplace is a perk, and belongs on a list of perks like the one given. "4X female developers" are not perks, they're people. When you put them on a list of perks alongside paid vacation, free chocolates and a keg of beer, you're objectifying them for use as bargaining chips.
Do you know what the 4X part means? Are they trying to say they have four times the typical amount of women or is it something else?
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of having good intentions, but I agree that they way they suggested women as something to tempt the reader away is just icky. I'm not sure that Richard Green gets that based on his apology. It would have been nice if he had been more explicit about what he did wrong and come up with a better alternative. He makes lots of claims about how evvnt is pro-diversity and anti-discrimination, but it's all tell and no show. Maybe the comments from employees at the bottom are supposed to be more of a demonstration, but right now they're also pretty vague and I think most of the commenters are men.
I assumed that it meant 4 developers, but after seeing responses saying that they don't have any developers at all yet, perhaps it means "four times as many female developers as male developers".
I always ask for general demographic information when I interview with a company. It isn't about being sexist (well maybe it is against men)... I just don't want to work with a bunch of mid-20s white males. Not enough diversity of thought.
I love laughing at self righteous people like you. You see the world as though people of different sexes and skin colors all think differently but at the same time think all white males think exactly the same without even realizing how ridiculous that is. What, do all white males in their mid 20s grow up in expensive suburbs? Get over yourself already. You're like that white guy that goes to Bubble Tea places and acts like he's into "ethnic" food.
Like it or not, women and minorities often have different life experiences than white men. There is a range of experiences within each group, and there is overlap, and economics play a big role, but it's a leap to assume that someone looking for a diverse workplace is self righteous or clueless.
I wasn't replying to the OP. The person I replied to had to put a Disclaimer in their post to inform everyone that he is a white male in his mid 20s. If you don't see the ridiculousness in that then I can't help you.
No, it's giving tech a bad name. Maybe as part of the whole "mentoring" thing angles and VCs give a start up, making sure the CEO doesn't post dumb sh*t like this in the first place (12+ experience need not apply) would go a long ways to helping the company not become a laughing stock. I mean, really, who is going to work at these companies?
The apology and aggressively calling out people criticizing them in blog/asrticle comments is particularly egregious as well - from both a "doing the right thing" perspective and from "stop digging the hole deeper" perspective.
That actually looks like a good apology. He starts by taking personal responsibility, clarifies the actual culture of the company, and throws in a legal disclaimer at the end.
I don't like it. The questions seem more like rhetorical accusations instead of a conversation. I really don't like point 4 since the guy takes personal responsibility at the beginning of the letter (which this reply says he doesn't). And I think the invitation to talk follows the advice in this post to the letter: http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/on-sexual-harassme... That is, making it as easy as possible to report harmful behavior.
And point 3 is just pointing out that he's getting defensive. Well of course he's defensive, you're attacking him!
Edit: OK I had to read the link from point 2 twice but I think I understand it now. However I don't see how it's relevant since it says "I didn't intend for you to feel that way, so if you do feel that way, don't blame me! My intent magically inoculates me from responsibility for what I actually said and how it was received!" But the apology specifically says "I got it wrong" and never claims that people shouldn't be offended. The whole reply is just wrong.
It isn't an apology if someone reading it can't even figure out what he's apologizing for, or in fact if he's actually apologizing, or merely saying "I should apologize" and considering it done.
Hell, for all we know this isn't even referencing the original article -- maybe he screwed up in more than one douchey, sexist way today and this apology is for one of the others. :)
Are we looking at the same page? Mine says, in BOLD print, I also would like to offer my Humble apologies when we get it wrong, today I got it wrong. I'm not sure how you could construe this to not be an apology.
What's "it"? He's very carefully not saying what he "got wrong."
It also reads like someone trying hard not to just flat out say "I apologize." You've got two sentiments: 1) "if we get it wrong I would offer an apology" and 2) "we got it wrong", neither of which are an apology, but together imply an apology without actually saying it. Why? All it serves to do is make your apology seem not very ... apologetic. It's the "mistakes were made" approach.
This has got nothing to do with ruby other than the fact that they are looking for ruby developers on its mailing list . The title seems link baity IMHO.
Their [evvnt's] responses are even more confusing than the original post (http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women-offered-...). It almost seems like there is some sort of english language issue here. I can't even be sure what they were trying to accomplish. Whatever it was they got it so very wrong.
Edit: After reading their confounding responses it almost seems as if they were literally asking people what "perks" where most important to them. Kind of the way social media marketers suggest you word Facebook posts as questions to prompt engagement. I honestly can't imagine how someone can be this naive.
Their ongoing response to criticism on Twitter is mindblowing. I really am at a loss to understand how anyone can be this foolish.
You're right about it being a literal question; it looks like he was hoping people would respond with the ones that appealed to them the most (i.e. "I'd be most interested in 1, 3, and 10").
"Ruby developers have quality banter and like to squish themselves in to tiny pubs, drink lots of beer and chat projects and code. More of point 3 required.
So in the art of snaring a ruby developer in the next 6 weeks, what temps these rare creatures out of their natural habit to venture to pastures new...
Let me know which of the following would tempt you from you desk...
[...]
I'm looking for your best number or a combination of up to 3..."
So I guess it's all hypothetical; it seems like he was fishing around to figure out what would attract attention or interest.
I think this is a case of unfortunate wording that leaves the wrong impression. My take on that "perk" is that the meaning that was intended is something like: "we have a gender diverse work place and have hired 4 awesome woman engineers! this is a great perk because these women kick ass and its a privilege to work with them."
but of course, those words weren't used. they probably should have been rather than the words that did appear.
> My take on that "perk" is that the meaning that was intended is something like: "we have a gender diverse work place and have hired 4 awesome woman engineers! [...]"
Based on the comments made ([1] and [2]), that doesn't seem to be the case. The company doesn't seem to have any developers yet.
Based on the non-apology (where this could have been clarified) and the comments on news articles and elsewhere, I really don't think this is the case, or it could have been clarified and apologized for.
Also, people that put women programmers in lists of "tempting perks" and then when called out on misogyny say, "but dudes, I have a wife and daughter!" doesn't exactly give me much room to really believe that you are committed enough to addressing the problem of sexism in tech enough that you would write "we have a gender-diverse and multinational workplace!" in the same place where you are talking about beer-at-your-desk
This seems like a misunderstanding to me. People saying that it's comparing women to eclairs need to read the rest of the list. If that's the case they're also comparing "commission from online sales" to eclairs and "30 days paid holiday" to a coffee machine.
There are serious gender inequality issues in our industry that need to be addressed. This isn't it.
Women listed as perks of a job, almost as "employment benefits," is thoroughly degrading. This is definitely the kind of issue that needs to be addressed in the community, and it not suitable to disregard smaller occurrences of sexism because we can pointer to more serious cases that we "have to deal with first." All instances of sexism are issues and deserve our the same contempt.
All instances of sexism are issues and deserve our the same contempt.
This is a problem I'm having with some of the responses. Accidentally offensive things are not as bad as people intentionally degrading women. There are shades of gray and I think something as small as this should only require an apology to be done with it.
> "We are committed to a diverse workplace sharing in the strengths of many points of view."
Ugh... do we really have to talk like politicians to avoid offending people?
Maybe something more like "We don't discriminate against women - 4 of our developers are female"
I don't see why it should necessarily be taken out of "perks". I imagine a lot of female developers in particular would be tempted to move jobs to somewhere with more women.
The way I understand it, he was trying to state (in a clumsy way) what kind of team they have. Indicating that it's technical staff does not consist only of men.
When you include the women as a perk in an effort to tempt engineering talent, it's easy to interpret the mindset of the author of using women as objects. Even if the author ISN'T authoring the list that way, they are not being cognizant of the pervasive problem of viewing women as objects and acting to prevent it.
Everything else on the list is proffered as transactional compensations of talented engineers renting their labor to the CEO. Highlighting the youth of these engineers while including them on a list of perks implies specific things about how they are valued.
If he had separately described the work environment, and had included these engineers in that description, and had not focused SOLELY on the young female engineers, then this wouldn't be a story.
I could never have written the ad in such a thoughtless manner myself (neither could I have written your own well-reasoned post, for that matter).
But I do think it is just clumsyness - I don't think he thinks of women as objects, he is probably just happy to have them around for what they add as a person.
Objectifying women is rarely an act that people embrace with a conscious perspective or decision. It's a way of behaving that most people engage in because the culture they occupy and learned in showed it as an acceptable behavior. They continue the behavior which reinforces their privileged position in society (again, often not consciously).
The intent and perspective of the author do not make the problem go away any more than a hunter realizing he accidentally shot someone in the wilderness that he mistook for a deer makes the victim's bullet wound close.
Part of the concern is that the youth and gender are highlighted prominently for these engineers, and ONLY the young woman engineers are listed as perks. I absolutely value the contribution women engineers bring to my work environments, they are valuable additions to our team, but some of them aren't young.
Again, IF the engineering team was described separately, OR if other engineers were included as 'perks', e.g. "We have a senior Rails contributor on staff whom you can learn with", OR if the perk wasn't specifically calling out their youth and gender (we have a multinational team of many races and genders), then this would be a non-story.
Perhaps. He could probably have avoided this by linking to a list of the persons employed, or added a picture of the team.
I actually believe that more companies should do that, I like to look at the Github profile of future colleagues, and see the team I am going to be a part of.
My current employer have this page: http://billetto.co.uk/pages/about which gave a good first impression (sorry for the danish page).
Maybe they were trying to appeal to me. Knowing that I'd be working with women and people from different cultures holds great appeal to someone who is sick of and uncomfortable in 100% bro environments. I lean towards thinking that was actually their intention, due to the mention of "frontend/backend" making sure that we know that the women they have are not all designers.
Of course, it's as inappropriate to advertise explicitly as "we have three blacks, and two hispanics!" would be. How do you advertise and get credit for creating a diverse workplace? Maybe a collaborative blog w/pictures above every blogpost? A tiny company can't get away with sponsoring "cultural" events, like the large ones do.
Yeah, a better idea might have been to put up a picture of the team to communicate the same thing.
On the other hand, if the intent is to communicate the same thing, should we really be that upset about it? The ad is a bit crass I admit, but I don't really think the spirit of it was bad, and this whole thing with "omg, they're equating women with free beer" is just hyperbole.
We should definitely give them the benefit of the doubt with regards to their intent, but I think it's still worth pointing out the negative connotations conjured up by the wording.
It's important to write carefully because connotations don't go away just because you didn't intend for them to be there.
True, but sensationalizing this type of issues also does harm. What we get here is a description that hints at omgsexism, and some deeper misogynist motives from the authors since that gets your blog more attention.
I don't think those motives are there, and that the authors are genuinely happy about having several female employees from diverse backgronds, but maybe expressed it in a clumsy way. We should be careful not to fall into this trope of female victimization for no reason.
So add more details. If you actually have a fun and diverse team, you should have some stories, right? So tell them!
"We love to hear S's stories about growing up in France."
"W has the yummiest recipes to share."
"One time we were struggling with this issue and J had this insight that we never would have thought of because we were so used to looking at it from such-and-such perspective."
"At lunch last week, D taught us this great game she used to play as a kid; we've been having so much fun with it since then and P told us it reminded him of this other game so now they're working on remix together and they won't tell us anything about it until it's done."
I was in an interview yesterday and my interviewers were telling me about how they bring their kids in to the office sometimes, and how they have tomato plants growing on the roof and how they take Good Friday off because "I grew up Roman Catholic, so it's a holy day for me. I need it to bake cookies!" Those kinds of things don't appeal to everyone of course, but they're right up my alley. They made me even more interested in the job than before.
This seems to fall victim to the same "sin" as the original post - calling out the women in a way which could be easily misconstrued as a Playboy centerfold biography.
I didn't mean to give the impression that all the stories would be about women. I think it would work best if you had several stories about a variety of people; the goal is to illustrate the diversity you have instead of going with the banal "we value diversity" claim with nothing to back it up. Of course having a team that actually is fun and diverse is a prerequisite to this strategy.
Not only that, but they all say that. Maybe the company full of suits (not naming any names, but we all know of some like these I bet) that thinks a "fun work environment" is a forced after-work party to the pub on Fridays, and 'diverse' means 'we force our employees to take diversity training'.
It's right up there with "can manage multiple tasks simultaneously" on a resume.
I would hope the sum total of your company's About Us section would not be "we have a fun and diverse team". You illustrate it with examples. You do not illustrate it by awarding new hires with women.
"fun and diverse"? Doesn't that just mean "we have a foosball table and some in staff voted democrat and others republican"?
They should say, "work with a team of both genders and different nationalities, a truly diverse team" and not place one gender on a string to dangle from a stick in front of the other gender, all while assuming heterosexuality.
While I'm inclined to agree with you that this was probably the intent, it probably should have been in an "about us" section rather than in the big list of perks (captioned by "which of the following would tempt you away from where you work").
These things do matter, even if the apologists would rather live in a world where they wouldn't. Frankly, the best evidence to me that this is an endemic problem is that we have one of these every three months and they seem to keep happening. There's always someone who missed the last memo, it seems.
I agree with you completely. Same for me and this is how I understood. Not all of us are great copywriters as well, this doesn't look like it was well written.
If we are to work with women, we really need this hysteria to calm down. Maybe I worked in places where women were treated well and didn't witness bad things.
> If we are to work with women, we really need this hysteria to calm down.
I don't know if you are familiar with where the term "hysteria" originated, but it is about as appropriate in this context as the word "uppity" is in discussing race relations.
I'd reject the idea that this was "hysteria" out of hand, in any case. The context strongly suggests women being treated as perks, and people are naturally going to be suspicious of an industry that throws up instances like this: http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-... (CTRL+F "hoops")
That doesn't mean I think the guy is definitely a bigot (there is a good chance he is merely terrible at communication and worryingly naive), but his defence is not doing himself many favours (mostly relying on the "it's just a joke guys! Gawhd, can't I just make a joke?" approach).
It does mean that I think the reaction is valid. If you say something that means something very specific, you don't get to call everyone irrational hysterics when they interpret your statement in that very specific way.
If he's anything like a guy I used to work for (and his job post sounds almost verbatim like something he'd write), subtle and not-so-subtle sexist and racist remarks are made under the guise of joking. Most of the time women and minorities (and, well, everyone else) just thought he was an asshole.
How do you advertise and get credit for creating a diverse workplace?
You don't. That particular game is rigged. As soon as you mention race, gender or sexual orientation, you lose. I see this as a feature, not a bug. Why would I want to work someplace that would rather tell me about the demographics of their employees than the things their employees create?
For some people that is more important.A recent study about factors in choosing work showed that an overwhelming majority of people care most about the work environment above all else.
The linked post does not even suggest that Ruby name or the Ruby community is in any way the issue here. It just happened on a Ruby mailing list. Period.
I certainly hope it doesn't reflect at all on the Ruby community.
How can it? It's the actions of single person, or that of a single company.
When did they become the stand-in for the thousands of people who use Ruby?
The idea that because some number of people all use a particular programming language that there is then some sort of cohesive and coordinated collective to which one can assign blame or praise is lazy and wrong.
Ah, this is really cute. Lamenting lack of acknowledgement of women in tech, but (crazy internet lady) DAMNED IF ANYBODY DARES TO MAKE IT SOUND LIKE WORKING WITH WOMEN IS A DESIRABLE SITUATION!
Above all, these "perks" sound a bit like they are addressed more at attracting potential female employees.
Why don't you do a little test. Find about 10-20 women working developers. Show them this job ad. Tell me the percentage that feel that the ad is welcoming.
Is there some kind of elaborate joke going on in here? Or are you people incapable of reading a simple text?
You don't advertise a diverse environment with "4X female french, italian and spanish junior". It can be stupidity or a lack of understanding of the English language (if you're feeling like justifying it) or just plain gender discrimination and a really sexist statement to make.
Anyway, not much more can be expected from a job posting that seems targeted to 12 year olds.
The tone of the post is informal and is intended to be humorous. If there is a good balance of male/female coders there, there's a good chance one of the women saw it and thought it was funny. One of them might have even written it.
For many programmers, I'm sure it is a perk to be around more women. They work in a completely male dominated field. The changes of meeting a potential partner who shares your interests at work is low.
I'm not sure why a startup CEO making a sexist job post looking for Ruby devs in a Ruby forum should give Ruby a bad name, more than, say, (in decreasing order of relevance), the particular CEO, the company, tech startup CEOs, and tech startup culture more generally.
You need to think of this from the point of view of the women. How would you feel if someone put you up as a perk, based only on your gender? I would feel like meat.
Edit: I'm not saying this was intended. Maybe they were actually trying to appeal to women (or men) who didn't want to work in a "bro environment", as pessimizer put it. Lots of explanations but they need an actual apology for messing up so bad.
I would say that if they were trying to appeal to women, they shouldn't have counted them, and listed their place of birth, in lieu of you know... meritocratic qualities.
It's probably agist. At least adding "dedicated" is better than just saying "young." But what was the context? Was that just a description of the work environment, or was it in a list of perks?
Not necessarily, but maybe the employer is subtly implying: "Old people don't need apply."
But if the employer wrote the job description with the intention of causing potential sexual arousal (e.g. if that perk is amongst free beers, chocolate and "frothy milk"), you are definitely objectified.
Don't CEOs ever run things by PR? This sounds like a rookie mistake of accidentally forgetting to cc the person in charge of making sure the company doesn't blow itself up in the press.
i think articles like this are the actual problem. Stop playing the woman card, get a job and shut your mouth. If you don't think you will be treated well because you're a woman, don't work there. I honestly am shocked that women care. This job is saying that there are already women here, which means you have a high chance of getting hired. The more women there, the less sexual harassment in the work place. I'm a white male, so I don't have any cards to play which is good because the game is stupid and i would have folded a long time ago anyway.
Who wouldn't enjoy working alongside a sexy French or Italian girl (or guy, no homo). Considering most engineers are men it makes sense to appeal to them in this fashion. Sex sells, duh.
Seriously, 'programmers being dicks' gets upvoted to front page?
Someone might as well start 'programmers being cunts' with the first post discussing 'women and programming - one small step for productivity, one giant leap for drama and bullshit'
You signed up to Hacker News 10 minutes ago just to spew bigotry. I don't think its what this community needs. "Adria wins" as a username was pretty telling of your bias as well.
I think that women that get upset on this AD are those whose companies were not proud of having them in the team - they are jealous. The type of women who are wearing generous decolletages, but they feel insulted when someone admires their boobs. The type of women who like their eyes to be complimented, but again, they feel insulted when a man compliments their ass.
I think we, as men, try too much to understand them, and they try too much to keep themselves mysterious.
Well - no.
You could interpret it as signaling that it is a fun and diverse work place. But that wouldn't make for good Two Minutes Hate.