Thanks for posting
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Steven_Rosenber May 13, 2012 11:39 AM EDT |
It helps to know who we are dealing with, or not. |
| Khamul May 13, 2012 12:56 PM EDT |
Well, this makes me feel better that I purchased (or rather, got my employer to purchase) an expensive Lenovo laptop instead of a Dell one. Is this for real? And in Europe of all places? |
| caitlyn May 14, 2012 1:41 AM EDT |
It's for real and it's not just Dell. It's pretty much industry wide. Just look at all the nasty and sexist comments Molly Wood got to her CNet article on this. Aytime a female tech writer raises the subject we get blasted in the comments by men who either 1) think we really do belong in the kitchen, or 2) that we just need to grow a thicker skin and take the abuse smiling like good little girls, or 3) that it's all in our pretty little heads and there really is no problem. |
| dinotrac May 14, 2012 6:52 AM EDT |
C'mon, sweetie, you know the old saying: Boys will be tools. Wait, that's not it. Although, maybe it should be. Sadly, boy geeks all too often lack what it takes to be man geeks. |
| montezuma May 14, 2012 8:51 AM EDT |
Buggered if I know why they act that way. Terribly insecure is all I can think of. |
| Khamul May 14, 2012 11:27 AM EDT |
I find it really weird because when I grew up around a bunch of nerdy boys, none of them were ever the type to act like this towards girls or women. In college, all the engineers I hung around with were, again, not the type. And in the workplace later, I never encountered this either except in my brief internship at a naval shipyard (but I only encountered this attitude amongst the tradeworkers, not my fellow engineering interns, one of whom was female). This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see with construction workers and other uneducated types, not with anyone who went to college in the last 20 years, or if so, only amongst the fratboys, but I never knew many engineering types to be in fraternities; we didn't have enough spare time for that. |
| dinotrac May 14, 2012 11:30 AM EDT |
@khamul -- I have to agree that it's a head-scratcher. I've know lots and lots of "nerdy" types over the years and haven't found this kind of attitude to be common at all. is there something about free software folks that just arrests development and rewards the inner toddler? |
| Khamul May 14, 2012 11:38 AM EDT |
@dinotrac: Well to be fair, we're not talking about free-software people here, we're talking about Dell. One of my former employers was Intel, another tech titan; I worked there for quite some time, and never saw this kind of thing there either. In fact, an attitude like this would get you fired there: they were quite serious about their no-harassment policy, plus at least in the groups I worked in, there were a fair number of women (though most of them were not American by birth, as you'd expect amongst engineers, but Intel did work a lot to recruit females, of any ethnicity). I couldn't imagine Intel doing something that even came close to appearing to be denigrating towards women like this, so I'm rather shocked that Dell would. From some small 10-person company, I can see it (esp. if the guys running it were in frats in college), but large companies like Intel are very averse to doing anything that could hurt their reputation. They taught us there many times about how their "brand" alone was valued in the billions of dollars, so it makes perfect sense that they would do their best not to offend anyone about anything. |
| Fettoosh May 14, 2012 12:30 PM EDT |
Quoting:This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see with construction workers and other uneducated types, ... we're talking about Dell. @Khamul, I don't agree, this is a type of inaccurate generalization and stereo-typing. I don't think it has anything to do with education and training, it has a lot to do with up bringing and society. I bet most of the attendees are educated and not all of them were from Dell. Pretty much most, if not all, large corporations have some kind of training programs to end discrimination and prohibits sexism. Unfortunately, they are not 100% successful and probably will never be. Like one commentators said, "Mads Christensen should recall that many years ago one of the ones he defines as “bi***” generated him". A great man once was asked about who would be the person most worthy of one's respect, his reply was: your mother, then who, your mother, then who, your mother, then who, your father. |
| Khamul May 14, 2012 1:53 PM EDT |
I don't agree, this is a type of inaccurate generalization and stereo-typing. I don't think it has anything to do with education and training, it has a lot to do with up bringing and society. In my experience, people who are more educated generally know better than to spout sexist drivel, and if they do, they know better when they can and can't get away with it (professionals usually know they can't do it on the job). There's a reason construction workers are infamous for cat-calls. But this is only partially about general attitudes WRT sexism among tech workers; my bigger point is about corporate policies. I bet most of the attendees are educated and not all of them were from Dell. And some of them were women too, but this is all totally irrelevant. The ONLY thing that's relevant to my point about tech titans is that this jerk was hired by Dell, and appeared for them in an official capacity, right after the CEO got done talking. It's not like he was just random person in the crowd who stood up and started making comments on his own; he was specifically hired for the role. Pretty much most, if not all, large corporations have some kind of training programs to end discrimination and prohibits sexism. Unfortunately, they are not 100% successful ans probably will never be. Yes, but what this shows is the exact opposite: a large corporation that is explicitly promoting sexism. As I was saying before, I could never imagine my former employer doing something like this. Does Dell even have any policies prohibiting sexism or training programs to combat them? If they do, they might as well cancel them all because obviously they're in direct contradiction to what their highest executive is doing. A great man once was asked about who would be the person most worthy of one's respect, his reply was: your mother, then who, your mother, then who, your mother, then who, your father. This is tangential, but whomever said that wasn't so great. There's nothing that makes mothers better or more important than fathers; there's plenty of cases of terrible mothers out there; I know several men myself who had to pick up for terrible mothers (one left to get wasted on drugs and is probably dead, the other wanted to raise their son in the same house as her alcoholic mother who leaves bottles of booze lying all around and wanted her (now ex-)husband to pay for the mother's booze to enable her alcoholism). Of course, there's no shortage of cases of deadbeat dads too; trying to make out one sex to be nobler or better than the other is just useless and wrong; every circumstance and individual is different. |
| Fettoosh May 14, 2012 2:21 PM EDT |
Quoting:This is tangential, but whomever said that wasn't so great.... I am not going to go arguing the point with you. All I am going to say is, take a minute and think about what your mother did for you and compare it with what you father did. Come back and tell me if you wish. |
| Khamul May 14, 2012 2:27 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh: I can easily find you people who had mothers who were absent or bad, and had fathers that were great. I'm sure I can find people with the opposite experience. Trying to paint one sex as superior than the other is sexism. |
| Fettoosh May 14, 2012 3:00 PM EDT |
Quoting:Trying to paint one sex as superior than the other is sexism. You are twisting my words, appreciating and respecting woman for what they are & do [were missing], by nature or otherwise, has no sexism at all. I never said one sex is superior than the other, you are putting word in my mouth and should stop that. And yes, woman do a lot more than man. Simple example, I don't know what your sex is, but can a man carry a child? I never heard of such a case. That is all I am going to say about this subject. |
| mbaehrlxer May 14, 2012 3:03 PM EDT |
in a world where everyone does their best, mom always wins, because she has a 9 month head start, and even if she does nothing else, feeding breastmilk is the most important contribution a mother can give to the future of their child. the takeaway from this is not so much that your mother is the most worthy of your respect by default, but that mothers everywhere should be respected and educated so that they have the opportunity to do well what only they can do: give birth and breastfeed. if you don't have the resources to send all your children to school, then you should give girls the priority because they are the first educator of their children (during pregnancy and while breastfeeding) greetings, eMBee. |
| Khamul May 14, 2012 3:17 PM EDT |
@mbaehrlxer gets it right: mothers have a head start. But to imply that all mothers deserve respect is cr@p. How about the mothers that murder their children because they're trying to attract a new boyfriend? Do they deserve respect? I resent the very idea that ALL mothers deserve respect. There's too many bad parents on both sides, and only the ones that act respect-worthy deserve respect. Carrying a child alone does not earn one respect AFAIC; again, there's plenty of examples of women doing so, and then locking their kids in the car and driving it into a lake, or allowing a boyfriend to beat their child to death or molest it. Its not like it takes any special effort to carry a child; it's a natural and sometimes completely involuntary biological function, and lots of women totally fail in that too: they smoke, drink, consume drugs, and treat their bodies like cr@p while they're pregnant, giving their children all kinds of problems like fetal alcohol syndrome. Do those mothers deserve respect? They're not going to get it from me. You want to make some (probably impossible to prove) claims about one sex in general doing better than the other (for certain subsets of the population, using surveys etc.), go ahead. But don't tell me that all women or all mothers deserve respect, because they don't. |
| Fettoosh May 14, 2012 3:23 PM EDT |
Quoting:if you don't have the resources to send all your children to school, then you should give girls the priority because they are the first educator of their children (during pregnancy and while breastfeeding) Bingo, and most third world countries stay in their pathetic situation because woman don't get the chance to learn. To come to think of it, empires thrive or die depending on how educated woman are. |
| jdixon May 14, 2012 4:17 PM EDT |
> In my experience, people who are more educated generally know better than to spout sexist drivel, In my experience, education makes little difference. There are jerks at every level. |
| montezuma May 14, 2012 4:52 PM EDT |
jdixon, Agreed and actually the better educated are often better at hiding their disrespect. |
| dinotrac May 14, 2012 4:54 PM EDT |
Quoting:There are jerks at every level. In my experience, the biggest jerks are doctors and lawyers. Last I looked, they were pretty well educated. |
| BernardSwiss May 14, 2012 4:56 PM EDT |
The only way I can even begin to make heads or tails of this incident is to assume that it's some sort of weird spin-off from the Anders Breivik massacre and his current trial ("traditional values" under scrutiny, etc.). |
| Khamul May 14, 2012 4:59 PM EDT |
@montezuma: I agree, and I believe I mentioned this earlier. You don't see doctors and lawyers whistling at women that walk by, but amongst themselves they'll make comments or whatever. @dinotrac: I'm sure there's some lawyers out there who aren't jerks. It's just too bad that the 99.999% of them who are bad apples give the rest of them a bad name. |
| dinotrac May 14, 2012 6:35 PM EDT |
@khamul - No, you see the doctors and lawyers being jerks directly to the women as they try to "sweet-talk" them into bed. |
| skelband May 14, 2012 7:23 PM EDT |
In my experience, most of these strange and arcane attitudes are passed down the family line. Children absorb these stereotypes from their parents and from their peers. There may be some correlation between the types of industries that these people generally migrate to. In times past where there was a much greater division in "class" terms between groups of people this was probably reinforced in a more concentrated way. These days, education and accessibility to different employment possibilities makes this less clear. However, most of the people that I have come across with this kind of stereotypical attitude have learned their attitudes from their parents. It is a difficult cycle to break. I join the others in their total disbelief of what happened at this event. It would seem to me that perhaps some of these organisations have a culture that is at odds with their public face. Then, it reveals itself accidentally at a "public" event. It probably never occurred to the person organising this event that anyone would be the slightest bit offended, particular if the attitude is endemic within the company. Like Khamul, I have never encountered these kinds of attitudes at my places of work (mostly male dominated I have to say, but with female developer peers) so I really don't know what to make of it. |
| caitlyn May 14, 2012 9:14 PM EDT |
Quoting: Like Khamul, I have never encountered these kinds of attitudes at my places of work (mostly male dominated I have to say, but with female developer peers) so I really don't know what to make of it.When I was active on the Linuxchix lists (2006 and prior) or Webgrrls back in the late '90s it was hard to find a woman in IT who, when able to speak freely away from her male counterparts, had not had such experiences at work. My own experience is that in most places and through most of my career I've had good experiences. The few places I had bad experiences (as in horrendous) are places where I chose to leave. Let me relate a couple of my bad experiences. Back in the late '90s I took a six month contract with a certain Big Blue company with excellent diversity policies which SHOULD explicitly prevent this sort of nonsense. Just as I arrived a certain good 'ol boy was demoted from a technical lead position specifically for his treatment of women. His attitudes did not change but he no longer had any authority. I don't know of any woman who liked working with the guy but we put up with him as best we could. 18 months into that six month contract he was promoted back to his old position. When the women in the group complained we were told that he was an IBMer and we were all contractors so, basically, tough. Within three weeks every woman in the group had resigned, myself included. This was during the waning days of the tech bubble so we all were in other positions, better positions, very quickly. So much for diversity policies which, on paper, sounded great. A year earlier I worked for an Internet company that was just out of startup stage and doing really well. One of the developers there told me, to my face, that women should earn less than men because we could get pregnant and leave to have children while men never would. When I pointed out that I and a number of women there had put our careers first he said that "didn't matter". Men should earn more. Perhaps he felt that way because he was one of the least competent, least respected developers there. He didn't earn any respect from me with his sexism. My experience is that if you talk to women in IT, of those of us who have been in the field for any length of time, 90% or more will have horror stories. For skelband and khamul, who have never seen such attitudes, I'd say there are two possibilities: 1. You've been fortunate enough to work only in really good places. That isn't impossible, or... 2. You are perhaps a bit less sensitive to or conscious of sexist behavior, particularly when it is not in your face blatant like the examples I just related. I think #2 is more likely. A lot of sexism is subtle and if it's not directed at you then perhaps you don't notice it. That doesn't make you sexist, just human. |
| BernardSwiss May 14, 2012 10:07 PM EDT |
Jerks are everywhere -- and they tend to be the most egregiously critical, and often the least competent as well (think the guys who are too clueless to understand their own incompetence). They'll put you down for being female, me for being a skinny, four-eyed geek, Herve for being too smart, Serge for being too dumb, Sydney for being too nice and Sandy for not, Marcel for having an accent, Jamal for being "foreign" (non-european, non-christian, immigrant/refugee, what-ever) Tom. Dick or Harry for having religion, for having the wrong religion, or for having no religion -- there's always some excuse, and some stereotype they can allude to. In the end, it all comes down to picking on some arbitrary group with some convenient "distinguishing feature" that enables them to single other people both as (in their own mind, at least) intrinsically "not like them" and thus an excuse for labelling them as "inferior". These people are usually desperately insecure, and desperately over-compensating. I've seen some classic cases, and the question is often just how many and which categories they want to come down on, and how much and which they believe they can get away with. It reminds me of that old dating advice, that goes something along the lines of, "If he's really nice to you, but mean to the waiter, he's really not nice." |
| gus3 May 14, 2012 10:07 PM EDT |
When I worked full-time in IT, I was "fortunate enough to work only in really good places." That isn't to say sexist attitudes didn't exist. When they did exist, and when they were harmful (to the company's interests), they were dealt with, swiftly and decisively. One incident I overheard involved an explicit threat of termination. Then again, I worked in IT for only 9 years, with only 4 companies, 3 of them start-ups. |
| Khamul May 14, 2012 10:49 PM EDT |
@caitlyn: It's probably a bit of #1 and #2. I did work at one place, my very first job out of school at a very small, private company near my college, in a small town in western Virginia. One day, I was in the server room (such as it was; it was 1998 and they had one little computer running NT I think being used as a file server), with the company President/part-owner, and another guy who was an intern. Those two seemed to have some kind of prior rapport. The intern started asking about some photo of a girl who used to work at the company, and the owner brought it up on the computer--it was a pic of several girls (local ones I presume) sitting naked on a floating log. Apparently, one of these girls either was an employee there or looked just like her, some other (male) employee found the pic on the internet, printed it out, and brought it in and showed her, asking if it was her. She quit the next day; they didn't say anything about the male employee so I presume nothing happened to him. For several other reasons (poor pay, lies about my performance by my boss, etc.) I left that cr@ppy company and moved on in my career to bigger and better things. I never saw anything like that again, but of course, not being a female myself, I may very well just not be exposed to it when it's more subtle and focused at its target, rather than the rather overt but general display described above (i.e., if a man says something sexist and demeaning to a woman when no one else is in earshot, I'm not going to know about it unless the incident becomes public). I've worked at quite a few different places; small companies, gigantic companies, a mid-size company, even a university research institute, so I had come up with some generalizations about different workplaces. These were: at big companies, you're much more likely to be a "small cog in the machine", your work is more likely to not amount to much (your project gets canceled, etc.), and the culture is rather bland, but on the other hand the pay is generally better, and you can expect a certain quality of employment experience there that's not too bad. Whereas at small companies, it's totally hit or miss; your work is much more likely to be crucial to the company's success and will actually be used somewhere, and the culture probably isn't going to be as bland, and you're likely to not get paid quite as much, but on the other hand your experience there is likely to either be really bad, or really good; it seems like there's little middle ground. It seemed to me that you were much more likely to have horror stories from working at a small company than a large one, but the risk can be worth it because you're also likely to have a really good experience. This story has made me re-evaluate this. If this story were about some 20-person company, I wouldn't even think it was a big deal, because much worse stuff happens at many small companies. I'm not saying it's acceptable, just that that's the way things are; small companies are small, and there isn't much benefit to an abused employee suing them, whereas if you have a good case of abuse at some multi-billion dollar firm, you'll have no trouble finding a lawyer to take your case on contingency because of the potential payout. So small places can get away with a lot more bad behavior that would get the megacorps sued. That a company of Dell's size would do something like this is just galling. |
| TxtEdMacs May 15, 2012 7:35 AM EDT |
To anyone one with an interest, [serious] Quoting: [...] can a man carry a child? Yes, delivery is the main problem. Given artificial insemination and implanting human eggs given enough hormones it is a doable task. In addition, given the propensity to resort to c-sections for delivery in the states that final detail could be solved easily for male delivery of a viable human. The problem remains, what even partially sane male would subject themselves to such extreme pain and chemical manipulation? Furthermore, many who proclaim their reverence for human life know viscerally that these artificial techniques are an implicit danger for the current status quo. [/serious] |
| caitlyn May 15, 2012 1:03 PM EDT |
Quoting:So small places can get away with a lot more bad behavior that would get the megacorps sued. That a company of Dell's size would do something like this is just galling.@Khamul: Obviously I agree with you. It goes beyond that. The fact that such a large company wouldn't see that this would create huge problems for them, at least in the area of PR, demonstrates just how pervasive and institutionalized sexism has become in the IT industry. |
| skelband May 15, 2012 1:41 PM EDT |
@caitlyn: For me it is #1. I have only worked for a few companies and mostly I stay with them. The first I was with for 12 years, a small, close-knit software company my closest peer being a woman that I have enormous respect for and still try to keep in contact with. [That reminds me, I must send her an email] Another I was with for 2 years I left because it was run by an ex-army a$$hole. I don't think he had realised that he had left the army :D My current company is one of the few companies that I have worked in that really *love* their people. Yes, I really mean that. The working atmosphere is awesome. We have a good number of women who are extremely competent in their fields and they are treated no different from everyone else. I have been truly fortunate. I really feel your pain in this caitlyn. The stupid thing is, I find mixed gender workplaces have a balance that is not found elsewhere and provides an atmosphere for a better class of workplace banter. My wife, who is a nurse feels this also. She says that where there are only women she finds that the atmosphere becomes bitchy and unpleasant. A few male nurses seem to change the atmosphere and balances things up somewhat. Also, women lost from the industry is a loss to the industry of skilled people that we can ill afford to lose. |
| Khamul May 15, 2012 3:19 PM EDT |
I agree with all this except the bit about "people we can ill afford to lose". That reminds me too much of employers whining about how they're understaffed and they can't find enough skilled people (like people with 10 years of Android experience). The industry doesn't *need* anyone at all. If it does, it has to make itself attractive to people who might want to work there, by providing jobs that people want to work at, and which pay enough for people to pursue them. If the industry here can't do that, then the industry doesn't need to exist, and we should just let other countries pursue that industry. There's tons of people in Asia who would be happy to do these jobs, at companies in Asia, and they certainly don't need any massively overpaid western CxOs to run their companies. Heck, there's plenty of Americans moving over there to do these jobs for the companies over there instead of putting up with the horribly-run companies here. |
| caitlyn May 15, 2012 3:21 PM EDT |
@skelband: I agree with you fully in this thread :) One of the reasons I started my own business was so that I could have control over my work environment. What you say about mixed gender workplaces applies to diversity in general. When I was with Lockheed Martin the male:female ratio was 60:40. We had people from all over the world and we had a fair number of African-Americans and Latinos who were top notch. They had to be to succeed in what is mainly a white industry. There is every bit as much racism as sexism. That was one of the best managed shops I've been in and one of the most cohesive teams I've worked with despite also being one of the largest teams I've ever been in. There was no lack of mutual respect and people worked together rather than building little fiefdoms as is oh so common in large corporate workplaces. My experience has taught me that the more diversity is respected and encouraged the higher the overall quality of the personnel and the better the results. |
| Khamul May 15, 2012 3:28 PM EDT |
Wow, that's completely different from my experience at a defense contractor. I did two internships at a naval shipbuilder, and not only did I see some sexism (can't say I saw any racism though; there were a lot of black guys there), I have never seen so many people paid money to basically sit around and do very little of value. It's no wonder an aircraft carrier costs $15 Billion with so much waste. |
| caitlyn May 15, 2012 3:32 PM EDT |
@Khamul: Lockheed-Martin is not just a defense contractor. They do all sorts of private sector and government work that has NOTHING to do with the DOD. I supported the EPA. |
| skelband May 15, 2012 6:40 PM EDT |
@Khamul: "That reminds me too much of employers whining about how they're understaffed and they can't find enough skilled people (like people with 10 years of Android experience)." You have to understand that my context is BC in Canada and there is a definite skill shortage of people good in their fields. We have been trying to recruit people in particular skills and we just cannot find them here. |
| Khamul May 15, 2012 8:02 PM EDT |
@skelband: I thought the Canadian government had some kind of fast-track system for letting technically-skilled people move to Canada easily without immigration hassles. Canada is generally underpopulated anyway, and it's no surprise you don't have all the skilled people you need, but the answer is quite simple: recruit them from south of the border. There's tons of skilled people in Washington, Oregon, and California, plus all over the rest of the US. You just need to recruit them better. I never see jobs in BC advertised on Dice.com, for instance. Offer them more money and a better work environment than these cr@ppy US corporations and you should have an easy time recruiting them. Heck, if I could find my wife a job up there in her profession, I'd be happy to come to work there too. Vancouver's a great city, unlike most of these ghetto American cities. |
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