Dunno. I'm a woman, and I think that blog poster needs to lighten up.
I've worked in IT for years - usually as the only woman on the team - and I've never felt degraded or discriminated against for being female. Maybe slight prejudices in the beginning when the guys think I'm not as good as them, but I enjoy proving them wrong. There is banter, and sometimes it's not 100% HR approved, but I've never felt that it was mean spirited or intended to put me down. I've found that by and large, computer engineers are super-nice, funny, and respectful towards women.
The comment about the guy noticing her low-cut dress and wanting to sit near her... not entirely appropriate, but is this really bad enough to run to HR and complain? That said, I wouldn't feel comfortable drawing attention with my clothes, so I would never wear something low-cut. I find that a lightweight cotton dress shirt is more comfortable than a tight, low-cut top anyway. If someone asked me to arrange a pot-luck or bring them coffee, it would simply not be happening.
I'm on the East Coast though. Maybe all the disrespectful frat boy "brogrammers" are working on the West Coast?
I'd love to wear lightweight cotton dress shirts. Unfortunately, trying to get a pair of 36G breasts into a shirt cut for my size is an exercise in futility. The results border on pornographic - gaping buttons, bulges etc. I have a few choices:
a) buy a shirt 3 sizes bigger and look like a clown
b) spend a fortune on clothing designed specifically for the 'well endowed' woman OR
c) wear something I own that makes me comfortable - which may or may not be low cut but is bugger all to do with anyone else (and really, most of the time is not designed to be low cut but ends up being so because the material shifts)
Do any of these situations warrant me being commented on, criticised or jeered at? Should I suffer these comments for something that isn't my fault?
(And don't even get me started on how being a breastfeeding mum impacts on both the choices above AND the range and depth of comments I receive.)
I'm glad that you've never felt degraded or discriminated against for being female. That doesn't mean it should be ignored when it does happen. That doesn't mean it is somehow this woman's fault and that she needs to "lighten up".
I mean "lighten up" as in, she perceives "a million little barbs" around her and sees herself as the victim of sexism lurking everywhere. She didn't just criticize one company or co-worker, but the whole industry. Her post is a torrent of rhetorical questions, exclamation points, hyperbole, and quotes she ascribes to her co-workers that likely never happened. Do you really think someone responded to her concerns with "if you are not in the middle of being raped or beaten or threatened or fired, lighten up"?
To make such sweeping statements about the industry, I presume she was not happy at her job, changed jobs, and the same thing happened again, and again, to the point where she left the industry altogether, discouraged. Which is weird, given that I changed jobs often myself and never had such experiences.
Two sentences gave me the most pause. One being, "Which label do I want to be stuck with today? Ice Queen or Slut?" It makes me think this is more about herself than the people around her.
The other weird comment was that she loves coding and "spent thousands of dollars to go to conferences so I can learn more about it." All excellent IT people I know learn stuff hands-on by playing around with technologies and studying on their own. Maybe there are other reasons why she felt stuck doing inferior tasks. If you are crucial to the team's success, nobody treats you like the "secretary who we let on the server" or a personal assistant, regardless of your gender.
I hope that the discussion of this topic doesn't make men paranoid about saying anything around women, because the fun and banter is one of the things that makes working in IT so enjoyable.
I work on a small team - just over 20 people - with only four women.
Every single one is a hilarious, self-possessed, confident individual. All the men, myself included, treat them with respect... meaning, we tease the shit out of them.
To do otherwise would exclude them from the team. Have you ever seen a cohesive group that didn't joke around? A tiny fraction of the jabs traded by men are HR-approved... if we filtered that for the women who work with us, we would be treating them as if they're too weak or too sensitive to be a part of the group.
So instead, we treat them no differently than any other team member. If one of the other coders were to arrive unusually dressed up, I would absolutely comment on it, regardless of whether it's a suit or a dress, but one of the ladies would probably beat me to it. Frankly, the women push the HR line harder than any of us guys, and we love them for it.
If you find that people are constantly telling you to "lighten up," whether you're male or female, you shouldn't assume that the world is conspiring to put you down. You're probably just no fun to work with.
I hope that the discussion of this topic doesn't make men paranoid about saying anything around women, because the fun and banter is one of the things that makes working in IT so enjoyable.
This is what most people do when things come with thousand strings attached.
I never talk to women unless and until it becomes completely unavoidable. And if it is needed, I just restrict to whatever minimal it would take to 'get the job done' for the moment.
I know about guys, you can tell anything to them. In fact in my team guys joking guys is so common, its considered abnormal if they don't joke.
But with women, you can never be sure, you don't even what offends and what not. So keep interactions to bare minimum.
Sexist comments like the one on the flyer are dumb, and these people deserve to be called out on it, but to imply they are keeping women out of tech careers is ridiculous (and in itself, sounds kind of sexist to me - like we are tender plants who change our career paths because some jerks like to see boobies).
If the flyer reflected the spirit of the event and the attitude of the organizers, I'm glad for the heads up so I know not to attend, free beer notwithstanding.
I wouldn't change my career path because there are idiots around, but there _are_ quite a few women who don't even want to embark on that path because it feels like you're entering frathouse central some days.
Especially since there are a few other (related) fields that seem to have a slightly lower jerk quotient.
Ironic, isn't it. Managers whose jobs revolve around communication, coordination, and staying on top of things get offices with doors where they can isolate themselves. Developers whose job requires long stretches of focus and concentration are kept in open spaces with numerous distractions.
Many managers are frequently hosting mini-meetings or yelling into their speakerphone a lot. It's an act of mercy to everyone to give them a shuttable door. :-)
yes, I agree, I once worked in a completely open office (no separate rooms, even for the manager / "CEO", it was a very small startup company and would have to listen to this sort of nonsense all day
I don't think I've ever worked someplace where the CEO didn't have the biggest, nicest office in the company. Although in both cases the CEO was also founder and owned upwards of half the company.
In any case, it doesn't really bother me as long as I have the resources to get my work done. It's just an interesting observation.
What is new about this generation is that they graduate with enormous student loan debt. They already have a "mortgage" or rent payment, only it goes towards their loans.
We desperately need good alternatives to current universities, indeed... the current default path of getting a degree by taking on enormous debt is just not viable in this economic environment.
But I also understand the cynicism of a couple responses. I have a few facebook friends in their twenties, and often enough, I read status messages like "I'm so broke and can't find a job (Posted from my IPhone)" or "I just spend two hours applying for ten jobs, will probably not hear back from any of them" (yes, most likely). Also - probably in part due to the large debt occurred to get their specific degree - some fresh graduates seem unwilling to expand their job search beyond their chosen field.
Hardship (even self-imposed) might even lead to new ideas. If life gets too cushy, there are few problems left to solve. Shelter is one of the most elementary human needs.
Many startup ideas are about extracting a few more dollars from the end user - what kind of annoyance can we solve today? - but I think it's important to think beyond the scope of consumer products to get to the real game changers.
A lot of the value being created in the digital sphere right now revolves around collecting information about people and providing it to third parties, who in turn use it to solve problems (and collect even more data). I believe these services will change our lives the most.
For example, major innovations in the near future might revolve around creating 100% safe neighborhoods through smart surveillance. People are rapidly becoming accustomed to being tracked all the time, anyway.
Technological progress and major societal changes go hand-in-hand. I think whoever can best envision what those changes will be - and how to profit from them - will become the next Steve Jobs.
"...creating 100% safe neighborhoods through smart surveillance. People are rapidly becoming accustomed to being tracked all the time, anyway."
This comment shocks me. I'm not sure what to say. Are you being sarcastic?
An apt metaphor for people becoming accustomed to surveillance is slowly boiling frogs to death. And what is your definition of safe? If it were up to me, nobody could wear the color black at night -- too dangerous! Also, drinking too much at the club is not acceptable in my society!
I'm being silly, but where do you draw the line? It's a slippery slope...
Pinterest has a market valuation of > 200 million dollars...
30%+ of its images are flickr images...
... 99%+ of which are "All Rights Reserved".
How many
... page views,
... new subscribers,
... and $$$
have the most-pinned flickr images generated for pinterest, with the author not seeing a single cent... not even having the satisfaction of seeing their popularity on pinterest reflect in their flickr stats?
And: Pinterest does not even have the decency to display the author name and license info next to the image.
Pinterest's business model is flawed; it is based on systematic violation of copyright. At some point, someone will start a class-action lawsuit and invite flickr photographers whose works got "pinned" to sign up, to reclaim part of that >$200 million pie.
In fact, this seems like a valid startup idea to me: Create a one-page website explaining to flickr users what has been going on. Do a systematic reverse image search to find out which authors have been affected and invite them to join.
Arrange with an interested lawfirm to get a % of their fee in exchange for delivering the list of potential plaintiffs.
Recently, I wanted to make some picture postcards of various locations around the US for personal use, so I went looking for images. I found many on Flickr. I wanted to compensate the original photographer. There is no easy way to do this.
At best, some photographs have a "request to license" link that bounces you to a third party (typically Getty Images) which offers to "Review the photo to determine if it's a good fit for licensing through us; Contact the photographer; Handle the details like releases and pricing" and takes "between two and seven days to arrange licensing." with prices typically around $100 for usable resolution for a postcard.
At worst, you have to sign in to Yahoo so that you can send the photographer a message about wanting to use their photo. You may or may not get a reply, and you have to arrange how to pay the photographer, if at all.
This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it's way too expensive and much too much friction.
The vast majority of images will never be used commercially. There should be an easier way to remunerate the photographer, and at more reasonable prices. A "Pix Store" if you will. Maybe that's what the stock photo sites are supposed to be, but they don't have nearly the inventory.
"This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it's way too expensive and much too much friction."
That's why Flickr lets you search for Creative Commons images, for which the photographer gives you that personal use permission in advance.
Never mind various sites which also offer public domain images as well. Then there is the 3rd choice of actually talking to the photographer. I have used original songs produced from a musician (with his written consent) and photos produced by a photographer (again with written consent) on websites I have made. Then again one is a good friend and the other is the future wife of another good friend of mine.
You think so? I license photos through Creative Commons, and differently depending on the shades of personal to commercial I consider inherent in the potential market for a photo.
I find it covers all the shades of commerciality I've considered. Meanwhile, for a purely commercial photographer, the getty images option is there, and those won't come up in the Creative Commons search unless licensed appropriately.
The CC search tool on Flickr is a fantastic tool for finding photos of the exact "shade" of use you're looking for.
CC photos are all free for non-commercial use, correct? What if you'd like to be compensated, but not at rates that justify the overhead of Getty Images? Many of the images I found were not CC licensed, nor did they have a Getty Images option. Those are the images I'm referring to.
e.g., go search Flickr for "drawdy falls". No results in Getty, no results in the Commons, but a handful of images from photographers that are retaining full copyright, but have't posted contact info. Maybe they don't want compensation and just failed to select CC when they posted. Who knows. Regardless, many of the images I found were in this middle ground. I'm not trying to sound entitled here, just pointing out that there's lots of images that sadly cannot be used.
The Getty Images process doesn't sound too terrible to me.
Is the up-to-a-week wait partly a consequence of GI giving the photog a chance to approve/deny the request? That would be reasonable -- they might not want, for example, a Neo-Nazi group licensing their photo of blonde, blue-eyed kids for some sort of racist poster campaign.
Also, $100 licensing for a photo that you really love is cheap as chips.
By personal use, do you mean that you were literally going to produce one copy of each postcard and keep them all yourself? You weren't going to make multiple copies and give/send any to anyone else?
I was making a single postcard per image, and needed a total of 30 separate images. These were going to a family member (30 postcards from 30 locations for her 30th birthday).
Having to wait a week for each image, and pay $100 each, wasn't going to work.
For personal use such as this it'd be nice if there were an easier way. Maybe Flickr could even be the middle man and take a 30% cut.
It's probably a bigger problem that it was going to cost him $3000 to send those 30 postcards (postage not included).
Getty is clearly defaulting to "I want to use this image in an advertisement" or similar uses, NOT a one-off single print of an image, to be "displayed" to a single person audience. $100 per image is ridiculous for that.
Yeah, in general stuff like Getty Images is intended to license redistribution of the photo: if you plan to sell or give away hundreds of post cards, or use the photo on your website, or something else. It's pretty uncommon to license photos that you just want to print out at home for private use. To me that's more akin to saving a photo and making it your desktop wallpaper.
Legally (IANAL but my understanding is), Pinterest only needs to comply with DMCA takedown requests. Instead they are being proactive and allow people to tag images as "nopin", vastly reducing the need for tedious or unreliable monitoring of Pinterest for copyrighted content, as content owners must do for almost every other sharing site. That's a good thing, and they should be applauded for it.
I suspect you might dislike the opt-out vs. opt-in nature of the nopin system, but new technologies have been accused of facilitating the death of copyright ever since the invention of the radio, but it turned out that most of those inventions created a lot of value for the world and for creators who adapt to the new medium.
"Pinterest's business model is flawed; it is based on systematic violation of copyright."
I don't think you've taken a look around the internet. Many successes are dependent on breaking or at least challenging the outdated concept of copyright, and many further successes were simply the latest new thing that incrementally improved the copyright situation (basically every music startup from Napster to Spotify). Even search engines (or ESPECIALLY search engines) are in a deeply gray area of copyright law and have never fully challenged the fuzziness of copyright law.
And maybe it's worth considering how much value is gained by everyone if there are weaker copyright restrictions and punishments.
In Pinterest's case, they could always make their system load the images directly from the source website. I'm sure they considered that and rejected it because it would make everything much slower and cause issues when sites go down or switch images, but that's precisely what Google Images does when you click on a thumbnail. What's the real difference here?
Happened to me at a small company that was swimming in cash (swank offices).
They told me that if you get seriously ill within the first 60 days, you can sign up for COBRA and be covered from then on through your previous employer's health insurance.
You have 60 days to decide if you want COBRA or not, so even if you don't go for COBRA right away, you are "safe" (sort of) for 60 days. Got diagnosed with cancer on day 59? Sign up with COBRA, pronto.
Implied: If you do get seriously ill right after starting - the new company wouldn't want you working for them anyway.
I love discussing implementation details of different designs, but it has always been to my disadvantage to acknowledge what's good about a competing vision and lay out in detail the pros and cons of my own idea, because that just gets turned around to support the high-level idea of the senior employee who's been with the company longer (and has already earned the trust of the IT director).
The devil is always in the details, so I love discussing all "gotchas" before code is written. But I guess early in the project, people like to believe that the new design will solve all problems and will only take two months to implement, and a frank discussion can only dampen that enthusiasm. So it tends to get suppressed rather than encouraged.
I've worked in IT for years - usually as the only woman on the team - and I've never felt degraded or discriminated against for being female. Maybe slight prejudices in the beginning when the guys think I'm not as good as them, but I enjoy proving them wrong. There is banter, and sometimes it's not 100% HR approved, but I've never felt that it was mean spirited or intended to put me down. I've found that by and large, computer engineers are super-nice, funny, and respectful towards women.
The comment about the guy noticing her low-cut dress and wanting to sit near her... not entirely appropriate, but is this really bad enough to run to HR and complain? That said, I wouldn't feel comfortable drawing attention with my clothes, so I would never wear something low-cut. I find that a lightweight cotton dress shirt is more comfortable than a tight, low-cut top anyway. If someone asked me to arrange a pot-luck or bring them coffee, it would simply not be happening.
I'm on the East Coast though. Maybe all the disrespectful frat boy "brogrammers" are working on the West Coast?