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My open letter to the tech industry on sexism, HR, and Linus Tech Tips (self.technology)

submitted 1 year ago by sweeny to c/[email protected]

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The Linus Tech Tips abuse allegations are yet another reminder that something absolutely needs to be done about the rampant sexism in the tech industry. If you haven't heard them yet you can read about them here, but be warned, there is some potentially very triggering abuse and self harm detailed: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.html

Madison's story is not unique - we have heard stories like hers time and time again. As a tech professional it makes me sick to share an industry with these horrible people, and to know that little is being done to reign them in.

So, what can be done about this? I don't have all of the answers, but one thing that comes to mind is that HR departments desperately need actual unbiased oversight, perhaps even from a governing body outside of the company. It has become common knowledge that HR’s primary purpose is to protect the company, and this prevents employees from speaking out and driving internal change even in terrible situations like Madison Reeve and countless others have faced. The way things are run clearly needs to fundamentally change

Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas on how we as a tech community might be able to address these issues, I am truly at a loss. All I want is for tech to be a safe space for everybody to find their passion and success, and it saddens me that we clearly aren't there yet.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

on someone else’s experience in life based on a single forum comment

You keep insisting on this point. I am not doing any of that. I am challenging the generalization of the analysis of those episodes to the whole sector. I am not interested in discussing or disputing your personal experience.

You don’t work for my company so I’m not sure why you are acting like the culture at your company where you can’t get promoted contradicts anything.

From how you wrote it, I did not understand it was specifically a statement regarding your company. In general I think that's not the experience of most people especially in the last 2 years (given the layoffs), but obviously, if that's what happens in your particular company, I have no way to dispute it. It is not representative of the general environment though, I hope we can agree that people are not thrown promotions generally out of nothing, and that employers try to squeeze employees as much as possible, even if men.

You are free to discuss your grievances, but for some reason these things only come up when women start talking about their experience…

I speak about these topics almost everyday, with colleagues and people in general. Not sure what are you trying to imply.

It’s just another “what about the men” comment that always comes up when women try to have a discussion. It’s a pattern of behavior that actually backs up my experience rather than refutes it.

My comment has nothing to do with this argument. This is just a strawman that you are using to win internet points, falling back on cliches. My argument is "the workplace is a warzone, full of conflict and discrimination. Certain behaviors that you describe can be sexist bu can also not be, and instead be classist, ageist, racist and also the result of distorted incentives for workers that end up fighting each other". In fact, I would argue that ageism in tech is a problem as big as sexism, but apparently you are not interested in having this kind of conversation.

It contradicts a ton of research

Research shows a lot of ageism in tech. So actually refusing to acknowledge that certain behavior can be the result of other form of discrimination as well or even not a result of discrimination at all, but the result of the way power structure is, seems to be contradicting research. My statement is far from being absolute. I am not saying that sexism does not exist in tech, I am not blind, I am saying that those two very specific common patterns that you described (and that I challenged) are not inherently sexist (but can be). My overall intention is to expand the critique to the toxic working culture in tech looking at it from multiple angles, but again, it seems you are not interested and you really want to only look at this through the lens of gender discrimination.

To me, this seems shortsighted, partial and, if I may, also oppressive towards the many who are discriminated in the very same way but from different reasons. It is detrimental to the overall effort that us -workers- should do to shape the culture in tech in another way, that should push for structural change that would drastically modify the incentives people have and so on.