|
Cicero posted:I'd say bay area techies are fiscally center-left as a whole, the libertopians are a small (but loud) minority. The "fiscal center-leftism" of Bay Area techies is loving awful.
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 18:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 13:50 |
|
|
Cicero posted:I knew/know a bunch of people who work at Google in Mountain View who live in SF. They do it because SF is a fun big city while the peninsula/south bay is basically surbubia. Guess which one is more attractive to affluent millenials? i'm literally a programmer but i am a gay woman and i literally see all day coworkers who are visibly uncomfortable around queer and minority coworkers. my assumption was that people go to the bay for the jobs and not the culture, especially given SF natives seem to think the techies are pushing them out and not participating in the community. and anyone who would rather spend 2 hours a day on a shuttle instead of a 15 minute drive home is crazy to me. i'm not going out every night, i get more time with my family if i live close to work and take the long trip when i want the fun of the city.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 19:39
|
|
|
Oh but you see Bay Area traffic is so awful that it'll be 2 hours commute in suburbia too! (This is in no way true, non-rush my commute is 15min each way and if for some reason I need to drive during rush hour I'll take the locals and it'll be 25-30. Bus is like an hour though.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 19:51
|
|
|
Apparently I didn't post My Year At Github here?Coraline Ada Ehmke posted:One day a notification came to me that a repo for the open source developer survey had been created and that the survey questions were in progress. My director followed up with me to make sure that I was aware of the survey and asked me to review the questions. I worked my way through, and stopped short at one particular question: "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender". I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue referencing the question. The body of my issue read: Github eventually pushed her out for her "non-empathetic communication style". Read the whole thing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 19:56
|
|
|
A lot of the programmers I knew coming up were the most liberal guy in their super-conservative suburb, and think that being Wiccan or going to Burning Man or whatever qualifies them as a minority. So yea, they think of places like SF or Austin are big ol gatherings of people like them. And they are, at least compared to the super-conservative suburb where they grew up.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 20:03
|
|
|
Shugojin posted:"Ourobourous" doesn't really lend itself very well to the "take out all the vowels" standard.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 21:02
|
|
|
cis autodrag posted:I don't understand why all these programmers that work down in the valley want to live in SF anyway. It's way cheaper to live closer to your office, saving you money and commute, and you can still go into SF to do stuff when you want to. I can't imagine most dorkuses who program computer would be comfortable participating in most of the poo poo that SF is known for to begin with (chinatown, homosexuals, etc). there's no affordable housing in the valley. people are dumb for living in sf over san jose or east bay tho
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 22:52
|
|
|
There is a bunch of land in the sf Bay Area with local communities eager for development and near transportation infrastructure. But you can't sell high price units on that lot so it remains empty. If you can't build the highest price units it isn't worth building because you can just go somewhere more expensive and get a better return.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 23:22
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:Apparently I didn't post My Year At Github here? For the sadly ironic part her manager opened up the performance review that lead to her firing after she had started going back to work after a traumatic experience. She had even asked for some time to decide if she had to take a medical leave on a Friday, and Monday starts with her manager opening the performance review.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 23:54
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:Apparently I didn't post My Year At Github here? Yea, the data scientist went through management and she was barred from communicating with her further. Something upset that data scientist enough that she went to management for protection. Coraline is opinionated, direct and not exactly shy. I suspect she was way more confrontational here then her inner narrative will allow. So she then gets a bad review, which was basically "you aren't doing reviews" (she says she wasn't asked and was trying to be respectful - but she also doesn't say she was proactive here) and have a history of doing things like what with the data scientist. This causes her to abuse her meds and be institutionalized, which she loving publicly documents on twitter. Given the option she then refuses medical leave. And then performs like poo poo, by her own admission, which leads to getting put on a PIP. A PIP of course being a loving death sentence anywhere for anyone, much less someone in their first year on a job. What am I supposed to be taking away from this?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 00:22
|
|
|
Buffer posted:What am I supposed to be taking away from this? That you're a lovely victim blamer, apparently.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 00:36
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:Apparently I didn't post My Year At Github here? That story gets dark at the end  The theme seems to be that Github management doesn't understand how to teach professionals to handle disagreements / adult conversations. Berating an employee for her (supposed) lack of empathy is just as bad as going after "lack of braininess" or "lack of character". It makes the problem about who she is instead of what she does. Those are much bigger problems, surely beyond the scope of a US employer/employee relationship unless there's already a huge base of trust (nope). If they were at all competent, they would address the actually-manageable problem by talking about concrete instances where her conduct caused problems and alternate techniques she could have used. It's also weird that they built a team of activists to work specifically on social justice issues. Why not put the people from marginalized groups on core technology and give them a chance to establish some credibility? They can still sit on a working group that sets requirements for some positively-SJ-inclined white dudes who do the grunt work of writing junk like engagement surveys and first-time-contributor badges.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 01:17
|
|
|
WampaLord posted:That you're a lovely victim blamer, apparently. It's a workplace tragedy in three acts featuring some weird choices(like that apparently github put together a social justice league) but come on. Apart from the code review bit, which is profoundly hosed up, she took a single bad performance review that may have been unwarranted and wasn't listened to / respected as much as she'd like / might be appropriate. That last bit isn't exactly an uncommon tale, it's just not normally presented through this lens. Her manager, the female lead of the social justice unit, apparently thought she was taking things too personally and was overly confrontational, but was working with her on it. Maybe she was wrong on this, but there were obviously interpersonal problems there, that seems pretty squarely presented. Other than that she had a psychological emergency which involved abuse of her meds, offering paid medical leave is pretty loving progressive and if the employee refuses it, what the hell are you supposed to do? What was her manager''s problem here? What did she do wrong?
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 02:03
|
|
|
The stiltbus guys were charged with fraud. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/07/06/535625957/chinas-elevated-bus-project-seemed-too-good-to-be-true-and-it-was
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 02:10
|
|
|
Buffer posted:(like that apparently github put together a social justice league) That's just it, GH got into mildly tepid water a few years back when a developer was harassed out of the company. They hired a batch of prominent activists with fat stacks and burned them out one by one. I'm surprised at anyone giving a company with a known-poo poo history as much of a charitable reading as you are, but presuming anyone in management wanted her to succeed takes some amazing leaps of faith.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 02:13
|
|
|
GitHub has a social justice league? I thought GitHub was a upload/download storage site.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 02:31
|
|
|
Nissin Cup Nudist posted:GitHub has a social justice league? I thought GitHub was a upload/download storage site. It's a website for hosting Git repositories (in short, basically a way to make large collaborative programming projects easier) and organizing people/organizations involved. The company itself has a history of, and evidently still practices, a lot of the same culture issues associated with tech companies, though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 03:03
|
|
|
Buffer posted:It's a workplace tragedy in three acts featuring some weird choices(like that apparently github put together a social justice league) but come on. Apart from the code review bit, which is profoundly hosed up, she took a single bad performance review that may have been unwarranted and wasn't listened to / respected as much as she'd like / might be appropriate. That last bit isn't exactly an uncommon tale, it's just not normally presented through this lens. "Lack of empathy" is unquantifiable - unless someone is being outright hostile or not responding, differences in communication styles are simply a fact of life. HR/Management should have backed her up with the data scientist, if her initial response was as quoted. Otherwise, "lack of empathy" eventually turns into "you didn't think me or apologize to me for 6 paragraphs for your statement, preempting what you're about to say." Direct communication in a work environment is good. Saying "Thanks" or "I appreciate it" is polite, but not required. And yes, the code review part is completely hosed up. But if her PIP focused on her interpersonal communication and didn't give her concrete feedback on how to improve, it was equally hosed up and simply a way for management/HR to remove what they considered a thorn in their side.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 03:29
|
|
|
I've been guilty of reading the tea leaves beforepangstrom posted:Yeah, not going to claim that other tech places are great in those respects at all but goddamn that sounds 1) awful and 2) very credible/authoritative.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 03:42
|
|
|
A PIP means you're fired. No one ever comes back from one anywhere I've ever worked. She was gone the second she got put on one.JawnV6 posted:That's just it, GH got into mildly tepid water a few years back when a developer was harassed out of the company. They hired a batch of prominent activists with fat stacks and burned them out one by one. I'm surprised at anyone giving a company with a known-poo poo history as much of a charitable reading as you are, but presuming anyone in management wanted her to succeed takes some amazing leaps of faith. I remember, and senior management, sure - just well, we're talking about a line manager here. The line manager they chose for this team that was supposed to put together activists and help fix that. The manager that was going to be judged on the success or failure of this effort and who went from believing in her enough to hire her and somewhat had her back to shitcanning her in less than a year. I mean the failure here is that managers - whomever she may be - I'm just not sure what it is. I also don't think my view is particularly charitable. It's basically she was perceived as a troublemaker / confrontational, her manager somewhat agreed but was working with her on it(I mean that was part of why she was hired, but I can see her crossing into the unprofessional here). Then she had bad times, was offered medical leave to go get her poo poo together, refused it, and then when she stopped cutting it as a developer welp. You don't generally offer people paid medical leave if you just want to get rid of them, you don't hire people you want to fail, and if someone lasts less than a year it's a personal failing of yours. Maybe I'm assuming too much competence, I don't know.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 03:42
|
|
|
GitHub was plainly lovely and hosed up. I also think the pip was ginned up bullshit. But I also harbour the notion she's not as completely blameless *at the start of things.* Oh poo poo, people are commenting on her stuff at a high rate! The horror! The gender question on the quiz was just...wow, though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 03:49
|
|
|
Buffer posted:A PIP means you're fired. No one ever comes back from one anywhere I've ever worked. She was gone the second she got put on one. Avenging_Mikon posted:I also think the pip was ginned up bullshit. Shooting Blanks posted:But if her PIP focused on her interpersonal communication and didn't give her concrete feedback on how to improve, it was equally hosed up and simply a way for management/HR to remove what they considered a thorn in their side. Buffer posted:I remember, and senior management, sure - just well, we're talking about a line manager here. The line manager they chose for this team that was supposed to put together activists and help fix that. The manager that was going to be judged on the success or failure of this effort and who went from believing in her enough to hire her and somewhat had her back to shitcanning her in less than a year. I mean the failure here is that managers - whomever she may be - I'm just not sure what it is.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 04:02
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:She was set up to fail much, much earlier. In that they hired someone who already had a personal history with github which would cause extra stress and pitfalls? Cause reading through that blog and taking it as truth, I still came away thinking the blame was roughly even between github, herself, and the fact that she was working there in general. Though I think hiring people to be "internal activists" is also a terrible idea, because the activist mindset is not good for changing a culture from the inside. So if you wanna blame github for that I'd agree. Avenging_Mikon posted:Oh poo poo, people are commenting on her stuff at a high rate! The horror! That would totally suck no matter who you are. It's pretty awful that their internal practices allowed that to happen in the first place. OTOH a blaze of publicity for new hires on an extra-special team is a great was to put a lot of added attention on them, even from the ones who aren't bigots.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 04:25
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:Ok, I wanna take your stance on this arbitrary point on the line. Consider how obvious it is from the introduction of the PIP that she's on the way out. See how some folks assume an even MORE charitable impression than you? I don't think it went south at the bad review, it went south far earlier than that, the review was just a precipitating event for her medical issue. She was out the door when they put her on a PIP, and she was put on the PIP ostensibly because of actual poor performance(because of, you know, the medical issue) plus her rebuffing her manager's offer of medical leave.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 05:40
|
|
|
Buffer posted:A PIP means you're fired. No one ever comes back from one anywhere I've ever worked. She was gone the second she got put on one. I can't speak to the places you've worked, but this is not true every where. I've seen two people come back from PIPs and managed a third who did as well. It does fully depend on management and the company doing some introspection to see where they hosed up and if it is fixable though. As someone in management, I tend to view have to have someone let go as a failure on my part. Also having seen railroading happen, particular with resistance to new changes or regimes, it looks like this from what she stated. Of course, we also haven't heard GitHubs side. But they have a strong negative history on this, so I'm going to view this as a lesson to be learned. Although I do agree with you on her not taking offered medical leave. Her therapist told her she needed to get back into routine, but work was going in a direction that was distinctly not routine. *shrug* We have incomplete knowledge of the situation, and I'm wandering off topic now, but to my core point. You can come back from a PIP if you want to and management wants you to as well. That can just be really rare.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 05:56
|
|
|
Buffer posted:A PIP means you're fired. No one ever comes back from one anywhere I've ever worked. She was gone the second she got put on one. I personally have gone through one and come out the other side a much improved worker. In my case, it was a good experience and a wake up call that made me a much better engineer. The subtext I got from the article is that the author did have legitimate and numerous communication issues. It's disappointing that the author did not get appropriate feedback from their manager, and it's also disappointing that their manager wasn't interacting with them in good faith, but that's actually almost the same treatment that I ran into with a manager that I worked under who was new to management and not used to differing communication styles. Unfortunately, engineers aren't really trained in communication, even though we really need to be (and I later got said training, which was very helpful), especially since we tend to be more introverted folks who aren't as good at communication to start with. The situation wasn't handled well by the manager, but I'd personally put more blame on the manager rather than the entire company. It's also possible that coworkers weren't happy with the author's performance, and the poor communication had poisoned the well thoroughly enough that improvement was too little too late. That all being said, it is a techbro silicon valley company, so there's even odds that bullshit was being pulled regardless. Edit: I think the most telling anecdote is the whole PIP thing. The manager complained about the author's conduct during team meetings, and the author didn't even acknowledge what happened during those meetings. They were talking directly past each other, which is honestly something that is the fault of both parties. Dirk the Average fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Jul 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 07:28
|
|
|
Buffer posted:A PIP means you're fired. No one ever comes back from one anywhere I've ever worked. She was gone the second she got put on one.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 08:25
|
|
|
ShadowHawk posted:At Google at least I've heard several stories of people coming back from them, and even being promoted eventually. It seems like a PIP is basically the formal method of slapping someone in the face and telling them to fix their poo poo immediately but like with that you'll find the vast majority of people are so deeply rooted into who/what they are that they aren't going to improve or strive for better once they get shamed. Of course like others have said it also seems like an easy way to tag an employee for soon to be firing based on not liking them especially in SV/Techbro run companies.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 08:33
|
|
|
ShadowHawk posted:At Google at least I've heard several stories of people coming back from them, and even being promoted eventually. Google has been around since 1998, and IPO'd in 2004. While young for such a large company, have had enough time to mature into a company that actually behaves like a real corporation. That's part of why the issues at Amazon are so surprising, it's a larger company that's also been around for a long time, I at least would have expected them to have a more mature organization, and the issues that have been published at Amazon are far less insidious than at places like Uber and Github. Part of developing an inclusive, supportive culture is having enough different businesses/product lines to avoid groupthink or old boy style corporate cultures. When a company has one product, or a couple variants of one product, and 90% of the employees are white, male, and in their 20's/early 30's, it's easy for that environment to develop into one where the 90% becomes convinced of their righteousness, and single out anyone that doesn't agree with them vociferously as an outsider. It's simple exclusion, from idea to skin color to age to gender to politics. And it's not unique to Silicon Valley.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 08:42
|
|
|
I generally agree but you're doing that thing again where someone asserts that SV techies are mostly/disproportionately white when it's not true. Asians: they're also a thing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 11:06
|
|
|
 edit: loving thing https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/883104054896861185
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 13:14
|
|
|
friend of mine 'won' the left top -> bottom right diagonal also fourth column
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 13:33
|
|
|
Rhesus Pieces posted:The "fiscal center-leftism" of Bay Area techies is loving awful. hoffman is pro-like-70%-communism-now, to the best of my knowledge he just can't say poo poo cuz he has too much money to say poo poo like that and not be completely reasonably viewed as a loving class traitor i think pincus is awful libertarian-democrat, tho
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 13:38
|
|
|
divabot posted:
I am furious that there is not a "Non-apology 'apology'" square, for all those "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" and "I apologise to anyone who may have witnessed the rape/assault/beating" copouts.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 14:56
|
|
|
Cicero posted:I generally agree but you're doing that thing again where someone asserts that SV techies are mostly/disproportionately white when it's not true. Asians: they're also a thing. Click around. Overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male. It's true there are more Asians than other ethnicities, but white people still dominate. Lol at those "manager" and "sales worker" lines.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 14:58
|
|
|
That data seems to show they're about as white as the US as a whole? And if you look at the companies people actually associate with Silicon Valley like Google or Facebook I think they're less white than average. I agree that if you're talking about executives explicitly then yes they're disproportionately white.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 15:53
|
|
|
Dirk the Average posted:The subtext I got from the article is that the author did have legitimate and numerous communication issues. It's disappointing that the author did not get appropriate feedback from their manager, and it's also disappointing that their manager wasn't interacting with them in good faith, but that's actually almost the same treatment that I ran into with a manager that I worked under who was new to management and not used to differing communication styles. Klyith posted:In that they hired someone who already had a personal history with github which would cause extra stress and pitfalls? Cause reading through that blog and taking it as truth, I still came away thinking the blame was roughly even between github, herself, and the fact that she was working there in general. Being an activist is necessary but not sufficient; in many cases the hiring company (A) wants a rubberstamp to continue what they're doing and (B) resents the activist for being alive, far less an employee.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 15:53
|
|
|
yurtcradled posted:That story gets dark at the end There are legit reasons why you don't want to put a bunch of people from disadvantaged groups into jobs where they're expected to be 40+ hour/week technical contributors and solve the company's diversity problems. Either they'll rebalance to lower their technical output (leading to "but they're not as good/not as hard working/just got the job as a diversity hire" complaints from the majority groups), or try to do it all. If they do try to do it all, it'll lead to some combo of fast burnout and "while I was sitting on the diversity group, the white guy on the team was doing a spare-time project to solve some internal problem, presenting it at a major conference, and now he's promoted to senior SDE over me because he's obviously more technically gifted than me". As for Github, it sounds like the core problem is that they had a tenth grade history model of activism: MLK marches with a bunch of people to the capitol, raises awareness by politely saying, "hey, we don't have rights, could you fix that oversight," and the people in power say, "gosh, we'd never thought of that, sure!" They expected to hire an "internal activist" team, who would then politely say, "What do we want? A measured list of easy-to-implement objectives we sent in an email! When do we want it? We understand you've got a lot to get to, but is Friday OK!" The PIP thing is obvious bullshit. In some places it's "keep this up and you're fired, but we're giving you a genuine chance to stay on," in other places it's a corporate CYA and an ironclad guarantee that you'll get your pink slip in six months, but it's always a notice that the company plans to fire you. If somebody's dealing with a medical issue that keeps them from working at their full potential, then a PIP is useless, because the "improvement plan" is going to read "1. Deal with the medical issue that's preventing you from working at your full potential," and the idea of a PIP is kinda useless.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 15:57
|
|
|
Space Gopher posted:If somebody's dealing with a medical issue that keeps them from working at their full potential, then a PIP is useless, because the "improvement plan" is going to read "1. Deal with the medical issue that's preventing you from working at your full potential," and the idea of a PIP is kinda useless. I don't see how a PIP is useless in that case. It's a measurable goal to perform at the level you were hired to perform at/formerly performed at. Medical leave was even offered. I'm not sure what responsibility an employer is supposed to have when someone can no longer do the job they were hired to do and insists on showing up to work to perform badly and causes additional load on the rest of the team because of it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 16:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 13:50 |
|
|
Rhesus Pieces posted:The "fiscal center-leftism" of Bay Area techies is loving awful. This is two people. There seems to be a weird amount of extrapolation about the tech world based off of the behavior of top level executives like Kalanick and Elon Musk. And there's a whole tech/startup world beyond the Bay. There's a defacto socialist contingent at my company . I don't think it's representative or anything but I'm pretty skeptical of what people project as "techie politics" LinYutang fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Jul 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 16:26
|
|
