zlacker

>>zdw+(OP)
I predict people will claim "our culture isn't that toxic. Some of those things happen, but they don't bother me much."

If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out.

So don't ask "would this bother me?" Ask "would it bother someone?" And since you can't predict this from inside your head, you have to rely on firsthand accounts of people being bothered. This seems like a good overview of such accounts.

>>tlb+h7
>If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out.

I used to think like this. After years and years of refining my own behavior, a non-work, non-"tech" friend let it slip that my fiends though I had turned into a non-confrontational, lawyer-sounding, people-pleaser. He wasn't wrong, I had gotten in the habit of always walking on eggshells, navigating every conversation like a minefield and letting myself be treated like a doormat. I did. After all, if I hadn't, I'd be one of those "bros" that only people who have never met a bro say are filling up the engineering departments.

The very next day I got chided about not being empathetic enough or whatever the buzzword was at the time. Maybe I could have kept up the facade if I was simply guilty by association. But it was specifically my behavior that was "toxic." That was it. And I'm out. I'm done.

The never-docile-enough nature of "tech" is what's toxic. I hadn't been able to feel comfortable in my own skin for years out of fear of being off-putting to anyone else. The people who's behavior is worth changing aren't listening anyway, so I'm done letting it be my fault, and I'm never over-correcting to make up for it again.

edit: Want to complain about something in "tech"? Why don't you (not you, specifically, parent poster) start with the ethics of your employer's products/practices.

>>finnth+Wd
As a consultant whose client portfolio used to include F500's in health, insurance, and NY finance, and whose portfolio now includes nothing but startups, and having had the pleasure of whiling away many languorous afternoons in the cube farms of those companies, I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that the average startup tech employee is "walking on eggshells" and being performatively docile compared to the day-1 baseline expectations of, to a first approximation, every non-tech company with more than 1,000 employees in the US.

The idea that tech employees are docile compared to the accounts receivable group at a major US insurance company seems pretty hard to support with evidence.

>>tptace+ne
How could tech people be more in touch with that, other than by consulting?

>>tlb+nf
Reading and talking to people are generally the best ones. I've learned about conditions in other industries by talking to friends who work in them and also reading articles in more measured publications (I would take anything on e.g. huffpost with a big grain of salt, or a Vox blog for that matter, to say nothing of Fox News or other cable/radio sources :o).

So maybe step 0 is: find people who know about them, before you can do the talking and reading. The New Yorker is my general go-to for measured introductions to new domains: the authors biases are fairly simple to spot when relevant (leftish-intellectual-in-US-terms) and the level of detail is usually high.

Sadly, I don't have a ton more at hand, other than one rule that I'd highly recommend to use as a filter: if you get the feeling the person is trying to make you angry, find something else. Polemics are rarely the best way to be introduced to a topic.