zlacker

>>zdw+(OP)
The tips in here on topics like building relationships outside work, being financially prudent and learning how to say no are all good nuggets of advice.

With that said, I thought that the article's title was kind of ironic because in my opinion, the intersectional identity politics espoused by the authors is itself one of the most toxic aspects of contemporary tech culture. It's the part of working at a mature venture-funded startup in SV that I miss the least, by far.

>>leroy_+I6
A) With respect, your experience and the author's experience may vary, for a variety of reasons, so I'm not sure it makes sense to pit one set of experiences against another, so to speak.

B) Would you be willing to clarify what was toxic about your experience with SV startups as you described?

C) Realistically, without denying the problems which probably do exist with "intersectionaly identity politics", etc, it seems pretty clear (as in there are studies, etc) that sexual harassment is one of the most toxic aspects, not only of tech, but of contemporary business and American life. Discrimination based on the color of one's skin is up there as well. So it does seem a bit disingenuous to point out the flaws in ways in which people are trying to ameliorate these problems without acknowledging the problems themselves, and/or to imply that said flaws are more pervasive than the damaging behaviors which they are a response to.

>>adamse+A9
The answer is and always has been to judge people by the output of their work and nothing else. As soon as you bring identity politics into to equation, you’ve lost because many people will (rightly) take attacks on white people and men as racist and sexist respectively.

>>malvos+Ca
Could you elaborate on the form of the attacks on white people and men you're seeing in SV companies? I'm both white, male, and at an SV company, and haven't seen them in my experience.

From a managerial perspective I'd love to hire more people from underrepresented groups because it would mean a bigger pool to hire from, so I'm all for recruiting efforts, outreach/education programs, etc, but at the end of the day the yes/no on the candidates coming through the door is in my hands, and even if I wanted to abuse that, I can't hire people who aren't even applying. :|

>>majorm+9c
Sure, from Damore’s Google lawsuit: https://twitter.com/mjaeckel/status/950446329603461121

>>malvos+rc
Jesus Christ.

Google seems to be infested by wingnuttery on both sides - nearly every example there is an example of left or right crazies.

But they do seem to show a pattern of left leaning wingnuts being more accepted than right leaning.

>>Aloha+ai
It's a company of 72,000 people where employees are encouraged to speak their minds.

Get any group of 72,000 people together and have them say what they actually believe and you'll find a lot of wingnuttery. Just look at the comment section of any blog, news story, YouTube video, or Internet forum.

The alternative viewpoint is that humanity actually holds far more diversity of thought and ideology than you had ever conceptualized before, and that this is a peek into the minds of many, many of your fellow human beings. It's glorious (and somewhat miraculous that we haven't killed each other yet, knock on wood...)

>>nostra+tj
> encouraged to speak their minds.

Damore was fired though.

>>malvos+Zm
It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's an abuse of the site—it kills the spirit we want here—so we ban accounts that do it, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>>dang+do
I'm responding on topic to the threads though. Here we have a blog post calling the industry I work in toxic, why can't I comment on it?

>>malvos+IG
It isn't a question of individual threads but of overall behavior. If you're using HN primarily for ideological battle then you're not using it for intellectual curiosity, the intended use of the site. The two are not compatible. Worse, one destroys the other, so we have to moderate HN to keep that toxin below fatal levels.

We can't exclude politics altogether, nor would we want to. But we can't let it take over the site either, and it's like fire: it consumes everything it touches. This is a conundrum. Our way out of the conundrum is the 'primarily' test:

We ban accounts that use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle, regardless of which politics they favor. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We noticed that the most damage comes from users who don't care about much except their politics, while users who are interested in plenty of different things and occasionally post on politics tend to be benign. The first group is abusing the site while the second is using it as intended. That turned out to be a clear line that we can rely on as a standard for moderation.

We try to warn people first, especially when they've been on the site for a while, but if the pattern persists we do ban them. So would you please reread the site guidelines and use HN in the spirit of curiosity, not battle, from now on?