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1. majorm+(OP)[view] [source] 2018-01-19 02:02:29
There's something kinda like a first mover problem here, but that's not quite the right word. I honestly don't know what the next steps should be (individually for me, or for the industry as a whole). It's easy to say "get better" for the latter, but hard to turn that into discrete actions.

I think this linked post is pretty good, specifically with this bit showing a nuance that is lacking in more mainstream-media regurgitations of "tech is bad, news at 11": "We say “toxic tech culture” because we want to distinguish between leaving tech entirely, and leaving areas of tech which are abusive and harmful."

I do understand the sort of "righteousness fatigue" that makes people tired of hearing about how they, their coworkers, their employer, their friends, are so terrible. Lose too much nuance and the reaction gets defensive, which from a purely practical point of view is a problem (this might get labeled as a "privileged" thing to be concerned with, but it's tough to reconcile wanting change but not being concerned with accomplishing it). I think a lot of the mainstream coverage of this is starting to poison the well, and then you end up with "sure, it's not your responsibility as non-white-male to fix the behavior of assholes, but it's not my responsibility to fix that asshole either."

Which leaves me back where I started. If my company seems pretty good in this respect - the ratio isn't great, a factor of our incoming applications/recruiting, but retention is high among the relevant employees, and no complaints have been raised (at least at my level of visibility). We try to broaden our candidate pool, and have widened it a LOT in the last five years, and are definitely hiring more candidates who do great despite not being run through the 5-algorithms-on-a-whiteboard gauntlet, but that doesn't translate directly into women and minorities...

So other than continuing to work at attracting a broaer pool of candidates... What else should we do? Even if only from the "name and shame" perspective of "god, it's annoying seeing the gender ratio published"?

Asking seems like a good first step, since another pervasive issue in tech is too many people who try to solve problems without ever thinking of talking to someone about it. :)

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