On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal - <AUTHOR> http://laurasanders.net/a-primer-on-sexism-in-the-tech-industry-by-an-actual-girl/ <comment><USER3> The original "Primer On Sexism" : 8 points and dead, 0 comments

The Rebuttal: 150 points and rising, 140+ comments

If that in and of itself doesn't say volumes about the sexist attitudes of the majority of HN readers - and as such, the tech industry as a whole - I don't know what does.

Surely a long, thoughtful article, with tons of context in the form of links and research, written by the creator of Modernizr and a former Appler beats a shouty "enraged me so much" rebuttal by a designer at a minor UK web agency for 7 months and prior to that, a movie usher for 2 years?

People on HN are fond of saying things like, "I couldn't care less whether someone has a vagina or a penis, as long as they write great software". So how come Laura The Troll is getting so much attention for "telling it like it is", just because she is an "actual girl"?

I am an "actual girl" too and I am seriously disappointed. We were offered a 5-star meal but we pounced on a 99-cent gas station burger because it had a picture of a ripe tomato on it, so hey, it must be healthy.

And Laura, if you are reading this, a small bit of advice for you. Next time an article "enrages" you, re-read it and I guarantee you will see that it doesn't say what you think it does.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really disappointed you decided to use phrases like "Laura The Troll."

It's funny. Those who've disagreed with Laura have come down to name calling and such.

Faruk's a good guy. But because he worked for Apple means nothing. Absolutely squat. If you judge people's worth on who they've worked for, then that's worrying. It's not who you've worked for - it's what you've done (Modernizr was a good link in this.) I know many Googler's, Appler's who spend a lot of time writing minor code for example.

But how does working for Apple and writing Modenizr qualify him to speak about sexism? That's got nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Laura's not the only person who's expressed this view. Many people in the comemnts have agreed (and disagreed)

I think it doesn't say volumes about the sexist attitudes. It says volumes that people agree with her more. I'm sorry it doesn't fit in your belief box, but that doesn't make it trolling, nor does it make it wrong.

<comment><USER4> I ain't touching the whole argument over form, but this:

> Laura's not the only person who's expressed this view. Many people in the > comemnts have agreed (and disagreed)

I think gets at precisely the point. Your average HN reader, the one who's making these agreeing or disagreeing comments, is probably a cis man who doesn't think of himself as sexist, and understandably doesn't want to think that his industry is sexist either.

The criticism here is that a relatively thin article denying sexism is being given more weight and credence than a much more exhaustive article documenting sexism, because 1) it's saying what we want to hear, and 2) its author is a woman, which-- well, I shouldn't need to point out the irony there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read the comments on her blog too. First is from a woman, and go down.

There are people on both sides of the fence, as you'd expect. But the the original commenter was so blindsided in her views about how she thought the OP was blinded in her views, she didn't even stop to smell the irony.

<comment><USER4> Could you be a little clearer on what you're hoping I'll take away from those comments? In case it wasn't clear, the gender of commenters isn't that important to me here.

There may be people on both sides of the fence, but there aren't two sets of facts. It's "great", if we can apply that word to what should be normal, that some women today haven't had personal experience with sexism, but that doesn't constitute a point of evidence against women who _have_.

Our culture as a whole has some very deep-seated not-so-subtle problems with gender politics. Our industry, with its absurd gender disparity, should be assumed _ceteris paribus_ to be at least that bad, though I'd wager it's a little subtler and a little deeper-seated. We, all of us, are basically good people who really wish we didn't have an actual problem, that there's some benign explanation for the gap. We wish all the blog posts and articles about endemic sexism were overblown from a few freak occurrences, regrettable but not something we need to concern ourselves with discussing or fixing.

We should be deeply suspicious of anything which promises to fulfill that wish without evidence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course.

She has had personal experience with sexism. But her argument was also that according to the original .net magazine article; every woman fears being raped all day every day. It was sensationalist.

I agree with a lot of what you have to say. She generally doesn't concern herself with posts like these but she felt the need to considering a man (I know you don't care about gender but it's important factor that a man is telling her how she feels) is saying what sexism is to EVERYONE. Name calling EVERY man on it (almost as if saying he knows better.)

<comment><USER4> > But her argument was also that according to the original .net magazine > article; every woman fears being raped all day every day.

I contend that _this_ is a sensationalist statement. The source for this claim, if I understand it, is this:

      ...our world has a history, spanning thousands of years, of
      violence as a means to silence and control women. This is
      simply not the case for men, and never has been. Every
      woman carries that historical weight with her wherever she
      goes, whereas very few men even have an understanding of
      how heavy that weight is.

That is simply true, as every African American carries the legacy of chattel slavery anywhere they go. Does this mean every black man is constantly afraid he'll be beaten up and arrested? Of course not. But ignoring that legacy will leave you profoundly confused on the subject of race relations.

Because women _do_ fear rape. No, not the way a hyperbolic strawman fears being knocked down, but day by day in little ways the fear of violence becomes another part of your life.

That creepy guy on the bus who said you looked pretty? He's probably just a harmless old dude. But then he moved to sit next to you and didn't say anything and you were worried he was going to touch you. So you get off at the next stop even though you aren't home yet, because the last time something like this happened that guy found out where you worked and took the same bus as you for a week... And you _know_ he's probably harmless and you feel like an idiot waiting for the next bus except your best friend was raped at a party and had to get an abortion and never told anyone but you and God, why are you even thinking about that? Why is it so hard for men to just _leave you alone_?

Since we're avoiding generalizations, I will be specific: _Every single woman_ that I have known intimately enough to know such things has such stories. Those who had not been victims of rape themselves, that is. Of course, they don't complain about it, because complaining about it has never, ever helped.

Does that mean "every woman fears being raped all day every day"? Stop talking like that. You know what it means.

> She generally doesn't concern herself with posts like these but she felt the > need to considering a man (I know you don't care about gender but it's > important factor that a man is telling her how she feels) is saying what > sexism is to EVERYONE.

I will charitably grant she mistook his speaking in generalities to be making pronouncements. For example, he says "A group of all men just doesn't seem as welcoming to women," to which she retorts "in general I find that men are in fact, more welcoming". They're plainly speaking past each other; he spoke of a statistical fact, such as "Black men are more likely to be arrested", and she responded with a personal fact, such as "I'm not a criminal."

It's obvious why these sorts of general statements are so dangerous, since they're so easy to misinterpret or use for evil (and tacking on some kind of IMHO doesn't help at all). In general, I'd avoid making them in the first place, except there are questions we need them to answer: "Why are so many black men being arrested?" or "Why are so few women entering tech?"

So I think I'd be a lot more charitable toward her position if I saw some indication that she got what the original article was actually _about_ : "I'm concerned about the gender gap in tech. I think it's an important thing for us to be talking about."

Then we can all work to figure out a way to talk about it that doesn't leave some people feeling unrepresented.

<comment><USER5> I ran out of time to reply to every comment yesterday, but as Faruk linked to this as one of his best comments, I thought I would take the time to reply now.

The example of African Americans carrying the legacy of slavery with them is not a fair comparison to women. African Americans are a group of people who, whilst now large and diverse, mostly share a common history which in the grand scheme of things was not all that long ago. You could use Native Americans or Jewish people as similar examples. Women don't have a shared history in the same way. Women have suffered terribly throughout history (and in some countries they still do now) by either horrible violence, being treated by second class citizens or both. However there was no one cultural atrocity which affected all women.

I'm aware of ways in which women have been persecuted. I'm also aware of how people have been persecuted based on race, religion, sexuality, age. Those things all contribute to my understanding of history, and I think it's extremely important not to ignore them, but not ignoring them, and not being weighed down thinking about them every day are very different things.

Stories like you describe - I can honestly say that I don't have a story like that. It might be that I've been extremely fortunate and I'm in a small minority. It might also be that I try very hard not to jump to conclusions. I don't want to unfairly judge people based on what is probably an entire harmless gesture, but I completely understand why other women do. When writing my post I started to wonder if I was weird because I didn't fear being raped. If the article could have that effect on me, isn't it possible that articles and comments like this are actually detrimental to that problem?

Finally, I don't think that "I'm concerned about the gender gap in tech. I think it's an important thing for us to be talking about" was what the original article was about. It's probably what the original intention of the article was, but it's not how the article turned out. I actually see the gender gap talked about a lot (both by women and men). I barely go a day without seeing someone or other talk about it on Twitter. My Twitter feed clearly is by no means a representation of the whole industry as a) there is a definite bias towards UXers and designers, and b) it's an entirely self- selected list on my part. However it does show that these discussions are already happening, amongst some communities at least, on a regular basis.

I think that an article that was truly about the gender gap in tech would actually talk about the gender gap in tech. There were so many issues that the article actually could have talked about - disparity in pay, women being overlooked for promotions, women getting unfairly let go or not hired because of pregnancy, women finding that their opinions are ignored or not even asked for, women feeling left out because the guys go for drinks after work and they're not asked to go with. The article did briefly touch on speakers at conferences, but for me personally that's a less important issue. I go to conferences a couple of times a year; I go to the office 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, and issues like pay and promotions affect my whole life.

That last paragraph is something I regret not putting in my original post as it helps to demonstrate that I was not criticising the intention of writing the article; I was criticising the way it was written and the things that it chose to concentrate on.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for taking the time, I appreciate the thought-out response. I completely see where you're coming from, and I hope I didn't sound too critical of you personally.

I do just want to comment on one tangent:

> However there was no one cultural atrocity which affected all women.

I don't think this is as big a difference as you do. There is no Holocaust, no singular event of great subjugation, in the history of African Americans.

The Atlantic slave trade and the ensuing institution of racial slavery wasn't an _event_. It happened day by day, one ship, one beating, one auction, one rape, one lynching at a time, generation by generation, for _hundreds_ of years, well into the last century.

It is the same situation with women. No, no one ever decided to round up all the females and shoot them; but day by day, one gospel, one edict, one rape, one revisionist history at a time, backed up by very real violence, women have had their natural rights to life and liberty and property and justice neatly excised and kept in a box for safekeeping. In nearly every civilization for _ten thousand years of recorded history._

If we don't call that an atrocity, it is only because the word is not large enough to contain such atrociousness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a really unfortunate treatment of a serious topic. There are valuable insights, but the signal to noise ratio is too low.

To be clear, I'm not launching the "I didn't like your TONE"; I'm launching the "I didn't like how you trivialized and subverted your own argument".

To take just the first 3 points made:

1\. Is the objection to the inclusion of a glossary? The serious criticism is that sexism is not rape, and makes it sound alarmist, though both are power displays. But to belittle the point by a solipsistic argument ( _I don't know about you but I haven't exactly read a lot of news about rapes at web agencies lately_ ) only fuels people who would repurpose that line to say they haven't seen sexism at their company.

2\. Is the objection to the inclusion of research? The serious criticism is that she rejects the exclusion of several self-collected data points, even if they have not been compiled by sociologists. But to subvert the point with a general aspersion to research at large ( _Some research is great, but a lot of research is totally skewed to prove a point, and it's not always easy to tell which is which_ ) only fuels people who would repurpose that line about the point trying to be made.

3\. The serious criticism is that he has unsubstantiated assertions ( _all women find a male-dominated industry "less appealing" and all-male groups less welcoming_ ), but the trivialization that immediately follows ( _at the very least you need to preface them with 'some research has found' or 'many women find that'_ ) fundamentally denies the value that statistics, and empirical measurement, plays in social science.

It sounds like there's a kernel of something valuable, but the signal to noise ratio is too low. I'd love to re-read this after a few revisions.

<comment><USER7> Just because she didn't write as if her blog were an academic journal doesn't mean she isn't giving a serious topic the treatment it deserves. Her post exists to state that "the whole [.net] article is hyperbolic generalisation."

<comment><USER8> With a million and one blogs out there, you only get prestige and that great "this is a good blog" status if you have a high signal-to-noise ratio.

Or you're blogging about the next Hollywood celeb breakup...but I think you see my point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is certainly sexism in the tech industry. It's not terribly common or widespread, but it's there.

But the tech industry is also famously self-selective. Many people in the industry self-selected for it when they were pre-teens. Spending hours upon hours programming in BASIC or whatever on their C64s or TRS-80s before they were out of elementary school...before thoughts of sexism enter the consciousness. There is very little preventing young girls from getting involved with tech at a very young age except simple lack of interest.

Anecdotally, I remember growing up and horsing around with many friends on our 8-bit computers before any of us had 2-digit ages. As I grew up the friends and computers changed, but the basic demographic didn't. When my peer group hit puberty we would have killed a member of the peer group to get a girl involved in our group of nerds.

Many of my friends had sisters, none of their sisters cared the first thing about what we were doing. A few of their sisters showed some interest at times, but always seemed to have other priorities. This must be a shared experience as the type of group arrangement in the _Big Bang Theory_ resonates with all of the tech industry males I know.

It wasn't until half-way through high-school that we finally lured a couple of girls into our group, but we spent most of the time teaching them basic computer skills than nerding out with them. Nevertheless I never heard anybody put the female members of our group down, or act like they weren't capable of eventually doing the high-nerd things that we were doing. To the person, everybody was helpful, and the girls hung around and one even tried her hand at majoring in CS...before changing majors to International Relations.

Happily, things have changed for the better. The number of women in tech has dramatically increased since those early days. It's not 50/50 by any stretch of the imagination. But there are actual women in tech these days doing cool things. They've self-selected to enter it and have put in the time to become good at it, and have managed to ignore the real sexism (such as it is) and that's very very cool.

It's an additional barrier that many males don't have to deal with, but I think self-selection at an early age is an even larger one.

<comment><USER10> Its interesting that the tech industry has so high number of people that learned the basic work skills at a very low age.

Very few other professions has this. A plumber did not go around fixing pipes at age 10. A medic, while they might have played doctor, do not really learn any of the basic skills until hitting university education. The lawyer when he was 10 is unlikely to be reading law documents.

Beyond maybe the mechanic profession, what other professions beyond IT has this property?

<comment><USER11> > A medic, while they might have played doctor, do not really learn any of the > basic skills until hitting university education.

The medics I know personally:

* Volunteered in ER in high school -> Doctor

* EMT and high-hours babysitting in college -> Children's Therapist

Also, sports profession :-)

<comment><USER12> My wife: Swam competitively, studied philosophy and religion as an undergrad -> Neurosurgeon.

More anecdata: all of the best engineers I know came to it late, after doing other things first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a young, white male, aka privileged person. I've read quite a lot about feminism (and anti-racism for that matter), and struggled to get a clear picture of when my actions are appreciated. I think the most important lesson I've learned is that I must listen; because I do not have any first hand experience.

<comment><USER14> I'm a young, white man too. Care to tell me how this makes me a privileged person?

<comment><USER15> Does this help?

<http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Privilege_checklist>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm quite curious about how sexism affects the broader tech industry as a whole, as it seems to not affect my niche area much at all.

I work in ASIC design, and we have probably even fewer women than software development. In general, I have never had the impression that sexism is much of a problem in our narrow little field. But since I'm male, I thought that perhaps I was blind to the problem. So I asked a female colleague, and she said she had never experienced any sexism on the job, period. Now, we're a small company, and I like to think we're a pretty progressive, decent bunch, so no surprises that she's never seen it internally. But we're also a professional services company, so we work with many clients, big and small, and we don't control their hiring process. But no - she's never experienced any sort of sexual discrimination at work with clients, either.

I've not been able to come up with a plausible explanation of why the problem does not seem to affect us in the same way that it might in a different sub- field.

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't sexism like anything else? There are extreme cases, quite often though just speaking up resolves it.

I have a stutter and I have been in many jobs where I have been the butt of some jokes. I have been overlooked or talked over. People have played 'guess the word' when i get stuck... i could go on.

I find in the vast majority of cases a quiet word, a quick bit of education or just straight up shutting someone down makes such problems perminantly go away.

There is sexism in the tech industry, i am sure there is some racism and whatever else as well. There will always be people who intentionally or not say something that offends. Your work place experience will depend on how you react to that.

My experience of the tech industry has shown that it handles complaints well and deals with issues that arise in a positive way. I think this is what people should focus on.

I saw a documentary about a fish market where women should be good wives at home. The few women who worked there were subject to daily sexist remarks. They had a choice. Ignore it or quit... There are far worse places to work than in technology

</comment><comment><USER18> So sexism, like any form of discrimination, doesn't just come in shocking bright red, "hey honey, why don't we go into the copy room for some hubba hubba". Rape can be a sexist act of violence, that's an extreme. Just because that extreme exists doesn't mean that less obvious forms of sexism and discrimination aren't ugly and evil.

A really pernicious dirty disgusting thing about sexism (and racism) is that it can be subtle, and hidden, and still hurt people. Pay rates, job discrimination, advancement are examples. Pressure to conform to a feminine ideal or be see as "bitchy" or overly aggressive.

So yeah, that's one bad thing. There are plenty of bad things. And sexism is bad for your business. Because discrimination doesn't just mean that some people are privileged over others. It means viewpoints, ideas, projects etc. from people who are women are not given the attention they deserve not because they are lacking, but because their source lacks testes. Discrimination doesn't just hurt women, it hurts everybody.

You advance a guy over a more deserving woman... you are hurting your business. sexism is suboptimal. It doesn't even have to be that obvious. You make a person feel unhappy or uncomfortable at work and the work their team is doing will suffer, if only because of the communication problems that arise.

Even if you aren't sexist (and it's hard to be a hundred percept free from stuff like that) sexism still informs the industry. The things you do that contribute to you being a programmer are often informed by gender roles and expectations. Math class for example.

Anyway, I recently came up with a test for sexism. It's a test I fail, but it makes me think. Ask yourself, is it better for something, a hobby, a sport, whatever to be manly or womanly?

</comment><comment><USER19> I only skimmed the original article, and I think this woman makes some great point about how absurd his article is.

She has some good points about her experience, however, as she has only had 6 months in this field, and that is working in one company, I'd say she's not the right person to write a rebuttal to anything about the current state of it's culture.

Someone who has worked in multiple companies, in different regions, and at varying levels of organizations would be much more fit.

Again, I'm not saying her article is crap, the bulk of it is a good counterpoint, I'd just like to see someone with a bit of a broader view way in from a woman's perspective.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to hear a version from someone who has been in the industry a lot longer too. I specifically added the section at the bottom explaining that I hadn't been in the industry all that long so I wasn't pretending to be speaking from a much more experienced position than I am. From the comments I've received so far there are definitely women who have been in the industry a lot longer than I have that share my point of view though.

<comment><USER20> What, you mean like someone who's been in the industry for fifteen years, worked at companies both small and large, startups and corporations, and in four different countries?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting article, along with the comment on it.

As a man in the tech industry, I saw sexism quite a long time ago -- in that a coworker benefited from a pay lawsuit. But that was several decades ago.

I haven't seen much sexism in the industry since then, but it could be that my views are limited and the companies and teams I have worked on limited.

So this article felt good to see. Maybe what I think I've been seeing (or not seeing) is not far off the mark.

Related: could it be that after declining for decades that sexism in the population has gotten worse over time? What is with you people?

<comment><USER22> that's my problem with these articles and posts. They seem to suppose that there aren't more women because of sexism.

I'm not an industry researcher, so all I have to go on is my experiences.

I was a tiny kid, playing with Simons BASIC and having fun. But I never thought of it as a career path. No one I knew was in IT, no one in the family, or friend's families was in IT.

At school it wasn't something that was talked about as a career path (though nursing and teaching were).

I didn't realize I wanted to be a developer until I got a random part time job at university and built websites and databases. (I was majoring in engineering at the time)

That left me with a big gap in skill set from everyone else my age who had been playing around with tech since they were pre-teens.

But things are relatively hunky-dory now.

But I always think, what if I hadn't gotten that random job? Why hadn't I been exposed to this career before then?

Would it have been industry sexism that meant I wasn't a developer? No. It would have been lack of exposure to the possibility at a young age.

<comment><USER23> > Would it have been industry sexism that meant I wasn't a developer? No. It > would have been lack of exposure to the possibility at a young age.

Not being told that certain opportunities are open to you because of your gender is sexism. This goes beyond child hood. People assume because of you're gender you will or will not be into certain job prospects and other activities. This is sexism.

<comment><USER24> I don't think that's what thisone was getting at. While I was growing up (late 80's into 90's), developing software and working on computers wasn't encouraged for a career path, for both boys and girls. It was always referred to as a hobby and one that wasn't looked upon very highly. Somehow I had a natural attraction to working with computers and software and that took me to where I am today working as a software engineer. My parents didn't even own a computer until I convinced them that I needed one for high school.

If I hadn't gone into software, I may have ended up in some other engineering discipline. Growing up I saw both boys and girls encouraged to go into engineering, but not into computers. Even as a male, I feel I'm working in software despite the culture I grew up with as a child.

<comment><USER25> _It was always referred to as a hobby and one that wasn't looked upon very highly._

I never see this point come up much but I can tell you that when I was growing up "geek" was a pejorative term and the guys who were into computers were largely social outcasts. I can remember in high school the kinds of guys who sat on IRC chatting with their little "cyber friends" being made fun of. And I don't think they ever got much of a chance to "exclude" girls since my bet is most of them never had much luck getting one to talk to them in the first place. I don't doubt that sexism helps fuel the gender gap we see in tech, but sometimes it seems like people forget that the original demographic in this industry was by and large made up of socially awkward males who pursued their hobby despite being looked down upon and excluded by others, not because of the heaps of encouragement they were receiving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What he wrote was a primer.. describing the basics of what sexism is.. in fact in his terminology portion he pretty much breaks down what any gender equality book would break down, and he does so in a very concise manor. Also you MUST address rape culture when addressing sexism. Being dismissive of it is what leads to sexism.

Reminds me of that kixeye manager "Let me tell you, it's ok to make jokes about slavery because that's over."

<comment><AUTHOR> Rape and sexism are not the same thing.

Rape is genderless. Despite the fact that rape happens more to women, it happens to both genders.

Secondly, just because someone is sexist it doesn't correlate to whether they're rapists or not. Sexism is about ignorance, rape is about many things often anger or control.

If you mention rape any time someone says "I get paid less because I'm a girl", it sensationalizes it. It's like mentioning slavery, every time someone says "I'm only paid minimum wage"

<comment><USER26> So blacks don't get paid less, get higher interest rates, and jailed more frequently; because of slavery?

All class systems invoke a behaviors which is the complete opposite of Meritocracy; They are sensational from one viewpoint but are still prevalent in the class system. If you do not openly address those then you are in fact being passive in allowing the system to continue.

Just because you treat women with dignity, and you have friends of multiple races.. Simply means you are not bigoted. You still could be a racist, and sexist. These are some things Faruk Ateş is bringing up in his primer, but is being lost by those who in general are privileged.

<comment><AUTHOR> He's bringing up valid points surrounded by the word rape. It's almost a Godwin's Law. He's presenting the most extreme example again and again in a post that otherwise has some validity.

Of course I disagree with rape. It's a very personal matter close to my heart for many reasons. But it is an extreme outcome of sexism, it is not the problem because of sexism nor is it the reason sexism happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _> The point of this is simply to show that, unlike what the article will have you believe, it is entirely possible to be a woman in the tech industry, like your job, get on well with your colleagues (even when most of them are, shock horror, men), and be treated in a totally fair way._

I don't think any of that is contrary to the original article. I'm not sure that implying it is is entirely honest.

</comment><comment><USER28> Faruk Ateş' at least got this part right:

 _The tone of our debates – which often get quite heated – is frequently different based on the gender of the author(s)._

Sanders' article seems a little more rant-y than it should be for someone who is basing her experiences "in the industry" (UK) since April 2012. Not that a relatively small amount of experience means you can't have an opinion, but it can't be good to become totally blind to something just because you don't want to see it.

Given a little bit of time, perhaps she will see that some sexism-based discrimination does exist -- not just in tech but pretty much every industry. But it's not the kind related to violence or "rape culture", but rather of pay. It is a cold, hard fact: women make less than men.

Let's just say "I know a gal" who was fired from a company in the Valley because of that very discrimination. She had a master's degree and had been at the company almost 1+ year when she discovered that than the guy _she was training_ , a dropout art school student whose "industry experience" amounted to working at Home Depot as a cashier was earning more. When my friend asked for equal pay for equal work, citing Obama's signing of Lily Ledbetter, her employers cut her salary to hourly, started writing her up for even the most minor infraction, and eventually ended up firing her. From what she tells me, she was unable to afford legal representation, Silicon Valley attorneys literally laughed at her (said they would not take the case for free), so she ended up signing a stack of legal mumbo jumbo that literally raped her of all her legal rights.

<comment><USER21> _Let's just say "I know a gal" who was fired from a company in the Valley because of that very discrimination. She had a master's degree and had been at the company almost 1+ year when she discovered that than the guy she was training, a dropout art school student whose "industry experience" amounted to working at Home Depot as a cashier was earning more. When my friend asked for equal pay for equal work, citing Obama's signing of Lily Ledbetter, her employers cut her salary to hourly, started writing her up for even the most minor infraction, and eventually ended up firing her. From what she tells me, she was unable to afford legal representation, Silicon Valley attorneys literally laughed at her (said they would not take the case for free), so she ended up signing a stack of legal mumbo jumbo that literally raped her of all her legal rights._

It's very hard to take this story at face value.

<comment><USER20> > "It's very hard to take this story at face value."

Why? Because it disproves your world view? Because it makes you uncomfortable to acknowledge that this kind of shit can (and does) happen in an industry you like to idolize?

This story is outrageous, but entirely in line with many other, very similar stories I've heard personally by various women. Men reacting dishearteningly poorly to women raising the issue of mistreatment is A Thing™. A COMMON thing, even. Yes, even in our industry.

<comment><USER21> Hey, pretty funny that KuraFire is a nym for Faruk Ateş, but you responded to me as KuraFire not as Faruk Ateş. Since my criticism goes to Faruk Ates, in the interest of full disclosure you probably should have told us who you were.

<http://i.imgur.com/NGe1D.jpg>

<http://i.imgur.com/V9I4y.jpg>

Sigh. You should be careful that your use of nyms does not make you look intellectually dishonest.

<comment><USER20> Uh, dude. I very clearly, openly and publicly use KuraFire as my nickname, everywhere in conjunction with my real name, Faruk Ateş. I wasn't trying to hide anything _on purpose_. By posting as myself, I told you who I was. Blame Hacker News' awful design if you think I was trying to hide my author-ship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ehh... Yeah. The original article was kind of a pile of crap, but it's hard to give this any credibility either.

1) She's only worked for 6 months 2) She works in UX, which is actually pretty well represented by women.

My two cents from a woman who actually works in a technical position (I'm a developer) for > 10 years now. Also working in infosec, which is one of the least represented when it comes to gender balance. Note: this is all totally anecdotal.

IMHO, "Imposter Syndrome" is one of the primary reasons we don't have more women in the industry, and it's reinforced heavily because of the culture of most workplaces. Why? When you emphasize a "brogrammer" and "rockstar" culture it's hard to believe that you can step in there and be just as "good as the guys."

When I'm talking about brogramming culture, I am not talking about silly shit like they turned the woman's bathroom to a man's one (lol, they did this at one company I worked at) or that you need to stop making fart jokes etc. I mean the idea we are all super awesome rockstars that sling amazing code and everyone else around you is shit and an idiot for not knowing something that you (and the other guys) know. When you're already feeling kind of alienated for being different, this can be really intimidating (and it's worse when people point it out -- I was asked an interview for a programming teaching position at a university BY A PROFESSOR "how will you handle it if people don't take you seriously as a female?")

I struggled with this for many years. I always assumed everyone around me knew more about computers (they didn't) and their code was 100% perfect (lol, it wasn't).

The effect for me was I was afraid to ask questions and when I wanted to figure out something, I did the research/reading on my own because I felt I had to prove that I was 110% competent - imagine how much time I could have saved and how much faster I would have progressed if in those early days I had just felt more comfortable asking people for help.

Because of this, I think corporate environments are an easier more comfortable place for a woman to work in a programming job than startups and small companies (again, this isn't universal). Which is sad, because I love working at a small company. And the startup space could benefit from women (since there are so few people usually in a startup, esp if you're building a product that will be widely used by women, it is invaluable to have that perspective).

2) What can you do about it? Well, if you're a woman, and you want to be in the tech field because you love working with computers, and you continue to pursue it, you're doing something already. You're an example to every other woman. I think only in this way, eventually the gender balance will even out. If you're a guy, and you want to hire a woman to join your technical team, emphasize the collaborative nature and how much they will learn on the job. Hire for smarts and ability to learn, not just knowing how to write a rails app in one day and knowing how to debug a deadlock with gdb etc.

<comment><USER30> Your experiences chime with my own, as another woman with just over 10 years of experience - especially the part about being afraid to ask questions. This extends to being afraid to try new tasks, take on new projects, or even just ask for critiques of my code, all of which I know are important in this line of work. Obviously these fears are not solely experienced by women, but I think there are some feedback loops which are particularly likely to lead women into this rut.

As an example, after university I discovered that when I'd been struggling alone to do my assignments and assuming all the guys were just finding it easy, all the guys were going round to each other's rooms, hanging out together, discussing work and looking at each other's code. They didn't think to invite me, possibly out of fear that I'd misinterpret it as a date or that I'd ruin the boys' club atmosphere, and I rarely asked them about work for fear of looking like I wasn't up to their level.

While it's not quite so obvious in the workplace, there's still some of that going on over lunchbreaks, after work or in impromptu meetings. And once you've been unintentionally out of that loop for so long, it's very hard to feel confident enough to ask people for a quick primer in what they're doing, because you feel like the only one who doesn't already know. Again, not intentional and by no means exclusive to women, but as a woman in a mostly- male workplace you are automatically something of an outsider and that can be hard to shake off, especially when trying to shake it off could get you labelled as "pushy", something women are generally socialised not to be.

<comment><USER29> "As an example, after university I discovered that when I'd been struggling alone to do my assignments and assuming all the guys were just finding it easy, all the guys were going round to each other's rooms, hanging out together, discussing work and looking at each other's code. They didn't think to invite me, possibly out of fear that I'd misinterpret it as a date or that I'd ruin the boys' club atmosphere, and I rarely asked them about work for fear of looking like I wasn't up to their level." - this x1000. It doesn't help when you're attending a super competitive CS program with a bunch of people who seem (or give the appearance of) knowing everything. I'm not saying they really could have done anything about it, or it's anyone's fault I felt excluded. In fact, it was entirely my fault I did all my group assignments alone; had I overcome my introversion, I have no doubt I would have gotten friendly responses. However, I think CS is going to be attractive for a higher proportion of introverted people than not. How do we make those environments friendlier to sensitive outsiders like this? It's not an easy problem to solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sexism that I've noticed has been very subtle. I work with some very intelligent people, so I can't imagine anyone is overtly sexist (ie. thinking that women can't do this job, would not hire a person simply based on gender etc.), but still, there are problems. It's hard to write about sexism as a guy without feeling like you're coming off as sexist, but hey, I probably am. Also, it's hard to write about things without generalizing, so I don't think that these apply equally to all organizations, or all members of either gender, but as a population (of people and of companies), my thoughts are:

For one, I think that recruiting is very masculine. "Solve impossible problems! Be a rockstar! Join the most hardcore developers in the world!". It works, but I think that men find a lot more appeal in it than women do. I think that things like mentoring and career growth are also important - <USER2> that that detracts from the end result of solving really hard problems, but I think that it presents it to a more growth oriented way. So I think that especially college recruiting should still focus on the fun, hard engineering aspect of the job, it should also focus on the growth side. We'll train you, you'll work with people - we want smart people, we'll make you into an awesome developer.

Aggressiveness. If I want a raise, I'll go and ask for a raise. If I want something changed, I'll speak up about it. If I'm not happy with things, I'll quit and find another job. I think that this trait is more common in men, but it has certainly led to my success - pay quickly diverges with this strategy.

Then there's the social aspect. Within the office, I think that everyone talks with everyone else on pretty equal footing. That said, while I'd be totally comfortable asking one of my male colleagues if he wanted to grab a beer after work, I'd be at least more hesitant to do so with a female colleague so as not to make them uncomfortable (being married makes this a little bit less awkward for me) and I think that's not unique. People don't want to come off as flirting with a co-worker, or make them uncomfortable, and so they don't go out after work except in a group (and have no other recourse when they are the only female developer in a staff of 50). The people who do go out though end up talking about work, and end up solving problems that they wouldn't have otherwise. They also get more opportunity to move between projects as their friends move around within the company.

Then there's the awful problem of low numbers. If you meet a crummy male developer, well, he's a crummy developer. If you meet a bad female developer, she's probably a significant portion of all female developers that you've met - and so at least subconsciously, I think that for many the association becomes that female developers are bad (since hey, 33.3% of all female developers you've worked with aren't that great).

Those are the main things I think. I think that all of these can be fixed, but I think that it takes conscious effort on the part of the company and the staff to get around them. I think at the heart of it is a bootstrapping problem - there are too few female developers because there are too few female developers, and as that changes culturally things will get better. We can definitely speed it up though.

As an aside, I talked to a professor once about sexism in the computer science faculty, and he said something really interesting: while the top few students in the class are typically men due to the sheer number of people (if 90% of students are men, 10% are women, by pure statistics the top 1% will mostly be men), very rarely are women in the bottom 75% of the class. He attributed this to a lack of ego - there's a real masculine competitiveness to the computer science faculty (the goal to be "hardcore"), which women were generally excluded from. Without this ego drive, they weren't too proud to learn.

<comment><USER32> The rockstar shit is a filter for me. If a company advertises itself as wanting rockstars, ninjas, "hardcore" people, or whatever brogrammer bullshit of the week is, I put that job advert to the bottom of my list. The thought of working around the sort of people who would apply because they consider themselves a hardcore ninja rockstar puts me off. (I spent more than enough time with homophobic macho fuckwits when I was at school, I'd rather not have to deal with them at work.)

There are gendered problems in tech: social bugs, really.

There's the putting-yourself-forward problem. I was at an event a while back and ran a birds-of-a-feather session on open source geo stuff (I'm an OpenStreetMap editor). At the session was a woman who is involved with a startup in the same area, but she didn't seem to have the confidence to run the session, even though her involvement in open source geo is much higher than mine (I just piss around editing maps). Ensuring that our community institutions invite women in is a good step: they don't have to accept the invitation, but many will. And that's good.

Another problem some women I know face: social expectations. They have to dress more masculine in order to be taken seriously at real-life gatherings. We as hackers like to say we don't judge people based on their appearances but based on their code. Then at the same time, we like to judge the "suits". I know women who have said they have to go home and change out of feminine wear (of all levels of formality) into jeans and a t-shirt in order for the hacker crowd to take them seriously. If a guy turns up to an event in a suit, people will just naturally assume he needs to wear it because he's doing coding in some kind of corporate environment. But if women turn up in a dress, they just get the presumption that they are in sales or PR or something. That's bullshit. (This stems from the geeky hackery idea that dressing nice makes someone untrustworthy. Sorry, no, I've worked with utter assholes who come to work in jeans every day, and I've worked with people who are awesome, ethical and never fuck people over who–gasp!–wear formal or dressy clothing.)

Is there an endemic problem of malicious deliberate sexism? No. That exists in some companies, sure, but I don't think that's the primary problem. Instead, there's lots of little nagging bugs, some of which stem from unconscious attitudes perpetuated by geek culture. The sexism problems such as they are consist of lots of little nagging bugs that taken together exclude women. Unless you are some kind of hardcore misogynist, fixing them will have generally positive side effects for everybody.

<comment><USER33> We judge people who dress to manipulate, whether it's "trust me" or "pay attention to me". The fact that a cheap costume might influence others' decisions is a social bug, and I kind of resent anyone knowingly exploiting it.

<comment><USER32> Okay, so consistency question.

A male friend of mine recently testified before a parliamentary committee on computer security. He wore a suit, as one might expect. If he hadn't dressed formally, the committee wouldn't have trusted him, even if he'd said exactly the same things (which consisted of being highly critical of a proposed government technology policy).

A female software developer friend of mine has gone home after work and changed into a less formal outfit before going to a developer event in order so that people don't assume that she is a marketing or sales person or just there to accompany her boyfriend.

Both of these are uses of dress to influence other people's decisions and attitudes. Are either one, or both of them, worthy of the resentment you describe? And why do we pick, say, dress out as something where manipulation for social ends is bad but, say, typography isn't? If someone is preparing a resume for a job and uses an inappropriate font (Comic Sans, maybe), I'll tell him not to do so. But if he wears a tie during the interview, is he trying to emotionally manipulate people?

<comment><USER33> > If he hadn't dressed formally, the committee wouldn't have trusted him

I can't blame your friend for accommodating their foolish demands. He treated them no worse than they deserved for it, and refusing would have made it a waste of everyone's time.

> gone home after work and changed

I guess I'm wondering whether she thinks her coworkers are incapable of judging her genuine merit, or something else is going on.

<comment><USER32> > I guess I'm wondering whether she thinks her coworkers are incapable of > judging her genuine merit

Numerous female friends have had the same experience. I don't think it's about coworkers. I think it's more to do with idiotic dudes thinking that pretty woman in a dress just a priori cannot be a software developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> <Insert experience of a single person and accept them as gospel for an entire industry>

Also pretty ironic that the author uses sweeping generalizations to dismiss the cited article's sweeping generalizations.

Is this what we've regressed to? Meta-useless articles of people ranting about issues without any proactive work towards understanding, or god forbid, solutions?

When are people going to stop ranting about the problem and start fixing it?

 _clicks next story_

</comment><comment><USER35> My workplace's content filter denied access to this page. Sexism is everywhere.

<comment><USER36> Seriously, you have a content filter? I mean, like the ones in primary school? Your boss trusts you that much? I'd seriously go looking for a better work place...

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think the original article touches on some good points, and I can understand the need for Laura to voice her opinion, but the author MUST have wrote the article with good intentions.

Personally, if I were really affected by an article I get in touch with the author, have a skype call and get all the concerns out in the open, and work together to revise the article so that both parties are happy with it. Then if the author didn't want to know etc, THEN I'd write the rebuttal.

I don't want to be harsh here, but Laura could have shared her input privately and together created a exceptional article with valid points and different perspectives, but instead when to route of going public and (potentially) damaging the authors name in the process.

We're all professionals, and can take criticisms, especially if they were voiced in a constructive way as a means to create something better. Laura's article begs the question whether her intentions are destructive, or whether her aim was to build and improve.

<comment><USER33> I don't view the low proportion of women in tech as a serious problem (I think it's determined by the typical obsessions of twelve-year-olds). I do view the expectation that they be kinder and less assertive as a problem. It's healthy that she's debating honestly, rather than settling for a compromised version of her points in someone else's work.

<comment><USER38> "I don't view the low proportion of women in tech as a serious problem (I think it's determined by the typical obsessions of twelve-year-olds)."

Which also has to do with sexism and gender roles in society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Isn't social research by its nature normally based on anecdotal evidence?"

No. That's the very antithesis of what social research is, by its nature.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you read his Tweets, when Laura tried to contact him on Twitter before. Anything she said was "wrong" because of evidence suggests otherwise. She literally couldn't give her personal views, because evidence denies it.

But let's be fair, you can make research say whatever you want. Especially social research. It's a very valid thing, but it should not be taken as gospel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I would say that sexism in IT is not the major issue, there will always be places where there might be some, but I frankly never encountered those and women were treated well in all the places. Point that @mdkess makes about when female dev is bad it kind of is more visible and projects more to others is also good. I worked with some exceptional girls that code like best of us. However some other roles in IT might be better for women to start, like BA and QA and project management where frankly they excel.

What IT or tech industry could use more is professionalism which would also help with work/life balance. I think that would bring up pay which I consider low, even though it is better then other fields. It would benefit from more women entering the field, but how to attract them is tough problem to solve.

<comment><USER38> "However some other roles in IT might be better for women to start, like BA and QA and project management where frankly they excel."

Yeah, that's not itself sexist or condescending or anything...

<comment><USER11> GP was bizarrely tone-deaf in his comment, but BA, QA, PM are a could vantage point form which to attack gender inequality.

They are jobs expect less technical prowess, and thus leave open an opportunity for a woman to show crossover talent (a BA knows how to write SQL? Wow!) and chisel away stereotypes.

Now, it's a ridiculous rigamarole to have to go through, but it may be strategically effective in wearing down barriers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice post. But I would like to hear on whether or not you disagree with the actual point that he's making.

Do you think rape jokes can be brushed off or should the tellers be actively censured instead?

</comment><comment><USER42> > I've found men to be more laid back, friendlier, and easier to talk to than > women.

I had to stop reading there. Is this article supposed to be an example of what real sexism looks like?

</comment><comment><USER43> My experience with women in technology matches the author's but I'll also add that I don't understand why the women in an office together are so cut-throat and brutal towards each other.

If you're trying to answer the question of why there are so few women in IT related roles, the best argument I've heard is that only men are stupid enough to accept the life-style often required by those positions. Sounds plausible to me.

</comment><comment><USER44> 10/2 article on dearth of women in the tech industry. It mentions a key point, in its first paragraph copied below. I agree (and I'm a woman).

It's an important question: why are there so few women working in the IT and telecoms sector? It might be one of the rare times that The Guardian has actually asked an interesting question in fact. The answer is, I'm afraid, that on average men and women are different.

<comment><USER45> I think it is interesting, but what really fascinates me is that I'm one of the only America women in my office and the only one who doesn't come from an Asian immigrant family. When I talk to my American female friends, most of them seem to think IT and computing in general is boring and dull. They wanted interesting careers and didn't think our sector fit the bill. The immigrant/first gen women in my office have a totally different attitude. They were encouraged by their family to pursue the career with the most stable potential, not the most interesting one.

<comment><USER44> Funny. Being a newer-bie into the tech world, this arena has so much more to offer than just straight coding, which I think is like learning a language - as intelligent as learning French, Spanish, or any other. And more crafting the code to produce an awesome product - front end or back end is pretty thrilling. Especially for people who like instant gratification, which includes lawyers, teachers, and others in non-boring and dull communities.

But alas, the only way attract more females (and of the box ones, too) is to have those in the world. Like attracts like - a universal axiom.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, I like it to. I wish I could convince other ladies otherwise. Plus, it's just a job, and it's a good job that allows me to have good job security. I think their jobs are boring. Sure, they are working in "cool" fields, but a lot of them are essentially doing secretary work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I don't think the original article was very good, and I'm glad Laura has had positive experiences (plenty of us guys do try to make sure its a welcoming environment for everyone). There are certainly plenty of well-meaning people out there who have subconscious biases (and plenty of assholes too) so I think at least its good that the topic is brought up occasionally.

</comment><comment><USER47> Whoever asks questions or needs an opinnion(woman or man) must understand that first: before you begin to do so, you took a responsibility to accept what ever is being said, because you don't know the other end whos anwsering. let me ......... 1nce more.... !!!!!you don't know!!!!! there are too many variables

Woman or men, what ever.... there are always 2 sides of the story

sexism = vicious circle

</comment><comment><USER48> This reminds me of the so-called Tiger Mother. Someone who reinforces the prevailing beliefs but claims credibility due to their status as a member of the group in situ.

I suspect the author is actually a male graduate student in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER49> I would lever call a woman I interact with in a professional context a girl. That's so Mad Men. Am I the only one who considers this headline inappropriate for a posting about gender issues at work?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm confused. She's not allowed to call herself a girl?

<comment><USER11> She can, you can't. Similar to the use of "nigga" or "[black] boy"

It's a (short-term) tactical subversion move to reduce the power imbalance in cases of extreme sexism, but as a long-term strategy it is incapable of reaching equality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did I call her a girl? And as far as she's concerned, I'm allowed to call her anything I like (within reason.)

Granted, that doesn't mean I should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually have to wonder if "owned" ever had this much of an effect on black people as "raped" did on women when it came about in gaming slang.

<comment><USER11> "owned" comes from a different meaning originally (owning a machine, and then identifying the machine with its user), whereas as the "rape" etymology is direct, but then convergent evolution leads us to insults like "I owned you like Thomas Jefferson owned slaves".

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> On a sidenote, her food blog looks delicious.

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Randi Harper a.k.a. FreeBSD Girl was interviewed for the FLOSS Weekly podcast and she said that every minute spent on discussing gender issues in technology is a wasted minute that should be better spent building free software.

<comment><USER52> And if people in every field and every community felt that way gender issues would never get discussed, let alone dealt with.

Unless you truly believe that there are no issues, this attitude is just intellectual laziness. Whether it comes from a woman or not is irrelevant.

<comment><USER53> I'm thinking she means what dfxm12 is saying in his reply: Do, Lead, Build something, and Make a statement with the thing you build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> How does such a waste of bandwidth even get 27 points? Is this site infested with feminists or what?

<comment><USER55> I think this is living proof that throw away accounts should be dealt with on here. If someone really wants to participate, a good 6/12 hours cool down without posting privileges would do nicely. I don't think anyone wins anything on here with this sort of reddit novelty account phenomenon. It will not stop all trolling, just this sort of troll.

<comment><USER56> 9 times out of 10 I agree with you, but HN is a rare site on which there are often genuine causes for a throwaway account, when people have good input to make on a thread but for work related reasons can't do it under a name that their colleagues/boss/etc. might recognise.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: KVdb.io – Simple Key-Value Store as a Service with Scripting - <AUTHOR> https://kvdb.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, this is a side project I've been working on and off that I recently decided to polish off. I initially built it to collect server stats but have since added a scripting engine so developers can write Lua scripts (V8-based JavaScript Service Workers coming soon) to operate on key-values with minimal latency. Would love to know what you guys think and if it's at all useful to anyone :)</comment>


Think like a reporter: Startup stories they want to write - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pressfriendly.com/?p=43

<comment><USER2> Joel, Thanks for starting this conversation. Your list of story types is close to the mark, but I think anyone who wants press needs to go a lot deeper.

I was a journalist for 10 years. Different kinds of reporters want different things, but they all have one thing in common. They hate being instrumentalized by press-hungry companies, and they do not exist to publicize startups. They exist to inform and entertain their readers. If you try to use them, they will ignore you. You need to figure out how you can help them report better, not just on your company, but on tech in general.

Basically, journalists want scoops and fresh points of view. If they can't surprise their readers with what they write, then they shouldn't be writing at all. Think about the stories you like: they all caught you a little off guard, either by the facts they contained or the quality of their analysis.

You need to reflect on where you fit into the supply chain of information. The next time something makes you say "Really?" or "Holy sh*t!", your next thought should be: Has this been reported yet, and if not, which journalist would want to write this story? Then you should email them.

That's how news should work. It should be something that makes people talk. Frankly, partnerships, metrics and product updates make for boring journalism that leaves readers dissatisfied, but strokes the egos of the companies involved.

You know what makes for exciting news? Finding a homeless dude and teaching him how to code. I don't know if Patrick McConlogue wanted exposure when he did that, but he got it, and if that was deliberate, the man is a genius. Everyone on HN has the capacity to make news like this. Forget about the latest app for an app that you're making, and do something big-hearted and cool. The press will eat it up.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-city-programmer- homele...](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-city-programmer-homeless-man- software-coding-classes/story?id=20042021)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comment. I think that technology news is generally too transactional in nature and that both sides (entrepreneurs and reporters) suffer as a result.

I'm going to focus more in depth later on how to create these more "qualitative" stories like trend pieces and founder profiles.

The way things are right now, though. A lot of people rely upon tech publications for new product information, which startups have money (and might be hiring) and what's coming down the pike. These are the most efficient means of getting that information out these publications.

<comment><USER2> You're right, people do rely on tech publications for news on who's hiring and what they're making. I don't object to journalists reporting on either of those. But the most interesting news goes beyond that.

It's OK if technology news is transactional. It's just that most people who want press have not asked themselves what they're bringing to the table. Too often, it's just a request for coverage, and that will fail.

Founders who want exposure should find out how they can help reporters do their jobs better, by making intros, flagging interesting posts on HN, digging into their own data for insights and generally working hard to make the reporter look good. If a source can complete his side of the transaction, then the journalist will want to help in turn.

The way things work now, tech PR firms serve up tech journalists to CEOs at swanky dinners where no one says anything interesting, and the reporter goes home with a bunch of canned quotes that would be useless in a story.

To sum it up: Anyone who wants press should be giving reporters access, insights and information that will lead to stories that tens or hundreds of thousands of people would want to read. Figure out how to do that, and you have the basis for a relationship.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more. To get coverage one needs to...

1) Add value 2) Be honest and transparent 3) Build relationships over time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two more tips i would love to add:

1) If your company is not currently newsworthy enough alone try pitching broader topics. eg the raise of wearable tech. Startup hype in City X. etc

Help the journalist with intro to other (not 100% competitive) founders.

2) Ask the journalist what kind of article he wants to write and what role our startup will play in this article (or where he sees you).

If you understand roughly what kind of article a journalist is going for you can deliver by far better usable quotes.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 Andreas.

There's lots of great things that you can do to be of help to a journalist even when you're not pitching them. For example, follow reporters you want to cover you on Twitter. They frequently have "hair on fire" requests that maybe you can help them with. I saw a reporter ask the other day, "Have any of my followers managed a Hadoop cluster?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good info. As a tech founder, this marketing/PR stuff is what I need the most schooling in.

<comment><USER5> If you have a great product it should speak for itself.

<comment><USER6> I don't understsnd why this person is being downvoted. Even Jeff Bezos said words to the same effect when on Charlie Rose.

To paraphrase he said 70% of your marketing effort should go into building a better product.

It's not some sort of naive idealism. It's reality.

And to quote Edwin Land: Marketing is what you do when you have an inferior product.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like horrible advice.

I guess you didn't see the Amazon drone on 60 Minutes? Marketing, showmanship, etc are very important for companies and products. Here, I think you should take a business course:

" Marketing is possibly the most important activity a business can partake in. It is the one activity that most directly affects the amount of recognition and sales that a company gets and this determines the level of profitability"

[https://www.udemy.com/blog/importance-of- marketing/](https://www.udemy.com/blog/importance-of-marketing/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Supplemental: [http://www.techendo.co/posts/how-to-hack-the- press](http://www.techendo.co/posts/how-to-hack-the-press)</comment>


Cheapest place to stay at and work out of in Bay Area? - <AUTHOR>

Has anybody got any ideas beyond just watching out for good postings on Craigslist? Looking for insider tips from locals. Not interested in comfort, just needs to be inhabitable. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Lake Meritt area in Oakland is pretty cheap and livable. I had an ok one bedroom over there for 750 ish a few years back. It's also pretty near BART so it's easy to get to sf.

<http://www.oaklandnet.com/parks/parks/lakemerritt.asp>

Inner Richmond in sf is also cheaper (for sf) and sunnier than the sunset area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks andymoe, I'll check it out!</comment></comment>


Work from home people earn more, quit less, and are happier than office workers - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1027484/work-from-home-people-earn-more-quit-less-and-are-happier-than-their-office-bound-counterparts/ <comment><USER2> Quick figures: 13% more productive, 50% better retention, and $2,000 more profit per employee.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not surprising given the industry.</comment>


Mess with Silverlight - Mac web developers write a blog about their experiences - <AUTHOR> http://www.messwithsilverlight.com/2009/09/where-we-are/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. However, I would note what they do:

"Through storytelling and technology, we helps brands engage the connected culture"

And that they are 'sponsored' by Microsoft. I can't find anything on the site explicitly distancing the blog from the company's main _marketing_ function.

Or maybe I'm being too cynical.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hate to join the cynic wagon, but their about page and the constant shilling for Microsoft, from their Web Platform on the front page to the Resources pages which has: Windows 7, Microsoft Expressions Studio 3, Silverlight, and once more the Microsoft Web Platform, makes this blog post seem less than genuine.

They come out and say that they are part of the Mess Initiative supported by Microsoft.

I'm not disparaging Silverlight or this Mess company, but this does seem a little fishy</comment>


The Students Who Feel They Have the Right to Cheat - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29950843

<comment><USER2> Posted yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8582398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8582398)</comment>


DSLs in Groovy - <AUTHOR> http://groovy-lang.org/dsls.html <comment><USER2> I love Groovy as a language but I have always been a bit divided on the DSL usage.

All the DSLs look cool on the surface, but they are all based on syntactic tricks that have subtle and unintuitive failure modes. When you mistype something in one of these DSLs, the error that comes out of the Groovy parser will make almost no sense to a naive user, and it is not easy to fix that and make it friendlier. It can lead to a really hostile user experience which doesn't end well. I think this is one of the reasons there is quite an antipathy towards Gradle amongst many people, because it is essentially a Groovy DSL and even among programmers this experience where there is no real intuition or understanding of how the language is getting interpreted is very frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER3> The feature discussed in the section entitled "Operator Overloading" is analogous to uniform function call syntax in Nim and D. It was something that at first I thought added unnecessary complexity to reading the code, but I slowly came around to it. Now I actually think that (once you know that it can be done) it makes code easier to read, in that you can choose to use the method-like syntax or the standard syntax depending on the particular situation.

I've written a fair amount of Groovy, but it's mostly been simple stuff integrating with Gradle or Jenkins. Maybe I should give it a try on a more significant project. There are a few features that make it quite interesting and some ideas that I think other languages could learn from (the one that leapt to mind is the Elvis operator for a special case of null-coalescing).</comment>


Musk Launches Neuralink to Connect Brains with Computers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-launches-neuralink-to-connect-brains-with-computers-1490642652?hn <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13971728).</comment>


Say hello to offline first - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hood.ie/2013/11/say-hello-to-offline-first/ <comment><USER2> I hope this becomes a popular maxim - fed up of offline not working for productivity tools (not necessary for other types of apps, but Trello is a shining example of this omission making productivity apps near-useless).

<comment><USER3> This could be seen as an extension of "YAGNI" (You Aren't Gonna Need It). Does your app _need_ to hit the server constantly? Can it not cache data and _only_ do network operations on an as needed basis?

<comment><USER4> This is not really caching. Caching is about not hitting the network to get data you have already gotten before. Offline is about having an application that works correctly in the absence of network, which means preemptively getting all or a subset of your data.

But I agree that you could see the server as YAGNI, especially if all your app is doing is data consumption and your data is small enough to be downloaded to the device in its entirety.

I have written about caching and offline here: [https://winch.io/blog/article/caching-prefetching-and-the- of...](https://winch.io/blog/article/caching-prefetching-and-the-offline- mode/) (warning: promotional content for a service that helps you do that for native mobile apps at the end).

<comment><USER3> Apology not needed for promotion; I'm biased, but I think far too much emphasis is put on services that encourage needless reliance on constant connectivity and third parties' servers. Offering an alternative is welcome.

As for local storage, even on smaller capacity devices, there's a whole lot that can be kept - why, for instance, does a todo list, addressbook, appointment manager, workout tracker, etc, etc, need to connect to a remote server for it's very basest of functions? Sure, backup, synchronization, sharing, etc need connectivity, but those aren't (IMHO, shouldn't be) the main focus of these apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to echo this, specifically focusing on AJAX. It's not enough to be offline-friendly if your requests don't themselves retry or work well when internet is spotty. A problem I've often encountered in online-only scenarios is when AJAX calls fail. How do you ultimately retry them? At a certain point, you need the same infrastructure you'd be building for an offline app to cache and queue requests, as well as present sensible non-success responses. So, just as mobile first solved problems for both tablets and focusing a design, offline first can solve problems with error messages, caching to speed up online responses and AJAX retries.

<comment><USER6> or you go away of AJAX calls entirely, by storing all data offline and having a separate process that synchronizes all changes, like remotestorage.io does it, or hood.ie

<comment><USER5> That's what I implied by AJAX retry. That you need some method that sensibly queues the request, until it succeeds or is no longer needed. That process could easily be called synchronization, sure. Depends on the app, really. The request might "expire" or be no longer necessary, so it wouldn't show up at "sync" time. Perhaps the request could be automatically retried through other devices that are connected -- imagining for the moment, an app that could use bluetooth or local wifi to communicate an operation across to other running instances even when offline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "This is quite literally a new frontier, largely unexplored and full of interesting problems and unimagined edge cases. In most other realms of app design we are spoilt with UX/UI patterns we can readily employ, but offline- first is terra incognita, there is practically nothing to go on in terms of patterns and metaphors."

Alright, let's step back a minute here.

We have over a quarter-century of offline-ONLY desktop applications to draw on. There are also a fair number of intermittently-online desktop applications that have been in existence for years. I realize it's not fashionable to consider these as applicable, but the only thing new here is the platform (browser). UI patterns abound - though unsurprisingly a quick google search for UI design patterns doesn't show anything except the latest web ui patterns.

These desktop applications still power the everyday work of most computer users[1], to a large extent more than most transient web-based apps. Why would we start any discussion on the assumption that they're not relevant?

[1] and before you tell me that you do just fine on your chromebook using only connected services: you are NOT most desktop users.

<comment><USER5> Generally speaking, when offline apps went online, they would "sync". This process is not straightforward, quick nor modern. Web apps don't "sync", they just "work". How can you design a native app that behaves like a web app? That's a less explored question. I'm not saying it hasn't been looked at yet, of course, and phones are some of the first to do it. Microsoft could take the lead here, with their approach of "only showing icons for connectivity when the connectivity changes" and of hiding buttons when they aren't going to work, so you can presume that anything you see on screen is going to work even when offline. Windows Phone and Windows 8 guidelines have a few more examples like this. On the other side of the fence, Apple has done similarly with their apps. iTunes Radio will continue caching the next song and part of the song after it, so even when I go down to the subway and lose signal, I still get to hear another 5 min of music. That said, the rewind and replay features of TuneIn were still superior and it'd be nicer still if iTunes radio transitioned into playing back either cached tracks or my own library instead of stopping dead. (Wouldn't it be nice if while listening, between tracks or when it stops, Siri stepped in and announced why the track can't play and suggests alternatives?)

Part of this new medium is to come up with techniques of explaining that apps work offline -- people's expectations, still, are that if they visit a website, they need to be online. That alone is a huge hurdle.

In addition, some of the best services, e.g. browser-based push notifications from Apple (rather than those of native Chrome) will not work without Internet since they use the same push protocols as native push notifications on iOS (iirc). That said, even on iOS, I think apps can now add notifications without internet, so that should be changing, just as apps can sign up to do background pre-caching of data.

There are some HTML-only problems too: How do you version web requests from remote hosts? How about third-party JS? There are so many considerations in offline scenarios that most web developers never need consider. I really hope offline first takes off as the next "mobile first" or "responsive design". If nothing else, it will make for more robust online-only apps.

<comment><USER8> The paradigm is not particularly new, even if the implementation needs to be. You're essentially describing IBM (Lotus) Notes _sans_ cruft (proprietary rich text structures, UI, etc., that predate HTML/WWW). Space- and/or time-limited replication when getting the whole data set is unnecessary, local design/code caching and so forth are solved problems, so to speak. (They've been solved at least once before, and so an be solved again.) Say what you will about the Notes client (as a developer, I had to fight it every step of the way), but the underlying _ideas_ are still valid and, IMHO, still necessary.

<comment><USER9> To be explicit, 20 years ago, there were people on airplanes reading, composing, responding to email and reading creating updating, deleting documents in multiple applications. They were creating and following links to docs and email in applications. All offline. When they reconnected via modem in the hotel room, it all synched with the the servers. Code and design changes also replicated so the apps as well as the data were always up to date and in synch. Replication could filter only those records that the users needed. Even long-running background processes could be run locally. That was Lotus Notes 20 years ago. CouchDB and its relatives can do this because Damien modeled it after the Notes Database, but with open protocols and standards (yay!).

Back then, even online was slow and expensive so many people worked in offline mode even when connected. Many still do this today, even on fast local networks. Perhaps there is yet more to be learned from the ancestors.

<comment><USER5> I agree with both of these replies. Lotus Notes was an interesting beast to learn about, back in the day. I suppose it's always been a problem to solve, though: We're not suggesting that before the WWW, there were no online-only services either. But graphical web browsers changed people's expectations. An offline only app that runs in a web browser... has about the same impact, for both the technology architecture and expectations. I look forward to this future and what new frameworks/"cloud" evolve, and I'll have to investigate more in this personally. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Living in the mountains of Northern California with crappy cell coverage, I hope thinking "offline first" really takes off. Through my day I pretty much only use apps that can "hold it" until we get to another wi-fi or cell coverage oasis.

Besides my personal coverage challenges, any mobile app should just be smart enough to handle loss of connection gracefully as a matter of course. It's one of the error conditions (along with low battery) that is guaranteed to happen.

I will definitely be watching hoodie for my own projects. Most of the US (by area) is in the same boat, I suspect.

</comment><comment><USER11> > We can't keep building apps with the desktop mindset of permanent, fast > connectivity...

That's just silly. A lot of apps are rightly useless without normal connectivity, like checking the weather [edit: for current conditions], or sending e-mails, or Facebook, or shopping on Amazon. There's no reason for these to work offline.

I mean, an app is pretty much online-only, or mostly offline (like most games, for example).

I don't see a big middle ground between the two where online apps need to be made to work better offline. And the few which do (which involve syncing data), seem to work fine.

So... I don't get it. What is "Offline first" trying to accomplish in the real world?

<comment><USER12> We are trying to get people to talk about offline-first app design for when it makes sense.

Weather is a great example, being offline could communicated as an error, leaving the user with an abysmal experience. Or some older content could be shown with the note that it is likely that the accuracy is off, but if the user just needs a general idea of the weather, that suffices and is not at all an "error" in the networking sense.

We have no common UX/UI language for these things and we'd like to change that. ;)

<comment><USER13> Good luck. Anecdote: after finding a small scorpion on the bathroom wall in the Honduran jungle, I had a huge compulsion to tear everything apart to make sure there's no nest. The only thing that calmed me down was access to offline, text-only Wikipedia on my Nokia n800. It was 2 a.m., slept like a baby when I found out this species was harmless. To this day, I never travel without it. (Edit: Wikipedia, not the n800 ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this offline-first approach is very interesting, and definitely something that is overlooked in UI and app design. The OP is correct about telco and wifi signals being far from total coverage. There are lots of "holes" and in some places, it's more a metaphor of moving between islands that have connectivity.

There is also another case of artificial data "scarcity" and that is the case no-data plans. To save money, I have a low cost ($10 and up) minutes-only phone plan. With apps that work with the offline-first mentality, being offline could be almost invisible on a 1-hour commute between the wifi at home and the office (no, I'm not one of those people who needs to read and write tweets in real-time).

Sometimes it is also a hardware issue. The first time I tried to use my phone as a true GPS with MotionX (this was 4 years ago on an iPhone 3G), I discovered it's not possible. The app does download maps and cache them so you can go hiking out of cell range, but the iPhone does not support GPS-only operation. Either I leave the radios on and it depletes its battery looking for a signal, or I put it in airplane mode and GPS is disabled. I don't believe a GPS-only configuration is possible even today.

Another point is that offline-first does not only apply to smart-phone apps, although that is probably the biggest problem space. But there are a lot of people who commute with laptops, and who could maybe live without a 4G dongle if their apps supported it.

I have also thought a lot about the sailboat cruising community (see the last sailboat picture in the OP). There are many recreational boaters out wandering from port to port, using sparse wifi and sailmail (very limited email services via marine HF SSB radio). A lot of them blog and send text and email to their family, friends, and followers, but have to struggle to time their online windows. Just imagine a laptop app that lets people write emails and blog posts whenever they want (in the middle of an ocean), and maybe it uploads the text to their blog via sailmail immediately (but slowly), and then adds the pics automatically when they get to port and connect to wifi (or have a 4G dongle within range of a cell on the coast).

So not only are there online and offline states, but also limited bandwidth states such as sailmail (it allows short text emails in both directions, but not images).

<comment><USER3> _I don 't believe a GPS-only configuration is possible even today._

Are you referring to iPhone? I'm fairly certain that's a software limitation, as I know of non-iPhone smartphones that can easily enable GPS alone (no cell, no BT, no WiFi, etc).

<comment><USER14> Yes, I'm referring to the GPS on the iPhone. Of course it's ultimately a software limitation, but from the consumer/non-jailbroken point of view, it's baked into the product. No app can override it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Been working with SymmetricDS (open-source Java database syncer over HTTP). Works on Java desktop, Android, Java web servers. An IOS version in the works.

Anyone else using it?

Would be nice to see a pure AJAX / IndexedDB plugin.

Since a local database would write directly to a central database, you really want row-level security and good triggers, so a user can only screw up their own stuff.

</comment><comment><USER16> Related: CouchDB for mobile.

With its master-master replication and explicit conflict handling, it handles being offline extremely well.

</comment><comment><USER17> Did this post get nerfed? It had 45 points in one hour but it seems to be stuck at the top of page 2.

<comment><USER3> It was at the top of page one at one point in time; along with another interesting article (that was killed) about a new operating system that looked promising, I'd say someone with an agenda has been flagging perfectly relevant articles today. Perhaps it was branksy. Or mobile app developers who don't like the idea of their users disconnecting because then they can't track their every move. Or web app developers who can't conceive of an app that doesn't involve a web server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Doing my college homework, if I had assumed I was offline and then only went online if I determined I was, then I might have spent half the time debugging my homework.

<comment><USER3> Explain, please? You appear to be comparing a state of mind (assumption of being offline), to a way to design apps (don't assume constant connectivity), with an unclear result (what do you mean by "spent half the time"? would it have taken you half as long as it originally did if you assumed you were offline? or you would have spent half your time debugging instead of looking up answers?).</comment></comment>


Two Networks Hint at Leaving the Airwaves - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/media/fox-hints-it-might-leave-the-airwaves.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's frustrating (and yet slightly satisfying) to read stuff like this. Watching an outdated business model face the reality of the modern era and sputter and spit in an attempt to keep its old revenue streams intact.

My first thought was "Why do they care? The ads are getting re-transmitted - if anything, they should be happy about getting a wider audience!" but deeper in the article is the key:

"The threat is specifically aimed at retransmission fees, which have become a crucial second source of revenue for stations as ad losses mount."

The broadcast networks have managed to get lucky in that they've found an alternative revenue stream to make up for their failing business model (ads). The problem is that alternative revenue stream isn't a consumer-driven product, it's a "forced" license fee. And now someone has figured out how to get around that fee, so it's hurting the broadcast networks.

Honestly, the move to cable is a natural one and it probably makes sense. Cable operators are willing to pay a per-subscriber fee to the networks, and consumers (in their decisions to subscribe to cable tv) are willing to pay for content. And as HBO / Showtime / etc. have shown, it _is_ possible to build a business without advertising if your content is good enough.

<comment><USER2> Cable itself is dying (or at least stagnating) as well. Overall new subscriptions to cable/satellite are essentially zero [1]. To the extent providers are getting new customers, they are mostly coming from a competitor.

People are less and less inclined to plan their schedules around broadcast content. They want to watch what they choose, when it's convenient. Cable doesn't really offer that any better than over-the-air broadcasting.

1: [http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ZERO_TV?SITE=AP...](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ZERO_TV?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-04-07-19-15-26)

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agreed. TiVo and the like are a partial fix, but I know >0 people recently who have totally nuked their cable subscriptions and gone 100% Netflix/iTunes/torrents (the latter of which is worth a whole conversation in and of itself). The only reason I even bother with a cable sub these days is access to live news (MSNBC, etc.) and the increasingly minuscule amount of content I can't get online.

Cable's days are numbered. It may be a big number since there a ways to go before streaming adoption really picks up, but they are numbered nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a political gambit; the idea that "free over-the-air television" is some massive public good still has power as the rationale for FCC airwave- rationing and censorship.

But the content available through that coarse ad-subsidized broadcast model is less impressive than ever, and the Fox and Univision TV frequencies would probably provide more public benefit as 'super-wifi' open internetworking.

They knew what they were getting into... I say, let 'em crash.

<comment><USER4> 100%. However, socialized TV will never go away.

Politicians will gladly force TV subsidy, because its literally the platform that gets them elected.

All of those useless PSA "Now you know..." Gov funded TV-spots are exactly that: Mini handouts / free cash.

Meanwhile, mainstream news will get softer and softer on their political benefactors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These broadcasters who don't want to be broadcasters are shooting themselves in the foot with this move. If regional cable monopolies no longer have to carry these channels for free, they'll do so for a hefty fee. Any benefit these networks hope to gain from destroying Aereo will be clawed back by the cable companies they're selling their souls to.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry>

</comment><comment><USER6> OK, let them stop broadcasting. Then let's take all the radio spectrum we use for broadcast TV and repurpose it for unlicensed wireless networks. We were going to do that with whitespace a while back.

</comment><comment><USER7> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5513545>

</comment><comment><USER8> Does Aereo stream advertisements as well as the program or do they store it and let you fast forward? If they stream ads, shouldn't this work in the networks' favor?

</comment><comment><USER9> Now if Fox will leave cable and the net as well, that would be nice.</comment>


2010 to 2020 Retrospective - <AUTHOR> https://robinhawkes.com/blog/2010-2020-retrospective <comment><AUTHOR> I've just published my 2010 to 2020 retrospective — looking at everything that occurred professionally and personally over the past decade.

From university, to joining Mozilla, to starting ViziCities, to mental health, to all the places I've travelled. It's all in there, laid bare.

It's a nostalgic adventure and it was incredibly therapeutic to put together. I recommend writing your own, if only for the nostalgia and as a record to look back on in the future.

I'm already looking forward to doing this again in 2030!</comment>