Well today's my day to be the not-so-subtle-ist asshole at Hacker News.
It's one thing to recognise that systemic forms of bias and discrimination can be subtle and invisible to those trying to fix them, but all this sort of thing does is hand more keys over to a small subset of people who are less interested in making the world more equal and more interested in grabbing, holding and exercising social power.
Shaming rituals, however light in touch they are, rarely improve things. They're just another small-p political tool to be used by politically minded people to exert social control.
Since this is the top-voted comment, let me be emphatic. The assumptions the parent comment makes about the HS experience bear no resemblance to reality. A good example is the consistent theme in this thread that such a rule can't exist without a shaming ritual, or without loss of being considered an adult.
The context we're missing here is that participants at HS are self-selecting. One person in our batch quit his job as director of investment technology at a massive international bank to attend HS; another was a high school student. In all cases, participation represents serious costs of opportunity, time, and capital, and almost always, the reason they do it is because:
Fundamentally, participants already believe in the assumptions of the environment.
There is room for this theoretical debate about whether x policy extends to good rules for all of society. But realistically, the HS rules are effective because people at HS agree with them.
To have this discussion without this specific context is to miss the point entirely.
That is why the rule can be lightweight, and can still be incredibly effective. And if you don't think that's true, then I suggest you poll a nontrivial subset of HS, because almost everyone agrees.
To add to that, given that HS is more diverse--in terms of race, religion, sex, orientation, gender expression, whatever--than anywhere else I've ever seen in the tech industry, maybe HS is onto something...
If you artificially create an environment that empowers minorities to harass straight white men without consequence, of course you'll get more minorities.
Yeah, and you can't have that discussion without understanding why it works for HS.
By ignoring this context, the parent comment, and your comment here, debate a position that was never posited at all. In some sense you are debating yourselves.
I actually agree, but I think it's a debate worth having.
Clearly, this system works for Hacker School. Kudos.
This system is also being advertised for wider implementation, possibly into communities and companies that all of us are a part of, and any broad social reform deserves a good deal of scrutiny before implementation. A key part of these rules, in particular, is the potential for abuse and the sorts of implications they have on the culture that implements them.
The ban on debates is particularly jarring. I get the idea, a debate could easily turn into a heated argument, but if someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not then I'm certainly not going to apologize for it.
If they want to maintain a civil environment that's able to call out subtle -isms, then they should simply accept "no, it wasn't" just as freely as "oops, sorry".
I may tell someone to "man up and crank through the work". I didn't intend on being sexist, but someone points it out. And then I proceed to get into an irrelevant shouting match about how, in German, "mensch" is gender neutral.
If you didn't intend on being sexist or whatever, then maybe there's a better way of phrasing what you said. Or, you can find faculty later, in private, and try to come to an understanding about the situation. Anyways, I would just say "sorry" on the spot and save the debate for later.
You can manufacture as many straw-man examples as you like, but it won't matter. My comment did not say that I said anything specific or anything that could or should be construed as offensive.
Is it really so hard to believe that I did not say something offensive? Is it impossible to think that the person doing the call-out can be in the wrong, that they might be imagining or even willfully manufacturing an emotional distress?
Are we all now to be beholden to the whims and fancies of those that continually reshape the landscape of political correctness in an effort to exercise a modicum of control or power over their peers?
My proposed solution is simple: if someone tries the call-out method and they are in the wrong, you reply in a manner that is just as direct and non-confrontational. "No, it wasn't."
Now we watch as the debate happens here by throwaway proxy.
I'm certainly not going to attend HS, so do what you want, I suppose. I probably won't be hiring anyone who comes out of the program, either. I can't imagine interacting with a product of this environment. So conditioned to avoid not just confrontation but plain discourse.
I'm going after the debate embargo. I don't think it's good for business. I choose not to embrace it.
I also think that codifying subtly is a snipe hunt. In doing so, It's conditioning people to be afraid to speak lest someone be offended. The throwaways here are evidence. It's encouraging hypersensitivity.
I'm also going to point out that rather than attacking my argument, you called my thinking sad. In my reading of the rules, that's a no-no. I'm glad we're not following those rules here, because now we can have this argument. At least until we declare a moratorium on argument.
"After this, we ask that all further discussion move off of public channels." I don't see anything wrong with keeping such discussions private. Especially when you are dealing with a minority standing up for himself or herself, keeping it to one-on-one instead of having to face off against a squadron of privileged people who for the first time in history are being asked to acknowledge viewpoints other than their own seems like a decent idea to me.
If a false allegation has been made publicly, then it must be debunked publicly as well. Otherwise, it remains as such in people's minds. It's both illegal and immoral.
That does not mean you would not be able to ask for clarification, concrete examples, how it has a negative effect.
> if someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not then I'm certainly not going to apologize for it.
It has not thing with being or having intent to be homophobic, sexist, etc. It is about some phrases being much more likely to have such intent and meaning in society in general.
It is unrealistic to expect a N random someones hearing a subtl-ism to understand the speaker's internal meaning of a phrase or word. While those N random people should endeavor to not jump to conclusions about the speakers internal meaning, for the most part all they can go off of is how society uses the word/phrase.
>That does not mean you would not be able to ask for clarification....
Only if such is not going to interfere with the current discussion, instruction, or other activity, which presumably represents what you are all there for, at that time.
Which might be the reason for banning debates: "Take it offline."
Is there a chance you said something that others would consider homophobic or sexist when that's not what you intended? Is there a chance others could have a different interpretation of your casual remarks?
Personally, I want someone to tell me if I've said something offensive. If the offense was unintentional, I then can decide whether saying that thing was important enough to me to warrant upsetting someone else. Maybe it was. Usually it's not. I suppose some people might prefer living in a bubble where they never have to think about how what they say impacts other people, but I was glad to go to Hacker School where that wasn't the case.
I don't think 'oops sorry' is demanded. You're allowed to disagree. That's there so people don't think that being corrected means that they're terrible racist sexist homophobes that don't belong in society, it just means that they made a human error and can apologize and move on. If you really don't feel you did anything wrong, that's fine. That being said, I don't know how many times people have told me (not at Hacker School) that it was fine that they said, "That's gay" about something because they 'didn't mean it that way.' Yeah, well, you don't get to tell me what offends me, especially if you're a person that's not a member of the group at hand. I tend to think women, for example, have a better idea of what a sexist remark is than I do and, if not, at least bring a perspective to the table that's different than mine and worth listening to.
I would also want someone to tell me if I've said something offensive. It gives me an opportunity to re-evaluate my words, and reply accordingly.
The reply might be "oops, sorry", or it might be "no, it wasn't." Thats the argument here. If further debate or discussion were necessary following that exchange, I would welcome it, but "oops, sorry" cannot and should not be the default because it assumes that whomever takes the defensive first is always in the right, and that is its own "bubble" worth worrying about.
Again, the 'no debate' is more two-pronged: 1) No need to defend yourself, because no one is saying you're terrible, and 2) Keep the debate private, as opposed to long threads on the HS boards that just deteriorate into this.
The one time I was accused of being subtly-sexist, I disagreed with the commenter and I told her so (privately). She stuck to her point, and by the end I didn't 100% agree with her and I thought she was being a little sensitive; _however_ I'll still be more careful in the future. Whether or not I agree that she should have been offended is irrelevant: I said something that offended her, she seems like a nice enough person, and making that tiny switch in my language was a small-enough sacrifice that I was happy to err on the side of caution.
> 1) No need to defend yourself, because no one is saying you're terrible
Accusations of sexism in technology need to be taken extremely seriously, as just the accusation alone can be all it takes for someone to be publicly vilified[1] or even fired[2].
In today's technology culture, the accusation of sexism can be even more damaging than the sexism itself.
That's a key reason for all this debate taking place. HS is promoting this culture in a way that encourages other companies and communities to adopt it, and the potential for abuse and misuse is far too high. It's very easy to imagine a culture developing as a result where someone is accused of sexism where there is none, and they either accept it and offer up an empty apology or they deny it and are crucified.
So, in that first article, the point was not that the person used the sexist gendered pronoun, but _absolutely insisted_ on it.
Here's my example, and if the person in question is reading this, he/she can feel free to chime in. I posted in our internal forums about how I was planning my wedding (to another man) which "was getting very expensive, even without a bride." Someone called me out on sexist language, saying that not all women needed elaborate weddings/dresses/whatnot, and so on and so forth. We debated (privately) for a while. In the end? Honestly? I appreciated her viewpoint a little more, but I still think she was being a little over-sensitive. HOWEVER, I went back and edited my post to remove the offending remark. It was a minor change for me to make (and she wasn't totally wrong), and if it made someone feel a little more comfortable and promoted harmony, great. It ended there. It also would have ended had I _not_ gone back and edited my post. But if I made a giant stink about it, involved other people, treated her poorly thereafter, and otherwise was a giant unpleasant jerk to work with, well then yeah--I'd expect some consequences. Does she hate me now? I don't think so. Am I a terrible misogynist? I hope not. But I got reminded that people with different viewpoints and backgrounds will think differently from me, and I should respect that, and that's a very good thing.
"...someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not"
It's good that you can recognize that you are being offensive and honest enough not to let embarrassment prevent you from reacting appropriately when you are.
Having met some of the Hacker School faculty (though not the OP) and discussed their social rules, I don't believe this is a shaming ritual, in intent or practice. I think it's more like a code review.
"You need to check for a null pointer there."
"I think what you said was subtly racist."
"Did you think about making this its own class? It might be easier to test that way."
"That was a well-actually."
The intent is to educate, not to punish; and I think the expected response is more "oh yeah, good point!" than "I'm sorry".
I think the expected response is more "oh yeah, good point!" than "I'm sorry".
Both responses assume that the assessment was correct, and that's a problem. The subtly critical part of the exchange takes place in public. If there's agreement that may happen publicly, but if there's disagreement it happens privately.
FTFA:
After this, we ask that all further discussion move off of public channels. If you are a third party, and you don't see what could be biased about the comment that was made, feel free to talk to faculty.
It then become the responsibility of those around you to go find out what really went on when someone made an unfavorable claim about you.
I realize the goal is to avoid prolonged "No it wasn't" "Yes it was" exchanges but this approach is asymmetrical in favoring accusation over rebuttal.
I would have to agree. To me "Subtle-isms" could lead to a culture of fear.
When a mistake is vague and hard to understand, there becomes a certain amount of probability involved in making a mistake. Therefore those who are the most active could end up with the most mistakes. In this case, those who engage most with those around them, will likely break the most "Subtle-isms".
This policy may simply reward the quiet students and discourage active verbal and written communication and do little to discourage borderline behavior.
Or in the case of "you guys", the mistake is perfectly clear, but it's 1) in no way intended to be sexist and 2) deeply ingrained in the culture I grew up in. I can understand why someone might object, but the fact is it is the standard gender-neutral second person plural pronoun around here. If my wife was going into town with her best friend, I would not hesitate to ask her "How long will you guys be gone?" nor would she give me an odd look if I did.
I can easily imagine people making a fuss about this leading to a state of near constant self-monitoring, and I'd probably get excited and slip up on a regular basis...
> I would have to agree. To me "Subtle-isms" could lead to a culture of fear.
If someone points out a subtle-ism it seems like it would be fine to ask for clarification and/or additional concrete examples.
They do try to address this issue by making the "social rules are lightweight" and tell students "feel free to talk to faculty."
> those who engage most with those around them, will likely break the most "Subtle-isms".
If the social rules are light then it is more important the student is learning to reduce their use of subtle-ism more then it is that it happens every once in a while.
Shaming and defaming someone of a crime that they didn't commit, and mobbing them out of their right to defend themselves publicly (the school's policy amounts to collusion with the shamer/defamer) is most certainly illegal.
Shaming rituals, however light in touch they are, rarely improve things.
This is in no way a "shaming ritual." It isn't intended to be one, and it hasn't become one in practice.
I'm one of the founders of Hacker School. I can't stand politics. If these rules actually created the environment you're imagining, we'd get rid of them immediately. Thankfully, we have several years of experience now and we've found that having lightweight social rules makes Hacker School a much better place for everyone, and it's by far the least political environment I've ever been in.
Accusation of sexism (etc.) is public and brings shame to the accused (whether or not the accused is guilty). It's also clearly a ritual. In conclusion, I think these social rules explained the blog article are indeed shaming rituals. You might not agree, which is not surprising since you're one of the founders.
I'm a straight, white, upper-middle class guy. Do you honestly believe I've dedicated the past four years of my life to making an environment that's terrible for myself and others like me?
I went to Hacker School, and I need to clarify: The 'no debate' really should read 'no public debate'. I have been on both sides of the subtle -ism 'violation', and when I was the one called out, I had a lengthy private discussion with the person who called me out on it. I believe that was fine: The goal of not having public debate is to remove the defensiveness as well as to keep innocent bystanders from being drawn in and making a big issue out of something small.
"Shaming rituals, however light in touch they are, rarely improve things. They're just another small-p political tool to be used by politically minded people to exert social control."
This is absolutely true. The only thing that will improve someone's manners is their mother slapping them when they got out of hand while growing up. Once they're an adult, their concepts of social roles and the appropriate ways of interacting with others are fixed. The only path of improvement is for them to die off.
We're not talking about egregious examples of bad behaviour. These subtle-isms are vague; they're hard to identify and explain; they crop up unconsciously.
It's not bad manners if you don't know you've upset someone, or you're unaware that you're enforcing damaging social norms.
We should change & we should question our moral compasses. For me, this is an absolute. But the proposed solution only works in situations where all actors are acting in good faith. It's too easily subverted. I have no beef with Hacker School for trying this, but time and again, groups that work within these frameworks devolve into politicking and rules lawyering.
When the concept of "subtleism" (note the spelling) was explained to me by one of the Hacker School founders, I thought it was brilliant. Precisely because it transformed a "shaming ritual" into an olive branch. The idea is that subtleist remarks are NOT *-ist, individually, but the aggregate of hundreds of subtleisms could be oppressive. So, nothing's wrong with saying "you guys", if only it didn't come in a flood of subtleisms. It's ok, you're forgiven, but we can do better.
Compare the word "micro-aggression". That's an accusation and the beginning of on argument. "Subtleism", by contrast, is a word to promote healing.
"we've been trying to stop using "you guys" to refer to mixed-gender groups."
Am I the only one that finds this over the top?
"No 'subtle -isms' is about recognizing the ways we're unconciously [sic] making our friends' lives a little worse."
I'm sorry, if your life is made worse by a completely benign (and friendly) statement like "ok guys, have a nice weekend" then you are naive and irrational. Creating an environment that indulges every childish sensitivity does not do those individuals any favors and makes a mockery of their cause.
"For the last year, the 'No subtle -isms' rule has carried some implementation guidelines. One of these is asking people not to debate whether or not something is an -ism."
Accusing someone of (even subtle) sexism or racism is not to be taken lightly—this rule forces the accused to apologize (affirming the alleged bias) without defending or explaining themselves. This is unethical and dilutes legitimate complaints.
A proverb that comes to mind: "Those who speak most about misfortune will find it. Those who speak most about success will find it."
The "you guys" instance seems a bit silly at first but is a good example of the way our language promotes the idea of male as the default. Note that there are no feminine words which we gender-neutralize in a similar way--we refer to a collective as "guys" or humanity as "mankind," but never use "gals" or "womankind" to refer to a mixed-gender group. In this way we construct women as an other, in opposition to men: the expected members of the workplace are guys, we expect history-makers to be men, and women are the odd exception to that rule.
It is important to note that very few of the people who use these linguistic constructs are being intentionally sexist in doing so, and as such nobody is taking hurt or offense away from the use of "guys" to refer to a mixed-gender group or anything like that. This is not an exercise in respecting others' sensitivities so much as an effort to recognize the way our actions subtly reinforce the problematic and undoubtedly biased power structures that exist in our current culture. As others have pointed out in this thread, the participants in Hacker School share a common interest refusing to reinforce said power structures, and as such put rules in place to codify that commitment to helping one another change the way they interact with the world.
As others have noted, these are not accusations--which would certainly not be appropriate or productive to whip out in the middle of a meeting--but gentle reminders amongst like-minded people to watch the way their words impact the world around them.
Words may have multiple meanings. These can either be related, or totally unrelated (polysemy vs. homonymy). Does English take a stand about financial institutions and rivers by giving "bank" two meanings related to these concepts? Of course not, that would be absurd. Similarly, male pronouns fulfill an extra role in many languages, and this in no way implies any kind of value judgment or reflection of power structure. Please, there are so many more pressing and more serious issues to spend our energy on.
That is very true and a mistake I do make pretty often but am working to be more cognizant of. Framing the discussion around women and men does nothing to further those who are identify as both or neither, nor those who are in transition from one binary gender to the other.
Can everyone see what just happened here? This is all it has to be. It was a cis-sexist remark. Now, I tend to make similar remarks and I also try to be aware of them, and there's indeed a limit to what you can do. But this is _all we're talking about_. OP was being facetious, but a subtle '-ism' was pointed out, and the commenter just said, "Oops, yeah, working on that." And we all happily move on with our lives.
It's really hard to predict the effect of social rules like these, which is why Hacker School does their best to actually test them empirically and change them if they're negatively impacting the environment.
A lot of people seem to be concerned about the chilling effects that these policies could have. This is a valid concern, as nobody wants to be in a place where they're constantly second-guessing everything they say.
The nice thing is that we don't just have to speculate, and we can look at what has actually happened at Hacker School, and the feedback from those who have actually experienced the environment seems overwhelmingly positive, both for people who have been traditionally marginalized and for those who have been unintentional marginalizers.
disclosure: I'm not a Hacker Schooler but I know Nick and Dave well. I've seen first hand how deeply and genuinely they care about making Hacker School both extremely inclusive and also free for open discussion and transparency.
This is a throwaway account. I feel we are being invaded. The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them. It developed through text were it hardly matter who was on the other side of the connection, only skills and thoughts mattered. Those were the good old days, when we were free.
Now we are being invaded. We, like every other culture in the world, are ask to not use certain language and not have certain thoughts. If we do not comply, we are heretics. Only they don't use that term, they rather use some ism.
The wheel of history is repeating. The control freaks still want to control, they just changed one set of sins for another.
The "no debate" thing seems really odd and control-freakish on their part, I'll give you that. But if you look at people trying to make tech a more inclusive community and call it an "invasion," you're reflecting the exact view that made movements like this pop up.
If "the good old days" were really that good, why have women been almost intentionally excluded from IT until relatively recently? Do you mean "good" for people in general, or "good" for you?
When you say "we are being invaded," who is "we"? White men? People who are already "in"? More importantly, who is doing the invading? If women say "hey, these are small, tacitly accepted things in tech culture that make people uncomfortable," do you seriously think that statement is persecuting you? They're not trying to control your thoughts, they're trying to get you to be less of an asshole.
You say you've never excluded women, but you are aggressively dismissing an attempt -- it seems, mostly from women -- at improving what they perceive as sexist undertones in the workplace.
If someone says "hey, we should work on addressing this sexism," and the response is, "be quiet, there isn't any sexism, you just hate fun," that seems pretty stinking sexist, doesn't it? Dismissing someone's concerns by saying they aren't real doesn't address the concerns, it just sweeps them under the rug because they aren't perceived as being important enough to give a shit about.
If some group has evolved office slang that includes saying "Quit being a ginger" to people who make dumb mistakes, and then that group hires some redheaded dude, wouldn't it be within his rights to say "hey guys, it's kind of weird to use 'ginger' as a euphemism for 'dumbass'"? Yeah, maybe he's "invading" and stepping on the group's ability to insult people at the expense of other groups, but it doesn't mean he's wrong.
Dismissing someone's concerns by saying they aren't real doesn't address the concerns, it just sweeps them under the rug because they aren't perceived as being important enough to give a shit about.
Conveniently, you've also accurately described what happens when someone expresses concern about negative side effects of new social rules.
> If someone says "hey, we should work on addressing this sexism," and the response is, "be quiet, there isn't any sexism, you just hate fun," that seems pretty stinking sexist, doesn't it?
No.
Replace sexism with unicorns and reread your premise.
That's silly -- a unicorn's presence is, for the most part, a measurable binary, it's either there or it isn't. Sexism is subjective, or at least more up for debate than "is the unicorn in the room or is it not."
If somebody says, "hey, this is some bad sexism," that's a lousy argument, because it's a vague statement that can't be proven either way. You could respond with "no it isn't, shhh" and it would be just as reasonable a rebuttal as any other.
But if someone says "these are things I think contribute to an unnecessarily exclusionary environment, here's why it should change," then I think it's disingenuous to just say "meh, no" without addressing the concerns. It's basically someone saying, "I think my opinions are being written off without being properly discussed," and responding with "That's not true, discussion over, it's written off." There's got to at least be a discussion, no?
If you believe you have an actionable claim, bring it to court.
If you don't (and you know that you don't) you have no right to shame and defame people, while hiding behind some bullshit policy that prevents them from defending themselves.
>The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them.
When? Depending how far back you go, The hacker culture attracted a very specific type of person. It was self-selective, so they themselves had similar cultural norms.
Today is very different. Hackers are more diverse, thus these issues come to light.
This brings us back to:
> Now we are being invaded.
There are going to be growing pains, but in the end, diversity is a good thing, right?
Not sure, people who care more about a narrative of justice than technical hacks.
>When? Depending how far back you go, The hacker culture attracted a very specific type of person. It was self-selective, so they themselves had similar cultural norms.
I guess that the startup scene made us popular, which tends to attract the sort of people who like guidelines, rules and control.
> There are going to be growing pains, but in the end, diversity is a good thing, right?
I just do not see why we need rules. Specially rules we are not expected to bend.
The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them.
This reads like a 4chan teenager's manifesto. Alright, a bunch of nerds in their basements who are just so edgy and can say whatever they want. Badass! Well, you might be pleased to know that you're totally free to carry on the misanthropy club in plenty of areas of the internet. But here on Hacker News, and apparently especially at Hacker School, a lot of people that are actually coming from within the culture would like to see some change.
When I read this article, I too was annoyed. I felt it was over the top, way too politically correct. But then I read the comments here, and it's basically all these people coming out of the woodwork and vaulting right over the spirit of understanding in their haste to defend their right to be acerbic assholes.
They're not trying to silence you, they're just trying to implement guidelines that foster inclusion and collaboration. Is that really so awful?
Although our employees are diverse on some axes, we're 90% white. There are also class barriers to attending Hacker School - while Hacker School is free, living in New York for three months is not.
I can't help but laugh sometimes. Good thing all the rich white women feel comfortable!
But seriously, how is it possible to have so few Asians? Usually the "problem" is that there are far too many. Maybe we need affirmative action for Asians, for once?
Good catch. That should be an easier problem to solve. If a few of them just volunteer to give their jobs to minorities, that will do wonders for diversity.
What's the difference between a "well, actually" and correcting someone's misunderstanding -- or rather, when is it not welcome? My understanding is that it's when someone parachutes into a conversation uninvited to correct someone, but if I was in a learning setting like Hacker School, I feel like I would welcome that from fellow students or instructors.
A well-actually occurs when someone's understanding is 90% correct, and someone comes along and says, heroically, "you're entirely wrong, because of this missing 10%". When iterated this kind of grandstanding erodes the confidence of someone who's working with a partial understanding, which in truth is all of us.
There is no hard-and-fast rule for figuring out what is and is not a well-actually, but the biggest factors (at least for me) are (1) did it derail the conversation, (2) did my correcting someone make it less acceptable to not know something, and (3) was my motivation to do something like show off?
I've been guilty of all 3. Anecdotally, I found that the effect of this lightweight rule was that at HS it was very much ok to not know something, and let me tell you, adjusting to the real world, where that is subtly untrue, is a trial.
As for the "parachuting in" problem, that's essentially the gist of a different lightweight social rule, "no backseat driving". :)
"(1) did it derail the conversation, (2) did my correcting someone make it less acceptable to not know something, and (3) was my motivation to do something like show off?"
Hallelujah! Someone who understands! :-) [1]
I've done it as well, and I hate it when I realize I am.
I suspect the worse part of HS' policies is exactly that "adjusting to the real world, where [it was very much ok to not know something] is subtly untrue, is a trial." In the typical business environment, appearing not to know something is a very unsubtle weakness.
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.htmlAs a child, I wondered why my sister could make friends and keep them so easily, while I could not. It would take me years to discover this. And now, as a public service I am sharing with you, my fellow geek friends, what I learned. Whoever pulls a "well, actually" almost always shifts the conversation to himself.
A "well actually" occurs when a person is splitting hairs. This can be desirable, for example when you're trying to obtain a complete understanding of something. But in normal conversation, such pedanticism is often annoying. The "well actually" policy, as I understand it, is an attempt to make such hair splitting "opt-in" rather than "opt-out".
It just seems like in order to get the most out of Hacker School one has to act with positive intent but otherwise entirely ignore the rules.
It looks immensely easy to fall into a trap of caring too much about the rules and not caring enough about the code, and I can imagine a large group of people trying to play along rather than try to become better "hackers". "Ohh, I'm sorry, you did actually just save us from three hours of bashing our head into a wall by recommending a specific algorithm, but you also broke the rules. For shame!"
I suspect that to get the most out of Hacker School one has to act with positive intent and otherwise entirely ignore the rules, but be prepared to admit that one's behavior is not already perfect.
It's really heartening that this has gone down like a lead balloon here.
Seriously, anyone who manages to take offence at a mixed group being greeted with "you guys" really needs to find something better to do. It doesn't consciously or unconsciously make anyone's life worse. It's just a couple of words that are a convenient greeting.
Well, going back a few centuries further, we used to have thou/thee (nominative/objective singular) and ye/you (nominative/objective plural). For some reason we ended up with the plurals being used as the singulars and no proper plurals at all.
Around here we use "you guys" for the second person plural, with the exact same amount of inherent gender reference as "y'all" has. (My wife's all-female college friends routinely refer to themselves as a group as "you guys", for instance.)
Frankly, I sometimes use "y'all" in print, but as a non-Southerner feel like a poser saying it out loud.
At a certain point don't you have to trust people to be adults?
If someone's being a "subtle" racist, they're just being racist, and you can deal accordingly (likewise for the rest of the "subtlisms"). Beyond that, if you want people to act with maturity, you have to treat them like adults, which these rules certainly don't do.
I'm one of the founders of Hacker School. We care tremendously about treating people like adults[1].
If you think the social rules don't treat people like adults, you're fundamentally misunderstanding them. The purpose of the rules is to make us all aware of the ways that we can unintentionally frustrate and hurt each other, not to shame people. The rules are not enforced top down, nor do you get in trouble if you break one. The way you treat a person like an adult is by being honest with them when they make you feel frustrated or uncomfortable and having an adult conversation about it.
Our job is to build an environment where everyone at Hacker School feels safe to focus on becoming a better programmer. I don't think you could find a single Hacker Schooler who would disagree that the social rules made for a better environment, and there've been well over 350 so far.
The problem is that it's there's no objective definition of racism, instead there are wildly different (and well-reasoned) positions. Some people think that even "believing" 'races' exist is racist, for starters. Perhaps even believing that someone could be justified in "believing" 'races' exist is racist in someone's mind. Then there's the whole debate about whether positive discrimination is racist or not, or if it's racist to prefer to have a relationship with one's "own race" etc. I guess the point thing is that racism is an extremely complex social issue with a lot of (well-argued) positions on a large number of questions.
On top of this, there's this idea of "subtle racism", which could include things that should be allowed if "suble racism" is defined by extremely politically correct people, or which could include only things that actually are racist according to some decent arguments.
I ask this as a general question to all of tech culture, not to just this particular setting:
What about subtile elitism?
It's one of the biggest subtile -isms I've run into. If you didn't go to a top ten university, you're sort of in a lower echelon in the tech world. In practice this subtilely selects for people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and/or people who have an "academic-oriented" learning style as opposed to an autodidact or self-directed learning style. It also contributes to America's regional class system... the top ten schools are by and large on the coasts. If you're from, say, Kansas or Ohio you are less likely to attend one of them than if you're from California or Massachusetts.
My impression for a long time has been that a significant chunk of the tech world is a top ten universities only club full of Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. graduates hiring, funding, and promoting other top university graduates. You could play a drinking game on sites like AngelList: take a shot every time someone lists "attended MIT" or "graduated from Stanford" as their sole qualification for being a founder or seeking a job.
Racism and sexism definitely exist, but from what I've seen socioeconomic elitism is the most powerful discriminatory -ism in the tech world. It's not an either-or thing of course. It just adds yet another barrier that outsiders must overcome. Barriers are kind of additive... each barrier reinforces the other pre-existing barriers by adding another point of resistance.
I've got to admit that this is a personal gripe. I'm from the flyover country, and I'm also not an academic type. I hated school for the most part. I just don't learn that way. But for some reason listing things like "has single-handedly conceived, designed, implemented, and shipped the following products..." or "taught myself 6502 assembly language at the age of ten using only the appendix of the Commodore 64 extended manual" just doesn't carry the same weight as "graduated from Stanford." Even if I could say "graduated with honors from the University of Cincinnati," I doubt this would carry near as much oomph as "attended MIT" even if my grades at MIT were poor.
I can't imagine being female or black/hispanic and not having the top ten degree. I feel like without "MIT" or "Stanford" I have to be twice as smart and work twice as hard. It feels like it's exponential. If I were not white and male I'd have to work... what... sixteen times as hard?
Edit: HN won't let me comment on this thread any more, so I'll put my responses here:
Re: elite universities equalizing admissions: no, it doesn't matter. There are 300+ million people in America and 7+ billion on Earth. Your odds of getting "tapped" by one of these kingmakers is vanishingly small regardless of how smart you are or how hard you work. Tweaking the selection bias of a tiny choke point does not change the overall size of that gate.
Re: the thread in general: whenever these kinds of threads come up, I find myself disagreeing with both the PC police and the hordes of right-wingers that materialize out of the ether. I really say a pox on both their houses. The wingers are hopelessly naive about the realities of discrimination. The PC police sort of have their hearts in the right place, but the problem is that PC stuff addresses the wrong causes. Women don't find it uncomfortable to work in tech because of phrases like "man up" or "hey guys." They find themselves excluded for more subtile reasons of cliquishness and in-group selection. These cliquish mechanisms are the same ones that give rise to top ten university bias, racial bias, cultural bias, etc. It's a microcosmic manifestation of what on the larger social stage is called the "old boy network." Playing language police is a lot easier than trying to really break up the cliques. The latter is incredibly difficult, as humans are tribal and cliquish by nature.
Still unable to post. I'm not going to forcefully assert some kind of soft-banning since as far as I know I'm being fooled by randomness, but I have noticed that "you are posting too fast" tends to appear in a way that seems uncorrelated to how fast I'm actually posting. Maybe it's just a strange algorithm with weird edge case behaviors. But... I did want to post this:
It is highly relevant, as I think it illustrates how PC policing can lead to a kind of "Animal Farm" scenario. While the rhetoric might be all about diversity, the reality is that diversity rhetoric can be used as another mechanism for the real power clique to maintain its dominance.
If you're from, say, Kansas or Ohio you are less likely to attend one of them than if you're from California or Massachusetts.
While that might be true, there's also a population density issue. CA, NY, and MA have large urban populations, so more students are likely to attend those elite colleges.
That said, I know for a fact that admissions officers and student volunteers from these schools literally spend months driving around the country to recruit prospective students from traditionally underrepresented states. They are well aware of this perception of elitism and want to combat it. One of my good friends from MIT was from Montana. (Yeah, anecdotes != data, but this issue you mentioned is very legitimate and something that Top 10 universities are actively trying to address.)
Is that unique to tech? Seems like nearly every industry is biased towards rich people from elite schools.
If anything, tech is better because the barrier to entry is low and you can relatively easily prove yourself with your code. Like... have a great idea for a most types of businesses? Great, you just need millions in funding and then you can start. Have a great idea that for a business that can be done mostly in software? Great, get to work.
I'm going to say one last thing and then move on with my life. It seems that most of the dissent revolves around asking that debates about when these things are pointed out be kept private.
So, I got almost no work done today, and I'm all sorts of grouchy and irritable because of this discussion. I probably didn't convince anyone, and no one convinced me. So what did this debate accomplish? Who feels better now? All HS wants to do is keep this sort of nonsense from happening. Person A says something, Person B objects, Person A either apologizes or doesn't, and they move on. If they really need to discuss, they don't bring in People C through Z and ruin their days and productivity as well. Whichever side you're on, that seems like a pretty good idea to me.
Furthermore, we all make innocuous comments that are ignorant of another group's situation. When someone asks me about my wife, I don't flip out and call them a homophobe for assuming I'm straight. But if they fight me when I point it out and refuse to acknowledge the fact that maybe they could stand to broaden their experience, I start to wonder why they're fighting me so much and what prejudices they're hiding.
These rules work in Hacker School. They work because they're lightweight and no one feels like a terrible person for breaking them. If other communities are organically adopting them because the structure has been successful, I don't understand why you'd fight it so much.
I think Hacker School's own words about why they no longer give feedback is a great example of what happens when one hyper analyzes the context and connotation of everything a person says and does.
I think it merely emphasizes that doing something "right" is hard and that sometimes over promising leads to less-than-ideal interactions for two parties at once. The page you links to essentially says, "we didn't like doing it and people didn't like receiving it." There is nothing wrong with wanting to give quality feedback rather than a hasty response that communicates dismissal.
I thought the significant absence of "age-ism" in the lists of biases to be a somewhat unsubtle "-ism." Because, you know old white men can't be the victim of bias, they're the enemy.
Good God, this is why I changed my OkCupid profile to omit the fact that I work at a tech startup.
A bit dishonest, to be sure, but I just want to have a chance to demonstrate in person that I'm not the kind of insensitive, entitled dickbag that makes comments like the ones in this thread.
Downvote away, guys, because hey, I'm engaging in some SHAMING here. Frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Seems to me that if you say something racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc, then there are a couple possibilities.
Either (a) you meant it or (b) you didn't mean it. If (b), a gentle nudge from a Hacker School pal is good, in the same sense of a friend telling me my fly is open. If (a), well, fuck you.
Or (c) what the other person claims to be racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. isn't, at all, and this is simply the other person's way of "Well, actually."'ing you, except not even pedantically, but completely baselessly.
This is an impossible rule to enforce, even lightly, when large portions of the population don't even recognize that those classes of prejudice exist, especially within them or their friends, their family (except their grandparents, which I hear about a lot), their class, their culture, or even their country.
As everybody knows on the internet: The real bigotry is pointing out bigotry.
A real solution is to have an opinion as an organization about specific classes of offense, and a process to deal with them. Not saying what an "-ism" is seems like the opposite of that plan. Instead of creating a minefield, build a path. Kick out anyone who doesn't follow it after having been warned.
Will you be reprimanded for saying something about Libertarians? If not, how about Democrats or Republicans? If not, how about war spending, religion, oil pipelines, or Social Security? Be specific about what the policy prohibits, and why the organization has drawn its particular line.
Really, there has to be a rule about not debating what an "-ism" is?? This seems a little much for a coding seminar. How about "Don't be a Jerk" or nothing at all.
True, 'cause, after all, the last thing jerks want is to spend an hour or so presenting arguments and evidences that they aren't really jerks, after such as been pointed out to them.
I'm sorry, but I'm starting to get a bit sick of Hacker Schools constant whining about rules.
If you want to encourage a specific culture you do this by starting with a small set of people who have this culture in their bones, then growing slowly and assimilating more people into that culture, addressing deviations swiftly and letting people get back to their work afterwards, without skipping a beat.
Not by writing manuals, and then stressing everyone with looooong, reaaaaally long and exhausting "we need to talk" style posts, where we hold hands, talk about how it's so difficult to open your mouth and say something that's not offensive, and how we're far from perfect, and in fact, we're all sinners.
It's not that the intent is wrong. But this way of going about it is so extremely taxing on everybody, creating an atmosphere where everything people say is judged on the "-isms" scale.
It means when you talk, you're terrified of what you're saying.
When you listen, you listen for someone to say something so you can point your finger at them.
What's the difference between your proposal and a policy of starting as a closely knit monoculture, and only accepting people that share that culture? Isn't that exactly what you should be trying to avoid?
No, why would this be something to try to avoid? Sexism and racism is a kind of cultural trait, I hope you realize that.
A culture may be selective on very different criteria. It can easily be blind to gender, race, age, religion, nation and many more, yet have certain very specific values. And letting people in who have the opposite values are toxic to that culture.
You can't have a culture that's "open to everything". It means you have no culture, you just adopt the zeitgeist unmodified. Everything goes. If this was the goal, this thread wouldn't exist.
Are you trying to say that the field of technology development in general or programming specifically would be toxicly harmed if certain groups of people, identified by "gender, race, age, religion, nation and many more", are allowed in to it? Or are you trying to say that objecting to people attacking others on the basis of gender, race, age, religion, nationality, etc., would be toxic to the culture of the field?
It's one thing to recognise that systemic forms of bias and discrimination can be subtle and invisible to those trying to fix them, but all this sort of thing does is hand more keys over to a small subset of people who are less interested in making the world more equal and more interested in grabbing, holding and exercising social power.
Shaming rituals, however light in touch they are, rarely improve things. They're just another small-p political tool to be used by politically minded people to exert social control.