You would say that though.
I bet you wrote it on a Mac, too.
:)
Machismo is ruining the tech industry for all of us. Equally
How people in IT treat one another is a subject whose taboo nature is having a deleterious effect on talent acquisition and retention. Some see it as chauvinism and machoism run amok, especially if their axe to grind is the lack of women in tech. Others have different views, but the topic is so charged that any attempt at …
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 15:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Axe to grind" is a fairly emotionally charged term.
With all due respect, that sounds like somebody who's looking to take offence, and will still do so regardless. Which you may not mean, but illustrates another tech related problem that people are very poor at coping with instant written communications. My last two weeks have been a miserable time of trying to contain people getting on their high horse over something or other in email. The trigger point is always something that seemed innocuous to the author, and then in a few presses of "send" there's a petty flame-war going on, rather than people cooperating to get their job done.
I think there must be a huge market for a course "Dealing with email" and a follow up "Managing emotions and email". Most of us would need to go in these.....
-
Saturday 5th March 2016 09:52 GMT allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Re: course "Dealing with email" and a follow up "Managing emotions and email"
I've been pondering to develop something like that for some time now. The working title so far is along the lines of 'communication skills for technical people, but without all that touchy-feely-stuff'.
Over the years I've realized that my initial response to any problem is a technical solution. Which is fine as long as it is actually a technical problem. But if it happens to be a non-technical problem, well...
I think that most problems involving people are of a non-technical nature and are based on a failure to communicate. And ironically the problems are worsened by using technical means of communications. (Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove an excellent illustration of that. Watch it again under the assumption that it's all about a failure to communicate on several levels, it's worth it.)
Over the years I've also realized that people are totally irrational, especially those who are convinced that they are not.
-
Sunday 6th March 2016 23:13 GMT Vic
I think there must be a huge market for a course "Dealing with email"
I once went on a course entitled "managing across cultures", which was primarily about working in a multi-national company, with different ways of doing things in different countries. It had a great piece on email barnies - which is applicable both to linguistic/cultural differences as well as just the usual awkwardness. The trick is this: when you read an email that gets your hackles up, stop a minute and write down - on paper, not on-screen - what the sender *actually* said. No inferences, no assumptions. Then simply note, for each entry, whether the statement is true, false, or unknown.
Pretty soon, most such angry exchanges can be narrowed down to a minor misunderstanding, since most of us are actually quite reasonable most of the time.
Vic.
-
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 12:20 GMT Dan Wilkie
One of the things that helped me the most to accept different levels and stop judging people for not being as smart as me (because I'm CLEARLY the cleverest guy in the office, natch) was when I went into contracting - I went from 3rd Line Permie dealing with the Rockstar stuff and avoiding customers to a 1st Line Contract role. Which meant I had to sit and speak to everyone. All day. Some were lovely, some were babbling rage monsters. But I had to be nice, curteous, polite, and deal with their issues as best I could in the time I had available before I had to kick it upstairs (and there's nothing more frustrating than knowing how to fix a problem, but having to kick it to 2nd Line because the fix will take too long).
I'd been on the 1st Line desk when I first started out in IT many moons ago, and I'd always seen it as a bottom rung to leave as quick as I could. Going back after all that time climbing up the tree was an eye opener, and has made me far better at the whole soft skills side of things.
Would I do a 1st line job again? Not if I can help it - I like to dig into things and deal with the juicy problems nobody else can fix. But I no longer look down on 1st line guys like I used to as the runts of the litter.
I'm still the Alpha though...
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 12:34 GMT Cynical Observer
Re: Oh look
If you've read this far you're probably wondering what this has to do with women in tech. In truth, not much. The women in tech thing is one really minor example I threw up front in order to send the really foaming-at-the-mouth types shrieking to the comments section before they would finish reading the article. That way they'll be really easy to identify and ignore later on.
Worked!
-
Sunday 6th March 2016 04:28 GMT Jeff from California
Re: Oh look
I'm always amused by how posts like this bring out the most insecure guys possible, who are so blinded by the Denning-Kruger effect that anything that potentially increases the number of people in tech is, by their definition, an existential threat.
When I first got into coding, in the 1970s, I grew to believe that we were 30 or 40 years away from software becoming a true engineering discipline, analogous to civil, aeronautic, or chemical engineering. It's presumed sentients like Bahboh here that remind me that we'll ALWAYS be "30 to 40 years away".
Here in the Democratic People's Republic of Singapore, (differing from "…of Korea" primarily by the presence of MASSIVE foreign investment), startups routinely die for lack of available talent. Four years ago when I was staffing up my most recent one here, I'd have given my eyeteeth for qualified people, male, female, or other. I've also had the opportunity here to see first-hand how the reinforcement of cultural divisions actively hinders a society from progressing.
-
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 12:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Personally I judge peoples ability not on knowledge but on willingness to learn as that is the key to knowledge.
I like Plato's comment I know that I know nothing as it's a good way to view yourself, as that way you can always learn and it avoids you believing you know it all. Think of it this way I've took courses in things that I am very proficient in and most would probably say I don't need to do that but it's those people that don't realise there is always something you don't know that benefits you greatly.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 12:49 GMT Cynical Observer
Is this getting worse with time
The cardinal sin of tech is to not know something that someone else knows. More than any other profession, techies do not tolerate a lack of knowledge.
It wasn't always this bad. When I were a lad... some 25 years ago, it was still a very difficult thing to admit that one might not know something, but - and perhaps it was the environment - a person would not get slammed for doing so. The older guys that I worked with would take the time to explain it.
Now - if one turned around in 3, 6, 9 weeks time after that and still didn't know it then you were advised to get to grips with it very quickly. And trying to bluff - that was fatal, especially if it was something that should have been known and mastered.
Rather unfortunately, taking it on-line only allows those with ego to shout "Look at ME and how much I know" so much more easily. That may be why so many of us tend not to go to certain fora all that often.
-
Friday 4th March 2016 13:47 GMT gv
Re: Is this getting worse with time
If I don't know about something, I'm quite willing to admit it. Better that than trying to bluff it: I've only seen one example in my career of somebody who lied about their skills to get a job -- they got found out fairly quickly and were shown the door.
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 13:59 GMT sysconfig
Re: Is this getting worse with time
And yet the largest and fastest growing tech site is stackoverflow.com
If there's one thing they got absolutely right there, it's the reputation system. People earn score for solutions that helped somebody else. Or even for asking very good questions! Once they have a sufficient score, new privileges are awarded, like moderating other people's questions for example.
Stackoverflow managed to achieve what no other forum does: Self-regulation and discipline among regulars. And it's all based on how they let people earn status. It's simple, but bloody brilliant.
-
Friday 4th March 2016 15:26 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Is this getting worse with time
Yeah but sometimes you get downvoted / your question marked as "duplicate" by fscking arseholes of and blights who have tons of reputation probably obtained by answering "How do download jQuery" questions about 10'000 times who don't even understand your question or think the answer is "obvious" because "it's in the books" (where it is obviously wrong to anyone who can do arithmetic and is not blinded by the light of the paper-writing malcomputing glitterati)
-
-
Saturday 5th March 2016 03:14 GMT Mark 85
Re: Stackoverflow.com
They do seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Machismo seems to really come out in forums and sites that have anonymous posters. For example, too many of Linux forums are really abusive to newbies. Part of knowledge is knowing that you don't know and asking questions. The abusive types seem to think that they discovered all knowledge and through some cosmic quirk, everyone else suddenly has that same level.
I've found that to ask usually takes more balls than to blast someone for not knowing. Want to be a human being... help instead of toasting everyone in sight. There's more power in sharing knowledge than lambasting.
-
-
Sunday 6th March 2016 04:43 GMT Jeff from California
Re: Is this getting worse with time
Part of the reason for that is that, compared to when we got into the field (1970s for me), there are so few older guys (or women) in the industry now.
In any proper engineering discipline, experience is valued, and one does not attain "senior" or "principal" levels without decades (usually quite plural) of experience. For software, I've seen adverts for "senior software 'engineers'" asking for as little as 1-1/2 years of experience, and I saw a "chief 'engineer'" advert last week, for an established firm, that was asking for a piddly four years of experience.
In four years, from what I've seen, people usually get to the point where they begin to understand what the important questions are. It takes quite a while beyond that for anyone to be able to evaluate competing answers, and that's if they're disciplined about learning (which too few of us are). Admit it: how much of what you pick up is I-need-this-next-week-for-the-project-I'm-on, and how much is I-don't-know-when-I'm-going-to-need-this-but-it-could-come-in-handy? Technicians focus on the former; engineers mix in the latter.
The predictable result of that is that nobody "has time" to learn from their or others' less-than-successful experiences, which means that nobody HAS experience in the traditional sense — you just manage to guess right enough for two or three years and then go into management, or leave.
Is that any way to run anything that fancies itself a profession?
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 12:57 GMT Lysenko
Nothing special about Tech...
The male/female ratio is equally skewed when it comes to car mechanics, plumbers, astrophysics, washing machine repairs etc. Essentially, any activity that involves yes/no answers and places zero emphasis on feelings and emotional reactions is skewed towards men.
When your washing machine floods your kitchen or your starter motor locks up (or you smell burning rust) it doesn't matter what anyone feels about it. There are no "safe spaces". The equipment will not negotiate, it will not be reasonable it will not compromise. You come face to face with the ghastly reality that what you want, think or feel does not matter.
Given that the above is presently immutable, it is unsurprising that inter-personal aspects tend the same way and I'm not at all convinced it is worthwhile to try to change that. If I am going to have to tackle vicious hostility from the Linux operating system, what is the advantage in toning down Linus himself?
I don't want my code being called "questionable" or "suboptimal" if the OS is going to throw it back at me with an ID10T error. Tell me I'm an idiot. Tell me to RTFM. Don't spout euphemisms to spare my feelings because the end user won't ... it's a machine.
IT has (what is being characterised here as) a 'macho' culture because the profession is dedicated to managing and sometimes fighting a bunch of Terminators. "Emotional intelligence" doesn't have any utility when your opponent has no emotions.
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 14:33 GMT Lysenko
who/what you define as your opponent
My opponent at this moment is an i.MX28 ARM board that needs to gather data over SNMP. It is being infuriatingly pedantic, showing no common sense, repeating itself, refusing to understand what I mean and being an insufferable grammar nazi!!
It is also utterly oblivious to the effects of its behaviour on my emotional state and not even slightly intimidated by the prospect of being reported to
Livestock ManagementHR.-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 17:56 GMT Lysenko
Have you tried buying it flowers and empathizing with it ?
Buying it flowers could be construed as sexual harassment or at least a patriarchal micro-aggression. Empathizing doesn't work as it just sits there and ignores me. Counselling sessions are worthless because it won't engage with the process. I'm beginning to suspect that although it is clearly marked as ARM it may self identify as MIPS (or even x86!).
Unfortunately the social hierarchy is clear. This CPU has friends in high places and it networks (when it feels like it) way better than I do. It is far more trouble and expense to swap the hardware than the wetware. I just have to shut up and deal with this socially dysfunctional and uncommunicative silicon oppressor.
-
-
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 15:15 GMT Tom 13
Re: Nothing special about Tech...
It's geekdom writ large and geeks just aren't good at interpersonal stuff. If they were, they wouldn't be geeks. What the feminazi's who complain about it don't get is that you can't kill that culture without also killing the goods it produces, or at least the combination of quality and quantity we currently produce.
-
-
Friday 4th March 2016 13:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Seriously?
"Traditional male culture is awful. We're horrible to one another."
You've obviously not worked in a female dominated workplace. People are horrible to each other and to suggest that women behave any differently is very naive.
I've known grown men reduced to tears from the way they've been treated by their female co-workers - it's like lambs to the slaughter if they spot a weakness.
-
Friday 4th March 2016 13:33 GMT FuzzyWuzzys
Re: Seriously?
Absolutely, a group of women can be just as bad as a group of men. To best honest I think watching two women at each other's throats is more scary than two men, women often won't try to hold back and show off like two blokes will, women will just tear into each other verbally or physically.
When it comes down to it, both sexes are as bad as each other just in slightly different ways.
-
Friday 4th March 2016 16:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Seriously?
"...women often won't try to hold back and show off like two blokes will, women will just tear into each other verbally or physically"
And they NEVER forget, much less forgive. They'll bring up shit that happened YEARS ago like it was yesterday, with the same degree of emotion like it just happened. Quite something to see. Guys? We're too fucking lazy to a) remember it, and b) give enough of a shit to get excited about it again. Not sure which is worse.
-
-
Biting the hand that feeds IT
