I mean "lighten up" as in, she perceives "a million little barbs" around her and sees herself as the victim of sexism lurking everywhere. She didn't just criticize one company or co-worker, but the whole industry. Her post is a torrent of rhetorical questions, exclamation points, hyperbole, and quotes she ascribes to her co-workers that likely never happened. Do you really think someone responded to her concerns with "if you are not in the middle of being raped or beaten or threatened or fired, lighten up"?
To make such sweeping statements about the industry, I presume she was not happy at her job, changed jobs, and the same thing happened again, and again, to the point where she left the industry altogether, discouraged. Which is weird, given that I changed jobs often myself and never had such experiences.
Two sentences gave me the most pause. One being, "Which label do I want to be stuck with today? Ice Queen or Slut?" It makes me think this is more about herself than the people around her.
The other weird comment was that she loves coding and "spent thousands of dollars to go to conferences so I can learn more about it." All excellent IT people I know learn stuff hands-on by playing around with technologies and studying on their own. Maybe there are other reasons why she felt stuck doing inferior tasks. If you are crucial to the team's success, nobody treats you like the "secretary who we let on the server" or a personal assistant, regardless of your gender.
I hope that the discussion of this topic doesn't make men paranoid about saying anything around women, because the fun and banter is one of the things that makes working in IT so enjoyable.
Dunno. I'm a woman, and I think that blog poster needs to lighten up.
I've worked in IT for years - usually as the only woman on the team - and I've never felt degraded or discriminated against for being female. Maybe slight prejudices in the beginning when the guys think I'm not as good as them, but I enjoy proving them wrong. There is banter, and sometimes it's not 100% HR approved, but I've never felt that it was mean spirited or intended to put me down. I've found that by and large, computer engineers are super-nice, funny, and respectful towards women.
The comment about the guy noticing her low-cut dress and wanting to sit near her... not entirely appropriate, but is this really bad enough to run to HR and complain? That said, I wouldn't feel comfortable drawing attention with my clothes, so I would never wear something low-cut. I find that a lightweight cotton dress shirt is more comfortable than a tight, low-cut top anyway. If someone asked me to arrange a pot-luck or bring them coffee, it would simply not be happening.
I'm on the East Coast though. Maybe all the disrespectful frat boy "brogrammers" are working on the West Coast?
Sexist comments like the one on the flyer are dumb, and these people deserve to be called out on it, but to imply they are keeping women out of tech careers is ridiculous (and in itself, sounds kind of sexist to me - like we are tender plants who change our career paths because some jerks like to see boobies).
If the flyer reflected the spirit of the event and the attitude of the organizers, I'm glad for the heads up so I know not to attend, free beer notwithstanding.
Ironic, isn't it. Managers whose jobs revolve around communication, coordination, and staying on top of things get offices with doors where they can isolate themselves. Developers whose job requires long stretches of focus and concentration are kept in open spaces with numerous distractions.
What is new about this generation is that they graduate with enormous student loan debt. They already have a "mortgage" or rent payment, only it goes towards their loans.
We desperately need good alternatives to current universities, indeed... the current default path of getting a degree by taking on enormous debt is just not viable in this economic environment.
But I also understand the cynicism of a couple responses. I have a few facebook friends in their twenties, and often enough, I read status messages like "I'm so broke and can't find a job (Posted from my IPhone)" or "I just spend two hours applying for ten jobs, will probably not hear back from any of them" (yes, most likely). Also - probably in part due to the large debt occurred to get their specific degree - some fresh graduates seem unwilling to expand their job search beyond their chosen field.
Hardship (even self-imposed) might even lead to new ideas. If life gets too cushy, there are few problems left to solve. Shelter is one of the most elementary human needs.
Many startup ideas are about extracting a few more dollars from the end user - what kind of annoyance can we solve today? - but I think it's important to think beyond the scope of consumer products to get to the real game changers.
A lot of the value being created in the digital sphere right now revolves around collecting information about people and providing it to third parties, who in turn use it to solve problems (and collect even more data). I believe these services will change our lives the most.
For example, major innovations in the near future might revolve around creating 100% safe neighborhoods through smart surveillance. People are rapidly becoming accustomed to being tracked all the time, anyway.
Technological progress and major societal changes go hand-in-hand. I think whoever can best envision what those changes will be - and how to profit from them - will become the next Steve Jobs.
Pinterest has a market valuation of > 200 million dollars...
30%+ of its images are flickr images...
... 99%+ of which are "All Rights Reserved".
How many
... page views,
... new subscribers,
... and $$$
have the most-pinned flickr images generated for pinterest, with the author not seeing a single cent... not even having the satisfaction of seeing their popularity on pinterest reflect in their flickr stats?
And: Pinterest does not even have the decency to display the author name and license info next to the image.
Pinterest's business model is flawed; it is based on systematic violation of copyright. At some point, someone will start a class-action lawsuit and invite flickr photographers whose works got "pinned" to sign up, to reclaim part of that >$200 million pie.
In fact, this seems like a valid startup idea to me: Create a one-page website explaining to flickr users what has been going on. Do a systematic reverse image search to find out which authors have been affected and invite them to join.
Arrange with an interested lawfirm to get a % of their fee in exchange for delivering the list of potential plaintiffs.
Happened to me at a small company that was swimming in cash (swank offices).
They told me that if you get seriously ill within the first 60 days, you can sign up for COBRA and be covered from then on through your previous employer's health insurance.
You have 60 days to decide if you want COBRA or not, so even if you don't go for COBRA right away, you are "safe" (sort of) for 60 days. Got diagnosed with cancer on day 59? Sign up with COBRA, pronto.
Implied: If you do get seriously ill right after starting - the new company wouldn't want you working for them anyway.
I love discussing implementation details of different designs, but it has always been to my disadvantage to acknowledge what's good about a competing vision and lay out in detail the pros and cons of my own idea, because that just gets turned around to support the high-level idea of the senior employee who's been with the company longer (and has already earned the trust of the IT director).
The devil is always in the details, so I love discussing all "gotchas" before code is written. But I guess early in the project, people like to believe that the new design will solve all problems and will only take two months to implement, and a frank discussion can only dampen that enthusiasm. So it tends to get suppressed rather than encouraged.
Giving attribution to imgur would be pointless as it is not a site known for original works. My guess is, the percentage of original images uploaded to imgur by the author is a small percentage.
What makes the connection between pinterest and flickr so interesting to me is that (if I remember correctly) A THIRD of pinterest images come from flickr, and pinterest thrives on using flickr's awesome repository of images against the law and the spirit under which most of the images were uploaded.
I believe I know why they are not hotlinking... if they did, they would immediately get a sh!!load of complaints from flickr authors about their images being used that way. (As anyone can attest who ever hotlinked flickr images on their sites, even WITH author attribution.)
If I were flickr, I would implement a feature "Your image has been pinned on pinterest!" with a notice that the views on pinterest will not register in the flickr stats, and allow the author to send a take-down notice to pinterest by pushing a button.
The attribution is not next to the image. A pinterest user would have to click on the picture to be taken to flickr and see the author/username. But how many people will do that if the photo is right there, full size, for viewing/downloading/repinning right on the pinterest page?
Most photographers who publish on flickr have a keen interest in their stats: how often their pictures have been viewed etc. With pinterest, the flickr stats do not reflect reality anymore. Thousands of users could enjoy and share the image on pinterest without the author ever knowing about it.
No image on the web is safe from copying, but I find it strange that pinterest makes a copy of the image and chooses to show it without clear, evident author attribution (including the "All Rights Reserved" notice, if applicable) when Flickr allows hotlinking and provides an easy api to pull the author and license information.
It's not about the amount of information you take in, but about how much you identify with it.
You can hear all day long about how much money other people make, but if you take it merely as a fact and do not construct a personal identity/story from it ("I am upset because others earn more than me", "Life is unfair" etc.), the information will not affect your happiness at all.
I believe the article is flawed as it seems to require of us to artificially restrict the amount of information we are exposed to, when the key is to manage one's perception of the information.
Seems that many Chinese have developed a strong "Keeping up with the Joneses" mentality lately; I would suspect that is the source of the unhappiness, rather than the wiring in their new homes.
Just checked... pinterest creates a copy of the medium-size image and stores it on their own servers. Users can view and re-pin it without seeing the context and author. Very surprising to me, and not cool.
My account is semi-fake, with a real pic and a few friends, but my birthday in 1920.
It's great, except for those annoying "Never too old for love" and "Mature Singles" ads.
For sure. Big industry names don't assimilate; they mold their environment to what they know (and they usually bring other people with them who come from the same place). Because of their clout, few will dare to disagree with them.
It is amazing how quickly a company's ecosystem can change when you bring in a big name from a different environment.
Working at a startup is obviously very different from working in a corporate environment. You have to thrive on risk and be so passionate about new technologies that you can't help but learn all that stuff and chomp at the bit to use it.
I can't imagine working at Microsoft and NOT having learned HTTP, Razor, MVC 3, ASP.NET, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, Facebook Connect, Twitter API, SQL at this point. It is stunning how much a single person can get done these days thanks to all the cool technologies that have come along in the last few years. If that guy is truly dying to join a startup, why doesn't he have his own side project yet?
I think Calbucci is just trying to find people with true passion. I would definitely worry that this person moves on to a job with more $$$ if the startup isn't a huge success right out of the gate. After all, financial motivations are keeping him at his current job right now.
The founder probably took a 100% paycut to get it started. I don't think it's too much to ask for someone to take a financial risk to come onboard; especially when it's before launch, which means their cash flow is probably close to $0. Obviously, these kinds of decisions are not for everyone. But, when you're truly passionate, it's not really a choice at all.
To make such sweeping statements about the industry, I presume she was not happy at her job, changed jobs, and the same thing happened again, and again, to the point where she left the industry altogether, discouraged. Which is weird, given that I changed jobs often myself and never had such experiences.
Two sentences gave me the most pause. One being, "Which label do I want to be stuck with today? Ice Queen or Slut?" It makes me think this is more about herself than the people around her.
The other weird comment was that she loves coding and "spent thousands of dollars to go to conferences so I can learn more about it." All excellent IT people I know learn stuff hands-on by playing around with technologies and studying on their own. Maybe there are other reasons why she felt stuck doing inferior tasks. If you are crucial to the team's success, nobody treats you like the "secretary who we let on the server" or a personal assistant, regardless of your gender.
I hope that the discussion of this topic doesn't make men paranoid about saying anything around women, because the fun and banter is one of the things that makes working in IT so enjoyable.