| I think that in a healthy society the point of someone talking about things that make them feel uncomfortable is that you have an opportunity to spend some time thinking about how what they are saying applies to that society rather than telling them the one hundred ways how what they just said can't possibly be true. If we don't take those opportunities to think about what makes someone else uncomfortable (maybe because it makes us uncomfortable ourselves?) then, over time, the people with the willingness to speak out about something which could be improved simply leave and an opportunity to improve that society vanishes with them. Which is a great sadness because I think we've all got our own stories about things we don't like about the software biz and I think many of us feel a little bit hopeless about ever being able to change some of that... ...but discouraging folk willing to talk about things that can improve, even if it's not something we find important ourselves, means that it's a little less likely that any other conversation about improvement is going to get a hearing either. For the record, I'd like to see more women and other types of human than white&male&alpha in software myself because over fifteen years of doing this I have found that the most toxic development environments (high levels of stress, distrust, dishonesty, coercion etc.) have also been the environments with the lowest human diversity. It is not difficult to scare away people who are different from you or people who you expect to silently put up with problems caused by your point of view. But the problem is, as that happens, without differences your society slowly stops having anything to communicate about and without communication it becomes dumber and without intelligence it eventually becomes a target for attack and takeover by some other failed community with an eye to your resources. (Sun / Oracle anyone ? ;-D) |