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by exo762 4473 days ago
> Deciding whether she's an engineer or a marketer is not up to you

This is not a subjective distinction. It is very objective thing and such judgement can be done by outsider.

2 comments

Forbes calls her a "developer". http://www.forbes.com/sites/northwesternmutual/2013/09/10/fi... Business Insider calls her a "designer". http://www.businessinsider.com/is-it-sexist-to-recruit-women... rds2000 is the only "source" I have seen claiming that she doesn't have skill.
It's also not a relevant distinction. What job she did there has no relevance to whether or not harassment is worth investigating.
How is it not relevant? The title is "Prominent GitHub Engineer Quits, Alleging Gender-Based Harassment".

Github ENGINEER. If she's not an engineer, she's not an engineer, it's pretty simple.

"Prominent GitHub Employee Quits, Alleging Gender-Based Harassment" ...there fixed, now is it relevant ? Let's just add the title to all the other shoddy inaccuracies in the article. So, now do you agree ?? >> What job she did there has no relevance to whether or not harassment is worth investigating.
You're right, but as a writer, if you mess up something so simple as somebodies job title, then your integrity takes a hit. I want a solid piece, that includes getting minutia like this right.
Relevant to the article title but not that actual issue. How she was treated is not made better or worse depending on whether or not she's an engineer.

Splitting hairs about her position distracts from the actual issue at hand.

Yes. But it also addresses the quality of the journalism, which in this case is disgustingly poor. The link to random open source repos hosted on github, the inability to nail down a title... just poor journalism.
It's also totally irrelevant.
If the author couldn't make this distinction, I wonder what else they missed? Integrity is required all across the board, and it reflects poorly on you as a writer if you mess up something so central and easy in the title of your article.
I think people often look at distinctions like that to find out of they're "one of his tribe", aka, another programmer.

It shouldn't matter, but it does to many people.