[Beasting247]

> "A culprit, many people in the field say, is a sexist, alpha-male culture that can make women and other people who don’t fit the mold feel unwelcome, demeaned or even endangered."

Wait, did someone just call programmer culture an "alpha-male" culture? That's hilarious.

When are people going to stop bitching about there not being enough women in <insert industry of choice>? Who cares? Like another comment said - nobody complains about there not being enough men in nursing.

I'm really sick of this whole victimization mindset that a lot of women embrace. In any male-dominated industry, there are bound to be cases of sexual harassment and misconduct. Nobody condones that. And frankly, there's really not much more anybody can do to fix it.

Technology and programming are among the most meritocratic industries in existence. All it takes is a computer and an internet connection. If you can code well and build great things, nobody cares whether you're a woman or some 13 year old nerd with Asperger's who gets bullied at school.

Oh and if you're outraged by some dumb boob app that a couple guys coded for fun at a Hackathon, you have your head way too far up your ass and need to stop taking yourself so seriously.

[com2kid]

> And frankly, there's really not much more anybody can do to fix it.

Yes there is.

Whenever it happens we can all stand up and say together that it is not appropriate and that it will not be tolerated.

[Beasting247]

I was talking on a societal scale. Obviously in any specific instance of sexism/harassment, people can and should stand up.

[dcre]

> Oh and if you're outraged by some dumb boob app that a couple guys coded for fun at a Hackathon, you have your head way too far up your ass and need to stop taking yourself so seriously.

Calling it outrage is disingenuous, just a way of making it seem unreasonable in order to easily dismiss it. Better to think of it as one of the "thousand cuts" that drive women out of the industry.

[dcre]

People do complain about there not being enough men in nursing.

[Mangalor]

> "When are people going to stop bitching"

Well, throwing around words like that so casually in a conversation about gender in tech certainly doesn't help.

[bowlofpetunias]

> ...cases of sexual harassment and misconduct. Nobody condones that.

No, that would make us feel bad. So instead, every time something happens that we really can't ignore (and that is just the tip of the iceberg) we deny, justify, rationalize or otherwise deny that sexism, sexual harassment etcetera have actually taken place.

You can read any thread on HN about any incident and you'll find it full of apologism and denial.

And it's not just about women. Anything concerning minorities will get the same treatment. Or in a more recent example, all the threads surrounding the Eich debacle were full of comments suggesting that having a raging homophobe in charge one of the most prominent tech organisations is not an issue and disparaging the "liberal" lynch mob.

No, we don't condone anything. We just deny, deny, deny, and round it off by shooting the messenger.

Your comment is an excellent example of that.

In fact, it's pretty much a textbook example of how this so-called tech meritocracy functions. Including the small print that says "and oh, you'll also have to be one of us...".

[stephen_g]

Your comment on the Eich case doesn't make any sense, and seems completely irrelevant to the first part where you talk about 'sexism, sexual harassment etcetera' being rationalised. The reason that people were defending him was because nothing actually had happened at Mozilla.

He's been there since the Mozilla foundation was started but the chairman of the board said she was surprised about a political donation six years ago "because I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness," but apparently you, who I can presume don't know him at all can say with all certainty that he is a 'raging homophobe.'

If there was any evidence that he had ever discriminated against any of his coworkers in his duties at Mozilla or treated any badly because they were LGBT, then you would have a point, but there wasn't.