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by joshuapants 4013 days ago
>Why would you want someone like that on your team?

Presumably because their talents add value to the team. Do his opinions affect the software in any way? Is he unable to work with other team members because of his opinions? If not, who cares?

3 comments

>Do his opinions affect the software in any way?

Excluding an entire swath of people.

>Is he unable to work with other team members because of his opinions?

Any future or current trans members of the Opal team who are or would be dissuaded away from a bigot.

> Excluding an entire swath of people.

That's interesting, you must have read different tweets than I did.

> Any future or current trans members of the Opal team who are or would be dissuaded away from a bigot.

In the string of tweets, the only abrasive behavior I saw came from Kurtis, not Elia. I don't think it's accurate to paint Elia as a bigot, though I don't agree with him.

edit: I can't reply to your post, but it's worth noting:

> He straight up says Transgender people are insane.

No, he didn't "straight up" say anything like that. You put those words in his mouth in your next post by appending a fragment of his post to your own interpretation of those words.

He straight up says Transgender people are insane.

How the hell is that not bigoted?

> That's interesting, you must have read different tweets than I did.

I'm reading reams of tweets saying transgender people refuse to work with a transphobic person.

Don't forget that while trans developers are probably incredibly rare, the amount of trans-accepting developers who might be dissuaded is probably higher, and likely to grow.
Anecdotally it seems to me that the percentage of developers who are trans is actually higher than in the general populace. I'd be curious to see statistics though.
> Do his opinions affect the software in any way?

Yes.

> Is he unable to work with other team members because of his opinions?

Are any of his current or future team members transgender? Then yes.

> If not, who cares?

Wat.

As in "if his opinions don't affect the software and don't cause internal problems, then who cares."

edit: Oh I see, you're the guy from the Twitter thread.

What if the team lead is transgender? Seriously, you need to take into account that there's another human on the end of the screen. This whole mess isn't an easy "separate politics from work" sort of thing. Folks like Elia I will never work with or for due to their beliefs. I've dealt with that in other workplaces and found my productivity plummet since I had to worry about being a target for harassment for being transgender. So, no it doesn't work in the real world.
> What if the team lead is transgender?

What if the team lead is a reproductive rights activist who doesn't like Elia's avowed anti-abortion stance?

> Seriously, you need to take into account that there's another human on the end of the screen.

I'm not a sociopath and I don't appreciate you painting me like one. Interestingly, if you applied that in the other direction you might find that Elia is a person on the other end of the screen and shouldn't be callously dismissed because he holds views you don't like.