[zxcvcxz]

Most of these "safe space" environments are filled with arrogant people who, while not being outright rude, can belittle you passive aggressively and it can sometimes be worse than someone just calling you out on your bullshit.

A friend of mine worked for a startup that's mentioned on HN quite a lot, (I won't say the name). The lead developers used git and IRC chat a lot. After being hired my friend began to test a new product they were working on and submitted some changes to github, they accepted the pull request and my friend submitted a few more finding all sorts of bugs. At this point the lead developers started to argue about how the changes were unnecessary and that my friend needed to learn more about how their product worked, what was rude is that they were publicly arguing while leaving him out of the conversation. No words directed at him, just conversation about him. A few weeks later they realized their project really did have a lot of bugs and pushed through a large change with many of my friends bug-fixes in it without giving him credit or even so much as a thank you.

The lead devs would pal around and make inside jokes and ask my friend to do all sorts of work while leaving him "out of the loop" as if he were some "lackey" for them to boss around and not really part of the team.

Not too long after he started working there the team told him he needed to attend a "conference on sensitivity in OSS" halfway across the country. My friend couldn't make it and then he was basically interrogated by the lead devs as to how he feels is the proper way to treat people. He said he was treated as if he was in trouble and felt like he was being accused of a crime. About a month later he left the company after being continually snubbed by his superiors and not receiving any appreciation for his work.

Personally I get this feeling with a lot of "safe space" organizations I've contributed too. The leaders are arrogant and passive aggressively rude, treat you like crap and belittle your work, then act high-and-mighty because they've never said a curse word.

[marktangotango]

I get the feeling there's a lot more to this story, would be interesting to hear the other side. Were they really that doughy?

[zeckalpha]

Sounds like an organization that won't scale.