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Comment by bpchaps | Hacker News Reader

"..except when I blog"

My favorite and most technical women coworkers in the past never, ever mention gender and actively avoid discussions about it. Professionally, it's irrelevant and their quality of work and attitude completely overshadows the quality of work of those who make gender an issue.

A very technical ex of mine would even go as far as calling those who make their gender relevant, even towards posts like this one, idiots.

The problem with these anti-label canned posts (sorry, but when I see info graphics like that, "canned" feels pretty accurate) is that they give off the same vibe as a the usual "I'm $LABEL, so treat me as such" crowd.

There are clear problems with gender issues in tech, but I can't shake the feeling that posts like this are more damaging than good.

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I feel the problem with such a response is that it feels like 'if I don't acknowledge the problem, or refuse to see it, then its not a problem'.

That wasn't how I meant it to come off, and apologies if it came out that way. I'm not suggesting that we don't acknowledge the problem. I'm more suggesting that the problem is completely elsewhere, so locally addressing it does harm, rather than good.

I have bipolar which causes ADD-like symptoms. When I try to address these problems with requests like "Please don't install three TVs in my peripheral vision", I'm often ignored, laughed at, or my problems are completely minimized (eg, "My cousin was given an ADD misdiagnosis at 2, so clearly that's the case with you", "Grow a thicker skin.", "Get used to it."). How can we expect to address gender issues if we can't even discuss mental health issues?

The problem doesn't start and end in employment, so treating it as a problem within employment and implementing "fixes" on top of employment/employment culture will only make things more complex and exclusionary (particularly for the fringe). As with security, adding a layer of complexity can often have incredibly undesired results, while making the implementers (HR) feel good and secure with their "fix".

It would be nice as a culture to address things from the problem sources, not just the symptoms. Any time I try to have similar serious discussions at workplaces, nobody wants to talk about the root. It's incredibly frustrating, particularly since protecting the fringe is something I'm personally vested in.

Sure, though I would probably argue with saying addressing it does harm, rather than good. I agree that adding a quota or benefits or what have you is not a 'fix'. The problem isn't solved. And they may even cause problems of their own, like people getting positions based on who they are rather than their merit - though that's also certainly prevalent in majority populations as well (who hasn't worked with someone who is less capable but more photogenic, or happens to be 'someone's mate'?).

But when there is an imbalance, or signs of general passive discrimination like with woman in tech, then initiatives that may not be perfect but which go some way towards helping address the problem ARE valid I think.

And if there are problems with a given approach, well, that's what iteration and metrics/analysis are for right? Continuous Improvement?

Building a school in a far off country without any prior experience in doing so can be good in the short term, but disastrous in the long run. These sorts of initiatives feel good and do what they're supposed to do, but just because it feels good and has a short term gain, doesn't mean it's a good answer and especially not the best answer.

Replace "women" with "medicated schizophrenics" (no subtext there..) and you'll find that the problems are very similar. A solution that addresses workplace gender issues could potentially be used to address workplace mental health issues. Yet, instead of addressing the problem with a wide and possibly empathy based solution, we're stuck with incredibly specific solutions and enormous gaps where solutions should exist.

I'm convinced that the whole issue stems from a lack of empathy in the workplace, and studies like [0] seem to hint towards the same.

[0] http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/7724-empathy-college-studen...

Edit: another point to add - I once went to HR to talk about my mental health issues. The HR head who had a degree in psychology didn't know what bipolar was, outside of the fact that it's a thing that exists. The number of things wrong with that talk was mind boggling, especially after literally zero came from it. This was at a relatively large company, too.

Building a school in a far off country without any prior experiencing in doing so is bad, but certainly not the same issue as trying to artificially increase diversity in the work place right? Quite different contexts.

I'm sorry that where you are seems like it doesn't deal with mental health very well (or at all, it sounds like). I'm from NZ and we have both very good gender equality (though not perfect, especially in tech) and very good support for those with health problems, psychological or otherwise (though again, not perfect - no government initiative can cover all scenarios and companies are fallible like anyone else).

Rather than arguing that gender problems shouldn't be addressed or should not receive as much focus, shouldn't you be arguing 'great, now can we also work on other areas of difficulty like ADHD?'

They're different problems, but the the feelgood intent with large, unintended consequences is what I'm referring to, rather than the contexts themselves.

I totally think that we should be using what we've learned from employment gender/racial issues to help out mental health problems. Not saying we shouldn't. I'm suggesting that the conversation should be much broader to address it at the level of empathy, without resorting to ego compartmentalization. If the empathy problems can be fixed, I highly suspect that everything else will fall in line.

As bold of a statement as that is, it matches my experience where simply telling someone "I have bipolar" increases communicative empathy. That's almost never an option though, since the subject is taboo enough that mentioning it has negative consequences.

Why should we wait until gender issues are "fixed" to try to address that taboo?

IMO, the more women sharing their positive experiences in the profession can only help encourage more to enter it. I don't see how this could be damaging.

That's good, yes. The containerization of self is the damage I'm talking about, though.

One step forward and two steps back.

IOW: "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doz5w2W-jAY

That's not what I'm saying at all.

Change that to:

"Why can't someone with bipolar/schizophrenia be more like someone without?"

and you'll find that the two things should be treated similarly, but they never are from personal experience.

It's not an issue restricted to gender. The issue is elsewhere, and your video flippantly minimizes a complex problem.

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