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Comment by its_bbq | Hacker News Reader

I met Izzy a few times at cppcon and always came away impressed. I have basically the same thoughts about the c++ community -- it burns people out and it's filled with a ton of negativity and ego and it's very hard to get anything done. While I was at Google I spent some time trying to push for some sort of codes of conduct after a colleague of mine had a reasonable proposal ripped to shreds in email groups with all sorts of inappropriate sexist and personal attacks. I got absolutely nowhere.

Don't get me wrong, there are many good people there pushing for positive change but the amount of inertia in that scene is just staggering.

I'm glad you got out and decided to do something more meaningful with your talent, Izzy

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You do not need a code of conduct for complaining about a sexist remark inside a corporation. CoCs ruin projects, create a stifled atmosphere of hate and distrust and it is always the wrong people who obtain power.

Persons who are vocally against CoCs can very well be on your side regarding sexist remarks. Personal attacks are difficult to quantify. Often they are a last resort for shutting up someone who thinks they should dictate everything in a code base, even if it is outside their area of expertise.

Perhaps Google's C++ code base is too mission critical to let it be ruined?

I'll bite...Do you have any citations for projects that have been ruined by a CoC? (Where ruined means something beyond "A CoC exists")

Eh. Call it "guidelines" and people write dang fanmail. Call it a "code of conduct" and some people lose their minds.

Yeah because the title is a fairly strong signal for the sort of content and enforcement it's going to get.

> Yeah because the title is a fairly strong signal for the sort of content and enforcement it's going to get.

Is it? Or are your priors being set by outliers sensational enough to be picked up by hn/twitter/whatever

thank you for this blunt assessment ; agree

Absolutely spot on.

I've seen reports of sexism get ignored and go unhandled (usually because "they're such a good contributor, we can't afford to lose them"), leading to a slow death as people stop contributing. The goal here is to make it so that there's an established set of standards, and a procedure to follow in case they get violated.

If implemented correctly, policies for this should not make matters worse, it should just let these projects be able to draw clearer lines towards acceptable behavior and build trust that these issues can and will be handled.

I should say I meant I found sexism outside of Google in the c++ community at large. Within Google everyone is very respectful

C++ is so pervasive and ubiquitous that there is no "C++ community" per se. It just reflects the whole world.

Call it the “C++ standards community,” then, because that’s where you go to get things like `offsetof` into the actual language, and it definitely doesn’t reflect the whole world any more than the JavaScript standards community does. Both of them are focused on moving the language as a whole forward, while most developers just want to use the thing.

my experience is that c++ community is very helpful, community is a small part of the real world, there are friendly and "bad" people, ask politely and to the point, help while you can, ignore some rants once a while...

> email groups with all sorts of inappropriate sexist and personal attacks.

Do you have a link to the mails / mail archives? I guess I don't typically see that conduct from the C++ community - be interesting to see what I'm not noticing.

>inappropriate sexist

If this was internal Google communication as it sounds then you should go to HR about sexist communication, if that doesn't get results then go to the victim and encourage a lawsuit against the company

Hint: HR is not your friend.

HR's primary job, overriding all its other jobs, is to spy on you on behalf of corporate. Second is to save the company money on lawsuit payouts.

The only saving grace is that, sometimes, a low-level HR functionary has not got the memo that this is their primary job, and might actually do something helpful.

The primary job of the Director of HR, an the other hand, is always simple corruption, graft, kickbacks, as much of it as they can manage to keep track of. It does no good to try to hire one who won't; they didn't get into HR not to. So, if you think your HR director seems not to, it just means they are playing a deeper game, one probably more harmful to you and the company.

Seriously worth repeating. HR is NOT your friend. I learnt this the hard way.

HR's core function is to protect the company from litigation by employees. The HR management is highly unlikely to side with you against upper management no matter how much you are in the right.

If it is about upper management you might be right. However if it is about anyone lower then their job is to prevent lawsuits and so they are on your side - this time - because it is the best way to do their job.

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