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> The decision to ban someone for smoking pot really cracked me up, given who I smoked pot with at PyCon 2012.

I've said this elsewhere, but:

The pot smoker was a few feet from me in an informal conference late one evening. I don't think anyone complained that pot was smoked at all. They complained that it was smoked inside a crowded room.

I would've been as personally annoyed if someone lit a tobacco cigarette in the same close quarters. It stunk. Badly. I also imagine that PyCon _had_ to say and do _something_ lest they get a reputation for condoning illegal substance abuse in the middle of open sessions.

Note: I'm just a bystander, a regular attendee like everyone else. I didn't report or complain about the pot smoker even though it reeked. The reaction of everyone around me wasn't anger, but sheer disbelief that someone would be that stupid.

Indoors? Okay, yeah, that's stupid. I rescind some of my amusement.

> The pot smoker was a few feet from me in an informal > conference late one evening. I don't think anyone > complained that pot was smoked at all. They complained that > it was smoked inside a crowded room.

I was there too. They were being obnoxious by stinking up the place (it didn't help that they got louder & less funny, i.e. more obnoxious, through the evening), and that is what got people's attention.

Anything that happens on the official premises of a professional, heavily sponsored and highly scrutinized conference is to some extent the responsibility of the organizers. They _had_ to do something.

I guess the assumption that if its inappropriate to smoke a cigarette then it is inappropriate to smoke anything else isn't obvious.

> I'm going to go a career that isn't completely nonsensical, like fishing. I can't imagine I'm the only one.

I fully intend to do the same. I'll likely always keep programming open source stuff etc. on the side, but the tech industry is so fucking weird and immature on stuff like that. (and also the fact that I don't see myself living the startup life when I have kids, at least not in the first few years of their lives)

> The overcompensation and hypersensitivity to combat sexism in technology is, rather amusingly, making technology even more hostile and demoralizing.

I find this attitude really strange, as if you need to make dick jokes to write code.

Sorry to lose you, but if basic manners are an insufferable encroachment on your style and abilities, maybe we'll just have to find a way to get along without your talent.

I'm not sure how you got from the quoted portion to your conclusion. I don't need to make dick jokes to write code. I'm not lamenting the loss of base humor. I'm lamenting the guerrilla campaign against it, such as considering it okay to take photos of someone and shame them publicly without even saying a word to them as if we live in 1984. Notice I didn't type anything like "boy, I'll sure miss dick jokes," so I suspect you're either projecting or misunderstanding what I wrote.

What's next, a Web site with 'mugshots' taken by people who walk around conferences listening for inappropriate jokes? For a group of people that fears the Orwellian, some sure are applauding this action.

When did we lose, as a culture, the basic ability to open the hole that words come out of and tell someone that we're offended by them, and please stop it so I can pay attention to the talk?

Basic manners, indeed.

Let's set aside the current situation. Surely you're not leaving your career because last week somebody indirectly caused some poor schmuck to get fired for being a goober at a conference you didn't even attend. Your complaints only make sense if you perceive the situational sum total of the sexism or plain offensiveness as being more similar to this event, rather than seeing this event as an anomaly.

But this situation is really quite anomalous. Even setting aside Adria's histrionics, we still have a situation where the online response was overwhelmingly out of proportion and either nobody did much in person or it was completely resolved in person, depending on which comments above were true. This stands in sharp contrast to the other five or six of these fiascos from the last year, where in nearly every case the offended parties tried to be polite and were shrugged off, told to get a sense of humor or not take things so seriously or told they should have been approached in private rather than publicly. In other words, this is the first fiasco we've had in recent memory where the response actually was out of proportion—prior, NYC got napalmed because the bed bugs were still there after trying everything else.

I find it disingenuous to rewrite history from this single event to paint the sexism problem in our industry as being an overreaction by people who didn't speak up in person when this is really the only example of that. You must have real reasons for leaving the industry that don't have anything to do with this. I just find it hard to believe that someone could love programming and yet be so unwilling to avoid being offensive—or so afraid of being persecuted for it—that they leave the career for just this one reason.

> Surely you're not leaving your career because last week somebody indirectly caused some poor schmuck to get fired for being a goober at a conference you didn't even attend.

I mean, if I were considering it with 30 units of determination and after this incident I'm considering it with 30.15 units of determination, it's certainly on the road. It wouldn't be the entire catalyst, but it's another let-down in a long line of being sad on Christmas from my chosen profession. Let's be serious, there are much worse potholes in our rear view.

I'm still not sure I agree that I'm desiring to be offensive with this line of thought, as my underlying goal. Just that I wish we'd talk to each other like, you know, adults. With words. In faces. I'm come to accept that I'm going to work with people that have terrible senses of humor. Shit, I do too. I'd rather we can work together instead of draw lines in the sand over feelings. We're all in this, learning, together. Cheesy song.

This will sound silly, but I just feel like the number of intolerable people in this industry is multiplying (sexist or otherwise; 'temperamental' is growing on my list, as is 'permanent contrarian', a couple rapid-growth archetype markets).

Thoughtful comment, thank you for replying so well.

I hope you continue to participate here on HN even if you do change careers. I like your style and I think our differences are mostly a matter of degree.

"I think all of us would agree that technology has a sexism problem."

I'm working in an office without any African American males or Hispanic American males. Does technology have a racist problem?

I think it does, but that's not necessarily the reason why you don't work with diverse races. If I hire five white people, that doesn't mean I'm racist. If I hire five white people in preference to five black people, that means I'm racist. The sexism angle here is similar.

I also disagreed with shaming the conference that scheduled all white male speakers, as it was very likely unintentional and indicative of nothing larger except incompetence. People look for any reason to turn something into a Big Deal.

> If I hire five white people in preference to five black people, that means I'm racist.

Only if the five black people were at least as competent as the five white people.

Well, in preference being the key phrase there, which is why I left out the part about capability or qualification. I suppose my original point was missing an implied "due to race". You are correct, though.

Regardless of the white person being more competent or less competent, preferring him due to color is a no-no.

Well, since technology projects keep naming themselves after Native American tribes and register the websites, IT might be a tad insensitive.

Nice to meet a fellow future bait shop owner. I plan to have a mechanical cash register, cash-only. Maybe electric lights.

Would the lights dangle from the ceiling?