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Comment by sgustard | Hacker News Reader

Honest question. When I read a sentence like this: "the guys at Lyft got to talking with the guys at Rover and they decided to work together instead."

Does "guys" imply the teams are all male? Is that relevant, or just reflect the casual sexism of the Valley? Or is "guys" a truly universal term and this just reflects an excessively lazy/casual writing style for a supposed news outlet?

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Yeah, I read it the same way. Not sure if it's even relevant, but they could have easily just replaced "guys" with "team", and it would have probably sounded less slang-like (regardless of the casual sexism factor). Same with the "got to talking" part (replacing it with something more simple like "talked").

"the guys at Lyft got to talking with the guys at Rover and they decided to work together instead." (I read this like poorly-worded slang)

"the team at Lyft talked with the team at Rover and they decided to work together instead." (I think this is much better worded)

Right or wrong, I've asked many female friends if they mind the term "guys" as a general reference to a group of people, and none of them mind it. Your milage may vary, but I think it's considered a general term.

It's a general term in social groups when I am not worried that someone actually forgot there were any women in the group of us going out that night. It's a trickier term that seems in my experience to correlate well with "there are no women here" or "I forgot there are any women here" when used at work, and so it is a slight negative indicator in professional language.

One data point, I have seen a several women independently call other women "guys" plenty of times. (I'm not native so the first couple of times it took me by surprise.)

I think by now it's a universal term.

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