Allegedly. I see plenty of people speaking their minds, on either side of the issue, and many of them are reasonable. I'm left to wonder how one can be so certain that 'the most reasonable people' (by what metric? In whose judgement?) are 'afraid to speak their mind'.
Because the most reasonable people will have well thought out and reasoned arguments and will have tried pretty hard to understand the problem from all sides that it has. And you rarely see that in anything on the internet that is difficult to talk about, you see a lot of quick fire, purely emotional responses.
All the examples you cite are relevant to an individual; they do not stop the gender as a whole exerting their voice in halls of power.
(You also end up mixing a lot of other weird demographic data in there that could be caused by existing entrenched gender roles, e.g. women on the whole tend to live longer because most militaries in the world don't have women soldiers!)
Women, as a gender, don't get as much of a say in how things are run as men. That's something that we all suffer for.
I have never once seen this happen at any place I've worked. I counter your anecdotal evidence with my own anecdotal evidence and we all have to go away and get some real data!
Young coined that term 'meritocracy' in satire; I feel it remains a ridiculous concept.
Who judges what is meritorious? The entrenched majority? Won't they tend to think along similar lines and discount dissenting opinions as lacking merit?
I suggest that there is no meritocracy in existence to begin with.
To those saying that "this is discrimination is it is morally wrong" (and I don't think this event constitutes discrimination, but here goes):
1. Should we then do away with gender segregated sports teams?
2. Should other minorities (e.g. LBGTQ groups) no longer have support groups that focus on issues relevant to them?
Having groups that cater to certain minorities feels to me both necessary and useful. We are not all identical. You probably don't want to live in a world without exceptional and different people in it; it would be boring.
That means there are times when some of those people who are like-minded want to get together and support each other. In some cases, that means other groups need to be discouraged (because that minority would otherwise be overwhelmed, drowned out in a sea of majority voices).
Why are so many voices in our industry constantly fighting events like this?
When will "enough be enough"? When will we have no more need for these separate groups? Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race. That is wrong.
There are much more women than men who attend college now. Women score better than men in reading and other subjects. The wage gap IS a myth. More money is focused on women's health issues.
Do you see that any area where women don't already represent at least 50% of the workforce, there will be loud voices decrying sexism at this?
On the other hand, there are 0 efforts on raising standards for boys, or trying to get them into X field. Nothing. As seen in history, once a group starts to gain power and privileges, it will continue in that direction no matter the actual circumstances.
"Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race."
I call bulltwang. Please provide evidence of this supposed systematic selection of 'minority' candidates, because I'm sure as heck not seeing it where I am.
You assert that the wage gap is myth. Please also provide evidence for this statement, because everything I've read suggests that it remains a problem across the board - and for the record we're talking about IT specifically here, and we're not talking about the wage gap, we're talking about the abysmally low rates of entry into this sector by half the population as defined by gender identification.
It's all well and good to say "NO ENOUGH IS ENOUGH MERITOCRACY NAO PLZ", but who decides what is meritorious? The entrenched majority? This is why that term was coined in derision.
I say, enough will be enough when there's no longer a problem (c.f. uptake of science/engineering/tech by women). Until then, we have a problem, and we need to do things to fix that problem.
To give some perspective to you, I come from the humanities field and have switched to IT. In the humanities field (from college majors to actual employment), men are underrepresented. Women hold majority positions in many places (and in related fields, HR, communications etc.).
Even still, when looking at job applications many times will be a blurb such as: "Qualified female candidates are especially encouraged to apply."
The issue I have with all of this, is that there is a sole focus on bringing in women into science and engineering, which is of course a GOOD thing.
However, there is zero effort to increase reading rates for boys, and to push boys and men into the communications and humanities fields, ZERO. Boys lag behind girls in many places when it comes to education, and nothing is done about that.
I've actually worked at a place where this was verbally justified. I am not lying when I heard a female senior management official state: "Women are better communicators than men, so it is only natural that they be placed in greater leadership and communication roles."
Why is there ZERO effort in getting men out of dangerous positions, such as mining and logging and hundreds of other fields and instead actually focus on THEIR education? Men die at a much, much higher rate than women in the workforce, but this is ignored.
So that is coming from my perspective.
If you are insulated in the IT field and that is what you have experienced, then I cannot blame you for thinking "Wow, there are so few women in this field! We need more!"
However, please note there are many fields where women are the majority of undergraduate and graduate students.
When you in fact compare individual jobs to one another there is no wage gap. Plus we have laws (at least here in the US, not sure where you are) that if you find out you are getting paid less because of your sex, you can bring this to court.
And for the record, yes I love meritocracy. I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Educate more women in the sciences, educate more men in communications/humanities/social work/education and get them out of dangerous positions. That is fair.
I totally agree with you that there are many problems here. I have also seen the research on male literacy and numeracy rates, and agree with you that there's a problem there that needs to be tackled.
That does not invalidate this problem.
And back to my original point: even if the problem of women in tech were solved, I still don't see the beef with having events held for particular subgroups of people. There's no cost here. Nobody is disadvantaged if we have a Geek Girls night, or a Gay Coder Hackathon, or the Left Handed Sysadmin Support Group.
Equality of opportunity is one thing, forcing everybody into the same cookie-cutter mould and insisting we all do the same things with the same people? Ick.
It's real simple.
Sexual harassment is not okay.
Tolerating that behaviour in others is not okay.
Inviting a known problem-person to conferences is not okay.
We can prevaricate about the "truth" of her story (and this particular incident) all we want, but the core message here is that these things do happen, women do get sexually harassed by people who are invited to tech conference, and that is not okay.
I work for Pollenizer (@pollenizer on twitter) - I'm engineering lead on Pygg. I do a lot of stuff out of work hours too, would be more than happy to chat.
Well, by that logic, we should abandon all labels altogether. Down with identification of groups of people! Cast off the oppressive shackles of classification!
Down here in Australia, "Hipsters" are an easily recognizable and quite specific cultural subgroup:
Thick-rim glasses, no actual vision impediment to justify them, Impractically skinny jeans, Borderline offensively cliched facial hair (ie. Hercule Poirot-esque moustaches) and - most importantly - Irrational dislike of anything "mainstream" or "commercial" (with little/no other justification)
It's no longer meaningful counter-culture, it's become a very specific subculture in and of itself (at least down here) - a culture I would describe not as counter-culture, but anti-culture. It's ceased to be productive and meaningful, and simply become (like Monty Python's Argument Clinic) the automatic gainsay of anything "mainstream".
I've no tolerance for it, because (in my opinion, at least) it's highly pretentious and offers very little in the way of positive change. I find that subculture to be, in general, very negative (often for very little reason).
When I talk about Hipsters, I'm generally referring not to the dress, but to the attitude. Maybe you're right, and I should be referring to those specific attitudes as what I take issue with - but sometimes convenient (if inaccurate) labels make communication faster.
Frankly, we have made efforts for quite a while to eliminate classifications which are used solely to put people down. While it is true that hipster is not as offensive as some other classifying words and carries none of the historical baggage, it has become a slur, nothing more.
What you've described sounds like a caricature. While it is possible that the more nuanced culture formed elsewhere and was made extreme on it's way to your shores (and, indeed, there is evidence of this having happened in many other cases), I am not sure that is what is going on here. The specific attitude you describe is one I see commonly attributed to hipsters, and only in very rare cases a fair characterization. I think that The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Radiohead (to throw something out there) are examples of incredibly commercial, mainstream bands which most of the people you are describing would be into.
Saying that you don't like the new Shins album because it is very mainstream doesn't actually mean that you don't like it because people are buying it (they aren't), it means that it doesn't seem challenging or interesting to you. It seems designed for mainstream appeal.
In the US, the word is not applied solely to the group that you describe, either. It's used to describe people who live in particular areas, people who ride bicycles, people who shop at thrift stores, people who listen to public radio, people who see lots of live music, and people who listen to records on vinyl, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. The most important thing is that people seem to have flipped your description of the attitude on it's head; It's not about whether or not you dislike "mainstream" or "commercial" things, it's about whether or not you like something which doesn't fall into one of these categories.
I agree that your description of this group doesn't make me want to hang out with anyone in it, but it certainly doesn't make me feel like I shouldn't tollerate it. If there is a group of people who want to be very bad at conversation at parties, more power to them.
If I believed that most people made these judgements on a case by case basis, that would be one thing, but that's not the case in my experience. The assumption seems to be that if you match one of these very superficial and general categories, I can mantle your personality and judge you (with little/no other justification, see what I did there?)
Mmm. Thinking about it, I can't think of a positive connotation of the word "hipster", or even a neutral one, so given that; you're right - it's become a slur, and probably worth abandoning as a term.
I realise what I'm describing sounds like a caricature. I wish I was simply being snarky, but spend 10 minutes at a bar on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne and you'd definitely witness what I describe. There are quite a significant proportion of people in that area who do indeed dress as described (for whatever reason) and who will hold conversations - at length - about the invalidity of any artistic endeavour that gives itself over to financial motivation.
I neither agree nor disagree with them on that point, but I feel I certainly have more productive things to talk about!
I think the usage of the word has probably varied within Australia from its usage in the US. Certainly when I read articles in Wired about 'hipster' culture, I'm left scratching my head (behaviours or purchasing patterns they describe therein tend to amount to the local use of the word 'trendy', which is rarely construed as an insult).
There's probably a PhD in sociological studies to be gained from the comparative usage of that word in Australia vs. the US. :P
Seconded. It's not a done deal until the money is in your bank account. If someone offers something, you write a Memorandum of Understanding at least to clarify the details.
Also, never trust anyone who asks for a little bit of work at a discounted rate in return for the promise of more work later. Even if they're a government department. They may mean well, but they're almost certainly not in a position to back that promise up.
Trying to run a service-based dev business to support creation of products. That consulting grew to consume 100% of our usable time and resulted in a period of pretty intense burnout, personally.
If you're in this situation, you might try honing your focus - if you can zero in on the most lucrative/time segments of your consulting practice, you may be able to make this work.
This does depends greatly on your client mix and financial situation.
We'd almost done that - had a brilliant marketing plan drawn up and everything; then burnout hit myself and my business partner (hard). The coup de grace was delivered by the GFC
(Even here in Australia, small businesses were hit - and all our clients were small businesses or primary industry and simply stopped paying invoices or returning calls.)
