Horror Stories From Women in Tech

http://jezebel.com/#!5781523/horror-stories-from-women-in-tech

by yahelc • 15 years ago

41 57 15 years ago

jezebel.com

reso• 15 years ago

Other headlines today from jezebel.com:

Pete Wentz Discusses Divorce, Thanks God For Charlie Sheen

Woman injured by Dolphin jumping into her boat

ABC Casting for "Stem-Cell Face-lift" Show

Al-Qaeda Expands into Women's magazines

biot• 15 years ago

And it's another broken hashbang site. It took three page reloads to finally see the content.

pasbesoin• 15 years ago

For those who no longer trust Gawker even as far as to run their Javascript:

http://m.jezebel.com/5781523/horror-stories-from-women-in-te...

(This is generalizable across their sites -- at least, for the moment.)

sonoffett• 15 years ago

I found the article to be interesting and relevant--ad hominem attacks don't contribute to the discussion and I hope HN will eventually get over its self serving bias and discuss self critical issues at the same level as any other conversation.

angusgr• 15 years ago

Are you trying to make a point apart from refute-by-vague-association? What does a cherry-picked list of headlines have to do with the content of the linked article?

danilocampos4• 15 years ago

Oh, well, in that case, let's pack up and go home, guys. There can't possibly be anything to learn here.

The only thing that really troubles me about the otherwise excellent Hacker News community is this defensive/dismissive streak that shows up every time the subject of "women in tech" is raised. It's especially mystifying to me given how obvious the problem is: (gross generalizations follow)

- Many nerds have a shocking talent for being insular, insecure dicks

- Most nerds aren't women

- Nerds dominate tech

No chance at all this ends poorly for the outsiders, right?

peterbraden2• 15 years ago

I feel like you could make your point in a more constructive way. Let's keep things civil on here.

sp3322• 15 years ago

There are "groups" of people. You don't talk to your family the same way you talk to your friends. You don't talk to older people the same way you talk to younger people. I'm not even talking about the conscious stuff, like maybe trying to watch your language around certain groups. People unconsciously talk louder to older people. It's not because people consciously believe that all older people have hearing problems, it's just a pattern that they picked up by watching other people. Certain things get absorbed unconsciously. There are lots of ways of saying "I'm interested in your project". Sometimes, a person will only mean to say just that, but they will unwittingly couch it in a sexist form that they learned from other people. They don't mean to be sexist, but certain attitudes, vocabulary, phrases, etc can simply be copied from other people without understanding exactly how they affect the listener.

This isn't easy to fix. If we treat women like men, many of them will be put off. But apparently a lot of people (possibly including women?) in our "geek" culture don't know how to "be friendly to women", even when they want to be (because they've learned bad habits from other people). We can only fix this if women point out good role models for the rest of us to follow, or give us an itemized list of things that make them feel welcome. Pointing out bad stuff strikes me as ineffective.

erikpukinskis6• 15 years ago

First of all, _recognizing_ the bad stuff IS a good thing that (many) women like. If you're with a man and a woman and the man tells a sexist joke, and you and the woman recognize that and don't laugh, then she feels like she's in the in-crowd and he feels like the odd man out. Congratulations, you just made a woman feel more comfortable. The reason we talk about the bad stuff is so we can practice in our head steering clear of it.

Actually, I think that's about it! Be helpful and friendly just like you would to a male developer and Don't Do Sexist Shit, and you'll be in good shape. Tech is fun. Women are innately drawn to nerding out the same way that men are. If they can do that without having sexism shoved in their faces every five minutes, then that's a pretty welcoming space. The positive is the absence of the negative.

As for a list... to some extent, it's not fair to ask women to not only deal with the assholes, but spend even more time teaching the earnestly "want-to-learn" guys what to do. Teach yourself. The internet is full of feminist advice.

A good place to start is just to subscribe to the Geek Feminism blog (http://geekfeminism.org) and read it with an open mind. If you want to go all out, dig through the archives. Feministing (http://feministing.com) is a great all-purpose feminist primer too.

And know that the folks who run those blogs generally Know Their Shit. They've been doing it for a while, and their analysis is mostly spot on, so if you find yourself thinking "this is insanity" just spend some time trying to really dig into their perspective before you go running into the fray with guns blazing.

And high five for wanting to learn. That's awesome, I respect that.

sp3322• 15 years ago

Yeah, the list-making thing was kind of a despairing joke, because people have actually tried it. I realize it's not really fair to ask for that kind of list, but if you're going to make one, make it a list of positive things people should do, not just negativity. If someone only knows how to express themselves in a sexist way, then telling them not to do that makes them feel like they're not allowed to talk to women anymore. Giving them something acceptable to do instead leaves them with some options.

edw519• 15 years ago

First this:

"The first half is going to be your pitch, the second will be me hitting on you."

Then this:

"Honestly, the thing I'm most excited about is the prospect of seeing you naked later tonight."

Please don't forget that any pitch must work both ways. We entrepreneurs should be evaluating potential investors with at least as much rigor as they evaluate us. They're not giving away money to lucky lottery winners, they're trading it for something else, something often much more valuable than their money: our blood, sweat, and tears in what could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

It's difficult to find a silver lining in this cloud, but let me give it a try:

Anyone spoken to by people like these, no matter who they are, should thank these investors for eliminating themselves. Better to find out what they are like now before wasting any more time (or worse) on them. The only thing that really surprised me about this story was:

She said she felt nauseous but pressed on with her pitch.

Why bother? Better she should focus her energy on building a great business that will attract investors with professionalism and integrity. They're out there, just harder to find.

At least they were until the pigs like this opened their mouths.

johngalt6• 15 years ago

Same thing I thought. If a VC started hitting on me during the pitch I'd leave, and frankly I wouldn't deal with a VC that would treat any founder this way. If they will use power to exploit why even consider a partnership with them?

danilocampos4• 15 years ago

Pigs indeed — agree completely. No one should do business with such creeps.

At the same time, especially when you're starting out, you've got a lot of insecurity already, male or female, about your pitch, about your idea, your business, everything. It's fucked up to ladle on ever more confusion to the process by making the beginner wonder if a rebuke will foul other opportunities. The relationship should be reciprocal, yes, but let's be real, the investor has done this way more than the entrepreneur. The imbalance of power feels real and it's disgusting to see it abused so crassly.

mechanical_fish• 15 years ago

Why bother [pressing on with her pitch]?

It might well have seemed like the most diplomatic path out of the room.

One might also make allowance for shock. When you're stunned, a natural reaction is to fall back on the script.

If I might dare to speculate further... One wonders how easy it is to know just when to walk out. I'm a man, a straight man, a clueless straight man, so I have no real first-hand idea of what it's like to be hit on all the time. But my understanding is that women get hit on a lot. Like, really a lot. Depending on the woman and the circumstances, one might even use the word "constantly". So one imagines that few women in tech can afford to have a hard-and-fast "if you hit on me I'll walk out in a huff" rule. Instead, one imagines that at one time or another every woman has felt that "nauseous" feeling of being hit on against her wishes. And that "at one time or another" can sometimes mean "several times per day".

And I'll bet it wears you down. Or toughens you up. Actually, I'll bet it does both, at exactly the same time. My guess is that the poor woman in that story was pressing forward, rolling her eyes inwardly, and feeling nauseous and miserable all at once. She kept going because she had trained herself to suppress that desire to retch, even though her nausea was her subconscious trying to tell her to flee the room.

But all I can really do is guess, of course.

rubashov2• 15 years ago

> "Who's watching your kids?" She retorted, "Who's watching yours?"

Let's be honest. It's a rather valid question, from an investor perspective.

hmahncke2• 15 years ago

It's a valid question only if the investor commonly asks it both to men and women.

rubashov2• 15 years ago

Not really. Men and women are different and relate to families differently. Deal with it.

yummyfajitas• 15 years ago

Or if the investor understands Bayes rule (and also knows that women are more likely to care for children than men, forming a prior).

Montagist• 15 years ago

Not valid at all, except that I know some people in that situation like to purposely ask jarring questions to see how one will respond to pressure. It may or may not have been condescending.

jrmg• 15 years ago

In an employment interview in most places, it would be an illegal question.

Assuming you think this is the intent behind it, "how much time can you commit to working on this?" or "you need to be immediately available at all times - can you do that?" would be a better way to phrase it. From the perspective of working, it doesn't matter what the thing is that is placing external demands on your time, only what those demands are.

johngalt6• 15 years ago

No one complains about the lack of female plumbers, sanitation engineers, or electricians. Men are four times more likely to be murdered, and ten times as many are in jail. Why is it that genders are supposed to be equal except when men are considered inherently inferior?

Life isn't fair and people with treat you unfairly. No this doesn't entitle you to special treatment. Yes it will limit you if you fixate on it.

Rariel7• 15 years ago

I couldn't help but wonder while reading this comment--have you ever experienced any sort of discrimination or are you a member of any minority group (person of color, gay, non-christian, etc.)?

"Life isn't fair and people with treat you unfairly. No this doesn't entitle you to special treatment." Who is asking for special treatment? Women just don't want to be discriminated against because of their gender--how do you get special treatment from that?

Additionally your logic is flawed--just because you have never heard anybody complain about the lack of women in blue collar jobs (the only jobs you mentioned) doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

And please explain how men being four times more likely to be murdered and ten times as many are in jail ( I'd love you to site where you came up with those statistics and their methodology in obtaining them btw) makes men "inherently inferior?"

sosuke• 15 years ago

A quick Google pulled up the Wikipedia article on Incarceration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration) which actually puts the males at a lower 7 times more likely than women.

Here are the stats for 2005 on murder citing men as 4 times more likely to be murdered. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/gender.cfm

johngalt6• 15 years ago

Yes I have extensive experience with discrimination, and it was much worse than any founder that had to put up with being hit on. Does this make my point more valid or less?

The point isn't a defense of discrimination, but merely a question of total impact. A guy hit on you and you didn't like it? Tell that VC to get bent and go make money without him. See my other comment about how I'd never partner with anyone whom acted in this manner.

There will always be someone that doesn't like you for no good reason male or female. If you look you'll always find a few bad apples. The special treatment is expecting everyone will be nice to you because otherwise it's "discrimination". Men get taken advantage of too, but that doesn't excuse what is effectively a hit piece on an entire industry.

"Additionally your logic is flawed--just because you have never heard anybody complain about the lack of women in blue collar jobs (the only jobs you mentioned) doesn't mean it doesn't happen."

This is true, I admit I'm not a regular jezebel reader and must have missed the article where they mentioned that. Or ever seen an article anywhere lamenting this. Compared to the cacophony of articles lamenting that the geeks are making money and they are all male!

I'd cite my stats, but looks like someone already beat me to it.

Apocryphon3• 15 years ago

I'm not sure that the inverse of your statement- that men are considered inherently superior by virtue of the fact that there are more men in the tech industry- is necessarily true, either.

erikpukinskis6• 15 years ago

If you're going to pull out the murder/jail card, you can't just quote figures about gender. The elephant in THAT room is race.

The truth is, both the prison system and the murder culture are HIGHLY skewed against black men. If you look at white people in the U.S., 4600 men were killed in 1999, and 2000 women. White men are roughly twice as likely to be killed as white women.

If you look at black people, 5500 black men were killed, versus 1000 black women. And let me remind you that black people make up something like 10% of the population.

The situation is similar for incarceration rates.

So, two takeaway points here:

1) If you're a black man, and a white woman is complaining to you about the sexism she faced in her VC pitch, you may have a right to bring up the Oppression Olympics card.

2) If you're a white man, crying about how horrible is the specter of you getting murdered or sent to jail, in the middle of a conversation about sexism... you're just making excuses. Your likelihood of going to jail or being murdered is much closer to a white woman's.

And the truth is, men commit a much higher portion of violent crime. It's not like women are out there murdering thousands of men every year and getting away with it.

Although white people do sell a lot more drugs than black people and get away with it.

Source: http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_informati...

johngalt6• 15 years ago

What I see in those statistics is that both race AND gender play a role. Do you see that too?

It's not about oppression olympics, it's about not letting that jerk investor do any more damage by making you bitter towards the whole process. Don't wait for things to be "fair". Accept that there are jerks in life, and play to win anyway. The stats I mentioned were to put the articles anecdotes about tactless investors in perspective.

"2) If you're a white man, crying about how horrible is the specter of you getting murdered or sent to jail, in the middle of a conversation about sexism... you're just making excuses. Your likelihood of going to jail or being murdered is much closer to a white woman's."

You're completely right, my gender and race make my opinion completely invalid. Glad we could have this discussion on equality.

ahoyhere4• 15 years ago

Oh please. Occasionally running into a rude man? THE HORROR! THE HORROR SPECIFIC TO TECH!

I found it interesting that the women didn't just walk out of these situations. Why were they willing to submit themselves to such indignities? Surely they weren't forced to continue pitching. But no... they wanted the money.

If you want the money more than you want respect, well, you're not going to get respect.

As a woman genuinely in tech -- which, coincidentally, means a lot more than "in search of VC" -- I can say that I've been treated ill by just as many women as men over the years. But when a woman is horrible to you, you don't cry sexism, because well, she's got the same equipment as you do. Also, nobody's interested, because "everyone knows" women are catty, shallow, and wield their social abilities like a weapon. Kind of like how "everyone knows" men are uncultured brutes, who look down on noble, long-suffering women, assume they are dumb, and hit on anything that moves.

Please.

Fact: some people are shitty. By "people" I mean "of any and all genders, equally." If a person is shitty to you in what seems like a gender-specific way, chances are s/he is shitty to people of a different gender but in a different way.

Take it personally and you're just telling yourself a story. But in reality, it's not about you. The way a person treats you is very rarely about you. It's about them. So ignore them and move on with your dignity intact, and stop telling yourself lies.

By the way, selling cosmetics -- but being in search of VC -- does not a "woman in tech" make. For the love of god, are your cosmetics web-enabled?

danilocampos4• 15 years ago

> By the way, selling cosmetics -- but being in search of VC -- does not a "woman in tech" make. For the love of god, are your cosmetics web-enabled?

Actually, it would appear that their distribution is entirely web-based. That, to my mind, would make them as much a tech company as is Woot, with its non-web-enabled wine, and Amazon circa 1996, with its non-web-enabled books. Diapers.com? $550 million exit, that one.

http://www.birchbox.com/

dougws• 15 years ago

I don't think they're claiming that this problem is specific to "tech"; sexism pretty much pervades our society. And yes, sexism is different and worse than just generic dickery because of the way it exacerbates existing societal problems. Their point is that (contrary to the gut reaction of many of the commenters so far) we as an industry can do better, which would help more women to succeed in the IT world.

Apocryphon3• 15 years ago

But tech is more male-dominated than a lot of other industries.

Isn't it?

Rariel7• 15 years ago

"Oh please. Occasionally running into a rude man? "

The point was not there is an occasional rude man, the point is that there is a reoccurring theme of inappropriate discrimination based on gender. Of course there are going to be rude men. As you pointed out, there are rude people everywhere. But what if that rude person is only rude in certain situations to a certain type of person--that makes a difference, no?

"As a woman genuinely in tech..." I think that is a bit pompous--under your definition is groupon tech? All they do is glorified coupons, not very techy under your standards yet google, a tech company, wanted to acquire them...

"Take it personally and you're just telling yourself a story. But in reality, it's not about you. The way a person treats you is very rarely about you. It's about them. So ignore them and move on with your dignity intact, and stop telling yourself lies."

Would you tell this to MLK or Harvey Milk? I doubt it. Over simplifying the problem and claiming it's all in these womens' heads isn't going to make it go away.

ahoyhere4• 15 years ago

Let's see -- are we actually comparing legal, systematized repression vs a couple dudes being rude dogs? When, if that dude was a boss and not a potential investor, said rude behavior would in fact be illegal?

Straw man, my friend. They are nothing alike.

I have run into many rude men at bars when attempting to buy drinks. Some have even butted in while I was dancing with another woman. I guess it's time to write an expose entitled "Sexism in the Beer Drinking Industry."

erikpukinskis6• 15 years ago

Ugh. I think these comments are incredibly sexist on so many levels. I respect that you hate the "kid gloves" form of feminism, but I think you're going waaaay in the other direction in order to achieve some balance. The part that MOST makes me want to throw up is this:

If you want the money more than you want respect, well, you're not going to get respect.

Wow. So it's HER fault that she doesn't get respect because she doesn't handle viciously sexist comments properly?

ahoyhere4• 15 years ago

Calling someone a "stupid worthless cunt" is viciously sexist.

Hitting on someone is not "viciously sexist." Nor is telling someone you intend to hit on them for half an hour, later. Saying you'd like to see someone in your bed is not viciously sexist, it's just terribly unoriginal, right up there with "Is that a mirror in your pocket? Cuz I can see me in your pants."

If the behavior is unacceptable, don't accept it. It's that simple. If you want money from someone but don't like the cut of their jib, WALK AWAY.

Imagine if you were taking your kids with you to apply for a home loan. You weren't on food stamps or anything - you just wanted a loan. What if the loan officer looked at your kids and said, "What a bunch of ugly little brats. Glad they're not mine."

Would you smile and stuff down your feelings and try to take his money anyway? Commit yourself to a working relationship with that guy and earn him a commission?

Or would you grab your kids' hands and walk out?

If you don't protect yourself, nobody else will. If you don't respect yourself, nobody else will.

But seriously, telling somebody you plan to hit on them is tactless and rude, but it is not sexist. It's just dumb.

anoncon2020• 15 years ago

The article does a poor job of convincing me that any of these problems are unique to the tech industry.

Journalism: http://jezebel.com/#!5738019/where-are-the-women-at-highbrow... Film: http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html Music: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news...

A more appropriate title would be 'Horror Stories from Women dealing with Wealthy Men in Powerful Positions"

Can anyone name an 'Industry' in which is this NOT the case? Otherwise, singling out the tech industry is counterproductive and unfair.

Apocryphon3• 15 years ago

It's wrong to single out one industry, yes, but it doesn't mean that the industry itself can't try to improve its own situation even if other ones fail to.

Rariel7• 15 years ago

Where in the article does she say it's unique to Tech?

erikpukinskis6• 15 years ago

I don't work in any other industry. If I was a doctor, I'd want to learn about sexism in healthcare. But I'm not. I'm in tech. I want to know what's happening in my industry.

ja27• 15 years ago

I had one male coworker ask a female coworker what bra size she was. (He was shopping for implants for his now ex-wife.) Awesome. She went into an empty office and cried.

puredemo2• 15 years ago

Sounds a bit over-sensitive to me. I certainly wouldn't cry about being asked what size my chest is.

dasil003• 15 years ago

I find myself torn between the "assholes are assholes, deal with it" and "woman have to deal with a lot of bullshit in tech" viewpoints.

I guess the reason for me is that I recognize that the best course of action for the individual woman is not to spend a lot of time complaining, but to recognize that tech is, for better or worse, a man's world, and the way to get ahead is to simply learn how the game works.

On the other hand I don't want to give assholes and their apologists a free pass. If it seems like some women are overly sensitive about this issue, it's important to realize it's because they are dealing with this shit all the time. It's similar to racism, and why reverse-racism claims by whites fall flat—because they already have every advantage, and they don't have the weight of that historical oppression on their shoulder. Does that mean that you have to be a little more sensitive to minorities and women? Sure, but with good reason. It's just basic interpersonal relations to understand that people may be sensitive about stereotypes that they deal with repeatedly.

That's where I think a lot of guys in tech go wrong—they want to believe in objective equality, so they trot out some examples of shit that guys have to deal with that women don't, which may be true, but it's irrelevant to the ultimate question of how common dynamics actually make people feel.

erikpukinskis6• 15 years ago

Who do you think is oversensitive to it? What do you think would be an appropriate amount of talking about it?

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