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My open letter to the tech industry on sexism, HR, and Linus Tech Tips
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I agree with what you said for the most part, except the fact that I wouldn't define sexism in the majority of cases having people "stealing" your ideas, nor shooting down ideas.
In the first case it seems a common practice in competitive environments, where workers have no incentive at all to cooperate and all the incentive to screw each other to look better and chase promotions. I think people who do that regularly do that with everyone. Appropriating ideas and work of others is how middle managers in many cases got there and how they climb the ladder, even though everyone knows what they are worth.
The second is an extremely common occurrence in tech, ideas are shot down all the time. I have seen it occurring countless of times, I don't think is a sexist practice inherently, although still something extremely annoying within tech. It is sexism when ideas are shot down "because a woman is saying it", though.
My final remark is about the part about "males getting raises without even asking" (paraphrasing). Now, this may have been true in your context, I have no way to dispute it. However, I just want to reinforce that the narrative of "males being somewhat on the same side" disregarding the conflict within workers and owners (I.e. those who get the raises and those who give them) seems to be completely fabricated (based on my experience) and also extremely damaging to workers solidarity. The narrative that somehow gender prevails over class as a factor of unification is very dangerous and plays right in the hand of those who benefit from gender conflict as an obstacle for class unity.
I think some of the points you have to look at demographically and use privilege to correct it. I’m not a woman, but I’ve seen women I work with have their ideas “shot down” simply because it was from them even if it was paraphrased a minute later by a man then magically it’s perfect!
I often make a point of correcting that in my org by saying “This was a good idea the first time from (woman), why did we move on from it last time?” So then people who shot this down have to awkwardly explain why they “didn’t understand” or make up some excuse. It works to highlight that maybe you just weren’t listening. Because it was a woman speaking. It’s unfortunate but it’s common in FAANG. I’m just tired of seeing it as someone who’s worked with some really incredible women who left the industry because of the toxicity.
But isn't that what he just said? It's not sexism if someone is just shooting an idea down. Stealing the idea is morally apprehensible. Shooting an idea down because "it's you" is discriminatory. Shooting an idea down because "a woman had it", now that's sexism.
I see a lot of ppl claim sexism, and it might as well be present, even if subtly for a lot of different companies. That said, context matters, and you can be an absolute prick to ppl with out even invoking any sexism.
E.g. I hear students doing an internship often get overlooked. Not cool, some of them are geniuses. Same goes for ppl lower in the corporate ladder vs. higher in the corporate ladder.
What I'm trying to say is: let's be absolutely clear with what we define as sexism, because it shouldn't lose it's meaning by being inserted into discrimination. You don't need sexism there everytime to involve OSHA.
Also let's make this clear: if Madison's allegations are true (and she doesn't have a horse in this race so there's a good chance they are), we can straight up skip the sexism and go straight to harassment, abuse, sexual assault, and more. I hope she is able to grasp the sheer horror that this really was, because she should know that no one deserves that and ppl will support the fight in her name.