About Work

You can amplify their voices and efforts. For example, depending on your power, you can take Shanley's articles like this (https://medium.com/about-work/514a6edcce2c) and implement them. Or you can disclose your salary. Or install a simple code of conduct.

Society stamped the male designation on my forehead, and feel like there's no end of wonderful things I do that have an immediate impact. Which improve people's dignity and quality of life. Do I attack patriarchy? Good. Do I attack the boss's ability to extract unconscionable hours, dignity and money from his wage-slaves? Good.

But you know that movie Avatar, which portrays the white male hero "leading" an army of poor blue savages? Avoid such corrosive social nonsense, and you'll spend a lot less energy. Simply assist and amplify the efforts of others, share literature which isn't afraid to be radical, and you'll go far.

Unfortunately for this all female team, feminists will accuse them of working to support the patriarchy just as much as the evil men. Sadly, this is actually what prominent feminists in technology believe: https://medium.com/about-work/e82b7ca7de03 (Ctrl-F "support the patriarchy").

For these feminists, women who fail are obvious evidence of patriarchy, and women who succeed are obviously just working alongside the patriarchy. I firmly believe that if next year the tech industry was 55% female and females received 55% of funding and salaries, feminists would point to that as evidence that the patriarchy is purposefully giving things to women to hide the fact that they're all misogynist pigs. This prominent tech feminism is, according to their own terms, completely unfalsifiable.

There also seems to be some ideological motivation for claiming rockstars don't exist.

The existence of rockstars provides fodder for individualist ideologies. Many people are more collectivist, so therefore feel the need to dispute the existence of rockstars. This is a little bit evident here - you need a rockstar team, with diversity. It's far more evident in the last post on this same topic.

(Not quite a dupe, but it might as well be. https://medium.com/about-work/6aedba30ecfe )

Amusingly, it's also a very corporate philosophy. "No programmer is worth more than any other, therefore to advance you must enter management." Tends to be self selecting in such corporations, since everyone who isn't mediocre leaves.

EDT: To me, this post comes across as vacuous and pompous because it does not explain at all what ‘culture’ means in this context. An IMHO great reply has already been written before this post appeared:

‘What Your Culture Really Says’:
https://medium.com/about-work/e8ab06c3b75f

> Let’s examine popular startup trends that are being called “culture” and look beneath the surface to find the real culture that may be playing out beneath it. This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and the materialistic trappings that can disguise them.

I'd argue that this post in itself violates the "shallow" prohibition on Hacker News. It's like a religious or political debate.

But for the record, once one starts generalizing an entire class of people, it's a slippery slope:
I hate MBAS -> I hate Marketers --> I hate women.

see: https://medium.com/about-work/aa49dffc975d

There are shitty devs just like there are shitty MBAs. And that's where I'll leave it.