The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

G-man:
What's WTF about that? It's been common knowledge for decades. If it still inspires a "WTF?" now, you've been living under a rock.

Some WTFs are still WTFs even when they keep happening for what seems like forever. I'm sure you can think of a few examples, but the 3 countries left still using imperial units come to mind.

boog · 2011-05-26 Reply Admin

yes but:
trtrwtf:
So what is it about your fragile ego that leads you to construct these imaginary ball-busting feminists, so you can defy them? Is it the not getting laid, or the creeping fear that you're actually not as smart as you'd like to be?

Your assertion about his getting laid or not, is built of just as much straw as his ball-busting feminist, though.

So blatant taunting counts as a straw man now?

Why did no one tell me?

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
yes but:
trtrwtf:
yes but:
Your assertion about his getting laid or not, is built of just as much straw as his ball-busting feminist, though.

True. Your point?

That straw-on-straw wars are even more futile than the regular kind.

Oh, sure, if he's stupid enough to take it up. But of course it's just a rhetorical maneuver designed to weaken his position by forcing him to either accept an implication of his lack of virility or to grant my ridiculous premise some legitimacy by engaging with it enough to deny it. In either case, I get to wave by virtual penis around, which helps me make my point.

I've learned how arguments are carried on here, you see.

The point that is being made, let's not forget, is that he's an imbecile for a) confusing, or pretending to confuse an assertion with a "speculation" (classic moron maneuver, similar to saying some stupid idiotic thing you say was "satire") b) missing the point of the studies showing that women don't stay in CS programs because they find their classmates repellent, and also because they find that there's an implicit expectation that students will have done 5-7 years of intense preparation, and also because their repellent classmates adopt a patronizing attitude towards them because they come into the program without having previously written any code c) and, as was pointed out elsewhere, believing that "work" doesn't involve social interaction, and that social interaction is not in fact a critical skill for a programmer

So, given all of that, I can well believe that he's not got his dick wet in a long while or ever. I just don't think he'd get the time of day from any woman I know. That's irrelevant, of course, just a side note. The point is, the guy's about as sharp as a bag of wet mice, and it's fun to make fun of stupid sexist twits. And hitting them where it hurts is even more fun - this guy cringes every time his on-line persona's penile superiority is challenged, because he actually cares! Try it some time, it's great fun...

If only there were women other than the ones you know....

2011-05-26 Reply Admin

yes but:
So, given all of that, I can well believe that he's not got his dick wet in a long while or ever. I just don't think he'd get the time of day from any woman I know.

If only there were women other than the ones you know....

You're right, I guess. I suppose there are chicks who go for pasty fat geeks who spout this sort of rubbish.

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

trtwtf:
yes but:
So, given all of that, I can well believe that he's not got his dick wet in a long while or ever. I just don't think he'd get the time of day from any woman I know.

If only there were women other than the ones you know....

You're right, I guess. I suppose there are chicks who go for pasty fat geeks who spout this sort of rubbish.

Oh I get it now. Cogent argument is only required of +everyone else.+ kthxbye

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

Bumble Bee Tuna:
"One was a clean-cut, thirty-something man in formal atire, and the other was a young blonde whose girl parts lead Felix to wonder how she came to be here."
Fixed that for Felix

You know, the blatant misogyny got old here a long time ago.

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

Franz Kafka:
Abso:
Franz Kafka:
lucidfox:
Sexist comments above aside (less than the usual "norm" for an IT site, I admit), I do wonder what the shy blonde was doing there. From the sound of it she didn't have a clue about the job, but if so, why did she apply for it in the first place?
What sexist comments? Some people made a joke is all.
And we all know that jokes can't be sexist.

And 'There are no women in IT' is hardly a sexist joke. Really, just give me something more than diffuse anger - it's like you aren't even trying.

Nope, you're right. It's not a joke at all. But it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

PhD Me...:
The lack of women in IT is not necessarily because IT is a big boys club (which many people often seem to imply). The fact is, that not many women are interested in code.

And why might that be?

PhD Me...:
I think sexism has altered the workplace demographic...

Bingo!

PhD Me...:
I don't think it's sexism, I think you'd probably find that out of several hundred applicants, only a handful are women, so chances are that there is a better male candidate. That's not sexism - that's EO.

No, hiring the best candidate is not sexism. Being an asshole to the few women that are hired and making this field even more unattractive to women is. So those of us who actually like having women around would like for all you asshats to shut your pieholes.

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

frits:
lucidfox:
jizz:
lucidfox:
Franz Kafka:
And 'There are no women in IT' is hardly a sexist joke.
Yes it is.
I think his point is it's not a joke...
"Few" is not the same as "none".
We may be few for now, but we're working to change that. And it really, really would help if we weren't met with "zomg a gurl" and "wut r u doing here?" comments in places who get their ideas about women from porn and dating sims.

Who's using streotypes now? Don't be a hypocrite.

Man, don't be an asshole. Be glad that there are women willing to put up with your bullshit to work in this field.

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

PhD Me...:
Girls and boys are different. Some of these differences are obvious and some subtle. Some of these differences are in the way we think (this has been extensively studied by many people far brighter than me). It would be incredibly unusual to find any one field or career where there is even close to a 50/50 balance in interest from men and women, and I challenge you to find one. There are some fields that women enjoy working in (so you will get more female applicants) and some fields where men like working in (and so you will find more male applicants). It stands to reason, that in any field where there is more applications from a particular gender you would expect the majority of the time for the applicant to be of the majority gender.
Watch out for seagulls!! They're eyeing that big chip on your soldier!!

The irony of an asshat man telling a woman how women feel is not lost here...

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

PhD Me:
Why is it, then, that we still have dwindling numbers of women in IT? The mysterious 'boys club' does not exist anywhere near an entry level...

You don't see it because you ARE IT.

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

Jon:
There are no blonde chicks in IT.

Just a couple of the many blonde chicks in IT who are smarter than you: http://blog.carolynworks.com/ http://leahculver.com/ http://www.hilarymason.com/

(FU Askimet, this isn't spam)

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

Level 2:
lucidfox:
Franz Kafka:
And 'There are no women in IT' is hardly a sexist joke.
Yes it is.
But is it a joke on the men or on the women?

Well...these dudes think they're being badasses by putting women down, and all they're really accomplishing is furthering their own forever alone status.

What do you think?

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

Tarl:
trtrwtf:
Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates
And here we have the real reason women (in general) don't end up in programming careers. They think work consists of social interaction. Males think work consists of work.

Aaaah, that's what WoW and Counterstrike and TDWTF are?

Seriously, what the hell planet do you come from where you don't interact socially at work?

2011-05-27 Reply Admin

Kensey:
trtrwtf:
db:
When I was a student just over 50% of the introductory CS classes were female as distict from the 2% in engineering. Oddly enough I've met far more female engineers in the workforce than women in IT. Where did they all go and why didn't they get IT jobs?

Many of them leave when they find out that their career counselor didn't tell them that they'd be in classes with the guys who spent their entire lives from the age of 11 in their room playing with their computers, only leaving for brief periods to go over to their buddy's house and play with their computers. This is actually not a wisecrack - your question is the subject of serious research, and this is actually what happens. Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates, combined with the typical 5 to seven year head start that those classmates have on them. They end up in other degree programs. True story.

And tying this back to the other subthread, this self-reinforcing culture -- not genetics, acquired, transmitted culture -- is a great deal of the reason women are underrepresented in many professions: the culture says "women don't do that", the professions so tagged become insular boys-clubs, the few women who do brave the storm are roundly subjected to the absolute worst behavior in order to keep them on the outs as much as possible, and the cycle repeats as it remains accepted wisdom that "women don't do well in those professions".

Whereas if a group makes an effort not to be total prats and be accepting of the idea that women just might do as well as men at whatever, and changes their behavior to match, they often find that to also become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This pattern repeats everywhere from business, to free-software culture, to various fandoms (there was a really awesome piece by someone a few years back basically saying "the toleration of Comic-Book Guy types in actual comic fandom is a huge reason women avoid comic book culture -- we have no one to blame but ourselves"). The danger is in thinking that a stable equilibrium is the only one possible or desirable -- these anti-women equilibria are very stable, but they can (and I think, should) be given a swift kick into the other valley on the graph, the one where women are just as welcome and productive as men.

Bravo.

lucidfox · 2011-05-28 Reply Admin

Kensey:
And tying this back to the other subthread, this self-reinforcing culture -- not genetics, acquired, transmitted culture -- is a great deal of the reason women are underrepresented in many professions: the culture says "women don't do that", the professions so tagged become insular boys-clubs, the few women who do brave the storm are roundly subjected to the absolute worst behavior in order to keep them on the outs as much as possible, and the cycle repeats as it remains accepted wisdom that "women don't do well in those professions".
Whereas if a group makes an effort not to be total prats and be accepting of the idea that women just might do as well as men at whatever, and changes their behavior to match, they often find that to also become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This pattern repeats everywhere from business, to free-software culture, to various fandoms (there was a really awesome piece by someone a few years back basically saying "the toleration of Comic-Book Guy types in actual comic fandom is a huge reason women avoid comic book culture -- we have no one to blame but ourselves"). The danger is in thinking that a stable equilibrium is the only one possible or desirable -- these anti-women equilibria are very stable, but they can (and I think, should) be given a swift kick into the other valley on the graph, the one where women are just as welcome and productive as men.

Thirded. Glad to see someone gets it.

2011-05-28 Reply Admin

In my company we require good degrees as an absolute minimum. The reason being that the university experience teaches you to concentrate for hours and hours at a time. Writing up your dissertation is probably the most important thing you do. It's like having an athlete ready to run a marathon, rather than a good sprinter.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

lucidfox:
Kensey:
And tying this back to the other subthread, this self-reinforcing culture -- not genetics, acquired, transmitted culture -- is a great deal of the reason women are underrepresented in many professions: the culture says "women don't do that", the professions so tagged become insular boys-clubs, the few women who do brave the storm are roundly subjected to the absolute worst behavior in order to keep them on the outs as much as possible, and the cycle repeats as it remains accepted wisdom that "women don't do well in those professions".
Whereas if a group makes an effort not to be total prats and be accepting of the idea that women just might do as well as men at whatever, and changes their behavior to match, they often find that to also become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This pattern repeats everywhere from business, to free-software culture, to various fandoms (there was a really awesome piece by someone a few years back basically saying "the toleration of Comic-Book Guy types in actual comic fandom is a huge reason women avoid comic book culture -- we have no one to blame but ourselves"). The danger is in thinking that a stable equilibrium is the only one possible or desirable -- these anti-women equilibria are very stable, but they can (and I think, should) be given a swift kick into the other valley on the graph, the one where women are just as welcome and productive as men.
Thirded. Glad to see someone gets it.

Fourthed. But am I the only one who winced a little bit at "a swift kick in the other valley on the graph"? I read it again and I got it, but my first reaction was "Ow!"

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Troy:
ThePants999:
Having a degree myself, I don't understand why anyone insists on a degree. It was fun and all, but spending that time working would have made me better suited for most jobs than the degree did.

Possibly you did not go to the right school. I mean really, would you have been introduced to data structures like B+ trees and understand their performance with out some pointers? Take a peruse through some of Knuth's books or Dijkstra's. Truly, you would have understood and known to look for that stuff?

I knew that stuff WAY before I got my degree. Yes, some people can learn by themselves and do so not by "copy-pasting something from the net".

I got my first software engineer job almost 2 years before I finished high school and got my degree while still working at that job.

If there's one thing I know about education, it's that a world-class book is worth infinitely more than an average professor. In fact, a good professor would usually tell you to read the book instead of listening to him/her ;)

Arancaytar · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

fresh-thinking problem-solver to help them leverage their IT infrastructure to maximum efficiency.

RUN.

2011-06-08 Reply Admin

Maye it was 6502 Assembler... Or 6510? Shown in the Terminator 1 movie.

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