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0 points0xcde4c3db10y ago0 comments

> Having girly motivations does not mean writing code is of no interest to you. You can be interested in people or whatever and see code as a way to accomplish your goals.

I've noticed that in some tech circles, social and emotional motivations (and especially ones with negative valence like anger and disappointment) are seen as sort of unreal and invalid. I understand that people often want to focus on choosing the product/technology/protocol/whatever that's objectively the best, but I think there are cases where it's warped the culture such that people get into cliques and develop (sometimes intense) social motivations based on perfectly valid factors like trust and respect, but pretend that those motivations are entirely based on dispassionate technical analysis.

I guess I'm not sure what my point is. Maybe it's that social "drama" is inevitable, but tech communities make it toxic because of a misguided belief that it's irrelevant, and this dynamic causes splash damage for women who are more heavily socialized to value personal relationships. Maybe it's just a brain fart, but I think it would explain a lot.

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Mz10y ago

I did once post an article here about how emotional labor is deemed to be women's work and the social expectation is that women must do it. It was fairly man-bashy, so it unsurprisingly got no attention here. It got a great deal of very positive attention in a different forum I belong to. It was a huge positive, eye opening discussion for a great many women who have boatloads of legitimate frustration and anger about this issue and how it negatively impacts their lives.

The degree to which women are expected to deal with the emotions of other people means that women in male dominated environments get dumped on in a way that becomes very problematic for them. Women are not allowed to say "Not my problem." If they try that, there is hell to pay. So I do not believe this is more problematic for women because they value social relationships more. I think it is more problematic because everyone around them will blame them if they do not smooth things over (I mean for other parties -- like mom interceding between fighting children), will cry on their shoulder and expect them to care, etc.

This is one reason tech needs to value diversity: Most men simply don't have substantial skill in dealing with certain things. When you lack social and emotional savvy, it is not uncommon for the fallout to involve things like being sued by people who are mad as hell at you. The way to minimize outcomes like that is to have people on board who will recognize the problem early and act to resolve it before it involves lawyers and bad publicity. But they cannot take effective action if they do not have real power and are not sincerely respected.

Thank you for replying.

rewqfdsa10y ago

I think part of the devaluation of emotion is the nature of the work. The computer doesn't care that you've had a bad day. The computer doesn't care that your kid is sick. The computer doesn't care that you're behind on your mortgage, or that your partner left you, or that you could really use a hug. The computer is a cruel adversary, and to beat it, you need to discard emotion (at least temporarily) and embrace its cold, logical way of reasoning about the world. You need to beat it at its own game.

Is it any wonder that we programmers tend to view logical reasoning as more useful than emotional reasoning?

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