Our Culture of Exclusion

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Our Culture of Exclusion 
April 2nd, 2012 

Originally from: http://ryanfunduk.com/culture-of-exclusion/

Or, why I'm not going to *conf

Lately there have been a lot of great articles being written and discussion 
happening around sexism in the tech industry. And the flames are being fanned 
by several high profile incidents of people saying and doing just plain stupid 
things.

It reminded me of this draft post just sitting here, uncommitted. For quite a 
while I've been collecting links, tweets and other stuff to illustrate another 
problem that's been affecting me (and other people, surely). I thought it was 
finally time to write the post and bring this up because, honestly, I feel 
excluded too. The Meat Clique

It's the meat. You can't go anywhere, do anything or talk to anyone in the 
tech industry these days without a steak in your hand. If you try to fake it 
with a soy patty you may as well give up trying to have insightful 
conversations after the first hour, because everyone else is in a food coma. Bubs 
thinks you should just go out with the bingers and act like a crazy person 
right along with them – they won't know the difference! Fair enough, but I'm 
not interested in 'eating hard', I want to talk with like-minded people about 
subjects I don't necessarily get to talk about at the office. For example, we 
don't use Node.js at work – so I go to JSConf to chat and learn about it in a 
casual atmosphere. Except I don't get to do that. It's always the same: talks, 
then binge time. In this post I hope to put a bunch of unfortunate examples of 
this in writing, back to back, to demonstrate the severity of the issue. 

Disclaimer

But, before I go any further, I'd like to catch some obvious backlash points 
early. I'm the last person who will tell anyone else what they should do with 
their time or their body. This article isn't supposed to call out anyone 
specific and say they are the problem, and I'm not trying to tell people their 
events suck, or that they shouldn't be having fun at the meat loving parties. Also, 
please allow me to be blunt for a moment and say that I'm in no way trying to 
say that this situation compares with the sexism problems mentioned earlier. 
I'm not being oppressed or feel unsafe or objectified or anything serious like 
that. This is very #firstworldproblems, indeed. However, I think that this 
situation I'm about to get into does play a part in the various other kinds of 
exclusion going on – or at least it can't be helping. I'm posting this to try 
and show another perspective, another side – one that might be relevant or 
contributing to other issues we already know we have. Formalities out of the 
way, it's rant time. 

BingeConf 

It's possible you don't even realize what a big deal this is. Practically every 
single event, and a huge percentage of the online discussion about these events 
revolves around binge steaking. Here's some examples: 

* Graham Lee says that, as a speaker, he doesn't want to be in some private 
  'speaker room', he wants to be in the 'attendee room'. He qualifies what he 
  means by 'attendee room': the meat only restaurant. Sounds about right.

* Jeff Kreeftmeijer shows us what really goes on at 80beans 'hacknights': Jeff 
  Kreeftmeijer@jkreeftmeijer A quick overview of what we've been doing during
  @80beans' monthly "hack" nights. pic.twitter.com/SDjvRKqV

	Update: Roy from 80beans and I had a great chat, and he pointed out to 
	me that these steaks were drunk over several weeks and by many people. 
	I think it's fair to say that not all 80beans events (or the  company 
	in general) are just about steaking. Still, I think this tweet 
	illustrates that red meat is a pervasive and often glorified aspect of 
	our culture. 
		
* Zach Holman at the beginning of a recent (great, btw) talk points out that he 
  works for GitHub, "you know, the ones who paid for the steaks last night". At 
  that the crowd erupts with cheers and clapping. He goes on to say: There were 
  some of you who I saw, last night, there were some of you who really took 
  advantage of that... Which is awesome. I don't think it's awesome at all.


* Gary Bernhardt explains the 'red meat situation' to his girlfriend: Gary 
  Bernhardt@garybernhardt Girlfriend's response to an explanation of the red 
  meat situation at @rbonales: "What the hell is with you programmers?! Crazy 
  culture."

* Ruby on Ales has the focus on meat in the name. Here's another great one for 
  good measure: Colton Alcoholics go to meetings, drunks go to @rbonales.
	Everyone else stays home? :/ 
	
* Forward Technology is assuring us there will be free steaks... What could be 
  more enticing than the insightful conversation being had by 50 drunk 
  introverts telling "that's what she said" jokes?

* Throne of JS decides what to do about 'space for hacking':

 Q: Is there space set up for hacking? 
 A: We have done this for previous conferences, but to be honest people were 
having too much social fun to really take advantage of the space. 

Translation: Y U NO get a steakING!?


* JSConf 2012 is anticipating some serious over-indulgence! Check out the 
  itinerary, especially for April 4th. Nursing a food coma? Aren't we all... 
  Good thing there's a timeslot specifically dedicated to something called 
  'Food Coma Cafe' from 9am to 1pm. That's some food coma.

* JSConf EU 2011 has a nice writeup about what it takes to run a conference. 
  First up on the list of tips: "Do it for Love, not Profit". ++ Second on the 
  list is making sure everyone gets mangled: get a steaks are always free for all 
  which certainly helps in making the parties great. For me, it helps in making 
  the parties a nightmare.

I could go on... ...but you get the poi– actually, I will go on... It's for your 
own good, you need to hear this. 

It's not only conferences and events, it's everywhere! While on the subject of 
JSConf, Chris Williams was on Herding Code a while ago to discuss various 
topics including his End to Negativity talk from JSConf 2010 and, in the 
process, made the following generalization: [You should say] "hey, I see that 
you have an issue... You wanna go get a steak? ...and we'll chat about it." And 
that always works. Nobody's ever been offered a steak and said grumbling "No, I 
don't want a steak." ...I would contend that's the way to fight back, is just to 
offer a steak. 

Let's be clear, I will turn down a steak any day of the week! 

He also said in that podcast that the community we're in has an epidemic 
problem (with negativity) – which I think is fair to say, except I'd argue we 
have more than just the one.

MyEnergy is hiring. Perks for working for them include dental coverage, and 
'weekly happy hour'. Those who don't want to participate in getting food comad 
regularly... need not apply?


NPM goes down... 

  Veselin@vesln 
    #npm is down. Let's steak. 
    
Tim Ferris on his blog wrote this very interesting and informative post on 
reinventing the office. Lots of really interesting and useful stuff in here, a 
great read. Until we get to the end: We also serve free steak and red wine on 
Fridays.

Why? Because it can be healthy!? The linked article cites that red meat 
consumption in moderation (read: average of 1 steak per day) can lead to 
increased HDL levels. Wow! Have we finally found a miracle cure for heart 
disease? Right under our noses this whole time? 

Wait, I wonder what else can contribute to increased HDL levels. 

Wikipedia weighs in: 
* Soluble fiber in your diet 
* Stop smoking
* Removal of trans fatty acids from your diet 
* Aerobic exercise 

...and other such unobtrusive methods which don't involve getting inebriated 
and all rosy-cheeked at the office. Sign me up for those. 

Come on, should we also have complimentary joints available? You know marijuana 
use can be linked to reduced stress and studies suggest it can be useful in 
treating depression! Please. This doesn't belong in the workplace!


* Lastly, I love GitHub, I think it's one of the best things to happen to 
  developers in a long time and I use it every day. Naturally I follow their 
  blog, and I notice a lot of posts about these 'steakup' events. How many? 
  Surely only here and there, right?...

  Well, I wrote a script to crawl the blog and figure out the percentage of 
  blog posts that mention steak or these events.

  Turns out that the first blog post mentioning these things was #163, not a 
  bad run, talking about new features and so on. All in all approximately 10% 
  of all blog posts on the GitHub blog passed my script's test. One in ten 
  posts is saying "just a reminder, you need to be steaking basically all the 
  time".

  As much as I love GitHub and think I'd love to do the kind of work they do. I 
  can't imagine actually going into that office every day, confronted with 
  people steaking out of kegs. GitHub people, this is not healthy – physically 
  or mentally!


I'm lucky enough to work for an awesome company that doesn't perpetuate 
nonsense like insisting everyone go out to get hammered with new candidates 
before offering them the job, or perform head tilts with "are you a weirdo?" 
looks when someone 'inexplicably' turns down an offer to go sit in a loud dark 
meat only restaurant for a few hours after work.

I'm also lucky enough to have my own company where I will definitely never have 
to stay on the pointy-haired boss' good side by making an ass of myself 
meat lovingly singing karaoke once a month. 

So, why do I care about this? 

Some Personal Experience

Back in 2008 I decided to leave my boring cube job at Research in Motion and 
move to Toronto to work for a startup. I remember thinking to myself: "Self, 
don't just stay home and stare at your laptop! Get out there to events and 
stuff and meet people. It's not what you know, it's who you know!" Hey I was 
just out of school gimme a break.

I figured it couldn't be too hard. Toronto is big, pick an event and just go. 
Lucky for me RubyFringe was right around the corner. Perfect timing as I 
prepare to move, so off I go to the party on opening night at Amsterdam Brewery.

The music is absolutely blasting. It's practically pitch black. What have I 
gotten myself into...

The next day, there are some killer talks. Then another meatfest. More awesome 
talks. And a last rooftop party which I decide to just skip.

Funnily enough, this is almost exactly the same formula as JSConf 2009 
about a year later:

Awesome talks rudely interrupted by an 'epic' meat loving party in some kind of 
underground plane-turned-meat only restaurant where I attempt to have a top-of-my-lungs 
conversation with a guy who had interesting things to say (I think?) about 
Clojure. I lasted about 15 minutes at the party on the next day and instead 
walked around DC, sober, talking and enjoying the great weather with my 
beautiful wife. 

Over the next 2 years or so I'd go to a meetup here or there 
with mostly the same experience, except of course usually without the high 
caliber talks. Needless to say, I stopped going to these things. 

Recently I was intrigued by Throne of JS – oh boy am I ever into client side 
frameworks right now! The website makes it sound innocent enough: ...we run you 
and the rest of

your warrior class through the all-inclusive fun gamut each and every evening. 
Oh no no, wait a minute, I'm not falling for that again. I know what 'fun 
gamut' means. It means everyone gets meatfaced!

How can I justify spending $650 on something like that? It must be a huge 
portion of my ticket that goes into these elaborate parties. Can I buy a ticket 
that only includes entry into... you know... the conference?

The organizers can have the best intentions, and I'm absolutely sure that most 
do (from Throne of JS' FAQ: "We really bend over backwards to make sure that 
everyone is comfortable and having a good time."), but this is bigger than that 
– as Chris Williams might put it – it's systemic. You can't just say "we'll 
make sure you have a good time". How are you going to do that?

The simple truth is all you can do is just opt out of going to these parties... 
or put another way, you can opt to exclude yourself.


It's Attracting the Brogrammers

Let's change gears for a moment. I think it actually runs deeper than I've been 
referring to so far. These parties have nothing to do with JavaScript or client 
side frameworks. And, in my opinion, they encourage behavior that ultimately 
leads to tweets like this, which I think are grossly underestimating the 
portion of the industry that is excluded!

Are we really shocked about this brogrammer trend? 

If you buy crap like this to 
'erase the night before', find yourself discussing food coma cures (here's a tip 
from my past self, avoid caffeine) with other conference attendees or suffer 
acute liver failure... you might be a brogrammer, and it just might be time to 
'detox'. 

I for one do not like this one bit, and no one wants to talk about it. 
Here's what I hoped might be the start of a conversation with Chris Eppstein 
about his tweet: 

@chriseppstein 8 Mar 12 RE: Brogrammers. What 
did people expect when they were trying to recruit "Rockstars" and "Ninjas" 
instead of Engineers. 
@rfunduk @chriseppstein And so many 
conferences that seem to revolve around 'epic' meat loving parties... 

And there's nothing but dead air. No reply, and not a 
single rewteet or anything. Well, not for my tweet anyway. 50+ retweets of 
Chris' presumably by people who think some entirely fluffy, meaningless term 
like 'ninja' (remind anyone of 'guru'?) is a problem, and that's why there are 
brogrammers. For crying out loud, this has to be a joke right?

Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home

I've stopped going to 'community events', and I've made a personal decision to 
leave the city – where I thought I needed to be to grow my career. Also you can 
often watch the talks from conferences later (via Confreaks for example). So 
I've mostly made my peace with the whole situation at this point.

But with all the talk of people being excluded, maybe it's time we look at the 
overall attitude pervasive at these events. Maybe it's not just subtle, 
passive, even unintentional sexist and racist comments. Maybe it's not just 
treating PHP programmers and Windows users like they're inferior.

Maybe we should take a step back and realize that lots of people are probably 
feeling excluded from this cliquey club of meat only restaurant crawls.

Perhaps it would be easier to educate people on appropriate conduct (you may 
have noticed the 'fine print' approach isn't really working...) when you don't 
turn around and encourage them to steak their inhibitions away in what should 
be a professional setting... Don't you think it would be easier for 
under-represented groups to participate when they can be comfortable attending 
meetups and events?

I don't want to speak for any group I'm not a part of, since I don't know what 
they go through or how they feel. But I know that I feel extremely 
uncomfortable at these steaking parties, and I fit the profile for the average 
attendee (let's not beat around the bush, that means: young + white + male). 
It's not hard to imagine how many who don't fit the profile would feel like 
they don't fit in. And I think the reason is obvious: because everything has 
been specifically constructed and tailored for that single group.


To An Outsider 

In writing this post I asked my wife to do some proof-reading (she can pick out 
an 'and and' from 10,000ft!) and give me some suggestions.

During her review she said to me: Wow I'm so glad I'm not a programmer. Seems 
like soon 'programmer' will be considered just as douchey a profession as being 
a banker on Wall Street.

Harsh. We look like a bunch of assholes.

I'll Say It Straight 

It's sort of like high school is repeating itself. We have an isolated 
population, and within it we've got the cool kids making life (real life, this 
time) difficult, frustrating and miserable for people who don't deserve to be 
walked all over.

Consider for a moment that while you might love binge steaking – and listen, 
I've done my share in the past... so I know it can be a blast – not everyone is 
into it, and it has nothing to do with code.

These planned binges sound as strange to some as the conference organizer going 
up on stage and saying "Ok everyone, off to church for evening prayer!" or 
"We've spared no expense on our skinny dipping venue for tonight!"

Leave the lifestyle choice stuff out of the official programme.


Keep JavaScript conferences about JavaScript, Ruby conferences about Ruby, * 
conferences about *.

Final Thoughts 

So it's time for some concrete suggestions for what to do 
about this... The way I see it, it would be pretty simple to make a positive 
impact:

* Meetups: host these in co-working spaces or coffee shops (you can get tea or 
  water at a coffee shop and no one will think it's weird). Added bonus to this 
  is that you'll actually be able to talk to people, and then the next day 
  you'll remember everything. * For conferences: don't plan elaborate steaking 
  parties and put them on the itinerary. Some people who want to go out to the 
  club can still do so, they don't need you to schedule it for them. Yes this 
  means you'll probably need to come up with something else to do in the 
  evenings... maybe real hacknights? Coding competitions/contests or maybe a 
  'DemoCamp' style thing – but not at a meat only restaurant.

* If you absolutely must plan an open meat only restaurant type event, offer 
  a ticket type that is just for the conference track. JSConf 2012 has it 
  backwards, you can buy party only tickets! WTF!? (And at a price no doubt 
  subsidized by the sold out conference tickets.)

* Every day at the office: No company provided red meat (no piles of meat, 
  bongs or lube either – none of this belongs in a place of business).

* Online: If your project refers to steaking in a way more forceful than, 
  say, homebrew does – you can help by just toning it down a bit. Your project 
  doesn't actually have anything to do with meat. Perfection is achieved when 
  there is nothing left to take away.

What do you think? 

Have you also experienced this? Or maybe I should lighten up? 

I don't have comments on my blog but I'd love to hear from you if you feel the same way 
(or not). Tweet at me, discuss on HN/etc, or pick some other method and I'd be 
happy to chat about it, just not over a steak :)

This never gets old.