So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995242#Comment_119995242

Not having a master (uhh dirty word) account for all repos. Not having all repos under corporate network IP restricted access. Not having a policy of only using work email for work github accounts so to make automatic access removal easy.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995243#Comment_119995243

I would guess that every single company the world over that deals with code on a regular basis will lose a lot if they suddenly fire a large proportion of the staff. Every single one. Add in more code if you include all the pieces that still work, everyone has access to, but no one knows how to operate.

I would also disagree when it happens. It happens when work is not done in a relaxed environment and the code base needs to be run yesterday that hacks go into the code, version control gets skipped and no documentation ends up being written.

pixelburp

Of course it's "inclusions" fault. 🤣 🙄

Access problems like this happens all the time. Christ my own startup experienced that when its previously single FE developer left about a year ago now and some things went "blip". It's stupid, and unnecessary and easily solved by using vaults like 1Password but putting this at the feet of "diversity" is inane, reaching and starting at the conclusion before working backwards. Hiring practises have ZERO to do with this problem FFS.

Anyone who has worked in web knows the pain of that one guy leaving who it turned out has set a critical piece of software against their personal email. Their ideological values never once figured in the equation. As said it's stupid when it happens but usually happens once before a better system is adopted.

Penn

I wonder what big change happened in Twitter in the last 2 months which meant this became an issue where it wasn't before....

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995255#Comment_119995255

Have you worked with large code bases? You are joking that master is seen as a dirty word in these places when they will all regularly have master branches when using git.

But sure, all problems in tech are because blue haired people exist.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995276#Comment_119995276

I have worked with large code bases. I'm not joking about the dirty words, I've seen projects that removed things like master-slave and whitelist-blacklist for no other reason than being offensive: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-team-approves-new-terminology-bans-terms-like-blacklist-and-slave/

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995255#Comment_119995255

Nothing you say has anything to do with ideology, and is exactly the kind of sloppiness endemic in tech, regardless of hiring practises. You're reaching.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995290#Comment_119995290

There was no ideology in the post you quoted, only strictly technical points - you're reaching.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995288#Comment_119995288

A change in terminology doesn't mean the systems in place still weren't used.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995266#Comment_119995266

It should not happen in a big organisation. Departments within a company would have policy regarding passwords and administrators access to systems.

The problem is when you sack whole Departments before you are properly inside the door.

This was not a single guy issue.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995299#Comment_119995299

This is your starting position from which we got here:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995243#Comment_119995243

You commenced this segue, putting ideology as the key flaw that would cause these issues. They don't, never do and are way more common than you might insist. Especially in FE development where there's often a clatter of 3rd party libraries being used. Going double when whole departments disappear overnight with no handover processes.

So yes, you are the one reaching 'cos this is why we're here; a relaxed working environment is not mutually exclusive with having good compliance. As said, it's often solved as easily as having a 1password account so at least core logins aren't lost.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995316#Comment_119995316

it was a single guy issue. the guys name is elon.

Cordell

It's unreal how you keep on defending incompetence just because Space Karen bad. Well, keep at it.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995332#Comment_119995332

It's unreal how you keep on trying to make incompetence symptomatic with inclusive hiring practises. Well, keep at it.

Nobody actually defending incompetence, just challenging your conflation.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995332#Comment_119995332

nobody is defending incompetence.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995243#Comment_119995243

It's all diversity and inclusion's fault!

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995288#Comment_119995288

Is being offensive not a good enough reason for changing terminology?

pixelburp

I've also worked on large codebases, many different kinds and ones where we've sanitised potentially problematic words - the most immediate and related to github was changing the main, core repo from "master" to "main". I think github now defaults to main, but would have go spin up a repo to check and feeling lazy.

Absolutely nobody I've worked with during these kind of changes has ever objected to it - beyond, at most, wee roll of the eyes when the work was asked. That's it: I dunno, it had no absolutely quantitive effect on our ability to code beyond the < 30 seconds it took to change our PC/Macs to centre around main instead of master. As with most of these kind of things, the noise made by those suddenly objecting to it like it was some kind of Holy Writ was louder than the vast majority not giving a shít either way - or indeed those who felt the words were a problem. Of course it also made cute headlines for right wing rags to rant about "woke", often from a point of complete technical ignorance.

It's not important; it has no value, not in the grand scheme of things and would have no relationship on the competence or otherwise of any given development team. Just another incident of smoke and mirrors. 99.9% of developers don't care.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995288#Comment_119995288

Interesting. Did it hurt your code when they used main instead of master or whatever?

AndrewJRenko

CEO of three large businesses has nothing better to do than to go full Covid-denial-conspiracy nonsense.

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995332#Comment_119995332

I don't think anyone is defending bad employees, but they're also not labelling hundreds of people as incompetent just to defend one billionaire man-baby and his superhuman ego.

AndrewJRenko

Great to see the free speech absolutist showing his true colours

https://twitter.com/mattzeitlin/status/1603011037711765504?s=46&t=_E1JyQJ2X2xiMsylDKwXKg

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995477#Comment_119995477

My mistake - those terms aren't actually offensive, they are/were well established technical terms used to describe purely technical aspects. But some people with nothing else better to do decided they are offensive, and the very fact these people have any word to say in purely technical matters is part of the reason we see such failures.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995829#Comment_119995829

Shocking to hear that there may have been black people, who clearly have “nothing better to do” , causing the tech bros to use different words. Maybe if the tech bro community was just a little more diverse and inclusive, these issues could have been sorted out earlier, internally?

pixelburp

So basically. Code would be amazing and less flawed, if it wasn't for those inclusion warriors.

LOLOL.

That's not even orbital to planet Earth at this stage, just fantasy scapegoating for pretty mundane incidences of bad technical management. Good to know the FE developer that left us with some critical libraries still tied to his work email, was actually because we changed our github repo to "main" rather than "master". Where's my red twine, I need to update the corkboard... it's all connected.

Snort.

Actually, scratch that IIRC, I myself pushed out something to production still using a trial API key the other month - I guess that's those diversity nazis at it again, muddling my brain.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995864#Comment_119995864

The tech bro community is as inclusive as it can possibly be, if you look at the open source communities it will be obvious how diverse they are. And for example one of the pioneers of computer engineering and more exactly gaming (the most toxic bro'hood of them all if you ask these people) is a black engineer. But we digress, this topic is not about that.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995898#Comment_119995898

If the tech bro community (and the hint is in the name) was anything near diverse, they wouldn't keep pushing out applications that work beautifully for 20-30 something white males, but not quite so well if you're older with poor vision or you forgot your glasses or you come from a different culture and don't get their in-joke error messages. They would also have worked out why blacklisting and master/slave terminology was offensive on their own, without needing to be told by outsiders.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995961#Comment_119995961

You do know every race has been slaves it's not really a cut and dry black issue. It's more a human condition against other humans.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995961#Comment_119995961

applications that work beautifully for 20-30 something white males

You can't possibly be serious.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995961#Comment_119995961

I think that's overstating the problem a little: functionally, technical terminology isn't IMO the big problem for PoC or women getting more involved in coding - compared with remaining institutional prejudices and how education and opportunity encourages those groups to take an interest in STEM in the first place. If there's evidence to the contrary than I'd be interested to see it. Things are improving, slowly (and often thanks to things like a former colleague who runs after-school coding groups in inner city Chicago), but fundamentally the problem seems to remain that lack of opportunity and education. Now, that's not to say there isn't toxicity in the culture of IT - I'd think of something like Uber as a big example of that from recent memory - but I think it's somewhat overstated through corporations whose problems didn't stop at "tech bro" but an overall shítty workplace culture.

I found it really fascinating and depressing the last major hiring phase we just went through, essentially doubling our engineering team. Now, despite casting the net across the literal globe by dint of us being a worldwide Remote company, female developers still amounted to approx. 10% of the hundreds of applicants. Being an engineering lead, I had to review all the applicants coming through our hiring portal and it was noteworthy how few women represented that total. Ethnicity wise, it wasn't such a problem given that global reach; TBH most candidates tended to be non-caucasian.

But nor can we hire people who don't apply, and if women aren't applying for the roles, what can we do? We're a very casual, inclusive workplace and wouldn't argue culture was the problem. The nomenclature isn't the problem here - and its removable seems more about superficial performance from companies than anything (but is also trivial enough that doing it has no appreciable negative value either, despite the insinuations by Cordell). Myself and my aforementioned colleague in Chicago both worked for a major US corporation and that corporation ws more interested in being seen to be inclusive through empty actions like nomenclature change, than actually helping (such as, you know, helping my colleague with his afterschool group)

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996086#Comment_119996086

Have you ever wondered why you have to help your elderly relatives with all the new fangled technology? It's not because they're thick. It's because applications are largely designed by 20-30 somethings for 20-30 somethings. Go test your application on older people, on people with sight loss, on people with dyslexia, on non-native langauge speakers and other diverse audiences and see how well your design works.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996047#Comment_119996047

Why don't you go tell some black people, some descendants of slavery from maybe five generations back, about why they can't take offence because the tech bros mightn't like lit?

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996327#Comment_119996327

That's a load of nonsense. I'm used to android never used An I phone I wager i will not be able to just pick on up and use it intuitively. I rarely use a mac would also have the same issue. When smartphones came out no one got a handle on them instantly we had to learn.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996327#Comment_119996327

But what about the "white males" part? How can be an application designed for a particular skin color and gender? Are you by any chance implying that skin color directly impacts tech abilities? You can't possibly be that racist.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996346#Comment_119996346

Anything with face recognition. There have been issues because they grabbed a load of white people to train the systems and then they failed horribly when introduced to anyone who didn't look like the training group.

Unsure how it has improved over the last few years though if it has at all.

Although never put in production there was also the Amazon attempt at building an ai to help hire people. Except their only training data of good hires were people who already worked there, even without working out gender as a specific input it figured it out from the cv and was wildly sexist as its training data was largely male. Even without changing anything to do with qualifications it would remove women faster than men. The entire project had to be scrapped though there was no malice on behalf of the creators who had been trying to remove bias. However many modern applications are only as good as the input used to create them.

So any sort of ai could have similar issues with race as people from different parts of the world tend to have different naming styles etc.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996488#Comment_119996488

https://www.wired.com/story/best-algorithms-struggle-recognize-black-faces-equally/

A good read.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996519#Comment_119996519

That's absolutely tripe. Arrow to the knee is skyrim a gaming term Unless were suggesting there are no black gamers. I follow a load of black streamers on twitch. Building a snowman Jesus. Walking puppies nothing to do with race. Unless your French speaking or know about Poutine anyone would struggle.

Edit I know about poutine due to Belgian and Canadian mates.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996590#Comment_119996590

Gaming is as multicultural as you can get. Seriously reaching here. Go to Comicon for example or E3. Were just making stuff up now.

Do people think the same percentage of black males play (let alone have access to) games as white males do?

How many AAA games have central characters that are not white males?

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996614#Comment_119996614

Cue the "why doesn't Elden Ring have a story mode difficulty" and "why aren't there any black people in Witcher" loaded questions.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996754#Comment_119996754

The vast majority of AAA games that have a human as player character allows the player to choose any colour and gender. The rest of them, the ones that have a set player character, are quite diverse in terms of gender and race.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996816#Comment_119996816

I remember years ago a Japanese gaming company made a game set in Haiti about zombies Cries of racism at the time due to the zombies being black. You cant win.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996816#Comment_119996816

And tell me, how are the vast majority of these games advertised? As a white dude, that's generally how it's done. Being able to alter the white dude to play as a black woman (for example) is pretty much tokenism. You know who the game is being marketed to.

It's bonkers that there's some people put there don't realize that the vast majority of tech (including games) is biased towards white males aged 20-30. It always has been this way. Sure there's a few in-roads, but it's nowhere near equitable yet.

Silentcorner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996841#Comment_119996841

Great opportunity for some black lads to start their own company and target that demographic then? What's stopping them do you think? Sexism?

.Donegal.

Twitter bans the ElonJet account.

"My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk" - Elon Musk. November 7, 2022.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996866#Comment_119996866

Because its that easy

https://kotaku.com/minorities-in-game-development-still-dont-have-the-supp-1839105781

Also newsflash, the games industry is overhwhelmingly made up of white males and the only bigger problem it might have other than racism is sexism, both issues are regularly reported on by games media and press

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996866#Comment_119996866

It's just that "Gaming is as multi-cultural as you can get" is an utter horsesh*t statement.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996841#Comment_119996841

That's a tiny market then Do you mean in countries that are predominantly white ? Asian market is huge. In a global context there would be far more Asians in video games than white people. The western market is predominantly white so You would expect main characters to be white. No one is stopped making games with Black main characters. If there was a demand they would be missing a market. Of the 20 black streamers I follow on twitch I have never heard "why is this character white." It's a game not real life. In the Asian market they tend to make black people less prominent in posters or remove them that does not happen in the west.

Silentcorner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119996891#Comment_119996891

I'm not going down that rabbit hole of madness, sorry, equally I don't think that it is it racism that white boys experience when they watch professional basketball...or sexism when fashion shows employ 95% women!

Good money in complaining about it though, lots of cash in that!!

Beasty

Once again back on topic, which is not the gaming industry. The clues are in the thread title