Collected for a friend
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Personal absolute highlights
There and Back Again – Or, how I quit programming and returned.
Making it Past the Lobby of the Meritocracy – What does it mean to have success socializing at hot-ticket events if you can’t get past the front door of them?
Gendered Language: Feature or Bug in Software Documentation? – How open source enforces male domination through shaming and hostility.
Lean Against: Building an Alternative to Lean In Within Tech – The ultimate message of Lean In ideology is transparent in the name itself: Stay in the machine. Work for the machine. Appease the machine.
Hiring, Rock Stars, and How Camaraderie Fails Us – The mythos of the “rock star” is a compelling and seductive one.
Manufacturing the Talent Shortage – How our assumptions about the skill and capability of our technical workforce keeps us from building more diverse — and more successful — organizations.
Leaving Toxic Open Source Communities – Exploring the cultural shame of leaving and tips for finding healthy communities.
HR Antipatterns at Startups – The toxic devaluation of HR at tech companies.
The Newest Frontier – Tech, the latest bastion of structural and economic White supremacy.
The Fantasy and Abuse of the Manipulable User – When mistreating users becomes competitive advantage.
On Open Companies, Consent, and Safety (among other things) – We can’t get to the future we want by pretending we’re already there.
Sex and the Startup: Men, Women, and Work – All of the efforts to get more women into tech will fail as long as the culture assumes that their labor is less valuable.
Not a Tech Bro, but Not a Tech Lady – A queer nonbinary South Asian dreams of intersectionality in tech.
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Highly recommended
Dear Marginalized People Coming Into Tech – Experiences, Thoughts and Advice From Experienced Technologists
An Open Letter on Feminism In Tech – We are tired of pretending this stuff doesn’t happen.
The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee – The indignities unwittingly foisted upon the early operations employee are many and varied.
Managing Up and Barely Holding On – When company attitudes around training and growth unwittingly produce ineffective managers.
It is Bigger Than Microaggressions – Moving through tech as a black trans man.
The Lesbians Who Tech Summit is the First Of Its Kind – Start Somewhere founder Leanne Pittsford dreamed of being able to network openly with other queer women in the tech industry.
Dissent Unheard Of – Perhaps the scariest part of speaking out is seeing the subtle insinuation of consequence and veiled threats by those you speak against.
Gawking At Rape Culture – We Are Not Your Clickbait.
In Defense of Twitter Feminism – Call-out culture, gentrification on social media and the politics of feminist discourse online.