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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33460 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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But, I do not see any way to achieve this due to the asymmetry in the distribution of interest. When taken to its logical conclusion, average expendable (male) Software Engineers like me will be left hanging out to dry unlike average or below average women. And it galls me when my concerns get gaslighted as incompetent men who cannot handle the competition.

I am considering alternative options for my future in the software industry. I have noticed that there are certain expectations and requirements for participation in various aspects of the industry, such as employment and technical communities. I am aware that there may come a time when my opportunities in the industry may be limited due to these expectations and requirements.

Come work in defense. Legends (meaning emails) tell of the company’s DEI initiatives, but I have yet to interact with any such thing. Everyone in a remotely technical field just quietly doesn’t give a shit.

I am reminded of an exchange several years ago on the original SlateStarCodex forum where a prominent "right wing" poster was complaining about not being able to find a programming job that was not inundated in progressive nonsense. I told them that if they were willing to move to Huntsville AL I could get them a job writing code for artillery and missile guidance computers where they wouldn't have to deal with any of that bullshit. To be clear this was a genuine offer at the time. But the response I got was a rant about how deeply offended they were by the mere suggestion that they might give up their cushy FAANG job to go work for the defense industry in a state that was over 25% nigger.

So it goes.

They chose their path, and in my eyes whatever DEI nonsense they complained about in the future became something that they had volunteered for.

Moving to defense to avoid DEI nonsense is not likely to work out so well. One, of course defense still has plenty of DEI nonsense, even if it's taught by bored black ladies instead of rainbow-haired white and Asian nonbinary queer folk. Two, the security clearance process involves a WHOLE LOT of nonsense, very intrusive nonsense. Three, programming for defense involves a whole lot of non-DEI nonsense. MIL-STD-498 may be gone, but its replacement isn't likely to be less bureaucratic. And yes, of course, defense pays much less than FAANG.

There are jobs in the tech industry with less DEI BS than Facebook, Google, and pre-Elon Twitter, and total less BS than defense (a very low bar). Maybe not in SF. Probably even in the Bay Area. (My own DEI stuff is taught by CalArts icons and diverse actors -- that is, it's prerecorded box-checking. Probably about the best you can do in tech, unless the company is VERY small).

I'll point to my reply back when someone brought up Antidem's proposal, here. I've done it. I recommend it!

But it wasn't getting you clear of the bullshit six or even two years ago, and it's gotten worse in the meantime. If you don't want to be surrounded by SJWs, moving to a purple or red state can help, but your defense contractor job absolutely will still be (required by federal regulation!) to throw social justice frameworks at you, even as everyone in the building not working for HR and compliance thinks a lot of it's bullshit.

((I'm also having trouble finding the original, but some other details from your past retellings seem relevant.))

your defense contractor job absolutely will still be (required by federal regulation!) to throw social justice frameworks at you...

Maybe, but your DEI training will be administered by a middle-aged black lady who through her emphasis on "federally mandated" will tell you that she thinks that this is a waste of everyone's time as much as you do.

Lots of work for medium-size Red manufacturing co.s and such these days -- you don't even have to move to their little Red town if you don't want to.

Or oil & gas? You'll probably have wear safety glasses at the computer or some shit, but shouldn't get run off the job for not being woke enough.

deleted

Pretty sure he's referring to the deep-blue nature of the populations in these fields, and the concomitant tendency to police their communities for any hint of crypto-Red tendency or sympathy. There's a good chance that the further down this road we get, the more untenable it's going to become for non-true-believers to survive in the tech industry.

Just as there's anti-black racism in the 'deeply subliminal and structural problems' sense and then there's anti-black racism in the 'will explicitly refuse to work with black people' sense, there's a difference between 'does exactly what's required to keep EEOC off them' and 'anti-racist layoffs'.

I got a ping today about a really inside-story drama from the modded Minecraft world, but one of the footnotes (archive) had Forge leadership getting pressured to leave a project by her employer over the Twitter Likes of an entirely different person on the project, and getting that person to step down from managing the project was the only way her employer would allow her to continue contributing. (archive link here).

This is insane cult behavior that makes maoist struggle sessions look measured and sensible. I have a hard time understanding what happened, but in the end the most rabid group won everything and purged all the competition? And these zealots are basically the self-appointed enforcers of community policy for all minecraft modding?

This collab program is occasionally misunderstood as a sort of "hit squad" attempting to "cancel" Minecraft community members and have them removed from as many servers as possible, largely due to rhetoric pushed by queerphobes, racists and other bigots that have been banned by communities taking part in the program. However, it does nothing of the sort

And then proceeds to narrate how they did exactly that

And these zealots are basically the self-appointed enforcers of community policy for all minecraft modding?

Perhaps not all, fabric is actually quite good these days

firearms manufacturing seems a lot more Red.

where, when, and what industry?

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