On the contrary, I delivered exactly what they asked for. There was nothing incorrect in anything I wrote. The only problem for them was their unspoken, indeed unspeakable cultural assumptions. They could not openly say, ‘And make sure what you write conforms to our sexist view of the workplace.’ Part of the power of a lot of oppressive prejudice is that it is unspoken and so invisible to its victims and sometimes even its perpetrators. I was glad to strike a blow for equality and freedom, even though it was a pretty light blow. Given your rage over this mild slight to patriarchy, one has to wonder where you stand on more serious matters.
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The ‘engineering’ model was adopted by academic institutions not because it was natural or rational but because they wanted to get some control of the commercial programming field and its money in a hurry, and the nearest thing they could think of in their existing establishment was engineering. Hence also ‘computer science’ which somewhat predated ‘software engineering’ and was no more science than programming is traditional engineering.
One thing for sure: I wouldn’t want to work at Joyent, where you get fired for trivial issues.
In addition to other reasons, those of us who self-identify as non-binary gendered would like a pronoun that doesn’t look silly.
I agree that it is a good idea to avoid gender pronouns, and that reverting an edit eliminating one is not a good choice.
That said, I’m happy to live under a jurisdiction where firing an engineer over such a trifle would be simply illegal. Tell it to the labour court, maybe they are amsued by your outlandish definition of “empathy”, but I doubt it.
one of the challenges of an open source project that depends on volunteer effort is dealing with assholes
Yes, I can see that.
Any new pronoun, almost by definition, is going to look silly until we agree upon it and get used to it. “Hir” as a singular third person alternative to “their”. “E” as an alternative to he or she. Many other proposals have been made, though they haven’t gained a lot of traction. I’ve seen these enough that I can read text containing them without too much of a doubletake, but I wouldn’t try to use one in any official document and I tend not to use them informally unless people tell me that they, specifically, prefer to be referred to this way.
[Late thought: People did manage to add Ms. to common usage, so it can be done – but that’s the scale of effort needed, and I’m not sure enough people care strongly enough about this to make it happen. More likely “singular they” will become accepted as too universal to ignore. More’s the pity.’
BTW, I tend to agree that anyone who deliberately delivers a product that their management chain will object to is not doing the job they’ve been paid for and should be kicked out on their ass. The customer is not always right, but the customer is always the one with the money. If you can’t talk them into doing it right, your options are to do it their way or not take the money.
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This.
Years ago I worked in QA, man the shit they’d try to push through production just because no one wanted to go through proper channels (no, you cannot send out untested product, no I won’t sign that, fine lets go talk to the boss!) … best job ever really, yelling at engineers all day, it was a hoot. 
really? Name one engineering project ever which was not intended and undertaken and executed to satisfy a persons need?
also, “we” are not talking about nazi’s. Only you are. You brought it up, and the reason why is evident.
quote=“AcerPlatanoides, post:68, topic:15344, full:true”]
also, “we” are not talking about nazi’s. Only you are. You brought it up, and the reason why is evident.
[/quote]
Actually no. I brought up Werner von Braun as an example to illustrate
that engineering skill and empathy are orthogonal to each other. I
could have brought a multitude of other examples, but that one is a
pretty obvous and known one. There were plenty of great engineers in
history who lacked empathy.
You are free to show how he really didn’t lack empathy or that he
wasn’t a good engineer.
[quote=“AcerPlatanoides, post:68, topic:15344, full:true”] really?
Name one engineering project ever which was not intended and
undertaken and executed to satisfy a persons need? [/quote]
Ah ah. No moving goal posts here.
The original statement was “Engineering is not just about getting a
thing done, it’s about serving people.” Considering that this
discussuion is about “empathy” I feel save to assume that it refers to
serving other people.
This excludes any engeneering projcet undertaken for the amusement or
beneft of its maker, be it software projects which address only a
personal need and are never being seen by another person or Justo
Gallego Martínez’ cathedral.
Also, the need can be very sketchy. Von Braun’s engeneering addressed
the Reich’s leadership’s need to deliver bombs to London, Project
Manhattan addressed the need to wipe out German or Japanese cities, so
simply fulfilling a need isn’t necessarily a good thing in itself.
But even if the needs and goals are just, the people who build the
solutions do not have to be. You might not want them talk with the
customer, hell, you might not want them on your team, because they
disrupt it, but again, that doesn’t make them bad engineers. It just
makes them hard to handle.
Sorry, but the whole idea that they have to have empathy to be good in
a goven field is just-universe folly, as propagated with every
expensive cheap Hollywood flick where the asshole gets his
comeuppance.
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There are only boys.
Which is probably a huge part of the problem.
“What separates the men from the boys is the price of their toys.”
Truer words were never spoken.
Oh, W v B had empathy all right. And sympathy. Even compassion.
It’s just that he directed (or applied) these, well - I’m still looking for the mot juste here, so I’ll just say: not where he should have. Not when we talk of places like Nordhausen Dora.
Having empathy doesn’t mean “doing the right thing” or even “being a nice guy”.
But I guess this should be the topic of a discussion of it’s own.
Okay, thank you for your civil response. I will try one more time.
I am not clear that you have struck a blow for gender equality or anything else. It is not like anyone picked up on what you did or learned anything about it… until your employer discovered it and flipped out. Nobody learned anything.
On the other hand, you could have simply used “he” or “they” everywhere, or even “he or she” as some manuals of style posted here mention.
To be honest I have been out of the country for a while so I may have to readjust my expectations. Because even though I used to think I could write damned good prose, and yes am pretty aware of gender issues in literary theory your suggestion that I am morally bankrupt notwithstanding, now I see I might have to readjust my expectations. The world moves on and people in the U.S. apparently all seem to have to be fighting for something at any given time with its expressions inserted randomly into works for hire, code, etc. Fine, I can adjust to that. As for the idea that empathy is necessary to engineering, this is quite an interesting and deep subject. Cosmically deep really it is fascinating. I think it can be taken as both true and false so it becomes a mirror of one’s attitude, as I think you hinted. Engineering in terms of physics does not need empathy. You could expect to find for example huge engineering works made by alien machines far away in the universe and they don’t need empathy, if you subscribe to a bleak machinery wins science fiction theme. Of course in lots of other science fiction, and in just about every other sense on this planet, empathy is important because you are building things people need to live in / deal with / be psychologically affected by. A lack of empathy (or sheer idiocy one might also say) is why a little child was crushed in a state of the art robotic entry door to Roppongi Hills in Tokyo. The sensors that normally stop these kind of heavy doors couldn’t see the short human in its way. There is a lot of other empathy stuff involved and whether it is about being more welcoming to women or being less robotic in the way a software project is managed, or dealing with people on a one on one basis and not on the basis of political power, there is much to consider. After all is said and done I think it would be more valuable to make more visible projects to support these directions and not limit them to petty acts of revenge buried in a user’s manual. It is important and you should talk to people about it.
p.s. This is in reply to starrygordon’s reply “On the contrary, I delivered exactly what they asked for. There was nothing incorrect in anything I wrote. The only problem for them was their unspoken, indeed unspeakable cultural assumptions. They could not openly say, ‘And make sure what you write conforms to our sexist view of the workplace.’ Part of the power of a lot of oppressive prejudice is that it is unspoken and so invisible to its victims and sometimes even its perpetrators. I was glad to strike a blow for equality and freedom, even though it was a pretty light blow. Given your rage over this mild slight to patriarchy, one has to wonder where you stand on more serious matters.”
I appreciate you giving me such freedoms. Thank you eternally for your gifts!
But you forgot one of the other things I am free to do.
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