Tuesday 17 July 2012

Link: On technical entitlement

A Post by Tess Rinearson called On technical entitlement, has provoked a bit of a stir in reddit.

Apparently some posters consider to to somehow be emasculating... which is ironic, as the whole point of the article is to show how the behaviours of some people in the industry has an effect of destroying self confidence... and not just for women.

In my mind the only reason why the "women in tech meme" (as one commenter complained about) even shows up in the article is because the poster just happens to be female and it was a convenient example of the *general* problem that tech-entitlement seems to cause.

I think the discussion has been blown way out of proportion to the original article - which is an interesting look on one way that we can all think about our own behaviour (me included) to help newbies to the field feel more comfortable with being the beginners they are (and are allowed to be!).

What I took out of the article is that next time I meet somebody who's new to comp sci - I shouldn't try and "impress them" with my own l33t skillz to make myself seem big. Because often all that succeeds in doing is to make somebody else feel inferior - and that's *NEVER* a good thing. Instead try to encourage their own love of problem-solving ability, starting from where they are right now.

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