Hmm... well, the best thing about freedom of speech is that people can say what they want. So let both sides speak their peace and let the pieces fall wherever. I don't see either side's commentary as implicitly having more value. Having said that, I'm not keen on walking on eggshells myself, but I just haven't experienced it (been at loads o' companies).

Two things I kinda feel about corps: 1) They are profit oriented, so they tend to prefer organizational discipline. People that contribute positively stick around, others don't. I haven't seen anywhere myself where folks are "walking on eggshells" such that the corporate profit motives are so diminished that it disrupts the entire workplace unless specific legal issues have arisen, which has been rare in my book. 2) Corporations (big or small) tend to be legally averse. In cases of actual discrimination, harassment, fiduciary fraud, money laundering, etc, they have structured programs to avoid law suits. The laws already exist for most of these situations; a number of the larger companies sometimes force you to learn their additional rules so they avoid 'operational risk' (read: brand risk, the association of their company name with acts they don't like). My bigger beef with corporations is that they literally force you to give away privacy rights on email, chat, financials, legal, whatever you sign when you sign a contract. This often applies to companies of all sizes; it's a litigated nation. As a worker, you tend to be pretty powerless in most states. Their corporation legal/compliance courses tend to be a nuisance mostly. So typically, at most companies, I don't see individuals calling the shots at all - it is the corporations entirely.

If you want to campaign against the corps for their application of social justice, that's cool... I just haven't seen actual individuals as the driving reason why company rules are made generally... I'd bet the bulk of the rules are made on the basis of existing law, with corporate choices made to reduce legal risks.

Have you had to walk on eggshells at your company? Totally curious about that. I've been at companies tiny (a few people) to huge (international) and I just haven't even felt like anything I said, even inflammatory got me in hot water... only with the person I was arguing with.

I'd respectfully disagree - at least in my experience. I've actually seen more male prima donna coders than women by far; I can't even think of a single massive female tech ego that I've worked with. Hell, out of the couple thousand people I've worked with, I can almost count the women techies under 20-30 total. Plus, guys love flame wars more, I think, when a guy gets angry you can tell that the anger is going to come out somewhere. There's definite bravado in it. Hell, I've done my own share of trying to skewer someone over what amount to technical ideological differences... prolly was just my testosterone kicking in for what was really minor shit, looking back on it twenty years later.

It's just my personal experience though. If you coded years before me (in the 1970s?) and had different experiences, cool. I've worked for just shy of forty companies now, and every place has been different. The ideological tech battles seem to depend squarely on the culture of the place, to me anyway (think Microsoft v open source, etc).

Anyway, guess we just had different experiences - thanks for telling your story too. btw, my first project was doing a punch card replacement sys, so odds are you've been doing it longer...

This is a fucking long comment, so I apologize in advance. It started out short.

I'm reluctant to comment here because there seems to be a lot anger towards this guy, and it seems weird to try to ask a broader question. However, why does this one person quitting matter so much to warrant such vitriol? Is his behavior a huge threat to anyone personally? I don't care that much about the individual here - I'm far more interested in what the whole incident was about, and the social context. My real question is below: Do we want more women developers or not?

Re: coding chops

The one trait I've found from people I've respected... at least the ones I consider the most talented, is their ability to recognize how much they don't know. So, in general, when I see any comments in a forum about people's coding chops, I know that statistically the odds are fair that a lot of the commenters are not the top 1% most skilled coders. I, myself, fully recognize some of people I've worked with have accomplished remarkable things, well beyond what I might hope to accomplish. I only consider myself experienced due to year count in the industry, but I can't judge my own tech skills objectively. Thus, I seriously doubt I'm a top 1% coder, so someone out there is better doing a chop busting code review of this guy's stuff than me, and better than 99% of us. But the bottom line is: I don't think there's much value in evaluating this guy's coding chops... it's not really the point of the article.

Re: process, tech standards, naming conventions

If it were me, I wouldn't have filed a bug. I might have done a patch, submitted it, and jokingly put in a comment. Reduce possible conflict around something that doesn't matter much - why not, provided risk cost were low? The variable name doesn't bother me, but I'd consider the cost of doing the patch, what how other people might view it, and try to see the risk/reward. I don't see a minor refactoring as necessarily expensive, depending on the quality of the unit test support around it, the possible supporting tools (IDEs, code generation) and the overall infrastructure. Variable names get changed all the time for more whimsical reasons. AND, honestly, why didn't any actual discussion about this occur between the two parties? Was there existing tension? God knows, if not, I'd say a banning seems a little harsh - kind of like "I'm going to take my ball and go home." Maybe the guy's prerogative, but still, it seems like the individual involved had been a team member who invested time in the project... Btw, the notion that iGiveHead doesn't have any meaning... I'd disagree. getHead for a linked list method, fine. But using Hungarian notation for an integer with a method-like name strikes me as not labeled well at best. Does it have possible sexual innuendo? Sure! or we would not be discussing it at all. C'mon, I think we can at least agree on that. In the end, a variable name is not a bug, following technical process has merit, and you balance risk against upside in all situations. I'm not really savvy enough to their whole software lifecycle to make a technical decision on what cost and risk really existed. It just seems like again, this is not the white elephant in the room, the core point of discussion.

Re: do we want women working with us or not?

I see loads of these discussions busting people for language, SJW attitudes, that sorta stuff... but to me, we're not even discussing the real issue. As coders, do we want women working with us or not in the workplace? I personally actually enjoy having women around; like any set of people, there are some I've liked more than others, although honestly there haven't been many women coders over the years. If most coders do not want women around, fine. At this point, I can't really tell. All I know is that during tech interviews, a lot of guys I've worked with seem to be fairly interested in hiring women... We obviously want to sell tech products to women, so it seems like having women involved in that process might have some merit. And if we do want women (big 'if'), does anything need to change? What is acceptable to people, what is too far, is there room for any discussion on it at all? My guess is that if we did want more women working with us, we'd probably need to see if we're making it more or less likely to attract them to the industry.

Again, I'm not going to say one way or another is better, and hell, for each tiny subset of humanity and team, maybe it's different. All I know is that to me a lot of times the comments usually avoid the meatier part of the discussion. Maybe it's not possible online, but I like to think the net provides new venues for conversation. In places like Voat that pride themselves on freedom of speech, I'm still hopeful that even if I get shat upon for posting a non-confrontational comment about the scenario, that some people are still interested in looking at the bigger issues... I'm intentionally trying not to pounce on anyone, my comments are solely my own, and I'm just really curious if fellow devs want women working beside them or not. Even a yes or no might work: I have no interest in judging anyone for it - it's pure curiosity.

I really questioned whether I would post this at all, b/c is it risky to post it? It's easier not to, but if Voat is really about freedom of speech and challenging status quo, I'd like to see if discussion can happen around something definitely seems like a topic in the industry. But fuck it, I am curious, and I do wanna know if I'm going to be in an industry where for the next twenty years I'll be surrounded solely by guys until ai takes over.