Riot Games won't get any better, and neither will the tech industry as a whole, until tech workers learn some goddamn history, unionize, go on strike, and stay on strike until management agrees to...
Riot Games won't get any better, and neither will the tech industry as a whole, until tech workers learn some goddamn history, unionize, go on strike, and stay on strike until management agrees to more humane working conditions and a more inclusive culture.
(I'm going to keep saying this every time I see an article like this unless things change or the admins give me the boot, because somebody has to.)
I do believe that will help solve some of the issues within the tech industry, such as being overworked. However, specifically with Riot's issues with diversity, women and basically non-straight...
I do believe that will help solve some of the issues within the tech industry, such as being overworked. However, specifically with Riot's issues with diversity, women and basically non-straight bro guys, are the minority. They have no real power as a minority. The culture, the 80% needs to change, and so far there are still employees arguing that employees who are up in arms are over-sensitive.
In Norwegian public life the phrase "taking responsibility" after a scandal effectively means resigning and letting someone else clean up the mess. That's anything but taking responsibility. It...
In Norwegian public life the phrase "taking responsibility" after a scandal effectively means resigning and letting someone else clean up the mess.
That's anything but taking responsibility. It generally means getting paid for x months/years while doing nothing and having someone else sort things out.
It's more of a symbolic action to show something is done while corporate policy/culture doesn't change one bit. It's a PR move, and it's a shame whenever people are calling for the meaningless PR move to be made.
It only makes sense to get rid of an executive if you don't believe they can fix the problems from their watch and you have someone capable of doing a better job lined up immediately.
As I understand it, many of the executives people are asking to be shown the door are being done so because of misbehavior, not mismanagement of culture. They want the COO gone because he's been...
As I understand it, many of the executives people are asking to be shown the door are being done so because of misbehavior, not mismanagement of culture. They want the COO gone because he's been harassing employees.
His attempt to defend the session from allegations of sexism is outright confusing, to put it lightly. Such a session is literally sexist in that it discriminates against a group of people, men,...
Late last week, two Riot employees who had been outspoken about women’s issues at the company exited the company following a controversial Riot session at Seattle convention PAX West. The session was meant to help women and non-binary people get into the games industry and excluded men, which sparked a huge outcry among League of Legends’ Reddit community, many of whom referred to the session as “sexist.” After Riot asked employees not to engage with these angry fans, Riot employee Daniel Klein called those fans out on Twitter. He attempted to explain why the panel was not sexist, and was intended to empower women and non-binary gamers, at one point calling angry fans “manbabies” and the Reddit thread a “toxic landfill.” Klein received some significant harassment online, and former employee Mattias Lehman, who had been outspoken about sexism at Riot in the past, stood up for him on Twitter. Lehman subsequently exited the company under hazy circumstances and, on that same day, Klein told The Verge, he was fired for “violating social media policy.”
sexism — 2. Different treatment or discrimination based on a difference of sex or gender; 4. Promotion or expectation or assumption of people to behave in accordance with or deviate from a gender role
His attempt to defend the session from allegations of sexism is outright confusing, to put it lightly. Such a session is literally sexist in that it discriminates against a group of people, men, based on a difference of sex or gender. Also, he hypocritically uses sexist language, "manbabies," to attack and demean his opponents for deviating from expected "manly" behavior.
I don't understand why he chose this hill to die on, especially considering that he claims to care deeply about fostering diversity in the workplace. His behavior implies the opposite. A better approach would have been to take the criticism, understand it, and use it to improve on future sessions. He didn't even have to apologize.
Inclusivity lies at the root of diversity, and it follows that inclusive educational assemblies would have a greater positive impact than exclusive ones. Inclusivity breeds further inclusivity, and likewise, exclusivity breeds further exclusivity. Everyone has something to gain from a more diverse environment, and it's up to all members of an institution, both in the minority and the majority, to facilitate its diversity.
Without getting bogged down in etymology, conventions and convention culture tend to be dominated by straight men. Is it so bad for someone to try and create a space specifically for other...
Without getting bogged down in etymology, conventions and convention culture tend to be dominated by straight men. Is it so bad for someone to try and create a space specifically for other genders? For them to have somewhere they can be
comfortable and feel like themselves without having to worry about the majority for once?
Personally, I think the establishment of a gender-exclusive space is neither good nor bad in and of itself. What determines its "goodness" or "badness" is relative to its purpose. For example, I...
Personally, I think the establishment of a gender-exclusive space is neither good nor bad in and of itself. What determines its "goodness" or "badness" is relative to its purpose. For example, I wholeheartedly agree with you that the creation of such a space is not so bad for the purpose of comforting those uncomfortable with diverse spaces in which they are part of a minority. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with my original comment or the excerpt from the article.
The session was meant to help women and non-binary people get into the games industry
This is the stated purpose of the session according to the article. Unlike in your scenario, exclusivity is most definitely bad for the fulfillment of this purpose. As explained in my original comment, an inclusive session would have fostered diversity on all sides, educating and improving the community as a whole. It would have better enabled conversations between existing members of the industry and minority newcomers.
At best, the exclusive session preached to the choir. At worst, it worsened the "us versus them" attitude maintained by intolerant individuals both inside and outside of the tent. Furthermore, the games industry is very apparently dominated by men. This fact inspired the gender-exclusive session in the first place. If the intention of the session was to help women and non-binary individuals enter the industry, excluding men makes little sense from a networking standpoint. It is impossible to establish a foothold in any industry without interacting with its extant members.
As someone who would have been welcomed into that session, I'm having a very hard time understanding its function.
My impression was more that this was an advice/portfolio review event, rather than a networking one. I may be wrong, but if that was its focus, it doesn't sound like opening it to men would have...
The session was meant to help women and non-binary people get into the games industry
This is the stated purpose of the session according to the article. Unlike in your scenario, exclusivity is most definitely bad for the fulfillment of this purpose. As explained in my original comment, an inclusive session would have fostered diversity on all sides, educating and improving the community as a whole. [...] If the intention of the session was to help women and non-binary individuals enter the industry, excluding men makes little sense from a networking standpoint. It is impossible to establish a foothold in any industry without interacting with its extant members.
My impression was more that this was an advice/portfolio review event, rather than a networking one. I may be wrong, but if that was its focus, it doesn't sound like opening it to men would have created more opportunities for female and nonbinary attendees to interact with extant members of the gaming industry-- any men going to see the panels would be in a similar place in their career, just starting out.
If there's an appreciative imbalance in the gender/race/etc composition of a field, events geared towards recruiting the minority parties make sense to me. A co-ed event would have likely perpetuated the same demographics split already seen in the industry. Is there research indicating that programs to recruit women specifically (for example) do more harm than good?
Ah, I hadn't considered that! That's a very good point, I definitely agree with you here. If that was indeed the purpose, sexism seems like a good call in this case. I doubt it, but I have no...
My impression was more that this was an advice/portfolio review event, rather than a networking one. … A co-ed event would have likely perpetuated the same demographics split already seen in the industry.
Ah, I hadn't considered that! That's a very good point, I definitely agree with you here. If that was indeed the purpose, sexism seems like a good call in this case.
Is there research indicating that programs to recruit women specifically (for example) do more harm than good?
I doubt it, but I have no idea. To hazard a guess, I'd imagine that so long as the same standards are upheld, sexist recruiting programs would yield employees of equivalent quality compared to inclusive recruiting programs. However, the total number of employees hired would likely be smaller due to the smaller starting pool.
Nonetheless, I remain unable to sympathize with Daniel Klein. Not only was he wrong, but he handled the situation incredibly poorly to the point of outright hypocrisy.
Riot Games won't get any better, and neither will the tech industry as a whole, until tech workers learn some goddamn history, unionize, go on strike, and stay on strike until management agrees to more humane working conditions and a more inclusive culture.
(I'm going to keep saying this every time I see an article like this unless things change or the admins give me the boot, because somebody has to.)
I do believe that will help solve some of the issues within the tech industry, such as being overworked. However, specifically with Riot's issues with diversity, women and basically non-straight bro guys, are the minority. They have no real power as a minority. The culture, the 80% needs to change, and so far there are still employees arguing
that employees who are up in arms are over-sensitive.This is a follow-up to a previous article about rampant sexism at Riot. Tildes thread here.
In Norwegian public life the phrase "taking responsibility" after a scandal effectively means resigning and letting someone else clean up the mess.
That's anything but taking responsibility. It generally means getting paid for x months/years while doing nothing and having someone else sort things out.
It's more of a symbolic action to show something is done while corporate policy/culture doesn't change one bit. It's a PR move, and it's a shame whenever people are calling for the meaningless PR move to be made.
It only makes sense to get rid of an executive if you don't believe they can fix the problems from their watch and you have someone capable of doing a better job lined up immediately.
As I understand it, many of the executives people are asking to be shown the door are being done so because of misbehavior, not mismanagement of culture. They want the COO gone because he's been harassing employees.
His attempt to defend the session from allegations of sexism is outright confusing, to put it lightly. Such a session is literally sexist in that it discriminates against a group of people, men, based on a difference of sex or gender. Also, he hypocritically uses sexist language, "manbabies," to attack and demean his opponents for deviating from expected "manly" behavior.
I don't understand why he chose this hill to die on, especially considering that he claims to care deeply about fostering diversity in the workplace. His behavior implies the opposite. A better approach would have been to take the criticism, understand it, and use it to improve on future sessions. He didn't even have to apologize.
Inclusivity lies at the root of diversity, and it follows that inclusive educational assemblies would have a greater positive impact than exclusive ones. Inclusivity breeds further inclusivity, and likewise, exclusivity breeds further exclusivity. Everyone has something to gain from a more diverse environment, and it's up to all members of an institution, both in the minority and the majority, to facilitate its diversity.
Without getting bogged down in etymology, conventions and convention culture tend to be dominated by straight men. Is it so bad for someone to try and create a space specifically for other genders? For them to have somewhere they can be
comfortable and feel like themselves without having to worry about the majority for once?
Personally, I think the establishment of a gender-exclusive space is neither good nor bad in and of itself. What determines its "goodness" or "badness" is relative to its purpose. For example, I wholeheartedly agree with you that the creation of such a space is not so bad for the purpose of comforting those uncomfortable with diverse spaces in which they are part of a minority. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with my original comment or the excerpt from the article.
This is the stated purpose of the session according to the article. Unlike in your scenario, exclusivity is most definitely bad for the fulfillment of this purpose. As explained in my original comment, an inclusive session would have fostered diversity on all sides, educating and improving the community as a whole. It would have better enabled conversations between existing members of the industry and minority newcomers.
At best, the exclusive session preached to the choir. At worst, it worsened the "us versus them" attitude maintained by intolerant individuals both inside and outside of the tent. Furthermore, the games industry is very apparently dominated by men. This fact inspired the gender-exclusive session in the first place. If the intention of the session was to help women and non-binary individuals enter the industry, excluding men makes little sense from a networking standpoint. It is impossible to establish a foothold in any industry without interacting with its extant members.
As someone who would have been welcomed into that session, I'm having a very hard time understanding its function.
My impression was more that this was an advice/portfolio review event, rather than a networking one. I may be wrong, but if that was its focus, it doesn't sound like opening it to men would have created more opportunities for female and nonbinary attendees to interact with extant members of the gaming industry-- any men going to see the panels would be in a similar place in their career, just starting out.
If there's an appreciative imbalance in the gender/race/etc composition of a field, events geared towards recruiting the minority parties make sense to me. A co-ed event would have likely perpetuated the same demographics split already seen in the industry. Is there research indicating that programs to recruit women specifically (for example) do more harm than good?
Ah, I hadn't considered that! That's a very good point, I definitely agree with you here. If that was indeed the purpose, sexism seems like a good call in this case.
I doubt it, but I have no idea. To hazard a guess, I'd imagine that so long as the same standards are upheld, sexist recruiting programs would yield employees of equivalent quality compared to inclusive recruiting programs. However, the total number of employees hired would likely be smaller due to the smaller starting pool.
Nonetheless, I remain unable to sympathize with Daniel Klein. Not only was he wrong, but he handled the situation incredibly poorly to the point of outright hypocrisy.