> Stop me when this sounds familiar. It’s early morning. There are stale bagels, cheap coffee, and a mix of knock-off stilettos. There’s a table with name tags, fat sharpies, and people bumbling about who looks a hair too much like Dwight Schrute. Everyone is shaking hands, saying their nice-to-meet-you’s, and being totally and utterly forgettable.
I'm happy to say that that sounds utterly unfamiliar, and I'm positively proud to say that I have no idea how to distinguish "knock-off stilettos."
I'm not sure about the origin of this idea, but I believe it is Ken Kesey... the gist being that charisma isn't so much the ability to get people to like you as the ability to get yourself to like other people.
No. Neither was the obfuscated swear word in the title. Nor the word 'screw'. Nor was the picture at the top of the article or the pink headings. Or the call to action below. Nor the chatty writing style. Very little of the article was necessary, but it is what it is.
You can draw the line anywhere, really, and the author chose to draw it there. If the author of every article self-censors and goes out of its way not to offend anyone at all then we're going to end up with a very boring world.
It's a good thing to have your sensibilities challenged.
Sorry, there's no handbook. You just have to go through life doing your best, occasionally there's a little misunderstanding and there's a witch-hunt and you're subjected to mass-Internet-bullying until you apologise for your little mistake, whether or not it was your fault. Together society moves forward to non-exclusionary monoculture where there is no risky language, however borderline or insignificant, and offenders are switftly dealt with.
For every joke there is a minority that it excludes.
Alternatively, people are thoughtful about what they write and equally thoughtful about their standards of evidence and credibility when they call people out on things. People stop and think before bullying each other in the name of equality and try to exercise empathy for everyone.
But sadly I don't think the human brain is wired for that.
(Yes I'm still annoyed about Noordhuis and incredulous about how vindictive and hateful some people can be.)
I'm generally what one would classify as a white-knighting witch-hunter who thinks that you should keep your "risky" language and humor out of professional contexts (for basically the same reason you shouldn't smoke cigarettes in professional offices, I shouldn't have to breathe that shit while I'm working) but I just upvoted you because you're making an excellent point about exercising empathy for everyone.
Here's the thing. So am I. I would say I am very egalitarian and very empathetic. I would say I am a feminist, which is perhaps why I find certain behaviour on the Internet under the banner of feminism troubling.
I recognise that mob-precursor-feeling rising in me occasionally (often when I see footage of policemen attacking civilians unprovoked) but, I think, it's up to us all to behave as civilised human beings, and that includes not joining the mob, seeking to empathise with both parties and actually looking for the evidence.
For this reason I find mob mentality and zero tolerance behaviour deeply troubling and try to engage in conversation whenever I see it.
This is a corporate blog so you could say it comes under the 'professional' umbrella. If you're going to criticise it, you could say that the general tone of the article isn't particularly professional, but, as I said in another comment, there was plenty more to find problems with than just the mention of a padded bra. I happen to think the blog post was fine, probably because the Internet has brought personal and professional universes incredibly close.
I understand if others disagree, for disagreement to be respected it has to come intellectual honesty (i.e. evidence of critical thought) rather than as a reflex.
I don't disagree with your initial point. However, it carries the rhetorical premise that simply because we find something offensive we should question our sensibilities rather than note when we feel other folks are being sexist.
To an extent, I agree with that as well, though it's possible you're not intending that premise within your statement.
But ultimately, we have sensibilities, and while we should question them it's not universally the case that our sensibilities are wrongheaded, and personally, I think the padded bra comment is a good example of that kind of thing which, even upon reflection, I have little trouble saying that folks who write like that are employing a sexist trope.
I think that we should all strive both not to be offensive and not to be easily offended. Just as importantly, we can call out stupid sexist tropes (or inadvertent exclusionary language) without demonizing those who write them.
It's a misogynous analogy. If we call it out we can make the world a better place, where everyone is actually equal and break the horrible let's-pretend-we're-equal-while-holding-some-people-down status quo. Everyone's a winner. Except misogynists.
Hear hear. But you're not doing it properly. Please be consistent.
"what about being human when it matters most? In person" - doesn't this exclude people with social anxiety disorders?
"mix of knock-off stilettos" - doesn't this exclude people who wear flats?
"people bumbling about who looks a hair too much like Dwight Schrute" - doesn't this exclude people who do look like him and may have body image issues?
"You have just entered the land of networking hell" - this imagery is deeply offensive to some religions
"Screw the schmoozing" - using sexual imagery? No thanks.
"The people who hand out business cards like they are condoms in a high school sex ed. class" - alienates those with a conservative upbringing
"Disclaimer – keep those condoms, kids" - again, pretty offensive to Catholics
"They want meaningful relationships" - again social anxiety
"And people respond to kindness." - not everyone. Exclusionary to those on certain parts of the autistic spectrum.
"The same philosophy goes for networking" - I can imagine quite a few real philosophers getting offended about the belittling of their profession
"One good conversation is better than five quick ones every day of the week" - not the Shabbat!
"It’s for people who will never be more than middlemen" - think of all the middlemen out there, feeling excluded at this hate speech and switching off
"when you remember to be human" - deeply insulting to robots
Sorry, I should have put a <rhetoricalIllustration> tag around that to clarify that I don't actually believe any of the above. (Do I really need to say that?). I won't spell it out again, I've made other comments in this thread.
Definitely. Misogyny is thrown around so much now that it's getting a bit absurd. She made a quip about push up bras => MISOGYNY! If I made a quip about dudes padding their underwear, what would that be?
And I've always thought of misogyny to mean the hate/dislike of women; in other words, a perpetual and sustained belief, but these days it seems to be attributed to singular insults/moments of disrespect. The two are related, and hate may imply disrespect but a moment of disrespect does not imply hate.
Women can and do use misogynistic, inappropriate, and unprofessional language, too. The "was that really necessary?" question is still perfectly valid to ask even when the author is female.
The point of the article was making fun of a small subgroup of humanity who like meatspace networking events in a format similar to cosmo-style psuedo-risque dating advice. And some folks don't like his use of an analogy of exhibitionistic-ish women. The problem is if you stick to a dating advice theme, what analogy would you prefer? White men can't jump would be much more politically correct because they're a politically safe target, but doesn't fit the theme at all. Also the theme of "lets make fun of suboptimal behavior of a subgroup" is completely incompatible with your proposed "lets pretend we're equal" theme, so the article not fitting your criteria is the opposite of a fail, under the defined theme and purpose of this individual article, however good it might be as general life advice.
So either its a great analogy for this specific text, or its a horrible text so the specifics of the analogies and other details don't matter. But it can't be both at the same time such as a bad analogy.
It was a bad analogy WRT not using technology, its a fail as I believe the push up is considerably higher tech than the padded, or at least a more respectable mechanical engineering challenge. It is a perfectly good analogy as an example of not using mere larger numbers as a success metric and not trying to maximize shallowness of interaction as a success metric. So about 90% correct but specific word choice was not ideal.
That and the commentary on condoms made it look like he was aiming for a dating scene series of analogies and changed his mind half way thru without completely changing the tone of the article. It does appear to have started as a post about dating advice and morphed into a networking post. #1 is about one night stands, #2 is about putting notches on the bedpost, #3 is a bit of personal bias about not liking adult toys or group activities, which is his loss. This analogy also makes the self-selection bias assumption that is probably wrong, in that most of the people participating are either exhibitionists or those who enjoy taking a harmless look at exhibitionists, and most definitely are not a self selected crowd interested in church approved premarital counseling and abstinence only young adult education, so pushing those unpopular outlooks is unlikely to interest the audience. In both the article or my dating analogy of the article.
Because I'm too lazy to hit the about button and find out its an all female site (which it is), one english language gendered pronoun has one less letter than the other and I'm lazy, in this particular situation scattering some "s" doesn't change the content of the discussion in any productive way, and gendered pronouns as a concept is a fairly stupid language design decision and one way to demonstrate disrespect for a stupid idea is to ignore a stupid idea's ridiculous rules.
If our shared language was poorly designed enough to have racially segregated pronouns as opposed to gender segregated pronouns (don't laugh, its an almost equally stupid design decision) I'd probably call you all martians out of disrespect to a dumb design decision not because you're all actually from mars.
Its not because the website authors profile pics make them look manlier than myself or I admire their beards or anything dumb like that.
Yeah sorry it's not that important. I suppose I was more sensitive to it because the discussion was derailed into misogyny (which derailing I participate in).
"Networking is for losers." but the final point is to put down your business cards and ...network?
I get it, he's saying not be soulless, personality-lacking networking stooge. But the advice is to simply network ... better. Instead of force-feeding your business card, actually talk to someone.
Not sure about anyone else but this was advice that seemed pretty obvious to me and most I network with.
In my experience this isn't obvious to most. I've hosted an event 8x a year since 2000, and you can see the people who seem to be 'on a mission' as opposed to the ones that are a bit more subtle about it. If it takes you less than 5 seconds to produce a business card, you're probably a bit too anxious.
Many people view events as an almost speed dating type atmosphere instead of just staying in the moment and not fixating on the need to acquire (info, contacts, etc.).
Yes, we nerds should know this trick: It's exactly like when we were kids, and they told us "don't try to be cool." What we really needed to do was not get caught trying to be cool; needed to try so hard that we made it our identity rather than a detectable affectation.
I wish I had known in high school that they meant, "Don't try to be cool, just make being cool the central focus of your life." Thank God the definition of cool gets much more flexible after high school.
This article can be summarized as "Honestly, just don't be an utter knob".
Just talk to people like they are your friends. I usually start off by talking about music and other interests before drilling down into work talk which everyone hates but can stand for a minute.
Right. I'm fairly outgoing, but I still have to turn on the "socialize with strangers" switch in my brain if I'm at a conference. If I don't, I end up spending all my time talking to friends rather than making new connections.
Articles like this are useful, though, for explaining what good networking looks like. Having a picture of the process makes a big difference for me when I'm trying to improve or do something I don't do very often.
I suck at networking, or any kind of social interaction that doesn't at least involve some dice. So if I follow the "fuck networking, just be human" advice, that means I'm not going to be meeting a lot of people.
Then again, I don't really want to meet a lot of people. But making one or two really good connections every once in a while would probably be nice. In fact, at a recent GDG Devfest, I spoke with a couple of people who were all passionate about teaching programming to young kids. I want to keep in touch, gave them my card, and then forgot who they were. I'm terrible at remembering people, even if they're really cool and we spoke passionately.
After you speak to someone you want to remember, you might try excusing yourself to the restroom to make a note on your phone. Or recording a voice memo in your car on the way home with all the information you can remember about various people.
Despite the advice to stop counting (and start stopwatch timing) it seems to boil down to everyone's an equal commodity and you should boost your numbers.
If someone's boring or not relevant, they're getting the "poorly designed piece of cardstock" and maybe a psuedo-sales pitch.
WRT to being one of those people, there is intense selection bias going on, and if the majority of the subset at a meatspace networking event are focused specifically on being one of those people, then no one at that event will be interested in not being one of those people. I'm just saying bars are great, and AA meetings are great, therefore a double-great idea would be an AA meeting at a bar. Hmm.
This is especially important for those of us that work in tech. We’re all extremely attached to our phones. We can’t just sit on the bus anymore. People are faking calls to make themselves look busy and important when they’re waiting for their friends to show up. We go out for dinner with people and we’re more interested in email and text messages. While it’s important to be connected, it’s even more important to be present when you’re interacting with others.
Perhaps I don't have much of a set to base this on, but from what I've noticed the ones in tech (at least, the ones well versed in it, not just generic managers and help desk workers -- though their job title does not dictate their actual knowledge, of course)... they tend not to be smartphone junkies as much as the average consumer. Especially not for things like text messages and email.
I guess it depends on the person, though. The ambitious startup type might fit the above criteria quite well.
I love Louis CK on that one. Like he says that people just need to put the way phones to learn be "just that person". Notice that you CAN ride an elevator by yourself normally. But when there are few more people you try to beat this awkward moment by going into the phone instead of just staying still, relax and look straight :)
Being present is critical, but this type of advice is pretty useless for someone who has a difficult time speaking with strangers. It is hard to be present when all you are thinking about is all the bad possibilities that may come out of talking to people you have never met.
If you're scared of sounding dumb or "new" you won't be willing to talk with the people who you think are much more successful than yourself. Handling the uncomfortable ball of nerves your body creates before speaking with strangers is hard. There's no step by step list of things you can do to get over yourself. It requires experience which is earned only by attending events/conferences/meetups that are full of strangers. The only way around the nerves is being prepared with a quick blurb about yourself (which is also hard). Knowing how to respond to the "So what do you do?" question sounds easy enough but it's also super terrifying if you're a shy/introverted person. Having this answer prepared will allow you to get through the hardest wall of all: actually speaking to the stranger(s).
If you're thinking of selling schemes before you even shake someones hand, your not going to be listening.
If you're just trying to collect names and cards, you won't be building long lasting relationships.
I try to forget about my business cards until I'm asked if I have one. I also try treating people with respect instead of a sales pitch, which requires listening to what they're saying. I would bring business cards with you everywhere, though. It is good to have them on hand if someone wants a way to remember you. They are even better to have on hand when they specifically ask for one. You are not going to build a meaningful relationship if they forget your last name. Lowering the barrier to your information for someone who actually wants your information on hand is important. It is even more important if the people you are meeting expect a card as a way to remember you.
Respect also requires remembering their name (which is harder for me than remembering an entire conversation!). In order for me to remember a single name in the moment, I will immediately repeat it. Maybe once out loud, as a way of beginning the conversation. If I'm with a group, and depending on the age of the people, I'll make it a memory game. I'll repeat their names as we go around introducing ourselves. After everyone has introduced themselves I'll repeat all their names again, sometimes letting them know I have a hard time with names. Self-deprecation helps me break the ice if I'm nervous and tends to make the group laugh. This works especially well when speaking with college students since they are usually much more nervous than whoever they are speaking with.
Being nice and handling conversations is difficult, and I think knowing the intricacies of conversation is an art. It needs to be practiced with everyone you encounter.
