As a woman, I adopted this solution about a year ago. I will literally tell new teammates, "Look, I'm new to this career, I have a TON to learn, and I would love to be critiqued and given advice on how I can improve. I operate under a good-faith policy, so I will always assume you're being helpful and not condescending, unless you're overwhelmingly insulting (ie: telling me women aren't made for leadership roles.)"

I do not exaggerate when I say that the amount of meaningful advice I've been given since I adopted this technique has increased 5x.

Another perk--due to my vocal policy on this, I had an autistic colleague tell me that I'm the only woman he feels comfortable working with. He struggles to read social situations, and he frets that women will interpret his bluntness as him being dismissive or "mansplaining." It made me very sad to think he's missing out on good relationships with so many talented women in our office, just because of this environment of fear. But he's a wonderful friend and colleague, and I am so happy to have his advice and support.

The problem is you can retroactively change this policy at any time and re-interpret past comments.

Can she? Why would she? One could just as easily say "The problem is that a man can be dismissive and condescending towards you and retroactively claim that he was just following your advice to be candid".

If the issue being debated here is an actual problem in (American?) tech business culture, the attitudes and principles that GP commenter is describing are a great step towards solving it. Deep-seated mistrust in the motivations and intentions of others are at the root of the problem, and the road to exacerbating it is paved with bad-faith-assuming hypotheticals.

A man doing that won't get you fired and tarred. The downside risk is too great.

This is true, and that's why I also try to bring up examples of times I have had blatantly sexist behavior toward me. (Which luckily, has been extremely rare.) It allows me to talk about my reaction, which has always been: let's have a personal, one-on-one chat about why I'm not okay with this. This conveys two things:

1) My "assume good faith" policy doesn't mean I'm okay with genuine harassment, and I have no problems standing up for myself. 2) I will always TELL colleagues if I'm uncomfortable and give them a chance to change their behavior before I escalate anything to HR.

But ultimately, this is something that comes down to trust. Trust in my colleagues to not take advantage of the "assume good faith" policy, and trust in me to use good sense to interpret my colleagues' behavior.

And, frankly, the modern workplace is a really hard place to cultivate trust in. But I do my best, and thus far, my efforts seem to have paid off.

I don't think you understood the point he made.

It is a question of trust, as you have correctly pointed out... But there has been precedence of women behaving as you currently seem to do, just to go public with stories going back years, taken out of context and portrayed as extreme sexism.

Any interaction is a potential liability with very little potential reward.

> But there has been precedence of women behaving as you currently seem to do, just to go public with stories going back years

I would actually think that's rare, for someone who says "no porcelain skin" and gives one and one feedback. ("TELL colleagues if I'm uncomfortable")

Not saying it's never happened -- however it seems to me that in this case it'd be more well spent time to worry about the traffic and drive a bit slower.

Whatever you do in life there's always some risk, and minimizing all risks can create a boring life. Like, always working from home (the traffic!), and avoiding [giving feedback to this seemingly good judgement person and making a new friend].

Making friends with a woman at work is like making friends with your boss. How can you ever be friends with someone who always has a finger on the 'destroy your livelihood' button?

The power dynamics all fucked up. I'll risk ruin and death for greatness or adventure, not to hopefully benefit the very person who would be my ruin.

I and my boss and coworkers were all friends, also on the spare time. It was all fine. My boss even said things like "don't work too much, you don't have any stocks unlike the others who work a lot".

I do understand the point, and believe me, it makes me very sad that I can never fully erase this fear.

All I can do is my personal best to turn down the fear notch. But I'll admit--if I were a male colleague, I would still hold onto some of that fear to some degree.

You sound like a cool, mindful person.

I think a strong part of what you're describing is that you need to be on point with your non-verbal communication; you need to both tell people that you won't take offense to constructive criticism, and signal it with a lot of cues.

Telling people "this is an example of prejudice, this is how I react to it, if you don't act like this you're clear" is a pretty smooth move too.

Well thanks, I appreciate it.

I definitely agree with the non-verbal communication bit. It took me a while to understand that, but now that I do, it makes things much easier.

There's not a chance that she could do that without every professional relationship she holds exploding in her face.

Exactly, this is what I rely on. People know me as the "people person" on my team. My career progression thus far has mostly been due to my ability to forge positive relationships throughout the organization (something that's desperately needed for cybersecurity teams.) If I screwed over a colleague like this, people know it would shatter those relationships and absolutely decimate my career. And cybersecurity is a small world, so it wouldn't be something I could easily brush under the rug.

It's sad, and sometimes frustrating, that I have to think in these "nuclear arms race" terms. And that's something else I try to be open about: that I'm really frustrated with this environment of fear. I think the more people openly acknowledge that, the easier it will be to move toward a healthier environment.

> positive relationships throughout the organization ... desperately needed for cybersecurity team

Why is that more important for cybersecurity teams? Is it that other teams can sometimes look at security as something annoying that slows them down? So they care about security not because they care about security, but because you + team are their friends? :-)

It's really common for other teams to view cybersecurity as an antagonist. We're the a-holes who slow them down, demand they follow rules, wag our fingers when they try to cut corners, etc.

It's also very common for people to view cybersecurity engineers as people who needlessly make things more difficult just so they can "look like they're busy" and collect a heftier salary. (I've found this mindset especially common in non-technical teams.)

We're kind of like the dentists of the industry--everyone grumbles about how pricey we are, no one looks forward to visits from us, people question whether we're actually fixing things or just out to make a buck, and we have to hand out all sorts of annoying reminders (floss your teeth! don't install Chrome add-ons! brush twice a day!)

Having a strong relationship with other teams allows me to come to the table and say, "Hey, look, we both respect each other. You know I don't bullshit, and I wouldn't be asking you to do this if it wasn't a real issue. So please at least listen to my concern and try to work with me here. And you know I'll always listen to your concerns in turn, so we can do this as painlessly as possible."

So it's not exactly "getting them to care about security because we're friends." It's more of, "getting them to listen because we both respect each other." And if you can do that--get them to listen instead of having them immediately shut down, get angry, and convince themselves it's all bullshit--then usually they'll quickly understand there's an actual threat at hand. And once you convince them there's an actual threat, they're way more likely to do something about it, instead of throwing a fit and resorting to vindictive pushback.

A bit off topic, but:

> all sorts of annoying reminders

Could that be the topic of a blog post? I'm interested in security and I've understood that I'd better avoid browser add-ons, but what more to not do?, from you & your team's perspective

> listen because we both respect each other

Ok yes "respect each other" sounds like a better way of saying that.

Fortunately, where I work, I can be as paranoid as I want wrt security :-) and postpone "deadlines" if needed, to do security stuff instead.

> And if you can do that--get them to listen instead of having them immediately shut down

I find it a bit interesting that soft skills (helping teams respect each other) can "convert" into and catalyze hard skills, I mean, secure IT systems

Still, is kind of "weapon" that is hold like in deterrence.

See #metoo, where facts were kept hidden, until the society was actually prepared to accept the truth, because at that time, a woman would have been laughed in face, for accusing a man of sexism in the 70's ....

Using your weapon analogy, she is both "disarming" herself to the fullest extent possible and providing nukes to other nations to ensure mutually assured destruction in the event she is holding a concealed weapon. What more can she feasibly do?

It's not what she can feasibly do, there are no points for effort- even when the effort is admirable. It's how the risk/reward dynamics end up looking.

At a previous job, I worked under a woman who managed a practically-all-male engineering team. I think part of what made her successful at this was that people in our company had a great sense of humor, and she was an enthusiastic participant in our lunchtime bull sessions, ribbing each other and whatnot.

>Becca: What are you doing here? I figured they’d have locked you away in the psych ward for good by now.

>Scott: Nope. And what are you doing here? You haven’t killed off all your patients yet?

>Becca: Only person in this hospital I might kill is standing right in front of me.

>Scott: Be careful, I’m armed and dangerous picks up a central line placement practice set menacingly

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/23/friendship-is-counters...

Not only did these kind of conversations make the company a more fun place to work, they also made it easier to speak critically to each other, because our critical feedback didn't seem like a big deal in light of the daily ribbing. There wasn't a lot of corporate BS at that company either--maybe not a coincidence.

I imagine there are other things you could do, like curse frequently, if you wanted to broadcast that words don't easily upset you. But telling jokes seems best if you think of one.

> I imagine there are other things you could do, like curse frequently, if you wanted to broadcast that words don't easily upset you. But telling jokes seems best if you think of one.

I absolutely use this technique, although I'll admit it's more of my natural goofy personality versus a serious effort. I'll often say things to my (all male) team mates like, "Hold up, repeat that for the dumb blonde please" or "If you really want that promotion, I can give you some makeup tutorials." I also refer to myself as "the team mom", since I'm always baking sweets for the team and mentoring our shy new grads.

All this jesting is really just a humorous way of me saying, "Hey, look, I'm the only girl on this team, but let's not turn it into an awkward elephant in the room. We may be different, but I know we all have mutual respect, so let's not be weird about it."

I have a phenomenal relationship with my team, and I credit a lot of it to this goofiness. It's hard to be guarded and worried about accidentally insulting someone when that person is saying far more insulting things toward themselves (even if it's obviously in total jest.)

And in an odd way, by turning those sorts of things into a joke, it's also subtly reminding people that attitudes like "she just got hired because she's a young blond" aren't appropriate. People don't make jokes about totally normal, benign behavior.

So it's a win-win situation: I'm surrounded by people I have wonderful relationships with, and those people are subtly reminded of what's work-appropriate behavior through goofy, sarcastic conversations, and not cringey trainings.

The problem with this "solution" is that the risk is still too high to bother risking it. Even if the woman is unlikely to assume bad faith (and the likelihood is such, outrage mobs are a minority, even if one with too much weight for its size), nothing guarantees she won't change her mind later and assume that the criticism was because of sexism after all.

And even if one were to believe that that is unlikely too, nothing guarantees that someone else won't think it sexist. For example, I remember some panel with four scientists (three men and one woman) that was discussed in HN a while ago; at some point, someone in the audience (I think she was a journalist) yelled at the moderator to "let her speak"... Even though the scientist herself didn't think the moderator was doing anything wrong.

As a guy this would only put me at ease in a one-on-one conversation with the woman in question. I am just as wary of others' opinions as hers.

We need a pink samizdat just like this blog post. Wink twice after your turn at stand up to let us know we can safely roast your pull requests.