Top all-time · #2991
Ashe Dryden
Personal blog · ashedryden.com/blogculturecareer
Ashe Dryden writes ashe dryden, a personal blog at ashedryden.com about culture and career. Since 2013, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community (2013)”. The last post was in 2016, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ashe Dryden's blog mostly for 'The Ethics of Unpaid Labor' post, cited against judging developers by GitHub activity and unpaid open-source work. Other posts come up on codes of conduct and blacklists.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community (2013)13 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2014-03-14
- The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-11-13
- /blog/weve-all-got-a-list2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-04-06
- We've All Got a List2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-30
What Hacker News says?
Expecting that people will put stuff on github gives an unfair advantage to rich people who can afford to spend more time doing unpaid work, among other things. You can read more about such arguments here -> http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an...
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “The Absurdity of LinkedIn”Submitted The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community as a story · 99 points
HN discussionI'd point you to a few well written articles that address this line of thinking pretty well: * http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an... * https://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/11/15/why-github-is-not-your-c... * http://www.garann.com/dev/2012/you-keep-using-that-word/
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “The Other Side of Diversity”Submitted The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community (2013) as a story · 57 points
HN discussionAt least you should try. Maybe start small (and stay small..), there is always some path to escape from cubicle nation.. ;) As for "github is your CV" hype: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an... https://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/11/15/why-github-is-not-your-c...
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job”Submitted We've All Got a List as a story · 24 points
HN discussionBasing hiring decisions on open source contribution rates contributes to the homogeneity (read: white maleness) of the industry at large. Women especially may not have as much time to contribute, since they are likely getting paid 30% less than their male counterparts and are more likely to be single parents than men. Ashe Dryden has a great breakdown of the issue, as well as some suggested alternative hiring techni…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job”Submitted We deserve better than this as a story · 7 points
HN discussionDoesn't work: https://www.ashedryden.com/blog/codes-of-conduct-101-faq#coc... > WHY IS THE LANGUAGE SO NEGATIVE/PUNITIVE? THIS'LL TAKE THE FUN/CASUAL ATMOSPHERE OUT OF MY EVENT. THE PEOPLE ATTENDING ARE MY FRIENDS, I'LL VOUCH FOR THEM. ISN'T IT OBVIOUS/COMMON SENSE WHAT'S ACCEPTABLE? WE'RE ALL ADULTS HERE, WHY CAN'T WE SAY "BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER"? Not everyone understands what is unacceptable behavior, especial…
Comment linking /blog/codes-of-conduct-101-faq
on “Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]”Submitted The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the Open-Source Community as a story · 4 points
HN discussionBut IBM, and many of the big corporations in the USA, followed very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place. A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity". In fact, nowadays people typically criticize such practices as inhibiting diversity [1]. As for culture fit, it's a complicated…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Girls Who Code”Submitted Codes of Conduct 101 + FAQ as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis article provides more context: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an...
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “So You Want to Be a Compiler Wizard”Submitted Twitter's Block Policy Change Hurts Only The Victims Of Abuse as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> men do hobby programming and women don't One possible reason: Women have less free time available for hobby programming. There are some statistics on this at http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an... . Another possibility: Women are in such demand in the industry that a hobbyist contributor will soon be hired by someone, and no longer be a hobbyist.
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Pull request acceptance of women versus men”Submitted Freelance contracts that anyone can understand as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDid you read the linked article on the subject? http://ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-th... Here's some key points from it if it is tl;dr Marginalized people in tech - women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others - have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity. Women are far more likely to be a primary caregi…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Why GitHub is not your CV”Submitted The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMost diversity activists in tech oppose bringing such approaches into tech on the grounds that it would reduce diversity. Ashe Dryden is the canonical cite: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an... In contrast, I think most of those who oppose the diversity activists (e.g. myself) strongly favor such approaches ("death by standardized brainteaser", hire by github, work sample tests).
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “100 Days as a Black Man in Silicon Valley”I typed the word "blacklist" in Dryden's blog search bar and the evidence magically manifested itself: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/weve-all-got-a-list
Comment linking /blog/weve-all-got-a-list
on “Technology’s Man Problem”Ashe Dryden's excellent work speaks for itself. (As opposed to evidence-free chatter on HN, which NYT says can feel like "hostile territory for women" .) It's nice overhearing people in real life speak glowingly about how her voice needs to be better heard. Can't wait to get her upcoming book and use it to help build a healthy team. ( http://www.ashedryden.com/ ) In another thread here, Alan Kay mentions how people…
Comment linking /
on “Technology’s Man Problem”Ashe Dryden wrote the best explanation I've read: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an... (Helped me realize why writing opensource never appealed to me: the respect of my peers is even worse motivator for me than money. I rarely enjoyed the company of other programmers, due to the toxic culture we replicate. Caused some minor problems when I "led" a team of them; needed to care for them desp…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Interview with Steve Klabnik”I suggest you be careful with your jokes or they'll put you on their list: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/weve-all-got-a-list The people you've mentioned curate their own echo chamber. If you read their Twitter stream you can see that they block anybody who even tries to engage them from an ignorant-but-skeptical point of view. Then they crow to their followers about the ignorant "bros" they block to gain plaudits.…
Comment linking /blog/weve-all-got-a-list
on “I'm Telling: Employer-Tattling and the Decline of Agency”As an industry, we used to be in favor of approaching meritocracy as a goal. We'd take pride in using github in lieu of a resume, difficult technical tests, and general attempts at objectivity. Strangely, the pushback against meritocracy as a goal and objective measurement as a method doesn't come from the alleged "good old boy" network. http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug http://www.ashedryden.co…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Building a better and more diverse community”Unfortunately, needs to remind people about the social distribution of OSS work in the community: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an... Of course OSS work is good, and we're happy you found time in 2006 to learn ajax or whatever, but considering open source as a measure for good developers is unfair. Even John Resig (quoted in this article) already made a post explaining his views abt this,…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Why the Best Companies and Developers Give Away Almost Everything They Do”Looks like he's just trying to shed some light on how bogus those activity graphs are (and also illustrating how easy it is to game them). The GitHub contributions graph probably shouldn't be used for any sort of meaningful measurement of skill, open source involvement, job candidacy—or anything else really. I found the two related articles linked in the readme really interesting: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Dear Github, can I go home now?”This line was really interesting to me: > From the perspective of the employer, Github, Bitbucket and other code sharing sites simply do not have these biases - when employers look at these sites, there is no demographic information on users to look at other than what the user voluntarily puts up. But there is demographic information there. Ashe Dryden's original article ( http://ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-un…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Why we look at job applicants' Github or 'What's your excuse?'”Oh god. Most of this is hilarious. "A seasoned C developer with 10 years experience can not instantly morph into an advanced front end web application developer" True, but they'll be a damn sight quicker at picking it up than anyone else. And they'll write far better code when they're there. If you're looking for a permanent employee, all development experience is relevant -- there is a huge amount of overlap and re…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “How to rip apart a programmers CV”I am confused about last sentence -- are you saying that requiring high-quality open source code will somehow help with "balanced racial or gender demographics"? Because I am pretty sure this is false. Anecdotally, the women in my group do not have any public code. And web searches found confirmations for this as well [0] [1] So if you want diversity, stay away from methods like the one described in this post. [0] h…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Interviewing Devs Is Broken: Here’s How to Fix It”"Some companies I work for write the contract that all code written while employed belongs to the company." That's why - because it shows evidence of code you produce, are interested in coding on a personal level (as opposed to doing it purely for the paycheck), how you solve problems, how you document code, how well you communicate with others etc. It does feel like having an active Github is almost a requirement t…
Comment linking /blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
on “Ask HN: Why is open source relevant in jobs?”
