Love that SpaceX’s own team shoots, announces, and switches the live production in-house rather than hiring a production company.
Also love seeing machinists side by side cheering with software engineers, standing by a mission control which is placed feet from where engines are assembled on the shop floor.
It’s like that at BlueOrigin too. I visited twice (they gave me a job offer but withdrew it after I got badmouthed by a reference, gah). They have an avionics software engineering room right next to where they assemble the engines.
If you know that the person asking you to be a reference is a bad engineer, and they're applying for someplace that builds critical systems - medical devices, say, or rockets - maybe you want to warn their potential employer that they're hiring a liability.
It's pretty presumptuous to make that assertion unless you knew the person for many years in different work environments.
I've seen lots of engineers become 'bad engineers' because of a myriad of environmental issues (bad management, bad peers, bad office, bad engineering decisions foisted upon them).
If you didn't see them perform well, don't provide a reference. If they are that bad, nobody in a reputable position will provide them a reference and the hiring company will see that.
It's not your responsibility to be an arbiter of some ex-coworker's life.
The only time I was a reference for someone, I was asked questions, and I answered them. I wouldn't know if they were spun positively or negatively. Is that how senior engineers provide reference, or is it more free form?
If someone calls me up and asks about Coworker X, and I refuse to provide a reference, isn't that likely to be viewed the same as a negative reference?
You have to be careful with who you use as references these days. But honestly I'm not sure why they are still a thing anymore. Most professionals give stock responses, ie yes/no that the person worked there, and are forbidden by HR to give much useful information.
Someone asked me to be a reference, I said no, they still put me as a reference anyway. I was not happy. Didn't badmouth him, but I also didn't say anything good about him. And when asked if I would hire him where I worked, I said no.
I asked permission from all of my references beforehand. Two were coworkers and the last was my previous team lead. I knew all of them had positive opinions regarding my work.
The problem was BlueOrigin’s reference-questionnaire. One of my references shared it with me afterwards. It’s a stock template - except pretty much all the questions seem contrived to find reasons not to hire someone. One of the questions was along the lines of “On a percentage scale where would you rank [candidate] relative to other people you have worked with?” (Which is s problem if you’re a relatively poor player in a high-performing team). Another was (almost verbatim) “Please provide a reason why we should not hire [candidate]?” (As opposed to “Can you think of a reason?” - I was surprised that the question straight-up assumes there is a reason).
BlueOrigin’s cooldown period is 2 years which is long for Seattle, when you consider SpaceX’s is 1 year and Google can be 6 months. My recruiter at BlueOrigin did tell me to re-apply though and gave me his card. I’ll think about it.
In the interests of honesty - I will say that I am not a model employee and I do have productivity problems - I’m sure that my references gave honest answers with good intentions and I accept that I’m probably not BlueOrigin-material: I have punctuality problems, I’ll spend half a day procrastinating then working late until 1am to make up for it, and I stilll often go on code refactoring crusades without telling anyone. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t even hire me anyway :)
I interviewed at BlueOrigin ~3.5 years ago, my impression was they're very old fashioned and secretive. Not necessarily a bad thing for such critical systems (though I think SpaceX has the better model/culture even if I know it's not for me), but I was applying for a backend role using Spring and hoping to get in on a program they had at the time where you could move around the various departments like avionics and such to get an idea of the whole 'stack' as well as learn more about what they did to get high quality assurance...
They were the only company to ask in the interview about my college GPA (which wasn't good, I still don't remember the exact number and didn't at the time but it's below 3) and I didn't get an offer. But I'm kind of like you, naturally a slacker but in my jobs I've always managed to put out work that satisfies everyone it needs to (including myself, sometimes, but other times...) and meet deadlines, so 'tsall good.
Your last bit reminds me of a quote "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member". It's hard to accept praise or feel belonging knowing the full depths of one's faults which are only improving slowly. ;)
I interviewed for the superlative job title “Spaceflight systems avionics software engineer”. Contrary to your experience, I found the process to be very casual. They told me not to bring my resume, but to put together a PowerPoint presentation about my life. For one of my interviews the interviewing engineer didn’t even show up and his boss came in later and said (paraphrased): “you made it this far so I guess you’re good enough” and had me go see the next interviewer. It did take them 2 weeks to get back to me with the “We want to make you an offer”-call.
My biggest surprise was that they were (and I assume still are) running Windows 7 on their dev boxes.
They sound like a mess. When an interviewer doesn't even show, that's not a good sign. When this boss says, "I guess you're good enough", that's a worse sign. This is rocket science, after all.
> “On a percentage scale where would you rank [candidate] relative to other people you have worked with?”
That does look like a terrible question. Without context, team organisation, and work history for the reference person, the answer is meaningless... Not even if you're poor performing. If that person just happens to work with amazing people, of course you'd be rated lower.
> Another was (almost verbatim) “Please provide a reason why we should not hire [candidate]?” (As opposed to “Can you think of a reason?” - I was surprised that the question straight-up assumes there is a reason).
Most of the time when someone asks to use me as a reference I never get a call. Last time, my colleague's prospective employer kept me on the phone for about 30 minutes and had an extensive list of questions about his work habits and performance.
Depending on what this company wanted, it's entirely possible that something I said during that call would've influenced the company's hiring decision, though I was obviously trying to portray my friend in the best light possible given the context.
I don't know if BlueOrigin has a similar process or not, but it's not necessarily that the reference was intentionally giving a negative report; they could've just picked up on something the reference said and felt it didn't mesh with the position.
Spoiler: my friend got the job, supposedly in part due to my good reference. Phew! I would've hated to be the one that got blamed for "bad mouthing" him.
Some places do "blind" reference checks, where they contact people you've worked with themselves (through Linkedin or similar.) The idea being that the references you provide are likely to be more positive than representative.
maybe he just put him down as a reference and never asked or gave him a heads up in advance? Or rather why would anyone put down a reference that isn't going to put in a good word for them?
The 4 presenters were also engineers. And by doing it that way, they got to show that some engineers are black women. Let's hope this inspires a generation of black girls to seek a career in space or tech.
This is why I love the live streams hosted by John Innsprucker. He doesn't look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real.
The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I'd believe it.
Seeing how a harmless comment on a man 'look[ing] like an engineer, a rocket scientist´ leads to yet another long thread about 'bias' and similar concept is worrisome. The more speech is stifled, the more people have to weigh every word, every expression before they dare to utter it for fear of being accused of violating something, somewhere, making someone feel 'harmed', the less open and welcoming society will be. Less open to new ideas and new concept, less welcoming to those who come forth with those ideas and thoughts.
It also does not mean people will actually change in such a way that they won't think someone 'looks like an engineer' or 'looks live a TV star', they just won't say it out loud. Instead they'll say it among friends they know they can trust, more vehemently than they'd have done if this type of speech were not taboo.
I can only hope that the hyper-sensitivity currently found in the public sphere will pass when enough people from enough parts of society speak up against it. If it doesn't we're in for troubled times as it touches something which lies at the core of the enlightened western society, freedom of speech and expression. Those are precious things, too precious to squander.
It's not harmless though, even if no harm was intended. My girlfriend is an engineer like me yet her experience in tech has been radically different than mine. She is constantly subjected to similar kinds of comments that imply that people like her don't fit in or belong, and it takes a real toll. It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech.
I would never want to censor anyone. I'm just asking people to think about what kind of effect their words can have. I have the right to say that just as much as someone has the right to comment on who does or does not look like a rocket scientist.
> It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech.
I find this rhetoric overblown, as it doesn't match the results of serious inquiry into the topic.
> Cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Men and women differed on all four traits. 200,000 participants from 53 nations.
> Only sex predicted means for all four traits, and sex predicted trait means much more strongly than did gender equality or the interaction between sex and gender equality. These results suggest that biological factors may contribute to sex differences in personality and that culture plays a negligible to small role in moderating sex differences in personality.
It's a big leap to go from a few supposed differences in personality characteristics to concluding that tech should therefore be utterly dominated by men in a >4:1 ratio. Even assuming that there are real personality differences between men and women, and that these differences have an impact on the propensity to get into technical jobs, you'd still have to establish the magnitude of these effects. What if the "natural" effect is that the ratio of men to women in tech should be 1.3:1, and that the vast majority of the actual discrepancy is in fact caused by bias and discrimination?
Also, you're ignoring cultural factors. See this article: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/stubborn-obstacle... There are and have been many societies in which women were much better represented in technical fields than they are today in the US. How do you explain that if it's all supposedly just innate biological differences? In the USSR a majority of engineers were women, and the reason for it was actually very logical: Men are stronger and are more suitable for physical labor, and women are thus more suitable for knowledge jobs.
And there are many character traits that men have on average more than women that make them worse engineers. A higher prevalence of mental illness, for starters. More of a tendency to be overly verbally combative and thus detrimental to team functioning. Less ability to focus on "boring" tasks and study, which is why you now see girls dominating boys in school performance at all levels, kindergarten through university.
Who is more "suited" to be an engineer is an entirely different discussion that is not even close to being resolved. What I was talking about was the very real fact that most women in tech experience gender-related discrimination that makes them feel unwelcome. That assuredly has a real effect and is on less shaky grounds than arguing from biological factors.
But I don't want to get drawn into this discussion because I really do have lots of work to get done today. Just refer to everything that was said in the wake of Damore -- I'm sure we wouldn't cover any new ground that wasn't already covered then.
This is an interesting study that addresses your distribution points directly.
> 3233 young and old adolescents representative of the population
> For the young adolescents, the observed difference in Mechanical Reasoning is equivalent to 10 IQ points, and this difference increases to 13 IQ points for the old adolescents.
> Beyond the observed small average sex difference in the general factor of intelligence (g), the boys' large advantage in mechanical reasoning (MR) must be strongly underscored. This sex difference is not explained by g, and therefore the probable contributions of what is measured by relevant subtests such as abstract reasoning (AR) or spatial relations (SR) can be excluded. The MR difference is still present with almost the same magnitude when the general factor of intelligence (g) is removed. It is also noteworthy that, for the old adolescents, more than half of the variance associated with numerical reasoning (NR) cannot be attributed to g. Thus, we suggest that mental processes captured by these psychological measures are behind the documented male advantage in STEM disciplines
If you think unconsciously treating people of a different social group differently is harmful, then you need to take a good hard look at your life and understand that there really isn't much strife in your life. I see where you're coming from, but it's such a minor behavioral difference that acting like it's a big deal really seems like a gross exaggeration to me.
I doubt anyone here is saying people aren’t free to speak. It’s just that speech has consequences.
You yourself are being quite hypersensitive about someone having the temerity to raise the issue of harmful stereotyping, and you’re appearing to attempt to stifle the speech of those who would do that. The irony meter is pegged off the scale. I believe the comment that kicked off the long discussion was pretty measured and backed up by experience. So perhaps it’s OK to chill a bit and just let the views be aired in a relaxed way, without adding drama to the non-drama.
I did not "have the temerity to..." nor do I "attempt to stifle..." anything. By all means you're free to make these claims as long as it is clear that we both realise they're not based on truth. In fact you are as free to make them as the original commenter who launched this thread was to say that the person "looked like an engineer". That is the whole point of freedom of expression, after all. Just don't act as if anyone who does not agree with your standpoints violates a moral high ground and please drop the expletives, it makes for a much more civilised discussion climate.
> hyper-sensitivity currently found in the public sphere
That's become the standard of public conversations in the past 10-15 years. Unfortunately, I don't think it is likely to change anytime soon, since there's more and more involvement from politicians as well to make "saying the wrong thing" in public something worth being sued for. I see this happen in many different countries that claim to be "democracies" even though they have free speech as part of their principles.
I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. It is painful to see how little respect for freedom of expression society in general has. While many of use were looking out for Government intrusion upon Free Speech it seems we ignored a much bigger threat.
Social Media enabled out rage mobs and a perpetual victim class has lead to more censorship than any government could ever hope for. If you are guilty of wrong think today you will be jobless, homeless, and a social outcast.
How far have we come from the days of "I disagree with you but I respect your right to say it" to "I disagree with you now I will boycott your employer, get you fired, get you kicked out of your home, and ensure all organizations/clubs/companies ban you from their events and platforms"
At the start of the video they introduced themselves as Lauren Lyons: Flight Reliability Engineer and Michael Hammersley: Materials Engineer. All rocket scientists it seems
I went to school with one of the other hosts. He's legitimately a genius, top marks and well-decorated in academia. Kind of weird to see the guy I used to hang out with livestreaming to 2.3mm people.
Yes. Historically, young people with limited experience didn't end up being the focal point of companies in the media, so the chance that they were some PR workers was much higher than advanced material scientists.
You're showing your biases here. The other people on the livestream are also rocket scientists. They aren't PR people. They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. So you might want to re-evaluate what you think a rocket scientist "looks like", because your notion is outdated.
Sorry to call you out like this, but these kinds of prejudices about who is the "correct" kind of person for tech jobs are harmful and discouraging to the people who don't fit the stereotypes, and helps contribute to keeping them out of the field.
On the other hand, there are indeed many scientists/engineers who look/act "nerdy" or don't have the suaveness of people we typically see on TV. I think what GP is saying is that typically companies will put forward people who are good-looking and charismatic for PR, so it's nice to see someone different and unpolished be center-stage in the public eye.
I don't think it's a bad thing. I think a lot of the differing opinions here stem from seeing the people on screen as primarily either engineering or PR people. So I think mabbo meant "nice to see an authentic engineering type thrown in with the PR people", whereas Yetanfou thought he said "Of the engineers on screen, that guy is the only one that looks like one". They're kind of standing up for the same principle though: inclusion of people in a role that goes counter to stereotypical outward characteristics.
There's a balance. Sometimes I enjoy watching someone nerding out about a subject. Charisma means they'll sometimes start banter with the co-host rather than continue with things interesting to them. Or they'll try to "make" things entertaining and exciting.
I guess it depends if you're looking more for entertainment or information.
I disagree, even if you don't care about banter, a capable host will be able to drive conversation and get panelists/guests/interviewees to express themselves better (even if they are typically awkward in front of a camera). I see it all the time in professional esports streams.
> They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color.
Maybe parent was referring to their mannerisms, rather than their appearance. It's not fair to jump to the assumption that parent was showing a bias against any of those variations in the human species.
To be pedantic, the poster did say "looks like" and:
- "looks like" is associated with physical appearance - possibly things like clothes, jewelry, gender, hair, skin color, face, etc.
- "sounds like" is associated with their speech - tone, accent, choice of diction
- "acts like" is associated with physical behavior + speech
But anyway, I think the point is that, we don't know what mabbo's intent was and 95% likely it was totally benign, but CydeWes is pointing out that saying things like that has a harmful effect by propagating certain stereotypes.
Pointing out someone's implicit biases is not necessarily a personal attack on them. Everyone has them so we should welcome when people point them out (unless done in an mean-spirited or aggressive fashion).
Personally, when I read mabbo's comment, I thought, "Yeah, so true, good point!", then I read the next comment and I thought, "Oh right, thanks for pointing that out to me".
Thanks. This whole derailment from topic smells delisive, and tastes impracticable, and it's starting to sound like ostentaion. Old, white, pedantic ostentaion
At the end of one of my onsite interviews, while showing me out the door, the interviewer turned to me with a big smile and said "you really look like you fit in around here". I almost burst out laughing.
I guarantee he had no malice but I just found it funny for one tall, white dude with glasses to say that to another tall, white dude with glasses. And he was right, I did blend in pretty well.
You might argue that perhaps he wasn't referring to my appearance but rather my uhhh.... hand gestures while talking, but at some point you have to call a spade a spade.
I left without saying anything just because I feel awkward sometimes, but in retrosepct, I should have said something. He was so good-natured, I'm sure he would have genuinely appreciated me pointing out that certain people might find his words harmful.
What's harmful about saying someone fits in? I use that as a filler statement after good interviews... if they performed well, they fit in. Does that offend people?
You might be eminently qualified to do the work but in reality no one works in isolation (unless you are Joe Hewitt [0]). So unless you can mind read, no one can say for sure if you will fit in with the existing culture to get the job done, a subtle aspect many people overlook.
A good example of a qualified hire quitting just after six months is Chris Lattner who quit because "... Tesla isn't a good fit for me after all." [1]. You are free to Google the personality clashes which made it difficult for him to continue at Tesla.
That uncertainty is always a given... addressed in the first three words of "it looks like you'll fit in". I still don't see how that can be perceived as offensive or insulting.
> Pointing out someone's implicit biases is not necessarily a personal attack on them. Everyone has them so we should welcome when people point them out (unless done in an mean-spirited or aggressive fashion).
I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. We all have implicit biases, and they are often a product of society rather than personal failures. It is painful when you suddenly notice your own shortcomings. But the desired response isn't "omg I'm horrible", it's "I can try to fix this in myself, and think about how to fix it in the whole culture for future generations."
No, it wouldn’t and hasn’t. The whole point is that this type of bias does lead to discrimination in the workplace. Our prior should be that discrimination is happening. This doesn’t mean we are horrible people ... more often that we simply have reflected on the background assumptions/heuristics that drive our behaviour.
So you're saying we should always examine everything people say and view it through the worst possible light? That sounds like a great way to piss people off and get them working against you.
I personally perfect the more charitable approach.
> "looks like" is associated with physical appearance
Yes in very strict sense, but many people use "looks like", "sounds like" and so on interchangeably. I say "your proposal sounds good" even though proposal was sent by email and I didn't mean it is pleasing to my ears, melodic and soothing - I mean its content is OK. So we should not overanalyze and imply meaning that the author may not have put there. "Looks like" may just mean "gives general impression, by appearance, behavior, speech patterns, actions, etc." not necessarily excluding non-visual inputs. Human speech is not always precise.
That said, I agree that we should not have biases like if somebody, say, looks good on TV (and here again I don't mean just pretty face or nice clothes but more overall competent communicative behavior) they must be TV actor or hired comm person and can't possibly be genuine engineer. It's true that many engineers are awkward and some are socially inept, but that shouldn't be required. One can be a good engineer and a good presenter and a good communicator.
The phrase "looks like" is commonly used as short hand for "seems like", "feels like", "gives the impression of", etc. It would be the same as if someone said they "appeared to be" professional actors, that doesn't necessarily indicate that it's based on visual cues.
Seems like bad form to assign malice to someone based on a likely misinterpretation of their comments, then accuse them of racism and sexism.
I upvoted you, but I think it’s important to recognize that unconscious biases often manifest in exactly that way.
White men have made up the majority of the scientists and engineers we’ve been exposed to in the past, so we associate the mannerisms of white men with them. Women and POC haven’t, so we don’t associate traits common to them with the persona we expect of those professions.
Sure, new mannerisms serve to flag people as scientists and engineers. But again, you're implicitly both assuming, and accusing the parent of, bias (against women, minorities, and young folks). Not only that, but there isn't any defense after you involve the 'unconscious mind'.
For the record, I am not accusing the parent of bias. I'm simply pointing out that bias often manifests indirectly. The core problem with bias is that it fundamentally is about the unconscious mind, and is not generally based on ill will. That doesn't make it any less real, or any less damaging.
We all have biases. The important takeaway is that it isn't about blame or accusations, it's about highlighting when bias appears so that people become more aware of when and how their unconscious associations might be coloring their thinking.
I think a good-faith reading of the parent commentary is that he was talking about the mannerisms and language and overall appearance of the person, not that he was white-skinned and a man. Immediately assuming he was saying he looks like an engineer because he isn't a women, or dark-skinned, is ironically a racist and sexist assumption.
I find it fascinating that SpaceX manages to pull off one of the most amazing things in the history of humanity and the top comment thread here on HN somehow manages to get bogged down in discussing race, gender and sexual orientation as it relates to the "hosts" of the live stream. These are important issues to be sure, but the self appointed thought police of generation "I'm offended" who feel the need to instruct everyone on how they should behave, write and think are beginning to get on my tits. I clicked on here hoping to feel and read everyone buzzing about this great news and instead I just switch off from HN and think "meh". Disclaimer: I'm a privileged middle aged white guy.
Edit: grammar and rephrasing to allow for the inclusion of the phrase "beginning to get on my tits".
No, recognizing the existence of sexist and racist stereotypes is not the same as being sexist and racist. Even if one incorrectly assumes that someone holds such stereotypical views.
Point is, it's not fair to assume that _any_ bias was being shown. I don't think anyone believes that "PR person" or "paid actor" is a bad profession.
You're assuming the parent was biased against something, and I'm suggesting that the parent discovered some mannerisms were not as indicative of a specific profession as they thought, and said so.
You made an incorrect assumption based on bad logic. The parent didn't say they didn't look like rocket scientists, he/she said that they could pass as PR people, regardless of whether or not they were rocket scientists.
Let me phrase it a different and rude (sorry) way. "You know they're including real engineers because there is at least one person in the spotlight that would never be employed by a PR firm."
> The parent didn't say they didn't look like rocket scientists
That's exactly what the parent said. Let me quote it for you:
> He doesn't look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real.
The implication being that the other hosts looked fake, not like engineers or rocket scientists but like PR people.
I think you're being overly charitable here, but even if you're right and your interpretation is correct, the original phrasing lends itself towards a worse interpretation that many other people (including me) picked up on. Precise communication is especially important around areas that are problematic for tech like diversity in our workforce, so if he had meant to compliment the rocket scientists on their poise he should have said exactly that, not implying that they don't look real (unlike the older white guy who fits all the stereotypes of being a rocket scientist).
>The implication being that the other hosts looked fake, not like engineers or rocket scientists but like PR people.
You made the same incorrect jump! The implication is only that he's definitely not in PR so he's probably a real engineer. The others have the looks to be in PR (which is why he "wouldn't be surprised" if someone said they were). Yet he never said they couldn't also be real engineers.
They are just attractive enough that it's ambiguous as to whether or not they are real engineers or just PR folks.
Let's think about conditional probabilities here. Let's take the example of a man at a regular day of work. Suppose that 50% of the men in sales wear suits, but only 5% of the men in engineering wear suits, at work. And suppose that 20% of the male engineers wear jeans and a t-shirt, but 0% of salesmen do that. Then, taking a random male employee from either sales or engineering, we can say: (1) if he's wearing jeans and a t-shirt, that is a maximally strong signal that he's an engineer, while (2) if he's wearing a suit, that is a moderate-strength signal that he's in sales.
If there are outfits where you can say "X% of engineers wear this, while Y% < X% of salespeople wear this", then someone wearing that outfit provides evidence (weak or strong depending on the values of X and Y) that they are an engineer. Contrariwise, if there's some other outfit where X% of engineers < Y% of salespeople wear it, then that's evidence for the wearer being in sales. Furthermore, since all the X's and Y's must add to 100% when taken across all outfits, if there are any outfits where X < Y, then there must be some outfits where X > Y.
If there is some pattern of visually obvious signs that, say, 30% of engineers show and only 1% of non-engineers show, then it follows that 99% of non-engineers and 70% of engineers show every other pattern of signs. Which means that, if you see someone showing some other pattern of signs, and you don't know anything except that it's not the abovementioned pattern that 30% of engineers show, then your knowledge logically implies that it's somewhat less likely (1.4 to 1 odds ratio) that they're an engineer. (Maybe someone else knows more than you, and could say that this pattern is actually also a strong signal of "engineer"—let's say it's even stronger, that 2% of engineers are like that and 0% of everyone else is. But the above statement about your knowledge remains accurate. Also, that would imply that the set of all other patterns is expressed by 68% of engineers and 99% of non-engineers, making the average of all other patterns a slightly stronger signal of "non-engineer".) That is a relatively diffuse signal, of course. If someone's very good at recognizing engineer-specific traits, and can see them in, say, 80% of engineers, then the average signal value of "all not-obviously-engineer traits" would be a strong "not an engineer". Or if someone can only recognize "definitely an engineer" traits in 2% of engineers, then that's only a 1.02 to 1 odds ratio for someone who doesn't show those "definitely an engineer" traits.
In conclusion, statements of the form "I can look at some people and conclude that they're very likely an engineer" logically imply statements of the form "There are other people I could look at and be less confident they're an engineer". The quantities—how much less confident—depend on the details.
I'm curious: (1) Do you think all statements of the form "Engineers are more likely to exhibit visible trait X" are worth calling out? (2) If 'mabbo had stated his criteria, and they were, for example (I haven't seen the videos), "Innsprucker is wearing very informal clothes while the others are obviously dressed up", would you think that was worth calling out? (3) If the answer to 2 is no, then would it have been better to ask 'mabbo, "I'm curious what makes Innsprucker so obviously a rocket scientist", before assuming it was absence of the traits "younger, or women, or of color" and calling him out for it?
You're being overtly crass to call someone out for being racist and bigoted when another reading of the same comment could imply that the other host were so professional, well spoken, and polished that he wouldn't be surprised if that was their profession.
Isn't it rather biased of you to assume that being an engineer is somehow superior to being a professional actor, spokesperson, or hostess?
I felt the same way as the commenter above and it had nothing to do with their looks or color. Rather, it had everything to do with their speech patterns and tone. They sounded like they had been coached and were reading off cue cards. As I watched them, I joked with a friend that these people had been sent by the PR department to act as engineers and read a script. They didn't sound genuine in the least. If they are indeed engineers, they were trying way too hard. They should relax and try to sound more natural and less like a vocal artist reading a commercial script.
Oh, I agree with you wholeheartedly! I didn't mean to say that those other people aren't also engineers and rocket scientist.
Some companies might have only let the people who look like them host the live stream. SpaceX put out their top people- young, old, white, black, male, female- and let them all be the faces of the launch. I don't know that my own company would be so brave.
You are not the only one. Funny that instead of looking forward to space exploration a bunch of people prefer mundane debates. I thought that HN was better than reddit but this thread is an awkward exception it seems.
There's a [-] sign next to every comment. You could have easily just collapsed the thread under that comment if you wanted to avoid that part of the discussion. Instead, here you are contributing to the very noise you're complaining about.
Not to belittle your point, but in defense of the original comment, I think he looked "more like an engineer" because he looked like he'd been up for 48+ hours powered nothing by coffee
Good comment. All the people trying to derail the conversation by claiming you are derailing the conversation could have just upvoted you instead or commented "good point" and then upvoted that.
I really did not want to derail the conversation into this topic anyway. I'm a lifelong space fan and I've been looking forward to this launch for years. I watched it live today with dozens of my coworkers.
But I went to read the comments here and the second highest comment wasn't about the magnitude of the achievement or anything like that, it was just a throw-away comment about the way the livestream's hosts look. I felt obligated to respond because the look of it was so bad. This whole thread would never have happened had that comment not been sitting so prominently on the page sans rebuttal. I'm not the one who started the conversation about looks, in other words.
I really appreciate that you called me out for it. I wasn't being clear in my meaning, and I totally see your point. Too late for an edit now unfortunately.
It's a bit aggressive to assume OP's metrics of what "looks like" a rocket science includes being an old white male.
Actually, you're the one who introduced these features as being relevant, and thus the only one perpetuating these features as being stereotypes right now is you.
I believe the person was comparing the engineer to his model of a TV star rather than comparing his model of the engineer to the other 'tv looking ones'. "Sorry to call you out on this" but this person is clearly giving an opinion and this type of reactionary statement reads as defensive due to you expressing some type of negativity due to the structure of this persons opinion. You might want to re-evaluate what your notion of an opinion is, it might be "outdated". Accusing this person of prejudice due to an opinion is using a hammer where a screwdriver is needed...(words are tools).
Lastly, suppressing the opinion of an individual with the power of appealing to various underrepresented group identities...can you see what type of appearance this person has through a screen? I think you're showing your "biases" here.
Thanks for the question. The entire comment is kind of defensive and impolite, but I'll focus on what you asked. In my opinion, approaching it like the parent did as an individual making a statement that can be disagreeing is polite to me. However, your question is asking me to define a polite way to introduce and acknowledge implicit bias into a conversation that is meant to be used in the same way as above, and I can't. Using the idea of implicit bias as a means for an accusation of prejudice and 'outdated' opinions by appealing to various forms of groups that the parent could OR could not be identifying with as 'your' own opinion as an 'individual' is a hammer. Its powerful and sometimes is needed, but again its not a screwdriver :)
I interpreted the parents comment as a joke more about the engineer not looking like a TV star than the others not looking like an engineer by the way...
So to close this comment, CANT ENGINEERS LOOK LIKE TV STARS TOO?? to which I will respond and say 'not always'.
Maybe that's a way to respond politely to implicit bias...
mabbo never said the others didn't look like engineers.
He said John doesn't look like an actor/PR person (which, I think you'll agree, have appearance job requirements).
> The other hosts are great, but if you told me they were hired actors or PR people I'd believe it.
Lots of people don't marry for money. And if someone marries a poor person, it pretty obvious they're not doing it for money. (Naturally, that doesn't mean they're the only one.)
OP just assumes that people don't go into tech because of what other people will think of them. It's a harmful assumption and not true either. People go into tech because it interests them. It's a choice.
Is this not alike to asking me to not have the mental view of a basketball team as a coloured group of tall males? And if I had that view, then am I discriminating against short white people, or have I built a more accurate mental model of the world?
If you think that being a female engineer is like being short in basketball, then there are clearly serious problems with your mental model of the world.
No, that's not what I said. Let me put it another way, things form patterns in life. All sorts of patterns. E.g. As a silly example to illustrate clearly, trees are generally green. Is that discriminating against other colours? (if such a thing were possible). Or simply an observation of life.
> He doesn't look like a TV star, he looks like an engineer, a rocket scientist. He looks real.
Which is funny because, reading the job titles given to the SpaceX announcers, my first thought is always "wow, SpaceX hires some really attractive engineers."
It makes sense, as publicity is central to SpaceX's / Musk's mission. SpaceX evolved out of Musk's Mars Oasis concept, with the aim being to inspire and reignite interest in space with a greenhouse on Mars.
Should have been written: "Love that SpaceX announces, shoots, and leaves live production in-house." Not because it was grammatically incorrect, but because I wanted just one more chance to make an Oxford comma joke. http://a.co/gc5Izsa
Also love seeing machinists side by side cheering with software engineers, standing by a mission control which is placed feet from where engines are assembled on the shop floor.
Open company culture well-executed.
Congratulations to all there!