|
by Rafiki 09/22/2014, 10:35am PDT |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Here's another comment providing context and thoughts:
Alright, I'll probably get downvoted to hell for this, but here we go....
Some context: The woman in question is a VR-developer who attended the conference along 2 other (female) co-workers, one of whom was sexually harrassed at the conference by an attendee.
She is definitely right that there IS a gender gap, both in the dev team and more strongly among developers/ this conference. The conference was attended by like 95% males, from what I've heard, it also seemed weird to most guys out there.
The question is therefore if this is a problem and who should fix it.
What's cut out in this video (and important) is Palmer Luckey's initial response, where he clarified that women simply didn't apply for the conference and they probably even invited a higher percentage of women who applied than men.
He also (correctly) pointed out that this is a problem in the entire tech industry and doesn't have to do anything with VR inherently.
He then added that he didn't feel qualified to address these issues, which is a totally legitimate statement. I think you can't expect them to solve social equality in tech while already burning out on revolutionizing VR.
What's shown here is Carmack claiming that they're gender-blind for hirings. This is a bold claim, but looking at the panel I think it's totally reasonable that these are indeed the best people that could work in VR (Palmer and Iribe founded the company, Abrash and Carmack are known to be geniuses)
So, to summarize, Oculus gave legitimate statements, though they admitted they couldn't solve the problem. I'd have to agree that this problem won't be solved at Oculus, but in schools, society etc.
What was wrong, was the woman's reaction on Twitter afterwards.
- She claimed that Oculus said "It's not our fault, it's tech's faul. There's nothing we can do about it." though they simply admitted that they didn't feel qualified to solve it.
- She accused Carmack that it's easy to say they're gender-blind, because he is the default gender there. I don't think this accusation is valid, because everyone working at Oculus is obviously very skilled and as long as not proven otherwise, Oculus should be given the benefit of the doubt that they're hiring color-blind.
- She also accused Oculus to present themselves as diverse, even though AFAIK they never said that.
HOWEVER, I feel ashamed by all the harassments she's been getting. This woman was pointing out a legitimate issue. No one should have to face all this hate and humiliation. |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|