Being a pretty devout Christian man certain anti-social behaviors in the technical industry hit a nerve with me. The two that stick out to me the most are pretty obvious, course language and something that I am having a hard time putting into words. Sexism seems a bit to strong of a word, but it hits on the overall thought that I have.
Let me also make this clear in that I am allowing for a separation from personal life actions and professional life actions. If it is your personal time, then do what you want. Who am I to judge? However when you are in a professional setting I don’t think it is to much to ask for a bit of professionalism. I wish I could say this is a limited problem, but its not. Far to many of those in the technical field will drop the F-bomb in a heart beat. Yes, I didn’t use the word. I don’t cuss (see the devout Christian man part…). That word makes me cringe, but lets be honest in a professional setting there aren’t many curse words that make me comfortable.
While I won’t call the presenter out publically here, there was one time I was at a presentation and before hand I heard the presenter lamenting about not being an MVP. He didn’t know why. Technically he was very sound and skilled. However his language was pretty poor. I even took the time to email him personally about it. Never got a reply, but I hope he takes it into consideration. Then you have the guys at DotNetRocks who have their twice-weekly podcast. What we generally get is a cleaned up version. Though they do drop the F-Bomb on occasion and one time they forgot to scrub the podcast before posting on the web. It was loaded with the F-Bomb. For me a professional setting should remain professional. Especially when you are in mixed company. If you know all involved and know their comfort level, that is one thing. But if you are presenting to a room of strangers, you should keep your mouth in check.
Then we get to the second part, sexism. We are the industry that took the porn industry to the next level. This topic is usually brought up in very subtle comments, however recently a fellow by the name of Matt Aimonetti took it to the next level. He recently gave a presentation on the Ruby technology titled,(WARNING… graphic images) CouchDB: Perform like a pr0n star. Just an initial glance at his power point presentation would give most folks a very uneasy feeling. I really don’t know how this ever seemed like a good idea to Mr. Aimonetti. He did address the topic publically.
What I think is the root of the issue is the makeup of the men in the technology sector. We were/are the geeks in life. We were the outcast and failed to really build great social interactions with people. Most people grow out of that lack of relationship building at some point, but since we are around like minded folks we push this envelope without giving it a second thought. Or as some of the commenter's put it, ‘still living in their mom’s basement at 35 years old’.
Can’t we all just grow up a little?