Innovation in Software

This morning I find that bastion of journalism Valleywag (please note sarcasm here), has decided to lay into Marissa Mayer the VP who oversees Google’s core search business. Their analysis of her comes down to this:

• She seeks publicity
• She has influence in the company at a senior level
• She dictates the style of web pages without a style guide
• She is a perfectionist over candidate selection
• She points to athletics as part of her life but her times aren’t great

And then… well, this:

“Did she really mean to invite media scrutiny of her athletic career? What’s really telling about it: In the handful of times where Mayer has competed on her own, without the backing of a billionaire ex-boyfriend and a pliant boss, she has proven to be an outright failure.

At the beginning of the piece, Mayer once again denies rumors of her impending departure from Google — rumors which Valleywag first reported. Perhaps she has realized that without Google, she’s nothing. Can you blame her for clinging to her job?”

The vindictive tone, the over-arching sense of misogynistic snobbery is just astonishing.

Let’s take another figure within the tech sector who is influential: Steve Jobs. He, for what it’s worth:

• Seeks publicity
• Has influence in the company at a senior level
• Dictates the style of some products, sometimes with a style guide, sometimes not
• Is a perfectionist over candidate selection

What about Bill Gates when he was at the helm at Microsoft? Well:

• He saught publicity
• He had complete influence in the company at a senior level
• He dictated the style of Microsoft software without a formal style guide (and it showed!)
• He was a perfectionist over candidate selection

Yet we call them symbols, heroes, geniuses even. Marissa may indeed have pointed to athletic engagement where her performance is not above-average, but is it wrong to aspire? Valleywag’s little dig by turning around Mayer’s words that “good students are good at all things” to mean she should be good at everything she does is frankly unfair.

She got picked on because – and only because – she is a woman.

I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a sector that struggles to attract and retain women. Given the tech sector now effectively runs Western civilisation, this is a problem beyond reasonable description. However, it seems that time and time again the women who get close to the top get torn down again.

Take Kathy Sierra whose articles on usability were perhaps amongst the best written in that area, well, ever. She was helping people understand how to improve software and services in real, tangible ways. Didn’t ask for a penny for it, just did the odd speaking gig and basked in the glory the majority of us held her in. Astounding writer. Anyway, you’ll never guess what happened? Well she got death threats and the occasional suggestion she should be raped. She shut the blog down and got out of Dodge. We as an industry are worse off as a result.

Gentlemen (and it is you who I speak to specifically): what the crap are we playing at here?

I believe in equality of the sort that means that women who genuinely screw up should be called for it as much as any man and should not be put in cotton-wool environments. But to pick out women for doing things exactly the same way her male peers do (or better) and then basically using the medium of the blog to bully them because they remind you of that cheerleader who wouldn’t go to the prom with you, is quite frankly despicable.

I not only want more women to be attracted to this sector, but I think as a society we need them. Not as social media analysts, but as real entrepreneurs, managers, engineers and designers. I was foolish enough to think the Sierra episode would be a watershed moment for us as an industry. The reality is we remain far away.

It seems Valleywag has found somebody else to bully and I have a horrid feeling this is going to get more miserable and vindictive before it gets better.