Category Archives: Thoughtful

How your “Team” pictures influence my desire to even apply

February 25, 2015 nouyang

Lately it’s the “startup thing” to put pictures of your team up on your website. Now, I don’t speak for all female engineers, but as a female engineer who’s kind of sensitive about these things, fairly or not, it’s an immediate turnoff to see pictures like this

It goes roughly like this:

I open my email.
Someone forwarded me an email. “Cool drone startup that’s looking to hire!”
I click the link and read about it, then somewhere along the way I see a picture of the Team.
I get irked and leave.

Sure, you all could be a bunch of egalitarian feminist dudes, and if I just go work for companies with a lot of females already I’m exacerbating the problem in some ways, but really, just kind of a turn-off.

If you at all care about getting a more diverse team, here’s two simple solutions:

1) Just don’t post pictures of your all white-male founders / leadership / engineering team. No pictures are better, then I can’t form preconceptions (yes, I recognize the irony here) about your team. Also, the more people you have, the more I’ll look specifically for females in engineering leadership positions. Mixing in your female HR / support department does not help you.

2) Or, just put a simple statement to the effect that you’re aware that your team is very white and male and that you’re working on it.

That’s enough to let me know that you care, which is a big deal to me. Working in a place where no one cares about feminism or feminism is an awkward topic would make me bitter and unhappy (and I’d leave) within months. You’ll have to word your statement to overcome people’s jadedness (“yea, right, that’s probably just their HR talking.”) and show that your statement reflects your company culture.

Oh! Ladies, one thing I’ve discovered is that older guys are pretty alright. Something about marrying and having a family… My current co-workers are almost all older white males, but it’s in some ways a lot more comfortable than hanging out at MITERS, because feminism isn’t a dirty word or somehow less important than the latest in kilowatt lasers.

Today, I am a 41-year-old father and husband whose feelings on this issue have changed. I have come a long way since being a single, 26-year-old state senator, and I am not afraid to say that my position has evolved as my experiences have broadened, deepened and become more personal.

—Congressman Tim Ryan

(Source: Rep. Dillon, Rep. Ryan)

p.s. This also goes for conferences… I’m looking at you, NERC.

Thoughtful

Do you trust the police? (my response to Patel)

February 18, 2015 nouyang

The tragic story of Sureshbhai Patel‘s arrest and serious injury (partial paralysis) 1.5 weeks ago (on Feb 6th, 2014) resonates strongly with me for a few reasons, despite the fact that I am not Indian.

I am not here to discuss police brutality or white privilege or any of another alienating terms that people “know their opinion on.” I am here to discuss my personal feelings and experiences.

Here is the dashcam video of Patel’s arrest and injury, should you wish to judge for yourself.

fifty-seven

Patel is 57, around the age of my parents. I love my parents a lot. Although 60 years old seemed crazy old to me a few years ago (when I was a teenager), my parents are in good health and kick my butt in getting stuff done, including physical chores.

grandparents leaning in

I am friends with a Chinese couple (the husband works in biotech and the wife is a Harvard grad student) in my area. They recently had a baby, and their parents flew in from China to help take care of the baby. (I’m not sure if this is a thing in European cultures? but I think it is common in Chinese cultures for the grandparents to take care of the children while the parents works. See here and here). So immigrants bring this cultural mindset with them.

(By contrast, I’m an ABC, in other words I was born and grew up in the US, and find the thought of my parents taking care of my baby to be weird and unrealistic… Actually, I’ve instilled in myself a deep suspicion of babies, so the words “my baby” :s eww).

Like Patel, my friends’ parents speak almost no English, but are by no means stupid. They (the grandparents) constantly invite me over for dinner and cook delicious foodstuffs for me, oh man, now I’m hungry. Sadly I can’t find any pictures of the food they cooked right now (possibly I don’t have any pictures). They always send me home with tupperwares of leftovers too. As a result, I’m quite fond of them, even if making conversation is a bit of a struggle due to language, cultural, and generational differences.

English as a Second Language

I’ve known from a friend’s experiences that simply not knowing English or not understanding it well enough / fast enough can get you arrested, even if you’ve spent decades in the US, worked your way up from being a dirt-poor immigrant, and now contribute to the US economy, pay your taxes, and are generally an upstanding citizen.

To get your record cleaned of an arrest when you did nothing wrong is still an easy few thousand dollars in lawyer’s fees. They did not benefit from police cams; they swept their arrest under the rug out of shame. Shame for what? Not being born in the US? Years later, it’s just something to be bitter about and not ever bring up again after dealing with it.

As a result, since a young age I’ve been open to the idea that our justice and policing system is not perfect.

Do I trust the police? Unfortunately, instinctively I do not.

due to my aforementioned experiences.

I temper my gut feelings with the knowledge that I should look more into the research behind whether police are trust-worthy, since my personal experiences will only ever constitute a part of the whole picture.

global comparison

For instance, having visited other countries, I am able to get some prospective and understand that the US is pretty high up there in terms of standards of governance. In 2008, the US ranked in the 90-100th percentile in terms of perceived corruption:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators

Or from the world bank in 2013, with links to the methodology:

Interactive version: http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#reports

Personally, I’ve visited several other countries where, in broad daylight, police officers will deliberately lead you (tourist in car = people with money) astray or ambush you, waste your time and make you sweat, and then threaten you with a ticket unless you realize what is going on and pay them a bribe.

However,

None of these facts excuse us from working together to build more just and trustworthy social systems. Our rule of law in the US maybe be good, on average, compared to the rest of the world. But you or I could easily be caught in one of the “outlier events” and lose thousands of dollars, our mobility, or our life. Averages are small comfort then.

Thanks for listening.

Thoughtful

i am a meat reducer (some musings on not-vegetarianism)

January 16, 2015 nouyang 1 Comment

(no, meat-reducer is not actually a thing)

Over the last year, I’ve been toying with reducing my meat intake. Here are the causes and the successive iterations I went through.

i won’t spend money on meat, but i will eat meat going to waste

The initial deciding factor was founding a company with one other person who didn’t eat much meat. I didn’t like meat that much anyway (too many dry chicken breasts I’d shoved down to avoid food waste), so when buying company rations it was easier to stockpile food we would both eat (ramen, frozen cheese pizza, frozen bean burritos, cake mix cake, cheetos… I had such a terrible diet. YET SO GREAT).

His general philosophy was to avoid spending money on meat while still prioritizing not wasting food. This seemed agreeable to me, since I dislike food waste more than I dislike killing animals by a wide margin. Fish were deemed okay to make a complete diet easier, and so company celebrations were at sushi restaurants (dubious from an ecological standpoint, honestly, since over-fishing is a big problem).

The other major point was to not take a stand, to got the opposite direction of evangelist vegans or vegetarians who believe they have the higher moral ground.

first dilemma

Chicken instant noodles uses chicken stock. But I dislike shrimp instant noodles. Is paying for chicken instant noodles okay?

I decided it was, because most places don’t stock vegetarian instant noodles.

second dilemma

I hosted a boatwarming bbq party. Was it okay to buy meat burgers and hotdogs for my friends who no doubt would expect it to be there and might find eating veggie burgers weird and unfulfilling?

I decided it was, although I’ll probably try to avoid the situation in the future.

Apparently, in mixed-diet household house parties, the vegan person might supply the vegan food and the omnivores buys the meat for everyone else.

third dilemma

When treating someone to lunch or dinner, is it okay to pay for their meat selections? We took our interns out to lunch several times.

I decided it was okay.

what options are there: few!

It was fun to go to restaurants and see what the vegetarian options were. They’re often not great. For instance, dim sum, that favorite of my group of friends. Good luck filling yourself up on anything vegetarian at dim sum. Crispy taro thing? Filled with meat inside. Long noodles? Secretly has shrimp embedded inside.

it’s hard to remember at first

I would catch myself ordering my go-to dishes at restaurants and then go “Derp.”

leather and down

Then the question comes up. What about spending money on animal products? Leather work boots are comfy and weatherproof. Down jackets are nice and warm. I decided spending money on these was okay.

it’s hard to not eat meat even when i’m not buying it

1) There’s a lot of free food around MIT, usually not-vegetarian

2) When I visit my parents or when they visit me, they cook me large quantities of meat (maybe I will make an exception and declare to them I am a meat reducer next time…)

It’s hard to explain your dietary preferences or avoid talking about them when you make them arse complicated

I had to declare my food preferences for ordering company lunch. (My company, <15 people, is a mix of vegan, vegetarian, and omnivore). My first week at work, my parents had cooked me a large batch of meat, so I ate it every day. Additionally, there’s a decent amount leftover from company lunch and I try to divert everything from the trash, including the meat dishes.

I wasn’t sure how to explain that I’m sort-of vegetarian except where chicken noodles and food going to waste are concerned, since really, if you’re sort-of vegetarian, you’re not actually vegetarian.

what about deer killed by bow and arrow from a friend of a friend

I’m not joking, this actually came up. I decided that it was okay to eat this meat, since it was definitely not factory-farmed.

why?

enh, why not. A lot of my friends are into it, I don’t actually like meat that much, and factory farming is definitively terrible.

also it’s delicious

i really want an eggplant parmesan sandwich. SO DELICIOUSSS. and hummus and raisin bread. and saag paneer. mmm. quinoa, onions, and sweet potatoes. sweet potato pizza. nachos and cheese. microwaved frozen vegetarian dumplings.

these are all super-simple college cooking foods.

currently

At work, I sit halfway between the vegetarians and the omnivores and pick exclusively from the vegetarian side if I can reach it, but if there’s leftovers I’ll eat them meat and all.

I never buy meat at the grocery store nor at restaurants. If I’m treating someone, I’ll pay for their meat selection. If it’s free food, I’ll avoid eating meat unless I’m really hungry, since usually someone else will get around to eating it.

Currently, I am a meat-reducer.

orange narwhals