Linden Lab Alum Bethanye Blount Featured in Atlantic Monthly Story on Silicon Valley Sexism

Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women? is a new Atlantic Monthly cover story that everyone in tech seems to be talking about today, probably because everyone in tech knows the Valley is awful to women (except, you know, everyone in tech being awful to women), and as it happens, starts right off with a story about Linden Lab -- but in a good way:

Bethanye Blount came into work early to interview a job applicant. A veteran software engineer then in her 30s, Blount held a senior position at the company that runs Second Life, the online virtual world... So she was taken aback when the job applicant barely gave her the time of day. He knew her job title. He knew she would play a key role in deciding whether he got hired. Yet every time Blount asked him a question about his skills or tried to steer the conversation to the scope of the job, he blew her off with a flippant comment. Afterward, Blount spoke to another top woman—a vice president—who said he’d treated her the same way.

Obviously Second Life wasn’t going to hire this bozo. But what the heck: He was here, and they had a new employee, a man, who needed practice giving interviews, so they sent him in. When the employee emerged, he had an odd look on his face. “I don’t know what just happened,” he said. “I went in there and told him I was new, and all he said was he was so glad I was there: ‘Finally, somebody who knows what’s going on!’”

As Bethanye notes, it's a relatively minor example of sexism in the tech industry -- one among a vast ocean of douchebaggery which inspired her to co-found Project Include, whose other co-founder is my friend Susan Wu, a Valley legend who happens to have an awesome SL avatar.

After Bethanye left Linden Lab, by the way, she was briefly chief engineer at Reddit, an experience she discussed here a couple years back.

Comments

[Name withheld]

My first job, 18 years old warehouse man. Everyday threatened by the old guys that they wanted to lube me up with various oils around the place then anally rape me. I'm male btw. I thought at the time (20+ years ago) , that it was just part of the course of being a young worker that the old timers would pick on me and tease me. Never the less it was awful to be around and made me quite nervous. The boss also made sexual advances towards me. I later encountered the same toxic people in retail, especially middle management.
This was after spending my youth growing up in children's homes run by pedophiles.

[PD MacGuire]

I've always found that a lot of the perceived sexism in the office correlates directly to the number of men with Asperger's, et c in the office. A lot of guys on the spectrum are just unnerved by the environment and potential social situations presented by women. And they see no problem at all with being extremely rude to coworkers. I really don't see the problem as misogyny, per se, so much as it is basic awkwardness, selfishness and a lack of what I'd call maturity. I'm always fielding hysterical complaints about these weird, minor (to me) things like perfume, or the clicky noises that high heels make. Or that women in the office are "bugging them". It's a hyper-sensitivity thing, I guess. It can be very awkward, trying to comfort someone who's extremely disturbed by transitory noises that I can't even hear, and smells that I don't notice.