Thursday, September 21, 2017

Something I notice more because of Jason Morningstar.

Something I notice more because of Jason Morningstar.

Can you identity the genders?
Boss: What is the difference in table1 and table2----
Owner of Table1: There is none.
Owner of table2: Except for the columns
T1: well of course except for the columns, but the same rows.
T2: Oh, obviously.
Boss: Great. So what is the difference in the timing of updating table 1 and table 2?

Any guesses?

14 comments:

  1. I have no idea about the genders, honestly. But I have to ask... if the columns are different in the tables, then how are the rows the same? I mean, that makes no sense to me... what am I missing?

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  2. Matt Johnson The technical isn't super important. These should really be views, showing different representations of the same underlying data.

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  3. Anna Kreider You sure? I'm actually real interested in why you think that.

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  4. I think Owner of Table1 is a Man. Arrogant and uninformed, and condescending. Sounds like most men I have had business meetings with, and like no woman I have ever worked with.

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  5. I think the owner of T1 is a woman. Table 2 is the Man trying to assert his perceived dominance by pointing out meaningless, literal differences to look sharp in front of the boss and knock T1 down a rung.

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  6. Yeah, I do tech support... the technical is what grabs my attention unfortunately. I can /guess/ the genders attempting to use stereotypes as a basis, but I can't identify them with any sort of certainty. My guess would be all men, because on average there are more male supervisors, and the two table owners both assert things as facts and despite being somewhat contradictory information the boss just accepts it and moves on which is more likely to happen to men than to a woman. But I wouldn't put any money on those guesses.

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  7. I am told I labelled this poorly, so I will try again!

    Boss: I'd like to know more about table 1 and table 2, in particular -
    Table 1: There's no difference.
    Table 2: Except the columns.
    Table 1: Well obviously, except for the columns.
    Table2: Well of course, but the rows are the same.
    Table 1: Agreed
    Boss: Great. I'd like to know more about the timing update difference in table 1 and table 2.

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  8. My assumption is that Tech #2 is a woman, and Trch #1 and boss are both men.

    My reasoning is in part because I've dealt with SQL tables... a difference in columns is a huge difference, so I read "well, obviously, except for the columns" as simply screaming "I have boldly stated the exact wrong answer, and want to cover up that fact." Saying that is a guy thing, and not picking up on it when a guy says it is also a guy thing.

    If it's a PowerPoint table, where an added column is not a big deal, that's a different dynamic than I initially assume.

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  9. Apparently I did this all wrong.

    Boss was interupted by Guy 1 and Guy 2, who got into a measuring contest over the tables. The boss -- their boss! -- is a woman, and they shouted her down without letting her finish the question.

    Or so I perceived. Hmmm.

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  10. Cadence and delivery is so hard to convey in text, and is so much of communication.

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  11. Also, doing some introspection to try to ferret out how strong my first-impression assumption was that the boss in a technical discussion would automatically be male, and that the question was between tech #1 and #2.

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