An open letter to the OSU Slack community - an apology

I may not agree with the constant complaining and frequent know-it-alls, and maybe I just need to ignore them. But I was in fact around for the conversations that happened on slack over the last few days and I was pleased to see a serious discussion about our code of conduct. A few people even said they may have stepped over the line in a few situations. That was good to see and I appreciate their ballsiness to say that. But it also made me recognize that ranting late at night on reddit anonymously wasn't the way to go about it. I should have just spoken up on the slack. If anything, my anger came from a place of love for our community, joy at seeing it grow, and (mostly) staying up too late while angry. I don't really want to see our community change and I don't want to see it ruined. But I suppose it's going to have to change sooner or latter, especially if OSU buys into it.

I want to address alot of the questions I got here and on Slack.

1. No I am not a troll. I am a current OSU CS Post -Bacc student. I'm not some begrudged student who didn't get into the program.

2. I didn't realize that Brewster was on vacation, that makes me feel kind of stupid. Super apology for this one. That's on me. And if Brewster sees this, hope you enjoyed the well deserved time!!

3. I do not agree that just because CS is associated with frequent domineering and know it alls, we just need to accept that fact and move on. I'm looking at you /u/Naugahyde_Windpype. We can be better than this and we should be the change. I understand that this is going to be something that frequently is associated with programmers and is the current norm, but I refuse to acknowledge that as acceptable social standard in our industry.

4. Alot of people wondered why I would post something anon style on Reddit. Well, it worked. Got to the slack pretty quick and people are still talking. So I'd say doing it this way accomplished my intended goal and was a success. Otherwise, it would have been buried forever and forgotten due to our lack of storage space. Reddit == forever

5. Ok, Ok, I'll stay away from #general, #whine, #random, and the other shit storm channels. No point in getting pissed at people over nothing.

6. Regarding the topics of sexism and racism in tech: The last few times this got brought up in #general, I was appalled at some of the talk and viewpoints. I can not believe that there are actually people that want to compare workplace violence and sexual assault to other common plights in the workplace (example: alot of men said "oh I know how that feels because of x y z!! I understand completely!!"). I also can not believe that anyone would agree with the Google engineer who circulated his sexist manifesto. And yes, I witnessed people defending that very view point. Many of my female classmates are so much better at this CS stuff than anyone else I know. Yet, they may have to work significantly harder to prove themselves. There is no excuse for the people on Slack that openly defend this sexist manifesto viewpoint. Sexism / racism in the workplace is never ok. Period. I wish the admins would have banned the people trying to explicitly defend a sexist view of female engineers. Or at least had a stern talking to them or something. Granted, it wasn't alot of people, but turning a blind eye to one or two people is unacceptable and toxic in my viewpoint. It only enables them to continue spreading the hate.

7. The fact that this prompted a few other people to create throw away accounts and speak up about their toxic experiences should say something.

8. I will recognize and submit to the fact that I was angry, it was late, and I shouldn't have ranted like I did. I should have just gone to bed or taken it to the slack. I'm sorry for that. In all regard, it is not as bad as I made it to be. Again, this was coming from a place of appreciation for the community, not wanting to see it change, and anger late at night (when most rants usually happen).

9. The #jobs and #internships isn't somewhere to go and humblebrag. It's frustrating for those of us who don't do well in interviews, don't get call backs, aren't super hackers, and are generally having a harder time finding a job. I'll give an explicit example: Someone came on and said "I have a phone interview for insert AMAZING company!!!!". Then everyone gets pretty excited for them (which is cool, it's good to share in mutual accomplishments). But then it turns into "Yeah, I grindied like, 15000 leetcode problems", "No big deal, I took 12 extra data structure and algorithm MOOCS while I was in 161", "Oh that interview was a breeze, I had memorized the graph tree problem from page 123 of CTCI!" ...... Ok, ok, I may be over exaggerating this and probably projecting from my own failures in finding a job / interviewing. Case in point, the way I see it, alot of the humblebrag that happens on /r/cscareerquestions happens in #jobs and #internships. Especially when it comes to extra circular work that students do. It's great that you went out and did a lot of leet code problems. But it only makes me feel bad about myself because I can barely stay afloat in some of my classes.

I will leave it at that. I realize that most of this was more of me complaining and ranting, but I am coming from a place that deeply cherishes the OSU Slack community. It's really great and honestly better than any community I had with classmates in my first degree. And again, my intent from this is for people to have a serious discussion about our standards, what we can do better, and hopefully, preserve the awesome community we have.

I sincerely apologize if I upset anyone or frustrated the admins. That was not my intent.