And from Me

I read Jessie Frazelle's blog post that outlines some of the horrid things that have happened to her solely because she's a woman contributing to the tech industry.

If you're engaging in acts of aggression against Jessie or any other woman or person of color, you are stealing from yourself.

Jessie is making a measurable contribution to the tech community. How do I know? Well, because I've heard of her. Because she wrote a very fine post on isolating desktop apps using Docker and done conference presentations as well.

Hearing about her means that she's more than a droid in a cube banging on a keyboard and collection a paycheck. She's making a measurable contribution to the tech industry... to the industry that I love.

And each man (yeah, I'm making an assumption about the sex of those attacking Jessie) that attacks, threatens, and otherwise tries to hurt her is stealing from himself with each negative action.

Why?

Because each hour she's spending time dealing with pain is an hour that she's not making something that you and I get for free. Yep. We get her blog posts and her conference presentations on YouTube for free.

So, if she's not spending time contributing because she's distracted from her work because of threats and destructive crap, then she's not giving you stuff that you don't pay for.

So, stop stealing from yourself. Stop wasting her time because her time leads to better stuff for you.

Time to Stop

It's time to stop harassing Jessie and other women and people of color in the tech industry.

Take their contributions... in this age of open source and blog posts and free to watch videos, you can take what they contribute without cost to you.

Spend your energy doing something that makes you look good rather than making someone else feel bad.

Stop stealing from yourself... and me.