Hello that is me. I left almost a year ago. I posted that as a joke after years of abuse and it was directed towards those abusive community members. I had no ill will towards users. In fact, users are why I stayed so long and tried to improve the product. I agree with some of the criticisms in this post. The fact you’re still using me, the most public facing woman on the project, as a scapegoat and target for your frustrations is predictable but sad. In general targeting one dev will not get you anywhere.
Thanks for all of your hard work on Firefox mobile -- I've read plenty of background about those abusive community members, and I can only sympathize with you. People can be jerks.
That being said; responding to them with that (public!) tweet probably only added fuel to the fire, especially since the tweet wasn't clearly directed at only those abusive community members. If I didn't know about your full story and stumbled upon that tweet, I wouldn't come away from it with the best impression of you or Mozilla.
I'm not sure this person is necessarily targeting you. Or women in general. It seems to me like they're just frustrated with the product and this tweet is a very easy vent for that frustration.
Anyway, hopefully your current role is a little less political than what you dealt with at Mozilla. I definitely wouldn't have lasted as long as you did in that situation!
How do you think it would go showing anonymous death threats to the police? I can tell you because we’ve tried! Not well. They laugh you out of the station.
You think giving advice to “not doxx yourself” is useful advice? It is not. We are hyper aware of our safety and still have to be afraid of unknown creeps - anonymous trolls who we can’t “do something about”.
“I hope instead of trying to find sexism in tech industry”
You can’t go 1 week without hearing about sexism in our industry. Being in denial about it because it doesn’t impact you personally is a predictable and weak move.
> How do you think it would go showing anonymous death threats to the police? I can tell you because we’ve tried! Not well. They laugh you out of the station.
There's several reasons for reporting anonymous death threats (even if I find it weird that police would openly laugh in your face):
1. If you need to make a case in the future you have documented evidence. You can bring a police report to court.
2. When statistics are being crunched on such things, having the reports on record help identify a problem.
> You think giving advice to “not doxx yourself” is useful advice? It is not. We are hyper aware of our safety and still have to be afraid of unknown creeps - anonymous trolls who we can’t “do something about”.
She is publishing under her real name - if death threats are a serious threat, use a pseudo name. I understand the "she shouldn't have to" argument, and in a perfect society no crimes would ever be committed - but unfortunately humans are not perfect and we must compromise our ideology in favour of realism.
> You can’t go 1 week without hearing about sexism in our industry.
You can't go a day without hearing about murder either, but I don't go hunting it out in the news or writing about it. I pick and choose my battles for my own mental health.
I'm not denying sexism in the workplace is a real problem, I'm just suggesting that the author has over burdened herself with a large problem she has little control over, and it's made her unhappy. She sounds as if she genuinely believes somebody will send her anthrax through the post - do you really believe that is a real possibility or do you think her battle with sexism in the workplace has gone slightly off the rails?
> Being in denial about it because it doesn’t impact you personally is a predictable and weak move.
I'm not denying it's a problem and I haven't suggested that it doesn't impact me personally - you just made these assumptions. It's also not denial to not stress about every problem that impacts you personally.
If I published under a pseudo name then the comments here would be “This is fake. Not even a real person is willing to say this”. You truly can’t win.
I said in the article that not every woman in tech gets death threats. But I have and you seem to want to find reasons to blame me for getting them or make me seem “off the rails” for feeling any fear.
That wasn't clear, apologies - but also now you have tied you HN username that was otherwise anonymous to your real name. If you believe you have a very real risk of death, please do not make it easier for people to determine who you are.
Honestly I am saddened that you see the world through the lens you write about. The path you are on does not lead to happiness, I hope this doesn't play as large a role in your life as your article leads one to believe.
> If I published under a pseudo name then the comments here would be “This is fake. Not even a real person is willing to say this”. You truly can’t win.
There are many cases where there is no good option, but if you believe your life to be in danger, pick the option of self preservation. Also I doubt that putting a name to an article really makes it any more credible to your critics, the goalposts simply move from 'you are not real' to 'your experience is not real'.
> But I have and you seem to want to find reasons to blame me for getting them or make me seem “off the rails” for feeling any fear.
I always look at things with scepticism - especially when I realize somebody is trying to change my world view. That said, I can believe that you have likely received some crazy messages, even if just being a human that creates content on the internet.
What I think is a leap is to believe that some random package that arrives has a very real threat of containing anthrax. If this is a genuinely held belief (and not just story garnish) then it appears like a self-induced paranoia.
You are responding to her yet you use the 3rd person. You meant to write:
“You are publishing under your real name”
This is a complicated use of first person and third person:
“She sounds as if she genuinely believes somebody will send her anthrax through the post - do you really believe that is a real possibility or do you think her battle with sexism in the workplace has gone slightly off the rails?”
You meant to write:
“You sound as if you genuinely believe somebody will send you anthrax through the post - do you really believe that is a real possibility or do you think your battle with sexism in the workplace has gone slightly off the rails?”
Women discussing their personal experiences is "controversial"? And we "should expect" trolling and harassment and worse? That's exactly the problem. You think that that's normal and acceptable.
For the record, I didn't say any of this. It's not controversial to talk about your experience. It's certainly controversial to generalize your experience across an entire industry, or sex. And it's not acceptable to be harassed, but yes it's normal and not specific to women.
So when ~50% of women working in tech have experienced harassment is that enough of a pattern to generalize? Or does it need to be 100% before we can talk about it?
I don't trust the results of anonymous online surveys, nor should you. It's amazing that any organization purporting to be journalistic would report such results, but those are the times we live in, I guess.
Anyway, my comment was about base rates of harassment received by anyone saying anything critical of anyone else: they are high, no matter who you are and what you are saying. It's not right, but it's not limited to women.
Thank you. I’m not doubting it happened. I thank you for updating the post with the extent of the harassment. It’s something I think people don’t realize how bad it is. Or has become. I’m sorry you experienced that.
It's clear from the other person's responses that they don't mean it as a jab (which you seem to have taken it to be). Many people have a mythical idea of needing to be a superhuman developer to get any position at a big name tech company. Reading this seems to have made this person realize that such positions might be not as out of reach as they assumed, and they were expressing surprise about that.
If I offered internships I think I'd be lucky to get a few applicants, but I thought internships at top tech companies like Mozilla were very competitive.
And why are you assuming that I wasn't qualified or a competitive candidate? I said I applied on a whim and wasn't drawn to Mozilla for any particular reason, not that I didn't deserve the job?
I'm only reading what you wrote: "I had taken one Android class, knew some Java". I guess I would have expected them to want some related open source work, or a lot of related coursework, things like that.
Hi! Emily here! Added some more context in a footnote in the blog post about this "obscene gesture" and the harassment after the fact. TLDR: The amount of disgusting harassment I received was unbelievable and could never be justified as a reasonable reaction to an "obscene gesture"
Hi Emily! Thanks for your reply. I’m sorry to hear of your being the victim of harassment and I appreciate your post here clarifying the circumstances.
Thank you for your contributions to open source software. Many web users, myself included, rely on free and open source projects for our work and recreation and these products would not exist without the generous contributions of kind and skilled persons such as yourself.
I hope you recover from your burnout and find a fulfilling role somewhere that respects your mental health and values your contributions.
I don't know really understand why users hate on ordinary devs.
But as someone who is still using Firefox despite Mozilla management (not the devs) ignoring us, belittling us when we voice our concerns and destroy the software we fell in love with more than a decade ago over "ux" I can understand why people are frustrated:
Firefox was in another league.
Someone wrote about Pale Moon the other day, I can sadly not recommend using it as the main browser, I'm not in a position to vouch for the security, but if anyone wonders they could try to create a few ugly modern apps or open a few known safe websites and have a look :
it feels snappy, even years after Firefox diverged! And it looks so good with all the old extensions.
A real shame even I don't really dare to use it, but the web is a harsh environment.
From someone who only uses the basics that a browser has to offer (simple is better), I just wanna say, I don't mind the update. I rather like it. Thanks for the hard work.
