I know a guy.
In fact, I know a lot of guys. That’s good because guys are all anyone is looking for these days—or even speaking to.
"Software guys."
"Hardware guys."
"Tech guys" in general.
Guys who might want to fund our round.
How tired are women of being either excluded in the language of who people are looking for, or being lumped in with men and being described as "Guys"?
It’s bothering me, too, actually. And it’s not just guys that do it.
Women do it all the time, which kind of blows my mind.
How hard is it to refer to people like this?
Software dev.
Hardware hackers.
Tech people.
Investors.
People use “guys” as a catch all term for addressing and referring to a group of people—and it’s just wrong. I know it doesn’t seem so bad, but it’s just a lazy habit that makes me think people are being lazy about lots of other language things—the way job posts are written, the way HR manuals are still unwritten, what profiles of people are recruited, etc.
Do you think Uber set out from the beginning to be an environment unfriendly to women?
I don’t—but unintentional and lazy lapses breed a kind of broken windows environment that just compounds on itself. Boundary lines get pushed everyday, millimeters at a time, until all of the sudden you’re actually surprised to find out you have a toxic culture.
Be intentional about your language and your culture. How you speak, and what you say, signals all sorts of things about you.
People ask why I don’t have much of a Brooklyn accent—and the answer was that I spent a lot of time to think about how I wanted to sound and what I wanted to say. If I can avoid sounding like someone who might shake your bakery down for money, then anyone can speak like they care about how women get addressed.