I was in a similar situation and had a job offer. I stayed the two weeks during which I would have given notice and wrapped up everything that needed wrapping up. I emptied my email, removed all needed files from my laptop to storage accessible by my team. I gradually removed all personal items from my desk (no one noticed or if they noticed, said anything). At the end of those two weeks, I let my team know what was going on and swore them to silence. At the end of the day, I waited until my tormentors left, sent my resignation by a timed email to arrive two hours later, put my phone and laptop in a locked drawer and left the key where the email said it would be. I turned in my badge to security on the way out and never looked back. I did this to coincide with payday, so there was little fuss about the final check. I continued to run into my team for several years and they always greeted me warmly. I could not face one more session of being screamed at. Another employer nearly interfered with being hired by giving a "would not rehire" recommendation -- their policy was to give that to anyone who quit, notice or no. And I had given them the notice requested in my offer letter and long discussions with my then manager. I was only able to get that "would not rehire" disregarded by pointing out that I had to take that employer to court for my last check. There is no guarantee, as an employer or employee, that being reasonable will result in reasonability from behaving professionally.

The number of small, simple calculations that have to be made are similar to those for banking -- which also uses a lot of big metal in the background. There are only a very few vendors of crap software that will manage those. Simplification of the process of determining who has what coverage for which service and whether that service is approved for which conditions and how much copay and what upper out-of-pocket limit and what deductible to which provider would save billions. Each large company (employees under corporate insurance will be primarily affected by the delay) has specialized, negotiated contracts for multiple choices of policies with a wide variety of copays, deductibles, formularies, etc. And they are different within each insurer. Oh, and then there are the companies that basically run their own coverage with the help of the insurance companies. And each of these calculations has to be reviewed to verify compliance with not-just-Obamacare. Most of the larger insurers have been trying for the last 3-5 years to replace their core systems -- which will still mainly run on flat-file dbs on mainframes. Once one sees how the sausage is made, the need to scrap the whole stupid system becomes obvious. While Americans generally pay more for core medical services (if we are not covered by payment structures negotiated by the insurance companies), but we also support an army of IT professionals just to keep the creaky thing working.

The individual may be dim (haven't read their post), but if we had unionized in the 90s on a guild-basis like the performers' unions, we would not be fighting this battle.

Isn't just India. Pakistan sends a whole lot of the same level of talent being described by ebusineemedia above. And Sri Lanka. Just a bit less organized.

I will be investigating whether I fit the class. I have had more skeevy interviews where I was a test case for being able to bring in an H1B worker. The best was the phone screen with the gent who could just barely speak English (a job in the US), who knew nothing about the job, but after asking about my Visa status, quickly started to explain about all the CANADIAN workers he has interviewed. The more poorly defined the job, the less likely any American is to be interviewed, let alone hired.

This is not news in California. The court ruling that requires California move immune compromised prisoners out of the Valley is the news. Headline is also nonsense. Bandanas and proper farming techniques that limit the amount of soil disrupted and blown away also helps minimize the infection rate. My mother had this in the early '50s (it was called San Juaquin Valley Fever, then). She had to go to NIH (on the east coast) for diagnosis, despite it being somewhat known in CA then. Lived to age 80, but with mildly compromised lungs. It was not good, but it wasn't quite what the article suggests, either. She did pick up other lung infections more easily than others, but she was also a nearly life-long smoker.

SF isn't terrible to raise kids in if one is not wildly wealthy, but it is a challenge. If you have arts kids, it is very good, in fact.

Or perhaps he (ooooh -- or she) thinks that the employer is a complete tool and is just holder their breath until they can escape. Like someone who is arrogant, dismissive of opinions other than his, and hypocritical.

Thank you to the man who feels ashamed of the man who attacked your colleague. The only people capable of making rape less common are men. The less this sort of behavior is treated as even remotely appropriate, the less it will provide the offending types with the sense of power and accomplishment they want. His response is absolutely typical of a privileged male accused by someone he perceives as less established in his community.

Thank you so much for mansplaining away decades of solid research. We poor little idiot feminists (none of whom has ever been raped, because the men involved said we deserved it for, well, being women) could not possibly have done peer reviewed study. We all know that only men ever publish peer reviewed work. And, of course, you being a man, you have read every peer reviewed study on the topic in the few minutes since you skimmed the article while reminding yourself that women are never raped, women don't belong in tech and certainly not at conferences in formerly Iron Curtain countries. Sheesh. Do you ever get tired of yourself?

Women can be attractive and pleasant while dressed comfortably. Just in the event you have never spoken with a woman who wasn't paid to be pleasant to you.

Really? You had to go *here*? And, yeah, it's "that's" -- at least in English.

Very true. Not everyone in IT/tech is a programmer or developer. There are folk who keep the machines you run your programs on up and running, among other things. All of you who claim your hiring process is pristine -- how many programmers/developers over 50 have you hired in the last 5 years? I doubt any. Or maybe one. Even if you keep your skills current, there is the "oh, no, an **old.** They never know anything and keep wanting to do this 'testing' crap. And they suck at beer pong." It is like physical disability -- you assume the disabled person is just whining, until you are hurt. But old is like physical injury -- it happens to all of us (if we are lucky) eventually.

The "dudes" were representing their respective companies at a professional event, thereby officially, legally at work. The companies for which they work no doubt have employment policies forbidding the creation of a hostile work environment. If not, they likely have to pay twice or three times as much for liability insurance. The "bitch" initially followed the rules as set out by PyCon and the situation was handled quietly. She should likely not have tweeted the pictures of the "dudes," but I doubt you would consider the death penalty as handed out by offended women to be appropriate for underage upskirt shots shared on the web, so I think we can agree that death threats for posting full-clothed pictures of people who offended her can be considered too much. Men who react the way you do are precisely why women will not "simply turn around and ask" people to stop being 12 during a presentation. Every single woman I know has the experience of being threatened with physical or sexual assault for doing so. Most of us stop after the third or fourth threat. Or after someone does more than threaten. If you cannot act professionally at a conference where you represent the company that sent you (with the company's name on your badge), perhaps you should just stay home. Serious question -- why do you think it is alright to threaten physical harm to someone because they want you to modify your behavior for a few minutes? You appear to want every woman on the planet to change her behavior to meet your needs, but think it is a death penalty worthy offense for anyone woman to ask you to modify yours. What is up with that, dude?

I have been reading here for years. I have worked with more of you than I can count. So I know you aren't all stupid, vulgar, or insensitive. You must know that when you are at a professional conference, you are expected to behave as though you are at work, not at a backyard barbecue or strip club. You must have learned by now, since you are on the web, that women who speak up generally receive threats of death/violence/sexual assault that have to be taken at least somewhat seriously. You also have to know that there are men in the next cubicle who do mean it when they make sexual jokes or innuendo and want all women either sexually submissive in the workplace or gone. You don't wear safe/not safe identifiers, so get used to being polite adults. It is up to the men in this industry to fix this. Women cannot change men's behavior by dressing differently, pulling our forelocks in submission, or whatever today's blame the survivor theory may be. The ball is in your court. Do something.