My opinion based on going through the clearance process for the NSA is that the federal gov't is fairly pragmatic and the anti-drug use policy is primarily a way of ensuring state secrets are not leaked, via extortion, bribery, etc. For instance, buying drugs from people who might intend to blackmail with that information at a later point. See also someone with e.g. a gambling addiction, skeletons in one's closet. In general, owing people money, wanting certain personal things hidden, and so on tends to compromise one's integrity. Which is to say, if you can demonstrate that integrity it is my belief that no one would deny clearance on moralistic grounds.
Went through a security clearance years ago (in the UK). Explained to another candidate also about to go through the process that we would be asked questions about our sex lives, etc. and had to be honest. They were horrified.
I suspect it was the horrified nature of having to discuss it that ruled them out (they failed), not the fact that they - I inferred through gentle questioning - had experimented a little with a same-sex relationship whilst at University.
If you're OK with your family finding out or it going in the local paper, you can't be blackmailed over it. You're probably fine.
If you are terrified by the thought of whatever it is - even if it's legal - becoming knowledge of those you care about, and even more so those you don't care about, that's likely a problem.
Within security services and law enforcement, hanging around with criminals - which is what drug dealers in most places are - will rule you out for obvious reasons.
Even in places where drugs (weed increasingly, booze almost everywhere in Europe and North America), being a heavy and habitual user of substances is going to raise an eyebrow and prompt a discussion, at least.
One line of thinking around requiring usage of preferred pronouns is that normalizing the act of giving/asking for pronouns allows for more inclusive spaces. For instance, if someone is transitioning between genders it might not be obvious what their gender identity is, and assuming their gender identity can lead to further dysphoria. At the same time, if you are someone who sees that the only people who get asked for their pronouns are people who do not obviously exist at either of edge of the gender spectrum, then the act of being asked for pronouns is tantamount to someone admitting their own confusion of your identity. This issue can be resolved for all parties and gender identities when asking/giving pronoun preference is the norm. For people with more straightforwardly normative gender identities, offering preferred pronouns is an act of solidarity with people who might not have the privilege of their gender identity being so obvious.
Doesn't that approach have the downside risk strongly elevating gender to be essential to activities where it really has no business?
I have no idea what your gender is and I don't think our interaction would be improved by forcing you-- by either rule or convention-- to specify something. Doing so would unnecessarily prime my sterotypes and perhaps leave you and/or me worrying that my response was unduly biased by the knoweldge. An effective requirement-to-specify implicitly makes a strong assumption that your gender can be described categorically rather than as, say, the fractal attractor of a complex collection of partial differential equations. :)
For a long time online I've tended to fill out apparently pointless gender fields with a "none of your business". I'm happy to support people identifying in whatever way they find most enabling, but at the same time it feels like a step back to elevate gender as important in contexts where it isn't after working so long to push towards a more gender blind world.
It's a little buggy but I can definitely see the potential. I freelance several web projects and while each stack is thankfully quite similar, switching contexts requires me to open a terminal with a few tabs, running whatever servers and test runners there are, and an editor and a browser with the project in question.
I think starting a workspace is only half the battle here, though. Considering how I switch from work to play -- it's mostly just app minimization and open the browser window I use for leisure reading. For me, the ideal here would be to find a way to preserve state of each workspace so that I can hop between each but not have to trouble myself with management
Sounds like the convenient POV from someone already well represented in the industry. Dismissing issues of diversity as being tangential to the core business of, well, business, is sensible from an, ahem, business-perspective. And from a human perspective, really flawed and problematic.
From a human perspective, humans are really flawed and problematic.
That extends to even the most well-meaning diversity initiative. If nothing else, diversity initiatives create implicit filters for the types of people that are excited-to-ambivalent about diversity initiatives.
Likely because people are emboldened to action when they see themselves in those who are being unjustly treated. It's no secret that Silicon Valley is not terribly representative of black people, veterans, and so on. If this is a fault of the folks at YC, I'd wager it's a fault of many many other people as well--so while I feel it is valuable to point out that issues, I don't think it's constructive at all to point at a good deed and ask, "Why not sooner?"
Seems to me that you're describing the exact sort of psychological tactic that software vendors favor to get people to install the bloatware in the first place.
