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Ask HN: Is brogrammer a sexist term?

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Re: Ask HN: Is brogrammer a sexist term?

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason there's a law against it is because bigots that still exist keep women from attaining equality and that's bad, not the other way around. It is in itself bad. You have a strange moral compass to me. I know it's fun to be laddish when you're at college and uni, but cultural fit can often be a polite way of saying 'Hey, I'm a bigot, women are stupid and I'm not employing them above the level of secretary!'. I…

This is not a political site so I'm not going to debate the merits/drawbacks of outlawing bigotry in hiring practices. But one thing that ought to be pointed out is that free markets tend to punish companies, over the long term, that intentionally deny themselves access to talent due to bigotry. Conversely, companies who acquire talent with rational screening procedures will have a competitive advantage over those wh…

"free markets tend to punish companies, over the long term, that intentionally deny themselves access to talent due to bigotry."

If this were true, we wouldn't have needed the EEOC and the Civil Rights Act in the first place. We did. Therefore.

Re: Ask HN: Is brogrammer a sexist term?

#212
this post is definitely real. i emailed the address on the ad, and they sent back a surprisingly dismissive reply. they open rudely, begin to say they made an error in judgement and then backhandedly defended themselves. pretty uncool, i'd really like to know who the company is.

here was my initial email: http://lilpuff.us/non-bro

and the reply from secretstartup@gmail.com: http://lilpuff.us/rY6D8r

and the original listing, cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WEsG46N...

also, just to note: the fact that they put "non-bros still welcome to apply" suggests that they were aware that brogramming might come off as a men-only requirement, but did not see this as a problem.

also consider the use of "still welcome to apply" vs. more positive or friendly language, e.g. "we love non-bros too!" which still utilizes the term in question, but is welcoming and follows the tone of the posting.

and i spoke with multiple men and women (who do and do not work in IT) who found this pretty offensive.

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