Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 397 posts

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#91

Post by lhnz »

dankohn1 wrote: post #84
hueving wrote: post #74

This is ultimately the result of things like 'implicit biases' training that tell you to accept that you are unfairly subconsciously advantaging majorities and that you should explicitly disadvantage them to make up for your biases. Disgusting.

Implicit bias is a real phenomenon backed up by good studies: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial... Whether or not reverse discrimination was taking place at Yahoo, it is worthwhile to try to reduce the implicit bias we practice in our own lives.

Implicit bias tests could end up becoming another big embarrassment for psychology. Worth reading this tweet storm [0] for the little amount of conflicting [1] literature that is available.

I wouldn't treat a Vox article as evidence that something is true.

[0] https://twitter.com/Billare/status/783482251761815552

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cfz6CgVWQAELrwZ.jpg:large

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#92

Post by Veen »

dankohn1 wrote: post #90
Veen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not reverse discrimination; it's just discrimination.

Yes, reverse discrimination[0] is an example of discrimination. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_discrimination

I object to the term because of this, from the article you linked to:

> In a narrower sense, it refers to the specific negative impacts Whites or males may experience because of affirmative action policies. The two meanings are often conflated, which leads to confusion and misinformation.

As companies try to fight historical biases, there will be some from the dominant group that suffer — those that might have been promoted under the old biased system won't be under a new less biased system. Advantages that the dominant group had will naturally be eroded. That's all well and good; an inevitable and desirable consequence of progress in the right direction.

However, if the Yahoo! figures from the article are right, this seems to be a case of active discrimination against male employees, which isn't the same thing at all.

Calling them both "reverse discrimination" elides the difference between those two possible meanings. So I prefer to think of what we're discussing here as active discrimination of no substantive difference to the usual historical discrimination. In Yahoo! some female managers were the dominant group — they had the power — and they used that power to discriminate against male employees to fill the ranks with other women. That's straight-up discrimination.

Of course, the whole thing might be nonsense, but we'll have to wait and see.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#93

Post by dreta »

There’s a reason why people make tons of money playing the stock market against companies that artificially force gender, or racial equality.

Practices like these are going to ruin your business the same way being sexist, or racist will. Either you hire the best person for the job, or you’ll be beaten by companies that do.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#94

Post by johnbellone »

petre wrote: post #63
ericdykstra wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, he uses Mayer's firing of remote employees as an example of a toxic work culture that values signalling over production. Here's the excerpt: > In 2013, for example, Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer banned employees from working at home. She made this decision after checking the server logs for the virtual private network that Yahoo employees use to remotely log in to company servers…

That's how corporate culture works - it does not necessarily reward actual work, but it does reward being visibly "busy" as in quickly responding to e-mail, attending meetings etc.

This is precisely how corporate culture works. /sigh

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#95

Post by merpnderp »

matt4077 wrote: post #8
grawlinson wrote: post #2

With all the hubbub surrounding Mayer/Yahoo, why hasn't the board or shareholders fired her?

Mostly because there are people with opinions that differ from the hn/reddit echo chamber. Nobody denies that yahoo failed, but most people also believe that it's fate was sealed the day it refused to buy google, and that she did about as well as anybody would have. ...but also: she'd get a 60$ million bonus if fired, and considering that yahoo has already lost 90% of its former value and is being sold of, people pro…

Isn't that bonus peanuts to the incredibly bad deal she signed with Mozilla? I love Mozilla so was happy when Yahoo got outmaneuvered on that deal, but she certainly didn't "[do] about as well as anybody would have" on that deal.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#96

Post by jakobegger »

pcurve wrote: post #20

“..less than 20 percent female. Within a year and a half those top managers were more than 80 percent female,” Even if they were not deliberate about it, they must have talked about how this might be perceived by employees. As bad as this issue is, I think hiring friend/referral/former colleague, especially en mass is much bigger issue that's rarely talked about because it's not necessarily illegal. However, I cannot…

But I understand that people prefer to hire friends / former colleagues. It's really really hard to know if people are a good fit for a position from just a couple of interviews. It's much easier if it's someone you've worked with before; you'll know if they can do the job or not.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#97

Post by imaginenore »

pcurve wrote: post #20

“..less than 20 percent female. Within a year and a half those top managers were more than 80 percent female,” Even if they were not deliberate about it, they must have talked about how this might be perceived by employees. As bad as this issue is, I think hiring friend/referral/former colleague, especially en mass is much bigger issue that's rarely talked about because it's not necessarily illegal. However, I cannot…

> Even if they were not deliberate about it

Which is statistically close to impossible.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#98

Post by bobcostas55 »

dankohn1 wrote: post #84
hueving wrote: post #74

This is ultimately the result of things like 'implicit biases' training that tell you to accept that you are unfairly subconsciously advantaging majorities and that you should explicitly disadvantage them to make up for your biases. Disgusting.

Implicit bias is a real phenomenon backed up by good studies: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial... Whether or not reverse discrimination was taking place at Yahoo, it is worthwhile to try to reduce the implicit bias we practice in our own lives.

It's one of those things that have fallen in the replication crisis. Take a look at this meta-analysis, for example: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.12288/abstra...

>there is also little evidence that the IAT can meaningfully predict discrimination

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#99

Post by phyzome »

As a man in technology... this seems fine. The playing field is already tilted against women in tech, so if someone intentionally levels it, that's great! And I don't really care if they tilt it the other direction. Those men will find work elsewhere, no problem.

(I am not taking a stance here on Mayer's other management practices, to be clear.)

Discrimination against an otherwise unoppressed majority really fails to make me care. (Caveat: That's along a single axis of oppression; I recognize that intersectionality is a thing, etc.)

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#100

Post by thaumasiotes »

dreta wrote: post #93

There’s a reason why people make tons of money playing the stock market against companies that artificially force gender, or racial equality. Practices like these are going to ruin your business the same way being sexist, or racist will. Either you hire the best person for the job, or you’ll be beaten by companies that do.

Practices like firing all your men and replacing them with women will ruin your business "the same way" that being sexist will?

Perhaps we need to examine the popular conception of what constitutes "sexism". This is right up there with the idea "more blacks = more diverse".

Post reply on HN