Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs Unless They’re 100% Qualified (2014)

A candidate's ability should be judged strictly on what are their abilities today and what is their perceived ceiling. While you can argue that years of experience correlates to those details, it certainly does not inform them.

Anecdotally, my most recent developer job post had an exactly 50:50 male to female applicant ratio. Without exception the women applying were juniors. If this article is to be believed, my putting even "1+ years of experience" might have arbitrarily rejected some number of otherwise qualified candidates.

Then don't be an engineer?

Seriously, an engineer's job is to invent new things that no one has done before, and tell other people how to reliably build more of them. If you start a project with a 100% clear vision of how to get to the end, then you are already behind your competition.

Not knowing how to do 40%, and not being intimidated by 95%, seems like about the right mix.

I frequently don't apply for jobs I see that I could probably do, for all of the reasons listed in the article. A couple of times I have even pulled out after a successful first round interview due to anxiety about continuing.

This is an example of how the "women in tech" movement alienates men who would otherwise be potential allies.

Instead of focussing on women, why not leave gender out of it and focus on "low-confidence candidates" (or whatever you want to call this cohort of people). That way if it's true that women are more likely to be "low-confidence" then you'll end up helping more women anyway, but you'll do it without alienating men.

Ignoring the root cause and jumping straight to helping women is exactly what what makes feminists look like man-haters.

I'm sick of the stereotype that because I'm an oh-so-privileged white male I must have had a ridiculously easy life and be full of confidence.

Job advertisement: Immediate requirement for an illusionist/escapist. Must have 15 years experience in inverted underwater lockpicking. Nice to have some experience in juggling chainsaws.

Job reality: You do coin and card tricks at children's birthday parties.

Even if the job does require something you don't know, it is very likely that--no matter what it is--you could spend a few hours on the Internet learning how to fake it well enough to fool anyone short of an actual expert until you get the real on-the-job experience.