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Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

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Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#171

Post by stuffedBelly »

mfe5003 wrote: post #145

Maybe they should invite some other company to their party with the other gender ratio if it is such a problem.

My thoughts exactly. Or host semi-exclusive parties at larger public venues such as bowling centers, where employees have chance to mingle with outsiders, likely with better gender ratio (most such venues have split sections and people can walk across them. Thirsty Bear in SF is a good one). Not to even mention implication on gender issues, hiring models to interact with employees does not really help them improve their social skills.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#173

Post by vikasg »

buserror wrote: post #120

I actually don't see much of a problem. These models are hired to have a chat with nerds, and the nerds are actually paid (directly and indirectly) to talk to them. Everyone is paid to be at that party and look reasonably good for the appearance of a good time. Most 'nerds' there don't enjoy being there either, they do it because they are professionals... like the models they are mingling with...? Any issue there? I…

It would be more honest --- still inappropriate --- for a company to take everyone out to a strip club where the rules of interaction are well-known.

It's gross that a company would hire women and have them pretend to be employees solely for the gratification of the men. And no, it doesn't matter if there were a few male models. That's not appropriate either, but it's very clear that this is a practice aimed at men at male-dominated companies.

The employer is not in the business of getting you off. Practices that try to do that inherently create an exclusionary environment.

And if your defense against the blatant objectification of women described in this article is some variant of "oh but look at both sides" then I suggest that you look at human interaction in the context of history and not as a blank Jupyter notebook that you put numbers into.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#174

Post by bdcravens »

ryandrake wrote: post #167
bdcravens wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are, that's an improvement. What's the breakdown like? I've venture to say less than 1% overall.

LMRTAFY: "For a typical party, scheduled for the weekend of Dec. 8, Cre8 Agency LLC is sending 25 women and 5 men, all good-looking..."

Oh ok, your comment said ".. also employed in these roles.." so I thought you were speaking to more than the article.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#175

Post by rad88 »

nawitus wrote: post #88
rad88 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads shouldn't mean there are so few women that you need to hire them for events.

What do you estimate is the gender ratio for software developers? And how can you expect every company to go over it? Surely it is not 50% or over. In addition, for every company that goes over the average (perhaps like yours), another company must go under the average.

The number I think is important is not how many CS grads there are (no one on my team has a CS major) or how many software developers there are, it's how many people are interested in and capable of this job. I don't know what the "true" ratio is but I'm sure it is more than 16% of women which is where ardit anchored it.

It often comes back to this "pipeline" problem, but we need to think of our companies as being part of the pipeline. I don't have a CS degree -- I came out of college with a BA -- but I landed a firmware programming job, 2 jobs and 7 years later I am experience and "senior". If you're willing to train smart people, you can sideline the pipeline issue.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#176

Post by bdcravens »

jasode wrote: post #168
bdcravens wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are, that's an improvement. What's the breakdown like? I've venture to say less than 1% overall.

The article gave one example of 30 models (5 men and 25 women) -- so 20% in that case.

Makes sense; I thought parent comment was speaking to more than the one party indicated in the article: "... also employed in these roles ..."

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#178

Post by rad88 »

EpicEng wrote: post #170
rad88 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads shouldn't mean there are so few women that you need to hire them for events.

>~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic Which is leagues above the vast majority of engineering companies, as well as the overall population within the software engineering community at large. Yours is an outlier, and an obvious one at that.

No doubt. I'm not here to say any company can have ~50% female engineers if only they did what we do, but this idea that a more reasonable expectation would be 16% strikes me as bullshit.

So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#179

Post by twobyfour »

jasode wrote: post #157
twobyfour wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great for the (straight) men. But it's extremely uncomfortable for the female employees at the events, who are now not only spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues at an alcohol-lubricated event, they're now spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues who are ogling other women who are there explicitly as objects of sexual attraction (even if it's deflected into "engaging them in conversati…

>, they're now spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues who are ogling other women who are there explicitly as objects of sexual attraction Unfortunately, it was my limited recollection of the event that's prompted some replies about it marginalizing female employees. To clarify, it was a vendor conference and not a company party. Employees from different companies would attend. (Think of it like Google I/…

I'm not suggesting that it's a quasi strip club environment or nearly as egregious a violation as taking employees to a strip club. Just that it's along the same spectrum of making beautiful women available for men's enjoyment and that that's what causes it to be a source of discomfort.

And if my company hired a bunch of gorgeous models - most female but a few male - for our holiday party, I would be outraged. The male models would probably make me uncomfortable first off for the same reasons some male commenters here say they're demeaned by the assumption that their company needs to hire people to speak to them.

But I'd also interpret the presence of the male models not as a way to make the female attendees happy directly (unless it was a horribly tone-deaf attempt by a man) - I'd probably interpret the choice to have them present as a way to excuse the presence of the female models in an attempt to titillate the men. "Oh, no, we're not objectifying women for the sake of our male employees! See? We have male models here too!"

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#180

Post by Toast_25 »

adamsea wrote: post #68
natecavanaugh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too think this is pretty crass and as artificial as so much else in SV. But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. And why shouldn't those women be able to work? For me, I don't mind anyone being hired or contracted for skills in guest relations, market…

> But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. The issue is the gender disparity in _software_engineering_, which is actually made worse by this, because hiring someone because they look pretty (they're not asking agencies for, like, conversationalists with…

I think he's talking about the party models...
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