Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#301

Post by ryanobjc » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:40 AM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #237

mrowland wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a personal level, children are optional; on a societal level they really aren't.

As crazy as it sounds, it still is a clear choice. It's a common trope in cartoons that the bad guys want the opposite - to destroy the world. I think you make an important point though, and I have no good argument to it. The best I can do is point out that having children does not fall on the responsibility of every woman. Not every woman needs to reproduce for society to continue. So the question is, is it okay for…

I mean come on, your argument is just weird and makes no sense.

We are talking about the 2nd most powerful biological drive after survival. You wouldn't say "as crazy as this sounds, continued existence is a clear choice" - even though it is, because anyone could decide to kill themselves at any time. And therefore they're choosing not to at every moment they don't.

But you don't say that because that makes no sense.

And thus I say that the notion that having children, while yes in theory a choice, also reflects the second strongest drive after survival and is less of a choice than one might think.

* also as a recent father, I'm gonna pull that card and say that you clearly aren't a parent, and Just Don't Get It.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#302

Post by paxys » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:44 AM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #295

habosa wrote: post #55

This area is really tough. I feel terrible for women who experience this bias, but the solution is not nearly as obvious as with race/gender/age/religious/etc discrimination. In those cases the answer is: stop being biased. Let's say you're a small company and you can really only afford to have Even if they both plan to have 2 kids in the next 4 years, it's a biological reality that it will take the woman away from w…

Excuse me for being flippant but, I don't care if you're a 10- or 10,000- person company, but I'm going to take >4 weeks of vacation per year and if you can't handle that then you don't deserve to exist in the market.

There is a huge difference between a few weeks of vacation a year (probably taken in 1-2 week chunks) and multiple continuous months of parental leave. The latter can absolutely kill a startup, especially when the person leaving is a subject matter expert in a critical area.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#303

Post by ryanobjc » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:45 AM UTC

cobbzilla wrote: post #291

To reproduce this error: 1. Create a law that penalizes companies for activities against current employees with attribute X (or who might have attribute X in the future) 2. Watch as companies ride the grey-line getting away with as much as they can whilst (a) staying within the letter of the law and (b) creatively discriminating to avoid hiring anyone who has (or might in the future have) attribute X. I'm not making…

I hate these kind of sophisticate-cynical arguments.

Yes you are technically correct, and thus get to revel in Being Right. Drinking a celebratory champaign.

Yet we are still having negative outcomes that are highly problematic. And you have contributed nothing except, what, smugness?

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#304

Post by ryanobjc » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:49 AM UTC

pertymcpert wrote: post #121

I'm really surprised by the number of comments here that support this kind of discrimination. I thought we were better than this.

I am not surprised. Hackernews is filled with entirely too many 20-something boys. I've been getting fairly disappointed with this place for several years now.

Sadly the rest of the internet is even worse somehow!

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#305

Post by APORWEVNAOEN » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

pertymcpert wrote: post #121

I'm really surprised by the number of comments here that support this kind of discrimination. I thought we were better than this.

You will win more people to your cause without insulting the people you are convincing to open their wallets!

Many of the great disagreements in the world come from one side considering only the 'normative' view, and one side considering the 'positive' view.

The normative view (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative) is when we look at how things ought to be.

The positive view (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_economics) is when you look at what actually happens.

In order for people to come together and agree, you have to convince them on both levels.

Consider abortion. The normative position is that "no fetus/baby should ever be aborted". The positive position is that illegal abortions are dangerous, and will happen anyway. In addition, making the topic taboo reduces contraception use, which is one of the few things that actually reduces abortions.

The normative position on this issue is that discrimination based on pregnancy is unethical, and we are bad for even discussing the issue.

The positive position is that putting the burden of paid leave on the employer INCREASES the incentive to discriminate against women of childbearing age. Therefore, we should avoid setting up a system where there are huge incentives to discriminate. If we want to reduce discrimination, we should require a small income tax (it'd only need to be like 0.5%), and have the government cover salaries during paid maternity leave.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#306

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:51 AM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #281

Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children during an interview, there's an unfortunate side-effect the market has adapted to: under-the-hood discrimination against young woman candidates. All other factors being equal, an employer knows a young woman could get pregnant and will probably quit to take care of the kids (going by statistics alone). So since they can't explicitly ask those t…

> Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children during an interview

It's not illegal to ask about these things, but it's illegal to make a hiring decision based on these factors and asking during an interview would be pretty strong evidence of using the information in hiring.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#307

Post by airnomad » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:51 AM UTC

tinbad wrote: post #14

Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take seve…

"WE had twins so SHE wasn't going back to work anyway"

I'd say you were discriminating her way more than Google.

Kids are ruinous for women careers but only partly for practice like one described.

The other reason is that we as families, partners and society in general accept that kids are, essentially, a woman job.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#308

Post by solatic » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:52 AM UTC

habosa wrote: post #55

This area is really tough. I feel terrible for women who experience this bias, but the solution is not nearly as obvious as with race/gender/age/religious/etc discrimination. In those cases the answer is: stop being biased. Let's say you're a small company and you can really only afford to have Even if they both plan to have 2 kids in the next 4 years, it's a biological reality that it will take the woman away from w…

> is that always reasonable?

This is why remote-only work culture is so important for social justice in tech. Flexible working hours from home gives women the freedom to work from their recovery beds, walk away from the computer to feed their newborns, be there to give their kids a snack and ask them how was school when they get home.

One of the best hiring strategies is to focus on workers whom the market is undervaluing, for whatever prejudice. Remote-only allows you to take the real career-related risks that pregnancy and motherhood imposes and completely mitigate them.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#309

Post by skookumchuck » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:54 AM UTC

tinbad wrote: post #14

Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take seve…

12 months paid and not having to show up for work?

> ... wasn't going back to work anyway ...

Adding in severance pay on top of that, sounds like a sweet deal!

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#310

Post by ryanobjc » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 4:54 AM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #223

pertymcpert wrote: post #121

I'm really surprised by the number of comments here that support this kind of discrimination. I thought we were better than this.

It should be expected - the high number of comments that regularly showed up in support of Damore's scientific (in the sense of being in the ballpark and selectively referencing some social science work) arguments in his internal post that got him fired when that was a hot topic was pretty disappointing.

"scientific" might be a better way.

I am continually disappointed at people who use the summary of a scientific article to prop up their justification, along with what I call "the world is a binary logic puzzle" fallacy.

For example, a lot of arguments positioned nature vs nurture. It's not a simplistic blend of this or that, or even as simple as "trait X is DNA and trait Y is societal" -- if you learned anything about biology the sheer adaptability of the human body should be it.

Don't forget that every single study hypothesizes a model, then attempts to build evidence in support of it. All models are wrong, some are occasionally useful.

I've been extremely disappointed in the 'bay area rationalist' community with their response to that memo. It's really given me an eye opening view on the limitations of so-called "rationality" as they practiced it.