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Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

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Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#441

Post by soulofmischief »

kitsune_ wrote: post #258
soulofmischief wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you care about these things, but to say those are the only two reasons why we have trouble correctly matching people to fulfilling jobs is asinine.

This very post is about targeted advertising to keep women and older people from seeing job ads. You then went off a tangent about employer-prospect matching in general. What other reasons are there that lead women and older people to be excluded? I'd probably add salary as a factor with older people.

Dude:

> The "modern world" sucks at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for one of two reasons:

> 1) they keep thinking about gender and age as qualifiers for jobs for which those factors have absolutely zero relevance (girls are bad at math! Old people can't learn new things!), or

> 2) They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! oldster can only do Cobol, they'll never learn Python!).

I didn't "go off on a tangent" about anything. OP already refocused the conversation to apply to the entire problem domain of career matching, which is absolutely absurd, so I teased the two issues back apart. Put on your reading glasses.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#442

Post by astura »

m0zg wrote: post #237
DoreenMichele wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get more women into the profession if they choose not to apply. And they can't apply if they never see your ad because of practices like the ones described in the article under discussion.

I've never got a job in response to an ad either. Have you? Do you personally know anyone who has? Another issue, with workplace politics and edicts being what they are, wouldn't white men be a better category of applicants to exclude via such targeting? I'm pretty sure this is happening as we speak. I don't view this as a problem, though, for the reason alluded to above: approximately nobody in tech lands jobs in re…

Um... I've never gotten a (software) job any other way than responding to ads. I'm a woman, fwiw. That includes co-ops

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#443

Post by sieabahlpark »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #421
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we think the imbalance is bad?

Imbalance is bad because participation in civil society, to include employment, should be representative of society as a whole. Besides, inclusive and diverse workforces have been repeatedly shown to be better for the bottom line because organizations are more able to serve a wider market when they are made up people more representative of the total market. Revenue for the division I work in at my current employer ex…

> Imbalance is bad because participation in civil society, to include employment, should be representative of society as a whole.

So when society changes the demographics we have to fire and hire the right amount? Sorry you're the best candidate we've ever interviewed but we have hired too many black men and are above our diversity quota.

> Besides, inclusive and diverse workforces have been repeatedly shown to be better for the bottom line because organizations are more able to serve a wider market when they are made up people more representative of the total market.

Is it the diversity of color or diversity of thought that is what drives a better bottom line? I'm gonna go on a hunch it's the diversity of thought that you're taking credit for.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#444

Post by TeMPOraL »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #434
TeMPOraL wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! This is not a delusion, and it's a thing commonly talked about in my country (Poland). It's not just about that girls will get pregnant and leave - it'll be that girls will get pregnant and out of the sudden[0] go on paid maternity leave, which they can extend to a year, during which you have to keep the…

This is actually a hard problem to genuinely solve. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm not really happy with the current way we typically talk about such things, which often amounts to denying that such issues exist. You can't solve problems while pretending they don't exist and making it Verboten to speak of them.

Exactly.

Beyond inertia of the traditional family model, there are real biological constraints that you can't bulldoze with calls to equality - pregnancy is taxing on the body, childbirth doubly so, the mother needs time to recover, and she's arguably the more important parent in early stages of a child's life. You can't e.g. declare equal amount of childbirth leave for both genders and call it a day.

(Though equal, paid mandatory leave for both parents would probably be fairer and also more beneficial for the child.)

I don't have first clue what the optimal, or "most fair", way of equalizing career prospects in context of childbirth is. But as you write, we can't reach it if people are pretending that the problem doesn't exist. And in context of companies, that means realizing employers aren't discriminating here out of spite or evil nature, but because there are economical considerations in play, and with them comes market pressure.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#445

Post by DoreenMichele »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #444
DoreenMichele wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a hard problem to genuinely solve. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm not really happy with the current way we typically talk about such things, which often amounts to denying that such issues exist. You can't solve problems while pretending they don't exist and making it Verboten to speak of them.

Exactly. Beyond inertia of the traditional family model, there are real biological constraints that you can't bulldoze with calls to equality - pregnancy is taxing on the body, childbirth doubly so, the mother needs time to recover, and she's arguably the more important parent in early stages of a child's life. You can't e.g. declare equal amount of childbirth leave for both genders and call it a day. (Though equal,…

Thank you for leaving substantive and reasoned comments on the topic.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#446

Post by GhettoMaestro »

dang wrote: post #158
GhettoMaestro wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I shouldn't have the government mandating that I can't tune my advertising campaign for ROI, which is basically the only point of running one if the first place. Then find another country.... dipshit. In the United States this is illegal. I would say "sorry", but I am not. If you really hold this view, kill yourself.

You can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong another comment is. In addition to contributing to destroying this place, it discredits what you're saying—which if your position is correct, means that you discredit the truth. That's a bad thing to do to the truth. So please don't comment like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it unfortunately turns out the you've been breaking…

Fair enough. I will refrain from said type of comments in the future. My apologies.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#447

Post by DuskStar »

Angostura wrote: post #383
stakhanov wrote: post #290

There are job boards that SPECIFICALLY make it their business to target women and deliver female candidates looking for tech roles (in organizations that are in need of diversity hires): https://powertofly.com/ ...and companies pay a premium for those job advertising channels. Why is it a great business and an initiative to be applauded if it is about excluding men and a scandal if it is about excluding women?

> Why is it a great business and an initiative to be applauded if it is about excluding men and a scandal if it is about excluding women? Because the one aims to reduce an imbalance in the workforce, which leads to a particular section being under represented. Thwe other aims to increase an imbalance in the workforce, which leads to a particular section being under represented.

I think this comes up against a fairly fundamental difference in opinions that people have.

Some people believe that discrimination on the basis of race/sex/etc is bad. By that standard, discrimination in favor of women is also bad.

Other people believe that imbalance is bad, and thus discrimination should be used to counteract this.

IMO people with the second opinion probably shouldn't call what they dislike "discrimination".

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#448

Post by hutzlibu »

raxxorrax wrote: post #381
hutzlibu wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe one of the reasons women do not want to work in IT is, that the atmosphere is still sometimes sexist? Or at least arkward. When I started to study IT, I was surprised to see, that the stereotypes were the majority. Meaning, long, oily hair, etc. So I guess that is still changing, and I really do not believe 50% women should be the goal, but maybe the IT world still needs reflection sometimes, why so little wome…

Women don't study IT because they dislike the grooming habits of their peers? And that is the fault of those icky nerds themselves? Because their hair is evidence of sexism? This is hilarious. I don't know if it is more insulting to nerds or to women, but I somehow like it. Seriously, I don't even know how to begin here...

People only read, what they want to read it seems. Nothing new.

But if you want it explained, well above I just said, that many (not all!) IT nerds still fullfill the stereotype in my experience.

And the stereotype is unwashed nerds, who have never been close to a women in a way they wanted, but they want to, but don't know how. So they behave weird with women around.

That makes women uncomfortable and avoiding the scene. Not long hair.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#449

Post by DuskStar »

adrianN wrote: post #293
stakhanov wrote: post #290

There are job boards that SPECIFICALLY make it their business to target women and deliver female candidates looking for tech roles (in organizations that are in need of diversity hires): https://powertofly.com/ ...and companies pay a premium for those job advertising channels. Why is it a great business and an initiative to be applauded if it is about excluding men and a scandal if it is about excluding women?

I think for similar reasons like it generally being seen as a good thing to give free food and housing to the poor, but frowned upon to do the same for the rich.

Wouldn't a better analogy be to give free food and housing to women, but not to men?

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#450

Post by astura »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #289
WomanCanCode wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. As a female software developer, I would like to see those ads so I can get better jobs. If I don't even see the ads, then I would not even know about opportunity. Without opportunity, I cannot really progress. If only men see the ads, apply jobs and get interviews, then the employers may think that they shouldn't advertise to women. This is just circular thinking.

Not in the steel mill in my town: no woman ever applied in 50 years, why spend money on advertising to them? Nobody rejects female applicants (they don't reject practically anybody), but no woman wants to work there, they can barely find men. Same with any highway construction site: there is no woman in the entire country, the working conditions are too harsh. They accept anyone willing to work (there is much more de…

>Why spend good money on meaningless advertising?

Simply put: because the law says you must.

FWIW highway construction is around ~5% female in the US.

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