Live data from Hacker News

Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

betterprogramming.pub

1–10 of 464 posts

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#2
> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges.

That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it.

When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other ones. Are they there because of skills? Could be, could also be HR wanting to push diversity? Also possible.

Some places I've even seen a "diversity quota" for tech recruiters that's tied to a bonus. So at every "diverse" hire you encounter you have to ask yourself: are they here because of skills or because someone was one hire short of cashing out their bonus?

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#3

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

... which is exactly why the post points out the need for the applicant to be informed about affirmative action being applied. If you know how much AA was applied, you can actually make a better argument when you're mistreated.

[for the people downvoting: I'm just pointing out what the article says.]

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#7

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

You don't have to ask yourself that, you can just accept that the people who you work with will usually be out of your control and respect their skills separately from what they look like. If they suck, then they suck, but don't prejudge because you think diversity hiring is rampant everywhere, which it is not.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#8
post #3

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

... which is exactly why the post points out the need for the applicant to be informed about affirmative action being applied. If you know how much AA was applied, you can actually make a better argument when you're mistreated. [for the people downvoting: I'm just pointing out what the article says.]

You are asking the companies to divulge that hiring you was a crass violation of labor laws?

That doesn't seem a likely course of action.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#9
I'm sorry you had to go through all of this. As myself being part of a minority, I can only tell you that I do my best to fight for minorities and women first in this IT env that can be rough.

Keep faith cause I've worked in different companies where everyone was really accepted and celebrated. Thank you for writing this article: hopefully, straight IT men will hear us and fight too.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#10
post #3

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

... which is exactly why the post points out the need for the applicant to be informed about affirmative action being applied. If you know how much AA was applied, you can actually make a better argument when you're mistreated. [for the people downvoting: I'm just pointing out what the article says.]

Sure. Company wide email: "Careful with these demographics: make sure to re-interview them before joining your team, they might not have had a proper technical screen."

The lawsuit would be hilarious.

Post reply on HN