Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by theluketaylor » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #34

Tech certainly does have a diversity problem, by which I mean lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. Yes, from the POV of companies who are hiring, this is largely a pipeline problem. No, tech companies aren't going to solve this problem directly themselves. But, what tech companies can do is change their candidate sourcing practices. I'm in favor of some version of the Rooney Rule [0] i…

I saw an interview with one of the late night hosts (I think it was Seth Meyers). He told a story about building the staff for their show as part of the launch. They asked the various talent agencies for packets for writers (which are collections of sketches and other material tv comedy writers use to get hired. Think artist portfolio). The show wanted to hire a more diverse writing staff and asked for that in packet submissions. They only got a handful packets from women out of hundreds of options. The show went back and said they would only look at packets from women. Suddenly packets came from all over and the show found a number of great female writers.

It was a really interesting conversation because to get a diversity of outcomes they had to completely change their approach, not just sprinkle some diversity into their existing process.

Applied to the rooney rule from above it would involve cultivating multiple inputs to the talent pipeline to make sure interesting candidates don't get blocked along the way. NFL positions like head coach have a pretty limited pool of candidates to begin with, so ensuring an interview quota is likely sufficient. For something like software developer the pool is so much deeper and wider and interview quota on its own is unlikely to be sufficient.

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

#62

Post by majormajor » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

OptionX wrote: post #31

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiters don’t make the final decisions on hiring. The bonuses incentivize them or seek out diverse clients, not to lower standards. And your whole argument is, unfortunately, the standard-issue objection to any efforts to change an unfair system by, just to rub it in, once again blaming its victims. Why don’t you ever suspect that young white guy to just have the job bececause their father knows the CXO from golf?…

If you're using whataboutism to justify something you already lost. Two wrongs don't make a right. By the same conflation one could argue that nepotism is a prefectly valid employment tactic due to quota-filling also being.

If you cheat during a football game, there's a yardage penalty applied that gives the other team an "unearned" advantage. It's somehow plainly obvious there that if you simply say "don't commit penalties" but don't enforce it, people will cheat and commit penalties. And this wouldn't be fair or just.

Yet people lose their shit when it comes to trying to apply proactive equalizers to a historically deeply unfair society.

There's no real mystery, it's just selfishness taking precedence over correcting past wrongs.

That said, to do it effectively, I believe we need to focus on doing it early on in schooling, and the burden and pressure being put on companies is a heavy one because it doesn't align with where the opportunities first diverge.

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

#63

Post by UncleOxidant » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

maxehmookau wrote: post #6

Firing someone for a "lack of chemistry" and refusing to give details is a Grade A dick move.

Similar to interviewing where they never tell you why you weren't selected (or very rarely - it's happened once in my experience) - they don't want any kind of legal liability. The less info they give you, the less you have to file a lawsuit is the theory. It definitely sucks, though.

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

#64

Post by lrem » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #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 one…

You can always do affirmative action like Google. Invite the minorities to boot camps, coaching and mentoring programmes and so on... But subject them to the regular interview process and hiring bar.

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

#65

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

It's a pretty straightforward deadlock:

"We want to hire you because you'll add diversity."

vs.

"I don't want to be hired just because I'll add diversity."

Since the solution of giving preference based on diverse attributes creates a deadlock, the problem has been framed wrong.

I'm not going to posit the right framing... I'm actually not sure. But letting people know they are doing the job for reasons other than their capability means they'll forever feel less qualified than their colleagues.

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

#66

Post by tonystubblebine » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #58

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #22

Oh, come on! Dozens of threads and thousands of comments for the weekly Dr. Seuss pearl-clutching. But mentioning that, on occasion, tech orgs are shitty to women is immediately flagged? Whose the snowflake that can’t take any criticism and wants to stop others from seeing it here?

Please don't post like this—it does nothing to help, and you're just stoking a flamewar, guaranteed to get dumber and nastier as it gets going, with this flamebait and name-calling. The way to help is to let us know. We don't come close to seeing everything. The way to let us know is by emailing hn@ycombinator.com, as the site guidelines say. Fortunately another user followed them and did so. https://news.ycombinator…

Dang, I'm confused, why was this article flagged? Is it that it's considered flamebait? I'm asking because the article is in my Medium publication and a lot of our stuff does end up getting posted here and so I want to be a good citizen. (Also, I've been an active HN member since 2007 and I think have been relatively constructive at contributing.) I'm not trying to debate you. So if you do have time to say a bit more, I would fold your feedback into the work we do.

(Or is it just that this was temporarily flagged and then got unflagged? Like I said, I'm interested but am having trouble following the details.)

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

#67

Post by ojnabieoot » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

tester756 wrote: post #11

>I have never considered that “having chemistry with the team” could be a reason for being let go. That's what worries me too. I like to throw a racist jokes, especially about my own nation from time to time and I guess I'd have hard time in corpos and companies like faang because polacks tend to lack of thick skin /s

Racist “jokes” make people uncomfortable because it’s directly adjacent to racist insults, racist hiring/firing practices, and even racist violence. Employers have a duty to workers from employees that are potential threats, and to remove employees that are walking legal liabilities. And that very much includes employees who claim to be “equal-opportunity offenders.”

I understand that it’s more complicated when you are making jokes about your own ethnic group. But please understand that it’s not an issue of “bad culture fit.” As an example, employees who make relentless personal criticisms of their coworkers aren’t gruff people that have trouble fitting in to an upright corporate culture: they are jerks whose behavior rightfully makes them difficult to work with and hard to justify hiring. It is the same with making ethnic / racist jokes in the office. Just don’t do it.

(There is also a difference between ethnic jokes about Poles and racist jokes about black people or Jews, but that’s a different discussion. Both are really not appropriate for the office.)

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

#68

Post by SavantIdiot » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #37

I'm a light skinned male. I'm also a Choctaw Native American. In my senior year of college in 2004 I applied to dozens of companies. I never got a single response. I decided to try an experiment - I applied to IBM and, for the first time, I selected "Native American" as my ethnicity. Within 24 hours I got an email inviting me to a special, all expenses paid IBM recruiting event held for Native Americans in Albuquerqu…

This is an example of a non-diverse company that doesn't understand diversity trying to implement some kind of diversity. I recall these kinds of ham-fisted attempts everywhere in the late 90's.

Ironically, this was most likely cringe because there were no minorities on the staff, a consequence of: no diversity.

I observed a similar event in the early 90's when a bunch of white folk in HR tried to show off diversity during a co-op tour and had posters of Africa all over the room. But why would I expect someone who just learned the term to actually grok it?

Bummer you go the offensive end of that.

EDIT: From the article "It was when I first realized that tech leaders have no idea what it is to manage work dynamics through a gendered lens."

When minorities are made "ambassadors" as though they suddenly speak for EVERYONE in their minority, it is awful, and wrong. People don't get this: "But X minority said it was OK..." No, it takes literal diversity of opinion.

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

#69

Post by SavantIdiot » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #65

It's a pretty straightforward deadlock: "We want to hire you because you'll add diversity." vs. "I don't want to be hired just because I'll add diversity." Since the solution of giving preference based on diverse attributes creates a deadlock, the problem has been framed wrong. I'm not going to posit the right framing... I'm actually not sure. But letting people know they are doing the job for reasons other than thei…

Taking a non-diverse population and making it diverse is not easy at first. You need to jumpstart the effort across the board. Example: if there are no minority engineers applying from schools, it is because there are no minority students getting degrees. Follow that back to the source. It also is a lot to ask of a non-diverse group to suddenly understand diversity: they really can't, you need the group to be diverse in the first place so that those opinions are baked-in to the system. It's a catch-22, and bootstrapping is gonna upset the status quo (and probably newcomers) until things are running smoothly.

One source: With engineering it can be followed back to opportunity at school. The US school funding model sucks: wealthy districts get the most money, which means better education, which means students come out primed for better jobs. Then there's the Gatekeeping common in engineering that tries to keep out others (in the late 80's it was harassing women so that they dropped out... one of the frats at my uni had an actual game to try to get women to drop out by making fun of them in recitation, which was horrific).

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

#70

Post by driverdan » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

tester756 wrote: post #11

>I have never considered that “having chemistry with the team” could be a reason for being let go. That's what worries me too. I like to throw a racist jokes, especially about my own nation from time to time and I guess I'd have hard time in corpos and companies like faang because polacks tend to lack of thick skin /s

> I like to throw a racist jokes, especially about my own nation from time to time

Do we really have to explain why that's inappropriate?