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

#101

Post by jariel » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

theluketaylor wrote: post #61

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…

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense though as a fair hiring process, it's just brutal gender-specific hiring.

Nobody ever doubted that there were 'good female writers' but there are 1000 writers for every 1 job, it's a hugely asymettrical situation.

The reason it's completely illegal and morally questionable to hire that way is because it ignores the material character of the individual in question.

If there are 10x more guys running the gauntlet of early-phase writing career, then it's really unfair and they are not getting the best writers (staff composition advantages notwithstanding).

A better approach wold have been to work with the agencies to get a true sense of the pipeline, and then to encourage and demonstrate the job is 'real' for more young women to understand that it's something they can aspire to.

The possibly sexist/racist actions of these companies are probably only going to get us into more culture wars, I'm not sure if they are a 'temporary pain' issue.

Edit: if you listen to 'Inside Conan OBrien' podcast by the head writers you'll get insight into several very inside conversations about the gender issue. In the 2000's there were hardly any female writers. Writing is a buddy-buddy system that's going to lean a certain way, so expressedly looking outside the boundaries of the pipeline is reasonable. Also a lot of the female writers in the 2000's indicated they literally 'did not know it was a job' in their youth. To be fair - almost nobody did. Though I'm not in the biz, as a young man I literally never contemplated the concept, I don't know anyone that even thought about it, it was like a thing that happened in a far off land. It's a hyper-niche kind of job with specific dynamics.

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

#102

Post by jonfw » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #62

OptionX wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 soci…

Sports are one of the few examples of a zero sum game in life. It is impossible to punish one team without giving an opposing team an unearned advantage in their league's standings. This unearned advantage is a negative externality of a game's best solution to prevent bad behavior.

In hiring, which is not a zero sum game, we can prevent these undesired behaviors (acknowledging and correcting for bias) without giving token advantages which undermine meritocracy

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

#103

Post by launderthis » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

SavantIdiot wrote: post #68

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…

thats what you get when you government mandate things. You cant expect things like diversity and culture to be processed by law. You pretty much have to make it non profitable for companies to not be diverse.

Then they company has a personal responsiblity to change rather than a checkbox to check off , much like the "what race are you" checkbox given to pander to their diversity quota.

I blame society, people cry about diversity but all they want to see is someone of a particular type in a manager position and never really as, "what is this person doing", "do they really get to make an impact". Diversity propaganda is all so shallow and has only made relationships different cultures worse.

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

#104

Post by ncw96 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:42 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…

The Rooney Rule sounds good in theory, and yet 28 out of 32 head coaches in the NFL are white.

(For reference, only about 25 percent of NFL players are white.)

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

#105

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by ViViDboarder » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:47 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…

Actually, this is not a deadlock at all really.

If a company wants to hire someone because of diversity, it’s not necessarily just because of diversity.

In the article, the author describes their experience as having been different than non-diverse candidates, therefore creating a sense of personal doubt about their abilities, however unfounded.

If given two equally qualified candidates, giving a preference to diverse ones does not present any deadlock. If you’re not just hiring someone for diversity, then you are doing that due diligence. Additionally, I would hope also doing the due diligence to make the environment you are hiring them into welcoming as well. The authors stories reflect things breaking down in this regard in a big way as well.

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

#107

Post by tonystubblebine » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #100

tonystubblebine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The article was flagged because users flagged it. I don't know why they flagged it. Most likely it was a combination of things. Some probably don't like the topic for ideological reasons, others are probably reacting to how common these threads are ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... ), others are probably reacting to the flamewar aspect. Those are just guesses. When someone told me abou…

Thank you. Nice key phrase you have there for future search. I didn't know to look for flagging or that you could email for reconsideration. I will use that knowledge judiciously, if at all.

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

#108

Post by handoflixue » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #94

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…

"lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. " Tech companies are diverse, more so than most companies. You mean to say 'not the right kind of diverse'. The ridiculous, Monty Python conversation that nobody wants to have, is that since White Americans are slightly underrepresented, but Asian Americans are about 600% over-represented ... which means getting the 'right' kind of diversity litera…

Can you cite sources for "more diverse"? I'm curious if you mean "higher percentage of POC" or "numerous different minorities are all represented"? A company composed entirely of 30-something black men is 100% POC, but it's still not actually that diverse.

I definitely agree that it's weird how much we focus on holding tech companies "accountable" for diversity when they're fundamentally working with whatever pipeline society gives them.

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

#109

Post by lambda_obrien » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

musingsole wrote: post #29

lambda_obrien wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> who you work with will usually be out of your control and respect their skills Unless you're in a small company with a substantial ownership stake, not only should you accept the reality of this but also accept that dealing with it is part of your job. Making the best of the team and resources available is part of the job description. If given the reins of the hiring process, a given developer could not do a better…

I guess not everyone agrees, since my comment was demolished.

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

#110

Post by SavantIdiot » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #98

rwcarlsen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More egalitarian funding will just make the wealthier classes just put their money and students somewhere else. I live in an area with a lot of private and charter schools. This is the mechanism that the community members have evolved to fund+support their children's education directly the way they want. If you try to make people pay for something they don't want to - they'll just find ways around it and you could ev…

Simple. Don't let them. My province has a math education program that would rank amongst #2-3 in the world, and you aren't allowed to run a private school with a different curriculum - at all, beyond a certain amount of enriched tracks that are available to anyone. This also applies to the first few years of college. Result? Everyone gets an amazing education, and you can't pay your way around it. You might say that…

Unfortunately, in the US, people from higher socioeconomic strata don't like to mingle with those of the lower. That is why they flee public education and laws allow them.

In addition, charter schools have no curriculum requirements in the name of "flexibility". They can teach whatever they want and hire whomever they wish but still get federal $$$. It's absurd.

Even worse, the US lacks comprehensive nationalized standards to begin with - public schools can purchase textbooks that have completely different US histories, usually regarding the Civil War and racism. It really is a clusterf*ck of epic proportions driven entirely by the GOP. I know HN gets fussy about calling out political differences, but this is a huge one. The GOP fights standards tooth-and-nail, as do GOP governors at the state level.