Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#121

Post by jrsj » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #98

jrsj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general it’s also a problem with what is considered diverse. If you’re a white man from a poor family with no college education, the policy is to explicitly discriminate against you. If you’re a white woman from an upper middle class background, you’re considered diverse and given advantages despite the fact that you could have gone into any field you wanted, could probably afford to switch on a whim, and don’t ha…

Yes this is what bugs me. I and older "white males" were mentioned in DEI surveys as something to fix, by an org full of mostly younger and more privileged backgrounds. AFAIK I was the only person in engineering who had been on welfare as a child, literally lived next to a toxic waste dump, etc. When I was a kid, us "nerds" were picked on/beat up for liking computers. This sort of thing really turned me off on most c…

I’m younger but from a similar background. I don’t have many opportunities available to me, and my family is going to be dependent on me financially when they can no longer work. It’s extremely stressful to have all of this hanging over my head & be expected to applaud it.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#122

Post by Ourgon » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

tempnow987 wrote: post #28

_0jki wrote: post #7

Quoted post unavailable.

It's interesting to see where the DEI stuff has gotten to. Historically under the law, discrimination based on gender was prohibited. There was no provision for allowed discrimination based on gender (ie, prohibiting men from becoming teachers or nurses). Now we are being told that it is OK to discriminate against men and the law only protects "marginalized" groups. In elder care (especially with heavier elderly) a m…

> in schools, many boys might benefit from some good male role models in these systems

Very much so, the female domination of the educational system is a disaster not in the making but one we're reaping the bitter fruits from. It is not only boys who would benefit from having good male role models, this is just as much true for girls. Unfortunately education is one of those fields where men have been pushed out and are made to feel unwelcome by women. The few men who make it all the way to the classroom often end up hen-pecked and unable to become the male role models needed.

The primary school in my village in Sweden (~450 pupils) has not had a single male teacher for more than a decade now, they pushed the last - very popular - one out with the pretence of him not having 'the correct papers'. Never mind that he single-handedly managed to organise several popular school-wide activities every year, never mind that those activities created a bond among pupils, teachers and parents, never mind that those activities are no longer organised and that tensions at the school have been rising ever since. He was a man in a female-dominated workplace who had to go, who was pushed out by the female head of school.

Come August my then 11yo daughter will no longer go to this school, instead opting for another school in a place much further away which has a more balanced approach.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#123

Post by nicoburns » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #5

throwadogabone2 wrote: post #3

Anecdotally I have seen this in person at a large tech startup. The recruiting team was all women, mainly white, and they were incredibly cliquey. Every hire was a woman. Men were turned down with vague excuses like “not a culture fit.” All while aggressively pushing DEI initiatives and interventions on the tech side. I don’t think the irony of this ever crossed their minds.

Men were turned down with vague excuses like “not a culture fit.” That excuse might have been entirely accurate though. Most men are indeed not willing to participate in such a blatantly sexist culture.

> That excuse might have been entirely accurate though. Most men are indeed not willing to participate in such a blatantly sexist culture.

Right, but that's exactly the sort of problem that these inclusivity initiatives are designed to tackle (they aim to forcibly change the culture to the point that it is no longer prejudiced). That this one was doing the opposite is highly ironic.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#124

Post by forum_ghost » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

gatvol wrote: post #17

lostcolony wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there are. Just not a blatantly sexist culture -they don't fit into-. There are plenty of male dominated companies, with male dominated recruiting teams, that still hire mostly males. To be clear, I'm not saying it's okay either way, I'm just disagreeing with the idea 'most men' won't participate in such a culture; most men (oftentimes unwittingly) do.

True, though the study addresses that point too, and that demonstrably does not happen, in Sweden at least.

> that demonstrably does not happen

what exactly doesn't happen?

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#125

Post by jokethrowaway » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

FFRefresh wrote: post #55

throwadogabone2 wrote: post #3

Anecdotally I have seen this in person at a large tech startup. The recruiting team was all women, mainly white, and they were incredibly cliquey. Every hire was a woman. Men were turned down with vague excuses like “not a culture fit.” All while aggressively pushing DEI initiatives and interventions on the tech side. I don’t think the irony of this ever crossed their minds.

I can also attest to this, I just left a pretty well-known tech company who leaned hard into DEI in the wake of the summer 2020 protests. The exec team essentially set up quotas, with every race+gender group getting priority over white males. Execs were given bonuses if they increased the percentage of non-white male employees. The crazy thing was that white males were NOT over-represented in the first place. 2 years…

> I just think this type of thinking that is informing hiring practices is pretty gross, and is actually moving things farther away from the stated goals.

If someone ever believed the stated goals they are not capable of rational thinking.

I know plenty of smart people who sadly go along with this BS just because it's what all "reasonable" people are doing and don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. The same people don't think about politics and parrot what left wing media tells them.

The activists themselves are not capable of rational thinking.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#126

Post by waterhouse » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

jrsj wrote: post #66

Manuel_D wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my observation as well. Most women don't want to be hired on account of some eng diversity target. It gets really toxic when a company is simultaneously engaging in this kind of discrimination while also harshly cracking down on anyone who points it out. In 2015 I worked at Dropbox when DEI discrimination was ramping up. Among other things, we only interviewed boot camp grads if they were diverse. We also hav…

In general it’s also a problem with what is considered diverse. If you’re a white man from a poor family with no college education, the policy is to explicitly discriminate against you. If you’re a white woman from an upper middle class background, you’re considered diverse and given advantages despite the fact that you could have gone into any field you wanted, could probably afford to switch on a whim, and don’t ha…

It's a strange thing for the adjective "diverse" to apply to a single human, in any case. It's a descriptor that applies to groups; the only way I can see it applying to one human is with genetic mosaicism or something.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#127

Post by oslsla » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #97

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The black family was only endangered because of those very same people who wrote all sorts of asinine rules for the social safety net programs that penalized stable households, penalized married couples and penalized above the table jobs. Were they poor? Sure. Were they marginalized? You bet. But the single mother, the child without a father figure and the idle black man were not serious issues, let alone stereotypes…

Seems like they purposefully created people now dependent on these government programs in order to secure electorate.

No, it's more complex than that. Racism in large portions of the united states still exists today. Individuals are not given opportunites in the u.s. simply because of something as simple as their last name. While people may base on DEI initiatives in the majority of America in non large corporate and even on those companies they are still refused if any opportunities which add on each other resulting in inequality.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#128

Post by PeterStuer » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

QuarterReptile wrote: post #61

cperciva wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men were turned down with vague excuses like “not a culture fit.” That excuse might have been entirely accurate though. Most men are indeed not willing to participate in such a blatantly sexist culture.

You missed a part. From GP: >The recruiting team was all women I guess this is what you get when you outsource hiring.

In house HR is predominately female nowadays as well.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#129

Post by s_tec » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

spzb wrote: post #43

SamReidHughes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> intelligence distribution skews more male at the higher end Really? You think there are inherently more intelligent men than women?

I'm not the OP, but I'll bite.

For many species, males have a higher standard deviation across a variety factors. There are biological reasons for this, since males are more disposable than females for reproduction. Think of one rooster for a dozen hens - this is still a viable flock, even if the other roosters get eaten. Nature can experiment more with males simply because the stakes are lower, and sometimes those experiments are worthwhile. [edit: Turns out this is not true for birds, so I learned something!]

Now, if you have two normal distributions with the same average and area but a tiny difference in the standard deviation... well, let's not go there because the math is too politically incorrect. [edit: And besides, many other factors affect outcomes besides genetics, so I do believe we should keep policies gender-unbiased as a matter of principle].

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#130

Post by oppositelock » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

nabaraz wrote: post #67

During my career, I've seen enough discrimination in the name of DEI as well. But what bothers me more is the ageism. The number of times an old person has been rejected from a job is too damn high. The reasons have always been "he may not work well with young people", "seniority complex", "he is over qualified" etc. Most of the times, they were more than qualified. I fear when I am into 40s or 50s, I will face the s…

I'm almost 50. I've been working in tech since 1996, and at this point, despite being a strong and seasoned engineer, I'm getting comments like, "it's different now", or "back in your day", etc, and the very young engineers fresh from school are the ones throwing this around. Those with a few years of experience under their belt don't.

It's really disheartening, but it's also my job to train these bozos and turn them into good engineers, which they most certainly are not coming fresh from school.