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

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

#241

Post by nomel » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:01 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?

From the NIH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20066931/

> men on average have higher intelligence than women by 3-5 IQ points

Maybe, but negligible.

What's probably more significant, when looking at a sub-population, is the variation in intelligence for men and women: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26158978/

The standard deviation for the population of men is higher than women, so you get more outliers for men, smarter and dumber, but the average is the same. If that's true, then the math says the upper percent will consist of more men than women, assuming a split population. The dumb end will also have more men.

I realize this is taboo, but I don't see how any other conclusion can be made. I don't think it matters though, in the grand scheme of things, assuming the hiring is based on merit rather than bias. And, if the above is true, there's a better chance that you hire a dumb man than a dumb woman, so merit is important.

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

#242

Post by jonkho » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #29

rmbyrro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, let'em choose to work with whoever they want. If it's all women, so be it. Only men? Whatever. I don't wanna work in either of these organizations. I think the best answer to these divisive, sexist or racist behaviors is to show them in practice they're dumb, kick their ass in the market. An open-minded, welcoming organization is going to attract the best minds. Collectively, these people will kick those ide…

Why can't we legislate away discrimination? Make it illegal, and prosecute the companies that engage in it.

Let’s zoom out a bit. The big picture is that by using discrimination they are not hiring based on merit and therefore the ability to produce the best goods and services is impaired. If these discriminatory hiring practices put them at a productive disadvantage, then companies that hire out of merit should, over time, outcompete them in a free market and put them out of business. No regulation required.

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

#243

Post by __turbobrew__ » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #52

jrsj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the average person actually knew what these initiatives meant they would be against them. In practice what it does is make it so members of designated groups typically win by default whenever they & other candidates meet minimum requirements for a position. It’s not even good for the people who get promotions faster as a result imo because everyone around them knows things are rigged in their favor. And who has be…

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…

Ah, maybe that is why I could never get an interview at dropbox? Maybe I should get rid of my profile pic on linkedin and change my pronouns to "they/them"?

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

#244

Post by jbluepolarbear » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

oppositelock wrote: post #130

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…

Yes and no to fresh engineers being good. I’ve met many fresh engineers that integrated and soon outperformed their older peers in a couple months. My first engineer position I went from new hire to lead on most projects in about a year. I was surprised and dumbfounded how much better I was than my peers (expect one he was amazing and I learned a lot from him). There a lot of good and bad engineers and experience doesn’t make up for bad engineers.

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

#245

Post by jandrese » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #115

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…

As I have gotten older, my pay has continued to increase. "Over qualified" means that I want too much money . (I don't apologize for that. I bring more value than I did 20 years ago. Either you have a use for that - enough of a use that you're willing to pay for it - or you don't.) Also, if you've got someone with 20 years experience, and they're willing to accept the same pay as someone with 5 years experience... ar…

More than just wanting too much money, they think you are going to be bored going back to gruntwork and if you are bored you'll be looking to switch jobs again in a year.

The sad thing is someone like that would probably produce a better product thanks to their years of experience, and even possibly become a mentor to the rest of the team, but that's not the kind of thing recruiters think about.

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

#246

Post by i_like_waiting » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

i_like_waiting wrote: post #237

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…

From perspective of fairly young hiring manager (25y old) it really depended on candidate. If you changed industries and you want to come in, more than fair. If you have 10+YoE and I know we don't play that much, why would you want to work with us? I am bit wary if those people are teachable. Please don't take it offensively, I just want to understand better philosophy of people who do only lateral moves for 8+ years…

But for the record, my first hire was 10yrs older than me, my last one is probably 10yrs older as well. So I still value experience of people who are longer in the industry

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

#247

Post by jleyank » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

colpabar wrote: post #83

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…

[flagged]

I’d pass on Soviet stuff right now, at least until Eastern Europe stabilizes.

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

#248

Post by okwubodu » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #81

This is the wrong conversation. The problem is not discrimination - the problem is that recruiters can do the dirty work of discrimination (or harassment or false advertising) and entirely shield these companies from lawsuit. The companies can simply claim ignorance to have known what was going on with the recruiting firms. The recruiting firms aren't big enough to sue. You wouldn't get anything out of them monetaril…

I’m glad I scrolled far enough to catch one of the few thought-provoking comments in this thread.

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

#249

Post by coward123 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

I've been on both sides of this, having been in a male-predominant industry and then in a female-predominant industry. In the male world, there was plenty of "mansplaining" and in the female world - I was actually really surprised at how female colleagues approached me. There were hilarious moments of "reverse mansplaining" where a group tried telling me all about the industry I had just come from, when none of them had any experience in that field. I remember a moment too where I was offering a business opportunity that would benefit all of them, but they very clearly did not think I was qualified simply by being a male - but would have been totally on board if I brought in a female partner. On the other hand, there were places where they wanted my opinion because there were (to me) weird gender role things at play - something like "we need a big strong man to defend us here, so let's get his opinion."

Men and women approach things in very different ways that even now with 40 years of life experience continue to surprise me. I think some of the bias is not intentional, but rather a lack of awareness, and frankly acknowledgement.

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

#250

Post by FFRefresh » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

eldaisfish wrote: post #133

FFRefresh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

comparing to the population at large isn't the most valid thing to do. Many fields are dominated by women - nursing to name just one. Even within nursing, there are a lot of latino and phillipino nurses. by your logic, the largest ethnic group of nurses in a country like the US or UK should be white women. There are many more factors at play here.

To be clear, that's not my logic, it is of my previous employer. I don't think trying to index hiring decisions to the broad population distribution is a good thing.

But if you HAD to index to a population distribution, I think it should be tied to the pipeline of competent candidates. However, my previous employer was already fairly representative of the pipeline in the summer of 2020.

The protests that summer sent a cultural shockwave in urban/upper-ish class society, and the social pressure ratcheted up for orgs to favor non-white male groups, particularly for one particular non-white group. The issue was that this particular non-white group was not overly abundant in the pipeline, so there wasn't as defensible of a position for the discriminatory policies the company felt they had to put in place, so they resorted to indexing to the broad US population. (which I flat out don't think is defensible myself, but I'm empathizing with the mindset that they were employing at the time)