Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

journals.plos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 666 posts

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

#261

Post by kube-system »

duxup wrote: post #57
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.

HR department at a previous workplace was like that. All women, all friends, all worked with each other or were relatives of someone... their personal lives were entirely intertwined with work. Most weren't at work most days and this was when they had a no work from home policy years ago. Loud personal calls all day long. I wasn't even in that department and the drama that came from it was exhausting. They would ofte…

Sounds like an incompetent HR department. I've have experience with similarly composed teams, but they handled themselves professionally at work, and recognized that company events need to be sensitive to the needs of different types of people.

People who don't consider the needs of others are bad employees, regardless of their gender.

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

#262

Post by Manuel_D »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #243
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…

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"?

Biggest boost would be to change your name to an ethnic or predominantly female name. Recruiters had compiled spreadsheets of names correlated with women and URM exported from census data. Also spreadsheets on ethnic fraternities and sororities.

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

#263

Post by endisneigh »

Manuel_D wrote: post #251
endisneigh wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for your claims?

Women's representation in tech fields varies from the low 20 percent to high teens. It can vary since "tech" is a nebulous designator. Computer science: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-declinin... Electrical engineering: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_325.45.a... Mechanical engineering: https://www.bu.edu/eng/about/dean-lutchen/engineerings-gende... .

And this?

> Which matches the rates at which women indicate tech as their preferred field in high school and middle school.

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

#264

Post by mkl95 »

In my area, 40+ developers basically fall into two groups:

- Burnt out developers who still like their job. These people often have a background in some STEM field, may hold a PhD etc. They can be difficult to work with due to the odd outburst, but their approach to problem solving is pretty constructive.

- Burnt out developers who hate their job. This is the most difficult group of people to work with I've encountered in my career. These people struggle on a daily basis and cannot be properly integrated into a team.

Now, if I became a recruiter, I would be aware that hiring 40+ developers can be a gamble. I know I will probably be one of those guys some day, and I don't see a non trivial approach to solving it. The software industry simply sucks.

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

#265

Post by forinti »

I've worked in a predominantly female team and there was discrimination against, well, me.

I've worked in a team with lots of older folks and the younger members weren't taken as seriously as they should have been.

It also happens when a company has lots of outsourced programmers.

I think there is a lot of emphasis on discrimination made by young white men because they simply are the largest demographic in IT and, of course, they don't generally behave as they should because they are immature (as young people tend to be).

The solution, if it is to be accepted widely, is to work on the group dynamics that all groups show.

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

#266

Post by rajin444 »

spzb wrote: post #229
rajin444 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men and women share fundamentally different genetic configurations which makes it seem illogical to me. What makes it seem logical to you?

Intelligence is not purely genetic.

Don't our genes dictate how we interact with the environment? I'm not sure how it could be anything but.

That being said, yes, we can change our environment and see changes in measured intelligence. A person with a head is smarter than one without.

To tie it back to your original point, you're saying the male/female differences in intelligence are purely environmental? As in, if two people with different genetic make ups were brought up in the same environment they'd have the same outcomes?

If we're seeing equality it's likely the result of changing our environment to force this.

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

#267

Post by ZeroGravitas »

JCM9 wrote: post #184

There are very concerning patterns developing at the moment in the DEI space. DEI efforts, and often those leading them, are increasingly the most biased and close minded parts of the organization. Spreading selected stereotypes and often solving concerns about “discrimination” by being very biased and inequitable. For example at my last company a report showed that slightly fewer of a certain minority were promoted.…

No post body was provided.

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

#268

Post by SamReidHughes »

Robotbeat wrote: post #56
SamReidHughes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I was willing to listen to your point (that perhaps some companies favor women and so women disproportionately percolate to those companies… at least in theory seems like a possible argument, even if I’m skeptical) until you got here: >> Also, because the intelligence distribution skews more male at the higher end, a company will be disproportionately male simply by being more technical and having a more difficult hi…

Not at all. It still holds. Let's suppose the field were overall 90% women, 10% men. Even then, companies looking to hire the smartest candidates would be disproportionately male -- say, 15% male instead of the average 10% -- as the population male:female ratio increases as you raise the intelligence bar.

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

#269

Post by spzb »

nomel wrote: post #253
spzb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly equal down to the single individual, yes that would be unlikely. Broadly the same, seems perfectly logical to me.

"Broadly the same" and averages don't work well when you're talking about a very specific sub population that would, necessarily, be picked from the few at the top end of the intelligence distribution.

We’re talking about men and women. Approximately 50% each of humankind. Hardly “very specific sub populations”

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

#270

Post by thorRay8383 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #179
jrsj wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this would probably work. Bonus points if you tell people your pronouns are they/them, HR departments really can’t get enough of that.

My wife works for a company that does tons of business with a FAANG company. They’re putting together a presentation for the client about how diverse they are (“we have all of the sexual identities!”). They also told a Mexican guy he wasn’t diverse enough to give the presentation because he was (1) a man and (2) his accent wasn’t thick enough—it might not be clear that he is “diverse”. It’s over the top even by post-…

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN