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

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

#281

Post by nostromo » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

throwaway0wha8h wrote: post #39

Throwaway. I'm happy to have more women in tech and hope it occurs or continues. However, virtually everyone recruiting in tech has observed some toxic diversity initiatives, I would venture. Some examples I have seen personally or one degree removed from me. - pressure on HMs to hire more women despite 95% of applicants being male - people in interview panels openly saying "but he's a white man" / "do we want to hir…

This is plainly illegal according to the Civil Rights Act, but the courts have watered it down repeatedly. Hopefully the Supreme Court picks up these cases and confirms that Civil Rights Act meant what it said when it said:

>It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. (b) It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

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

#282

Post by actuator » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

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.…

Sadly this battle is lost. I understand affirmative action and the need to do it if there has been some systematic bias preventing outcomes but this has become such a touchy topic that how it is done is not debatable lest you be seen sexist.

I have sat in hiring debriefs where the criterias used for selection have been very subjective but no one will want to acknowledge that they are trying to do positive bias to do affirmative action.

More effort is put on taping things at the end of the funnel rather than fixing things at start, if there are things that need fixing. When metrics of managers and DEI employees are measured on short term impact, why would they not take the easy way out.

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

#283

Post by MisterBastahrd » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 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…

If I were a senior manager and I heard that coming from you, you'd hit the unemployment turnstile faster than you could blink. You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit. If you don't understand that, then you aren't capable of conducting a quality interview, and you shouldn't be in that position at all.

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

#284

Post by spzb » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #266

spzb wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not really. Not the degree you seem to think. Otherwise identical twins would have the same personality.

You’ve edited your post while I wrote this response. Your final point is a straw man. I didn’t say anything like that. Good day to you

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

#285

Post by bentcorner » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

jrsj wrote: post #96

colpabar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

Explicit pronouns are actually useful for communicating with coworkers. If you communicate with people who have names that don't hint at gender (or are in a language you are completely unfamiliar with), having pronouns available helps to avoid some basic communication gaffes. Think of it as human type hinting.

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

#286

Post by ghufran_syed » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #267

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.…

Quoted post unavailable.

I find it amazing that you think this kind of blatant racism is acceptable - what does being “white” have to do with his behavior or performance? or do you think certain skin colors are limited in their abilities and performance?

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

#287

Post by lkxijlewlf » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 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…

You might also hire a younger who turns out to not work on bugs because it's beneath them. Or they only want to work on new projects because they went to some uppity college and it would just be wasting their education to work on "old tech".

I've seen those. They suck to work with just as much as an older who is set in their ways.

Honestly, age has nothing to do with either. It's personality.

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

#288

Post by SamReidHughes » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #82

Robotbeat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It has nothing to do with intelligence curves. Agreed. A vast majority of supposedly "high tech" jobs are solidly average intelligence, including coding, so if anything women should be rewarded in such positions because males' wider variance in I.Q. cuts both ways. It's only pure delusional thinking that keeps up the "muh I.Q. is one of the highest" attitude among "tech" bros.

Programmers are not solidly average intelligence at all. Everybody writing software is at the upper end, even if defined very loosely to mean something like top 10% of Americans. Note that among SAT scorers, the top 11% of males score >700 on the math section and top 7% of females score >700. This isn't some super-elite group, and you're already looking at 1.6x as many men.

But you're arguing somehow that we should specifically discriminate in an attempt to hire dumber people, so... well, that seems like a bad idea to me.

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

#289

Post by robonerd » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

jleyank wrote: post #247

colpabar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

Are Che tshirts still cool? Maybe just one of those raised-fist tshirts. That's sufficiently distant from the Russian matter.

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

#290

Post by duxup » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #275

duxup wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Then came the litany of complaints that HR sponsored events (where HR planned everything to HR's preferences) were not attended enough by the tech support team At some point we have to start recognizing that forcing employees to attend work parties and lunches and other events by using social shame tactics like this creates a hostile work environment. Managers who enable this are toxic as hell.

Agreed. The event should be attended if folks find it appealing to do so. So it should be on the event to be that way, not everyone else.

Fortunately for me at that workplace HR eventually realized nobody was listening to their complaints / we weren't going to entertain them.