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

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

#351

Post by kleiba » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

jleyank wrote: post #255

kleiba wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite approaching 50 yet, but I am getting there. What I can tell you is that the reason for some older folk's views on new trends is not that they're generally behind times, it's that with more life experience you have seen trends come and go, and you're actually in a slightly better position to judge the baloney factor of novel things. That is not to say that this is _always_ the way things are, of course,…

As an example of this, compare the hype of “the cloud” with the introduction of XTerminals from people like sun and oracle.

Right. Or think of the recurring discussion on how much of a certain task should be computed on the server-side vs. in the client.

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

#352

Post by spaetzleesser » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #340

t_mann wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to compare this across areas. My impression is that eg Finance (another popular destination for mid-career switches) is far more open in that regard. Experience, even if it's in a different field (as long as it's a technical role or one that will give you a rich set of contacts) seems to generally confer seniority. Would be interesting if someone could weigh in.

Anecdotally, the hard engineering fields (e.g., mechanical, civil, etc.) are much more tolerant about age and more receptive to the benefits and tradeoffs of both youth and, erm.., "experience" (said tongue-in-cheek because age does not necessarily equate to experience)

Probably most regulated industries. I am in medical devices and you can easily make it to 65 with dignity.

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

#353

Post by gruez » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

codelord wrote: post #295

It's interesting to me people make all sort of assertions about why men or women are dominant in an industry without anyway to falsify their hypothesis. I provide some data points having lived in several countries that may offer some insight. Draw your own conclusions. I got my undergrad degree in Iran (a relatively conservative society with an ultra-conservative even anti-women government), where the ratio of women…

>I got my undergrad degree in Iran (a relatively conservative society with an ultra-conservative even anti-women government), where the ratio of women to men in our computer science class was roughly 60/40 in favor of women [...]

>When I went to Europe for grad school (to a very progressive university in perhaps the most progressive European country) to my surprise I had only one female classmate who was a non-European international student in a class of 40.

also known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

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

#354

Post by jrsj » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

joe5150 wrote: post #312

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.

unless you're applying for a job in HR, I don't see how HR's feelings on your pronoun use would make a difference to your job prospects.

They have a DE&I gun to the head of every hiring manager in the company so it doesn’t particularly matter what you’re applying for, there’s strong pressure to hire candidates that help meet HRs goals.

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

#355

Post by colinmhayes » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #156

jedimastert wrote: post #50

This comment section is gonna be a RIDE... To actually comment on the topic at hand: the reason there's still male-dominated spaces is that women are weeded out far earlier than the hiring stage. See, for example, statistics about women in STEM and especially computer science and realize that hiring managers don't even have to be sexist for male-dominated fields to exist, even though they still are.

Women's representation in tech matches the graduation rates of relevant fields. Which matches the rates at which women indicate tech as their preferred field in high school and middle school. I think it's in incorrect to say that they're "weeded out". That implies that women are being removed from the field, rather than exercising their own agency and choosing different fields.

> rather than exercising their own agency

There is no free will. Society implanting ideas about which jobs you are capable of succeeding at is an especially obvious case of this. Why do you think women are going into different fields?

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

#356

Post by recursive » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

bentcorner wrote: post #285

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.

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.

In that metaphor, why is gender part of the type hierarchy in this context? Why is that the first-class classification for concrete implementations of `Person`? Why not hair color? Why not height? Why not age? I feel like everyone would have been better off if pronouns weren't even gendered to start with. But now that would be an incendiary political crusade, which I'm not interested in.

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

#357

Post by lazide » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #293

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.…

> DEI efforts, and often those leading them, are increasingly the most biased and close minded parts of the organization. That's a feature, not a bug. As Ibram X Kendi says, "the only remedy to past discrimination, is present discrimination".

Coarse grained discrimination based on some visible attribute is fundamentally destructive to producing value of any kind, and always ends up with terrible outcomes for anyone that cares about anything but the metric of 'what percent matches this coarse grained attribute'.

We call it race when it's based on appearance markers we associate with race, we call it sexism when we base it off gender, we call it ageism when it is off apparent age, we call it nationalism when it is based off national origin.

And it's always wrong, and left unchecked, it is always destructive.

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

#358

Post by johnnyanmac » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #156

jedimastert wrote: post #50

This comment section is gonna be a RIDE... To actually comment on the topic at hand: the reason there's still male-dominated spaces is that women are weeded out far earlier than the hiring stage. See, for example, statistics about women in STEM and especially computer science and realize that hiring managers don't even have to be sexist for male-dominated fields to exist, even though they still are.

Women's representation in tech matches the graduation rates of relevant fields. Which matches the rates at which women indicate tech as their preferred field in high school and middle school. I think it's in incorrect to say that they're "weeded out". That implies that women are being removed from the field, rather than exercising their own agency and choosing different fields.

>I think it's in incorrect to say that they're "weeded out". That implies that women are being removed from the field, rather than exercising their own agency and choosing different fields.

That's simply the language used when a freshman takes some intro courses, feels overwhelmed or disinterested, and then chooses to change majors early on. Very few freshman actually fail their classes and get ejected from the university, they just realize they are paying a huge premium to learn something they feel they don't want to or can't keep up with.

But yes, I agree that if we're focusing on the problem at the hiring lever you're way too late. But that's the mentality of publicly shared companies that simply want a good shareholder report next quarter. Investing in middle schoolers takes years to reap what is sown.

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

#359

Post by mech422 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:31 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 50+, and perhaps I've just been lucky...but its not been an issue for me. I got my last job 18 months ago and I'm looking now. I think a lot of what people think is ageism, is wageism.. but that's just a hunch.

In my experience, if you work in areas with enough demand - its not an issue (eg you work the 'ends' of tech - really old or really new). If the demand isn't there, they probably don't want to pay for a senior employee when a fresh college grad could do it for half the cost ?

Anyway - fear not for your 40s or even your 50s!! Old geeks never die...

we just 'exec' a new program! :-D

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

#360

Post by smugma » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

spookybones wrote: post #344

smugma wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my 40's have been with the same company (FAANG) for over a decade. I'd say a majority of the management (including engineering) is in their mid-30's to 50's. It looks like the entirety of the senior management in engineering in my org is in their 40's. There are fewer individual contributors in their 40's, but I know several (some moved from manager back to IC, others stayed IC). Maybe this is a bigger issue a…

How many 40+ are recent hires versus having been with the company 5-10 years?

I'd say the many/most have been with the company 10+ years (low attrition!). New hires are generally younger, but new hires that are more senior (IC or Manager) are generally older. That's not surprising, is it?