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

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

#391

Post by pc86 »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #372
sdsaga12 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear. If your conception of diversity doesn't include viewpoint diversity, you are operating within a prejudicial, small-minded, small-hearted, and regressive framework. If you belive the most salient details about a person can be read from their appearance, you are a bigot. This cuts every which way, but many want to pretend it's not true for their own biases. This includes seeing someone with blue hair and a p…

Genuinely asking: Is there a limit as to viewpoint diversity that should be tolerated in perceptions of diversity? eg. Should viewpoint diversity be extended to welcoming "women shouldn't have the right to vote" or "black people are not human beings"? If so, how does one value an opinion and also the opinion that some opinions are worth less than others?

How could either one of these viewpoints possibly come up during a job interview?

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

#392

Post by mech422 »

wccrawford wrote: post #302
forty wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "he is over qualified" etc. Most of the times, they were more than qualified. What's the difference between "over qualified" and "more than qualified"? ;)

The amount they'll have to pay to keep the person in the future. They don't want someone that will leave in a year. They want them to stick around, without inflating their budget.

aka 'wageism'

if you don't need a rocket scientist, you don't pay for one... grunt work is grunt work.

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

#393

Post by jnwatson »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #143
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m somewhat sympathetic toward your POV, but the average tenure in this industry is like 1.5 years or something like that. It’s not like young people stick around for a long time, and I would wager that older people are more likely to stick with a company (the older people I know are more likely to talk about “company loyalty” than my age cohort).

I don’t think it is loyalty. By your 40’s your pay is high enough that new offers to get another 20% come much rarer. The effort to find a new job has less upside.

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

#394

Post by Manuel_D »

okwubodu wrote: post #379
nostromo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating two issues: discrimination and self-selection. Discrimination is never ok. If a woman applies to a job as a developer, she should absolutely not be discriminated against because of her gender. Self-selection is always ok. If women in aggregate are more interested in biology than computer science, that is fine. This paper is evidence of discrimination, not self-selection.

I understand that. But if we have no problem hand waving discrimination away as self-selection when the exact same conclusion is drawn for other groups, I don’t see how this is suddenly different. Half the top comments on this very thread decry DEI efforts while calling this wrong without the slightest hint of irony.

> But if we have no problem hand waving discrimination away as self-selection when the exact same conclusion is drawn for other groups

We're not hand-waving away discrimination as self selection. If we saw higher call back rates among male applications as compared to identical female applications then there would be a case for discrimination. When we study the call-back rates in tech companies, the results typically show no bias and sometimes show bias in favor of women [1].

What's happening is that people are alleging discrimination on account of nothing except for disparities in representation in tech. You're right: tech shouldn't be any different. Do we conclude that veterinarians must be rife with anti-male discrimination because they're 80% women? Why do we make the same arguments about tech?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644

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

#395

Post by uoaei »

sdsaga12 wrote: post #306
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.…

Hear hear. If your conception of diversity doesn't include viewpoint diversity, you are operating within a prejudicial, small-minded, small-hearted, and regressive framework. If you belive the most salient details about a person can be read from their appearance, you are a bigot. This cuts every which way, but many want to pretend it's not true for their own biases. This includes seeing someone with blue hair and a p…

Viewpoint diversity is very, very important. But for a large contingent of the workforce, their viewpoints are already represented in the numerous implicit and ideological supports that our society has developed, without them even needing to be present: this is called "hegemony".

If you do not acknowledge this is the case, then DEI efforts can seem very unfair. But one should be careful not to allow emotions and sensitivities to creep in, to do the ideological work for you. Your status is not threatened by people of different backgrounds coming together and critiquing the processes and pathologies that dominate today (and that white men typically grow up in, and so are already comfortable navigating to the point they assume that it is the natural way of things). It will make everything better for everyone if we take the time to put effort into including (injecting) the diversity of viewpoints that you find so valuable, and that is precisely the aim of DEI.

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

#396

Post by pc86 »

mywittyname wrote: post #335
pc86 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please let them know, but do so as anonymously as is possible. Consider an email from a proton burner address via VPN, printed letter mailed from somewhere other than where you live (maybe even from your office if there are no cameras). Depending on the size of the company, discovery during a lawsuit like this can get insanely detailed and expensive.

Honestly, it might not be a bad idea to make it easy to find him. Yeah, the op might be punished, but if companies start to worry that employees are going to out them for their illegal behavior, they might change.

Unfortunately I think the more likely scenario is that OP gets sidelined at work until he leaves. Most importantly (to the company) though, he's no longer involved in hiring.

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

#397

Post by johnnyanmac »

swayvil wrote: post #199
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.

Quoted post unavailable.

well, society advertised that angle 40 years ago, yes: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

Unfortunate effect given that some 30 years later that social media would make tech much more universal. But this media portrayal of the "tech nerd" wasn't spread over a year and won't be solved in a year.

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

#398

Post by mech422 »

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…

>>Either you have a use for that - enough of a use that you're willing to pay for it - or you don't.

I think this is the crux of a lot of it. You only need one lead/rockstar/ninja/10x* for every 10-20 'developers'. And, as you said, there is always the fear they will leave tomorrow for 2x the money...

*) I wanna see 'evil genius' next! :-)

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

#399

Post by shtopointo »

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.

Are weeded out, or do they weed themselves out?

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

#400

Post by throwaway894345 »

jnwatson wrote: post #393
throwaway894345 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m somewhat sympathetic toward your POV, but the average tenure in this industry is like 1.5 years or something like that. It’s not like young people stick around for a long time, and I would wager that older people are more likely to stick with a company (the older people I know are more likely to talk about “company loyalty” than my age cohort).

I don’t think it is loyalty. By your 40’s your pay is high enough that new offers to get another 20% come much rarer. The effort to find a new job has less upside.

I meant I've heard older people talk about loyalty explicitly.
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