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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

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit. Yes and their job history and how they changed the companies is very vital part of that. So many people are talking a lot about "quality interview" but lets be brutally honest, for more junior positions 10% of people get to have interview, rest of them is rejected based on CV (story that job history tells) screening or technical…

I didn't quite have five moves in ten years and they weren't all lateral so this isn't me but I have a resume that some people didn't like because of high frequency moves due to early stage start-ups. My resume took off when two of the companies I worked with got acquired by Shopify, but before then having a high frequency of moves was viewed by some as a negative.

Keep in mind moving every two years is common in tech especially in companies that don't give four year option plans because you often get a token 1% raise when inflation is hovering around 8%. This means you're roughly 15% behind after two years with compounding. If you're a senior engineer making roughly $200K, that means you're often getting around a $30K raise to move. I think some people have careers that cap out at senior and that's okay. Not everyone makes staff or principal engineer.

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

#472
post #432
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…

Most of the age discrimination I've ever seen has been anti-Boomerism, not specific fixed ages. i.e. it was "people over 30-40" 20 years ago, and now is basically mainly against people in their 60s+. I've never (as far as I can tell) experienced age discrimination, and I'm >40 now. There may be passive age discrimination (incompatible schedules for people with families, etc.), but most of the companies I've interacte…

It doesnt matter what label you put on it, its still age discrimination.

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

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a strange thing for the adjective "diverse" to apply to a single human, in any case. It's a descriptor that applies to groups ; the only way I can see it applying to one human is with genetic mosaicism or something.

In this case, "diverse" simply means "not a white male."

Not white male and not Asian male either. Some recruiters at the company went even further and categorized Asian males as "negatively diverse", a category below even white males.

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doe…

Single data point. It doesn't prove or disprove anything. I have seen 60 yo folks jump on a project and literally turn it around in weeks.

> I was surprised and dumbfounded how much better I was than my peers

Self-Humbled

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

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'll be voting Republican

LOL as if politicians are going to solve this. There's already enough laws governing this stuff for companies or groups of people to self govern while having a reasonable DEI policy that doesn't harm anyone. It's a cultural problem and voting for trolls is not going to make it better but worse, as it will elicit a panic reaction on people that hold power and are scared by the trolls spewing vitriol about how everythi…

These DEI policies can only exist because judges have ruled that racial / gender discrimination is legal, even though the text of the Constitution and civil rights statutes clearly say that it is not. These judges are mainly liberals appointed by Democrats. All we need to end this crap is judges who will enforce the law, and then any company running such a scheme will be sued into the ground.

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

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the whole, the weaker the gender roles in society the lower women's representation are in STEM [1]. I'm nearly 30 and there was ample messaging to try and get girls into technology when I was in elementary school decades ago. I disagree that society is implanting ideas in girls that they're not capable of succeeding in tech. This is a disparity that persists despite ample efforts to try and encourage girls to go i…

> I disagree that society is implanting ideas in girls that they're not capable of succeeding in tech. Then why do you think girls are self selecting away from computer science? Unless you believe they are somehow biologically wired to enjoy tech less it has to be because they're receiving messaging that causes them to believe they will enjoy it less than other fields relative to boys, right? I guess from your link y…

>computer science? Unless you believe they are somehow biologically wired to enjoy tech less

Millions of years of sexually dimorphic evolution has predisposed women to be more interested in people and males to be more interested in things. This is supported by research and has been commonly known for most of human history; you can thank 2-3 generations of postmodernist propaganda and a healthy dose of insecurity for the rabid denial of even the possibility that women are just less interested in these domains.

Men and women are different. It has consequences. To pretend otherwise is to deny reality. The evidence is overwhelming and ubiquitous, but we try desperately to handwave it away by looking for of sexism under every rock because to acknowledge these obvious truths would destroy the foundation of the modern progressive push for equity. It's insulting and purely political.

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

#477

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…

No. Not I. But I will say this:

> pressure on HMs to hire more women despite 95% of applicants being male

is something I've done myself, not to hold anything against the applicants coming in but because HMs have a significant amount of control over the funnel of applications coming in. I want them hustling to encourage women, minorities, veterans, old-timers, re-inventors, people with nonstandard educational paths--people from ALL walks of life who are qualified, to get them to apply. I want it because I firmly believe that will make the engineering departments I work for more healthy.

> people championing all women teams as a win for diversity

I have been on many all-men teams in my career. I wouldn't consider it a specific diversity goal, but I do not think _one_ all-woman team is likely to put a dent in balancing, let alone over-balancing, the scales.

> women getting a salary premium

ROFL, I would _love_ to see an instance of this.

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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! :-)

> I think this is the crux of a lot of it. You only need one lead/rockstar/ninja/10x* for every 10-20 'developers' I really disagree, ideally you'd have at least one in every team.

oh - I agree it would be nice... but very few places seem to do that. I've seen a lot of 'senior' people leading 3+ teams of junior/average developers.

edit: point being, if you can muddle thru - mgmt generally doesn't see it as a 'need' just an 'expense'

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

#479
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The black family was only endangered because of those very same people who wrote all sorts of asinine rules for the social safety net programs that penalized stable households, penalized married couples and penalized above the table jobs. Were they poor? Sure. Were they marginalized? You bet. But the single mother, the child without a father figure and the idle black man were not serious issues, let alone stereotypes…

Also horribly flawed. In several states if you are not white your resume is just thrown in the trash. There are several studies on this. People simply do not like others who they do not see as equals or as similar to them.

I don't think we can attribute as much of that happening to racism only. With all the DEI initiatives happening its becoming more so the case that people are seeing through the experience and realizing a lot of the accomplishments by minorities are due to favoritism and "help" than actual experience. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant because people believe it.

I personally feel bad for the dedicated, accomplished and smart minority developers that I've met. They get drowned out in all the noise caused by these DEI drives.

Worst of all, we can't even talk about it.

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

#480
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…

It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more. So like, seeing that type of application is in an indication that the person's first twenty years of career haven't yielded the kinds of achievements and contact network that have bumped them out of the hustle and into the world where they no longer be…

"If you were good, you wouldn't need this job by now"

Who the hell would want to work for an org that thinks this way?

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