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

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

#481

Post by Crabber » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #387

robonerd wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate DEI has laws backing it, but I don't think that's the full picture. Corporations have a genuine economic interest in diverse hiring even if those laws didn't exist: 1) Diverse hiring expands the labor pool, which suppresses wages. 2) Diverse labor organizes less effectively, particularly if the workers can be kept on edge around each other.

I don't doubt that it's not the full picture, but I'm skeptical about your theory. My $0.02: Regarding (1), it only expands the labor pool if the pipeline for "diverse" labor hasn't already been exhausted. Instead we seem to see employers competing for "diverse" labor, including in some cases foregoing technical qualifications for "diverse" qualifications. This is only in the company's best interest to the extent tha…

>I really don't think most companies are to the point where they're deliberately stoking racial division as an anti-union tactic

Amazon tracks lack of racial diversity as a union formation risk metric https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61403

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

#482

Post by pvarangot » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #421

It's pretty amazing how useful working with the military has been in changing my views of a lot of groups/demographics. I probably would have assumed nurses = female almost entirely, but there were a lot of nurses who were male, both the specialty types and more generalist nurses. (Also, I grew up in a suburb where it was basically "different white ethnicities", with the exception of some black students from nearby p…

The tech industry knows they are far behind on the DEI metrics and they overcompensate playing this culture wars chess move where they make everyone sick of hearing them virtue signaling about diversity so that they can't be questioned. They loose even when compared to "conservative" institutions. It's not only the military, in San Francisco the police department is more diverse than Lyft, Uber, Google. The club I go shooting to in Richmond has more black people on a weekend than what I've ever seen inside the same room at Lyft. Richmond is a moderate democrat city where everyone that doesn't work for the government works for Chevron.

Until I started shooting I think I had only interacted with three black people in the Bay Area. One from work, one from co-living and another one that hangs out with a crew I party with. Of course all those circles lean tech-heavy. First "conservative" thing I dare do and there's loads of latinos and black people and we are all confused as fuck as to where all the evil white people we keep on reading about actually are.

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

#483

Post by dang » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #470

My sense is that most responses here are only to the title of the submission (the actual article title is "Gender discrimination in hiring: An experimental reexamination of the Swedish case"). Skimming through said actual article, it looks like the "against men" hiring discrimination is ~completely driven by this: "...In female-dominated occupations such as cleaner, childcare provider, preschool teacher, accounting c…

Yes - the title here was so egregiously editorialized that I'm not even going to revert it.

Submitters: breaking the site guidelines like this will eventually cause your account to lose submission privileges. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and note this one:

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

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

#484

Post by t0mas88 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

qwerpy wrote: post #434

t0mas88 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American, so I'm not as deep into the exact political party differences, but why do you think that's the solution?

I have a similar opinion as the person you replied to. There are many issues that I care about, but this is probably the most important to me because it will affect the educational and career prospects of my children. Unfortunately in this country the only meaningful votes are "blue" or "red", and "blue" is the side that is pushing DEI to the detriment both of my family and (in my opinion) the competitiveness and eff…

Thanks. It's unfortunate that is has to be so polarised. In the end a more inclusive society is good for everyone, but if your only options are "fuck yourself over" vs "avoid all progress" then not a lot of good is going to happen and people will forever be passionately offended at both extremes instead of meeting closer to the middle and working on the future.

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

#485

Post by idiotsecant » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #470

My sense is that most responses here are only to the title of the submission (the actual article title is "Gender discrimination in hiring: An experimental reexamination of the Swedish case"). Skimming through said actual article, it looks like the "against men" hiring discrimination is ~completely driven by this: "...In female-dominated occupations such as cleaner, childcare provider, preschool teacher, accounting c…

This is pretty dismissive of the men who want to work in what you consider low status crappy jobs. There are plenty of men out there who expressly go to school with the goal of being an educator, for example. The discrimination those men face is very real.

It's ok to admit that there are some areas society has decided men shouldn't work in. It doesn't diminish the struggles of anyone else

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

#486

Post by bradlys » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

I'm not going to bother with the actual study itself - as it's not really what a lot of the discussion here is about.

Instead, I'd like to ask this: Why do we have DEI measures for race, gender, and sexual orientation but none for socioeconomic class/upbringing? I have a thought as to why but still - I wonder what others here think.

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

#487

Post by sitkack » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #346

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…

All the DEI brochures I have seen show young good looking people with different skin colors. There are no disabled people, no ugly people, no fat people, no old people.

United Colors of Peloton

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

#488

Post by mkl95 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

postalrat wrote: post #411

mkl95 wrote: post #264

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 encounter…

How would you characterize 15-25 year old developers?

15 year olds: they "yeet" and make weird noises when you merge their code. Shouldn't be allowed near the beer fridge.

25 year olds: good at inverting binary trees and writing Javascript.

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

#489

Post by ghaff » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

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.

And they may make enough and have enough savings that they care less about a salary bump. They probably own a house and don't want to move for any number of reasons--which still matters a lot of the time even in this more WFH friendly world. And, at some point, they know that a job search is probably going to be harder. And there's always risk with a new job.

I've certainly known people who would entertain a move if a new position fell in their lap but wouldn't likely seek one out.

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

#490

Post by briandilley » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

weatherlite wrote: post #405

ponow wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if that older dev is only at par with the younger one: will she or he be treated equally, if everything else was equal? In other words, is an old person expected to compensate for her or his lack of youth by an excess of wisdom?

I think there is a certain expectation that after 10-20 years in the industry you bring some added value a fresh grad won't bring. Surely you must have learned a few things, no? If not that's not a great sign.

Impact. Impact is #1.

Interesting thought though, what if the product in question is a product geared toward a younger audience that younger devs are more "in tune" with? Assuming they have more impact as a result.