Live data from Hacker News

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

journals.plos.org

531–540 of 666 posts

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

#531

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…

> Which sure sounds to me like "employers try to fill low-status, low-pay, often-crappy female-dominated jobs with yet more females".

That reflects an outmoded view of the labor market. These are good jobs for people who lack a college degree. Lots of the women in my wife's family have similar jobs. It's not like their brothers--i.e. men from similar educational and class backgrounds--are becoming doctors instead of nurses, or college professors instead of preschool teachers.

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

#532
post #330

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…

BC (Before COVID), I was having trouble finding a qualified person for a role on my team (Operations, not Engineering). I was getting a lot of candidates apply that looked the same on paper but weren't good fits (they claimed to be technical but weren't that technical, poor communication skills, etc.). So I went in the tool and looked through the discard pile and found more diverse candidates that hadn't been present…

You do realize, right, that "implicit bias tests" are poppycock (and hence very likely implicit bias trainings as well).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype#Criticism

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

#533

Quoted post unavailable.

You're kidding but this is exactly the problem. Boys are taught they are "toxic" and young women outperforms women academically and on the job. Women in their 20s make more than their male counterparts - and then they complain they can't find a male partner who earns more than them. The media tells them "the future is female" and that their behaviour is "toxic masculinity"; meanwhile, men are the most likely to kill…

I noticed that your other reply got flagged and disappeared. Funny how that works.

Insidious even.

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

#534
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- people in interview panels openly saying "but he's a white man" / "do we want to hire more white men" etc. Not surprised to hear people saying this, but am surprised that nobody brings that up as a plainly racist/sexist thing when it is said. Bystander effect?

I sat next to a guy who once complained that our new Pakistani CTO fired our black coworker for no reason (he was a top performer but was called “lazy”) and then proceeded to fire 3 Indians and only bring Pakistani candidates to the final round of interviews. He was called racist for pointing this out by HR (all white women) and he was the next person to be fired and replaced by a Pakistani developer. Moral of the st…

That would be a good lawsuit case.

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

#535
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're genuinely asking about the most extreme and uncharitable interpretation of the GP's post? Your question sounds like "If we should be kind to everyone, what about serial killers?" It is so out-of-place in the picture that's being painted, that I (and I'm sure others) am skeptical of the question. Maybe you can first qualify it by explaining how it is relevant in anything other than an extreme thought experiment…

I don't personally ascribe to the idea that diversity of thought must be a value without the caveats I've ascribed above. The reason why I ask it is because I don't actually think my examples are that extreme; I've been presented with those literal ideas IRL by people who are otherwise quite normal. It's very common to essentially view other people as subhuman for their demographics. Therefore I'd like to know how to manage this fairly common human thinking pattern which functions to exclude other viewpoints, if we want to ascribe value to diverse human thinking. I've never been able to square this circle myself, therefore I am curious how other people square them.

To be clear, if the answer to "how do we both value human diverse thinking and also modes of thinking seeking to suppress other human diversity" is "well this clearly never happens", I think that entire premise risks being itself an extreme thought experiment with no grounding in reality.

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

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the Civil Rights Act passed when the congressman from Virginia (can't remember the name) tried to kill it by including women in the bill. A law designed to save the endangered black family was instead coopted to boost the career prospects of successful women, so I guess the poison pill worked despite the bill passing.

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…

I wasn't meaning to imply that federal legislative action was the solution; I considered that question to be outside the scope of my comment.

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

#537

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…

Seems like they purposefully created people now dependent on these government programs in order to secure electorate.

More likely, the misplaced notions of how to easily fix a complex problem created people dependent on them these government programs, which have in turn perpetuated an electorate.

I don't mean to say that good intentions justify the policy, as the 20th century disproved time and time again, but your phrasing attributes malice or cynicism where none is needed or helpful.

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

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the staff is white males I'm a computer programmer. Since about the late 90's, virtually all of my coworkers have been Indians. Yet I keep hearing from the DEI group that white males are overrepresented (and that this is bad). I never hear from the DEI group that Indians (or asians) are overrepresented (and whether this is also good or bad).

From that we can conclude that you work at a very unusual workplace, but not much else unless your workplace also includes a noticeable fraction of all software engineers.

I would not agree with that. There are many of these shops. But there is different cultures. There are companies which are 90% indians/asian and then there are companies which are 90% white.

Which make DEI a bit silly until you look into Higher Management or other departments. Or until you realize that this pattern does not apply with latin or black people.

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

#539

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…

Let me give you a personal anecdote.

I built software for an employer that pulled in over $35M over the 13 years that I worked for them and continues to draw approximately 70% of their revenue. This wasn't an application. It was an entire suite of online products. I interfaced directly with C-level executives to go over the strategy, the scope, the features, and the design of each of these products in the lineup. I met with clients to learn about their marketing needs and how we might meet those needs. I was the technical point of contact for all software and hardware related tasks.

I was the only technical employee on staff. Occasionally I'd manage a contractor.

To be clear, I was the product manager, the hiring manager, the project manager, the lead developer, the business analyst, and devops.

But those weren't my "official" titles.

My job title was software developer.

I was fully engaged with creating the products, I was well compensated, and I was close to home.

Now tell me, what should my next move have been? Should I have gone for a position where I sat around, twiddling my thumbs, fucking with spreadsheets, sitting through inane product roadmap meetings, planning to plan about planning, and all the other insane busy work bullshit that tech companies do to justify spending capital?

I'm an expert product developer and an expert product designer and an expert facilitator and I have the receipts. I didn't become a software developer to manage people. I became a software developer because I wanted to develop software. How's that for motivation?

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

#540

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--p…

You divide candidates into such stereotypical categories why not throw all of that labeling away and get to know each candidate as unique humans with different skills/personalities and make judgements on those?

It's like you are judging a tasting contest by the color of icing instead of eating it.

Post reply on HN