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

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

#661

Post by nullc » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #650

nullc wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most tech jobs don't actually require significantly greater than average intelligence. If you crunch the numbers it takes a pretty high bar to skew the gender of the posterior distribution much. It's not inconceivable and shouldn't be discarded out of hand, but there are plenty of other factors (including non-discrimination ones) worth keeping in mind. As an aside-- when you make the variance argument it's useful to…

I don't think it is useful here (on HN) to point out the low end. That just gets tedious and I think comes across as tedious. The pertinent fact is that m:f ratio increases at the top, and variance is just the most irrefutable factor that breaks apart any presumption that the distributions should be identical. Also, I'm not trying to pretend that's the only difference between men and women. Men sleep 20 minutes less…

Maybe it comes across as tedious.

But -- we write because we hope to communicate, and if you're mistaken as a flaming misogynist then the communication will fail and you won't reach the people who could benefit the most from your perspective.

I think it can be worth it to put on a bit of a dance to make it clear that you're not just looking for reasons to be dismissive towards women, even if in some cosmic fairness sense you shouldn't have to prove you're not a witch.

In my mind a reasonable way to do that is to point out that variance differences often make men worse. Particularly so since someone one extra sd more intelligent on the top end probably has little benefit to their life, while someone being one extra sd more violent on the bottom end makes them much more likely to live a life thats miserable for them and those around them.

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

#662

Post by uoaei » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

blindmute wrote: post #588

uoaei wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One, it has not been proven or even shown somewhat that a diverse team is more successful. This is just a wildly baseless assertion on the scale of disinformation, not even misinformation. It's not worth the time to go into the rest of this comment but the quote above summarizes it well.

It is one of those things that gets "proven" by one or two politically funded studies that shows a mild effect size with tiny sample, then magnified 100x in headlines until it is "common knowledge". There is no such proven source like you believe and imply. The effect sizes shown are on the order of those showing eggs raise cholesterol, eggs don't raise cholesterol, dietary fat causes obesity, sugar causes obesity, c…

Another completely made-up assertion. Just saying it doesn't make it true.

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

#663

Post by uoaei » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

camelite wrote: post #590

uoaei wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inequity resulting from the material consequences of appearing in, being raised in, and interacting with society as white and male is a well-established statistical fact.

There are important differences between material and statistical facts you would be better off not glossing over. And more centrally, whiteness (in particular) and maleness are still not facts. You're in voodoo territory if you center them as such.

A nice bit of wordplay but that's nonsense. The difference between statistical facts and material facts is, one is a(system-scale) summary of the other (individual-scale) measure.

I fail to see the nit you're picking at with that second bit. Are you saying they are categories? Suppositions? Made up? Do you mean to imply then that they are "spooks" and their presence in the minds of physical agents has no bearing on physical outcomes?

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

#664

Post by forum_ghost » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 9:41 AM UTC

nullc wrote: post #612

recursive wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but they haven't been. That's what matters.

Doesn't apply if the parties have notice of the recording. Offer to take notes for the meetings and tell people you're recording for the notes. People making openly racist/sexist statements usually won't refrain when a mic is on-- they do it because they've convinced themselves that what they're doing is OKAY. Failing that, an illicitly obtained recording can still be used in court in California if its used to dispro…

This is a very optimistic statement, and I hope you are right, but I'd imagine the probability of a candidate who announced he'll record the interview to get hired will be approximately zero.

Personally, I'd expect the interview cut very short, if not immediately e.g. citing an existing security policy or something.

I've seen many places with "no recording for our client's privacy" on the doors.

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

#665

Post by dheera » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 10:51 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #654

dheera wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've done it so often that I've started to wince when I see your username. This has nothing to do with your views; I don't have any idea what they are and haven't read the context in this thread. I just saw this comment because it was flagged, and I recognize that this happens a lot with your account. That's not cool and not what this site is for. https://news.…

I don't think it was a flamewar comment at all, but I do believe all this, including this style of moderation is really just shutting up honest productive discussion, and essentially translating to "don't post things that disagree with the majority opinion". I believe this sort of flagging and moderation exacerbates the echo chamber effect.

See for example discussion at https://bookface.ycombinator.com/posts/48890

I edit-deleted the comment in protest of how the community has decided to treat minority opinions, I did not mean to start a flame war.

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

#666

Post by dang » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 12:25 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #665

dang wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've done it so often that I've started to wince when I see your username. This has nothing to do with your views; I don't have any idea what they are and haven't read the context in this thread. I just saw this comment because it was flagged, and I recognize that this happens a lot with your account. That's not cool and not what this site is for. https://news.…

I don't think it was a flamewar comment at all, but I do believe all this, including this style of moderation is really just shutting up honest productive discussion, and essentially translating to "don't post things that disagree with the majority opinion". I believe this sort of flagging and moderation exacerbates the echo chamber effect. See for example discussion at https://bookface.ycombinator.com/posts/48890 I…

I don't remember what your views are on any of these topics but I'm pretty sure plenty of HN users express views similar close to yours while remaining within the site guidelines: thoughtful, respectful to others, substantive. You don't need snark, swipes, or putdowns—editing them out makes comments better, not worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. Bookface is a private forum, so a link to it doesn't make much sense in a public place like HN.