The comments so far might give insight into the terrible sexism of tech in general.
Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
31–40 of 128 posts
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#32Aren't most corporations incorporated in Delaware for tax reasons anyway?
Is incorporated-in the same as headquartered-in? for the purposes of this law?
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#33Shouldn't they also be required to have at least one black person, one Asian, one gay, one handicapable person and one non-cisgender member? Imagine the job prospects of your average handicapped, transgender blasian lesbian? You could have your pick of any company board. I kid, but I can't help but imagine there will be some unintended consequences of legislation like this.
The perfect is the enemy of the good, darling. Give it time.
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#34Fascinating to see all comments against this at the moment. Some level of mandatory female board presence seems to work OK in plenty of places elsewhere in the world without a great backlash. No visible campaigns to repeal because of the great damage or tokenism that's resulted.
Which are the other places in the world that have done this?
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#35[deleted]
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#36This is no different than outlawing all-male marriages.
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#37Why isn't the excuse of "representing the public" used to require certain members have a particular religion or race as well? What about income? Board members are about as far from representing society as you can get (and that's not the purpose of a board anyway) so I don't understand why this is being mandated. Seems like a strategy for cheap political points rather than any kind of well-reasoned reform.
A slippery slope argument seems really justified here as this legislation applies to boards that are quite small in size. If women need this special advantage, we only have to find a few other deserving minorities (race, religion and age seem like reasonable choices) before it is illegal to use merit as the first criteria for making up a corporate board.
There is also a real concern with regulation like this is that the current climate of discussion is such that the negative effects are difficult to discuss in civil society. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people who object to this are sexists.
EDITED because I'd interpreted the article wrong
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#38Honestly surprised at how many people are posting comments about this. You know you'll end up on some list, right? Maybe you think it's ok to debate this kind of measure now, but the line will keep moving. In three years you may have people scouring your internet history for past wrongthink to deny you that promotion, or to get rid of you. In five years, machine learning algorithms may take your comments as input for your Ethical Credit Score. Hacker News is not going to delete your comments if you come to regret them.
It's best not to think about these things at all. What can you do, anyway? Suppress your mind's wandering. Focus on that algorithm on that refactoring, someone needs to get that work done, and it's you. You need that promotion. You need to make a lot of money for the federal government, for the state of California, and for your landlord, and you better make enough that there is something left to save. You don't want to look back in ten years and realize your youth disappeared while you were sitting in front of a monitor, you're still unmarried, you don't own a house, and you haven't had an independent thought in a decade, right? At least you've got to have some money saved up, that's going to make it worth it. So put your head down and get back to coding.
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#39Six person board? “At least” three women. Says it all.
Re: Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards
#40Curious - as article mentions - if this can be enforced on the standard Delaware C / California foreign that almost all of us work for.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
> 301.3. (a) No later than the close of the 2019 calendar year, a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California shall have a minimum of one female director on its board. A corporation may increase the number of directors on its board to comply with this section.