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The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

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Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#51

Post by fdsaaf »

epistasis wrote: post #34
smegel wrote: post #13

> Born white and male in today’s world I won the lottery without having a clue. Here we go. (actually I stopped reading).

There's a couple comments to this effect. Why? It comes across as being unwilling to consider ideas at all.

I've considered and thoroughly rejected that idea. If you choose to see the world through the lens of privilege and group grievances, my opinion of you plummets. That kind of thinking pushes us apart instead of bringing us together.

Do you have any fucking idea how unfair it is to discriminate against people, people who might have had very difficult lives, because they were born a certain way and share gonads and pigmentation with people long dead who do things that don't fit today's social mores?

If you choose the see people as group members first and individuals second, I want nothing to do with you.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#52

Post by flukus »

nostrebored wrote: post #7
Kpourdeilami wrote: post #2

> At that point I made a decision to change this by enforcing a new hiring rule. Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team I stopped reading after this part!

Then you really don't understand hiring women. Most women don't want to work at a place where they're the only woman. Or the workplace is ridiculously imbalanced in one direction. Even in large companies such as Amazon, women cluster into teams. Not having women on your team usually points to a culture issue, and who wants to have a terrible work environment? It's another area where avoiding false positives is probab…

> Most women don't want to work at a place where they're the only woman.

That's a problem women can solve, not one that has to be solved for them.

> Her co-workers really didn't know how to interact with women

Examples? You react to them the same way as everyone else.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#53

Post by jordanlev »

Svenskunganka wrote: post #37

> At that point I made a decision to change this by enforcing a new hiring rule. Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team Most of us can agree that this is a bad decision, but I've always wondered how people can end up with such tunnel vision. Men in IT has always been overrepresented, so it's not surprising that the majority of teams are mostly men. But what I wonder is why thi…

> But what I wonder is why this person thinks that hiring women only will change this trend.

As someone else pointed out in another comment, many women feel better about working at a place that already has other women.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#54

Post by romanhn »

stale2002 wrote: post #31
romanhn wrote: post #14

Interesting data, BUT... "Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team." - this is gender discrimination and it is illegal. How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants? Things like ridding your careers page of implicit biases and bro culture, putting extra emphasis on personal as well as professional growth, attending/hosting various women-oriented events/…

"How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants?" Yeah, and do you know what the best and easiest way to make a workplace more attractive to women is? It is to have other women in the workplace! I know many women who are unwilling to even apply to a company if they know they would be the first or only woman on the team. It is a chicken and egg problem. Until his company is able to get SOME wom…

Agree with you up until the very last sentence. It does not make business sense to break the law (and gender discrimination is a real thing a company can get sued over). No matter how tempting, you can't magically wish the problem away and say "I'll hire 5 women, then 10 people of color, then a couple of LGBT folks, then I won't have any diversity problems". It doesn't work that way.

Yes, it is a chicken and egg problem. Yes, the first couple of hires will be difficult to make. But if you don't have the framework in place to actually support these women once they join the workplace, guess what, even if you luck out into making those hires, they won't be sticking around. It's not a one-time kind of thing.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#55

Post by joeax »

intopieces wrote: post #38
romanhn wrote: post #14

Interesting data, BUT... "Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team." - this is gender discrimination and it is illegal. How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants? Things like ridding your careers page of implicit biases and bro culture, putting extra emphasis on personal as well as professional growth, attending/hosting various women-oriented events/…

>this is gender discrimination and it is illegal. Employment discrimination laws don't kick in until you have 15 employees. This guy has 10.

But this guy has now set a precedent with a published article claiming he will actively discriminate against male candidates. So as soon as his company scales past 15, a male candidate that was rejected could sue, using that article as evidence.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#56

Post by jacalata »

joeax wrote: post #55
intopieces wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this is gender discrimination and it is illegal. Employment discrimination laws don't kick in until you have 15 employees. This guy has 10.

But this guy has now set a precedent with a published article claiming he will actively discriminate against male candidates. So as soon as his company scales past 15, a male candidate that was rejected could sue, using that article as evidence.

Huh, would it apply retroactively? That seems weird.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#57

Post by bmmayer1 »

intopieces wrote: post #29
bmmayer1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team." The CEO should have run this blog post, and particularly this sentence, by a lawyer. It seems pretty clear that the above statement, if reflected in actual hiring practice by the company, is in violation of Section 703(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act[1]. It is also pretty easy ammunition for an employment discrimination lawsuit…

You missed this bit. >The term “employer” means a person engaged in an industry affecting commerce who has fifteen or more employees for each working day. FTA: >We’re team of 10 people of which only 2 are women, only one is a developer.

I actually didn't know the employer qualification of Title VII. Thanks for the tip.

However, the second part of my statement still very much applies. This blog post can easily become Exhibit A in an employment discrimination lawsuit in a year when the company has more employees, or even against a completely different company run by the same CEO in the future, to establish a pattern.

Point being, not worth the risk!

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#58

Post by fdsaaf »

stale2002 wrote: post #31
romanhn wrote: post #14

Interesting data, BUT... "Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team." - this is gender discrimination and it is illegal. How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants? Things like ridding your careers page of implicit biases and bro culture, putting extra emphasis on personal as well as professional growth, attending/hosting various women-oriented events/…

"How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants?" Yeah, and do you know what the best and easiest way to make a workplace more attractive to women is? It is to have other women in the workplace! I know many women who are unwilling to even apply to a company if they know they would be the first or only woman on the team. It is a chicken and egg problem. Until his company is able to get SOME wom…

I'm sick of made-up and ever-more-implausible reasons for women not comprising 50% of the workforce. (Someone once mentioned that a company might be having trouble finding women because an employee had a model of the Millennium Falcon on his desk.)

The truth is that fewer women than men choose to enter this profession in the first place. You may or may not agree that this state of affairs represents a "problem". Even if it does, the hiring stage is far too late to "fix" it.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#59

Post by cellularmitosis »

ben_jones wrote: post #25
thedevil wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the author's worldview is twisted a little by politics, but I recommend skipping to the bottom, there's some substance there. He has some interesting charts regarding how much salary is requested by people of different skill, experience, and gender.

So for future reference, best practice is to ignore any bad parts of an article that agrees with my political and moral leanings and only focus and trumpet the good parts??

A better takeaway might be "focus on the data"

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#60

Post by nickpsecurity »

epistasis wrote: post #34
smegel wrote: post #13

> Born white and male in today’s world I won the lottery without having a clue. Here we go. (actually I stopped reading).

There's a couple comments to this effect. Why? It comes across as being unwilling to consider ideas at all.

It's a combination of a refrain we hear from people with specific views (too repetitive), an indication of stronger-than-average bias on the topic, and an accusation. For a white minority like me, it's also very false given the situation reverses completely in an area where Blacks are majority and control everything. I've always felt cursed far as societal circumstances rather than blessed by being white, male, and intellectual. Our whole childhood and then much job seeking is an uphill battle where I empathize with racial or gender minorities in other areas. And those I was in as they still existed.

So, these kinds of comments have at least four ways of causing an instant eye roll by my count. Two of which, repetitive and bias parts, aren't really caused by sexism topic so much as nature of people following sites like this on a regular basis and how we respond to certain things.

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