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Pathetic. The whole point is to celebrate with the employees and their families and recognize the hard work everyone has put in over the year. A stranger not co

• bdcravens 9y ago
  > If you want more women at the event This has nothing to do with equality. They aren't hiring these models as equals, but for the misogynistic dynamic (while removing the organic nature of opposite-sex interaction)
  • throwaway0255 9y ago
    > They aren't hiring these models as equals, but for the misogynistic dynamic Interesting, my mind goes straight to this being incredibly demeaning toward the legitimate male attendees of the party. Didn't even occur to me that somebody would have the opposite interpretation. That'd be my only thought at the party. "They had to pay this good-looking person to pretend to talk to me." I don't see how this is misogynistic? I just see this as an extreme degradation of the males involved.
    • jordigh 9y ago
      It's misogynistic because it commodifies women. Having a woman to talk to is something that you can just buy, like a car or a nice meal. They're not treated as people, just as consummables.
      • GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
        Like hiring a software engineer to make code for you?
        • jordigh 9y ago
          It's not comparable. A programmer spent a lot of time honing their craft, faces every day challenges, has growth opportunities, can aspire to higher salaries through tough work, has growth opportunities, can influence the world around them and create new things. Coding yields power. While modelling may require difficult labour, it's mostly just "congratulations for your face".
          • theshrike79 9y ago
            Let's see you put on a bikini on the beach during winter and pretend you're not freezing your ass off to shoot the catalog for next summer. Now do it for 12 hours straight. Yes, it's just a pretty face, no skill required.
            • dwaltrip 9y ago
              I would argue this angle is irrelevant. It's not about whether it is difficult or not, it is more about what type of culture do such things foster and what values does it signal (referring to "SV roller skate models").
      • alexasmyths 9y ago
        Not only does it not commodify women, you're assumption that men will treat them as objects is possibly bigoted. Men having polite conversations with women is 'wrong' only in a dystopian future. I personally think it's a little ridiculous and would not want to attend, nor would I put together a party like that, but it's a matter of social taste, not morality.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    • jerf 9y ago
      Why not both? It's not really a single-dimensional scale; it is perfectly feasible to be simultaneously misogynstic and misandrist at the same time. Proof by existence.
      • aphextron 9y ago
        Precisely. It’s the strip club dynamic. Where men are seen as nothing more than disposable vessels of cash, and women are degraded to the level of livestock on display.
    • bdcravens 9y ago
      The focus is on the attractiveness of the women, and the presence of women for men's sake. Misogyny is degrading to everyone involved.
  • bitL 9y ago
    They are hiring them to hack "stupid" geeks that aren't accustomed to attractive female presence, with the usual "to corrupt geek" fun they play since high school. It's trying to hack male biological response in favor of whatever, a pretty low-life stuff.
  • alexasmyths 9y ago
    "but for the misogynistic dynamic" Male appreciation of female company is utterly and absolutely in not 'misogynistic'. Not only that - it's also very normal, and frankly good. If people are treated as sexual objects, then you can complain.
  • notyourday 9y ago
    > while removing the organic nature of opposite-sex interaction One needs to be absolutely insane to organically interact with a co-worker of opposite sex at a company social events considering the popularity of all kinds of sexual harassment claims.
    • jmagoon 9y ago
      I really hope that you're joking. You don't know how to interact with the opposite sex without it being sexual harassment? Or are you saying that all the women making those claims are frauds who treat non harassment as harassment?
      • notyourday 9y ago
        I like the money that I make. My solution is to avoid any and all interaction that is not mandatory.
  • ryandrake 9y ago
    How do you square your claim of misogyny against the fact that male models are also employed in these roles?
    • bdcravens 9y ago
      If they are, that's an improvement. What's the breakdown like? I've venture to say less than 1% overall.
      • ryandrake 9y ago
        LMRTAFY: "For a typical party, scheduled for the weekend of Dec. 8, Cre8 Agency LLC is sending 25 women and 5 men, all good-looking..."
        • bdcravens 9y ago
          Oh ok, your comment said ".. also employed in these roles.." so I thought you were speaking to more than the article.
      • jasode 9y ago
        The article gave one example of 30 models (5 men and 25 women) -- so 20% in that case.
        • bdcravens 9y ago
          Makes sense; I thought parent comment was speaking to more than the one party indicated in the article: "... also employed in these roles ..."
• libria 9y ago
  > If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that. Well hold on now, this may be the solution to that. Include some male models on rollerskates and the female hiring rate should climb in response.
  • skj 9y ago
    As a straight male, this sounds like a really fun idea.
• 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
  The whole point is to take them to the hotel.
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
  But they did hire them. Pedantry aside though, what's wrong with having a boring party?
  • bdamm 9y ago
    Not enough board games to solve that boredom problem, evidently.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• natecavanaugh 9y ago
  I too think this is pretty crass and as artificial as so much else in SV. But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. And why shouldn't those women be able to work? For me, I don't mind anyone being hired or contracted for skills in guest relations, marketing or any position or work need. This bothers me though, because it's a contrivance being used to not only help their employees have fun, but to mask a systemic flaw, which is just too much in the SV culture of always killing it, everything is amazing, fake it till you make it, false value creation and other cultural negatives that prevent true growth and benefits to the part of their society they are primarily responsible for: their work force. This is really generalized, though, but it would apply to more than a handful of SV companies. But I do think that they're living up to the letter of what you're saying, but definitely not the spirit of it.
  • adamsea 9y ago
    > But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. The issue is the gender disparity in _software_engineering_, which is actually made worse by this, because hiring someone because they look pretty (they're not asking agencies for, like, conversationalists with master's degree, and if they were, they'd still have to be attractive) is straight-up objectification, which is bad for women everywhere - and men.
    • natecavanaugh 9y ago
      I dunno, I struggle with the area of what constitutes objectification here. On the one hand, yes they're hired first because they're pretty, but assuming that's the only quality they bring, or that it's somehow baser or less valuable than technical skills seems to me still degrading to an entire group of people who do put a lot of work into both their presentation and ability to navigate socially. The other part is that I don't think it's wrong to allow the GUI of a person to be the initial draw towards someone else. If that's all someone wants, then they're shallow and objectifying someone. But for as many guys in SV who are pervs only out for one thing, I'm willing to wager that there are just as many, if not more, introverted SE's who actually don't mind a more personal connection, however momentary, than to just get their rocks off. Sometimes it's nice to have a short, if meaningful, or at least interesting conversation with someone so far out of your league in traditional social contexts. I'm not trying to be an apologist for this practice, I just feel that while it has its own innocent value, it could be implemented in a way that is a bit more transparent and helpful long-term to what is behind some of the motivations for this.
• ardit33 9y ago
  "If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that." -- Yes, some magic wand will solve it? If they are tech companies and engineers are the primary value drivers, and only 16% of CS grads are female, what kind of rock will they find balanced workforce? Companies hire because they need people to feel a role, (eg. engineers, marketing, sales, hr... etc). If they need more engineers they have to deal with the workforce supply issues, where only 16% of applicants are female. They are a business that need to build and sale products, and not a charity. I live in NYC, and they have the opposite is here, most PR or fashion firms are more female dominated... It is, what it is. Not sure it justifies hiring models to balance the gender ratio in a party, but the workforce imbalance is there to stay as long as there is such an imbalance ratio in CS grads.
  • rad88 9y ago
    ~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads shouldn't mean there are so few women that you need to hire them for events.
    • alphaalpha101 9y ago
      >~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. How big is your team? 5 people? It's either a small sample size, or it's discrimination.
    • nawitus 9y ago
      What do you estimate is the gender ratio for software developers? And how can you expect every company to go over it? Surely it is not 50% or over. In addition, for every company that goes over the average (perhaps like yours), another company must go under the average.
      • rad88 9y ago
        The number I think is important is not how many CS grads there are (no one on my team has a CS major) or how many software developers there are, it's how many people are interested in and capable of this job. I don't know what the "true" ratio is but I'm sure it is more than 16% of women which is where ardit anchored it. It often comes back to this "pipeline" problem, but we need to think of our companies as being part of the pipeline. I don't have a CS degree -- I came out of college with a BA -- but I landed a firmware programming job, 2 jobs and 7 years later I am experience and "senior". If you're willing to train smart people, you can sideline the pipeline issue.
• gbarc888 9y ago
  Don't employees usually bring a +1 to these events anyway?
  • bdamm 9y ago
    Oddly, the company party at my place of work has been employee-only for the last half dozen years, which has consequently meant I have left the party not long after opening and saying hello to a few folks, playing darts or something, grabbing a drink, and getting the heck outta there since I want to head home to my +1 and not expose my +1 to the feeling of abandonment.
• alexasmyths 9y ago
  " The whole point is to celebrate with the employees and their families and recognize the hard work everyone has put in over the year. " Not really, that's more a 'New Years' thing. Christmas 'party' is just really a Christmas season gathering. It really isn't even a party. Imagine 100 years ago, your grandad owns a printing press in town. December 20th he brings in Egg Nog, a cake, everyone stops working. Maybe a local musician sings a few songs. Maybe some people drink a little too much. Or maybe he pays for a nice dinner at the local restaurant and people show up and 'give thanks'. Light a candle. That's it. We are so 'de-culturalized' in North America we don't even know how to do something normal. Of course a 'holiday party' could technically be anything people want it to be, but there's no reason to go to this level. When in doubt: just go out for dinner. :)