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"In fact, having particular characteristics is comparable to a 5 percent boost in pay" Looking the part is worth some money! This of course contributes to gend
by datadrivenangel 3y ago
"In fact, having particular characteristics is comparable to a 5 percent boost in pay"
Looking the part is worth some money! This of course contributes to gender imbalances in software.
- creer 3y agoOn average, they report, but good vs bad marketing is normally worth much more. So the extremes in great vs bad photo are most likely much more. Paying attention and getting help is worth money.
- rpmisms 3y agoMaybe? My personal observation is that female engineers who prefer dark clothing and wear glasses are often the best engineers. Is that sexist or is that using a different measure vs. beards for men? I'm fully aware that these metrics are easily broken. Best eng I ever met dressed and talked like a complete hillbilly. Best female eng I ever met looked homeless, and indeed, did a lot of crack at one point.
- itronitron 3y agoMaybe you just perceive women that wear dark clothing to be better engineers because either you perceive them as less feminine, or because you are less distracted by their anatomical features (when they wear dark clothing).
- rpmisms 3y agoMaybe? Dark clothing is generally something I find attractive, and unless exceptionally baggy, I can get a pretty decent idea of body type. I think it's the more utilitarian "vibe". If you're not thinking about matching colors, you probably have a more utilitarian mindset. This applies to male engineers too, except there's other more important signals there.
- loco5niner 3y agoor the women are self-selecting for clothing that is more utilitarian?
- lowbloodsugar 3y agoI don't know that it's sexist per se, but if you use it to predict the outcome of future interactions (which I am assuming you do since you actually posted it here), then that is an example of bias. IANAL but probably actionable in the US. So if your remark is, "In my limited experience I've worked with only 10 female engineers and the eight good ones all wore dark clothing and wear glasses. That's a funny and unlikely distribution!" then you're good. If your remark is "I can determine if a female engineer is any good based on whether or not she is wearing dark clothing and glasses" then you probably have no business working in the field at all.
- rpmisms 3y agoMy remark is closer to the former. The latter would be silly, but an excellent tweet. I'm in the Damore camp on this issue, though.
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago>I'm in the Damore camp on this issue, though. Which parts? The "men and women communicate differently" part or the "women are neurotic" part? And if the former, do you take it as far as "Better not hire women, because it's all guys here, and we don't want to have to learn how to communicate with them?"
- rpmisms 3y agoWomen and men are different and communicate differently, tech is usually a male-calibrated environment, to get more women, you need to adjust the environment. "Women are neurotic" is talking about the neuroticism trait. Women also score higher on average on agreeableness, for example. That's hard data, spoken in unflattering terms. The former just means you need communication standards that are balanced.
- a_techwriter_00 3y agoMan, I seriously hope people don't use what they post here to predict the outcome of future interactions.
- spacemadness 3y agoI really hope you are not a manager. And if you are you think a little more about your personal biases when hiring.
- rpmisms 3y agoI can set aside my impressions, but they exist. That's pretty normal, and unfortunately I'm a lot less biased than many tech hiring panels these days.
- sizzle 3y agocorrelation \= causation
- rpmisms 3y agoNo, I'm pretty sure that putting dark clothes and glasses on a woman makes her an amazing engineer.
- Gibbon1 3y agoI've come to the conclusion affinity fraud is a very wide spectrum. You got guys like Madoff on one end. And people carefully picking out clothes and watching their accent on the other. I think of the latter as low grade affinity fraud. An example a friend. Branches of her family are very wealthy almost old money. She could take something out of her closet and go to a party thrown by old money, fit right in and no one would suspect she's broke.
- elcritch 3y agoFor better or worse it’s all part of human social networks. The looks, the lingo, etc all add up to help identify in-group vs out-group. Don’t get me wrong, when I was younger it annoyed me much more. However now I accept that at some level it’s just part of the “human social dance”. Given that large societies, governments, corporations, etc all exist and can function shows that there’s something to it. Who knows, perhaps Neanderthals didn't do these social rituals and that prevented them scaling social networks and eventually dying out.
- foobarian 3y agoWait until you hear how many more cars I sold at the local dealership once I started showing up in a nice suit instead of shorts and flip-flops!
- hgomersall 3y agoIt's funny, because i really really distrust that super slick fully suited salesman getup. I'm much more likely to be suckered in by a surfer dude in beach wear.
- blharr 3y agoYou are probably on the demographic not to get suckered in the first place
- sizzle 3y agoWhat was the car segment such as luxury, economy, etc.?