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Maybe? 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
by rpmisms 3y ago
Maybe? 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.
- rpmisms 3y agoI would never. I'm either genuinely interacting (with people) or genuinely shitposting in good faith (not sure what else to call it, I'm not necessarily going to stand behind everything I say, but the interaction is genuine). I assume many others here do the same.
- 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.