4 ms·

Who said anyone was owed a job? The problem is that hiding listings from people based on their gender obviously impacts who gets what jobs.

fastball 11mo ago
Nobody is hiding anything. But the point about not being owed a job is that even if they were "hiding" something, that wouldn't be a problem. You are not owed visibility of a job in the same way you are not owed the job itself.
- ivan_gammel 11mo ago
  This is not true, at least in Europe. There exists well-established anti-discriminatory law, which dictates equal opportunity in employment. When targeted advertising is based only on demographic signals, it creates strong information asymmetry. Let’s say someone is not actively looking for a job, but gets information about new opportunities through ads more frequently, than someone else with same skills but different gender or background. When this happens at scale, the people like the first person will have more upward mobility than second group. Or the second group has to invest considerably more resources to find a better job. This is classic discrimination.
  - rpdillon 11mo ago
    > invest considerably more resources Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we just talking about going to a job board and searching for the job you're interested in?
    - ivan_gammel 11mo ago
      Let’s say you have group A and group B, both of which have suitable candidates for the job. The information about the job is available via pull (job boards) and push (ads) channels. A has access to both channels, B only to pull. In this case A has statistically higher chances to get that job than B, if they have no other differences. If B is already disadvantaged, this just increases the gap. Your question is, in this model, why pull isn’t covering the absence of push (i.e. pull conversion >> push conversion). But that is obvious: if it was the case, there would be no need to spend money on ads. The very existence of those ads confirms that push channel is significant. And that means that platform does pre-screening of candidates based on gender, which is illegal.
      - rpdillon 11mo ago
        It sounds like this is about going to a job board and just searching for the job you want. That's the big barrier we're discussing?
        ivan_gammel 11mo ago
        Ok, let me explain in simple words. No, you cannot reduce it to „just searching the job you want“. Information asymmetry means that: 1. not everyone is aware of all the opportunities available on the market, e.g. when skillset is matching different type of the job people have not considered 2. …or where to find them, because there are many job boards and not everything even lands on them 3. …or that they should look for them at certain moment of time Push ads address all 3 problems, reaching e.g. those who are employed and not actively looking, but open to change. If a man gets that ad, but a woman not, it means that that man spent zero time to find that opportunity and woman may not even find it in active search. Effectively they pay different costs for getting a better job.
        rpdillon 11mo ago
        It's not the complexity of the words that's causing the misunderstanding. It's getting down to ground truth about what the job searching experience is like for actual individuals that will be impacted by this legislation. So the hypothesis is that there are jobs that people will pay money to advertise for but won't place on a free job board to be found by interested parties? There also seems to be a hypothesis that someone will click on an ad for a job, even if they don't realize they have the skills for it, where they won't search for a job that they don't realize they don't have the skills for. Am I understanding? Do we have any examples to demonstrate this? All seems like an incredibly weak argument. Like, who was harmed by this? There was somebody that was a woman that wanted to be a mechanic and she couldn't because she didn't get a Facebook ad for it? That's what we're talking about, right?
        ivan_gammel 11mo ago
        I will have to repeat myself, because I already answered this above. The fact that paid ads for jobs exist is clear indication that „free job boards“ channel doesn’t perform well enough, so employers are ready to pay extra. Paid job ads market has not gone in first few months, it is sustainable, i.e. people continue to pay because they have satisfactory conversion. It’s already proven by market that pull+push performs better, otherwise push wouldn’t exist. If push has gender-based targeting, then it creates an advantage for a specific gender - and that’s it. I did suggest plausible mechanics of why push works, but we don’t really need to find concrete examples, neither it is possible: you cannot present things that didn’t happen. If someone didn’t see an opportunity because ads were not shown, this person is not aware of it and cannot complain.
  - fastball 11mo ago
    This sub-thread isn't really about what is legal (or illegal) in Europe or any other jurisdiction. It is about what is right. When it comes to legality and enforcement though, it does seem highly inconsistent to enforce something like this, which isn't actually discrimination on its own (rather it could lead to discrimination), when at the same time orgs are very obviously participating in actual discrimination ("we'd like this role to be filled by {insert group here}") in Europe and elsewhere.
    - ivan_gammel 11mo ago
      > This sub-thread isn't really about what is legal (or illegal) in Europe or any other jurisdiction. It is about what is right. My argument wasn’t about whether it’s legal or not. It’s discrimination, which is both illegal and wrong. > when at the same time orgs are very obviously participating in actual discrimination I don’t think so. Please provide evidence. Which orgs and where? In Germany all job postings explicitly say „(m/w/d)“ in title (male/female/diverse). I would be surprised to see any demographic-related constraints as they are easily challenged in court.
      - fastball 11mo ago
        You brought up Europe, so I assumed you were making a legal argument. Right and wrong isn't dependent on the region you are in, imo. > In Germany all job postings explicitly say „(m/w/d)“ Great, and what is actually stopping someone from only hiring men, or only hiring women? Putting "m/w/d" in a job posting is performative nonsense. Jobs are not granted automatically when you interview, they are discretionary. It is trivially easy for someone with hiring authority to not hire a woman because they are a woman, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
        ivan_gammel 11mo ago
        Are you making an excuse for discrimination in ads by saying that discrimination exists on later stages?
        11mo ago

fastball 11mo ago

Nobody is hiding anything. But the point about not being owed a job is that even if they were "hiding" something, that wouldn't be a problem. You are not owed visibility of a job in the same way you are not owed the job itself.

ivan_gammel 11mo ago
This is not true, at least in Europe. There exists well-established anti-discriminatory law, which dictates equal opportunity in employment. When targeted advertising is based only on demographic signals, it creates strong information asymmetry. Let’s say someone is not actively looking for a job, but gets information about new opportunities through ads more frequently, than someone else with same skills but different gender or background. When this happens at scale, the people like the first person will have more upward mobility than second group. Or the second group has to invest considerably more resources to find a better job. This is classic discrimination.
- rpdillon 11mo ago
  > invest considerably more resources Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we just talking about going to a job board and searching for the job you're interested in?
  - ivan_gammel 11mo ago
    Let’s say you have group A and group B, both of which have suitable candidates for the job. The information about the job is available via pull (job boards) and push (ads) channels. A has access to both channels, B only to pull. In this case A has statistically higher chances to get that job than B, if they have no other differences. If B is already disadvantaged, this just increases the gap. Your question is, in this model, why pull isn’t covering the absence of push (i.e. pull conversion >> push conversion). But that is obvious: if it was the case, there would be no need to spend money on ads. The very existence of those ads confirms that push channel is significant. And that means that platform does pre-screening of candidates based on gender, which is illegal.
    - rpdillon 11mo ago
      It sounds like this is about going to a job board and just searching for the job you want. That's the big barrier we're discussing?
      - ivan_gammel 11mo ago
        Ok, let me explain in simple words. No, you cannot reduce it to „just searching the job you want“. Information asymmetry means that: 1. not everyone is aware of all the opportunities available on the market, e.g. when skillset is matching different type of the job people have not considered 2. …or where to find them, because there are many job boards and not everything even lands on them 3. …or that they should look for them at certain moment of time Push ads address all 3 problems, reaching e.g. those who are employed and not actively looking, but open to change. If a man gets that ad, but a woman not, it means that that man spent zero time to find that opportunity and woman may not even find it in active search. Effectively they pay different costs for getting a better job.
        rpdillon 11mo ago
        It's not the complexity of the words that's causing the misunderstanding. It's getting down to ground truth about what the job searching experience is like for actual individuals that will be impacted by this legislation. So the hypothesis is that there are jobs that people will pay money to advertise for but won't place on a free job board to be found by interested parties? There also seems to be a hypothesis that someone will click on an ad for a job, even if they don't realize they have the skills for it, where they won't search for a job that they don't realize they don't have the skills for. Am I understanding? Do we have any examples to demonstrate this? All seems like an incredibly weak argument. Like, who was harmed by this? There was somebody that was a woman that wanted to be a mechanic and she couldn't because she didn't get a Facebook ad for it? That's what we're talking about, right?
        ivan_gammel 11mo ago
        I will have to repeat myself, because I already answered this above. The fact that paid ads for jobs exist is clear indication that „free job boards“ channel doesn’t perform well enough, so employers are ready to pay extra. Paid job ads market has not gone in first few months, it is sustainable, i.e. people continue to pay because they have satisfactory conversion. It’s already proven by market that pull+push performs better, otherwise push wouldn’t exist. If push has gender-based targeting, then it creates an advantage for a specific gender - and that’s it. I did suggest plausible mechanics of why push works, but we don’t really need to find concrete examples, neither it is possible: you cannot present things that didn’t happen. If someone didn’t see an opportunity because ads were not shown, this person is not aware of it and cannot complain.
- fastball 11mo ago
  This sub-thread isn't really about what is legal (or illegal) in Europe or any other jurisdiction. It is about what is right. When it comes to legality and enforcement though, it does seem highly inconsistent to enforce something like this, which isn't actually discrimination on its own (rather it could lead to discrimination), when at the same time orgs are very obviously participating in actual discrimination ("we'd like this role to be filled by {insert group here}") in Europe and elsewhere.
  - ivan_gammel 11mo ago
    > This sub-thread isn't really about what is legal (or illegal) in Europe or any other jurisdiction. It is about what is right. My argument wasn’t about whether it’s legal or not. It’s discrimination, which is both illegal and wrong. > when at the same time orgs are very obviously participating in actual discrimination I don’t think so. Please provide evidence. Which orgs and where? In Germany all job postings explicitly say „(m/w/d)“ in title (male/female/diverse). I would be surprised to see any demographic-related constraints as they are easily challenged in court.
    - fastball 11mo ago
      You brought up Europe, so I assumed you were making a legal argument. Right and wrong isn't dependent on the region you are in, imo. > In Germany all job postings explicitly say „(m/w/d)“ Great, and what is actually stopping someone from only hiring men, or only hiring women? Putting "m/w/d" in a job posting is performative nonsense. Jobs are not granted automatically when you interview, they are discretionary. It is trivially easy for someone with hiring authority to not hire a woman because they are a woman, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
      - ivan_gammel 11mo ago
        Are you making an excuse for discrimination in ads by saying that discrimination exists on later stages?
        11mo ago