7 ms·

What if I started a company, and all good candidates were male, and the women weren't on par? What if no women applied at all? I don't get this whole gender thi

by rfnslyr 13y ago

What if I started a company, and all good candidates were male, and the women weren't on par? What if no women applied at all? I don't get this whole gender thing. If statistically less women apply to a STEM degree, or tech related job, how is it the fault of "white males"? White male guilt at it's finest if you ask me. If you actively see discrimination, do something about it. I actually work with a team that is 90% women, it just happened that way. The male applicants sucked, the women were great. My friends teams however, are only male, because they had no female applicants. Why try to force equality? Am I missing something? What if the person doing the hiring silently disregards all female applicants? How would you tackle that problem? OP if you had a company would you hire a less qualified woman than a more qualified man in the name of equality? This movement seems counter-intuitive. If the applicant is good, hire them, male or female, young or old. Our team consists of elder women, young fresh grads, interns, and working class middle aged women as well, all across the spectrum. We all mingle just fine and still shoot the shit. Hiring GOOD people is the only thing that should matter. Throw out all this ideology and affirmative action nonsense.

rollo_tommasi 13y ago
Clearly you ought to parcel out the women on your team to the other teams until you've reached parity across the board. Change begins with you!
- Ellipsis753 13y ago
  That would be kind of mad. The teams might not even be doing the same things!
- xd 13y ago
  I hope you're joking .. what if they are happy on their team and don't want to be moved?
ForHackernews 13y ago
> What if I started a company, and all good candidates were male, and the women weren't on par? What if no women applied at all? Then it's pretty clear you've done a bad job of advertising your job openings. Did you, perhaps, just ask for referrals among your own personal network?
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  I'm sorry am I supposed to go out of my way to directly extend a hand to women as well? Are they part of some other entirely exclusive development network that I haven't specifically advertised to? I reckon if we're all on the same page of development, we're frequenting the same communities, forums, and job listings. Why not look at majors where there are nearly no men. We should start actively making men seek fashion degrees.
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    > I'm sorry am I supposed to go out of my way to directly extend a hand to women as well? In a word? Yes. Women are seriously under-represented in the tech community, so if your recruiting effort only extends to your friends and their friends. (And this kind of 'hey, do you know a good ____ dev?' search is pretty common for small firms) then it's statistically unlikely you're going to get many good female candidates. I don't think you're morally obligated to hire a woman just for the sake of diversity--you should hire whoever's best for the role. But I do think you're obliged to at least consider qualified women. And I find it laughable to suggest that there simply don't exist good female candidates. They are numerically fewer; you have to make an effort to find them.
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      Why do we actually care about inequality in professions? Humanities studies are greatly dominated by women, tech is dominated by men, and so is every other field out there dominated by either/or.
      - ForHackernews 13y ago
        > Why do we actually care about inequality in professions? At an individual level, it's unfair if people are discouraged or denied the opportunity to peruse their interests because of their demographic characteristics. At a societal level, we'll all benefit by having more people working in fields where they're most productive. > so is every other field out there dominated by either/or. That's not true at all. Some fields are near parity. Med schools are basically 50/50 these days.
mewwts 13y ago
You shouldn't force equality, but actively work towards it. There's a huge difference.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  I totally agree, and OP went about this the dumbest way. Didn't go through with a job because it's all white males... so he's going to be replaced with another of the type he's actively trying to avoid. Why not volunteer at some womens development workshops/conferences/classes/groups? I've seen them around.
  - Tzunamitom 13y ago
    Perhaps it was dumb. Perhaps not. I made a judgement call that I'd be able to make more of a difference to the company culture by sending a blunt email to the senior management team than I would by joining the company's middle management where I'd have very little influence anyway. My hope is that they will implement some changes based on a. concern about their public image, and b. evidence that they are losing qualified candidates as a result of their imbalance. It is often the case with companies like this that many people on the inside would like to see a change but lack the evidence and support necessary to gain widespread support for it. If it doesn't work it doesn't work, and yes I am involved in other activities to promote gender equality (both men and women's equality), both inside and outside work.
bmelton 13y ago
My daughter's in STEM, along with a few other girls, though it seems that the class is mostly male. I would wager that, at least at the middle-school level my current daughter's in, STEM involvement has more to do with the parents and less to do with the child's natural inclinations. That isn't to say that kids don't have free will, obviously, or that they can't effect their own preferences in their lives, but I'd wager that my daughter's inclination for math and science has more to do with both of her parents having that inclination, and hence, her more frequent exposure to it. While I tend not to worry about these sorts of things, and/or how big a deal they are, I would wager that much of this is self-perpetuating. Mothers who aren't inclined towards technology aren't able to impart technical inclination to their daughters. I couldn't swear to whether my daughter's interest in tech comes from me or my wife, but if we assume that daughters often take after their mothers, and their mothers aren't technically inclined, it's easy to say that the problem is not self-healing.
rayiner 13y ago
Your viewpoint is predicated on an assumption: that equality is the equilibrium state of human society. In such a world where this equilibrium exists, there is no need for "ideology and affirmative action" because any affirmative actions to create inequality will be erased through the passage of time as the world returns to the equilibrium of equality. The problem with this attitude is that it is utterly unwarranted, unsubstantiated, and totally Panglossian. It is irrefutable that for generations American society took "affirmative action" to suppress women, to pigeonhole them into an impoverished gender role concerned only with housekeeping and child rearing. You don't even have to go back that far to see this "affirmative action" (http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-ads http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-ads). Even if you believe that there is no continuing discrimination,[1] what on earth makes you believe that past discrimination will simply be erased through the history of time? The solution to gender inequality issues is to simply hire women. Hire women and promote women. Once your organization and industry isn't perceived as male-dominated, once qualified and ambitious women don't turn away from the field to pursue others where being a woman is less likely to be a career liability,[2] the qualified applications will materialize. One of the greatest success stories of gender equality is, in my opinion, are professional services firms, law in particular but also accounting and consulting. The legal industry went from 95%+ male in the 1950's and 1960's to almost even today, even at large corporate law firms. While tech companies are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get any women in the door, law firms are under fire because "only" 1/3 of new partners each year are women. "Only" 15% of Big 4 accounting firm partners are women and its a source of constant consternation for women.[3] While any discussion of trying to get women into tech is clouded by the specter of "affirmative action" law firms, at least at the lower levels, no longer even need to take explicit steps to recruit equal numbers of women. Professional services firms are proof that when you hire women and promote women, equalized gender ratios become self-perpetuating. There are still major challenges faced by women today in the professional services industry, but these firms are operating in a whole different century than the tech sector. [1] Which is itself a ridiculous belief in the face of studies proving that older men are, say, less likely to mentor younger women than younger men, and that employers tend to treat similar resumes with male versus female names differently. [2] Who wants to, as a woman, invest themselves in a career in tech when there is a decent chance your boss will be this guy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875311 ("there are differences in the way men and women think, with men more naturally drawn to STEM fields...") [3] At what tech company are the most senior engineering roles even 15% women? Marissa Mayer estimated about 15-17% for women engineers in Silicon Valley across the board. For comparison, Big 4 accounting firms are 45-50% women across the board, with 15-20% at the partner level.
Tzunamitom 13y ago
> Why try to force equality? Am I missing something? OP here. Good question. A long time ago I thought in a very similar way because I was strongly opposed to discrimination in all forms and because I think that there is often a backlash effect against affirmative action. Between then and writing the linked article, what changed? Well 2 things: 1. Increasingly studies have shown that diversity or equality in itself contributes to the performance of a team more than just having lots of GOOD homogeneous employees - as per Natch's excellent comment (by GOOD here I'm using the study's metric of IQ. Link: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea... 2. I have come to the realisation that some of these societal norms have a far more insidious effect of us than we often realise or accept. That is to say we will often judge "GOOD" through our own very polarised perception. Thus women are often told that if they want to succeed in business they are told that they need to act "more like men", just like how black people were (are?) told that they need to act "more like white people". The dominant culture creates the societal norms, but this has a negative impact on my first point because we lose the balance and discourse that comes from having a diverse organisation, so we miss an opportunity to improve the performance of our teams. To combat this there needs to be an artificial effort to challenge dominant norms and see greater diversity. Finally notice how my article refers to gender equality, not Women's Rights. I believe the case for gender equality is as equally valid in Tech as it is in Consulting and HR.
- voidr 13y ago
  So we should hire people because they are women and/or not white and not because they are good at what they do?

by rfnslyr 13y ago

rollo_tommasi 13y ago

Clearly you ought to parcel out the women on your team to the other teams until you've reached parity across the board. Change begins with you!

Ellipsis753 13y ago
That would be kind of mad. The teams might not even be doing the same things!
xd 13y ago
I hope you're joking .. what if they are happy on their team and don't want to be moved?

ForHackernews 13y ago

> What if I started a company, and all good candidates were male, and the women weren't on par? What if no women applied at all? Then it's pretty clear you've done a bad job of advertising your job openings. Did you, perhaps, just ask for referrals among your own personal network?

rfnslyr 13y ago
I'm sorry am I supposed to go out of my way to directly extend a hand to women as well? Are they part of some other entirely exclusive development network that I haven't specifically advertised to? I reckon if we're all on the same page of development, we're frequenting the same communities, forums, and job listings. Why not look at majors where there are nearly no men. We should start actively making men seek fashion degrees.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  > I'm sorry am I supposed to go out of my way to directly extend a hand to women as well? In a word? Yes. Women are seriously under-represented in the tech community, so if your recruiting effort only extends to your friends and their friends. (And this kind of 'hey, do you know a good ____ dev?' search is pretty common for small firms) then it's statistically unlikely you're going to get many good female candidates. I don't think you're morally obligated to hire a woman just for the sake of diversity--you should hire whoever's best for the role. But I do think you're obliged to at least consider qualified women. And I find it laughable to suggest that there simply don't exist good female candidates. They are numerically fewer; you have to make an effort to find them.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    Why do we actually care about inequality in professions? Humanities studies are greatly dominated by women, tech is dominated by men, and so is every other field out there dominated by either/or.
    - ForHackernews 13y ago
      > Why do we actually care about inequality in professions? At an individual level, it's unfair if people are discouraged or denied the opportunity to peruse their interests because of their demographic characteristics. At a societal level, we'll all benefit by having more people working in fields where they're most productive. > so is every other field out there dominated by either/or. That's not true at all. Some fields are near parity. Med schools are basically 50/50 these days.

mewwts 13y ago

You shouldn't force equality, but actively work towards it. There's a huge difference.

rfnslyr 13y ago
I totally agree, and OP went about this the dumbest way. Didn't go through with a job because it's all white males... so he's going to be replaced with another of the type he's actively trying to avoid. Why not volunteer at some womens development workshops/conferences/classes/groups? I've seen them around.
- Tzunamitom 13y ago
  Perhaps it was dumb. Perhaps not. I made a judgement call that I'd be able to make more of a difference to the company culture by sending a blunt email to the senior management team than I would by joining the company's middle management where I'd have very little influence anyway. My hope is that they will implement some changes based on a. concern about their public image, and b. evidence that they are losing qualified candidates as a result of their imbalance. It is often the case with companies like this that many people on the inside would like to see a change but lack the evidence and support necessary to gain widespread support for it. If it doesn't work it doesn't work, and yes I am involved in other activities to promote gender equality (both men and women's equality), both inside and outside work.

bmelton 13y ago

My daughter's in STEM, along with a few other girls, though it seems that the class is mostly male. I would wager that, at least at the middle-school level my current daughter's in, STEM involvement has more to do with the parents and less to do with the child's natural inclinations. That isn't to say that kids don't have free will, obviously, or that they can't effect their own preferences in their lives, but I'd wager that my daughter's inclination for math and science has more to do with both of her parents having that inclination, and hence, her more frequent exposure to it. While I tend not to worry about these sorts of things, and/or how big a deal they are, I would wager that much of this is self-perpetuating. Mothers who aren't inclined towards technology aren't able to impart technical inclination to their daughters. I couldn't swear to whether my daughter's interest in tech comes from me or my wife, but if we assume that daughters often take after their mothers, and their mothers aren't technically inclined, it's easy to say that the problem is not self-healing.

rayiner 13y ago

Your viewpoint is predicated on an assumption: that equality is the equilibrium state of human society. In such a world where this equilibrium exists, there is no need for "ideology and affirmative action" because any affirmative actions to create inequality will be erased through the passage of time as the world returns to the equilibrium of equality. The problem with this attitude is that it is utterly unwarranted, unsubstantiated, and totally Panglossian. It is irrefutable that for generations American society took "affirmative action" to suppress women, to pigeonhole them into an impoverished gender role concerned only with housekeeping and child rearing. You don't even have to go back that far to see this "affirmative action" (http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-ads http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-ads). Even if you believe that there is no continuing discrimination,[1] what on earth makes you believe that past discrimination will simply be erased through the history of time? The solution to gender inequality issues is to simply hire women. Hire women and promote women. Once your organization and industry isn't perceived as male-dominated, once qualified and ambitious women don't turn away from the field to pursue others where being a woman is less likely to be a career liability,[2] the qualified applications will materialize. One of the greatest success stories of gender equality is, in my opinion, are professional services firms, law in particular but also accounting and consulting. The legal industry went from 95%+ male in the 1950's and 1960's to almost even today, even at large corporate law firms. While tech companies are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get any women in the door, law firms are under fire because "only" 1/3 of new partners each year are women. "Only" 15% of Big 4 accounting firm partners are women and its a source of constant consternation for women.[3] While any discussion of trying to get women into tech is clouded by the specter of "affirmative action" law firms, at least at the lower levels, no longer even need to take explicit steps to recruit equal numbers of women. Professional services firms are proof that when you hire women and promote women, equalized gender ratios become self-perpetuating. There are still major challenges faced by women today in the professional services industry, but these firms are operating in a whole different century than the tech sector. [1] Which is itself a ridiculous belief in the face of studies proving that older men are, say, less likely to mentor younger women than younger men, and that employers tend to treat similar resumes with male versus female names differently. [2] Who wants to, as a woman, invest themselves in a career in tech when there is a decent chance your boss will be this guy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875311 ("there are differences in the way men and women think, with men more naturally drawn to STEM fields...") [3] At what tech company are the most senior engineering roles even 15% women? Marissa Mayer estimated about 15-17% for women engineers in Silicon Valley across the board. For comparison, Big 4 accounting firms are 45-50% women across the board, with 15-20% at the partner level.

Tzunamitom 13y ago

> Why try to force equality? Am I missing something? OP here. Good question. A long time ago I thought in a very similar way because I was strongly opposed to discrimination in all forms and because I think that there is often a backlash effect against affirmative action. Between then and writing the linked article, what changed? Well 2 things: 1. Increasingly studies have shown that diversity or equality in itself contributes to the performance of a team more than just having lots of GOOD homogeneous employees - as per Natch's excellent comment (by GOOD here I'm using the study's metric of IQ. Link: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea... 2. I have come to the realisation that some of these societal norms have a far more insidious effect of us than we often realise or accept. That is to say we will often judge "GOOD" through our own very polarised perception. Thus women are often told that if they want to succeed in business they are told that they need to act "more like men", just like how black people were (are?) told that they need to act "more like white people". The dominant culture creates the societal norms, but this has a negative impact on my first point because we lose the balance and discourse that comes from having a diverse organisation, so we miss an opportunity to improve the performance of our teams. To combat this there needs to be an artificial effort to challenge dominant norms and see greater diversity. Finally notice how my article refers to gender equality, not Women's Rights. I believe the case for gender equality is as equally valid in Tech as it is in Consulting and HR.

voidr 13y ago
So we should hire people because they are women and/or not white and not because they are good at what they do?