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I think this anonymous blogger should evaluate her hiring practices. I have hired many women and men. If anything I have had fewer melodrama issues with women.

I think this anonymous blogger should evaluate her hiring practices. I have hired many women and men. If anything I have had fewer melodrama issues with women. The women I have hired are focused, analytical, meticulate and disciplined. I had exactly one so far leave for "soft" reasons; she wanted to pursue nonprofit work in a developing country and we remain on good terms. In a manufacturing environment, I've had far more issues with gossip, melodrama and feuds with men. As I have brought more women in (not intentionally, but just because they were good candidates) many of those issues have disappeared and our production operations have become more upbeat with fewer personnel issues. In general, I find a much higher incidence rate of irresponsibility among male production candidates: outstanding arrest warrants, inability to resolve past DUI offenses with the courts, domestic violence that spreads into the workplace, absenteeism, etc. -- all actual issues we have had to deal with. Obviously not all male candidates are like this, and it would be wrong to draw the opposite conclusion. It is also fairly easy to weed these people out of the recruiting process, or, at worst, to part ways with them if we are not successful in catching it before hiring. But if you find you have hired a bunch of melodramatic and uncommitted women, you should probably ask yourself why your hiring processes selected people with those traits (hint: it is not because of their gender).

SolarNet 12y ago
It could be an income level thing. Not that I like making generalizations (and this is just the observation of other people's experience, I don't agree with this personally as I have no personal data to support the majority of observations which lead to it): * At low incomes, women are responsible workers, men are irresponsible workers. * At higher incomes (middle class), men are responsible workers, women are irresponsible workers. It could come from the confluence of privilege and feminism, lower income female workers think they have to go the extra mile to prove they deserve the job, because feminism isn't ingrained in them, the communities they live in often force women into gender roles (they just happen to be the more responsible roles). Upper income female workers have ingrained feminism, but society still treats (via media, social interactions, etc) them like their old gender roles (ever see girls on teen TV shows? It's the most sexist shit I've seen on TV). This means they believe they are equal to men (which they are) but they also believe (due to society) that they can behave like society expected them to 50 years ago, which they can't if they want a job in the modern work place. Again, I blame society.
icambron 12y ago
You have employees with outstanding arrest warrants and domestic violence issues? It kind of sounds like you also need to reevaluate your hiring practices... Edit: I'd like to encourage people responding to this to consider the context: an article about why someone doesn't want to employ a certain category of people, and a response to that article about how there's lots of value to be found in that category, if only the author had better hiring practices. E.g. "somebody's gotta hire them" would apply equally to the article's female employees, and thus is also a criticism of hiring practices that exclude those "problem" people, which presumably includes the parent. IOW, the premise here is that you want to hire people maximally useful to your business. Maybe you don't think that's should be the point, but then you're having a different discussion.
- watwut 12y ago
  Are you sure that world where such people are unemployable is better? It is better for all of us if they can find employment somewhere. Otherwise they have no other choice then collect social checks or steal.
- cmiles74 12y ago
  The poster works in manufacturing.
  - icambron 12y ago
    So? The point of the post is that they think the article's author must have poor hiring practices and cites their own experience hiring as evidence. That's a perfectly reasonable line of argument and I'm not even defending the article on that point. But to the degree to which that evidence is applicable to the business described in the article, the parent's own employee issues are also comparable. If you want to say that manufacturing hiring is simply completely different than in...whatever the article's author does, then sure, but then what's the point of the comparison again? I'd also point out that I don't quite understand why manufacturing hires should involve wanted criminals...
    - niels_olson 12y ago
pravda 12y ago
>outstanding arrest warrants, inability to resolve past DUI >offenses with the courts, domestic violence that spreads into >the workplace, absenteeism, etc. -- all actual issues we have >had to deal with. Umm...maybe you just need to pay higher wages. Pay monkey wages, get monkeys.
- mediaman 12y ago
  Most of our production workers earn over $21/hr, up to $45-50/hr depending on the position. There are a few doing very basic manual labor (stacking small objects) that are more in the $14/hr rate, but I'm not really referring to them in the post. It's a common mistake to think that in the skilled trades, people automatically behave much more professionally. Often very skilled welders or machinists have some interesting quirks to them, but they still get paid well and do a good job. We would only let them go if they started creating a dysfunctional team environment for others, and could not correct it.
- niels_olson 12y ago
  I hope you're just Russian and incorrectly composed an aphorism. "Pay peanuts and you get monkeys" is I think what you were going for. Unfortunately, it came off as extremely classist. That said, even your central thesis, pay higher wages, misses the fact that in a functioning market economy, higher wages isn't always possible, or even productive.
calcsam 12y ago
This might be because you are male. Woman are likely to interact with you differently than they might interact with another woman.
- mediaman 12y ago
  Many of our managers are also female. There isn't much drama between them and other female managers, or female employees. We work hard on getting the right people on board, and correcting the mistakes when we don't.
yepyepyep 12y ago
You'd like her to reevaluate her hiring practices and yet you make a very similar claim to hers: If anything I have had fewer melodrama issues with women.
- mediaman 12y ago
  I addressed that. I do not make hiring decisions based on it because I do not believe there is a causal relationship that can (either functionally, legally or morally) be used as the basis for a hiring decision. Other factors are far more important.
agorabinary 12y ago
This is rather apples to oranges. Blue collar manufacturing work where women run at only 25% of the workforce and men have higher than national average crime rates --- you are bound to have more problems with the men. Not to endorse the author's view, but compare the above to your typical white collar environment with a more even distribution of men and women doing similar, non-physical work. Easier to judge the gender differences there.
Pxtl 12y ago
I think part of the problem is that both you and the blogger are talking about hiring interchangeable bottom-level workers. I assume you're not talking about skilled labour like electricians and millwrights. You're talking about unskilled workers. Highschool-educated guys. The blogger mentioned secretaries. Not somebody who has credentials they've honed and invested in. Even without an education, a professional needs to build success to make the difference between a "job" and a "profession". People who don't have any credentials like that are basically used as interchangeable parts in the job market - one CSR or one stock-room worker is replaceable with any other. And likewise, they can (and should) treat their employer as just as interchangeable. Everybody needs customer service workers. Everybody needs guys who'll push a cart and lift stuff. I used to do software for steel warehouses. I met brilliant electricians and accountants and whatnot, but I also dealt with the truckers and the gals who worked the desk with the truckers. And that's where the difference was. It's hard to discuss this stuff without being really, really classist, because I don't think it's about "class" so much as the investment a person makes in their career. But I think that this "investment" is what makes this difference - is it a job or a career?
- fleitz 12y ago
  Yeah it's the difference between living to work, and working to live.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > The blogger mentioned secretaries. Not somebody who has credentials they've honed and invested in. Have you ever worked with a good secretary? It sounds like you haven't.
  - Pxtl 12y ago
    I've worked with great men and women in every field, secretaries included. But the blogger was talking about secretaries, so secretaries are obviously a pain-point for her. My point is just that you run into more sources of trouble in those jobs that have no barrier to entry - no investment needed for it.

SolarNet 12y ago

It could be an income level thing. Not that I like making generalizations (and this is just the observation of other people's experience, I don't agree with this personally as I have no personal data to support the majority of observations which lead to it): * At low incomes, women are responsible workers, men are irresponsible workers. * At higher incomes (middle class), men are responsible workers, women are irresponsible workers. It could come from the confluence of privilege and feminism, lower income female workers think they have to go the extra mile to prove they deserve the job, because feminism isn't ingrained in them, the communities they live in often force women into gender roles (they just happen to be the more responsible roles). Upper income female workers have ingrained feminism, but society still treats (via media, social interactions, etc) them like their old gender roles (ever see girls on teen TV shows? It's the most sexist shit I've seen on TV). This means they believe they are equal to men (which they are) but they also believe (due to society) that they can behave like society expected them to 50 years ago, which they can't if they want a job in the modern work place. Again, I blame society.

icambron 12y ago

You have employees with outstanding arrest warrants and domestic violence issues? It kind of sounds like you also need to reevaluate your hiring practices... Edit: I'd like to encourage people responding to this to consider the context: an article about why someone doesn't want to employ a certain category of people, and a response to that article about how there's lots of value to be found in that category, if only the author had better hiring practices. E.g. "somebody's gotta hire them" would apply equally to the article's female employees, and thus is also a criticism of hiring practices that exclude those "problem" people, which presumably includes the parent. IOW, the premise here is that you want to hire people maximally useful to your business. Maybe you don't think that's should be the point, but then you're having a different discussion.

watwut 12y ago
Are you sure that world where such people are unemployable is better? It is better for all of us if they can find employment somewhere. Otherwise they have no other choice then collect social checks or steal.
cmiles74 12y ago
The poster works in manufacturing.
- icambron 12y ago
  So? The point of the post is that they think the article's author must have poor hiring practices and cites their own experience hiring as evidence. That's a perfectly reasonable line of argument and I'm not even defending the article on that point. But to the degree to which that evidence is applicable to the business described in the article, the parent's own employee issues are also comparable. If you want to say that manufacturing hiring is simply completely different than in...whatever the article's author does, then sure, but then what's the point of the comparison again? I'd also point out that I don't quite understand why manufacturing hires should involve wanted criminals...
  - niels_olson 12y ago

pravda 12y ago

>outstanding arrest warrants, inability to resolve past DUI >offenses with the courts, domestic violence that spreads into >the workplace, absenteeism, etc. -- all actual issues we have >had to deal with. Umm...maybe you just need to pay higher wages. Pay monkey wages, get monkeys.

mediaman 12y ago
Most of our production workers earn over $21/hr, up to $45-50/hr depending on the position. There are a few doing very basic manual labor (stacking small objects) that are more in the $14/hr rate, but I'm not really referring to them in the post. It's a common mistake to think that in the skilled trades, people automatically behave much more professionally. Often very skilled welders or machinists have some interesting quirks to them, but they still get paid well and do a good job. We would only let them go if they started creating a dysfunctional team environment for others, and could not correct it.
niels_olson 12y ago
I hope you're just Russian and incorrectly composed an aphorism. "Pay peanuts and you get monkeys" is I think what you were going for. Unfortunately, it came off as extremely classist. That said, even your central thesis, pay higher wages, misses the fact that in a functioning market economy, higher wages isn't always possible, or even productive.

calcsam 12y ago

This might be because you are male. Woman are likely to interact with you differently than they might interact with another woman.

mediaman 12y ago
Many of our managers are also female. There isn't much drama between them and other female managers, or female employees. We work hard on getting the right people on board, and correcting the mistakes when we don't.

yepyepyep 12y ago

You'd like her to reevaluate her hiring practices and yet you make a very similar claim to hers: If anything I have had fewer melodrama issues with women.

mediaman 12y ago
I addressed that. I do not make hiring decisions based on it because I do not believe there is a causal relationship that can (either functionally, legally or morally) be used as the basis for a hiring decision. Other factors are far more important.

agorabinary 12y ago

This is rather apples to oranges. Blue collar manufacturing work where women run at only 25% of the workforce and men have higher than national average crime rates --- you are bound to have more problems with the men. Not to endorse the author's view, but compare the above to your typical white collar environment with a more even distribution of men and women doing similar, non-physical work. Easier to judge the gender differences there.

Pxtl 12y ago

I think part of the problem is that both you and the blogger are talking about hiring interchangeable bottom-level workers. I assume you're not talking about skilled labour like electricians and millwrights. You're talking about unskilled workers. Highschool-educated guys. The blogger mentioned secretaries. Not somebody who has credentials they've honed and invested in. Even without an education, a professional needs to build success to make the difference between a "job" and a "profession". People who don't have any credentials like that are basically used as interchangeable parts in the job market - one CSR or one stock-room worker is replaceable with any other. And likewise, they can (and should) treat their employer as just as interchangeable. Everybody needs customer service workers. Everybody needs guys who'll push a cart and lift stuff. I used to do software for steel warehouses. I met brilliant electricians and accountants and whatnot, but I also dealt with the truckers and the gals who worked the desk with the truckers. And that's where the difference was. It's hard to discuss this stuff without being really, really classist, because I don't think it's about "class" so much as the investment a person makes in their career. But I think that this "investment" is what makes this difference - is it a job or a career?

fleitz 12y ago
Yeah it's the difference between living to work, and working to live.
DanBC 12y ago
> The blogger mentioned secretaries. Not somebody who has credentials they've honed and invested in. Have you ever worked with a good secretary? It sounds like you haven't.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  I've worked with great men and women in every field, secretaries included. But the blogger was talking about secretaries, so secretaries are obviously a pain-point for her. My point is just that you run into more sources of trouble in those jobs that have no barrier to entry - no investment needed for it.