5 ms·

> Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X. I find this a

by tie_ 12y ago

> Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X. I find this a very interesting fact, but I see a number of other possible explanations for "I do X": - It is simply shorter. Men being used to more compact communication? - It is also more boastful - perhaps men being used to market themselves more aggressively than women? Or, put in another words, having and/or presenting bigger egos in their CVs? - Women being insecure about their personal contribution in X? Maybe the coattail-riding assumption is not always wrong. In any case, I would withhold judgement before an interview.

api 12y ago
There's lots of possibilities. It's really hard to tell whether any of these things are cultural or come from actual gender dimorphism (to use the technical biological term). Ultimately it doesn't matter if they are irrelevant to ability. What I'm saying is that when we are evaluating peoples' abilities, we should take care to evaluate actual ability rather than unreliable proxies for ability. The latter are prejudices, basically, and they blind us to a lot of talent that might not fit those lazy filters. I'm neither a "PC liberal" nor a conservative/reactionary on this issue. Liberals pretend differences in ability don't exist, while conservatives like to defend the accuracy of our "gut" prejudices and argue there's nothing wrong. IMHO equality of opportunity comes when people make an effort to look at actual ability as objectively as possible. It's in your best interest as an employer to do this. Good people are very hard to find, and if you're running some kind of dumb ape-brain filter that excludes ~50% of the population from consideration you are handicapping your recruitment efforts pretty badly. Think like a human being.
nlawalker 12y ago
I (male, for the record, but gender-specific behavior isn't my point here) used to write/say that I was "part of a team" that did X or "worked on a team" that did Y, but I stopped doing it for a couple reasons, the most prominent being that "worked on a team that..." is usually obvious given the context of the conversation and the scale of the work discussed. In those cases, explicitly mentioning it feels like you're going out of the way to distance yourself from the work and describe yourself as a bystander - someone who just happened to be on the team that did this great work.
caseysoftware 12y ago
Personally, I hate phrases like "I worked on a team that did X" because I can't tell what you did. Where you the lead, a junior, or did you get called in when everything exploded and saved the day? I'd rather see "I did the Y on the team that did X" as it's more descriptive and leaves less to my imagination.

by tie_ 12y ago

api 12y ago

There's lots of possibilities. It's really hard to tell whether any of these things are cultural or come from actual gender dimorphism (to use the technical biological term). Ultimately it doesn't matter if they are irrelevant to ability. What I'm saying is that when we are evaluating peoples' abilities, we should take care to evaluate actual ability rather than unreliable proxies for ability. The latter are prejudices, basically, and they blind us to a lot of talent that might not fit those lazy filters. I'm neither a "PC liberal" nor a conservative/reactionary on this issue. Liberals pretend differences in ability don't exist, while conservatives like to defend the accuracy of our "gut" prejudices and argue there's nothing wrong. IMHO equality of opportunity comes when people make an effort to look at actual ability as objectively as possible. It's in your best interest as an employer to do this. Good people are very hard to find, and if you're running some kind of dumb ape-brain filter that excludes ~50% of the population from consideration you are handicapping your recruitment efforts pretty badly. Think like a human being.

nlawalker 12y ago

I (male, for the record, but gender-specific behavior isn't my point here) used to write/say that I was "part of a team" that did X or "worked on a team" that did Y, but I stopped doing it for a couple reasons, the most prominent being that "worked on a team that..." is usually obvious given the context of the conversation and the scale of the work discussed. In those cases, explicitly mentioning it feels like you're going out of the way to distance yourself from the work and describe yourself as a bystander - someone who just happened to be on the team that did this great work.

caseysoftware 12y ago

Personally, I hate phrases like "I worked on a team that did X" because I can't tell what you did. Where you the lead, a junior, or did you get called in when everything exploded and saved the day? I'd rather see "I did the Y on the team that did X" as it's more descriptive and leaves less to my imagination.