This is very lofty talk for someone fully willing to take away opportunities intentionally aimed at someone else who needs it.

Taking that opportunity (which specifically, I think is also very little) is someone who also needs it. You can create this hierarchy even among the women at that very fair, in fact.

Don’t you think snatching that opportunity is going to cause fragmentation?

I think not, if framed under the right perspective.

Do you think women or minorities stop having material struggles as long as you don’t think of them as a distinct group? That’s not how it works. If it was, then before feminism, working class women would have equal material conditions to working class men, and that is absolutely not how it went.

Absolutely I don't. And I am not claiming that the problem is solved by "meritocracy" or by just stopping thinking about this. I am suggesting that it is not responsibility of the victims to self-police and sort themselves in order of priority.

I guess your logic is that if you are working class and you help yourself you are helping the working class? Funny, but that’s not it.

That's not what I am suggesting. I am personally just thinking in very pragmatic terms. Realistically the struggle of the working class requires strong unions and harsh battles. How are you going to build a union when I - a male - see you -a woman (but you can pick any other category) - as something else as myself, as belonging to another group? To me building strong unions requires a mutual recognition of class belonging, and this is what I think helps in a systemic way. Nothing systemic is also going to change if X% more women would be hired by Microsoft/Apple etc., with the difference that if you reach that situation having alienated and fragmented workers, that's also where you stop.

There are other job fairs and recruitment opportunities where these guys could go to.

I have no idea why they chose to attend. What I know is that you don't spend 600-1200$ for the hell of it if you need a job.

whoever does is taking away an opportunity that a woman needed

And how is this different from any other job? I mean, ultimately you can apply this logic to any job you are going to take. Realistically, any company that will hire you is going to have a small % of women, so any job you are taking, you are taking it from a woman (or a black person, etc.). I really fail to understand how your logic works outside the specific context of the job fair. Are you saying that besides this job fair, then no concerns anymore should exist about under represented categories?

these women need jobs regardless. You know, material conditions, the thing you were saying was much more important.

Of course, but it's a matter of deciding the strategy to reach that objective. From my point of view, for the reasons above, I disagree with this particular one.

While I do think that the situation is not as bad now (basically in any company I worked, the episodes you mentioned are unthinkable), I am fully aware that gender roles are still a thing and sexism in tech is quite widespread.

Women need more help getting jobs in the tech industry because they are more likely than their male counterparts to lose jobs to sexism, unequal expectations, sexual harassment, and hostile work environments.

I do agree with this. BUT, you can make the same argument with other oppressed categories (for example, foreigners, who have way less contractual power due to the inherent threat of losing visa), and that's a big part of my argument here. From my own observations (i.e., the video in the article and some educated guess), it's not just "men" who rushed this conference, it is men from other oppressed categories. So this leads to us start measuring who is more oppressed, which sounds like a futile if not detrimental exercise, exactly because the same dynamics that lead to women being fired due to hostile workplace lead to old people (even men) to be pushed out, or to foreigners to be paid less. Not all men are privilege by virtue of being men, because more discrimination than just gender is at play.

it would be helpful for male tech workers to acknowledge and understand their inherent advantages and refrain from interfering with opportunities aimed at helping women in the industry.

I agree with this as well, and I have absolutely no problem with events aimed to help women getting into tech. What I have a problem with is the inability to ask questions and to think of these people who wasted 600$ bucks for 0 chances of a job as anything else than males, now that the fact happened. This to me seems an intentional way of ignoring other dynamics that exist in the workplace (racism, for example), producing an overall shortsighted analysis. It seems to me detrimental to the overall improvement of the society as well because ultimately the women at that conference might have way more in common with some of those men than they have with the successful woman speaking at that same conference, and forcing the distinction you are making instead suggests otherwise, creating fragmentation among the workforce in place of union and solidarity.