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Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech (www.wired.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The Grace Hopper Celebration is meant to unite women in tech. This year droves of men came looking for jobs.

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[–] 14 points 3 years ago (10 children)

Sorry I didn't mean to imply I was supporting the idea of a career fair that discriminates against men. They problem was this one trying to get around the law by just making men feel unwelcome. The fact that there are laws that prevent them from just banning men should have clued them in that maybe it's wrong

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (9 children)

    I don't see the problem with the fair. Women are incredibly underrepresented in IT. Creating a space for them to join the industry or create connections seems healthy.

    This sounds like the argument of rich white kids complaining about black kids getting the scholarships. If you want to balance an unbalanced system, you have to give incentives to the afflicted group.

    I work in IT and I get at least 2 job offers every day in LinkedIn, why the F would I invade a women only fair to prove some point? Let them have something... It's not like this will affect men in the industry.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    Specifically disregarding someone in favor of someone else based on discrimination is wrong no matter how you look at it. As long as these companies are evaluating all applicants fairly these women would have the same opportunity as anyone else. I've worked in IT for 20 years and while there are fewer women we also see fewer woman applying. Out of those that apply I'd guess a higher proportion are hired on than of the male candidates just because they typically present themselves better than a lot of the men. I've never seen anyone turned down because of their gender.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    So prefacing this with specifying I am Trans masc, former tech support person. Now in another male dominated career. I was read unambiguously as a woman during my time in the field and the number of times I picked up a phone and had someone ask me to put them through to a male tech was astounding. It doesn't really matter if your employer is willing to hire you if you are treated like a second class citizen by the average person in the job. I lasted about three years before I left and trashed all hopes of ever applying for anything in the field ever again. The number of women folk who dip their toes into the entry-level and then decide that they can't deal with the added mental health issues of being treated like a child or an idiot by default for the rest of their working life keeps a lot of women out of a lot of fields. Even if you are passionate about the thing the additional wear on your psyche will burn you out faster.

    My new field has a different issue. It's very nepotistic so people tend to hire their friends first. Being incredibly competent only earns you the fourth or fifth spot on a crew of about six or seven people. If you are a male crew boss and your friend base is overwhelmingly male and you hire the people you feel most comfortable around then unthinkingly about 50 percent of the most secure jobs go to your male friends. Women, incredibly competent ones, tend to bounce around our industry, a lot get stuck as temp labor. Female leads are rare as are those who get the secure crew spots despite the total numbers at the hall telling us 40 percent of the hall roll is female. It doesn't matter if the bosses aren't actively trying to discriminate against women because they are just hiring people they like to work with, in the end none of that matters if you are a woman because regardless of the intent in the hearts of the crew bosses you are still stuck having to be incredibly competent just to fight for the leftover scraps.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (3 children)

    Do you believe all discrimination is wrong?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Since it seems like you're looking to trap me here, how about you just go ahead and say what type discrimination you don't think is wrong. When I said discrimination I was referring to the protected classes probably should have been more clear about that. Obviously there are traits that can make a person unsuitable for a job. I, for instance, as a short only moderately athletic man, should not be hired on to play for a professional basketball team.

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  • [+] 1 point 3 years ago* (1 child)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    This is the argument made against affirmative action as well, but what I conveniently never see mentioned in these comments is how even with these extra steps to get women and BIPOC into underrepresented fields, often when equally qualified people submit their resume for a role in the larger field (outside of your company) a equally qualified white man has a greater chance to get the role than a black woman. I have a hard time thinking the system is discriminating against me, when objectively it isn’t.

    I've been hiring a long time and I've never seen two candidates that were perfectly equal. Especially after going through the interview process and having a chance to speak to them and see how they carry themselves. I obviously can't speak for every company but at mine we don't even see demographic information when reviewing applications. I couldn't select for race/ethnicity if I wanted to.

    We quickly posted the jobs but also told our teams that we were hiring and to let their friends know. Nearly half the applications where from Hmong people, because several people working for us were Hmong and they put the word out in the Hmong community and suddenly half our workforce was Hmong overnight.

    The same thing would happen if you had only spoken to women at a career fair and deliberately only hired women.. The only fair way is to give everyone an equal chance to apply/speak to you. Like you said, get the word out everywhere not just to particular communities. With job sites and linkedin this is relatively easy. My company advertises on the radio/internet when we're hiring as well.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 years ago

    There it is with the "white" again.

    This is keeps popping up.

    People are talking about genders then all of a sudden sudden someone says "white"

    It's almost as if people are running out of ideas and are attempting too flog to dead horse of identity politics.

    Here's an idea: if your solution to a problem involves treating half the population like shit and telling them to shut the fuck up then maybe your solution isn't a good one.

    Identity politics people need to understand that just because you had have identified a problem doesn't mean your solution is a good one.

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