Ask HN: What do you think of Lever's “50/50 men and women team” sales pitch | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you think of Lever's “50/50 men and women team” sales pitch

5 pointsbluesharpie7 comments

I see their ads popping in hacker news every other day and they always mention they have a 50/50 men and women team, but does that 50/50 ratio hold in the engineering team?

According to a friend who worked there a while ago their engineering team is nowhere near that 50/50 ratio.

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It makes me think that, that statistic likely came at the expense of talent - on either side of the spectrum. Engineering is a good example. There are vastly more men than there are women. Would I expect this company to hire the best women? No. Meaning the company intentionally hired less talented engineers specifically because they were women.

Beyond being sexist, I just don't think that's what a company should be focusing on.

Even if the statistic didn't carry over to every department - which I get the feeling it doesn't - I still think that would be wrong.

With that selling point, it's not hard to see why their job ads are continually up.

I like working with all sorts of different types of people, as I learn from perspectives different than my own in ways I wasn't expecting to learn, and I find that enjoyable.

I think some men reject the idea of women as competent, or more competent, as them, and tend unconsciously diminish female engineering talent, and you get meetings where the female engineer makes a proposal, and it's ignored, and then a second meeting where a male engineer makes that exact same proposal, and is lauded for the good idea.

I think if Lever is an attractive place for women, it means that the best women engineers and other employees will be more likely to be working there, rather then being devalued elsewhere. I think women that stay in tech and are successful have to be better at their job then men with equivalent roles.

That said, if I was concerned about the quality of their engineering talent, for whatever reason, I'd consider how best to judge them on that in a neutral and quantifiable sense when I interviewed there, rather then using demographics as any sort of signifier of talent.

I personally don't care. When I look for future employers (as a male at least) I don't care how many women work there. I care about the work being done (is it interesting?), the team I'd be a part of (is it a happy team?), the compensation, etc. In short: I'm not sure who the sales pitch is intended for? Single men? Women who want to work in a less male-centric organization?

I always thought it was a weird thing to say, though it does grab your attention which might be what it is going for. But as a man I always assume this means that I wouldn't have a good chance of being hired by the company. I don't buy arguments that women applicants are on average more qualified than male applicants, my prior is that applicants should be roughly equal. Presumably the company gets more male applicants, so to maintain a 50/50 ratio they must reject a significantly higher fraction of male applicants than other companies do.

It makes me think no matter who they hire, they're going to throw off the balance!

Unless they hire in gendered pairs which would be... well, an interesting approach.

It makes me think that they're sexist. The CS applicant pool is ~15-25% female. I would expect similar team compositions.

I wouldn't work there simply due to the fact that they advertise this. Not that it's a bad thing at all, it just shows that the company will have a culture that is very PC/SJW heavy and I'm honestly sick of it in this industry so I would stay away

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