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Comment by davidu | Hacker News Reader

Pathetic. The whole point is to celebrate with the employees and their families and recognize the hard work everyone has put in over the year. A stranger not connected to an employee would take away from that value.

If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that.

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"If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that."

-- Yes, some magic wand will solve it?

If they are tech companies and engineers are the primary value drivers, and only 16% of CS grads are female, what kind of rock will they find balanced workforce?

Companies hire because they need people to feel a role, (eg. engineers, marketing, sales, hr... etc). If they need more engineers they have to deal with the workforce supply issues, where only 16% of applicants are female.

They are a business that need to build and sale products, and not a charity.

I live in NYC, and they have the opposite is here, most PR or fashion firms are more female dominated...

It is, what it is. Not sure it justifies hiring models to balance the gender ratio in a party, but the workforce imbalance is there to stay as long as there is such an imbalance ratio in CS grads.

~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads shouldn't mean there are so few women that you need to hire them for events.

What do you estimate is the gender ratio for software developers? And how can you expect every company to go over it? Surely it is not 50% or over. In addition, for every company that goes over the average (perhaps like yours), another company must go under the average.

The number I think is important is not how many CS grads there are (no one on my team has a CS major) or how many software developers there are, it's how many people are interested in and capable of this job. I don't know what the "true" ratio is but I'm sure it is more than 16% of women which is where ardit anchored it.

It often comes back to this "pipeline" problem, but we need to think of our companies as being part of the pipeline. I don't have a CS degree -- I came out of college with a BA -- but I landed a firmware programming job, 2 jobs and 7 years later I am experience and "senior". If you're willing to train smart people, you can sideline the pipeline issue.

Yes, for small team (sub 10), I have seen high ratio of females/males, but for larger companies, it is impossible.

If you are hiring 100s, or even thousands of engineers you are bound to the supply of the market. Unless you do some straight out hiring discrimination, and refuse to hire males. Similar to some Vegas clubs (they wont let males unless they have a female with them). Good luck building a successful business with those values.

It is Econ 101 dude... or dudette (not sure you are guy or a girl)

P.s. I personally would love to have seen balanced genders (working for tech companies sometimes it feels like you are in the army), but that's probably a utopian ideal that is not going to be fixed in my lifetime.

You are obviously bound to the supply of the market. What I'm saying is that the market is bigger than you assume. The number of women interested in and capable of a career in programming is much greater than the number of those who actually want to work at your company.

>~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic

Which is leagues above the vast majority of engineering companies, as well as the overall population within the software engineering community at large. Yours is an outlier, and an obvious one at that.

No doubt. I'm not here to say any company can have ~50% female engineers if only they did what we do, but this idea that a more reasonable expectation would be 16% strikes me as bullshit.

So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.

iirc male CS grads outnumber females by more than 4:1, so ~20% seems about spot on, no? It's something that would have to be attacked at a level far before employment, e.g., social constructs and the education system. Once it comes down to the employer they only have one pool from which to draw applicants.

20% would be a lower bound. I majored in a hard science, not CS. Two great programmers I know, in senior positions, don't even have a degree. At my last company there was a decent Rails engineer who studied communication in college and had worked in affiliate marketing at his previous job. There was also a guy who was a lawyer and then went to code camp and got hired as an engineer.

The pipeline isn't sufficient to explain the gender ratio.

Ok, but if we assume that the number of non-CS grads who work in software development is proportional (seems fair) between males and females you're still in the same boat. Are you saying that women far out number men when it comes to sw devs who didn't major in CS?

I just don't see any data that supports what you're saying. 20% is the _upper_ bound.

Your question is about people who have already become employed software developers. Obviously those women don't far outnumber men in any respect. What I'm saying is the candidate pool of women is much larger than is assumed here (the candidate pool of men is as well). It wouldn't take a "magic wand" to start hiring them. Maybe doing so would amount to discrimination in some people's eyes, but I think this business of hiring professional models to entertain the men and give the appearance of parity is pretty sketchy as well. Corporations are apparently willing to take drastic measures to create the a certain kind of gendered workplace experience. Given the choice I would rather the results of their actions actually benefit society in some way.

> If they are tech companies and engineers are the primary value drivers, and only 16% of CS grads are female, what kind of rock will they find balanced workforce?

I'd be happy if I found a company that was that balanced, instead of more like 1-2%...

Does your company have 16% or more women in software roles?

> I live in NYC, and they have the opposite is here, most PR or fashion firms are more female dominated...

In NYC the tech companies are also diverse. They solve problems of other industries with tech and hire for many different roles besides engineers. Tech companies in NYC generally have significantly more women compared to Silicon Valley.

There are people who are not "CS grads" who might be able to throw together a web app or two. That number doesn't mean anything.

The fact that a lot of women simply don't like programming, don't find it interesting, find it hard to learn and understand is meaningful.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... (read from "So if it happens before middle school, and it’s not stereotypes, what might it be?")

It seems that there is a things-people distinction in sexes and it shows.

> If you want more women at the event

This has nothing to do with equality. They aren't hiring these models as equals, but for the misogynistic dynamic (while removing the organic nature of opposite-sex interaction)

> They aren't hiring these models as equals, but for the misogynistic dynamic

Interesting, my mind goes straight to this being incredibly demeaning toward the legitimate male attendees of the party. Didn't even occur to me that somebody would have the opposite interpretation.

That'd be my only thought at the party. "They had to pay this good-looking person to pretend to talk to me." I don't see how this is misogynistic? I just see this as an extreme degradation of the males involved.

It's misogynistic because it commodifies women. Having a woman to talk to is something that you can just buy, like a car or a nice meal. They're not treated as people, just as consummables.

Like hiring a software engineer to make code for you?

It's not comparable.

A programmer spent a lot of time honing their craft, faces every day challenges, has growth opportunities, can aspire to higher salaries through tough work, has growth opportunities, can influence the world around them and create new things. Coding yields power.

While modelling may require difficult labour, it's mostly just "congratulations for your face".

Let's see you put on a bikini on the beach during winter and pretend you're not freezing your ass off to shoot the catalog for next summer.

Now do it for 12 hours straight. Yes, it's just a pretty face, no skill required.

I would argue this angle is irrelevant.

It's not about whether it is difficult or not, it is more about what type of culture do such things foster and what values does it signal (referring to "SV roller skate models").

Not only does it not commodify women, you're assumption that men will treat them as objects is possibly bigoted.

Men having polite conversations with women is 'wrong' only in a dystopian future.

I personally think it's a little ridiculous and would not want to attend, nor would I put together a party like that, but it's a matter of social taste, not morality.

Why not both? It's not really a single-dimensional scale; it is perfectly feasible to be simultaneously misogynstic and misandrist at the same time. Proof by existence.

Precisely. It’s the strip club dynamic. Where men are seen as nothing more than disposable vessels of cash, and women are degraded to the level of livestock on display.

The focus is on the attractiveness of the women, and the presence of women for men's sake. Misogyny is degrading to everyone involved.

They are hiring them to hack "stupid" geeks that aren't accustomed to attractive female presence, with the usual "to corrupt geek" fun they play since high school. It's trying to hack male biological response in favor of whatever, a pretty low-life stuff.

"but for the misogynistic dynamic"

Male appreciation of female company is utterly and absolutely in not 'misogynistic'.

Not only that - it's also very normal, and frankly good.

If people are treated as sexual objects, then you can complain.

> while removing the organic nature of opposite-sex interaction

One needs to be absolutely insane to organically interact with a co-worker of opposite sex at a company social events considering the popularity of all kinds of sexual harassment claims.

I really hope that you're joking. You don't know how to interact with the opposite sex without it being sexual harassment? Or are you saying that all the women making those claims are frauds who treat non harassment as harassment?

I like the money that I make. My solution is to avoid any and all interaction that is not mandatory.

How do you square your claim of misogyny against the fact that male models are also employed in these roles?

If they are, that's an improvement. What's the breakdown like? I've venture to say less than 1% overall.

LMRTAFY: "For a typical party, scheduled for the weekend of Dec. 8, Cre8 Agency LLC is sending 25 women and 5 men, all good-looking..."

Oh ok, your comment said ".. also employed in these roles.." so I thought you were speaking to more than the article.

The article gave one example of 30 models (5 men and 25 women) -- so 20% in that case.

Makes sense; I thought parent comment was speaking to more than the one party indicated in the article: "... also employed in these roles ..."

I too think this is pretty crass and as artificial as so much else in SV. But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. And why shouldn't those women be able to work?

For me, I don't mind anyone being hired or contracted for skills in guest relations, marketing or any position or work need. This bothers me though, because it's a contrivance being used to not only help their employees have fun, but to mask a systemic flaw, which is just too much in the SV culture of always killing it, everything is amazing, fake it till you make it, false value creation and other cultural negatives that prevent true growth and benefits to the part of their society they are primarily responsible for: their work force.

This is really generalized, though, but it would apply to more than a handful of SV companies.

But I do think that they're living up to the letter of what you're saying, but definitely not the spirit of it.

> But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical.

The issue is the gender disparity in _software_engineering_, which is actually made worse by this, because hiring someone because they look pretty (they're not asking agencies for, like, conversationalists with master's degree, and if they were, they'd still have to be attractive) is straight-up objectification, which is bad for women everywhere - and men.

I dunno, I struggle with the area of what constitutes objectification here. On the one hand, yes they're hired first because they're pretty, but assuming that's the only quality they bring, or that it's somehow baser or less valuable than technical skills seems to me still degrading to an entire group of people who do put a lot of work into both their presentation and ability to navigate socially.

The other part is that I don't think it's wrong to allow the GUI of a person to be the initial draw towards someone else. If that's all someone wants, then they're shallow and objectifying someone.

But for as many guys in SV who are pervs only out for one thing, I'm willing to wager that there are just as many, if not more, introverted SE's who actually don't mind a more personal connection, however momentary, than to just get their rocks off. Sometimes it's nice to have a short, if meaningful, or at least interesting conversation with someone so far out of your league in traditional social contexts.

I'm not trying to be an apologist for this practice, I just feel that while it has its own innocent value, it could be implemented in a way that is a bit more transparent and helpful long-term to what is behind some of the motivations for this.

I think he's talking about the party models...

> And why shouldn't those women be able to work?

> " made them sign nondisclosure agreements, and given them names of employees to pretend they’re friends with, in case anyone asks why he’s never seen them around the foosball table. > “The companies don’t want their staff to be talking to someone and think, Oh, this person was hired to socialize with me,” says Kermaani, who’s sending models to seven tech parties in the same weekend.

They are pretenders and I would feel betrayed. By my company. They hire people to betray me. Really? No. They shall just be honest about it and I can deal with it. But this? No. I don't want to waste my time with those pretenders.

> If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that.

Well hold on now, this may be the solution to that. Include some male models on rollerskates and the female hiring rate should climb in response.

As a straight male, this sounds like a really fun idea.

" The whole point is to celebrate with the employees and their families and recognize the hard work everyone has put in over the year. "

Not really, that's more a 'New Years' thing.

Christmas 'party' is just really a Christmas season gathering.

It really isn't even a party.

Imagine 100 years ago, your grandad owns a printing press in town. December 20th he brings in Egg Nog, a cake, everyone stops working. Maybe a local musician sings a few songs. Maybe some people drink a little too much.

Or maybe he pays for a nice dinner at the local restaurant and people show up and 'give thanks'. Light a candle.

That's it.

We are so 'de-culturalized' in North America we don't even know how to do something normal.

Of course a 'holiday party' could technically be anything people want it to be, but there's no reason to go to this level.

When in doubt: just go out for dinner. :)

Don't employees usually bring a +1 to these events anyway?

Oddly, the company party at my place of work has been employee-only for the last half dozen years, which has consequently meant I have left the party not long after opening and saying hello to a few folks, playing darts or something, grabbing a drink, and getting the heck outta there since I want to head home to my +1 and not expose my +1 to the feeling of abandonment.

But they did hire them. Pedantry aside though, what's wrong with having a boring party?

Not enough board games to solve that boredom problem, evidently.

The whole point is to take them to the hotel.

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