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Comment by shabangcohen | Hacker News Reader

As a woman currently applying/interviewing for a new grad role, I think you're definitely right about most companies caring only about current knowledge/skill.

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Why is that bad? Jobs should be filled based on skill/knowledge. (The ability to learn is a skill too, one that means what you know currently matters less). I take slight offence to your statement. Why is being a woman relevant to anything, unless your company is going for 50/50 male female. But in my opinion that is wrong, and amounts to sex discrimination against men, because if 50% of roles are filled by men, even if there is a better male candidate, then the female will get the role. (And vice versa, but that is generally not the case in my experience). This is wrong. It's about what the person can do, not evening numbers. Sex discrimination gone mad!

This is just the current zeitgeist we live in right now. In my prior career as an electrician, I didn't see any of this brought up by my employer/industry, but now that I'm a software developer, I see it all the time. I think that might be because the work of an electrician is more physical and labor-intensive, and therefore not very enticing to a lot of women looking to enter the workforce.

I think that a women quota is useful in cases where the proportion of female (one could also insert specific cultural backgrounds here) possible applicants for a role (be it junior or leader) is much higher than the proportion in the actual role. For instance, in theatres or hospitals in Germany, a large part of the employees is female whilst the bosses tend to be male. You cannot argue with "but better candidates will be turned down just because they are male" because obviously, the criteria for choosing are heavily unbalanced already. It's harder to determine whether a quota is useful in jobs the reason for not choosing women might be women not applying for the job. But we won't solve the matter by hating each other over the cause. Let's try to be critical, yet empathic.

The very existence of a quota is sex discrimination against both men and women.

It is. Sex discrimination gone mad. All rich industries have it, IT was the latest bastion to conquer. Please join a group for men’s rights, we only get nothing because men never dare to stand up as a gender.

Building diversity is an important component of forward progress, since it engenders a broader experiential pool to draw from.

In the case of gender, female developers have been shut out of the industry for long enough that corrective action has to be taken to balance the scales. Until such time as that happens, "sex discrimination against men" is impossible.

>Building diversity is an important component of forward progress, since it engenders a broader experiential pool to draw from.

Only the pool has to be created in the lower levels (education etc) not imposed at the company level with less good candidates favored just because of their sex.

>Until such time as that happens, "sex discrimination against men" is impossible.

It's very possible, if meritocracy is sidestepped, and the person who gets sidestepped is a man in favor of e.g. 50-50 parity with a woman.

Unless the pool entering the workforce is 50-50 already, then 50-50 hiring requires discrimination.

Gender is only one factor. It's what I focused on here because of context. Nationality, native language, childhood population density, and even hobby choices all play a part in experiential makeup.

"Meritocracy" is almost always a flawed idea, because it relies on the principle of those in positions of authority choosing the best candidate for a given role; the key word here is "best." That's a subjective term, and usually favors a small set of criteria over a more holistic view. People, with some exceptions, are bad at seeing the big picture.

With very few exceptions, I will always favor candidates with broader experience over those with narrow strengths.

>"Meritocracy" is almost always a flawed idea, because it relies on the principle of those in positions of authority choosing the best candidate for a given role; the key word here is "best." That's a subjective term, and usually favors a small set of criteria over a more holistic view.

That's the whole idea. When you need a surgeon you don't need a specifically sexed, or colored, or whatever surgeon. You just need a person good at the "small set of criteria" of performing a surgery.

I completely disagree for reasons I already said above. Meritocracy is the basis of life. Including evolution. Men are better at some things and women are better at some things. And you know what? That's fine by me.

Eg. Imagine if I was at the top of a burning building and my family needed rescued. I would want 5 men to try to save us, not 5 women. Does that make be sexist or normal minded?

EDIT: and off course vice versa for tasks that women are best suited.

It is still descrimination.

"Discrimination: the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually" - Merriam Webster Dictionary

Please don't bend what the word means just because others do. If we have our own meanings for every word, than the words mean nothing.

Fair enough.

But it's discrimination with a higher purpose.

I'd like to share a perspective based on an anecdote. The first company that I'd worked for had come to our college to hire interns. They wanted 2. I'd find out later that the CEO had intended one male hire and one female hire, but they ended up hiring 3 (all men) including me. Two of us that got hired were from financially poor background, had lived in tier 3 cities, went to underfunded-corrupt schools with bad educators (as was common in the region we were from), had taken out huge education loans and were possibly the only source of retirement income for our parents (I'm based out of India, poor people have to rely on their children's success here). There were around 10-15 women in our batch. Most were from well off families, had well-educated parents who were also bankrolling their daughters' education, were from tier-1 cities and were exposed to tech long before us. They'd had better opportunities for growth even before joining college and only equal opportunities after, like the rest of us. In retrospect I feel that I had been lucky in a certain sense. Thankfully the recruiters weren't people with the >`But it's discrimination with a higher purpose.` mindset. It would've been a very difficult road to recovery for me otherwise.

I would urge you to reconsider the notion that affirmative action is a sustainable solution for anything. It's hack. You only need to look at the current state of India's government, which over the course of more than 50 years of affirmative action (and other varying factors) has managed to convert the government sector into a cesspool of corruption and bad management.

>You only need to look at the current state of India's government, which over the course of more than 50 years of affirmative action (and other varying factors) has managed to convert the government sector into a cesspool of corruption and bad management.

This seems to imply that India's government fifty years ago was NOT full of corruption and bad management. The Raj was definitely corrupt but I know little about the two decades after India got its independence - were things really that good fifty years ago? Or was it just that it was less obvious?

No, not implying that. I used `more than 50 years` as a range, as these policies were also proposed as part of the Raj's secession. The introduction of affirmative action wasn't a single event, but a growing set of reservations and quotas included in education, govt sector hiring and other places. Even today, the left leaning political parties use this topic as a leverage to increase their vote bank.

This is probably the most reasoned counterargument I've seen here.

I'm going to step away and do some more reading on the subject before responding. Since this thread will likely be stale by then, I'll put up a blog post or similar with my updated thoughts.

well said.

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