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Comment by YeGoblynQueenne | Hacker News Reader

A recent article posted on HN offering funding to women to study programming sparked a flamewar, with many users claiming that special hiring policies for women in the tech industry discriminate against men.

The current article is about a special hiring policy for autistic persons in Dell. Luckily there doesn't seem to be a flamewar this time around.

Of course, I wonder why. To be honest, I don't understand why so many users were upset about the former article but not this one. It just seems dissonant to me.

I'm quite confident that the present comment will not start a new flamewar, btw.

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> Of course, I wonder why. To be honest, I don't understand why so many users were upset about the former article but not this one. It just seems dissonant to me.

Only a minority subscribes to the neurodiversity idea. Autism is considered a disability by most people, therefore this is not controversial.

Quotas for women can be, because we are taught they're equal to men.

I did not mention neurodiversity.

From what I've seen in the other thread, most people complaining about "reverse discrimination" felt that one should get a job only based on their ability to do the job, regardless of gender or antyhing else.

It follows that if a person with a disability can't do the job then they shouldn't be hired over someone who can, but doesn't have the disability, in the same way that one who can't do the job but is female should not be hired over someone who can but isn't.

I think suggesting that the disadvantages of gender are in any way comparable to the considerably greater disadvantages of being mentally or physically disabled is in extremely bad taste.

I would not hesitate to change genders, not for an instant, if it would free me from my disabilities.

>> I think suggesting that the disadvantages of gender are in any way comparable to the considerably greater disadvantages of being mentally or physically disabled is in extremely bad taste.

I don't understand what this has to do with my comment. Are you saying that I'm comparing gender with disability?

Because autism is a disability. Being a woman is not a disability.

I don't understand. What does autism being a disability have to do with special hiring practices being discriminatory or not?

While in a perfect world does not need to be one, couldn't you say that by just the way a large chunk of the tech community (not necessarily devs but also gamers ect) reacts to them they on average have more bad social experiences just like austic people do? (For totally different reasons ofcourse)

Can you please explain this whole American "affirmative action" and "special hiring practices" thing? As I understand it, when given two candidates with equal interview results, the company will choose the female instead of the male one. Am I getting it wrong?

The generic explanation is: The 'minority' can often have worse interview results and still get the job over a non-minority.

There was recently in the news a lawsuit against Harvard I believe, because there is some evidence that a White or Asian (minority in US but not in schools as a lot of them attend school) student can have better admissions testing scores and a "underrepresented" minority with lower scores gets admitted instead.

Wikipedia: In other countries, such as the UK,[7][8][9] affirmative action is rendered illegal because it does not treat all races equally.

The Harvard lawsuit you're referring to was quite a bit more subtle than that. There was a consistent pattern of Asian applicants getting lower scores in interviews conducted by Harvard admissions officers than in the other interviews that were part of the application process while other applicants of other races got approximately the same scores from admissions officers as from other interviewers. This was taken as evidence that the admissions officers' interview scores (and thus the overall admissions decisions) were biased against Asian applicants.

That is correct...in some cases they'll even choose the woman/Black/Hispanic over a more qualified Asian or White candidate to boost their diversity numbers.

Maybe people with autism are just less likely to feel condescended-at and "upset" by this whole misguided notion that "just" teaching people to program is the solution to every problem in society. People have wildly different backgrounds, experiences and inclinations; it's easy to see this in the case of autism-spectrum neurodiversity, but the idea that maybe lots of women just aren't that attracted to the whole programming thing is seen as more contentious for some reason.

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