Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrissnell | Hacker News Reader

It's a little peculiar how this blog post really pushes the inclusiveness angle despite the numbers showing clearly that it is not a big priority for prospective employees. They even go as far as highlighting that the sampled women want inclusiveness 171% more than the sampled men, which sounds pretty strong, but hides the real story when you look at the _actual numbers_. Only 15% of women ranked inclusion as a top priority, which is telling.

It seems pretty apparent to me that most employees (and that includes all genders, races, etc.) don't care nearly as much about inclusiveness as their leadership seems to. After reading this post, it seems to confirm what I've suspected all long: people mostly want money and the potential to make more money in the future.

View on HN

It is because it is SEO spam. TripleByte regularly posts these here in HackerNews to promote their hiring platform. People seem to like it nonetheless

It is SEO spam, and TripleByte does seem to use a lot of "growth hacks" or something, because I see their ads on pretty much any platform that I see ads for (like on mobile apps, where I don't have any easy-to-use ad blockers), and they're mentioned on HN at a surprisingly high rate.

But (I think?) I've seen people here genuinely recommend them, and I also don't think YC would work with and promote a company they didn't like or trust. Companies' marketing and sales teams can sometimes have a very different vibe and sense of ethics compared to the rest of the company.

They do advertise very aggressively, to the point where I think they risk damaging their reputation. But I guess they've done the analysis and decided it's worth it.

I went through their process and got lots of practice interviewing. Even though I didn't take any of the offers I got through them I was able to use one to negotiate a much higher salary at the job I did take. Their recruiters and interviewers treated me respectfully and professionally.

So I'd recommend it, especially if you're very good and/or smart but not an attractive candidate by conventional standards. If you have 5 years at Microsoft or something then you probably don't need them, since you can interview wherever you want at that point.

If a tree falls in the woods because a ex-YC partner chopped it down, it makes a sound that everyone else can hear

Not sure what you're alluding to there, but no YC or ex-YC partnerness had any effect on this thread. Users upvoted it, for whatever reasons users upvote things for. HN moderators didn't touch it, let alone anyone else at YC.

It is dangerous to speak to others allusions, but I believe both that HN moderators/YC had nothing to do with the strength of the thread, and also that YC or YC affiliated companies occupy more of the HN consciousness than other companies of the same size, space, etc. An analysis would actually be really interesting, but I would bet, and agree with OP, that YC companies are naturally more occurring on the top/active HN lists, and (less analyzable) not always based on the strength of their articles, blogs, actions, but rather their affiliations.

Not in vain they are dubbed TripleSpam

As I type this, it has 565 points on hacker news. That's quite a distinction for a post that is just “SEO spam”.

"content marketing"

> Only 15% of women ranked inclusion as a top priority, which is telling.

The problem with top rank only is that the top spot is basically a dice roll between various things which are important for people. A "top 3" (or another number significantly smaller than all categories asked, but more than 1) is usually far more interesting and less driven by chance. That doesn't invalidate what you wrote - maybe it is unimportant for most people, but there's not enough data here to tell.

Top rank is a random dice roll but the things that were voted by less people are less so?

I’m not sure what argument you are making.

The point is that it's usually pretty easy to say "here, I give you 15 categories, tell me 3 which are important to you" while "find the one most important" is not. The order between top picks is mostly arbitrary.

Furthermore, are we comparing big differences in a variable (money, opportunity, interesting work, workplace flexibility, etc.) or small differences? It's a lot easier to say these three things are fairly important to me even if the deltas are not huge than it is to say one variable trumps all.

Sure, money is important to most people at some level. But for many, it's important relative to other things in that it can't be dramatically lower at one opportunity vs. another. A bit lower? That's maybe OK if other factors balance it out.

It's not a big priority, but it's by far the biggest difference in priorities by gender in the data that they're showing.

It's the biggest by relative percentage difference but in absolute terms it's second to salary. I'm not sure it's a useful measure. It exaggerates the effect when one number is small as seen with autonomy. I agree with GP, it looks peculiar.

Inclusive workplace has an absolute difference of 10% but has a relative difference of 171%.

Salary has an absolute difference of 15% but has a relative difference of 43%.

Presumably the relative difference for flat organization (0% and 2%) would be larger.

You're right! Thank you!

Well if 0.1% men cared about something, and 1% women cared about it -- that's 10x difference in that priority.

But still a blip overall, that can be ignored.

Seems like this aligns with my intuitions about what people care about.

"Inclusivity" doesn't mean anything by itself, it's a synonym for diversity, and these terms themselves essentially mean bias in favour of women. Large majorities of both men and women want to be measured on merit, not many want to feel like they got a job or promotion because of their gender. So no surprise it's not popular and indeed, never has been. The trend towards it is because a small minority care about it more than anything else and go on the attack if they don't get it. The silent majority doesn't care.

I guess it will be low on priority list unless you have somehow suffered the consequences of a non-inclusive workplace. Especially since a non-inclusive workplace in general mostly means that everything is fine as long as you are a man.

Priorities can also shift as different levers are pulled. You'll care more about inclusion when your expenses are less than your income.

None of them marked lack of violence or emotional abuse as a priority, either. Telling that even women - Females! - didn’t even write in to mention it.

After realizing that, it seems to confirm what I’ve suspected all along: people mostly want to money and the potential to make more money in the future.

> people mostly want money and the potential to make more money in the future.

Adding to that, without too much risk or responsibilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com