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Comment by 0000011111 | Hacker News Reader

He is also white, male, not gay and has a Phd.

Many folks from marginalizes communities cant find a way past the rejection barriers the world throughs at them.

Companies have been tripping over themselves to hire from "marginalized" communities for years now. At this point it's a handicap. At my tiny startup people are overtly talking about not hiring any more "white guys". Which is offensively discriminatory.

Same for colleges by the way, more likely to accept and graduate minorities. In this blind push for equity, white men are being deliberately left behind.

Similar situation here. I've been in a staff meeting where the principle openly told the managers that they needed to place females into specific roles.

That's so insulting, as a female.

If I found out I got any job or role due to my genitals, I'm immediately quitting because that's a terrible way to run a company. For so many reasons.

Then you'll "love" my EU country that suddenly turned woke on hiring, as many tech jobs say they will prioritize hiring females over males provided equal competency levels, in order to fix gander equality.

Ugh. Setting aside the moral questions, I just can't get over how that solution COMPLETELY IGNORES all the variables that might result in differing competencies and applicant pools.

Which is what I think bugs me the most about the intellectually lazy wokedom: Stop taking genuinely interesting, nuanced problems and making them boring!

Recently we were forced to watch an "ethics" video that essentially told everyone "picking White men for your team is wrong, don't do that." I guess now that Whites are becoming minorities in most of their countries the bigotry is going the other way.

What’s the evidence that being gay lowers job prospects?

I doubt you can pick out the gay people from looking at resumes and a 30 minute interview.

It does, but not that obviously.

I'm a lesbian, and the main problems I've encountered are American culture/organizations acting as though everybody has a spouse (when you're homosexual, your dating pool is small enough that if there's nobody around, there's nobody around, but this hits single people in general), assuming that I could move or live anywhere (the suggestion to live in the middle of a rural area to save money was a lot more dicey for us a decade or two ago, and there are still a lot of places I can't/won't travel), and trying to be sure not to out myself on accident during interviews. I had to practice saying I had a boyfriend so I wouldn't slip up. That kind of thing.

That said, I also wasn't visibly gay until last year. I've never run the interview gauntlet as a butch woman, and I imagine that being a butch dyke or an effeminate male adds a new layer of issue.

They never TELL you they're rejecting you because you're gay (or a woman. Or too young. Or disabled). You just get fewer jobs than your peers.

How would a boyfriend or lack thereof even come up in an interview? Let alone so often as to be worth practicing such a thing? (I'm single, but I don't remember ever mentioning it in an interview. Though my memory is bad at this stuff so for all I know I've mentioned it every single time.)

The small talk will get you. It's less about the boyfriend and more about not letting them know I liked women. So I'd practice so I wouldn't accidentally say, "My interest in X started when my girlfriend and I went to Y." Or when someone mentions their wife/husband and then asks you about yours/your kids. (VERY common if you're a woman above 25; my impression is that men are not expected to divulge their childed status or lack thereof immediately socially [including in professional contexts], whereas women are).

Also you have to go over your bag, clothes, car, etc. and get rid of anything that could out you.

I eventually landed on "I don't date" as my official presentation, but after about 25, that starts looking really weird too. If I ever have to go back into the closet now, I'd probably claim to be divorced or widowed. "Traumatized by a bad marriage" is still easier for lots of people than "rug muncher".

Why would you want to work somewhere where you are rejected for what you are ? Just say you've got a girlfriend if it's coming in the conversation and if you don't get the job because of it, well, you just avoided working for years in a toxic environment.

Because I was in my 20s with no financial support and being in the closet at work beat being homeless. Especially as a visually impaired female. That's a one way ticket to ending up raped in a ditch. Pass.

Thanks for explaining. I guess if you ever decide to become a foreign spy, you can point to this as "relevant experience" in THAT job interview. Or something.

You would be surprised.

I’m one of those that is harder to pick out (but that is not true of many others), so I’ll make a subtle reference as early on as possible if the conversation allows (I don’t force it).

Better to discover a place you won’t advance, early in the process. More so for executive roles than IC.

Also have seen when raising capital.

This is antidotal but when I was in elementary school my 4th grade teacher was fired when she came out. She told us on her last day she was moving to a different state b/c she was black listed from the school district.

I'm not so sure how accurate that is in today's tech world. I've often told my wife she ought to consider switching to coding as a career because my company will pay a premium to get female software developers.

This is just a hacker news myth told by men, not real life experienced of women.

Source: I'm a female developer

Exactly, I feel like "privilege" has become a misnomer for "no strife" when its use really just means "less distraction".

Less barriers on an already fraught path. Its honestly probably the wrong word for the phenomenon, but that ship has sailed.

The trick is to just be better than everyone else or use the rules in a way that others don't or can't, which in a way makes you better than everyone else.

Don't cry about it, there's always a way nowadays if you're intelligent and driven.

Voting me down instead of explaining how I'm wrong is both lazy and cowardly. I am a single data point, sure but I've lived it.

The plural of ancedote is not data.

My lived experience is the opposite of yours: All those nice tests that put me in the top 0.01% of IQ + problem solving ability and the drive that got me through 2 degrees and cross-continental moves with zero support completely deserted me when I had my first MS relapse. I couldn't will my body into staying awake, or not being in excruciating pain.

The idea that being intelligent means you can't or won't be slapped down by life is a coping mechanism.

I should've said barring exceptional circumstances like medical conditions. how about now, how do you deal with the MS?

The problem is you can dump anything that doesn't meet your initial post into the 'exceptional circumstances' bucket.

For other examples from my life, my being female and homosexual aren't really issues now, but my femaleness made my stepmother disapprove of my tech interests, and my father started pressuring me to give it up as a teenager because she was more important to him. I also don't have to worry about having the crap beaten out of me anymore for being a dyke, but 15-20 years ago when I was making my career and educational decisions, I was pretty restricted in where I felt safe living.

I lucked out and have 'benign' MS, so the MS is less of an ongoing problem than the Brazilian (in the Terry Gilliamesque sense) system we have in this country for health care. My meds cost 300k+/yr for life; health insurance and care dictate a LOT of my decisions. But it blows up a lot of conventional advice. Try making 'responsible' saving/retirement planning decisions when you have no idea how long you'll be able to work.

And that's why I'm pretty sympathetic to people who are affected by circumstances beyond their control: You never know when it's going to be your turn. It benefits all of us to extend grace, lest we be the the one penniless in a hospital bed in the future.

Well I think it's reasonable to dump most of whatever isn't mentioned in conventional advice into the 'exceptional circumstances' bucket. They are anything that brings you off of the conventional happy path of normal income, normal job, normal career and life progression that isn't the result of your decisions after adulthood.

You seem intelligent - It looks like you've figured out how to compensate for the less than optimal hand that you were dealt. It's up to everyone else to figure it out as well. I have little sympathy for anyone who can't and I'd expect the same for anyone's opinion of my situation if something horrible and unforeseen were to happen to me.

There's two related, but slightly different, things that we're discussing here I think.

I think that, broadly speaking, such people do deserve sympathy from society as a whole. That is a different question as to whether or not they deserve your particular sympathy or attention. Much like how I agree that fire fighters are a good idea, but would look at you as though you were brain damaged if you suggested I run in and fight fires. People can be entitled to sympathy and understanding and you are also allowed to have your own boundaries, strengths, etc. (Or even just not like supporting people emotionally. That's fine.) Or hell, maybe this topic is just boring to you and you're sick of it taking over everything. That's also understandable.

> I'd expect the same for anyone's opinion of my situation if something horrible and unforeseen were to happen to me.

I don't often tell people their views of themselves are wrong (because how the hell would I know?), but this made me wince, because it's like talking to myself 10 years ago. It's one thing to say this, it's another when it actually happens.

I'll also submit that it's easy to say that about yourself, but it's going to be much harder if it's say, something horrible and unforeseen happening to (for example) your child or spouse. Basically, life is a giant game of Russian Roulette, and while some of us have guns with more bullets in the chamber, nobody has zero.

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