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Comment by jjgreen | Hacker News Reader

Of course, a candidate who doesn't want to communicate with women, or can't accept a female senior, no-one wants that. But "not making eye contact" is possibly not a good way to infer that. Some years ago there was a study as to why UK magistrates gave heavier sentences to black kids rather than white. One thing that came up was that black kids tended to look to the ground, to not make eye-contact, when being questioned: the magistrates saw this as "guilty looking" whereas it is just an Afro-Caribbean cultural thing, making eye contact with an elder is considered disrespectful to many in that community.

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The indomitable Naomi Wu dug at exactly this point in the thread. She got OP to clarify that by typing "not making eye contact" he did not mean "not making eye contact" but meant "communicating with".

I'll leave the irony of this unstated.

He didn't, though, he clarified that he meant making eye contact with the man but not the woman.

Apparently when he said "Doesn't make eye contact with or communicate with" he meant "doesn't communicate with or communicate with"

“Doesn’t do X or Y” has colloquial meaning of “Does neither X nor Y”. In cases of X being subset of Y or otherwise lower degree it means “Doesn’t do Y, e.g. X”

You’ll see this in common speech “My husband doesn’t do the dishes or clean up at all”, “he doesn’t reply to emails or update anything in JIRA”, etc.

Pretty standard language structure in English. Odd that people are having trouble.

Except he didn't say "doesn't do X or Y" he said "is unwilling to X or Y", which breaks the colloquial defense and makes it questionable what he meant. (And I don't fully trust further explanations by someone under this kind of pressure)

Do you interpret "unwilling to X or Y" as "unwilling to X" or "unwilling to Y"? I interpret it as "unwilling to X" and "unwilling to Y".

For instance, "my husband is unwilling to take care of the twins or take the dog to day-care" means the husband is not going to either of those things, i.e. the speaker wishes for the husband to do one of these two things and the husband is doing neither.

Likewise, "unwilling to make eye contact or communicate" means "is not willing to either make eye contact" and "is not willing to communicate".

In fact, it feels very natural to me to take that interpretation. But I am completely open to the idea that this is not the case in other people's English. I don't know the OP guy, so there's no real skin in the game for me, but I really think he has the same meaning as me here.

My initial take was that "unwilling to make eye contact or acknowledge" meant either/or as opposed to neither/nor. But I think there's also a possibility that I'm wrong.

But can we know for sure? I feel that we have to try to interpret the first tweet as a standalone thing, because the followup explanations happened after he started getting called out for what is, in theory, illegal.

> My initial take was that "unwilling to make eye contact or acknowledge" meant either/or

What would that even mean in practice though. It’s like a pointless thing to write.

The indomitable frumiousirc is incredibly incorrect.

What you're discussing is tangibly different than what's described in the thread though. Refusing to look the lone woman present in the eye while giving interview answers -- even for a primary interviewer who is a woman -- while making good eye contact with others present isn't the same as looking down/away from a male judge or magistrate in a court setting.

This could be bias against those who are uncomfortable making eye contact with women. Is eye contact a requirement for communication? Certainly it helps but now with remote work, video meetings, and lots of async written artifacts, I find it much less so.

"Occasionally make eye contact with women" should probably be a reasonable expectation for professional employees, who should be expected to work well with diverse (not the identity politics meaning of that word) teams.

Does being shy around women make you a bad person? Does being uncomfortable around people who are different than you make you a bad person?

It's one thing if someone outright ignores an interviewer (that is hugely disrespectful). It's entirely another if someone is forcing their values on someone else over something as trivial as eye contact.

This whole thing sounds hand-wavy and virtue-signally to me. And in a bad way.

> Does being shy around women make you a bad person? Does being uncomfortable around people who are different than you make you a bad person?

It may not make you a bad person, but it would probably make you a bad hire.

> It's one thing if someone outright ignores an interviewer (that is hugely disrespectful).

If you read the entire twitter thread, you will see that this is exactly what is being discussed. And if you haven't seen this behaviour in person before, you haven't been paying attention.

> It may not make you a bad person, but it would probably make you a bad hire.

Ah yes, so the very people who champion "diversity" and "empathy" show their true colors by selecting against people with some kind of social anxiety or traumatic experience. So much for that!

> If you read the entire twitter thread, you will see that this is exactly what is being discussed.

Well it definitely wasn't described that way from the outset, which is an indicator of the Gergely Orosz's biases. Perhaps he should apologize and undergo some bias training.

> And if you haven't seen this behaviour in person before, you haven't been paying attention.

Or it could be that the field that I work in is largely a male presence and I haven't been on the interviewer side of the table with a woman.

The social justice types are funny to me. They issue proclamations about *ism from their ivory tower, all the while assuming the worst intent from anybody who doesn't act like they do. It's actually laughable. The moral puritanism needs a rest.

It is not moral puritanism to say that when I am interviewing candidates, it is a hard requirement that they be willing and able to communicate with their coworkers - yes, even the women.

This isn't a good faith interpretation of what I said.

Intentionally ignoring was already covered off on. Yes, policing someone's eye contact during a potentially high-stress situation (like an interview) is moral puritanism.

If your social anxiety or trauma prevents you from interacting with men and women in an equitable way, then it's absolutely fair for your interviewer to reflect on how it impacts the workplace and proceed accordingly. "Treat men and women equally" is a perfectly valid professional expectation.

I'm going to assume the equitable treatment you're talking about is eye contact, because I previously already addressed ignoring someone as disrespectful.

Policing eye contact, absent any other context, sounds like a massively negative impact on the workplace to me. And if someone does have some legitimate circumstances that make that a subconscious (or even consciously difficult) behavior then it sounds like your otherwise "equitable" workplace stops being equitable the moment someone is different than you in a way you don't agree with. It's "equitable for me, but not for thee."

We already know that interviews are nervewracking for some people. Add some other crap on top of that and I could see how someone well-meaning makes a minor blunder like failing to make eye contact with a woman. Where is the empathy that the equity types are clamoring for?

There is no need to discuss this “absent any other context”, since the context is provided. I do not think you’re engaging with this material in good faith.

FWIW, later he clarified:

> Spelling it out for the few people in replies wanting to misunderstand what I am saying:

> We rejected candidates who refused to communicate w female interviewers when they asked questions or tried to communicate. They’d only respond to the guy, who did not initiate the comms!

and

> When I wrote "did not make eye contact" I meant "only made eye contact with the man, refused to do so with the woman" reflecting on how the woman was ignored. Not just about eye contact: was about refusing to communicate in any way with the woman: but not the man.

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