All in all, you might be right in that they might have put "cultural fit" as their #1 priority, but that doesn't make it a good decision. Saying that the alternative is "a stiff and sterile ad" is a fallacy of false dichotomy.
fair enough. to clarify--"a stiff and sterile ad" is the only type of add that won't alienate any possible subgroup.
the goal of a job ad is not simply to "attract talent". it's to attract the right kind of talent. to that end, a job ad that emphasizes culture is one way to look for it. these guys made a choice, and it looks like their (imo) poorly-worded job ad isn't being well received by the majority of people on hn. but unless we know that no suitable candidates resulted from it, i don't think we can claim it a failure.
To be fair, it's not a job ad that fails here, it's the culture that came up with that job ad.
agree, in the sense that if people react adversely to this job ad, they would have a similar reaction to the company culture.
In addition, I can say that the only reason I'd care to know who the stealth company is is so I can avoid giving any thought to working for/with them later on or reading any later (probably toned down) job postings.
I know it's fun to be laddish when you're at college and uni, but cultural fit can often be a polite way of saying 'Hey, I'm a bigot, women are stupid and I'm not employing them above the level of secretary!'.
I'm sure cultural fit was used because some racist thought someone with a different coloured skin wouldn't fit in the office.
I don't like the way they phrased it because it was very easy to read that advert as advertising specifically for male programmers only. In other words, they're in danger of coming across as bigots.
And by association, so are we.
So I said something as it made me uncomfortable.
You're defending the ad. By extension defending any sexism contained within it (actual sexism TBD).
They went for a breezy tone and forgot to pass it through Legal. I doubt they're sexists. I'm sure sexism would, in this day and age, hurt them more than anyone else.
I don't think it was intentional on the job poster's part, but the fact that he didn't catch how it sounded of proofreading definitely indicates a blind spot to sexism.
You can defend something based on one merit, while not supporting a related detriment.
Stealing would still be wrong if it were legally acceptable, which some forms arguably are.
I didn't think you (as in ia) was especially defending it, I was just trying to point out the logic was very wooly. Though re-reading my comment I was a little hot under the collar, so apologies for that.
Which is a strange moral compass, because lots of bad things are not against the law (and with good reason).
But one thing that ought to be pointed out is that free markets tend to punish companies, over the long term, that intentionally deny themselves access to talent due to bigotry. Conversely, companies who acquire talent with rational screening procedures will have a competitive advantage over those who use irrational screening procedures.
It's a sort of corporate karma. In aggregate, bigotry in hiring procedures will eventually harm you, legal or not.
To give an analogy, if you have access to all the food you want, but you voluntarily limit yourself to kumquats and bananas for arbitrary, irrational reasons, in the long run you will develop health problems.
Likewise, a business that irrationally limits itself to a subset of all available talent will, in aggregate, lose out to those who are not thus limited.
I admit to not having citations of statistical evidence at hand, although I have seen many publications in the past that indicate diversity of employee populations is correlated with innovation and success. I did not provide evidence because I believe as a Gedankenexperiment, the conclusion is self-evident.
> one thing that ought to be pointed out is that free
> markets tend to punish companies, over the long term,
> that intentionally deny themselves access to talent
> due to bigotry.
That sounds a lot like fair world fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
If this were true, we wouldn't have needed the EEOC and the Civil Rights Act in the first place. We did. Therefore.
and now we have a feminine culture takeover: used to be only sticks and stones would hurt me, now it's words that slay me. Get over the obsession already, this is tiresome! Everyone starts out equal, no one person is inherently better than another - but some people perform more valuable services than others. Men and women are different, hence the chromosomal difference. If these guys want an exclusionary company, let them have it! But you don't have to buy their goods/services.
Birds of a feather flock together - people are almost always going to associate with people they feel more comfortable will - and each individual will decide which character trait they most like to identify with, and will seek out people with like traits. </rant>
So a company decides that most female engineers wouldn't be a good fit?
It's fairly obvious that using it in a job ad (as opposed to using it in a self-deprecating way to joke about yourself: how the term started) has the effect of alienating female developers.
On the other hand I don't understand, why, most of you, as males are really getting mad about this? Why do you feel offended? If you have a female programmer friend, ask her about this and make her post their opinions, not you. I'll bet my life savings that all females that are into tech (that I know) will not have the slightest problem with this.
Stop whining about this kind of stuff HN, you're better than this.
I was just asking for a female programmer to tell that she's having a problem with this, not a dude.
Probably I haven't exposed my ideas in a correct and coherent way, but I am tired and english is not my main. But trust me, I know a lot of women that are programmers, at some I look up to, and those who aren't I try to help them integrate, we need really need female programmers, because we, as males, can never achieve their way of thinking.
So you think that I, as a whitey, shouldn't be offended by racism? And that I, as an atheist, shouldn't find religious persecution offensive?