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Comment by drivebyacct2 | Hacker News Reader

Called this a week and a half ago. Anyone who's LGBT (or anyone period really) knows that there are reasons to keep things on FB private from friends, family, employers selectively, etc. I had mentioned this was likely illegal for this very reason. Numerous states in the US have similar anti-discrimination laws. When I was interviewed at Microsoft they basically told me I couldn't talk about certain things and they were specifically trained to not ask questions that could reveal information that could lead to these sorts of suits.

I don't understand the downvotes? I've seen at least 4 people downvote this. Do you not believe me? And to edit for the people below, I was more or less hint-hint told that this was at least including not wanting to force someone to reveal that they were LGBT. I know that at least the group I was with, they were forbid from asking if "you have a girlfriend" and it wasn't for fear of an interviewer hitting on someone.

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Welcome to the club:)

My general thoughts on this, plus the "called it" comment are here: https://plus.google.com/107226275692313566931/posts/L69x1jz8...

I was focusing more on how to deal with it in a world where employers will do this, though, and less on the "here's how to hack it". After all, for many of us both saying "no" and "hacking" the process is not necessarily a valid option. Mortgages and kids need to be figured in occasionally. (I hope I'd still have the conviction to say "no", but I understand it's a sticky situation for many)

"When I was interviewed at Microsoft"....Interesting given that MSFT has a long history of being a LGBT-friendly company.

the "certain things" might have had nothing to do with LGBT

Oh I wasn't worried about them being antigay or anything at all, much more so that HR forces them to be that careful and tip-toey about HR practices during recruiting.

edit: to be clear, they were specifically about being LGBT. And I don't necessarily think that sort of PC-ness should be absolutely required, but I'm unhappy to tell you that there are still plenty of discriminatory people out there.

Is not having a policy that reduces the risk of interviewers intentionally or subconsciously discriminating against someone who is LGBT exactly the type of thing you would expect from an LGBT-friendly company?

Microsoft itself is very LGBT friendly, but that doesn't mean every employee is. Because of this, HR puts policies into place to try and prevent employees from making employment decisions based on that type of criteria.

> "you have a girlfriend"

Why would anyone ask that in an interview totally beats me.

It might accidentally come up in the course of normal conversion. Which is why interviewers are trained to avoid the patterns leading to there.

> Anyone who's LGBT knows that there are reasons to keep >things on FB private from friends, family, ...

See now if only people could keep it secret that they were; black, female, Jewish, etc as well there would be no problem of discrimination in the world!

I know that you're not serious, but I just feel the need to reinforce that having to hide a portion of your identity does not in fact shield you from discrimination. The simple fact that you have to do so is discrimination itself.

Of course the idea is to eliminate a subset of discrimination, which arguably it does well, but to do so it introduces another sort.

I think the point was rather that there should be no need to hide details of your sexuality from your friends in case your employer forces you to reveal it.

Personally I hate stereotyping - and stupid Americans

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