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Comment by rdfc-xn-uuid | Hacker News Reader

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> * Diversity hiring: Big US/EU companies are trying to hire more females here because cost is low and they can show great diversity numbers. It hurts when you see posh privileged urban women having much more chance of getting into a good company than a man who worked his way up through sacrifice.

do you have any examples of this happening? or is this just a boogie man?

my experience has been different: so many mediocre men in this industry. all of the women i've worked with have been brilliant.

I've had the same experience, and I've reasoned it as follows:

It's very difficult to be a woman in Computer Science. CompSci is uniquely awful for women. Like other STEM, it's overrun by men, so you get all the subtle discrimination of that. But CompSci men also tend to be, for lack of a better word, asocial weirdos. Civil engineers have to work with people, CompSci people built up their skills in front of a screen.

All this means that the large majority of women are filtered out. The ones that remain are the ones most skilled with navigating tough situations, and who have a strong passion for engineering. A passion strong enough to wade through the downsides.

I also think they have to constantly prove themselves, which also builds up their skills.

I always got the feeling that the distributions were different for men and women. Male professionals seem to be normally distributed, with a lot of mediocrity, some excellence, and some incompetence. In women, the mediocrity part of the population seems to be missing, so the distribution looks more bimodal.

If that's actually the case and not just a warped perception on my part, it could easily happen that, depending on your own skill-level and environment, you'll be more likely to work with one of the two groups in the bimodal distribution.

> It hurts when you see posh privileged urban women having much more chance of getting into a good company than a man who worked his way up through sacrifice.

It's not a gender issue. I would be looking to hire someone competent who works hard, not someone who makes "sacrifices" and then expects a job/promotion.

The latter never works. That's not the work culture in most places. I've seen it many times, people who make "sacrifices", allowing themselves to be exploited, expecting some promotion from it, and are then passed over for someone who actually has demonstrated they are good at the job and ready for more responsibility, and not being a doormat. Then they become resentful.

Don't be bitter. Be better.

I think it does work, just look who won the presidential election thanks to Men

But they are better, that's his point lolwut

That is not the poster's point.

The poster contends women are being prejudicially hired as "diversity" rather men who have "sacrificed" and worked hard.

"lolwut" indeed.

Right, but certain careers have figured out that women are, on average, better at the socialization game and thus, broadly speaking, a better fit for the job. Ain't nobody "diversity" hiring on the oil rigs or other jobs where the physical act is more important than interpersonal interaction.

However, it is difficult to measure those positive traits for what they are, so employers are selecting based on gender hoping for positive correlation. But that's illegal, so "diversity" hiring was created as a scapegoat to help avoid legal fire.

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