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Comment by arglebarnacle | Hacker News Reader

I assume your choice to describe average HR reps as “clueless ladies” isn’t meant to suggest that you respect e.g. women software engineers on your team any less. But if the gender of the clueless HR employees isn’t relevant, why mention it? Maybe worth reflecting on whether calling them clueless ladies rhetorically emphasizes their cluelessness

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The OP should have left off "ladies" as that was unnecessary -- clueless is a sufficient descriptor for many people in many roles (whether genuine behavior, strategic fiefdoming, or learned helplessness).

Here is the US BLS breakout of demographics by occupation category: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

To save everyone the click: HR managers: 76% female, HR workers: 75% female, HR assistants: 84% female.

That doesn't make the remaining 24% more clueful. Identifying a department by the gender of its workers seems pretty suspect.

I read the original comment as implying that the average HR person reviewing your resume will be a clueless woman. Not as implying that only women work there or that people of other genders working there are more clueful.

The comment is open to interpretation, and you are free to interpret it in a less charitable way. The ambiguity is absolutely something we can and should criticize the comment for

I never implied any of that nonsense that I’ve perhaps triggered nor I want to be responsible for other people’s interpretations outside core meaning

Neat fact: statistical independence means that two factors are orthogonal.

My prior, expressed in my earlier comment, is that cluelessness and gender are orthogonal.

The distribution in other categories is fascinating, and HN doesn't format tables well.

Though "saving a click" typically refers to spammy clickbait news articles that bury the lede, which a statistical table directly relevant to the conversation does not qualify as.

I found it useful at least.

Reality denial and picking on people who state simple truth is evil.

~80% of software developers are male. [1]

I’m not sure the percentage of companies that use software for highlighting candidates, but Anthropic almost certainly does and this [2] source says 75+% do.

So since men wrote the software that didn’t highlight the candidate, is it the clueless men that caused this?

[1] https://www.zippia.com/software-developer-jobs/demographics/

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/6/22659225/automated-hiring-...

Yes - people in HR departments are often female and often clueless, but I don't see the parent denying this. The wording of OP connected both though, which is sexist and can be considered "evil".

Funny enough, I see this whole framing as sexist itself.

Nobody would have bat an eye if he said "clueless guys" or "clueless gents", and given the prevalence of women in HR, that wording would actually have more chances of having a sexist background to it.

“guys” is gendered but is very often used to mean a general group.

>given the prevalence of women in HR, that wording would actually have more chances of having a sexist background to it.

The reason there are more women than men in HR is clearly because the men they do hire are too clueless and get fired faster. Ever have an HR department with all men? Most dysfunctional department I’ve ever interacted with! “Clueless HR men” is just redundant. The ~25% that exist are DEI hires. So it wouldn’t be sexism, it would be reality.

You‘re right, but that just reflects the structural sexism in our society while the wording by the op was intentional (I suppose. If not, I might as well be more sexist then he is).

After years hearing justly about bad things perpetrated by males as a class, without any concerns about generalizations, I think we are mature enough to also call for responsibility in the other side of the aisle.

Having a free pass for doing evil stuff is what gave man their bad rep, should we now for equity give women a pass to become the new slave lords?

Nopes, nothing to the ladies in general nor any other gender in general. Just a shortcut to my own negative experience with HR by example. English is my foreign language and in my country we are not that allergic to terminology. But clueless processors stay as valid… regardless of particular denomination.

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