I only got that job because I’m a girl

Have you ever seen a white person not be good at their job? Yet you don't associate their failures with their race. Why do so with black people?

Also, read the studies. Black people and women actually have a harder time getting a job. So by your logic, of people getting jobs that they may not be the most qualified for, you'd be better off hiring women or black people. They have to be more qualified into to be seen as equals.

>Can you really blame an employer for leaning towards being risk adverse in this situation?

Yes. It's called "the right thing to do", not "the easy and convenient thing to do", and for a reason.

Discriminating by race is convenient, but it puts a number of people in a dead end through no fault of their own. Had everyone done the convenient thing to do, those people would be locked out forever. For employers it's a matter convenience, for recruits it's a matter of having or not having a life. The impact is disproportionate.

It's strange how convenient and accepted unchecked anecdotal evidence can be around here under certain circumstances . If this was a strictly tech article I would hope more people would be saying your sample size here is two or three, that's clearly not the best predictor of the future. But you're talking about race and gender from the majority white male centered perspective so your comment is at the top.

According to you a couple black people got farther than they should have because of affirmative action and because of that you wouldn't blame an employer for considering all black people "risky" hires. Doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? Put another way, has anyone ever said "a couple white people screwed over the team a few years back so we think twice nowadays before hiring white people". Or "we found that guys seem to slack more during work hours and now we shy away from hiring men". Of course not, because white and male are normal when it comes to jobs in tech and so they enjoy the privilege of being treated as individuals. To drive the point home your bias is obvious in your comment - "you're going to naturally think 2 and 3 times before making a similar hire" - "similar" applies to black or female because it's understandable to aggregate those individuals, their actions easy fit into a narrative that already exists in your mind. Pick two white men at your work who consistently perform poorly and I don't think you would be as comfortable attributing their behavior to their race or gender.

Sorry man, I appreciate your point but the general tone of your argument comes across like you think women are more of a 'risky' hire?

"risk averse" here really means "it may be a problem for society, but let someone else bear the cost of solving it". one point of antidiscrimination laws is to spread those risks and costs out evenly so that no one is unduly affected.

So, there are some claims here that should be made explicit...

1) Some people get benefits undeservedly.

2) People will often rationalize after the fact to say that they deserved to get those benefits.

3) Women are people, so sometimes women will get benefits undeservedly but lie to themselves after the fact by thinking that they deserved it.

All certainly true. But I'd like to offer another claim:

4) Men are people, so sometimes men will get benefits undeservedly but lie to themselves after the fact by thinking they deserved it.

Is 4) unlikely, particularly relative to 3)?

How likely do you think it is that you might be deceiving yourself in the same way, about the relative benefits of being a man versus being a woman in tech?

Um. Read the studies. No, the odds aren't even. In technology, they're stacked against women. (And against black people in general.)

(I would very much believe, however, that in bartending, it's stacked against men.)

Also, think through what it would mean to actually get the offer (not the interview -- the offer itself) because you were female. Your recruiter isn't deciding who is getting an offer; the individual teams are. So how would this collaboration have happened such that only women from your college were given offers? Remember that Microsoft still has a very low percent of female engineers, so it's not a company wide policy.

You're telling me that a set of unrelated teams decided interdependently to specifically offer positions to women from your college? Why? Why your college? It just doesn't make sense.

My guess is that there's something much less sinister going on, such as: -- It's just a weird coincidence. (After all, they recruit from many schools.) -- Some professor referred mostly female students, perhaps even being under the mistaken impression that they were asking for good female candidates. -- The female students are your schools are actually more qualified than the male. (This is not particularly unlikely, if your school is really less than 5% female. To get numbers that low, there may be some pressure to drop out, leaving only the best women there.) -- Microsoft hires mostly PMs from your school, which are more likely than devs to be female. -- Microsoft extended offers to a number of men too, who happened to not take the offer. -- Many of these 5 students were actually given offers for a specific program dedicated to minorities. -- You're wrong about the percent of women in your CS program (very likely). -- You're wrong about the number of women / men hired.

These are just a few of the possibilities I can think of. What seems incredibly unlikely is that a bunch of unrelated teams all decided to hire only women from specifically your university. I just don't understand how that would work.

By the way, are you sure your school is <5% female? That is WAY under the national average.

It is unusual that all 5 people hired were female. But, remember that coincidences happen. There are plenty of schools in which all 15 people hired are male. Unless there is some reason why your school specifically would be set apart, I don't think this is anything more than a strange coincidence.

It's possible that something in the middle is going on -- a recruiter asked a professor for recommendations and he/she happened to recommend mostly women.

Erm, do you have anything to say about the article or the general subject matter? And are you saying that anybody who would have nits to pick with this article is immediately discredited by your lurking suspicion that they are driven by prejudice? Further, "sub-conscious [sic] prejudice", which by definition the accused cannot refute?

I acknowledge that there is a huge sub-conscious prejudice. I don't like how society doesn't focus on all of the types of prejudices that exist. Like I posted before, there is the halo effect, prejudice against women, fat people, old people, people of a different race, people with disabilities, etc.

I refuse to believe that this person (although she is qualified) managed to be hired completely free from any bias and only on her skill.

edit: I don't want anyone to believe I am trying to undersell the prejudice women have to experience daily. It's absolutely horrible that it still happens. I just posted the rest of this because I'm a nihilist and have trouble seeing good things with humanity....

In my experience (and studies seem to bear this out), most people will automatically assume an attractive woman has poor skills in X (where X is anything that doesn't involve dealing with customers). So I don't think your "commonsense" argument actually holds in the real world.

Interesting, but I disagree.

(1) You can't assume that there are a lot of equally qualified A players for those companies. In fact, those companies struggle to hire enough qualified engineers.

(2) You're assuming that those companies, if they were presented with multiple qualified people, can only hire one of them. In many cases, they would just hire all of them.

(3) You're assuming that, if a company has to decide between multiple qualified people, it would use personality or looks as a dividing factor. Obviously, the people aren't actually identical, other than looks. The companies could instead decide based on a preference for public universities over equally ranked private ones, or what city the people are from, or whatever. There are many differences between people.

(4) You're assuming that attractiveness would help someone's candidacy for an engineering role, and not hurt it. If you were talking to two people -- one was a very attractive woman and one was a very unattractive woman -- which would you assume is more technical, if you had to bet? You'd probably bet on the less attractive person.

Hey man! I didn't quite understand your argument, but in this arena looks shouldn't come into it. The greater weight attributed by some people to women's appearance is a form of unconcsious discrimination. I appreciate you weren't sure what to call it, but the 'novelty of being attractive' doesn't sit well with me. She has the novelty of being highly skilled - that's what counts :)

First of all, when people are trying to diminutize your accomplishments -- saying that you don't deserve them -- it does matter. It affects not only your morale, but also your ability to achieve things in the future.

Second, the point of the article is not the being a woman is an advantage but rather, that there's good evidence that it's a disadvantage. When you have a group that is already unrepresented in the sciences who face additional disadvantages, that IS a problem.

Yes, of course you play the hand you're dealt. What other choice do you have? That doesn't mean you shouldn't fight for equality for everyone.

It's back now. Here's a mirror in case it goes down again: http://i.imgur.com/hR9Mc.png

I clicked thinking i'd see some some skin.

(Oh yeah I'll deserve the down-votes for that one, go ahead!)

> companies with more women at senior levels earn upwards of 33% more on important financial metrics

There are two major problems with that. First is that it's just correlation, "greener" companies also do better but it's quite likely that they simply can afford to be greener.

Second why is no one buying that? I mean, if companies with many women at senior levels really did significantly better, speculators would bet on those companies, their stock prices would jump and there would be a boom for female execs (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/femfirmfinance.html). That is not happening.

I did not see that article, but would be interested to. Do you have a link?

The only research that I am aware of along those lines was specific to South Korea.