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Comment by nemomarx | Hacker News Reader

Lookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly.

Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.

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I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.

Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"

The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.

It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.

The halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

I was gonna say "this is decades old", it's over a century old.

Relevant sequence from 30 Rock - Jon Hamm lives in "The Bubble"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQoXOLlvT0

Hamm is a great example. He hazed multiple people in college, like burned a dudes dick, never apologized, and settled out of court. When asked about it he often used his mom's death to avoid the topic. Dude has never owned up to it.

But cuz he's a funny attractive white dude nobody cares.

I like "pretty privilege."

In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"

The problem with pretty privilege is it's quite female centric. (It's not that normative to call a man pretty and intend it as a compliment) It ignores that it also applies to men who are attractive, tall, have strong (as in pronounced) masculine physical features

My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.

Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/

This sounds like a great idea. Can you share more details about the story? Did she finally get a job?

She eventually did get a job, though not a great one. At that point she was willing to take pretty much anything.

If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.

The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.

Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.

>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.

I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.

Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.

Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.

I get a haircut and wear a suit when I interview but am wearing an oversized Star Wars t-shirt while working right now. It’s just putting in the right level of effort at the right time?

There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world

In my experience the worst dressed definitely have more self confidence about their ability, rightly or wrongly

honest question - did that cliche ever apply to women? or non-white people?

i'm well aware of the stereotype but 100% of the time, seen it as a scrubby white guy in a hoodie.

> Lookism

Pretty privilege

Halo effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

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