LinkedIn rejects engineering ads with female images, bans account | Hacker News Reader

LinkedIn rejects engineering ads with female images, bans account

toptal.com

70 pointskowdermeister89 comments

>The fact of the matter is: members of the tech community (LinkedIn users) saw it as impossible that our female engineers could actually be engineers, and a leader of the tech community (LinkedIn) agreed with them.

Oh, quiet you. The text sounds scammy and the photos of attractive women just give the entire thing a 'spam' feel. It's not a slight against female engineers.

Apparently they only had an issue with the images specifically...so maybe they just have a problem with attractive women.

Strange nonetheless.

To be honest, I actually find the copy rather disturbing -- it reminds me of the copy I've seen used to advertise sites that provide video chat services.

Maybe, but if the pictures were male engineers, would you even blink or look twice?

Given the same pose, lighting, and composition, absolutely.

so maybe they just have a problem with attractive women.

Yeah, that's probably it.

one of the images originally in the post was a 'borrowed from the internet' of an attractive actress, they claimed it was an "engineer" on their staff. This was pointed out in the comments and they quickly removed the image. So while the author of the post brings up an interesting topic, he's clearly not being honest.

You can go to any tech conference and find attractive engineers and programmers of any gender.

My bad! Those are recruiters... :)

I don't think it's the fact that the women are intrinsically attractive, but rather the fact that they're consciously choosing the pose/makeup/lighting in order the emulate the design language of the adultFriendFinder-style ads. (It's not like the glamor-shot trend of the 80s was the result of some evolutionary genetic shift that made every woman temporarily look like that.) The fact that most of the copy could apply equally well to sex trafficking doesn't help much either.

> these (and others) are our real engineers that we have signed contracts with

> the photos of attractive women just give the entire thing a 'spam' feel

And this would be their point, the fact that people feel that way is a problem given that all advertising is mostly attractive people because that works better.

Ugh. What a mess.

I really don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, God, does it ever look bad. On the other hand, I glance at the two ads they're showing there, and my first impulse is "they slapped some stock photos of attractive women on there to give male viewers an endorphin kick." They're a far cry from the "look! boobs!" of Evony ads, but they also don't look like women ready for a day at the office. I know from the article that these are actual, working female engineers, but part of me wants to say that the ad designer obviously picked them for "sexy" as opposed to "professional," and that seems sleazy and sad. But on the other hand, who the hell am I to tell any professional how to dress or style their hair? But on the third hand, if I'm right it's not the fault of the engineers but of the ad designers...

Augh, I kinda feel like an asshole just for thinking about this.

> they also don't look like women ready for a day at the office.

Really? How do you judge that? Why do you say that?

I'm guessing ... Statistical inference? Sure, there are exceptions. But the [recognition that something is an] exception proves the [general validity of the] rule.

The OP didn't say "that woman is not qualified"; he didn't say he'd reject her for a position on sight; he just said that based on the picture, he would place a low estimate on her being qualified.

Essentially, their hair, makeup, clothing, and body language all suggest someone who's getting a glamour shot taken to me, and don't much resemble the women I work with and have worked with. And this is of course a hideously vague and completely subjective standard, and I really do worry that I'm being unfair.

Except.

Except that, when I wrote my first post, there were two people pictured in that article. Now there's only one. There's only one because someone in the comments pointed out that the first woman was not, in fact, an engineer employed by Toptal, but a actress whose glamour shot Toptal had swiped. Now, mysteriously, that comment is gone, there's only one woman in the article, and there's no mention of the edit.

So...I'm not as worried now as I was yesterday.

My thoughts exactly. The blonde in particular looks extremely similar to the kind of women in sleazy ads where the goal is to get you to think below the waist.

It's true that there are women could do just as well in engineering as in modeling. But using hot stock models to play on the worst tendencies of viewers is also a problem that debases a site, so I can completely understand why LinkedIn would not be okay with those ads, even though they happen to not be stock models this time.

> but they also don't look like women ready for a day at the office

They look like a few of the women that work in my office. What counts as "ready for a day at the office" from a headshot?

The problem with this kind of argument is that it is based on an inherently sexist worldview - that attractive women are good for nothing more than being attractive. Which is obviously bullshit.

Also I don't know where you all work but where I work engineers + 'looking professional' (however the fuck you even define that) barely ever mix.

I can understand completely why the ads were banned. Mind you, I'm female myself.

Most female developers simply do not look as 'picture-perfect' as the one Toptal decided to use in their ads or at least not at work.

That particular photograph looks too staged and is not particularly suggestive that it was shot to be used in a technical career context.

Toptal chose an outlier to represent the majority and that is dishonest to the user population targeted by the ad.

Florencia, the developer pictured in the ad should've supplied different pictures or the company should've asked for them itself, preferably pictures with more work-appropriate clothing, like a t-shirt, shirt or blouse of some sort.

I seriously doubt any female programmer goes to work in that sort of attire, not only it would be over the top in 99% of the cases, it would be damn uncomfortable.

When I worked at fashion startups in New York, women did wear outfits like this, including the engineers. The engineer in question is in Buenos Aires where both sexes tend to have a bit more flair.

I think this would fit the reserved 1% of the cases and would be perfectly acceptable and probably even encouraged. I imagine an otherwise wide gap in type of attire could create possible tension in the work group, of varied nature.

It could, but to me it looks to me like a normal outfit a 20 something woman would wear in Manhattan.

This reminds me of working with crotchety gen-X and above sysadmins. They complain about "hipsters" but the people they are talking about are wearing standard issue clothes from the mall that everyone in that age bracket wears. They don't realize that wearing a "JavaConf 1999" fleece, bat-belt, cargo shorts and Tevas is not what other people consider normal work attire.

Key point here: Fashion startup. I'm not trying to argue that women never dress like that anywhere else, but I think you've got a very skewed viewpoint.

I agree that it's probably not something a Cisco engineer would be wearing, but it seems like a normal 20-something outfit in Manhattan.

In many companies, developers have to dress "professionally", especially if they work in parts of the office where customers might show up. Where I work, t-shirts are not considered to be work-appropriate clothing, even for developers.

That's why I didn't stop at 't-shirt' and the other options I mentioned are approximately progressively more 'professional'.

While I do understand your point, I hope you understand that I was arguing in regards to the article's content and the position of that particular person, that of developer/programmer/etc.

They were/are not a receptionist, a member of the executive board or even account manager, all of which let's assume could wear that without issue at work.

Florencia's picture on her own profile is a bit more casual: http://www.toptal.com/resume/florencia-antara

Toptal chose an outlier to represent the majority and that is dishonest to the user population

I don't think this is a valid objection. Just about every print or video or TV ad I've ever seen (for any product or service) uses good-looking outliers to represent the typical user.

And in many cases, unlike this case, the models in the ads are ... actors. Not actual users (of cigarettes, or McDonald's, or Windows 8) at all.

So is it socially accepted or even expected to be dishonest in all situations then? :)

>"Most female developers simply do not look as 'picture-perfect' as the one Toptal decided to use in their ads or at least not at work."

That depends, I did some work in a place with a large contingent of developers from post-Soviet states. Every one of them, men and women dressed to the nines pretty much every day.

">That particular photograph looks too staged and is not particularly suggestive that it was shot to be used in a technical career context."

Does it really look any more staged than the typical technology advertising photo of a group of attractive, widely smiling people looking thoughtful or excited about the contents of an unseen display?

The picture on her actual toptal page would have been much better all around. http://www.toptal.com/resume/florencia-antara

I'm a female engineer, and easily get upset over stuff like this, but I can see why they rejected the ads...maybe banning was extreme, but those images really look like spam ads. While not particularly distasteful, generally men in ads like these are either doing something "businessy" or wearing a business suit, etc. to indicate the connection. I wonder if this would have happened if they showed less glamorous women in pictures where they were in the workplace, interacting with computers. etc.

The poster doesn't really seem to get it. They argue their male ads are the same - but then specifically mention glasses for some reason. I'm guessing the male pictures have a much more "professional" and less sexualized look to them. They should try to run ads with shirtless guys at the beach, and see if they get rejected then...

Edit: Wow, OK - follow the link to see the second engineer's profile : http://www.toptal.com/resume/florencia-antara The picture on her page there looks fun and realistic. I'd love to see that kind of photo on an ad! The fact that this developer is choosing this photo for herself and the company is instead very deliberately choosing a glamorous and sexy feel for the photos really doesn't do much for their credibility. Explicitly going out of their way to make photos like this - that the woman herself doesn't choose to represent herself with - and THEN crying sexism?

And second edit: If this company cares about female developers so much, how come all of the (decidedly very unglamorous) photos on their homepage are of men? Pretty much solidifies for me that they're using sexy pics to draw people in, and then showing the "real developers" once you get to the homepage...Yuck! And below, someone pointed out the first photo is an actress.

This is an excellent example of angry, prudish anti-sexism being sexist.

Americans need to get over themselves and recognize that sexuality and attraction are part of what makes life wonderful. Persistent sexual harassment and coercion are not acceptable. Appreciation and recognition of beauty are life affirming.

That said, I think the ads are in poor taste, not because they are women, but because they are quite obviously intended to be sexy. If it were a man in a tuxedo winking in the camera I'd feel the same way.

I don't think they should be banned. Toptal should eventually figure out they are getting horny men clicking on their ads instead of funded companies.

I think LinkedIn recognizing that the presence of women were the problem is abhorrent and they will be issuing apologies shortly.

I think I speak for all Americans when I say "no, YOU get over yourself." I suppose you believe gravity too?

http://xkcd.com/202/

I have no idea what you are trying to say for all Americans, but as an American, I'm pretty sure you're not speaking for me.

To those that think these look spammy - this is exactly the fucking problem. They are not spammy. It's just that spammy ads have been objectifying women on the Internet since, oh, forever...and now it's an improper association. I hope this gets sorted out real soon.

>ads have been objectifying women

in all kinds of media, before the Internet, since forever.

Those ads definitely look spammy, and I am sure the versions with men on them look spammy as well. They would look spammy with the pictures sliced off entirely.

The specific objection to the women's pictures is troubling of course. Hard to move my opinion of LinkedIn any lower than it is already though... Sleezebags being sleezebags... more at eleven.

Okay, but that's like complaining that spammers have made it so you can't say V1@gr@ in subject lines. In both cases, sure, its an inconvenience ... but what the hell were you trying to do with such an improbable string/picture in the first place? (Trust me the engineers in the picture were not chosen at random!)

Of course they're spammy: crappy hype words, generic pretty-girl image. Complete fluff in a simple-minded attempt to garner clicks. I don't see how this is deniable.

The person in the first photo was an actress. Now they removed it.

The person in the second photo is a web developer/designer without an engineer or major university degree, not sure if we should call her an engineer. At least it's a real profile and she works in the area, so it's a borderline case.

If these are the best examples they have, I'd really like to see the other not-spammy examples.

I found the first image! http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/suits-usa-network... (You can't hide form Google Images.)

She is Amanda Schull: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Schull

> Amanda Schull (born August 26, 1978) is an American actress and former professional ballet dancer. [... and studied journalism ...]

Great find, so this pretty much discredits their entire argument no? Ironically it makes them the sexists ones when they feel they need to use models rather then actual real life developers to sell their services.

Exactly, it's pretty pathetic they're turning the sexism argument around to benefit themselves when they were the ones guilty of it in the first place...Hope more information comes out and this company is called on it.

So Amanda Schull is a developer as well? "Now, mind you, these (and others) are our real engineers that we have signed contracts with."

Annnd again, their credibility is going down the toilet, that along with the fact that they keep claiming their male images are "no different" but refuse to show them.

Just wanted to use this to get some press for themselves, I guess, and it worked...

I just updated the wiki to add she's an awesome developer.

It would be interesting to make the male equivalent of this ad. Would we find it equally offensive to have an attractive man in cocktail attire in an engineering ad?

My guess is it would be seen as weird but not a bannable offense.

This is crazy! Comparing Florenica Antara's photo from her TopTal page (http://www.toptal.com/resume/florencia-antara) to the one they posted you can see that they did use the more glamorous image (or she provided that one to be used). So what! Using glammed up photos is standard professional practice. The photo they used is not sexy or exploitative any way.

One argument against it (as pallandt mentions) is that such people are outliers, i.e. it's probabilistically unlikely to have a female developer dressed in that outfit. Apart from the fact that this hypothesis is scientifically untested (there may be some truth to it), how does it make it any different than, say, the other practice of using "she" to refer to a common coder (the chance of a randomly picked programmer to be female is much smaller than male). No one I know complains about that!

There's no possible way this is the same LinkedIn that puts up thumbnails of female users and then tries to tease me into a Premium account with the good 'ol "wondering who's been looking at your profile?" sales trick?

It can't be.

This is a little odd, but reminds of a project at work. I work at a face recognition company and we had a worked a bit on an attractiveness estimator. I argued that one of the uses would be for times when you actually wanted somebody plain rather than attractive (assuming you were filtering stock images for an advertisement). I guess maybe this is one of them.

So a possible theory is that the images are being rejected because they are attractive?

The lady, while attractive, does look like she's headed to a cocktail party rather than work. Though it's not really my place to tell women not to dress up or "appear attractive."

Contrast it with her actual profile picture on the site, both are flattering but completely different in what they communicate.

I think there would have been a significantly smaller chance of rejection had they gone for the profile picture on the engineer's toptal page, not the "professionally" done headshot.

The toptotal link provided by the article doesn't really seem to help their case. Going down the bullet list provided:

Created WordPress themes

Developed HTML5 sites

Designed UI/UX for websites based on wireframes

Vectorized logos

Technologies: HTML5, CSS3, WordPress, jQuery

Directly managed my own clients

Supported clients throughout the entire site development process, including coming up with an idea, designing site architecture, wireframing, choosing a platform and development languages, and improving marketing techniques . Created HTML and CSS layouts, gave life to them with jQuery, and empowered them with a CMS.

Created designs in Photoshop.

Spliced designs into HTML/CSS templates.

Implemented Drupal, Joomla!, and WordPress templates. Customized and configured CMS's, including the positioning and styling of modules and components.

Technologies: HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, Joomla!, WordPress, Drupal

I'm sorry, but to me, it seems like she hasn't done any software engineering, and has, at best, implemented hodgepodge jQuery (written by other people). I think it's dishonest to refer to her as an engineer, and 'front-end developer' or just 'web developer' would be much more appropriate. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm going off the job titles at my places of employment (both current and former), and what I see on job listings.

I'm sure that they have placed PLENTY of female software engineers who actually write and maintain software on a daily basis. They just aren't as attractive, which is why they don't use their picture.

Where do you draw the line between front-end developer and engineer? If you write a hello world, you are writing software. WP themes are a mess and they require a lot of PHP code.

Oh, I see, jQuery and PHP aren't real programming, she doesn't spend enough of her day designing schemas or building iPhone apps or whatever your arbitrary definition of real engineering is?

First of all, real engineers design bridges and machines, and when they screw up, people can die. What does that have to do with whether she is fit to appear in an ad? Why does being attractive disqualify her?

Your post is disgusting and made no more appropriate by your use of a throwaway account.

And, as you say on your website doing "project and brand management, public relations, advertising campaigns, publishing and event management [...] mostly in the video games and computing industry" puts you in the position to determine who is an engineer and who isn't?

Or you are just in a mood to troll a little bit those of us who for a small fee deal with this mess that the web development is to protect others from horrors of doing it?

I've never been to Argentina, where the developer in question is from. However, I've lived in 5 different international cities this year, and in at least 3 of them (Bangkok, Tokyo, and Kyiv) I have noticed that women professionals put a lot of time and effort into their appearance, including hair, makeup, clothing, jewelry, and accessories. Yes, this includes sci/tech personnel.

As another noted, those working in the fashion/beauty industry in the US - including those in IT - do the same. I'm not making any value judgement here, but I think we should open our minds to other cultural perspectives since that appears to be at work here.

What I don't like about this is that Toptal agreed to the terms.

"Our COO went ahead and said we promise not to show any females in our advertisements"

That reminds me of the saying: "Sitting on two chairs with one ass." You can't make a write up saying how insulting and how much you disagree with LinkedIn's advertising policies only to later agree to their terms. That's like an activist complaining about the way McDonalds treats their cows before ordering a burger. If your employees are offended, stand up for them by telling LinkedIn they can go f* themselves.

I think you'd be able to present a better argument if you can show us the images of the male versions. You claim "our male versions are no different", but I think in such a case you should be absolutely transparent. That way, the whole story is laid out and we can see if the pictures are very similar except for the sex, then yes there is sexism on LinkedIn's part or if the images are obviously different and it's valid for LinkedIn to be suspicious. That way we aren't forced to take your inherently biased word (no offence meant).

I think this whole thing could have been avoided if Toptal had images that were obviously related to engineering. Model portfolio type images (female or male) of employees isn't the best image to use when you're not a modelling agency, but a development agency.

Check out their home page - male headshots there seem ahem "different".

The images look reasonable to me, and I'm a female software engineer. Sure, she's wearing an interesting top (it could be a dress, but could also just be a nice blouse), but it's nothing beyond what I might wear to work. She's wearing the tiniest bit of makeup, very discreet and professional. And her facial expression is fairly neutral -- there's nothing especially sexy in it. Banning the account seems uncalled for.

Invoice in binary? $0110110001 per hour? That's $433. The whole thing is weird.

The second photograph is of Florencia Antara, Argentina. From her profile : http://www.toptal.com/resume/florencia-antara

  > Education
  > 2008 - 2009
  > Web Programming degree in Master's
  > IT Master - Buenos Aires, Argentina

  > 2005 - 2007
  > Bachelor's degree in English Translation
  > Catholic University of Argentina - Buenos Aires, Argentina

An Engineering or Computer Science degree in Argentina last 5-6 years. She isn't an Engineer, so it's misleading to for an article titled "In Defense of Female Engineers ", that says

> Now, mind you, these (and others) are our real engineers that we have signed contracts with.

(Note: She apparently specialized in web development/design and has many projects. Probably she has enough work experience to do the work correctly.)

I posted a comment here yesterday in which I was deeply conflicted and felt like kind of an asshole even for that.

Yesterday, there were pictures of two women in that article.

Today, there's only one. Because someone in the comments pointed out that the first woman was not in fact a Toptal-employed engineer, but a glamour shot of a professional actress. Now, she's mysteriously vanished from the article and Toptal is moderating their comments.

So, look, I'm just going to say it: LinkedIn was 100% right, Toptal is trying to sex up their professional ads with completely irrelevant pictures of hot women, and when they were called on it they threw a sanctimonious hissy-fit and made themselves out to be innocent victims of sexism, the hypocritical sexist fucks.

And it worked. LinkedIn has given them their ads back.

I deeply regret ever defending Toptal. I just hope that none of this causes problems for the remaining woman in the article, who actually is an engineer and bears no guilt for Toptal's bullshit on her behalf.

They did, in fact, end up deleting my comment, banning my Discus account from posting, and in fact all comments pointing out that an actress was used initially are now gone.

So, so sad. Their credibility on this issue is pretty much gone now. I wish that anyone going to that page would get a fair view, but it looks like that's not going to happen.

Update - looks like they've since removed the image that showed the actress, to numerous comments on the blog asking them about it...I wonder if they'll end up deleting my comment, or the comments about the actress photo and removal as well? :/

Regardless of your opinion on the adverts and whether they should be allowed or not, they're pushing it being surprised that they got banned.

> After a couple hours we logged in and simply re-enabled all of the disabled ads, including the female ones. In a few more hours, they were all approved, and continued to run smoothly… until a bigger issue arose.

Either take the hit or try and win the argument, if you just ignore the decision like they did then what could they have expected would happen?

What I can't get my head around is who the hell complains about a female image beside an ad online? Someone needs to get a life.

LOL. Now they removed all the comments mentioning Amanda Schull. How classy.

Just noticed this myself - and I'm banned from posting there again. Really helps their case, huh?

Is there a reason this story was removed from the front page?

LinkedIn probably banned them in order to prevent sexism.

I don't get why there is a photo at all.

Toptal is moderating and deleting any comments that aren't in support of their twisted publicity stunt, but here's my open letter to their CEO.

Taso,

Your vociferous moral crusade against LinkedIn has highlighted a few equally disturbing issues with Toptal. Trusting everything you've written here, I'm hoping you can explain why Toptal operates antithetically to your claims of defending female engineers and "regular professional women."

First, your site raises question -- what women?

- Toptal's homepage features 10 images of its tech professionals. Not just engineers, but specific titles like Django Developer and Security Specialist. 0 are women.

- Toptal's team page features 9 employes and investors. 0 are women.

- Toptal's blog features photos of its 10 latest post authors. 0 are women.

- Toptal's 2-minute homepage video features "clients like Mark and developers like Andrew," and cartoons of characters dressed in everything from business to scuba suits. I counted over two dozen of them, but let's say 21. 0 are women.

Out of 50 -- FIFTY -- featured Toptal employees, investors, engineers, developers, specialists, clients, bloggers and candidates... 0 are women.

Professional women are just as offended when tech companies sex-up their images to promote their products as they are when their images are excluded all together. Between Toptal's ads and website, women are either 1). as attractive as professional models, or 2). don't exist at all.

Second, why should we believe you?

Searching toptal.com for any support for female technologists, or even a mention of women, woman, female, girl, diversity, etc. reveals 0 results prior to this post. In fact, Toptal's only discussion of women is in a blog post you wrote about how Toptal built "The Ultimate Remote Culture" by organizing a four week long company trip to Thailand. Not only are there no women, but you publicly label your employees' female partners "The Problems" and shamed one employee for returning to his family after two weeks away. I'll let your views speak for themselves below:

"The Problems The second problem almost brought the trip to a halt. Actually, this particular problem can often bring the whole world to a halt. What could it be? Any guesses?

Girlfriends. Or wives, in some cases. That’s right. Most of the girlfriends (especially the Russian ones) were not okay with their significant other going away for more than two weeks, much less four. One of our engineers (whose name will go unspoken) was such a victim, and could only stay for the first half of the trip. Pretty much every single attendee asked if they could bring their girlfriend/wife for at least a week. But, alas, this was a company event, and the answer was no. Everyone acquiesced and, in the end, the biggest hurdle was surmounted." http://www.toptal.com/remote/the-ultimate-remote-culture

If this is how Toptal feels about women, it seems the only thing we need defense from, is you.

Thank you for researching / posting / emailing that :)

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