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Comment by PhasmaFelis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

> 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.

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