Is it okay to ask how many women are on the team I'd be working with? | Hacker News Reader

Is it okay to ask how many women are on the team I'd be working with?

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I wouldn't work in a team with a suspiciously high % of females. Nothing against female programmers per se, but if a company values my contributions less than a female's simply because I have a penis (which seems to be the case with most so-called "gender equality" programs) then I don't want to work for/with them.

So I'd say yes, it's okay to ask.

My experience with some so-called "gender equality" programs is that the company will try to value my contributions equally, even though I have a vagina.

I'm mortified that the "why is it important to you?" comment has so many votes.

Protip to men: if you find yourself being reflexively defensive whenever you have to think about gender equality in this industry, you're part of the problem.

You're assuming that it was defensive when there really isn't anything to suggest that it was other than your own bias.

Why do you believe a person asking the question is "reflexively defensive"? And what is "the problem" that the person asking is part of?

I don't think I'm the only one who can't understand what you are trying to say. Could you carefully explain your thoughts in detail, making your assumptions and values more explicit?

That comment served no productive purpose toward answering the question. Even if the response were "because I hate men", the original question would stand: is it OK to ask if there are any other women on the team? Yes, of course it is.

It was plainly made to imply that the asker is being somehow unreasonable for even caring about the question at all.

Asking the motivation behind a question is often helpful in solving the underlying problem. For example, a junior programmer I was working with once asked me how to store arrays in Postgres. I asked why she wanted to, and a non-answer was the most useful reply: "CREATE TABLE a_many_to_many_b ( a_id BIGINT REFERENCES(a.id), b_id BIGINT REFERENCES(b.id))." (Skipping indices, constraints.)

In any case, I'll ask again - could you lay out your reasoning in more detail? I really can't figure out how you determined this implication of the question, what "the problem" (as you perceive it to be) is or why you believe it was "defensive".

Of course it is not OK to ask that. Would it be OK to ask "how many Asian people is there on the team"?

If you were asian? Yes, absolutely. This is a woman asking how many women are on the team. It's completely relevant to her interests.

Bullshit. Would you also argue that it's okay to ask how many white men work there if you were a white man? If it is a job where things like race, gender, age etc have no effect on the work itself, any of those questions are completely inappropriate regardless of who is asking.

> think about gender equality in this industry

Yes, I have given it the same thought as `gender equality in kindergarten`, `gender equality in prostitution` and `gender equality in the military`.

> you're part of the problem

People who keep insisting that tech needs women are part of a problem that's for sure.

As far as I know anybody has the chance to sit down and code, last time I checked women were not banned from coding.

I'm a woman and I totally understand why another woman would want to know that. And when I've been part of an interview panel, the panel was asked that. I responded that we have a mix of genders and ethnicities.

On the flip side, I've never asked that when interviewing for a position myself, though I've always been curious; I just assumed that asking would blow my chances of getting the job. I've always assumed that the team would probably be all male. And that it could be OK for me either way, depending on the personalities and attitudes of the team.

I'm a woman and I totally understand why another woman would want to know that.

Could you explain why?

I became curious after timr pointed out a comment asking about this.

I've worked on a number of teams that were all male - other than me, of course. In some cases, I had no issues related to the fact that I'm female. In other cases, I encountered males who assumed that I was incapable of performing the job, simply because I was female - and told me so. And even when I proved myself as capable as them - or more - I was constantly challenged/tested verbally on my technical capabilities in ways that the males were not. A few people continually told me that I was hired/retained/promoted simply because I was female. . .even after I had proven myself to be as capable - or more - than they.

That's quite a mental/emotion drain that males on all/predominantly male teams don't face - at least regarding their gender. And since all/predominantly female teams are rare in tech, it's a situation that male techies will rarely, if ever face, or even need to contemplate - at least regarding their gender.

So, I would be curious because I would wonder if I might encounter sexism on the team - sexism at a level that would drain/distract me. Well, I never let it distract me, but it was certainly draining.

> That's quite a mental/emotion drain that males on all/predominantly male teams don't face - at least regarding their gender.

There are million other ways to give somebody a hard time. There are people who just want to be assholes, they can accomplish that even if you are white male.

> So, I would be curious because I would wonder if I might encounter sexism on the team - sexism at a level that would drain/distract me. Well, I never let it distract me, but it was certainly draining.

What about sexism from women towards men? is that okay?

I would say it's a sexist question during an interview, and might possible be illegal.

I don't think it'd be illegal (in the US anyways). AFAIK only the employer is legally restricted as to what questions they may ask. I believe a prospective employee may ask any thing they want. What the employer responds to a question with might be restricted though.

Can you just search linkedin and look around the office?

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