Er, What? – Alibaba Posts Job Ad for Female Programmer

Yeah, this is gross and sexist. It's insulting to women, but it's also insulting to the programmers.

I'd be a insulted if my manager hired ANYONE as an "official encourager" for my position. Praise means very little to me when it's someone's job to give it.

Quality employees who take pride in their work want the respect of people they respect. A good leader has the respect of their co-workers, earned through competence, and takes time to praise good work. This position should already be handled by someone the programmers look up to.

If they're lacking people worth respecting who can give praise they have much bigger problems that a supreme beauty can fix.

I suppose that hackers having a social (sexual?) life outside of work is a huge time management issue at Alibaba.

It's pretty fascinating that they are willing to solve that problem in such a straightforward and explicit way.

I mean you have Googlers eating, dressing themselves, and even sleeping at Google... What's missing after that, one might ask...