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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

"If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program."

This is like saying "I'd enjoy my success more without the Mortgage Interest Deduction unfairly advantaging me financially". Theoretically feasible, but in practical reality, uh no. If you're hacking it in a competitive environment and you have a life, you most assuredly have 1,000 more important/interesting things on your mind.

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You have to strive for the things you want in live, nothing is easy for anyone.

Do I want a better salary? a better job? yes. But I want a quality of life, I don't want to work long hours. So I wont have something better because I have other preferences in life. And I am ok with it.

Cool.

Completely inaccurate analogy. The MID is in the tax code available and given blindly to everybody who wants to apply for a house, not part of any human judgment on merit or ability.

A more relevant one would be whether brokers are now showing houses or discussing financing options differently to people based a perception of the person's identity group.

Apparently it's your hobby horse, but there's no reason an analogy has to adhere to the topic of identity politics. Few people give active thought to the advantages they're born into or receive throughout life - that the GP thinks people advantaged by hiring preferences would prefer to have been hired some other way is just a failure to comprehend human psychology. Unless they're writing a blog on the topic, most people are more busy with their jobs and lives to care about their hiring process.

I am a woman and do NOT want to be (or viewed as) a token diversity hire. It affects my job because it means I get less interesting work, in practical reality. Diversity programs mean that equally & highly qualified women operate under the cloud of an assumed diversity hire, and are thus, viewed as less-competent.

Are you working in a competitive field? I know and have worked with many women and minorities in highly competitive fields (medicine, engineering) where diversity programs were in effect and the idea that there's any kind of stigma or that they could be remotely correlated with a less competent team is simply a joke.

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