Comment by afroboy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by afroboy | Hacker News Reader

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I just discovered that where i work (Algeria) there is hidden rule in hiring new devs that wasn't known publicly it's simply no women, seriously i work with 20 men for more than two years and i just discovered that our head of recruitment doesn't hire woman at all no matter how she's talented because of so many reason most of them are racist but kind are hard to argue with him like if woman get married she will stop working and yes like 70% of this happened all time when women get married her husband will force her to stop working, even if she doesn't when she have kids she start working less hours i mean like 50% less and the big reason that they can't handle pressure at all specifically if production server is down she simply get cracked down and where i live woman never work full time never that is like freaking problem and they never work for additional hours (despite we pay for those hours). so if he invest in woman she's going to get him like 30% productivity of men.

In a free market such companies would be at disadvantage versus the ones who also attract top talent regardless of gender or race or any other demographic criteria whatsoever.

I disagree. With a large enough pool of applicants, you tend to get adequately talented people. If there were only 10 people who are capable to do what I am hiring for, I'd be at a disadvantage if I discriminated against men/women. But if there are 10 million such people, I can discriminate all I want and I'll still get acceptable results.

That's assuming an internal company culture couldn't be created based on shared understanding that would lead to competitive advantage. Eg, if you create a company with only black women, you may not necessarily get the very best individuals, but you could create a very unique culture. That culture could empower the whole team to work better with each other with the end result being a more productive team even though individuals may be less productive alone. It could also reduce turnover and increase job satisfaction, leading to less time spent training and cheaper and more productive overtime for the company.

Such a company could be at an advantage in a free market where there were no rules on employment discrimination.

I tend to use a simple method to analyze a post. Switch the races and genders around.

If in your post one would switch the term black woman into white man it would become "If you create a company with only white men.... you could create a very unique culture.". etc

That kind of post would cause a massive uproar for rather obvious reasons.

Yet it's interesting that these kind of posts don't.

Yeah, it's unfortunate and that kind of uproar doesn't do anybody much good. I chose black female on purpose for that reason, obviously, as it's acceptable to consider such things intellectually in today's world.

We've stopped discussing some key concepts just because it's not allowed anymore. I guess we need the bravery of enlightenment era philosophers once again - to stand up to social pressure in the name of open ideas.

May, could, would…

That's right! But the same applies the other way around. The argument that a company that doesn't hire that one guy because he's Malasian may allow your competitor to beat you in a free market is also very much a "may, could, would" scenario.

There's only one way to know: get a free market and see whether the companies that hires all Malasians or no Malasians or a mix of Malasians and non-Malasians comes out on top in aggregate.

(Malasians used as an example, not because of anything specific about Malasians. Feel free to replace with Lithuanians if you want. Although the specific cultures involved are probably very important. A culture that has a focus on technology and work ethic would likely beat out a culture that focuses on extended deep sea fishing when it comes to building a startup.)

Only if they could easily assess ability. It sounds like gender is a fairly reliable indicator of performance in Algeria, so it probably helps to just use it. They might miss some occasional great women but will save themselves from the majority of low performing ones. I'm not saying it's right to discriminate like this, just that it could be competitive to do so.

I don't think the myth of a theoretical "free" market holds any water and can be applied sensibly to any real world scenario. In the actual free market a giant megacorp would swoop all promising hires and suppress all competition by selling at a loss until nobody else dares to enter the field.

In actual free market selling at loss is a very short-sighted strategy: you may cause the bankruptcy of your current competitors, but bariers to entry are low, so once you raise your prices back to profitable levels the new competition arises. You would have to sell at loss most of the time which would eventually bankrupt your megacorp. That’s why monopolies can only exist in regulated markets.

Ever heard of natural monopolies? Railways?

How do you swoop all promising new hires if you have a free market? its not like all of them want to work in the same place and the same culture. Even right now we have tons of startups despite the existence of Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

By nipping competition in the bud and starting company towns. When you're an unregulated monopoly with no danger of anti-trust, lots of things are possible.

> unregulated monopoly with no danger of anti-trust, lots of things are possible.

It's far from being proven yet. Even with anti-trust laws, breaking out companies in smaller entities does not challenge their market position that much, and anti-trust laws have a nasty effect: they encourage companies which are close to monopoly to let a weak competitor survive just to say "hey, at least there is one competitor left so we are not a monopoly". It's just not working well.

no matter how she's talented because of so many reason most of them are racist

I don’t think that means what you think it means

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