Comment by throwaway_1114 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway_1114 | Hacker News Reader

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I worked at a place that is discriminatory and has hostile attitudes against men -

1) a team I was previously on had two open headcount. I knew a friend of mine that would have been a perfect fit for the role. I suggested my friend and was told that they weren't considering men or non-diverse candidates. I'm a mixed Latino and was told this from a white man

2) a government grant was given to businesses impacted by covid, and our business assisted with this. Preference was given to women and minorities. White men were held in a queue. Eventually a lawsuit was filed by white men claiming discrimination and the court stopped the program. Dozens of people in my company Slack were furious that the white men held up money disbursement because of their "racism". This was the narrative for weeks

3) there have been official mandates to interview minorities (non-white, non-Asian men) before anyone else (is this even legal?)

4) in an effort to combat wage discrimination against men, women are paid more on average than men in respective wage bands. This is announced quarterly and celebrated

5) women get special groups, off sites, and classes paid for by the company. woman and minorities get special coverage, special interest stories, community highlights, and praise. white and Asian males do not unless they are LGBT

6) a female colleague of mine (who I like as a friend) is an extremely low performer. We've all had to pick up the slack from her, and at times I've had to explain things repeatedly that I'd fail candidates in interviews for. she's never been given a negative performance eval, yet a collage who went through a bad quarter got fired

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edit: flagged, which is disappointing. I'm not anti-women or anti-minority. I am a minority on the race and sexuality dimensions. why isn't my experience valid?

> Preference was given to women and minorities.

I directly know of an international financial institution (that probably most of the HN-ers have heard of) telling my SO's company, "off the record", that they would prefer to have a woman engineer assigned to their IT contracting position (my SO works for a IT services consulting company). One of my friends works for a FAANG company and he told me that a woman was directly chosen over a man for a promotion only because she was a woman, the man had higher credentials and had done more for the company than said woman but in the end that wasn't enough. I'm from Europe, where things have not gotten so out of control as in the States, so I suppose over there these cases happen even more often.

I'm putting aside whether this telling is accurate, or whether this happened or not (given it is a throwaway).

Just answering the questions about legality:

1: 100% illegal. Any FAANG manager has likely had to go through hiring training that stresses this point.

3: 100% illegal.

4: Might be illegal under Federal law if this is a blanket policy, definitely illegal under California law (most "equality"-type laws and programs are deliberately worded to be gender and race neutral).

A recruiter working for Google sued Google over point 1. Maybe that lawsuit was all lies, couldn't find anything about what happened with it later, but at least it isn't just a bunch of anecdotes.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wi...

I realize it's not helpful that I'm also posting as a throwaway (I unfortunately believe there's a chance being on the record opposing these programs could bite me in the future or really even now), but I hope it's a datapoint, to sister comment exbarrelspoiler as well.

My FAANG currently has 3 on the books in writing (it is called diversity slating), and has for periods of time ordered 1 verbally by vice presidents in certain organizations, that hiring is frozen but if a diversity candidate is found exceptions should be made.

You are correct with what the training stresses, my impression is that has little impact on the bigger picture that companies are shamed for not getting these numbers up so they turn every screw they can.

Probably because your story sounds dubious. Name and shame or forever hold your peace. You're posting from a throwaway account anyway.

I work at a FAANG and I've seen every single one of those except #4.

I've participated in hiring at 3 billion-dollar tech companies. Nearly all of them I've seen happen, always under the cloak of wink wink nudge nudge.

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