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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This is the real world. If I worked at a firm that I learned was doing this (for instance, because I was on the hiring committee, saw the resume feed, and noticed women weren't getting interviews), I'd blow the whistle. If we got evidence that a company was actively pursuing a strategy like this, they'd be a pariah overnight. Team members would quit. Every job ad they posted would be accompanied by comments and catcalls. Candidates would be embarrassed to consider jobs there. A huge fraction of the best-qualified candidates would select themselves out of consideration.

You'd have to be a comprehensively incompetent manager to allow this to happen at your company.

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Conversely, given that the whistle is not blown at most tech companies, team members aren't quitting, and job ads are not accompanied by catcalls, we can conclude that discrimination is rarely/never happening in the tech industry.

That's the probabilistic converse of your claim. Do you endorse it? If not, why not?

I don't think it was implied that a particular form of hiring funnel discrimination was the only form of discrimination in tech.

What forms of discrimination does tptacek's argument not apply to?

Is there some reason that irrational taste-based discrimination would not trigger candidate embarrassment and self-selection, but rational lawsuit-fear based discrimination would? (More precisely, rational in a world where tptacek's hypothetical perfect market self-regulation mechanism did not apply, but irrational in such a world.)

a world where women are hired but not promoted? Or where the discrimination falls under the heading of "culture fit" instead of explicit policy? Or even where women are hired and promoted equally, but otherwise treated like shit in the office?

Why would non-promotion or "treated like shit" not trigger the negative consequences tptacek proposes? Would he and his fellow travelers not blow the whistle, quit or catcall their job ads?

What's perceived as discrimination varies. Society at large disapproves of discrimination, so everyone believes "it's not me". It's harder to pretend something as overt as a policy against hiring women is anything but discrimination, as opposed to "just having fun" or "random chance".

> What forms of discrimination does tptacek's argument not apply to?

Job ads that say let's bro down and crush some code? (Generally speaking if women are a small percentage of the applicant pool, it would almost certainly be the case that the optimal hiring funnel makes you more likely to hire a given man than a given woman.)

That would be discrimination on the part of the female applicants, not on the part of the employer. The woman is not hired because she chose not to apply, not because she was rejected by the employer's choice.

Just like how black people discriminate between businesses that have "whites only" signs in front and businesses that don't.

The kind of discrimination alluded to upthread? No, I do not think it's common. That's my point.

What kind of discrimination (if any) do you believe can be common without triggering the negative consequences you describe?

I ask because you seem to be describing a world in which discrimination basically can't exist due to market self-regulation - i.e., all our industries problems are basically solved, which seems to differ from your usual position.

With apologies, I do not believe you are discussing this in good faith, and I think the distinction I am drawing is clear enough.

Just respond with a clear answer if there is a distinction. Don't resort to ad homs.

Fwiw I think the parent of your comment asked a very reasonable question and it's not really clear what distinction you are drawing from your GP comment.

That was a beautiful deflection. Your career is in politics tptacek.

Your second sentence is more hostile than needed.

One of the reasons I ask Tom these questions that he is one of the more rational folks on HN, particularly on other issues. It's pretty clear that he realizes he made a mistake, hence the deflection. Making a mostly rational person feel attacked is only likely inhibit their logical mind.

The parent seemed to be describing a world in which that specific and blatant form of discrimination can't exist, not all forms of discrimination.

Hence my question - what kind of discrimination can exist in such a world?

Not the kind where a board of wangbangers sit in their castle surrounded by scantily-clad ice sculptures and give toasts "to female misery," believe it or not.

Don't get me wrong, but that is easy to say when you are you ;)

Most folks need that paycheck and don't live in the magical Bay Area where they find jobs laying in the street when they go for a stroll.

I personally would think about moving to a different company if that was the case, but I wouldn't make a fuss about it as I wouldn't know what the future lies ahead of me and who I'll meet in future companies (burning bridges and all that)

While bias is a big issue, so is individual manager bias (two+ managers completely different evaluations from each) As I've mentioned before, it's all nice that companies are inclusive, etc., yet that does little to prevent managers from hiring people who agree with them and retroactively finding clever ways to fire people who disagree with them.

It's like Ellen Pao, to use an example. She was a great employee till the day she wasn't and then she became incompetent. And the best reason to use for fire someone is to have "no reason". Just because. Or they can retroactively find "reasons" if necessary.

The idea that we should be less vigorous in pursuing the rights of women and minorities because managers will retaliate by discriminating against them is a form of concern trolling. Yes, policy changes come with unintended consequences. But this consequence is especially unlikely and silly, because it is culturally taboo, overtly unlawful, and hard to conceal from employees.

It's not diversity should not be pursued at the expense of something else. It's that you also have to plug those other insidious holes while you're at it, else it's more show than go.

Great, you hire lots of underrepresented groups, but then you can just push them out and keep the grinder going.

This is the real world, in the USA, your particular city, in software engineering, software security.

Sure, it's still very commendable that you would do that, I can at the same time easily imagine other contexts where such actions would not have much of an effect and that's where the skepticism of the parent poster comes from.

Self-policing firms/whistleblowers is your solution for squashing discrimination?

It sounds like you and I have had rather different professional experiences.

It does indeed.

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