The Grace Hopper Celebration is meant to unite women in tech. This year droves of men came looking for jobs.
This comment section is a perfect example of how capitalists have won the class war. Such hatred for half of the population of the world that people seem to have forgotten that people need jobs to survive.
I would like to know which half of the population you think is receiving the hatred and which half of the population is lobbing it.
Yes that is very unclear in the last sentence. Same with the responses beneath it.
It’s a delicious free-for-all and I’m all for it
Divide and conquer is a strategy old as world
Seriously… no one should be blamed for trying to earn a living. Instead of being supportive of each other and fucking organizing in unions, we are fighting with each other.
Because the left is too busy playing identity politics rather than focusing on unions.
It’s just continual bigotry that creates more problems than it ever solves.
Identity politics always leads to ruin.
Very true. The downvotes you have earned shows just how out of touch this community can be.
Pretty sure Lenny’s user base is heavily male dominated.
I like how this comment section highlights why a job fair specifically not for cis men is needed lol
some of the comments here are downright scary. women can’t have a single thing, it seems.
And article makes it clear what is to blame
The nonprofit says it believes allyship from men is important and noted it cannot ban men from attending due to federal nondiscrimination protections in the US.
lol
Yeah, this sucks. It doesn’t surprise me, but it sucks. So many manchildren out there who only think about themselves.
Yeah if there’s ever a sign that a group doesn’t need representation is when they brigade someone who does.
Ignoring gender, are job fairs overrun by job seekers now? Is it that bad?
Tech is overcrowded as a field and it gets worse each year. So yes.
Sadly, the perception will always be that there aren’t enough workers in tech, or that there aren’t enough “good” techies, when that hasn’t been the case for many many years now.
While a lot of people do leave tech for management or other careers, bootcamps still sell the dream to make money, and people always talk about how “learning to code is so important to society”. There has been an effort in the last decade or so to flood the market with entry-level workers, that we’re now in a situation where people are spending thousands on qualifications, only to find it near impossible to get the job - or finding that no one gives a fuck where you went to college and that you need to “LC or GTFO”.
I left tech to go work in nuclear power. Best career change I could have made.
Yup qualifications are only one of the things we look at, and it’s way down the list. which college… who cares?
Show us an active github page, boast about how you installed lemmy whilst fighting off a herd of wildebeast… top of the list.
Fuck. I graduate next year in tech
From the title I thought this was an article about men driving vehicles into people at the job fair. I was slightly aghast that the discussion was only about whether or not it’s ok to have a job fair for women in tech.
The fact that it’s illegal for them to ban men because it’s considered gender discrimination kind of highlights the problem here.
How? If they make laws to stop discrimination you can’t exclude it protecting select groups. That’s just legitimizing discrimination as a form of corrective action for… discrimination…
Sorry I didn’t mean to imply I was supporting the idea of a career fair that discriminates against men. They problem was this one trying to get around the law by just making men feel unwelcome. The fact that there are laws that prevent them from just banning men should have clued them in that maybe it’s wrong
I don’t see the problem with the fair. Women are incredibly underrepresented in IT. Creating a space for them to join the industry or create connections seems healthy.
This sounds like the argument of rich white kids complaining about black kids getting the scholarships. If you want to balance an unbalanced system, you have to give incentives to the afflicted group.
I work in IT and I get at least 2 job offers every day in LinkedIn, why the F would I invade a women only fair to prove some point? Let them have something… It’s not like this will affect men in the industry.
Specifically disregarding someone in favor of someone else based on discrimination is wrong no matter how you look at it. As long as these companies are evaluating all applicants fairly these women would have the same opportunity as anyone else. I’ve worked in IT for 20 years and while there are fewer women we also see fewer woman applying. Out of those that apply I’d guess a higher proportion are hired on than of the male candidates just because they typically present themselves better than a lot of the men. I’ve never seen anyone turned down because of their gender.
So prefacing this with specifying I am Trans masc, former tech support person. Now in another male dominated career. I was read unambiguously as a woman during my time in the field and the number of times I picked up a phone and had someone ask me to put them through to a male tech was astounding. It doesn’t really matter if your employer is willing to hire you if you are treated like a second class citizen by the average person in the job. I lasted about three years before I left and trashed all hopes of ever applying for anything in the field ever again. The number of women folk who dip their toes into the entry-level and then decide that they can’t deal with the added mental health issues of being treated like a child or an idiot by default for the rest of their working life keeps a lot of women out of a lot of fields. Even if you are passionate about the thing the additional wear on your psyche will burn you out faster.
My new field has a different issue. It’s very nepotistic so people tend to hire their friends first. Being incredibly competent only earns you the fourth or fifth spot on a crew of about six or seven people. If you are a male crew boss and your friend base is overwhelmingly male and you hire the people you feel most comfortable around then unthinkingly about 50 percent of the most secure jobs go to your male friends. Women, incredibly competent ones, tend to bounce around our industry, a lot get stuck as temp labor. Female leads are rare as are those who get the secure crew spots despite the total numbers at the hall telling us 40 percent of the hall roll is female. It doesn’t matter if the bosses aren’t actively trying to discriminate against women because they are just hiring people they like to work with, in the end none of that matters if you are a woman because regardless of the intent in the hearts of the crew bosses you are still stuck having to be incredibly competent just to fight for the leftover scraps.
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This is the argument made against affirmative action as well, but what I conveniently never see mentioned in these comments is how even with these extra steps to get women and BIPOC into underrepresented fields, often when equally qualified people submit their resume for a role in the larger field (outside of your company) a equally qualified white man has a greater chance to get the role than a black woman. I have a hard time thinking the system is discriminating against me, when objectively it isn’t.
I’ve been hiring a long time and I’ve never seen two candidates that were perfectly equal. Especially after going through the interview process and having a chance to speak to them and see how they carry themselves. I obviously can’t speak for every company but at mine we don’t even see demographic information when reviewing applications. I couldn’t select for race/ethnicity if I wanted to.
We quickly posted the jobs but also told our teams that we were hiring and to let their friends know. Nearly half the applications where from Hmong people, because several people working for us were Hmong and they put the word out in the Hmong community and suddenly half our workforce was Hmong overnight.
The same thing would happen if you had only spoken to women at a career fair and deliberately only hired women… The only fair way is to give everyone an equal chance to apply/speak to you. Like you said, get the word out everywhere not just to particular communities. With job sites and linkedin this is relatively easy. My company advertises on the radio/internet when we’re hiring as well.
Do you believe all discrimination is wrong?
Since it seems like you’re looking to trap me here, how about you just go ahead and say what type discrimination you don’t think is wrong. When I said discrimination I was referring to the protected classes probably should have been more clear about that. Obviously there are traits that can make a person unsuitable for a job. I, for instance, as a short only moderately athletic man, should not be hired on to play for a professional basketball team.
There it is with the “white” again.
This is keeps popping up.
People are talking about genders then all of a sudden sudden someone says “white”
It’s almost as if people are running out of ideas and are attempting too flog to dead horse of identity politics.
Here’s an idea: if your solution to a problem involves treating half the population like shit and telling them to shut the fuck up then maybe your solution isn’t a good one.
Identity politics people need to understand that just because you had have identified a problem doesn’t mean your solution is a good one.
I think most of the discussion is that a job fair created to rectify discrimination, is complaining in an article that they can’t discriminate
🙄
its mostly complaints that people are being disrespected, if you read the article: pushing, shoving, etc.
“But what about the paradox of tolerance!”
Nawwwe bro, not interested.
You can’t pretend that comparative history has no impact on the present. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
I can’t wait for this to be posted on Hacker News, get 5 of the worst techbro libertarian nonsense comments, get 3 angry SJW replies to those techbros, then dang shouts at the SJWs about tone, rate limits them, then flags the article off the site.
/it me, I’m the SJW.
Accurate lmao
No one wants to work anymore!
The mating call of terrible managers everywhere…
We call em “effective managers” nowadays, of course with note of sarcasm in voice)
I prefer “affective managers” as in “that managers attitude has affected employees desire to work here”
Purely commenting on the TikTok and not the article:
“… career fair aimed at women and non-binary tech workers…” and then there’s a TikTok that says “A conference for (wo)men by women” and “the allies are totally allying”
So do only female presenting nonbinary people count?
(I know if you read the article that it says there was an increase in the number of self identifying males but how would the TikToker know that? The TikToker is just looking at the crowd and assuming that the place is overrun with men without actually checking if they’re NB.)
That doesn’t seem like a job fair for women, but rather a job fair for everybody except men…
Correct. Since you can’t tell if a person in enby by looking at them this is just a bunch of bigots getting mad that enby and trans people were present. Terfs gonna terf i guess.
I think that’s heavily implied. But they’re not legally allowed to say that
I imagine there were many 8 year old spending hundreds of dollars on a ticket.
You actually think there’s the slightest possibility that a meaningful fraction of the men there are actually ftm trans people?
People in the comments: Discrimination is bad! (Except when it’s against a group of people I don’t like)
It’s a shame these people can’t understand the flaw in their logic. More discrimination is not the answer.
Imagine if this was a whites only or over 6ft tall job fair, this stuff just fails to make sense when you divide groups based on criteria you can’t control.
I want a job fair for short people. Fuck those lankies, too long have they towered over us short kings! #SetTheBarLow
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Discrimination, without context, is necessary in nearly every situation. I must discriminate between bleach and water if I am to live, I must discriminate between walking into fast traffic and when it is safe to cross the road etc…
On a softer level, I discriminate between who I call my wife, and who I don’t, which of my friends is named David and which is named Alex…
And then if I’m employing people I can’t give everyone a job, I have to discriminate to a single person per job.
So, with the taken that to do anything some level of common sense discrimination is needed. However, humans cannot be relied upon to not take discrimination to an unfair place, and people must be forced to discriminate fairly.
People also lie, and will straight up tell you to your face they do not discriminate against women from the moment they enter the workforce to their dying day, and yet will, in private, discriminate against women so hard even if it were to destroy everything they hold dear. The only way to prevent that is to force people to discriminate.
Discrimination != Choice
There are moments in life where you gotta choose something. There is no discrimination if you choose objectively. You choose water over bleach because there are objective reasons why one over the other will be better for you. You choose waiting for a green light over running onto a driving car because that is less likely to get you killed. If you cant give everyone a job you have to choose someone. If you choose purely based on qualities describing who will fit the position best like experience and knowledge that wont be a discrimination. There is no such thing as a fair discrimination
I know that, of course, I was using my initial points to set a frame of reference that the word “discrimination!” is a thought-terminating cliche.
This comment thread is a completely bad faith framing of the issue. Creating safe spaces for women in tech isn’t discrimination. It’s elevating a traditionally underrepresented demographic. Lemme guess, you guys talk a lot about divorce court right?
600 dollars for a ticket to a conference is creating a safe space for women?
I don’t know the last time I talked about divorce court. Maybe we should be using facts instead of guesses.
I think you’ve misinterpreted me. I’m saying that it’s not discrimination to force people to stop discriminating in favor of white men.
When did “white” come into it?
You want data and logic from someone who things that the government should legally force people to be bigoted?
race is one of the many topics facing HR professionals today
People can’t be trusted to hire correctly but they can be trusted to do a their job correctly? Say I was interviewing another engineer, you would argue that I can’t be trusted to do this task, but you presumably accept I can be trusted to do all other tasks associated with my job. Strange how I lose all ability to reason correctly the moment I walk into the conference room and regain it the moment I leave.
Hey if I stand in the door way will I be in a superposition state between bigoted and rational or will I be half of both at once or is it more like the Trinity? You know a mystery of the church…watch as the engineer is fully rational and fully irrational the two are separate but of same substrate.
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Hey if I stand in the door way will I be in a superposition state between bigoted and rational or will I be half of both at once or is it more like the Trinity?
Noticed you didn’t actually answer the question.
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Given that you made specific claims about people in general you can hardly fault me for wanting to know some of the details.
Exactly what part of the interview process do I become magically irrational and what happens if I linger in that exact location? Sounds pretty straightforward.
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Most of the problems mentioned in the article seemed to be problems with the convention organization and not the attendees.
I believe you mean ADMIRAL Grace Hopper
While getting more women interested in natural science and tech is an important issue, the current approach in the States isn’t working, and one of the major point in you-know-what is that despite the aggressive, well-intentioned push of female representation in traditional male dominated industries in fictional media(it does go too far sometimes), it does not seem to translate into the real world, ans enforcing a female only job fair also seems also well intentioned but unhelpful, because ultimately, you can’t force people to like something.
It’s troubling, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution to this.
Oftentimes what these events actually are for is more about solidarity than recruitment. One of the issues with male dominated fields is that oftentimes they are exhausting to participate in when you are treated as an outsider. Having a community space where people can get together and talk shop, ask frank questions about culture from recruiters and gather strength from visibly seeing other people doing the same thing you do can give a sense of not being so alone.
That and a lot of women require a lot more data on how they compare before they feel like they are actually a viable candidate. They are sort of trained into an almost crippling idea of modesty and more social anxiety in general so a lot of them will only apply if they solidly fit the listed requirements. When they utilize a dialogue based recruitment space they can gain confidence that small missing bits of listed experience desired on their resume don’t fully discount them from being a candidate for a job and gets more of them to apply. Women lean on pack tactics more than men do so these sort of events actually fufill a lot of secondary objectives than just on the day hiring.
Curious where you think it goes to far?
Maybe excluding people based on gender in order to fulfil some ideological fantasies about how the world should be?
well-intentioned push of female representation in traditional male dominated industries in fictional media(it does go too far sometimes),
I think they mean what she means by going too far in fictional media representation.
Cullen White, AnitaB.org’s chief impact officer, said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, that some registrants had lied about their gender identity when signing up, and men were now taking up space and time with recruiters that should go to women. “All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said. AnitaB.org did not respond to a request for comment.
Who picks their gender identity? The individuals or Cullen White? If anything this underscores the insanity of identity politics. If gender is whatever an individual feels like, then this event was just thousands of women and non-binary folks, and White needs to stop being such a bigot. However I think most of us understand that this is nonsense.
"an increase in participation of self-identifying males”
These aren’t guys who claim transgenderism or non-binary identity, these are men.
Gender is what an individual feels like: and it’s a consistent feeling regardless of their circumstances.
Nobody in good faith argued that your gender changes at the drop of a hat or whenever convenient. The transgender people I know have experienced significant suffering for decades due to a mismatch in feeling vs societal impositions.
White isn’t being a bigot: you are with your terf talking points. Fuck off.
These aren’t guys who claim transgenderism or non-binary identity, these are men.
They didn’t poll anyone already at the conference. There were no genital checks at the door. This is Cullen White making a prima facie observation of people who present as men and claiming they “lied about their gender identity when signing up.”
It sounds like both you and White feel entitled to dictate to others their gender.
But how did they know the people lying about their identity were actually lying? That’s what I was left wondering. Hopefully it’s not just based on what the organizers assumed because that’d be (while admittedly funny) quite contrary to what I assume they want to advocate for.
I read the article but didn’t see it clarified. Dunno if they clarified in the video
If gender is whatever an individual feels like, then this event was just thousands of women and non-binary folks,
The event could be “thousands of women and non-binary folks”. Did all these male-presenting people identify as women or non-binary just to be able to attend this event?
What do you think identity politics is, exactly? Just a way to make changes you don’t like to make you unhappy? It couldn’t possibly be about people trying to make social changes so they’re not constantly treated like shit. Oh no. The horror.
To the casual observer, identity politics seems to be a bunch of people competing to see who can put the most minority group names and acronyms in their social media profiles.
The event could be “thousands of women and non-binary folks”. Did all these male-presenting people identify as women or non-binary just to be able to attend this event?
According to their Chief Impact Officer, yes. Apparently they “lied about their gender identity when signing up.”
What do you think identity politics is, exactly?
Performative politics centred around identity. White is perfectly happy to pretend that men can be women - until it impacts him.
if yall are going to a job fair at least don’t be assholes about it.
ITT: men who can’t ever admit they might be the problem. So many excuses here it’s pathetic.
edit: I love the “not all men” and “not me”. As always, it’s not all men. But it’s enough. And the men here getting so defensive really prove the point. And before anyone gets into it, it’s not really the sex or gender. It’s the societal expectations and allowances that encourage men to engage in abusive shit like we see in the article here. I.e. the patriarchy and those who support it.
Can you expound on that statement?
It sounds as if the organizers were too quick to take the $650 from attendees and those willing to pay were very eager to pony up the cash in the hope of networking.
Great Parks and Rec episode
It’s abusive to checks notes apply for a job?
It’s abusive to invade women’s spaces as a man looking to take advantage. Stay out.
Oh look, you’re all up in this thread a day late posting his horrid takes.
The organization says it welcomes men’s allyship and participation though
Well, it seems to be considered abusive to have a men’s space at all, and if there is one, women are downright encouraged to invade it.
The horrid tale is hating men for trying to get a job.
Problem for what?
I exist, I need a job to live, I have job, I try my best not to be an asshole, I fight (and vote) for a better society, for social and civil rights.
Why exactly I - since I am a man I feel included in your statement - should be THE problem?
I try my best not to be an asshole
Maybe people are getting too in the weeds with this because muh culture war
But it is an asshole move to show up to an event meant for one group of people when the original issue is how over represented your group is. I’m a developer. The grind sucks. But I would be an asshole to show up to this.
I would be an asshole to show up to this.
That’s the part I really don’t get. If you’re cis male looking for a job, do you really think crashing this event is going to reflect favorably on you and that you’d be more likely to land a job? People are going to look at you and think that you have good judgment and won’t be a problem at all? What the heck is the thought process that makes this a good plan?
I assume most tech bros have a mental form of tinnitus going on in their brains in lieu of thoughts. Just a constant bzzzzzzzzzz
But it is an asshole move to show up to an event meant for one group of people when the original issue is how over represented your group is. I’m a developer. The grind sucks. But I would be an asshole to show up to this.
If I was out of job, I would honestly care less about the fact that “my group” is over represented. There is no white male lobby that pays my mortgage. That said, I - as in the actual me - would not go to such event either, but that’s also because I wouldn’t go to any job fair atm since I don’t need a job.
I would honestly care less about the fact that
Sure, that’s what makes people behave like assholes. “I don’t care about X” is why we have a pretty shitty world in many areas.
This is pure rhetoric, I can flip the argument:
“You care more about the gender than about my material condition.”
Also, the moment I need to let prevail abstract concepts over my material condition (i.e., caring about “my group” being over represented while I am out of a job) is the moment in which the class unity is broken. Me and those women who are out of a job have so much in common that there is no reason for me to consider us part of two separate groups. That’s the whole point of my argument, I advocate for worker solidarity and I absolutely feel that this attitude is overall harmful for it.
I don’t agree. I can be at a disadvantage and still accept that another group has even greater disadvantages that I would continue or make worse by stepping into something they built. Its freeloading in a pretty assholish way. I’m not just some animal trying to get a nut with narrow focus that says fuck everything else. I can job search and find my own opportunities without freeloading
When the economy starts to falter an unemployment rises, people attend job fairs at higher numbers. More at 10.
