catinahat
Joined 12 years ago
Karma
9
Submissions
7
Member since
May 29
Recent submissions
Comment · 12 years ago
If it's useful and the copy is meant to appeal to its target demographic, what's wrong with that? Clearly a lot of potential buyers seem to be appreciating the humor...
Comment · 12 years ago
Well, there is this:
> The main challenge comes when we actually do get a female candidate. We don’t discard a single one on resume. We see all of them. We discard about 80% of guys on resume. But even so, we get to see 4 guys to 1 girl or so. In the interviews, we help the girls shine, because we actually want to hire them, but then, one of the other 4 guys shows just an amazing performance, for whatever reason, truly impressive, like he has done many more things than the girl (and than the other candidates), can show more amazing code, personal projects, etc. And we think: “If the girl was a guy, she would not be on the race with this guy, just like the other male candidates are totally discarded now”. Should we let this amazing coding guy go? It’s not easy to find amazing coders either, you know?
source: https://startupsanonymous.com/story/hiring-girls-difficult-w...
And it makes sense that someone would vent such things anonymously or not at all, considering the skewering they'd get from the media if they even suggested anything of the sort publicly.
As someone who's experienced teaching programming classes for girls, I can wholeheartedly say that trying to recruit candidates who are actually interested in the area is quite difficult. The program I worked for eventually had to move away from being a 'programming' course, to more of a 'digital arts' course just so that we'd get enough applicants to justify continuing it. And this is in the bay area, the tech/liberal capital of the country. So I can totally see this happening in the workplace too.
Comment · 12 years ago
> But in the same way that Godaddy uses buxom female models to promote their products (which works well for them) and some people find that distasteful, I find this distasteful.
Bingo. I find it odd how many people here either seem to be missing your point entirely, or are just trying to be contrarian and '1-up' you by being saying it's effective' (virtually implying that it's therefore 'ethical'), when that wasn't even what you were arguing against to begin with.
If this were a post calling out godaddy about their usage of women (as per your analogy), then most comments here would probably be agreeing with you, but since it's something more 'controversial' and closer to what we as developers do for a living, then suddenly your actual point isn't as important anymore... I don't want to attribute it to a lack of 'self-awareness', but it is a bizarre phenomenon.
Whenever it's convenient, HN will always reliably argue against the use of 'morality' in arguments, because it's just so 'subjective', that it's not even worth bringing it up at all (which is just lazy critical thinking IMO, but oh well).
Comment · 12 years ago
and now your comment is in the grey with no explanation. It's absurd how downvote-happy HN's been lately, really kills the conversation...
Comment · 12 years ago
Trust me, your phrasing wasn't even bad -- the problem is literally just how sensitive the actual subject is (as I'm sure you've noticed). It's worse than debating race/politics/economy/etc, we just have to tread lighter than walking on eggshells when bringing up these matters in our society unfortunately.
And as you can see, this thread itself has already been flagged from the front pages as a result...
Comment · 12 years ago
Your sentiments aren't wrong, but your delivery is a bit cringe-worthy at times, and probably isn't gonna get a lot of respect (much less help the cause) as a result.
I highly recommend looking through Karen Straughan's youtube channel [0] to help you gather your thoughts on the matter and deliver arguments in a less 'potentially inflammatory' way; because like it or not, unfortunately this viewpoint is the underdog and is always met with heavy, emotionally charged criticism that doesn't look to understand the logic of the argument first.
Also, despite it's criticisms, the http://reddit.com/r/mensrights community is very diverse, understanding and well-reasoned -- unlike a lot of the old cliche misogynistic "No Ma'am"[1] MRA's of the 90's. So if you're looking for support from others who have shared and/or noticed your type of experiences (not just men!), it's a good place to hang out.
Also, here's a good intro to how people usually discover and fall into this rabbithole/problem that's pretty enlightening:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/24lqgf/came_here...
Hope that helps!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcmnLu5cGUGeLy744WS-fsg