[0xbear]

As a former Googler: bullshit. If anything, Google gives women all the help they can possibly get, including preferential treatment during recruitment, hiring, and promotions. If this is not enough, I'm not sure what else they could do to boost the numbers of women in higher paid roles.

[vkou]

As a current Googler, I'm not seeing, or giving any preferential treatment during hiring or promotions.

The recruitment pipeline does seek out women, but they are expected to pass the same hiring bar that everyone else does.

[0xbear]

In borderline hire/promote situations committees are more likely to hire (and promote) women than men. If you don't know that, you haven't been on a committee. It's not that much help, but it's help nevertheless.

[bergeronize]

clearly the answer is to start holding men down so that woman can be equal

[dang]

Ideological battle-style comments are against the site rules. We ban accounts that post this way, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[0xbear]

Nobody is holding anyone down, bud. You must have mistaken my message for a complaint, I wasn't complaining. At no point did I feel held down or disenfranchised or anything like that, and I do agree that women could use a bit of extra help in a mostly male workplace.

That said, at some point I think one would need to think carefully if their outcomes are strictly the product of institutional bias, or whether there's something they need to change in themselves. Perhaps be more assertive, step up into leadership positions, speak up when they normally wouldn't, etc.

Truth of the matter is, it's very easy to blame one's misfortune on somebody or something else, but this is also the least productive thing one can do, if the goal is to achieve something and not just solicit sympathy or a legal settlement. Contrary to popular belief, things don't just fall from the heaven on (most) white men. They have to work and put themselves in precarious and uncomfortable situations to get where they want to be too.