[ia]

maybe they are going for cultural fit, first and foremost. if you were offended by this job advert, it's likely you wouldn't be a good fit. why hide company culture by writing a stiff and sterile ad? i'm not saying what they did was good or bad, unless they are actually breaking laws in the post--then it's bad. other than that, if you don't like the way they phrased things, don't apply.

[CodeMage]

Hey, that's great logic. Remind me to start a company where we have a dedicated "porn-watching hour", too. I'm sure it will make for a spectacular ad and attract a lot of serious talent.

[ia]

If that's the type of person you're looking to hire (say, for a porn site...), not sure why you wouldn't do this. Assuming, again, that you aren't breaking any laws. Not sure what point you were trying to make. Sarcasm doesn't translate well in writing...

[CodeMage]

I daresay it translated well enough for a couple of people already. The point I was trying to make is that the goal of a job ad is to attract talent. The job ad in question fails at that goal, because the cultural implications will drive away talent. To be fair, it's not a job ad that fails here, it's the culture that came up with that job ad.

All in all, you might be right in that they might have put "cultural fit" as their #1 priority, but that doesn't make it a good decision. Saying that the alternative is "a stiff and sterile ad" is a fallacy of false dichotomy.

[ia]

Saying that the alternative is "a stiff and sterile ad" is a fallacy of false dichotomy.

fair enough. to clarify--"a stiff and sterile ad" is the only type of add that won't alienate any possible subgroup.

the goal of a job ad is not simply to "attract talent". it's to attract the right kind of talent. to that end, a job ad that emphasizes culture is one way to look for it. these guys made a choice, and it looks like their (imo) poorly-worded job ad isn't being well received by the majority of people on hn. but unless we know that no suitable candidates resulted from it, i don't think we can claim it a failure.

To be fair, it's not a job ad that fails here, it's the culture that came up with that job ad.

agree, in the sense that if people react adversely to this job ad, they would have a similar reaction to the company culture.

[jessedhillon]

The point is not to avoid alienating a subset of the population. An ad can and should filter out candidates through its use of language and expression of culture. It cannot, however, filter people out on the basis of whether or not they have penises. That is the only question here: does this ad do that? Many think it does.

[jubbam]

Probably not a success from their point of view but from my point of view it's a great ad. It convinced me immediately not to waste any time pursuing the opportunity.

In addition, I can say that the only reason I'd care to know who the stealth company is is so I can avoid giving any thought to working for/with them later on or reading any later (probably toned down) job postings.

[mattmanser]

The reason there's a law against it is because bigots that still exist keep women from attaining equality and that's bad, not the other way around. It is in itself bad. You have a strange moral compass to me.

I know it's fun to be laddish when you're at college and uni, but cultural fit can often be a polite way of saying 'Hey, I'm a bigot, women are stupid and I'm not employing them above the level of secretary!'.

I'm sure cultural fit was used because some racist thought someone with a different coloured skin wouldn't fit in the office.

I don't like the way they phrased it because it was very easy to read that advert as advertising specifically for male programmers only. In other words, they're in danger of coming across as bigots.

And by association, so are we.

So I said something as it made me uncomfortable.

[ia]

Can you explain your first sentence? I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I'm not defending bigotry/sexism/etc. Hopefully, you didn't take my comment that way.

[jessedhillon]

Your original comment was to the effect of 'things are bad if they are illegal, but otherwise they're not.' He's calling you out on your sense of morality because whether a thing is right or wrong does not, to most people, derive from it's legal status.

Stealing would still be wrong if it were legally acceptable, which some forms arguably are.

[mattmanser]

That was exactly my thinking when writing it.

I didn't think you (as in ia) was especially defending it, I was just trying to point out the logic was very wooly. Though re-reading my comment I was a little hot under the collar, so apologies for that.

[mikeryan]

I'm not defending bigotry/sexism/etc

You're defending the ad. By extension defending any sexism contained within it (actual sexism TBD).

[chernevik]

I'm pretty sure that when I defend the right of, say, OWS to protest, I'm not defending whatever it is they're protesting.

They went for a breezy tone and forgot to pass it through Legal. I doubt they're sexists. I'm sure sexism would, in this day and age, hurt them more than anyone else.

[chc]

That's not really the case in the software industry. There really are very few women in the field. That's why we need to call out stuff like this — so that female programmers' lack of visibility doesn't become an excuse to marginalize them.

I don't think it was intentional on the job poster's part, but the fact that he didn't catch how it sounded of proofreading definitely indicates a blind spot to sexism.

[thomaslangston]

Your conclusion does not follow from the premise.

You can defend something based on one merit, while not supporting a related detriment.

[tripzilch]

Well, you said it was only bad if it is actually against the law.

Which is a strange moral compass, because lots of bad things are not against the law (and with good reason).

[throwawayday]

the reason there's a law against it is because men (yes, men!) were stupid enough to allow women to vote in the first place.

and now we have a feminine culture takeover: used to be only sticks and stones would hurt me, now it's words that slay me. Get over the obsession already, this is tiresome! Everyone starts out equal, no one person is inherently better than another - but some people perform more valuable services than others. Men and women are different, hence the chromosomal difference. If these guys want an exclusionary company, let them have it! But you don't have to buy their goods/services.

Birds of a feather flock together - people are almost always going to associate with people they feel more comfortable will - and each individual will decide which character trait they most like to identify with, and will seek out people with like traits. </rant>

[davidhansen]

This is not a political site so I'm not going to debate the merits/drawbacks of outlawing bigotry in hiring practices.

But one thing that ought to be pointed out is that free markets tend to punish companies, over the long term, that intentionally deny themselves access to talent due to bigotry. Conversely, companies who acquire talent with rational screening procedures will have a competitive advantage over those who use irrational screening procedures.

It's a sort of corporate karma. In aggregate, bigotry in hiring procedures will eventually harm you, legal or not.

[hack_edu]

The notion that the long term will harm them is a bit out of scope. Being a startup, a YC one at that, you can assume they see no significant long term for the company anyway, and hope for an acquisition before their idealized startup culture dream is popped.

[irahul]

> free markets tend to punish companies, over the long term, that intentionally deny themselves access to talent due to bigotry. Conversely, companies who acquire talent with rational screening procedures will have a competitive advantage over those who use irrational screening procedures.

That sounds a lot like fair world fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

[jessedhillon]

Evidence? I know free market theory sounds like the most plainly obvious, common sense set of statements but you still have to justify your conclusions. You are asserting without proof that the market is full of completely rational agents.

[dantheman]

It's not that markets are completely rational at all, it comes from supply and demand. If you exclude a large portion of your supply the price will go up. For example, if I only higher people greater than 6 feet at my company, and my competitor doesn't care about height -- the wages will be lower, unless of course tall people are the cheapest to hire already.

[davidhansen]

I am not asserting that the market is full of completely rational agents. I am asserting that voluntarily excluding yourself from a resource pool or limiting your access to a resource pool will decrease your likelihood of success.

To give an analogy, if you have access to all the food you want, but you voluntarily limit yourself to kumquats and bananas for arbitrary, irrational reasons, in the long run you will develop health problems.

Likewise, a business that irrationally limits itself to a subset of all available talent will, in aggregate, lose out to those who are not thus limited.

I admit to not having citations of statistical evidence at hand, although I have seen many publications in the past that indicate diversity of employee populations is correlated with innovation and success. I did not provide evidence because I believe as a Gedankenexperiment, the conclusion is self-evident.

[pyre]

  > one thing that ought to be pointed out is that free
  > markets tend to punish companies, over the long term,
  > that intentionally deny themselves access to talent
  > due to bigotry.

If this happens on a large enough scale, then it's hard to quantify. If this happens enough that it keeps the number of women in tech low, then how can you really quantify what they are missing out on? It would be easier to quantify if there was a large number of skilled female programmers, but if they are discouraged from even reaching the point of becoming skilled/competent programmers...

[chc]

This assumes that talented programmers of each sex exist in fixed quantities. That isn't how the real world works. In reality, if you make women feel unwelcome in programming, many who would have been good programmers will just go into different fields, so the entire market ends up losing access to their talent.

[jaylevitt]

"free markets tend to punish companies, over the long term, that intentionally deny themselves access to talent due to bigotry."

If this were true, we wouldn't have needed the EEOC and the Civil Rights Act in the first place. We did. Therefore.

[strlen]

> if you were offended by this job advert, it's likely you wouldn't be a good fit

So a company decides that most female engineers wouldn't be a good fit?

It's fairly obvious that using it in a job ad (as opposed to using it in a self-deprecating way to joke about yourself: how the term started) has the effect of alienating female developers.

[rprime]

Exactly my thoughts, I really like that they actually exposed their cultural thoughts on this one, I hope to see this kind of trend in job postins more and it really makes me want to join that respective company.

On the other hand I don't understand, why, most of you, as males are really getting mad about this? Why do you feel offended? If you have a female programmer friend, ask her about this and make her post their opinions, not you. I'll bet my life savings that all females that are into tech (that I know) will not have the slightest problem with this.

Stop whining about this kind of stuff HN, you're better than this.

[sethbannon]

To say that males shouldn't call out things they see as sexism against women because they aren't women is dangerous thinking. We're all members of this community, and behavior that disrespects any of us is a problem for all of us.

[mzbridget]

We do have a problem with this. We aren't whining. I asked some male friends about this just now and they think its shameful. It basically reads: "We are looking for male programmers, females need not reply." Yeah, just stick us back into the secretarial pool.

[rprime]

Well, see, here's the difference, it counts how you see the glass, full or empty. From my point of view, and I assume theirs, that's simply a joke that most of you got serious.

I was just asking for a female programmer to tell that she's having a problem with this, not a dude.

Probably I haven't exposed my ideas in a correct and coherent way, but I am tired and english is not my main. But trust me, I know a lot of women that are programmers, at some I look up to, and those who aren't I try to help them integrate, we need really need female programmers, because we, as males, can never achieve their way of thinking.

[liedra]

I'm a female programmer and I have a problem with this.

[lemming]

On the other hand I don't understand, why, most of you, as males are really getting mad about this?

So you think that I, as a whitey, shouldn't be offended by racism? And that I, as an atheist, shouldn't find religious persecution offensive?