[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.