[sheena]

I'm a woman and a developer at Stripe. I don't see how welcoming women as well as men into the engineering -- and every other -- team at our company can reasonably be called "lying" or "dishonest." No, we can't singlehandedly change the gender ratios in the valley, but we can and will try to make our hiring process as good and fair as possible.

[tomjen3]

I don't think Stripes hiring process is anything but fair. Given that, the next developer they will hire is likely to be male and there are more likely to be a higher percentage of females in the non-dev roles than in the dev roles.

What I find dishonest is that they pretend this is not the case. They pretend that they are most likely to hire females.

Which is wrong.

[adrianhoward]

It's not pretending. It's signalling.

They're sending a strong signal that female applicants are going to be treated fairly - not that the next hire is likely to be female.

To use a non-sex based example.

My partner is wheelchair bound some of the time. Despite the theoretical legal requirements access to many places is a complete PITA. Having to phone up every time to find out whether you can get in or not, or whether we can actually sit together if we can get in, gets frustrating. When you get to the Nth occasion of visiting somewhere to discover that you can't get in because of some step or narrow door that nobody has considered it gets very annoying.

Now - some venues have things like pictures of people in wheelchairs at the venue, or strong visible inclusivity statements, or some other strong signal that there is going to be zero problem with access.

Guess which places we're more likely to visit - even if there are many other locations that are theoretically accessible, but don't signal it as well.

What Stripe have nicely done is signal to every smart female developer that "we are open to hiring you". Judging by the interview experiences of my female friends this strikes me as a rather clever move. It's going to get them a stack of applications from talented women who might not otherwise apply.

I'm sure that will more than outweigh the loss of any folk who see this as political correctness gone mad ;-)