[t-writescode]

Having spoken with some truly incredible women engineers who battled through the tiers and tiers and tiers of strife and struggles and bullshit women in the engineering world have to deal with to make any sort of progression for themselves, that 5:1 in favor of women is a VERY good thing. How many 1:5 man teams have you seen? How many 0:5 man teams?

Getting more women and getting more women-majority teams is a net good not only to the hilarious gender disparity in tech but also for the individual engineers, especially women, who don’t have strong, similar-to-themselves mentors and people to look up to.

[scarab92]

So basically, “discrimination is okay when I do it”.

It’s concerning how many people don’t see other people as individuals and instead see them as classes. This intellectual laziness results in discriminatory outcomes because it presumes that balance can be achieved by punishing different individuals within the same class.

It’s terrible that a 50 year old woman experienced discrimination, but privileging a 20 year old women doesn’t fix that. You’re ignoring the individuals that were harmed, privileging someone else that doesn’t need it, discriminating against 20 year old men to “balance” the privilege that 50 year old men received.

None of this makes sense.

[throwawaydjf]

Are you saying women don’t face sexism anymore?

[scarab92]

Of course they do, but as a cohort, young men experience substantially more discrimination than young women, because they are being punished for the sins of previous generations.

If you look at the general experiences of a young men, you’ll see that they are discriminated against in university admissions, in early career hiring and in early career promotion.

This is justified by data points which average outcomes over different age groups. The result may be company wide gender balance, but when you break it down by age you see that it’s not really a balance, it’s just discrimination against women in some cohorts and discrimination against men in others.

This is the root problem with DEI. You’re punishing one generation for the actions of a different generation, and pretending that’s fair.

[throwawaydjf]

How else do you fix it? If you leave it alone, the problem will keep persisting because there is no reason to change.

[scarab92]

Understand that discrimination is experienced individually.

You cannot fix the discrimination an individual experiences by discriminating against a different individual in return.

You cannot "balance" the discrimination a group of people experienced in the past, by discriminating against a different group of people today.

Doing so will just result in an oscillation, with men of the past being privileged over women, leading to women of today being privileged over men, leading to men of the future being privileged over women etc.

[gjsman-1000]

Simple.

You stop evil wherever you see it. If you see actively discriminatory practices, kill them.

However, you do not commit an evil, to right another evil. You do not discriminate against anyone, even the over-represented majority, to accomplish any goals, or they can and will one day react violently and probably win.

Fighting fire with fire burns the world down. It’s not a fun answer; people who like being activists and feeling morally superior don’t like being told to stand down, but that’s the only thing that will work.

[bdangubic]

Of course they do, but as a cohort, young men experience substantially more discrimination than young women, because they are being punished for the sins of previous generations.

don’t be silly. insane statements like this you’d have to back with (non-existent) data. so just stop it with this absolute garbage. men, especially white, have every fucking imaginable advantage possible in this country from the time they are born until they are 6 feet under. and of course many find ways to fuck it up and then blame society for it. fucking hell

[dijit]

Men, especially white men, are overrepresented at the extremes.

The worst life available to you in the west is only afforded to white men, you don't even register that they're human.

the best life available to you in the west is only afforded to white men.

Stop trying to promote suffering of the former because of the perceived injustice of the latter, it's sick.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/poverty-hurts-the-boys-th...

[bdangubic]

ouch don't say that ... HN is overrepresented by white men too so you know, this comment won't be taken all too well :)

[bdangubic]

just ask yourself this - if you had say a white son - would you trade that for ANYTHING else given an opportunity? any other skin color? any other sex/gender?

Of course not so sit down until the answer to this question is different (it will never be)

[karmakurtisaani]

Such a strange take on this.

[bdangubic]

how so? if you are a parent you only want the absolute best for your child. so if your child (based on race/sex/...) is apparently discriminated against wouldn't you want what's the best for your child? it is exactly the take that gets to the root of these silly discussions, if your child is X and Y has all these "apparent advantages" wouldn't you want your child to have them?

[rockskon]

Insert "no, that's a completely different sentence. Wtf are you talking about?" meme here.

[gjsman-1000]

The fact that this is downvoted, shows HN commentators have no idea why the current president won.

Those 20 year olds aren’t ignorant of the fact that they are being discriminated against, and they will one day be our future voters and politicians.

Can we be surprised when they want to burn it all down? Can we be surprised when they flock to anyone offering a sympathetic ear?

Reverse discrimination is a fundamentally short term and self-defeating strategy.

[thijson]

I was listening to MLK's speech the other day, and he said he wanted his children to be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. Seems like that's not what is happening today, racism (and sexism) is alive and well. Around the time in question Google fired one of their employees for publishing a memo about gender differences, Google gave in to the cancel mob and fired him (James Damore).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...

[scarab92]

I’m not sure if it’s automated behaviour, but I often notice my posts go to -3 within a minute of being posted then climb back to positive over time.

[dijit]

There are definitely bots crawling this site for things to engage with, the speed in which votes happen compared to how long it would take to read a comment I make is inhuman.

I doubt its HN itself, and it seems positive for some things (anything that could be seen as pro-startup, pro-company, anti-regulation), while negative for other things (anything pro-europe, or political in a way that could be misconstrued as an endorsement of the right- even if the comment itself is actively admonishing the right).

I have contemplated experimenting with short lived comments (essentially: spam) to see how they are manipulated and to confirm this behaviour, but I doubt dang would approve, so I have refrained.

Case-in-point: this comment was downvoted within 1s of being posted.

[busterarm]

When my brother was starting his career in university IT in the very early 90s, CS was still part of the math department and most places were anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 women. Many people at the time considered operating a computer to be equivalent to secretarial work.

Such a gender disparity in tech is relatively recent and pretty much since the iPhone and the flood of zero-interest money into the industry. And yet all of the big FAANGs hire lots of women.

And as someone who has done lots of hiring across the industry, generally women don't even apply to jobs that aren't big recognized brands anymore.

[kalleboo]

> pretty much since the iPhone

I would say it's since the dot-com crash, I went to university in 2003 and it was like 100:1 men in the CS courses back then.

[busterarm]

And nobody was complaining about that then either because there were no job prospects and the high salaries from pre-crash were long gone.

[tdb7893]

Yeah, experience is that women tend to stick together on teams because of the shit they experience all the time on other teams. Mentoring women engineers was eye opening at the number get asked out at work or get asked if they are engineers or other a million other problems. If people have a problem with women engineers sticking together they first have to fix the culture problem.