[mooism2]

No, it turns out that hiring someone because of their gender is discriminatory.

Disqualifying all male candidates due to their gender is discriminatory, just as disqualifying all female candidates due to their gender is discriminatory.

[jasonlotito]

That's what the article says.

The problem is they want a diverse workforce. So the question becomes how do they hire for that?

[oellegaard]

The real problem is that there are not 50% women in IT. That means that not every company can have 50% women. If you make sure your company is a great place to work, I'm sure the people who apply for your job are also great.

[Peroni]

The problem is they want a diverse workforce.

I'm sure the vast majority of companies want the exact same thing but there comes a point where you simply have to accept that we work in a significantly male dominated industry and to get to a point where more than 20% of your staff are female means you have to compromise somewhere in order to achieve that balance. Unfortunately that compromise isn't always going to be appropriate.

[fein]

Yes they want a diverse workforce, but I think the issue is more that they need a diverse workforce. We should probably examine the need part first. In most cases its a PR/ government requirement issue, which means that maybe this wouldn't be a goal if the PR and regulatory pressure didn't exist.

I don't know of a right way to get more women into the IT space, but the diversity requirements imposed on businesses don't seem to have the effect that seems to have been intended.

[antonID]

Forcing diversity doesn't work. They should instead find out how to get more minorities etc to apply in the first place to be considered equally with other candidates, without their applications being weighted over the others. Hiring based on experience no matter what gender or race you are, and becoming more diverse due to that, is better than discriminating against others for the sake of diversity.

[jasonlotito]

> Forcing diversity doesn't work. They should instead find out how to get more minorities etc to apply in the first place to be considered equally with other candidates, without their applications being weighted over the others.

Yes, that's what they are trying to do. Find out how. How do they signal to that group of people they want effectively, without weighting that group over others (such as by advertising only to that select group, or through other selective means).

[antonID]

Is that what they are trying to do? My understanding is that they are ONLY considering women for the position.

[jasonlotito]

Obviously we can't know what they will actually do. I interpret their article as their goal, not their actual point-by-point plan. YMMV

[mooism2]

That's not what the article title says.

[apawloski]

It's difficult to make a meaningful contribution here if you only read title of the article we're talking about.

[mooism2]

The title is the most important bit.

It is, as you note, the only bit people who don't read the article will read. (And as it happens, I did read it, but don't let that stop you from jumping to conclusions.) That includes people who don't click through from the HN front page, but the message will lodge in their brains regardless.

It is also, presumably, what the author feels is a good one sentence summary of the article: he cannot hire women, because it is illegal... so he has no choice but to hire men only from now on (subtext: stop blaming him for the 15-1 gender imbalance at his company, nothing to do with him, honest).

Another way of putting this: if the author knows full well that it is NOT discriminatory to employ women, why did he lie to us in the article's most prominent sentence?