Discrimination and injustice

Sep 19, 2020 127 Comments

Recently, I read this post about Google's hiring practices, where guys were not given an interview chance even with a perfect score in the screening, while girls were advanced to the next round regardless of the score.

I have personally been burned by this both in India (during undergrad hiring) and in the US as a new grad and as an experienced engineer. This is not just an issue at the hiring stage as it manifests time and again during the career progression opportunities. The HR org driving this has been almost all-female in my professional experience (Netflix included), and I feel that there are significant biases and propaganda behind this.

In all this, a male from the lower middle class, who had to fight for everything, has constantly been neglected. Being one of them myself, I want to help. Here are some concrete questions that I have to help the affected folks:
1. Is this practice legal? If not, should we crowdsource some funding and fight it the legal way.
2. Are there organizations/non-profits working on this issue? If so, I would donate to them and urge others to do so.

Discrimination and injustice

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TOP 127 Comments
  • Yahoo
    Igpay17

    Go to company page Yahoo

    Igpay17
    There is no such thing as “reverse racism”.

    Being male or female isn’t a race.

    You work for Netflix. How are you “neglected”?
    Sep 19, 2020 43
  • Amazon / Eng
    frupid

    Go to company page Amazon Eng

    frupid
    Summary of this post and comment section: Men who are too accustomed to their historically granted privilege of education and professional development are b*tching and crying about a fraction of their privilege being shared with women.

    You want to raise funds for men to be treated more fairly in tech hiring???😂😂😂 big jokes.
    Sep 19, 2020 15
    • Amazon
      jQtO88

      Go to company page Amazon

      jQtO88
      Of course people like frupid will defend diversity hiring to the point of being irrational because they would not be in their current role without the benefit of being a diversity
      Sep 20, 2020
    • Amazon
      helpmeVis

      Go to company page Amazon

      helpmeVis
      No no now frupid will say we need diversity at senior roles/managerial roles. She is done with her new grad days. She nows wants more power , pay and influence. This will continue until she becomes the ceo. Then she will want to become president of United States. Their hunger never stops. They use feminism as a tool to advance their career
      Sep 20, 2020
  • Amazon / Eng
    frupid

    Go to company page Amazon Eng

    frupid
    The post in the screenshot claims that “Google India only selected girls for internships.” Then how do you explain the disproportionate under-representation of women in the tech industry?

    Unverified anecdotes and Linkedin posts are not enough data to support these claims. The proportion of male to female workers in the tech industry speak otherwise.
    Sep 19, 2020 22
    • Google
      zAkj78

      Go to company page Google

      zAkj78
      @frupid how about you read the definition of opportunity? I clearly mentioned I'm not against equal opportunity, but what they are doing is trying to have equal outcome, which isn't same as equal opportunity. Equal opportunity is essentially that if there is a white male and a black female, there will be equal probability of them being hired if they have same skills. It isn't true anymore.
      Sep 20, 2020
    • OP
      @frupid, see this is the issue here. Many of Amazon friends tell me the same story over and over. Ladies who are incompetent can't be let go because someone at the top wants better diversity metrics on their dashboard.
      Sep 20, 2020
  • New
    shark_kid

    New

    shark_kid
    My female friend got a mail from google recruiter saying we find you fit for a position in Google India, when asked how did she get this, I was surprised to know that she had solved 1/4 question in Google Kickstart and she got this mail only because of this, no other parameters associated.
    And dudes solving 4/4 in less amount of time are many a times not even considered.
    Diversity hire should have a minimum bar wherein every candidate should clear it.
    This 1/4 thing is ridiculous, but who am I to say anything, I don't own the company, it's them who are going to make a decision.
    Sep 19, 2020 5
    • VMware
      nope12

      Go to company page VMware

      nope12
      I'm all for equality in everything including construction, front line combat, hazardous waste disposal, sewage treatment, cable installation, road work, etc. I'm appalled that all those claiming to fight for equality are not fighting for more women in the industries I listed.
      Oct 5, 2020
    • Marriott / Product
      PoUkl

      Go to company page Marriott Product

      PoUkl
      I'm all for women in all industries, including the ones you mentioned and tech.
      Oct 5, 2020
  • Amazon
    behaviour

    Go to company page Amazon

    behaviour
    This is the sum effect of radlib/identity politics taking hold in the western world. You will see plenty of selective elevation of "disadvantaged" identity groups (the "creamy layer" as India calls it) while those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged remain that way, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity. Understand why it's being done -- it's a release valve to substitute the image of justice for what it would actually take to get there.

    Think about it this way: no one is ever going to be fully happy. The closer you get to "true" meritocracies, the closer you get to your top colleges, companies, and societies being majority filled (at least at this current point in time) with white and Asian men. You would of course underrepresented minorities present, and you wouldn't worry about their capabilities if they get in. But it's also possible that those minorities would suffer discrimination. Such a company or organization would doubtless suffer from a lack of viewpoint diversity and evolutionarily lack hybrid vigor.

    And so we can come up with the general pattern that the whole is more than just the sum of their parts. It is possible for someone to appear to be less than an absolutely stellar IC in a vacuum and still do more for what the company needs "at scale". Big FAANGs need to adequately serve the gigantic global customer base they depend on for revenue. You'll have a hard time arguing that can occur without an employee base whose diversity reflects the makeup of the customer base.

    Beyond that, the whole idea of measurement and "meritocracy" is kinda chicken and egg. It's easy to measure achievements, but how do you measure potential? At a large company, how do you measure what someone contributes when many times, the high-value stuff is somewhat intangible and political? When that's the case, you shouldn't be surprised to see policies which reflect the political reality.

    Now that was all a very long way to say this: if you don't like the political reality of bureaucratic big companies and you prefer more of a meritocracy, you don't have any option but to join a small firm. That could be a quant firm, it could be a hypergrowth startup, it could be a number of things. But I guarantee you that you'll see less of this kind of posturing there, if only because there's no budget for it.

    Think with your head. Don't get upset about these things. Understand the reality it portrays, and accept it. You have alternatives. Make your own decisions. Remember, you have to pay a price to get access to those giant FAANG RSUs. This is part of it. If it's still worth it to you, try to find another team or division or company that does a better job here. There's no free lunch.
    Sep 20, 2020 7
    • >You think the US is going to collapse?

      Well I just know history. Every single empire in history, from Roman to Ottoman to USSR collapsed due to demographics.

      0) Empire is formed
      1) Empire expands too much
      2) Empire acquires a lot of different ethnic groups within its borders
      3) Said ethnic groups are incompatible and they end up in a war with one another
      4) Empire collapses
      5) Go to step 0

      It's nothing new, and we can already see the beginning of this with BLM and other ethnic movements inside US. All things follow this natural pattern, It's kind of like credit boom-bust cycles.

      Best case scenario, you might have a country named "United States" 50 years from now, but it will be nothing like today's United States. Just like "United Kingdom" 200 years ago and today.
      Sep 20, 2020
    • Amazon
      behaviour

      Go to company page Amazon

      behaviour
      @KingSky, I think I see what you mean now. If that's what you mean by collapse (IE Byzantine style) then I think that your explanation makes analytical sense. You are correct that in a Spenglerian sense, no empire is immune to the natural lifecycle. Everything eventually, or at least drops out of first place. But there's a long way between second place and collapse.

      Beyond that, the USA has been using its military might to crash the global south for fun and profit basically since the end of WWII. And they do it for economic reasons, because no one stands in their way. Maybe the difference today is that now China stands in the way a bit, along with Russia. But that's just a continuation of the cold war. Even if the USA ends up like the UK and it's nothing like "today's United States" it will remain in the top 10 wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world with the largest domestic consumer market. Ethnic nationalists will come and go because people have short attention spans. But, if you really think that Americans have enough energy to go to civil war rather than doom-scroll through the social media that was engineered to hijack their mental energy, turn it into free advertising, and neutralize that very impulse, then you're a lot more hopeful than me.

      I think there's a 0% chance that BLM doesn't continue to get co-opted by corporations. 0%. It's just too good of a crisis to waste, and too lucrative a brand to make a profit from. But that very profit will neuter its fangs. And so we will go, in a Baudrillardian cycle...
      Sep 20, 2020