This is the original piece comment we are talking about:
> He needs to be replaced by a woman
It's evident that the objective is to hire a women, not to hire a qualified person, therefore a less qualified person can be hired just because she is a women. A person hired like this would most likely not get too much respect because she had an advantage not because of her skill, but her gender.
> Being a successful woman and having all the experiences and perspectives that come with that
See my question in another comment.
We are talking about the role of board member - which comes with the impact of immediately being one of the most powerful and influential voices within Uber. Bonderman's voice spoke volumes today about the culture the company previously condoned, and a new female board member could potentially have a far greater positive impact promoting a more inclusive culture. By definition, one person can't change a company culture, but could set an example and set the ball rolling.
The point is, your vision of diversity is just anti-white-male. You'll be satisfied until you find too many representatives of whatever arbitrary label you come up with next.
Random example I've seen many times, but feel free to extrapolate to other positions/issues: If you have a group of native British developers of a web app, there's a good chance that any non-latin input will be either mishandled or rejected. Not because they hate other languages, but simply because that's not a problem they run into, or think about. Add one (for example) Greek dev, and the team will be quickly made aware of and learn about the locales and encoding issues. This will help the accessibility for all cultures, not just British and Greek.
Exposure to enough people different than you makes you think about others more. Even if you don't work with every possible token representation of the difference.
The theory says it shouldn't matter who you are it should only be based on your professional ability. And in theory it wouldn't make a difference to the ability of a company to function whether the gender or racial mix was one sided or not.
The reality is different. The reality is that having a uniform gender and race mix across a company causes all sorts of problems to the culture which in turn flows through to the companies actions and behaviours. And so if you want your company to be healthy you need to have at least some mix of men and women and races because the fact is that employees simply behave differently when there is a mix.
Has the world changed? Can groups of uniform gender-race people no longer act cordially to people who aren't same gender-race?
That's to say they are capable of it, not that it's ideal or that they were responsible solely for progress. Most abolitionists were not African-American.
"No longer?" At what point did they ever?
Given the politics of the situation, reasonable people might hear in this: "A woman should not be hired for this role."
Imagine the optics of replacing a sexist old man with another sexist old man. Worth the risk to shareholder value?
Do you see the irony in your statement?
Your statement implied that replacing one "sexist old man" (who we believe to be a sexist by something he said) with another "old man" is a risk to shareholder value because that replacement, by virtue of being a man and/or old, will also be a "sexist".
Your statement is passing judgment on a potential candidate without knowing anything about them simply based on their potential gender. That is definitionally sexism, the same sexism you are identifying as a risk to shareholder value. Perhaps you didnt mean it that way but that doesnt change the valid interpretation of the statement. The irony is that this sexist statement was made in a thread about an article of a guy who made a sexist comment (that cost him his job).
We might consider the possibility that a suitable woman in the role is significantly less likely to make this very embarrassing class of mis-step. And with billions of dollars on the line... where's the smart money? I suppose that is a sexist sentiment, too. Nuts, I can't win!
HN is probably not the place to have this conversation (I would have emailed you if it were in your profile) but to your point on "a suitable woman is significantly less likely to make this embarrassing mis-step"... that too is overt sexism of the kind I suspect you would find unacceptable coming from a man. Rhetorical question: how would you feel about a male manager justifying hiring a man because he is "significantly less likely to get pregnant and lose interest in the job"?
Lolz, yes, I do think that is a sexist comment and a part of me wonders if you actually think it isnt (maybe I'm being too literal). That said, I don't really care that you are making it. I'm a white male living in the 21st century, living with the double standard of being labeled a sexist or racist despite not being one is something you have to accept.
To your point, I think "smart money" buys the right tool for the job. I can see why you think replacing this old rich sexist white male with a young rich (sexist) white female is the smart move as it gets the trolls of your back and appeases the populists trying to hijack your company through negative PR. Anyway, I had fun with this. Hope you're having a good day.
Having read more and more YCombinator News comments on these topics recently... I'm starting to understand that there are voices out there that decry any perceived sexism at all, no matter the circumstances. I honestly find cries of 'sexism against men' that completely discount the real world context to be rather gauche.
Your last sentence doesn't follow. Maybe you could replace a sexist old man with a man who isn't sexist?
This is not testable. Move what you can measure.
> Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
But in this specific case, being a woman actually is a qualification. One of the key jobs for Uber's leadership in the immediate future is reducing sexism, and women are likely to have at least some personal experience being on the receiving end of it in their lives, which gives them a unique perspective.
What about a straight while male with strong prior experience changing the culture at a company and with experience in transportation?
There are many qualifications that need to be considered, and boiling it all down to one qualification above all others, being a women, is incredibly diminishing and overtly discriminatory.
The qualifications should be defined in terms wholly indifferent to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, etc.
Individuals who happen to be white and or male and are now experiencing a culture that now blames them for everything because they are of the same gender and skin color as people in the past that did bad things now also have experience dealing with a toxic culture. It may only be 5 years or so experience dealing with a toxic culture, but you usually only need about 5 years or so experience with something to be qualified so long as you are well qualified in other aspects the job requires.
Imagine Uber had persistent database consistency problems, and a nontechnical member of the board laughed them off, and had to resign as a result. Shouldn't they be replaced with someone with direct experience in database consistency?
> He needs to be replaced by a more qualified individual
Being a woman doesn't make you an expert in sexism. Anyone, regardless of race, gender, or creed could fit that role. So long as they are QUALIFIED.
After five months of examining the company's culture,
Uber's new human resources officer, Liane Hornsey
concluded that the firm's treatment of women was no
worse than what occurs at other companies.
Uber's biggest employee problems are pay and pride, not
sexism, says HR boss “Wherever I have worked, I have
seen things that are not great for women,” Hornsey said
in a USA TODAY interview. “I don’t think it’s about tech,
or this city or this company. I think it’s about the
world of work, and I think that it’s something that we
have to take really super seriously.”
Liane Hornsey was formerly the VP of People Operations at Google for like 5 years I think. I'm far more inclined to believe her account of what things are like than any journalist lazily trolling for any disgruntled former employee to recount a story that will generate ad impressions.
Does Uber have a problem with women in particular because there is something special about Uber or does it have "a problem with women in particular" because it's a tech company and the media established a narrative with momentum that it is somehow worse than other companies in this respect. If Facebook or Github had been founded in 2009, they'd be the scapegoat for what is an industry-wide problem.
Thinking this is specific to Uber and that Uber is somehow worse, just leaves all other companies with an unexamined culture. Worse yet, it leads other companies to think "Our culture is fine because at least we're not Uber" when they probably have all the same problems.
Her job is to represent and protect the company. HR isn't there to give blunt, honest truth to journalists. They're there to say "everything's fine, no need to sue".