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Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by stevage on Friday January 10, 2025 @06:00PM (#42661316)
I had an interesting experience asking a startup I worked at why they had no female engineers. The answer was they couldn't afford them. They were in such demand that they commanded a significant premium over male engineers at the same level.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by skeeter2020 on Friday January 10, 2025 @07:30PM (#42662070)
That's absolute nonsense. We know it's almost completely a supply problem not a demand one.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by llm_trw on Friday January 10, 2025 @07:48PM (#42662197)
And price is determined by both supply and demand.

If there wasn't a demand for specifically female engineers they would cost the same as male engineers regardless of the supply because an engineer should be fungible with gender. Unless you think that women have some innate characteristic that makes them better than men?

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by mjevans on Friday January 10, 2025 @07:52PM (#42662219)
It can be both.

To fix this sort of problem a wholistic approach is required. Whatever the approach it should apply to all equally so that the market is fair. Offhand, my historic recollection is that STEM generally is traditionally less appealing to those of the female sex (by Science/Biology definition of the phrase), and that there might (rightly?) be a perception of poor work / life balance and career tracks that don't pair well with fulfilling time limited biological imperatives. My personal opinion is that enforced labor regulation that provides sufficient parental leave, work / life balance generally, and generally promotes healthier recognition of employees as humans would be better for society overall.

I also recognize that we're probably not going to get that until the US gets rid of the 'first past the post' madness and adopts a voting system with literally _any_ form of IRV. There just won't be bandwidth for such an issue otherwise. Of said systems, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method is my favorite, but I'd start with ANY IRV, they're (offhand) all less flawed than what we've got.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by ponow on Friday January 10, 2025 @10:40PM (#42663099)
None of that is combatting sexism, but reality.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by mjevans on Friday January 10, 2025 @11:31PM (#42663312)
Sexism is '(sex) Can't do x'. That's combated by successful examples being common.

Bias of applicants is solved by making the job worth for all to do, not just from the positives but by removing the negatives.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by MacsHeadroom on Saturday January 11, 2025 @12:18AM (#42663508)
This is real. Female engineers are overrepresented in big tech something like 3-4x the graduation rate. There just aren't any left over for startups that can't afford FAANG rates.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by Cumpiler69 on Saturday January 11, 2025 @10:18AM (#42666416)
> Female engineers are overrepresented in big tech something like 3-4x the graduation rate.

Why is that? Virtue signaling? Discrimination on males?

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by LPisGood on Saturday January 11, 2025 @12:34PM (#42667410)
Could be a combination of technical skill gap, better networking, better interviewing. Jumping straight to virtue signaling or discrimination seems strange.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by Cumpiler69 on Saturday January 11, 2025 @01:22PM (#42667831)
Why would those quality traits be specific to females in engineering? Engineering as a whole is a skill fungible regardless of gender so if a gender is hired by big-tech at 3-4x their graduation rates compared to the other gender, then there must be something at play.

Think about it like this, if you'd use the same argument you gave me if the roles were reversed with men being 3-4x overrepresented in a well paying white collar career, everyone would cry sexism and discrimination and action being taken to "fix" that. So why isn't it when the genders are reversed?

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by LPisGood on Saturday January 11, 2025 @09:15PM (#42670678)
> So why isn't it when the genders are reversed?

Men occupy a position of institutional and societal power that makes such a comparison unhelpful, at best.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by an_guy on Sunday January 12, 2025 @04:23AM (#42672303)
Has the same energy as "President is black therefore talks about racism against blacks is unhelpful"
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by Cumpiler69 on Sunday January 12, 2025 @05:52AM (#42672637)
>Men occupy a position of institutional and societal power that makes such a comparison unhelpful, at best.

That doesn't justify discrimination. You're using the same argument Nazis used to genocide Jews: "they're overrepresented in positions of wealth and power so it's ok to discriminate and kill them all because it's obviously their fault for your problems".

You average man has no benefits in common with the top 1% of wealthy and powerful men who write the rules. The top 1% of Americans have more in common with the top 1% of Russians or Chinese then they do with your average Walmart American male.

Why punish men todays for the original sin? This only leads to extremism as backlash.

Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by LPisGood on Sunday January 12, 2025 @12:44PM (#42675261)
I’m not justifying discrimination. I’m justifying the comparison being bad, which it is.
Re:Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs by LPisGood on Saturday January 11, 2025 @12:34PM (#42667413)
Is there any data out there that reflects this? That’s really interesting