444
Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech
(www.wired.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
444 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
61081 readers
1995 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
How dare workers in (potentially desperate?) need of a job to look for jobs. They are men and belonging to that category automatically makes them rich and privileged. The working class should be united against common enemies, not divided because of gender. While it's obvious that women in tech are discriminated, alienating fellow victims, even if males, is not the answer to the problem.
Capital really won the class war...
I know you didn't mean it like this, but the result from this line of thinking is that we only try to put women on equal footing with men in tech when it's convenient for men because times are good. Which in turn means we never put women on equal footing because the needs of men always come first.
Put differently women have to deal with being women in tech on top of times being desperate, men only have to deal with times being desperate. Things like this are why spaces like these are necessary in the first place, and if you break them down at the first discomfort you're not a working class hero fighting the capital, you're tearing down women and setting everyone back.
Gender is absolutely not the only nor the most important discriminating factor in tech. Being a foreigner and, probably most commonly, being old is an extreme disadvantage in tech. Similarly, a woman coming from a wealthy family might be a privileged compared to a man coming from a poor background (which translates into lower access to education, resources, etc.).
Look at the video in the article, and tell me you don't notice some commonalities among the men in the queues.
I see mostly foreigners, who most likely have no network of support, and need a job to maintain a VISA before getting kicked out of the country. Are they in a better or worse position compared to a local woman? Does it even make sense to start asking these questions?
I want to challenge this vision where discriminations are only looked at through the lens of gender division. This is shortsighted because discrimination on the workplace is extremely diverse and it exists for the benefit of those same sponsors of this event.
As a teenage girl into coding, I was treated like absolute shit. If I made a mistake in my botball code, it was because I wasn’t good at coding. If a boy made a mistake in their botball code, then it was something that the other boys would help them debug. I remember it being assumed I just wouldn’t be able to figure out what structs were, so the boys running the botball code didn’t teach me. In college, any group project was an opportunity for boys to try to fuck me.
As a trans man, someone who has experienced life as both a man and woman in STEM, there are massive barriers to women. It’s invisible to you because you haven’t lived through it.
I am fully aware that those barriers exist. I am arguing (in other comments I am more explicit) about fighting against barriers, not a particular barrier.
I am also a foreigner in another country, and despite being a privileged person from many point of views (I could attend public university despite my family being poor), I have experienced some form of discrimination myself, so please don't make assumption about other people's. I am not blind to those kind of barriers, I simply have different opinions on the actions to take to improve the overall situation, with the goal of removing the concept of barrier, not any particular one (if that makes sense).
Neither and both, depending on the context. There is no point to tell a person (who is maybe in need of a job and behind with the mortgage) "sorry, your group is privileged, fuck off". At the same time it still makes sense talking generally about solving sexism, ageism and other form of discrimination still too common in tech. Both perspectives exist, but you can slice the population in many groups, with different "average" experiences, therefore is overall shortsighted to categorize people only based on "one slice". Hence, the class analysis which is I find both more effective and more functional.
You didn't mention in which context you are suggesting I am changing scope, so I am not sure what am I supposed to discuss.
Yes?
I didn't negate any general trend using any particular experience. The only particular experience I mentioned is my own, with the sole purpose of responding to:
Which suggested that I don't acknowledge the existence of certain barriers because I did not live through it (assuming a lot about my personal life). This is completely irrelevant to the overall argument I am trying to develop anyway, as I am not arguing that women don't have barriers in tech, I am fully aware they do (even if at the individual level some might not). I am simply stating that since there are multiple levels of discrimination in tech, and people might be victim of many of those (classism, ageism, sexism, racism, homo-transphobia, etc.), workers - and in particular victims of discrimination (but also the "privileged" ones) - should acknowledge each other situations (in other words, develop a class consciousness) and join the struggle against the overall system that generates discrimination, not create fragmentation between them because of the specific discrimination(s) they suffer. To me, this rhetoric since to push for a kind of "feminism of the regime", in which the status quo stays effectively the same, but the oppressor substantially are untouched, with a new coat of paint for supporting diversity.
That said, the population who attended this job fair is not a random sample of the "tech worker" population, therefore even in this case it might not make sense to use broad categories (like male and female) alone. For once, if you spend 600-1200$ for a job fair, chances are you are in dire need of a job. This probably means that at least a good chunk of those men are indeed outliers, so judging by broad categories (such as male=privileged in tech) might be especially wrong. This is my personal guess, and also why I would have liked for the article to interview some of them and understand why they were there.
Actually I am more referring to the analysis that is being done on the outcome of the fair than to the fair itself. I have no problem with the fact that the event was targeting women. Rather than asking why would some men join this event? Which men joined the event? etc., we stopped at "men steal places meant for women". No depth in the analysis, no expansion of perspective, just alienation of some workers.
No one is saying gender is the only point of discrimination, but this specific event is focused on gender issues.
My point is that there is nothing else for issue related to other discriminations. And yet, before thinking whether those men (who showed up) maybe are also oppressed and discriminated, they have been simply labeled as "men" and therefore intruders, by definition. I would think that an oppressed community would realize the commonalities with other oppressed categories and use this to expand the struggle to them as well. Instead the rethoric behind this article makes me think that this is one of those events which is ultimately functional to the conservation of the status quo: big tech companies which sponsor the event and gain some visibility and good karma points to boost diversity while nothing really changes or is done to address the fundamental issue with discrimination (in general, not a specific one), because this is ultimately functional to the companies, which can leverage them to fight a fragmented worker's front.
Bang fucking on point. Dont trust the people who profit off inequality and a desperate workforce to make things less desperate and more equal
I've had a lot more foreign male colleagues than I have female colleagues. Where are you getting you information about who's disadvantaged?
Quantitative measuring tells you nothing. You have no visibility of the "starting condition", how many foreigners are not even accepted a job interview, how many apply, etc. Discrimination is not something that can be measure with a scale.
Not to talk about age, ageism is huge in tech. Old people are sometimes fired to be replaced (hello IBM). In my company we are at around 25% women, 20% on engineering. I still need to meet a person over 50 (in engineering), I think there are maybe 3-4 over 40 (on a total of 300).
Also, discrimination doesn't mean just not getting hired, it means contractual penalties, less salary etc., which happen in some cases with women too, of course.
That said, I am not arguing that women in tech are not discriminated, of course they are. I am saying that there are multiple vector of discrimination and that we should be able to fight against the general phenomenon, without having to choose which discrimination to keep and which to fight.
You need to do a lot of reading about intersectionality and intersectional feminism. You're right about there being multiple possible systemic disadvantages because of someone's identity (gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, disability, etc) but the answer to that is not to sit around going NUH UH THIS GROUP HAS IT WORSE. Everyone needs uplifting, and it just so happens that this event was for women. If you think there needs to be a foreigners in tech job fair, go do one.
I respectfully disagree. If you think that organizing such events, with sponsors of that caliber is just a matter of "go do one", then we simply have different point of views. I also did not make qualitative comparisons between who gets oppressed, I am simply observing that there are so many components to discrimination in tech that focusing on only one (intentionally, even after the opportunity to expand opened up presented itself) is not synergic with the long term strategy.
It's fine to disagree, this is ultimately a subjective ideological call. I simply disliked the tone of the article overall. I would have liked some more in depth analysis of the impact (and reasons) of layoffs and maybe some interview to those people who "crashed" the event. Maybe with some sprinkle of discussion of unionization and collective fight, but I guess it was not fitting in an article about an event sponsored by the very same who laid off tens of thousands of people.
The paywall dropped on me before I could get to the end of the article, but a couple of observations:
“Overrun” is dehumanizing language. I’m otherwise highly sympathetic, but casting desperate people, many likely staring down deportation unless they can find a new position, as an effective horde is gross. I would like to trust that Wired provided that characterization, not the organizers.
The organizers ruined their own event, by not establishing and enforcing guardrails for attendance. This is a problem mostly of their own making. Rather than pointing, again, at desperate people, they should be accepting responsibility and planning to avoid the issue in the future.
I think part of the problem is that everyone- regardless of race, sex, gender or orientation has MASSIVE debt, in part due to the greed of the housing and rentals market, student loans, and unpayable medical bills- on top of caring for families and children. While people in a 1:1 conversation would definitely acknowledge cons for minority groups, this situation is more like a sinking ship with everyone fighting over the same few rickety lifeboats. Everyone else is just a faceless competitor as debt sharks get closer and closer.
I still don't understand why we don't write laws preventing CEOs from making disgusting amounts of money and why we don't have laws against multibillionares hoarding vast amounts of cash that should be getting invested into the very job fairs and infrastructure people are squabbling over.
It's an unfortunate situation any way you look at it. And it's a bummer that people are missing the forest for the trees in this thread :/
Privilege doesn't mean that things are easy or automatic, just that (in general) people with privilege don't have the same systemic negatives that those without it have. And it's very indicative of privilege for the men who went to this thing, which was built up over a number of years by a community specifically to benefit the members of that community, to just assume they had the rights of a community member without ever having contributed to that community. Something exists, and therefore they are automatically entitled to it.
I can have sympathy for people desperate for jobs, and I can understand class warfare, and yet ... once again something that women and enbys spent years and decades building up, is ruined because cishet men decided it was more 'convenient' for them to invite themselves into spaces not designed for them.
And yes, I do get frustrated with men not understanding issues of consent, in all of it's different aspects.
Couldn't this same logic be used by men to justify not allowing women into the tech industry in the first place? If someone of the wrong gender being around counts as "ruining" then men could say "once again something that men spent years and decades building up, is ruined because women and enbys decided it was more ‘convenient’ for them to invite themselves into spaces not designed for them." In fact I'd say something like that attitude really is what underlies a lot of tech industry sexism.
Gender-exclusive spaces often seem appealing to the favored gender, but they're really not good for anybody.
No, it couldn't. Because men excluding women from tech in the first place is wholly excluding them - there isn't another tech industry they can participate in. Men are being excluded from a single event when there are many other events doing the SAME THING that they are encouraged to attend.
Not saying I agree one way or the other, but the argument you make about the logic is not sound.
This argument is nonsense, but to humor it, there are other "industries", and tech is just a collection of companies ultimately. " go do your fair" can sound also as "go make your own company (and hire who you want)". Again, this is overall ridiculous, but at a purely rethorical level I think it works?
My point is that while privilege can be applied to a category, it doesn't make sense for a small number of individuals.
As I mentioned in another comment, look at the video, and notice how most men are clearly foreigners. Foreigners who maybe need a job to keep their visa or that anyway might not have the same network of support behind because they are just 2nd generation.
In my opinion, alienating fellow victims of a discriminatory system is at best shortsighted.
I also disagree with you deliberately labeling convenience what can very likely be necessity. I understand this aids your argument, but I find it purely based on prejudice.
I'm going to copy my reply to someone else elsewhere in this conversation:
First off, that job fair didn't just spontaneously happen. It was thought up by, organized by, and run by women and enbys in tech, specifically to help women and enbys in tech. Those sponsors didn't just miraculously happen; they were researched, approached, courted, their concerns addressed and their needs accommodated. And yes, that effort too was put in by women and enbys in tech, for other women and enbys in tech.
These are people with limited time and resources, who spent thirty years working on this, who carefully nurtured and shepherded the few resources they could gather, in order to create one single thing to help with their specific needs and challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't other groups with their own needs and challenges - foreigners who need accommodations for their visas and maybe cultural or language help, disabled people who need sign language interpreters or low-vision accommodations, people with issues like ADHD or major anxiety who need supportive environments and some guidance or handholding. There are lots of groups who can benefit from a job fair organized around their specific needs. The fact is, if you aren't part of the group the fair is intended to help, you shouldn't just show up, insert yourself into a place you were never invited, and take resources away from those who those resources were intended for.
And honestly, one of my frustrations is this: if you make a resource for ... people living on Native American reservations, or blind or deaf people, or the mentally ill, or the homeless, or whomever, the resources generated get reserved for that community and no one blinks an eye. But as soon as a resource is designed to help women, there is an immediate and constant demand to expand that resource to other groups. The women and enbys who spent years and decades creating and nuturing this thing have the right to expend their limited time and energy creating resources that matter to them.
I'm not saying that foreigners don't need help. I'm saying that out of the literally tens of thousands job fairs across the country every year, there's this one job fair that supposed to be for women and enbys. And if foreign women and enbys want to come and participate, great! But cishet men just deciding to help themselves to something that wasn't created or intended for them is just such an incredibly self-centered cishet-man thing to do that it's incredibly frustrating to those of us who have given so much of ourselves to creating and nuturing safe spaces.
I am also copying another response:
My point is that there is nothing else for issue related to other discriminations. And yet, before thinking whether those men (who showed up) maybe are also oppressed and discriminated, they have been simply labeled as "men" and therefore intruders, by definition. I would think that an oppressed community would realize the commonalities with other oppressed categories and use this to expand the struggle to them as well. Instead the rethoric behind this article makes me think that this is one of those events which is ultimately functional to the conservation of the status quo: big tech companies which sponsor the event and gain some visibility and good karma points to boost diversity while nothing really changes or is done to address the fundamental issue with discrimination (in general, not a specific one), because this is ultimately functional to the companies, which can leverage them to fight a fragmented worker's front.
The difference between women in tech and the examples you made in my opinion is exactly that the examples address the whole universe of people affected by a particular discrimination or disadvantage. In the case of woman in tech, a single aspect of a more general problem is cherry picked. Again, I don't want to use moral terms, I just think in terms of objectives to pursue. I have the feeling that the objective for some of the people who are talking about "intruders" is not to improve the culture in tech to eliminate discrimination and privileges, but a simple issue of "we want to be a bigger % of the privileged". As such, I feel that the struggle is inherently reactionary, entrenching the overall dynamic of discrimination and fragmentation of the working class, simply tweaking a bit the appearance.
While it's for sure true that organizing all of this did not happen in a vacuum, I would also argue that ultimately this is also the result of a "more privileged" status quo, bigger amount of power and influence, compared to other minorities that simply can't achieve the same. Rather than using this power for the benefit of other oppressed, it seems that the idea is to just fight your own battle. I don't want to say it's wrong, I just think that this does not fit in my idea of struggle to improve the society. If I were a man who needed a job and I was labeled as intruder, non invited or something, I would have a problem tomorrow to join a union with those who labeled me, because the feeling I would get is that there is no mutual recognition of common problems and class. In turn, this means that when tomorrow there will be the need to protest against the various Apple, Microsoft, etc. Workers are going to have less power, not to mention that some of the people will think that since X% more women are hired in tech there is maybe nothing to protest in the first place.
Do you go to a fundraiser for Heart Disease and ask for money to be diverted to Diabetes?
Foreigners from misogynist coutries by chance?
How is this relevant? What does that tell you about particular individuals also?
Thus speaks a person of privilege, who doesn't really understand what "privilege" means. Class warfare does exist; that still doesn't mean you're entitled to help yourself to every community-generated resource without actually being a member of that community.
I personally agree with this, but:
In other words, I would agree if we were talking about the tech-bros with families worth 6 digits behind and huge networks they can leverage. However way more attributes are a determining factors than just gender.
First off, that job fair didn't just spontaneously happen. It was thought up by, organized by, and run by women and enbys in tech, specifically to help women and enbys in tech. Those sponsors didn't just miraculously happen; they were researched, approached, courted, their concerns addressed and their needs accommodated. And yes, that effort too was put in by women and enbys in tech, for other women and enbys in tech.
These are people with limited time and resources, who spent thirty years working on this, who carefully nurtured and shepherded the few resources they could gather, in order to create one single thing to help with their specific needs and challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't other groups with their own needs and challenges - foreigners who need accommodations for their visas and maybe cultural or language help, disabled people who need sign language interpreters or low-vision accommodations, people with issues like ADHD or major anxiety who need supportive environments and some guidance or handholding. There are lots of groups who can benefit from a job fair organized around their specific needs. The fact is, if you aren't part of the group the fair is intended to help, you shouldn't just show up, insert yourself into a place you were never invited, and take resources away from those who those resources were intended for.
And honestly, one of my frustrations is this: if you make a resource for ... people living on Native American reservations, or blind or deaf people, or the mentally ill, or the homeless, or whomever, the resources generated get reserved for that community and no one blinks an eye. But as soon as a resource is designed to help women, there is an immediate and constant demand to expand that resource to other groups. The women and enbys who spent years and decades creating and nuturing this thing have the right to expend their limited time and energy creating resources that matter to them.
I’m highly sympathetic, but this thing didn’t go wrong in an instant. The organizers watched it go off the rails, and, AFAICT, didn’t intervene to fix it, as the problem revealed itself at scale.
Hard situations require hard thinking and decisive action.
I think this is the response that summarizes why someone would have an issue with this:
A class of men used their time and resources to build an old-boys-club to help each other. This is widely regarded as a bad thing. There are actual solutions that would address the underlying issue of special interests giving certain demographics an advantage, like anonymizing applications to circumvent discrimination and ensure the most qualified applicant gets the job regardless of demographic. Instead, the approach here is to make a new old-not-boys-club to give an advantage to different demographics.
That's the issue here. The response to gender discrimination isn't to take turns, it's to eliminate unfair discrimination entirely.
Ah yes, my favorite community, a gender.
I can't tell if your misunderstanding is unintentional or trolling. In the context of this conversation, the community I was referring to was the group of women and enbys who worked together for years to try to overcome some of the systemic issues facing women and enbys in tech.
Also, since you seem determined to give only brief one-liners in response, I have no interest in continuing this conversation with you.
My point was that I don't feel being in a community with every man in existence, and likewise I see no point to limit a community to a specific gender, especially in this day and age. "We don't know you, it's the first time I see you" is a valid reason for not considering someone a part of a community (yet) on a fair presumably meant for already established members. "You're a man, go away" just isn't.
Quite a bold statement after a single reply from me. Did we have some similar interaction beforehand elsewhere? I usually don't pay much attention to nicknames, so apologies if by chance it was a repeated occurrence.
Of course you don't feel like you're in community with every man, you're not a fucking marginalized gender! Some of us have to have solidarity to survive.
This is the whole point of the fucking event in the first place! Y'all have to insert yourselves into literally everything don't you? Unbelievably childish.
Yeah that was my first thought. For men to be trying to get a job here means there is real serious desperation. Don't hate the desperate people, hate the people that created this desperation