This really sounds like a failure of the organizers more than anything- first off, lumping in non-binary is a catch all that anyone will take advantage of, and second and most importantly, everyone was complaining about long lines. Long lines means lots of people. Lots of people means the event over-sold their $600-$1000 tickets.

Sounds like the event organizers were more interested in making money than helping women in tech- women would have had the same problems had it been 100% women.

Edit: I’m not bashing non binary people, I’m just saying that people will take advantage of it, that’s all.

ITT: men who can't ever admit they might be the problem. So many excuses here it's pathetic.

edit: I love the "not all men" and "not me". As always, it's not all men. But it's enough. And the men here getting so defensive really prove the point. And before anyone gets into it, it's not really the sex or gender. It's the societal expectations and allowances that encourage men to engage in abusive shit like we see in the article here. I.e. the patriarchy and those who support it.

I like how this comment section highlights why a job fair specifically not for cis men is needed lol

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...

Tangentially related, but are job fairs even worth it? In my limited experience, you wait in a long line for someone to tell you to apply online. I was better off getting a list of employers who were attending, and then looking through each of their websites.

This comment section is a perfect example of how capitalists have won the class war. Such hatred for half of the population of the world that people seem to have forgotten that people need jobs to survive.

Ignoring gender, are job fairs overrun by job seekers now? Is it that bad?

Glad to see federal anti-discrimination law working to prevent these conference organizers from being as sexist as they wanted to be.

Most of the problems mentioned in the article seemed to be problems with the convention organization and not the attendees.

I can't wait for this to be posted on Hacker News, get 5 of the worst techbro libertarian nonsense comments, get 3 angry SJW replies to those techbros, then dang shouts at the SJWs about tone, rate limits them, then flags the article off the site.

/it me, I'm the SJW.

If we had proper public supports for people between jobs, students and immigrants looking to find a way to live and/or not get kicked out of the country, this wouldn't be a problem.

The whole job hunt feels like a rat race, it's practically common recruiter advice to apply for stuff that you don't qualify for on paper, send out as many applications as possible and take every chance you can get. So I can see how people can apply these ideas to participate in spaces where they aren't encouraged to apply.

This is compounded by the pressure put on people to even live without income for short periods of time.

I'd say I'm privileged, yet it took me a year of looking to land something in my field. I had money saved up and enough supports to keep costs at a minimum, I'm aware I'm lucky I was even able to be in this circumstance.

We need smart and capable women, trans and nb people in the workforce, and we need resources to overcome the barriers they face. I'm just saying that it's not easy, even without such barriers and also with comforts that are not afforded to many.

Organizers expressed frustration. Past iterations of the conference have “always felt safe and loving and embracing,” said Bo Young Lee, president of advisory at AnitaB.org, in a LinkedIn post. “And this year, I must admit, I didn’t feel this way.”

“This group was really accepting until all these unacceptable people showed up”

I have to sayings I give to my students.

In times of high unemployment: "Be overqualified for the job you are applying to. If you are not, you competition will be."

In times of low unemployment: "If the recruiter picks a name out of a hat among those who applied, your chances are 1 divided by the number of applicants. Find the average number of applicants that apply to jobs you want - that is the average number of applications you have to send out before you find a job. (E.g.: Online WFH jobs with good pay sometimes get thousands of applications)."

From the title I thought this was an article about men driving vehicles into people at the job fair. I was slightly aghast that the discussion was only about whether or not it's ok to have a job fair for women in tech.

Purely commenting on the TikTok and not the article:

"... career fair aimed at women and non-binary tech workers..." and then there's a TikTok that says "A conference for (wo)men by women" and "the allies are totally allying"

So do only female presenting nonbinary people count?

(I know if you read the article that it says there was an increase in the number of self identifying males but how would the TikToker know that? The TikToker is just looking at the crowd and assuming that the place is overrun with men without actually checking if they're NB.)

While getting more women interested in natural science and tech is an important issue, the current approach in the States isn't working, and one of the major point in you-know-what is that despite the aggressive, well-intentioned push of female representation in traditional male dominated industries in fictional media(it does go too far sometimes), it does not seem to translate into the real world, ans enforcing a female only job fair also seems also well intentioned but unhelpful, because ultimately, you can't force people to like something.

It's troubling, but there doesn't seem to be an easy solution to this.

No one wants to work anymore!