this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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The Grace Hopper Celebration is meant to unite women in tech. This year droves of men came looking for jobs.

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[–] carl_dungeon 165 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (20 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Including non-binary people was not the problem. Relevant quote:

"AnitaB.org, the nonprofit that runs the conference, said there was “an increase in participation of self-identifying males” at this year’s event. The nonprofit says it believes allyship from men is important and noted it cannot ban men from attending due to federal nondiscrimination protections in the US."

They identified as male, not non-binary, and the event allowed men to come.

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[–] CaptainPedantic 101 points 9 months ago (31 children)

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.

[–] Rentlar 37 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think I figured it out... only rarely you'd get immediate interviews, but the idea is you get LinkedIn contacts to chat with later and industry insight, and something to tell recruiters/hiring managers that you did, but you dress it up in a way that shows you look for opportunity like "I met members of [industry/company] at a recruiting conference in [town]". I found industry conferences to be more useful than jobfairs in this respect, but those can be a little to a lot expensive.

Otherwise it's pretty much just being told to scan QR codes, business cards and maybe getting a couple plastic cups and pens.

All in all I say job hunting is such an awful game.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

No. Mostly you run around collect business cards and then go online to apply for the jobs.. that you could have done without going to the job fair in the first place.

TBH It's a huge red flag if a recruiter wants upfront payment with no guarantee at the end of it (or even if they 'guarantee' one). If the recruiters are so desperate for someone they want to organise a job fair, they can bloody well pay for it themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 9 months ago (7 children)

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

[–] PeachMan 46 points 9 months ago (30 children)

It's so fucking cringe. I work in tech, I see how weirdly women get treated and I see their unusually high turnover rate. Early on I was told "women don't last long here" and it was very true, that woman in particular quit to do freelance work (good for her). Why can't women have a job fair? Men don't fucking need one, NEARLY ALL of the other tech job fairs are dominated by men.

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[–] endhits 63 points 9 months ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Tech is overcrowded as a field and it gets worse each year. So yes.

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[–] tory 48 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (10 children)

All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said.

But then earlier:

The nonprofit says it believes allyship from men is important and noted it cannot ban men from attending due to federal nondiscrimination protections in the US.

So... We'd like to discriminate against men and would conversely see no problem if someone else hosted male only hiring events...?

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[–] sudneo 44 points 9 months ago (54 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 116 points 9 months ago (29 children)

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.

[–] sudneo 35 points 9 months ago (9 children)

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.

[–] andros_rex 72 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] Zerfallen 47 points 9 months ago (2 children)

No one is saying gender is the only point of discrimination, but this specific event is focused on gender issues.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've had a lot more foreign male colleagues than I have female colleagues. Where are you getting you information about who's disadvantaged?

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago (21 children)

Cullen White, AnitaB.org’s chief impact officer, said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, that some registrants had lied about their gender identity when signing up, and men were now taking up space and time with recruiters that should go to women. “All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said. AnitaB.org did not respond to a request for comment.

Who picks their gender identity? The individuals or Cullen White? If anything this underscores the insanity of identity politics. If gender is whatever an individual feels like, then this event was just thousands of women and non-binary folks, and White needs to stop being such a bigot. However I think most of us understand that this is nonsense.

[–] psychothumbs 26 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Gender is indeed based on what an individual feels like. That's a perfectly reasonable way to categorize people - it's also for example what religion is based on. It's just hard to implement systems where you give different rights to different genders when there's no way to check what gender someone is besides asking them. Probably the best solution is to just treat people the same regardless of gender so nobody has an incentive to lie.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Rentlar 22 points 9 months ago

Layoffs are what caused the long queues to begin with. Event organization and operation makes it seem closer to an average American Black Friday event than a job conference.

[–] Rentlar 36 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (25 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Can you expound on that statement?

It sounds as if the organizers were too quick to take the $650 from attendees and those willing to pay were very eager to pony up the cash in the hope of networking.

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[–] sudneo 27 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Problem for what?

I exist, I need a job to live, I have job, I try my best not to be an asshole, I fight (and vote) for a better society, for social and civil rights.

Why exactly I - since I am a man I feel included in your statement - should be THE problem?

[–] Touching_Grass 38 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (44 children)

I try my best not to be an asshole

Maybe people are getting too in the weeds with this because muh culture war

But it is an asshole move to show up to an event meant for one group of people when the original issue is how over represented your group is. I'm a developer. The grind sucks. But I would be an asshole to show up to this.

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[–] randon31415 34 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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)."

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[–] I_Fart_Glitter 31 points 9 months ago (18 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Landmammals 29 points 9 months ago (3 children)

No one wants to work anymore!

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.)

[–] Iceblade02 25 points 9 months ago (3 children)

That doesn't seem like a job fair for women, but rather a job fair for everybody except men...

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[–] alienanimals 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (18 children)

People in the comments: Discrimination is bad! (Except when it's against a group of people I don't like)

It's a shame these people can't understand the flaw in their logic. More discrimination is not the answer.

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