Conversation

Programmer/software engineer friends, is it true in your experience that for your coworkers, hiring standards are lowered if they're women?

nope
18.8%
a bit/sometimes
18%
a lot/often
12.6%
not applicable/results
50.6%

4,044 votesFinal results

12:39 AM · Oct 30, 2021

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this question brought to you by a friend helpfully suggesting I could go into programming as a backup job, and when I was like I don't know how to program he shrugged and was like "you have tits, they're desperate for anything with tits"

104

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You have to keep in mind that the way some men are going to answer this has a lot to do with their ego/self estimation

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It seems plausible to me in the abstract, since the company talks the talk as far as DEI. But when I just consider the competence of the people we've actually ended up with, if anything the women might be slightly better than the men.

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I strongly suspect yes and no. Meaning as a woman you have be twice as good to be seen as at parity with a man. So if they feel pressure to hire a woman and think they have to lower standards, it means you only have to be 1.5X as good as a man to get the position.

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I've seen it once or twice where a particularly horny interviewer liked someone who was cute but clearly not qualified, but they were overruled.

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I have heard reliably of the opposite effect in social work, where male social workers (at eg a government community mental health org) are given significant slack because leadership are so desperate to reduce the significant imbalance in female to male ratio.

M Fletcher 𝔍𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔇𝔞𝔯𝔨𝔒𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔯

@mfcodeworks

Oct 30, 2021

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@Aella_Girl

I'd say like most things it depends on who the hiring manager is

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How much of this is true vs. perception that women are less skilled?

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I'm not sure it's intentional but I do think there are subconscious effects that take place when dudes in tech interview women. Expectations are lower so that generally skews the candidates that are hired.

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I honestly can’t say, my company has hired 3 ppl since I’ve been here, and only 2 women applied compared to 300+ men. Neither of the women had any experience in what we needed, so they weren’t even considered.