Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech
Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech
The Grace Hopper Celebration is meant to unite women in tech. This year droves of men came looking for jobs.
The Grace Hopper Celebration is meant to unite women in tech. This year droves of men came looking for jobs.
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.
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...?
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...
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.
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.
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 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)."
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.)
I believe you mean ADMIRAL Grace Hopper
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.
if yall are going to a job fair at least don't be assholes about it.
When the economy starts to falter an unemployment rises, people attend job fairs at higher numbers. More at 10.
Hmm.. lots of white dudes on Lemmy then, eh?
It's like old reddit, but with new and improved culture wars
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.
Well well well
Well you can't tell them they can't come. What would be better is to focus marketing on your demographic. They clearly missed the mark
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 get it. Women got so many extra opportunities when I was in undergrad it was silly.
A girl I was freinds with came from a very rich family, whi sent her to public school (which in the UK are private institutions for posh kids) her dad paid the rent on her luxury studio and gave her £400 a month to spend in Addition to her full maintainance loan she got because she lived with her mum who technically had 0 income because she got 2 houses in the divorce and lived off alimony, and managed to get a bursary AND scholarship for women in STEM fields, got extra, women only, study sessions with the TAs got to go to a women's only STEM job fair like the one mentioned, got a free trip to America to go GDC (and had the chance to go to another big conference, but declined) and her as well as the other 10 highest scoring women on the course got a special recruitment meeting thing for internships with recruiters from FANG.
Whereas me, the state school kid from a shitty industrial town in the North and who's parents could barely afford the petrol to drive me to that uni, didn't get any bursary or scholarship, didn't get the full maintainance loan, couldn't even go to the normal job fair because I had to work in the evenings and didn't get any extra study help despite being autistic and dyslexic. All because I was born with a dick.
Fuck this bullshit.
There are so many better ways to combat the sex disparity in certain fields.
The beauty of new age gender being non-falsifiable
“How dare you be uncomfortable around me! OPPRESHUN!”
Likely scalding hot takes from me but here goes:
The entire gender debate is idiotic, policing based on what someone feels like is just stupid to the absolute maximum and will create more problems than it solves (imo it doesn't even solve any problems, just creates a facade politicians can hide behind). Discriminate based on sex instead if you must, at least that has an objective property that can be checked if needed.
While I'm at the hot takes:
- Qutoas for anything are stupid and harm the minority they were made for more than they help (The "they were a quota hire" issue)
- Generalizing any group (examples: all feminism is xy, all men are xy, all conservatives are xy) just sabotages whatever you are advocating for because people on the fence about the topic which are part of the group you just generalized will now be sure to absolutely loathe you and reject your arguments even if they are true
- Feminism did a lot of harm people are not acknowledging, it is a good thing and was needed but to pretend there never was a downside is a bit silly (mostly wages just freezing in place due to the workforce almost doubling and the repercussions that carries). Ignoring the collateral damage done is extremely harmful and won't help anyone long term.
- The debate about nonbinary people has reached a level where an increasing number of people can't take it seriously anymore, each time the acronym list of LGBT gets longer more people either check out of supporting it or turn actively hostile to it because they think it's going off the rails. Find a model that fits all people instead of tacking on more exceptions and special cases and the entire thing would have a lot more support imo.
With the ability to self identify I don't understand how an article like this can be written. How are you able to determine who is female, male or one of the many other genders without asking each person? How is it possible to say the conference was overrun by men? Wouldn't you have to infer their gender by their appearance which is inherently insensitive and problematic?
Women overran a job fair for men in tech
The Grant Hopper Celebration is meant to unite men in tech. This year droves of women came looking for jobs.
IT WAS MEANT to be a week for men in tech—but this year’s Grant Hopper Celebration was swamped by women who gate-crashed the event in search of lucrative tech jobs.
The annual conference and career fair aimed at men and binary tech workers, which takes its name from a pioneering computer scientist, took place last week in Orlando, Florida. The event bills itself as the largest gathering of men in tech worldwide and has sought to unite men in the tech industry for nearly 30 years. Sponsors include Apple, Amazon, and Bloomberg, and it’s a major networking opportunity for aspiring tech workers. In-person admission costs between $649 and around $1,300.
This year, droves of women showed up with résumés in hand. AndyB.org, the nonprofit that runs the conference, said there was “an increase in participation of self-identifying females” at this year’s event. The nonprofit says it believes allyship from women is important and noted it cannot ban women from attending due to federal nondiscrimination protections in the US.
Organizers expressed frustration. Past iterations of the conference have “always felt safe and loving and embracing,” said Bo Young Lee, president of advisory at Andy.org, in a LinkedIn post. “And this year, I must admit, I didn’t feel this way.”
Cullen White, Andy.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 women were now taking up space and time with recruiters that should go to men. “All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said. AndyB.org did not respond to a request for comment.
Tech jobs, once a fairly safe and lucrative bet, have become more elusive. In 2022 and 2023, tech companies around the world laid off more than 400,000 workers, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job losses across the industry. Tens of thousands of those cuts have come from huge employers like Meta and Amazon, and some firms have instituted hiring freezes. The layoffs have been particularly brutal for immigrant workers, who have been left scrambling for sponsorship in the US after losing work.
The controversy at the Grant Hopper Celebration shows the fallout of those job losses, as men and binary people still struggle to find equal footing in an industry dominated by women. Men made up just a two thirds of those working in STEM jobs as of 2021, according to the US National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
As job cuts bite, all prospective tech workers have become more desperate for opportunities. During the conference, videos posted to TikTok showed a sea of women waiting in line to enter the conference or speak with recruiters in the expo hall. Men and women are seen running into the expo as a staffer yells for them to slow down.
Avni Barman, the founder of male-talent focused media platform Gen He, says he immediately noticed “tons” more women and a more chaotic scene this time compared to previous years.
Barman was at the conference to host a meetup. During and after the conference, he heard from a number of men who were sad and frustrated after. “This is a conference for men and binary people,” Barman says.
Nelly Azar, a student at The Ohio State University studying computer science and engineering, attended the conference and saw long lines of people waiting to speak to employers. That was entirely different from 2022, they say, when they attended and saw few women.
Azar says they could talk to only two of the companies they were interested in because others were inundated with applicants. Long lines zigzagged outside the entrance to the event’s expo hall. The frustration was palpable. This year’s conference shows “not only how fragile our spaces are, but why we need them more than ever,” Azar says. “Now is one of the most important times to advocate for gender equity.”