Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech

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.
- 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.
  
  So they identified as men, and the event allowed the men to come? Then I'm failing to see what the issue is?
  
  It also mentioned how some were lying about their identity, but I'm not sure how they figured that out
- What are the genders of non-binary?
  And while you're here, is yellow more of a blue or red?
  
  you have to specify what genders of nonbinary are/aren’t welcome
  "Genders of nonbinary"
  My friend, nonbinary is a gender. This is like asking what type of bird a chicken is.
  
  what genders of nonbinary are/aren’t welcome
  Like, intergender is fine, but genderless is not...? or the other way around?
  
  Right, like the ones with vaginas are cool and the ones with penises aren't?
  
  Exactly like Java vs Python vs C++

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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  Also watch out for the recruiters who give you a challenge to fulfill just to be considered. It’s free work they are looking for.
- My experience of going to a tech fair was:
  Great discussion with sourcing recruiter of Big Name Company, who loves CV and experience
  Get Business Card and told to apply online
  Apply online
  Ghosted/immediately rejected.
  They're basically box-ticking exercises for companies that want to work with specific organisations.
- I remember when a lady tried to scam me into an MLM at a job fair I attended several years ago.
  
  I got scammed into attending a seminar for "business women empowering business women." It was just this lady giving a talk about what a great job coach she is and then pressuring everyone into hiring her for $300 per month. She saw me as a mark and was really targeting me, I actually wrote the check for her first three months and was about to hand it to her, but saw the look in her eyes, looking at my check and realized I should just tear it up.
  
  It's not a pyramid, it's a triangle.
- That's been my experience as well. Totally pointless when they just want you to apply online. What's the use of networking then?
- I've been on the opposite side. A company I used to work for did a table at a job fair once. The candidates who showed up to talk to us were mostly under qualified for the entry level position we were trying to fill. And by that, I mean that people with zero knowledge, training or experience in our industry. Even one class or a little knowledge might have sufficed.
  We had one guy lingering near our table who really seemed to want to work with us even though his skill set didn't fit our needs at all and we told him as much. The whole thing was a big waste of time for us, we never did another one after that.
  
  under qualified for the entry level position we were trying to fill.
  Was it really "entry level" then?
  
  hiring for entry level
  saying people are underqualified
  The problem is with the companies, not the job seekers. Actually offer true entry level positions, and actually hire the people that apply.
- If recruiters are trying to discriminate, and you have the attributes they're discriminating in favor of, getting a face-to-face with them can be a way to get your foot in the door that doesn't leave a paper trail.
  Which really highlights how bad the job market is now. All the recruiters at this job fair are going to share the sentiments the organizers are expressing in this article. They're there to hire women and are pissed at all the men who showed up, so significantly less likely to hire them... but those dudes are so desperate they still gave it a shot.
  
  Which really highlights how bad the job market is now
  I think we should specify, "in tech". The greater job market is doing fine. Tech has been over hiring and over compensating for years.
  
  I'm a woman and wasn't even at the event. No clue it was going on, and it seems like it'd be far too expensive for me to attend in the first place. If they're looking for women who are eager to work for them, they're looking in the wrong place.
- It depends on the job fair. My mid-tier university's career fair was as you describe. From talking to (women) classmates who attended Grace Hopper on the other hand it sounded very worth it. The lines were short (in the mid 2010s anyway) and many of the companies in attendance were scheduling next-day, single round interviews with job offers sent out by the end of the week. I have no idea if it's still like that but I can't say I'm surprised that, given how the tightly pool of entry-level jobs offering visa sponsorships has contracted, affected male students have gotten desperate and shameless enough to try it.
- That's been my experience as well. Totally pointless when they just want you to apply online. What's the use of networking then?

I like how this comment section highlights why a job fair specifically not for cis men is needed lol
- 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.
  
  I'm really being sincere, but why would men magically not need a job fair? They can also be unemployed and struggle to get a job. That's not a 2x specific issue.
  
  What’s worse is when you see workplaces that want more women for only the idea it will ‘bring up the standard’ like….I think there’s something telling about the culture alone if they need a specific gender to help understand better standards of working. I would hope they are hiring inclusively for more reasons than just ‘our standards are low cuz the men here are poo and we won’t confront them on it. We will leave it to women to mommy manage it for us. Know any women looking for a job?’
  
  Why can’t women have a job fair?
  Laws.
  I agree with you, it's just not the way the laws were written.
  
  If woman want a job fair they should create one that actually only allows women, but given no one seems to have a definition for women, it might be hard to do.
- Yeah if there’s ever a sign that a group doesn’t need representation is when they brigade someone who does.
- No it does not. The problem was with men that lied about their gender.
  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.
  edit: the deleted comment stated that the article claimed they had problems with amab enbies

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.
- I would like to know which half of the population you think is receiving the hatred and which half of the population is lobbing it.
  
  Yes that is very unclear in the last sentence. Same with the responses beneath it.
  
  It's a delicious free-for-all and I'm all for it
- Divide and conquer is a strategy old as world
- Seriously.. no one should be blamed for trying to earn a living. Instead of being supportive of each other and fucking organizing in unions, we are fighting with each other.
  
  Because the left is too busy playing identity politics rather than focusing on unions.
  It's just continual bigotry that creates more problems than it ever solves.
  Identity politics always leads to ruin.
- Pretty sure Lenny's user base is heavily male dominated.

Ignoring gender, are job fairs overrun by job seekers now? Is it that bad?
- Tech is overcrowded as a field and it gets worse each year. So yes.
  
  Sadly, the perception will always be that there aren't enough workers in tech, or that there aren't enough "good" techies, when that hasn't been the case for many many years now.
  While a lot of people do leave tech for management or other careers, bootcamps still sell the dream to make money, and people always talk about how "learning to code is so important to society". There has been an effort in the last decade or so to flood the market with entry-level workers, that we're now in a situation where people are spending thousands on qualifications, only to find it near impossible to get the job - or finding that no one gives a fuck where you went to college and that you need to "LC or GTFO".
  
  Fuck. I graduate next year in tech

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...?
- After thinking about it that's exactly what they're doing.
  They sold tickets at $700 each to loads of men. So loads of men turned up.
  What did they expect to happen. They knew in advance how many tickets they'd sold and to who.. and nobody raised any flags. A few % lying about gender (if they did, gender is complex) wouldn't tip the scales that much.
  
  That's the motto of the WNBA.... SOMEONE, needs to pay for this, but it's not the responsibility of women to support women's sports ¯(ツ)/¯
- BringBackDiscrimination
- Did you mean this to seem sincere? Because it reads like a snide anti-LGBTQ statement.
  
  Not a TERF, just downvoting because you made a ridiculous statement and then followed it up with "anyone who disagrees with me is a bigot".

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.
  
  A lot of times people arguing like that ignore the imbalance that exists and they go on to argue as if everything is equal to start with.
  
  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 :/
  
  What do you mean by equal footing? Equality in Outcomes, or Equality in Opportunities?
  Having a job conference open to all genders sounds more equal then a conference excluding a gender identity.
  I personally would love to get to the point where names, photos, genders, and social networks - are removed from all employment material and people are just judged on their ability to do a job.
  Something like putting someone into the interview queue based on their resume and projects, then having the interview feedback re-written by a third party to remove all discriminatory indicators, then a double blind hiring committee making decisions based on the interview feedback, and neutral resumes. It's a pipe dream, but it would get us closer to a true meritocracy
- They are men and belonging to that category automatically makes them rich and privileged.
  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.
  
  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.
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Switch men with women.
  Let's see how that reads 🤡
  Class is a lot bigger factor in these things than sex...
- 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
- Your comment isn’t loading for me
- Modern feminists are the biggest bootlickers out there.
  They sold out in 1970s, no solidarity.

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.
- 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.
  
  Probably the best solution is to just treat people the same regardless of gender so nobody has an incentive to lie.
  I couldn't agree more.
- "an increase in participation of self-identifying males”
  These aren't guys who claim transgenderism or non-binary identity, these are men.
  Gender is what an individual feels like: and it's a consistent feeling regardless of their circumstances.
  Nobody in good faith argued that your gender changes at the drop of a hat or whenever convenient. The transgender people I know have experienced significant suffering for decades due to a mismatch in feeling vs societal impositions.
  White isn't being a bigot: you are with your terf talking points. Fuck off.
  
  These aren’t guys who claim transgenderism or non-binary identity, these are men.
  They didn't poll anyone already at the conference. There were no genital checks at the door. This is Cullen White making a prima facie observation of people who present as men and claiming they "lied about their gender identity when signing up."
  It sounds like both you and White feel entitled to dictate to others their gender.
  
  But how did they know the people lying about their identity were actually lying? That's what I was left wondering. Hopefully it's not just based on what the organizers assumed because that'd be (while admittedly funny) quite contrary to what I assume they want to advocate for.
  I read the article but didn't see it clarified. Dunno if they clarified in the video
- Just because gender is a complicated matter, it doesn't mean people can't be dishonest about it. Trying to invalidate transgender people for the lies of male registrants intruding on women's spaces is doubly shameful. Really, transphobic people love to put up a flimsy mocking pretense that they are a different gender to discredit trans people.
  Even entertaining this argument seems like a mistake, but trans and non-binary people are a small minority. It's extremely unlikely that they would outnumber cisgender women.
  It's sad to see this sort of two-faced transphobic talk taking starting to take root in Kbin and Lemmy. It's bad enough how much of this happens in other places.
  
  I think it points out the fact that saying you are something does not mean you are that something. Anyone willing to lie (lots of people) can abuse this freedom to the detriment of the protected group. self id cannot be a thing if you want to exclude a certain group, because you have no basis to call them out, no matter what your hunch may be.
  
  It's not clear from your comment. Are you also accusing the trans women at this conference of lying about their gender?
- If gender is whatever an individual feels like, then this event was just thousands of women and non-binary folks,
  The event could be "thousands of women and non-binary folks". Did all these male-presenting people identify as women or non-binary just to be able to attend this event?
  What do you think identity politics is, exactly? Just a way to make changes you don't like to make you unhappy? It couldn't possibly be about people trying to make social changes so they're not constantly treated like shit. Oh no. The horror.
  
  To the casual observer, identity politics seems to be a bunch of people competing to see who can put the most minority group names and acronyms in their social media profiles.
  
  The event could be “thousands of women and non-binary folks”. Did all these male-presenting people identify as women or non-binary just to be able to attend this event?
  According to their Chief Impact Officer, yes. Apparently they "lied about their gender identity when signing up."
  What do you think identity politics is, exactly?
  Performative politics centred around identity. White is perfectly happy to pretend that men can be women - until it impacts him.

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

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.
- You're saying this like the rat race isn't a feature for employers. They give you that advice because they want you to settle for whatever shit job they can get you to do for as little pay as possible. Employers don't want happy, productive employees. They want desperate, starving employees just happy for the "opportunity" to make just enough to technically be able to survive.
  
  it's a feature for employers
  You're absolutely right about that.
- I'm a trans woman and don't bother applying because I know that my resume isn't even looked at, and the interview hurdles are just so high that they'll just say no anyway. What's the point if companies refuse to hire me?
  
  Well, companies can't hire you if you don't apply. Do your best and make them all tell you no, rather than expecting it and not trying.
  Just know that it's often not your fault your application didn't make it through. It's half an exhausting lottery. I've had pristinely written CV and letter with family and career counselors editing it not get anything, and applications where I found spelling mistakes after were interested in interviewing. Companies tend to have hiring seasons where if you apply at a consistent pace, you'll get no answers some months and many answers at other times.
  Even recruiting itself is a hellscape, you see corps getting recruiters, laying them off because "they don't need em anymore", then all of sudden they need more staff but way more than the recruiters they have can handle.

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.
- 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.
  
  The attendees should be able to tell that they would be intruding even if the organization didn't bother to check that. Both were in the wrong.
- 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?
  
  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.
  
  seriously this happens a lot people will go off and say word for word that a whole group of people are evil and bad when its a subset of a group. When called on it they may simply say that its not talking about the group as a whole or “not for you” if they dont genuinely believe the whole group is bad (which is wrong and discriminatory)
  The issue is the discrepancy of what you say in relation to what you mean will lead others to believe in what you say but not what you mean and this harms those just trying to survive normally.
  
  Being an asshole is not illegal. Obeying the law doesn't mean you're a good person.
  If these dudes were - as the article quotes describe - pushing, shoving, cutting in line then like I don't see why you feel you need to identify with these particular dudes.
  You can absolutely wait until some guy actually is being unfairly treated before dying on this hill.
- Great Parks and Rec episode
- It’s abusive to checks notes apply for a job?
  
  It's abusive to invade women's spaces as a man looking to take advantage. Stay out.
  Oh look, you're all up in this thread a day late posting his horrid takes.
- There's nothing more pathetic the a Mens Rights Activist. Shame to see so many of them here.
  
  I don't support the actions of men in this article, but all gender roles are toxic, and there are societal expectations of men that are genuinely toxic.
  Again, women have gotten the shit end of the stick for muuuuch longer. I don't want to minimize that. But saying mens rights activists are pathetic?
  60% of male suicides report no off behavior from the man before commiting suicide. This suggests it isn't a mental illness causing the problem, but circumstances in their life cause them to kill themself because they truly see no other solution or way out for the predicament they're in.
  How come men are twice as likely to be homeless than women?
  Why isn't it socially acceptable for men to take on the "care taker roll" like a stay at home dad or a nurse?
  I could go on, but I don't want to make this a rallying cry for men in a thread about a tech conference for women. I get meninsts is like a men's rights group that was created to troll feminists, but men's rights and woman's rights should both just try and be egalitarian

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)."
- I only got my first job in tech for not lying. That was the only way I stood out. The guy hiring me was relieved when I came by and said my stuff was mediocre so I could not be lying like the sea of shitheads (his words) plaigerizing even his own work. Yes,even his own work started showing up in other people’s resumes..
  So sometimes being truthful is worthwhile to be the only way to stand out. It’s a way to stay believable especially if they are inundated with liars
  
  I answered the 'why do you want this job' question with 'I'm unemployed and need money', rather than lying about some lifelong ambition to work for a small software company in bumfuck nowhere. Got me the job.
  Of course it depends on the interviewer, but TBH I'd rather work for one that values honesty anyway.

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.
- Accurate lmao

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.
- The fact that it's illegal for them to ban men because it's considered gender discrimination kind of highlights the problem here.
- I think most of the discussion is that a job fair created to rectify discrimination, is complaining in an article that they can't discriminate
  
  🙄
  
  its mostly complaints that people are being disrespected, if you read the article: pushing, shoving, etc.
  
  "But what about the paradox of tolerance!"
  Nawwwe bro, not interested.
  
  You can’t pretend that comparative history has no impact on the present. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

No one wants to work anymore!
- The mating call of terrible managers everywhere…
  
  We call em "effective managers" nowadays, of course with note of sarcasm in voice)

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.)
- That doesn't seem like a job fair for women, but rather a job fair for everybody except men...
  
  Correct. Since you can’t tell if a person in enby by looking at them this is just a bunch of bigots getting mad that enby and trans people were present. Terfs gonna terf i guess.
  
  I think that's heavily implied. But they're not legally allowed to say that
  
  I imagine there were many 8 year old spending hundreds of dollars on a ticket.
- You actually think there's the slightest possibility that a meaningful fraction of the men there are actually ftm trans people?

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.
- Imagine if this was a whites only or over 6ft tall job fair, this stuff just fails to make sense when you divide groups based on criteria you can't control.
  
  I want a job fair for short people. Fuck those lankies, too long have they towered over us short kings! #SetTheBarLow
- Discrimination, without context, is necessary in nearly every situation. I must discriminate between bleach and water if I am to live, I must discriminate between walking into fast traffic and when it is safe to cross the road etc...
  On a softer level, I discriminate between who I call my wife, and who I don't, which of my friends is named David and which is named Alex...
  And then if I'm employing people I can't give everyone a job, I have to discriminate to a single person per job.
  So, with the taken that to do anything some level of common sense discrimination is needed. However, humans cannot be relied upon to not take discrimination to an unfair place, and people must be forced to discriminate fairly.
  People also lie, and will straight up tell you to your face they do not discriminate against women from the moment they enter the workforce to their dying day, and yet will, in private, discriminate against women so hard even if it were to destroy everything they hold dear. The only way to prevent that is to force people to discriminate.
  
  Discrimination != Choice
  There are moments in life where you gotta choose something. There is no discrimination if you choose objectively. You choose water over bleach because there are objective reasons why one over the other will be better for you. You choose waiting for a green light over running onto a driving car because that is less likely to get you killed. If you cant give everyone a job you have to choose someone. If you choose purely based on qualities describing who will fit the position best like experience and knowledge that wont be a discrimination. There is no such thing as a fair discrimination
  
  People can't be trusted to hire correctly but they can be trusted to do a their job correctly? Say I was interviewing another engineer, you would argue that I can't be trusted to do this task, but you presumably accept I can be trusted to do all other tasks associated with my job. Strange how I lose all ability to reason correctly the moment I walk into the conference room and regain it the moment I leave.
  Hey if I stand in the door way will I be in a superposition state between bigoted and rational or will I be half of both at once or is it more like the Trinity? You know a mystery of the church...watch as the engineer is fully rational and fully irrational the two are separate but of same substrate.

Glad to see federal anti-discrimination law working to prevent these conference organizers from being as sexist as they wanted to be.
- If companies were looking for applicants there, it is clear discrimination.
  
  Companies are definitely looking for applicants there, so it would definitely be discriminatory to ban men from it. That's why it would be illegal to ban men:
  "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."

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.
- Oftentimes what these events actually are for is more about solidarity than recruitment. One of the issues with male dominated fields is that oftentimes they are exhausting to participate in when you are treated as an outsider. Having a community space where people can get together and talk shop, ask frank questions about culture from recruiters and gather strength from visibly seeing other people doing the same thing you do can give a sense of not being so alone.
  That and a lot of women require a lot more data on how they compare before they feel like they are actually a viable candidate. They are sort of trained into an almost crippling idea of modesty and more social anxiety in general so a lot of them will only apply if they solidly fit the listed requirements. When they utilize a dialogue based recruitment space they can gain confidence that small missing bits of listed experience desired on their resume don't fully discount them from being a candidate for a job and gets more of them to apply. Women lean on pack tactics more than men do so these sort of events actually fufill a lot of secondary objectives than just on the day hiring.
- Curious where you think it goes to far?
  
  Maybe excluding people based on gender in order to fulfil some ideological fantasies about how the world should be?

if yall are going to a job fair at least don't be assholes about it.

They are all for gender equality, except when...
- Except when you cannot find any female candidates to apply for your openings, so you go to a conference to do ad-hoc interviews.
  
  If you cannot find (female) candidates for an opening, maybe it is time to re-evaluate the jobs you are offering, and how you are doing this.

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

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

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

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.
- That sounds like a class issue not a gender issue
  
  That's kind of my point. The gender issue is just more culture war bullshit to keep the worming class fighting petty squabbles, when the real issue is classism.
  My story imply the question: who needs help more, rich women or poor men?

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”
- This is such a brain dead take. The conference exists to support a group that has been and is actively discriminated against and harassed in the tech industry. All the men crashing the event care not at all about the conference, its mission, and its participants - they’re just desperate to find a job. And while I absolutely sympathize with people suffering unemployment, it’s really shitty (and sadly so typical and indicative of the problem) to flood a space designed for women and non-binary people, completely disregarding them in the race to get ahead.
  
  The conference should have been for females, not women. Transgender women are over represented in tech and the real numerical discrepancy is with the number of females in tech.
- Dude, have you worked in tech? At all? It’s already horrendously overrun with men who step outside their space and make everyone’s day worse. I don’t begrudge women for being frustrated that it’s happening at the Grace Hopper conference.

- So many of these comments are so damn disheartening.

Just shows that men are better at everything, even being women.

The beauty of new age gender being non-falsifiable

“How dare you be uncomfortable around me! OPPRESHUN!”

- Coal mining pretty much died as a career path before women could really get into it.
  Primary education pays terribly for the education level, so the educated men go elsewhere.
- Its not the same comparison tho. Tech is a far more lucrative career than coal mining/primary ed. Inequity in tech affects a lot more than inequity in those other fields.

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.
- These might just be some of the dumbest opinions I've heard in a while, and I'm actually impressed you were able to create a worldview that supports those inane ramblings.
  
  Oh I know, let's play a game: You give me a list of political questions along with what you think my opinion on them is and I give you my actual opinion, see if my worldview is actually as dumb as you think it is.
  
  whoo 6 downvotes and finally someone at least leaves a remark. Was wondering if I was going to get the honor at all. As I said: likely scaldingly hot takes. Actually surprised other people even agree with me given how insanely left leaning lemmy is.
- Wow, this might legitimately be the worst thing I've ever read on lemmy, and that is not a low bar to pass.
  Like I'm on the same "side" as you but my god you make me wish I wasn't, because this is such a braindead take.
  Also making a comment crying about getting downvoted is THE most cringe thing imaginable.
  
  where was I crying? I expected the downvotes, otherwise I wouldn't have put the hot take nomer into the comment in the first place ffs. I was genuinely surprised it took 6 downvotes before someone left a comment because from prior experience that happens a lot earlier. If you think I was crying maybe don't try to interpret too much into everything? I get that there's a lot of unmarked sarcasm and irony around but sometimes people just write what they actually want to say instead of wrapping it in 20 layers of metaphor. In this case I was genuinely stoked to get my first comment on a downvoted comment because I was also genuinely waiting for it.
  Maybe I can sum it up like this: If I were unable to cope with negative feedback to my opinion I would not have written it down in a comment on a public forum in the first place.
  Also not sure what you mean with "side" but if you believe it's such a braindead take you might have to re-evaluate your stance on things. If an incredibly dumbed down version of a stance you (apparently) agree with even on some level makes you do a double take I suggest going back and reconsidering whether where you think you stand is actually where you stand. If at the end of it you come out of that with the opinion that I just worded things incredibly stupidly or am just an douche or whatever is another matter but imo it's worth doing the retrospection in any case.

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?
- Is this a real question or trolling? I'm not sure...
  
  It's a rhetorical question.

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.”
- This is so disingenuous because it completely ignores why a woman's tech conference needs to exsist in the first place. I hope you're not actually convinced that you care about equality and realize where the urge to argue against a woman's tech conference being for women comes from.
  
  The article implies that it’s somehow harder to find a job in tech as a woman. In my experience in IT this is quite the opposite. Every company I’ve worked for where I was involved in the hiring process would have loved to hire more women. The problem is that women don’t choose a career in IT.
  
  Surface level arguments from willfully ignorant people.
- That comparison would make sense if it was set in a universe where tech is a female dominated field in which males are paid less.
  
  If this post was in a gendered community, I wouldn't have responded at all. But it was posted to Technology, ostensibly a topic of interest to all technology subscribers.
  Discrimination based on someone's non-optional attributes, especially protected classes such as gender, is exclusive by definition. That means we are discriminating against subscribers of the technology community if we can't point out the sexism inherit in the article.
- If we reverse the genders in the story it sounds kinda sexist....
  
  The tech industry is super sexist. We already have a huge advantage and are whining that women get a little one.
  "Vast majority of tech works are women" "women are way more likely to hold high level tech jobs" "Men have to fight to to be taken seriously by tech bosses" also sound sexist but it's literally true for men.
  
  Yes, removing all context from a situation can make it look bad.
  
  Yes, removing all context from a situation can make it look bad.
  
  Thank you for pointing that out. I wasn't able to infer that myself.