[TriLUG] Discrimination <- Re: The biggest deterrent for women in tech

[Ryan Leathers]

Three cheers for discrimination.

I am a hiring manager.
I am delighted that I get to discriminate on the basis of skill and also on
the basis of potential value to the organization.
I greatly prefer to reward effort, talent and success than to reward
everyone equally regardless of effort talent or success.

Not every employee with the "Programmer 2" job title earns the exact same
wage, but they are all in the same "band".
Wage "bands" are a standard practice.
When an offer is made to a potential employee, I consider everything I know
about the candidate and the position in order to make an appropriate offer.

Suppose a candidate I am considering interviews well, but has informed me
that they will never be able to work on weekends or stay past 5PM.  Is this
employee just as valuable to me as one who can, everything else being
equal? Maybe - maybe not. I guess it would depend on the position.

Suppose a candidate has some non-work related thing that frequently
requires their attention. Maybe its a family member  needing long term care
in the home, or a religious observance, a volunteer role in a local
political party. It really doesn't matter what it is or how noble I
personally find it.  If it makes them less available then they are less
valuable to me than they might otherwise be.

Now suppose this candidate turns out to be a stellar employee in spite of
frequently dividing their attention between work and non-work concerns. I
want to reward them, and I can do that in two ways. One way is to give a
raise. The other is to be even more accommodating with their time.  Maybe I
try to do both.

A thought for those stuck on the statistics...
Perhaps there are some differences between male and female employees a
manager has a duty to consider.  If they are equally talented, then
obviously we begin with an expectation to compensate equally... but we need
to consider individuals - not whole genders.  Is this particular man or
woman starting a family? If so, how will maternity leave affect each of
them?  How will it affect the project they are working on?  Will they each
have the same amount of time away from work tending to a sick child? And so
it goes...  considering all we know about the individual employee.

The point is, even putting all of history aside and starting from a blank
slate today, IF women as a percentage of workers tend to have more ongoing
non-work related obligations than men, (and I suspect this is statistically
the case) then it follows that women will tend to have lower pay.  This
isn't something a manger will calculate by checking the secret evil gender
column in a compensation spreadsheet.  It has a hard intersection with
project management and product deliverables.  Whats more, the way that one
rewards a good employee might not be reflected entirely by pay. That isn't
the only thing people care about. Its easy to follow a statistic and
conclude 'evil discrimination', but that doesn't make it so.

As a point of interest, female engineers in my company happen to be doing
quite well compared to their male counterparts - I dare say better. Things
like this happen when you base your discrimination on the talents and
abilities of the individual.

Regardless, discrimination is only a dirty word if you use it that way.