… but you have to ask - why can’t this person find a job? Surely not every employer is non-inclusive. There’s smells of a partial story all through this.
As another trans person that's been in a similar position before, it's really frustrating how many loops I've gone through where the moment I'd get to some part where it wasn't voice only anymore, you could just hear the tone shift and get rejected shortly after.
Combine that with the current tech market being on a downswing and it's not unreasonable that this would take a while to find a new place.
I've met more than one hiring manager who tacitly refuses to hire anyone who is transgendered. Of course this is only revealed in confidence, and they'll deny it if asked.
The reason is typically one or more of:
- they don't want the rest of the team to have to walk on eggshells regarding pronouns and so on, or
- they don't want to have to deal with any fallout from female employees getting pissed about males using their bathroom, or
- they've had a bad experience hiring a transgender previously (typically due to the previous two reasons) and don't want to repeat it with another.
Kind of sucks for the transgendered applicants, but understandable I suppose, given the circumstances these days.
While it’s unrealistic to believe that every bad thing that happens to you is because of discrimination, being part of a commonly discriminated group has an effect of making everything harder.
Lots of people struggle to find a job. Now imagine if on top of that, some additional percentage of jobs are off the table to begin with.
In a way, this reminds me of climate change. You can’t usually point to any one event and definitively say “this was caused by discimination,” but you’re quite aware it’s happening overall.
San Francisco and Seattle aren't exactly hotbeds of intolerance. The large-scale studies on discrimination in tech companies did find slight gender discrimination, in favor of women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
Anecdotal story time, when I was a young student in France, I believed that discrimination was mostly a thing from the past, I believed that in 2000, being black wouldn't affect hiring decisions that much and wouldn't make it much harder to find a job.
Then two very good friends of mine graduated, they were both black, they were both French citizens from the French islands, they both graduated as electronics engineers within the top 10% of their class, they were well-spoken, and pretty much serious model students. The average time to find a class for people who graduated in their major was less than 2 months. One of my friend found a job in 6 months, the other in 5 months. Both of them had a starting salary that was more than 40% lower than the average salary of the other students in my university graduating in the same major.
That's when I discovered that discrimination still exists and that it has tremendous impact. So, it doesn't surprise me at all that being transgendered makes finding a job significantly harder.
Many manager are reluctant of hiring members of certain minority groups, as they are afraid of the potential HR issues; as far too many people play the discrimination card when they are involved in any kind of conflict or face disciplinary action. Sometimes measure to prevent discrimination can do the opposite.
Probably because they sound absolutely insufferable to work with.
Who demands extensive requirements docs in <100 person startups? Who organizes ERGs in that context? Who spends all their time obsessing over process, planning, and identity instead of actually building stuff?
According to the article she was actually moving up the ranks and getting promoted, so it sounds like the company did in fact think she was doing something right.
throwaway202351|2 years ago
Combine that with the current tech market being on a downswing and it's not unreasonable that this would take a while to find a new place.
begno|2 years ago
The reason is typically one or more of:
- they don't want the rest of the team to have to walk on eggshells regarding pronouns and so on, or
- they don't want to have to deal with any fallout from female employees getting pissed about males using their bathroom, or
- they've had a bad experience hiring a transgender previously (typically due to the previous two reasons) and don't want to repeat it with another.
Kind of sucks for the transgendered applicants, but understandable I suppose, given the circumstances these days.
Waterluvian|2 years ago
Lots of people struggle to find a job. Now imagine if on top of that, some additional percentage of jobs are off the table to begin with.
In a way, this reminds me of climate change. You can’t usually point to any one event and definitively say “this was caused by discimination,” but you’re quite aware it’s happening overall.
Manuel_D|2 years ago
nicolas_t|2 years ago
Then two very good friends of mine graduated, they were both black, they were both French citizens from the French islands, they both graduated as electronics engineers within the top 10% of their class, they were well-spoken, and pretty much serious model students. The average time to find a class for people who graduated in their major was less than 2 months. One of my friend found a job in 6 months, the other in 5 months. Both of them had a starting salary that was more than 40% lower than the average salary of the other students in my university graduating in the same major.
That's when I discovered that discrimination still exists and that it has tremendous impact. So, it doesn't surprise me at all that being transgendered makes finding a job significantly harder.
mjbeswick|2 years ago
throwestfaraway|2 years ago
Who demands extensive requirements docs in <100 person startups? Who organizes ERGs in that context? Who spends all their time obsessing over process, planning, and identity instead of actually building stuff?
It's amazing they had a job this long.
pcthrowaway|2 years ago
mjbeswick|2 years ago
codehitchhiker|2 years ago
weird