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Can you even avoid affirmative action employers anymore? 79

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WARose

WARose

Structural
Mar 17, 2011
5,594
I had a buddy talk me into applying to the same place he's working....and I take a look at the place later (nothing like looking after you leap)....and in a company that's 90% male....they've got women in just about ALL the lead positions. I know at least 2 of them.....and they are nowhere near as qualified as some of the other people there.

Is there even a way to avoid this now? (Except at the smaller companies.) I am not anti-female in any way....but this sort of thing has resulted in chaos everywhere I've been that had it.

 
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I think the OP is sounding more and more like the snowflakes he purports to despise.

OP: Did the old rules get changed on you? Did you lose out the first time you played on a level field? Boo hoo.
If you're blaming affirmative action, you forgot to look in the mirror.
 
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I think the OP is sounding more and more like the snowflakes he purports to despise.
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Pardon me but when exactly have I claimed to dislike "snowflakes"?

OP: Did the old rules get changed on you?
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Yeah, things like productivity (and competence) use to matter.

Did you lose out the first time you played on a level field?
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Well...no. If you will note in my OP....I am talking about how some places are run as a result of this stuff. I am not talking about me necessarily filling some of those roles.

I would suggest reading my posts more thoroughly before coming up with all these strawmen.

 
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Exactly. And even in large companies, having a bunch of voids sitting in production positions just puts more weight on other people.
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Do you have first hand knowledge of this? I've worked for companies that are 10,000 to 150,000 employee strong, and haven't met anyone any less competent or less productive as the smallest companies I worked for. Sounds like you are just throwing out stereotypes of large companies and women and the immediate assumption that women must have been promoted on less stringent bases because they couldn't have possible been more qualified than the men they passed by.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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Do you have first hand knowledge of this?
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Yep.

I've worked for companies that are 10,000 to 150,000 employee strong, and haven't met anyone any less competent or less productive as the smallest companies I worked for.
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I've worked for some of the largest EPC outfits in the country (in fact, in the world). And anyone who hasn't noticed this must have blinders on.

Sounds like you are just throwing out stereotypes of large companies and women and the immediate assumption that women must have been promoted on less stringent bases because they couldn't have possible been more qualified than the men they passed by.
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Well, as usual, what you are hearing isn't what I am saying. (And I think we've had enough strawmen for one thread.)

I've seen this with my own eyes. One of the outfits I alluded to is right here in the area I live and I have worked for them. They've got a female head of Project Management. When I worked there I had the displeasure of working with her. One big issue was she was never there. (And her frequent absences had nothing to do with work.) Another was just how rude and abrasive she was. (One guy quit over difficulties with her, and he made it a point to let HR know that. Sounds like someone you'd want to promote eh?) And of course the last big issue was (in spite of her engineering degree) she apparently knew nothing about engineering (in any discipline)....or really much else. I kept waiting to see an upside (scheduling knowledge, estimating knowledge, real management skills, etc, etc) and I never saw that. And here she is the head of the PM group.

And it was like that all the time with a lot of other positions that directly effected someone like me. So don't you tell ME what this has been like when I've had to clean up after some of these people. I don't know what it is like at some aerospace outfit and I don't give a rip either. That's not what I do.

And (again) this isn't hating on any particular group (there are plenty of competent women out there).....this is about putting people in key positions for all the wrong reasons.





 
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Its a simple business proposition that regularly comes up. If your company is owned by or employs the quota of protected classes stateside then it is eligible for various tax incentives, subsidies, and even non-competitive govt contracts. I've personally seen examples of all three, and yes, the system disproportionately incentivizes large companies in that regard. When I was younger the folks who refused to identify their race or gender on paperwork seemed rather nutty to me. Nowadays I generally refuse to do so, including identifying as a veteran bc I know the purpose of it. I dont need the govt to help me get hired, I need them to not help others. Taxes are much the same way - I dont need the govt to give me more of my money back based on an absurdly complex/expensive system of credits and deductions, I need them to take less in the first place.
 
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I've seen this with my own eyes. One of the outfits I alluded to is right here in the area I live and I have worked for them. They've got a female head of Project Management. When I worked there I had the displeasure of working with her. One big issue was she was never there. (And her frequent absences had nothing to do with work.)
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And in all your years, you've never known a male manager do that?

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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And in all your years, you've never known a male manager do that?
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And get promoted.....in fact, all the way to the top? No.

 
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One can make the argument that women tend to have better people skills than men.
And some organizations value people skills highly for supervisory / management positions.
So if you're judging them purely on technical, it might not be the whole story.

With that said, we've had about five young women in engineering that I recall at my workplace the last 20 years.
Three were fast-tracked into some form of operator training which is how generally engineers move into management.
Zero remain. A few dropped out of the work market for family considerations. The others went on to other jobs.
I dunno what it means, it is what it is.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?
 
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Of course in the bad old days there was another interpretation on how certain women achieved certain positions. I don't think that was better :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand
 
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Unless someone completely different gets planted at the top, nothing changes. I have been a "victim" of affirmative action, and I don't feel too scarred by it. There is plenty of room at the table. Different perspectives are refreshing.
 
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WARose - if you have never seen an incompetent male get promoted to management, including to the top, you have lived a very sheltered existence.
 
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In my part of the world all goverment jobs get determined by AA. This has caused all government entities (power, rail, aviation) to be run into the ground. In terms of engineering, the expertise is not there any more, or not enough, so all the work gets outsourced. So the tax payers effectively pays double.
 
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As it should be. The only finger wagging harpy I'm willing to put up with is my wife.
 
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WARose - if you have never seen an incompetent male get promoted to management, including to the top, you have lived a very sheltered existence.
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Anyone ever seen a employer brag about that? Well, guess what? A lot of companies brag that they practice AA. That's the issue.

And even if you want to run with that theory (i.e. that a lot of incompetent white males wound up [here or there] because they were white & male in the past)....that's forgetting one big thing: especially in production positions these days, there isn't a lot of "fat" anymore. Every year the number of people on a project just keeps getting leaner. So there really isn't room anymore for discrimination (be it reverse or regular).
 
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Why is THAT an issue?
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Why do you think? What have I been talking about in this thread? (I.e. in terms of what this means in the trenches.)

What would be the issue with a employer bragging that they give preference to white males? Would that be a problem?
 
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So you think having the MAJORITY of management being white and male should stand and not be changed at all.
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IF that is the best they can find? Absolutely. And it goes more for production type positions than anywhere else.

It should be like the NFL draft (a bit of a irony there in comparing to a all-male institution, but there it is). Whomever can help us the most is who we get. Hell, it use to be, they didn't care if you smoked crack on your spare time as long as they thought you could produce for them.

That's the way it ought to be. This isn't a social experiment.....this is work.

Clear enough? Or do I need to try putting it in braille next?
 
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