

Ask HN: Why was the article "Don't Just Ask" killed? - RyanMcGreal

The Atlantic article "Don't Just Ask: Why Women Don't Negotiate" by Megan McCardle [1] was killed, even though it had 105 points and 100 comments.<p>Do we seriously think this isn't an important or legitimate issue, or that it's not worthy of discussion on HN?<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3302364
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malandrew
IMHO: It was logically weak and largely anecdotal. It made reference to a
study where the name was changed from a woman's name to a man's name. We don't
know when the study was published. We don't know if that was just one example
out of many that conveniently illustrated her point.

All the rest of the article was based on her own experience (sample size: 1
woman) and nothing else. This makes it very different from the anonymous post
on Reddit recently about salary negotiation. In the case of the Reddit post,
the author had hired hundreds of people and probably was talking about a
statistically significant sample size.

Very weak article overall. I would have commented on the Atlantic about it,
but there's no comments section.

The correct rebuttal to the OP on Reddit would be a double-blind study where
women and men with the same résumés were interviewed for the same position
with subjects given the same HR instructions as the OP. The men and women are
each broken up into two groups (for a total of four), each employing the
salary negotiation tactics described by the OP.

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accountoftheday
my guess: YC batches being almost exclusively sausage fests pg's posse prefers
to avoid subjecting itself to potential criticism wrt gender discrimination,
thus the topic is best not raised.

personally i found the article quite illuminating that the topic one worthy of
HN debate.

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JoachimSchipper
I'm surprised. The article was pretty informative and the comments page was
actually pretty good, so the usual reasons for flagging stories like that do
not apply.

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llambda
Possibly it reached a flag threshold? (Blind guess.)

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RyanMcGreal
Okay, but that begs the question. Why did enough people flag this article to
have it auto-killed?

~~~
loup-vaillant
My guess would be machismo, mixed with an American Dream mentality.

Here the Zeitgeist here in HN: you own your own destiny. If you succeed, you
made yourself. If you fail, that is your fault. If you have a problem, do not
complain (it's not productive), just suck it up and go solve it yourself. We
could go on inserting typical right-wing libertarianism here. Sure, not
everyone here thinks that way. But many do.

On to why this article was flagged. Simple: It responded to a _man_ which told
women that their low salaries were _their fault_ , and that solving that
problem was up to _them_. And it was written by a _woman_ who simply said they
tried and it doesn't work because it _is_ largely men's fault.

In other words, she dared complain and made excuses for what cannot be but her
own failures (or so would tend to think a typical right-wing libertarian
male). Also everyone knows that the flag link is meant to be used like
Reddit's down arrow (even if it's false).

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xiaoma
It was political. There are many other forums online already dominated by
discussion of sexism, racism, class inequities, etc...

~~~
Joeboy
It's surely a highly practical issue for women negotiating pay. And
negotiating pay doesn't seem to be regarded as off-topic here.

~~~
gujk
Introducing gender divides is off-topic, though.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
That rather depends on which side of the divide you find yourself.

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Mz
Hi RyanMcGreal.

I have been kind of wondering if my remarks were part of why it got flagged to
death. Of the 103 comments, I made 11 of them. I actually made a couple more
that I then deleted but which were up long enough they could have been read by
someone. I was having a really bad night and deleted those two remarks because
I concluded I was too fried and they were probably on the inflammatory side
without meaning to be. I have a long history of really upsetting people on
certain topics. I usually try to be pretty restrained when posting on such
topics. However, short of sleep and having just gotten an eviction notice,
combined with not getting ugly replies to my remarks, I was far less
restrained than I typically try to be on such topics. I find such topics
fascinating and tend to not have much outlet for really discussing them in a
satisfactory manner. Gender issues tend to be touchy issues where both sides
get really defensive, which tends to not support meaty discussion.

I have hesitated to wonder out loud about this. I'm not interested in taking
all the blame or something like that. But it is a thought that has crossed my
mind and I thought it might be meaningful to you as an individual. A great
deal of what goes on in any forum is driven by social aspects like pecking
order, who is friends with whom (that you might not be aware of), emotional
reactivity of some members and so on. I have a very serious medical condition
which often leaves me in pain and feverish, so I am prone to foot in mouth
disease. I was molested as a child and being willing to tell my story is what
saved me, so I tend to be very "out of the closet" so to speak and prone to
being very comfortable discussing topics that other people are typically far
less comfortable discussing. My story makes me a sympathetic figure which
means people are sometimes tolerant of "bad behavior" on my part that they
wouldn't be so tolerant of from just anyone (not that I think expressing my
opinions on gender topics constitutes bad behavior, but I realize it tends to
be disruptive or disturbing behavior, which is much the same in the eyes of
many people). For that and other reasons, at times I seem to be a perfect
storm of how to push everyone's hot buttons.

I actually started an anonymous blog to give myself a place to talk about
things like that without stirring up so much trouble on forums I belong to. I
think I generally do better these days at "behaving" myself (ie restraining my
big fat mouth on topics where I know I make others really uncomfortable). But
I wonder if perhaps it was killed in part due to the combo of my lack of sleep
and eviction notice leading me to share my views perhaps too generously on a
topic where it is generally wise to tread more lightly in public. I also
wonder if this post is recreating the same error. I still don't know where I
will go on January first and, though I've slept better this morning, I'm
hardly caught up on sleep. I like analyzing such things but it tends to make
other people really, really uncomfortable and tends to put excess focus on me
in a way that often leads to trouble. Given the level of financial trouble I
am in currently, I'm not sure it matters much in the grand scheme of things
how this one post gets taken.

It's offered as food for thought, in case that helps you (or anyone) figure
out better ways to deal with some of the issues on the forum that you would
like to see improved.

Peace.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Hi Mz, I went back and re-read your comments on the other piece, and while I
obviously couldn't read the comments you deleted, I didn't see anything in the
comments you left to indicate that they should be considered inflammatory. If
people are willing to flag a post based on your comments, that in itself
indicates that there's something wrong with how the tech community regards
women. Even the excuses posted elsewhere on this piece suggest the double
standard that's going on: significant, reproducible gender imbalances in pay
and other treatment are "politics", but a snarky post by Gruber is Serious
Business.

By the way, I'm sorry to hear about your troubles, and I hope you can resolve
them without too much disruption.

~~~
Mz
As for the gender stuff: I think it's actually fairly common for men to react
negatively to me in part simply because I am female. Here and now is probably
not the time to start publicly navel gazing in that regard. I'm short of
sleep. I need to be in to work early. Blah blah blah.

As for my personal troubles, I just need about $75,000 to clean up my
financial mess and start my life over elsewhere. Thinking of taking up a
collection. Donations or assistance spreading the word or what not are very
welcome. It's really a drop in the bucket compared to what my medical
condition is supposed to cost to treat. And it feels very unfair that the
unconventional approach I took, which was both so much more effective and so
much cheaper than conventional treatments, is simply not covered by the state
aid, federal aid, charities, and insurance that would help cover conventional
treatments. It bites.

Take care.

