I cant see anyone letting something like this hit the public on purpose, big HR slip, but its certainly interesting insight to the hiring manager / person who wrote the job description.
If i were to go into that interview as not a man, i would feel disadvantaged.
Sorry, they are using correct English. The male gender is used for the gender neutral case. We need something that is truly gender neutral, but all attempts sound wrong to anyone who made it through high school English. S/he is unpronounceable. They sounds strange when talking about a single individual, but kind of works. You works somewhat, but in an employment ad sounds like something out of "Mission Impossible".
please cite a source for "The male gender is used for the gender neutral case". as far as i can tell, this is an issue with no clean solution in modern English.
'he or she' is the most reasonable option in my opinion. it is cumbersome, but that is better than sexist or grammatically incorrect.
'we are looking for a technical lead. he or she will have three years experience as a lead developer or similar role.'
Singular third person "they" is widely attested and there is no grammatical problem with it at all. It's even in Shakespeare. You can use it, and if anyone complains about it, don't hire them.
Shakespeare is not good english. His work is old, and the language has evolved, and his work is poetry.
Also, citation needed for using 'they' as singular. Apart from the fact that it very strongly sounds plural, one of my personal pet peeves with English is the fact that we do not have a singular plural differentiation in the second person. As long as we are re-working pronouns, lets not repeat that mistake.
When I am trying to be careful and gender neutral (for something that needs to be speakable, so no (s)he), I try to structure it to use either 'one' or 'that person' in place of (s)he.
In most cases for jobs 'they' could be appropriately used.
Also for the record I don't really care. I've seen good and bad women and men programmers. Getting huffy about pronouns just strikes me as someone that is a bit too emotional. Huh, strike a chord? (j/k)
There was a post on HN jobs a little while back about a startup looking for a "front end guy" which reiterated several times throughout the post that they "need a guy" and if "you're the guy" to contact them.
The job sounded great otherwise, and was definitely one I would have been interested in, but I felt immediately disqualified and annoyed.
Normally these types of things don't bother me and I often think people read too much into things, but for some reason, that one did. Maybe it was the casual nature of the writing. It made it seem more personal, which, in turn, made it seem like the author was making it clear that they actually weren't interested in hiring women, that they legitimately felt as if a man was needed to fill the role properly, or that the idea of hiring a woman was so foreign to them that it hadn't even crossed their minds.
fwiw (maybe nothing) I know what you mean about finding certain job postings off-putting. For myself, I don't think it has as much to do with the job posting itself as much as it may have to do with how I am feeling about myself at the moment, and how much I hate the rest of the world.
I can understand and won't argue about your being a woman and being put off by "the guy" language. I'd probably feel the same way, if only because I am 50 and "the guy" seems very young.
Yeah, I probably have about 10 years on "the guy," myself.
I guess it was the casual assumption that a man would be the one filling the position. In a lot of ways those unintentional biases are worse than intentional ones.
This is dumb. It's merely pointing out pronouns. Should it be he/she everywhere or it? Gender neutral is often 'he'. Should we now say that 'all men are created equal'? Is it splitting hairs yet? Nobody is telling women not to get into tech things. I don't know whether it is general interest or what, but it should not engender such divisive hate.
I think we need more positive role models. Less of this pointless vitriol.
I just think women would read this and believe that this company is looking for a male, not a female. I know I would. It would emphasize a bro type of environment.
Your only reference to "he" being gener neutral was from the 1700s... do you have a modern example?
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 63.8 ms ] threadIf i were to go into that interview as not a man, i would feel disadvantaged.
'he or she' is the most reasonable option in my opinion. it is cumbersome, but that is better than sexist or grammatically incorrect.
'we are looking for a technical lead. he or she will have three years experience as a lead developer or similar role.'
Also, citation needed for using 'they' as singular. Apart from the fact that it very strongly sounds plural, one of my personal pet peeves with English is the fact that we do not have a singular plural differentiation in the second person. As long as we are re-working pronouns, lets not repeat that mistake.
When I am trying to be careful and gender neutral (for something that needs to be speakable, so no (s)he), I try to structure it to use either 'one' or 'that person' in place of (s)he.
Seems to be an artifact of older formally trained english teachers.
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30455/is-using-he...
Using "he" has fallen out of fashion.
Call me a purist though, but I still detest using "they". It doesn't seem right.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27
and approval here:
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/dept-min/pub/legis/n41.html
For the plural second person, try out my ancestral dialect's "y'all".
In most cases for jobs 'they' could be appropriately used.
Also for the record I don't really care. I've seen good and bad women and men programmers. Getting huffy about pronouns just strikes me as someone that is a bit too emotional. Huh, strike a chord? (j/k)
The job sounded great otherwise, and was definitely one I would have been interested in, but I felt immediately disqualified and annoyed.
Normally these types of things don't bother me and I often think people read too much into things, but for some reason, that one did. Maybe it was the casual nature of the writing. It made it seem more personal, which, in turn, made it seem like the author was making it clear that they actually weren't interested in hiring women, that they legitimately felt as if a man was needed to fill the role properly, or that the idea of hiring a woman was so foreign to them that it hadn't even crossed their minds.
It was very off-putting.
I can understand and won't argue about your being a woman and being put off by "the guy" language. I'd probably feel the same way, if only because I am 50 and "the guy" seems very young.
I guess it was the casual assumption that a man would be the one filling the position. In a lot of ways those unintentional biases are worse than intentional ones.
I think we need more positive role models. Less of this pointless vitriol.
Your only reference to "he" being gener neutral was from the 1700s... do you have a modern example?