I decided to do a search on LinkedIn for Toptal to see if the employees there skewed any differently from the ones people were viewing on the website. Of the 99 people found by search results, 2 were women. One of those was a HR person. The other was an attractive engineer from Russia. She looked somewhat like the photo but not terribly - maybe it’s a really old photo?
Just looked on LinkedIn, out of curiosity. 67 listings, 2 women: one engineer (not the one alleged to be in that picture) and one listed as a psychologist in human resources.
In a lot of countries, headshots at the top of a CV (American translation: resume) are a normal thing. As a headstrong American who has lived in a lot of places, I continue to refuse to include a headshot, my birthdate, my marital status or how many children I have on any cv, no matter where I’m sending it.
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Obvious astroturfer is obvious.
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We don’t know if it was more female LinkedIn users or male LinkedIn users that reported it. I’d wager that it was disproportionately female users that reported it.
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That’s a good point. Nor do we know if the people who ‘banned’ it were male or female.
I know plenty of very good looking female engineers, I work with many of them.
Unfortunately, if you look at toptal’s website, or their linked in postings and members, THEY DON’T.
Couple it with the fact that this ad mirrors that of one of those “Singles in your area” ads, and they’ve already been caught using stock photos on two other ads (as mentioned above), and frankly… it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here.
Yes , it’s sexist to say that sexy women can’t be geeks/good coders/etc.
It’s ALSO sexist to use pretty pictures of women to drive people to your website , and then claim it’s all for diversity, when you have next to no actual women on your website.
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So I’m thinking I need to ask for 4 monitors and 3 vanity mirrors in baseline ask…should it be 1 vanity mirror and 2 10" front-surface coated high-energy mirrors instead? What, no Tyrell Corp. copyright claim?
Her outfit fails my company’s dress code, FWIW.
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Please be careful with this. I was a model turned software engineer. I honestly face a lot of discrimination for looking like I should be a trophy wife (as in I’ve had that said to my face in a meeting). I’m not. And it sucks to be treated that way.
That being said, I actually do find their ad does seem somewhat… questionable.
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I think this problem owes as much to the use of a random woman’s image to accompany seemingly unrelated ads as it does to discrimination against women in the workplace. In fact, if you think about it, these are the same problem.
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Were you a model for a particular brand of paper napkins and/or towels? Do you recognize this man?
Who are you?
How am I an astroturfer? For whom do you think I’m a sock puppet?
That is absolutely a vital point. If they claim that these are their own engineers, when in reality they don’t employ any female engineers at all, that stinks. It’s still possible they honestly want more female engineers in their company, but if this is not their own engineer but a model, then they must have intentionally gone for this particular “singles ad” look, and that makes it a whole different issue.
The primary damning fact is them lying about “these are photos of our own engineers”.
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Dress codes can vary a lot. I’ve worked at plenty of companies where this would be totally acceptable.
The issue isn’t whether she looks too good, the issue is whether this is really their own engineer, as they claim. If she is, then awesome, and I support their case. If she isn’t, and they intentionally picked a glamorous model for their ad in order to draw in male geeks, then that’s really bad.
The big problem with this case is that an outsider can’t possibly distinguish between these two.
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Exactly. I don’t want women to be banned from engineering ads. I also don’t want sexy models to be used to draw clicks for engineering ads. It’s sexism either way. There’s really no good choice here.
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I’ve had recruiters ask for my photo and birthdate, and every time I wonder how that’s any of their business. They want to hire me for my skills and not my age or my looks, right? That kind of information can only lead to (unintentional) discrimination. I’m not an American, but I also prefer to withhold that kind of irrelevant information.
I had a terrible experience with Linked In yesterday. Their captcha is so obscure that not even a human can get past it. And I’m a programmer! If you make it that difficult for me to log in, I’m not going to use your site. #Fail!
Oh, I’ve got zero problems with models turned software engineers. I don’t sexualize my coworkers at all.
My point in this was that , I’m sure Toptal hires and employs females. But, as of yesterday, I didn’t see any of them on linked in or on the toptal main page. I did find a link to the person’s resume, on their site who they claim is the person in that photo, but oddly enough, her “headshot” was removed from the resume. I still think they’re not showing us an actual employee there.
My biggest problem with their actions is that they are claiming the ads got removed because of sexism when it’s more likely they got removed because people found out they were using stock photos and models. And then the whole world jumped on LinkedIn while ignoring the fact that ZERO engineering women feature prominently on Toptal’s own website, and that they seem to have very, very few women on their linked in sites. That to me is real sexism, because they’re using women to get media attention when they don’t REALLY support them.
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There’s a comment on the hacker news article about it comparing the other details of the ad–not just the photo–to spam ads that use photos of women to sell things. The comment describes ways in which the ad appears to really be selling women, not job opportunities. If LinkedIn had the same opinion as the commenter, then bravo for taking down ads that they were morally opposed to (even if you and I do not agree with that assessment).
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