Indeed. My phone's battery life seemed to double when I got a Pebble. I'd not say that's useless at all.

Where did I say "call everyone in"? I believe what I said was:

If you don't have time to interview your top two candidates, you're doing something wrong. Seriously.

Good strawman, though.

And in my case it's 10. Maybe I'm just lucky.

My mistake, I didn't look at who was posting and assumed you were the peron I had responded to previously. I take back what I said about your prior arguments, as those weren't your arguments. The complete and utter bullshit remark stays, though.

So you're saying I'd have been robbed at gunpoint 3 times instead of 2 if I was black? It's quite possible that my assailants were targeting white victims and I'd not have been robbed at all; the hardship would have been replaced with something else, though, for sure; I think we can both agree on that. In other words, your argument is so much complete and utter bullshit based on "what might have been", rather than anything concrete, that I can't bring myself to take you seriously. And your arguments before that have boiled down to "laugh when white people complain because they neve complain about anything real", which I was easily ablt to counter by, well, giving you something real.

You got anything real for me, buddy? If not, bugger off and let the adults have their debate.

We're not in disagreement, here, and I was certainly not arguing.

Well, yes, one does wonder. How do you propose we find out? I say try it; if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. My experience shows me, though, that men aren't necessarily better at negotiation, we're just better at starting negotiations.

So many times this! Especially the marketing! I can imagine it would be quite difficult to parent one's child in opposition of the marketing of the day. Sure, you can shield them from marketing at home, but they'll get it fro mall angles in public, including from classmates at school.

And that's where we disagree. You see, it's the "older others" who have to change the marketing and parenting. The kids sure as hell can't do it. In the mean time, those of us who are so inclined can certainly do much more than pretend; we can give equal opportunities where we have the authority to do so, and we can urge others to do the same. I'm certainly not pretending I can change the hiring practices of an entire company, but I can damn well be fair in who I personally hire.

Actually... being a sole proprietor and the sole person in charge of hiring for my business, I can change the hiring practices of an entire (albeit very small) company. Since I hire equally, though, I'm not sure why I'd want to.

I agree, she didn't handle it well at all. I say, make it mandatory, rather than banning it or leaving it optional. The issue, as I understand it, is not so much that men are better at it, it's that women don't generally bother with it at all; making it mandatory would solve that. Of course, it would lead to the company either having to pay everyone more or justify not doing so.

As for sexism, it really comes down to intent and understanding. If a man and a woman of equal qualification and experience are offered the same position and the man gets hired at $10k/yr more than the woman, is that sexism? Maybe; there isn't enough information to tell. Were they offered the same starting wage, but the man bargained for more while the woman did not? In that case it was not sexism. Were they offered different starting wages? In that case, it certainly looks like sexism to me, regardless of any bargaining that went on. If both were offered the same starting wage and both bargained for more, the line blurs, as it cold either be sexism or that the man simply asked for more than the woman, or did so more effectively.

It's also exceedingly difficult to prove that sexism was a factor in most cases. Because of this, there has been a huge push to make sexism the default assumption, which does greatly amplify the perception of sexism for those who are looking for it. The corollary to that is that it is also difficult, if not impossible, to prove that one's motives were not sexist, which is why that predilection for the assumption of sexism is a dangerous thing.

I meant for the company. It's a good thing to have loyal employees. Of course, the corollary is that it's also good to be loyal to your employees, which most employers seem to have forgotten.

And that doesn't negate your parental responsibility to instill a sense of civility. Sure you might not be successful, that child may experience something that destroys what you've taught them, but if you don't do your job as a parent, its guaranteed that they'll grow into little monsters.

I never said it was easy. It's the hardest job on the planet, there's a reason I'm not doing it.

Of course it's difficult, there are outside stimuli in the system, they get plenty of input from other kids (and teachers) at school and even from the parents of other children who might not raise their kids the way you raise your own, and from people who have no business raising or interacting with children; that steps on a lot of your own work with them. That doesn't negate the fact that they learn how to interact with others by interacting with others.

Damn, typo'd that closing em tag.

This is a real issue. However, a girls-only STEM academy is not/em. the answer.

And that's precisely why men and women should work (and learn) together! Men will point out angles that women miss, and vice versa. Happens with my wife (co-owner of my consultancy) all the time; we'd both make many more poor decisions if we couldn't work from each-others' perspectives.

You're right, it's not difficult at all to relate to the opposite gender. Boundaries are learned, though, and the earlier they're learned, the better. Segregating the genders until they reach adulthood, then throwing them together, results in boundaries being learned later in life. Human interaction is not something that can be taught, it has t obe learned through experience; there are decades of studies that back this up.

Please, allow me to remedy that.

In general, I agree with your stance, treat everyone professionally and without regard for gender. However, the "without regard for gender" part can actually get you in some trouble here in the US, so it doesn't really work that way. Over here, if you and your male coworkers are having a discussion and a woman enters the room, it's almost always advisable to end that discussion so as not to offend the woman, either because someone said something she didn't like (even though she was not part of the conversation) or because she was excluded (even though she could have joined in). Here in the US, women have been given the ability to point at a man, scream "SEXUAL HARASSMENT", and destroy that man's career and life over the tiniest of perceived infractions; most won't do that unless there is a real problem, but the handful who will do it out of spite have ruined it for everyone. Again, these are most often only children, or raised in a family of all girls, and are commonly home-schooled; as a result, they never learned how to not take something that wasn't said to or directed at them personally. Interestingly this doesn't happen nearly as often in the other direction, as we're taught that men are supposed to be stronger, we're supposed to let things roll off our backs and be unaffected, but we're also taught to walk on eggshells so as not to offend women.

I wish I lived in a society where people treated each other respectfully and professionally, where the general attitude was "if it wasn't said to or about me, I won't let it bother me", where people could have workplace conversations in small groups without fear of someone who had no interest in being part of that group in the first place deciding to cause problems because they weren't included. I wish that was the reality in the US, but it simply is not. You're right, though; it's not a difficult thing. The problem is that some people don't want to put forth even the tiniest bit of effort and, over here, many are raised to believe that it's okay to benefit from destroying someone else's life.

Which is why you, as a parent, teach them to act in a civil manner. Of course it gets uncivil as they grown into that knowledge; they haven't learned it yet.

The quotas are definitely part of the problem. Equality means evaluating based on ability, experience, and performance, not race and gender. The race and gender quotas only ensure that we never have true equality.