&gt;Let&#x27;s just... ignore the larger societal angle of harassment, denigration, fear and uncertainty that plagues women and some minorities in STEM fields or finance, okay? Let&#x27;s say, &quot;It exists but let&#x27;s not discuss it here.&quot;<p>No, let&#x27;s not just agree to a narrative that you want to sell.  I strongly reject your premise that uses weasel words and emotive language.  You already tried manipulating the conversation by referencing a lawsuit without mentioning that the outcome ran counter to your narrative of endemic sexism.<p>&gt;I really don&#x27;t wanna do this conversation AGAIN but the contention is that right now &quot;whiteness&quot; and &quot;maleness&quot; are implicitly part of the meritocratic process as positive traits.<p>It&#x27;s clear that you&#x27;re used to &quot;arguing&quot; with people that agree with your ideology.  If you don&#x27;t want to deal with disagreement, then don&#x27;t bother responding -- stay in your echo chamber.<p>The&#x2F;my meritocratic process doesn&#x27;t care about race or gender.  When I hire consultants and contract-out work, I often don&#x27;t know their race or gender and I&#x27;m not interested.  I choose candidates in my price range based on the best work-samples.<p>&gt;1. Young, single, white (and Asian!) men are targeted by recruiters because of a perception of a &quot;work ethic&quot;. This ethic is &quot;I expect people to prop up my life so I can work 80+ hours a week<p>Sorry, you forgot to mention that those people have experience in the industry or are otherwise credentialed -- your phrasing either intentionally or unintentionally suggests that recruiters just contact arbitrary white and asian men: &quot;Hey, so we see that you&#x27;re currently painting fences.  Want to run a tech startup?&quot;  That&#x27;s not the case.<p>Further, your assignment of &quot;work ethic&quot; to mean &quot;I put my career first&quot; reflects a personal choice.  Either gender and any race can make this choice.  By the way, &quot;working really hard&quot; isn&#x27;t a &quot;perception of a work ethic&quot;, that&#x27;s just what&#x27;s meant by work ethic.  It&#x27;s okay for words to have definitions.<p>&gt;2. Subsequent &quot;pattern matching&quot; be it implicit or explicit, kind or cruel, expects that kind of commitment and education and ethos.<p>If I&#x27;m unpacking your assertion correctly, you&#x27;re just saying that an interviewer or recruiter wants&#x2F;looks-for commitment, relevant education, qualifications, and a career-first mentality.  What a shock.<p>&gt;But what actually happens is that people find that there is a specific profile of people most likely to be willing and able to commit to that kind of lifestyle and then they optimize for selecting that.<p>Which makes me think that I&#x27;m understanding you.  The person that makes the personal choices and sacrifice required to excel in an industry is the logical pick over the person that didn&#x27;t.<p>&gt;Indeed, Meritocracy may be selecting &quot;merit&quot; based on attributes which explicitly reinforce sexism or racism...if anyone actually gave a shit about skill based hires they&#x27;d be blinding their recruiting efforts, doing pre-filter tests and desperately trying to remove every drop of bias from the industry to identify them.<p>According to your reasoning, hiring someone with a very strong work ethic is a &quot;reinforcement of sexism and racism&quot;.  Your prior suggestion that that those traits are unique to &quot;young, single, white (and Asian!) men&quot; is disgusting and offensive.  Stop diminishing the importance of personal agency in becoming successful in a highly competitive field.<p>I&#x27;m going to stick with my approach of not caring about the gender, race, or any other _not at all relevant to their work or how I treat them as a person_ detail.  If this wave of &quot;social justice&quot; parasites actually wanted change instead of attention and money, they&#x27;d quit the bullshit and put in the work to become great engineers or create their own companies.