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Amazon Employees Launch Matchmaking Startup For Coworkers (geekwire.com)
reifman writes: As posted earlier, Amazon's growth and predominantly male hiring has made dating in Seattle incredibly difficult for everyone. Two Amazon employees, Becca Goldman and Mahvish Gazipura, recently launched DateADev to help coworkers optimize their dating profiles: 'at Amazon [we're] surrounded by software developers and project managers all the time, we just noticed their need. We talk to them all the time about their frustrations with dating.' Goldman's gone on more than 500 dates in the past three years. 'Her experience ... helps her quickly assess an online profile of a potential partner.' Rather than drive its employees into moonlighting, Amazon could just start hiring more women.
If women *did* like dating engineers (in America), this problem would resolve itself.
Of course, there are reasons why women don't like dating engineers:
1) Social myths and stigmas about engineers.
2) The realities behind the social myths and stigmas about engineers.
3) Engineers tend to be introverts and beta-males, and as such they don't exude the sense of power that makes men attractive to women (despite their wealth).
These are social problems. They need to be fixed by social means. Another online dating service won't accomplish that.
Amazon "Could Just" hire more women.
Ok, from where?
The bad thing about hiring quotas by any determinate like race or gender or any pool with a smaller population, is that ALLOF THE COMPANIES are trying to generally do the same thing.
So lets say Amazon does succeed in doubling the hiring rate of women - doesn't that mean there are a LOT of companies now short their "share" of women? In fact is it any wonder that small companies are so devoid of women when so many large companies are trying so desperately to hire women? Centralizing technical women in a small number of companies in fact seems like a terribly bad idea to me and is probably exacerbating all of the technical culture issues people have noticed (which must be said are rooted in Silicon Valley and not nearly so bad outside that echo chamber).
The whole thing makes me sick honestly, and to me seems to objectify women vastly more than, say, porn...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As a male dev who has interviewed and knows people at Amazon, the problem isn't lack of an app. After I went out to talk with them for a day, I came away with the impression that there are a large number of really arrogant and pushy people working there. Undoubtedly, my personal experience isn't statistical representation of the whole company, but I wasn't very impressed with them as people. They seemed stressed, hurried, egotistical, and self-centered. I didn't want to work there for money, so I could imagine that few women would want to date people like that for free.
Anecdote: If you go on a date and the date goes poorly, the person may have been a jerk. If you go on 10 dates and they all go poorly, chances are you are actually the jerk. If nobody at Amazon can land a date, what does that tell you? A lack of girls in Seattle? For being so smart, you seem pretty slow...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
They're not only not forbidding coworkers to date one another, but actually encouraging it? How is this not a sexual harassment disaster waiting to happen? Or is it all hunky dory because a woman came up with the idea?
500 dates in three years? This is why Seattle is ideal for Amazon's growth and why they don't hire more women. If they spend so much time dating and distracting their colleagues , how much time can they be spending on coding?
Get back to work sweetheart!
PS, from a current suffering Seattleite, 500 dates in 3 years is probably par for the course for woman of middling quality. Punished by choice the darlings. Perhaps we men of Seattle are socially inept, but from my experience I encounter single women way too seldom ever to develop any skill or finess at the game.
For the past three years I've tried everything, get-togethers, singles mixers, salsa dancing, or clubs and lessons for outdoor adventures like kayaking, sailing, hiking, skiing, etc. etc. Either zero single women attend these kind of things, or if they do their swarmed with thirsty interested suitors 8 to 12 deep.
I give up now. Resignation.
Seattle is a crummy overpriced and overrated city but in a very a lovely setting. As a single man you better not mind enjoying it alone though.
Women don't "date down". Period.
For women, equality is a platform for advancement -- not for equality.
Mothers tell their sons to marry a sweet girl with a good heart.
Conversely, mothers tell their daughters to seek males with superior wealth and social status.
The end result is millions of disappointed women who search vainly year after year for what was promised. As women advance career wise to ever higher levels, the pool of available superior-men dwindles sharply.
The level of disappointment among American women is enormous.
You can't preach equality and practice superior-mate seeking at the same time. The end result is an endless and most likely fruitless search.