Me, I was hiring someone to be on my engineering team. Found someone with lots of technical experience. Was not so subtly told we cannot hire them and had to hire a female for the team. I could either push back but I was lucky I was even getting a hire. So we found a female engineer to bring on with a lot less experience.

I literally skipped dozens of men in the interview application pipeline just because it had to be a female hire.

It was a very bad feeling for me but I have no doubt HR is doing this constantly, to read a name and specifically pass them over because it didn't sound like a woman's name. For every female applicant there is easily 20+ male for a technical role.

Shortly after this I was no longer allowed to search or filter for my own applicants. It was an odd time where our HR was gone and I had to do it myself. Really giant eye opener to how this bias works in a real sense.

Still remember I told my manager: "I am not used to not hiring the most qualified"

Their response: "Work is not just about work but also about life"

Not sure what that meant (I believe he was pushed from his boss, same as I) but stuff like this is an every day occurrence in SV