Some of the "best" are going to have families, and existing jobs. Thus, if this process helps eliminate those candidates, then the basic thesis of "we hire the best" is by definition false. With a more accurate statement being, "we hire the best of those who are willing to jump through our company specific hoops".
And there we go again. 'optional activity'. And people wonder why there are few women in tech and the situation is not improving. The post above is your answer.
Have a family, it's the end of your career, because you engaged in productivity limiting 'optional activities'. Yes, the tech sector IS that toxic.
If you have a family it's more important than your career. If you don't feel your family is more important, you may abandon it or never have one to begin with.
Just because you have a different stack of priorities than another doesn't mean you can blame them for ranking theirs differently than yours.
Analogy is; you wouldn't protest at the Buddhist temple door because you feel that your time availably is less to become a full fledge Buddhist monk because you have a family.
It has nothing to do with women in tech, try and keep on topic please.
I was not uncivil. This kind of belittling of family has to stop. Software development has a major problem hiring women, older people, and minorities. People in the sector belittling things like children and families by using terms like 'lifestyle choices' ARE part of the problem, and the industry has a very serious one. These people need to be called out for the poisonous garbage that they're spouting, and that calling out rarely happens.
The gender gap is not going to get better while these attitudes are accepted. Women avoid tech to a large degree because it is rational to do so. The entire sector is so immersed in brogrammer culture that half the participants aren't even aware of it.
Telling someone "you are part of the problem" is a kind of personal attack. That counts as uncivil. I don't think I misread you, because phrases like "these people" and "need to be called out" are also markers of incivility.
Regardless of how right you are, how wrong someone else is, and how big of a problem the industry has, all commenters on HN need to follow the site guidelines:
https://hackertimes.com/newsguidelines.html.
My basis is long experience trying to cajole this forum into not degenerating completely. "Need to be called out" is the kind of thing users say to justify hurling invective at one another, and we ask everybody not to do that on HN.
Users frequently express views similar to yours without violating the site guidelines, so I don't think the moderation question has anything to do with subject matter.
Then don't take the job? Your life choices (Children, wife, loan payments) aren't the fault or social responsibility of your prospective employer.
Why get so uppity about a job you aren't even going to apply for?