What about tech? Are physically attractive software engineers more likely to receive jobs and promotions than engineers of equivalent skills and experience?
Almost certainly yes, unless tech is different from the job market at large.
An interesting point on attractiveness in the job market is that people who are extremely unattractive tend to also perform very well. It’s mildly unattractive people who do the worst. My pet theory is extremely unattractive people have to work their asses off to make enough money to be sexually competitive in any way.
This carries the assumption that competence is something that is purely objective. I find it more likely that what is perceived as competence is still subject to bias.
Honestly I don’t see a profession where people considered attractive in that location would do worse than their unattractive peers, all other things being equal.
Probably, but this is a rabbit hole all in itself. All aspects of life are dictated by others' perception of us, our work and our personality being signals just as appearance is.
In an ideal world, we could simply uncheck these biases and do blind promotions and detach a person's work output from his or her face, but it doesn't work like that. Even worse attractiveness is subjective and thus hard to control for. You can usually identify racism because the person will have traits that puts him/her in that category. It's much harder for subjective beauty.
TLDR: Probably yes, but don't expect it to go away anytime soon.
Good questions, I would like to see some data for that.
I assume it is like a reverse bias where someone who looks like garbage is expected to be a good programmer.
