"When people bring up the market in discussions like these, they make it sound like it’s a force of nature. It’s not. It’s just a word that describes the collective actions of people under some circumstances. Mary’s situation didn’t automatically get fixed because it’s a free market. Mary’s rejection by the recruiter got undone when I complained to my engineering director, who put me in touch with an HR director who patiently listened to the story and overturned the decision4. The market is just humans. It’s humans all the way down. We can fix this, if we stop assuming the market will fix it for us, and fix things ourselves." - Todd Hoff