Too hot to be an engineer?

Florencia Antara is a developer featured in the ads that were blocked by LinkedIn. Picture: TopTal Source: Supplied

JOB networking site LinkedIn has been caught in an embarrassing backflip, forced to re-post ads it pulled after the women featured in them were deemed too attractive to be real-life engineers.

Developer network TopTal posted a series of advertisements on the site with a mixture of male and female staff, with the aim of attracting new clients and employees.

However they recently logged on to find their ads inexplicably disabled, according to TopTal CEO Taso Du Val, who blogged about the incident.

"Today was a disappointing day at TopTal. We saw extreme sexism within the tech community, from an industry leader and advertising partner that we work with quite extensively: LinkedIn," he wrote in a post entitled In Defence of Female Engineers.

Mr Du Val said having regularly advertised on LinkedIn with a combination of stock and employee photographs, they were told their ads had been taken down after "many LinkedIn members complained about the women images you were using," according to the blog.

TopTal initially republished the ads themselves with the same images, including that of Argentinian web developer Florencia Antara, only to find themselves barred from the site and allowed back once the ads were changed.

The ad originally posted on LinkedIn. Picture: Toptal. Source: Supplied

"The fact of the matter is: members of the tech community (LinkedIn users) saw it as impossible that our female engineers could actually be engineers, and a leader of the tech community (LinkedIn) agreed with them."

"Unfortunately we're banned from showing anything except 100%, all male software advertisements from now on and so, that's what you'll be getting. I'm disappointed both on a personal and professional level. I expect better," Mr Du Val wrote.

A spokeswoman for LinkedIn said the ads were rejected in error while the customer service team was going through the standard review process.

"We have taken the necessary measures to approve the previously rejected ads, and TopTal can now run them on our platform as intended," they said.

The issue sparked plenty of debate in the tech community, with one user writing under the name whatever, accusing LinkedIn of "slut shaming" and "nerd oppression because no female engineer could look good".

The article was also criticised on Twitter.

However Macman 851 commented that while he thought blocking the ads went too far, he could see why the pictures were rejected.

"What's with the bra strap showing? How does that help emphasise her abilities as a developer? Why is she staring at the camera as if she is about to make love to it? The images are a bit suggestive and I would like to kindly turn the tables and ask you why you felt you needed to portray these women in such a sexually suggestive light than a professional light," he commented.

Other writers on Hacker News said the photographs had a "scammy" feel of adult sites.

"The text sounds scammy and the photos of attractive women just give the entire thing a 'spam' feel. It's not a slight against female engineers," said one person.

Another wrote: "I don't think it's the fact that the women are intrinsically attractive, but rather the fact that they're consciously choosing the pose/makeup/lighting in order the emulate the design language of the adultFriendFinder-style ads ... The fact that most of the copy could apply equally well to sex trafficking doesn't help much either."

Mr Du Val later updated his blog to say LinkedIn had agreed to run the ads and admitted the company had used stock photos for some of their advertising, although he said they were not the ones that got the company banned.

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