Why not try unorthodox solutions: cap engineering salaries so men no longer rush to fill the jobs.
Not unheard solution. Russia did something similar in the 1920s, but it turned out to be an epic fail.
You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
201–210 of 504 posts
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just political correctness. The socially optimal future is one in which anyone, regardless of race and gender, can become a software engineer. Someday, we're going to put in effort to move from our current world to this better future. Software engineering is a highly-desirable, well-paying, forward-looking job and it's still early days. Why not give it a shot? There are of course many PC-police types who can…
>Why not give it a shot? A) because the evidence of institutionalized discrimination in the field is scanty at best. B) because the techniques suggested for "giving it a shot" frequently involve cruel social manipulation, elimination of meritocracy, and accusing innocent people of sexism or even sexual assault. C) because "giving it a shot" also suspiciously often involves handing over money and power to sociopaths w…
With regard to getting responses to job applications, there's plenty of evidence that women and people of color face systemic discrimination:
- https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/st... - http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-...
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#203I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
If certain activities have a huge effect on how the world operates, which is kind of the premise of Y Combinator (software is eating the world, etc.) then it's important that the people who call the shots are representative of the people who are affected. This has to happen from the bottom up, since for obvious reasons you can't parachute in "untrained diversity" at a management/strategy level.
I'm not certain I see how C++ and SQL would be all that different if designed by women.
Nor, for that matter, browsers, or perhaps word processors.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#204The big result there is this: "Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men." On the hiring side, "For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin th…
At the start of our teens, we lose the intrinsic value that society places on us as children. For many boys, after this, their only worth is in what they can accomplish, for themselves or for others. For many girls, they learn that they are intrinsically valuable as women, as long as they're attractive. It's not an issue of 'explaining' the odds. It's an issue of women knowing that they're worth something in and of t…
Wouldn't the message of "you are your accomplishments" make men more likely to give up after a failure rather than less?
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#205I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
Both nursing and teaching have been wrestling with how to get more men into those professions for well over a decade, and the number of men in nursing has been rising for the past three decades.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
> mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries Given that we're talking about "tech", I think your argument would be stronger if you used examples where physical strength is seldom an important factor in job-performance.
Physical strength tends to be an extremely important part of being a nurse. There's no shortage of women being represented there. As for the above: my garbage "man" is a woman, so it has nothing to do with physical strength. The truck picks up the can and has for at least 5 years in even the most Podunk town.
One of the things currently being tangled with, in nursing (because contrary to the usual assertion, the profession does worry about this) is the tendency for male nurses to get assigned to difficult patients who need restraint, and what that means for their occupational health.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#207I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
Personally I'm happy to make an argument that given a lack of evidence that gender plays a negative roll, we have a moral imperative to eliminate unfair and discriminatory barriers to entry because its the right thing to do . But lets say that isn't a compelling argument for you. Our industry has a disastrous success rate. Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On t…
> Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to fill positions with qualified applicants.
True.
> Given that, there is a pretty strong argument that we should change the way we hire software developers and an obvious way to change it is to be more inclusive.
What is this 'strong argument'? Your conclusion "be more inclusive" is based on nothing more than an assumption that change will be good. There are any number of changes that could be made. You need to expand on your reasons for asserting that 'being more inclusive' will fix the problem. It could just as easily make it worse.
You could possibly argue that increasing the pool of candidates by not excluding people based on irrelevant factors (such as gender, race, or age) will mean that we have a better chance of finding qualified candidates. The danger here is if we confuse increased diversity in the hiring process (opportunity) with increased diversity amongst employees (outcome). The first fits your assumption. The second doesn't and could lead to worse outcomes (from a business perspective).
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#208I'm surprised that "people of color" is the preferred term for racial diversity.
It gives me a hard time to understand why sociologists think white people are homogeneous. In certain professions, if you don't wear black oxford lace-ups, you are out, even if your skin is #ffffff.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#209I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
I too await in anticipation for the politically naive to solve the problem of men being under represented in houses looking after their kids full-time, working at home and holding a job or find one.
I'm all in for as many people to do the job as possible regardless of race, creed, sex or colour.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a pretty huge statistic, - what also pops out to me is: "stop practicing ". This seems to imply that these technical interviews are skills that you don't really gain on the job. I know that personally would 9 times out of 10 spend time on a cool / beneficial project rather than making time to practice trivia problems.
I've had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn't practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can't get past them.
I too once had only had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. Then I had my 5th and failed. I've since passed many more for (even better) positions. I have no trouble finding jobs and have never had trouble (despite the occasional, random interview failure).
Given that there is a certain amount of randomness in interviews, of course it's possible to have a streak of successes. I don't look at a die that I just rolled 4 times and never got a 6 and determine it's loaded.