I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
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Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#2Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak.
It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year olds --- let alone 9 and 7 year olds --- neither has any clue what they're really going to end up doing.
The piece culminates in a recommendation that we focus our diversity efforts on college admissions and earlier stages in the pipeline. But that's a cop-out. We should work on all stages of the pipeline. It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline, but the fact is that virtually none of the software engineering we do in the industry --- very much including most of the work done at Google --- requires a college degree in the first place.
Most importantly, though, the only contribution this post makes to the discussion is to add "I'm a woman and I agree with one side of the debate" to the mix. Everything in it is a restatement of an argument that has been made, forcefully and loudly, already. Frankly: who cares?
Edit: I added "some of the" to the beginning of the comment, not because I believe that, but because I concede that there are arguments in the post that can't be dispatched with a single paragraph in a message board comment (through clearly there are some that can.)
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#3Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak. It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year…
Compared to her anecdote about her kids, she spends more space recounting how she tried to hire and retain women with no appreciable success.
EDIT: Also she recommends these at the bottom of her piece:
""" Start a mentoring program.
If you are a manager, make sure women who work for you are properly treated and recognized.
Educate men and women about how to detect and correct subliminal biases.
Find men who are willing to educate other men about this to make the message more effective. """
...the mentoring program could be for girls and young women, but it could also be for women already on the payroll. The rest of the recommendation are for after hiring has already taken place.
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#4Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak. It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year…
Compared to her anecdote about her kids, she spends more space recounting how she tried to hire and retain women with no appreciable success. EDIT: Also she recommends these at the bottom of her piece: """ Start a mentoring program. If you are a manager, make sure women who work for you are properly treated and recognized. Educate men and women about how to detect and correct subliminal biases. Find men who are willi…
It's not news to anyone that the candidate pool for software developers is comprised almost entirely of men. You can't have have hired a single software developer without confronting that fact. Exactly what was interesting about her reported experience hiring?
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#5I like realistic posts like this. She presents her experience and the problems associated with trying to diversify a tech team. She's sincere in her efforts, yet still finds she can't achieve her goals. Also, she brings up two points I've long believed about the troubling lack of women in tech.
She's 100% correct about the fact that it's too late to make a difference in industry when you're only dealing with women who just graduated from college. You have to start earlier and teach young girls that technical skills are necessary. Even if they don't like technical subject matter, they should be made to learn it. It's no longer an option.
Aiding men in industry who want to help is crucial. I see a lot of rhetoric online about how all men in tech are a problem and that they should be excluded from this whole process. "Men can't speak for women." If you believe that, you're contributing to the problem. Perhaps men can't speak for women, but they can at least speak with them.
Patience will be required because this situation isn't going to be solved overnight, or even in 10 years. It'll take a generation of concerted effort to really make a difference.
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#6>Feminist outbursts are driving even the most genuine of men away from us.
I think this depends on what "genuine" refers to in this sentence. Many issues have loud and/or shrill advocates on any or all sides, but that has nothing to do with the actual merits of any side. Anyone who is seriously interested in arriving at the best estimates of truth or utility available should disregard whether or not advocates are shrill and simply focus on facts.
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compared to her anecdote about her kids, she spends more space recounting how she tried to hire and retain women with no appreciable success. EDIT: Also she recommends these at the bottom of her piece: """ Start a mentoring program. If you are a manager, make sure women who work for you are properly treated and recognized. Educate men and women about how to detect and correct subliminal biases. Find men who are willi…
It's not news to anyone that the candidate pool for software developers is comprised almost entirely of men. You can't have have hired a single software developer without confronting that fact. Exactly what was interesting about her reported experience hiring?
That's a fair point. Her recommendations also look a lot like current corporate diversity best practices as far as I can tell.
Likely it's interesting because she's a coder, a founder, a hiring manager, and a woman. That gives her a lot of credibility in one person that is fairly unique. I suppose, at the end of the day, it all boils down to an argument from authority. But people do make decisions that way.
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compared to her anecdote about her kids, she spends more space recounting how she tried to hire and retain women with no appreciable success. EDIT: Also she recommends these at the bottom of her piece: """ Start a mentoring program. If you are a manager, make sure women who work for you are properly treated and recognized. Educate men and women about how to detect and correct subliminal biases. Find men who are willi…
It's not news to anyone that the candidate pool for software developers is comprised almost entirely of men. You can't have have hired a single software developer without confronting that fact. Exactly what was interesting about her reported experience hiring?
it's might not be news to anyone but you said kernel of the article is an anecdote which is just wrong.
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#9Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak. It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year…
I don't see where the author's reasoning is weak. A female tech lead / founder tried the standard way to get better representation of women at Google: try to hire more women, and found out there weren't enough highly qualified candidates to significantly move the numbers in the desired direction. Then as a founder herself, she tried to hire a higher percentage of women, and found there weren't enough candidates. She compared two approaches to fixing that: lowering standards (with negative effects she outlined), and generating more candidates from colleges. She recommends the later approach. The argument isn't novel, but it's also not made in a vacuum or from an ivory tower as she tried the "try harder" approach down in the trenches more than once, and so suggests "try different" instead.
Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
#10Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak. It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year…
>, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop.
Fascinating how different readers take away different salient points. For me, her main buildup was hiring women to meet a "diversity goal" resulted in pressures to hire some women who couldn't do the work. This creates a perverse feedback loop that unfairly taints future women candidates who could do the work -- which ends up undermining the whole point of diversity. Imo, the biological stuff about her son and daughter is more of a side note.
To restate her text, we could say that yes, there are talented female computer scientists like Grace Hopper and NASA's Margeret Hamilton.[1][2] However, if companies lower the bar to hire women who are not competent like them (because diversity is valued over skills), it will inadvertently make it harder to hire future Grace Hoppers and Margeret Hamiltons.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with her but her Google observation is getting lost in her boy/girl preferences sidebar.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)