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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

#31

Post by magic_beans »

> Despite that, we paid premium salaries to bring a few women who did well in our interviews. But, they lacked the energy to put us into overdrive. Worse, they were starting to drain the energy from the rest of the team. Eventually, we had to do the right thing for the company and let them go.

This is one of the most disturbing thing's I've ever read in an article proclaiming to promote change in the tech gender gap.

What exactly is this supposed to mean? What exactly does it mean to "lack energy" and to "drain energy" from other people? How on EARTH did she come to this conclusion? And WHY would this be a problem inherent to women? This tells me more about her management style than it does about any woman at her company.

This woman is NOT someone we should be listening to when it comes to closing the gender gap in software engineering.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#33

Post by ardit33 »

tptacek wrote: post #2

Some 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…

Riiigght... It takes years to become decent, and almost a decade to become 'really good'. Most junior engineers (first year off the school), or interns are a net negative for the first year. Including the folks that just went to hacker/training type of programs.

Hence most startups avoid them, and only large companies have the means to absorb them in large numbers. The only good right after school engineers I have worked with, had been the types that had started coding at 15. Some of them didn't even go to college, but had at least 5-8 years of practical experience before getting to the point on being hirable to the big cos...

On one hand you are right that CS degree is not required, on the other hand your argument just ignores the fact that it takes years to become decent and at least 5 to 10 years of practice to become really good. Google (and any other large company) is a business at the end of the day.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#34

Post by orclev »

humanrebar wrote: post #24
orclev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the core of the article was pointing out that setting arbitrary quotas for female hires and then sacrificing your standards in order to meet those quotas does more harm than good. Fundamentally there are two issues that need addressing, firstly trying to get more qualified female applicants which is why she recommends focusing on early education and college STEM programs. Secondly there's the issue of how to addr…

> ...I mean hiring junior level candidates, not trying to shove a more senior female developer into a lower level position... The word "shove" aside, I wish more companies would hire senior people for junior roles if they want them. One of the big problems with the American (and I presume Western) job market is the unwillingness to train people unless they're straight out of college. It seems that moms (and less ofte…

Sorry, I think there's some confusion about the usage of the word senior there, I meant senior in terms of skill level, not in terms of age. Age shouldn't be a factor at all, it doesn't matter if you're a fresh college graduate or a 60 year old so long as you have the skills to do the job. What you don't want to do is take a highly skilled worker and then hire them into a low skill position, they'll get bored/frustrated, assuming they even accept the position in the first place because presumably you're paying market rates so you'll be massively under paying them in that position.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#35

Post by goatlover »

humanrebar wrote: post #24
orclev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the core of the article was pointing out that setting arbitrary quotas for female hires and then sacrificing your standards in order to meet those quotas does more harm than good. Fundamentally there are two issues that need addressing, firstly trying to get more qualified female applicants which is why she recommends focusing on early education and college STEM programs. Secondly there's the issue of how to addr…

> ...I mean hiring junior level candidates, not trying to shove a more senior female developer into a lower level position... The word "shove" aside, I wish more companies would hire senior people for junior roles if they want them. One of the big problems with the American (and I presume Western) job market is the unwillingness to train people unless they're straight out of college. It seems that moms (and less ofte…

The preference for new grads is because it's a lot easier to convince them to work overtime with less pay than someone more experienced with a family.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#36

Post by cycrutchfield »

Icedcool wrote: post #23

"In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech." Awesome. A plea towards hiring based on quality, rather than quotas. Towards a group that is judged by the content and quality of their character rather than some of the variation of an attempt to combat discrimination through discrimination.

Which companies are hiring based on quotas?

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#37

Post by humanrebar »

jtchang wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #2

Some 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 actually see it as calling more attention to the start of the pipeline. If you have a broken tech stack with bugs up and down the toolchain from the physical hardware up to the software you kinda do want to fix the base layer first. Though there are arguments to be said to attack the bugs from the standpoint of the entire system.

Well, that analogy breaks down when you consider how young people are not like CPUs (or whatever counts as the bottom of the stack). CPUs never look at all the garbage code up the stack and decide it's not worth it.

A young woman could hear a lot about how tech is a rough place to work and decide to do something else. So the various parts of the pipeline do affect on another.

How much is an empirical question, I suppose.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#38

Post by [deleted] »

GlennCSmith wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #2

Some 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…

[deleted]

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#39

Post by d--b »

She has very valid points about what should be fought against, like subliminal biases against women in tech. But then she's like 'we had to fire our women tech workers because they lacked the energy'. Isn't that something that's easily taken out of context and fuels exactly what she advocates against?

This feels to me that it's the kind of articles that causes engineer bros to say things like: 'see, even good women engineers think women suck at it'.

She could have gone with the stats: in a pool of candidates, you have 3% of very good people. And in that same pool of candidates, you have 90% of men. Given that there is not really any compelling reason that would explain why women would be better or worse than men at engineering, only 0.3% of your candidate pool are very good women. Plus given that pretty much every company out there will try to retain their exceptional women worker (in the name of diversity), exceptional women engineers are a rare sighting in the job market. Hence the diversity issue cannot be solved by forcing people to hire women.

No need to involve personal stories about how teenage girls are more interested in clothes than in assembly programming...

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#40

Post by tptacek »

GlennCSmith wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #2

Some 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…

Again: everyone knows the candidate pool is overwhelmingly comprised of men. There's no real dispute anywhere about this fact. It's not part of the debate; there is no debate about it. Nobody can reasonably believe it's realistic to expect parity in hiring in the immediacy, and all the available evidence suggests --- like you'd expect! --- that Google doesn't expect that either.

That makes that part of the argument in her post a kind of straw man.

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