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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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So quotas are terrible, yes. But what if there are still biases in hiring? That someone sees a woman and assumes this or that about her based on gender alone? My own experience as a transgender person is that there are people who, as my gender presentation has shifted, really seem to view me as less competent. Not in a "girl's can't code" way, but like steadily viewing me as more junior, needing more hand holding, gi…

> But what if there are still biases in hiring? That someone sees a woman and assumes this or that about her based on gender alone? I think the issue is not so much about someone actually being outright blocked at the interview, although that may well happen also, especially if there are substantial numbers of people who think that women need to be accommodated because of fundamental biological differences. But I wou…

> The problem is made up of myriad small issues all along the pipeline, so that's also where you need to tackle it.

Yup. The WHOLE pipeline, from how we treat girls who are interested in math to how we figure out who to promote. The system pushes female gendered people out at every step. In High School, College, at Interview, at Work, at Promotion time.

I think though it's a bit disingenuous to say if we just look at the beginning, then it will eventually all sort itself out.

I can promise you as a person coming to grips with a transgender identity, seeing that there are women in upper management at my workplace is really, really important to me. You need to see people further along the path than you to know it's a real option. I needed to see women succeeding in ways I wanted to before I could be comfortable accepting my identity.

I wish I had more transgender women as role models, but cis women make a huge difference, too. I know that me, personally, presenting in a feminine way at the workplace has inspired at least one other person to accept her gender identity, too.

Point is, it's not an abstract thing that affects hypothetical people. It's a concrete thing that very directly affects me, right now. I'm in a fragile place trying to rebuild my identity, and I need people to look up to.

Edit: Either you edited what you wrote or I missed half a paragraph, but either way, we're in agreement :)

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

#222
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is special pleading. Software developers like to believe they're workaholics, but a job as a biglaw associate or a medical resident will eat your life in ways we'd find difficult to imagine, and it's hard to believe that the kind of work a law associate does (kowtowing to partners to gather more scut-work to get done for faceless corporate clients) is more meaningful than the work a developer does. That, and the…

You might be right about the work load/work type on average/median/most cases? but I still think there is a difference in social status for the fields/titles. To go slightly off topic, can you speculate as to why is there more gender parity in those fields that are harder to get into (in terms of specific schooling) in the first place?

That's the entire question we're addressing in these threads. It is weird that women excel in:

* the rest of STEM,

* the law,

* medicine,

* pretty much all the rest of the professions (accounting, actuary, &c)

... despite the fact that many of those fields are, both intellectually and from the amount of work product expected, more challenging than computer science.

Add to that the fact that most software jobs are far more work/life flexible than other professions (roll in late, work from home, wear whatever, weekly+ deliverable cadence, &c).

It is difficult to come up with an explanation for the 82/18 split in this industry that doesn't primarily include an implied preference on behalf of industry incumbents to avoid working with women.

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

#223

" In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech. " Precisely. This goes directly to the core of the issue and what I had brought up on the thread recently about the Google employee who got fired. Specifically, if companies were truly interested in fairness, the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions.…

The central point is proven unconsciously bias, which makes "hiring the best person" only possible with blind hiring, and blind marking in University which isn't likely to happen any time soon - to see unconscious bias ignored or passed over is discouraging since it is the problem.

What evidence do you have for this?

What I have read is that the "hiring a lab manager" experiments actually only found an effect for candidates that were (a) mediocre and (b) identically qualified. For exceptional candidates, they did not find bias. If there was a clearly better candidate they did not find bias.

Furthermore, the most commonly cited study on this was hiring for a position in a Psychology department. A discipline that is majority female. Other studies have shown that grading tends to be biased towards the gender that is less well represented in a particular field.

And of course there's the Ceci-Williams study that showed a 2:1 advantage for women in STEM tenure track hiring.

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

#224
post #173

Can anyone provide insight as to how transgendered people count in the "women in tech" discussion? As I see it, there's now a quadrant of biological (fe)males and psychological (fe)males. Would a woman in tech mean only biologically and psychologically female, or also biologically female, also psychologically female, depends on who's counting? I ask only because I see this already hyper-sensitive topic very soon beco…

So to start with, don't conflate sex with gender.

Next, I'll make it really easy for you: women are women, and you can just count them as one group. That doesn't mean we should erase away the specific challenges and bigotry trans women face, but we also shouldn't be forcing them into a separate "quadrant" of women.

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

#225
post #218
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generic ideological tangents never lead anywhere interesting and pretty much guarantee contentless flamewars, so please don't take HN threads in such directions. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15010185 and marked it off-topic.

Could you explain why this post is disapearing from the frontpage as fast as it is? Even though it has the most votes in very little time. (see my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011458 )

Users are flagging it heavily, as they have been flagging most opinion pieces that have appeared during this tidal wave.

People who feel strongly one way or the other typically want to see the articles they agree with stay on the front page and the ones they disagree with get flagged. But from a systemic point of view, it isn't in HN's interest to have the front page dominated by repetitive arguments (and certainly not repetitive flamewars) about the same thing. That's not what the site is for and not why the majority of HN users come here.

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

#227
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…

>But that's a cop-out. We should work on all stages of the pipeline.

From the article:

>>Go out and talk to freshmen and sophomore women about why they should pursue a career in tech.

>>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.

Which part of her list of suggestions is a cop-out?

>It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline

I fail to see how any reading of the article will give you that impression.

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

#228
post #32

Is diversity only defined as gender diversity?

years ago, diversity had almost nothing to do with women.

It was about underrepresented minorities such as Blacks, Latinos, etc..

It didn't really pertain to white women

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

#229
TL; DR Woman startup CEO fires women, hires men who work for peanuts because men love coding and thus are higher "energy"; takes advantage of recent controversy to get free advertising on HN. Side note, said woman lacks professionalism and uses profanity in an appeal to the peanuts working, 20twenties'ish men reading the article.

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sick of tired of the hiring strawman. The reason there's a scarcity of women and other minorities is that many companies have a culture that's full of toxic sewage. Correlation does not imply causation. Is rampant systemic sexism the reason why most oil rig workers are male? Is rampant systemic sexism the reason why 95% of child care teachers are women? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8 Disparate outc…

"Correlation does not imply causation". The go-to of the armchair scientist. It doesn't imply there isn't causation, either. We have plenty of evidence of rampant systemic sexism. We have plenty of evidence that women left the field due to that sexism. We have evidence that the field's composition changed fairly recently (in the late eighties). We have evidence the culture changed around that same time. If you would…

We do not have plenty of evidence of rampant systemic sexism. That is not a self-evident truth unless you're bought into the ideology pushing that agenda. Next.
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