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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

#301

Post by mcguire »

tptacek wrote: post #77
cargo8 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that her "infinite loop" theory was her perception of the anecdote around hiring at her own startup. It does seem conceivable, but yeah obviously data is light here. Good point on how the whole interview process is a crapshoot anyway. Hadn't really thought about that aspect, but obviously is a huge opportunity for subliminal bias since it is how it is.

Another weird attribute of her theory about setting the bar and paying premiums for talent is that her engineering team, according to LinkedIn, is in India --- which is a radically different market for software talent than SFBA. In particular, the gender distribution of CS grads and programmers in India is very different from what it is here. One possible interpretation --- and there are probably equally credible oth…

That makes it even more weird. The percentage of women programmers there is higher.

https://m.cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186026-decoding-femi...

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

#302

Post by [deleted] »

ergo14 wrote: post #263
dang wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

I think maybe flagging needs to be reworked into: - spam - nsfw content - breaks the rules So people can flag "bad" stuff and don't remove topics based on their political/social views instead? Currently the system seems to be broken if this happens. This way you could easly penalize the users who try to manipulate by flagging "valid" topics.

[deleted]

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

#303

Post by frinxor »

JelteF wrote: post #214

What I find really weird is that this post is at the bottom of the frontpage, even though it has the most upvotes of the entire frontpage (443 at time of writing) and achieved this in only 2 hours. This was the same case for the article containing the 10 page manifesto from last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937895 Could @dang or some other moderator shed some light on why these specific posts are disa…

was wondering the same. the explanation i can think of is that people are flagging this and the algo lowers flagged posts?

its better than the alternative of @dang and friends manually moving this item down/off the front page.

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

#304

Post by thecrazyone »

rbanffy wrote: post #276
humanrebar wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring. Or the fact that it's not really possible. Right now, most software engineering jobs are pretty communication heavy. Almost all company cultures contain a non-trivial amount of verbal communication, so with that premise, it's reasonable to have candidates verbally describe technical things or even make…

> Once you're listening to real voices, Use a voice scrambler.

thats what i was thinking. Everyone should be made to sound like darth vader and now we've an interview process to die for :P

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

#305

Post by JimboOmega »

Danihan wrote: post #68
JimboOmega wrote: post #46

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…

I believe that treating everyone as individuals, rather than as stereotypical groups, is the only way forward. It's the only truly fair approach. What ever happened to the notion of being color-blind when it comes to policy enforcement? AKA, actually treating people equally, based on merit? If biases are really that big of an issue (are there studies that show this is true in tech?) then what is wrong with "blind-hir…

> If biases are really that big of an issue (are there studies that show this is true in tech?)

I don't know if there are studies, but I absolutely know toxic and unfriendly environments exist. I don't know how you'd quantify the effect; if you made up some metric where you looked at how many women COULD be in tech, there's huge lost productivity, but that's not necessarily meaningful.

Even clearing the hiring hurdle is not nearly enough. Hiring someone who your culture treats like crap is not going to help you or them. If the person is actually very competent, but consistently treated as a newbie, their work will be sub-par and they will burn out and leave.

It turns out you need managers who can actually see people, how they interact, and manage them on a personal level. Set up mentoring for those who need it, put people who like to work alone tasks that can be handled alone, people who like to be on big teams on big teams, etc.

There's no way to exhaustively list the things you could do, and that's the point - it's a big, hard job that is a job, that I think SV too often wishes didn't exist.

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

#306

Post by gaius »

brightball wrote: post #153

I can't remember who said it, but there is a great quote that applies to management in general that seems to apply here. "As soon as a good measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Goodhart's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

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

#307

Post by mistermann »

lerpa wrote: post #264
microcolonel wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there's either something wrong with how they introduced the trial, or there are just fewer qualified female candidates. Either way, I really didn't understand why they backed off on the trial. If you can reasonably assess that your process is fair, I don't think anyone should care how the numbers bear out.

> If you can reasonably assess that your process is fair, I don't think anyone should care how the numbers bear out. Because it goes against the results they wanted to arrive at.

Odd how that Idea never occurred to the person to whom you are replying.

In comment after comment, the possibility that there is no bias is considered literally impossible. The blatant and unrecognized bias in this conversation is absolutely fascinating. (I also notice HN has introduced a throttle, presumably to reduce the volume of incorrect messages.)

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

#308

Post by mduerksen »

tptacek wrote: post #222
stevenwoo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Possible explanation as follows: The perks for those jobs in our culture are different ones and on average women prefer a different mix.

In western culture, my experience has been: When you tell some acquaintance you're a software developer, engineer etc., they are almost instantly bored.

Contrast that with

* Science - The flair of knowledge, curiosity, discovery and a general sense of meaning

* the law - Status and money

* Medicine - Making a real difference in peoples lives, also extremely prestigous

Maybe men are just less capable of resisting the urge to tinker in order to achieve more respected/better payed jobs?

It bears to be repeated: This is western culture valuation, might be different in other cultures, which also might result in a different distribution.

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

#309

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

#310

Post by Symmetry »

mpweiher wrote: post #223
Nomentatus wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I always assumed the hiring disparity was due to previous steps in the pipeline being biased in some way, as in this PG essay:

http://www.paulgraham.com/bias.html

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