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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

#361

Post by leereeves »

Lon7 wrote: post #354
leereeves wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people here were alive "when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender?" Preferences (quotas, lower standards, financial incentives, etc) for women and minorities in hiring and admissions have existed for a long time.

I'm still pretty young yet I've experienced benefits solely from my gender. My sister is smarter than me and better at math and physics than me. I was invited by my grade school to go to robotics camps over the summer, she wasn't. I was given special permission to take computer science courses not offered by our highschool, she wasn't. I was encouraged to to go into engineering by our guidance Councillor, she wasn't.…

I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/...

And young women earn more than young men, on average.

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274...

I'm sorry about what happened to your sister, but that's not the norm.

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

#362

Post by smokeyj »

tptacek wrote: post #356
smokeyj wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we have a straight white male telling a woman she's wrong about her experience. I don't subscribe to identity politics, but if you do - there's a fishy smell here. Of course the logical thing is to evaluate all ideas for their merit. But that's not what we're doing here.

Yes. I am a straight white male. That is what I'm doing. I would say exactly the same set of things to her face as well. Next question?

What percentage of your technical hires are female?

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

#363

Post by MaysonL »

turc1656 wrote: post #146

" 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 only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person"

The problem is, that hiring only "the best persons" will not create the best company. Diverse viewpoints and experiences create the best products.

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

#364

Post by KirinDave »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #353
KirinDave wrote: post #131

One of the reasons I push for very objective, fixed, and carefully selected technical interview techniques is precisely to avoid these issues. The goal is to reach a point where either you pass the technical, or you don't. But making a fair technical assessment for levels and roles in a company takes time and is very tempting (but, I argue, futile) to contract out. I think in a larger context: the "pipeline problem"…

>She's showing kids perhaps one of the ugliest and least rewarding facets of being a software engineer and wondering why her daughter... isn't interested. And yet her son is. That seems an important detail. What is the virtue in hiding the "ugly" side of engineering when its generally the most common part of the process?

So you spend your days working arbitrary logic puzzles in a gross language like Python? I know I'd have never gotten into this field.

It's so easy to say, "Gosh this confirms our stereotypes!" But even if there are inherently measureable and statistically significant differences that doesn't really translate to "women are worse at programming and math."

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

#365

Post by flukus »

MaysonL wrote: post #363
turc1656 wrote: post #146

" 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 only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person" The problem is, that hiring only "the best persons" will not create the best company. Diverse viewpoints and experiences create the best products.

But no one seems to care about hiring people with diverse viewpoints and experiences. The only diversity we care about is skin color and reproductive organs. I don't see anyone trying to fill their quota of people with an IQ of 90. I don't see anyone trying to fill their quota of people over 65. I don't see anyone trying to fill their quota of computer illiterate people.

Those types of diversity are much bigger than the difference between male and female computer geeks, they would have a much bigger impact on product design and yet no one is scrambling to implement it.

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

#366

Post by unityByFreedom »

leereeves wrote: post #361
Lon7 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still pretty young yet I've experienced benefits solely from my gender. My sister is smarter than me and better at math and physics than me. I was invited by my grade school to go to robotics camps over the summer, she wasn't. I was given special permission to take computer science courses not offered by our highschool, she wasn't. I was encouraged to to go into engineering by our guidance Councillor, she wasn't.…

I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/... And young women earn more than young men, on average. http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274... I'm sorry about what happened to your sister, but that's not the norm.

> I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women.

The gender gaps under discussion are specific to computer science [1]. That more and more women have been (a) going to college and (b) getting into STEM with the exception of computer science is why this is so interesting to debate.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

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

#367

Post by leereeves »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #366
leereeves wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/... And young women earn more than young men, on average. http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274... I'm sorry about what happened to your sister, but that's not the norm.

> I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women. The gender gaps under discussion are specific to computer science [1]. That more and more women have been (a) going to college and (b) getting into STEM with the exception of computer science is why this is so interesting to debate. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

I'm aware that some people are trying to limit the scope of the discussion, and yet, I wonder why no one cares about the young men who are now at a disadvantage.

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

#368

Post by therebedragons »

Lon7 wrote: post #354
leereeves wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people here were alive "when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender?" Preferences (quotas, lower standards, financial incentives, etc) for women and minorities in hiring and admissions have existed for a long time.

I'm still pretty young yet I've experienced benefits solely from my gender. My sister is smarter than me and better at math and physics than me. I was invited by my grade school to go to robotics camps over the summer, she wasn't. I was given special permission to take computer science courses not offered by our highschool, she wasn't. I was encouraged to to go into engineering by our guidance Councillor, she wasn't.…

Why did she become a teacher? I mean, the grades difference required to be a teacher vs CS are vast. How does that happen?

My mum went through this - she finished 1st in a state in Australia in English, and top 100 in History, and became an English teacher. Thing is, that was 1960s. She taught at a selective school (academic?) and NONE, ZERO of her students under similar circumstances would choose english teaching over being a lawyer. Now, my mother also taught with an ex-lawyer who hated it and became a teacher, but that was not because she was not given opportunities, but because she hated the law industry.

I wonder again how was your sister was steered down this path?

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

#369

Post by unityByFreedom »

Interesting. She's saying something different from Damore,

> "These women show up at work and perform not as great as we want them to"

Damore said his female coworkers were equally capable.

> "After some rounds of low to no success, we start to compromise and hire women just because we have to"

It sounds like somebody in her chain misunderstood or misapplied Google's hiring practices. From what Google and Damore said, all the women and men there are equally capable.

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

#370

Post by unityByFreedom »

pnathan wrote: post #155
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the piece isn't very well written†, it's unclear whether the "infinite loop" of mediocrity she's referring to is something she actually observed, or something she surmises is possible. She is clear and specific, presenting numbers, when talking about things she was personally involved in. Since the cycle of increasing mediocrity has a prominent float in the parade of horribles conjured by the "anti-diversity"…

> Finally, an obvious point: evaluation of the performance of an individual software developer is one of the great unsolved problems of software engineering. I don't think it's obvious at all. That an experienced engineer or manager can correctly evaluate a software engineer is one of the ground assumptions that runs through our industry and its thinkpieces. (Though it is borne out by the studies that, e.g., even Goo…

> It's also evidence, I think, that broken hiring processes do not inherently break a company - or at least a sufficiently profitable one.

Also, it's possible that the hiring processes were broken in her chain, but not everywhere. Her experience doesn't seem to align with what either Google or Damore say (he felt all his female coworkers were equally capable and deserved to be there).

> Google's hiring process is legendarily bad ... the hoop jumping they ask you to go through is... quite amazing

How does having a high standard implicate any other hiring practices? "Bad" in one sense doesn't mean "bad" everywhere, and certainly "bad" for you doesn't mean "bad" for everyone. All that said -- I personally don't wish to go through an interview in which I'm grilled in detail on all the algorithms I reviewed in college. Hence why I don't work at Google.

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