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Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

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Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#181

Post by rad88 »

ardit33 wrote: post #99
rad88 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads shouldn't mean there are so few women that you need to hire them for events.

Yes, for small team (sub 10), I have seen high ratio of females/males, but for larger companies, it is impossible. If you are hiring 100s, or even thousands of engineers you are bound to the supply of the market. Unless you do some straight out hiring discrimination, and refuse to hire males. Similar to some Vegas clubs (they wont let males unless they have a female with them). Good luck building a successful busines…

You are obviously bound to the supply of the market. What I'm saying is that the market is bigger than you assume. The number of women interested in and capable of a career in programming is much greater than the number of those who actually want to work at your company.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#182

Post by EpicEng »

rad88 wrote: post #178
EpicEng wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic Which is leagues above the vast majority of engineering companies, as well as the overall population within the software engineering community at large. Yours is an outlier, and an obvious one at that.

No doubt. I'm not here to say any company can have ~50% female engineers if only they did what we do, but this idea that a more reasonable expectation would be 16% strikes me as bullshit. So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.

iirc male CS grads outnumber females by more than 4:1, so ~20% seems about spot on, no? It's something that would have to be attacked at a level far before employment, e.g., social constructs and the education system. Once it comes down to the employer they only have one pool from which to draw applicants.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#183

Post by MadSudaca »

olalonde wrote: post #143
MadSudaca wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why?

Like joining a soccer game and finding out half the other team was hired to let you score goals -- not a very stimulating experience if you ask me.

What would be the analogous of scoring goals in the context of a work party with coworkers? Also, I think it would be a bit exaggerated to freak out and leave. Although maybe I'm imagining the situation differently to how it was.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#184

Post by rad88 »

EpicEng wrote: post #182
rad88 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt. I'm not here to say any company can have ~50% female engineers if only they did what we do, but this idea that a more reasonable expectation would be 16% strikes me as bullshit. So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.

iirc male CS grads outnumber females by more than 4:1, so ~20% seems about spot on, no? It's something that would have to be attacked at a level far before employment, e.g., social constructs and the education system. Once it comes down to the employer they only have one pool from which to draw applicants.

20% would be a lower bound. I majored in a hard science, not CS. Two great programmers I know, in senior positions, don't even have a degree. At my last company there was a decent Rails engineer who studied communication in college and had worked in affiliate marketing at his previous job. There was also a guy who was a lawyer and then went to code camp and got hired as an engineer.

The pipeline isn't sufficient to explain the gender ratio.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#185

Post by ImSkeptical »

bdcravens wrote: post #165
ImSkeptical wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably models are also real people who have an interest in being there (their interest is in being paid). If consenting adults are being treated fairly, I don't see any moral problem here.

The article says they are told to say "I'm (real employee)'s friend". If I go to a party put on by my employer and they are paying people to lie to me, I would say I'm not being treated fairly.

Edit: Oops. I misread you the first time. Maybe my comment is no longer relevant.

But you chose to accept that job. The actor on TV isn't being treated unfairly because he/she has to lie and say they're a detective, or whatever. I don't see why the model is being mistreated because her role is software company employee.

If anyone is being mistreated by the lie, it's the person being lied to, who is, you know, being lied to. That said, this is a balance between having a fun party, and possibly feeling dumb when it turns out the girl you thought you were flirting with is actually a model hired to entertain you. I think it's up to those companies, the employees, and the models, to strike the right balance.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#186

Post by seanmcdirmid »

thorell wrote: post #70
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, and with limited supply, as more bigger richer companies strongly focus on gender diversity, it will make it worse than it was before for the rest of the industry. The problem will have to be corrected in the universities before it is in the industry. Many higher end CS programs are making great strides here, so I think it will happen in a couple of generations.

But you're presupposing a problem. It's possible that women don't enter CS due to personal preference. Not because CS is hostile to women but because the subject matter isn't interesting to them. I heard somewhere that there are just as many women in undergrad math as men, but the ratio dramatically decreases in graduate math because so many women leave... to teach.

Stanford has done wonders getting is to almost parity between male and female. Now, CS was already oversubscribed, so I’m not sure how much shaping is going on, but many departments don’t have a shortage of female applicants if they are competitive.

I do wish there was more research on how the gender gap arose in the first place, e.g. why that drop occurred in the mid/late 80s.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#187

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ScottBurson wrote: post #151
thorell wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're presupposing a problem. It's possible that women don't enter CS due to personal preference. Not because CS is hostile to women but because the subject matter isn't interesting to them. I heard somewhere that there are just as many women in undergrad math as men, but the ratio dramatically decreases in graduate math because so many women leave... to teach.

Yet somehow we don't see the same self-sorting phenomenon in other cultures. Russia, for instance. Maybe the one good thing communism accomplished was to create a culture in which everyone knows women can be technical. (Maybe that was part of the culture before -- I wouldn't know -- but the Soviets certainly encouraged it.)

To be clear, china has the same problem, perhaps even worse despite its reputation of gender diversity. Our big boss when I was working in china made it abundantly clear to us that we had to hire more women, and that there were supply issues from the universities, etc.... Maybe India does better?

Also, I find it weird that while I’ve met many Russian developers, I’ve never met a female Russian developer. That is just anecdata of course, take it with a grain of salt.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#188

Post by olalonde »

MadSudaca wrote: post #183
olalonde wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like joining a soccer game and finding out half the other team was hired to let you score goals -- not a very stimulating experience if you ask me.

What would be the analogous of scoring goals in the context of a work party with coworkers? Also, I think it would be a bit exaggerated to freak out and leave. Although maybe I'm imagining the situation differently to how it was.

Since you didn't get the analogy: I don't find it enjoyable to converse with people who are paid to deceive me, especially if I find out about it after the fact. I wouldn't mind it as much if the models were clearly identified as such so that I could either avoid them or engage with them knowing full well what's going on. I am shocked you find this surprising.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#189

Post by MadSudaca »

olalonde wrote: post #188
MadSudaca wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the analogous of scoring goals in the context of a work party with coworkers? Also, I think it would be a bit exaggerated to freak out and leave. Although maybe I'm imagining the situation differently to how it was.

Since you didn't get the analogy: I don't find it enjoyable to converse with people who are paid to deceive me, especially if I find out about it after the fact. I wouldn't mind it as much if the models were clearly identified as such so that I could either avoid them or engage with them knowing full well what's going on. I am shocked you find this surprising.

My bad, I didn't know they were meant to pass as guests! I imagined they would be clearly identified. I agree it's a very uncomfortable situation.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#190

Post by EpicEng »

rad88 wrote: post #184
EpicEng wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iirc male CS grads outnumber females by more than 4:1, so ~20% seems about spot on, no? It's something that would have to be attacked at a level far before employment, e.g., social constructs and the education system. Once it comes down to the employer they only have one pool from which to draw applicants.

20% would be a lower bound. I majored in a hard science, not CS. Two great programmers I know, in senior positions, don't even have a degree. At my last company there was a decent Rails engineer who studied communication in college and had worked in affiliate marketing at his previous job. There was also a guy who was a lawyer and then went to code camp and got hired as an engineer. The pipeline isn't sufficient to e…

Ok, but if we assume that the number of non-CS grads who work in software development is proportional (seems fair) between males and females you're still in the same boat. Are you saying that women far out number men when it comes to sw devs who didn't major in CS?

I just don't see any data that supports what you're saying. 20% is the _upper_ bound.

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