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We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#71

Post by sbilstein »

rinchik wrote: post #56
sbilstein wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your cultural beliefs and intuitions ARE personal issues and biases. They are challenging to overcome. Racist people don't get to being racist by reading a blog post or two; they develop and internalize it over time like any cultural trait. Same goes for these anxieties people of color feel. It's ignorant to not realize that all of these things are mental. Duh, therapy helps. Trust me, every single person of color wh…

I’m not sure I follow, I don’t think that if a white guy is present during your interview, he is automatically racist? What I got from your post is that you are having problems during interviews because you are not comfortable with white people conducting your interviews. It’s sounds like you are automatically assume that white interviewers are racist? You are broadly generalizing people who happened to be white whic…

Huh? I'm not sure where you are reading that.

I'm saying that any internalized biases, anxieties, etc are deeply personal whether you are of an in group or an out group. It's totally a mental thing for me to get psyched out in an interview so of course therapy helps.

It's deeply personal but it's also something I know anecdotally is common amongst my peers of similar background. I'm pointing it out as one of the ways an interview can be unintentionally biased.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#72

Post by bsder »

kevintb wrote: post #4

Key point: > there really aren’t enough women to meet demand… if we keep hiring the way we’re hiring. Namely, if we keep over-indexing on CS degrees from top schools, and even if we remove unconscious bias from the process entirely, we will not get to gender parity. And yes, there is a way to surface strong candidates without relying on proxies like college degree. I am all in favour of reducing the industry’s relian…

> I am all in favour of reducing the industry’s reliance on fancy name schools for hiring.

1) The fact that people aren't hiring from schools lower on the list tells me that we have an oversupply of CS majors. If I need an employee, I'll do what I have to to get one--this indicates that most companies don't really need CS people.

2) "60% of software engineers at FAAMNG hold a degree from a top 20 school" isn't automatically damning. Some of those schools simply produce a LOT of students. I seem to remember something like University of Illinois produces almost 20% of all engineers graduated annually. Silicon Valley also may simply have a local bias because Berkeley and Stanford are literally next door.

3) If I had a chance to direct a talented female in terms of college study, I would point her at engineering, not CS. Engineering has its own bias problems, but seems to be a lot less toxic than CS. It also seems to have better geographic spread of jobs than CS right now.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#73

Post by [deleted] »

majos wrote: post #29
nradov wrote: post #17

My alma mater Harvey Mudd College has had rough gender parity in Computer Science for several years now. It's a small school but other colleges could learn from their practices. https://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/how-harvey-mudd-college-...

For anyone who didn't read the linked article (it's short), it suggests that a key element is careful design of intro courses. Students with computer science experience get a more advanced course that is explicitly designed not to make them more competitive in second-year courses (instead, it starts on material that will re-appear in third-year courses). Students with no computer science experience get their own intr…

[deleted]

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#74

Post by sbilstein »

ergfdgs wrote: post #64
sbilstein wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too hate the term LatinX but it's become the preferred term around so many I know that I'd rather just conform than argue about it. Just cause I used it doesn't mean I endorse it.

You're Latin American! Impose the right terminology! This is cultural colonialism from the, typically WASP, urban elite. Who possibly finds Spanish's gendered pronouns annoying? How many are them are native Spanish speakers? And yet they feel slighted and therefore try to impose their (typically poor) Spanish on us! They ignore that, technically, Spanish has three genders (the neutral which is almost, but not complet…

For real, I've looked into this and in LatAm some people prefer Latines as the neutral collective noun. I like that myself cause I'm down with gender neutrality but everyone thinks it's a fucking typo so I give up.

Outside of the Bay Area tech scene, I can't imagine I would ever use LatinX in Spanish conversation. I choose my battles.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#75

Post by nick_ »

brightball wrote: post #23
kevintb wrote: post #4

Key point: > there really aren’t enough women to meet demand… if we keep hiring the way we’re hiring. Namely, if we keep over-indexing on CS degrees from top schools, and even if we remove unconscious bias from the process entirely, we will not get to gender parity. And yes, there is a way to surface strong candidates without relying on proxies like college degree. I am all in favour of reducing the industry’s relian…

Several of the best developers I know have no degree at all. I know one guy who did a boot camp 2-3 years ago and since then has self taught himself so much that he's one of the most knowledgeable people I've been around. He was recently told in an interview that he otherwise passed with flying colors that, "someone with a boot camp education couldn't be seriously considered." It's mind blowing to me that anyone in c…

I definitely believe you and I think plenty of good devs have just a boot camp education, but I've also had a conversation with someone who came out of a dev boot camp and was very upset that they weren't treated like any other dev in the job market. Meanwhile, it was quite obvious they had no foundational experience/knowledge in terms of technical problem solving skills.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#76

Post by Pharaoh2 »

billti wrote: post #60

This stood out to me, and aligns with my observations in the (limited) female representation in the workplace: > In India, for instance, about 35% of developers are women; in the U.S., it’s 16% Does India not have the various gender biases we often attribute a large part of the problem to? What is India doing so well in this space to have over double the percentage of female software developers as the U.S.?

Basing this solely as a person from India and not some research background,

In the small minority of hacker rank study set, I would say that women are just as much encouraged or frankly expected to be in STEM as men. Although I am fairly certain that this observation will quickly disappear and will be heavily male dominated on a larger percentage of the population.

Really, looking at the actual hacker rank source, it seems like their sample set is really tiny and heavily biased.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

commandlinefan wrote: post #61
TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the point of criticizing the criticism of "it's a pipeline problem" is that, wherever you try to improve the pipeline, you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment. Working near the end of the pipe, you'll quickly hit diminishing returns. If the input at your segment is biased 4:1, then you can't improve past it. Sure, if your output is 8:1 then it's bad, but you won't g…

> you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment People have been fired from Google for suggesting exactly that.

I know. Google deeply disappointed me with that one.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#78

Post by ajross »

wayoutthere wrote: post #69
stormbrew wrote: post #16

I don't think the point of criticizing "it's a pipeline problem" is that there isn't a pipeline problem, but that it's an easy out to avoid taking action at whatever stage of the 'pipeline' you happen to be working at. If, as an manager at a FAANG, you say "it's a pipeline problem" you're probably saying that there aren't enough candidates because not enough women graduate from ST programs. If you're a program develo…

The author is leaving unstated what we all know to be true: most of these jobs aren't really that hard. You don't really need the people with pedigreed CS backgrounds, but it's easier than actually figuring out how to screen candidates. The "pipeline problem" is the pipeline itself. So you have to go around the pipeline by avoiding the formal education system, which is where the bias is observed.

That's not quite right either, because if these were truly easy jobs someone would have figured that out and won by hiring cheap developers with non-traditional backgrounds. In fact engineering jobs are hard, and there is a big spread in candidate quality.

The issue is that heretofore the best proxy for candidate quality is educational background, hence the pipeline problem. And you definitely fix that by going around the pipeline. But we shouldn't be blind to the fact that this has costs. You need to see a lot more bootcamp grads than Stanford alums to fill the same position. It's a cost worth bearing, but still a cost.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#79

Post by charliesharding »

sbilstein wrote: post #42
travisoneill1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe you are openly racist enough to claim that interviews are unfair because you have to be interviewed by white people (who you would have to work with every day if you were hired). If I said that I was uncomfortable being interviewed by latinos what do you think the reaction would be?

That's not at all what I said. I related a very personal set of anxieties (largely irrational) that I feel as a minority. Plenty of white people are uncomfortable around minorities. Do they all love that feeling? I'm confident most feel intense guilt about it and never act on those impulses in any way. Just having a 'racist' feeling doesn't make someone racist.

> Just having a 'racist' feeling doesn't make someone racist.

I would argue that that is exactly what racism is. It's having an irrational feeling towards someone and assuming they have characteristics based solely on their race. Why is it so hard to judge people on a case-by-case basis? By your own admission you say that these personal anxieties are irrational and then you go on to attribute it to being a minority. If instead you attribute it to yourself personally, it becomes a problem that you can solve for yourself rather than an affliction of which you are victim to. There are plenty of minorities (myself included) who don't feel this way.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#80

Post by papreclip »

They keep saying "top schools", but lower tier schools have the same gender disparity. And 40% of bootcamp grads might be female, but how much of that is due to the fact that there are bootcamps, apprenticeships, etc. that exist purely to pluck women & underrepresented groups from the mass of mostly-male non-traditional candidates? And other bootcamps that give scholarships preferentially to those groups?

I am pretty confident I would have gotten into LEAP or ADA if I were a woman. Instead I went fully self-taught because I didn't want to pay $20k for a bootcamp.

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