We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by HeroOfAges » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

kaikai wrote: post #149

HeroOfAges wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this level the playing field? Why would this not reduce the overall rate of learning for everyone to suit the needs of the slowest students?

Inexperience doesn't equal unintelligence. Making sure that your intro class structure supports people with varying experience levels means you're more likely to engage people with the right interest and capabilities, not less so.

I've never experienced or witnessed a scenario in which trying to support varying levels of experience didn't result in lowering of standards. People with the right interest and capabilities will strive to clear the bar and will not expect the bar to be lowered for them.

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

#162

Post by orthoxerox » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #155

So her claim is that going to t top tier university is a complete waste of time and money, because boot camp graduates end up being just as capable? What are top tier universities doing to keep being competitive with those low cost boot camps? It seems to me for the additional money, they should be able to provide some additional value?

They signal to the employers, "our alumni are more likely to be either smart or well-connected than boot camp survivors". Hiring people is expensive, so interviewing people that have been preselected to be likely to show potential is cheaper in the long run.

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

#163

Post by 4bpp » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

sbilstein wrote: post #26

whb07 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm ready for the downvotes, but its worth it. I don't think it is generally good to look for divisions and more ways to separate from the whole. I don't know if that is because you're out somewhere in super woke SF or similar but you've already used terms like "LatinX" and "person of color" like someone who is already woke but maybe stop for a sec? Why don't you see yourself as a person who likes CS/tech and like…

I think you might be reading into what I wrote a bit. This is just how I feel...not how I WANT to feel. Obviously, these are biases and anxieties that exist in my own mixed-race low-income immigrant brain that i wish weren't there. As another latino founder told me..."walk into a VC pitch meeting with the confidence of a tall white man." Like I don't hate caucasians but sometimes can't help but notice these differenc…

This sounds like your problem is not so much any actual discrimination as it is the expectation of it, and you are suffering real disadvantages due to that expectation. It might be better to try to reduce your consumption of US culture war content (including this article and discussion thread) and maybe even seek the company of more people who are not constantly preoccupied with it.

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

#164

Post by asdff » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #83

wrs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, if doing more things that involve spatial reasoning makes you better at spatial reasoning (which seems like a very likely assumption), this becomes a circular argument. (Did you read the Gender Differences section of that Wikipedia article?)

Yes, I did read the Gender Differences section of that article. You will note that I stated what research shows about population differences and did not wade into the more controversial question about why those differences exist. That said, I have found that on controversial subjects, people grab every sliver of support for their own ideas, and ignore data that might contradict it. The more heated the debate, the har…

You are a HS senior with good grades, test scores, and a decent essay. That's all the engineering school expects for admission. There is no explicit test for spacial reasoning ability, other than your ability to compete at your specific high school, your ability to take the SAT, and your ability to write a boilerplate 5 paragraph essay (probably strongly dependent on whether you use a writing coach or test prep service). You managed to continue to get decent grades in college and land an internship every summer. That's all the FANG expects for hiring.

No spacial reasoning is tested for entry level engineering jobs. Only academic performance which is dubious in its correlations to job performance, and your ability to network during undergrad.

Back to the gender disparity. If all it comes down to for jobs is your grades being decent, and it's not like genders skew in any direction here, and your ability to network, then in my eyes the elephant in the room is the effectiveness of networking. I don't think there is a big difference between nervous women and nervous men talking to recruiters about their first job, so the difference must be in the recruiter's biased perception of the candidate based on their gender.

I think spacial reasoning ability, even if it's stratified by gender as you claim, therefore has no effect on entry level job placement at all.

If you are really curious and want to explicitly prove that testosterone levels affect spacial reasoning, you have to set up an experiment that isolates these variables and not a meta analysis on populations full of confounding variables. You need an experiment.

A good experiment could be to develop a task that assayed spacial reasoning in female rats. You have your control rat, and one you treat with testosterone. Then you see if there is a difference in the ability to complete the task and test for significance. Until that experiment is done, and maybe it has been done already, I'd call this conclusion 'hand wavey,' at best.

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

#165

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

sbilstein wrote: post #2

I think it's pretty bold to post something like this. As a person of color, I absolutely observe bias in hiring processes and recruiting...however as someone who majored in CS it's undeniable that we have far less women and minorities going through these programs. After I graduated, my university managed to get the number closer to 60/40 of men vs. women but when I graduated there was just one woman in our graduating…

There are many stories of people who had horrible experiences with Google interviews. White people get anxious, too. You acknowledge yourself that those feelings may be irrational, but nevertheless I wanted to point out that you don't really know what it is like for white people going through those interviews. White people are not automatically being hired, either.

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

#166

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #128

Honestly for young children I wouldn't want any of the girls to become software engineers. Most Software Engineers including myself are friendly but also grumpy, nerdy and annoying, with poor communication skills and an unhealthy lifestyle. For some reason for men its OK because all they do is work, but for women I'd rather my daughters have more human contact and nicer environment - esp one without developers in it.…

I've always said women are too smart to become programmers. I'm pretty sure it is better for the soul to have a job with more people interactions. (Yeah I know there are meetings and you have to communicate with clients - still, you end up staring into a glowing screen most of the time. The general work environment often isn't great either. Why would Software Engineers need a nice environment, they only stare at their computers anyway, seems to be the general thinking).

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

#167

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #141

rb808 wrote: post #128

Honestly for young children I wouldn't want any of the girls to become software engineers. Most Software Engineers including myself are friendly but also grumpy, nerdy and annoying, with poor communication skills and an unhealthy lifestyle. For some reason for men its OK because all they do is work, but for women I'd rather my daughters have more human contact and nicer environment - esp one without developers in it.…

Counterpoint: If not you, then who? Your daughters could be part of a cultural shift with respect to the tech workplace, so why discourage them?

Because you would sacrifice your kid's wellbeing just to make some arbitrary, meaningless statistic look good.

And do you think women having to work with computers all day would end up being less grumpy than men who have to do it? Why?

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

#168

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

16bytes wrote: post #140

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misreporting the very link you quoted. Indeed, the Wikipedia description is pretty fair. I'll quote the relevant paragraph directly: "James Damore was spurred to write the memo when a Google diversity program he attended solicited feedback.[2] The memo was written on a flight to China.[12][13] Calling the culture at Google an "ideological echo chamber", the memo states that while discrimination exists, it is e…

Damore wasn't fired because he argued that the pipeline shortages largely explain gender disparity, he was fired because he made women felt excluded and othered. He wasn't fired because he argued against diversity, he was fired because he threatened inclusivity. To quote: "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these diff…

That Sundar's quote is weird and it does a similar population sleight of hand. The "group of our colleagues" is already a subset of population selected for relevant skill (by virtue of having been hired by Google), so it's out of scope of Damore's memo.

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

#169

Post by atroche » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #145

sbilstein wrote: post #2

I think it's pretty bold to post something like this. As a person of color, I absolutely observe bias in hiring processes and recruiting...however as someone who majored in CS it's undeniable that we have far less women and minorities going through these programs. After I graduated, my university managed to get the number closer to 60/40 of men vs. women but when I graduated there was just one woman in our graduating…

Torvalds is Finnish

Although his family was part of the Swedish speaking minority.

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

#170

Post by scarejunba2 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

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.?

What you want to do rapidly evaporates when you're faced with the question of what you have to do. Engineering, medicine, and law are three real paths to success in India, so you will face heavy parental pressure to participate here, irrespective of gender. Success is being in your high-school engineering or medical stream. Escape from failure is being in the third stream but intending to participate in law. All else is failure.

Secondarily, Indian education admissions have a high co-efficient on standardized tests and a near zero co-efficient on 'well-roundedness'. Affirmative action is caste-based and implemented via quotas filled from the standardized-test scores.

Finally, lots of SWEs in India are drudge-work engineers. They may spend a few days changing the text on a ColdFusion page. For these jobs there is a bare selection mechanism that involves your university GPA-equivalent and whether you can speak English (usually). The large number of graduates will then spend their time 'on the bench' as spare burstable capacity to perform this sort of drudge-work maintenance. The lack of a selection mechanism removes a source of bias.

So some good things, some bad things. Some don't apply to Google India (like the last one, I think).

EDIT: Sorry, had to create a throwaway for this one, but I lived there (and observed this for many of my friends, though not for myself) and felt you deserved to have live info. I'll accept the full ban on my account for bypassing the rate-limit.