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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

#201

Post by shadowgovt »

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…

I wish I knew what to do to help ameliorate the anxieties you've experienced, because as the white guy giving the interviews, I'm terrified that something about my approach or demeanor is enhancing those anxieties in my candidates (and I've seen entirely too many promising candidates wash out where I had to put as my feedback "I think they can do this, but they couldn't do it during the interview, and I suspect they got too nervous").

What can I do to do better?

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

#202

Post by HeroOfAges »

One thing I've found very interesting is that even though the majority of software developers in an enterprise or organization are male, with the ratio being as high as 80/20, the ratio of male to female managers directly managing software developers is closer to 50/50. I would say this is evidence of bias in favor of women.

edited for clarity

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

#203

Post by nl »

supernova87a wrote: post #187

With such politically charged issues, it's always a problem of people wanting to believe something is possible (and mandatory to pursue) banging their heads against what is true and actually possible. If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representa…

it's always a problem of people wanting to believe something is possible (and mandatory to pursue) banging their heads against what is true and actually possible.

I'm not sure if you realize this, but change always seems impossible until it happens. 10 years ago it seemed completely impossible that Facebook would have 1B users, let alone the ~3B it has now.

The same 10 years ago it seemed impossible to that gay people would be able to marry, and even 4 years ago the idea of a Trump presidency was considered a joke.

Change is and will remain hard. That doesn't mean it isn't desirable nor does it mean that people shouldn't bang their heads against walls to make it happen.

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

#204

Post by TeMPOraL »

gen220 wrote: post #188
TeMPOraL wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for elaborating. What you wrote resonates very strongly, it's essentially the way it's been in every job I worked on. Hell, I'm guilty of it myself - once I have my own fiefdom in the codebase, I feel terrified of letting someone else work in it. In my mind, I have the vision of them struggling unproductively because they lack the knowledge about all the tiny little idiosyncrasies, of various design decisio…

I feel like a step towards a solution to this problem (which I likewise observe), is to document these idiosyncrasies in the code . My rule of thumb is that when I write or read weird code that's necessarily weird (to avoid idiosyncrasies in downstream/upstream systems), I try to add a very concise clarifying comment that acknowledges the code as weird, and points in the direction of both the problem we're avoiding a…

I agree with your proposed step forward.

Myself, recently I've been more often producing fresh code than working on someone else's, so I ended up aggressively documenting design decisions in code - most of them in top-level file comments, and the more local/tactical decisions within the scope they affect. I try to do that simultaneously with writing the code, because unless I write things down immediately, there's a good chance I'll never go back to put them in.

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

#205

Post by parennoob »

speeder wrote: post #10
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…

I am Brazillian, mixed race, my dad family is from europe, my dad has green eyes, and I can apply for EU citizenship. My mother family is mixed of black and native american. Almost every single time I faced discrimination, was because I was "white", for example open hostility by 100% black people assuming that I was "white" and evil or something, or when I was informed I should not apply for affirmative action becaus…

I can't even pass as white, and I'm still excluded from most diversity programs because my race (South Asian) is overrepresented in tech.

However, overrepresentation in tech in Silicon Valley does not necessary translate into societal privilege, or even extend to all places in the US. Like sure, Google's CEO is Indian, but the entire upper layer of management at the company I work at (and a lot of other companies in Middle America) is 100% golf-playing white males with no way to break in. So I'm kinda SOL both in the diversity programs in Silicon Valley / more progressive tech places as well as the golf-and-whisky club at work.

Would like to hear solutions or experiences from other brown South Asians working outside Silicon Valley.

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

#206

Post by naasking »

HeroOfAges wrote: post #196
spamizbad wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of perspective taking. If a "Never saw a line of code until I took this class" sits between two "Coding since 11" students, they're going to watch their neighbors effortlessly breeze through the curriculum. If they don't know those student's background, it's not unreasonable if they come to the (false) conclusion that they're not cut out to be a developer because it's just so much easier for "everyone e…

Even if you do have a "fast" track and a "slow" track, the only ways I can think of to get travelers on either of these paths to the same place at the same time is to either slow down those on the "fast" track, or speed up those on the "slow" track. What I seem to be witnessing is a willingness of people to slow down those on the "fast" track instead of expecting people on the "slow" track to work harder to catch up.

> Even if you do have a "fast" track and a "slow" track, the only ways I can think of to get travelers on either of these paths to the same place at the same time

They don't have to get to the same place at the same time, they just all have to cross a finish line. The finish line is the same for everyone, even if the fast track students get to take a more fun route and play doing other things they enjoy along the way.

Certainly the fast track students will still have a competitive advantage since they will probably have worked on more challenging problems, but it fixes the graduation stats. Who knows if it will have positive downstream effects.

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

#207

Post by stonejolt »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #186
ryandrake wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve got a bunch of hobbies and none of them are even close to gender parity. Go check out poker rooms in Vegas and find me a single table where the players are 50-50 men-women. Visit flying clubs, carpentry groups, engine mechanics shops, you won’t find gender parity in any of these. And nobody is really tackling any of these as some urgent problem to solve. Why do professions need to aim for 50-50 but not non-profe…

It's all about the money. People care about professions because "female" professions tend to be paid less than "male" ones.

I assume you mean something like care professions? They don't pay less because it's mainly female workers, they pay less because they can't easily scale the generated profits.

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

#208

Post by TeMPOraL »

shadowgovt wrote: post #184
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 Not in the short-run. But the reason working on the pipeline is valuable is that discrimination includes negative feedback loops. When people who would be entering the pipeline look for role models and success stories and don't find any, they're discouraged from trying. So while there are of course diminishing returns in investi…

I agree. But as you note, these feedback loop work slowly (after all, they loop back, and people move through the pipes only as fast). The role model example you provide is great, and I absolutely agree that it's worth it to improve the pipe at every stage - I'm only saying that you shouldn't expect (and it shouldn't be expected of you) to get better results, or get them faster, than the pipe allows structurally.

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

#209

Post by lordnacho »

btilly wrote: post #27

I know it is not politically correct to say it, but I remain unconvinced that gender parity is a desirable goal. Particularly given the current state of research into differences in gender averages. Here is a real example. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_visualization_ability#... men have about a one standard deviation advantage in spacial reasoning over women. Assuming that both distributions are normal wi…

But unlike say basketball or other sports, there's no one thing that makes you better at engineering. Why spatial reasoning? I did engineering and what spatial reasoning is there? Maybe a few vector calculus courses, and some mechanics. A lot is a bunch of equations. There's also an argument that you can make up for a lack of skill by either spending more time, or for instance by recasting problems from one domain to another. This is what often happens precisely with geometry, you can turn it into algebra.

Anyway I assume you mean that there's a bunch of these types of skills that might be unevenly distributed, and indeed it would make sense to have the numbers.

I'd say one thing to think about is whether there's an economic effect taking place. Suppose women have comparative advantage in something that isn't software. Then even though they might be just as good at it, fewer of them would choose it. And this is where actually absolutes are not what matter, it's the relative opportunity costs that do. So looking at who is better at spatial reasoning might seem sensible, but the decision might be better understood as economic, requiring us to look at Ricardo.

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

#210

Post by nl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105
ajross wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a fair characterization. Damore's memo (which I assume is what you're talking about) absolutely did not attribute Google's lack of women candidates to a lack of graduates in the pipeline. It went with a straight on (and largely unsourced) "women are biologically different" argument. Wikipedia's page on the controversy is relatively good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch... And e…

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…

In terms of pipeline argument, the memo can be viewed as arguing that the pipeline is biased at every stage

That's your interpretation, and isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia page nor the original memo.

Both the memo and the Wikipedia page discuss the changes Damore suggested making at Google, not anything about changes in the pipeline.

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