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

#241

Post by mcguire » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:03 PM UTC

Hmm.

https://nsf.gov/nsb/sei/edTool/data/college-14.html

"Science and engineering" bachelors degrees have been about 50% male and 50% female since 2000, growing from about 400,000 degrees in 2000 to 589,000 in 2012.

From 2000 to 2004, women's share of computer science degrees were between 25% and 28%. From 2007 to 2012, they stabilized at about 18%.

Now, the question is, did men preferentially enter computer science, or did women preferentially leave? Hint: the latter.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp

[Edit: more recent.] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_325.35.a...

In 2004-2008, degrees granted to men decreased by 6%, 10%, 9% and 8%. Degrees granted to women decreased by 20%, 18%, 20%, and 13%. (The other big drop in degrees, from 1986 to 1993-6, shows the same pattern and is when degrees granted to women went from 35-37% of the total to 27%.)

Whence comes this pipeline difference?

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_222.10.a...

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics scale score, the difference between boys and girls up to grade 12 has been stable for years and doesn't really amount to a hill of beans. Same with science.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_224.70.a...

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_224.74b....

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_224.74a....

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_224.73.a...

The Technology and Engineering Literacy scores for 8th graders don't have any difference to write home about.

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

#242

Post by fzeroracer » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:04 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #212

fzeroracer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in the 1960s there was discrimination and no women were in engineering. This was a terrible waste of talent. But by the late 1980s, women were 20% of engineering students. Decades of hand-wringing later, women are still about 20% of engineering students. Based on spacial reasoning ability, perhaps women SHOULD be about 20% of engineering students. I just wanted to point out that this is objectively wrong for o…

I said engineering, and I meant engineering. Not computer science. See https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/table-of-the-day-bachelors-de... to verify that in 2016, just under 21% of engineering degrees were given to women. The figures for the mid 1980s were almost the same. But if you can find figures, in the mid-1960s, engineering degrees were almost exclusively given to men. The ratios have been fairly constant in recen…

My point was that this article is specifically using the term engineering in the sense of computer science. Using engineering as a whole is misleading because as I have demonstrated, software engineering had a historically larger amount of women which faced a decline post-80s. It's burying the lede to make a point about something as a whole rather than the specifics of the article.

Also, your point about those language features being harder is also, objectively wrong. All of those features you mentioned existed before the 80s and were used at the time. If anything software engineering has gotten easier to understand over time, not harder thanks to more robust tooling, debugging and support. Back then you didn't have access to easy resources and had to do everything yourself, so you would have to provide a better explanation than 'things are harder now than they were before'.

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

#243

Post by sbilstein » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #216

sbilstein wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, making an interview less biased is not about color of skin. It's about comfort and acknowledging how these anxieties creep up. At big companies I've worked at, we coached interviewers to do at least 5 minutes of small talk and resume review, to smile, to always leave time for questions at the end, to show some amount of enthusiasm for the work the interviewee is doing. It's not about an interview fo…

Yea, I’m white and I feel I have less in common with the Ivy League Zuckerbro personality than I have with poor and working class folks like who I grew up with. When I see my interviewer has two popped collars under his Stanford sweater I can instantly feel the anxiety growing. I think to myself “the minute I open my mouth he’s going to hear the mining town and farm work coming out.” It’s more about cultural backgrou…

Thank you for understanding where I'm coming from and sharing this point. I've def had friends who corroborate this experience as well.

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

#244

Post by supernova87a » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

inerte wrote: post #224

ForHackernews wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have a goal of 50% female developers? Can we see some citations for that? Most companies I've worked at claimed to be trying for 20%, and they were failing abysmally at it.

I've heard from a Googler that yes, they want the workforce to match the outside world. With that in mind read https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_what-would-it-tak... and "That’s why in 2019 we challenge ourselves and others to think differently so that we widen pathways to tech. Only then will we reflect our consumer base, and truly elevate our ability to build products for everyone." So Google wants to refl…

Most corporate statements of diversity goals I have ever seen take the simplistic position (in some form or another) that , , or statistic "should mirror the representation of the general population." It seems to be an accepted truism that this equals unbiased selection and equity.

It is very politically unacceptable to object to this intellectually lazy reasoning.

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

#245

Post by age_bronze » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

TimTheTinker wrote: post #231

age_bronze wrote: post #219

I find it extremely ironic that those opposing discrimination and racism are now the ones to view people as just statistics. The whole reason why racism and sexism is bad is because it doesn't look at people as individuals. Behind every person who goes to an interview there's whole life, and every interviewer has so much more information about that person than just her being a female or black. Pretending that by know…

> the defining feature is envy. envy for people who succeeded. Unfortunately, that describes human nature in general.

I've gotten used to the reeking smell of envy all my life. I was always encouraged by everyone to 'still be nice to them', to try to appease them, etc. It never, ever, and will never, work.

I've had enough of that and decided and realized that the best way to deal with envy, is to stick it to them. Hit them as hard as you can with the reality. Even when it hurts them. Hurt them with the facts of how much you're better and they suck.

You can't ever be accepted by those that envy you, the most you can get is that they stop using you to cope with their insecurities.

EDIT:

It's not about me thinking I'm successful, because I don't. It's about not giving envious people the positive feedback they desire so much from their corrupt behavior. It's about getting them so hurt they will never again consider coping with their insecurities by transference.

If you've never felt like you need to justify your 'success' (even tho you never felt like it is a big deal) to envious people in disguise you'll never understand. It is the most frustratingly impossible task. They can't and will never separate you as an individual from the negative emotion of envy they feel.

Unlike what it might sound, this isn't about me at all. I usually try to stay humble around normal non-envious people. But the best way to deal with envious people is to break their positive feedback loop. They need a strong negative feedback for their behavior so they don't repeat it.

I realize I will be hated by them. I also realize from so many different experiences being loved by them was never a possibility, and I am content with the small success of them dealing with their issues elsewhere.

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

#246

Post by fennecfoxen » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

uwuhn wrote: post #222

I'm going to preface this post by saying that I don't have a problem with most of my coworkers (male and female) being Asian. In fact, I prefer it. I'm not Asian, but the majority of my friends, classmates, and coworkers throughout my life have been, and that continues even now during my career in tech. Whenever I see anything related to affirmative action being discussed nowadays, I think that it's only a matter of…

> I think that it's only a matter of time until Asian women are treated the same way as Asian men. Once you've managed to close the gender gap in engineering, you have a new problem to deal with -- a lack of diversity among women engineers in regards to race and socio-economic class.

The blanket catch-all term "Asian" is not doing this conversation any favors. You assert a monoculture, but Asia is a huge region with many cultures, not a monolith. South Korea is unlike India is unlike the Philippines is unlike Vietnam is unlike Iran is unlike China.

Can you narrow this down so we understand what kind of monoculture you're actually talking about?

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

#247

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #213

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…

Does anyone have a goal of 50% female developers? Can we see some citations for that? Most companies I've worked at claimed to be trying for 20%, and they were failing abysmally at it.

The article claimed that 50% is the goal.

And if people aiming for diversity don't have 50% as a goal, somehow I have never seen them name another number that they would consider satisfactory.

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

#248

Post by hnick » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

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…

I generally agree with you, but such smart and resourceful companies could do something about it. They are not powerless.

Companies used to train internally - watch an older TV show (or even something like Better Call Saul) and see how many characters "worked their way up from the mail room". The death of company loyalty goes both ways but I'm sure it can be mended with some effort. Where I work one of the better programmers I knew was an immigrant from south east Asia who started in the warehouse and had an interest in programming. I don't know whether or not he had a degree, but the point was he worked hard to prove himself, and they took a chance to give him a go.

So I guess my point is, graduate statistics isn't the end of the story.

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

#249

Post by AdrianB1 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #193

TeMPOraL wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is: because of 2), less women enter the pipeline that leads to a job that's less social and more about things, relative to other occupations, therefore 1). 2) is presented here as a plausible explanation of 1). The connection is very clear, so the validity of that view depends entirely on the validity of point 2) itself. Damore presented a boatload of links to research supporting that point, and plenty o…

> The concept that men and women may have different interests is considered sexist The concept that men and women may have different interests due to biological differences is extremely sexist, yes. For all the sources Damore cited, there's an entire body of academic work (and an entire cultural revolution in the United States spanning upwards of a century) to the contrary on that topic specifically. A large chunk of…

Actually any psychologist can contradict you easily. If you find arguments like "men are on average taller and heavier than women" to be sexist, you have a wrong sense of what sexism is.

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

#250

Post by weberc2 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #189

TeMPOraL wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe both Sundar's note and Damore's original memo were in the context of people hired by Google.

Damore's thesis was that Google shouldn't expect gender parity because (among other factors) the preferences of women are distributed differently than the preferences of men. So Damore was talking about both groups, but he was fired specifically for suggesting that Google's hiring practices were unfair--the argument being that criticizing Google's hiring practices implies that the women hired under those practices didn't really deserve to be there. This is especially interesting because lots of people make the inverse claim (Google's hiring practices are biased in favor of men) and no one is trying to fire them for implying that male Googlers don't belong (note that recently Google has discouraged activism, but this is because it stirs up unwanted controversy and impedes business, not because it offends a demographic; never mind that being told to behave is not the same as being terminated).