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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

#271

Post by wwweston »

age_bronze wrote: post #245
TimTheTinker wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bette…

Just going out on a limb here, I may well be wrong, but you might want to consider asking around for better tools in this area. None of this sounds healthy. Or enviable, for that matter.

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

#272

Post by AdrianB1 »

ajross wrote: post #104
commandlinefan wrote: post #97

Well, the gist of this is: there aren’t enough women in “tech”, so different standards should be applied for women until there are. Setting aside all the other problems I have with this: law and medicine have much stricter barriers for entry. There are no practicing doctors or lawyers without advanced degrees, but there are plenty of women in both professions. So even if you accept the premise, it’s still pretty clea…

Alternative hypothesis: law and medicine started proactively working on their "pipeline problem" many decades earlier, and have had time to reach parity. Computer science, in the sense of the modern job market of elite grads going to bay area employers, is barely into its third decade of existence. Seriously: go back to the 50's and 60's and you'll find all these same arguments about how women can't be good doctors a…

Have you considered that women may prefer to heal than to code and when they need to choose a career they choose healing, so this is the real explanation why most doctors in my country are women and most people in IT are men?

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

#273

Post by JimboOmega »

mcguire wrote: post #241

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,…

It's also worth remembering that the problem continues in the workforce; there's fewer women reaching senior roles, fewer taking EM positions, etc. Those steps are entirely under the control of employers - women drop out of tech faster than men even when they get jobs in it.

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

#274

Post by zanny »

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…

> most companies, who are expending great effort on balancing the gender ratio while treating men of color as second-class URMs

At least in the US actually admitting to having gender biased hiring would have to violate a half dozen anti-discrimination labor protection laws, no? Universities are doing affirmative action because there is no legislation mandating they not be sexist in their enrollment whereas corporations don't have that freedom in hiring.

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

#275

Post by travisoneill1 »

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.

I don't really care whether or not your feelings constitute "racism," but I don't hold it against you. What I call racist is that you suggest an interview by people of a different race is biased against you.

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

#276

Post by wnoise »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #190
abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since an Engineer may change jobs half a dozen times over a career, but women generally change once (to non-Engineering job) we have a cumulative effect. I don't understand this reasoning. Are you saying that women generally have one engineering job and then they change to a non-engineering one? If not, where is the number difference coming from? Off-topic: why do you capitalize "engineering"?

Even if there were equal numbers of women and men starting out in engineering, but women never 'recycle', then the flows would be different. That's all. I capitalize Engineer as an occupation, like Doctor Smith. Yeah, probably don't want to capitalize it as an adjective.

Doctor is capitalized there as a title, not as a profession.

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

#277

Post by shajhansbx »

4bpp wrote: post #163
sbilstein wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People of color don’t have a switch that allows them to turn off the experience of being a person of color. Your comment amounts to a claim that sbilstein is inventing all of the issues he’s faced in life.

If you’re seriously claiming that people of color aren’t treated differently, look at the implicit bias test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

It’s a very easily reproducible experiment (you can conduct it on yourself by following the link) that shows that most people respond differently to disadvantaged groups, even if those people are not consciously aware of having bigoted attitudes.

I think that if somebody is telling you they’ve faced discrimination, it shows respect to at least acknowledge the possibility that they are telling the truth and not hallucinating it.

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

#278

Post by mehrdadn »

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 whole reason why racism and sexism is bad is because it doesn't look at people as individuals.

No, that's not the reason. Senior/youth discount rates also doesn't look at individuals, and yet they're not generally seen as bad. The inherent moral nature of the discrimination itself is extremely important.

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

#279

Post by AdrianB1 »

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…

As a tall while Caucasian I think you need you have a problem with the environment, not a racial one. I live in Eastern Europe and we don't really know what racism is because we have no history of problems in the past; I had direct reports that were Latino and Latina, Europeans (Caucasians), black (African): they were friends more than subordinates. In Bucharest my South African colleague, the Brazilian one and the Chinese lady are cool and they attract attention in a positive way, they have absolutely no issues living here. I think the problem is the US with the long history of treating poorly other races, not with your race.

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

#280

Post by Swizec »

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…

> Role model nonsense is even more absurd

As someone who moved from a post-socialist country to USA, I would like you to know there's a lot more to role model nonsense than meets the eye. And to environment in general.

My perspective on life, career, and success is completely than my girlfriend's. I grew up surrounded assuming that the only way to make more than $50k/year is to be a crook. She grew up in Palo Alto, making $X00k/year to her sounds like just a default. Successful people start the next ebay.

It took me years to overcome that. Without anyone discriminating against me at all. It was just me discriminating against myself by [subconsciously] thinking certain things just aren't possible.

Yes even though I had Bill Gates, James Watt, Edison, Tesla, and Oprah Winfrey as role models growing up. That was nice to dream but surely not achievable.

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