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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

#321

Post by neonate »

shajhansbx wrote: post #277
4bpp wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with you, but the implicit bias test has been crumbling under the replication crisis.

https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed-psyc...

https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-...

From that last link: "Both critics and proponents of the IAT now agree that the statistical evidence is simply too lacking for the test to be used to predict individual behavior."

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

#322

Post by trophycase »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #314
hnick wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

So much this. I work at a FAANG company which has terrible diversity numbers in hardware development. Upper management is frequently asked about this by employees at big q&a sessions. The answer is always to blame the pipeline, as if we do not have billions of dollars that we could direct at solving it ourselves...

Except it isn't their responsibility. Clearly they don't have trouble making profit so why would they spend billions of dollars trying to urge people who may or may not even want the job to try and do it?

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

#323

Post by ben_jones »

hellisothers wrote: post #303
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…

The whole point of the article is that restricting your hiring pool to only CS graduates is a bad pattern and you should consider other qualities instead so saying only 18% of CS graduates are female misses the point. Having no CS degree myself and excelling in a top 10 company I agree with this sentiment, especially seeing the epidemic of “over leveling” the small pool of CS graduates occurring. I’d rather work with…

I’m a drop out too and have made my way to manager where I find myself training juniors many of which also do not have degrees. Unfortunately it is night and day between the ones who do have degrees and those that don’t. At this point I am now strongly recommending cs degrees to anyone seeking a career in programming because the theories do come up in any serious work, particularly full stack engineers who must have strong understandings of databases, type theory, statistical analysis, etc.

I would LOVE to create a large curriculum in house that aims to teach non degree holding individuals these skill sets because it would have tremendous return on investment. Be we are a small company (It is an unrealistic burden to any small or medium org to do what is required by your comment.

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

#324

Post by stale2002 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #31
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…

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…

> wherever you try to improve the pipeline, you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment.

You absolutely can. You can do so by not overindexing on traditional pipelines that have large amount of discrimination in them, such as top CS schools.

IE, if you are more willing to interview people from less discriminatory sources, such as bootcamps, then you can get around other, worse pipelines.

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

#326

Post by yarg »

(Politically inconvenient differences across various human subgroups aside) if you're trying to deal with this situation as late as hiring, you already fucked up.

There are unresolved social issues in terms of racial disparity in America (and this comes with an inherent inter-generational cycling).

The place to start dealing with this is per-capita equality of resourcing for primary and secondary schools (and make sure the kids are fed).

Even if that weren't a political no-go from the initialisation perspective, the 20 year latency on emergent benefits means that any progress will be demolished at the next swing of the political pendulum.

Short of the extinction of regressive political ideologies in America, this is an intractable problem.

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

#327

Post by downerending »

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…

If you've not seen it, Thomas Sowell incisively comments on the wish for the impossible in The Quest for Cosmic Justice. There's a full book, but the original speech gives the main point:

https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html

Definitely worth a look, even if you don't think it applies here.

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

#328

Post by aidenn0 »

leeny wrote: post #96
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…

Author here. Yeah, I went back and forth on the intro a bunch and couldn't find a clearer way to not dismiss systemic issues while calling out the fact that we're not being fair to the people on the ground by bundling everything up as bias.

I don't think in general people are bundling everything up as bias; many people are bundling up everything as sexism, but that is a superset of bias.

A silly example: if your job description said "We only hire men" (and this weren't illegal), then even if your entire interview process were unbiased, you're probably going to end up with fewer men.

There is an argument that individually and as a whole, the tech community has been sending a message of "not for women" in various ways. If this is true, then the communities complaining about the pipeline problem could both be unbiased and a significant cause of the pipeline problem.

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

#329

Post by age_bronze »

JimboOmega wrote: post #283
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…

This whole thing is ignorant to the point of being offensive. > Role model nonsense is even more absurd, because it already assumes things like women can't have men role models. You need to have the sexist mindset in the first place for this to even be a problem. I have felt this very acutely and it's offensive to assume I'm sexist just because I don't see people like me at the higher levels of the org, and struggle…

So that's the only defining bit of personality? That you're a woman? What about your personality? Up-front / discrete? Introvert / extrovert? Mannered / rude? So many other traits? I'm pretty sure there are man with much more similar personality to you than just a random woman. You've just been brainwashed to have a single bit when judging people, by the same 'diversity' advocates. There is no one like you, and that is not a bad thing. There is no one like every other single person. You don't need someone like you to know you can succeed.

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

#330

Post by kelnos »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #249
shadowgovt wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That sounds suspiciously like a straw man. The actual meat of the argument is what matters, not the simple fact of the comparison.
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