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

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

#381

Post by greggman2 »

hnick wrote: post #248
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 pro…

> Companies used to train internally

Please no. Japan is that way. Japan pays programmers $20k to start, no better than working fast food. Their salaries go up to $60k at the top end at most big Japanese companies and they have the attitude that anyone over 35 is too old to code. I feel the fact they hire grads with zero experience is one of the reasons. Why pay someone $$$ if they can't actually do the job yet? Conversely interns at Google make $70k-$100k yearly equivalent. The two might not be connected but I feel they are and so AFAIK the "pay for experience" is better than "pay with free training" for employees.

It also seems better for the employer. Japan still has a culture of lifetime employment so the employer invests the equivalent of a college education into the employee and gets a lifetime commitment. That would never work in the west. People would take the free education and then leave for greener pastures the first chance they got.

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

#382

Post by kelnos »

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…

Even if gender parity isn't the "equilibrium" state, there's still plenty of discrimination, bias, and alienation that keeps women out of software development, at every stage of the pipeline. If we can get rid of those, and still find that it's not 50/50, I think a lot of people will be happy with that. Sure, there will still be some people who will push the 50/50 narrative regardless, but we're not even to the point where we can say with a straight face that women have the same opportunities in software that white men have.

Another issue is in what's being measured. Even if you do observe a gender difference, how can you be sure it's an inherent difference caused by biology, and not an emergent difference caused by environmental or experiential factors?

Regardless, if you replace "women" with "people of color", then it's even more obvious that we're not in the equilibrium state. No matter how you dice it, suggesting that a man who is non-white is somehow less suited to software development work isn't defensible in any way.

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

#383

Post by commandlinefan »

trophycase wrote: post #347
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…

Nobody is saying biology is "limiting" anything. That's the crux. They are choosing something else. Not better and not worse, but something they feel better suits their needs or desires. CS isn't some magical field that floats on air. In fact, it's mostly a miserable profession with managers who don't understand how it works, cooped up in an office the whole day under artificial white light while sitting on your ass.

I can’t shake the feeling that the women who leave programming because it’s “unwelcoming” don’t realize that it’s just as miserable a profession with managers who don’t understand how it works cooped up in an office the whole day under artificial light for men as it is for women.

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

#384

Post by xupybd »

From my experience many women are put off by the way they see the average computer science student. The geeky weird stereotype scares many off. There does seems to be more socially awkward people that choose computer science (myself included). I'm not sure how you can address that.

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

#385

Post by sukilot »

oh_sigh wrote: post #261
TimTheTinker wrote: post #251

In software development in particular, the "pipeline problem" has only existed since the 1980s in Western nations. Prior to that, I've heard it said that women were over -represented in software development compared to men (which wouldn't have been a bad thing), or at least that there was much less of a gender gap. I have a theory about why this changed in the 1980's in particular. - The 1980's saw the dawn of person…

Can you provide a source that women outnumbered men in 'software development' before the 80s? I hear it thrown around a lot, and it usually revolves around counting human computers as software developers, which is akin to counting a CPU a software developer.

Human computers were mathematically technical people, the sort of job a modern programmer would fit well at if programming didn't exist.

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

#386

Post by achenatx »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #116
hinkley wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and for me the happy ratio is around a 90:10 split. There is a time and place for really sophisticated code, and people will just have to expend some effort to understand its behavior at least, if not in fact how it accomplishes it. If that's leaking throughout the system then it's likely a code smell. I'd like to reiterate that the statement you quoted was made in the active voice. It's a process. As you add th…

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…

In my old age I use comments to write my code before I write the code. The comments explain in pseudo code what Im trying to accomplish.

# check to see if the user has a cart. The default state for

# users is to not have a cart. The original implementation

#created a cart for every visitor which resulted in 10s of

#thousands of unused carts.

# if the cart does not exist only create a new one because

# they are adding an item. You can never assume the user has

# a cart.

as I read code that isnt mine and figure out what it does, I write comments like the above about why I think it works that way. I will sometimes date the comments. You can do that with your own code as you make modifications or additions. It adds minimal overhead and is tremendous for when you go back later.

For a check like if i > 5 then do something I have seen comments like "check for i>5" which is obvious. I would want something like

# Im hardcoding a 5 here because so that when

# 5 then we do

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

#387

Post by jki275 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #307
pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would you expect women to be more like to choose the approach of not graduating than men, though? Women have the same options to attend university as men. It seems more likely to me that the proportions of applicants without a degree are similar to the ones with degrees.

The focus on Computer Science is a female filter. I’ve rarely run into a colleague who claimed their education truly prepared them anyway. You’d be better off being diverse in major. When I think of the smartest developers or IT people I know, one was a sociologist who learned programming as a labor department statistician, another had an MFA in Piano, and the other was in pharmacy school and dropped out after an inj…

There are certainly people like this. What you generally find about them though is that they are highly motivated and deeply interested in the concepts of computing. They don't grow on trees -- they're quite rare.

Oddly enough, I've never met a single one that was female, though that's only anecdotal of course. The only female devs I know have CS degrees.

The focus on CS is important. Developers who don't have it are generally not educated in how to write good code. Many people do get into the field without the degree, but many of them are very bad at programming. I've had to rewrite O(n!) algorithms written by some of them, and they really didn't even understand why the algorithm was bad even when I broke it down to them.

My CS education absolutely gave me many of the tools I need for a career in software engineering. It didn't give me everything to be sure -- there's a lot of learning that still goes on in the job, but having a solid foundation is crucial to being a good engineer.

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

#388

Post by sukilot »

HeroOfAges wrote: post #202

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

I'm curious where you got that measurement from. It's quite common to overestimate small fractions, do see 3/10 and believe it's half, because one stops noticing the multiplicity of the majority.

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

#389

Post by buboard »

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.

any big , resourceful company should

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

#390

Post by jki275 »

axoltl wrote: post #369
jonfw wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to build on this- among younger age groups- women are more likely to be college graduates than men. Women willingly choose different education paths because of different interests.

That's not true. Harvey Mudd made changes to their CS program to remove bias and now more than half of its computer science majors are women. There is some very insidious bias in the pipeline that isn't explained away with "but different interests". https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bia...

Basically everyone at Harvey Mudd is in STEM -- the article says this. Their results are not really useful in the discussion, as their female student population is already heavily self-selected in favor of the hard sciences.
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