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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

#451

Post by xtracto »

ben_jones wrote: post #323
hellisothers wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My experience is somewhat the opposite: I have a BSc in Software Engineering and MSc and PhD in Computer Science. I've been in the Software Industry for about 10 years now and have held a Eng Director/VP level positions at some start ups.

I used to be very degree-centric in my recruiting. But some time ago I started hiring from boothcamps, particularly for frontend jobs. The fact I saw is that as part of the development needs of the companies I have been at, there is a good amount of work that can be done by developers of these skill levels. Once my team was able to organize the work, we were able to make jr people productive.

This not only made us capable of hiring jr devs. It actually made more Sr devs happy because they did not have to do that work and made mid levels happy because they own the growth of the jr devs .

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

#452

Post by datashow »

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…

The problem is how you gonna find a different hiring pattern to force 50%?

Internal training, ok, but are you going to only provide internal training to women? Is this even legal?

Basecamp training, ok, but are you going to only provide basecamp training to women? Is this even legal?

Special talents (dropouts etc.), ok, but are you going to only hire special talents who are women? Is this even legal?

Non-traditional education, ok, but are you going to only hire non-traditional education candidates who are women? Is this even legal?

The whole idea that there is a social engineering way to make programmers 50% male/female is not based on any facts as we know in a free society. On the contrary, there is evidence that the more gender equal society, the fewer women choose STEM. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

The obsession of 50% is not only anti-science, it is also demeaning to other great contributions women provide to society. Yes, nurses and teachers make less money than programmers, but it does not mean nurses and teachers are less important than programmers. It is because personal caring kind of job is less scalable than STEM jobs, so a team of 10 programmers can provide services to far more people than 10 nurses.

Oh, are you going to disagree that caring for people is more a part of female nature than male nature? Are you going to say this is actually a result of society oppressed women and tricked them to care more about others? Because female psychology is exactly the same as male psychology? So maybe we should expect a gender equal society there are 50% male/female in murders and rapists?

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

#453

Post by Mirioron »

hkmurakami wrote: post #230
HeroOfAges wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never experienced or witnessed a scenario in which trying to support varying levels of experience didn't result in lowering of standards. People with the right interest and capabilities will strive to clear the bar and will not expect the bar to be lowered for them.

There's the "math majors' math track" and the non math majors' math track at most institutions. Even within the majors track, there's separation between experience levels and intended tracks within the discipline. Ex: MAT215-217: Recommended for math majors, some prior experience in constructing formal proofs is useful but not required. MAT216-218: Accelerated math major sequence, for students with substantial backgr…

But the difference in your case is that we don't expect, nor care, whether math majors and non-math majors end up at the same destination. It's okay and expected that math majors will end up learning more and becoming better at math. But when we're talking about people studying the same major, then this is not okay. You will either end up slowing down the fast track students or you will give them an advantage over those that weren't on the fast track.

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

#454

Post by unishark »

dijit wrote: post #350
meristem wrote: post #30

Underneath all this: although companies need talent, interviews are adversarial and not structured to create a supportive environment so candidates are at their best. Quite often the interview setup is to see how the candidate performs at their worst-- stressed, time pressured, on the spot, performing for fragments of time to a number of people while in what (feels|is) an asymmetrical power relationship.

> Interviews are adversarial and not structured to create a supportive environment so candidates are at their best. This is a really broad stroke and it may even be true to a high degree. But I've had (and given) plenty of interviews where we engage a topic and just talk about it openly as if we were already colleagues. Maybe that's a Swedish thing?

I suspect the grueling interview process is the result of CS being overrun by people who cheated through their programming classes and/or exaggerated (lied) on their resume, things which have become extremely prevalent in recent years. Plus in the US you can't get a meaningful reference anymore because of fear of lawsuits (former employers will often only confirm employment). There's nothing left to trust. Worse, I have come across a number of CS graduates who can't write a working program to save their lives, though many (particular international students) seem to be very well-prepared to talk all day about the technologies and all the cool projects they supposedly did. Not that a surprise exam is a good solution.

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

#455

Post by perl4ever »

fzeroracer wrote: post #160
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…

> 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…

Circa the late 50s, I literally knew someone who was told there was only room for one woman engineering student at the school she wanted to go to, so she studied math instead and that's how she became a programmer. Subsequently, she became an assistant to an engineer, obviously being paid much less than him.

Compare to Ursula Burns, who started at Xerox in 1980 and eventually became CEO.

So, of course something happened that wasn't biological - the opportunities for women with the ability to program or do engineering dramatically increased.

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

#456

Post by [deleted] »

Udik wrote: post #443
16bytes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore wasn't fired because he argued that the pipeline shortages largely explain gender disparity, he was fired because he made women felt excluded and othered. He wasn't fired because he argued against diversity, he was fired because he threatened inclusivity. To quote: "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these diff…

> "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK" That quote is plain stupid. I assume my colleagues to be all qualified for the job because they've been hired according to the same standards. If my company only hires people that is more than 1.80 metres tall, I'm not diminishing the height of my female colleagues if I suggest that the re…

[deleted]

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

#457

Post by ryan93 »

dang wrote: post #130
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?

You've broken the site guidelines badly here. Would you please review them and stick to the spirit of this site when posting to HN? Note this in particular: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

no he hasnt

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

#458

Post by Mirioron »

abathur wrote: post #439
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…

I wrote a few direct responses, but they all felt patronizing. Apologies for the length, but I'm hoping to avoid that by showing my math, as it were: About 7 years ago, I started to wonder about a cluster of concepts that I've yet to successfully explain to anyone without getting a confused look... Roughly, it's a curiosity about what (if anything) is in the joints and gaps and shadows around the more salient feature…

While I think your criticism about the example given is good, you're still only addressing the specific example given. The parent poster was trying to illustrate why gender parity might not actually be the ultimate goal. The example might have problems, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate the point that was made.

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

#459

Post by hellisothers »

datashow wrote: post #452
hellisothers wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is how you gonna find a different hiring pattern to force 50%? Internal training, ok, but are you going to only provide internal training to women? Is this even legal? Basecamp training, ok, but are you going to only provide basecamp training to women? Is this even legal? Special talents (dropouts etc.), ok, but are you going to only hire special talents who are women? Is this even legal? Non-traditional…

I agree, 50% is probably an unreasonable goal, I could maybe even see arguing that any percent based goal is a bad goal. The goal should be “enough so those who are feeling disenfranchised don’t anymore” but that might be too squishy :)

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

#460

Post by commandersaki »

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…

Could you write a glossary for that post.
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