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

#511

Post by blub » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

pcarolan wrote: post #312

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…

This is a good point. EDS during the 80s and 90s used to hire smart people with no college degree and send them to Texas to learn how to code for several months. They built their workforce this way because the demand was higher than the global supply. It would cost a blip on the balance sheet of FAANG co.’s to do the same. Interestingly there was a high number of married people that coupled up during that time. Sound…

"Interestingly there was a high number of married people that coupled up during that time."

I guess you meant to say unmarried, not that they were all cheating on their partners.

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

#512

Post by spicyramen » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

Jordan Peterson and James Damore explained this as well...but we'll yeah the narrative of SJW and Google don't like science all the time

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

#513

Post by taurath » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:06 AM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #415

int_19h wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience as somebody without a degree and employed for >15 years now, you don't need a degree to get enough understanding of type theory and statistics, even for things at senior level. It will obviously depend on the specific project, but self-learning is very much a viable option in this industry. Conversely, I've seen many candidates with a CS degree who couldn't handle trivial coding challenges (and I mea…

Yes, but the issue is how likely is an arbitrary person interested in being a programmer but lacking a degree going to be able to self-teach the vast amounts of information needed to be productive as a modern developer? I wager it is very unlikely. Those who do follow the self-taught route are 1) unusually smart and/or self-motivated or 2) got into the field when there were fewer moving parts and so self-teaching had…

> Yes, but the issue is how likely is an arbitrary person interested in being a programmer but lacking a degree going to be able to self-teach the vast amounts of information needed to be productive as a modern developer?

You don’t need much to be productive. There’s plenty of great guardrails like code reviews, pair programming and shadowing that can make someone surprisingly productive.

The value of a degree is social signaling that you are the “type” of person to be able get that degree, socioeconomically and temperamentally. Plenty of people out there for whom the economics of a degree didn’t make any sense, or they had bigger needs that had to be filled immediately so didn’t have the ability to sacrifice for the long term.

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

#514

Post by new_here » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:10 AM 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…

How is this the top rated comment? It swats down the post based on points that the post has already addressed:

> Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints?

The post suggests searching and hiring outside of the traditional pipeline, which is something that is within control. The comment is then topped off with a strawman argument:

> If we put actual performance metrics and pay on the line for achieving these physically unattainable goals, everyone would be fired.

50% is clearly a goal that is a long way away but it doesn't mean we cannot work towards it. Yes, it's probably unrealistic to expect anyone to bring 50% representation to a significant sized workforce within an average tenure. It doesn't mean that the pursuit of gender parity is delusional or that meaningful and achievable targets cannot be set.

If anything this top comment is a prime example of the prevailing biased and unwilling attutide to improve representation in the industry, that has been placed on a pedestal.

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

#515

Post by edanm » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:11 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #177

sokoloff wrote: post #62

Is the right thing to assume we should target 50-50 gender representation as a first-principle outcome target in all fields? If so, it’s a negative sign that the marquee companies analyzed hired at about the gender split of universities they targeted. Is it equally plausible that we should be looking bottoms-up from the perspective of a fresh college graduate entering the field and asking the question, “am I likely t…

I’ve got a bunch of hobbies and none of them are even close to gender parity. Go check out poker rooms in Vegas and find me a single table where the players are 50-50 men-women. Visit flying clubs, carpentry groups, engine mechanics shops, you won’t find gender parity in any of these. And nobody is really tackling any of these as some urgent problem to solve. Why do professions need to aim for 50-50 but not non-profe…

> Why do professions need to aim for 50-50 but not non-professional hobbies?

The logic is (from certain points of view at least) - if programming is a desirable occupation, both for individuals, and also for us as a society, then if we have something that "artificially" restricts the amount of programmers - we want to get rid of that something.

In other words, if it really is true that we could have twice as many programmers, that's better for society. If some segment of the population is far less represented in that profession, it could be for a number of reasons, but it's certainly some indication that there might be many potential programmers who are missing out on a possibly valuable profession (and who we as a society are missing out on being programmers), and this is possibly "fixable".

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

#516

Post by sfink » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:14 AM UTC

travisoneill1 wrote: post #275

sbilstein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No he didn't.

But it very well might be (biased against him).

Racism exists. Racism is widespread. People in populations that are targeted by racism are much more familiar with what racism is present than those of us in untargeted populations. Much racism is subtle and implicit.

If you can logically accept those statements, then I don't see how you can claim to know how likely the presence of bias might be. And worrying about something that could actually be true is not racism. Even if the reasons involve race. Assuming that the interviewers are thinking X or will do Y because they are white is racist. Worrying that they might is probably just being realistic.

Again, though, I am the one making this argument that you are declaring to be racist. The person you replied to wasn't. He was just expressing an anxiety he experiences, and wasn't even speculating on how likely that anxiety might be based on reality.

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

#517

Post by drdeca » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:19 AM UTC

sfink wrote: post #501

drdeca wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying: 1) the input is not actually biased 2) the company is responsible for making the output less biased than the input (or produce an unbiased output from a biased input) 3) the company is responsible for making sure that they don’t cause the output to be more biased than the input, (but you are not saying that it is responsible for more than that) 3’) The same as 3, except that the amount of bias in the…

With my current understanding, I believe I can answer this one. It's #2. Specifically, your parenthetical comment in #2. Bias exists and is a problem. It is worth spending additional resources to draw additional samples from the underrepresented population in order to offset that bias. With more samples from that population than the previous pipeline stage would provide if you sampled evenly, you can counter some of…

thank you, that seems like a plausible idea to me.

It also seems possible to me that such an intervention might reduce feedback loops which cause the bias in the input anyway. Like, if women who are aware that a smaller proportion of the people employed in a field are women than the proportion of people in the population, maybe they might see that as a factor weighing against picking that field as one to go into? (of course, some might find it a reason to pick that field. I just mean that it seems possible that there is such an effect on average), and so, the #2 intervention might reduce such a feedback loop problem, if such feedback loops do exist.

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

#518

Post by blub » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:25 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #489

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 the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) I don't see why one would assume that gender distribution of CS degree holders is a strong proxy for the gender distribution of available candidates suitable for software development positions. Its true that many big firms (and even a large number of small firms) have a well-known strong bias for CS deg…

"statistics of the field as a whole, and of CS degree holders, show that that is a bias inconsistent with the real qualifications for the field which cannot avoid exaggerating the gender gap in the field."

You've made a counter-intuitive point and claimed that it's confirmed by statistics and yet haven't included any...

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

#519

Post by adamsb6 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:27 AM UTC

new_here wrote: post #514

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…

How is this the top rated comment? It swats down the post based on points that the post has already addressed: > Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? The post suggests searching and hiring outside of the traditional pipeline, which is something that is within control. The comment is then topped off with a strawman argument: > If we put actual per…

The alternative sources in the post still aren’t at gender parity, though they do show a higher percentage of women. If you can hire equal amounts of men and women from those sources then you’ll move your metric up, but you won’t get to 50%.

To hit 50% when the hiring pool is less than 50% women would require women to get accepted at a higher rate than men.

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

#520

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:28 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #319

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.

> But why would you expect women to be more like to choose the approach of not graduating than men, though? Well, probably because the environment in all parts of the tech pipeline, is often times toxic the entire way through, and women don't want to deal with that. So part of solving the pipeline problem means trying to solve it in many different parts of the pipeline, and recognizing that even if a previous part fa…

It's certainly not "toxic all the way through". That's such an insulting assumption. I bet you for example that at engineering university women are more likely to get help than men.