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

#531

Post by iovrthoughtthis » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:42 AM UTC

throwaway8692 wrote: post #316

sakoht wrote: post #182

The exciting thing if you are a hiring manager is that, as long as there is talent that is being passed-over for the wrong reasons, you can beat your competitors in one of the most challenging ares of building a compay by being good at avoiding this error. A friend noted recently that a compounding benefit of hiring a gender-balanced team early is you won't lose female talent you find later when they refuse to join a…

Given the complexity of the feelings a lot of people have and are developing over time, I think it's worth emphasizing how the push for gender balance can backfire. The linked writeup mentions "diversity fatigue", and it can turn people who would otherwise support fixing the pipeline into cynics. We have a woman who was hired on my team at work. As soon as management saw an actual woman had applied, the interview pro…

“When she gets distracted looking at cat pictures”

This is not the behaviour of someone who is comfortable and enjoying their job. Has anyone reached out to your female colleague to ask if everything is ok. What their goals and aspirations are and how the company can help them reach those?

Could you all just be sitting back watching a team member fail not helping because of their gender and your fear of talking to them / management about them?

This whole situation could it’s self be a manifestation of sexism. Not even intentionally.

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

#532

Post by lowercased » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:44 AM UTC

adamsb6 wrote: post #528

kmonsen wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I know you are wrong, but there are alternative ways we end up in this world. Like that the world of computer engineering is currently full of Brogrammers that females know it is best to stay way clear of. Or that there are countless examples of horrible behavior of men towards woman in computer engineering and perhaps this is affecting the pipeline. We don't know which one of these is true, and perhaps th…

I’ve worked at a couple of mid-late stage startups and currently at a FAANG and I’ve observed very few engineers that I would put in the “bro” category. I don’t know how this became the stereotype when nerd is still the dominant character class by far. Is it just me? Does anyone find that their workplace is even 50% brogrammer?

I've worked in a couple of small-mid size companies, and in those cases, while the engineering team themselves wasn't really 'bro'-ish... the management kept trying to introduce that sort of culture, I think as a way to try to get us to ... work more? better? attract newer/younger/cheaper devs?

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

#533

Post by notduncansmith » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:48 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…

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

Some people presume that billionaire multinationals could spend some of their cash fixing the pipeline problem by convincing a few thousand women to take up coding.

More precisely: while technical proclivity and skill are obviously not uniformly distributed across the population, some people believe they "should" be more uniformly distributed than they currently are (because those things can correlate with wealth/power), and that whoever has the power to fix a gender imbalance in wealth/power-probability has the responsibility to do so.

Aside: Interesting how people push for these demographics at software companies but not at elementary/middle/high schools. Maybe if we solve that problem (which is literally just a matter of salaries) then there would be more openings in the tech industry for women and other under-represented groups.

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

#534

Post by romwell » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:49 AM UTC

CapricornNoble wrote: post #500

romwell wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strawman argument. The goal is not to have 50% women, sharp. The goal is to fix the problem that in the US, where there are 5 men for every woman working in top major software corporations, and those are the ones that supposedly try to improve things. It's 2019, and yet a company with all-male board was the norm until this year (arguably still is). We are so, so far from any form of reasonable balance that…

>>>The goal is to fix the problem that in the US, where there are 5 men for every woman working in top major software corporations There's also 99 men for every 1 woman working in coal mining. Why is no one (especially women) advocating we "fix" this gender disparity?

Because we treat mental and physical work differently.

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

#535

Post by elliekelly » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:58 AM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #432

TuringNYC wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% Perhaps employers can expand the search to those with degrees in statistics, mathematics, physics, econometrics? What I've seen time and time again is that when people dont want to hire, they come up with excuse after excuse. When they really want to hire [a VP's brother-in-low, or whatever], ev…

Is the pipeline in other degrees any better? And more importantly, why is it even a suggestions to look for other degrees when searching for candiate just to fill out diversity quota ? Just to be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with looking for candidates from those areas, companies should, and already did source candidates from more than CS degrees. But the company should do that because those candida…

Wall Street hires people from all kinds of degrees all the time (though not for the purpose of diversity). I’ve worked with fund managers who majored in Japanese history, astrophysics, a lawyer who clerked for SCOTUS, and even a former professional card counter who dropped out of college.

I thought the tech industry had pioneered the idea that a degree shouldn’t be the yard stick that all potential hires are judged against. And yet every time there’s a discussion about diversity in tech it’s the first excuse brought up. Suddenly a CS degree is a necessity.

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

#536

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:02 AM UTC

sukilot wrote: post #351

stonejolt wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean something like care professions? They don't pay less because it's mainly female workers, they pay less because they can't easily scale the generated profits.

https://www.onlinefnpprograms.com/features/men-in-nursing/ "The ACS also reported that men are more likely to gravitate toward high-paying nursing jobs. The highest representation of men is in nurse anesthesia, a role that often pays six figures. According to the ACS, about 41 percent of nurse anesthetists are men, and their median earnings in 2011 were $162,900. Among nurse practitioners, 9 percent were men making $…

[deleted]

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

#537

Post by qbaqbaqba » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:04 AM UTC

hellisothers wrote: post #459

datashow wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

>feeling

Good luck with that. People who profit exploiting "gender gap" like bootcamps, hr firms, speaker agencies, will never be happy.

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

#538

Post by rdtwtf » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:08 AM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #427

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) is 18% Perhaps employers can expand the search to those with degrees in statistics, mathematics, physics, econometrics? What I've seen time and time again is that when people dont want to hire, they come up with excuse after excuse. When they really want to hire [a VP's brother-in-low, or whatever], ev…

>> Perhaps employers can expand the search to those with degrees in statistics, mathematics, physics, econometrics?

Why do you assume there won't be a similar (or worse) gender bias in those fields too? And if you expand the search in some way or loosen the requirements, then you can't do it only for women, that wouldn't be legal. That's why there is a real pipeline problem that needs to be addressed by getting more women into STEM.

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

#539

Post by isoskeles » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:28 AM UTC

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…

One of the most disgusting things I have seen in my career was when my manager up-leveled a male candidate just to offer a salary the candidate might agree to, but he did not do the same for a female candidate who received similar feedback in the interview process. I mainly remember this because it happened around the same time for the same role we were trying to fill. Neither candidate accepted an offer.

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

#540

Post by majewsky » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

cforrester wrote: post #403

greggman2 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Conv…

I'm wondering if they don't have a different idea of training internally than you do... When I was younger, my mother worked as a freight forwarder. After she'd been there for awhile, the company paid to send her for training and certification to work with hazardous materials. If I recall correctly, she signed a contract agreeing to repay the costs of the courses if she left the company before a certain period of tim…

> she signed a contract agreeing to repay the costs of the courses if she left the company before a certain period of time had passed.

I had a similar clause in my first contract. Since the team I was hired into was a Perl shop and I hadn't done any Perl before starting there, they sent me on a week-long Perl training early on. The contract said that if I quit within the first year, I would have to reimburse them for the cost of the training (going down progressively by 1/12th of the price per month that I'm staying with the company).