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

#551

Post by db579 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 12:52 PM 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…

I think the assumption you're making here is that companies don't influence the pipeline. Don't influence whether people choose do STEM degrees etc.

I think the idea behind diversity targets is an implicit assumption that they do. In subtle ways like how/where they advertise, and in more obvious ways like funding educational programs etc. It's there that diversity programs/targets need to start, not at the hiring stage.

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

#552

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #494

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…

Always interesting that on Hacker News, people are always so ready to throw in the towel and call something impossible and list the 83 reasons why. Unless it is about starting a business and making money via ads.... Then they're willing to devote thousand of hours of their life thinking creatively about how to solve problems to "change the world".

That sounds like "magic key" cryptodenialist logic. Just because you really want something doesn't make it possible or viable.

They do support initiatives to help but realize it is essentially generational at this point.

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

#553

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

goosehonk wrote: post #466

ben_jones wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a person without a CS education but with 30 years of industry experience, including several of The Bigs, I urge young people to get an education in anything but CS. The number of CS degree holders, even the masters and doctors, who struggle with statistics, linear algebra, or even thermodynamics and basic accounting is pretty dispiriting. Get an education and learn to program computers. Two separate things in my h…

That assumes that those mediocore "fizzbuzz test failers" tiers would do better in the domain with another degree. The problem may be in their capabilities predegree.

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

#554

Post by ramblerman » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 1:18 PM 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 article is based on how we have failed to achieve 50/50 parity and why that is bad. You yourself have reiterated it as a good goal to chase. But is it? That is what OP is objecting to.

Do you believe if the world was completely fair we would have 50/50 in every industry or is there (shock and horror) perhaps an uncomfortable biological difference driving our interests.

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

#555

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #520

stale2002 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The accusations against tech have been a decades long Kafkatrap essentially for the sin of "not fitting in with their expectations and being successful" as a trial where the conclusion is guilty but they must deliberate over what sins. Look at the oldest accusations which failed to illustrate it best. I believe one howler was that "It would make cultures homogenous."

At a certain point you are clearly dealing with bad actors and the default assumption stops being any attempt to accomidate them and starts being to tell them to fuck off.

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

#556

Post by Aaron_Putnam » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

tarsinge wrote: post #502

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% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representation? I really thought it was the accepted fact and a starting point of all the discussions on this subject, that the issue is the pool of candidate. Myself I recently tried to hire a developer and t…

The main driver is the H1B: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...

73.9% of H1B visas are given to Indians, 79.2% of those Indians are males.

The solution is to require at least 50% of all H1B recipients, from all countries, to be female.

High levels of Indian and Chinese migration also produce secondary effects, as families from those communities still carry out sex-selective abortion even into the 2nd and 3rd generations: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6133054/

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

#557

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

notduncansmith wrote: post #533

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 "sh…

> by convincing a few thousand women to take up coding

Because we all know how well people react to being told "Hey, you should learn to code!"

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

#558

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #203

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…

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. I'm not sure if you realize this, but change always seems impossible until it happens. 10 years ago it seemed completely impossible that Facebook would have 1B users, let alone the ~3B it has now. The same 10 years ago it seemed impossible to that gay peopl…

[deleted]

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

#559

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #547

abathur wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Wikipedia article picks one of many pieces of research to quote. Your criticism are fair as a criticism of that specific research paper. But after you've looked at a dozen of them, continuing to say that it is just an artifact of terrible methodology (even though most actually are terrible) becomes much harder to support. But that said, here is a classic test showing strong gender differences accidentally discove…

If I were presented with the task, I would first draw a tilted water line to figure out what the "halfway filled" amount looks like. Then I would "undo" the tilt, taking care to keep the represented amount of water the same. It could be that women are simply being more methodical in their approach.

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

#560

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #387

Spooky23 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that a computer science degree is bad, just that it's a poor filter. I have one, and while the math background is critical for many things, honestly the skills learned there are pretty limited in terms of what I've do.

If you have a background in any science, or even a good analysis ability in a liberal arts field, you can be trained pretty quickly to be a functional developer. I'm surprised this doesn't happen more given the absurd salaries people are getting paid these days!