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

#581

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #531

throwaway8692 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Surely it's the behaviour of someone who is very much comfortable and enjoying their job. Getting well paid to waste time on Instagram all day without risk of being fired is many people's idea of a dream job!

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

#582

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #580

shadowgovt wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry that happened to you, because whoever did that to you utterly missed the point. It's about choice, and if you chose to be a homemaker, it's exactly as valid a choice as someone who chooses to pursue a career that leaves no time to raise a family if they don't want to raise a family. What we should avoid is choices being constrained by assumptions about what you want because of your biology (such as the assu…

For various reasons, I've thought very long and hard about what I think of as "human sexual morality." A great deal of our historical cultural norms, such as expectations of monogamy, virginity prior to marriage and shotgun weddings , boil down to the fact that sex is a profound human drive and very often has unintended consequences. This includes both pregnancy and disease. You talk about women and their lives as if…

> You talk about women and their lives as if what they want is or should be the driving factor in their lives. I don't think that's accurate at all.

Is "what they want" the driving factor in men's lives? If so, it's a somewhat fundamental principle of American cultural philosophy that we do all we can to make the option available for women too, if they want it. To do otherwise is to abandon the notion of "created equal."

The American experiment may be founded on flawed reasoning there, but it's going to be a heck of an uphill battle to convince people that's true. A battle I'm not going to fight because I'm on board with the "created equal" notion.

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

#583

Post by davidf18 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

It is grey matter and not skin color or gender that should be the relevant indicator for fields that require a great deal of competence be it airline pilot or airliner designer or nuclear power plant (NPP) operator or engineer, etc.

I'm all for being color blind and gender blind when it comes to hiring.

What is wrong with hiring people in critical fields of STEM based on competence and ability?

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

#584

Post by braindouche » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:05 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…

Hello! Now you've met a female dev with no CS degree. There may be a reason we're thin on the ground, too. My "training" as a software dev consisted of 10 years of self-employment as a freelance web developer, and when I decided to transition to working for a company, I faced massive hiring discrimination. I couldn't pay someone to interview me! And I did demonstrate that it was discrimination, too. My resume was getting something like a 2% response rate with my name on it, but I put a man's name on it and sent out a bunch, and suddenly I was getting a response to more than 80% of them.

Anecdote is not data, and it's only my individual anecdote, but it's my experience that breaking through into the industry to be incredibly hard. Since then I've made up for lost time and advanced faster than a college grad would expect (junior dev in a shitty agency to enterprise lead dev in about four years), and I attribute that to spending so incredibly long as essentially a junior dev freelancer and just being older.

So it can be done, certainly, but I strongly suspect there are several filters working against self-taught developer women making that transition into the industry, and one of them is definitely gender discrimination. And no, aside from sending out resumes with a man's name on them, I don't know how to fix it.

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

#585

Post by frenchyatwork » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #574

freddie_mercury wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Lots of people have started businesses and made money via ads, in ways that increased wealth for everyone. Of course people think about how to do that. In contrast nobody has changed the gender ratio in tech without discriminating against men: a zero sum game that definitely does not increase wealth for everyone. As for your dismissal of people's 83 reasons, why not show us how it's done and address them?

> in ways that increased wealth for everyone

It certainly doesn't increase the wealth of people who are persuaded to buy stuff that really isn't worthwhile for them.

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

#586

Post by danans » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #469

danans wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing rote arithmetic is nothing like doing mathematics. Doing manual calculations is nothing like being a programmer. The activities have zero resemblance. Understanding the function of pointers, classes, and most programming itself are also nothing like advanced mathematics. Even ML is largely stats and calculus in its technical aspects, not cutting edge math. There is zero at all evidence to suggest that women a…

>most programming itself are also nothing like advanced mathematics. This is certainly true. But they do overlap in requiring a heavy amount of abstract reasoning. While "abstract reasoning" is a bit vague, one proxy for this is spatial reasoning which shows strong gender disparities and has implications for science and math ability. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44385-0_...

> While "abstract reasoning" is a bit vague,

It's extremely vague, and therefore shouldn't be used to justify any conclusions about an entire population.

> one proxy for this is spatial reasoning which shows strong gender disparities and has implications for science and math ability.

Another proxy for it is symbolic reasoning, which is arguably even more closely related to programming (most programming is symbolic manipulation - arising from discrete mathematics). Programming languages themselves were inspired by the study of the structure of natural human languages.

Since women's language skills are often stronger than men's, I might argue that women are better suited to programming than men ... but I wouldn't argue that because that would be using the same fallacious reasoning that is behind the argument you used.

In the real world, most programming and software engineering tasks use a mix of quantitative, spatial, symbolic, analytical, and social reasoning skills. Above all, it takes a structured approach to problem solving, which can be achieved through many forms of reasoning.

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

#587

Post by DoreenMichele » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #582

DoreenMichele wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For various reasons, I've thought very long and hard about what I think of as "human sexual morality." A great deal of our historical cultural norms, such as expectations of monogamy, virginity prior to marriage and shotgun weddings , boil down to the fact that sex is a profound human drive and very often has unintended consequences. This includes both pregnancy and disease. You talk about women and their lives as if…

> You talk about women and their lives as if what they want is or should be the driving factor in their lives. I don't think that's accurate at all. Is "what they want" the driving factor in men's lives? If so, it's a somewhat fundamental principle of American cultural philosophy that we do all we can to make the option available for women too, if they want it. To do otherwise is to abandon the notion of "created equ…

America has a generally worse track record for women's rights than Europe. It boils down to the fact that the American attitude of "we were created equal and I can too achieve just as much as a man if you will just get out of my way!" is a broken mental model.

European women asked for help with carrying the burden entailed in bearing and raising children. They asked for things like maternity leave. America is the only wealthy, developed country on the planet that still lacks a strong national maternity leave policy.

American "rugged individualism" is a delusion. It always has been. It serves the needs of women especially poorly.

Once a woman gets pregnant and has a child, she needs other people to help her raise that child, like it or not. We can't do what some mammals do of hiding the kid up under some bushes while we go get food.

Society as a whole has to make it easier for parents to do right by their kids. America has an atrocious track record in that regard.

And women like me are the ones that get ROFLstomped in the process, often while very much benefiting other people. I spent a month playing nanny for my sister and her child. She got a serious career. I still am failing to pull that off.

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

#588

Post by vkou » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #550

vkou wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company can't hit 50/50, but it is obviously possible for any one company to hit 50/50, without compromising on their hiring bar. (Until everyone adopts that same mentality, at which point it, of course, becomes impossible.) Also, just because you have a goal to aspire to doesn't mean you can realistically meet it. Suppose if every high achiever in a school wants to be valedictorian, but only one of them will m…

> but it is obviously possible for any one company to hit 50/50, without compromising on their hiring bar How? If I interview a bunch of people for programming positions and pick the 10 best men and 10 best women, which group do you think will be best? Statistically I have considered several times more men than women, so the male group will almost surely be stronger. The only way to avoid this is to intentionally pic…

No hiring bar in the world is looking for the best 10 people.

It's just looking for people who are better than (some arbitrary skill level).

More men than women could bench press 160 lbs, but if your hiring bar is 'we hire people who can bench 160 lbs', you can trivially find as many people from either gender as you want.

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

#589

Post by goosehonk » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

Leherenn wrote: post #505

goosehonk wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you think other degrees, outside of maths or physics maybe, makes you better at the things you listed? It seems unlikely to me, and the fact people struggle with this is more representative of the general population than of the degree itself I would say. It might depend on how the degree is taught I guess, mine had very little actual programming.

I'll never have personal first-hand experience with another kind of degree program, but my engineering program taught thermodynamics, accounting, technical writing, and ethics. I am looking right now at the Stanford CS undergraduate catalog and there are no requirements for technical writing, ethics, etc in here at all. Even the senior year writing requirement can be satisfied by working for Facebook for six months, which is disturbing and, frankly, explains a lot about why these kids can't write.

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

#590

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #579

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you tried speaking to any women to get their opinion on the matter? Because basically every women in tech has many many many stories of their bad experiences, all the way through the pipeline. If you want to talk about universities, the problem with them is often the culture. Women are second guessed, every step of the way, and are often told that they don't belong there, and they have their abilities questions…

Most "studies" of that are rather distorted, you have to read very carefully. For example they may summarize that many women have experienced discrimination at some point. That can mean in 4 years of study, somebody once made a sexist joke in passing. It doesn't imply they had real issues. And the issues of men are not even studied for comparison.

That latter thing might be the biggest issue. The basic assumptions seems to be that things always come easy for men and they are always welcome.

And yes I know many women in tech, as I studied with them and worked with them.

I have also seen many articles by women in tech who say they didn't have issues. But somehow they don't count and are quickly forgotten, because they go against the narrative.