Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.interviewing.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 668 posts

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

#611

Post by plughs »

jgust wrote: post #240
plughs wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting insight. When applying to colleges I never considered applying for CS as I (female) had no programming experience whatsoever, and seemed to be surrounded by people (male) who'd been working on computers for years, ( I'll leave speculation on that for another day ) It was only because they forced EE majors to take programming courses that I ended up in the field. I wrote my first "hello world" as a…

Male here. CS courses were _not accessible_ to those without prior experience, male or female, full stop. That issue was compounded by having to use the IDEs and tooling available to us 10+ years ago. It wasn't until the last year of my business degree I was exposed to the simplicity of .NET/Visual Basic that made programming interesting, fun, and accessible to someone without experience. If only I had that exposure…

When I started the "IDE" was vi running on a Solaris mainframe. 'vi' has has never been accused of being user friendly but since this was pre-linux, I'm not sure any of the experienced coders had ever seen either before. In retrospect it was a pretty good equalizer.

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

#612

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#613

Post by commandlinefan »

thu2111 wrote: post #573
new_here wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How is this the top rated comment? Because it spells out a view that the majority agrees with. The post suggests searching and hiring outside of the traditional pipeline It suggests the only way to hire more women is to discriminate against the best credentialed candidates. It doesn't mean that the pursuit of gender parity is delusional Lots of us believe it's actually, truly delusional. How long have women been enco…

> My entire life.

Mine, too, and I'm in my 40's now.

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

#614

Post by commandlinefan »

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #562
blub wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see some proof that there's a large pool of competent software engineers without any degrees (or CS degrees) just waiting to be hired. Additionally, if you meant specifically without CS degrees, I think a lot of companies accept unrelated degrees + experience.

I am one of them. I have no college degree of any kind and bested CS grads in an interview.

> I'd like to see some proof that there's a large pool

> I am one of them

You, yourself, are a large pool? Or you, yourself are one instance of a fairly small pool (like OP suggests).

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

#615

Post by dang »

rinchik wrote: post #309
dang wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please keep internet psychiatric diagnosis off HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not psychiatry, it's psychology. Not even remotely I'm making an attempt to diagnose a psychiatric pathology as in no way I'm qualified to do that. You are giving me more credit than I actually deserve.

I mean "psychiatric" ironically rather than literally—adding "internet" to a word is sort of an instant ironizer. You can read it as "psychological diagnosis" if you like. The point is that making remarks about someone's psychological issues as you perceive them, suggesting that they need therapy and so on, is unduly personal. It crosses a line that is better not to cross, even if you're right, because it frequently lands with the other person as a kind of violation or attack.

We don't know nearly enough about each other from an online text forum to be able to make personal statements, so making them is presumptuous. If there's a substantive point beyond that, it should be easy to express in an impersonal way, and if there isn't, not posting anything is a better option.

If you read the comments at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... you'll see a history of explanations about this.

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

#616

Post by commandlinefan »

braindouche wrote: post #584
jki275 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 get…

> one of them is definitely gender discrimination

Definitely? As in, you have actual proof? Or even some evidence? Because if you do, that’s illegal, and ought to be reported to the DOL.

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

#617

Post by braindouche »

commandlinefan wrote: post #616
braindouche wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 get…

> one of them is definitely gender discrimination Definitely? As in, you have actual proof? Or even some evidence? Because if you do, that’s illegal, and ought to be reported to the DOL.

The only evidence I have is response rates, and about 12 companies that responded to a man's-name resume that did not respond to an identical resume with a woman's name. I have consulted with a labor lawyer, who told me that this might be actionable if I can get enough women together to also perform this experiment and gather together in a class-action lawsuit. I don't live in a particularly large city, and I believe it's almost impossible without astroturfing.

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

#618

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

claudiawerner wrote: post #605
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a bias, it's a fact. you may not like it but that doesn't make it any less true.

This "fact" seems to be derived from your observation that your daughter doesn't have an appreciation for counting. From that observation, you've concluded that "she mustn't like it because she's a girl". Please tell me you know how lazy this reasoning is. I'm a woman, and I never liked counting or arithmetic. Now I study electronic engineering.

the point is not a sweeping generalization about all women. the point is: statistically, a higher percentage of men like computer science/programming than women.

My experience as a parent and as a person who has learned about parenting is that these types of interests are often innate: i've seen this over and over again. For example, our daughter loved shiny things (before age 2) before any kind of social conditioning could take place.

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

#619

Post by yongjik »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #594

I have a 4 year old daughter who I'm trying to get interested in programming. The first step is to teach her reading/writing and math. Every time we start with basic counting, after just 2 minutes, she's constantly telling me "daddy, I don't want to count anymore". I'm not giving up yet. But, we have to accept the fact that certain genders don't like math and don't like programming. Sometimes, I see the same thing pl…

I have to wonder if there's some missing detail, because I can't imagine a 4-year-old sitting down and doing counting exercises for two minutes without being distracted, boy or girl.

In fact, if it was a boy, many people would have chalked it up to "Well of course boys like to move around and be active. Who likes to sit down and count things, anyway?"

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

#620

Post by quineoa »

thu2111 wrote: post #573
new_here wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How is this the top rated comment? Because it spells out a view that the majority agrees with. The post suggests searching and hiring outside of the traditional pipeline It suggests the only way to hire more women is to discriminate against the best credentialed candidates. It doesn't mean that the pursuit of gender parity is delusional Lots of us believe it's actually, truly delusional. How long have women been enco…

Except every single one of the dozen+ female engineers I personally at FAANGM+ has a first-hand account of something vile that a male collegue did. In one case an internship mentor asked someone to come to their house, stating the wife and kids aren't home at night. Maybe you're a great man, and you only know other great men . But you can't dismiss a whole group just because you don't experience what they do. Just because it's not happening to you, doesn't mean it's not happening.

Similar situation is when my non-minority friends are surprised that racism still exists in . "I know racism exits, but that kind of thing cannot happen !" Well, my friend, you wouldn't feel that way if you looked like me.

Post reply on HN