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

#621

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #419

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…

Ignorning the fact that many engineering orgs can't hit 10% let along 18%; you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree". Statistically your company isn't actually hiring for jobs that need higher level CS theory. It's not assigning malice, but pure negligence . There's a huge population of competent people with amazing ROI for your business and, especially companies with pockets as deep…

> you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree".

But, why, though? Are you saying that women as a group are less capable of completing CS degrees than men?

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

#622

Post by braindouche » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #600

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…

I suspect you'd have had far easier success with a BSCS on your resume. I can't imagine trying to get into this field without having had a degree -- it is a hard industry to get into. I keep hearing about gender discrimination, and maybe this is a market segment thing, but everywhere I've worked is actively recruiting female devs. Also the places I've worked as a dev typically require a CS degree though for what that…

Oh you're almost certainly right, it would have been easier with the degree. I don't have any degree, and programming is a second career for me, so in a world where 26 year old senior developers are a thing, it's just one more thing putting me on my back foot. My biggest regret is not starting down this path 10 or 15 years earlier, honestly.

I am absolutely willing to believe it's a market segment thing. I live in a smaller city full of colleges, so the handful of large companies hiring want all of their jr devs to be right out of college, and that's straight from the recruiter's mouths. I was forced to apply to all the small companies.

And, for what it's worth, my current job and the two before it "required" a degree. From what I can tell, that requirement is to filter people on the low end of years of experience. Old age and treachery counts for a lot more than you may think.

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

#623

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #69

stormbrew wrote: post #16

I don't think the point of criticizing "it's a pipeline problem" is that there isn't a pipeline problem, but that it's an easy out to avoid taking action at whatever stage of the 'pipeline' you happen to be working at. If, as an manager at a FAANG, you say "it's a pipeline problem" you're probably saying that there aren't enough candidates because not enough women graduate from ST programs. If you're a program develo…

The author is leaving unstated what we all know to be true: most of these jobs aren't really that hard. You don't really need the people with pedigreed CS backgrounds, but it's easier than actually figuring out how to screen candidates. The "pipeline problem" is the pipeline itself. So you have to go around the pipeline by avoiding the formal education system, which is where the bias is observed.

> most of these jobs aren't really that hard

This is a popular trope among non-programmers, and I can see why they’d like it to be true (it would make hiring a lot easier!) but actually yes, these jobs _are_ that hard. They’re hard because they’re constantly changing. Environments change, languages change, tooling changes, team structuring changes… and the programmers have to keep up. What may have been easier for, say, a self-taught PHP developer who doesn’t really know how databases work, or how networks work, or how operating systems work, or how HTTP works, ten years ago is much harder for that same developer without a decent grasp on the fundamentals trying to get their head around, say, React. There are easier jobs in “tech” like project management or testing, but developing software isn’t one of them.

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

#624

Post by dang » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #255

inerte wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard from a Googler that yes, they want the workforce to match the outside world. With that in mind read https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_what-would-it-tak... and "That’s why in 2019 we challenge ourselves and others to think differently so that we widen pathways to tech. Only then will we reflect our consumer base, and truly elevate our ability to build products for everyone." So Google wants to refl…

When I hear statements like that, I always wonder if they try to hire 2% pedophiles, too. About 2% of people in the real world are supposed to be pedophiles, so if they want to reflect the real world, they should aim to hire them.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#625

Post by abathur » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #593

abathur wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for taking the time to read this; it took me long enough to write that I was afraid it would be for naught. I think you are reading me more narrowly than I want to be read, but I don't fault you there. I am not good at communicating this concept yet. I picked the first study because I start at the beginning, and look for loose threads. I didn't pick on this study because I think its methodology is terrible.…

If you haven't already, you may be interested in the Replication Crisis and various related research on metascience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis has an overview and you can dig in from there. That said, I've run across enough lines of evidence, both from anecdote and research, that this particular phenomena seems likely to be real.

Last fall, my father asked what I thought about a video on YouTube that took a passage from the Book of Revelation, upcoming astral events from Stellarium, and interpreted them into an end-days prediction.

I said that it held about as much water as predictions based on numerology.

And then he asked what I would think if the astral event happened when and as described in the video.

I said I had no reason to assume Stellarium was wrong, but that the fact of some arrangement of astral bodies doesn't inherently validate any interpretation that the arrangement is significant, nor any subsequent interpretation of what its significance is.

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

#626

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

braindouche wrote: post #617

commandlinefan wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> responded to a man's-name resume that did not respond to an identical resume with a woman's name

If you can demonstrate evidence of this, you absolutely should, because that would be a particularly surprising finding considering how many organizations state upfront that they have preferential hiring for women. I’ve hired software developers for decades, and the resumes are dominated by Indian-sounding names: I don’t know about you, but I usually can’t tell whether those names are masculine or feminine. I’m shocked on the rare occasion I come across a resume with an American sounding name like Jim or Mary.

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

#627

Post by btilly » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

abathur wrote: post #625

btilly wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't already, you may be interested in the Replication Crisis and various related research on metascience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis has an overview and you can dig in from there. That said, I've run across enough lines of evidence, both from anecdote and research, that this particular phenomena seems likely to be real.

Last fall, my father asked what I thought about a video on YouTube that took a passage from the Book of Revelation, upcoming astral events from Stellarium, and interpreted them into an end-days prediction. I said that it held about as much water as predictions based on numerology. And then he asked what I would think if the astral event happened when and as described in the video. I said I had no reason to assume Ste…

And the relevance of your example is...?

Hormonal differences are known to cause a host of physical differences between the genders, a host of behavioral differences (have you read the research on what testosterone does?), and a tremendous amount of mental differences in other species. But political correctness causes us to reject out of hand the idea that biology could cause modest differences in average mental abilities and interests in homo sapiens.

There is no question that a few decades ago people casually accepted conclusions about gender differences that we today recognize are fallacious. But the current consensus is an absurd overreaction.

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

#628

Post by lordCarbonFiber » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:04 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #621

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorning the fact that many engineering orgs can't hit 10% let along 18%; you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree". Statistically your company isn't actually hiring for jobs that need higher level CS theory. It's not assigning malice, but pure negligence . There's a huge population of competent people with amazing ROI for your business and, especially companies with pockets as deep…

> you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree". But, why, though? Are you saying that women as a group are less capable of completing CS degrees than men?

There's a whole host of systematic reasons why women (as a group) might choose not to pursue a CS degree. As a hiring manager I can choose to complain about the ~pipeline~ (which i conveniently can't change nor appreciably effect in the short term) or I can re-examine my existing assumptions (namely whether a CS degree is necessary for filtering).

I'm, personally, not really a fan of programs that are trying to shuffle people into a specific degree to improve employment representation rather examining what skills are necessary to do the job in the first place. The university as proxy for job training model, I feel, is perverse and doesn't necessarily serve students nor employers.

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

#629

Post by filoleg » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

frenchyatwork wrote: post #585

thu2111 wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If buying things didn't provide value to people, they wouldn't have bought it.

Just because I cannot extract monetary value by buying another MIDI controller for my hobby doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile purchase. If you derived enjoyment from a purchase, it increased your [non-material] wealth and added value.

The same way, Gmail and FB make money by selling ads, but if they didn't exist without ads, it is easily arguable that people would have missed out on a lot of wealth and benefits that comes with those things. I use Gmail, because I extract value from using it. And I pay for it by letting Google personalize my ads and sell them. For me, that exchange is absolutely worth it. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have been using it.

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

#630

Post by TrinaryWorksToo » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #614

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I am proof a pool exists.