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

#631

Post by pksdjfikkkkdsff » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #591

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

> I have also seen many articles by women in tech who say they didn't have issues. And there are many that do have issues. See, thats the thing about this stuff. Some women not having bad experiences, does not overrule the bad experiences of other women.

Why does it not work the other way round, some women with bad experiences don't overrule the good experiences of other women?

For what it's worth, many of the accounts of "bad experiences" didn't really convince me, either. It is too easy to attribute all of one's issues to sexism. For example the common complaint of being passed over in promotions, or of having one's opinions not being appreciated. That happens to men all the time, too, they just don't get to claim it is because of sexism.

Confirmation bias may play a huge role in those personal accounts, too.

As I said - usually the comparison to actual experiences of men is missing. There are many, many more men who have been passed over for promotion than women who have been passed over, in the tech industry, for example.

Another thing that is missing is an account of the advantages women have, like men being eager to help, extra funding only for women, hiring quotas, and so on.

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

#632

Post by downerending » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:25 PM UTC

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 a very specific memory of the first moment I encountered a "math" book, in kindergarten. It was literally just a book of the numbers from one to ten, with pictures illustrating what those meant, etc. I wouldn't have been able to verbalize it, but the feeling was "I am going to f___ing love this.".

And indeed I did, and took to math and CS like a duck to water.

No idea whether that's common, nor whether it might be more common for males, but it's hard to see how someone with that intuitive drive wasn't going to do quite well in the subject.

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

#633

Post by abathur » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:25 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #627

abathur wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abil…

It feels like you're lobbing points from trench to trench. I am not in either trench, and wouldn't like to be (there are weird things in both trenches), so I'm doing what I can to avoid the established battle lines.

I am not trying to debate or argue or win, so there is no satisfying crunch. I am just hoping to say a few things you can chew on (without being too much of a jerk along the way).

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

#634

Post by filoleg » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

goosehonk wrote: post #589

Leherenn wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Your comment seemed really strange to me, because I remember that even back at Georgia Tech, we had both technical writing and ethics requirement for anyone in the CS program, so I decided to doublecheck the facts you listed about the Stanford CS program.

Where did you get your info from? Because I just checked the Stanford CS curriculum requirements for Bachelors degree, and it clearly has "Computers, Ethics, and Public Policy" requirement, along with a senior project requirement (that would, I assume, includes writing), as well as 3-5 credit units from the list of approved "Technology in Society" courses.[0]

0. https://exploredegrees.stanford.edu/schoolofengineering/comp...

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

#635

Post by filoleg » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #630

commandlinefan wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A pool of statistical outliers is not a "big pool" that the parent comment was referring too. There are quite a few brilliant software engineers I got a chance to work with who had no college education whatsoever, but they are very clearly outliers among very few. I strongly doubt there is some big untapped pool of engineers without degrees who are just being completely overlooked simply for not having a degree.

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

#636

Post by nwallin » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #437

axoltl wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Harvey Mudd made changes to their CS program to remove bias and now more than half of its computer science majors are women. There is some very insidious bias in the pipeline that isn't explained away with "but different interests". https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bia...

A bit of "wait a minute, something else is going on here" comes with the mention that Physics has a even higher % women, yet there's no mention of curriculum changes for that major. This wouldn't happen to be a very small school with a very low acceptance rate, would it? It is: less than 900 students and less than 13%. They can have whatever gender ratio they want, more or less, with essentially no effort. I'm not su…

23% of the women who apply to Harvey Mudd are admitted. 10% of the men who apply to Harvey Mudd are admitted. It sounds like they have one admissions process for women, and a different one for me. That's one way to get 50/50 I suppose.

That wouldn't fly in the workplace. I'm surprised it's acceptable under Title IX.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/1...

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

#637

Post by downerending » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

gjmacd wrote: post #226

Not one mention of age as being a factor as passing over good talent because of ageism. I'm 54, I walk through the door to interview and people run the other way before I even sit down with them because I probably look like their Dad -- meanwhile, i'm not only as current on skills than anybody I'm talking to, I'm probably the best option at a startup since I've seen it all (three and four times over). It's ridiculous…

I'm about your age, and it is indeed depressing. On my last hunt, after passing the all-day at a FAANG, I was declined at the executive review because of my "career trajectory".

Guess who doesn't have career trajectories. (Spoiler: It's young people.)

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

#638

Post by filoleg » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

vonseel wrote: post #336

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…

> theories do come up in any serious work Depends on what you classify as serious work, I guess? From years of reading similar comments and my own experience, I was under the impression most “software developer” jobs only lightly touch on anything complex - most of us aren’t designing databases and complex low-level stuff day-to-day, but we do need to know enough to not do something terribly inefficient and stupid in…

>I think what you really need are smart people, and people who are willing to put in the work to get past the first few years of stumbling and not knowing what anything means.

I totally agree with you, but that doesn't solve the issue, there are not that many of those people out there struggling to get jobs, because employers already know about this trick. That's why a bunch of quant and other top-tier finance shops are full of math and physics grads who had almost zero knowledge of finance before getting hired for those jobs.

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

#639

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #631

stale2002 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have also seen many articles by women in tech who say they didn't have issues. And there are many that do have issues. See, thats the thing about this stuff. Some women not having bad experiences, does not overrule the bad experiences of other women.

Why does it not work the other way round, some women with bad experiences don't overrule the good experiences of other women? For what it's worth, many of the accounts of "bad experiences" didn't really convince me, either. It is too easy to attribute all of one's issues to sexism. For example the common complaint of being passed over in promotions, or of having one's opinions not being appreciated. That happens to m…

> some women with bad experiences don't overrule the good experiences of other women?

Because I am not overruling those womens experiences! So if you were to claim that some women have no problems, thats fine. I am sure there are some. But there still exists bad exeriences for many women, and thats still bad and we should try and solve those bad experiences!

See the difference? I am not saying that good experiences don't exist. I am saying that even if some good experiences exist, we should still try and solve the bad experiences, which definitely do exist.

You, on the other hand, seem to be trying to minimize the real life problems that other women definitely do have. (Whereas I am not denying that some women have no problems. Just that even if this is the case, we should still work to solve the bad experiences)

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

#640

Post by filoleg » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

nwallin wrote: post #636

simonsarris wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of "wait a minute, something else is going on here" comes with the mention that Physics has a even higher % women, yet there's no mention of curriculum changes for that major. This wouldn't happen to be a very small school with a very low acceptance rate, would it? It is: less than 900 students and less than 13%. They can have whatever gender ratio they want, more or less, with essentially no effort. I'm not su…

23% of the women who apply to Harvey Mudd are admitted. 10% of the men who apply to Harvey Mudd are admitted. It sounds like they have one admissions process for women, and a different one for me. That's one way to get 50/50 I suppose. That wouldn't fly in the workplace. I'm surprised it's acceptable under Title IX. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/1...

There could be plenty of non-malicious natural explanations for this.

What if there are way more males applying to Harvey Mudd, thus, assuming equal ability levels of people in both groups, resulting in a higher women admission rate?

What if the women applying to Harvey Mudd are, on average, more competent than males applying for whatever reason? E.g., women being less confident about applying to schools like MIT, so a bunch of them would apply to Harvey Mudd instead, while all MIT-capable males wouldn't apply to Harvey Mudd.

I am not claiming whether that specific situation they have at Harvey Mudd is acceptable or not under Title IX, but the numbers your bring up should not be problematic on its own under Title IX imo, it is how those numbers were arrived at and other numbers in the context that make all the difference.