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How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
21–30 of 117 posts
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#22The article doesn't really say why they wanted more female engineers, other than "it was vital to the product."
I'd like to see more women engineers, and I applaud Etsy's initiative, but it seems unlikely that adding a few more super-junior (freshly-trained) women developers to their staff is going to meaningfully change the product in the near term.
I suppose (hope) that these women could help prevent anti-female product boo-boos, like the time Microsoft offered "bitch" as the equivalent to "male" in a Windows XP Spanish localization.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#23I'd like to see some numbers on how having 500% more female engineers made Etsy ship a better product - which is what I imagine customers ultimately care about. The idea that diversity is good for its own sake in every possible situation is taken as an axiom - which I'd like to see proven.
It seems like the idea of meritocracy - that the best professional for a given job is based on competence is substituted with one of diversity. Ie that in any group of size n, the personal qualities (gender,race,sexual orientation) of N+1 person joining the group is just as (or more important) that his/her core qualifications.
For example - why does company have to have engineers that mimic its customer base? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to have people whose job it is to figure out what customers want and then tell engineers to code it up?
Now - I am not saying that diversity is bad, rather that it's presented as a given, with no numerical justification.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#24Recently I watched a documentary in which a researcher told of how he was ridiculed for studying happiness, even though nobody saw anything wrong with studying depression. Then I saw a documentary where a handful of really skinny people were put on a ridiculous diet and their physiological changes were tracked.
Instead of trying to figure out why there aren't MORE women in science, math and engineering disciplines, perhaps we should be talking to the ones who are already there? It seems to me that if we've really had to jump over extra hurdles and deal with lower wages, there has to be something very compelling that keeps us here.
We think these answers are obvious. Maybe they aren't?
ETA: I interviewed with Etsy in 2010 or 2011. It seemed as if I did very well, but it wasn't a career move that warranted relocating the home to Brooklyn. At the time, I thought they were just excited by me, as a professional. I'm feeling a bit sad that it might have just been a "hire more women" drive instead. Bleh.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#25You know, gender aside, this is what more companies should do; there's an enormous demand for skilled engineers out there, yet very few companies that acknowledge there just may not be any more in the market and they need to create said skilled employees themselves.
The problem for employers is that trainees and interns are a risk; you need to screen them beforehand, and then you take a gamble about whether they'll get up to the required skill level in six months or a year to be up to par to the rest of the company's team.
I heard about a major consultancy company's success in attracting interns as potential future engineers (Ordina iirc), they said the success rate was about 1 in 20. Which, for smaller companies (The article itself states they hired eight people from Hacker School, which is daring and commendable. I'm curious as to how those people will develop themselves in the coming year.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#26I'd like to see some numbers on how having 500% more female engineers made Etsy ship a better product - which is what I imagine customers ultimately care about. The idea that diversity is good for its own sake in every possible situation is taken as an axiom - which I'd like to see proven. It seems like the idea of meritocracy - that the best professional for a given job is based on competence is substituted with one…
On any other problem whatsoever, people would readily grant that having the developers understand the problem domain confers an advantage. I don't see why this should be any different.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article doesn't describe sexism, the article describes scarcity and demand: In Silicon Valley today it's not possible to hire more women simply by recruiting them. Good engineers today have their pick of jobs, and good female engineers are being stalked like the last antelope on the African veldt. Etsy's solution doesn't seem to be to stop sexism, Etsy's solution appears to be train more engineers, take a risk on…
The argument is that sexism is what creates the scarcity in the first place. So by creating an environment where sexism is less of a factor you attract more women.
Yep, exactly. By funding this training program Etsy signaled that they value women as much as they value men. As a result, a ton of women applied to the program and many of those ended up getting hired.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#28500% more female engineers = 500% more risk of sexual harassment lawsuits. If that's not progress, I don't know what is.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#29I'd like to see some numbers on how having 500% more female engineers made Etsy ship a better product - which is what I imagine customers ultimately care about. The idea that diversity is good for its own sake in every possible situation is taken as an axiom - which I'd like to see proven. It seems like the idea of meritocracy - that the best professional for a given job is based on competence is substituted with one…
On any other problem whatsoever, people would readily grant that having the developers understand the problem domain confers an advantage. I don't see why this should be any different.
I am not convinced that males are incapable of understanding whatever it is that Etsy's clients want. After all - we don't look for programmers who are doctors for medical programs, etc.
I'd actually posit that in majority of cases (ie all enterprise software), programmers actually have much less of clue as to what they are working on than in the case of consumer site like this.
Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers
#30You know, gender aside, this is what more companies should do; there's an enormous demand for skilled engineers out there, yet very few companies that acknowledge there just may not be any more in the market and they need to create said skilled employees themselves. The problem for employers is that trainees and interns are a risk; you need to screen them beforehand, and then you take a gamble about whether they'll g…
Companies should also be very clear about what they're actually looking for. If you're looking for "world class" talent, don't complain about a "programmer shortage".
The fact that there were 600 valid applications (the women applying had code examples to show), basically busts the "programmer shortage" myth.
There are a whole lot of people who can program computers, and who could, with some investment, become valuable assets.