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How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

fastcolabs.com

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Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#91

Post by Tichy »

elptacek wrote: post #88
Tichy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about the "willing to work 40h" question, seems fair to ask?

Weird. Something ate that post. The question was, "I can hear your kids in the background. Are you sure you're okay with working 40 hours a week?" From a female recruiter for a previous employer when I specifically inquired about FTE. Her boss (also female) certainly didn't think it was fair to ask.

I'm male and not really OK with working 40 hours a week (with a 2 year old at home). I find it annoying that people automatically assume I'm OK with it. Not sure what to think, I mean why the question is offensive. Maybe it is illegal to ask (like pregnancy status)?Edit: I don't know what FTE means.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#92

Post by Tichy »

subsystem wrote: post #67
Tichy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What didn't you like about the way I asked?

You're asking a rhetorical question that insults my character by implying that I would fabricate a theory and then "push it" although I knew it was false. I'm fine with not being right or people having a different opinion, but don't insult me in the process. Your other question doesn't make sense since it's factually incorrect (hackers school was free before) and puts weight on only one factor. The incentive Etsy mad…

I didn't say you fabricated it, just that it doesn't follow from the story. That there was something to offset also doesn't imply sexism was in the mix of things to offset.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#93

Post by Kudzu_Bob »

notahat wrote: post #90
Kudzu_Bob wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since human nature is so malleable, while we're at it, let's build a culture where men don't care about women's looks, women don't care about men's social status, parents love other people's children more than their own kids, and wearing stripes with plaid is the height of fashion. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

Now you're arguing that culture is hard to change, so we shouldn't do it, even if the existing culture is morally horrible? (Oh, and you're using a straw man argument to do it.)

No, you're the one who's making that argument, if you don't believe that it's possible to condition men into not caring about women's looks and all the rest of it. If those things are possible, no problem. But if those things are not possible...

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#94

Post by mlent »

omonra wrote: post #29
Bakkot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, you do end up needing a degree of domain-specific knowledge. Do you not think that programmers of medical software don't pick up a ton of medical knowledge while they're working? And that people who are programmers who were, say, pre-med or bio students or whatever wouldn't have an edge? As someone who happens to work in a science/bioinformatics environment with no education on the topic, I can definitely say that I make decisions based on the domain (what I've learned since joining) and the behaviors of our end-users, scientists.

When programmers lack domain knowledge, they're likely to make bad assumptions that will hurt them later. Of course you have to know intended use when you're writing software, it can help you design it properly. A very simple hypothetical: Designing a database to efficiently receive some data set. What if Etsy's users aren't interested in that data? And they care more about something else, which would merit designing it differently? Maybe having a female voice to bring that up would be helpful. Obviously, it's purely conjecture, but I think it's a reasonable scenario.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#95

Post by mlent »

randomdata wrote: post #50
kansface wrote: post #43

I find this policy of intentionally hiring female over male programmers as highly disturbing. Etsy already proved that female programmers are not needed to successfully sell to females. Is there some sort of magical difference between male and female programmers that I am unaware of? Why throw out equality to promote it? Would anyone be OK with the reverse policy? Could a company that sells to 99% men systematically…

I tend to agree. I thought the whole point of gender equality was to be blind, so to speak, of gender? If you have to specifically hire female people, it says their quality is lower (otherwise you would just always hire the best person female or male), which is not something I am sure I can support. Women are just as capable of being the best. It seems like an insult to give anyone special treatment just because of g…

I mean, being qualified is never the only piece of the "getting hired" puzzle, right? You want someone who fits well in your team, is generally interesting, is eager to learn, and possibly fills some other niche that you feel your team is missing. I think it's a fair question to ask, "Will this person provide a unique perspective within our team?"

It seems simply that Etsy is trying to fill a female niche and add female perspective. It's not like they're hiring random ladies off the street, their hires have gone to hacker school and are clearly capable given the opportunity. Software isn't written is silos where you don't talk to other people about what/how/why you are going what you're doing.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#96

Post by wglb »

Tichy wrote: post #91
elptacek wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. Something ate that post. The question was, "I can hear your kids in the background. Are you sure you're okay with working 40 hours a week?" From a female recruiter for a previous employer when I specifically inquired about FTE. Her boss (also female) certainly didn't think it was fair to ask.

I'm male and not really OK with working 40 hours a week (with a 2 year old at home). I find it annoying that people automatically assume I'm OK with it. Not sure what to think, I mean why the question is offensive. Maybe it is illegal to ask (like pregnancy status)?Edit: I don't know what FTE means.

FTE -> Full Time Employee

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#97

Post by wglb »

luu wrote: post #2

I wonder how long it will be before other companies start doing this. At his confirmation hearing, when Alan Greenspan was asked why Townsend-Greenspan employed so many women (> 50%, compared to about 5% in finance at the time), he replied that since he valued women as much as men, but other firms didn't, he could get more work for the same amount money by hiring women. Now, of course, the difference has mostly been…

I have a friend who has been doing this at a significant business ($70m/yr) in a very high technology company for over 20 years. When I asked "what if no women apply?" Her answer was "you aren't looking hard enough."

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#98

Post by subsystem »

Tichy wrote: post #92
subsystem wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking a rhetorical question that insults my character by implying that I would fabricate a theory and then "push it" although I knew it was false. I'm fine with not being right or people having a different opinion, but don't insult me in the process. Your other question doesn't make sense since it's factually incorrect (hackers school was free before) and puts weight on only one factor. The incentive Etsy mad…

I didn't say you fabricated it, just that it doesn't follow from the story. That there was something to offset also doesn't imply sexism was in the mix of things to offset.

See, you didn't actually say story, you said experiment. I wouldn't base my theories on a single story. Instead I've been following this experiment for a year, during which many of the people involved seem to think that sexism actually is one of the factors.

Hacker school amended their policy with "no subtle sexism", the CTO of Etsy said that it was harder to hire great women because they tend to have a history of bad experience and one of the attendees, which was later hired by Etsy, specifically pointed out sexism as a problem within the tech community.

This of course also make me think that sexism or, like I said, something devolved from sexism actually is a factor for women. It was at least definitely part of the experiment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4LExVkv4Pw http://firstround.com/article/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-... http://marthakelly.github.com/blog/2013/03/10/an-open-letter...

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#99

Post by randomdata »

mlent wrote: post #95
randomdata wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree. I thought the whole point of gender equality was to be blind, so to speak, of gender? If you have to specifically hire female people, it says their quality is lower (otherwise you would just always hire the best person female or male), which is not something I am sure I can support. Women are just as capable of being the best. It seems like an insult to give anyone special treatment just because of g…

I mean, being qualified is never the only piece of the "getting hired" puzzle, right? You want someone who fits well in your team, is generally interesting, is eager to learn, and possibly fills some other niche that you feel your team is missing. I think it's a fair question to ask, "Will this person provide a unique perspective within our team?" It seems simply that Etsy is trying to fill a female niche and add fem…

You definitely right that being the overall best is more complicated than being the best at one specific thing. However, doesn't the idea of "female perspective" reintroduce the exact same gender bias issues?

If you can justify hiring for "female perspective", what about the companies who only want "male perspective"?

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#100

Post by yummyfajitas »

raganwald wrote: post #38
yummyfajitas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this kind of thinking incorrect?

Probably incorrect. And I could just as easily posit the reverse. Say we have one woman and nine men. If we add a woman, does it really double the likelihood of a harassment suit? Why would it? Either one of the nine men harasses women, or he doesn't, why would adding a second women change his behaviour? On the other hand, if we halve the proportion of women by hiring ten more men, I'd say you may have doubled the ch…

If we add a woman, does it really double the likelihood of a harassment suit? Why would it? Either one of the nine men harasses women, or he doesn't, why would adding a second women change his behaviour?

He might not harass all women. He might only harass women in his general vicinity, either a social, work related or geographic.

Lets consider only correct accusations, and further suppose a given individual only interacts with K coworkers (for K Provided P(coworker is woman) is small (as is the case in most tech companies), this number decreases as P(woman) increases. I.e., more women raises the probability of a harassment lawsuit.

And this is all in a model which assumes women never ever make this stuff up.

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