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How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

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Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#101

Post by yummyfajitas »

raganwald wrote: post #52
cousin_it wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't completely understand your argument here, on a purely intellectual level... In a very simple model, going from 0 women to 1 woman should increase the number of harassment suits, right? Then going from 1 woman to 2 women should have a similar effect, because all naturally occurring functions are differentiable :-) Intuitively it seems to me that the amount of reported harassment should be proportional to how m…

I think the onus is on you and those who agree with you to discard all this "intuitively" and other hand-wavy stuff and come up with some hard evidence and/or citations, or back down and say, "we're making this shit up because it suits our biases." I wasn't born yesterday. If someone makes a claim without a shred of evidence, it's perfectly legitimate to say, "Well, here's another alternate explanation that's just as…

His intuitions are simply basic mathematical intuitions ("natural functions are differentiable") and have nothing whatsoever to do with any prejudices. He isn't "making shit up", he just isn't justifying it with as much mathematical rigor as I did.

It really does not help discussions like this to simply assume and accuse those you disagree with are prejudiced and unthinking.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#102

Post by notahat »

Kudzu_Bob wrote: post #93
notahat wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Like I said, you're making a straw man argument. You're saying that getting men to "not care about women's looks" is the same as getting men to stop sexually harassing women. That's simply not true.

And it is definitely possible to change our culture so that sexual harassment is not ok.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#103

Post by Ellipsis753 »

jt2190 wrote: post #15
Ellipsis753 wrote: post #9

Doesn't this seem a little sexist? I only hope they give men the equal opportunity to women and don't start "paving the way" to make it easier for women to get a job there than an equally good man. Avoiding sexism isn't about hiring an equal number of men as women. It's about hiring the best for the job regardless of their gender.

> Doesn't this seem a little sexist? Had the article been: "How Etsy Replaced 50% of our Male Engineers with Females" you might have cause for concern. If we were using startup lingo, we'd be saying that Etsy is disrupting the traditional labor market by finding a supply of software engineers where one didn't (or didn't seem to) exist before. We wouldn't assume that the labor supply remained exactly the same size, an…

It's not whether they're getting rid of male engineers. I just hope they're not giving an unfair advantage to females over males here as I would consider that to be sexist. Equality isn't making sure 50% of workers in each role are of each gender. Equality is making sure that when recruiting/training you always pick the best candidate regardless of there gender.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#104

Post by raganwald »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #101
raganwald wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the onus is on you and those who agree with you to discard all this "intuitively" and other hand-wavy stuff and come up with some hard evidence and/or citations, or back down and say, "we're making this shit up because it suits our biases." I wasn't born yesterday. If someone makes a claim without a shred of evidence, it's perfectly legitimate to say, "Well, here's another alternate explanation that's just as…

His intuitions are simply basic mathematical intuitions ("natural functions are differentiable") and have nothing whatsoever to do with any prejudices. He isn't "making shit up", he just isn't justifying it with as much mathematical rigor as I did. It really does not help discussions like this to simply assume and accuse those you disagree with are prejudiced and unthinking.

Sorry, what he and you are doing is starting with assumptions you are making up and then saying GIVEN this shit I'm making up THEN given these mathematical intuitions I cherry-pick as simple demonstrations of the conclusions I've drawn THEN the conclusion I drew before I back-filled my reasoning holds.

Again, without even the barest attempt to go out and gather some empirical data. That kind of talk belongs amongst consultants pedalling methodology snake-oil. And yes I am being dismissive of your so-called arguments.

Around here we regularly make fun of the "social sciences" for their lack of rigor. Except, it appears, when we want to throw our prejudices around. Shame on you all for treating Hacker News like it's Reddit.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#105

Post by raganwald »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #100
raganwald wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inte…

Notice the use of your word "might?" That's a clue that we're bandying around unsupported guesses. As in, "well, it might be that this, or it might be that that."

There's nothing wrong with that kind of talk, provided it is followed by, "And here's how we would go out and discover what the actual truth is." That is Science. Stopping with "might" is fine, provided you don't call it anything other than speculation.

I'm not calling what I said anything other than speculation. I put it there to show that if you're going to make stuff up, you can arrive at any conclusion you like. So I needn't defend my suggestion. I agree it is indefensible, just as the one you're supporting is indefensible.

It all comes down to either saying "I don't know and that's fine with me because I have faith," or "I don't know, and I'm going to find out what is actually true."

Take your pick, but start with "I don't know."

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#106

Post by mlent »

randomdata wrote: post #99
mlent wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I don't think Etsy is acting as though they want only the female perspective, just more of it than what they have. I'm sure there are other areas where they are trying to get more male perspective (e.g. at small liberal arts colleges, to a degree).

Etsy is obviously not starting to hire only women or even mostly women.

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#107

Post by yummyfajitas »

raganwald wrote: post #105
yummyfajitas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inte…

Notice the use of your word "might?" That's a clue that we're bandying around unsupported guesses. As in, "well, it might be that this, or it might be that that." There's nothing wrong with that kind of talk, provided it is followed by, "And here's how we would go out and discover what the actual truth is." That is Science. Stopping with "might" is fine, provided you don't call it anything other than speculation. I'm…

Let me quote the part of your post I'm disagreeing with:

I guess it all comes down to whether you walk around thinking that women cause sexual harassment lawsuits or men cause sexual harassment lawsuits. I think it's the men doing the harassing, but whoo-boy are there a lot of apologists out there who believe that women are making this stuff up.

I took a model very similar to yours, in which women never make stuff up. The only factor I added was a (in my opinion quite reasonable) assumption that you can't harass the people in the company you've never met.

I.e., I showed one can disagree with you even while believing that women never ever make stuff up.

If you want to call all beliefs based on mathematical models rather than some frequentist statistical estimate "faith", fine. I don't agree that mathematical models are useless, I think they can give us excellent guesses about the world and we should use them until we have something better (particularly when a variety of different models give similar conclusions). But I suppose we just have radically different views on epistemiology.

But in that case, why are you claiming that kudzu_bob's claim is "probably incorrect"? How could you possibly know this? Absent some frequentist study proving this is the case, why would you believe that "it's men doing the harassing"?

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#108

Post by yummyfajitas »

raganwald wrote: post #104
yummyfajitas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His intuitions are simply basic mathematical intuitions ("natural functions are differentiable") and have nothing whatsoever to do with any prejudices. He isn't "making shit up", he just isn't justifying it with as much mathematical rigor as I did. It really does not help discussions like this to simply assume and accuse those you disagree with are prejudiced and unthinking.

Sorry, what he and you are doing is starting with assumptions you are making up and then saying GIVEN this shit I'm making up THEN given these mathematical intuitions I cherry-pick as simple demonstrations of the conclusions I've drawn THEN the conclusion I drew before I back-filled my reasoning holds. Again, without even the barest attempt to go out and gather some empirical data. That kind of talk belongs amongst c…

Which prejudices?

I made three assumptions. One was social distance (a harasser will harass only one of the K your assumption that a harasser always harasses. The third was your assumption that all harassment allegations are true.

I assume that the social distance assumption is the one you believe to be prejudiced?

I'm also curious why you believe your post is any different. You also posited a mathematical model (exactly like mine, except without the social distance), and hinted that those you disagree with must be sexist. Is it merely the existence of an ad-hominem attack that makes your post more valid?

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#109

Post by [deleted] »

raganwald wrote: post #52
cousin_it wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't completely understand your argument here, on a purely intellectual level... In a very simple model, going from 0 women to 1 woman should increase the number of harassment suits, right? Then going from 1 woman to 2 women should have a similar effect, because all naturally occurring functions are differentiable :-) Intuitively it seems to me that the amount of reported harassment should be proportional to how m…

I think the onus is on you and those who agree with you to discard all this "intuitively" and other hand-wavy stuff and come up with some hard evidence and/or citations, or back down and say, "we're making this shit up because it suits our biases." I wasn't born yesterday. If someone makes a claim without a shred of evidence, it's perfectly legitimate to say, "Well, here's another alternate explanation that's just as…

[deleted]

Re: How Etsy Attracted 500% More Female Engineers

#110

Post by Tichy »

subsystem wrote: post #98
Tichy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

The number of people believing something is not a good indicator for it being true oe not. Example: billions of people have contradictory religious beliefs.
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