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Girls Who Code

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Re: Girls Who Code

#291

Post by dinkumthinkum »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

I am a man. These initiatives will simply not work. Imagine "Men Nurse." Many women SIMPLY do not code for the same reason many men do not code. Most of us were not exposed to the science as kids, hence step 1 is to make Programming mandatory. Note I say programming and not C.S.. I am an amateur programmer and I can say wit confidence that this is as fundamental as basic arithmetic. Full stop. I frankly wish they shu…

Why is this nursing thing coming up so often? There are many more women than you think in US graduate CS programs; however, many are not from the United States.

Re: Girls Who Code

#292

Post by yummyfajitas »

glesica wrote: post #221
yummyfajitas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But IBM, and many of the big corporations in the USA, followed very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place. A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity". In fact, nowadays people typically criticize such practices as inhibiting diversity [1]. As for culture fit, it's a complicated…

> A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity". Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities. [1] Aside from that, what exactly is a "meritocracy"? What does that mean? You have to define it pretty carefully. HN is full of posts about making soci…

The few links provided by your google search do not back up your claim of bias - they repeat the same vague assertion as you but provide no evidence. If you have evidence of this claim please be more specific about presenting it.

I also didn't claim any startups use IQ tests.

The point I was making is that what lkrubner described as "very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place" (namely, assessing ability via objective, quantitative means rather than subjective interviews) is now criticized by folks like yourself as anti-diversity. The legal precedent set by Griggs vs Duke Power and related legal cases makes it legally problematic.

Merit, BTW, is defined as "whatever will make my company the most money". In some roles it does involve social connections.

Re: Girls Who Code

#293

Post by yummyfajitas »

glesica wrote: post #246
theorique wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities. IQ tests - which are pretty well normed across cultures if you use the right ones - tend to turn up the same patterns over and over. IQ tests (or their proxies) are useful ways of testing general cognitive fitness and ability and anticipating on-the-job performance and learning (see, e.g., http://www.udel.edu/educ/go…

So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy? You actually made my overall point stronger, because you demonstrated that this community clearly doesn't define "merit" to be "raw intelligence". It is a much, much more nuanced concept and it includes, I suspect, a large number of characteristics that are heavily influenced by gender, culture, and class. When we say "merit"…

Unless I plan to teach someone how to code, I also need to know if a person can code. In the era lkrubner was describing (the IBM/mainframe era), no one could code due to the small number of people with a mainframe in their basement.

Nowadays we hire people who already know how to code - I don't have time to teach someone to code. That's why I'm a big fan of github-as-resume. I want you to write code to make my company money so show me your code. But since women choose not to write open source, this form of work-sample test is criticized as discriminatory as well.

Also note that certain large meritocratic institutions (trading desks, some tech firms) do hire more or less on IQ. They can't actually give an IQ test themselves due to Griggs vs Duke Power so they outsource it to elite colleges instead. That's basically what is happening when they say "must come from a top school".

Re: Girls Who Code

#294

Post by bermanoid »

philwelch wrote: post #287
bermanoid wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone rubs you wrong personally, why in the world would that not be relevant, especially on a small team? Sure, you don't have to be besties or anything, but being able to at least converse with someone makes any work relationship go a lot smoother, and inability to do so can cause serious problems. I'd never let a good culture fit override a poor technical interview, but I've seen the consequences of hiring a b…

> If someone rubs you wrong personally, why in the world would that not be relevant, especially on a small team? Because business decisions should be made based upon facts and data, not based upon hunches and gut feelings. Going with your gut basically means throwing out the data and letting all of your personal biases decide the matter, consciously or unconsciously. If it's a question of being able to work with othe…

Ok, I can buy that - your point is that you should be attempting to get an unbiased estimate of how well someone works on a team, not that it shouldn't matter. Totally reasonable. Much more difficult, but a worthwhile goal.

I feel like it might be almost impossible to remove gut feeling from the equation alogether, though, since a lot of the problems that wreck teams really do come down to "X really doesn't like Y's personality". At some level, isn't a negative gut feeling expressed by one of your team members as valid a data point as you can get to predict how well the person will work out on that team?

Re: Girls Who Code

#295

Post by yummyfajitas »

tptacek wrote: post #107
yummyfajitas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a vast improvement over most normal hiring processes. A question though - how do you avoid legal liability from (4) and (5) in the event that they cause a disparate impact (see Griggs vs Duke Power, etc)?

I don't think about it at all, and for good reason: nothing that our process does could possibly be more risky than the crapshoot process other companies use. To wit: I know for a fact that my process isn't going to be dumb enough to ask a woman whether she's going to be able to manage her child care responsibilities and still be able to answer emergency work calls.

The danger comes from the fact that courts generally give deference to ad-hoc processes, whereas systematic processes are inherently suspect. That's why interviews are fine but IQ tests are legally suspect.

As another example in this general line of thought, compare Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger. Point-based racial discrimination is illegal, but "holistic" "individualized" processes where race is just a "plus factor" are legal. (Only discrimination in favor of non-Asian minorities, of course.)

I agree that this legal doctrine is insane.

Completely tangentially, since you mentioned relevant questions which are illegal to ask, I'd love to see an economic analysis of this topic. Specifically, the classical Akerlof lemon market paper assumes a complete inability to measure quality. But in the hiring market there are only a few dimensions for which one is unable to measure quality. That complicates the analysis significantly, so I'd love to gain some intuition on the topic.

Re: Girls Who Code

#297

Post by yummyfajitas »

esperluette wrote: post #218
xrctl wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hahah, you recall that the top science students you knew were women? How convincing! I have analyzed the records of the World Cubing Association, and there is 1 woman in the top 100 ranked [1]. I have analyzed the ratings of the American Scrabble Association, and there are 6 women in the top 100 ranked [2]. It is well known that there is only 1 woman in the top 100 ranked chess players (FIDE). I have analyzed the rat…

And this couldn't be in part because women have less free time across the board, about five hours less?[1] Hard to get to tournament quality if you don't get as much time to practice. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/10/another-gend...

The delta in "Leisure and sports" activities is not caused by the fact that women have "less free time across the board". It is caused by the fact that women choose to engage in other activities.

Women spend 6.61 hours on work + household work + caring for others + shopping, men spend 6.41 hours on it. The delta is 1.4 hours/week, not 5 hours/week.

Women sleep 1.82 hours/week more than men, spend 1.61 hours/week more than men on grooming, and 0.85 hours/week more than men on religious/civic activities. A woman who wanted to become a scrabble champion could easily choose not to do her nails, to wake up earlier and to skip church.

http://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2012.pdf

Re: Girls Who Code

#298

Post by girvo »

pnathan wrote: post #210
ama729 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have some links to the studies you have read, I would be really interested to read them. Thank you

I apologize, I do not. I read widely and generally do not maintain an annotated bibliography of what I read. Perhaps I should.

I try to, surprisingly it's quite useful even outside of this small use-case. Evernote or OneNotes clipping functionality is perfect for it. Give it a try, even if only for a few weeks, it's super useful IMO!

Re: Girls Who Code

#299

Post by jsmthrowaway »

codahale wrote: post #249
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things, I am not sure how to react. What's depress…

Watching you clutch your pearls is fucking hilarious, so I've set up a weekly donation of a fair chunk of change to Shanley's Gittip account. Keep up the good work.

Unlike most folks, I know who you are (I am not far removed from your social circle from prior employment) and you'll have to try that on someone else. I would encourage you to formulate a substantive point, for once, and seek a rational discussion on this with me but I know from experience that's not Coda Hale Style.

Last year I donated more than your annual contribution to Shanley's Gittip on causes for hunger and urban outreach, too. Since 2010 I have done a 50/50 split between my own 401(k) and hand-selected charities, and my 401(k) contribution is currently 3%. You can do the math. So, you can't hurt my feelings by tossing your big bad salary at another salaried worker in the industry in SF instead of, you know, helping people that need it.

Finally, between you and Michael Church I just can't use Scala any more for fear of remembering that you exist.

Re: Girls Who Code

#300

Post by rodgerd »

hacker789 wrote: post #170
jfarmer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure. This is explained equally well by inexperienced managers hiring people similar to themselves culturally, racially, and socioeconomically. Likewise, if I were a woman, I wouldn't want to work on a team with five dudes oblivious to their dude-dom.

Across all cultures (perhaps across all of history), women are more risk averse. In fact, feminist activists didn't push to get more women into tech until tech was a higher paying, lower risk endeavor. Only then did it become scandalous that young women were choosing different career paths (but interestingly, the fact that young women are earning more than young men and graduating from college in far greater rates th…

> women are more risk averse.

When was the last time you did something as risky as get pregnant?

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