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Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

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Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#131

Post by api »

Dewie wrote: post #124
api wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And it may be that it intimidates more women than men." I've been looking around for a developer recently, and in looking at the profiles of women vs. men at places like AngelList I noticed a few key differences in how they described themselves. We're talking about people with very similar academic backgrounds here with similar levels of experience. Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while…

> Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X." Depending on what X is, and on context, it can be obvious that "worked on X" simply means that they worked on X, but that doesn't mean that others did not also work on it, with them. Especially if "X" is too big and complex for one person to do on ones own. In particular,…

"But this interpretation doesn't fit with the usual men-are-egotistical-narcissists-compared-to-women. So pay this comment no mind."

I'm just reporting the patterns I saw. That's all.

I wouldn't say "egotistical narcissist," just that the culture probably holds out different behavioral expectations for men and women and that gives rise to differences in how people present themselves.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#132

Post by dripton »

marktangotango wrote: post #30
matart wrote: post #14

As a younger male about to finish his software engineering degree and start applying I agree with these points. I am intimidated at the rigorous testing some companies use. I don't have the confidence that others might have in there ability. I am ultimately looking for a mentoring workplace ( just to start) where I can build my confidence quickly and start producing for the company.

>>just to start One place I worked at had a senior dev slash architect who really enjoyed mentoring green developers. This company did tend to hire people straight out of college, and this guy was really good at bringing them up to speed. It was really quiet nice to behold. The problem was, the hires that were 'good' tended to leave after a year or two, leaving the less talented and motivated to muddle along. I think…

I don't think that has anything to do with mentorship. I think it's just that most companies don't give most young programmers big enough raises to reflect their increased value on the open market.

Lots of companies don't want to hire new grads, so there's a significant price premium for hiring someone with a couple years of experience. The companies that are willing to hire new grads aren't always willing to give annual raises that reflect that price premium. So lots of programmers with a couple of years of experience see that they can get a 20% raise by switching jobs. So they switch jobs.

(This happens with programmers later in their career too, but the difference between 8 and 10 years of experience is much less dramatic than the difference between 0 and 2. If a company gives the same annual raise to all its programmers in the same performance band regardless of experience, that raise may be too small for the newest ones, even if it's just right for the middle ones.)

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#133

Post by gaius »

brudgers wrote: post #15
jnbiche wrote: post #7

I agree that lack of gender diversity in tech is an obvious problem, and I laud Fog Creek for trying to address this problem. However, I'd like to strongly emphasis the fact that one of the main problems Fog Creek identified as hindering the most talented female developers from applying to Fog Creek, is also a huge problem that prevents many of the most talented male developers from applying to Fog Creek. Ironically,…

It's a provocative thesis that Fog Creek hires mediocre developers. The evidence of their products suggests otherwise. Of course as Atwood's friend Scott says, "We're all amateurs," so perhaps Fog Creek just hires the less mediocre on an absolute rather than relative scale.

Does it? I don't know a single person who uses any of their products. And I don't think it is plausible that the best devs in the world are flocking to work on a website for project managers.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#134

Post by ripb »

krschultz wrote: post #119
ripb wrote: post #112

There are more women than men in employment in the US, where is the daily articles on that? And the effort to tackle that? And the constant shaming of companies that employ more women than men? There are 1.4x the amount of women graduating college than men. Where are the daily articles on that massive issue? Where is the effort to do something about that? Where is the constant headlines on how many more women are gra…

This absolute, unrelenting and incredibly transparent (tech = money, status currently) narrative being sharted at everyone in the tech industry on a daily basis is driving me toward getting out of it altogether. It's not being thrown at the tech industry. It's people within the industry calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the industry as a community under siege.

>It's not being thrown at the tech industry. It's people within the industry calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the industry as a community under siege.

Actually, the vast majority of it is being carried out by people on the fringe of the industry in roles as "journalists" and similar who've never spent a day working within it.

And yes, I see the tech industry as being under siege.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#135

Post by brudgers »

gaius wrote: post #133
brudgers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a provocative thesis that Fog Creek hires mediocre developers. The evidence of their products suggests otherwise. Of course as Atwood's friend Scott says, "We're all amateurs," so perhaps Fog Creek just hires the less mediocre on an absolute rather than relative scale.

Does it? I don't know a single person who uses any of their products. And I don't think it is plausible that the best devs in the world are flocking to work on a website for project managers.

Do you know anyone who uses StackOverflow? Not the same fictitious person as Fog Creek, but the many of the same people.

https://www.fogcreek.com/about/

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#136

Post by LunaSea »

krschultz wrote: post #122
ManFromUranus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for starters, COBOL and FORTRAN are effectively ancient technologies are far as much of modern business programming is concerned. I would omit them from your resume. State them for interest sake only. Also they are not a charity organization, the business goal is to get value out of you. Perhaps you did not demonstrate sufficient value, or seemed out of touch with current technology. I have found that programmer…

but you do have to stay up to date with tech, and that is a battle that gets harder and harder as you age. Wait what? That right there is blatant age-ism. You know what helps learn new technology? When it's the same shit we did 15 years ago repackaged. WSDL is coming back around right now, just in JSON or Protobuf form. Don't you think mobile apps that have to sync with the server are a lot like server/client apps fr…

I think his point is more related to the learning curve.

If you're in your fifties it doesn't mean that you are stupid but it does mean that you're going to have to learn a lot of technologies from the recruiting company's stack.

Now if they can find someone that already know's them, their return on investment will be faster and safer.

The older developer will also most likely not program on his free time for family reasons or because he has more interesting hobbies.

Now this is controversial but I still would say that this is career / life choice which means that not having a very sexy resume won't get you everywhere no matter what your experience is.

This of course sounds very "hipsterish" but if you loot at the kinds of companies that are talked about here (start-ups and ex-startups that grew), it does make financial sense.

I'm not a psychologist but I would also wager that age gap is lowering team performance due to a lesser bond / closeness between the members.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#138

Post by tomjen3 »

protonfish wrote: post #23
mooreds wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tough though, because when you are a small company that expects developers to jump in and be productive, you do need some kind of process. That process can be referral based, in which case testing isn't as necessary because you can rely on past shared experience, but that obviously limits your talent pool. When you are interacting with an unknown (or a less known) person, you have to have some kind of vetting pr…

Only if you have a policy of not having positions for Junior programmers. Fog Creek has the same hypocrisy as any other company that demands X years of experience from applicants but consider it somebody else's problem how they get that.

Worse: they demand that you can code, and don't consider it their problem to teach you how to do that.

Anyway I thought it was well established that years of experience is a bullshit measurement anyway and you should just apply no matter what - worst thing happens, you end up getting hired.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#139

Post by ManFromUranus »

throwawayaway wrote: post #100
ManFromUranus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and forcing them to choose between having a family or a successful career This is not true. There are always trade-offs in life, even for men. Almost everything has an opportunity cost. You focus on your family the career suffers, focus on your career family suffers. The same is true of men except they don't have a biological clock. >Add on top of this any sort of general sexist behavior that is rampant in offices l…

The price of the privilege and prestige of being a member of the oppressive majority is eternal vigilance against overstepping the mark. Sure it's inconvenient, but politeness doesn't cost much effort. Eggshells is a good way of putting it. If you or anyone you see steps over the line, get an apology out there and discuss it and move on. Over time what constitutes a transgression seems to get more minor and trivial i…

>The price of the privilege and prestige of being a member of the oppressive majority

I disagree with this assertion that I belong to an oppressive majority, or that the majority is oppressive.

>Sure it's inconvenient, but politeness doesn't cost much effort. Eggshells is a good way of putting it.

Tolerance goes both ways. Why should 100 people modify their behaviour so that 1 person doesn't get offended, when 1 person could modify simply raise their threshold for offence, and save a 100 people a lot of hassle.

>If you or anyone you see steps over the line

There is no way to know what or where the line is. The line is totally subjective and unique to each individual. So it would simply be easier and less risky (remaining employed wise) to avoid interacting with the person than spend the time to learn how to avoid triggering their offence reaction. I guarantee the path of least resistance is the one that will be followed.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#140

Post by ManFromUranus »

vonmoltke wrote: post #118
ManFromUranus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for starters, COBOL and FORTRAN are effectively ancient technologies are far as much of modern business programming is concerned. I would omit them from your resume. State them for interest sake only. Also they are not a charity organization, the business goal is to get value out of you. Perhaps you did not demonstrate sufficient value, or seemed out of touch with current technology. I have found that programmer…

Fortran, while it might be ancient in computing terms, is still an actively-developed language[1] with multiple open-source and commercial compilers. I started writing Fortran professionally when I was 26, nine years ago. In certain scientific realms it is still used heavily, and it generally still kicks everything else's ass at linear algebra. Kind of a tangent, but I have a soft spot for that language. [1] Most rec…

Fortran is not used at most businesses. I doubt Fortran is used much anywhere outside of possibly engineering. Even then Engineers probably use some type of AutoCad like software that does modelling, and therefore nobody needs to know FOrtran anyway.
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