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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

#151

Post by throwawayaway »

tomjen3 wrote: post #143
throwawayaway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 That sure sounds like most nerds I know - we are just so high on the social scale, even pop stars wish they were us. And let me put it this way: I have no intention of walking on eggshells my entire career, never knowing when I hurt some delicate being. I don't for a second believe women are that delicate (there are far too many wom…

And you are some sort of compiling automaton? Keep telling it like it is - you stick to your guns. You won't have to walk on eggshells when you're done trust me.

Oppressive majority: I meant white male, rather than programming nerd.

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

#152

Post by mahyarm »

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 not a 5 day process. This is the standard bay area interview process:

1. 15 minute recruiter call

2. 1 hour remote screener interview

3. 4-6 45m-1hr onsite interviews. They can be done all on one day or possibly split up if your local.

4. Wait 1 day to a couple of weeks to get an offer or a rejection.

The real pain in the ass part is the onsite one. But that is 1 day, not a week. And because they go for high false negative rates, and you need multiple offers for higher salaries, you need to do onsites at multiple places.

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

#153

Post by throwawayaway »

ManFromUranus wrote: post #139
throwawayaway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pers…

100 people should modify their behaviour if they are being impolite and unprofessional.

The line is subjective I agree. Being polite and courteous rather than unprofessional works best for everyone. It's pretty easy too.

The path of least resistance is being followed and we are all the worse for it.

Also the opinions you are expressing are very much those belonging to a member of the oppressive majority, as far as I am concerned. 100 to 1? Oppressive majority? Fairly cut and dried.

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

#154

Post by tempestn »

> Fog Creek doesn't get any immediate benefits

I'd say articles like this one are pretty significant benefits. I doubt they overlooked the PR benefits of this program. (Which of course doesn't mean it isn't still a great thing. Just that "no benefit" is a bit of a stretch.)

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

#155

Post by Apocryphon »

dominotw wrote: post #24
geebee wrote: post #10

Several people have already mentioned it here, but I'm also very pleased to read this line: "Hall asked a simple question: Why didn't Chipps, a brilliant engineer, ever apply to work at Fog Creek? Chipps said she didn't think she would make it through their rigorous testing process." I do think that the grueling and intimidating software interview process is a very serious problem in our field. This one sentence hint…

i can only imagine people who work at Google are some sort of interview ninjas.

I disagree. How many people actually do the bare minimum and work their way through Cracking the Code Interview, and make sure they know all of the material covered by those questions? I think having that would do a long way towards proving oneself in the tech interviews.

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

#156

Post by dasil003 »

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #129
tenpoundhammer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with a 10x developer once, he was awful and I couldn't stand to work with him. Although he could produce an insane amount of code and functionality his presence was like throwing a grenade into the middle of the dev team everyday. He left to take a job at google and the overall team productivity went up significantly. He basically did 10X individually,but took 11x away from the team. So team work is pretty d…

I wanted to reply to all the comments so I just decided to reply to my own comment. For those telling me I'm misinterpreting what a 10x dev is, I don't think a solid definition of the 10x developer actually exists it's mostly in the eye of the beholder. I think it's mostly in what other people think of them especially that guy that hands out raises. So it's incredibly subjective. I say a 10x developer is someone that…

I agree everyone has their own definition, but the one you are giving is a pointy-haired definition, where the only metric is LoC and a successful demo of some feature.

Even though it's hard to measure a lot of things like technical debt, architectural benefits, bugs, edge case handling, UX polish, teamwork, etc, it doesn't mean that you can reasonably get away with discounting those effects when you talk about 10x. The 10x is referring to productivity, which is implicitly a net measure (gross productivity is just activity, and no one willingly pays for that).

So yeah, you can be 10x in terms of cranking out working code a lot faster (rare), but if that is blowing other people up then it's not meaningful to say they are more productive, in fact it's extremely harmful to risk putting them on a pedestal like this in front of clueless management. For me, true 10x is more intangible than cranking out functionality, it's more about the ability to reconcile the details with the big picture, and zeroing in on solutions that solve the most problems and create the fewest. How this actually looks in practice varies from project to project, but I think it rarely correlates with sustaining a 200wpm typing speed for 8 hours a day.

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

#157

Post by tomjen3 »

throwawayaway wrote: post #151
tomjen3 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The price of the privilege and prestige of being a member of the oppressive majority That sure sounds like most nerds I know - we are just so high on the social scale, even pop stars wish they were us. And let me put it this way: I have no intention of walking on eggshells my entire career, never knowing when I hurt some delicate being. I don't for a second believe women are that delicate (there are far too many wom…

And you are some sort of compiling automaton? Keep telling it like it is - you stick to your guns. You won't have to walk on eggshells when you're done trust me. Oppressive majority: I meant white male, rather than programming nerd.

And I am pointing out that you can't simply include all white males and say that they are all oppressing majority (for one there are more people who are not white males on this planet) - not only would you have to include nerds, but you would also have to claim that homeless people are oppressing (since they tend to be men).

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

#158

Post by tristor »

brighteyes wrote: post #64
ashray wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (www.gapjumpers.me) are trying to solve the gender diversity issue in tech by using blind auditions as a first filter. Our data shows that blind auditions result in greater diversity numbers. By using a technical challenge as the first step and fast forwarding people to an advanced interview stage, we're eliminating candidate reluctance and increasing transparency (the candidate interacts directly with the hiring…

I wonder if you could also make the matching part of the process blind as well? That is, the article mentions that women might be less likely to apply to places like Fog Creek - but if you matched applicants to employers blindly both ways (blindly to them, of course, you the matcher would not be blind), so the applicants didn't know who they were interviewing for during the interview? Then developers with lower self-…

I'd find this very interesting myself, although I'd have concerns about potential employers in some ways. As long as I was able to provide a list of employers I DON'T want to work for up front and have those auto-filtered from my blind interviews I'd be totally open to trying out this process through a recruitment firm. I personally tend to pick my employers broadly on three questions: 1) Are they doing something that's actually innovative? 2) Do they behave ethically in the marketplace towards their employers, vendors, and customers? 3) Is the position located somewhere that I'd be okay with living?

If the answer to any of those is "no", I won't even bother applying/interviewing and I automatically turn down recruiters from that company. #2 in particular is a big one, there are way too many businesses in the world from startups to big corps that behave unethically, and I refuse to be a part of it.

Being able to work with a recruiting platform where I can detail these qualifications up-front and trust that they'll be respected would give me the piece of mind to put myself in a situation where I'd be matched to an employer based on their needs and my qualifications without concern that I'd be getting screwed somehow.

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

#159

Post by thedufer »

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.

To add to what brudgers said, Trello also came out of Fog Creek (and somewhat more recently).

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

#160

Post by gaius »

thedufer wrote: post #159
gaius wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To add to what brudgers said, Trello also came out of Fog Creek (and somewhat more recently).

I don't know what that is, or anyone who uses it.
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