Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by jnbiche » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 11:36 PM UTC

army wrote: post #111

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,…

You are wrong about the Dunning-Kruger effect - there is not a negative correlation between perceived and actual ability, just a weaker positive correlation than you might expect. There's plenty of debate about the causes of the effect in the original Dunning-Kruger paper. Moreover, if you look at the actual paper (rather than exaggerated retellings of it), you will see that perceived ability is actually positively c…

I regret my initial phrasing about Dunning-Kruger, which was incorrect as you have pointed out (and as I conceded below some 3 hours before you wrote your rebuttal).

Also, my point is that if I'm making $100-$200,000 and am happy with my situation, particularly when I live in a lower cost area than the Bay Area, then I am much less likely to put myself through the pain of one of these interview processes. Unlike lots of workers, software devs actually have a choice.

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

#172

Post by wpietri » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 11:39 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #141

wpietri wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Women can do whatever they want to do, if they aren't in tech, they probably don't want to be there. This is so far from the lived reality of women in tech or any of the data on hiring that you should be embarrassed to open your mouth. On HN most people get that before opining on the merits of functional programming, they should have tried it. Or at the very least spent a fair bit of time reading about what people…

I can come up with at least four reasons why people want to be lawyers in 2005 more than in 1965, without caring what is between their legs. These may or may not be their actual reasons, those are known only to the individual. Honestly you don't deserve any reply though, after the way you treated OP. It is always the person who makes a claim who has to provide evidence for it - it is NOT the person who disagrees with…

> It is always the person who makes a claim who has to provide evidence for it - it is NOT the person who disagrees with the claim.

You miss my point. Suppose I turn up and say, "The Earth is flat!" And maybe I even provide some evidence. Is it your job to argue and argue until I admit you are right? No. You are free to go about your business. If you don't take the time because you think I am a lunatic or a troll, does that prove me right? No. It is my job to know what's going on, not your job to convince me of it.

I make this obvious point only because many people like ManFromUranus seem to believe that anybody who says, "Hey, maybe several thousand years of blatant sexism didn't end on Jan 1" is obligated to argue with them until they are convinced. They aren't.

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

#173

Post by Kalium » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 11:43 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #170

Kalium wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, serious response: you are perpetuating the notion that it's acceptable to attempt to silence an opinion that you disagree with sufficiently. Is this the norm you wish to encourage? That it's OK to exclude people who don't think sufficiently like you? Please, do not attempt to answer. I would like you to contemplate this. It's not senseless navel-gazing and is quite significant. Also, tone matters because we're de…

I like your presumption that I couldn't possibly have thought of this before. As well as your ridiculous assumed superiority in ordering me not to "attempt" to answer. Gosh golly, anon, please point out more of what's truly significant. Without you I would be lost. I think any opinion is welcome in honest dialog between people who are pursuing sincere understanding and are acting with sufficient empathy toward all pa…

I was being charitable and attempting to offer food for thought. I now understand that both were in error.

I happen to entertain the fringe belief that call-out culture is unhealthy and serves to further the problems it purports to address. I can see that you do not share this belief.

Good day to you.

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

#174

Post by bigger_cheese » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 11:50 PM UTC

ManFromUranus wrote: post #140

vonmoltke wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Engineer here. I work at a large industrial plant Fortran is used quite a bit. We have numerical simulation code which runs and feeds back into our operating process written in Fortran (mostly Thermodynamics and Chemical kinetic's simulations). Plant Operators make descions based on the output of Fortran models all without knowing or caring that the things are written in Fortran.

You can trace the herritage of the code back to the 80's but it has been more or less constantly maintained since then there is a lot of company IP wrapped up in the code. You certainly don't need to know Fortran to use or understand the models (it's wrapped in a 'modernish' C++ GUI) but the engineers working on improvements to the backend definately need to know Fortran.

I suspect there is a lot of reasons for the prevalence of Fortran in Engineering code. Industrial plants tends to operate continously you can't exactly replace all the infrastructure without large downtime. A large part of our plant was built in 1996, so the technology is very much what you'd expect from that era (RS/6000 Unix boxes everywhere in the control system). The Libraies and compilers etc all have to link against that vintage. It's not slated to get upgraded until 2018 and we will probably try to push that as far back as we can. When the upgrade happens I suspect we will be on Wintel (and in another 20 years that will probably be just as outdated).

The other reason for Fortran is that Engineering processes tend to be stable. A chemical reaction does not change so once some code is written and it works very low incentive to replace it. At my plant our models were first written in the 80's (when personal computers began to become ubiquitous) by senior engineers in the company - these were guys who grew up in the 70's and were raised on Fortran. Eventually the code was handed to the junior engineers to maintain. The juniors passed up the ranks to become seniors and when it came time to write the next generation of models "I'll base it on this existing Fortran Model which I know inside out and works really well" became the mantra and so Fortran become self perpetuating and entrenched across the industry. If it had been a decade later would probably have been C

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

#175

Post by throwawayaway » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 11:50 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #162

throwawayaway wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that Ira Glass quote, maybe some day I'll get there. I think you are just positively improving your work, I don't think what you are saying is an application of Dunning-Kruger. Why in the first instance do you give your negative assessment credence, and have doubts about your positive assessment in the second? Dunning-Kruger says both assessments are likely to be wrong, and in both cases you are striving to im…

It's about how one strives to improve. Have you read the original paper? http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/... Incompetent people think they're doing fine because they can't tell the difference between good and bad work. Highly competent people, readily seeing their own flaws, think they don't do as well as they are doing. (At least until you have them grade a bunch of other work, at which p…

haven't read it thanks. are you saying the paper is about how one strives to improve? - because it's not titled that. the title is pretty clear. so is the abstract.

i think we agree that self assessments aren't worth much.

i think our disagreement stems from me applying it from a neutral ability perspective and you applying it to your own self assessment, where you don't question your basic competency.

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

#176

Post by bootload » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 12:14 AM UTC

api wrote: post #38

skywhopper wrote: post #6

I'm glad the "rigorous testing process" was mentioned. The facade of "we only hire superninja-kickass-hyperexperts and we will verify that you are such a programmer before we hire you" attracts a certain type of person, and intimidates another. And it may be that it intimidates more women than men. But the article seems to glide past that and presents the idea that five years of experience might change someone's will…

"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." Women would highlight the cooperative nature of their work, while men would give the impression that they did it all themselves."

Cannot emphasise this quote enough. It is the difference between, "We" and "I", the basis of any community where you put yourself second. It is also the essence of good leadership.

If you want a lone wolf programmer as a new-hire in a small startup, maybe this type isn't for you. As your company grows, the type of programmer described by @api above, the one who works in teams where your livelyhood and codebase is on the line, is the person I'd want to work with and for.

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

#177

Post by marssaxman » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 12:28 AM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #34

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…

I'm a big fan of looking at developers' github contributions. It's a good way to see that they can actually write code and it doesn't involve a high-pressure whiteboard test. On the other hand, it can be a negative for somebody working for a company that discourages or forbids open sourcing their work. Or people who don't have free time to spend on FOSS projects.

...or who work on open source projects that aren't hosted on github?

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

#178

Post by thedufer » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:02 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #160

thedufer wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh. Well, in my defense that was pretty unlikely. Hacker news search shows that it's been mentioned in the title of 475 stories, at least 25 of which hit the front page.

Well, we've still got Stack Exchange. Surely you've heard of that?

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

#179

Post by RogerL » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 2:59 AM UTC

Kronopath wrote: post #89

jnbiche wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my interview attitude is that I'm there to find out what you can do, not to find out what you can't, Have you ever considered trying to find out and confirm what the candidate has done in the past, instead of the almost impossible task of finding out what they "can do" in a few short hours? Barring some major new life issue, a developer's past performance is highly predictive of their future performance. Edit: Remo…

What about developers with little experience, that come right out of school, or are applying for an internship position? Are you going to cut them out of the process? If so, are you okay with the fact that you'll often be missing out on getting an early lead on good junior developers? Good developers rarely kick around on the job market, and so it's often much more difficult to hire them when they've become more seni…

Talk to them about school projects or classes. I recall one candidate was in a compiler class, and told me about the compiler s/he had working. I asked 'what's a recursive descent parser'. They didn't recognize the term. I asked what grammar the language had. They didn't know. Other's show excitement, talk about having had to study things on their own because it wasn't covered in class but they really wanted to learn it, and so on. You quickly get a sense of who has a fire burning and who is going through the motions.

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

#180

Post by tenpoundhammer » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 3:50 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #156

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I'm going to quote this on my blog, I love everythin about this comment.