Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far

Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far
nytimes.com

At Google, something like only 1 in 5 tech workers are female, and their diversity practices are fairly extreme compared to the norm. It's logically more difficult to find qualified female coders because there are less of them applying for positions. REQUIRING a certain benchmark of females to be hired each month or year, when HR is picking from a much smaller candidate pool, is going to result in hiring potentially less qualified individuals. That could actually cause a greater gender bias if women are being hired to hit a metric but potentially performing at a lower quality than their male counterparts. I say "potentially" because obviously there are a ton of great female coders, but there are a lot of shoddy ones too. Same with men.

As an example: You have ten applicants for one position. 2 are female, 8 are male. Just for fun, lets say "33% of all programmers, male and female, produce good code and have a qualifying resume". The chances that you will have a qualified male candidate are going to be greater based on those two facts alone. If you need to hit a 50% men/50% women hiring metric, you're taking a gamble on the work quality of women hired.

~BUT~: WE HAVE TO OFFER STRONGER INCENTIVES FOR WOMEN IN TECH IN ORDER FOR THE PLAYING FIELD TO BE LEVELED. Future female coders aren't going to feel inspired or motivated to enter a workforce that's dominated by men. The solution sometimes looks faulty when viewed on a case-by-case basis, but we need to offer an olive branch in the form of better job placement opportunities until women are inspired to pursue tech and have equal rights and job prospects.

The divide is really whether you want force extra diversity at the expense of a meritocracy or if you want a meritocracy. With all the 'more women' vs. 'boys club' nonsense, a person not thinking critically could forget that some people want to work with the best people so they can do the best work and all the labels in between don't mean shit. If that ends up being more women or any other group that is a minority in tech it makes a tiny difference compared to being able to really achieve something meaningful.