Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees

#11

Post by raganwald » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 1:35 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #10

"Subtle cues in the physical environment of companies such as Star Trek posters and video games lead to women being less interested in being a part of an organization when compared to a neutral office environment." It also self selects for women who dig video games and Star Trek. Liking those things are geek things, not guy things and contrary to popular belief, women that like those things do exist. Furthermore, I'm…

Your entire comment seems to be based on the premise that either companies have a strong insider/outsider culture or they are soulless places to work. When in reality, there are many, many companies that have strong company cultures without somehow alienating a large number of otherwise qualified prospective employees.

Speaking as a person with a fair chunk of experience managing software development, I find it difficult to believe that management's only choices are frat-boy culture or soul-sucking bland corporation.

I'll speak very frankly. When a company has a half dozen or a dozen employees, when a company is scrambling for traction, it can be a great motivator to have a strong insider culture. Steve Jobs hung a pirate flag up at the Macintosh offices for a reason.

But companies grow, and part of growing is, well, growing. You need to select from a larger pool of prospective employees. You need to bring in some new DNA instead of doubling up on the DNA you already have.

I can't speak to this specific company, but as a general principle, successful companies become less exclusive and possible--I am not speaking about Dropbox--less discriminatory as they grow.

If you want an example, look at Apple. It's hyper-successful, and famous for how hard they work at inclusiveness and tolerance.

Re: Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees

#12

Post by malandrew » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:34 AM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #11

malandrew wrote: post #10

"Subtle cues in the physical environment of companies such as Star Trek posters and video games lead to women being less interested in being a part of an organization when compared to a neutral office environment." It also self selects for women who dig video games and Star Trek. Liking those things are geek things, not guy things and contrary to popular belief, women that like those things do exist. Furthermore, I'm…

Your entire comment seems to be based on the premise that either companies have a strong insider/outsider culture or they are soulless places to work. When in reality, there are many, many companies that have strong company cultures without somehow alienating a large number of otherwise qualified prospective employees. Speaking as a person with a fair chunk of experience managing software development, I find it diffi…

You're reading my post as a false dichotomy, however that was not my intent.

The culture of companies can and do change over time and will in response to wanting to be more inclusive if that is how it needs to change in order to be more competitive. Every single employee that joins a company, joins it knowing what it is and leaves their imprint on the company's culture as they spend more time there and become part of the group. No company's culture is static.

What I was getting at is that you shouldn't complain about the culture you willingly joined. Don't like everything you see, gain acceptance and be the change you want to see in the company. If you do things right, the company culture will become a little bit more inclusive without becoming soulless.

Complaining is what leads to soulless places to work at where everyone is quietly in fear of offending anyone else.

Re: Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees

#13

Post by malandrew » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:37 AM UTC

iamdave wrote: post #6

raganwald wrote: post #3

Of course, correlation does not equal causation . If there is something about their "culture" that is off-putting to women, you can't "fix" it by changing the hiring practices. You fix the culture and the hiring practices follow suit organically. I suspect that the title is wrong, and that the thesis of the article is that there is something strongly biased about Dropbox's culture and the experiences recounted about…

I was busy writing a comment while you cranked this out, so I'll just reply underneath yours since we more or less agree. The premise of the article is a valid one but the arguments underneath are incredibly weak. Perhaps a question on how Dropbox might be used to solve income inequality or the unaffordability of housing in San Francisco would reveal as much about someone’s creativity—and more about their character—t…

I see why the name "The Bromance Room" is a demonstrably masculine name, but not why "The Break-up Room" is.

The article said:

    "‘The Break-up Room,’ by a male"

... what if this woman had been interviewed in that exact same room by a female? Would that have changed things? What if a male later on were interviewed in the same room by a female? I dunno about you, but "The break-up room" is pretty gender-neutral to me and that any gender-bias that person felt is entirely in their own head, due mainly to the fact that her interviewer was may (a statistical likelihood in this industry).

Re: Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees

#14

Post by johnbm » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 9:44 AM UTC

"Her advice to Dropbox? “Founders are looking for ‘objective’ measures such as school ranking, GPAs, SAT scores, but fail to recognize that these are biased. Dropbox and other start-ups should pioneer new ways to identify people who can succeed on the core set of job responsibilities."

Yes, they're biased towards girls, who excel in school over boys from a young age.

"Indeed, the trend is getting worse. In 1985, 37 percent of computer science undergraduate degree recipients were women. By 2011 this proportion had dropped to 18 percent."

In 1985, the gender ratio in colleges was 1:1. Today, it is 3:2 in favor of women. So that means that not only did the percentage get chopped in half, but it did so completely against the larger trend.

The actual explanation can be found in the Norwegian Gender Paradox: the more men and women are free to choose their occupation, the more they choose stereotypical gender occupations. When men and women actually choose what they want to do, they don't choose equally.

To the great chagrin of feminists.

Re: Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees

#15

Post by espertus » Tue, Feb 18, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

I agree with the author that asking questions about superheroes is going to weed out qualified people (unless the project involves superheroes). When I interview someone, I do my best not to ask questions irrelevant to the job. I don't know why someone would ask a question biased against people from different cultures, etc.

As for whether Dropbox should change its culture to be more attractive to women, that's their choice. They should be aware that their decor might turn off some otherwise qualified people, whether or not they choose to act on that information.

I've worked for and interviewed for Google for about ten years, and our training includes not asking irrelevant and/or culturally biased questions.