We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#131

Post by rocqua » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #52

Collective madness is largely reached at this point: the writer is complaining about a totally self-made issue. If I was trying to recruit men for nurse jobs, or people of color in Korea I would ran in a similar pipeline problem. The real issue is that "diversity" had became a metrics to reach for its own sake by companies instead of simply recruiting people that fit the job. Moreover, you can’t complain about so-cal…

The desire for diversity is not for its own sake.

Recruiting people that 'fit the job' leads to a mono-culture. Besides being unfair, this is bad for companies. It means you get collective blind-spots, collective hype-trains. Moreover, you reduce the effective hiring pool. Because, if you have a mono-culture then there is significant disruption to adding things outside the mono-culture. This reduction in the hiring pool means there is a lot of talent left on the table.

This means you hit a local maximum that is not a global one. Trying to move to the global maximum means moving away from the local maximum for a while.

> Moreover, you can’t complain about so-called systemic sexism or racism when your policy is to not recruit white, asian or men that could fulfill the job precisely because of their race/sex.

You can however complain about systemic disadvantages conferred to women and people who aren't Caucasian and have a policy to prefer people who are women or not Caucasian. Especially if you think that these people would have a positive effect on your company.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#132

Post by baddox » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

stormbrew wrote: post #16

I don't think the point of criticizing "it's a pipeline problem" is that there isn't a pipeline problem, but that it's an easy out to avoid taking action at whatever stage of the 'pipeline' you happen to be working at. If, as an manager at a FAANG, you say "it's a pipeline problem" you're probably saying that there aren't enough candidates because not enough women graduate from ST programs. If you're a program develo…

And the point of criticizing the criticism of "it's a pipeline problem" is that, wherever you try to improve the pipeline, you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment. Working near the end of the pipe, you'll quickly hit diminishing returns. If the input at your segment is biased 4:1, then you can't improve past it. Sure, if your output is 8:1 then it's bad, but you won't g…

> wherever you try to improve the pipeline, you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment.

But that's basically just complaining that there's no quick and easy fix to your hiring problem. Well, too bad, maybe it actually is a really hard problem that you're going to have to work really hard at for a long time. If there was some relatively trivial solution like "have all hiring managers do this diversity webinar" then I'm sure the problem would've been solved already.

In other words, to the extent that there may be a pipeline problem, that is your problem.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#133

Post by choppaface » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #128

Honestly for young children I wouldn't want any of the girls to become software engineers. Most Software Engineers including myself are friendly but also grumpy, nerdy and annoying, with poor communication skills and an unhealthy lifestyle. For some reason for men its OK because all they do is work, but for women I'd rather my daughters have more human contact and nicer environment - esp one without developers in it.…

One of the most effective ways to make devs less “grumpy nerdy and annoying” is to inject the dev community with voices that are different. There must be bottom-up pressure for there to be positive change.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#134

Post by lovehashbrowns » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

lordgrenville wrote: post #57

ergfdgs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a recent poll that 90% of Latin Americans don't like the term.

The poll is here [0]. It was discussed recently in an NYT oped here [1]. It was an interesting result that definitely altered my opinion. [0] https://medium.com/@ThinkNowTweets/progressive-latino-pollst... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/opinion/latinix-warren-de...

Wait, that question is awful. As a Hispanic person, I would also put "Hispanic" but that doesn't put into context why. If someone sees me, reads my name, and uses that to refer to me as Latinx, I wouldn't be offended at all, and would prefer Latinx over something like Hispanic.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#135

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

jdmoreira wrote: post #15

at my workplace we try very hard to hire women programmers and we are at about 10% - 15% which is still quite low but better than other companies around us. At the same time I noticed that the majority of engineering managers, product owners and agile coaches in our company are women. Some of these women were programmers at some point in their career. I'm not deducing anything from this (especially since it’s a singl…

My suspicion is that the pipeline has fewer women, partly because they leave Engineering so quickly. Thus there are hardly any experienced women in the pipeline.

Since an Engineer may change jobs half a dozen times over a career, but women generally change once (to non-Engineering job) we have a cumulative effect.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#136

Post by lmeyerov » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

sbilstein wrote: post #26

whb07 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm ready for the downvotes, but its worth it. I don't think it is generally good to look for divisions and more ways to separate from the whole. I don't know if that is because you're out somewhere in super woke SF or similar but you've already used terms like "LatinX" and "person of color" like someone who is already woke but maybe stop for a sec? Why don't you see yourself as a person who likes CS/tech and like…

I think you might be reading into what I wrote a bit. This is just how I feel...not how I WANT to feel. Obviously, these are biases and anxieties that exist in my own mixed-race low-income immigrant brain that i wish weren't there. As another latino founder told me..."walk into a VC pitch meeting with the confidence of a tall white man." Like I don't hate caucasians but sometimes can't help but notice these differenc…

Not being a straight cis white male etc is now a MASSIVE superpower for fundraising and company building. I am happy to help anyone in this bucket for their pitching process if they do not already see that.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#137

Post by tshaddox » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #61

TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the point of criticizing the criticism of "it's a pipeline problem" is that, wherever you try to improve the pipeline, you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment. Working near the end of the pipe, you'll quickly hit diminishing returns. If the input at your segment is biased 4:1, then you can't improve past it. Sure, if your output is 8:1 then it's bad, but you won't g…

> you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment People have been fired from Google for suggesting exactly that.

I don't know about people getting fired for saying that, but it's probably not a true or reasonable thing to say. Consider that, to the extent that there may be a pipeline problem, one significant cause of it may be the conditions of work in your industry.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#138

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #132

TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the point of criticizing the criticism of "it's a pipeline problem" is that, wherever you try to improve the pipeline, you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment. Working near the end of the pipe, you'll quickly hit diminishing returns. If the input at your segment is biased 4:1, then you can't improve past it. Sure, if your output is 8:1 then it's bad, but you won't g…

> wherever you try to improve the pipeline, you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment. But that's basically just complaining that there's no quick and easy fix to your hiring problem. Well, too bad, maybe it actually is a really hard problem that you're going to have to work really hard at for a long time. If there was some relatively trivial solution like "have all hirin…

Exactly. And that's what the pipeline argument tells. Whereas the more vocal pro-diversity movements tend to assume that if you haven't fixed that problem directly and immediately, it must be your moral failing.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#139

Post by TurkishPoptart » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

sbilstein wrote: post #74

ergfdgs wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're Latin American! Impose the right terminology! This is cultural colonialism from the, typically WASP, urban elite. Who possibly finds Spanish's gendered pronouns annoying? How many are them are native Spanish speakers? And yet they feel slighted and therefore try to impose their (typically poor) Spanish on us! They ignore that, technically, Spanish has three genders (the neutral which is almost, but not complet…

For real, I've looked into this and in LatAm some people prefer Latines as the neutral collective noun. I like that myself cause I'm down with gender neutrality but everyone thinks it's a fucking typo so I give up. Outside of the Bay Area tech scene, I can't imagine I would ever use LatinX in Spanish conversation. I choose my battles.

I don't understand what's wrong with the terms "Latino", "Latina", and "Hispanic". These are _Spanish_ words, and we're speaking English, so it doesn't make much sense to invent new words just to appease the tiny activist trans community on Twitter.

Re: We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring

#140

Post by 16bytes » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

ajross wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a fair characterization. Damore's memo (which I assume is what you're talking about) absolutely did not attribute Google's lack of women candidates to a lack of graduates in the pipeline. It went with a straight on (and largely unsourced) "women are biologically different" argument. Wikipedia's page on the controversy is relatively good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch... And e…

You're misreporting the very link you quoted. Indeed, the Wikipedia description is pretty fair. I'll quote the relevant paragraph directly: "James Damore was spurred to write the memo when a Google diversity program he attended solicited feedback.[2] The memo was written on a flight to China.[12][13] Calling the culture at Google an "ideological echo chamber", the memo states that while discrimination exists, it is e…

Damore wasn't fired because he argued that the pipeline shortages largely explain gender disparity, he was fired because he made women felt excluded and othered. He wasn't fired because he argued against diversity, he was fired because he threatened inclusivity.

To quote:

"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership"

"Abilities" is the operative word there, as in women, on average, aren't as able. Pointing that averages don't imply individual ability doesn't make it better.