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Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

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Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#231

Post by sokoloff »

jeromegv wrote: post #189
f154hfds wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The Case For Color Blindness' by Coleman Hughes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_hRr5J9UUc I was sort of raised to believe 'Color blindness' was the right approach to take. It wasn't until the last couple years that I realized there was significant push back to the philosophy.

Let's say your company has a workforce where the minorities are only 5% but they are let's say 30% of the population. Would that be fair to assume that Color-blindness has failed? Or perhaps there is some kind of biais that was missed and the policies were not as color blind as they pretended to be? In that case, in order to address it, would you rather entirely ignore the issue of race (and fail again) or perhaps ha…

I think it can depend on the population that you're comparing against. If the company is a law firm, the positions being compared are entry-level lawyers, and a requirement for the role is holding a law degree, then when evaluating the law firm's hiring practices you should probably compare against the population who hold the qualifications for the role (law degree holders).

If there are biases upstream of that point in the process (such as "those with a social security number ending in 9 are admitted to law school at one-sixth the expected rate"), then I'd expect an unbiased hiring process to result in that same discrepancy in those hired (presuming here that social security digits are entirely uncorrelated with performance in law school and the practice of law).

Should the law firm work to try to eliminate that upstream bias? Sure. Should the law firm work to hire in a biased way such that they end up with an evenly distributed outcome? I personally don't think so, but I understand others who think they should.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#232

Post by malandrew »

arenaninja wrote: post #173
ibudiallo wrote: post #132

I wrote about my experience as a black developer not too long ago [1]. At first, you are shocked when you hear some insensitive comments made around you. Then you realize no one else even notices, so it must be something wrong with you. Eventually you ignore it. When someone says something stupid, you rationalize it and move on. After all, you are only just here to do a job. But then you get angry. You are angry at e…

I'm in a similar boat, story time! $current_company runs internal events and makes noise about leadership bonuses being tied to diversity targets. I'm part of $targeted_minority so I usually show to the relevant zoom meetings. There's recurring meetings but no actionable items emerge from these meetings. In a way I'm alright with this because some people need the meetings as a coping mechanism but it doesn't fix the…

> There's recurring meetings but no actionable items emerge from these meetings.

I'm curious what items are actionable that also don't run afoul of equal protection (i.e. don't discriminate based on a protected class).

My general observation of D&I in the years since it has become a corporate department at many companies is that the D&I department never sets specific and measurable target goals. They say they want to increase representation, but that's where things generally stop. Sub-metrics and sub-goals that would move the needle are conspicuously absent.

If you don't have specific and measurable goals, how do you know when you've solved the problem for which the D&I department was originally formed to address?

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#233

Post by asdff »

thu2111 wrote: post #202
asdff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one take. Another take is that people want chums at work. An average person hires someone they see themselves as being friends with rather than the best qualified candidate. Animals such as bees, monkeys, and ourselves are also biased to favor their genetic group (kin selection). In other words, you subconsciously favor people who look like you and act like you. In that light, the non diverse office might be s…

It sure would be easier to build software firms if every job got thousands of qualified applicants. Obviously, that isn't the case.

That has more to do with the lack of marketing of the job opening than a lack of qualified talent out there

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#234

Post by tzs »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #37

I'm a light skinned male. I'm also a Choctaw Native American. In my senior year of college in 2004 I applied to dozens of companies. I never got a single response. I decided to try an experiment - I applied to IBM and, for the first time, I selected "Native American" as my ethnicity. Within 24 hours I got an email inviting me to a special, all expenses paid IBM recruiting event held for Native Americans in Albuquerqu…

> They had Native American speakers, food, performances and music. It felt so condescending.

How does that even work? Even if we restrict "Native American" to groups that were native to what later became the United States, that's still a whole lot of different cultures across a vast range of ecosystems.

They had different foods and different kinds of music. How could IBM pick which Native American culture's food and music to have? Wouldn't any such choice be essentially foreign food and music to people from other Native American cultures?

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#235

Post by II2II »

sidlls wrote: post #192

"I believe everyone can become a good professional as long as they’re willing to learn." This isn't sexist. I've been told this, and I've told this to junior engineers of both genders. It's not even just a stretch to claim it's sexist, it's ridiculous to. The remark about prioritizing is actually more troublesome, and entirely independent of this comment. "Some things went well, others not so well. I am not giving yo…

The "willing to learn" case was construed as sexist since she was a diversity hire who did not undergo the same hiring process as her colleagues. While the double standard may have given her an advantage in being hired, it was a disadvantage with respect to her future prospects. The company did not know how to utilize her strengths nor what weaknesses had to be addressed. In effect, they abdicated responsibility for her success within the company prior to even interviewing her. This was not the case for non-diversity hires. Her interpretation is legitimate.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#236

Post by ausbah »

mcculley wrote: post #205

I am amused about these perceptions of bias in “tech”, especially coming from those with little experience elsewhere. I work in tech and also in the tugboat industry. My consulting work has brought me into organizations in many industries. Tech is much better at being fair to minorities and the otherwise disadvantaged than non-tech industries. I don’t know how people end up complaining about tech without noticing the…

this is just a rehash of "you shouldn't complain because other people have it worse"

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#237

Post by [deleted] »

worker767424 wrote: post #73
rsweeney21 wrote: post #37

I'm a light skinned male. I'm also a Choctaw Native American. In my senior year of college in 2004 I applied to dozens of companies. I never got a single response. I decided to try an experiment - I applied to IBM and, for the first time, I selected "Native American" as my ethnicity. Within 24 hours I got an email inviting me to a special, all expenses paid IBM recruiting event held for Native Americans in Albuquerqu…

I wonder if anything will ever happen with reverse discriminatory hiring practices like this. They're all seem so barely legal, and if even one in ten people in HR disagree with them, there could be a #metoo-like flood of issues once a high-profile case goes a little too far.

[deleted]

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#238

Post by worker767424 »

ibudiallo wrote: post #132

I wrote about my experience as a black developer not too long ago [1]. At first, you are shocked when you hear some insensitive comments made around you. Then you realize no one else even notices, so it must be something wrong with you. Eventually you ignore it. When someone says something stupid, you rationalize it and move on. After all, you are only just here to do a job. But then you get angry. You are angry at e…

> Hiring more black people

It's not like there's a large, untapped pool of talented black software engineers.

I'm at a large tech company. There was a team I worked with for a big with some really talented people, the sort of team where really smart domain experts go. There was a black guy on it who asked questions showing he wasn't an obviously talented domain expert. I found out he was recruited for coming from an unconventional background and was spending time with different teams.

Large tech companies are trying really hard to finds diamonds in the rough, and they're taking chances on people that aren't talented enough.

The other issue is blacks are only 13% of the American population. Seattle is only 7%. Now imagine you're an even smaller minority. It's about people not being assholes, not "hiring more x people" because that will always fall short for some group.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#239

Post by smoe »

munificent wrote: post #118
rsweeney21 wrote: post #37

I'm a light skinned male. I'm also a Choctaw Native American. In my senior year of college in 2004 I applied to dozens of companies. I never got a single response. I decided to try an experiment - I applied to IBM and, for the first time, I selected "Native American" as my ethnicity. Within 24 hours I got an email inviting me to a special, all expenses paid IBM recruiting event held for Native Americans in Albuquerqu…

All of this sounds horribly cringe-inducing and I don't fault you at all for walking away from IBM. At the same time, I can't help but look at this from an iterated organizational perspective. Let's say you had taken the offer at IBM. Next year, IBM does the recruiting event. But this time they have a Native American employee, you, that they can talk to about how to reach out to that group. So it's a little less awkw…

I think tech events focused on specific groups can be great, but from my perspective:

- Better if it is not the corporation organizing it, but just sponsoring either trough financial contributions or things like providing space instead.

- Have interesting topics beyond just talking about group X.

- Don’t assume everyone within a group is the same.

- Actual hiring/evaluation process should be same for everyone, do as much blindly as you can.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#240

Post by Planktonne »

ip26 wrote: post #197
Planktonne wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article says the exact opposite of what you are claiming: > The issue doesn’t appear to be girls’ aptitude for STEM professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they h…

Aptitude for a thing is your raw capability to do a thing well. Predisposition to do a thing is your inclination or desire to do a thing at all. Basically the linked article finds that women are perfectly capable of doing the job, but the more choice they have, the less they want to do it.

'Predisposition' is not solely focused on your inclinations. It's absolutely absurd to say, for example, that a genetic predisposition towards cancer is desired by anyone.

What we *know* is that there is no aptitude problem preventing women from doing the job. We also know that many capable women choose not to, particularly in more equal societies.

Jumping from the above information to 'men are naturally more predisposed towards the sciences' is a massive and unsupportable reach, dependent on deliberately ignoring a host of factors and redefining words.

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