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

#31

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

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 get it better than 4:1. You definitely won't achieve parity, despite what the people screaming "it's not a pipeline problem" the loudest would want from you. For further improvement, you have to work on earlier segments of the pipe.

EDIT:

And another point: moving through the pipeline takes time. So e.g. if you're working on university recruiting and trying to fix the input bias at the high school->university interface, you can't expect to see improvement at the output (university->job) earlier than in 3 to 5 years. But the "it's not a pipeline problem" activists rarely have that kind of patience.

EDIT2:

"you cannot expect to make things better than they are at the input of your pipe segment", unless you're willing to start doing corrective discrimination - i.e. throwing overrepresented people out from the pipeline.

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

#32

Post by sbilstein » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

rinchik wrote: post #7

sbilstein wrote: post #2

I think it's pretty bold to post something like this. As a person of color, I absolutely observe bias in hiring processes and recruiting...however as someone who majored in CS it's undeniable that we have far less women and minorities going through these programs. After I graduated, my university managed to get the number closer to 60/40 of men vs. women but when I graduated there was just one woman in our graduating…

Have you tried therapy? The fact you are not able to concentrate and perform when "'Zuck' white guy personality type" (whatever "Zuck" type means) is present, suggests a deeper personal issues and biases that you need to work on and resolve. If there are no personal issues then your comment, honestly, comes across as a bit racist.

Your cultural beliefs and intuitions ARE personal issues and biases. They are challenging to overcome. Racist people don't get to being racist by reading a blog post or two; they develop and internalize it over time like any cultural trait. Same goes for these anxieties people of color feel.

It's ignorant to not realize that all of these things are mental. Duh, therapy helps. Trust me, every single person of color who works in tech and sees a therapist talks through all this stuff with their practitioner.

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

#33

Post by rofo1 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

I don't understand why people deliberately hire people of certain group. Be it women, or black, or whatever. Why? Why can't you just hire the right person for the job?

To me, this is just as bad as actively discriminating against certain groups of people.

Why must everyone be absolutely and uniformly represented? It just doesn't make sense, that's not how reality works. It will never be so, and all you end up doing is crunching the numbers to "make it work on paper".

Are women or black or whatever group we discuss equally represented across all jobs across the whole universe, everywhere?

It's a ridiculous concept, I don't understand who came up with it.

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

#34

Post by wolco » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #18

kevintb wrote: post #4

Key point: > there really aren’t enough women to meet demand… if we keep hiring the way we’re hiring. Namely, if we keep over-indexing on CS degrees from top schools, and even if we remove unconscious bias from the process entirely, we will not get to gender parity. And yes, there is a way to surface strong candidates without relying on proxies like college degree. I am all in favour of reducing the industry’s relian…

> I am all in favour of reducing the industry’s reliance on fancy name schools for hiring. Soon after the industry seriously stops doing this, the fancy name schools will quickly get female-dominated, and whatever the industry starts using as a signal of candidate quality that hadn't been male-dominated before, will start to be. When proposing new policies, always solve for equilibrium, don't ignore second order effe…

I would think the opposite. More males are in trade schools programming than females. Females make up a higher percentage number of college students compared to males.

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

#35

Post by TurkishPoptart » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

sbilstein wrote: post #2

I think it's pretty bold to post something like this. As a person of color, I absolutely observe bias in hiring processes and recruiting...however as someone who majored in CS it's undeniable that we have far less women and minorities going through these programs. After I graduated, my university managed to get the number closer to 60/40 of men vs. women but when I graduated there was just one woman in our graduating…

>As for bias in interviewing, I think it's really hard for non-POC to understand the more subtle parts of what sucks about interviewing. Even tho I grew up in the states and have been around white people my entire life...there is something about the way most caucasian Americans telegraph (or don't) feelings and communicate during a technical interview that put me totally on edge. I get anxious with the 'Zuck' white guy personality type and somehow these feelings of being poor, being bilingual, going to a shit public school, etc bubble up in my head while I'm trying to rotate a binary tree. The two times I interviewed onsite at Google I couldn't escape the feeling. It felt like the 'whitest' place ever and that everyone I spoke to was Linus Torvalds or James Damore or someone like that. The fact they didn't seem coached to be friendly added dramatically to that effect.

You've described me perfectly. Except that I'm an anxious, pale-skinned, Jewish guy from rural Oregon who was bullied throughout high school for being, I dunno, skinny, pale, and awkward. This has resulted in a lot of self-worth issues, social anxiety, and major depression, which I struggle with to this day, nearly 15 years after high school. I have been interviewing for high-level companies for the past year and...have not secured a single offer, probably because I suck at interviewing, but who the hell knows?

Anyway, I get what you're saying about the "Zuck" personality type, and that's refreshing for you to mention. I, too, am pretty intimidated by some of the people you describe. I am sorry that they make you feel that way. They probably don't intend to. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that there are a LOT of "non-POC" people, AKA Zuckerberg-looking folks, who are incredibly anxious and just want you to smile at them and try to get to know them as a _human being_. I don't want to be grouped together with all the people in this country that have light skin. It's not fair to me.

I suspect that some of the "non-POC" people (why don't you just say white people?) COULD wrongfully see you as an intended "diversity hire", and need to "prove your worth" accordingly, which is racist and wrong. But the problem is that the narrative you're putting forth is encouraging companies to take measures to make the workplace more diverse. If you follow this idea down the rabbit hole, I think it will hurt people that look like me, who have no acceptable "race card" to play. And that's OK. But down the road, it's going to lead to more racial friction. I don't want to be put into a racial box based on my phenotypes. What if there was a form of affirmative action that led to more anxious and depressed people getting better jobs? For a few minutes it sounds awesome, but it's probably the wrong way to go about things, because I think it would lead to animosity between neurotypical people and, to use a woke term, the "neurodiverse".

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

#36

Post by x0x0 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #23

kevintb wrote: post #4

Key point: > there really aren’t enough women to meet demand… if we keep hiring the way we’re hiring. Namely, if we keep over-indexing on CS degrees from top schools, and even if we remove unconscious bias from the process entirely, we will not get to gender parity. And yes, there is a way to surface strong candidates without relying on proxies like college degree. I am all in favour of reducing the industry’s relian…

Several of the best developers I know have no degree at all. I know one guy who did a boot camp 2-3 years ago and since then has self taught himself so much that he's one of the most knowledgeable people I've been around. He was recently told in an interview that he otherwise passed with flying colors that, "someone with a boot camp education couldn't be seriously considered." It's mind blowing to me that anyone in c…

You're going to find any stupid choices in a wide enough pool. That's not representative: I know boot camp grads at FAANGs.

At smaller companies -- like mine -- it's not that we won't hire out of boot camps. We do, and have. But we're very conscious of search and training costs. Search costs can be somewhat fixed with money by using internal recruiters; training costs are horrific. Bootcamp grads are nearly useless in a professional environment without enormous amounts of senior / staff eng time.

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

#37

Post by sbilstein » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

ergfdgs wrote: post #5

sbilstein wrote: post #2

I think it's pretty bold to post something like this. As a person of color, I absolutely observe bias in hiring processes and recruiting...however as someone who majored in CS it's undeniable that we have far less women and minorities going through these programs. After I graduated, my university managed to get the number closer to 60/40 of men vs. women but when I graduated there was just one woman in our graduating…

As a fellow Latin American, I find "LatinX" offensive. English already has a gender neutral adjective to refer to us, Latin, and therefore Latin American. LatinX means you've internalized the colonialization of white "liberals" [0] who would refer to us as Latinos or Latinas while speaking English to show off their poor Spanish and therefore pretend to be sophisticated and woke. [0] I don't consider liberal bad or go…

I too hate the term LatinX but it's become the preferred term around so many I know that I'd rather just conform than argue about it. Just cause I used it doesn't mean I endorse it.

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

#38

Post by logfromblammo » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

deogeo wrote: post #6

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 also would be willing to be my bottom dollar that Google of all places doesn't feel like a small town in Sweden. You would win that bet - Google is 54.4% white, 39.8% asian, according to https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_this-years-data The US is 61.5% white, so whites are underrepresented at Google.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to match the demographics of the entire US unless they have a uniform presence across the entire US, such as one might find with Wal-Mart. It's a big country, and the people tend to aggregate into clumps.

Alphabet keeps about 1/4 of its people in Mountain View. In terms of the demographics of San Francisco metropolitan area, those diversity report numbers likely only slightly overrepresent whites and Asians. Statistically, it is unlikely that Alphabet/Google has a racial bias in hiring, but it certainly has a geographical bias for California.

I might bet a dollar--other than my bottom one--that the offices outside of California all feel like a small town in Silicon Valley.

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

#39

Post by baddox » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

kevintb wrote: post #4

Key point: > there really aren’t enough women to meet demand… if we keep hiring the way we’re hiring. Namely, if we keep over-indexing on CS degrees from top schools, and even if we remove unconscious bias from the process entirely, we will not get to gender parity. And yes, there is a way to surface strong candidates without relying on proxies like college degree. I am all in favour of reducing the industry’s relian…

That does seem to be the key point, but it directly contradicts the catchy headline "there really is a pipeline problem." This reads like the author is complaining that there's no way to improve hiring diversity without....significantly changing the hiring process. Well, yeah?

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

#40

Post by TurkishPoptart » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

sbilstein wrote: post #22

joshmarlow wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm asking to better understand - can you think of ways to make an interview process more comfortable? What about 'blind' remote interviews (ie, no video, but audio)?

The company that wrote this blogpost, which I work for part-time, does exactly that. I think it's a massive improvement.

I like this idea, but what makes it different from a phone call? I avoid video chat whenever I can. I don't want to see myself in the screen. When I can just speak to an interviewer on the phone, I do better.