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

blog.interviewing.io

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

#41

Post by rofo1 »

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…

> 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.

Are you actually counting how many of you are woman and conclude based on that, that you are better off than other companies?

It's not low, or high, or medium. It just is. As long as you are not rejecting perfectly capable women/females (just because they are so), you are not doing anything wrong and you are not worse off.

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

#42

Post by sbilstein »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #11
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…

I can't believe you are openly racist enough to claim that interviews are unfair because you have to be interviewed by white people (who you would have to work with every day if you were hired). If I said that I was uncomfortable being interviewed by latinos what do you think the reaction would be?

That's not at all what I said. I related a very personal set of anxieties (largely irrational) that I feel as a minority.

Plenty of white people are uncomfortable around minorities. Do they all love that feeling? I'm confident most feel intense guilt about it and never act on those impulses in any way. Just having a 'racist' feeling doesn't make someone racist.

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

#43

Post by whb07 »

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.

The problem with your stats is that not very long ago, the term "white" essentially referred to a Protestant European. Didn't actually apply to Italians, Greeks, Jews, etc. So if history tells us something is that this will also change.

Also Google's CEO is noticeably anything but white.

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

#45

Post by sbilstein »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #40
sbilstein wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We do a shared code editor and VoIP. It really helps to not be able to see any facial expressions IMO. I've done like a hundred or so of these interviews.

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

#46

Post by nostrademons »

wolco wrote: post #34
xyzzyz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think that was his point - "the fancy name schools will get female-dominated".

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

#47

Post by Jyaif »

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…

In my experience in France, all of the genius-level developers I know come from a prestigious school.

Not surprising as the prestigious schools pretty much exclusively take in the top ~2000 students of the country every year.

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

#48

Post by rofo1 »

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…

> however as someone who majored in CS it's undeniable that we have far less women and minorities going through these programs.

Why should there be predetermined amount of women or "minorities" in these programs? Who says that's how it should be?

Is this true for all jobs in the world, or just in "these" programs? If so, who chose these particular programs to be "special"?

If not, where is the "fight" for all the other jobs like plumbing, oil drilling, special forces in combat, working on top of 35+ story buildings? Why is nobody counting in those fields?

Those are the things I like to think about whenever I hear something that makes no sense.

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

#49

Post by bsder »

x0x0 wrote: post #36
brightball wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> Bootcamp grads are nearly useless in a professional environment without enormous amounts of senior / staff eng time.

To be fair, this is also true for standard undergrads.

The difference between a cooperative engineering student and a standard undergrad is quite staggering--9-12 months of working experience causes a vast differential.

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

#50

Post by wrs »

btilly wrote: post #27

I know it is not politically correct to say it, but I remain unconvinced that gender parity is a desirable goal. Particularly given the current state of research into differences in gender averages. Here is a real example. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_visualization_ability#... men have about a one standard deviation advantage in spacial reasoning over women. Assuming that both distributions are normal wi…

Of course, if doing more things that involve spatial reasoning makes you better at spatial reasoning (which seems like a very likely assumption), this becomes a circular argument. (Did you read the Gender Differences section of that Wikipedia article?)
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