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

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

#521

Post by CapricornNoble »

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #270
pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you would sacrifice your kid's wellbeing just to make some arbitrary, meaningless statistic look good. And do you think women having to work with computers all day would end up being less grumpy than men who have to do it? Why?

You misunderstood my comment. I said "why discourage them?", not "push them to become programmers". The parent I was responding to made it seem like he/she would want to actively steer their daughter away from programming because of the workplace conditions. But what if their daughter really likes software/tech? You don't want to push her to some other career just because of how you feel about it, she can decide for…

Isn't the whole point of parenting to leverage our significantly larger base of life experience to steer our children away from potentially harmful (or at least sub-optimal) decisions somewhat induced by their own inexperience?

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

#522

Post by blub »

kick wrote: post #430
TuringNYC wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% Perhaps employers can expand the search to those with degrees in statistics, mathematics, physics, econometrics? What I've seen time and time again is that when people dont want to hire, they come up with excuse after excuse. When they really want to hire [a VP's brother-in-low, or whatever], ev…

Instead of getting economists and statisticians involved, why not just encourage companies to fund the educations of demographics of workers they're trying to recruit? Not only is there a financial incentive (if you get people new to the field, you can pay them less until they get a new job or sufficient raises, and this is a benefit for both parties due to the lessened educational cost), it also creates loyalty out…

a) making for-profit companies responsible for education is an anti-pattern

b) suggesting that those people should be paid less is immoral

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

#523

Post by DoctorMckay »

Spanish guy here. Just to give ya'll some context of why bootcamp hiring does not work here.

I had to go through the "do I go to a bootcamp or get a CS degree" conundrum 5 years ago. The answer was quite clear for me.

All the serious and stable jobs that were offered in the entire nation except for the capital city, Madrid, required you to have a CS degree + bootcamps/X years of experience for a specific language.

Either that or they outright asked for a Master's degree or a PHD in a specific field.

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

#524

Post by iovrthoughtthis »

zanny wrote: post #284
sakoht wrote: post #182

The exciting thing if you are a hiring manager is that, as long as there is talent that is being passed-over for the wrong reasons, you can beat your competitors in one of the most challenging ares of building a compay by being good at avoiding this error. A friend noted recently that a compounding benefit of hiring a gender-balanced team early is you won't lose female talent you find later when they refuse to join a…

The irony of this thinking is that if you do the whole "teams must be gender balanced" routine early on where you are getting the 5-1 or worse ratio of men to women applying for a software position you can often be the one passing over way more talent than the company with the toxic white-male dominated culture lacking diversity. If men and women are equally good at the job (and in programming there is no reason to t…

Simply applying normal statistics to candidates feels wrong as we usually have to make the “random independent variable” assumption for the simple statistical analysis we do.

I fairly certain that assumption does not hold about humans. Our social environment has a direct impact on our work outcomes.

Ergo, simply picking the top best candidates for some individual measure candidates does not guarantee the best work outcomes and so, depending on the effect size, doesn’t necessarily confer any advantage.

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

#525

Post by onion2k »

ravenstine wrote: post #477
xenocyon wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that there is indeed a pipeline problem; however there is still much scope for improvement at workplaces. Notably, gender balance is not only skewed at the point of hiring; in fact, the skew gets worse and worse as one goes up through the ranks.

Do you think the numbers would change appreciably if the entire hiring process was boiled down to a multiple-choice exam, with no humans besides the applicant involved, which chose who gets hired based on the first applicant to pass it?

Yes.

The assumption you're making is that everyone who is capable of doing a dev job manages to get one, so if you remove all the hiring biases all those people will continue to get dev jobs and nothing will really change.

That assumption is wrong.

There are thousands of people who can't get dev jobs for reasons other than lacking technical ability. Some hiring managers filter out candidates before the make it to interview for absolutely stupid reasons. Some companies have hiring practices that are plain stupid and select out capable engineers for dumb reasons. If hiring was a multiple choice exam those people would be able to enter the industry and there'd be fewer companies with unfilled positions.

Also, even if you don't think it'd have much of an impact on the numbers across the industry, the numbers at the specific companies that have bad hiring biases obviously would change. That could be useful.

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

#526

Post by indigochill »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #496
int_19h wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the interviews are for, no? The point of the article is that if you are using degrees as a filter, you're passing on a lot of otherwise qualified candidates.

I agree, but I don't think there is a substantial number of software shops that use relevant degrees as a hard filter, nor is there a significant number of non-degree holders bursting with realized CS talent that the field is somehow blind to. I took the intended sentiment to be that of finding talent among non-degree holders that won't necessarily present itself in a typical CS interview scenario. Thus we need a way…

My opinion: applying one-size-fits-all formulaic interviewing to your candidates excludes unconventional talent. Asking personal questions and following through on them unearths the smart and self-motivated talent. As an unconventional CS talent myself, I've had the most success with this approach on both sides of the interview process.

What do I mean by personal questions? My favorite interview so far left all the academic quizzing aside and asked me to talk in-depth about a particular real-world project I worked on. What patterns did I use? How did it interact with the database? How did I model the problem? This was not something that would be easily googled and it let me convey how I think about software on my own terms. Then it was up to the interviewer if my approach to software would be useful to them.

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

#527

Post by [deleted] »

kick wrote: post #430
TuringNYC wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% Perhaps employers can expand the search to those with degrees in statistics, mathematics, physics, econometrics? What I've seen time and time again is that when people dont want to hire, they come up with excuse after excuse. When they really want to hire [a VP's brother-in-low, or whatever], ev…

Instead of getting economists and statisticians involved, why not just encourage companies to fund the educations of demographics of workers they're trying to recruit? Not only is there a financial incentive (if you get people new to the field, you can pay them less until they get a new job or sufficient raises, and this is a benefit for both parties due to the lessened educational cost), it also creates loyalty out…

[deleted]

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

#528

Post by adamsb6 »

kmonsen wrote: post #481
datashow wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is how you gonna find a different hiring pattern to force 50%? Internal training, ok, but are you going to only provide internal training to women? Is this even legal? Basecamp training, ok, but are you going to only provide basecamp training to women? Is this even legal? Special talents (dropouts etc.), ok, but are you going to only hire special talents who are women? Is this even legal? Non-traditional…

Not saying I know you are wrong, but there are alternative ways we end up in this world. Like that the world of computer engineering is currently full of Brogrammers that females know it is best to stay way clear of. Or that there are countless examples of horrible behavior of men towards woman in computer engineering and perhaps this is affecting the pipeline. We don't know which one of these is true, and perhaps th…

I’ve worked at a couple of mid-late stage startups and currently at a FAANG and I’ve observed very few engineers that I would put in the “bro” category. I don’t know how this became the stereotype when nerd is still the dominant character class by far.

Is it just me? Does anyone find that their workplace is even 50% brogrammer?

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

#529

Post by slowenough »

supernova87a wrote: post #187

With such politically charged issues, it's always a problem of people wanting to believe something is possible (and mandatory to pursue) banging their heads against what is true and actually possible. If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representa…

This just means another paradox of fake liberal ideology is showing.

It's not surprising if the strategies such as diversity quotas are not effective. Because they're not meant to be effective. They're meant to virtue signal. Ergo they are meant to only redirect people's anger towards an ineffective end, not to create an actual improvement.

For another example, take a prevailing narrative in fake feminism that continually tells women they are disempowered victims. This doesn't help bring balance, it only helps disenfranchise women.

Of course, if that were true, why would anyone believe any of these narratives such as diversity quotas? Because they provide the fake victim fake payoff: there's something very compelling about not having to be responsible for your problem but instead being able to blame someone else albeit incorrectly. It's very satisfying and an effective means to redirect anger towards a ineffective but satisfying ends. It's very compelling for people and gets them hooked.

Another place these fake payoffs are used to manipulate people is in terrorist recruitment. You can sublimate raw economic issues and individuals dissatisfaction into blaming and hatred towards another state, you can create armies of willing footsoldiers.

I'd suggest there's a further parallel between armies and the "Twitter armies": legions of ideologues willing to crucify anyone who dares disagrees.

So it's not surprising these so-called strategies do little effective. they're not meant to, they're meant to preserve the status quo. And they do that by the simple psychological mechanism of redirecting people's anger towards something ineffective.

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

#530

Post by lowercased »

kmonsen wrote: post #481
datashow wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is how you gonna find a different hiring pattern to force 50%? Internal training, ok, but are you going to only provide internal training to women? Is this even legal? Basecamp training, ok, but are you going to only provide basecamp training to women? Is this even legal? Special talents (dropouts etc.), ok, but are you going to only hire special talents who are women? Is this even legal? Non-traditional…

Not saying I know you are wrong, but there are alternative ways we end up in this world. Like that the world of computer engineering is currently full of Brogrammers that females know it is best to stay way clear of. Or that there are countless examples of horrible behavior of men towards woman in computer engineering and perhaps this is affecting the pipeline. We don't know which one of these is true, and perhaps th…

> Like that the world of computer engineering is currently full of Brogrammers that females know it is best to stay way clear of

I'm a middle-aged white male who's been working with software development for 25+ years. I don't like being around the typical dev shop - the culture isn't usually much of a fit (whether 'bro' or 'sci-fi' or 'gamer' oriented), often a focus on 'free beer!' and similar 'perks' - so much so that I stay way clear of most typical software/dev jobs. I can pass in those environments (and have), and it's still uncomfortable for me - it must be 10x worse for people who are that much more 'other'. :/

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