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

#591

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

pksdjfikkkkdsff wrote: post #590

stale2002 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried speaking to any women to get their opinion on the matter? Because basically every women in tech has many many many stories of their bad experiences, all the way through the pipeline. If you want to talk about universities, the problem with them is often the culture. Women are second guessed, every step of the way, and are often told that they don't belong there, and they have their abilities questions…

Most "studies" of that are rather distorted, you have to read very carefully. For example they may summarize that many women have experienced discrimination at some point. That can mean in 4 years of study, somebody once made a sexist joke in passing. It doesn't imply they had real issues. And the issues of men are not even studied for comparison. That latter thing might be the biggest issue. The basic assumptions se…

> I have also seen many articles by women in tech who say they didn't have issues.

And there are many that do have issues. See, thats the thing about this stuff. Some women not having bad experiences, does not overrule the bad experiences of other women.

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

#592

Post by jalgos_eminator » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

CapricornNoble wrote: post #521

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, that would be helicopter parenting. A parents job is to teach the child how the world works and how to deal with its shortcomings using that bank of experience. Not to make decisions for them or shield them from risk at the expense of their adult life.

You can't "patch the bugs" in the life you lived by telling your child how to live, you just have to try to teach them so that they fully understand the situation and will make the "right" decision when the time comes. Sometimes they will have the information but still make the "wrong" decision, which is frustrating I imagine (no kids, but I've seen people do this). This is normal though because there are some things you can't explain to someone, they just need to experience it. How to love and be loved is the big one, but there are a lot of other smaller ones.

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

#593

Post by btilly » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

abathur wrote: post #572

btilly wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wikipedia article picks one of many pieces of research to quote. Your criticism are fair as a criticism of that specific research paper. But after you've looked at a dozen of them, continuing to say that it is just an artifact of terrible methodology (even though most actually are terrible) becomes much harder to support. But that said, here is a classic test showing strong gender differences accidentally discove…

Thank you for taking the time to read this; it took me long enough to write that I was afraid it would be for naught. I think you are reading me more narrowly than I want to be read, but I don't fault you there. I am not good at communicating this concept yet. I picked the first study because I start at the beginning, and look for loose threads. I didn't pick on this study because I think its methodology is terrible.…

If you haven't already, you may be interested in the Replication Crisis and various related research on metascience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis has an overview and you can dig in from there.

That said, I've run across enough lines of evidence, both from anecdote and research, that this particular phenomena seems likely to be real.

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

#594

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

I have a 4 year old daughter who I'm trying to get interested in programming. The first step is to teach her reading/writing and math.

Every time we start with basic counting, after just 2 minutes, she's constantly telling me "daddy, I don't want to count anymore". I'm not giving up yet. But, we have to accept the fact that certain genders don't like math and don't like programming.

Sometimes, I see the same thing playing out at older ages. We once hired a female intern and our PM was like "ok everyone, now do your best to make programming seem as fun as possible so we can get this person to go into CS". I'm thinking, at that age, I would have killed for an internship, you wouldn't have had to convince me to "think it was fun", I already knew it was.

There's so much focus on gender equality in programming but where is the gender equality talk in other industries like: cosmetics, football, ballet dancing, etc

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

#595

Post by DataWorker » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

mepiethree wrote: post #569

leereeves wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can that work for Google or Tesla or any other company that everyone knows about, where anyone who wants to work there is likely to apply?

Lots of people don't apply because they incorrectly believe they are not qualified.

Noted!

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

#596

Post by hackinthebochs » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #586

hackinthebochs wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>most programming itself are also nothing like advanced mathematics. This is certainly true. But they do overlap in requiring a heavy amount of abstract reasoning. While "abstract reasoning" is a bit vague, one proxy for this is spatial reasoning which shows strong gender disparities and has implications for science and math ability. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44385-0_...

> While "abstract reasoning" is a bit vague, It's extremely vague, and therefore shouldn't be used to justify any conclusions about an entire population. > one proxy for this is spatial reasoning which shows strong gender disparities and has implications for science and math ability. Another proxy for it is symbolic reasoning, which is arguably even more closely related to programming (most programming is symbolic ma…

There's nothing fallacious about spatial reasoning being stronger in males on average, and math (and presumably programming) being heavy on utilizing spatial reasoning.

It's certainly an open question how much spatial reasoning is relevant, but its not irrelevant and so such data has explanatory power. Of course one doesn't have to be in the top 1% of spatial reasoning to be a capable software developer, but no one is making such a claim. We're looking for factors that help explain women's apparent disinterest in becoming software developers. But its a given that people are drawn to things they're good at and disinclined towards things they struggle with. And so the gender disparities in spatial reasoning is a relevant data point in this discussion.

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

#597

Post by geebee » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

goosehonk wrote: post #466

ben_jones wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a drop out too and have made my way to manager where I find myself training juniors many of which also do not have degrees. Unfortunately it is night and day between the ones who do have degrees and those that don’t. At this point I am now strongly recommending cs degrees to anyone seeking a career in programming because the theories do come up in any serious work, particularly full stack engineers who must have…

As a person without a CS education but with 30 years of industry experience, including several of The Bigs, I urge young people to get an education in anything but CS. The number of CS degree holders, even the masters and doctors, who struggle with statistics, linear algebra, or even thermodynamics and basic accounting is pretty dispiriting. Get an education and learn to program computers. Two separate things in my h…

I'm stunned to hear that. Well, not the part about basic accounting, or maybe thermodynamics, that I believe. But stats and linear algebra? I've worked at or attended several UC schools, and they all require calculus through linear algebra, vector calc, basic differential equations, and probability theory as part of the CS major. I myself was a math major and a grad student in Industrial Engineering, but we were all in the same core math sequence together.

Sometimes you go ahead and walk the fine line of the no true scotsman argument - a degree without this basic math isn't CS. And any "reputable" CS degree - and by "reputable" I don't mean top 10 or even top 50, I just mean a fine university with a proper curriculum - will absolutely have this requirement.

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

#598

Post by jeromebaek » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #594

I have a 4 year old daughter who I'm trying to get interested in programming. The first step is to teach her reading/writing and math. Every time we start with basic counting, after just 2 minutes, she's constantly telling me "daddy, I don't want to count anymore". I'm not giving up yet. But, we have to accept the fact that certain genders don't like math and don't like programming. Sometimes, I see the same thing pl…

No offense, but you sound like a terrible parent. Keep your unconscious bias in check while you teach your daughter to count. Better yet, don't teach your daughter to count. Get a tutor.

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

#599

Post by fennecfoxen » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

Buge wrote: post #508

fennecfoxen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that it's only a matter of time until Asian women are treated the same way as Asian men. Once you've managed to close the gender gap in engineering, you have a new problem to deal with -- a lack of diversity among women engineers in regards to race and socio-economic class. The blanket catch-all term "Asian" is not doing this conversation any favors. You assert a monoculture, but Asia is a huge region with…

If we can't say "Asian" then let's also stop saying "black" and "white".

One is quite welcome to say "Asian" in the abstract. It's the part where one says that "Asian" is an socio-ethnic monoculture in practice that is uninformative.

At the very least, name the Asians you're talking about. India and China, for instance, seem to have a lot more representation among US programmers than other Asian nations.

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

#600

Post by jki275 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

braindouche wrote: post #584

jki275 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly people like this. What you generally find about them though is that they are highly motivated and deeply interested in the concepts of computing. They don't grow on trees -- they're quite rare. Oddly enough, I've never met a single one that was female, though that's only anecdotal of course. The only female devs I know have CS degrees. The focus on CS is important. Developers who don't have it are…

Hello! Now you've met a female dev with no CS degree. There may be a reason we're thin on the ground, too. My "training" as a software dev consisted of 10 years of self-employment as a freelance web developer, and when I decided to transition to working for a company, I faced massive hiring discrimination. I couldn't pay someone to interview me! And I did demonstrate that it was discrimination, too. My resume was get…

I suspect you'd have had far easier success with a BSCS on your resume. I can't imagine trying to get into this field without having had a degree -- it is a hard industry to get into.

I keep hearing about gender discrimination, and maybe this is a market segment thing, but everywhere I've worked is actively recruiting female devs. Also the places I've worked as a dev typically require a CS degree though for what that's worth. Many of them even require an MSCS -- I've actually been turned down for one job because even though I have an MS it wasn't an MSCS (gov contracts get very specific).