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Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

theverge.com

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Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#61

Post by striking »

Toenex wrote: post #50
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12

tldr This article is terrible. Maybe this is a "Facebook rejects..." story. Maybe it's a story about how bad Facebook is. But if you keep reading past the introduction it sure sounds a lot more like a "male engineers reject..." story. And then if you keep reading some more it sure sounds like a "code is rejected proportionally to engineer seniority..." story, which is not a story. And then at the very very end, you f…

> the current representation of senior female engineers both at Facebook and across the industry is nowhere near where it needs to be. So is the story really that the n is too small for this story?

No, the issue with the article is that its author didn't take into account (as someone claiming to be from Facebook said in a different thread) "skill level" when making their comparisons. (This claim aligns with the statement in the blockquote at the bottom of the article.)

Maybe on average women get less code into the code base, but it's unfair to everyone if you don't remove the influence that seniority has on your dataset before pointing at gender.

Women face many problems in this industry as it is. If I could, I'd ask The Verge not to make up any new ones.

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#62

Post by ReverseCold »

jlebrech wrote: post #49
randomact2452 wrote: post #19

Creating a throwaway since I've taken part of this internal discussion at Facebook. Once normalized for skill level (i.e. junior engineer, engineer, senior engineer) the level of rejection between genders is the same.

it's sad that you have to create a throwaway to have a genuine opinion here.

He works at Facebook and is stating it as a fact.

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#63

Post by hyperdunc »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12

tldr This article is terrible. Maybe this is a "Facebook rejects..." story. Maybe it's a story about how bad Facebook is. But if you keep reading past the introduction it sure sounds a lot more like a "male engineers reject..." story. And then if you keep reading some more it sure sounds like a "code is rejected proportionally to engineer seniority..." story, which is not a story. And then at the very very end, you f…

That part doesn't make much sense either because gender representation isn't a legitimate concept. Individuals have different strengths which may help them succeed if their pursuits use those strengths. This results in uneven gender distributions within industries and there's nothing wrong with that.

Unless you think there is some sort of overt discrimination happening that's stopping females becoming senior engineers, in which case you'll need to define it.

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#64

Post by thwarted »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #34

I've heard that the opposite of this suggested bias ought to be consciously corrected. If the stereotype for a senior engineer is a balding white male with glasses, and you have two prospective engineers with otherwise identical resumes and work histories: one balding white male with glasses and even a pocket protector on his white shirt, and one black woman with a wild T-shirt, which would you hire? The answer I'd h…

So is "dress for the job you want" still worth heeding or not?

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#66

Post by agumonkey »

randomact2452 wrote: post #19

Creating a throwaway since I've taken part of this internal discussion at Facebook. Once normalized for skill level (i.e. junior engineer, engineer, senior engineer) the level of rejection between genders is the same.

Does this mean Fb hired more junior women ? it would be ironic if trying to get more girls into a company would backfire in the medias now..

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#67

Post by tremon »

jlebrech wrote: post #49
randomact2452 wrote: post #19

Creating a throwaway since I've taken part of this internal discussion at Facebook. Once normalized for skill level (i.e. junior engineer, engineer, senior engineer) the level of rejection between genders is the same.

it's sad that you have to create a throwaway to have a genuine opinion here.

I think that's not related to "here". It's more likely that that is because they've "taken part of this internal discussion at Facebook".

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#68

Post by jcwayne »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12

tldr This article is terrible. Maybe this is a "Facebook rejects..." story. Maybe it's a story about how bad Facebook is. But if you keep reading past the introduction it sure sounds a lot more like a "male engineers reject..." story. And then if you keep reading some more it sure sounds like a "code is rejected proportionally to engineer seniority..." story, which is not a story. And then at the very very end, you f…

No good dead goes unpunished.

As long as Facebook continues to increase the percentage of women it hires, it will have a disproportionately high number of junior female engineers. Intentionally failing to control for that fact is great if you want to profit from the problem of under-representation of women in engineering roles, not so much if you actually want to solve the problem.

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#69

Post by jlebrech »

agumonkey wrote: post #66
randomact2452 wrote: post #19

Creating a throwaway since I've taken part of this internal discussion at Facebook. Once normalized for skill level (i.e. junior engineer, engineer, senior engineer) the level of rejection between genders is the same.

Does this mean Fb hired more junior women ? it would be ironic if trying to get more girls into a company would backfire in the medias now..

it's a shame, but to get more women into STEM they have to start somewhere.

Re: Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

#70

Post by geofft »

hyperdunc wrote: post #63
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12

tldr This article is terrible. Maybe this is a "Facebook rejects..." story. Maybe it's a story about how bad Facebook is. But if you keep reading past the introduction it sure sounds a lot more like a "male engineers reject..." story. And then if you keep reading some more it sure sounds like a "code is rejected proportionally to engineer seniority..." story, which is not a story. And then at the very very end, you f…

That part doesn't make much sense either because gender representation isn't a legitimate concept. Individuals have different strengths which may help them succeed if their pursuits use those strengths. This results in uneven gender distributions within industries and there's nothing wrong with that. Unless you think there is some sort of overt discrimination happening that's stopping females becoming senior engineer…

Can you provide evidence for the specific claim that women, in particular, are statistically-significantly less strong at the software engineering industry, in particular?

(I buy the argument that there are statistically-significant differences in some strengths that apply in some industries, yes. I'm curious to see how this applies to software engineering in particular.)

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