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

#651

Post by anonytrary » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:44 AM UTC

oconnore wrote: post #487

anonytrary wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A while back, I did rough envelope calculations that if one of the major FAANG companies hit their diversity goal, there would be none left for any of the rest of them. Not to mention, if the other companies also wish to hit their diversity goals, they will be forced to take on weaker hires, since the (already small) pool of adequate hires has been exhausted. In my opinion, diversity hiring is an anti-pattern. Hiri…

Common practice is to ignore diversity (to the extent possible) in assessing, but not in sourcing.

IIUC, I think the distinction between sourcing and assessing is not relevant here. Assuming the females in the pool of viable candidates have already been exhausted, then sourcing only females is suboptimal, as they are less likely to pass assessment because (by construction) they are not in the set of viable candidates.

It will always make the most sense to source the best people without regard to anything but job skill. If the best people aren't diverse, then chasing diversity requires you to look outside the set of best people, by construction. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

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

#652

Post by dang » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:17 AM UTC

rinchik wrote: post #647

dang wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean "psychiatric" ironically rather than literally—adding "internet" to a word is sort of an instant ironizer. You can read it as "psychological diagnosis" if you like. The point is that making remarks about someone's psychological issues as you perceive them, suggesting that they need therapy and so on, is unduly personal. It crosses a line that is better not to cross, even if you're right, because it frequently…

Ah that's a well written and thoughtful response to my comment. Thank you for that! However I can’t say I agree with the trigger premise though, even if suggestion perceived as personal. Psychological problem suggestions, gentle nudges if you will, are inherently beneficial even if those generate a defensive response. Defensive response is a response! That response is a deliberate thought in itself, an analysis. In m…

From my perspective this line of thinking makes more sense for in-person contact, where it's possible to read the other person's state more accurately and get a feel for whether or not one's helpful suggestions are actually helpful or not. What matters is not the message you send, but the message the other person receives, and a lot can change from one to the other.

Here on an internet forum, we have almost no information about each other. The risk of such comments doing more harm than good is much higher, partly because the potential for misunderstanding is so high, and also because people have often used this language in snarky ways, for personal attacks, and so on.

That doesn't mean you can't reach out to someone you're genuinely concerned for, but the burden in that case is on you to disambiguate your intention from anything presumptuous or malicious, and that requires a different communication style—much less generic and casual.

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

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Post by sfink » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

travisoneill1 wrote: post #542

sfink wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No he didn't. But it very well might be (biased against him). Racism exists. Racism is widespread. People in populations that are targeted by racism are much more familiar with what racism is present than those of us in untargeted populations. Much racism is subtle and implicit. If you can logically accept those statements, then I don't see how you can claim to know how likely the presence of bias might be. And worry…

Your statements are irrelevant because he didn't claim that there was any racism against him in the interviews. Only that the interviewers were a different race and that made h

That would be the "no he didn't" that I started with.

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

#654

Post by sfink » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

drdeca wrote: post #517

sfink wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With my current understanding, I believe I can answer this one. It's #2. Specifically, your parenthetical comment in #2. Bias exists and is a problem. It is worth spending additional resources to draw additional samples from the underrepresented population in order to offset that bias. With more samples from that population than the previous pipeline stage would provide if you sampled evenly, you can counter some of…

thank you, that seems like a plausible idea to me. It also seems possible to me that such an intervention might reduce feedback loops which cause the bias in the input anyway. Like, if women who are aware that a smaller proportion of the people employed in a field are women than the proportion of people in the population, maybe they might see that as a factor weighing against picking that field as one to go into? (of…

Right. And those feedback loops do very much exist -- you can find plenty of women sharing their experiences of what it feels like to be the only woman in a room full of men. Over and over again. Being an "only" is rough. I'd imagine that going from 2 to 3 in a group is a much, much smaller change.

It also means that success often requires acting like a man, even when that is neither natural nor optimal for the situation. That's one reason why more than minimal diversity helps -- if there is a benefit to be had from diversity, you may not get it from having an "only" who is pressured to fit in.

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

#655

Post by iovrthoughtthis » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 8:25 AM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #581

iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“When she gets distracted looking at cat pictures” This is not the behaviour of someone who is comfortable and enjoying their job. Has anyone reached out to your female colleague to ask if everything is ok. What their goals and aspirations are and how the company can help them reach those? Could you all just be sitting back watching a team member fail not helping because of their gender and your fear of talking to th…

Surely it's the behaviour of someone who is very much comfortable and enjoying their job. Getting well paid to waste time on Instagram all day without risk of being fired is many people's idea of a dream job!

Perhaps. My experience of people comfortable in, and enjoying their job is that they are good at it and do it, usually quite socially.

Procrastination or “wasting time on instagram” would be better described as a symptom of dissatisfaction or discomfort.

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

#656

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 9:46 AM UTC

iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #655

thu2111 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it's the behaviour of someone who is very much comfortable and enjoying their job. Getting well paid to waste time on Instagram all day without risk of being fired is many people's idea of a dream job!

Perhaps. My experience of people comfortable in, and enjoying their job is that they are good at it and do it, usually quite socially. Procrastination or “wasting time on instagram” would be better described as a symptom of dissatisfaction or discomfort.

For developers sure, because we tend to intrinsically enjoy our work. Sadly, many people don't.

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

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Post by thu2111 » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

quineoa wrote: post #620

thu2111 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this the top rated comment? Because it spells out a view that the majority agrees with. The post suggests searching and hiring outside of the traditional pipeline It suggests the only way to hire more women is to discriminate against the best credentialed candidates. It doesn't mean that the pursuit of gender parity is delusional Lots of us believe it's actually, truly delusional. How long have women been enco…

Except every single one of the dozen+ female engineers I personally at FAANGM+ has a first-hand account of something vile that a male collegue did. In one case an internship mentor asked someone to come to their house, stating the wife and kids aren't home at night. Maybe you're a great man, and you only know other great men . But you can't dismiss a whole group just because you don't experience what they do. Just be…

Men hitting on women and women not liking it is a phenomenon as old as humanity itself. The idea that it's "vile" is relatively new. Women can say no. If he doesn't take the hint, there are procedures they can start to correct his behaviour. Or they can report him to his wife and trigger social consequences that way.

Or they can say yes and enjoy a romantic relationship - as for example happened with Bill Gates and Sergey Brin (twice). Clearly, not every woman thinks it's "vile" to be asked out at work. If I recall correctly Melinda Gates even said no the first time. Lucky for her she wasn't meeting Bill in 2019.

Regardless of how these women felt, being asked out by a married guy is simply not as bad as being openly excluded from promotions and job opportunities because of your gender or race: as happens regularly to men these days, usually at the behest of activist female workers.

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

#658

Post by threatofrain » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #587

shadowgovt wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You talk about women and their lives as if what they want is or should be the driving factor in their lives. I don't think that's accurate at all. Is "what they want" the driving factor in men's lives? If so, it's a somewhat fundamental principle of American cultural philosophy that we do all we can to make the option available for women too, if they want it. To do otherwise is to abandon the notion of "created equ…

America has a generally worse track record for women's rights than Europe. It boils down to the fact that the American attitude of "we were created equal and I can too achieve just as much as a man if you will just get out of my way!" is a broken mental model. European women asked for help with carrying the burden entailed in bearing and raising children. They asked for things like maternity leave. America is the onl…

This also suggests that family should play a role in rearing children because the nanny chain is not sustainable except for an elite class.

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

#659

Post by bobbytherobot » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

anonytrary wrote: post #468

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…

> A while back, I did rough envelope calculations that if one of the major FAANG companies hit their diversity goal, there would be none left for any of the rest of them. Not to mention, if the other companies also wish to hit their diversity goals, they will be forced to take on weaker hires, since the (already small) pool of adequate hires has been exhausted. In my opinion, diversity hiring is an anti-pattern. Hiri…

> they will be forced to take on weaker hires

What I have seen in my experience is not a lowering of the bar for more diverse hires, but a lowering of the bar when a company wants to drastically increase its number of engineers. Yet the lowered bar does not increase the percentage of diverse hires, quite the opposite. I've seen lowering the bar for white men, but no other group.

I say this as a white man who doesn't want to work with poor quality engineers who are uncoachable. It infuriates my sense of logic when they cry about not wanting to lower the bar while doing exactly that.

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

#660

Post by DoreenMichele » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #658

DoreenMichele wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has a generally worse track record for women's rights than Europe. It boils down to the fact that the American attitude of "we were created equal and I can too achieve just as much as a man if you will just get out of my way!" is a broken mental model. European women asked for help with carrying the burden entailed in bearing and raising children. They asked for things like maternity leave. America is the onl…

This also suggests that family should play a role in rearing children because the nanny chain is not sustainable except for an elite class.

Yes. And that elite class can only exist in a system where servitude by the masses is the norm. To call it a search for equality is straight up a lie.

It's a narrative that actively seeks to trade gender-based inequality for class-based inequality. And then that class-based inequality has a strongly gendered bent to it. You don't typically see men working as nannies and maids.

I find it abhorrent in the extreme.