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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

#81

Post by commandlinefan »

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…

> "someone with a boot camp education couldn't be seriously considered."

Ok, wait a minute - they brought him in for a full interview, knowing that he didn’t have a degree, made him jump through all the hoops and then told him that he was never actually under consideration at all? That’s douche behavior no matter how you feel about college degrees.

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

#82

Post by ergfdgs »

sbilstein wrote: post #37
ergfdgs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow Latin American, I find "LatinX" offensive. English already has a gender neutral adjective to refer to us, Latin, and therefore Latin American. LatinX means you've internalized the colonialization of white "liberals" [0] who would refer to us as Latinos or Latinas while speaking English to show off their poor Spanish and therefore pretend to be sophisticated and woke. [0] I don't consider liberal bad or go…

I too hate the term LatinX but it's become the preferred term around so many I know that I'd rather just conform than argue about it. Just cause I used it doesn't mean I endorse it.

I upvoted your reply to my "Impose yourself" comment. Specifically the "Choose my battles".

I get it. I live in the mid-West. Most people haven't heard the neologism. My parents (well educated, sophisticated people) certainly hadn't.

SV is different.

But culturally where I live doesn't matter. We accept the culture. If SV adopts LatinX, then all Latin Americans will have to adopt it.

Imagine being referred to be a noun that you hate! (well you're a visible minority, so I guess you're more aware of this than I).

We despise -nX. I'm willing to adopt your "Latines" as a compromise. But I'll die refusing to use that X ("X" is dehumanizing, as if we're a mere unknown in an eq.)

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

#83

Post by btilly »

wrs wrote: post #50
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?)

Yes, I did read the Gender Differences section of that article. You will note that I stated what research shows about population differences and did not wade into the more controversial question about why those differences exist.

That said, I have found that on controversial subjects, people grab every sliver of support for their own ideas, and ignore data that might contradict it. The more heated the debate, the harder it is to find a neutral data driven point of view. So rather than engage with the argument that I made, you grabbed on to, "But it might still be social and not biological!" And thereby bypass the argument that the gender discrepancy in engineering can be explained by population differences in ability and not by bias within engineering departments.

That said, articles like https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2015.0001... are highly suggestive that on this particular item there really could be a biological component to it.

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

#84

Post by xyzzyz »

majos wrote: post #21
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…

> Soon after the industry seriously stops doing this, the fancy name schools will quickly get female-dominated Why would this happen? Is your thinking that men will respond to the lower incentive of a fancy school degree by pursuing other options, but women won't? If so, why?

Pretty much, yes. You are asking why would the response to this incentive affect people of different gender differently. I don’t have any clear answer to this question, other than pointing out that in the current system, we already have an existing imbalance, so there is already a difference in how incentives affect different people, and unless we determine the exact mechanism here, random changes are unlikely to change it.

By the way, this is called Campbell’s law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law

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

#85

Post by hinkley »

wayoutthere wrote: post #69
stormbrew wrote: post #16

I don't think the point of criticizing "it's a pipeline problem" is that there isn't a pipeline problem, but that it's an easy out to avoid taking action at whatever stage of the 'pipeline' you happen to be working at. If, as an manager at a FAANG, you say "it's a pipeline problem" you're probably saying that there aren't enough candidates because not enough women graduate from ST programs. If you're a program develo…

The author is leaving unstated what we all know to be true: most of these jobs aren't really that hard. You don't really need the people with pedigreed CS backgrounds, but it's easier than actually figuring out how to screen candidates. The "pipeline problem" is the pipeline itself. So you have to go around the pipeline by avoiding the formal education system, which is where the bias is observed.

The problem is that if you give a rocket engineer the job of opening a pickle jar, you are forever in danger of them doing something titanically ornate, instead of just opening the goddamn jar or installing one of those toothy wedges under a cabinet near the fridge, where people can still function normally if they forget it's even there.

The one time I worked on a team of all highly senior people you couldn't get any of us to do anything. We were always writing code to do the thing for us. Which sounds okay at first, until you started trying to trace through all that code and then holy shit, we have made a terrible mistake.

On any project there is a mix of tasks that are perfectly suited for mid-level developers, and a set of tasks that are interesting enough but relatively low risk that you can use to train up low- and mid-level people for something meatier. Many of those tasks are also perfect for introducing new team members too.

If you aren't constantly trying to make 90% of the tasks simple enough for a boring team member to do then I don't know how you prevent the overall complexity of the system from eventually swamping you all. There are systems that look like they avoid this but if you look hard enough there is almost always one or two people who are holding the system hostage, and if they don't want something done to the system, it's not getting done, no matter how many customers leave. Eventually power overshadows merit and you get an oligarchy instead of a democracy.

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

#86

Post by sdnlafkjh34rw »

billti wrote: post #60

This stood out to me, and aligns with my observations in the (limited) female representation in the workplace: > In India, for instance, about 35% of developers are women; in the U.S., it’s 16% Does India not have the various gender biases we often attribute a large part of the problem to? What is India doing so well in this space to have over double the percentage of female software developers as the U.S.?

In India, your major is largely determine by your academic results and social pressure when you finish up secondary schools.

If you score at the top in your entrance exams, you will applying to medical or engineering schools. The good schools are hyper selective and only take the top scorers (at a rate more selective than our ivy's). Very, very few people consider majors outside of these areas. Secondly, there is a huge amount of social pressure to be an engineer or doctor. It is quite often that parents choose your major, or at least heavily push their kids into one. There are lots of Bollywood movies whose plots are centered around parents forcing their kids into engineering.

Since your choice of major is largely determined by academic and social reasons there isn't a big gender disparity. Females do just as well on the entrance exams, and there is no societal view that engineering is a male major. If you are a parent who wants your kids to earn well and marry well, you will push your kids towards medicine or engineering regardless of gender. If you are female who scored well and got entrance into a top engineering school, dropping out would be unthinkable. It would be an insult to your family. You would be throwing away years of hard work in their view; some kids start preparing for entrance exams when the hit 14. There is even a suicide problem when people fail out of the top schools (see the movie 3 Idiots). Essentially majors and careers have a hierarchy which is the same regardless of gender.

As to why there isn't a societal bias that engineering is a male major, I'm not sure. It was definitely a quick change as it was only in the 1960s when most engineering colleges started admitting females.

There is definitely still a gender gap (many women are not supported to even finish basic schooling), but there isn't a huge societal bias that engineering major or STEM is a male profession.

I have heard that some of the USSR countries (Russia, Ukraine) have a similar culture and don't view engineering or STEM as "male" majors.

Maybe the problem is parents don't bully their daughters and sons into engineering here :)

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

#87

Post by burfog »

ergfdgs wrote: post #5
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…

As a fellow Latin American, I find "LatinX" offensive. English already has a gender neutral adjective to refer to us, Latin, and therefore Latin American. LatinX means you've internalized the colonialization of white "liberals" [0] who would refer to us as Latinos or Latinas while speaking English to show off their poor Spanish and therefore pretend to be sophisticated and woke. [0] I don't consider liberal bad or go…

Oh yes. Hispanic is the correct term when speaking English.

Latinx is a sign of wanting to show off Spanish (to virtue signal) but actually being intolerant of the way the language works. Values collided, and thus Latinx was born. Using the correct term, Hispanic, just wasn't an option.

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

#88

Post by mjfisher »

sbilstein wrote: post #26
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 think you might be reading into what I wrote a bit. This is just how I feel...not how I WANT to feel. Obviously, these are biases and anxieties that exist in my own mixed-race low-income immigrant brain that i wish weren't there. As another latino founder told me..."walk into a VC pitch meeting with the confidence of a tall white man." Like I don't hate caucasians but sometimes can't help but notice these differenc…

I don't know if this will be of any use to you. If you're pitching to VCs, you're already operating way above my level. I also don't know if it's different over here. I live and work in the UK and I'm white. I genuinely don't think I've worked with anyone in the tech industry who cares what race or background their co-workers have.

There's definitely an underrepresentation problem (most grievously with female engineers), but I sincerely believe the problem is mostly systemic, rather than driven by personal prejudice.

From my (limited) perspective, the only thing anyone gives a damn about is whether you're a good developer. If you can code, if you can ship, if you can work well with your other colleagues. Please don't feel like you have you walk into meetings pretending you're somebody else. Walk into meetings with the confidence of a great engineer and founder - because anybody who gives a crap about anything else isn't worth impressing.

With love, from one engineer to another ️

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

#89

Post by jdmoreira »

rofo1 wrote: post #41
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 s…

True. But I also believe that a diverse workplace is a better workplace because of a combination of different perspectives. I also believe women are underrepresented in programming, the main consequence being the infantile machismo we all know exists.

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

#90

Post by commandlinefan »

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 absolutely observe bias in hiring processes and recruiting

Ok, see, this assertion bugs me. The linked post SPECIFICALLY talks about biasing hiring and recruiting in favor of women. Diversity efforts, by definition, are hiring and recruiting bias, but for supposedly benevolent reasons. But you’re dismissing that and implying that there are subtle, hidden, unremovable biases that only certain people are capable of even seeing. If somebody were to suggest that you’re imagining things, there’s no way to test your theory against theirs, since you’re begging the question (in the original philosophical sense).

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