Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem? • Hacker News Board

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#81

Post by malandrew » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:21 AM UTC

rmc wrote: post #76

malandrew wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they make a living if they aren't working at all? That seems like a shockingly high figure of people who have the means to avoid any sort of labor productivity. I can only conclude that "are not working today" is loosely defined or that these people were unfit for working at all, since someone that has the means to quit work and not have to look for other work elsewhere probably hasn't lead a very rigorous lab…

You're right the whole "sexism in tech" is probably not a problem at all. It's all totally made up. It can't possibly be that bad. /s

I never said such a thing, nor did I imply that. lawnchair_larry nailed it with his comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960327

"I agree there is a problem, but is it ever frustrating having to tolerate completely fallacious statistics and bogus metrics. That sets the conversation back."

The statistics you cite are quite frankly bad statistics. You could have written the following and it would have been just as meaningless:

* "716 humans who left industry X" * "I have collected stories from 716 other humans who have left industry X" * "Of the 716 humans surveyed, 465 are not working today." * "Two-hundred-fifty-one are employed in non-Industry X jobs, and 45 of those are running their own companies. A whopping 625 humans say they have no plans to return to Industry X Which strongly implies "left the industry", not "moving to this job" or "that job". 2/3s of them aren't working at all, not "promoted to something else"

When you eliminate the nouns that allow our own biases to fill in the blanks and arrive at our own strong implications, it's quickly obvious that those statistics mean absolutely diddly-squat without additional related figures (like base rates) that allow us to perform an informed comparison.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#82

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:30 AM UTC

rmc wrote: post #69

malandrew wrote: post #12

A few questions: What does it mean to "leave the field"? Does that mean to no longer practice low-level work or to leave the industry entirely for another industry? If it is the former, does moving into management or another complementary area (like moving from engineering to product management) qualify as leaving the field? So what I've always been curious about is what percentage of women leave other fields? It wou…

> What does it mean to "leave the field"? You can read it in the linked article: http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-leave-tech-culture/ * "716 women who left tech" * "I have collected stories from 716 other women who have left the tech industry" * "Of the 716 women surveyed, 465 are not working today." * "Two-hundred-fifty-one are employed in non-tech jobs, and 45 of those are running their own companies. A whopping…

What's the point of asking only the ones who left? That's about the worst sampling method I can think of.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#83

Post by malandrew » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:32 AM UTC

Jare wrote: post #59

todayiamme wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to usually stay away from such debates, but I've thought a lot about the point you're making: if people are being irrational with respect to hiring then clearly the solution is to start a company that isn't ageist, sexist, or any -ist by formalising the hiring logic and finding people who share something deep - like a passion for building things - in common. But after talking to people and many, many companies,…

I think this argument needs to be less black and white than what you present. There's no need for a company to "swoop all" of these people and go for an "audacious goal"; that's all too exaggerated. All that's needed are a few companies competing in a largely male-dominated space, staffed with "a larger presence" of women, and being reasonably successful in whatever goal they have, regardless of how trivial or lofty…

Some companies actually are able to disproportionately hire many of the women available to be hired in the industry.

Company A has a hard time hiring women because Company B had a few more and better female engineers early on. Network effects take over as the company grows affording it the opportunity to hire far more women than other tech companies.

This infographic shows the ratios at a bunch of companies from those with gender ratios below the higher education pipeline ratio to those well above that ratio: http://do-better.studiometric.co/

Women earn 18% of computer science degrees: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp

That table shows the ratio at that sample of companies to be around 19% women. Assuming those companies are representative, that is a 1% different in favor of more women than men based on the pipeline feeding the industry.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#84

Post by danieltillett » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:42 AM UTC

rchiba wrote: post #46

danieltillett wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "gender microagression”?

It's when a guy from another department walks into a room and asks for a developer, unconsciously ignores the female developer closest to him and starts addressing the male developer. It's when a guy kindly asks a woman to stop debating a technical spec because she wouldn't understand the details (even though she's more technical than he is). It's when a sales guy makes a joke with his female colleague that her eye m…

I can see the micro in these examples, just not the aggression.

Thanks for the explanation as it was a term I had no idea existed.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#85

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:45 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #5

owen_griffiths wrote: post #3

"almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory environments as their main reason for leaving" If the work environment is not to women' liking and has no bearing on outcome, where are all the successful companies formed by women who want a more friendly environment? "This is a huge, unnecessary, and expensive loss of talent in a field facing a supposed talent shortage." Again, if true, s…

I'll run with your thought experiment. The article's very first example of unconscious gender bias suggests that ~2/3rds of investors prefer the same pitch delivered by a man than by a woman. So there's one example of women following your proposed approach needing to overcome structural disadvantage in order to obtain investment. The article goes on to enumerate more examples of this disadvantage, etc. I guess the po…

What if the man was Billy Mays and the woman was Roseanne Barr? What if we change it so the man is Jim Gaffigan and the woman is Ivanka Trump? I think your bias would be upside down. It's probably a true statement that the man's pitch is preferred, but that experiment Does nothing to demonstrate it.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#86

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:47 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #9

More generally, not specific to the dear tech industry, there's been a fantastic discussion on metafilter titled "“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor" [1]. If you are a person who has personal/professional relationships with other people, it's probably worth a read [2]. Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments: > A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than" one p…

This sounds intriguing for a second until you realize it has no basis and some commenter just made it up. Seriously when is the last time you looked at a woman in the office and thought she must be too busy taking care of a man to work?

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#87

Post by danieltillett » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:56 AM UTC

jmiwhite wrote: post #54

natmaster wrote: post #47

I'm curious about this quote, "Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32% in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. “Male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the same pitches narrated by a female voice.”" They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone…

This is addressed in the study[0] on the third page (4429): "The pitch videos showed images related to the ventures, but they did not show the entrepreneurs themselves. Participants heard the entrepreneur’s voice-over narration while they watched each video. This video pitch format allowed us to dub in a male voice and a female voice (randomly assigned), holding the narration script constant. After watching the video…

This is such garbage science I can't believe it was published in PNAS outside of an old direct submission. Using only one narrator for each sex just tests the narrator and tells us nothing about the role of gender.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#88

Post by nasalgoat » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 10:01 AM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #50

troels wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they didn't know, did they. But I would say that with such good results, they might want to increase it even further. 18 weeks is still rather short.

I'm sorry, but paying someone to take off for more than 1/3 of the year? Is this based on how long they are with the company before said leave? 4.5 months of maternity leave is very generous, and honestly enough for a physical recovery and to spend time with the baby. I'd even be in favor of 4-8 weeks maternity leave for new dads. I'm all for maternity leave, I think it's important, and there are too many companies t…

Here in Canada, maternity leave is a Federally-mandated full year. Before having a baby I thought that seemed excessive, but after having one, I see the value it brings at a critical time in a child's life.

Now the idea that the US only allows for 2 weeks seems cruel and unusual.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#89

Post by rmc » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 10:04 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #78

I agree there is a problem, but is it ever frustrating having to tolerate completely fallacious statistics and bogus metrics every time someone talks about this. That sets the conversation back. There is no such thing as equally qualified for a promotion. To pretend that performance is a simple formula with two inputs is being disingenuous. It is a pipeline problem, because I have interviewed zero females and 100 mal…

> Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview.

The study ( http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html ), asked interviewers to rank how "hireable" the candidate was, and what they would offer the candidate.

Yes, the resume gets you the interview, not the job. But without the interview, you definitly don't get the job. If changing the apparent gender of the resume gets you better odds of getting the interview, then the gender gets your more/better jobs!

This is science. Creationists are invested in believing the earth is 6,000 years old and don't like evidence that contradicts that. Antivaxxers don't like evidence that shows vaccines are safe. Homeopaths don't like evidence that shows that it's just as good as water. And here we have evidence that men get more interviews.

> you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota

To quote the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice". You (and I) have a bug in our brains. We are not actually able to correctly deduce with 100% accuracy whether someone is more qualified than other.

Yes a female quota might mean that there's a woman who's being hired when you would have given that job to a man, but how do you know the man is definitly more qualified? The function in your brain that calculates "qualified" has a bug and isn't always accurate about "most qualified".

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#90

Post by rmc » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 10:05 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #82

rmc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does it mean to "leave the field"? You can read it in the linked article: http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-leave-tech-culture/ * "716 women who left tech" * "I have collected stories from 716 other women who have left the tech industry" * "Of the 716 women surveyed, 465 are not working today." * "Two-hundred-fifty-one are employed in non-tech jobs, and 45 of those are running their own companies. A whopping…

What's the point of asking only the ones who left? That's about the worst sampling method I can think of.

It can tell you why people left. Which might tell you the problems in it.

Update: Imagine a company has many people leaving, and they ask why. If everyone says "Got paid better elsewhere" it means you have a problem with salary. If "Sick of commuting out to the sticks", maybe look at relocation. If "Tech is old fashioned and boring", maybe look at what your employees are working on. If "Manager is an asshole", maybe fire/retrain that manager. etc.