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Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

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Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#91

Post by montalbano »

radiantswirl wrote: post #90
montalbano wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response seems to be suggesting that having two different approaches precludes the possibility of two people listening to each other and reaching a sensible agreement?

I do not suggest that, because obviously people can listen to each other and reach sensible agreements. But if that's possible then how "genuine" is their intellectual difference in the first place? My question is this: what defines an organization other than a shared intellectual approach? Borders? Dare I say... Walls? I'm just saying that a "shared intellectual approach" is literally the definition of an organizati…

When I google the definition of 'organization' this is the 1st one that comes up: "an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department." People can have different ways of fulfilling the same purpose.

As for an example: I'm currently developing a fairly large open-source software package for numerical analysis. I do the majority of the coding but every few weeks I discuss the latest developments with a co-worker and my supervisor. They often disagree with the way I have done certain things (intellectual diversity) but after (sometimes lengthy but productive) discussion we almost always end up with greatly improved software design that we are all happy with. Sometimes they compromise or come round to my way of thinking, sometimes its the other way around.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#92

Post by colordrops »

s-shellfish wrote: post #18
colordrops wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an analogy. The point is that there are deep social and cultural factors at play that bias women against software, so the applicant pool is small, and it can't be fixed by some localized corporate initiative.

The 'analogy' can be taken either way allowing people who benefit from the issue to continue avoiding confronting the problem head on, directly, clearly, logically, in a straight forward manner - where both sides of the argument can be cleanly inspected and analyzed.

If a company is hiring at or above the rate of women coming out of college and applying to jobs, what exactly are they avoiding to confront?

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#93

Post by ryanmercer »

jonathankoren wrote: post #54
nsxwolf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex targeted toys sell. Most parents want that for their kids. It's not a conspiracy by the toy companies.

I wouldn’t say, “most parents want [sex targeted toys]”. Rather parents give the toys their kids want. Kids want what they see, and the see gender specific toys.

>I wouldn’t say, “most parents want [sex targeted toys]”. Rather parents give the toys their kids want. Kids want what they see, and the see gender specific toys.

I don't know. The pink bicycles vs non-pink bicycles thing applies to adults too. See 'pink tax'.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#94

Post by ryanmercer »

ryanmercer wrote: post #69
colordrops wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an analogy. The point is that there are deep social and cultural factors at play that bias women against software, so the applicant pool is small, and it can't be fixed by some localized corporate initiative.

Indeed. I should have just said this --- In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent. As of July 2016, White Americans are the racial majority with the White population being 76.9% of the country. Statistically, an applicant with a computer science degree is likely to be a white male so logically a company that employees mostly CS types would be heavy o…

*light on women and other races.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#95

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jonathankoren wrote: post #54
nsxwolf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex targeted toys sell. Most parents want that for their kids. It's not a conspiracy by the toy companies.

I wouldn’t say, “most parents want [sex targeted toys]”. Rather parents give the toys their kids want. Kids want what they see, and the see gender specific toys.

Sure its not the parents. Kids 'want' what they see on tv, see their friends have, see who the toy's aimed at etc. Its cultural. Which means, learned.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#96

Post by ryanmercer »

s-shellfish wrote: post #89
ryanmercer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no need to put out information that oversimplifies the problem women have in technology and reduces it down to an analogy There's literally less qualified women than there are men. Fact. Period. End of story. That means fewer applicants. That means fewer hires. Should Facebook go hire unqualified people then spend considerable amounts of times training them like some military occupational training where you'…

You are throwing out figures you don't have access to. The article's figures come in the form of a metric of change, a delta value indicating the passage of time. That is the foundation to reason and measure with. That is where there is complaint and room for improvement because that measurement is a useful measurement to the whole system as a dynamic system.

>You are throwing out figures you don't have access to.

Erm. I linked where the figures came from. There are considerably more white people in the U.S. than any other race, fact. Numbers of women majoring in CS degrees has fallen considerably, fact.

Less than 20% of CS degrees are being pursued by women per the source I cited. Women would be a minority at anything less than 50%.

You can't expect 20% of the degree holders to fill 50% of the jobs.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#97

Post by s-shellfish »

colordrops wrote: post #92
s-shellfish wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'analogy' can be taken either way allowing people who benefit from the issue to continue avoiding confronting the problem head on, directly, clearly, logically, in a straight forward manner - where both sides of the argument can be cleanly inspected and analyzed.

If a company is hiring at or above the rate of women coming out of college and applying to jobs, what exactly are they avoiding to confront?

If a comment on the internet uses physical strength and stature as an analogy for why there are less women applying to programming jobs, what exactly are they trying to say?

Please don't treat me like an idiot because ambiguity is convenient.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#98

Post by colordrops »

s-shellfish wrote: post #97
colordrops wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company is hiring at or above the rate of women coming out of college and applying to jobs, what exactly are they avoiding to confront?

If a comment on the internet uses physical strength and stature as an analogy for why there are less women applying to programming jobs, what exactly are they trying to say? Please don't treat me like an idiot because ambiguity is convenient.

I agree it was a poor analogy, but I am giving the commenter the benefit of the doubt and assuming that some idea of inferiority (that you seem to be implying) is not the intent of their comment. Women and men have traditionally had very different roles and expectations in society, and significant physical differences as well, and to think that these differences don't have an effect on preferences and motivations, and that the situation is easily changeable, is naive.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#99

Post by s-shellfish »

ryanmercer wrote: post #96
s-shellfish wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are throwing out figures you don't have access to. The article's figures come in the form of a metric of change, a delta value indicating the passage of time. That is the foundation to reason and measure with. That is where there is complaint and room for improvement because that measurement is a useful measurement to the whole system as a dynamic system.

>You are throwing out figures you don't have access to. Erm. I linked where the figures came from. There are considerably more white people in the U.S. than any other race, fact. Numbers of women majoring in CS degrees has fallen considerably, fact. Less than 20% of CS degrees are being pursued by women per the source I cited. Women would be a minority at anything less than 50%. You can't expect 20% of the degree hol…

Yay, so neither of us want to read what the other wants to say! That's surely going to fix the problem!

From the linked article:

'Unless companies fire everyone and start over, we’re not going to see drastic improvements anytime soon.'

People who are saying 'there is a problem' are well aware this isn't something you can just measure today and fix with just the information that exists as it exists presently.

Why do I care? Because, I was once a little girl reading hacker stuff on the internet. It is part of the problem. If you can't admit to the subtext implied by your original post, or even get a sense that maybe it's not the right kind of analogy to use, I don't have anything left to say.

I'd be lying if I have to say I'm happy to infer that your point here is to discredit and silence the perspective of the article, but that's how all of this is coming across. Also a point from the article:

'That’s because homogenous cultures lead to limited perspectives and potential lack of awareness of things that may be more obvious to diverse groups of people.'

But perhaps all of this is pointless.

Re: Facebook’s diversity efforts show little progress after five years

#100

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

neoburkian wrote: post #84
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Success Sequence is bunk, here's some reading on it[1] but the basic idea is that in those three points you laid out number 3 does basically all the explanatory work, number one does a little work and number 2 does almost nothing. >This is a problem of culture and a lack of personal responsibility. Okay then where does that culture problem come from? Does it just emerge from the ether to grab black people and wip…

So the conclusion here is that failing to graduate high school and becoming a teen parent has little impact on life outcomes? I'm sure Bruenig is right when when he says that the ability to stay out of poverty is mostly determined by the ability to hold a job. But thats basically a tautology. Did AEI shoe-horn in their pet theories into the analysis? Sure. On the other hand, does Bruenig (or anyone) believe that hold…

>So the conclusion here is that failing to graduate high school and becoming a teen parent has little impact on life outcomes?

The conclusion is that it has little impact on your ability to not be "permanently poor" as the prior commenter stated.

>On the other hand, does Bruenig (or anyone) believe that holding a job is casually independent from the sets of behavioral traits that lead people into failing high school and becoming teen parents?

Saying "these things aren't independent" and saying "these things have a strong causal connection and here's the direction" are worlds apart so let's not treat the former as our motte and the latter as our bailey.

>Accusations of motivated reasoning cut both ways. He could say that you seem just as desperate to implicate society as he is to exonerate it.

Motivated reasoning requires a motivation, eg motivated reasoning would be '... that you're desperate to exonerate because you're racist.' But I never did that. And I don't mind the accusation that I'm implicating society here, I am.

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