Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees

I don't know if frat boys are different now than when I was in school but all I know is you never saw them in the Computer Science building.

The premise of the article is a valid one but the arguments underneath are incredibly weak.

Perhaps a question on how Dropbox might be used to solve income inequality or the unaffordability of housing in San Francisco would reveal as much about someone’s creativity—and more about their character—than questions about superheroes

Certainly a refined hiring protocol that asks targeted and direct questions that allows the candidate to express and communicate their competence may perhaps improve the metrics of gender-diverse hiring. Suggesting such a radical change like asking for an opine on economic disparity at a Cloud Services Provider however I think is going a bit too far just to step back and claim progress; Post hoc ergo propter hoc .

The author here seem to stumble across, and then walk right by a much more interesting story in the use of demonstrably masculine conference room names in which to conduct interviews. All we got out of that was one paragraph.

    "Subtle cues in the physical environment of companies such 
    as Star Trek posters and video games lead to women being 
    less interested in being a part of an organization when 
    compared to a neutral office environment."

Women who show up in such an environment that don't relate with the culture aren't not relating because of their gender but because of their interests.

At some point in the founding of those companies the people there decided that they want their work environment to be as pleasant and fun as their home environment, after all you are spending 40-60 hours of your week there. That's a lot of your life. If that culture isn't your idea of fun, then you chose the wrong company to work for and should go work somewhere that does share your attitudes and beliefs or some soulless place that doesn't encourage employees to express themselves at work for fear of alienating anyone.

Dropbox is a desirable place to work at because of and not despite this culture. It's also desirable because there are a lot of smart people that are going to be successful in their careers. It's natural that many people, that despite their personal disinterest in the former (culture), might want to work at Dropbox because of the latter reason (success). Unfortunately, you don't get to pick and choose what parts of a company to accept. It was doing its thing before you arrive and no one has a right to establish their career at Dropbox without accepting most of the culture. Once there, you're welcome to try to change it, but doing so comes at the risk of being ejected from that culture because those working their may not like the changes you introduce.

Seriously, what give employee number 150 the right to reject and neutralize parts of the company culture that attracted the first 149 employees to work there in the first place? Don't like that? Boo-fucking-hoo. Start your own company or show up at a company early enough to influence the culture to be more to your liking.

I'm going to guess that those employees that left, complaining about the culture were not among the first 20 employees. If you're not among the first 10-40 employees at a large successful venture, you have no right to complain about culture because culture is always set by those that came before you. Don't like it? Then show up earlier.