4 ms·

> Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to fill positions with qual

by tmnvix 10y ago

> Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to fill positions with qualified applicants. True. > Given that, there is a pretty strong argument that we should change the way we hire software developers and an obvious way to change it is to be more inclusive. What is this 'strong argument'? Your conclusion "be more inclusive" is based on nothing more than an assumption that change will be good. There are any number of changes that could be made. You need to expand on your reasons for asserting that 'being more inclusive' will fix the problem. It could just as easily make it worse. You could possibly argue that increasing the pool of candidates by not excluding people based on irrelevant factors (such as gender, race, or age) will mean that we have a better chance of finding qualified candidates. The danger here is if we confuse increased diversity in the hiring process (opportunity) with increased diversity amongst employees (outcome). The first fits your assumption. The second doesn't and could lead to worse outcomes (from a business perspective).

kasey_junk 10y ago
The argument is we could hardly be worse. I'm not convinced we know what qualified even looks like. We certainly can't tell in any objective way. Given that a purely random inclusion of more applicants is likely to improve the situation. Thats before arguing for the merits of a diverse work force or relying on moral imperatives.
- tnones 10y ago
  "Diversity" and "inclusiveness" isn't about adding more randomness to a selection, it's about introducing an explicit and deliberate bias. Special outreach programs favor candidates with lower _distribution_ in the available populace. Not only is it discrimination by itself, against the current majority, but it's self-defeating measure, in that every diversity hire skews the remaining pool of candidates more towards the biased majority it's trying to eliminate. This is usually combined with a concerted effort to ignore the actual sources of skew in the first place, because the implications go against ideas of blank-slatism and politically correct thought. If you want to bring moral imperatives into it, one would think a basic commitment to truth and statistical literacy would be included, but it very rarely is. You'd also imagine diversity of thought would be included as a point of intellectual honesty, but in practice, it is the exact opposite. As for software projects routinely failing, that has numerous possible explanations. One is that it's one of the most abstract forms of engineering around, in the sense that the material we manipulate and the arrangements we construct cannot be seen or touched, and hence are invisible to outsiders. It must rely entirely on explicit and deliberate communication, unlike more practical fields. The onus is entirely on the engineer to make himself understandable, and it is rare to find people gifted both in abstraction and verbal thinking. Another is the recurring observation that schools are particularly bad at teaching the practical skills required to deliver software projects, being taught by people with little to no industry experience. It goes beyond basic project and code management skills and goes into product design and usability: people learn to build code when they should be learning to craft tools. But just because currently applications focus more on theory than practice, doesn't mean we'd get better results by turning to people who lack the theory entirely.
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    Women have a lower distribution in the populace?
    - flukus 10y ago
      No one is hiring from the population at large, they're hiring from the population of software developers.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        This is tautological.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  It could be much worse. Simply making random changes and hoping it is an improvement rather than making things worse is not sensible.
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    That would be true if we could mention a single factor that we agreed was correlated to successful software projects. Given that is the biggest open question in the industry, who knows? What we do know is that current hiring practices aren't inclusive & they aren't successful. Are those things related? No idea, but I'm more willing to try inclusion than I am riddles for finding my next candidates.
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      >What we do know is that current hiring practices aren't inclusive & they aren't successful. We don't know either of those things, they are baseless claims. Software gets made, it gets shipped, it kinda works. Given the overwhelmingly horrifying incompetence of the vast majority of programmers, I would suggest we're actually going very well at interviewing and finding the rare competent candidates. >No idea, but I'm more willing to try inclusion than I am riddles for finding my next candidates. And I am more willing to put thought into it rather than do something likely to produce the opposite effect and justify it with a terrible strawman.

by tmnvix 10y ago

kasey_junk 10y ago

The argument is we could hardly be worse. I'm not convinced we know what qualified even looks like. We certainly can't tell in any objective way. Given that a purely random inclusion of more applicants is likely to improve the situation. Thats before arguing for the merits of a diverse work force or relying on moral imperatives.

tnones 10y ago
"Diversity" and "inclusiveness" isn't about adding more randomness to a selection, it's about introducing an explicit and deliberate bias. Special outreach programs favor candidates with lower _distribution_ in the available populace. Not only is it discrimination by itself, against the current majority, but it's self-defeating measure, in that every diversity hire skews the remaining pool of candidates more towards the biased majority it's trying to eliminate. This is usually combined with a concerted effort to ignore the actual sources of skew in the first place, because the implications go against ideas of blank-slatism and politically correct thought. If you want to bring moral imperatives into it, one would think a basic commitment to truth and statistical literacy would be included, but it very rarely is. You'd also imagine diversity of thought would be included as a point of intellectual honesty, but in practice, it is the exact opposite. As for software projects routinely failing, that has numerous possible explanations. One is that it's one of the most abstract forms of engineering around, in the sense that the material we manipulate and the arrangements we construct cannot be seen or touched, and hence are invisible to outsiders. It must rely entirely on explicit and deliberate communication, unlike more practical fields. The onus is entirely on the engineer to make himself understandable, and it is rare to find people gifted both in abstraction and verbal thinking. Another is the recurring observation that schools are particularly bad at teaching the practical skills required to deliver software projects, being taught by people with little to no industry experience. It goes beyond basic project and code management skills and goes into product design and usability: people learn to build code when they should be learning to craft tools. But just because currently applications focus more on theory than practice, doesn't mean we'd get better results by turning to people who lack the theory entirely.
- kasey_junk 10y ago
  Women have a lower distribution in the populace?
  - flukus 10y ago
    No one is hiring from the population at large, they're hiring from the population of software developers.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      This is tautological.
MustardTiger 10y ago
It could be much worse. Simply making random changes and hoping it is an improvement rather than making things worse is not sensible.
- kasey_junk 10y ago
  That would be true if we could mention a single factor that we agreed was correlated to successful software projects. Given that is the biggest open question in the industry, who knows? What we do know is that current hiring practices aren't inclusive & they aren't successful. Are those things related? No idea, but I'm more willing to try inclusion than I am riddles for finding my next candidates.
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    >What we do know is that current hiring practices aren't inclusive & they aren't successful. We don't know either of those things, they are baseless claims. Software gets made, it gets shipped, it kinda works. Given the overwhelmingly horrifying incompetence of the vast majority of programmers, I would suggest we're actually going very well at interviewing and finding the rare competent candidates. >No idea, but I'm more willing to try inclusion than I am riddles for finding my next candidates. And I am more willing to put thought into it rather than do something likely to produce the opposite effect and justify it with a terrible strawman.