10 ms·

Women are incredibly valuable, but there isn't anything inherently "good" about having an exactly even split M-F ratio. Is a company with 70% women and 30% men

• tdb7893 10y ago
  It's a recruiting tool in many cases. Both men and women want to work for a more balanced company generally
  • muninn_ 10y ago
    I find this kind of strange. I've never thought about what percentage of asians or blacks work at a company, or what percentage are men or women before considering a job opportunity. It just has never mattered to me. 100% men, 100% women, 100% asian. I just don't care.
    • billylindeman 10y ago
      Thank you! I've also literally never given a thought to it and generally don't care. If you're smart and cooperative I'll love working with you -- male, female, trans, black, hispanic, whatever-the-fuck-label-you-want. I was raised to not judge people by whats on the outside, and the whole fetishization of ratios (be it gender or race) is sickening to me. It itself is inherently racist/sexist and only perpetuates race/gender based categorization instead of unity.
• st3v3r 10y ago
  Probably because there is an even split of men and women in the general population (more or less), but nowhere near that in tech. And don't bother bringing up other industries; I'm not in those other industries, so I have no opinion or influence to try and help things there. I am in tech, so I can try and improve things here.
  • ar15saveslives 10y ago
    Just don't call it "improve".
  • muninn_ 10y ago
    This is nonsense. These things don't exist in a vacuum.
• rayiner 10y ago
  Having been a programmer and a lawyer, I can't think of anything about the respective jobs that is a good explanation for why my programming jobs were 10% women while my legal jobs have been 50% women. Even if we indulge stereotypes about men versus women, programming is if anything more social, collaborative, and cooperative while law is confrontational and adversarial. So what's left are bad reasons. Women who are logical/mathematical go into medicine or law instead of programming because frankly it sucks to be the only woman in a room full of men. It gets tiring. And even if you get into the realm of "things you can't say." The ratio of women to men in the SAT Math in the upper ranges where you'd expect most programmers to score is like 40/60. I think everyone would be ecstatic if 40% of programmers were women.
  • Archio 10y ago
    >Women who are logical/mathematical go into medicine or law instead of programming because frankly it sucks to be the only woman in a room full of men Medicine or law used to fill rooms with men, but like most other fields, that changed in the past few decades. The question is, what is the differentiator with CS that has led to the severity of the current imbalance?
    • amyjess 10y ago
      So, Vox has an article where they go in depth about what's behind the wage gap [0], and they ended up reaching an interesting observation about pharmacists: > The wage gap for pharmacists has shrunk significantly because the profession has changed. > In the 1970s, pharmacies were primarily independent and self-owned businesses. A single pharmacist might be responsible for keeping his or her shop open. The pharmacy would need to be open typical business hours; the owner would need to be available to do that. > Now large chains own most pharmacies. And while you might get nostalgic for the mom-and-pop shops, you should know this change has been undeniably good for female pharmacists’ earnings. > The majority of pharmacists are now women. And their wages have grown faster than those in other professional roles, like lawyers or doctors. > Bigger pharmacies hired more pharmacists, and customers essentially saw the workers as interchangeable. Most patients don’t care about seeing a particular pharmacist — they just want to make sure they get the right medication. > This meant it wasn’t important to be around 9 am to 5 pm — a shift from 6 am to 2 pm would do the pharmacy just as much good. And nobody accrued higher hourly wages for working exceptionally long hours. And speaking of doctors, the article has this to say: > You see this shift happening elsewhere too. Primary care doctors, for example, have shifted away from running one-person practices to joining larger, multi-doctor offices. In these situations, doctors become more interchangeable: When I go to my medical practice in downtown Washington, DC, I usually just want a doctor who can solve my problem — and I care less about which doctor is doing that. The short version is that the Walmartization of professions has resulted in them becoming more amenable to women. If you want to correct the imbalance, a lot of programmers who think of themselves as auteurs are going to have to accept moving to a shift work model where individual professionals are interchangeable and might as well be anonymous. Startups are going to have to suck it up and accept that environments where employees are expected to work more than 8 hours per day are actively hostile to anyone responsible for rearing children (another thing the article points out: most child-rearing in the US is performed by women, even when both parents work). [0] http://www.vox.com/2016/8/1/12108126/gender-wage-gap-explained-real http://www.vox.com/2016/8/1/12108126/gender-wage-gap-explain...
• CharlesW 10y ago
  These strike me as good and interesting questions. I read the article after I read your comment, and I have one follow-up. > The obsession with having an even split… Does it strike you that the article is describing an obsession? It seems like a strong word, used pejoratively in this case. To me, the article is described an unusual and thoughtful approach that led to surprising results.
  • zo1 10y ago
    Not the OP, but if you ask me, I'd say that society as a whole has a very obsession-like fixation on equality of all kinds. It is the absolute hot-topic being injected into almost every discussion and field. From the other side as well because there are people that opposed to the way it's being forced-upon individuals/companies. It has come to a point where dissenting opinions on the matter are actively vilified and who knows what other forms of actual discrimination. I guarantee you that I would treat every person I interact with with absolute courtesy and respect their known boundaries in all aspects except their opinions. And I am reasonably sure that there are hiring teams out there that would skip me because they'd find my comments distasteful or worse. "Culture fit"
    • st3v3r 10y ago
      I'm sorry, but I can't take seriously the idea that those with dissenting opinions face 'actual discrimination'. Especially considering most of those people are white males, who likely have never know what it's been like to be discriminated against.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • zo1 10y ago
        I mentioned that I'd probably be discriminated against in a hiring context due to my views, if I were to make them obvious or easily available. But, tangentially and not in an American context: This currently affects the place where I live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad-Based_Black_Economic_Empowerment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad-Based_Black_Economic_Emp... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Economic_Empowerment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Economic_Empowerment It actively rewards companies for hiring non-white individuals (and white individuals are a minority here). Such a company would gain preferential access to government contracts via a "point based" system that influences their choice in employees/owners and suppliers. It's really just a proxy for coercing companies into hiring for quotas rather than actual talent/availability, and for preferring suppliers based on their black-ownership rather than their ability to deliver. This sort of thing spiders-out into the overall economy outside of just government contracts.
• tarmstrong 10y ago
  If you took all the time you spent writing comments like this and spent it instead on questioning why the norm for other companies is 10-90 or 20-80, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation quite so much. Part of the reason why this announcement is significant is that people frequently argue that it is impossible to build a gender-equal team. This shows pretty clearly that it is possible. I don't think this is equivalent to saying that all companies need to be exactly even in the end. > The men that don't get jobs because of these new 50-50 splits, where do they work? Do you think there is a shortage of tech jobs? If the end state was equal for men and women it seems more likely to me that plenty of people would still be employed, but the best jobs would be going to the best people rather than just the best men. Does all that make sense? I'm genuinely curious about why equality is uncomfortable for you.
  • wyager 10y ago
    > people frequently argue that it is impossible to build a gender-equal team. No one argues that. What is true is that it's impossible for everyone to have a 50/50 teams (because most fields don't attract precisely 50/50 men/women), and it also makes recruiting substantially more expensive if you hope to maintain a high and equal standard for both men and women. This is a consequence of the fact that, assuming skill distributions are roughly the same across genders, there are simply much fewer (in absolute terms) women of a given skill level than men of a given skill level in CS or engineering.
    • tarmstrong 10y ago
      > No one argues that. I've encountered this argument in real life. I agree it sounds a lot like a straw man though and doesn't help much with my argument -- thanks. And I agree that it is more expensive to hire this way because of how diverse CS graduates are. Do you think it might be worth it in order to help nudge the industry at large in a more positive direction?
  • zo1 10y ago
    >"I'm genuinely curious about why equality is uncomfortable for you." It's interesting how you straw-man the other person of being uncomfortable with a good-sounding word such as "equality". So, because they're against something noble as "equality" then they're automatically the bad guy? I'm not the OP, but if you ask me I would tell you that we have different definitions of equality. People not like me want to write the wrongs of cosmic injustice and circumstance under the guise of fixing "discrimination" by treating people unequally. But really, at the end of the day, we would probably agree with you that equality is a good thing and we'd welcome a universe that was equal. But it's not; chance, circumstance and history dictate as much. It's not "equal" for the people being discriminated against so that this company can have a feel-good tick-box somewhere about being 50-50. Does this help out females that are potentially being treated unequally by society? Yes. Does this "throw out" perfectly good and capable males because they happen to be in the bath-water? Yes. Two wrongs don't make a right. And it certainly isn't fair.
• ericz 10y ago
  To be fair the article is not about an "obsession with an even split" at all. It's about Lever's practices to promote diversity and inclusion.
• zmillman 10y ago
  Male engineer at Lever here, and I can confirm that we don't make hiring decisions based on gender or gender presentation. It's not only highly illegal, but totally not the point of tracking diversity metrics. The ultimate goal here is not to build a company with perfect representation of the general population, but to build a company which honestly evaluates and rewards the contributions of all its employees (because we believe that those kinds of companies do build better products, businesses, etc.) and you can't do that unless you're inclusive and consistently fair with everyone in the company. A number like 50-50 gender balance doesn't mean that we've finished building that company (and no company is ever finished). However, an imbalance of gender or any demographic such as age, race, prior work experience (such as government, enterprise, startup), academic background, parental status, etc. at a company usually indicates that there's a blindspot or bug in a company's hiring or culture and it deserves a closer look.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • yeuei8 10y ago
    How much autistic can you be?? If you don't make decisions based on gender,how the fuck you got 50/50 ratio as you have been advertising?
    • geofft 10y ago
      Hire only the best people, because being the best isn't correlated with gender? And actively recruit from balanced pools (paying attention to gender balance), which is very different from making hiring decisions based on gender? This is pretty straightforward if you're in fact committed to hiring only the best people.
      • anonemu 10y ago
        Seems like bullshit. As someone who's been doing a lot of interviewing recently the ratio of male to female SDE candidates is at least 10:1. If we assume that ability is uniformly distributed there is literally no way to get to a 50:50 split or anywhere close to it without discrimination.
• Red_Tarsius 10y ago
  US culture cherry-picks data and declares that any statistical discrepancy is caused by oppression or passive privilege. Other hypotheses are taboo and dismissed. There's also a subtle background noise: a constant reminder that males are somehow defective and need to be taught how to behave, so to stop the oppressors. Thankfully, experts whose incomes depend on identity politics are here to fix your mess.
• hysterix 10y ago
  Quite simple really. Because women don't want to do physically difficult jobs like oil worker, construction worker, mechanic etc. If there are cushy office jobs where you have to sit most of the time, women are clamoring for equality in those. If you have to do a lot of physical labor, not so much. Where is the feminist outcry to put women on oil rigs in the middle of the gulf?
  • lazyasciiart 10y ago
    http://myoffshoreweb.com/job/10_oil_rig_jobs_for_females.html http://myoffshoreweb.com/job/10_oil_rig_jobs_for_females.htm...
  • in_cahoots 10y ago
    Feminism is about an equal playing field, and that means that all work roles should be available to both genders. Of course women (and men) want equal access to comfortable, high-paying jobs. That being said, there has certainly been an outcry to allow women to enter combat roles in the military, partially because the highest-paying roles tend to go to people with combat experience. On the other hand, while I am not familiar with oil rig workers, there are many female truck drivers complaining about what they perceive as unsafe, unwelcoming work conditions. I suspect you just haven't been reading their stories.
  • enknamel 10y ago
    I don't know if it is a lack of want but there is definitely a small pool of capable women. Women are on average significantly weaker and smaller than men so the pool of women who are as capable to perform hard physical tasks is very small compared to the pool of men.
• bArray 10y ago
  This is equal opportunity vs equal outcome. I believe equal opportunity to be correct, whilst the outcome depends on the individual. Regardless of what people want to believe, men and women are genetically different, seen in almost every mammal in the world. The outcome is unlikely to ever be even naturally. Women may tend towards caring roles, men may tend to roles with competition. If we are to optimise our society we should take the best people for the best roles, regardless of who they are. I think that's ultimately the greatest selection process.
• geofft 10y ago
  > The men that don't get jobs because of these new 50-50 splits, where do they work? They only have their jobs because better-qualified people don't. So, they should do exactly what the better-qualified people are expected to do today: improve their skills, find another field, lean on their spouse for support, etc. If we don't think there are enough jobs for the population, a) changing the gender ratio of people who are employed doesn't make that problem worse, and b) that's a different conversation about UBI or whatever. If we truly believe in a meritocracy, we're going to have to kick out incompetent people. There's no getting around that, and there's no getting around the fact that it's unjust to keep employing incompetent people and just to fire them. > I support women, but I support men too. I support women, and I support men too. I support qualified men, qualified women, and qualified everyone else having jobs they're qualified for. As far as I can tell, gender isn't correlated with job performance, and there seem to be about 50-50 men and women in the world. The moment that you or anyone demonstrate a reason to believe (not even conclusive proof, just a plausible hypothesis) that men are over twice as likely to be good at technical jobs as women, I'll support a 70-30 split. Similarly, the moment anyone demonstrates a reason to believe that women are twice as likely to be good at technical jobs than men, I'll support a 70-30 split in the other direction. I haven't seen such a reasoning in either direction, so I support the null hypothesis, the 50-50 split. Same with dock workers, honestly! But I'm not a dock worker and I know nothing about dock working and this isn't Dock Worker News, so I'm not going to comment about it. I hope the dock workers are trying to hire the best people, too!
  • michaelmrose 10y ago
    If you have a pool of applicants and ranked them in order of ability and drew x applicants out of the top of the pool of y individuals you would expect all things being equal to see the selected group had demographics similar to the group as a whole. If you start with for example a group of people that is 75% male and select the top n workers. The top n will be 75% male and the only way to arrive at 50% female instead of 25% is to replace some of the more qualified males with less qualified females further down in the stack. The ones higher in the stack are by definition already taken. This isn't saying that men are more qualified just that they make up a larger portion of the pool. Places that select a higher portion of males than the population suffer from the same deficiency.
• gaius 10y ago
  The question people aren't asking is why this actually matters Oh that's an easy one. Literally no-one cared about this while the IT department was at the bottom of the corporate pecking order and sometimes literally at the bottom of the company in a windowless basement. But now it's important and well-paid and people sit in nice offices on Herman Miller chairs, and suddenly out of nowhere a bunch of people who weren't geeks at school, who hated the geeks, have appeared and started demanding that they get some of this money and prestige too. Brogrammers are another symptom of this exact same phenomenon. I support women, but I support men too I'm an engineer. I care about what's between your ears, not your legs! :-)