4 ms·

We're hiring devs, designers, PM's, digital producers etc. working with recruitment companies, advertising in various places - meet ups, job boards etc etc. Re

by _s 10y ago

We're hiring devs, designers, PM's, digital producers etc. working with recruitment companies, advertising in various places - meet ups, job boards etc etc. Recieved hundreds of CV's, run dozens of interviews. I can count on one hand the number of women that sent their CV through, and we interviewed two, hiring one. This isn't a tech thing - this goes back to children growing up in an environment where gender should make no difference to their desire or interest in STEM subjects, which should be encouraged regardless. Now the conundrum: Given two candidates (m/f) of equal footing (talent, skill, comms etc) - would you offer work to the female or male? Given a stronger male candidate over a female candidate - should I offer the job to the female instead just because she's a she?

Markoff 10y ago
so essentially you want to be known as company which discriminate white people and men in particular and prefer gender or race over several skills, good luck with such reputation, be sure I will always choose company not known for having these practices when shopping around
- _s 10y ago
  Of course we don't - and it's rather disingenuous to say we do. We want to promote diversity where we can, and if you walked into our office today you'd be surprised at the balance we've got. My statement was highlighting what the current state of tech is, and to make a more gender diverse working space i would have to sacrifice quality / skills / talent, which I will not do. But if I am not willing to sacrifice, how am I supposed to have a more diverse space?
  - Markoff 10y ago
    why should you have more diverse space if there are no suitable diverse candidates? that's like expecting that photo models should be ugly women as well or sellers should be rude people to have diversity just for the sake of diversity
    - _s 10y ago
      Because the first few generations of people will always lack the skill or confidence where they feel like a minority, ideally you want to create an environment where they all can flourish together; but not everyone se's things this way - and businesses more than anything expect immediate returns on their investments. As OP has stated, and I concur - diversity always encourages one to be more empathic, and generally leads to better teams. Side note - your definition / standards of beauty or customer service will be wildly different to mine, which will be wildly different to someone on the other end of the planet. You can have diverse teams, with varying strengths and weaknesses in individuals but still be a net positive.
  - richmarr 10y ago
    > to make a more gender diverse working space i would have to sacrifice quality / skills / talent, which I will not do. The main point here I've already addressed in my reply to your parent comment, but there's an additional point worth making. There are now two (to my knowledge) studies that show diverse teams outperform heterogenious teams. The diverse teams feel less comfortable because your team members might fail the "would I enjoy working with you on a sunday" test, or the "do I want to go for a beer with you" test, but the additional perspectives provide meaningful insight Edit: The point being that assessing team members on the basis of individual skill misses an important point about the way teams behave as a whole
  - belorn 10y ago
    You say you want to promote diversity, but do you? Do you have smoke and non-smoke offices, meat and non-meat, nude and non-nude? Do you promote equally people who drive to work, walk, and those that take a bike? Is there promotion in diversity of music taste, where each different taste is given proportional place in the office? Do you have proportional use of programming languages, promoting the diversity in preference? Have you ever used team building in order to make the group more homogeneous and working as a singular mind? Such effort goes directly against promoting diversity. Group cohesion is general opposite to diversity in behavior, goals, values, culture and opinions. The less disagreement and infighting there is, the less diversity you got.
    - richmarr 10y ago
      > You say you want to promote diversity, but do you? Studies show gender & racially diverse teams perform better. Not aware of any studies into whether diversity of music taste relates to productivity.
      - teddyh 10y ago
        Do studies show causation and not simply correlation?
        richmarr 10y ago
        A mixed bag to be honest, but some do. Example off the top of my head; a study into mixed-race juries (Sommers 2006) showed that not only did the predictive power of the group increase in the presence of black jurors, but the prodictive power of the white jurors increased without the black juror needing to actually intervene. Their presence caused a behaviour change.
        teddyh 10y ago
        If that’s the case, we should not aim for equality, but instead aim for at least a token minority member presence in all groups, since this produces the intended effect.
richmarr 10y ago
A few points to make here: > I can count on one hand the number of women that sent their CV through, and we interviewed two, hiring one. Studies show that: (a) You can create a biased process inadvertently before the CV stage based on the language you use and approach to sourcing. (b) CVs themselves are also a biasing influence. (c) Interviews are extremely biasing unless done in a very structured way, and even then they're not great. So it's very likely that you're (without meaning to) introducing additional bias on top of the constraints on the talent pool. This isn't finger-pointing, it's very hard to run a bias-free process. Even the Googles of the world fail at this. > ...an environment where gender should make no difference to their desire or interest in STEM subjects Are you saying that the environment is neutral, or that it should be neutral? First would be wrong, second would be correct. > Given two candidates... Your hypotheticals are premised on the idea that your hiring process and judgement are objective, and that you need to positively discriminate in order to redress the balance... that's simply not a view supported by the literature on this.
- _s 10y ago
  Should be neutral of course; and I concur with all of your points. We've gone back and had our female staff give us plenty of input in our outreach / hiring / on-boarding practices, but it's certainly something we need to keep working at; I think a bit of herd mentality also kicks in when you're already on the inside and can no longer see things from an outsiders perspective.
abandonliberty 10y ago
Yes, it goes back to childhood. The population of women in these fields is very small, so the number of exceptional ones is small as well. Forcing a match to nationwide demographics is inappropriate. That's not the population that should be considered. Hiring people who are poor coders and collaborators on account of their gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation is equally inappropriate whether it's a white male or minority female. My female partner in tech has encountered this so regularly she is now suspicious of female hires. Behaviors & performance that would get a male terminated are tolerated and instead show up on a CV as experience at multinational companies. I'm talking basics: unwilling & unable to use source control. This drives resume bias as richmarr highlights. This is the result of inappropriate affirmative action. It harms the very people you are seeking to help.

by _s 10y ago

Markoff 10y ago

so essentially you want to be known as company which discriminate white people and men in particular and prefer gender or race over several skills, good luck with such reputation, be sure I will always choose company not known for having these practices when shopping around

_s 10y ago
Of course we don't - and it's rather disingenuous to say we do. We want to promote diversity where we can, and if you walked into our office today you'd be surprised at the balance we've got. My statement was highlighting what the current state of tech is, and to make a more gender diverse working space i would have to sacrifice quality / skills / talent, which I will not do. But if I am not willing to sacrifice, how am I supposed to have a more diverse space?
- Markoff 10y ago
  why should you have more diverse space if there are no suitable diverse candidates? that's like expecting that photo models should be ugly women as well or sellers should be rude people to have diversity just for the sake of diversity
  - _s 10y ago
    Because the first few generations of people will always lack the skill or confidence where they feel like a minority, ideally you want to create an environment where they all can flourish together; but not everyone se's things this way - and businesses more than anything expect immediate returns on their investments. As OP has stated, and I concur - diversity always encourages one to be more empathic, and generally leads to better teams. Side note - your definition / standards of beauty or customer service will be wildly different to mine, which will be wildly different to someone on the other end of the planet. You can have diverse teams, with varying strengths and weaknesses in individuals but still be a net positive.
- richmarr 10y ago
  > to make a more gender diverse working space i would have to sacrifice quality / skills / talent, which I will not do. The main point here I've already addressed in my reply to your parent comment, but there's an additional point worth making. There are now two (to my knowledge) studies that show diverse teams outperform heterogenious teams. The diverse teams feel less comfortable because your team members might fail the "would I enjoy working with you on a sunday" test, or the "do I want to go for a beer with you" test, but the additional perspectives provide meaningful insight Edit: The point being that assessing team members on the basis of individual skill misses an important point about the way teams behave as a whole
- belorn 10y ago
  You say you want to promote diversity, but do you? Do you have smoke and non-smoke offices, meat and non-meat, nude and non-nude? Do you promote equally people who drive to work, walk, and those that take a bike? Is there promotion in diversity of music taste, where each different taste is given proportional place in the office? Do you have proportional use of programming languages, promoting the diversity in preference? Have you ever used team building in order to make the group more homogeneous and working as a singular mind? Such effort goes directly against promoting diversity. Group cohesion is general opposite to diversity in behavior, goals, values, culture and opinions. The less disagreement and infighting there is, the less diversity you got.
  - richmarr 10y ago
    > You say you want to promote diversity, but do you? Studies show gender & racially diverse teams perform better. Not aware of any studies into whether diversity of music taste relates to productivity.
    - teddyh 10y ago
      Do studies show causation and not simply correlation?
      - richmarr 10y ago
        A mixed bag to be honest, but some do. Example off the top of my head; a study into mixed-race juries (Sommers 2006) showed that not only did the predictive power of the group increase in the presence of black jurors, but the prodictive power of the white jurors increased without the black juror needing to actually intervene. Their presence caused a behaviour change.
        teddyh 10y ago
        If that’s the case, we should not aim for equality, but instead aim for at least a token minority member presence in all groups, since this produces the intended effect.

richmarr 10y ago

A few points to make here: > I can count on one hand the number of women that sent their CV through, and we interviewed two, hiring one. Studies show that: (a) You can create a biased process inadvertently before the CV stage based on the language you use and approach to sourcing. (b) CVs themselves are also a biasing influence. (c) Interviews are extremely biasing unless done in a very structured way, and even then they're not great. So it's very likely that you're (without meaning to) introducing additional bias on top of the constraints on the talent pool. This isn't finger-pointing, it's very hard to run a bias-free process. Even the Googles of the world fail at this. > ...an environment where gender should make no difference to their desire or interest in STEM subjects Are you saying that the environment is neutral, or that it should be neutral? First would be wrong, second would be correct. > Given two candidates... Your hypotheticals are premised on the idea that your hiring process and judgement are objective, and that you need to positively discriminate in order to redress the balance... that's simply not a view supported by the literature on this.

_s 10y ago
Should be neutral of course; and I concur with all of your points. We've gone back and had our female staff give us plenty of input in our outreach / hiring / on-boarding practices, but it's certainly something we need to keep working at; I think a bit of herd mentality also kicks in when you're already on the inside and can no longer see things from an outsiders perspective.

abandonliberty 10y ago

Yes, it goes back to childhood. The population of women in these fields is very small, so the number of exceptional ones is small as well. Forcing a match to nationwide demographics is inappropriate. That's not the population that should be considered. Hiring people who are poor coders and collaborators on account of their gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation is equally inappropriate whether it's a white male or minority female. My female partner in tech has encountered this so regularly she is now suspicious of female hires. Behaviors & performance that would get a male terminated are tolerated and instead show up on a CV as experience at multinational companies. I'm talking basics: unwilling & unable to use source control. This drives resume bias as richmarr highlights. This is the result of inappropriate affirmative action. It harms the very people you are seeking to help.