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You want sexist and racist hiring policies Did I say I did? I want meritocratic hiring processes. I just happen to suggest -- and I believe evidence is strong

You want sexist and racist hiring policies Did I say I did? I want meritocratic hiring processes. I just happen to suggest -- and I believe evidence is strongly on my side -- that a process which produces lopsided gender/race ratios is extremely unlikely to be meritocratic. I also do not believe many of the other sound bytes people inevitably throw out in this argument (example: "that group just isn't interested in our field" / "they just prefer other things", another classic which will, I'm sure, rear its head in this thread sooner or later).

umanwizard 10y ago
> a process which produces lopsided gender/race ratios is extremely unlikely to be meritocratic. What is the strong evidence for this statement that you claim exists? It is very unintuitive to me, as I have always thought the problem existed earlier in the pipeline than the actual interview/hiring process. I am always open to my view being changed, so I would like to see this evidence that is strongly on your side.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  It is very unintuitive to me Here's an example: look up the historical gender breakdown of computer programmers. Hint: once upon a time there wasn't a "pipeline problem" to use as an excuse, and for-profit free-market competitors were doing just fine with a very different gender ratio than they have now. It is unlikely that, in the (short -- less than a generation to transform the industry) period in question, women magically became unqualified to work as programmers. Especially since many of them already had worked as programmers and nobody had found reason to complain about their work. Or, more bluntly: the sudden disappearance from a field of an entire category of people, whose only distinguishing characteristic is being of a gender historically denied economic opportunities, is unlikely to be explained by a similarly sudden catastrophic decline in their qualifications. The continuing absence of people of that category is equally unlikely to be explained by their lack of qualifications. Here's another example: take a look at what happens to other fields when they introduce effective blind interviewing (in which interviewers cannot discover the gender/race of the candidate prior to making a hire/no-hire decision). It once again does not suggest that previous processes were anything approaching meritocratic.
  - umanwizard 10y ago
    Woah, where did I ever claim women are unqualified to work as programmers? You're putting words in my mouth. There are many other possible explanations. As for your example, it is not "strong evidence". Historical breakdown doesn't mean much since very few people were computer programmers at all back then. You can't extrapolate from that to the distribution of people who would become programmers decades later once it would be a super mainstream profession that a huge fraction of the population would enter.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      If the process produced one gender ratio at one point, and a wildly different gender ratio at another point, and the process is asserted to be meritocratic, then the only explanation is that the relative innate qualifications of people as a function of their gender changed between those two points in time. Also, your second paragraph amusingly makes a different form of my argument for me (if you can't assume that the ratio at one point in time is indicative of general facts about qualification as a function of gender, you also can't assume that it is at a different point in time -- it may be that a decade or two from now there will be an order of magnitude more programmers!).
      - Sacho 10y ago
        > then the only explanation is that the relative innate qualifications of people as a function of their gender changed between those two points in time. Sure, for example, boys being encouraged to become computer programmers. There's an article on NPR that discusses this[0]. Also, when you say "the process", I'm not sure you're adequately describing the evolution of programming and its related skillset demands. A strong increase in competition would naturally lower the ratio of women to men: - time invested in programming correlates strongly with skill - historically men have been able to put more time into careers than women(who often need a better work-life balance to manage a household). - the historic SMAM[1](mean age at marriage) gives men an extra ~2-2.5 years over women even if you assume equal parenting responsibility, before men must also make parenting concessions. [0] - http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... [1] - http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldmarriage/worldmarriagepatterns2000.pdf http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldmarriage/...
tomp 10y ago
> that a process which produces lopsided gender/race ratios is extremely unlikely to be meritocratic Then you have the wrong process in mind. AFAIK the breakdown of employees is very similar to the breakdown of graduates (and hence applicants). So there's no bias in hiring, all the bias is coming before (socio-economic status? personal choices?).

umanwizard 10y ago

> a process which produces lopsided gender/race ratios is extremely unlikely to be meritocratic. What is the strong evidence for this statement that you claim exists? It is very unintuitive to me, as I have always thought the problem existed earlier in the pipeline than the actual interview/hiring process. I am always open to my view being changed, so I would like to see this evidence that is strongly on your side.

ubernostrum 10y ago
It is very unintuitive to me Here's an example: look up the historical gender breakdown of computer programmers. Hint: once upon a time there wasn't a "pipeline problem" to use as an excuse, and for-profit free-market competitors were doing just fine with a very different gender ratio than they have now. It is unlikely that, in the (short -- less than a generation to transform the industry) period in question, women magically became unqualified to work as programmers. Especially since many of them already had worked as programmers and nobody had found reason to complain about their work. Or, more bluntly: the sudden disappearance from a field of an entire category of people, whose only distinguishing characteristic is being of a gender historically denied economic opportunities, is unlikely to be explained by a similarly sudden catastrophic decline in their qualifications. The continuing absence of people of that category is equally unlikely to be explained by their lack of qualifications. Here's another example: take a look at what happens to other fields when they introduce effective blind interviewing (in which interviewers cannot discover the gender/race of the candidate prior to making a hire/no-hire decision). It once again does not suggest that previous processes were anything approaching meritocratic.
- umanwizard 10y ago
  Woah, where did I ever claim women are unqualified to work as programmers? You're putting words in my mouth. There are many other possible explanations. As for your example, it is not "strong evidence". Historical breakdown doesn't mean much since very few people were computer programmers at all back then. You can't extrapolate from that to the distribution of people who would become programmers decades later once it would be a super mainstream profession that a huge fraction of the population would enter.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    If the process produced one gender ratio at one point, and a wildly different gender ratio at another point, and the process is asserted to be meritocratic, then the only explanation is that the relative innate qualifications of people as a function of their gender changed between those two points in time. Also, your second paragraph amusingly makes a different form of my argument for me (if you can't assume that the ratio at one point in time is indicative of general facts about qualification as a function of gender, you also can't assume that it is at a different point in time -- it may be that a decade or two from now there will be an order of magnitude more programmers!).
    - Sacho 10y ago
      > then the only explanation is that the relative innate qualifications of people as a function of their gender changed between those two points in time. Sure, for example, boys being encouraged to become computer programmers. There's an article on NPR that discusses this[0]. Also, when you say "the process", I'm not sure you're adequately describing the evolution of programming and its related skillset demands. A strong increase in competition would naturally lower the ratio of women to men: - time invested in programming correlates strongly with skill - historically men have been able to put more time into careers than women(who often need a better work-life balance to manage a household). - the historic SMAM[1](mean age at marriage) gives men an extra ~2-2.5 years over women even if you assume equal parenting responsibility, before men must also make parenting concessions. [0] - http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... [1] - http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldmarriage/worldmarriagepatterns2000.pdf http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldmarriage/...

tomp 10y ago

> that a process which produces lopsided gender/race ratios is extremely unlikely to be meritocratic Then you have the wrong process in mind. AFAIK the breakdown of employees is very similar to the breakdown of graduates (and hence applicants). So there's no bias in hiring, all the bias is coming before (socio-economic status? personal choices?).