5 ms·

I think the industry is suffering from the cobra effect right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

smt88 10y ago
Can you elaborate?
- jlebrech 10y ago
  check leshow's reply
- jlebrech 10y ago
  as leshow deleted their comment (edit: I can see it again) i'll explain: * facebook got criticism for not hiring enough women as coders. * facebook hired more women (probably lots of junior coders) * they do what junior coders do * someone turned the code review rejections into a spreadsheet and disregarded seniority (experience mainly), and made the issue about gender.
  - smt88 10y ago
    What about studies of GitHub showing that pull requests are rejected more often when the contributor is known to be female? Or, to put it another way: when contributors are anonymous and genderless, work by women is accepted at the same rate as men?
    - nathanasmith 10y ago
      The Github results were based on the assumed gender of submitters based on things like having female anime character avatars and "female sounding" usernames. I would posit that methodology as highly flawed.
      - jlebrech 10y ago
        are what is 'code', maybe they were just textual changes (eg adding a contributor covenant)
ch4s3 10y ago
Care to elaborate on how the cobra effect relates here?
- ybrah 10y ago
  Women are more likely to get hired to solve the unequal distribution of female/male engineers. This makes it more likely to have less qualified female engineers, and more qualified male engineers, since hiring requirements for men are more strict. A higher average of under qualified females compared to under qualified male engineers will lead to more code getting reject from the female counterpart.
  - accountyaccount 10y ago
    This is also a biased assumption that women are worse developers... seems a little quick to jump to that conclusion.
    - Sacho 10y ago
      Not necessarily. If the pool of talent is exactly the same(let's say 1000 women and 1000 men) and your interviewing process is perfect at determining engineer quality, but you are hiring 80 women and 20 men, then you'll hire the top 2% of men and the top 8% of women. Again, just assuming that the talent is exactly the same, the women you've hired will still be worse. In reality, the pool of female talent is very shallow. Again assuming the talent levels are exactly the same, there's just not enough highly-skilled women to go around, e.g. if you're trying to hire the top 1% of engineers, and you have a pool of 1 million men and 100,000 women, then you're looking at 10000 men and 1000 women as your potential hires. If the top 1000 women are already taken, then you're forced to relax your interview requirements for women. In fact, if the pool is completely free for your usage, but you're looking to hire 10000 men and 10000 women, you'll be hiring the top 1% of male talent and down to the top 10% of female talent, which should lead to a difference in output. This doesn't mean that "sexism" isn't real or that it's not a problem women face in the workplace. The question however, is how to measure the effectiveness of "anti-sexism" practices employed, if you cannot measure the effect of "sexism" itself, as it is entangled with all the other, confounding factors. You can't optimize performance if you can't measure the effects your solutions have on it.
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
I'm interested in how the Cobra Effect applies to an analysis.
scandox 10y ago
> Historian Michael Vann argues that the cobra example from British India cannot be proven, but that the rats in Vietnam case can be proven, so the term could be changed to the "rat effect". This guy won't win any prizes for marketing.

smt88 10y ago

Can you elaborate?

jlebrech 10y ago
check leshow's reply
jlebrech 10y ago
as leshow deleted their comment (edit: I can see it again) i'll explain: * facebook got criticism for not hiring enough women as coders. * facebook hired more women (probably lots of junior coders) * they do what junior coders do * someone turned the code review rejections into a spreadsheet and disregarded seniority (experience mainly), and made the issue about gender.
- smt88 10y ago
  What about studies of GitHub showing that pull requests are rejected more often when the contributor is known to be female? Or, to put it another way: when contributors are anonymous and genderless, work by women is accepted at the same rate as men?
  - nathanasmith 10y ago
    The Github results were based on the assumed gender of submitters based on things like having female anime character avatars and "female sounding" usernames. I would posit that methodology as highly flawed.
    - jlebrech 10y ago
      are what is 'code', maybe they were just textual changes (eg adding a contributor covenant)

ch4s3 10y ago

Care to elaborate on how the cobra effect relates here?

ybrah 10y ago
Women are more likely to get hired to solve the unequal distribution of female/male engineers. This makes it more likely to have less qualified female engineers, and more qualified male engineers, since hiring requirements for men are more strict. A higher average of under qualified females compared to under qualified male engineers will lead to more code getting reject from the female counterpart.
- accountyaccount 10y ago
  This is also a biased assumption that women are worse developers... seems a little quick to jump to that conclusion.
  - Sacho 10y ago
    Not necessarily. If the pool of talent is exactly the same(let's say 1000 women and 1000 men) and your interviewing process is perfect at determining engineer quality, but you are hiring 80 women and 20 men, then you'll hire the top 2% of men and the top 8% of women. Again, just assuming that the talent is exactly the same, the women you've hired will still be worse. In reality, the pool of female talent is very shallow. Again assuming the talent levels are exactly the same, there's just not enough highly-skilled women to go around, e.g. if you're trying to hire the top 1% of engineers, and you have a pool of 1 million men and 100,000 women, then you're looking at 10000 men and 1000 women as your potential hires. If the top 1000 women are already taken, then you're forced to relax your interview requirements for women. In fact, if the pool is completely free for your usage, but you're looking to hire 10000 men and 10000 women, you'll be hiring the top 1% of male talent and down to the top 10% of female talent, which should lead to a difference in output. This doesn't mean that "sexism" isn't real or that it's not a problem women face in the workplace. The question however, is how to measure the effectiveness of "anti-sexism" practices employed, if you cannot measure the effect of "sexism" itself, as it is entangled with all the other, confounding factors. You can't optimize performance if you can't measure the effects your solutions have on it.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

I'm interested in how the Cobra Effect applies to an analysis.

scandox 10y ago

> Historian Michael Vann argues that the cobra example from British India cannot be proven, but that the rats in Vietnam case can be proven, so the term could be changed to the "rat effect". This guy won't win any prizes for marketing.