4 ms·

Compared to her anecdote about her kids, she spends more space recounting how she tried to hire and retain women with no appreciable success. EDIT: Also she re

Compared to her anecdote about her kids, she spends more space recounting how she tried to hire and retain women with no appreciable success. EDIT: Also she recommends these at the bottom of her piece: """ Start a mentoring program. If you are a manager, make sure women who work for you are properly treated and recognized. Educate men and women about how to detect and correct subliminal biases. Find men who are willing to educate other men about this to make the message more effective. """ ...the mentoring program could be for girls and young women, but it could also be for women already on the payroll. The rest of the recommendation are for after hiring has already taken place.

tptacek 9y ago
It's not news to anyone that the candidate pool for software developers is comprised almost entirely of men. You can't have have hired a single software developer without confronting that fact. Exactly what was interesting about her reported experience hiring?
- humanrebar 9y ago
  That's a fair point. Her recommendations also look a lot like current corporate diversity best practices as far as I can tell. Likely it's interesting because she's a coder, a founder, a hiring manager, and a woman. That gives her a lot of credibility in one person that is fairly unique. I suppose, at the end of the day, it all boils down to an argument from authority. But people do make decisions that way.
- parthdesai 9y ago
  it's might not be news to anyone but you said kernel of the article is an anecdote which is just wrong.
- Infinitesimus 9y ago
  For better or worse, her credentials (top tech first, high rank, woman ) will lend her more legitimacy in what she's said. It's not a novel idea, but the reality is that someone who is convinced all men are out to discriminate against women is more likely to listen to her than to a man writing the same post. So if for nothing at all, her voice matters in that it strengthens the argument that pipeline is a big part of the problem. It is obvious to a lot of people in this crowd but might not be to many, many others. Plus, it's still relevant to remind people that equal opportunity and equal outcome are not the same
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >Plus, it's still relevant to remind people that equal opportunity and equal outcome are not the same I see this trope trotted out again and again. Where exactly are we drawing the line between opportunity and outcome? When a 22 year old (woman or otherwise) gets hired at google that's no more an outcome than an opportunity. It's not like they're going to be sitting on their deathbed thinking of the way their life turned out realizing it was all set in stone at 22. More likely they're going to work for google for a few years, maybe leave to start a new business, get poached by a competitor or make a run at climbing the google ladder but what is that 22 year old going to be thinking later on in their career, say ten years down the line? Probably something like "I'm glad I got the opportunity to work at Google."
    - Infinitesimus 9y ago
      The phrase typically refers to what happens before the hiring stage. Think kids that don't have role models of their gender/ethnicity. Think kids that are placed in gendered roles without respect for their own interests ("oh you're a buy, let me get you the trucks and computer programing skills. I'll get your sister the art books instead"). It extends to school programs, funding, etc. and is certainly a complex issue. It is more about giving people similar access and motivation to enter careers/areas of study/careers. I agree that many events (hiring, etc.) can be seen as outcome or opportunity, it's about where you draw the line. The phrase comes up because the common conversation about diversity is focused on 50-50 splits in hires and that is dangerous if we do not accept that there isn't a 50-50 split in qualified supply in the first place.
      - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
        >The phrase comes up because the common conversation about diversity is focused on 50-50 splits in hires I'm not sure that's true. >and that is dangerous if we do not accept that there isn't a 50-50 split in qualified supply in the first place. Except it's not dangerous at all? What I specifically don't like about this article and your focus on outcome vs. opportunity is that it draws this bright line where none exists. The writer in this article basically lays out that everyone in the pipeline right up until her has a role in reducing gender bias. For example when she says: "I beg you to expend your energy motivating and mentoring young women at the crucial stages of making decisions about a tech education" she makes it clear that she doesn't think she's at a crucial stage. But she is. She admits to having failed to produce a diverse workforce at her startup but rather than really admit it as just that, a failure, she basically says that it's not her fault because all these other people aren't making it easy for her. It's never easy, we're never at "outcome", we're always at "opportunity", hire some damn women.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
>the mentoring program could be for girls and young women // How is that fair for boys/men if they're excluded from mentoring opportunities (eg in a company that hires them) simply because they're male. This is "fine" if your objective is "hire more women". As someone who supports equality of opportunity I don't see how compounding more sexism will ever lead to less sexism. In the UK, overall, young men get poorer school results, are less represented at university, receive lower wages than women (up to the ages when people choose to start families) ... how does this sort of sexist mentoring policy fit in here? Is it really enough to say "well if we look only at this industry segment"? What's wrong with equality?
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I didn't comment on any of her suggestions other than to say I've seen them in place already. So if we're not happy with the current proportion of women in tech, the industry should explain why, say, current mentoring efforts aren't working. The answer could be "it works, but there's not enough of it" I guess. I mostly brought it up because tptacek wrote, "It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline..." and I thought the recommendations for helping already-in-engineering women pointed to a more complex position. Though perhaps that position wasn't communicated, at least not clearly enough.

tptacek 9y ago

It's not news to anyone that the candidate pool for software developers is comprised almost entirely of men. You can't have have hired a single software developer without confronting that fact. Exactly what was interesting about her reported experience hiring?

humanrebar 9y ago
That's a fair point. Her recommendations also look a lot like current corporate diversity best practices as far as I can tell. Likely it's interesting because she's a coder, a founder, a hiring manager, and a woman. That gives her a lot of credibility in one person that is fairly unique. I suppose, at the end of the day, it all boils down to an argument from authority. But people do make decisions that way.
parthdesai 9y ago
it's might not be news to anyone but you said kernel of the article is an anecdote which is just wrong.
Infinitesimus 9y ago
For better or worse, her credentials (top tech first, high rank, woman ) will lend her more legitimacy in what she's said. It's not a novel idea, but the reality is that someone who is convinced all men are out to discriminate against women is more likely to listen to her than to a man writing the same post. So if for nothing at all, her voice matters in that it strengthens the argument that pipeline is a big part of the problem. It is obvious to a lot of people in this crowd but might not be to many, many others. Plus, it's still relevant to remind people that equal opportunity and equal outcome are not the same
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >Plus, it's still relevant to remind people that equal opportunity and equal outcome are not the same I see this trope trotted out again and again. Where exactly are we drawing the line between opportunity and outcome? When a 22 year old (woman or otherwise) gets hired at google that's no more an outcome than an opportunity. It's not like they're going to be sitting on their deathbed thinking of the way their life turned out realizing it was all set in stone at 22. More likely they're going to work for google for a few years, maybe leave to start a new business, get poached by a competitor or make a run at climbing the google ladder but what is that 22 year old going to be thinking later on in their career, say ten years down the line? Probably something like "I'm glad I got the opportunity to work at Google."
  - Infinitesimus 9y ago
    The phrase typically refers to what happens before the hiring stage. Think kids that don't have role models of their gender/ethnicity. Think kids that are placed in gendered roles without respect for their own interests ("oh you're a buy, let me get you the trucks and computer programing skills. I'll get your sister the art books instead"). It extends to school programs, funding, etc. and is certainly a complex issue. It is more about giving people similar access and motivation to enter careers/areas of study/careers. I agree that many events (hiring, etc.) can be seen as outcome or opportunity, it's about where you draw the line. The phrase comes up because the common conversation about diversity is focused on 50-50 splits in hires and that is dangerous if we do not accept that there isn't a 50-50 split in qualified supply in the first place.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      >The phrase comes up because the common conversation about diversity is focused on 50-50 splits in hires I'm not sure that's true. >and that is dangerous if we do not accept that there isn't a 50-50 split in qualified supply in the first place. Except it's not dangerous at all? What I specifically don't like about this article and your focus on outcome vs. opportunity is that it draws this bright line where none exists. The writer in this article basically lays out that everyone in the pipeline right up until her has a role in reducing gender bias. For example when she says: "I beg you to expend your energy motivating and mentoring young women at the crucial stages of making decisions about a tech education" she makes it clear that she doesn't think she's at a crucial stage. But she is. She admits to having failed to produce a diverse workforce at her startup but rather than really admit it as just that, a failure, she basically says that it's not her fault because all these other people aren't making it easy for her. It's never easy, we're never at "outcome", we're always at "opportunity", hire some damn women.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

>the mentoring program could be for girls and young women // How is that fair for boys/men if they're excluded from mentoring opportunities (eg in a company that hires them) simply because they're male. This is "fine" if your objective is "hire more women". As someone who supports equality of opportunity I don't see how compounding more sexism will ever lead to less sexism. In the UK, overall, young men get poorer school results, are less represented at university, receive lower wages than women (up to the ages when people choose to start families) ... how does this sort of sexist mentoring policy fit in here? Is it really enough to say "well if we look only at this industry segment"? What's wrong with equality?

humanrebar 9y ago
I didn't comment on any of her suggestions other than to say I've seen them in place already. So if we're not happy with the current proportion of women in tech, the industry should explain why, say, current mentoring efforts aren't working. The answer could be "it works, but there's not enough of it" I guess. I mostly brought it up because tptacek wrote, "It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline..." and I thought the recommendations for helping already-in-engineering women pointed to a more complex position. Though perhaps that position wasn't communicated, at least not clearly enough.