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> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end

> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.

Alex3917 9y ago
Keep in mind that because of their scale, jobs that would be considered full stack or back end at other companies are probably considered front end at Google.
- jpatokal 9y ago
  Edit: Nvm. Alex3917 defines it better than I did.
  - nrmitchi 9y ago
    Well, they sort of do, because those terms don't map so cleanly when you begin spreading into a multi-tiered architecture. You could easily end up with 'server side' work, which exists solely to augment or support a UI, and is not part of the 'core' business applications/services.
    - skj 9y ago
      You could, but at Google "frontend" work means things happening in the browser.
      - brlewis 9y ago
        What about Android?
      - Klockan 9y ago
        I worked in infrastructure and to us 'frontend' meant user-facing services while 'backend' are services that only other services are talking to.
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    At a two-person startup, the front end developer is the one doing Angular or React, and the back end developer is the one doing Django or Rails. At a mid-sized startup, the front end developers are probably also responsible for Django / Rails, and the back end developers are responsible for things like managing the Hadoop cluster and the machine learning components. And at a large company, anything built with existing libraries might be considered front end, whereas back end might be creating a new database or whatever. I don't claim to know how Google works, but as companies get bigger the back end tends to go further back, and so the 'front end' encompasses more also.
    - bb611 9y ago
      I haven't worked at Google, but I have worked at a very large tech company, and this isn't accurate. They still hire frontend devs. Those frontend devs still do front-end JS with libraries. Some of them work on in-house libraries, but their focus is still narrow. Same for backend - they use the industry standard term to mean the industry standard. However, the differentiation of teams/departments is much higher. To take on your argument directly, a project to create a new database would have software engineers but be on an infrastructure team. They don't call themselves backend engineers or recruit backend engineers, they call themselves software engineers and recruit people with skills writing system software.
- skylark 9y ago
  You're half right. Google doesn't hire purely frontend engineers. They have a job listing for them, but once inside everyone gets the same title: Software Engineer. At Google, the "frontend" work also usually includes the server which serves the frontend code - this means engineers need to be not only capable at UI development, but also be familiar with the Java systems that exist at Google. From this perspective, frontend at Google is indeed similar to a full stack role at most startups running on AWS or GCP. Backend at Google is more like working on AWS itself.
geofft 9y ago
Anecdotally, I spent a couple of months this summer going through team selection at Google NYC, with a specific request for back-end, low-level, preferably C++ roles (app security, build systems, etc.). I didn't meet or talk to a single woman through the entire process, with the exception of reception, another candidate, and someone who was covering for my recruiter when he was on vacation. I asked every manager I talked to about diversity on their team, and they all gave wishy-washy answers (at best; one told me that women just weren't interested in his team's work). If I'm remembering right, of the teams that I could have accepted an offer from, exactly one had exactly one woman. This wasn't the only reason that I ultimately turned down the Google offer (and spent so long in team selection after passing the interview), but it was certainly one of them. There are some back-end teams at Google that have lots of women; Chrome security comes to mind (I don't know if that's "back-end" in the common sense of the term, but it was the sort of team I was interested in). But I don't find it particularly dubious that these are the exception and not the rule.
- isoskeles 9y ago
  If you want to assume something insidious about Google's intentions, am I allowed assume that you just want to find a female coworker to wife?
  - brad0 9y ago
    I'm not really sure what you're trying to achieve with this comment. In saying that I am curious as to why the GP is looking for females specifically in the team.
    - isoskeles 9y ago
      The person I replied to was implying that the team he was interviewing for was sexist, to an extent where they simply would not hire women. I don't think this is an okay implication to make based on such little information (we're supposed to trust that the people he spoke to were "wishy-washy" about "diversity"), and I'm asking if it's just as okay to question his own intentions.
qaq 9y ago
I am not sure about US trends in Eastern Europe a fairly large % of FE devs are female same for QA roles.

Alex3917 9y ago

Keep in mind that because of their scale, jobs that would be considered full stack or back end at other companies are probably considered front end at Google.

jpatokal 9y ago
Edit: Nvm. Alex3917 defines it better than I did.
- nrmitchi 9y ago
  Well, they sort of do, because those terms don't map so cleanly when you begin spreading into a multi-tiered architecture. You could easily end up with 'server side' work, which exists solely to augment or support a UI, and is not part of the 'core' business applications/services.
  - skj 9y ago
    You could, but at Google "frontend" work means things happening in the browser.
    - brlewis 9y ago
      What about Android?
    - Klockan 9y ago
      I worked in infrastructure and to us 'frontend' meant user-facing services while 'backend' are services that only other services are talking to.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  At a two-person startup, the front end developer is the one doing Angular or React, and the back end developer is the one doing Django or Rails. At a mid-sized startup, the front end developers are probably also responsible for Django / Rails, and the back end developers are responsible for things like managing the Hadoop cluster and the machine learning components. And at a large company, anything built with existing libraries might be considered front end, whereas back end might be creating a new database or whatever. I don't claim to know how Google works, but as companies get bigger the back end tends to go further back, and so the 'front end' encompasses more also.
  - bb611 9y ago
    I haven't worked at Google, but I have worked at a very large tech company, and this isn't accurate. They still hire frontend devs. Those frontend devs still do front-end JS with libraries. Some of them work on in-house libraries, but their focus is still narrow. Same for backend - they use the industry standard term to mean the industry standard. However, the differentiation of teams/departments is much higher. To take on your argument directly, a project to create a new database would have software engineers but be on an infrastructure team. They don't call themselves backend engineers or recruit backend engineers, they call themselves software engineers and recruit people with skills writing system software.
skylark 9y ago
You're half right. Google doesn't hire purely frontend engineers. They have a job listing for them, but once inside everyone gets the same title: Software Engineer. At Google, the "frontend" work also usually includes the server which serves the frontend code - this means engineers need to be not only capable at UI development, but also be familiar with the Java systems that exist at Google. From this perspective, frontend at Google is indeed similar to a full stack role at most startups running on AWS or GCP. Backend at Google is more like working on AWS itself.

geofft 9y ago

Anecdotally, I spent a couple of months this summer going through team selection at Google NYC, with a specific request for back-end, low-level, preferably C++ roles (app security, build systems, etc.). I didn't meet or talk to a single woman through the entire process, with the exception of reception, another candidate, and someone who was covering for my recruiter when he was on vacation. I asked every manager I talked to about diversity on their team, and they all gave wishy-washy answers (at best; one told me that women just weren't interested in his team's work). If I'm remembering right, of the teams that I could have accepted an offer from, exactly one had exactly one woman. This wasn't the only reason that I ultimately turned down the Google offer (and spent so long in team selection after passing the interview), but it was certainly one of them. There are some back-end teams at Google that have lots of women; Chrome security comes to mind (I don't know if that's "back-end" in the common sense of the term, but it was the sort of team I was interested in). But I don't find it particularly dubious that these are the exception and not the rule.

isoskeles 9y ago
If you want to assume something insidious about Google's intentions, am I allowed assume that you just want to find a female coworker to wife?
- brad0 9y ago
  I'm not really sure what you're trying to achieve with this comment. In saying that I am curious as to why the GP is looking for females specifically in the team.
  - isoskeles 9y ago
    The person I replied to was implying that the team he was interviewing for was sexist, to an extent where they simply would not hire women. I don't think this is an okay implication to make based on such little information (we're supposed to trust that the people he spoke to were "wishy-washy" about "diversity"), and I'm asking if it's just as okay to question his own intentions.

qaq 9y ago

I am not sure about US trends in Eastern Europe a fairly large % of FE devs are female same for QA roles.