4 ms·

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 te

by 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.
- geofft 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 am making no such implication. I am simply saying that I don't find it "highly dubious" that Google has extreme levels of gender bias in teams correlated with area, based on some amount of data (looking at basically all the open reqs in backend in Google NYC over a couple months). I do find it worrisome to see "sexist" thrown around so quickly: this is a question of objective fact, and we either need to be comfortable with applying the label "sexist" to lots of scenarios and not interpreting it as equivalent to "morally inferior and execrable", or we need to avoid the label, because otherwise there are chilling effects towards discussions of objective fact. The assertion was made, in the lawsuit, that backend teams at Google do in fact fail to hire women. In order to discuss that, we have to be willing to talk about teams that fail to hire women. That said, if I'm going to support free speech, I should be consistent, and I welcome your attempts to question my own intentions. But to that I would reply that if I was looking for someone to marry, I'd specifically want to avoid them being on my team (even if I'm okay with the ethical breach, conflict-of-interest rules would prevent us from marrying), so joining a company that hires women but not for my field would actually be just what I'd be looking for in this case. Perhaps more factually-tenable aspersions to cast would be that I'm gay and get hopelessly distracted if I'm working with men? That's not true either, but it'd make more sense.
  - snovv_crash 9y ago
    I'm currently trying to hire multiple C++ engineers. We have a quick, simple automated test that we use as a pre-screen, and so far no women have managed to pass this test. Not that I'm actually surprised; the ratio of applicants is also biased about 50:1, and we haven't had 50 people pass the automated test yet.
    - geofft 9y ago
      Let's be clear, I agree that this is hard. (And as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I ended up joining an all-male team at another company.) But I also want to know that the company is taking the problem seriously. If your ratio of applicants is biased at 50:1, either you're doing something that I'm not super happy with, or more likely, you're trying your best and your recruiting funnel is doing something that I'm not super happy with and your ability to change that is limited -- which, to be clear, is not really your fault, and more the fault of how company politics works and what power you have to fix the recruiting process, but if your company is set up so that you as a hiring manager don't have the power to make your recruiting pipeline better, that says things about your company's management culture / power structure that are a negative indicator to me. (In particular, since I tend to work more in support functions like building platforms than direct profit centers, my management chain having limited political sway in the company is a pretty big concern for my long-term happiness, regardless of the thing they're trying to accomplish with that sway.) If you tell me your recruiting funnel is biased at even 5:1, I'm not going to insist on 1:1. I know it's a hard problem. If you tell me it's biased at 5:1 and you're working to change it, fantastic, that's more than I've heard from most people.
      - snovv_crash 9y ago
        The 50:1 is before any filtering of résumés or anything. We don't have any unreasonable expectations around working hours or overtime, we aren't a company that has limited runway, and we aren't a bro-grammer company, so I don't think we are being "unattractive" or anything like that. What we ''do'' have are specific technical requirements - experience with computer vision or computational geometry or GIS data or some related field, modern C++, git, bonus for experience with TDD/CI. We get a lot more female applicants for the C++ generalist positions, although still like 10:1. Oh, and this is in Europe. Not sure if that changes anything. And I'm not a hiring manager, I'm a senior engineer who at the moment is wearing a different hat half the time. I'm not sure I'd trust any point of the funnel to non-technical people when it comes to hiring technical people. There are too many potentially interesting things that could be mentioned that someone who doesn't have a deep understanding of the field would discard good candidates out of ignorance.

by 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.

geofft 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 am making no such implication. I am simply saying that I don't find it "highly dubious" that Google has extreme levels of gender bias in teams correlated with area, based on some amount of data (looking at basically all the open reqs in backend in Google NYC over a couple months). I do find it worrisome to see "sexist" thrown around so quickly: this is a question of objective fact, and we either need to be comfortable with applying the label "sexist" to lots of scenarios and not interpreting it as equivalent to "morally inferior and execrable", or we need to avoid the label, because otherwise there are chilling effects towards discussions of objective fact. The assertion was made, in the lawsuit, that backend teams at Google do in fact fail to hire women. In order to discuss that, we have to be willing to talk about teams that fail to hire women. That said, if I'm going to support free speech, I should be consistent, and I welcome your attempts to question my own intentions. But to that I would reply that if I was looking for someone to marry, I'd specifically want to avoid them being on my team (even if I'm okay with the ethical breach, conflict-of-interest rules would prevent us from marrying), so joining a company that hires women but not for my field would actually be just what I'd be looking for in this case. Perhaps more factually-tenable aspersions to cast would be that I'm gay and get hopelessly distracted if I'm working with men? That's not true either, but it'd make more sense.
- snovv_crash 9y ago
  I'm currently trying to hire multiple C++ engineers. We have a quick, simple automated test that we use as a pre-screen, and so far no women have managed to pass this test. Not that I'm actually surprised; the ratio of applicants is also biased about 50:1, and we haven't had 50 people pass the automated test yet.
  - geofft 9y ago
    Let's be clear, I agree that this is hard. (And as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I ended up joining an all-male team at another company.) But I also want to know that the company is taking the problem seriously. If your ratio of applicants is biased at 50:1, either you're doing something that I'm not super happy with, or more likely, you're trying your best and your recruiting funnel is doing something that I'm not super happy with and your ability to change that is limited -- which, to be clear, is not really your fault, and more the fault of how company politics works and what power you have to fix the recruiting process, but if your company is set up so that you as a hiring manager don't have the power to make your recruiting pipeline better, that says things about your company's management culture / power structure that are a negative indicator to me. (In particular, since I tend to work more in support functions like building platforms than direct profit centers, my management chain having limited political sway in the company is a pretty big concern for my long-term happiness, regardless of the thing they're trying to accomplish with that sway.) If you tell me your recruiting funnel is biased at even 5:1, I'm not going to insist on 1:1. I know it's a hard problem. If you tell me it's biased at 5:1 and you're working to change it, fantastic, that's more than I've heard from most people.
    - snovv_crash 9y ago
      The 50:1 is before any filtering of résumés or anything. We don't have any unreasonable expectations around working hours or overtime, we aren't a company that has limited runway, and we aren't a bro-grammer company, so I don't think we are being "unattractive" or anything like that. What we ''do'' have are specific technical requirements - experience with computer vision or computational geometry or GIS data or some related field, modern C++, git, bonus for experience with TDD/CI. We get a lot more female applicants for the C++ generalist positions, although still like 10:1. Oh, and this is in Europe. Not sure if that changes anything. And I'm not a hiring manager, I'm a senior engineer who at the moment is wearing a different hat half the time. I'm not sure I'd trust any point of the funnel to non-technical people when it comes to hiring technical people. There are too many potentially interesting things that could be mentioned that someone who doesn't have a deep understanding of the field would discard good candidates out of ignorance.