5 ms·

~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads sh

by rad88 9y ago

~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. Also, in a big company most employees are not engineers, so the relative lack of female CS grads shouldn't mean there are so few women that you need to hire them for events.

alphaalpha101 9y ago
>~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. How big is your team? 5 people? It's either a small sample size, or it's discrimination.
nawitus 9y ago
What do you estimate is the gender ratio for software developers? And how can you expect every company to go over it? Surely it is not 50% or over. In addition, for every company that goes over the average (perhaps like yours), another company must go under the average.
- rad88 9y ago
  The number I think is important is not how many CS grads there are (no one on my team has a CS major) or how many software developers there are, it's how many people are interested in and capable of this job. I don't know what the "true" ratio is but I'm sure it is more than 16% of women which is where ardit anchored it. It often comes back to this "pipeline" problem, but we need to think of our companies as being part of the pipeline. I don't have a CS degree -- I came out of college with a BA -- but I landed a firmware programming job, 2 jobs and 7 years later I am experience and "senior". If you're willing to train smart people, you can sideline the pipeline issue.
ardit33 9y ago
Yes, for small team (sub 10), I have seen high ratio of females/males, but for larger companies, it is impossible. If you are hiring 100s, or even thousands of engineers you are bound to the supply of the market. Unless you do some straight out hiring discrimination, and refuse to hire males. Similar to some Vegas clubs (they wont let males unless they have a female with them). Good luck building a successful business with those values. It is Econ 101 dude... or dudette (not sure you are guy or a girl) P.s. I personally would love to have seen balanced genders (working for tech companies sometimes it feels like you are in the army), but that's probably a utopian ideal that is not going to be fixed in my lifetime.
- rad88 9y ago
  You are obviously bound to the supply of the market. What I'm saying is that the market is bigger than you assume. The number of women interested in and capable of a career in programming is much greater than the number of those who actually want to work at your company.
EpicEng 9y ago
>~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic Which is leagues above the vast majority of engineering companies, as well as the overall population within the software engineering community at large. Yours is an outlier, and an obvious one at that.
- rad88 9y ago
  No doubt. I'm not here to say any company can have ~50% female engineers if only they did what we do, but this idea that a more reasonable expectation would be 16% strikes me as bullshit. So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    iirc male CS grads outnumber females by more than 4:1, so ~20% seems about spot on, no? It's something that would have to be attacked at a level far before employment, e.g., social constructs and the education system. Once it comes down to the employer they only have one pool from which to draw applicants.
    - rad88 9y ago
      20% would be a lower bound. I majored in a hard science, not CS. Two great programmers I know, in senior positions, don't even have a degree. At my last company there was a decent Rails engineer who studied communication in college and had worked in affiliate marketing at his previous job. There was also a guy who was a lawyer and then went to code camp and got hired as an engineer. The pipeline isn't sufficient to explain the gender ratio.
      - EpicEng 9y ago
        Ok, but if we assume that the number of non-CS grads who work in software development is proportional (seems fair) between males and females you're still in the same boat. Are you saying that women far out number men when it comes to sw devs who didn't major in CS? I just don't see any data that supports what you're saying. 20% is the _upper_ bound.

by rad88 9y ago

alphaalpha101 9y ago

>~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic. How big is your team? 5 people? It's either a small sample size, or it's discrimination.

nawitus 9y ago

What do you estimate is the gender ratio for software developers? And how can you expect every company to go over it? Surely it is not 50% or over. In addition, for every company that goes over the average (perhaps like yours), another company must go under the average.

rad88 9y ago
The number I think is important is not how many CS grads there are (no one on my team has a CS major) or how many software developers there are, it's how many people are interested in and capable of this job. I don't know what the "true" ratio is but I'm sure it is more than 16% of women which is where ardit anchored it. It often comes back to this "pipeline" problem, but we need to think of our companies as being part of the pipeline. I don't have a CS degree -- I came out of college with a BA -- but I landed a firmware programming job, 2 jobs and 7 years later I am experience and "senior". If you're willing to train smart people, you can sideline the pipeline issue.

ardit33 9y ago

Yes, for small team (sub 10), I have seen high ratio of females/males, but for larger companies, it is impossible. If you are hiring 100s, or even thousands of engineers you are bound to the supply of the market. Unless you do some straight out hiring discrimination, and refuse to hire males. Similar to some Vegas clubs (they wont let males unless they have a female with them). Good luck building a successful business with those values. It is Econ 101 dude... or dudette (not sure you are guy or a girl) P.s. I personally would love to have seen balanced genders (working for tech companies sometimes it feels like you are in the army), but that's probably a utopian ideal that is not going to be fixed in my lifetime.

rad88 9y ago
You are obviously bound to the supply of the market. What I'm saying is that the market is bigger than you assume. The number of women interested in and capable of a career in programming is much greater than the number of those who actually want to work at your company.

EpicEng 9y ago

>~60% of the developers on my team are women. It's not magic Which is leagues above the vast majority of engineering companies, as well as the overall population within the software engineering community at large. Yours is an outlier, and an obvious one at that.

rad88 9y ago
No doubt. I'm not here to say any company can have ~50% female engineers if only they did what we do, but this idea that a more reasonable expectation would be 16% strikes me as bullshit. So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  iirc male CS grads outnumber females by more than 4:1, so ~20% seems about spot on, no? It's something that would have to be attacked at a level far before employment, e.g., social constructs and the education system. Once it comes down to the employer they only have one pool from which to draw applicants.
  - rad88 9y ago
    20% would be a lower bound. I majored in a hard science, not CS. Two great programmers I know, in senior positions, don't even have a degree. At my last company there was a decent Rails engineer who studied communication in college and had worked in affiliate marketing at his previous job. There was also a guy who was a lawyer and then went to code camp and got hired as an engineer. The pipeline isn't sufficient to explain the gender ratio.
    - EpicEng 9y ago
      Ok, but if we assume that the number of non-CS grads who work in software development is proportional (seems fair) between males and females you're still in the same boat. Are you saying that women far out number men when it comes to sw devs who didn't major in CS? I just don't see any data that supports what you're saying. 20% is the _upper_ bound.