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> you basically just guarantee women get a job in Tech. Regardless of skill set But how do you know they weren't hired for their skill set? Like, if you have t

by spraak 9y ago

> you basically just guarantee women get a job in Tech. Regardless of skill set But how do you know they weren't hired for their skill set? Like, if you have two equally good apples in flavor, but you want to balance the profile of varieties, choose the one you're most lacking?

pedrosorio 9y ago
The supply of apples is limited (and with a distribution of 20:80 in terms of varieties A and B). People can test individual apples for taste before buying and compete with you for the best ones. It's going to be much harder to get 50:50 excellent apples than 20:80 excellent apples.
sweden 9y ago
To me, taking into account gender during the hiring process is the text book definition of sexual discrimination. Whether you mean it in a good way or not. How will you tell you won't be developing some bias over time just to make the hiring process an easier job for you?
skellera 9y ago
It’s literally just has to do with numbers. If men and women are equally good at the job and there are less total women, forcing a 50% split at all jobs means that eventually places need to take on lower skilled workers from the smaller group.
- pwinnski 9y ago
  These numbers only makes sense if there are literally zero skilled women. Otherwise, you're not dealing with the whole of the industry, you are dealing only with your own team, the one or two positions you are currently trying to fill. The question isn't therefore, "What systemic biases in the pipeline can we have addressed in the past to ensure that I have a reasonably set from which to draw today?" It's simply, "Today, right now, is there one qualified woman that I'm likely to overlook if I don't make an effort to remind myself that being surrounded by nothing but men isn't ideal?" There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively from the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much easier.
  - Smaug123 9y ago
    I feel like you've missed the point, namely: "if all companies ensured 50/50 hiring, so that exactly half their jobs were taken by female applicants, then simply because of the large number of jobs taken across the whole industry and the relatively small number of female applicants for those places, virtually all the females who apply will be employed, regardless of their actual skill". You're addressing the question of what happens if only one marginal company does that; the parent was addressing the question of what happens if that's a universal policy. (I pass no judgement about the validity of the above argument; the thought experiment elsewhere on this thread about "suppose 5% of working women are great at tech" is at least a counterargument.) The entire discussion doesn't address the systemic changes which happen if nearly every female applicant is employed, of course; one obvious thing that would probably happen is that more females would consider applying to this sort of job, which most would agree is a good thing.
  - sagebird 9y ago
    RE > There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively from the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much easier. I don't know of any large companies that only hire from candidate pools of men. Does anyone know of an example?
    - pwinnski 9y ago
      You moved the goalposts with your question. I said that the set of companies which hires only men is large. You asked specifically about the hiring practices of large companies, which is a different question. Recently, 88.6% of developers surveyed identified themselves as men[0]. That ratio alone suggests that the vast majority of teams and companies have zero female developers. In my experience, women developers often cluster at companies (usually large companies) so that they are not isolated, which might make the numbers even more extreme. [0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics
- deleted 9y ago
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by spraak 9y ago

pedrosorio 9y ago

The supply of apples is limited (and with a distribution of 20:80 in terms of varieties A and B). People can test individual apples for taste before buying and compete with you for the best ones. It's going to be much harder to get 50:50 excellent apples than 20:80 excellent apples.

sweden 9y ago

To me, taking into account gender during the hiring process is the text book definition of sexual discrimination. Whether you mean it in a good way or not. How will you tell you won't be developing some bias over time just to make the hiring process an easier job for you?

skellera 9y ago

It’s literally just has to do with numbers. If men and women are equally good at the job and there are less total women, forcing a 50% split at all jobs means that eventually places need to take on lower skilled workers from the smaller group.

pwinnski 9y ago
These numbers only makes sense if there are literally zero skilled women. Otherwise, you're not dealing with the whole of the industry, you are dealing only with your own team, the one or two positions you are currently trying to fill. The question isn't therefore, "What systemic biases in the pipeline can we have addressed in the past to ensure that I have a reasonably set from which to draw today?" It's simply, "Today, right now, is there one qualified woman that I'm likely to overlook if I don't make an effort to remind myself that being surrounded by nothing but men isn't ideal?" There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively from the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much easier.
- Smaug123 9y ago
  I feel like you've missed the point, namely: "if all companies ensured 50/50 hiring, so that exactly half their jobs were taken by female applicants, then simply because of the large number of jobs taken across the whole industry and the relatively small number of female applicants for those places, virtually all the females who apply will be employed, regardless of their actual skill". You're addressing the question of what happens if only one marginal company does that; the parent was addressing the question of what happens if that's a universal policy. (I pass no judgement about the validity of the above argument; the thought experiment elsewhere on this thread about "suppose 5% of working women are great at tech" is at least a counterargument.) The entire discussion doesn't address the systemic changes which happen if nearly every female applicant is employed, of course; one obvious thing that would probably happen is that more females would consider applying to this sort of job, which most would agree is a good thing.
- sagebird 9y ago
  RE > There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively from the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much easier. I don't know of any large companies that only hire from candidate pools of men. Does anyone know of an example?
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    You moved the goalposts with your question. I said that the set of companies which hires only men is large. You asked specifically about the hiring practices of large companies, which is a different question. Recently, 88.6% of developers surveyed identified themselves as men[0]. That ratio alone suggests that the vast majority of teams and companies have zero female developers. In my experience, women developers often cluster at companies (usually large companies) so that they are not isolated, which might make the numbers even more extreme. [0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics
deleted 9y ago
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