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Nothing needs to be fixed. Make the opportunity available to women but do not enforce a gender quota. Candidates should only be selected on merit. Equal opportu

Nothing needs to be fixed. Make the opportunity available to women but do not enforce a gender quota. Candidates should only be selected on merit. Equal opportunity is good. Forcing equality of outcome is BAD.

lern_too_spel 8y ago
Nobody said anything about quotas except you. The GP said they were working on sourcing their candidates differently.
- chimpburger 8y ago
  @lern_too_spel: I know they didn't, but they did not say they were not considering a gender quota.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    Wow, what an eloquent argument. Does that means you intend to harass a woman since you haven’t denied planning that?
    - chimpburger 8y ago
      It wasn't an argument.
KenoFischer 8y ago
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, but even compared to tech itself, the open source community tends to be less diverse. I think it's fairly clear that there is a large number of qualified people who are not adequately represented in the open source community at the moment. In order to not miss out on these people, we need to a) try to get more such people involved with the open source community through outreach, etc and b) once we get to that point in our hiring, make sure that our hiring funnel is not just restricted to the subset of the population that happens to already be active in the open source community. In my opinion, the key is just to have a sufficiently wide funnel at the top to avoid injecting bias at the top of the funnel.
- chimpburger 8y ago
  Fair enough. Women are generally less interested in engineering, so there will always be a gap. James Damore was fired from Google for writing this memo on the tech gender gap. You may find it interesting. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...
  - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
    He was fired for being sexist and an idiot, not for “telling the truth” as his sexist supporters would make it.
    - orbifold 8y ago
      He was an idiot in the sense that you obviously should not write and distribute an essay at work on a sensitive topic, if you are not an “expert” and were not asked to do so. As far as anyone reasonable could tell the facts he cited are correct but his opinions and recommendations were obviously politically incorrect.
      - kiriakasis 8y ago
        just a bit of a factual remark: he was asked to do so. diversity and inclusion committee at google ask employees for feedback, the memo was a feedback saying "current policies do not work as expected, maybe offering more part time and family friendly jobs would allow both men and women that do want to spend time with their family to like working at google".
    - kiriakasis 8y ago
      The James Damore memo is quite a complex subject. The story is nuanced and at no point Damore was sexist. He goes the extra mile to say that women can be as good engineer as any man and propose a different mode to interest women in engineering jobs. I do not know if you have read the memo, but it only objective is to find a way to hire more women in an effective way. Personally I liked the proposition in the memo because it would allow for men and women to equally share child-duties. That said I do not criticize google's decision to fire him as the overwhelmingly negative exposure the memo had was quite a damage to the company...
cygx 8y ago
If you have a gender imbalance of 27:0 that is not predicated on self-evident physiological differences, there's a cultural problem that artificially limits the pool of potential candidates. It is in a field's best interest to fix that.
- dubya23 8y ago
  Yes the only possible reason is bias, there can be no other explanation.
- snovv_crash 8y ago
  I was trying to hire specialists in a similar field, in Europe. Applicants were at least 50:1 m:f. Instead we focused on getting diversity based on other things - country of origin, industries worked in before, age etc. It has worked out really well, we have a dynamic team, and yes, once we started hiring for other roles the gender balance of applicants flipped completely.
  - cygx 8y ago
    Sure: When hiring, you work with what's available. But as a community, it doesn't hurt trying to figure out where such ridiculously large gender imbalances come from, and if there's something that can be done about it.
cashsterling 8y ago
Chimpburger... I think your heart is probably in the right place. But think about the wider canvas. In terms of what might be best for me, were I looking for a job... equal opportunity is fair/good. Of course I would think that... I'm a white male... I am a historically privileged class of person in the workforce. Anything that doesn't adversely my job opportunities is good for me, right? From the perspective of a company that is trying to build a high-output, innovative team... diversity is really, really awesome: diversity of thinking patterns, backgrounds, interests. I have experienced this first hand and am now 100% sold on the importance of diversity and oversampling certain segments of "talent pool" to reach diversity goals. I may I miss out on some opportunities due to how I am categorized in the overall talent pool.... but diversity is really good for the organization and society in general. Some sports analogies apply: you can't make a basketball team out of all shooting guards or a soccer team out of all forwards. You need a lot of different kinds of talent to make a good team. That is just my opinion... I would rather work on a diverse team and I'd rather live in a diverse city/culture.
- chimpburger 8y ago
  Suppose you had a brain tumor that could possibly be fixed by surgery. You are given the choice of two surgeons. One is a female who graduated from her medical school to fill a gender quota at the expense of other male students. The other option is a more qualified and experienced surgeon but just so happens to be a male. If you are true to your ideology then you should choose the female surgeon. Am I right?
  - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
    This is not how it happens. So don’t be disingenuous.
    - chimpburger 8y ago
      You completely missed the point.
  - cashsterling 8y ago

lern_too_spel 8y ago

Nobody said anything about quotas except you. The GP said they were working on sourcing their candidates differently.

chimpburger 8y ago
@lern_too_spel: I know they didn't, but they did not say they were not considering a gender quota.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  Wow, what an eloquent argument. Does that means you intend to harass a woman since you haven’t denied planning that?
  - chimpburger 8y ago
    It wasn't an argument.

KenoFischer 8y ago

Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, but even compared to tech itself, the open source community tends to be less diverse. I think it's fairly clear that there is a large number of qualified people who are not adequately represented in the open source community at the moment. In order to not miss out on these people, we need to a) try to get more such people involved with the open source community through outreach, etc and b) once we get to that point in our hiring, make sure that our hiring funnel is not just restricted to the subset of the population that happens to already be active in the open source community. In my opinion, the key is just to have a sufficiently wide funnel at the top to avoid injecting bias at the top of the funnel.

chimpburger 8y ago
Fair enough. Women are generally less interested in engineering, so there will always be a gap. James Damore was fired from Google for writing this memo on the tech gender gap. You may find it interesting. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...
- FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
  He was fired for being sexist and an idiot, not for “telling the truth” as his sexist supporters would make it.
  - orbifold 8y ago
    He was an idiot in the sense that you obviously should not write and distribute an essay at work on a sensitive topic, if you are not an “expert” and were not asked to do so. As far as anyone reasonable could tell the facts he cited are correct but his opinions and recommendations were obviously politically incorrect.
    - kiriakasis 8y ago
      just a bit of a factual remark: he was asked to do so. diversity and inclusion committee at google ask employees for feedback, the memo was a feedback saying "current policies do not work as expected, maybe offering more part time and family friendly jobs would allow both men and women that do want to spend time with their family to like working at google".
  - kiriakasis 8y ago
    The James Damore memo is quite a complex subject. The story is nuanced and at no point Damore was sexist. He goes the extra mile to say that women can be as good engineer as any man and propose a different mode to interest women in engineering jobs. I do not know if you have read the memo, but it only objective is to find a way to hire more women in an effective way. Personally I liked the proposition in the memo because it would allow for men and women to equally share child-duties. That said I do not criticize google's decision to fire him as the overwhelmingly negative exposure the memo had was quite a damage to the company...

cygx 8y ago

If you have a gender imbalance of 27:0 that is not predicated on self-evident physiological differences, there's a cultural problem that artificially limits the pool of potential candidates. It is in a field's best interest to fix that.

dubya23 8y ago
Yes the only possible reason is bias, there can be no other explanation.
snovv_crash 8y ago
I was trying to hire specialists in a similar field, in Europe. Applicants were at least 50:1 m:f. Instead we focused on getting diversity based on other things - country of origin, industries worked in before, age etc. It has worked out really well, we have a dynamic team, and yes, once we started hiring for other roles the gender balance of applicants flipped completely.
- cygx 8y ago
  Sure: When hiring, you work with what's available. But as a community, it doesn't hurt trying to figure out where such ridiculously large gender imbalances come from, and if there's something that can be done about it.

cashsterling 8y ago

Chimpburger... I think your heart is probably in the right place. But think about the wider canvas. In terms of what might be best for me, were I looking for a job... equal opportunity is fair/good. Of course I would think that... I'm a white male... I am a historically privileged class of person in the workforce. Anything that doesn't adversely my job opportunities is good for me, right? From the perspective of a company that is trying to build a high-output, innovative team... diversity is really, really awesome: diversity of thinking patterns, backgrounds, interests. I have experienced this first hand and am now 100% sold on the importance of diversity and oversampling certain segments of "talent pool" to reach diversity goals. I may I miss out on some opportunities due to how I am categorized in the overall talent pool.... but diversity is really good for the organization and society in general. Some sports analogies apply: you can't make a basketball team out of all shooting guards or a soccer team out of all forwards. You need a lot of different kinds of talent to make a good team. That is just my opinion... I would rather work on a diverse team and I'd rather live in a diverse city/culture.

chimpburger 8y ago
Suppose you had a brain tumor that could possibly be fixed by surgery. You are given the choice of two surgeons. One is a female who graduated from her medical school to fill a gender quota at the expense of other male students. The other option is a more qualified and experienced surgeon but just so happens to be a male. If you are true to your ideology then you should choose the female surgeon. Am I right?
- FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
  This is not how it happens. So don’t be disingenuous.
  - chimpburger 8y ago
    You completely missed the point.
- cashsterling 8y ago