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It's interesting that you still don't understand the third possibility. I wonder if it has something to do with why many hard-leaning leftists also only conside

It's interesting that you still don't understand the third possibility. I wonder if it has something to do with why many hard-leaning leftists also only consider the first two as possibilities.

chc 8y ago
OK, let me give you an example outcome and maybe you can explain to me how the third possibility applies in a way that is meaningfully distinct from the first two. Outcome: The women working as programmers at FooSoft make on average 10% less than the men working there. Possible reasons: 1. Lack of opportunity (e.g. people in power at FooSoft have bias against them makes it harder for them to have their contributions valued) 2. They just aren't as good as the men 3. They...have different interests in some way that apparently doesn't make them worse but does make them deserve to be paid less?
- leereeves 8y ago
  Let's be specific and replace FooSoft with Google. A quick search suggests that only 20% of programmers in general are female, but 30% of Google programmers are female. I'm not certain these numbers are accurate, but if they are, female programmers are over represented at Google. That would mean Google hired a greater percentage of female programmers than male programmers. That is, if Google hired the top 0.1% of male programmers, they hired the top 0.15% of female programmers. If we assume two groups have identical distribution of qualifications, the female programmers hired would have lower qualifications, as an obvious consequence of a hiring policy that favors women. That's not saying women are less qualified, it's saying that Google hires women who are less qualified because they want to hire more women than the 20% that sex-blind hiring would result in.
  - chc 8y ago
    Let me get this straight: When women are hired less, it's because they're simply not interested. But when men are hired less, it's because they're being discriminated against? I think my hypothesis is simpler: - Women are discriminated against in the industry as a whole - Google actively discriminates in favor of women It's discrimination both times.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Women are discriminated against in the industry as a whole I would expect in 2019, that the industry as a whole discriminates in favor of women, but I'm just a layperson when it comes to that. Do you have citations? - Google actively discriminates in favor of women It's discrimination both times. I agree.
      - chc 8y ago
        It may be that it has changed very recently, but a few years ago there were quite a few studies that showed an anti-women bias in evaluating employees. For example, here's a quickly Googled cite that talks about a preference for resumes with male names over female: https://www.aauw.org/2015/06/11/john-or-jennifer/ https://www.aauw.org/2015/06/11/john-or-jennifer/ This could even still be true at Google, though I don't have insight into whether or not it is. It seems at least plausible that Google has put systemic biases in place to balance out more diffuse bias among individual humans, but has done too thorough a job.
        stcredzero 8y ago
        When orchestras started using blinds for auditions, the population of women hired shot up. Have there been attempts to do blind hiring? If so, what were the results?
        waterhouse 8y ago
        Excellent question. There was an article a few years ago about an interviewing platform that tried using voice modulation to play with the gender of candidates: "Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data." http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    A quick search suggests that only 20% of programmers in general are female, but 30% of Google programmers are female. I'm not certain these numbers are accurate, but if they are, female programmers are over represented at Google. Going by the "logic" of outcomes being the "only holistic measure" this would indicate that Google is biased against male programmers within the context of the pool of available candidates. Yet if we change the scope of our consideration to that of the general population, Google would be biased against females. Seems like the "only holistic measure" has some kind of issue with logical consistency. One has to be careful with how the population sample relates to the specific pipeline of available candidates. If one isn't careful, then the interpretation of the numbers might as well be fiction. You can't just stop at, "Does it match the general population? No? Then BIAS!"
    - leereeves 8y ago
      > Yet if we change the scope of our consideration to that of the general population, Google would be biased against females. That would be expecting Google to hire untrained people as programmers, which would be absurd. If we compare with the general population, any bias found wouldn't be at Google, but in the school system, children's entertainment, parenting, or some other group that influences people long before they apply to Google.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - sgift 8y ago
    > A quick search suggests that only 20% of programmers in general are female, but 30% of Google programmers are female. I'm not certain these numbers are accurate, but if they are, female programmers are over represented at Google. The pool of programmers "In general" is not relevant for Google. They don't hire programmers in general, but are focused on a specific subset (usually from some big universities).
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      What's the gender distribution of graduates from those big universities?
- pault 8y ago
  You've jumped into a discussion about the ratio of men to women in STEM and started talking about equal pay, when none of the parent comments were taking about pay, and the article we are discussing is a study that found women at Google get paid more than their male peers. I'm not sure what's going on here.
- ZeroFries 8y ago
  Yeah, this isn't what we're talking about at all. Outcome: Women working as programmers at FooSoft comprise 10% less of the workforce than men working there. Possible reasons 1. Hiring bias 2. Not as qualified 3. Less applicants due to disinterest in programming as a vocation

It's interesting that you still don't understand the third possibility. I wonder if it has something to do with why many hard-leaning leftists also only consider the first two as possibilities.

chc 8y ago

OK, let me give you an example outcome and maybe you can explain to me how the third possibility applies in a way that is meaningfully distinct from the first two. Outcome: The women working as programmers at FooSoft make on average 10% less than the men working there. Possible reasons: 1. Lack of opportunity (e.g. people in power at FooSoft have bias against them makes it harder for them to have their contributions valued) 2. They just aren't as good as the men 3. They...have different interests in some way that apparently doesn't make them worse but does make them deserve to be paid less?

leereeves 8y ago
Let's be specific and replace FooSoft with Google. A quick search suggests that only 20% of programmers in general are female, but 30% of Google programmers are female. I'm not certain these numbers are accurate, but if they are, female programmers are over represented at Google. That would mean Google hired a greater percentage of female programmers than male programmers. That is, if Google hired the top 0.1% of male programmers, they hired the top 0.15% of female programmers. If we assume two groups have identical distribution of qualifications, the female programmers hired would have lower qualifications, as an obvious consequence of a hiring policy that favors women. That's not saying women are less qualified, it's saying that Google hires women who are less qualified because they want to hire more women than the 20% that sex-blind hiring would result in.
- chc 8y ago
  Let me get this straight: When women are hired less, it's because they're simply not interested. But when men are hired less, it's because they're being discriminated against? I think my hypothesis is simpler: - Women are discriminated against in the industry as a whole - Google actively discriminates in favor of women It's discrimination both times.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Women are discriminated against in the industry as a whole I would expect in 2019, that the industry as a whole discriminates in favor of women, but I'm just a layperson when it comes to that. Do you have citations? - Google actively discriminates in favor of women It's discrimination both times. I agree.
    - chc 8y ago
      It may be that it has changed very recently, but a few years ago there were quite a few studies that showed an anti-women bias in evaluating employees. For example, here's a quickly Googled cite that talks about a preference for resumes with male names over female: https://www.aauw.org/2015/06/11/john-or-jennifer/ https://www.aauw.org/2015/06/11/john-or-jennifer/ This could even still be true at Google, though I don't have insight into whether or not it is. It seems at least plausible that Google has put systemic biases in place to balance out more diffuse bias among individual humans, but has done too thorough a job.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        When orchestras started using blinds for auditions, the population of women hired shot up. Have there been attempts to do blind hiring? If so, what were the results?
        waterhouse 8y ago
        Excellent question. There was an article a few years ago about an interviewing platform that tried using voice modulation to play with the gender of candidates: "Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data." http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...
- stcredzero 8y ago
  A quick search suggests that only 20% of programmers in general are female, but 30% of Google programmers are female. I'm not certain these numbers are accurate, but if they are, female programmers are over represented at Google. Going by the "logic" of outcomes being the "only holistic measure" this would indicate that Google is biased against male programmers within the context of the pool of available candidates. Yet if we change the scope of our consideration to that of the general population, Google would be biased against females. Seems like the "only holistic measure" has some kind of issue with logical consistency. One has to be careful with how the population sample relates to the specific pipeline of available candidates. If one isn't careful, then the interpretation of the numbers might as well be fiction. You can't just stop at, "Does it match the general population? No? Then BIAS!"
  - leereeves 8y ago
    > Yet if we change the scope of our consideration to that of the general population, Google would be biased against females. That would be expecting Google to hire untrained people as programmers, which would be absurd. If we compare with the general population, any bias found wouldn't be at Google, but in the school system, children's entertainment, parenting, or some other group that influences people long before they apply to Google.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- sgift 8y ago
  > A quick search suggests that only 20% of programmers in general are female, but 30% of Google programmers are female. I'm not certain these numbers are accurate, but if they are, female programmers are over represented at Google. The pool of programmers "In general" is not relevant for Google. They don't hire programmers in general, but are focused on a specific subset (usually from some big universities).
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    What's the gender distribution of graduates from those big universities?
pault 8y ago
You've jumped into a discussion about the ratio of men to women in STEM and started talking about equal pay, when none of the parent comments were taking about pay, and the article we are discussing is a study that found women at Google get paid more than their male peers. I'm not sure what's going on here.
ZeroFries 8y ago
Yeah, this isn't what we're talking about at all. Outcome: Women working as programmers at FooSoft comprise 10% less of the workforce than men working there. Possible reasons 1. Hiring bias 2. Not as qualified 3. Less applicants due to disinterest in programming as a vocation