8 ms·

Why do you want to avoid "man only" teams?

kfk 7y ago
This is not an easy topic to discuss here. What I can say is: 1) I have a good mix now and I like it but new hires are only males so it will change, this mix seems to work very well but I might be wrong here; 2) companies these days see it well and see it as “good” (being honest here)
stale2002 7y ago
Well, one reason is that once you get into the state of a male only team, it becomes significantly more difficult to recruit women. I have heard from multiple women, that they will absolutely not join a team if they are the only woman on it. You would miss out on a lot of talent that way.
onion2k 7y ago
Making software is about asking questions. You ask the questions necessary to figure out the best solution to a problem. If you have a "man only" team, or "anything only" really, you're less likely to have people asking different questions - they're all going to ask the same questions if they all have the same perspectives, biases, etc. Diverse teams gather more information which leads to better insight of edge cases, and ultimately to better products.
- hnaccy 7y ago
  Tech companies today seem more homogenous in thought and educational background than gender or race.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  That's a sexist view. Men don't have "the same perspectives" on pretty much anything.
  - CJefferson 7y ago
    A man only team is likely to miss some perspectives, which it is much more likely women will have, in the same way a female only team will miss a male perspective.
    - bufferoverflow 7y ago
      Any team is likely to miss some perspectives.
      - CJefferson 7y ago
        True, and trying to optimise for everything won't work, but we can try.
    - bubblewrap 7y ago
      Many software products don't need female specific features. There is the famous story of the Apple fitness tracker that couldn't account for menstruation cycles, but that is a rather specific example. And that approach is doomed to fail in general, because there are too many different people. If you can only think of appropriate features by having a representative needing such a feature on your team, you'd have to hire thousands of people to work on your product.
    - scooble 7y ago
      So what kinds of things are female programmers going to miss? What kind of roles can we decide a priori should go to a man?
    - bubblewrap 7y ago
      Can you give some examples? I find it very hard to believe, for general software products.
  - chobeat 7y ago
    but for sure they cannot have the perspective of a woman. And a white bro cannot have the perspective of an Indian or a Chinese or a Quechua. Asserting that white brogrammers cannot embody some perspectives doesn't say that they have a uniform background. It just asserts that your team will be made encompassing just that set of perspectives.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  Why do you think that all men have the same perspectives and biases?
- makgf 7y ago
  The problem with these threads is that many people make generalized and probably unfounded assumptions (like the one that is the topic of the article). So in this case I do not see at all that software from "diverse" teams has gotten better. I fact I think that overall software has gotten worse in the past decade. There is no structure, quality or documentation. The only thing that matters is that "something visible happens" so it resembles a product.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Hmm, it's a good idea, but it relies on men and women being fundamentally different (which I think they are) which goes directly against modern feminism. If men and women are fundamentally different then there are good reasons to choose men or women only in a given situation (along normal stereotypes: women are better caregivers, men are better manual labourers). Recruiting in this way is illegal in a lot of places. >they're all going to ask the same questions if they all have the same perspectives, biases, etc. // Then shoudln't you choose people based on their ability to consider the specific perspectives you need? One of the things about people is the ability to adopt the perspective of others readily.
  - necovek 7y ago
    > which goes directly against modern feminism. Not sure about what "modern feminism" is about, but the goal is fairness, which means treating women as women and not requiring male characteristics. Basically, detaching personality traits more common in one population (eg gender) from actual job requirements.
  - atoav 7y ago
    I don’t think there is a widespread consesus within Feminism for the idea that women and men aren’t different — and honestly, everybody who says so didn’t bother to inform themselves. Different genders/races/cultural backgrounds/educational backgrounds are connected to having different experiences in life. Of course you can imagine what e.g. sexism looks like, but when it happens to you every other day as a woman you will have it much more present than a man. Same thing with other aspects, people who have different racial/educational/cultural backgrounds bring different experiences with them and they might offer them precisely at the point where you didn’t think about it, not because you are a bad person, but because emulating all other perspectives your self is exhausting. The variance between individuals of both genders and within races/nationalities/etc is big enough for you to look on the individual level. When you say “women are statistically on average better caregivers” and hire only women, not only are you missing out on very talented men, but the functionality of your team is reduced as well. E.g. because in some situation a male caregiver might be a better fit for a given client. Not because they are better or worse at their job, but because beeing male brings a whole set of experiences, cultural expectations etc with itself. The same apparently goes for other traits your employee might have. Most jobs require teams to react to new and unpredictable challanges and having a broad range of backgrounds, helps them to always have a team member whi knows how to deal with it, because of their background ans life experience. When you hire a team where you have a monoculture, it is hit or miss. It might work well for a certain job at a certain time, but if anything changes, your team might be less resilent, flexible and able to solve problems compared to a more diverse team.
- bubblewrap 7y ago
  Yeah because all men are completely the same.
- F-0X 7y ago
  > Diverse teams gather more information which leads to better insight of edge cases, and ultimately to better products. This is just an assertion currently, and I am not inclined to believe it is true. I would believe it for more "people" and/or culture oriented problems, such as catering, but for the majority of software development problems, diversity in people is nothing compared to diversity of software development experience. Which, ironically if we take as given most developers are white males, we maximise on average by only hiring white males!
- scooble 7y ago
  Back in the day, saying that an all female team of developers would be somehow deficient and would write inferior software would be seen as sexist. The idea that this kind of a priori judgement is not only acceptable but laudible has come as a bit of a surprise. Not least because it would seem to justify rejecting female applicants for a role where a 'male perspective' is considered important.
- treis 7y ago
  >Making software is about asking questions. All that time I've wasted writing code...
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Code is the answers to the questions you've asked translated in to something a machine understands. If you're not asking the right questions your code is essentially worthless because your product won't do what the user actually wants. Hence software is about asking questions.
viraptor 7y ago
I'd invert this: why would a man-only team ever be a desirable situation? Normally if you have enough people, you should get fairly close to common ratio in numbers. If you end up with men only (or any X-only), it may be an indicator that there's something unhealthy about the company culture. Following from that, it may be in your interest as a hiring person to bootstrap some diversity to remove that "unhealthy" idea early on.
- bubblewrap 7y ago
  What is "common ratio"? Men only teams can actually have advantages. Mixed teams can have different advantages. One advantage I could imagine is mixed teams making the company more attractive for men to work at, making it easier to attract talented developers.
  - viraptor 7y ago
    I meant ratio of available engineers in the market. Not as a specific number, but more of lacking any representation if you have 100+ employees.

kfk 7y ago

This is not an easy topic to discuss here. What I can say is: 1) I have a good mix now and I like it but new hires are only males so it will change, this mix seems to work very well but I might be wrong here; 2) companies these days see it well and see it as “good” (being honest here)

stale2002 7y ago

Well, one reason is that once you get into the state of a male only team, it becomes significantly more difficult to recruit women. I have heard from multiple women, that they will absolutely not join a team if they are the only woman on it. You would miss out on a lot of talent that way.

onion2k 7y ago

Making software is about asking questions. You ask the questions necessary to figure out the best solution to a problem. If you have a "man only" team, or "anything only" really, you're less likely to have people asking different questions - they're all going to ask the same questions if they all have the same perspectives, biases, etc. Diverse teams gather more information which leads to better insight of edge cases, and ultimately to better products.

hnaccy 7y ago
Tech companies today seem more homogenous in thought and educational background than gender or race.
bufferoverflow 7y ago
That's a sexist view. Men don't have "the same perspectives" on pretty much anything.
- CJefferson 7y ago
  A man only team is likely to miss some perspectives, which it is much more likely women will have, in the same way a female only team will miss a male perspective.
  - bufferoverflow 7y ago
    Any team is likely to miss some perspectives.
    - CJefferson 7y ago
      True, and trying to optimise for everything won't work, but we can try.
  - bubblewrap 7y ago
    Many software products don't need female specific features. There is the famous story of the Apple fitness tracker that couldn't account for menstruation cycles, but that is a rather specific example. And that approach is doomed to fail in general, because there are too many different people. If you can only think of appropriate features by having a representative needing such a feature on your team, you'd have to hire thousands of people to work on your product.
  - scooble 7y ago
    So what kinds of things are female programmers going to miss? What kind of roles can we decide a priori should go to a man?
  - bubblewrap 7y ago
    Can you give some examples? I find it very hard to believe, for general software products.
- chobeat 7y ago
  but for sure they cannot have the perspective of a woman. And a white bro cannot have the perspective of an Indian or a Chinese or a Quechua. Asserting that white brogrammers cannot embody some perspectives doesn't say that they have a uniform background. It just asserts that your team will be made encompassing just that set of perspectives.
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Why do you think that all men have the same perspectives and biases?
makgf 7y ago
The problem with these threads is that many people make generalized and probably unfounded assumptions (like the one that is the topic of the article). So in this case I do not see at all that software from "diverse" teams has gotten better. I fact I think that overall software has gotten worse in the past decade. There is no structure, quality or documentation. The only thing that matters is that "something visible happens" so it resembles a product.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Hmm, it's a good idea, but it relies on men and women being fundamentally different (which I think they are) which goes directly against modern feminism. If men and women are fundamentally different then there are good reasons to choose men or women only in a given situation (along normal stereotypes: women are better caregivers, men are better manual labourers). Recruiting in this way is illegal in a lot of places. >they're all going to ask the same questions if they all have the same perspectives, biases, etc. // Then shoudln't you choose people based on their ability to consider the specific perspectives you need? One of the things about people is the ability to adopt the perspective of others readily.
- necovek 7y ago
  > which goes directly against modern feminism. Not sure about what "modern feminism" is about, but the goal is fairness, which means treating women as women and not requiring male characteristics. Basically, detaching personality traits more common in one population (eg gender) from actual job requirements.
- atoav 7y ago
  I don’t think there is a widespread consesus within Feminism for the idea that women and men aren’t different — and honestly, everybody who says so didn’t bother to inform themselves. Different genders/races/cultural backgrounds/educational backgrounds are connected to having different experiences in life. Of course you can imagine what e.g. sexism looks like, but when it happens to you every other day as a woman you will have it much more present than a man. Same thing with other aspects, people who have different racial/educational/cultural backgrounds bring different experiences with them and they might offer them precisely at the point where you didn’t think about it, not because you are a bad person, but because emulating all other perspectives your self is exhausting. The variance between individuals of both genders and within races/nationalities/etc is big enough for you to look on the individual level. When you say “women are statistically on average better caregivers” and hire only women, not only are you missing out on very talented men, but the functionality of your team is reduced as well. E.g. because in some situation a male caregiver might be a better fit for a given client. Not because they are better or worse at their job, but because beeing male brings a whole set of experiences, cultural expectations etc with itself. The same apparently goes for other traits your employee might have. Most jobs require teams to react to new and unpredictable challanges and having a broad range of backgrounds, helps them to always have a team member whi knows how to deal with it, because of their background ans life experience. When you hire a team where you have a monoculture, it is hit or miss. It might work well for a certain job at a certain time, but if anything changes, your team might be less resilent, flexible and able to solve problems compared to a more diverse team.
bubblewrap 7y ago
Yeah because all men are completely the same.
F-0X 7y ago
> Diverse teams gather more information which leads to better insight of edge cases, and ultimately to better products. This is just an assertion currently, and I am not inclined to believe it is true. I would believe it for more "people" and/or culture oriented problems, such as catering, but for the majority of software development problems, diversity in people is nothing compared to diversity of software development experience. Which, ironically if we take as given most developers are white males, we maximise on average by only hiring white males!
scooble 7y ago
Back in the day, saying that an all female team of developers would be somehow deficient and would write inferior software would be seen as sexist. The idea that this kind of a priori judgement is not only acceptable but laudible has come as a bit of a surprise. Not least because it would seem to justify rejecting female applicants for a role where a 'male perspective' is considered important.
treis 7y ago
>Making software is about asking questions. All that time I've wasted writing code...
- onion2k 7y ago
  Code is the answers to the questions you've asked translated in to something a machine understands. If you're not asking the right questions your code is essentially worthless because your product won't do what the user actually wants. Hence software is about asking questions.

viraptor 7y ago

I'd invert this: why would a man-only team ever be a desirable situation? Normally if you have enough people, you should get fairly close to common ratio in numbers. If you end up with men only (or any X-only), it may be an indicator that there's something unhealthy about the company culture. Following from that, it may be in your interest as a hiring person to bootstrap some diversity to remove that "unhealthy" idea early on.

bubblewrap 7y ago
What is "common ratio"? Men only teams can actually have advantages. Mixed teams can have different advantages. One advantage I could imagine is mixed teams making the company more attractive for men to work at, making it easier to attract talented developers.
- viraptor 7y ago
  I meant ratio of available engineers in the market. Not as a specific number, but more of lacking any representation if you have 100+ employees.