4 ms·

I am really sick of these articles; why cant we just focus on talent. Put the best people in the best positions. It should not matter if they are male, female

I am really sick of these articles; why cant we just focus on talent. Put the best people in the best positions. It should not matter if they are male, female black or white.

chrisbroadfoot 16y ago
Because diversity is important and hugely valuable. You shouldn't have to compromise on talent in order to achieve diversity. Why aren't there more talented female developers? And if they're out there, why aren't they applying for these jobs?
- hugh3 16y ago
  Is that proven? Is it intuitively clear? What makes us think that a mixed team of programmers is better than a homogeneous one? Maybe it is in some cases, and isn't in others.
  - SpikeGronim 16y ago
    Several studies have reproduced a correlation between diversity and organizational success. I don't know of such a study for programmers specifically. I also haven't seen proof of causality - do better organizations have diverse hiring practices, or vice versa? But I've never seen a study that said that lack of diversity was a good thing. So far the evidence weighs towards diversity being better for your organization, though I wouldn't call it "proven".
    - makmanalp 16y ago
      I think if you're making a claim like this, you should point people to the studies.
      - SpikeGronim 16y ago
        You're right and I would prefer to link. It comes up in The Economist from time to time. I can't find the links right now.
jasonwocky 16y ago
I think the point of the these articles is to point out a smell. An indication that maybe we aren't putting the best people in the best positions. Maybe we're doing so after all, but it's worth asking the questions. And it's worth asking them again and and again and again.
DanHulton 16y ago
I read this as "Startups Lack Hot Female Employees" and was expecting an Onion-style article. I'm only sort of glad that it isn't. The Onion article would at least have been funny.
SpikeGronim 16y ago
As an industry, we're leaving about half the talent lying on the floor in the form of women who aren't inclined to study computer science. Carnegie Mellon has had a lot of success recruiting talented women [1]. In order to recruit talented women you can't alienate them. If I were a woman I wouldn't want to associate with the men in a typical high school or college computer science environment. I could give you a bunch of personal anecdotes, but the stories from [2] are typical of my experience. Why should bright women develop computer science talent when they're being harassed by their male peers? They go into another technical field, to the detriment of our industry. 1. http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19990820compwomen4.asp http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19990820compwomen4.a... 2. http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-harassment-problem-open-source-c http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-hara...
- m_sixes 16y ago
  > As an industry, we're leaving about half the talent lying on the floor in the form of women who aren't inclined to study computer science. Your assertion shoots itself in the foot. Since you posit a group of people who are not inclined to study a subject, you can't count them as a loss -- all further effects are purely speculative. It takes years and years of effort to get good at something difficult. You may as well lament the lack of interest in hammer-throwing, or ice hockey. > If I were a woman I wouldn't want to associate with the men in a typical high school or college computer science environment. And your bigoted attitude is the fault of other people why? And despite that, you don't need to socialize with anyone to work on problems of theory or programming. > I could give you a bunch of personal anecdotes, but the stories from [2] are typical of my experience. I refer you to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment_in_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment_in_education Sexual harassment is not a computer science issue. There are any number of pursuits where sexual harassment is far more prevalent -- and yet females do not avoid those other pursuits like they do with computer science. If anything, females are far more likely to experience sexual harassment and bullying from other females. Stories about this abound in the news and are fodder for teen movies. Regardless of the makeup of a social group, you don't get good at a technical skill by socializing. You can spend all day painting and become a great painter, or you can try to "break into the scene" and spend all day trying to hang out with the hip crowd, and lament your lack of acceptance. None of that will make you a better painter. Likewise, programmers get good by spending all day programming. There is more learning material available at everyone's fingertips than ever before in human history. A female of today has it a thousand times better than a male of the 1980s. Nobody is going to harass you while you are in your room working on programming, or art, or writing, or playing music. Also note that the vast majority of males avoid computer science like the plague. Why are we not lamenting losing all of their talent? Are we only concerned with numbers of bodies here, or do individuals matter? For every story about a female being harassed, there are 10 more about males bending over backward to be helpful and non-harassing to female peers. But it doesn't seem to matter, because ultimately, this stuff is difficult, no matter how nice people are to you. Nobody can learn for you, just like a personal trainer can't exercise for you. And people have tons of excuses for why they aren't in shape. Ultimately, this whole topic is begging the question, because people like you are assuming females ought to want to get into computer science. That seems the most condescending viewpoint of all, deciding that you know what's good for them better than they do. The whole notion of making things more "female-friendly" is insidious sexism of the worst kind. How are you going to overcome social or cultural biases when you are dead set on preserving an existing set of cultural stereotypes and baggage? If you are taking for granted that females are fundamentally different, then there is no basis for assuming that they should approach parity with males in any given context. IQ tests show that there are more males at either extreme, with females clustered more toward the middle. If whatever IQ measures correlates well with whatever computer science requires, you should expect to see fewer females at the top end, even if you start with complete gender parity in classroom makeup. Even disregarding that, it is not at all far-fetched that certain personality traits will be far more prevalent in one gender than another. It could just be that the kind of person who is okay with staring at a screen all day wrestling with code is more likely to be male. It could even be that extremely smart people are evolutionary "mistakes", and all our progress comes thanks to the social equivalent of paraplegics. The more intelligent someone is, the more likely he or she is to be socially isolated or feel socially alienated. And it may require social isolation to be able to devote enough time to certain pursuits to become very skilled. Just by random chance, a small percentage of people born every year will be unusually smart, even when their parents aren't. So even if the smartest people never reproduce, there will still be a supply of smart people turned out by the general populace every year. That group -- a genetic dead-end -- picks up the reigns of the existing technology and takes the next step, generation after generation. There is no reason we ought to wish anyone into that position. As a group, people who are into computers have traditionally been heavily discriminated against socially. Your comments are just another example of the social ostracization that technical people can expect. And then on top of it, they are a convenient scapegoat for why other people avoid the field. It couldn't be because it's hard -- no, it's got to be because of those fucking nerds.
robwgibbons 16y ago
I agree a thousand times. If women want to do tech (read: if they are interested in tech) then they will do tech, and good for them. But god damn it, stop complaining about it. There may be a distinct lack of women in the industry, but stop acting like it's actually a problem. It would be great to have more, sure, but the industry is doing fine, and so are the women. If you're interested in something, fucking do it. That's all there is to it. No one told me to get interested in programming, and if they did I would have told them to fuck off. The same goes for women, and everyone else in the world.
- SpikeGronim 16y ago
  How many times were you groped by a peer while learning to program? When you were in high school and first learning to code, did you have peers whose presence inspired all the women to leave the room because of their obnoxious behavior? These patterns of behavior are a real, measurable problem that discourages female computer science participation. That shrinks the talent pool and benefits nobody.
  - thedz 16y ago
    Are saying that the typical experience of a woman in tech is that they are groped by their peers? I don't often do this, but (non-anecdotal) citation needed.
    - SpikeGronim 16y ago
      The citation was [1]. It is typical for women that attend open source conferences. That really sucks, for everybody involved. 1. http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-harassment-problem-open-source-c http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-hara...
      - thedz 16y ago
        Yes, it does suck for anyone who undergoes sexual harassment. But you're using the word "typical". It connotes that such harassment is not only regular, but expected if a woman attends a conference. Nothing you've linked to (and nothing they've linked to from what I've read) supports the position that sexual harassment is activity that a woman should expect to be typical when going to these conferences. Do they happen more than any of us would like? Most definitely. I agree it's a problem. I disagree that it's a typical problem.
dtran 16y ago
How do you measure talent while recruiting? The person with the most accomplished resume or who can answer your technical questions most aptly? Both are only proxies, albeit usually pretty good ones, for measuring talent. Perhaps that interviewee was nervous or maybe they're really really bright, but just haven't been programming as long as some of their counterparts. Tracy Chou of Quora wrote a really insightful post about being a female software engineer: http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineering-Part-I http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineerin.... It really opened my eyes to some of the reasons why maybe there aren't more women who even get started in the field - even if there isn't outright prejudice, women in engineering still face a lot of challenges that men simply don't. Sure, you can argue that you should give the most talented person the job, but keep in mind that the methods we use for measuring talent are hugely subject to circumstance. For example, I'll bet the average age when most female engineers start programming is higher, so they simply haven't been programming as long. It is rather naive to believe that talent is the primary indicator of whether someone gets a job or gets into a particular school - success is just as much a product of circumstance, getting the necessary opportunities, and other external conditions as it is of one's own inherent talent and work-ethic. And let's face it, women in software engineering face a wholly different set of circumstances than their male counterparts, so let's stop pretending that it's just about talent.
- robwgibbons 16y ago
  By making the "women in tech" conversation about anything other than talent, you are immediately creating another "affirmative action" situation. Why should female applicants get a hand-out over more qualified male applicants? That doesn't do a damn thing other than even out some cosmetic "gender gap." If I am passionate about programming, having done it from an early age, and I lose a position to a person who just discovered he/she could make a pretty penny at this "computer stuff," well, that really pisses me off.
  - dtran 16y ago
    I'm not advocating affirmative action or anything even remotely resembling that. In fact, I'm not offering any kind of solution at all. Just responding to having my eyes opened a little bit by a first-hand account of the struggles a woman in engineering faces. I don't advocate affirmative action, but I acknowledge some of the reasoning/merit behind it. For example, I got into my dream school. Sure, I worked my ass off, and sure I wouldn't have been happy if someone else got in instead of me in part because of their race/gender/socio-economic status, but I also know that deep down, I'm really lucky/fortunate. I'm from a low-income family, but had tons of support/opportunities that a lot of other equally-deserving, equally-qualified people simply didn't. If affirmative action worked in a perfect world where out of two equally-qualified candidates, the upper hand went to the one who overcame more obstacles, then I wouldn't have any problem with it. Again, I'm not espousing choosing an applicant solely based on race/gender/socio-economic status, but if you turn a blind eye to an applicant's circumstances, your methods of evaluating candidates is extremely flawed.
gte910h 16y ago
Diversity can bring a difference of perspective on the problems you face. Sometimes it just brings different looking folks who think the same way.

I am really sick of these articles; why cant we just focus on talent. Put the best people in the best positions. It should not matter if they are male, female black or white.

chrisbroadfoot 16y ago

Because diversity is important and hugely valuable. You shouldn't have to compromise on talent in order to achieve diversity. Why aren't there more talented female developers? And if they're out there, why aren't they applying for these jobs?

hugh3 16y ago
Is that proven? Is it intuitively clear? What makes us think that a mixed team of programmers is better than a homogeneous one? Maybe it is in some cases, and isn't in others.
- SpikeGronim 16y ago
  Several studies have reproduced a correlation between diversity and organizational success. I don't know of such a study for programmers specifically. I also haven't seen proof of causality - do better organizations have diverse hiring practices, or vice versa? But I've never seen a study that said that lack of diversity was a good thing. So far the evidence weighs towards diversity being better for your organization, though I wouldn't call it "proven".
  - makmanalp 16y ago
    I think if you're making a claim like this, you should point people to the studies.
    - SpikeGronim 16y ago
      You're right and I would prefer to link. It comes up in The Economist from time to time. I can't find the links right now.

jasonwocky 16y ago

I think the point of the these articles is to point out a smell. An indication that maybe we aren't putting the best people in the best positions. Maybe we're doing so after all, but it's worth asking the questions. And it's worth asking them again and and again and again.

DanHulton 16y ago

I read this as "Startups Lack Hot Female Employees" and was expecting an Onion-style article. I'm only sort of glad that it isn't. The Onion article would at least have been funny.

SpikeGronim 16y ago

As an industry, we're leaving about half the talent lying on the floor in the form of women who aren't inclined to study computer science. Carnegie Mellon has had a lot of success recruiting talented women [1]. In order to recruit talented women you can't alienate them. If I were a woman I wouldn't want to associate with the men in a typical high school or college computer science environment. I could give you a bunch of personal anecdotes, but the stories from [2] are typical of my experience. Why should bright women develop computer science talent when they're being harassed by their male peers? They go into another technical field, to the detriment of our industry. 1. http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19990820compwomen4.asp http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19990820compwomen4.a... 2. http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-harassment-problem-open-source-c http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-hara...

m_sixes 16y ago
> As an industry, we're leaving about half the talent lying on the floor in the form of women who aren't inclined to study computer science. Your assertion shoots itself in the foot. Since you posit a group of people who are not inclined to study a subject, you can't count them as a loss -- all further effects are purely speculative. It takes years and years of effort to get good at something difficult. You may as well lament the lack of interest in hammer-throwing, or ice hockey. > If I were a woman I wouldn't want to associate with the men in a typical high school or college computer science environment. And your bigoted attitude is the fault of other people why? And despite that, you don't need to socialize with anyone to work on problems of theory or programming. > I could give you a bunch of personal anecdotes, but the stories from [2] are typical of my experience. I refer you to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment_in_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment_in_education Sexual harassment is not a computer science issue. There are any number of pursuits where sexual harassment is far more prevalent -- and yet females do not avoid those other pursuits like they do with computer science. If anything, females are far more likely to experience sexual harassment and bullying from other females. Stories about this abound in the news and are fodder for teen movies. Regardless of the makeup of a social group, you don't get good at a technical skill by socializing. You can spend all day painting and become a great painter, or you can try to "break into the scene" and spend all day trying to hang out with the hip crowd, and lament your lack of acceptance. None of that will make you a better painter. Likewise, programmers get good by spending all day programming. There is more learning material available at everyone's fingertips than ever before in human history. A female of today has it a thousand times better than a male of the 1980s. Nobody is going to harass you while you are in your room working on programming, or art, or writing, or playing music. Also note that the vast majority of males avoid computer science like the plague. Why are we not lamenting losing all of their talent? Are we only concerned with numbers of bodies here, or do individuals matter? For every story about a female being harassed, there are 10 more about males bending over backward to be helpful and non-harassing to female peers. But it doesn't seem to matter, because ultimately, this stuff is difficult, no matter how nice people are to you. Nobody can learn for you, just like a personal trainer can't exercise for you. And people have tons of excuses for why they aren't in shape. Ultimately, this whole topic is begging the question, because people like you are assuming females ought to want to get into computer science. That seems the most condescending viewpoint of all, deciding that you know what's good for them better than they do. The whole notion of making things more "female-friendly" is insidious sexism of the worst kind. How are you going to overcome social or cultural biases when you are dead set on preserving an existing set of cultural stereotypes and baggage? If you are taking for granted that females are fundamentally different, then there is no basis for assuming that they should approach parity with males in any given context. IQ tests show that there are more males at either extreme, with females clustered more toward the middle. If whatever IQ measures correlates well with whatever computer science requires, you should expect to see fewer females at the top end, even if you start with complete gender parity in classroom makeup. Even disregarding that, it is not at all far-fetched that certain personality traits will be far more prevalent in one gender than another. It could just be that the kind of person who is okay with staring at a screen all day wrestling with code is more likely to be male. It could even be that extremely smart people are evolutionary "mistakes", and all our progress comes thanks to the social equivalent of paraplegics. The more intelligent someone is, the more likely he or she is to be socially isolated or feel socially alienated. And it may require social isolation to be able to devote enough time to certain pursuits to become very skilled. Just by random chance, a small percentage of people born every year will be unusually smart, even when their parents aren't. So even if the smartest people never reproduce, there will still be a supply of smart people turned out by the general populace every year. That group -- a genetic dead-end -- picks up the reigns of the existing technology and takes the next step, generation after generation. There is no reason we ought to wish anyone into that position. As a group, people who are into computers have traditionally been heavily discriminated against socially. Your comments are just another example of the social ostracization that technical people can expect. And then on top of it, they are a convenient scapegoat for why other people avoid the field. It couldn't be because it's hard -- no, it's got to be because of those fucking nerds.

robwgibbons 16y ago

I agree a thousand times. If women want to do tech (read: if they are interested in tech) then they will do tech, and good for them. But god damn it, stop complaining about it. There may be a distinct lack of women in the industry, but stop acting like it's actually a problem. It would be great to have more, sure, but the industry is doing fine, and so are the women. If you're interested in something, fucking do it. That's all there is to it. No one told me to get interested in programming, and if they did I would have told them to fuck off. The same goes for women, and everyone else in the world.

SpikeGronim 16y ago
How many times were you groped by a peer while learning to program? When you were in high school and first learning to code, did you have peers whose presence inspired all the women to leave the room because of their obnoxious behavior? These patterns of behavior are a real, measurable problem that discourages female computer science participation. That shrinks the talent pool and benefits nobody.
- thedz 16y ago
  Are saying that the typical experience of a woman in tech is that they are groped by their peers? I don't often do this, but (non-anecdotal) citation needed.
  - SpikeGronim 16y ago
    The citation was [1]. It is typical for women that attend open source conferences. That really sucks, for everybody involved. 1. http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-harassment-problem-open-source-c http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/there-sexual-hara...
    - thedz 16y ago
      Yes, it does suck for anyone who undergoes sexual harassment. But you're using the word "typical". It connotes that such harassment is not only regular, but expected if a woman attends a conference. Nothing you've linked to (and nothing they've linked to from what I've read) supports the position that sexual harassment is activity that a woman should expect to be typical when going to these conferences. Do they happen more than any of us would like? Most definitely. I agree it's a problem. I disagree that it's a typical problem.

dtran 16y ago

How do you measure talent while recruiting? The person with the most accomplished resume or who can answer your technical questions most aptly? Both are only proxies, albeit usually pretty good ones, for measuring talent. Perhaps that interviewee was nervous or maybe they're really really bright, but just haven't been programming as long as some of their counterparts. Tracy Chou of Quora wrote a really insightful post about being a female software engineer: http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineering-Part-I http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineerin.... It really opened my eyes to some of the reasons why maybe there aren't more women who even get started in the field - even if there isn't outright prejudice, women in engineering still face a lot of challenges that men simply don't. Sure, you can argue that you should give the most talented person the job, but keep in mind that the methods we use for measuring talent are hugely subject to circumstance. For example, I'll bet the average age when most female engineers start programming is higher, so they simply haven't been programming as long. It is rather naive to believe that talent is the primary indicator of whether someone gets a job or gets into a particular school - success is just as much a product of circumstance, getting the necessary opportunities, and other external conditions as it is of one's own inherent talent and work-ethic. And let's face it, women in software engineering face a wholly different set of circumstances than their male counterparts, so let's stop pretending that it's just about talent.

robwgibbons 16y ago
By making the "women in tech" conversation about anything other than talent, you are immediately creating another "affirmative action" situation. Why should female applicants get a hand-out over more qualified male applicants? That doesn't do a damn thing other than even out some cosmetic "gender gap." If I am passionate about programming, having done it from an early age, and I lose a position to a person who just discovered he/she could make a pretty penny at this "computer stuff," well, that really pisses me off.
- dtran 16y ago
  I'm not advocating affirmative action or anything even remotely resembling that. In fact, I'm not offering any kind of solution at all. Just responding to having my eyes opened a little bit by a first-hand account of the struggles a woman in engineering faces. I don't advocate affirmative action, but I acknowledge some of the reasoning/merit behind it. For example, I got into my dream school. Sure, I worked my ass off, and sure I wouldn't have been happy if someone else got in instead of me in part because of their race/gender/socio-economic status, but I also know that deep down, I'm really lucky/fortunate. I'm from a low-income family, but had tons of support/opportunities that a lot of other equally-deserving, equally-qualified people simply didn't. If affirmative action worked in a perfect world where out of two equally-qualified candidates, the upper hand went to the one who overcame more obstacles, then I wouldn't have any problem with it. Again, I'm not espousing choosing an applicant solely based on race/gender/socio-economic status, but if you turn a blind eye to an applicant's circumstances, your methods of evaluating candidates is extremely flawed.

gte910h 16y ago

Diversity can bring a difference of perspective on the problems you face. Sometimes it just brings different looking folks who think the same way.