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I'll preface this with the usual "my views are my own" but I do think that diversity in the workplace is a very deep and interesting problem and that we do a ma

I'll preface this with the usual "my views are my own" but I do think that diversity in the workplace is a very deep and interesting problem and that we do a major disservice to it by creating ridiculous metrics. I think the most damning metric I see constantly touted is percentage gender; "We aim to have 50% women in the workplace" is a prime example of this. If this is by sexual assignment then even if the value is reached the intent will not be (one could be a female by sex but a male by gender and thus from a diversity standpoint is largely contributing as a male). If this is by gender assignment not only is the metric focused on a fluid concept but it's also not a binary - in order to reach 50% women we'd only have 50% for the remaining non-women, which represents a broad range of gender expression and is not exclusively male. I do respect that many companies (not just in tech) see diversity as an issue and are trying to do something about it. However, I do hope that they spend more time investigating the full range of the issue and begin by making small attempts at approaching the problem space before declaring metrics as objectives.

BlueTemplar 7y ago
Uh, people like this are rounding errors in these kinds of statistics...
abjKT26nO8 7y ago
The companies, I've worked at so far, had 0 female software engineers. I'm not even looking at percentages. It's horrible.
- sukilot 7y ago
  How many engineers at these companies? The only place I had to extend my range a bit to find women engineers in my part of the organization was at Amazon.
romwell 7y ago
This is a strawman argument. The goal is not to have 50% women, sharp. The goal is to fix the problem that in the US, where there are 5 men for every woman working in top major software corporations, and those are the ones that supposedly try to improve things. It's 2019, and yet a company with all-male board was the norm until this year (arguably still is). We are so, so far from any form of reasonable balance that I am not sure which universe your comment applies to. And yes, what you said matters, as does race, country of origin, and economic background. Intersectionality is a fancy word, but it's useful, and the article mentions it. So that said, 50% is a useful number. It's useful to say that if the actual hiring rate is at 15%, we still have a problem.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Why is 50% the useful number? Why not 25 or 40 or 60 or 75%? Any number needs a justification, 25% or 75% alike, so why 50%? We have 80% females in the marketing department and it is actually much larger than the IT department. Should we have 50%? Why? Actually we have a pipeline problem there too, not so many males interested in marketing. Is that a problem that needs to be solved?
  - romwell 7y ago
    >We have 80% females in the marketing department and it is actually much larger than the IT department. Is that a problem that needs to be solved? It depends on whether it has been a consistent trend across the vast majority of marketing departments and companies, like it is wit software. Just like having one software company with 80% women is not a solution, having one company with 80% women in marketing is not a problem. 50% is a useful number because that's about the proportion of women in the world (did I really have to spell that out?).
- seangrogg 7y ago
  Accenture [1], BHP [2], Dell [3], and that's just a cursory glance at those that have made public commitments to 50% women "sharp" by a target year. My comment had nothing to do with software in particular (I explicitly call that out), just the utilization of the metrics themselves by any company. I have nothing against companies taking a moment to reflect on how their hiring practices may be unintentionally (or worse, intentionally) stifling diversity. Rather, I'm invoking Goodhart's law here, in that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." [1] https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/inclusion-diversity/gender-equality https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/inclusion-diversity/ge... [2] https://www.bhp.com/media-and-insights/prospects/2017/09/no-silver-bullet-but-great-progress-on-gender-balance https://www.bhp.com/media-and-insights/prospects/2017/09/no-... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-12/dell-aims-to-make-women-half-of-workforce-in-diversity-push https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-12/dell-aims...
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  >>>The goal is to fix the problem that in the US, where there are 5 men for every woman working in top major software corporations There's also 99 men for every 1 woman working in coal mining. Why is no one (especially women) advocating we "fix" this gender disparity?

BlueTemplar 7y ago

Uh, people like this are rounding errors in these kinds of statistics...

abjKT26nO8 7y ago

The companies, I've worked at so far, had 0 female software engineers. I'm not even looking at percentages. It's horrible.

sukilot 7y ago
How many engineers at these companies? The only place I had to extend my range a bit to find women engineers in my part of the organization was at Amazon.

romwell 7y ago

This is a strawman argument. The goal is not to have 50% women, sharp. The goal is to fix the problem that in the US, where there are 5 men for every woman working in top major software corporations, and those are the ones that supposedly try to improve things. It's 2019, and yet a company with all-male board was the norm until this year (arguably still is). We are so, so far from any form of reasonable balance that I am not sure which universe your comment applies to. And yes, what you said matters, as does race, country of origin, and economic background. Intersectionality is a fancy word, but it's useful, and the article mentions it. So that said, 50% is a useful number. It's useful to say that if the actual hiring rate is at 15%, we still have a problem.

AdrianB1 7y ago
Why is 50% the useful number? Why not 25 or 40 or 60 or 75%? Any number needs a justification, 25% or 75% alike, so why 50%? We have 80% females in the marketing department and it is actually much larger than the IT department. Should we have 50%? Why? Actually we have a pipeline problem there too, not so many males interested in marketing. Is that a problem that needs to be solved?
- romwell 7y ago
  >We have 80% females in the marketing department and it is actually much larger than the IT department. Is that a problem that needs to be solved? It depends on whether it has been a consistent trend across the vast majority of marketing departments and companies, like it is wit software. Just like having one software company with 80% women is not a solution, having one company with 80% women in marketing is not a problem. 50% is a useful number because that's about the proportion of women in the world (did I really have to spell that out?).
seangrogg 7y ago
Accenture [1], BHP [2], Dell [3], and that's just a cursory glance at those that have made public commitments to 50% women "sharp" by a target year. My comment had nothing to do with software in particular (I explicitly call that out), just the utilization of the metrics themselves by any company. I have nothing against companies taking a moment to reflect on how their hiring practices may be unintentionally (or worse, intentionally) stifling diversity. Rather, I'm invoking Goodhart's law here, in that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." [1] https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/inclusion-diversity/gender-equality https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/inclusion-diversity/ge... [2] https://www.bhp.com/media-and-insights/prospects/2017/09/no-silver-bullet-but-great-progress-on-gender-balance https://www.bhp.com/media-and-insights/prospects/2017/09/no-... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-12/dell-aims-to-make-women-half-of-workforce-in-diversity-push https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-12/dell-aims...
CapricornNoble 7y ago
>>>The goal is to fix the problem that in the US, where there are 5 men for every woman working in top major software corporations There's also 99 men for every 1 woman working in coal mining. Why is no one (especially women) advocating we "fix" this gender disparity?