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With such politically charged issues, it's always a problem of people wanting to believe something is possible (and mandatory to pursue) banging their heads aga

With such politically charged issues, it's always a problem of people wanting to believe something is possible (and mandatory to pursue) banging their heads against what is true and actually possible. If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representation? A while back, I did rough envelope calculations that if one of the major FAANG companies hit their diversity goal, there would be none left for any of the rest of them. Look at these percentages and you can see unsentimentally that this must be true. Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? If we put actual performance metrics and pay on the line for achieving these physically unattainable goals, everyone would be fired.

nl 7y ago
it's always a problem of people wanting to believe something is possible (and mandatory to pursue) banging their heads against what is true and actually possible. I'm not sure if you realize this, but change always seems impossible until it happens. 10 years ago it seemed completely impossible that Facebook would have 1B users, let alone the ~3B it has now. The same 10 years ago it seemed impossible to that gay people would be able to marry, and even 4 years ago the idea of a Trump presidency was considered a joke. Change is and will remain hard. That doesn't mean it isn't desirable nor does it mean that people shouldn't bang their heads against walls to make it happen.
- mffnbs 7y ago
  It’s ridiculous you were down voted for this. These people don’t want to change their behavior or admit there’s bias. They would rather remain ignorant and pretend that it’s a problem caused by someone else rather than reflect on what might not be working.
  - nl 7y ago
    I don't like to complain about it, but since you raised it... I was shocked by how quickly this was downvoted. It went to -4 in minutes! I didn't even think anything I said there was particularly controversial. I think it's pretty well established that social change is hard.
- deleted 7y ago
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shrimp_emoji 7y ago
Freshman year CS: 30-40% girls Senior year CS: 1-5% girls Pepehands SquadW Tfw your lived experience won't stop redpilling you D:
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't do this here.
ForHackernews 7y ago
Does anyone have a goal of 50% female developers? Can we see some citations for that? Most companies I've worked at claimed to be trying for 20%, and they were failing abysmally at it.
- inerte 7y ago
  I've heard from a Googler that yes, they want the workforce to match the outside world. With that in mind read https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_what-would-it-take https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_what-would-it-tak... and "That’s why in 2019 we challenge ourselves and others to think differently so that we widen pathways to tech. Only then will we reflect our consumer base, and truly elevate our ability to build products for everyone." So Google wants to reflect the consumer base, so I guess we can take that to mean ~50% female devs?
  - supernova87a 7y ago
    Most corporate statements of diversity goals I have ever seen take the simplistic position (in some form or another) that <x>, <y>, or <z> statistic "should mirror the representation of the general population." It seems to be an accepted truism that this equals unbiased selection and equity. It is very politically unacceptable to object to this intellectually lazy reasoning.
  - pksdjfikkkkdsff 7y ago
    When I hear statements like that, I always wonder if they try to hire 2% pedophiles, too. About 2% of people in the real world are supposed to be pedophiles, so if they want to reflect the real world, they should aim to hire them.
    - daseiner1 7y ago
      arguing in bad faith seems unnecessary when there's so much authentically wrong with their view
      - 7y ago
xienze 7y ago
> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representation? Oh it can be done, it just requires reducing the number of male employees in one way or another. Everyone wants to believe the utopian ideal of perfectly-balanced ratios of employees can be achieved without someone getting the short end of the stick, but reality says otherwise.
hnick 7y ago
I generally agree with you, but such smart and resourceful companies could do something about it. They are not powerless. Companies used to train internally - watch an older TV show (or even something like Better Call Saul) and see how many characters "worked their way up from the mail room". The death of company loyalty goes both ways but I'm sure it can be mended with some effort. Where I work one of the better programmers I knew was an immigrant from south east Asia who started in the warehouse and had an interest in programming. I don't know whether or not he had a degree, but the point was he worked hard to prove himself, and they took a chance to give him a go. So I guess my point is, graduate statistics isn't the end of the story.
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Sure, but the scope of what most companies are concerned with is their hiring goals for the next 1-2 years (let's be generous and say 5 years). What you're talking about clearly falls into the pipeline problem and just further supports the premise -- something like a 20 year timescale issue. Which goes to the truth of this article -- this problem is far beyond the power (or responsibility) of any company. I'm not saying a company should throw up its hands and do nothing. But why are we looking to assign to companies the solving of a 50% problem (if that's the goal), when they can only ever achieve 15% within their reasonable powers?
  - hnick 7y ago
    The article says to not rely on proxies like college degrees, so I was aiming more along those lines. As far as I can tell (I admit I skimmed it) they advocate hiring for skills over pedigree. There's a pipeline problem if you are only taking a specific output and society is not producing it. As an individual company then you can either broaden what you accept (and I don't think this will lower quality, but it will make hiring harder), or take charge and extend the pipeline in your own backyard through training or probationary periods to trial someone. FTA: > As you can see, broadening your pipeline isn’t a magic pill, and as long as demand for software engineers continues to grow, it’s still going to be really hard, systemic changes to our society notwithstanding. If we do make these changes, however, the tech industry as a whole can accelerate its path toward gender parity and potentially get there within a decade. There's probably a feedback loop here where if they can broaden their intake, it will help accelerate societal change. The largest companies will have the most trouble, because they have the most seats to fill, but they also have the resources to try something different to fix this if they really want to. On your last point, I think having a hard target like 50% can be damaging since it is demoralising to look at the gap and it might all feel like too much to deal with. I'd personally prefer to work towards 'a bit better than last year' with some achievable (non-startup) growth rates.
hellisothers 7y ago
The whole point of the article is that restricting your hiring pool to only CS graduates is a bad pattern and you should consider other qualities instead so saying only 18% of CS graduates are female misses the point. Having no CS degree myself and excelling in a top 10 company I agree with this sentiment, especially seeing the epidemic of “over leveling” the small pool of CS graduates occurring. I’d rather work with correctly leveled non-CS graduates than over-leveled CS graduates
- ben_jones 7y ago
  I’m a drop out too and have made my way to manager where I find myself training juniors many of which also do not have degrees. Unfortunately it is night and day between the ones who do have degrees and those that don’t. At this point I am now strongly recommending cs degrees to anyone seeking a career in programming because the theories do come up in any serious work, particularly full stack engineers who must have strong understandings of databases, type theory, statistical analysis, etc. I would LOVE to create a large curriculum in house that aims to teach non degree holding individuals these skill sets because it would have tremendous return on investment. Be we are a small company (<100) with limited resources that can not afford to have a six month on boarding process to Do it properly (and I am not a professor). It is an unrealistic burden to any small or medium org to do what is required by your comment.
  - goosehonk 7y ago
    As a person without a CS education but with 30 years of industry experience, including several of The Bigs, I urge young people to get an education in anything but CS. The number of CS degree holders, even the masters and doctors, who struggle with statistics, linear algebra, or even thermodynamics and basic accounting is pretty dispiriting. Get an education and learn to program computers. Two separate things in my humble opinion.
    - Leherenn 7y ago
      Do you think other degrees, outside of maths or physics maybe, makes you better at the things you listed? It seems unlikely to me, and the fact people struggle with this is more representative of the general population than of the degree itself I would say. It might depend on how the degree is taught I guess, mine had very little actual programming.
vkou 7y ago
Every company can't hit 50/50, but it is obviously possible for any one company to hit 50/50, without compromising on their hiring bar. (Until everyone adopts that same mentality, at which point it, of course, becomes impossible.) Also, just because you have a goal to aspire to doesn't mean you can realistically meet it. Suppose if every high achiever in a school wants to be valedictorian, but only one of them will make it. That in itself doesn't mean it's a pointless goal.
- username90 7y ago
  > but it is obviously possible for any one company to hit 50/50, without compromising on their hiring bar How? If I interview a bunch of people for programming positions and pick the 10 best men and 10 best women, which group do you think will be best? Statistically I have considered several times more men than women, so the male group will almost surely be stronger. The only way to avoid this is to intentionally pick bad men, or if I just randomly ignore 83% of their resumes.
  - vkou 7y ago
    No hiring bar in the world is looking for the best 10 people. It's just looking for people who are better than (some arbitrary skill level). More men than women could bench press 160 lbs, but if your hiring bar is 'we hire people who can bench 160 lbs', you can trivially find as many people from either gender as you want.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      Would your point still stand, if the baseline of being able to bench press 160lb was just a starting requirement, with a possibility that requirements can change at any point and you might need people who can be trained to bench press 260lb instead? Also, if you are buying a car with the goal of being able to accelerate from 0-60mph in under 4 seconds, and you have to choose between two cars priced exactly the same, but one can do it in 3.9 seconds and another one in 3.1 seconds, why would you pick the 3.9 car over the 3.1 one, even though the 3.9 one meets your requirements of under 4 seconds just as well (assuming all the other relevant characteristics are equivalent or about the same)?
downerending 7y ago
If you've not seen it, Thomas Sowell incisively comments on the wish for the impossible in The Quest for Cosmic Justice. There's a full book, but the original speech gives the main point: https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html Definitely worth a look, even if you don't think it applies here.
- EricE 7y ago
  Oh it absolutely applies - excellent reminder and post!
erikpukinskis 7y ago
> If the percentage of female computer science graduates [is] a strong proxy for the available candidate population I doubt it is. You’re writing off all the self-taught coders. You’re also writing off all the non-coders. Most companies seem to think they want a 10:1:1 ratio of engineers:designers:product managers, etc. I think 3:3:3 would be better, and makes your issue go away. But we have this worship of “engineering” as some sort of magical thing that happens in a vacuum and requires no cross-discipline input. Meanwhile every tech company I’ve ever worked for is pathologically rewriting the same code over and over, bashing their heads against the same tech debt over and over, and regularly wasting millions of dollars Building The Wrong Thing. Heck we should probably have 10:1 masseuses and 10:1 psychotherapists on staff. Productivity would strictly increase.
xenocyon 7y ago
I do agree that there is indeed a pipeline problem; however there is still much scope for improvement at workplaces. Notably, gender balance is not only skewed at the point of hiring; in fact, the skew gets worse and worse as one goes up through the ranks.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  Do you think the numbers would change appreciably if the entire hiring process was boiled down to a multiple-choice exam, with no humans besides the applicant involved, which chose who gets hired based on the first applicant to pass it?
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Yes. The assumption you're making is that everyone who is capable of doing a dev job manages to get one, so if you remove all the hiring biases all those people will continue to get dev jobs and nothing will really change. That assumption is wrong. There are thousands of people who can't get dev jobs for reasons other than lacking technical ability. Some hiring managers filter out candidates before the make it to interview for absolutely stupid reasons. Some companies have hiring practices that are plain stupid and select out capable engineers for dumb reasons. If hiring was a multiple choice exam those people would be able to enter the industry and there'd be fewer companies with unfilled positions. Also, even if you don't think it'd have much of an impact on the numbers across the industry, the numbers at the specific companies that have bad hiring biases obviously would change. That could be useful.
  - username90 7y ago
    Yes, you would get more men and less women than now as men do better on such tests while women do better on tests with more social cues such as interviews or writing resumes.
godelski 7y ago
> Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? Because 1) there is a feedback loop that does show that having role models at the end of the pipeline does help the entire pipeline. 2) It is easier than restructuring the entire pipeline than admitting that it is a societal problem rather than big bad Google being sexist (I'm not saying Google isn't sexist). This is kind of a pattern in problems that don't have smoking guns. We like to pretend that things are first order problems (problem causes an effect, directly) when most problems are pretty high order and complex. First order problems are usually easier to solve because they have a clear smoking gun. You take care of the bad person that fired the gun and the problem is solved. I actually suspect that this is an evolutionary problem, being that most of our early problems could be approximated by first or second order and thus increase our survival rate. I'm also pretty convinced that we've solved most of those now, and thus that line of thinking doesn't work for modern problems. But for part 1), if you have the flu, tissues help. They don't cure the flu, but they help you from preventing the spread and alleviate the symptoms. So if you take my preposition about first order problems, I don't think it is hard to see why people would get stuck at that stage. Essentially "we did something and it had a positive effect. So let's keep doing that thing!" That's not bad logic. You admit that they do have __a little__ control over the constraints, so it isn't surprising that they have __a little__ impact. The failure is not continuing to look for more potential solutions and stagnating. Just need to do some PCA, find the other factors, and push on those (as well as what we've already found to have positive effects). But this is much easier said than done, and I think that is part of the problem. Difficult problems are tautologically difficult, but we as a society like to pretend there are simple solutions (come on, admit it, you do this too). So why do we do this? Well, how many people do you know break down complex problems into multiple components? I know very few, and even then they don't consistently do it. > If we put actual performance metrics and pay on the line for achieving these physically unattainable goals, everyone would be fired. I'd argue that they would just start cheating. Which I think that there is evidence that this is happening (some being given in this article).
lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
Ignorning the fact that many engineering orgs can't hit 10% let along 18%; you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree". Statistically your company isn't actually hiring for jobs that need higher level CS theory. It's not assigning malice, but pure negligence. There's a huge population of competent people with amazing ROI for your business and, especially companies with pockets as deep as FAANG, ignoring them because it's perceived as less risky to hire another (cis/het/white) guy is bad optics at best. Ironically, in my experience, the companies who figured this out a decade ago are the major finance companies. Hire anyone with a pulse, put in the effort to train them, be the only company on the block that isn't active treating these populations like shit, the you get retention rates that are unheard of in tech (especially for such comparativly shitty jobs by metric of pay and interesting things to do). Talent is there, tech companies just choose to ignore it and play into the existing biases ( and out right misogynistic streaks) that already exist. Maybe 50% is a perfect ideal, but, don't let perfect be the enemy of better. We absolutely should be loudly shaming those at the top that "just can't find talent". #rantsFromAnAngryTransWoman
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree". But, why, though? Are you saying that women as a group are less capable of completing CS degrees than men?
  - lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
    There's a whole host of systematic reasons why women (as a group) might choose not to pursue a CS degree. As a hiring manager I can choose to complain about the ~pipeline~ (which i conveniently can't change nor appreciably effect in the short term) or I can re-examine my existing assumptions (namely whether a CS degree is necessary for filtering). I'm, personally, not really a fan of programs that are trying to shuffle people into a specific degree to improve employment representation rather examining what skills are necessary to do the job in the first place. The university as proxy for job training model, I feel, is perverse and doesn't necessarily serve students nor employers.
TuringNYC 7y ago
>> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% Perhaps employers can expand the search to those with degrees in statistics, mathematics, physics, econometrics? What I've seen time and time again is that when people dont want to hire, they come up with excuse after excuse. When they really want to hire [a VP's brother-in-low, or whatever], even the flimsiest of cases suddenly get made for the hire. I'd say, we should look think bigger.
- pnako 7y ago
  There is a similar push for "women in statistics", "women in mathematics", etc.
- kick 7y ago
  Instead of getting economists and statisticians involved, why not just encourage companies to fund the educations of demographics of workers they're trying to recruit? Not only is there a financial incentive (if you get people new to the field, you can pay them less until they get a new job or sufficient raises, and this is a benefit for both parties due to the lessened educational cost), it also creates loyalty out of almost nothing. If not university classes or a bootcamp-like setup, apprenticeships would probably work amazingly for the purpose.
  - blub 7y ago
    a) making for-profit companies responsible for education is an anti-pattern b) suggesting that those people should be paid less is immoral
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- NhanH 7y ago
  Is the pipeline in other degrees any better? And more importantly, why is it even a suggestions to look for other degrees when searching for candiate just to fill out diversity quota? Just to be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with looking for candidates from those areas, companies should, and already did source candidates from more than CS degrees. But the company should do that because those candidates were qualified, not because they have to hire to sastify a demographic composition requirements for the company
anonytrary 7y ago
> A while back, I did rough envelope calculations that if one of the major FAANG companies hit their diversity goal, there would be none left for any of the rest of them. Not to mention, if the other companies also wish to hit their diversity goals, they will be forced to take on weaker hires, since the (already small) pool of adequate hires has been exhausted. In my opinion, diversity hiring is an anti-pattern. Hiring should instead ignore demographics information rather than use it to try and achieve some optimal representational balance. If demographics information are completely ignored in the hiring process (which is impossible if you do on-site hiring), then no one can accuse you of favoring a particular group of people.
- oconnore 7y ago
  Common practice is to ignore diversity (to the extent possible) in assessing, but not in sourcing.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    How can that work for Google or Tesla or any other company that everyone knows about, where anyone who wants to work there is likely to apply?
    - mepiethree 7y ago
      Lots of people don't apply because they incorrectly believe they are not qualified.
      - DataWorker 7y ago
        Noted!
  - anonytrary 7y ago
    IIUC, I think the distinction between sourcing and assessing is not relevant here. Assuming the females in the pool of viable candidates have already been exhausted, then sourcing only females is suboptimal, as they are less likely to pass assessment because (by construction) they are not in the set of viable candidates. It will always make the most sense to source the best people without regard to anything but job skill. If the best people aren't diverse, then chasing diversity requires you to look outside the set of best people, by construction. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
dgzl 7y ago
We've abandoned the pursuit of equality for the pursuit of equity.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) I don't see why one would assume that gender distribution of CS degree holders is a strong proxy for the gender distribution of available candidates suitable for software development positions. Its true that many big firms (and even a large number of small firms) have a well-known strong bias for CS degree holders (and for CS degree holders from particular elite institutions), but the statistics of the field as a whole, and of CS degree holders, show that that is a bias inconsistent with the real qualifications for the field which cannot avoid exaggerating the gender gap in the field. > A while back, I did rough envelope calculations that if one of the major FAANG companies hit their diversity goal, there would be none left for any of the rest of them. That only makes sense if you assume that none of the meeting the target was done by bringing people into the field that otherwise would not be in it, despite the fact that that is typically a focus of such efforts by large firms.
- blub 7y ago
  "statistics of the field as a whole, and of CS degree holders, show that that is a bias inconsistent with the real qualifications for the field which cannot avoid exaggerating the gender gap in the field." You've made a counter-intuitive point and claimed that it's confirmed by statistics and yet haven't included any...
tarsinge 7y ago
> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representation? I really thought it was the accepted fact and a starting point of all the discussions on this subject, that the issue is the pool of candidate. Myself I recently tried to hire a developer and that’s a reality that there is nearly no female candidates. And I‘m not restricting it to CS degree. I don’t understand how it’s not obvious that what can be done at the hiring process is completely marginal. There is no politics here. The politics is how much we try to aim for 50% candidates (education, training...)
- Aaron_Putnam 7y ago
  The main driver is the H1B: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h-1b-petitions-by-gender-country-of-birth-fy2018.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re... 73.9% of H1B visas are given to Indians, 79.2% of those Indians are males. The solution is to require at least 50% of all H1B recipients, from all countries, to be female. High levels of Indian and Chinese migration also produce secondary effects, as families from those communities still carry out sex-selective abortion even into the 2nd and 3rd generations: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6133054/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6133054/
new_here 7y ago
How is this the top rated comment? It swats down the post based on points that the post has already addressed: > Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? The post suggests searching and hiring outside of the traditional pipeline, which is something that is within control. The comment is then topped off with a strawman argument: > If we put actual performance metrics and pay on the line for achieving these physically unattainable goals, everyone would be fired. 50% is clearly a goal that is a long way away but it doesn't mean we cannot work towards it. Yes, it's probably unrealistic to expect anyone to bring 50% representation to a significant sized workforce within an average tenure. It doesn't mean that the pursuit of gender parity is delusional or that meaningful and achievable targets cannot be set. If anything this top comment is a prime example of the prevailing biased and unwilling attutide to improve representation in the industry, that has been placed on a pedestal.
- adamsb6 7y ago
  The alternative sources in the post still aren’t at gender parity, though they do show a higher percentage of women. If you can hire equal amounts of men and women from those sources then you’ll move your metric up, but you won’t get to 50%. To hit 50% when the hiring pool is less than 50% women would require women to get accepted at a higher rate than men.
- deleted 7y ago
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- ramblerman 7y ago
  The article is based on how we have failed to achieve 50/50 parity and why that is bad. You yourself have reiterated it as a good goal to chase. But is it? That is what OP is objecting to. Do you believe if the world was completely fair we would have 50/50 in every industry or is there (shock and horror) perhaps an uncomfortable biological difference driving our interests.
- deleted 7y ago
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- thu2111 7y ago
slowenough 7y ago
This just means another paradox of fake liberal ideology is showing. It's not surprising if the strategies such as diversity quotas are not effective. Because they're not meant to be effective. They're meant to virtue signal. Ergo they are meant to only redirect people's anger towards an ineffective end, not to create an actual improvement. For another example, take a prevailing narrative in fake feminism that continually tells women they are disempowered victims. This doesn't help bring balance, it only helps disenfranchise women. Of course, if that were true, why would anyone believe any of these narratives such as diversity quotas? Because they provide the fake victim fake payoff: there's something very compelling about not having to be responsible for your problem but instead being able to blame someone else albeit incorrectly. It's very satisfying and an effective means to redirect anger towards a ineffective but satisfying ends. It's very compelling for people and gets them hooked. Another place these fake payoffs are used to manipulate people is in terrorist recruitment. You can sublimate raw economic issues and individuals dissatisfaction into blaming and hatred towards another state, you can create armies of willing footsoldiers. I'd suggest there's a further parallel between armies and the "Twitter armies": legions of ideologues willing to crucify anyone who dares disagrees. So it's not surprising these so-called strategies do little effective. they're not meant to, they're meant to preserve the status quo. And they do that by the simple psychological mechanism of redirecting people's anger towards something ineffective.
notduncansmith 7y ago
> Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? Some people presume that billionaire multinationals could spend some of their cash fixing the pipeline problem by convincing a few thousand women to take up coding. More precisely: while technical proclivity and skill are obviously not uniformly distributed across the population, some people believe they "should" be more uniformly distributed than they currently are (because those things can correlate with wealth/power), and that whoever has the power to fix a gender imbalance in wealth/power-probability has the responsibility to do so. Aside: Interesting how people push for these demographics at software companies but not at elementary/middle/high schools. Maybe if we solve that problem (which is literally just a matter of salaries) then there would be more openings in the tech industry for women and other under-represented groups.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > by convincing a few thousand women to take up coding Because we all know how well people react to being told "Hey, you should learn to code!"
db579 7y ago
I think the assumption you're making here is that companies don't influence the pipeline. Don't influence whether people choose do STEM degrees etc. I think the idea behind diversity targets is an implicit assumption that they do. In subtle ways like how/where they advertise, and in more obvious ways like funding educational programs etc. It's there that diversity programs/targets need to start, not at the hiring stage.
camgunz 7y ago
TFA says "then drop the CS degree requirement". It goes into a lot of detail about bootcamps, etc. Its entire premise is "there aren't enough women with CS degrees, there is a pipeline problem, here are some things to get around it".
deleted 7y ago
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nl 7y ago

it's always a problem of people wanting to believe something is possible (and mandatory to pursue) banging their heads against what is true and actually possible. I'm not sure if you realize this, but change always seems impossible until it happens. 10 years ago it seemed completely impossible that Facebook would have 1B users, let alone the ~3B it has now. The same 10 years ago it seemed impossible to that gay people would be able to marry, and even 4 years ago the idea of a Trump presidency was considered a joke. Change is and will remain hard. That doesn't mean it isn't desirable nor does it mean that people shouldn't bang their heads against walls to make it happen.

mffnbs 7y ago
It’s ridiculous you were down voted for this. These people don’t want to change their behavior or admit there’s bias. They would rather remain ignorant and pretend that it’s a problem caused by someone else rather than reflect on what might not be working.
- nl 7y ago
  I don't like to complain about it, but since you raised it... I was shocked by how quickly this was downvoted. It went to -4 in minutes! I didn't even think anything I said there was particularly controversial. I think it's pretty well established that social change is hard.
deleted 7y ago
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shrimp_emoji 7y ago

Freshman year CS: 30-40% girls Senior year CS: 1-5% girls Pepehands SquadW Tfw your lived experience won't stop redpilling you D:

dang 7y ago
Please don't do this here.

ForHackernews 7y ago

Does anyone have a goal of 50% female developers? Can we see some citations for that? Most companies I've worked at claimed to be trying for 20%, and they were failing abysmally at it.

inerte 7y ago
I've heard from a Googler that yes, they want the workforce to match the outside world. With that in mind read https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_what-would-it-take https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_what-would-it-tak... and "That’s why in 2019 we challenge ourselves and others to think differently so that we widen pathways to tech. Only then will we reflect our consumer base, and truly elevate our ability to build products for everyone." So Google wants to reflect the consumer base, so I guess we can take that to mean ~50% female devs?
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Most corporate statements of diversity goals I have ever seen take the simplistic position (in some form or another) that <x>, <y>, or <z> statistic "should mirror the representation of the general population." It seems to be an accepted truism that this equals unbiased selection and equity. It is very politically unacceptable to object to this intellectually lazy reasoning.
- pksdjfikkkkdsff 7y ago
  When I hear statements like that, I always wonder if they try to hire 2% pedophiles, too. About 2% of people in the real world are supposed to be pedophiles, so if they want to reflect the real world, they should aim to hire them.
  - daseiner1 7y ago
    arguing in bad faith seems unnecessary when there's so much authentically wrong with their view
    - 7y ago

xienze 7y ago

> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representation? Oh it can be done, it just requires reducing the number of male employees in one way or another. Everyone wants to believe the utopian ideal of perfectly-balanced ratios of employees can be achieved without someone getting the short end of the stick, but reality says otherwise.

hnick 7y ago

I generally agree with you, but such smart and resourceful companies could do something about it. They are not powerless. Companies used to train internally - watch an older TV show (or even something like Better Call Saul) and see how many characters "worked their way up from the mail room". The death of company loyalty goes both ways but I'm sure it can be mended with some effort. Where I work one of the better programmers I knew was an immigrant from south east Asia who started in the warehouse and had an interest in programming. I don't know whether or not he had a degree, but the point was he worked hard to prove himself, and they took a chance to give him a go. So I guess my point is, graduate statistics isn't the end of the story.

supernova87a 7y ago
Sure, but the scope of what most companies are concerned with is their hiring goals for the next 1-2 years (let's be generous and say 5 years). What you're talking about clearly falls into the pipeline problem and just further supports the premise -- something like a 20 year timescale issue. Which goes to the truth of this article -- this problem is far beyond the power (or responsibility) of any company. I'm not saying a company should throw up its hands and do nothing. But why are we looking to assign to companies the solving of a 50% problem (if that's the goal), when they can only ever achieve 15% within their reasonable powers?
- hnick 7y ago
  The article says to not rely on proxies like college degrees, so I was aiming more along those lines. As far as I can tell (I admit I skimmed it) they advocate hiring for skills over pedigree. There's a pipeline problem if you are only taking a specific output and society is not producing it. As an individual company then you can either broaden what you accept (and I don't think this will lower quality, but it will make hiring harder), or take charge and extend the pipeline in your own backyard through training or probationary periods to trial someone. FTA: > As you can see, broadening your pipeline isn’t a magic pill, and as long as demand for software engineers continues to grow, it’s still going to be really hard, systemic changes to our society notwithstanding. If we do make these changes, however, the tech industry as a whole can accelerate its path toward gender parity and potentially get there within a decade. There's probably a feedback loop here where if they can broaden their intake, it will help accelerate societal change. The largest companies will have the most trouble, because they have the most seats to fill, but they also have the resources to try something different to fix this if they really want to. On your last point, I think having a hard target like 50% can be damaging since it is demoralising to look at the gap and it might all feel like too much to deal with. I'd personally prefer to work towards 'a bit better than last year' with some achievable (non-startup) growth rates.

hellisothers 7y ago

The whole point of the article is that restricting your hiring pool to only CS graduates is a bad pattern and you should consider other qualities instead so saying only 18% of CS graduates are female misses the point. Having no CS degree myself and excelling in a top 10 company I agree with this sentiment, especially seeing the epidemic of “over leveling” the small pool of CS graduates occurring. I’d rather work with correctly leveled non-CS graduates than over-leveled CS graduates

ben_jones 7y ago
I’m a drop out too and have made my way to manager where I find myself training juniors many of which also do not have degrees. Unfortunately it is night and day between the ones who do have degrees and those that don’t. At this point I am now strongly recommending cs degrees to anyone seeking a career in programming because the theories do come up in any serious work, particularly full stack engineers who must have strong understandings of databases, type theory, statistical analysis, etc. I would LOVE to create a large curriculum in house that aims to teach non degree holding individuals these skill sets because it would have tremendous return on investment. Be we are a small company (<100) with limited resources that can not afford to have a six month on boarding process to Do it properly (and I am not a professor). It is an unrealistic burden to any small or medium org to do what is required by your comment.
- goosehonk 7y ago
  As a person without a CS education but with 30 years of industry experience, including several of The Bigs, I urge young people to get an education in anything but CS. The number of CS degree holders, even the masters and doctors, who struggle with statistics, linear algebra, or even thermodynamics and basic accounting is pretty dispiriting. Get an education and learn to program computers. Two separate things in my humble opinion.
  - Leherenn 7y ago
    Do you think other degrees, outside of maths or physics maybe, makes you better at the things you listed? It seems unlikely to me, and the fact people struggle with this is more representative of the general population than of the degree itself I would say. It might depend on how the degree is taught I guess, mine had very little actual programming.

vkou 7y ago

Every company can't hit 50/50, but it is obviously possible for any one company to hit 50/50, without compromising on their hiring bar. (Until everyone adopts that same mentality, at which point it, of course, becomes impossible.) Also, just because you have a goal to aspire to doesn't mean you can realistically meet it. Suppose if every high achiever in a school wants to be valedictorian, but only one of them will make it. That in itself doesn't mean it's a pointless goal.

username90 7y ago
> but it is obviously possible for any one company to hit 50/50, without compromising on their hiring bar How? If I interview a bunch of people for programming positions and pick the 10 best men and 10 best women, which group do you think will be best? Statistically I have considered several times more men than women, so the male group will almost surely be stronger. The only way to avoid this is to intentionally pick bad men, or if I just randomly ignore 83% of their resumes.
- vkou 7y ago
  No hiring bar in the world is looking for the best 10 people. It's just looking for people who are better than (some arbitrary skill level). More men than women could bench press 160 lbs, but if your hiring bar is 'we hire people who can bench 160 lbs', you can trivially find as many people from either gender as you want.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Would your point still stand, if the baseline of being able to bench press 160lb was just a starting requirement, with a possibility that requirements can change at any point and you might need people who can be trained to bench press 260lb instead? Also, if you are buying a car with the goal of being able to accelerate from 0-60mph in under 4 seconds, and you have to choose between two cars priced exactly the same, but one can do it in 3.9 seconds and another one in 3.1 seconds, why would you pick the 3.9 car over the 3.1 one, even though the 3.9 one meets your requirements of under 4 seconds just as well (assuming all the other relevant characteristics are equivalent or about the same)?

downerending 7y ago

If you've not seen it, Thomas Sowell incisively comments on the wish for the impossible in The Quest for Cosmic Justice. There's a full book, but the original speech gives the main point: https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html Definitely worth a look, even if you don't think it applies here.

EricE 7y ago
Oh it absolutely applies - excellent reminder and post!

erikpukinskis 7y ago

> If the percentage of female computer science graduates [is] a strong proxy for the available candidate population I doubt it is. You’re writing off all the self-taught coders. You’re also writing off all the non-coders. Most companies seem to think they want a 10:1:1 ratio of engineers:designers:product managers, etc. I think 3:3:3 would be better, and makes your issue go away. But we have this worship of “engineering” as some sort of magical thing that happens in a vacuum and requires no cross-discipline input. Meanwhile every tech company I’ve ever worked for is pathologically rewriting the same code over and over, bashing their heads against the same tech debt over and over, and regularly wasting millions of dollars Building The Wrong Thing. Heck we should probably have 10:1 masseuses and 10:1 psychotherapists on staff. Productivity would strictly increase.

xenocyon 7y ago

I do agree that there is indeed a pipeline problem; however there is still much scope for improvement at workplaces. Notably, gender balance is not only skewed at the point of hiring; in fact, the skew gets worse and worse as one goes up through the ranks.

ravenstine 7y ago
Do you think the numbers would change appreciably if the entire hiring process was boiled down to a multiple-choice exam, with no humans besides the applicant involved, which chose who gets hired based on the first applicant to pass it?
- onion2k 7y ago
  Yes. The assumption you're making is that everyone who is capable of doing a dev job manages to get one, so if you remove all the hiring biases all those people will continue to get dev jobs and nothing will really change. That assumption is wrong. There are thousands of people who can't get dev jobs for reasons other than lacking technical ability. Some hiring managers filter out candidates before the make it to interview for absolutely stupid reasons. Some companies have hiring practices that are plain stupid and select out capable engineers for dumb reasons. If hiring was a multiple choice exam those people would be able to enter the industry and there'd be fewer companies with unfilled positions. Also, even if you don't think it'd have much of an impact on the numbers across the industry, the numbers at the specific companies that have bad hiring biases obviously would change. That could be useful.
- username90 7y ago
  Yes, you would get more men and less women than now as men do better on such tests while women do better on tests with more social cues such as interviews or writing resumes.

godelski 7y ago

> Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? Because 1) there is a feedback loop that does show that having role models at the end of the pipeline does help the entire pipeline. 2) It is easier than restructuring the entire pipeline than admitting that it is a societal problem rather than big bad Google being sexist (I'm not saying Google isn't sexist). This is kind of a pattern in problems that don't have smoking guns. We like to pretend that things are first order problems (problem causes an effect, directly) when most problems are pretty high order and complex. First order problems are usually easier to solve because they have a clear smoking gun. You take care of the bad person that fired the gun and the problem is solved. I actually suspect that this is an evolutionary problem, being that most of our early problems could be approximated by first or second order and thus increase our survival rate. I'm also pretty convinced that we've solved most of those now, and thus that line of thinking doesn't work for modern problems. But for part 1), if you have the flu, tissues help. They don't cure the flu, but they help you from preventing the spread and alleviate the symptoms. So if you take my preposition about first order problems, I don't think it is hard to see why people would get stuck at that stage. Essentially "we did something and it had a positive effect. So let's keep doing that thing!" That's not bad logic. You admit that they do have __a little__ control over the constraints, so it isn't surprising that they have __a little__ impact. The failure is not continuing to look for more potential solutions and stagnating. Just need to do some PCA, find the other factors, and push on those (as well as what we've already found to have positive effects). But this is much easier said than done, and I think that is part of the problem. Difficult problems are tautologically difficult, but we as a society like to pretend there are simple solutions (come on, admit it, you do this too). So why do we do this? Well, how many people do you know break down complex problems into multiple components? I know very few, and even then they don't consistently do it. > If we put actual performance metrics and pay on the line for achieving these physically unattainable goals, everyone would be fired. I'd argue that they would just start cheating. Which I think that there is evidence that this is happening (some being given in this article).

lordCarbonFiber 7y ago

Ignorning the fact that many engineering orgs can't hit 10% let along 18%; you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree". Statistically your company isn't actually hiring for jobs that need higher level CS theory. It's not assigning malice, but pure negligence. There's a huge population of competent people with amazing ROI for your business and, especially companies with pockets as deep as FAANG, ignoring them because it's perceived as less risky to hire another (cis/het/white) guy is bad optics at best. Ironically, in my experience, the companies who figured this out a decade ago are the major finance companies. Hire anyone with a pulse, put in the effort to train them, be the only company on the block that isn't active treating these populations like shit, the you get retention rates that are unheard of in tech (especially for such comparativly shitty jobs by metric of pay and interesting things to do). Talent is there, tech companies just choose to ignore it and play into the existing biases ( and out right misogynistic streaks) that already exist. Maybe 50% is a perfect ideal, but, don't let perfect be the enemy of better. We absolutely should be loudly shaming those at the top that "just can't find talent". #rantsFromAnAngryTransWoman

commandlinefan 7y ago
> you've already lost if you've restricted your pipeline to "has a CS degree". But, why, though? Are you saying that women as a group are less capable of completing CS degrees than men?
- lordCarbonFiber 7y ago
  There's a whole host of systematic reasons why women (as a group) might choose not to pursue a CS degree. As a hiring manager I can choose to complain about the ~pipeline~ (which i conveniently can't change nor appreciably effect in the short term) or I can re-examine my existing assumptions (namely whether a CS degree is necessary for filtering). I'm, personally, not really a fan of programs that are trying to shuffle people into a specific degree to improve employment representation rather examining what skills are necessary to do the job in the first place. The university as proxy for job training model, I feel, is perverse and doesn't necessarily serve students nor employers.

TuringNYC 7y ago

>> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% Perhaps employers can expand the search to those with degrees in statistics, mathematics, physics, econometrics? What I've seen time and time again is that when people dont want to hire, they come up with excuse after excuse. When they really want to hire [a VP's brother-in-low, or whatever], even the flimsiest of cases suddenly get made for the hire. I'd say, we should look think bigger.

pnako 7y ago
There is a similar push for "women in statistics", "women in mathematics", etc.
kick 7y ago
Instead of getting economists and statisticians involved, why not just encourage companies to fund the educations of demographics of workers they're trying to recruit? Not only is there a financial incentive (if you get people new to the field, you can pay them less until they get a new job or sufficient raises, and this is a benefit for both parties due to the lessened educational cost), it also creates loyalty out of almost nothing. If not university classes or a bootcamp-like setup, apprenticeships would probably work amazingly for the purpose.
- blub 7y ago
  a) making for-profit companies responsible for education is an anti-pattern b) suggesting that those people should be paid less is immoral
- deleted 7y ago
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NhanH 7y ago
Is the pipeline in other degrees any better? And more importantly, why is it even a suggestions to look for other degrees when searching for candiate just to fill out diversity quota? Just to be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with looking for candidates from those areas, companies should, and already did source candidates from more than CS degrees. But the company should do that because those candidates were qualified, not because they have to hire to sastify a demographic composition requirements for the company

anonytrary 7y ago

> A while back, I did rough envelope calculations that if one of the major FAANG companies hit their diversity goal, there would be none left for any of the rest of them. Not to mention, if the other companies also wish to hit their diversity goals, they will be forced to take on weaker hires, since the (already small) pool of adequate hires has been exhausted. In my opinion, diversity hiring is an anti-pattern. Hiring should instead ignore demographics information rather than use it to try and achieve some optimal representational balance. If demographics information are completely ignored in the hiring process (which is impossible if you do on-site hiring), then no one can accuse you of favoring a particular group of people.

oconnore 7y ago
Common practice is to ignore diversity (to the extent possible) in assessing, but not in sourcing.
- leereeves 7y ago
  How can that work for Google or Tesla or any other company that everyone knows about, where anyone who wants to work there is likely to apply?
  - mepiethree 7y ago
    Lots of people don't apply because they incorrectly believe they are not qualified.
    - DataWorker 7y ago
      Noted!
- anonytrary 7y ago
  IIUC, I think the distinction between sourcing and assessing is not relevant here. Assuming the females in the pool of viable candidates have already been exhausted, then sourcing only females is suboptimal, as they are less likely to pass assessment because (by construction) they are not in the set of viable candidates. It will always make the most sense to source the best people without regard to anything but job skill. If the best people aren't diverse, then chasing diversity requires you to look outside the set of best people, by construction. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

dgzl 7y ago

We've abandoned the pursuit of equality for the pursuit of equity.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) I don't see why one would assume that gender distribution of CS degree holders is a strong proxy for the gender distribution of available candidates suitable for software development positions. Its true that many big firms (and even a large number of small firms) have a well-known strong bias for CS degree holders (and for CS degree holders from particular elite institutions), but the statistics of the field as a whole, and of CS degree holders, show that that is a bias inconsistent with the real qualifications for the field which cannot avoid exaggerating the gender gap in the field. > A while back, I did rough envelope calculations that if one of the major FAANG companies hit their diversity goal, there would be none left for any of the rest of them. That only makes sense if you assume that none of the meeting the target was done by bringing people into the field that otherwise would not be in it, despite the fact that that is typically a focus of such efforts by large firms.

blub 7y ago
"statistics of the field as a whole, and of CS degree holders, show that that is a bias inconsistent with the real qualifications for the field which cannot avoid exaggerating the gender gap in the field." You've made a counter-intuitive point and claimed that it's confirmed by statistics and yet haven't included any...

tarsinge 7y ago

> If the percentage of female computer science graduates (as a strong proxy for the available candidate population) is 18% (Google for the facts and stats), how is every company to hit an idealistic goal of 50% representation? I really thought it was the accepted fact and a starting point of all the discussions on this subject, that the issue is the pool of candidate. Myself I recently tried to hire a developer and that’s a reality that there is nearly no female candidates. And I‘m not restricting it to CS degree. I don’t understand how it’s not obvious that what can be done at the hiring process is completely marginal. There is no politics here. The politics is how much we try to aim for 50% candidates (education, training...)

Aaron_Putnam 7y ago
The main driver is the H1B: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h-1b-petitions-by-gender-country-of-birth-fy2018.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re... 73.9% of H1B visas are given to Indians, 79.2% of those Indians are males. The solution is to require at least 50% of all H1B recipients, from all countries, to be female. High levels of Indian and Chinese migration also produce secondary effects, as families from those communities still carry out sex-selective abortion even into the 2nd and 3rd generations: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6133054/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6133054/

new_here 7y ago

How is this the top rated comment? It swats down the post based on points that the post has already addressed: > Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? The post suggests searching and hiring outside of the traditional pipeline, which is something that is within control. The comment is then topped off with a strawman argument: > If we put actual performance metrics and pay on the line for achieving these physically unattainable goals, everyone would be fired. 50% is clearly a goal that is a long way away but it doesn't mean we cannot work towards it. Yes, it's probably unrealistic to expect anyone to bring 50% representation to a significant sized workforce within an average tenure. It doesn't mean that the pursuit of gender parity is delusional or that meaningful and achievable targets cannot be set. If anything this top comment is a prime example of the prevailing biased and unwilling attutide to improve representation in the industry, that has been placed on a pedestal.

adamsb6 7y ago
The alternative sources in the post still aren’t at gender parity, though they do show a higher percentage of women. If you can hire equal amounts of men and women from those sources then you’ll move your metric up, but you won’t get to 50%. To hit 50% when the hiring pool is less than 50% women would require women to get accepted at a higher rate than men.
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ramblerman 7y ago
The article is based on how we have failed to achieve 50/50 parity and why that is bad. You yourself have reiterated it as a good goal to chase. But is it? That is what OP is objecting to. Do you believe if the world was completely fair we would have 50/50 in every industry or is there (shock and horror) perhaps an uncomfortable biological difference driving our interests.
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thu2111 7y ago

slowenough 7y ago

This just means another paradox of fake liberal ideology is showing. It's not surprising if the strategies such as diversity quotas are not effective. Because they're not meant to be effective. They're meant to virtue signal. Ergo they are meant to only redirect people's anger towards an ineffective end, not to create an actual improvement. For another example, take a prevailing narrative in fake feminism that continually tells women they are disempowered victims. This doesn't help bring balance, it only helps disenfranchise women. Of course, if that were true, why would anyone believe any of these narratives such as diversity quotas? Because they provide the fake victim fake payoff: there's something very compelling about not having to be responsible for your problem but instead being able to blame someone else albeit incorrectly. It's very satisfying and an effective means to redirect anger towards a ineffective but satisfying ends. It's very compelling for people and gets them hooked. Another place these fake payoffs are used to manipulate people is in terrorist recruitment. You can sublimate raw economic issues and individuals dissatisfaction into blaming and hatred towards another state, you can create armies of willing footsoldiers. I'd suggest there's a further parallel between armies and the "Twitter armies": legions of ideologues willing to crucify anyone who dares disagrees. So it's not surprising these so-called strategies do little effective. they're not meant to, they're meant to preserve the status quo. And they do that by the simple psychological mechanism of redirecting people's anger towards something ineffective.

notduncansmith 7y ago

> Why do we place the blame and assign malice of intent to those who have little control over the constraints? Some people presume that billionaire multinationals could spend some of their cash fixing the pipeline problem by convincing a few thousand women to take up coding. More precisely: while technical proclivity and skill are obviously not uniformly distributed across the population, some people believe they "should" be more uniformly distributed than they currently are (because those things can correlate with wealth/power), and that whoever has the power to fix a gender imbalance in wealth/power-probability has the responsibility to do so. Aside: Interesting how people push for these demographics at software companies but not at elementary/middle/high schools. Maybe if we solve that problem (which is literally just a matter of salaries) then there would be more openings in the tech industry for women and other under-represented groups.

zozbot234 7y ago
> by convincing a few thousand women to take up coding Because we all know how well people react to being told "Hey, you should learn to code!"

db579 7y ago

I think the assumption you're making here is that companies don't influence the pipeline. Don't influence whether people choose do STEM degrees etc. I think the idea behind diversity targets is an implicit assumption that they do. In subtle ways like how/where they advertise, and in more obvious ways like funding educational programs etc. It's there that diversity programs/targets need to start, not at the hiring stage.

camgunz 7y ago

TFA says "then drop the CS degree requirement". It goes into a lot of detail about bootcamps, etc. Its entire premise is "there aren't enough women with CS degrees, there is a pipeline problem, here are some things to get around it".

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