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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". Statist

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.
- stale2002 7y ago
  No, women are not less capable of getting a degree. Instead, the problem is often that they have such a bad time, in those programs, due to the existence of a toxic culture, that they don't want to put up with that crap, and instead leave to get a job in industry that has a less bad culture (because they have other options). Unfortunately, toxicity on all stages of the pipeline tends to drive out people who would be good engineers, but instead decide to do something else, because they have alternative options that don't suck so much, for cultural reasons.

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.
stale2002 7y ago
No, women are not less capable of getting a degree. Instead, the problem is often that they have such a bad time, in those programs, due to the existence of a toxic culture, that they don't want to put up with that crap, and instead leave to get a job in industry that has a less bad culture (because they have other options). Unfortunately, toxicity on all stages of the pipeline tends to drive out people who would be good engineers, but instead decide to do something else, because they have alternative options that don't suck so much, for cultural reasons.