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Respectfully, this is the wrong way to look at the problem. It’s true, objectively, that there are fewer minority/female CS graduates. But there’s no way that g

by entee 6y ago

Respectfully, this is the wrong way to look at the problem. It’s true, objectively, that there are fewer minority/female CS graduates. But there’s no way that gets better if a person who is “not a subject matter expert” gets dismissed. That person needs to be trained. If they want to be expert at that subject, we as an industry need to be able to help them get there. Increasingly I believe the problem with diversity in tech is a retention and training problem, not a pipeline problem. If you’re a woman and you want to be a coder but all you hear about is hell stories, why would you sign up for that major? Our job is to make those who are generous enough in spirit to decide they want to do this thing, in spite of all the pain they might face, the best coders they can possibly be. Only then will they be able to provide the positive reinforcement necessary to improve input pipelines. Same applies to any underrepresented group.

worker767424 6y ago
Do you think there's any chance hell stories become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
arp242 6y ago
> If you’re a woman and you want to be a coder but all you hear about is hell stories, why would you sign up for that major I think this is a bit more complex; think of something like Revenge of the Nerds where computer peeps are all socially inept (sometimes borderline creepy) otherworldly nerds whose only interest in life is computers. Would you want to work in an environment like that? I wouldn't. And luckily I don't because that's not really what most programmers are like. I can count the number of people I've met that fit this stereotype on a single hand, and I've met quite a number of programmers at conferences and such over the years. I feel these problems run much deeper than just "hell stories from women". Luckily in the last ~10/20 years attitudes seem to be changing somewhat for the better, but for a long time during the 80s, 90s, and 00s the perception of the average programmer was not especially positive.
- entee 6y ago
  Fully agreed, there's a whole lot going on beyond stories of bad experiences. It's a complicated issue, I just think we're focusing on the wrong problem if we're just looking at this from a pipeline point of view and not asking what factors contribute to the pipeline being sub-optimal. Too often I hear, "women just like people more than men," and other similar BS, which lets us as an industry off the hook for creating sub-par environments.
- robin21 6y ago
  There are a lot of socially enept developers out there. Maybe it’s changed a bit recently. But if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do? Something you see often is developers who were bullied at school, finding refuge in their computer, finding something they enjoy, and then the feminists canceling them because they don’t have the social skills to understand all the new rules of what is not politically correct. E.g. James Damore - the fired Google guy - was just quoting scientific evidence regarding women in tech but without realizing the sensitivities of 2010+ and that some things are better left unsaid. This is simply a lack of social awareness, and now the nerds and re-bullied day in day out because they started making lots of money.
  - arp242 6y ago
    > if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do Probably not too well, although I've known more than a few programmers that have also done sales. I have actually, and I'm very bad at it not because of my lack of social skills, but just because I don't like being pushy. Anyway, "not being good at sales" doesn't mean you're "socially inept" just as not being able to program a computer very well makes you "technically inept". And maybe programmers, on average, are a little bit below average on social skills – I'm not sure if that's the case but it could be – but "a little below average" is still "normal" and not "inept", and it's a far cry from the stereotypes that were being propagated. I don't really know enough about James Damore to say anything about this, especially not him as a person.
robin21 6y ago
> but all you hear about is hell stories The reality is distorted though. Like in this article many would argue that none of it is sexist and it is just human behavior. Whereas other women reading this have their biases confirmed. I really struggle to find any sexism stories that describe situations that don’t also happen to men. Human nature is to pattern match. It’s easier to blame groups than to blame individuals than to blame yourself.
- entee 6y ago
  I used to think this way, but I think it’s a mistake. If something happens to men but happens far more often to women, then there’s a problem. The fact that we keep hearing about these stories, with various shades of face-palming awfulness should be a sign that something is wrong. “Use your femininity”? I’ve been working professionally in various STEM positions for 15+ years, never once has someone told me to “use my masculinity” to help smooth a working relationship. We can assume that all of these people, across the industry, in dozens of different contexts are all just whining, or we can do some introspection and wonder if we could do better. Even if some things are unintentional, if they make people en masse feel less welcome, we should re-examine how we do things, and if they are truly necessary. I’ve personally known several women who are insanely smart and good at what they do who have felt rejected, mistreated and unwelcome in tech. It’s a tragedy they faced that, and it’s sadly way too common. We cannot deny there is something systematic at play here.
  - robin21 6y ago
    “Masculinity” does not predispose someone to working better with people. “Use your masculinity to help carry some boxes up the stairs” - is this sexist? I don’t think sex plays into capability but more so motivation. If there wasn’t science to indicate there is a difference in what men and woman are drawn to...then you could write it off...but there are differences and those differences seem to play out. The fact we hear more stories from women is because they are on trend of sexism. Whereas the same stories from men are just office politics. Take any office politics story, make the aggressor male and the subject female and voila - you can claim it’s sexism.
dopidopHN 6y ago
> I believe the problem with diversity in tech is a retention and training problem, not a pipeline problem. I saw one guy setting up a hiring pipeline in large industrial/tech company in the south, and changing the face of a office for that company. - When he start : The city is 60% black, almost not black dev. A few in IT/Support. - He strike a deal with a local bootcamp, being extremely specific on the training content. Basically the boot-camp became a dedicated training ground for that company. several hiring event a year, summer internship program. Young folks from diverse backgroun. usually a solid 40/60 female/male blend. - 2 years later I see junior black devs male AND female in a lot of teams. When I left some were promoted senior and a few really good recruits were on track to become team-lead/architect/whatever they wanted. It's highly anecdotal, and that was matching that industrial behemoth goal to 'blend' into the culture of the south. ( read : hire black folks ) But I do think that a hiring pipeline do make a difference. Maybe this particular exemple was just too easy. Again, more than a majority of folk here are black, so it just natural to find more black candidate.
- ibudiallo 6y ago
  Hi, I would really like to know more about this guy and his program, and maybe get in touch. My contacts are in my profile.
- entee 6y ago
  To be clear, I don’t think input pipelines are not a problem at all, I think they’re just a part of the problem. Sounds like this person is doing things right by investing time and effort across pipeline AND developing talent once hired. You can’t have success without both and the latter is often a secondary consideration at best.
  - dopidopHN 6y ago
    you are very right. Junior hire were strategically placed in 'ok' teams. they had common "low-key" projects on top of their regular assignments, and a particular effort was put on exposing them to various roles ( dev, TPM, BA, design ). The idea was to create a community of new hires that can tap into to reach for help, advices and the like. This person took advantage of a large company with a fat belly to do awesome thing. I'm not even sure they realized.
ingsoc79 6y ago
While not the entirety of the under-representation situation, the pipeline is absolutely the biggest contributing factor. Take a look at any CS class today and you'll see a sea of white and east/south asian faces, an almost no black students – I took several CS courses at the University of Washington a couple years back (staff perk) and out of ~500 students perhaps 2-3 were black. No amount of corporate diversity training or preferential hiring is going to fix that ratio.

by entee 6y ago

worker767424 6y ago

Do you think there's any chance hell stories become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

arp242 6y ago

> If you’re a woman and you want to be a coder but all you hear about is hell stories, why would you sign up for that major I think this is a bit more complex; think of something like Revenge of the Nerds where computer peeps are all socially inept (sometimes borderline creepy) otherworldly nerds whose only interest in life is computers. Would you want to work in an environment like that? I wouldn't. And luckily I don't because that's not really what most programmers are like. I can count the number of people I've met that fit this stereotype on a single hand, and I've met quite a number of programmers at conferences and such over the years. I feel these problems run much deeper than just "hell stories from women". Luckily in the last ~10/20 years attitudes seem to be changing somewhat for the better, but for a long time during the 80s, 90s, and 00s the perception of the average programmer was not especially positive.

entee 6y ago
Fully agreed, there's a whole lot going on beyond stories of bad experiences. It's a complicated issue, I just think we're focusing on the wrong problem if we're just looking at this from a pipeline point of view and not asking what factors contribute to the pipeline being sub-optimal. Too often I hear, "women just like people more than men," and other similar BS, which lets us as an industry off the hook for creating sub-par environments.
robin21 6y ago
There are a lot of socially enept developers out there. Maybe it’s changed a bit recently. But if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do? Something you see often is developers who were bullied at school, finding refuge in their computer, finding something they enjoy, and then the feminists canceling them because they don’t have the social skills to understand all the new rules of what is not politically correct. E.g. James Damore - the fired Google guy - was just quoting scientific evidence regarding women in tech but without realizing the sensitivities of 2010+ and that some things are better left unsaid. This is simply a lack of social awareness, and now the nerds and re-bullied day in day out because they started making lots of money.
- arp242 6y ago
  > if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do Probably not too well, although I've known more than a few programmers that have also done sales. I have actually, and I'm very bad at it not because of my lack of social skills, but just because I don't like being pushy. Anyway, "not being good at sales" doesn't mean you're "socially inept" just as not being able to program a computer very well makes you "technically inept". And maybe programmers, on average, are a little bit below average on social skills – I'm not sure if that's the case but it could be – but "a little below average" is still "normal" and not "inept", and it's a far cry from the stereotypes that were being propagated. I don't really know enough about James Damore to say anything about this, especially not him as a person.

robin21 6y ago

> but all you hear about is hell stories The reality is distorted though. Like in this article many would argue that none of it is sexist and it is just human behavior. Whereas other women reading this have their biases confirmed. I really struggle to find any sexism stories that describe situations that don’t also happen to men. Human nature is to pattern match. It’s easier to blame groups than to blame individuals than to blame yourself.

entee 6y ago
I used to think this way, but I think it’s a mistake. If something happens to men but happens far more often to women, then there’s a problem. The fact that we keep hearing about these stories, with various shades of face-palming awfulness should be a sign that something is wrong. “Use your femininity”? I’ve been working professionally in various STEM positions for 15+ years, never once has someone told me to “use my masculinity” to help smooth a working relationship. We can assume that all of these people, across the industry, in dozens of different contexts are all just whining, or we can do some introspection and wonder if we could do better. Even if some things are unintentional, if they make people en masse feel less welcome, we should re-examine how we do things, and if they are truly necessary. I’ve personally known several women who are insanely smart and good at what they do who have felt rejected, mistreated and unwelcome in tech. It’s a tragedy they faced that, and it’s sadly way too common. We cannot deny there is something systematic at play here.
- robin21 6y ago
  “Masculinity” does not predispose someone to working better with people. “Use your masculinity to help carry some boxes up the stairs” - is this sexist? I don’t think sex plays into capability but more so motivation. If there wasn’t science to indicate there is a difference in what men and woman are drawn to...then you could write it off...but there are differences and those differences seem to play out. The fact we hear more stories from women is because they are on trend of sexism. Whereas the same stories from men are just office politics. Take any office politics story, make the aggressor male and the subject female and voila - you can claim it’s sexism.

dopidopHN 6y ago

> I believe the problem with diversity in tech is a retention and training problem, not a pipeline problem. I saw one guy setting up a hiring pipeline in large industrial/tech company in the south, and changing the face of a office for that company. - When he start : The city is 60% black, almost not black dev. A few in IT/Support. - He strike a deal with a local bootcamp, being extremely specific on the training content. Basically the boot-camp became a dedicated training ground for that company. several hiring event a year, summer internship program. Young folks from diverse backgroun. usually a solid 40/60 female/male blend. - 2 years later I see junior black devs male AND female in a lot of teams. When I left some were promoted senior and a few really good recruits were on track to become team-lead/architect/whatever they wanted. It's highly anecdotal, and that was matching that industrial behemoth goal to 'blend' into the culture of the south. ( read : hire black folks ) But I do think that a hiring pipeline do make a difference. Maybe this particular exemple was just too easy. Again, more than a majority of folk here are black, so it just natural to find more black candidate.

ibudiallo 6y ago
Hi, I would really like to know more about this guy and his program, and maybe get in touch. My contacts are in my profile.
entee 6y ago
To be clear, I don’t think input pipelines are not a problem at all, I think they’re just a part of the problem. Sounds like this person is doing things right by investing time and effort across pipeline AND developing talent once hired. You can’t have success without both and the latter is often a secondary consideration at best.
- dopidopHN 6y ago
  you are very right. Junior hire were strategically placed in 'ok' teams. they had common "low-key" projects on top of their regular assignments, and a particular effort was put on exposing them to various roles ( dev, TPM, BA, design ). The idea was to create a community of new hires that can tap into to reach for help, advices and the like. This person took advantage of a large company with a fat belly to do awesome thing. I'm not even sure they realized.

ingsoc79 6y ago

While not the entirety of the under-representation situation, the pipeline is absolutely the biggest contributing factor. Take a look at any CS class today and you'll see a sea of white and east/south asian faces, an almost no black students – I took several CS courses at the University of Washington a couple years back (staff perk) and out of ~500 students perhaps 2-3 were black. No amount of corporate diversity training or preferential hiring is going to fix that ratio.