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One way to look at percentages is as a quota. "20% of our speakers this year shall be women!" Right or wrong, a lot of people don't like this. Another way is t

One way to look at percentages is as a quota. "20% of our speakers this year shall be women!" Right or wrong, a lot of people don't like this. Another way is to use percentages as an indicator of how well your outreach is going. If you have, say, 5% women/minority/whatever speaking in the first year of your conference, that metric could act as a swift kick up the butt that you're not doing enough outreach, your CFP is poor, you're not promoting the CFP in a diverse way, etc. You work and improve, and then in year two you might notice you ended up at, say, 30%. Hurrah! Both approaches involve percentages and measurements, yet the second is not an attempt at fulfilling a "quota" (even if there's a target % to reach) and should be more palatable to everyone while still ensuring efforts are made to increase diversity.

vijayr 14y ago
This "forced quota" thing rarely works well - on large or small scale. Back in my college days, IBM came to campus - they announced their intention to hire more women than men, to have diversity in their workforce. While it was good for the girls who got hired (edging out guys who were more qualified), it annoyed a lot of guys who had better grades. May be a better way is to create a nice atmosphere where women feel welcome and comfortable, having very strict code of conduct in conference and generally us (male engineers) being nice to them - this might take time, but the changes would stay.
- wuest 14y ago
  >May be a better way is to create a nice atmosphere where women feel welcome and comfortable, having very strict code of conduct in conference and generally us (male engineers) being nice to them - this might take time, but the changes would stay. I agree wholeheartedly! I think that this is the sort of attitude which would be conducive to moving the state of affairs along. In these fights it's often lost that the problem at hand is that treating people in a way that makes them feel like they're not welcome and not respected is at the root of the issue.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  By the way, are "grades" still considered as a worthy predictor of one's performance in the workplace? Because it's kind of strange when I think of it. I've interviewed a lot of people in my life already and I can't remember a single time grades were brought forward or mattered. Is it an US thing?
  - mhurron 14y ago
    What else do you have when you are going to a campus to recruit? On top of that, even if the company didn't consider them, their classmates probably knew where everyone fell in relation to each other. They would know if they got passed over for someone who had better grades than themselves.
    - jleader 14y ago
      If person A came from a privileged background, and got straight As, and person B came from a much less privileged background, and had to overcome many hurdles just to get into school, and continued to fight to stay in school, and got Bs, which person would you want on your team? I'm not saying that's definitely the case here, just that grades alone don't tell the whole story.
      - jchonphoenix 14y ago
        The one that will produce more value for my company. In many cases, that person is person A. I don't care if you were pampered and that's why you got A's. If you have the necessary knowledge and are a hard worker, you have my vote.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Your comment is so thick in assumptions (students objectively know who is better at whatever metric you have in mind?) that you are proving the case that traditional metrics are untrustworthy for selecting meritorious candidates.
      - mhurron 14y ago
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  While it was good for the girls who got hired (edging out guys who were more qualified), it annoyed a lot of guys who had better grades. So what? It's not like those men are going to find all employment doors shut to them. They weren't guaranteed jobs at IBM, and the assumption that they should have a say in the firm's hiring criteria and strategic goals demonstrates an almost laughable sense of entitlement.
  - mhaymo 14y ago
    Of course. When women don't want to be discriminated against, it's an issue of rights and equality. When men don't want to be discriminated against, it's a laughable sense of entitlement.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  On the contrary it almost always works. Force the quota of women, gays, blacks, Jews, poor etc. to zero and the privileged group will spend almost exactly no time considering the fact that there may have been someone more qualified that could have bumped them imperceptibly down the ranks if that quota wasn't enforced. They'll not even notice after decades of this. Just make sure you don't do it to anyone, like straight, white males who have the political strength to resist it or you'll never hear the end of it.
  - vijayr 14y ago
    <questions> genuine/serious questions: would you be okay with quotas in sports? music? movies? something like "30% of olympic 100m finalists should be allocated to minorities" etc? I've seen students with laughable grades (no, I am not making this up) get into medical schools, because they are from underprivileged group. Would you be okay with them performing surgery on you? </questions> Quota system is a very dangerous game to play - it usually goes downhill quickly, even if the intentions are good and even if people who run it are super competent. There are numerous other ways to help the under privileged. They'll not even notice after decades of this. History has lots of people from the privileged class who ended up working to improve society as a whole. Bill Gates is great living example.
caseysoftware 14y ago
When you look only at the % of speakers who have a particular attribute, you're looking at the output of a very long process spanning years. Before the schedule was announced.. did the organizers get the speakers they wanted or did some decline? Before that.. when CfP responses were rated, did the submitters provide relevant supporting material like a resume of previous speaking appearances (to demonstrate speaking skill) and blog posts, articles, etc (to demonstrate expertise in the topic). Before that.. did the submitters have writing and speaking skills that made them comfortable to submit? Before that.. was the CfP well-publicized to relevant groups, companies, etc? Before that.. was the CfP entirely open? Was it invite only? Was it a blend of the two with only some of the slots open to the CfP? Before that.. did the person believe they had the skills and expertise to submit? Before that.. did the person actually have the skills and expertise to submit? Before that.. did the person have a job or interests to give them the opportunity to learn those skills? Before that.. did they get encouragement and support along the way? Before that.. did they receive the education to get the job or choose those interests? Before that.. did they believe they could learn and work in the industry? Before that.. did the person have the aptitude for those skills? If the number at the beginning of this process is small and every one of those steps chips away at the entire group - let alone those with particular genders, ethnicities, etc - of course the output is going to be low.
- caseysoftware 14y ago
  And for the record, that doesn't mean I like the result. I just think we need to look at this as a systemic problem and address it as such.. not blame the people at the end. For example, my undergradate engineering school adopted a bunch of Girl Scout troops to encourage and grow interest in STEM. It has taken years but female enrolment has increased by 50%.. and they're not just shuffling from other schools. They're growing the pool of qualified candidates.
  - erikpukinskis 14y ago
    Every single person making all those decisions (the encouragers, the skill builders, the aptitude developers, the educators, the inviters) are "people at the end". We're all the end of the line when they come across us. Your kindergarten teacher was the person at the end when you entered their classroom. So I disagree with you. The blame does lie with "the people at the end".
bcgraham 14y ago
She asks if quotas are marginalizing women's achievements. The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women being selected. A solid guess is that the specific way in which it is broken is that it is giving undue weight to men, topics men find interesting, and topics that exclude women. In a sense, this is "outsourcing" the discriminatory elements. This has an obvious correction: put a counterweight on it in the form of a quota. Does this fix the illness? No. It is a pill, medicine to manage the symptoms of the illness while the illness is fought. The malady is diffused, the remedy is not, so it is easy to pick on the remedy - but it's better than doing nothing. We have some guesses about what the "right" number would be, and a quota of 20% or 25% is hardly getting us there - it is ensuring a lower bound. How much injustice is really resulting from having a lower bound?
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  > The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women being selected. What numbers do you have to demonstrate that the function is broken? What percentage of our industry is made up of women, and what percentage of them are interested in presenting at a conference? > This has an obvious correction: put a counterweight on it in the form of a quota. Does this fix the illness? No. It is a pill, medicine to manage the symptoms of the illness while the illness is fought. The malady is diffused, the remedy is not, so it is easy to pick on the remedy - but it's better than doing nothing. Why do you believe that enforcing the selection of speakers on a basis other than their qualifications is better than doing nothing?
  - bcgraham 14y ago
    When "their qualifications" results in a selection rate of men approaching 100%, I think that's prima facie case that one of the most important qualifications is being a man. Furthermore, (% of industry that is women) x (% of women interested in presenting at a conference) is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about "outsourcing" the discrimination - the filter was set upstream.
    - 14y ago
coldtea 14y ago
>One way to look at percentages is as a quota. "20% of our speakers this year shall be women!" Right or wrong, a lot of people don't like this. Another way is to use percentages as an indicator of how well your outreach is going. If you have, say, 5% women/minority/whatever speaking in the first year of your conference, that metric could act as a swift kick up the butt that you're not doing enough outreach You present it as different things but it's exactly the same flawed idea. "An estimation of your outreach" would only be different from quota if the number of good conference pitches sent in by men was equal or near equal to the number of pitches sent in by women. Since the number of women in programming are far less than the men, that is obviously not the case (their respective total number of pitches would be unequal and hence their respective total of good pitches would be unequal). Unless men and women Python programmers are something like 50-50, you cannot have something like 50-50 men and women Python conference speakers. At best, a fair outreach should be M-F, where M/F the respective male and female Python programmers ratio. And that's assuming (and it's not guaranteed by any law of physics) that men and women Python programmers, in aggregate, are equally good and passionate with Python and doing conference worthy stuff with it. Which might not be the case at all (it doesn't even have to be because women are, say, less nerdy and obsessive with coding: just assume, which is very plausible, that male bosses in the workplace don't assign them interesting enough problems in their Python work, and prefer males to be project leaders etc. Then, following that, fewer women will have interesting conference pitches to make). And there are 1000s of other factors like that. Finally, not every field needs to have 50-50 representation anyway. We don't lament that there are far fewer women boxers or rugby players than men. Or that there are far fewer women coal miners or truck drivers than men. Or that there are far more women in fashion that men. Or than there are far more women in biology than men, etc etc.
- speeder 14y ago
  I thought of replying to this post, but instead I decided to make this submission, I cannot write something better than it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5554695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5554695
- jlees 14y ago
  You are assuming that the curve of ability distribution is equal between the sexes, i.e. that X% of male pitches and X% of female pitches would be "good". What if the females who have the courage to pitch, or to stick around in programming at all, shift the bell curve further up? (Or, the inflammatory counter, what if women just aren't good at math and should be shopping instead - shifting it the other way?) We don't lament that there are far fewer women $foo than men We don't, because we're in technology. Some of my other hobbies are also male dominated and unrelated to technology, there's definitely an awareness of the situation and active efforts to recruit more women. On the flipside, I've seen some arguments about the biology situation, theorising that the reason there are more women in biology is cultural conditioning for girls interested in science (it certainly happened to me, but that's hardly solid data).

vijayr 14y ago

This "forced quota" thing rarely works well - on large or small scale. Back in my college days, IBM came to campus - they announced their intention to hire more women than men, to have diversity in their workforce. While it was good for the girls who got hired (edging out guys who were more qualified), it annoyed a lot of guys who had better grades. May be a better way is to create a nice atmosphere where women feel welcome and comfortable, having very strict code of conduct in conference and generally us (male engineers) being nice to them - this might take time, but the changes would stay.

wuest 14y ago
>May be a better way is to create a nice atmosphere where women feel welcome and comfortable, having very strict code of conduct in conference and generally us (male engineers) being nice to them - this might take time, but the changes would stay. I agree wholeheartedly! I think that this is the sort of attitude which would be conducive to moving the state of affairs along. In these fights it's often lost that the problem at hand is that treating people in a way that makes them feel like they're not welcome and not respected is at the root of the issue.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
By the way, are "grades" still considered as a worthy predictor of one's performance in the workplace? Because it's kind of strange when I think of it. I've interviewed a lot of people in my life already and I can't remember a single time grades were brought forward or mattered. Is it an US thing?
- mhurron 14y ago
  What else do you have when you are going to a campus to recruit? On top of that, even if the company didn't consider them, their classmates probably knew where everyone fell in relation to each other. They would know if they got passed over for someone who had better grades than themselves.
  - jleader 14y ago
    If person A came from a privileged background, and got straight As, and person B came from a much less privileged background, and had to overcome many hurdles just to get into school, and continued to fight to stay in school, and got Bs, which person would you want on your team? I'm not saying that's definitely the case here, just that grades alone don't tell the whole story.
    - jchonphoenix 14y ago
      The one that will produce more value for my company. In many cases, that person is person A. I don't care if you were pampered and that's why you got A's. If you have the necessary knowledge and are a hard worker, you have my vote.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Your comment is so thick in assumptions (students objectively know who is better at whatever metric you have in mind?) that you are proving the case that traditional metrics are untrustworthy for selecting meritorious candidates.
    - mhurron 14y ago
anigbrowl 14y ago
While it was good for the girls who got hired (edging out guys who were more qualified), it annoyed a lot of guys who had better grades. So what? It's not like those men are going to find all employment doors shut to them. They weren't guaranteed jobs at IBM, and the assumption that they should have a say in the firm's hiring criteria and strategic goals demonstrates an almost laughable sense of entitlement.
- mhaymo 14y ago
  Of course. When women don't want to be discriminated against, it's an issue of rights and equality. When men don't want to be discriminated against, it's a laughable sense of entitlement.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
On the contrary it almost always works. Force the quota of women, gays, blacks, Jews, poor etc. to zero and the privileged group will spend almost exactly no time considering the fact that there may have been someone more qualified that could have bumped them imperceptibly down the ranks if that quota wasn't enforced. They'll not even notice after decades of this. Just make sure you don't do it to anyone, like straight, white males who have the political strength to resist it or you'll never hear the end of it.
- vijayr 14y ago
  <questions> genuine/serious questions: would you be okay with quotas in sports? music? movies? something like "30% of olympic 100m finalists should be allocated to minorities" etc? I've seen students with laughable grades (no, I am not making this up) get into medical schools, because they are from underprivileged group. Would you be okay with them performing surgery on you? </questions> Quota system is a very dangerous game to play - it usually goes downhill quickly, even if the intentions are good and even if people who run it are super competent. There are numerous other ways to help the under privileged. They'll not even notice after decades of this. History has lots of people from the privileged class who ended up working to improve society as a whole. Bill Gates is great living example.

caseysoftware 14y ago

When you look only at the % of speakers who have a particular attribute, you're looking at the output of a very long process spanning years. Before the schedule was announced.. did the organizers get the speakers they wanted or did some decline? Before that.. when CfP responses were rated, did the submitters provide relevant supporting material like a resume of previous speaking appearances (to demonstrate speaking skill) and blog posts, articles, etc (to demonstrate expertise in the topic). Before that.. did the submitters have writing and speaking skills that made them comfortable to submit? Before that.. was the CfP well-publicized to relevant groups, companies, etc? Before that.. was the CfP entirely open? Was it invite only? Was it a blend of the two with only some of the slots open to the CfP? Before that.. did the person believe they had the skills and expertise to submit? Before that.. did the person actually have the skills and expertise to submit? Before that.. did the person have a job or interests to give them the opportunity to learn those skills? Before that.. did they get encouragement and support along the way? Before that.. did they receive the education to get the job or choose those interests? Before that.. did they believe they could learn and work in the industry? Before that.. did the person have the aptitude for those skills? If the number at the beginning of this process is small and every one of those steps chips away at the entire group - let alone those with particular genders, ethnicities, etc - of course the output is going to be low.

caseysoftware 14y ago
And for the record, that doesn't mean I like the result. I just think we need to look at this as a systemic problem and address it as such.. not blame the people at the end. For example, my undergradate engineering school adopted a bunch of Girl Scout troops to encourage and grow interest in STEM. It has taken years but female enrolment has increased by 50%.. and they're not just shuffling from other schools. They're growing the pool of qualified candidates.
- erikpukinskis 14y ago
  Every single person making all those decisions (the encouragers, the skill builders, the aptitude developers, the educators, the inviters) are "people at the end". We're all the end of the line when they come across us. Your kindergarten teacher was the person at the end when you entered their classroom. So I disagree with you. The blame does lie with "the people at the end".

bcgraham 14y ago

She asks if quotas are marginalizing women's achievements. The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women being selected. A solid guess is that the specific way in which it is broken is that it is giving undue weight to men, topics men find interesting, and topics that exclude women. In a sense, this is "outsourcing" the discriminatory elements. This has an obvious correction: put a counterweight on it in the form of a quota. Does this fix the illness? No. It is a pill, medicine to manage the symptoms of the illness while the illness is fought. The malady is diffused, the remedy is not, so it is easy to pick on the remedy - but it's better than doing nothing. We have some guesses about what the "right" number would be, and a quota of 20% or 25% is hardly getting us there - it is ensuring a lower bound. How much injustice is really resulting from having a lower bound?

pifflesnort 14y ago
> The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women being selected. What numbers do you have to demonstrate that the function is broken? What percentage of our industry is made up of women, and what percentage of them are interested in presenting at a conference? > This has an obvious correction: put a counterweight on it in the form of a quota. Does this fix the illness? No. It is a pill, medicine to manage the symptoms of the illness while the illness is fought. The malady is diffused, the remedy is not, so it is easy to pick on the remedy - but it's better than doing nothing. Why do you believe that enforcing the selection of speakers on a basis other than their qualifications is better than doing nothing?
- bcgraham 14y ago
  When "their qualifications" results in a selection rate of men approaching 100%, I think that's prima facie case that one of the most important qualifications is being a man. Furthermore, (% of industry that is women) x (% of women interested in presenting at a conference) is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about "outsourcing" the discrimination - the filter was set upstream.
  - 14y ago

coldtea 14y ago

>One way to look at percentages is as a quota. "20% of our speakers this year shall be women!" Right or wrong, a lot of people don't like this. Another way is to use percentages as an indicator of how well your outreach is going. If you have, say, 5% women/minority/whatever speaking in the first year of your conference, that metric could act as a swift kick up the butt that you're not doing enough outreach You present it as different things but it's exactly the same flawed idea. "An estimation of your outreach" would only be different from quota if the number of good conference pitches sent in by men was equal or near equal to the number of pitches sent in by women. Since the number of women in programming are far less than the men, that is obviously not the case (their respective total number of pitches would be unequal and hence their respective total of good pitches would be unequal). Unless men and women Python programmers are something like 50-50, you cannot have something like 50-50 men and women Python conference speakers. At best, a fair outreach should be M-F, where M/F the respective male and female Python programmers ratio. And that's assuming (and it's not guaranteed by any law of physics) that men and women Python programmers, in aggregate, are equally good and passionate with Python and doing conference worthy stuff with it. Which might not be the case at all (it doesn't even have to be because women are, say, less nerdy and obsessive with coding: just assume, which is very plausible, that male bosses in the workplace don't assign them interesting enough problems in their Python work, and prefer males to be project leaders etc. Then, following that, fewer women will have interesting conference pitches to make). And there are 1000s of other factors like that. Finally, not every field needs to have 50-50 representation anyway. We don't lament that there are far fewer women boxers or rugby players than men. Or that there are far fewer women coal miners or truck drivers than men. Or that there are far more women in fashion that men. Or than there are far more women in biology than men, etc etc.

speeder 14y ago
I thought of replying to this post, but instead I decided to make this submission, I cannot write something better than it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5554695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5554695
jlees 14y ago
You are assuming that the curve of ability distribution is equal between the sexes, i.e. that X% of male pitches and X% of female pitches would be "good". What if the females who have the courage to pitch, or to stick around in programming at all, shift the bell curve further up? (Or, the inflammatory counter, what if women just aren't good at math and should be shopping instead - shifting it the other way?) We don't lament that there are far fewer women $foo than men We don't, because we're in technology. Some of my other hobbies are also male dominated and unrelated to technology, there's definitely an awareness of the situation and active efforts to recruit more women. On the flipside, I've seen some arguments about the biology situation, theorising that the reason there are more women in biology is cultural conditioning for girls interested in science (it certainly happened to me, but that's hardly solid data).