11 ms·

Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

67 points by mystique 11y ago

orionblastar 11y ago
Most likely this submission will be flagged as most sexism or racism articles get flagged. Corporate American needs a major reform. US society need a major reform. Our culture and community need major reforms. The way boys and girls are raised need to be changed, the way they are educated and develop social skills and people skills need to change as well. As it is Corporate America and the Tech industry has developed a certain mindset based on the power elite of Silicon Valley that controls VC and who gets on the board of directors via shareholders. Everyone has to work 80+ hours a week, and it is hostile to trying to raise a family. Corporations favor the worker who is single over one that is married and has children. They don't like it when there is responsibilities other than work that an employees has. Which is why there is no good maternity leave, or even child care services. Heck in most cases you have to drop your religion and become non-practicing so you don't attend services so you can work more hours. When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different, people got the weekends off and spent it with the family with family picnics and they only worked 40+ hours a week, and took off for family matters. The 1980s and 1990s changed that and the Dotcom Boom made the Startups and marathon coding that required more time per week to work. People got less sleep, worked more hours, gave up relationships and family, and put everything into working a job. For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. I took time off to pick up my son from a babysitter because child care was not offered and my wife worked a different shift, and I got made fun of because I was taking care of my son instead of my wife. I ended up on short term disability and when I returned I was fired for being sick. You see once you become mentally ill they don't want you, even if you were hurt in the line of duty. Which is why so many mentally ill people hide their illnesses and go untreated and then do a suicide later on. I ended up on disability in 2003. I never made it back to work. But I know of all of the problems in the industry and can talk about them freely without worrying that I'll be fired for talking about them. In order to make up diversity, many tech companies use the H1B Visa program to hire people from India because they are not white males and because they will work for less money. Being from India gives them a more diverse work force, and they are disposable employees. If they don't do what they are told, the Visa is canceled and they go back to their native country. Then the company hires someone else. It is a big racket.
- gfosco 11y ago
  I don't know a single person who feels the need to work that hard, and benefits and conditions for parents have never been better. It doesn't make sense for a guy who hasn't worked in 12 years to tell us how it is. Sorry you couldn't handle the stress of life and the choices you made.
  - dang 11y ago
    > Sorry you couldn't handle the stress of life and the choices you made. Whoa. Meanness like that is not ok here. Please don't do this again. Kicking someone when they're down makes it 10x worse.
    - orionblastar 11y ago
      There are a lot of people like that in the workplace when I worked. It is called kicking a person when they are down. Management had it as well which is why I got fired for getting sick on the job. Society in general hates the mentally ill. Every time there is a public shooting they claim the person is mentally ill and that paints all mentally ill people with the same broad brush. I'm non-violent and dysfunctional and could not do a public shooting. I have empathy and compassion that prevents me from doing something like that. The people who did the shootings are sociopaths that lack empathy and compassion.
- simoncion 11y ago
  > For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. It's seriously a damn shame you worked yourself into a nervous breakdown. I can't possibly stress that enough. I've spent about ten years working a couple of tech jobs. Over those years, I've probably put in a few hundred hours of OT (unpaid or otherwise). If we're pessimistic and call it an even 1k hours of OT, this means that I've spent an average of somewhere between 42 and 45 hours per week at work over my entire career so far. I -and others in tech that I know- have never been required to work anywhere near point of burnout, let alone breakdown. Moreover, from what I understand of tech sector hiring practices during the Dot Com Era, anyone who could spell SQL and/or HTML could get a well-paying job in the industry. Maybe those practices also included a near-universal culture of overwork, but -based on what I hear from a few folks who were working in The Valley at the time- I'm pretty certain that that's not true. If management was pressuring you to work those insane hours, you would have very probably found better treatment at another company. It seems like the lower hiring bar would have given a seasoned veteran quite some mobility during the boom. The situation after the bust is another story all together. Since you stopped working in the industry in 2003 and claim over 25 years of industry experience, would you be so kind compare and contrast the work ethic and attitudes of tech company management during the Dot Com boom of the late 1990s to those of tech company management during the PC Boom of the 1980s and very early 1990s? Thanks!
owen_griffiths 11y ago
"almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory environments as their main reason for leaving" If the work environment is not to women' liking and has no bearing on outcome, where are all the successful companies formed by women who want a more friendly environment? "This is a huge, unnecessary, and expensive loss of talent in a field facing a supposed talent shortage." Again, if true, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all the amazing talent.
- todayiamme 11y ago
  I try to usually stay away from such debates, but I've thought a lot about the point you're making: if people are being irrational with respect to hiring then clearly the solution is to start a company that isn't ageist, sexist, or any -ist by formalising the hiring logic and finding people who share something deep - like a passion for building things - in common. But after talking to people and many, many companies, I've come to realise that, although a "market correction" is inevitable, markets can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent. Change is inevitable and sooner or later a company will come along which will swoop up all of these people and apply them towards an audacious goal, but the time at which the stars align and such a company is born cannot be predicted and most people can't hold on until that time. Hence their desire to fix it through advocacy, which is quite understandable.
  - personjerry 11y ago
    Sure, you may believe that to be the case, but in the meantime, others may believe that, exactly due to the lack of a company that has swooped up all these people, that there is no such opportunity.
  - Jare 11y ago
    I think this argument needs to be less black and white than what you present. There's no need for a company to "swoop all" of these people and go for an "audacious goal"; that's all too exaggerated. All that's needed are a few companies competing in a largely male-dominated space, staffed with "a larger presence" of women, and being reasonably successful in whatever goal they have, regardless of how trivial or lofty it is. Advocacy is great, and necessary to get out of local maximas, but living proof is always going to be more effective. Of course, there's always the question of how useful such a competitive advantage (access to a large pool of excellent staff) would be to drive success. It may not be, which is a different discussion and one that would make engineers of both genders nervous regarding their own value.
deleted 11y ago
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shoo 11y ago
More generally, not specific to the dear tech industry, there's been a fantastic discussion on metafilter titled "“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor" [1]. If you are a person who has personal/professional relationships with other people, it's probably worth a read [2]. Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments: > A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than" one person to work with him, because it is assumed he has someoone feeding/dressing/cruise directing him. This frees up his brain space for ... work. On the other hand, a married woman is considered to bring less than a whole person to work. Because she is assumed to be feeding/dressing/cruise directing at least one other human. And possibly incubating another. This is taking up valuable brain space that could be devoted to work. So, there's a conscious or unconscious bias against women in working life, due to the assumption that they'll be doing more than their fair share of unpaid, generally undervalued labor outside of the workplace. Oh so plausible. This would be a rational reason for a workplace to discriminate against women, given the existing context of structural unfairness and bias in the rest of society. "Hurray!" [1] http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emo... [2] ...unless you are very uncomfortable with reading criticism of men, and you cannot stomach discomfort. in that case, it's probably best for everyone involved if you don't follow the link.
- malandrew 11y ago
  Also sounds like a bias against men. Men are perfectly capable of feeding and dressing themselves. And while I don't know what exactly "cruise directing" means in this context, there is no reason to believe that men aren't also capable of doing that either. I just got out of a relationship where I handled all those responsibilities. I wasn't compensated for it, nor did I expect to be. Insofar as my own generation is concerned, I've encountered lots of men that cook. In fact, I have known more men that cook than women. I also know more men than women, but the relative frequency seems about equal between the sexes.
  - shoo 11y ago
    Sure. I agree, and certaintly cannot argue with you about facts of your own life. It's more subtle: I don't think anyone is making sweeping uniform generalisations. i.e. "ALL MEN DO a" "ALL WOMEN DO b". I'm not claiming anything about specific individuals. but I am indeed claiming there is a general bias, at least in a statistical sense. For example, here's an arbitrary statistic from the UK in 2012 [1]: > Just over one in 10 women – 13% – say their husbands do more housework than they do, while only 3% of married women do fewer than three hours a week, with almost half doing 13 hours or more. So, given no further information about particular circumstances, if I were a betting man, I know which way I'd bet about this kind of thing. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gender-equality-women http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gen...
sanxiyn 11y ago
"When Google increased paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, the number of new moms who quit Google dropped by 50%." This seems to be such a spectacularly good result that I wonder why they haven't tried it sooner.
- malandrew 11y ago
  If maternity leave policies are a major reason for retention, what are the figures for other industries? It's not like only women in tech want to have kids and are impacted by maternity leave policies.
- troels 11y ago
  Well, they didn't know, did they. But I would say that with such good results, they might want to increase it even further. 18 weeks is still rather short.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    I'm sorry, but paying someone to take off for more than 1/3 of the year? Is this based on how long they are with the company before said leave? 4.5 months of maternity leave is very generous, and honestly enough for a physical recovery and to spend time with the baby. I'd even be in favor of 4-8 weeks maternity leave for new dads. I'm all for maternity leave, I think it's important, and there are too many companies that don't offer any, or enough. That said, there's a point where you really aren't an employee anymore. I'm not saying they should shorten their leave, but making it longer probably isn't a great idea.
    - troels 11y ago
      Raising it from 12 to 18 clearly had a very positive effect. I'd wager that there is more to be had by raising it further. So this is a cold hard HR calculation - not something I suggest they do out of altruism. Although that would be OK too. Just for perspective, where I live 52 weeks is mandated by law. Now, a private company doesn't have to offer full payment during that period (or any), but it's quite common to do. Personally, I have a hard time imagining passing my child on to day care at the age of 4 months. So that means at least one of the parents needs to stay out of work. For various reasons, that usually ends up being the mother.
malandrew 11y ago
A few questions: What does it mean to "leave the field"? Does that mean to no longer practice low-level work or to leave the industry entirely for another industry? If it is the former, does moving into management or another complementary area (like moving from engineering to product management) qualify as leaving the field? So what I've always been curious about is what percentage of women leave other fields? It would be nice to have numbers to compare it to there. Also, what percentage of men leave the field? If "leaving the field" is defined as no longer actively practicing software engineering and instead doing more human contact work (like managing), then I would expect a significant number of men to leave the field at all. I'm not trying to dismiss the number out of hand, but merely demonstrate that it's a useless figure to bandy about with context or comparison.
- ozim 11y ago
  There was article on HN some days ago maybe even weeks which was showing IT compared to other fields. It was about how many women work in field and for IT it was lot less than other. It was showing percentage in years so in 80's there was a lot more women in IT than now. Sorry but cannot find article, maybe someone will have link.
  - malandrew 11y ago
    I'm also generally curious about the figures for men in female dominated industries. I'm a senior software engineer now, but I graduated with a degree that would have had me working in an industry that was overwhelmingly female (fashion). I think it's like 95% female. Most of my classmates were female. I didn't go into that industry because other opportunities cropped up and because that industry doesn't pay anyone, man or woman, well and you're expected to work for years for very little to get anywhere career-wise. Not once during school or after it did I feel disadvantaged in a school/work environment where I was very much a minority (straight cis male). I have been unable to find any figures, but I suspect that fashion was an industry that had a lot more men working in it up until the 1980s. http://amfi.nl/boys-fashion-industry-gender-ratio/ http://amfi.nl/boys-fashion-industry-gender-ratio/
T2_t2 11y ago
Serious question: why are women so harsh to EACH OTHER? From the article: > both men and women were significantly more likely to hire a male applicant than a female applicant with an identical record. And from the linked studies: "Men only penalized female candidates for attempting to negotiate whereas women penalized both male and female candidates." And the pay rates, and drops, from here http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html are both worse from female faculty - with sale offered from men 30K -> 29K vs 27K -> 25K for female faculty, and male faculty scored women higher in all categories than the female faculty.
- shoo 11y ago
  glib throwaway response: yeah, let's criticise women for being harsh to each other in an environment that is structurally biased against them! because they could use some extra criticism here! (i mean, yeah, that might genuinely be an interesting question to look into, but surely that isn't at the top of our list of priorities, right?)
  - rcthompson 11y ago
    It's an important question because it helps to show that it's not only men discriminating against women, but also a bias shared generally by society. The way in which things break reveals a lot about how they work.
- anon4 11y ago
  A few ideas come to mind -1- Women have a lower salary, therefore their anchoring point is lower. -2- There are few women in the department, therefore every woman feels threatened by every female applicant - they are fighting for a scarce resource. -3- The push against sexism has resulted in men overvaluing women, while women themselves have no qualms about rating other women exactly what they think they are worth (which might still be less than they should, see 1). -4- There may be a strong correlation in women who can succeed in a male-dominated environment for sociopathic psychological traits. -5- There may very well be correlation (though no direct causation) between gender and expected performance, which combined with 3, results in women applying an unconscious bias. Basically, you do not have an unbiased sample and can't make generalisations from just that article.
Banzaaaai 11y ago
From my experience: 1. It is a pipeline problem (I never got as much women applications as I wanted, even with targeting a women audience) 2. It is a problem of not enough role models for women (so women do not see themselves in tech and do not aspire for tech careers or for becoming CTOs - women CTOs go a long way here). 3. It is a problem of the vile and toxicity of the tech community in general (just see all the fights over programming languages, about being right vs. understanding each other). And the bro culture in some places. 4. It is a problem of women in general being more risk averse (so they gamble less with salaries or risk to push for promotion) 5. It is a problem of job ads (male focused, where males might say 'Ah I can do all those things' and women might say 'I don't know all the things they want') and the recruiting process in general.
- tracker1 11y ago
  Wrt the pipeline, I have to agree to a large extent. I admit it, I'm biased on a lot of levels, not really against gender, but I will admit I prefer to work with men. That said, doing pre-screening of applications at a job a few years ago opened my eyes a lot. To be honest, I no longer hold much of any value to a resume... I've seen too many people with higher degrees and years of experience that can't seem to do what it says they can on said resume. Me, I'm particularly bad at white board coding... but I understand the need. That said, I'd rather have a laptop connected to a projector. I've probably sat in on a couple hundred interviews of other people over the years, and only a handful were of women... For the most part, I appreciate that women tend to be much more accurate on their resumes and in responses as to their skill level. I've never really liked excessive arrogance, and prefer someone more honest. This is just me though. I also think that efforts to make language and interactions politically correct are a disservice to the goal of letting anyone that wants to work in IT do so. A few months back I witnessed someone pretty much accosted because he dared to ask, "...can any of you guys help me with this?". My extended family is over 80% female... my step father was an only child, but my mom was one of 4 sisters, her mom one of three, and half of the women in my family only had daughters (including my sister). hearing things like "I miss you guys." was said by women, to women, without any gender bias, as a generic phrasing. There's a difference between being overtly sensitive and issues of bias/discrimination worth bringing up. We're at a point where awareness is increasing, but as a society we've also been heading down a path of so much excessive sensitivity that it's downright abusive towards people who aren't ill-meaning. I hope that a balance is found sooner than later.
rchiba 11y ago
> These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice. As someone who has faced situations where a gender microagression has caused workplace conflict, the above quote cannot be stressed enough. Just because you didn't have the intention to be biased or discriminate does not mean it did not happen. For some reason this concept eludes even the sharpest people. We all have our biases. It's about time we owned up to them and put effort into mitigating them.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  What is "gender microagression”?
  - rchiba 11y ago
    It's when a guy from another department walks into a room and asks for a developer, unconsciously ignores the female developer closest to him and starts addressing the male developer. It's when a guy kindly asks a woman to stop debating a technical spec because she wouldn't understand the details (even though she's more technical than he is). It's when a sales guy makes a joke with his female colleague that her eye makeup is what is closing deals that day.
    - malandrew 11y ago
      I don't know about other departments coming in to ask for an engineer, but when it's an engineer looking for another engineer on a different team, it usually takes the form of asking openly in that teams hipchat/slack/irc room (as gender neutral as it gets) or specifically addressing one particular engineer (usually because that engineer is known for being great at providing advice or technical details on the issue at hand) I've never once witnessed that second one and would be shocked if I did witness that. I've been around long enough that if that were still a problem, I would expect to have witnessed it firsthand. I know the third happens (my sister is in sales and has been subjected to it).
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      I can see the micro in these examples, just not the aggression. Thanks for the explanation as it was a term I had no idea existed.
flipp3r 11y ago
Didn't read the whole article but this stood out to me; "Confirm that men and women with the same qualifications are earning the same amount and that they are receiving promotions and raises at similar rates (and if not, explore why)." Yeah, no. I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill, it's all in salary negotiations. If you work for a company where salaries aren't public, then this is the case for you. Also, although anecdotal, in my experience men are willing to risk more when they know they're worth more than what they're being paid.
- rmc 11y ago
  > I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill How many companies claim to be a "meritocracy"? If it's a big lie, we should admit it.
  - warkdarrior 11y ago
    Negotiating is also a skill. Most companies are negotiation meritocracies.
    - rmc 11y ago
      They claim to be technical skill/programming meritocracies.
- ousta 11y ago
  all companies pay employees based on skills. it is just that skill is not the only variable and sometimes not the most important. but definitely skills play a major part.
venomsnake 11y ago
> Create a collaborative environment Stanford research studies document that women are more likely to dislike competitive environments compared to men and are more likely to select out of them That is not how it works. Tech is as pure marketplace of ideas as possible. So while we should all collaborate after the decisions are made, the process before them is by definition adversarial. We must nitpick and deconstruct each other's solutions. Because we programmers cannot work if we don't understand anything in full. To grok it.
- tracker1 11y ago
  There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking." ... I have to admit, I've thought the latter on more than one occasion having to fix a bug, or do a feature enhancement in a piece of software. I try to be more sensitive in my actual interactions though. You can review, advise and even critique without being outright abusive. I tend to take similar arguments when people want to use curse word filters... tone is a hell of a lot more than specific verbiage.
  - malandrew 11y ago
    There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking." True, but I don't see how this is a gender issue, but an issue with how specific individuals handle competitive and potentially abrasive environments. Women are as capable of handling competitive and abrasive environments as men and I've met plenty of men that can't handle competitive or abrasive environments and end up opting out.
natmaster 11y ago
I'm curious about this quote, "Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32% in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. “Male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the same pitches narrated by a female voice.”" They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone know whether it was the same words, and they just changed the name, or if they actually composed different pitches?
- jmiwhite 11y ago
  This is addressed in the study[0] on the third page (4429): "The pitch videos showed images related to the ventures, but they did not show the entrepreneurs themselves. Participants heard the entrepreneur’s voice-over narration while they watched each video. This video pitch format allowed us to dub in a male voice and a female voice (randomly assigned), holding the narration script constant. After watching the videos, participants chose which company to fund." [0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf
  - natmaster 11y ago
    Thanks!
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    This is such garbage science I can't believe it was published in PNAS outside of an old direct submission. Using only one narrator for each sex just tests the narrator and tells us nothing about the role of gender.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ExpiredLink 11y ago
Where does the 50% obsession stem from? Serious question. Why must all fields be equally staffed by men and women?
- tracker1 11y ago
  Where's the staffing drive to bring more men into nursing?
  - sanxiyn 11y ago
    There is. I suggest Google search, for example "bring more men into nursing".
    - ExpiredLink 11y ago
      But why?
natmaster 11y ago
I'm curious why only one of the studies about gender-bias has anything to do with tech. Are there just not enough studies being done in that field? Are there conclusions we should be making about the world at large? Why has the author chosen to focus on tech in the title, and yet diverge once getting to evidence?
ousta 11y ago
frankly, the IT industry has to be the fairest industry in the world. the problem with statistics when one side has few data and the other side a lot (women in IT vs men in IT) is that you can "choose" datasets that speak for what we look for. it is easy to pick the bottom male engineers and compare them to women and im pretty sure women will be better paid at "similar" jobs (haven't seen one similar job in 10 years in the it industry but ok). I am myself married to a woman who codes and as long as she has shown to her managers that her productivity and quality of work was excellent she never got discriminated. people assume everything should come to them because it came to others. a company is not some socialist everland where everyone gets paid same. people get paid what their are worth (minus/plus negotiation skills) as for women leaving the field. knowing that most engineers in big companies or services companies are leaving the field to become PM or manager of something I see this as a sign that women are more passionate about their carreer than about IT.
natmaster 11y ago
Earlier in the article the author states that both men and women have bias. Then we get this quote, "If tech culture is going to change, everyone needs to change, especially men and most especially leaders." It would be nice to know why "especially men," with no foundation for this statement it makes it hard to believe as a scientist, and even harder to act upon. Any revisions with this included would be greatly appreciated. :)
- thsealienbstrds 11y ago
  This article is heavily biased. Consider that the case of the other 59%(!) is not explored in the article even a little bit... You'd think a position paper that is proposing solutions would at least cover potentially existing solutions before concluding that the system needs an overhaul.
natmaster 11y ago
"Don’t rely on self-nominations or self-evaluations" I think this is the big thing that should be rallied around. This is prevalent, obvious, and hurts companies in more ways than just discrimination (not to marginalize that aspect). Focusing on self-nominations means the most successful people aren't going to be your people best able to do the job, but people best able to 'play the game'. This is in fact not independent, but negatively correlated with skill. (Citation needed)
lawnchair_larry 11y ago
I agree there is a problem, but is it ever frustrating having to tolerate completely fallacious statistics and bogus metrics every time someone talks about this. That sets the conversation back. There is no such thing as equally qualified for a promotion. To pretend that performance is a simple formula with two inputs is being disingenuous. It is a pipeline problem, because I have interviewed zero females and 100 males. I've never even received a woman's resume. Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview. VCs investing disproportionately in male CEOs is hardly surprising because even if they have no bias, they know their money is on the line for someone who will be up against the rest of the tech and business world, with all of its bias. Diversity quotas are harmful. Great, now nobody takes you seriously not just because they're biased to begin with but also because you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota. That isn't helping anybody. A much better option is to get more women to apply. I have actually taken bias training and yes, I'm biased as hell. I don't like this fact and try to correct it. I also point it out to my male peers. But it's really hard to overcome when nobody has non-junk data and nobody is showing up to interview. And are we allowed to be open to the fact that maybe, on average, women are weaker performers in tech? It seems like that is not allowed to be an option. It should also be a possibility that they're actually stronger performers in tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence). Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of programmers should be women doesn't get us anywhere.
- rmc 11y ago
  > Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview. The study ( http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html ), asked interviewers to rank how "hireable" the candidate was, and what they would offer the candidate. Yes, the resume gets you the interview, not the job. But without the interview, you definitly don't get the job. If changing the apparent gender of the resume gets you better odds of getting the interview, then the gender gets your more/better jobs! This is science. Creationists are invested in believing the earth is 6,000 years old and don't like evidence that contradicts that. Antivaxxers don't like evidence that shows vaccines are safe. Homeopaths don't like evidence that shows that it's just as good as water. And here we have evidence that men get more interviews. > you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota To quote the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice". You (and I) have a bug in our brains. We are not actually able to correctly deduce with 100% accuracy whether someone is more qualified than other. Yes a female quota might mean that there's a woman who's being hired when you would have given that job to a man, but how do you know the man is definitly more qualified? The function in your brain that calculates "qualified" has a bug and isn't always accurate about "most qualified".
malandrew 11y ago
So I noticed that maternity leave is cited often, but that strikes me as a lesser problem in tech relative to the cost of housing. Raising a family in San Francisco is not a cheap proposition. Rent keeps rising in the Bay Area. Let's do a thought experiment. Lets say a man and a women in tech both moved here 5 years ago and each got small rent-controlled studio apartments for about $1000/month. Let's say they met and started dating two years ago. They decide they want to move in together. They can forego one dwelling and share a studio apartment, or they can look on the market. They look around for a one-bedroom. Two years ago, a one bedroom is probably going for $2500 a month. Fast forward to today and they decide to have a kid. Everything is great for the first 1-2 years, but by 2017, they feel like they need a 2-bedroom. They start looking around and see that the only options cost about $5000 to $6000 month. That's a huge cost of living increase before the cost of child-rearing and is far more likely to drive people (men and women) out of the industry than unfavorable maternity leave policies. In the thought experiment above, both a man and a woman both leave tech in SF together once they are forced out of the area by the conflict between housing prices and raising a family. The different is that the age distribution for men is likely to much broader than for women because of the biological clock. A man marrying and having a kid could likely be anywhere from 27 or so to past 40, where the range for women is likely to have approximately the same lower bound, but a much lower higher bound. I suspect 33 or so. This would suggest that housing prices are more likely to prematurely end the careers of women in tech in San Francisco.
tzs 11y ago
> A culture that rewards facetime and encourages people to regularly stay late or eat dinner at the office puts employees with families at a disadvantage (particularly mothers), and research shows that working excess hours does not actually improve productivity in the long-term since workers begin to experience burn out after just a few weeks I suspect excessive hours also contributes to unintentional harassment [1], mostly against single women. Most people are heterosexual. Most of them want to find partners to have relationships with ranging from casual flings to long term romantic relationships. If people are expected to work long and hard hours they will be left without the time and/or energy for activities outside of work where they can seek out sexual and romantic partners. Since people are not going to give up on seeking out sexual and romantic partners inevitably some of that activity will shift to the office. If that office has significantly more single men than single women it is going to get particularly annoying for the women. [1] By "unintentional harassment" I mean actions that are takes as harassment by the person they are directed to, but are not intended as harassment by the person taking the action.
imh 11y ago
Surprised not to see this [1] cited next to the Yale study for the sake of completeness. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

67 points by mystique 11y ago

Most likely this submission will be flagged as most sexism or racism articles get flagged. Corporate American needs a major reform. US society need a major reform. Our culture and community need major reforms. The way boys and girls are raised need to be changed, the way they are educated and develop social skills and people skills need to change as well. As it is Corporate America and the Tech industry has developed a certain mindset based on the power elite of Silicon Valley that controls VC and who gets on the board of directors via shareholders. Everyone has to work 80+ hours a week, and it is hostile to trying to raise a family. Corporations favor the worker who is single over one that is married and has children. They don't like it when there is responsibilities other than work that an employees has. Which is why there is no good maternity leave, or even child care services. Heck in most cases you have to drop your religion and become non-practicing so you don't attend services so you can work more hours. When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different, people got the weekends off and spent it with the family with family picnics and they only worked 40+ hours a week, and took off for family matters. The 1980s and 1990s changed that and the Dotcom Boom made the Startups and marathon coding that required more time per week to work. People got less sleep, worked more hours, gave up relationships and family, and put everything into working a job. For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. I took time off to pick up my son from a babysitter because child care was not offered and my wife worked a different shift, and I got made fun of because I was taking care of my son instead of my wife. I ended up on short term disability and when I returned I was fired for being sick. You see once you become mentally ill they don't want you, even if you were hurt in the line of duty. Which is why so many mentally ill people hide their illnesses and go untreated and then do a suicide later on. I ended up on disability in 2003. I never made it back to work. But I know of all of the problems in the industry and can talk about them freely without worrying that I'll be fired for talking about them. In order to make up diversity, many tech companies use the H1B Visa program to hire people from India because they are not white males and because they will work for less money. Being from India gives them a more diverse work force, and they are disposable employees. If they don't do what they are told, the Visa is canceled and they go back to their native country. Then the company hires someone else. It is a big racket.

gfosco 11y ago
I don't know a single person who feels the need to work that hard, and benefits and conditions for parents have never been better. It doesn't make sense for a guy who hasn't worked in 12 years to tell us how it is. Sorry you couldn't handle the stress of life and the choices you made.
- dang 11y ago
  > Sorry you couldn't handle the stress of life and the choices you made. Whoa. Meanness like that is not ok here. Please don't do this again. Kicking someone when they're down makes it 10x worse.
  - orionblastar 11y ago
    There are a lot of people like that in the workplace when I worked. It is called kicking a person when they are down. Management had it as well which is why I got fired for getting sick on the job. Society in general hates the mentally ill. Every time there is a public shooting they claim the person is mentally ill and that paints all mentally ill people with the same broad brush. I'm non-violent and dysfunctional and could not do a public shooting. I have empathy and compassion that prevents me from doing something like that. The people who did the shootings are sociopaths that lack empathy and compassion.
simoncion 11y ago
> For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. It's seriously a damn shame you worked yourself into a nervous breakdown. I can't possibly stress that enough. I've spent about ten years working a couple of tech jobs. Over those years, I've probably put in a few hundred hours of OT (unpaid or otherwise). If we're pessimistic and call it an even 1k hours of OT, this means that I've spent an average of somewhere between 42 and 45 hours per week at work over my entire career so far. I -and others in tech that I know- have never been required to work anywhere near point of burnout, let alone breakdown. Moreover, from what I understand of tech sector hiring practices during the Dot Com Era, anyone who could spell SQL and/or HTML could get a well-paying job in the industry. Maybe those practices also included a near-universal culture of overwork, but -based on what I hear from a few folks who were working in The Valley at the time- I'm pretty certain that that's not true. If management was pressuring you to work those insane hours, you would have very probably found better treatment at another company. It seems like the lower hiring bar would have given a seasoned veteran quite some mobility during the boom. The situation after the bust is another story all together. Since you stopped working in the industry in 2003 and claim over 25 years of industry experience, would you be so kind compare and contrast the work ethic and attitudes of tech company management during the Dot Com boom of the late 1990s to those of tech company management during the PC Boom of the 1980s and very early 1990s? Thanks!

owen_griffiths 11y ago

"almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory environments as their main reason for leaving" If the work environment is not to women' liking and has no bearing on outcome, where are all the successful companies formed by women who want a more friendly environment? "This is a huge, unnecessary, and expensive loss of talent in a field facing a supposed talent shortage." Again, if true, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all the amazing talent.

todayiamme 11y ago
I try to usually stay away from such debates, but I've thought a lot about the point you're making: if people are being irrational with respect to hiring then clearly the solution is to start a company that isn't ageist, sexist, or any -ist by formalising the hiring logic and finding people who share something deep - like a passion for building things - in common. But after talking to people and many, many companies, I've come to realise that, although a "market correction" is inevitable, markets can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent. Change is inevitable and sooner or later a company will come along which will swoop up all of these people and apply them towards an audacious goal, but the time at which the stars align and such a company is born cannot be predicted and most people can't hold on until that time. Hence their desire to fix it through advocacy, which is quite understandable.
- personjerry 11y ago
  Sure, you may believe that to be the case, but in the meantime, others may believe that, exactly due to the lack of a company that has swooped up all these people, that there is no such opportunity.
- Jare 11y ago
  I think this argument needs to be less black and white than what you present. There's no need for a company to "swoop all" of these people and go for an "audacious goal"; that's all too exaggerated. All that's needed are a few companies competing in a largely male-dominated space, staffed with "a larger presence" of women, and being reasonably successful in whatever goal they have, regardless of how trivial or lofty it is. Advocacy is great, and necessary to get out of local maximas, but living proof is always going to be more effective. Of course, there's always the question of how useful such a competitive advantage (access to a large pool of excellent staff) would be to drive success. It may not be, which is a different discussion and one that would make engineers of both genders nervous regarding their own value.

deleted 11y ago

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shoo 11y ago

More generally, not specific to the dear tech industry, there's been a fantastic discussion on metafilter titled "“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor" [1]. If you are a person who has personal/professional relationships with other people, it's probably worth a read [2]. Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments: > A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than" one person to work with him, because it is assumed he has someoone feeding/dressing/cruise directing him. This frees up his brain space for ... work. On the other hand, a married woman is considered to bring less than a whole person to work. Because she is assumed to be feeding/dressing/cruise directing at least one other human. And possibly incubating another. This is taking up valuable brain space that could be devoted to work. So, there's a conscious or unconscious bias against women in working life, due to the assumption that they'll be doing more than their fair share of unpaid, generally undervalued labor outside of the workplace. Oh so plausible. This would be a rational reason for a workplace to discriminate against women, given the existing context of structural unfairness and bias in the rest of society. "Hurray!" [1] http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emo... [2] ...unless you are very uncomfortable with reading criticism of men, and you cannot stomach discomfort. in that case, it's probably best for everyone involved if you don't follow the link.

malandrew 11y ago
Also sounds like a bias against men. Men are perfectly capable of feeding and dressing themselves. And while I don't know what exactly "cruise directing" means in this context, there is no reason to believe that men aren't also capable of doing that either. I just got out of a relationship where I handled all those responsibilities. I wasn't compensated for it, nor did I expect to be. Insofar as my own generation is concerned, I've encountered lots of men that cook. In fact, I have known more men that cook than women. I also know more men than women, but the relative frequency seems about equal between the sexes.
- shoo 11y ago
  Sure. I agree, and certaintly cannot argue with you about facts of your own life. It's more subtle: I don't think anyone is making sweeping uniform generalisations. i.e. "ALL MEN DO a" "ALL WOMEN DO b". I'm not claiming anything about specific individuals. but I am indeed claiming there is a general bias, at least in a statistical sense. For example, here's an arbitrary statistic from the UK in 2012 [1]: > Just over one in 10 women – 13% – say their husbands do more housework than they do, while only 3% of married women do fewer than three hours a week, with almost half doing 13 hours or more. So, given no further information about particular circumstances, if I were a betting man, I know which way I'd bet about this kind of thing. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gender-equality-women http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gen...

sanxiyn 11y ago

"When Google increased paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, the number of new moms who quit Google dropped by 50%." This seems to be such a spectacularly good result that I wonder why they haven't tried it sooner.

malandrew 11y ago
If maternity leave policies are a major reason for retention, what are the figures for other industries? It's not like only women in tech want to have kids and are impacted by maternity leave policies.
troels 11y ago
Well, they didn't know, did they. But I would say that with such good results, they might want to increase it even further. 18 weeks is still rather short.
- tracker1 11y ago
  I'm sorry, but paying someone to take off for more than 1/3 of the year? Is this based on how long they are with the company before said leave? 4.5 months of maternity leave is very generous, and honestly enough for a physical recovery and to spend time with the baby. I'd even be in favor of 4-8 weeks maternity leave for new dads. I'm all for maternity leave, I think it's important, and there are too many companies that don't offer any, or enough. That said, there's a point where you really aren't an employee anymore. I'm not saying they should shorten their leave, but making it longer probably isn't a great idea.
  - troels 11y ago
    Raising it from 12 to 18 clearly had a very positive effect. I'd wager that there is more to be had by raising it further. So this is a cold hard HR calculation - not something I suggest they do out of altruism. Although that would be OK too. Just for perspective, where I live 52 weeks is mandated by law. Now, a private company doesn't have to offer full payment during that period (or any), but it's quite common to do. Personally, I have a hard time imagining passing my child on to day care at the age of 4 months. So that means at least one of the parents needs to stay out of work. For various reasons, that usually ends up being the mother.

malandrew 11y ago

A few questions: What does it mean to "leave the field"? Does that mean to no longer practice low-level work or to leave the industry entirely for another industry? If it is the former, does moving into management or another complementary area (like moving from engineering to product management) qualify as leaving the field? So what I've always been curious about is what percentage of women leave other fields? It would be nice to have numbers to compare it to there. Also, what percentage of men leave the field? If "leaving the field" is defined as no longer actively practicing software engineering and instead doing more human contact work (like managing), then I would expect a significant number of men to leave the field at all. I'm not trying to dismiss the number out of hand, but merely demonstrate that it's a useless figure to bandy about with context or comparison.

ozim 11y ago
There was article on HN some days ago maybe even weeks which was showing IT compared to other fields. It was about how many women work in field and for IT it was lot less than other. It was showing percentage in years so in 80's there was a lot more women in IT than now. Sorry but cannot find article, maybe someone will have link.
- malandrew 11y ago
  I'm also generally curious about the figures for men in female dominated industries. I'm a senior software engineer now, but I graduated with a degree that would have had me working in an industry that was overwhelmingly female (fashion). I think it's like 95% female. Most of my classmates were female. I didn't go into that industry because other opportunities cropped up and because that industry doesn't pay anyone, man or woman, well and you're expected to work for years for very little to get anywhere career-wise. Not once during school or after it did I feel disadvantaged in a school/work environment where I was very much a minority (straight cis male). I have been unable to find any figures, but I suspect that fashion was an industry that had a lot more men working in it up until the 1980s. http://amfi.nl/boys-fashion-industry-gender-ratio/ http://amfi.nl/boys-fashion-industry-gender-ratio/

T2_t2 11y ago

Serious question: why are women so harsh to EACH OTHER? From the article: > both men and women were significantly more likely to hire a male applicant than a female applicant with an identical record. And from the linked studies: "Men only penalized female candidates for attempting to negotiate whereas women penalized both male and female candidates." And the pay rates, and drops, from here http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html are both worse from female faculty - with sale offered from men 30K -> 29K vs 27K -> 25K for female faculty, and male faculty scored women higher in all categories than the female faculty.

shoo 11y ago
glib throwaway response: yeah, let's criticise women for being harsh to each other in an environment that is structurally biased against them! because they could use some extra criticism here! (i mean, yeah, that might genuinely be an interesting question to look into, but surely that isn't at the top of our list of priorities, right?)
- rcthompson 11y ago
  It's an important question because it helps to show that it's not only men discriminating against women, but also a bias shared generally by society. The way in which things break reveals a lot about how they work.
anon4 11y ago
A few ideas come to mind -1- Women have a lower salary, therefore their anchoring point is lower. -2- There are few women in the department, therefore every woman feels threatened by every female applicant - they are fighting for a scarce resource. -3- The push against sexism has resulted in men overvaluing women, while women themselves have no qualms about rating other women exactly what they think they are worth (which might still be less than they should, see 1). -4- There may be a strong correlation in women who can succeed in a male-dominated environment for sociopathic psychological traits. -5- There may very well be correlation (though no direct causation) between gender and expected performance, which combined with 3, results in women applying an unconscious bias. Basically, you do not have an unbiased sample and can't make generalisations from just that article.

Banzaaaai 11y ago

From my experience: 1. It is a pipeline problem (I never got as much women applications as I wanted, even with targeting a women audience) 2. It is a problem of not enough role models for women (so women do not see themselves in tech and do not aspire for tech careers or for becoming CTOs - women CTOs go a long way here). 3. It is a problem of the vile and toxicity of the tech community in general (just see all the fights over programming languages, about being right vs. understanding each other). And the bro culture in some places. 4. It is a problem of women in general being more risk averse (so they gamble less with salaries or risk to push for promotion) 5. It is a problem of job ads (male focused, where males might say 'Ah I can do all those things' and women might say 'I don't know all the things they want') and the recruiting process in general.

tracker1 11y ago
Wrt the pipeline, I have to agree to a large extent. I admit it, I'm biased on a lot of levels, not really against gender, but I will admit I prefer to work with men. That said, doing pre-screening of applications at a job a few years ago opened my eyes a lot. To be honest, I no longer hold much of any value to a resume... I've seen too many people with higher degrees and years of experience that can't seem to do what it says they can on said resume. Me, I'm particularly bad at white board coding... but I understand the need. That said, I'd rather have a laptop connected to a projector. I've probably sat in on a couple hundred interviews of other people over the years, and only a handful were of women... For the most part, I appreciate that women tend to be much more accurate on their resumes and in responses as to their skill level. I've never really liked excessive arrogance, and prefer someone more honest. This is just me though. I also think that efforts to make language and interactions politically correct are a disservice to the goal of letting anyone that wants to work in IT do so. A few months back I witnessed someone pretty much accosted because he dared to ask, "...can any of you guys help me with this?". My extended family is over 80% female... my step father was an only child, but my mom was one of 4 sisters, her mom one of three, and half of the women in my family only had daughters (including my sister). hearing things like "I miss you guys." was said by women, to women, without any gender bias, as a generic phrasing. There's a difference between being overtly sensitive and issues of bias/discrimination worth bringing up. We're at a point where awareness is increasing, but as a society we've also been heading down a path of so much excessive sensitivity that it's downright abusive towards people who aren't ill-meaning. I hope that a balance is found sooner than later.

rchiba 11y ago

> These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice. As someone who has faced situations where a gender microagression has caused workplace conflict, the above quote cannot be stressed enough. Just because you didn't have the intention to be biased or discriminate does not mean it did not happen. For some reason this concept eludes even the sharpest people. We all have our biases. It's about time we owned up to them and put effort into mitigating them.

danieltillett 11y ago
What is "gender microagression”?
- rchiba 11y ago
  It's when a guy from another department walks into a room and asks for a developer, unconsciously ignores the female developer closest to him and starts addressing the male developer. It's when a guy kindly asks a woman to stop debating a technical spec because she wouldn't understand the details (even though she's more technical than he is). It's when a sales guy makes a joke with his female colleague that her eye makeup is what is closing deals that day.
  - malandrew 11y ago
    I don't know about other departments coming in to ask for an engineer, but when it's an engineer looking for another engineer on a different team, it usually takes the form of asking openly in that teams hipchat/slack/irc room (as gender neutral as it gets) or specifically addressing one particular engineer (usually because that engineer is known for being great at providing advice or technical details on the issue at hand) I've never once witnessed that second one and would be shocked if I did witness that. I've been around long enough that if that were still a problem, I would expect to have witnessed it firsthand. I know the third happens (my sister is in sales and has been subjected to it).
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    I can see the micro in these examples, just not the aggression. Thanks for the explanation as it was a term I had no idea existed.

flipp3r 11y ago

Didn't read the whole article but this stood out to me; "Confirm that men and women with the same qualifications are earning the same amount and that they are receiving promotions and raises at similar rates (and if not, explore why)." Yeah, no. I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill, it's all in salary negotiations. If you work for a company where salaries aren't public, then this is the case for you. Also, although anecdotal, in my experience men are willing to risk more when they know they're worth more than what they're being paid.

rmc 11y ago
> I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill How many companies claim to be a "meritocracy"? If it's a big lie, we should admit it.
- warkdarrior 11y ago
  Negotiating is also a skill. Most companies are negotiation meritocracies.
  - rmc 11y ago
    They claim to be technical skill/programming meritocracies.
ousta 11y ago
all companies pay employees based on skills. it is just that skill is not the only variable and sometimes not the most important. but definitely skills play a major part.

venomsnake 11y ago

> Create a collaborative environment Stanford research studies document that women are more likely to dislike competitive environments compared to men and are more likely to select out of them That is not how it works. Tech is as pure marketplace of ideas as possible. So while we should all collaborate after the decisions are made, the process before them is by definition adversarial. We must nitpick and deconstruct each other's solutions. Because we programmers cannot work if we don't understand anything in full. To grok it.

tracker1 11y ago
There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking." ... I have to admit, I've thought the latter on more than one occasion having to fix a bug, or do a feature enhancement in a piece of software. I try to be more sensitive in my actual interactions though. You can review, advise and even critique without being outright abusive. I tend to take similar arguments when people want to use curse word filters... tone is a hell of a lot more than specific verbiage.
- malandrew 11y ago
  There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking." True, but I don't see how this is a gender issue, but an issue with how specific individuals handle competitive and potentially abrasive environments. Women are as capable of handling competitive and abrasive environments as men and I've met plenty of men that can't handle competitive or abrasive environments and end up opting out.

natmaster 11y ago

I'm curious about this quote, "Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32% in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. “Male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the same pitches narrated by a female voice.”" They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone know whether it was the same words, and they just changed the name, or if they actually composed different pitches?

jmiwhite 11y ago
This is addressed in the study[0] on the third page (4429): "The pitch videos showed images related to the ventures, but they did not show the entrepreneurs themselves. Participants heard the entrepreneur’s voice-over narration while they watched each video. This video pitch format allowed us to dub in a male voice and a female voice (randomly assigned), holding the narration script constant. After watching the videos, participants chose which company to fund." [0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf
- natmaster 11y ago
  Thanks!
- danieltillett 11y ago
  This is such garbage science I can't believe it was published in PNAS outside of an old direct submission. Using only one narrator for each sex just tests the narrator and tells us nothing about the role of gender.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ExpiredLink 11y ago

Where does the 50% obsession stem from? Serious question. Why must all fields be equally staffed by men and women?

tracker1 11y ago
Where's the staffing drive to bring more men into nursing?
- sanxiyn 11y ago
  There is. I suggest Google search, for example "bring more men into nursing".
  - ExpiredLink 11y ago
    But why?

natmaster 11y ago

I'm curious why only one of the studies about gender-bias has anything to do with tech. Are there just not enough studies being done in that field? Are there conclusions we should be making about the world at large? Why has the author chosen to focus on tech in the title, and yet diverge once getting to evidence?

ousta 11y ago

frankly, the IT industry has to be the fairest industry in the world. the problem with statistics when one side has few data and the other side a lot (women in IT vs men in IT) is that you can "choose" datasets that speak for what we look for. it is easy to pick the bottom male engineers and compare them to women and im pretty sure women will be better paid at "similar" jobs (haven't seen one similar job in 10 years in the it industry but ok). I am myself married to a woman who codes and as long as she has shown to her managers that her productivity and quality of work was excellent she never got discriminated. people assume everything should come to them because it came to others. a company is not some socialist everland where everyone gets paid same. people get paid what their are worth (minus/plus negotiation skills) as for women leaving the field. knowing that most engineers in big companies or services companies are leaving the field to become PM or manager of something I see this as a sign that women are more passionate about their carreer than about IT.

natmaster 11y ago

Earlier in the article the author states that both men and women have bias. Then we get this quote, "If tech culture is going to change, everyone needs to change, especially men and most especially leaders." It would be nice to know why "especially men," with no foundation for this statement it makes it hard to believe as a scientist, and even harder to act upon. Any revisions with this included would be greatly appreciated. :)

thsealienbstrds 11y ago
This article is heavily biased. Consider that the case of the other 59%(!) is not explored in the article even a little bit... You'd think a position paper that is proposing solutions would at least cover potentially existing solutions before concluding that the system needs an overhaul.

natmaster 11y ago

"Don’t rely on self-nominations or self-evaluations" I think this is the big thing that should be rallied around. This is prevalent, obvious, and hurts companies in more ways than just discrimination (not to marginalize that aspect). Focusing on self-nominations means the most successful people aren't going to be your people best able to do the job, but people best able to 'play the game'. This is in fact not independent, but negatively correlated with skill. (Citation needed)

lawnchair_larry 11y ago

I agree there is a problem, but is it ever frustrating having to tolerate completely fallacious statistics and bogus metrics every time someone talks about this. That sets the conversation back. There is no such thing as equally qualified for a promotion. To pretend that performance is a simple formula with two inputs is being disingenuous. It is a pipeline problem, because I have interviewed zero females and 100 males. I've never even received a woman's resume. Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview. VCs investing disproportionately in male CEOs is hardly surprising because even if they have no bias, they know their money is on the line for someone who will be up against the rest of the tech and business world, with all of its bias. Diversity quotas are harmful. Great, now nobody takes you seriously not just because they're biased to begin with but also because you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota. That isn't helping anybody. A much better option is to get more women to apply. I have actually taken bias training and yes, I'm biased as hell. I don't like this fact and try to correct it. I also point it out to my male peers. But it's really hard to overcome when nobody has non-junk data and nobody is showing up to interview. And are we allowed to be open to the fact that maybe, on average, women are weaker performers in tech? It seems like that is not allowed to be an option. It should also be a possibility that they're actually stronger performers in tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence). Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of programmers should be women doesn't get us anywhere.

rmc 11y ago
> Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview. The study ( http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html ), asked interviewers to rank how "hireable" the candidate was, and what they would offer the candidate. Yes, the resume gets you the interview, not the job. But without the interview, you definitly don't get the job. If changing the apparent gender of the resume gets you better odds of getting the interview, then the gender gets your more/better jobs! This is science. Creationists are invested in believing the earth is 6,000 years old and don't like evidence that contradicts that. Antivaxxers don't like evidence that shows vaccines are safe. Homeopaths don't like evidence that shows that it's just as good as water. And here we have evidence that men get more interviews. > you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota To quote the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice". You (and I) have a bug in our brains. We are not actually able to correctly deduce with 100% accuracy whether someone is more qualified than other. Yes a female quota might mean that there's a woman who's being hired when you would have given that job to a man, but how do you know the man is definitly more qualified? The function in your brain that calculates "qualified" has a bug and isn't always accurate about "most qualified".

malandrew 11y ago

So I noticed that maternity leave is cited often, but that strikes me as a lesser problem in tech relative to the cost of housing. Raising a family in San Francisco is not a cheap proposition. Rent keeps rising in the Bay Area. Let's do a thought experiment. Lets say a man and a women in tech both moved here 5 years ago and each got small rent-controlled studio apartments for about $1000/month. Let's say they met and started dating two years ago. They decide they want to move in together. They can forego one dwelling and share a studio apartment, or they can look on the market. They look around for a one-bedroom. Two years ago, a one bedroom is probably going for $2500 a month. Fast forward to today and they decide to have a kid. Everything is great for the first 1-2 years, but by 2017, they feel like they need a 2-bedroom. They start looking around and see that the only options cost about $5000 to $6000 month. That's a huge cost of living increase before the cost of child-rearing and is far more likely to drive people (men and women) out of the industry than unfavorable maternity leave policies. In the thought experiment above, both a man and a woman both leave tech in SF together once they are forced out of the area by the conflict between housing prices and raising a family. The different is that the age distribution for men is likely to much broader than for women because of the biological clock. A man marrying and having a kid could likely be anywhere from 27 or so to past 40, where the range for women is likely to have approximately the same lower bound, but a much lower higher bound. I suspect 33 or so. This would suggest that housing prices are more likely to prematurely end the careers of women in tech in San Francisco.

tzs 11y ago

> A culture that rewards facetime and encourages people to regularly stay late or eat dinner at the office puts employees with families at a disadvantage (particularly mothers), and research shows that working excess hours does not actually improve productivity in the long-term since workers begin to experience burn out after just a few weeks I suspect excessive hours also contributes to unintentional harassment [1], mostly against single women. Most people are heterosexual. Most of them want to find partners to have relationships with ranging from casual flings to long term romantic relationships. If people are expected to work long and hard hours they will be left without the time and/or energy for activities outside of work where they can seek out sexual and romantic partners. Since people are not going to give up on seeking out sexual and romantic partners inevitably some of that activity will shift to the office. If that office has significantly more single men than single women it is going to get particularly annoying for the women. [1] By "unintentional harassment" I mean actions that are takes as harassment by the person they are directed to, but are not intended as harassment by the person taking the action.

imh 11y ago

Surprised not to see this [1] cited next to the Yale study for the sake of completeness. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract