I'm disappointed that "Key Reality" #2 and #4 in an article about addressing a gender related issue are both unsupported gender stereotypes. Those points could just as easily say 'people' instead of 'women', and as near as I can tell be just as true. I'm quite willing to believe that "People" tend to be conservative about switching jobs, especially if they've had a negative experience in the past. And I can see tech interviews set up "people" for failure; but I don't see anything specific to women in that, unless you want to start from some really negative stereotypes. Working on those issues will probably help your offer acceptance rate, regardless of gender - but you need to be sure you can still distinguish good candidates from bad candidates, so you can't just toss them entirely.
So that leads us to the contrast between point #3, don't lower hiring standards, and the conclusion - a method of trying to get better results from reduced experience requirements when hiring. Getting good results from less experience is definitely something important and useful, but less experience -is- a lower standard, so I think the most interesting topic is there. Is watching people in hacker school really enough of an equalizer compared to years of experience? How does it compare to running an intern or co-op program? Is there any problem with the sponsored hackers getting trained on Etsy's dime but working for a competitor? How is hacker school different/better than working with a local university?
When I read the article I knew someone would complain about those points and that'd it'd be the most upvoted comment.
Point #2 I'll grant them. Maybe it's an over generalization and maybe it's not. It is however what they have seen in their experience so it's certainly their reality. Point #4 is a little odd, but I'm also willing to give them the benefit of the doubt given everything they have done and are trying to do. Taken in the greater context I find it incredibly uncool to cry wolf at the slightest miscue. It'd be much easier to discuss sensitive issues if the first reaction wasn't to grab a pitchfork and rally the troops.
Let's try this instead. Dear Etsy, I didn't fully understand your comment about interview processes generally setting women up for failure. Could you elaborate? Thanks.
Point #4 is about interview anxiety, and the confrontational approach used by too many interviewers. These are the kind of interviewers that keep asking technical questions until they find something you don't know, just so they can deflate your ego during the interview.
And yes, it's a problem that less-aggressive guys have to deal with as well. Sometimes we have to choose a bad situation, and sometimes it causes us to work for a competitor instead. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem, a pain point for some people, which could be solved.
These are the kind of interviewers that keep asking technical questions until they find something you don't know, just so they can deflate your ego during the interview.
If I ask questions at difficulty levels 1-7, and you flunk 7, I know you are a 6. If I stop at 4, all I know is that you are >=4.
Or you could discuss concepts at difficulty levels 1-7 and gauge how well I'm keeping up. The conversational interview is just as effective, more disarming, and more pleasant. I'd dare say it's more humane.
True, but that's not what he's referring to. He's talking about one-upmanship, which I've seen more of than the sensible testing you're talking about. I call the former "dick-waving contests", usually followed by suggesting they put their ego back in their pants.
The problem here is the pressure of the time limit which is only compounded by starting off easy in the beginning where there is more time and then ending with the hardest problems which take the longest to solve. Then the question as was raised in the original point 4 is what are you really trying to interview for - speed or the ability to develop a solution in a collaborative manner given a minimum expectation of intelligence?
You can start with a higher-level discussion, such as this:
"Tell me about a time when your team's site/service went down at a critical time (like 10am Monday morning, or maybe it got "slashdotted" on launch day), how you determined the root cause, and how service was restored."
Lots of people are good at BSing such discussions. It's a lot harder to BS with code. Why waste time with a coarse filter when I can start immediately with the fine filter?
A lot of really smart engineers that I know personally are really bad in interview situations because they are extremely artificial and stressful, while they perform really well in normal (yet potentially also stressful) work situations. In fact, one guy I know flunked an interview exactly because of this even though I know he's really good at what he does (because I've known him a long time).
I think a lot of it is about interview anxiety and, if in general you are in a market where the perception is that you may not be as good as other candidates simply because of your gender, the baseline interview anxiety for women might be higher so you would expect to see worse performance just because of this.
>These are the kind of interviewers that keep asking technical questions until they find something you don't know
Don't make the mistake of assuming that asking harder and harder questions must mean I am trying to deflate your ego. I am trying to hire people who are smarter than me, and know more than me, and can bring something I am lacking to the team. I need to ask harder and harder questions to find those people.
* If they are hiring for junior positions, perhaps not;
perhaps they just expanded their junior engineering team.
* If nobody hires junior female engineers now, there will
be no senior female engineers later.
I don't know why anyone would be hesitant to join companies' with uncertain financials with unremunerated risk... probably has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with intelligence. Buying lottery tickets is not a wealth building strategy.
They talk a lot about diversity and then talk about ivy league, how much diversity are you really getting from focusing on such small segments of the workforce? Unless they are specifically targeting the Ivy league Harvard's grad gender ratio should mean absolutely nothing. I don't see what being born to wealthy parents has to do with good developers, or diversity.
The article might as well say "We're diverse because we hire people who think the same but have different genitals"
Your point about the Ivy League is, sadly, waay too true. The Ivy League is way too weak on socioeconomic diversity.
I think a classic, and rather accurate criticism of efforts to increase diversity is the notion of what "diversity" actually means. How many students does Harvard have who grew up in trailer parks in Appalachia? Certainly these students, culturally, would be more different, and therefore increase "diversity" more than a black student raised by a wealthy family in a New England suburb. What about an Asian student who is from a poor Hmong family in Minnesota? It seems current admission policies would lump her in with all of the other Asian students which the Ivy League has used a defacto cap to limit.
What has always been weird to me is the widespread observation (and most certainly accurate) that organizations with huge gender imbalances are more prone to weird groupthink type issues (Wall Street's excessive risk taking, hospital nurse/elementary school infighting), and a constant notion of "we need more women here." But when companies try to talk about solutions, there is suddenly a requirement to view women as exactly the same as men. If the effect of having more women in an organization will change the organization (for the better, according to research), it is very likely that women have some inherent attributes which make them differ from men.
"Unsupported gender stereotypes." Stated also as "opinions based on experience."
Possibly also "opinions based on experience that contradict one's equality indoctrination in kindergarten and therefore deserve loud public indignation."
The fundamental problem with most stereotypes is that there is generally much more information available by asking the individual.
eg. Instead of assuming women are more conservative, just ask the candidate, ask questions surrounding their risk profile.
There are great tools one can use from the finance industry to assess an individuals risk profile and tailor an employment package that meets their profile. Some candidates like myself (a guy) want more time off because we'd rather spend time with family than coding.
If you can create a tailored work environment you'll have no problem attracting talent that's diverse, instead of just a bunch of people who like to work 80 hours a week.
If you offer one size fits all employment you will hire people only for who that size fits. If you offer bespoke employment you'll hire bespoke individuals.
In a world of perfect information, that would work. In a Bayesian world (ours), it doesn't work.
Say that you have two types of widgets, widget A and widget B. Both have tolerances that fall along the same normal distribution but with different means. The mean for widget A is off by 0.1mm, and the mean for widget B is off by 0.2 mm.
Now, say that you measure each widget before accepting it, using a perfect measuring function. In this case, it doesn't matter whether you use widget A or widget B.
However, in the real world, you have an imperfect measuring function. Say that it gives you an answer along a normal distribution with some standard deviation.
Does this make the case for widget A or widget B different? Yes, you'll have more widgets fall within tolerances if you only use widget A.
To further improve the model, you would want to know the rejection cost of using an incorrectly sized widget and the supply-demand costs involved in only using widgets of type A. The results of the optimization problem would tell you how much of widget A versus widget B to use.
"Unsupported gender stereotypes." Stated also as "opinions based on experience."
Oh yeah, but you see here these "opinions based on experience" would be "personal prejudices formed by filtering the world using your existing beliefs" whereas "unsupported gender stereotypes" would mean unsupported by rigorous studies.
However, if you are too focused on hiring female engineers, you can bring the overall quality of the team down.
Now I do not mean female engineers are any less competent compared to male engineers, but I will give an example from personal experience.
The manager at my current day job has (in a team meeting) expressed that "females are better". The reasoning was that females are more creative and in general, more social. This idea of "females > males" was expressed multiple times over my time here, and it has really begun to take off. In our last round of hiring a co-op, our team lead said "the new co-op has to be a girl". In the screening phase, the team lead decided we would not interview a few of the male applicants, for no specific reason. We then picked 2 people (1 male, 1 female) for interviews. The female candidate was interviewed by myself, a co-worker, and the team lead. This candidate was not exceptional in any way and was not more skilled than the other candidate. She was hired the second the interview ended.
A year prior, we had a female co-op student who was on a 8 month term. 3 months into the term, she was given an offer by the manager for a full-time position. This offer was in secret, and other teams were not to hear about it until her last month. As she was still in school, she expressed that she wanted the job but wanted to finish her last year and graduate. And so the position (and budget), was saved for her for the year, regardless of whether or not she was able to graduate.
I have no problem against hiring female engineers. However, hiring female candidates over male candidates simply because of gender is discrimination, and that's not something I agree with. This kind of discrimination can also be detrimental to the success of the team/company.
Simple example: Let's assume 10 of 30 (about 33%) applicants are female. The team decides to select 10 people for interviews (yes there are places that do not interview based on fit alone but fit + headcount). Since there are only 10 females, if we only select females, there are a few problems. 1) We lose out on any male candidates that may be a better fit (which also comes from a pool of 20/30). 2) We're forced to spend money and resources on candidates that essentially have a 0% chance of being hired because they would not have passed the screening if sexism were not in play.
Oddly enough, the manager(s) at your current job are using sexist rhetoric about women being creative and social to create a policy where women who are hired have to meet a standard of behavior/performance that is higher than would be for any other candidate. While it may be that women are getting hired more often under this state of things, it really is quite sexist.
When you are underrepresented with a certain group of people, who don't start magically attributing sexist or racist attributes to them and demand they meet those stereotypes. Your job has way more problems then just hiring if that is how they approach things.
I agree that the sexist rhetoric is wrong or misplaced. However, if they have a need for people who are especially creative and social, it's fine for that to be part of the hiring bar. I see absolutely no reason to tie it to any stereotype, though.
"We have discovered that employees who are especially creative and social are more successful in our environment. Therefore, when we evaluate a candidate we are much more likely to consider people who are especially creative or social."
Set the bar that you need for your environment. Evaluate people against that bar.
Sexism is socially systemic sexual discrimination.
Racism is socially systemic racial discrimination.
Classism is socially systemic class-based discrimination.
This is why you'll find people who say "You can't be sexist against men." You can obviously discriminate against a man based on sex, but that's not part of a larger, overarching societal norm. When the discrimination becomes routine, ingrained, and pervasive, that turns it into an 'ism.'
Incidentally, this is exhibit A in Orwellian political redefinition. Instead of using the plain meaning of a word, you load it with political assumptions based on your manichean worldview so any word with a bad connotation cannot be applied to your side.
"You can't be sexist against men" is a classic Orwellian contradiction in that (by the plain meaning of the term) it itself is a sexist statement while simultaneously reinforcing this redefinition. It is so blatantly self-refuting that I'd long assumed it to be some kind of straw man, not something feminists actually said.
That you are unable to distinguish between an instance of sexual discrimination (called sexual discrimination) and systemic sexual discrimination (called sexism) does not mean anything political or Orwellian is afoot. Words have meanings. Ignorance of the meanings of words is easily solved. Stubborn refusal to recognize your own errors is rather less so.
I don't accept redefinitions of words that pack in political assumptions. Lots of people use "socialist" to mean "anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan" but we have no problem dismissing that as biased hyperbole.
What you're essentially doing is trying to pack into the word "sexism" the notion that everything in society is systemically biased in favor of men, at the expense of women. But rather than establishing and defending that notion, you pack it in as an unquestioned assumption so that you don't have to defend it explicitly.
As a result, you deliberately minimize any injustices suffered by men to the benefit of women, implicitly saying that it doesn't matter as much when a man faces sexual discrimination. Again, you could simply argue this point explicitly, but for some reason you're trying to pack it into your language.
Steve Klabnik's point, stated explicitly, would be something like this: "that instance of sexual discrimination against men, in favor of women, doesn't really count for much, because on aggregate, society still discriminates against women in favor of men." As far as I can tell that's what he meant, and it's even a defensible argument from a feminist perspective, but it also lays bare a lot of assumptions that not everyone might agree with, so it's couched in the superficial form of a semantic argument. This not only makes the controversial premises of the argument easier to swallow, but renders them in a form of a simple factual claim giving the illusion of certitude.
As far as the scope of this discussion is concerned, I don't have a problem with Mr. Klabnik's point, but simply the dishonest way he expresses it.
"Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex" (Google)
"prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women" (Merriam-Webster)
"prejudice or discrimination based on sex; behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex" (Wikipedia)
I think these are all perfectly acceptable "plain English" definitions of "sexism".
Definitions are nothing but arbitrary convention anyway--my point is that when you explicitly unpack the feminist definition of "sexism", seemingly semantic arguments like Mr. Klabnik's are packing in a lot of assumptions that deserve to be unpacked. Generally, I don't favor definitions that pack in tendentious assumptions for political purposes.
As you noted, those definitions are all arbitrary, but needless to say they leave out the entire history of the origin of the word, an origin which seeks to critically describe both individual instances of sexism as well as the systemic, social factors of sexism. It should be noted though that the Wikipedia definition does include something about more than just individual instances of sexism.
I disagree that there are extra meanings being packed into the word sexism beyond the meanings you cited. That you are unaware of the origins and issues that go into sexism doesn't remove the meanings of the word. To be fair, no mainstream outlet or publication tends to talk about things at that length and level for a variety of reasons, many of which are due to systemic sexism, but don't confuse common understanding for the only understanding. Common understandings that lack depth or more rigorous information are what contribute to a common understanding that promotes racism, sexism, and other issues.
That post seems to unpack more or less the same assumptions I'm unpacking:
"A running theme in a lot of feminist theory is that of institutional power: men as a class have it, women as a class don’t"
"What this imbalance of power translates to on an individual level is a difference in the impact of a man being prejudiced towards a woman and a woman being prejudiced towards a man"
Or as I called it: "the notion that everything in society is systemically biased in favor of men, at the expense of women", leading to the conclusion that "it doesn't matter as much when a man faces sexual discrimination".
Fine. We agree that the same assumptions are being packed into the feminist usage of the word "sexism". My argument is that these assumptions need to be called out and defended in this forum. If this were a feminist forum where everyone could be reasonably assumed to have already accepted those assumptions already, perhaps the implicit jargon would be more appropriate. Furthermore, the act of imposing this jargon is a backhanded way of imposing the assumptions behind that jargon.
I totally agree about the inaccessibility of a lot of feminist literature, including things on sexism. Talking about the meaning and reasons behind sexist incidents and sexism, as steveklabnik did, is important and esp. so in places where basic, fundamental info is not known.
There's nothing Orwellian about that, though, because we are talking about information that hasn't been made available or accessible for others rather than taking terminology and changing its meaning to suit a political agenda diametrically opposed to what the original term stood for. In fact, that mass media has perpetuated sexism and feminism as things that do not have a systemic basis or ignoring that they do is the more Orwellian thing going on in US society.
As for imposing assumptions, the notion that using terminology correctly and explaining and examining that terminology is somehow backhanded in a discussion or argument is silly. How else are we going to get better understanding without using actual terms and the ideas behind them?
Your argument seems to be that since feminists invented the word, it's pretty much up to them what it means. Fine. My response: that definition still packs in assumptions unfairly and it would be better to abandon the word entirely, at least in forums where the assumptions packed into that word's definition are not universally held premises.
Incidentally, this is Hitlerian argumentation style. Instead of making a straightforward argument, you load it with emotional baggage to support your Stalinesque worldview.
Admittedly, if you haven't read 1984 the Orwell reference probably went over your head. "Manichean" is a word you should just look up, as it is quite useful.
> Admittedly, if you haven't read 1984 the Orwell reference probably went over your head.
Thanks for pointing this out. I did go through high school, so I'm hip to your extremely erudite reference.
> "Manichean" is a word you should just look up, as it is quite useful.
Really. I don't find much use for it. Maybe if I just spent more time virtuously casting my opponents as evil users of "Orwellian" tactics, I could also point out that _their_ worldview is manichean.
Cool story bro. (I've seen you comment on these stories before, and I know I'm not going to get anywhere with you, so know that I'm just choosing not to respond to you.)
It's fine if you don't respond--the strange thing about ideologies is that any two followers of them are largely interchangeable due to the lack of original thought involved.
Given recent events though, I'm surprised you're still going around setting yourself up as some type of moral authority. Someone who bullies women programmers doesn't really have much credibility on this issue, does he?
Steve explained that his tweet about @harthur's replace utility was not meant to disparage its author, or its code, but was meant to express his feelings about Node (i.e. the ecosystem for which replace was written). And, he apologized, "unequivocably", for the fact that his tweet had caused pain to @harthur:
My last blog post was quite a downer, so I want to do a short follow up for posterity.
First of all, there were some nice responses to it from Steve Klabnik and especially Corey Haines, who gave a very sincere straight-up apology. Several people have told me they are usually very nice, so keep that in mind.
So, your characterization appears to be incorrect and unfair.
I'm sorry, this is ridiculous. So if a Japanese person discriminates against me on the basis of race in Japan, it is racist, but do it in the US and it is "racial discrimination"?
How do I explain this... it is quite odd talking to someone who thinks your way. I know you exist but I struggle even to wrap my head around it.
Racism/sexism/whatever... a wrong is a wrong. Fight it wherever you find it. My example was an interaction between two people, two individuals, and now you're talking about "discussing social groups". Racism and sexism is caused by considering people as "groups" and not individuals, and your solution is to... do more of the same. Recursively. All I have seen the left do in the last 40 years is carve up society into ever smaller and more specific groups with associated victim-hood points and it doesn't get us anywhere. All you are doing is entrenching division.
> My example was an interaction between two people, two individuals, and now you're talking about "discussing social groups".
Two people aren't a group?
> Racism and sexism is caused by considering people as "groups" and not individuals, and your solution is to... do more of the same.
You might actually really like Latour, who's a sociologist who argues that his entire field is wrong because of too much abstraction. I've been reading 'Reassembling the Social' lately, and it's fascinating.
That said, I actually disagree that the cause is 'thinking of people as groups,' but you of course are entitled to your opinion.
> All you are doing is entrenching division.
I'm not sure how advocating that we have more women in computer science is 'entrenching division.'
Talking about experiences and pointing out issues that are driven by more than just individual encounters is very important for groups of people. to gain control over their lives and to break free from the kinds of violence and oppression they face. By definition, racism and sexism is discriminatory to whole groups of people, talking about the collective experience of that doesn't make those oppressions stronger.
> You can obviously discriminate against a man based on sex, but that's not part of a larger, overarching societal norm.
I would argue that many of the pressures men face, such as those to "man up" in difficult situations rather than freely express their feelings, counts as a routine, ingrained, and pervasive form of sexual discrimination. Even if I fully agree with your definition of sexism, that doesn't mean that sexism against men is nonexistent.
According to this line of argumentation, anyone doing OOP is calling it the wrong thing.
(This particular dictionary has a reference to a 'computing dictionary' waaaaay down at the bottom. But if you picked up an actual dictionary, or went to a different one, it wouldn't be there. Dictionaries have different things for the same words!)
Yes, we understand that you wish to redefine words to make them more suitable to you. It is not ignorance of your dialect, it is a rejection of it. Those words already have meanings in English, and people are not wrong for continuing to use those meanings. You are welcome to use whatever meaning you wish, but saying "my clique uses a totally different meaning for those words, so you are wrong now" is not a constructive activity.
You are aware that disciplines exist, right? And that within those disciplines, words often are used as technical terms, with meanings that do not exactly map on to colloquial usage? For example, when physicists talk about 'energy', they are not talking about a state of mind that people can have (eg "I'm really full of energy today"). That doesn't mean that physics is wrong or orwellian, it just means that you need to get an education before making pronouncements about it. In the case of "sexism", when we are talking about it here we are usually talking about it from within the disciplines that actually deal with it (either sociology, gender studies, modern history, philosophy or etc). Within all of these fields, sexism is a technical term that means (with slight variations between fields) exactly what steveklabnik above summarised it as.
>In the case of "sexism", when we are talking about it here we are usually talking about it from within the disciplines that actually deal with it
No, we are not. That is the entire point. We are not in a women's studies department. We are not women's studies majors. We are not talking about women's studies. So the terminology of women's studies is not relevant.
>Within all of these fields, sexism is a technical term that means (with slight variations between fields) exactly what steveklabnik above summarised it as.
No, it is not. History and philosophy do not use sexism that way. Only a minority of sociologists do. The only example you listed that is actually correct is women's studies.
As I have said elsewhere, the terminology is relevant because it is the terminology of the disciplines that deal with this stuff. I can accept that people will want to talk about this stuff without knowing anything about it at first - that makes sense, and without already knowing that it has already been studied how would they know? When people learn that there is actually a prior literature and well developed disciplines that deal with this stuff however, then deliberately turning their back on even the most basic part of the literature and the discipline when there are people who are literally explaining it in front of them is rank anti-intellectualism worthy only of contempt and scorn.
When looking at issues of gender in history, modern history does use the language of privilege - ie sexism might be talked about as manifest in terms of what records or history is recorded and treated as important by the people who are being studied. When discussing issues of gender, modern Philosophy has to deal with system level analysis - hence the use of ideas of systemic sexual discrimination as sexism. Recent sociologists seem to non-controversially use this terminology also.
There is no branch of science which defines the words that way. And even if there were, rejecting a redefinition of a common word is not rejecting an entire branch of science. If everyone involved in astronomy suddenly decided the word large only applies to things greater in size than the sun, people continuing to use large to refer to their soda would not be rejecting astronomy as a consequence.
Also, you appear to be deliberately misrepresenting a small subset of sociologists as being representative of the entire field. That redefinition of sexism isn't even universally accepted in women's studies and feminism, much less sociology. It is in fact a clique that uses those terms that way, not a branch of science.
You are wrong. These terms (and the definitions steveklabnik gave) are very important in sociology, and were coined in large part by sociologists looking for a way to describe social phenomenon that they'd observed.
We've used them in the vernacular (which is the dictionary definition) to describe individual offenses, but when sociologists and academics use them (the field the terms came out of), it is very useful to describe a power structure and things that happen within that power structure.
I'm sad to see that steveklabnik has been downvoted so much on this board for saying something that is so very correct.
No, they are very important to sociologists who also happen to be into women's studies. Pretending all sociologists go along with that is dishonest.
>and were coined in large part by sociologists looking for a way to describe social phenomenon that they'd observed.
No they were not, see the rest of the thread.
>but when sociologists and academics use them
Which is relevant to lay-persons using them here on this forum and then being told they are wrong when they are not wrong?
>I'm sad to see that steveklabnik has been downvoted so much on this board for saying something that is so very correct.
I suspect the downvotes were more due to the way he told people their correct use of a term is incorrect, simply because there is a second correct use of that term.
If we were talking about astronomical phenomena, and we said that these formations were not very large (because they were smaller than the Sun), and you said that they were super large (because they were bigger than a breadbox), you would be obviously trolling. It is similar here; when discussing this stuff, we do it with the vernacular of the fields that study it, and objecting that it doesn't match up to colloquial usage is just trolling. Please stop being a troll.
If we were astronomers, you would have a point. This is not a women's studies department, we're not discussing women's studies. We're non-experts, discussing ordinary daily life. The field specific meanings are not appropriate, and telling people who use the general definition they are wrong is not constructive. Please stop accusing people of being a troll for no reason. It is also not constructive.
I'm not calling people trolls for no reason, though I take your point that in some cases (such as perhaps this one) it is not the correct response. So, my apologies.
However, we are still discussing the subject matter that things like Women's Studies and Sociology deal with, so using the terminology makes more sense than not using the terminology, especially when people who are going to actually be able to say anything useful about this will mostly either already know the terminology or quickly learn. Getting exasperated at people who will not use the correct terminology even after it is explained to them seems justified to me, in the same way that if some people kept saying that a "page" obviously only refers to either a piece of paper or a trainee knight or a trainee legislator, "because common English usage and anything else is Orwellian psyops" (quote marks indicating aggregate ranting of the hypothetical other), when we were talking about single page applications in the context of webapps, and they resisted correction, exasperation would be justified, and accusations of trolling would not be remiss.
So, I think that insisting on using the correct terminology from the disciplines that deals with something makes sense where we can, whenever we want to actually talk about something in a useful way, and people who insist that using the correct terminology is somehow a conspiracy or evil or whatever (to be clear, you have not suggested that, but others in this thread have) are totally trolls.
>However, we are still discussing the subject matter that things like Women's Studies and Sociology deal with, so using the terminology makes more sense than not using the terminology
No, it doesn't. The vast majority of people do not recognize the other meaning of the word. So in a discussion among ordinary people, like the one here, using the ordinary word's ordinary meaning is appropriate. The response from SJWs that everyone is wrong for using the word correctly is not reasonable.
There is a discipline which deals with this stuff. Being initially ignorant of that is fine - no one knows everything - but when people say "Look, there is a discipline that deals with this stuff, and here is how the terminology works and here is why" then replying (as you have done) "No, ignore that and use the colloquial usage when talking about this stuff" without watertight explicit reasoning as to why either that discipline does not apply, or some other discipline is a better fit, or the discipline is somehow flawed in a way that makes this terminology wrong, is stupid and also both morally and practically bad.
Do you understand this now, or do you think that the word 'page' should only be used to mean either 'paper' or 'position analogous to squire, but for either knightly or political office' even when we discuss webapps?
Did you even read that post? Not two sentences after the one you cite does Caroline Bird say:
> [Sexism and racism] have used to keep the powers that be in power.
A direct statement about the systemic, power imbalance nature of sexism. Sexism is both those individual instances of discrimination and the overall systemic and social issues that allow it to perpetuate.
Yes. I even understood it, which appears to be what's bothering you. The quotes you refer to, once again, does not support the claim. The statement "sexism has been used to do X" does not mean "the definition of sexism is X". Paint has been used to cover walls. That does not mean the definition of paint is "stuff that covers walls".
I think it's worth pointing out that the definitions you're using are relatively uncommon. That doesn't make them wrong, but it does mean that they're probably not the definitions that any of us learned in school, or the definitions that are mostly widely known and used. I'm all in favour of the idea that the meaning of words can change, but that normally goes alongside the idea that the meaning of a word is determined by its popular usage.
Personally, I think your usage is fine, and I think it represents a more precise concept, but I'm not surprised that it causes confusion and I'm not sure it's fair to blame everyone else for that.
Right! That's why I wrote the comment: people who haven't needed to care about this (coughmencough) generally... haven't needed to care. Dictionaries are really bad at terms of art:
etc. Both of these terms (and many more) have special meanings within computing that aren't in the dictionary. (This one has a reference to the 'computing dictionary' at the bottom.) Likewise, social scientists have terms of art.
> I'm not sure it's fair to blame everyone else for that.
Who am I blaming? I just mentioned that a term was being mis-used. No blame here. I expect people who've never been forced to confront their privilege to not have any understanding of the topic, by definition.
Well, yes, but terms of art are generally reserved for discussions among specialists. If I started using words like 'class' or 'object', I can be reasonably expected to be talking about OOP. Unless, that is, I'm attending a conference on Marxism, in which case nobody will assume that; they'll assume that I'm talking about sociological class and objectification. If I talk about 'master-slave hierarchies' on HN, I'm probably talking about database replication. In a race studies class, I'm talking about something entirely different.
I don't think it's entirely reasonable to say that people are 'mis-using' a word by adopting its most popular usage in a discussion between non-specialists, and I think it's doubly unreasonable to complain about the confusion being caused when you try to use the specialist definition.
If you're as aware of social science as you sound, then you'll be well-aware of the power of words, and the power of defining what a word means. By seeking to define a word, and implying that those who don't accept your definition as ignorant ("people who've never been forced to confront their privilege") and by insisting that it is they who need to change their vocabulary and not you who need to be more precise, you're behaving quite arrogantly; in the manner, if I might mischievously suggest, of a person who believes in the privileged position of their knowledge on the subject and their right to tell others how to speak.
When we're discussing the social implications of women in technology, it doesn't seem un-reasonable to me to use terms of art from social science. Maybe it does to you?
> implying that those who don't accept your definition as ignorant ("people who've never been forced to confront their privilege")
The point of privilege is that you don't notice it. I think the disconnect here is that you assume that I'm making some kind of judgement about ignorance. I don't think people who are ignorant are 'bad.' Everyone needs to learn these things sometime.
> in the manner, if I might mischievously suggest, of a person who believes in the privileged position of their knowledge on the subject and their right to tell others how to speak.
The thing is that in this case, it's (to switch back to CS ;) ) a leaky abstraction. If someone thinks "I get discriminated against too, as a man, so I've experienced sexism" they're totally talking past people who are discussing what it is for women to experience sexism, since they (the man) are only experiencing sexual discrimination. The 'pervasive' part is significant. It's not about policing words: it's about getting men to understand that they have not and will not be able to experience sexism in the way a woman does, even if they are, at times, discriminated against based on their gender. You're absolutely right that words have power: that's why we shouldn't let people use the wrong ones.
The problem is, at least superficially, you didn't have anything to say except for trying to shift the conversation from plain English to feminist jargon. (Of course, highlighting the specific shift you chose translated to rather substantial contribution, which I've unpacked elsewhere. I wonder why you had to be so oblique about it.)
> The point of privilege is that you don't notice it. I think the disconnect here is that you assume that I'm making some kind of judgement about ignorance. I don't think people who are ignorant are 'bad.' Everyone needs to learn these things sometime.
The question of whether one acknowledges one's own privilege is orthogonal to the question of word usage. I believe that I acknowledge my own privilege, but I do not see the benefit in trying to impose word usages on people, particularly in a threaded comment on a technology discussion forum. I don't believe that it's a good strategy for persuading people of anything, which is a shame as there is much persuading to do.
My interpretation is that these kinds of word usage distinctions serve as signals; you want to signal enlightenment through the "correct" usage of a word, but what you're not understanding is that this is going to piss off people who don't understand what you're trying to say. Insisting that the onus is on them to learn the "correct" meaning just pisses them off more, especially when they go off to read a dictionary or encyclopedia and it tells them that, in fact, they were right all along. This just creates an "us and them" scenario in which the two sides identify themselves by linguistic characteristics. We're doing this to each other right now even though I bet we agree a lot on the actual issues.
> If someone thinks "I get discriminated against too, as a man, so I've experienced sexism" they're totally talking past people who are discussing what it is for women to experience sexism, since they (the man) are only experiencing sexual discrimination.
Nope. It depends entirely on what you think the word means. What does the keyword "sexism" in the above statement represent? If you think "sexism" means "discrimination on the grounds of sex" then "I get discriminated against too, as a man, so I've experienced sexism" is a true statement (assuming said discrimination occurs). Nowhere does this imply that the experience for men is the same as the experience for women - sexism (defined as sexual discrimination) can differ by degree and by frequency, and we'd all acknowledge that it is of far greater degree and far more frequently experienced by women. It is not obvious that this presents any difficulty in discussing the matter accurately. You could easily say "pervasive sexism" or "systemic sexism" or "institutional sexism" when you want to make a further qualifying point about the nature of the discrimination taking place.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree, as neither of us is going to be proved right here. I'll conclude by saying that I think people often say quite reprehensible things about sexism on HN and elsewhere and I don't wish to encourage them by disagreeing with people who are obviously trying to do the right thing. That said, I am not sure the battle over semantics is the one we need to win and fighting it may well be counter-productive.
You've clearly missed the point. In an ideal world there would be no discrimination. My post was not even about how the system is biased against men, it was about how bias against men also exists.
It is extremely difficult to achieve a perfect balance of a 50/50 gender split in the industry. There isn't a 50/50 ratio in Computer Science/Engineering to begin with. If a company or manager tries to bring the ratio to 50/50 (like in my post), you are bound to hire people who are not a good fit simply because you eliminated a portion of the pool for no valid reason. Of course bad hires occur all the time, but trying to force a 50/50 split or a female majority when the supply is not there will only increase that chance.
Sexism against females in the industry is nothing to be laughed at. And the skewed gender ratio within the industry is also real. However, we cannot fix that ratio unless we increase the amount of female students in Computer Science/Engineering.
(Often in feminist spaces, when people talk about removing systematic disadvantages against women, someone'll suggest how it's really men that are disadvantaged now. This has morphed into a meme-like joke of "WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ!")
My son's elementary school appears to be hugely discriminatory towards men. Less than 10% of the teachers are male, all of the leadership at the school is female. Yet I don't see any gender equality organizations complaining about this very widespread reality.
Gloria Steinem always argued that gender equality would only be achieved when society believed women could do what men could do, and men could do what women could. The latter half of that statement offers zero political advantages for the women's studies faculty members which make up the cornerstone of the gender equality movement of this country, and therefore Gloria's full vision is ignored.
Girls have lower scores on math than boys. Explanation: There is something wrong wtih the way math is being taught.
Boys have lower scores on writing than girls. Explanation: Boys are naturally biologically inferior when it comes to processing language.
Boys have lower grades overall than girls. Explanation: Boys aren't as well behaved or attentive as girls.
If the situation were reversed, there would be conversations about how to redesign the school day to erase the overall grade gap between female and male students. But because the group in question isn't a classically oppressed category, the cause of failure is immediately considered to be an internal factor.
See my point? Within some of the social sciences, there is a very potent politically motivated push to search for only external, rather than internal, causes for issues within any group which is considered socially disadvantaged. Nobody has any doubt that Saudi Arabia's Wahabi influenced culture has major internal influences on undermining their economy, but if the same analysis is conducted on any disadvantaged cultural groups within a Western nation, the group conducting said analysis is shamed as being bigoted.
Except, well, often times equality / anti-sex-discrimination law does benefit men. It's now illegal for driving insurance companies to charge men more than women (even though they are statistically worse drivers) (in EU).
Additionally there are attempted to get more men into professions where they were traditionally underrepreseted.
So yes, equality and governmental agencies are complaining about the lack of men in some professions and trying to increase it. The photo on the NHS's "Nursing" career page ( http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-career/nursing/ ) is a man. (The NHS is the UK's public sector health system and is one of the largest employers in the world.)
You do not appear to have done any research and are claiming that "no-one tackling the lack of men in some cases", when in fact, they are.
With your specific examples, you don't give any citations, so I wonder if you're cherry picking? Humanity is big and people will have lots of opinions. You're telling me that the most common response to lower grades for boys as opposed to boys is an appeal to biology? Got any citations?
I don't know about this VAW Act (seems to be US thing), the US isn't so great on the equality law anyway (since there is no legal maternity leave, marital status or sexuality isn't a protected ground etc.) If I were to talk about how China does voting, would that be a fair cop against democracy?
Incidentally this is why it's so important to point out instances of discrimination against men. There's alot of hostility to the idea and interests that want to perpetuate such sentiment.
Although there are cases where men are disadvantaged and victim of gender roles, often the "WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ" is exclaimed when ever anyone says anything about women being disadvantaged, comparing a molehill to a mountain.
That ~40,000 men kill themselves in U.S is not a molehill. That men are statistically more likely to get a much harsher prison sentence and are filling up the prison-industrial complex in record numbers is not a molehill. That men are on-course to be outpaced in college degrees 2:1 is not a molehill. As users of ycombinator we're most likely privileged men that have never experienced any of this. But don't be so self-absorbed to assume that your cushy life is representative of the average man.
Thats because it's true but it's also true of all positive discrimination. Sex, Age or Race should never really be a deciding factor when you're attempting to decide who to hire, but we live in a world where people are trying to right wrongs that potentially aren't wrong anymore, but definitely have been in the past and occasionally probably still are.
I read somewhere (I'm pretty sure it was the WSJ) that Woman doing the same job with the same experience level are paid, on average, 8% more than their male counterparts. This is while militant feminists are still screaming about the average or median wage gap of around 20% without taking into considering that woman don't typically do the same jobs as men nor work as many years.
If you really want an effort to balance the demographic, do it at school level. Open a few female only CS schools / degrees, let them have it and lets see if they really compete with men both in numbers and in skill. It may be they just need a better environment to learn, but I also wouldn't be surprised if in general woman simply aren't interested in the subject for the same reasons boys play with cars and girls play with dolls.
In reality woman often have better life choices than men. Many of them have life plans which consist of landing a man and choosing not to work. Others can choose to work in a male dominated field and will likely get preferential treatment with regards to education, recruitment and renumeration. There is no such efforts to even out historically woman centric jobs that I know of, so they likely win there too. That however doesn't mean there aren't problems with sexism in sausage factories and that it should be allowed but I know if I was running a company, my ethos on hiring would be to get the best person I can for the role and the rest of it hopefully wouldn't factor in.
I think most people have this figured out though and most people are reasonable enough not to listen to the nut cases on either side. For those who do, I'd rather not work with them anyway.
I read somewhere (I'm pretty sure it was the WSJ) that Woman doing the same job with the same experience level are paid, on average, 8% more than their male counterparts.
Interesting. Got a citation? That would of course be illegal. Equality law doesn't say "You can't pay women less than men", it says "You cannot pay people less based on their gender".
Similar laws have been used to require (in EU) that you cannot charge men more for driving insurance than women.
"Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women's earnings are going up compared to men's."
I'm not sure on the original source, but thats the WSJ sorta citing it. If it is true, I'm not sure it'd strictly be illegal but it does suggests that feminists who don't understand equality is about fairness rather then sameness may be pushing further than they should.
It's simple supply and demand. If a minority of the engineers graduating from college have a particular trait (e.g. blue eyes), then if Silicon Valley companies compete to have a 50/50 split of blue eyed engineers vs non-blue eyed engineers, they'll end up paying blue eyed engineers more for the same skill level. (Unless the skill distribution of blue eyed engineers is somehow skewed higher than non-blue eyed engineers.)
A cynic might imagine that a percentage increase is easy if you don't have many female employees to start with.
From the article:
"At the time of the talk, Etsy’s had twenty women on its 110-person engineering team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase from the previous year. It’s not quite hockey stick growth, but it’s a huge step forward."
Still, clearly it's a huge problem in the industry, so props to Etsy for trying to tackle it.
* hiring any software developer right now is seemingly an uphill task, driving up salaries.
* If women are discriminated against in IT (and lets face it ...) then there is a huge pool of under-tapped engineers out there - whilst many are not in software right now, there is an equal number of talented, driven, intelligent women who could enter the profession.
* If only we could learn from the experiences of people like etsy we could double the pool of software talent.
* If we can double the pool of available talent, hiring will become easier and salaries will plummet.
* ...
* Stuff that - lets keep being sexist, and bash etsy for trying.
> lets keep being sexist, and bash etsy for trying
No, lets stop circle jerking about how progressive we are at the expense of reason.
> If women are discriminated against in IT (and lets face it ...) then there is a huge pool of under-tapped engineers out there
If this was actually true, then people would try and keep it secret, because it could be so profitable. A true "huge pool of under-tapped" resources would sell itself, not have to be pushed so mindlessly.
No one is bashing Etsy; it's just this concept is kind of silly, I could go on Monster.com, search for software engineers and only make offers to the female ones, that would get me an engineering team of 100% women! I am not sure that would prove anything, though.
Put a job on monster and see if you get any women applying - in my experience I have never had more than a handful of women applying. Build a complete team? Unlikely.
Anyone from these follow-a-cv-through-HR-to-hire apps got actual stats on application ratios by gender?
I have to admit I never stopped to look at why (the headlong rush perhaps) - most women I knew in IT had come up through the ranks in that company.
And now I think I should look at what happened - I want to know how to get 50/50 applications let alone actual hires.
But sorry. I reject the idea you could easily build a (qualified or even strong junior) team from women only by putting out an ad on a bog standard job site
It seems to take a lot more than that and it may be a mystery why
> If this was actually true, then people would try and keep it secret, because it could be so profitable.
This doesn't make sense to me. If we say that there is a systemic bias against women being hired in tech jobs, it follows that women will be systemically excluded from those jobs even when they apply, or may leave industry after experiencing discrimination. It follows then that there may very well be a large pool of untapped talent that, by definition, will not be tapped by existing business without explicit attention paid to the fact that discrimination against hiring women is happening.
Very encouraging article but this bit is super depressing, and speaks to deeper problems with discrimination in our industry: "Etsy’s seen the most success when there’s either zero or two women engineers on a team...because if there’s only one, she’s a woman engineer as opposed to just an engineer."
I wonder how Etsy defines "most success" in the teams of zero or two women.
I'm a female dev and I don't feel weird on all male teams. Just another team member. But I did feel singled out when the other female developer and I were mostly assigned to work together.
Not that I don't love working with other ladies, but making it any kind of policy makes me feel more segregated than included.
> I'm a female dev and I don't feel weird on all male teams. Just another team member. But I did feel singled out when the other female developer and I were mostly assigned to work together.
Could it have been to make her feel more comfortable? With certain jobs I've had, my male co-workers would communicate differently with the other males than they would with me. Sometimes they'd talk to me like I was removing my training wheels, other times more formally, and other times less seriously. This changes with time (well, okay, not sometimes), but that was the initial approach.
I remember one manager who did that as a matter of policy to save on the sexual harassment suits. He didn't trust his male engineers. It was a "see how many stereotypes we believe true" type of situation.
The title of this article is misleading. From the article:
At the time of the talk, Etsy’s had twenty women on its 110-person engineering
team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase
from the previous year.
The year over year difference in growth rate is ~500%, the actual growth rate is 18%.
I read this as: 18% of 110 is 20. If they started with
4 and hired 18, that would be a "four and half times"
increase (perhaps modulo replacement or non-FTE hires).
In any case, good for Etsy for investing in training
rather than just spending placement fees.
Seems like a grammatical error in the article. They have 20 now, which is about 18% of their eng team, and I guess they had 4 to start with. This is ~+450% growth but it's off such a negligible base (~5% assuming they also hired some men that year) that the whole "500% growth" claim is only interesting as a marketing statement, so it kind of undercuts the rest of the article's value.
It's like a school with one minority student out 100 letting in two more and then bragging about "200% growth in minority students."
I'm not taking away from what they did - just how they're positioning it based on a growth figure.
Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by the fact that they don't have a "diversity" ?
And I know that there are competent women out there, but I find very hard to believe that a sharp increase of women in your company will make your team better.
Even them end admitting that the women they are hiring are junior engineers, and that they could not find senior engineers (probably because the few that exist are already happy where they are and won't switch jobs).
FTA: "Pitt County Memorial Hospital...boasts one of the best records nationally at hiring men as nurses.
About 10.5 percent of the hospital's registered nurses are male -- a stellar showing considering that men make up only about 5.7 percent of registered nurses nationally.
Attracting more men to nursing is seen as one way to extend the supply of registered nurses, who perform much of the hands-on patient care in hospitals."
Second, people here talk about that too. In an article that you should have read just recently: "hiring for diversity will set up better recruiting opportunities. Consider Harvard’s graduating computer science class: forty-one percent of the students are women, and an inability to hire talented females will start to significantly impact your ability to recruit altogether."
You said that nursing is only talking about increased male participation in terms of benefits for the industry, not the men - implying (perhaps unintentionally) that this is different to CS, because CS is focused on benefits for women. I pointed out CS talk on diversity also talks about benefits to the industry (/company), specifically in terms of increasing the pool of available workers.
If I misread your implication, then I'm sorry, but I don't know what your point was.
"The NHS thrives on equality and diversity. In some specialties, such as general practice, we know that almost a third of the emerging workforce are overseas-qualified. Without these immigrant workers the NHS would come to a standstill.
Despite this, many international medical graduates (IMGs) who have been the workhorses of the NHS, are over-represented in the lowest paid, least glamorous specialties in the least popular parts of the country. Some of them have faced racism, less recognition for awards and slow promotion in their working life."
I think jbattle might have meant that you're exposed to a lot of articles about promoting gender diversity in CS since you follow CS/startup sites (such as HN). If you followed sites or news aggregators for fields where the gender distribution is reversed (nursing or psychology both come to mind), you might see some of the same concerns raised about the lack of male participants.
ETA: Just saw jbattle's post - guess that's not what he meant! Sorry to have spoken for you :)
Some industries or professions are male-dominated because the industry itself has been around for a long time and thus has historically been male-dominated. Weirdly, those industries are probably diversifying faster than IT because they were the first obvious targets for women wanting to "break the glass ceiling" - being the first female lawyer, professor or general in a particular firm/university/country is quite a prestigious achievement, and books and movies are made about those kinds of people (though actually this makes me realise that I'd love to read a book or watch a movie about a woman who does something cool as a software developer - and no, Hackers doesn't count). It's easier to bring external political pressure on those industries partly because everyone regards them as important, and locking women out of 'important' industries was probably regarded as a major problem to solve for politicians. Also, the first women to achieve something close to workplace equality with men were probably relatively high-status women to begin with, and they would have wanted to break into prestigious professions.
Programming and IT has not, until recently, been regarded as particularly high-status, and it was not regarded as a problem for society at large that most of the people doing it were men. But now people regard software and IT as very important - people like Steve Jobs or Aaron Swartz or Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Berners-Lee have a similar order of influence in society as, say, senior judges, politicians or scientists. It now seems unreasonable that, if "code is law" (in Larry Lessig's phrase), the law is being written mostly by men.
I guess those are the political reasons why people regard the gender balance in software as 'problematic'. There are other reasons too - greater gender diversity may lead to greater diversity of thought, and this is generally a good thing; women may bring different skills and attitudes which may be beneficial (though this is by no means guaranteed, and certainly doesn't mean that any given woman is going to do this); purely personally, I've worked well with women in project management, business analysis and other roles and I'd like to see similarly talented women doing programming too.
The question of why Etsy are doing what they're doing is intriguing though. If one believes that sexism is rife, and that self-interest of the firm concerned argues against spending money training female developers who aren't necessarily even going to work for you, then it is almost impossible to explain the behaviour described in the OP. One of the assumptions must be wrong, I guess.
I never considered highly bureaucratic industries male dominated, where I live, 60% of middle managers, lawyers, etc... are women.
Also women dominate retail, and the service sector in general.
I see male dominated industries that don't bother with gender balance, being construction (and I am not talking only about the field workers, but also engineers, architects, etc...), automobiles, metallurgy, window cleaning (I never saw a woman window cleaner!), sports equipment manufacturing, fishing, farming (I know personally a female farmer that is bloody rich, but she is a exception, and she inherited her farm from her late husband... she is a good farmer though), electricity, telco (excepting call centers and support system of course).
To be honest, given the legal system and the prejudice of a lot of parents, you would have to be a fool or have 100% coverage surveillance cameras to hire a man to do child care / early childhood education.
If you worry the male child care provider might change your child's diapers or be the one to clean up your child incase of accidents, then you are part of that problem.
It's a question of social status. Programming used to be a low social status occupation. Skyrocketing pay and the second tech bubble changed that, so now there's an emphasis on hiring women programmers just like the emphasis on women doctors and women lawyers. Garbage collection is still low status, so women garbage collectors are a lower priority.
That's kinda true. It explains why women outside of the tech industry would look at the tech industry and say "there should be more women doing that kind of thing", when they wouldn't say that about garbage collection or being in prison. But I don't think the opinions of people outside of the industry are really what we're talking about here - this thread is discussing efforts within the industry to recruit more women.
I'd see it like this: 20 years ago, being a geek was Not Cool. Being a female geek was Very Not Cool, and it's still not something that society feels able to celebrate in the way that, say, being a female lawyer or doctor or CEO is regarded as good.
20 years ago, the average man would have been given shit by people for being a software developer, and some of these stereotypes still linger. Now things are different. Software developers are now highly paid, influential and respected. We've removed a lot of the stigma from being geeks, and this is a good thing, but the program is not complete yet. Being a proud, successful geek is still hard for women, in a similar way to how it used to be for men.
What people are trying to do here is not harm the interests of men in favour of the interests of women, but advance the interest of geeks against those who think that being a geek is something bad, and that being a female geek is unacceptable according to their idea of what women should be like.
Being excluded from high status professions hurts the social status of women as a whole. It's a legitimate concern if you're interested in raising the social status of women.
As far as the profession is concerned, there are probably a lot of women with the potential to become good programmers and it would be a shame to exclude them. So there is an argument from both sides. What changed is the status part of the question.
Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by the fact that they don't have a "diversity"
Sure you do. Often the industries tackled this years ago, and is a acknoledged problem.
Just picture the TV show Mad Men, set in the 1960s USA. The advertising industry moved from being male dominated then to a better now. How do you think that happened?
The article fails to mention how they are going to attract other minority groups such as African-Americans and Hispanics.
Yes, I am playing the Devil's Advocate. You cannot give yourself a pat on the back for only tackling one segment of the diversity problem and ignoring the rest.
A trucker is speeding down the highway along with a few other trucks.
He sees blue lights in his rear view mirror and pulls over.
"Officer, how can you pull me over?! There were at least 1/2 dozen other trucks going the same speed!"
Officer: Do you ever go fishing?
Trucker: Well, yes.
Officer: Tell me, did you ever catch ALL the fish?
Volunteering at an animal shelter does not mean you don't car about people. Attempting to improve conditions for women does not mean you don't care about people of color. Working to improve conditions for impoverished US citizens does not mean you don't care about people in the third world. Is my point coming thru?
It's irritating to always see some person chiming in about how if you are working for women you're ignoring Hispanics or some such BS. Both efforts are valid!! I can't believe Etsy is trying to at least make baby steps to helping women get into a male dominated very well paying field, and all you have is criticism. phooey.
I find it interesting that having significantly more male than female engineers is regarded as problem that needs to be proactively 'fixed'. There are a vast number of occupations where the gender ratio is skewed one way or the other. The tech industry seems to be obsessively fixated on an issue that doesn't seem to bother most other professions where such a disparity exists.
I imagine that, being steeped in the tech industry, you pay much more to our conversations than those of other industries. I would be hard-pressed to believe that other male-dominated or gender-skewed don't also think about these sorts of issues. Perhaps they just have other forums (like, say, Forbes magazine [1] or academic/industry journals [2]) to discuss them.
I didn't say there were none. I said most. Call me up when the trade organizations for construction, road work, plumbing, etc. have this as a topic of discussion on an almost weekly basis. Doesn't happen. Not to the extent it does with the tech industry.
My own personal theory, which is completely unsupported by anything other than my own experience and bias, is that it is a particular manifestation of the 'white knight' behavior that is so common among my peers.
Again, I am not saying that it is not a real issue, or that it is not worth discussing. I'm just pointing out that the tech industry has an unusual level of fixation on this issue.
At the heart of this gender dynamic is the need to separate the masculine from
the lesser valued feminine. Male nurses do this by employing strategies that
allow them to distance themselves from female colleagues and the
quintessential feminine image of nursing itself, as a prerequisite to elevating
their own prestige and power.
Now spin that into computer science and female and post it here. The fire will reach sky-high.
The key to hiring females: Have a product that appeals to females. It doesn't seem like rocket science in this case.
I don't want to down play hiring female engineers or hiring for diversity. I think both of those are important.
I graduated from college over 10 years ago but the reality then was that females made up a very minor percentage of my computer science/engineering class. It must've been somewhere around 5% (definitely below 10%).
Of the ones I knew that started their careers in software engineering, many (if not most) left programming for other tangential careers. That is, they went to business school and then came back to the industry as product/program managers.
Is that bad or is that good? Should we encourage one over the other?
I imagine that, over time, the percentage of women who stay in engineering dwindles significantly. Considering that the initial percentages you are working with out of school is already small, think of how much you're limiting your application pool if you're looking for an experienced female software engineer. Most of the good ones are probably already working at the large tech companies since they do a good job of grabbing these women right out of school.
While we're talking about diversity, what about other forms of it? How many african-american/latino/native-american engineers do you see in Silicon Valley? Why don't we talk about this more? Isn't there value in diversity across ethnicities? Latinos are the fastest growing segment in America.
"Historically we've kept all of this content locked away and only accessible to our companies - mainly to create a sense of confidentially and openness."
I might feel that I can be open with you about my alcoholism and drug abuse if I know that this will be kept confidential. It's a confusingly-written sentence but it's not an invalid concept.
Here is a question: I am an early employee at a small startup (5 people.) We don't have much space, nor do we have lots of cash. Which means we couldn't possibly set aside a few rooms to host hacker school - we just have a small office in Brooklyn. Nor do we have the cashflow to offer scholarships like Etsy has. We probably only have the budget to hire another engineer this year, and we rely a lot on contractors.
Not having the means to sponsor broad programs like this, What can I do - either as an individual, or as a company - to contribute to diversity?
There are lots of various localized groups for women in tech in most cities, many depending on their specialties. Some of them are mailing lists, some of them are Meetup groups, some of them are IRC channels. Tap into those communities with job listings and - if you're so inclined - encourage the likelihood that one of them will apply if you state that you're explicitly looking for women to fill the role. Good luck!
I just read the headline, but whenever someone quotes an astounding growth figure, you should ask about the base [1].
If you start a startup with one female engineer (maybe your total staff is 3-5 plus the founder(s)), and then you get funded and suddenly have the money to hire a couple dozen people, it's easy to see the possibility of having 500% growth.
Hasn't it been shown the more sexually egalitarian a society is, the more likely you are to find these gender imbalances in the work place? Less egalitarian societies have been found to have less of a gender imbalance in stereotypically gender imbalanced professions. Engineering is usually male dominated, and nursing is usually female dominated.
"At the time of the talk, Etsy’s had twenty women on its 110-person engineering team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase from the previous year. It’s not quite hockey stick growth, but it’s a huge step forward."
So that leads us to the contrast between point #3, don't lower hiring standards, and the conclusion - a method of trying to get better results from reduced experience requirements when hiring. Getting good results from less experience is definitely something important and useful, but less experience -is- a lower standard, so I think the most interesting topic is there. Is watching people in hacker school really enough of an equalizer compared to years of experience? How does it compare to running an intern or co-op program? Is there any problem with the sponsored hackers getting trained on Etsy's dime but working for a competitor? How is hacker school different/better than working with a local university?