Changing the Ratio of Women In Tech: How Etsy Did It

First time accepted submitter occidental writes in about Etsy's push to get more women engineers. "You’ve probably heard of Etsy, the bustling online marketplace for crafters and artists. You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of its customers are women, both buyers and sellers. Ditto that the Etsy team is a pretty good representation of the Earth’s gender ratio. Yet when Marc Hedlund took the helm of Etsy’s Product Development & Engineering department, 97% of the engineering department were men. Hedlund realized that in his nearly two decades in IT, he’s hired no more than 20 women for engineering positions. This began to bother him. Especially after his daughter was born."

Comments

Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[Karganeth]

Typically you see a rule like "at least 10% of the workforce m ust be x% female". This means that people will be hired according to their gender - sexism is built into the system. The same applies to many anti racist rules. You can't ever have rules that explicitly favor one gender over another.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[robthebloke]

Well, about a year ago I was working in a games company (~120 employees) that had no female developers, artists, or producers. In total there were three female employees: the office manager, the HR manager, and the cleaner. Over the seven years I worked there, we hired 3 women, but they'd all leave after about six months... possibly as a result of having 50+ horny games devs constantly trying to hit on them (in fairness, they may have left due to other reasons, but I doubt it helped much). It's sad to say, but in the games industry there are a large number of immature men (boys is a more accurate decsription), who think that women are nothing more than boobs on legs. They often act creepily around them, sending them unwanted valentines cards, hanging around their desks like bad smells, etc, etc. In short, these people just don't know how to interact properly in civilised society, especially around women.

I'm now working in a film VFX company, and the difference is night and day. On the software teams, about 20% of the employees are female, and on the art teams, it's about 50%. The female software devs aren't for show either, they are more than capable of holding their own when it comes to C++/SIMD/GPU/Graphics coding, and it's actually been a really refreshing change from the games industry! Really though, the difference between the two comes down to one thing only. In VFX, women are treated with the respect. In Games, they're often treated as the office oddity.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[h4rr4r]

Did they not let women apply before?

This means if they get two similarly qualified candidates they will select a woman if their quota needs one. That means males who apply are being discriminated against.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[__aaltlg1547]

The problem of hiring female engineers happens because there are very few female applicants. I've interviewed one female applicant, ever, in 20 years as an engineer. ONE. I've worked for a number of engineering companies, small and large and I can count on ONE HAND the number of female engineering co-workers I have had, out of hundreds of engineers. They were all good at their jobs. I wouldn't hesitate to hire a woman engineer, if there was one available.

My sister is an engineer and my niece is in engineering school. They are the only two female engineers in my whole extended family, but there are dozens of male engineers, scientists and programmers.

I don't know why, but women, at least in the USA, almost universally lack interest in being engineers. No hiring policy can change that.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[jythie]

It means examining bais. Changing a name on a resume to change gender or ethnicity often results in interpretations of the resume, with european male names often being rated as seeming more competent even when the exact same resume with another type of name on it is read as less capable.

So the problem is, people think they are hiring the 'best' people in an unbiased way, but statistically they are not. Addressing that in your hiring process leads to better people because there is a significant talent pool out there who are consistently rated lower then their actual abilities reflect.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[jythie]

It is generally not that complicated... when women complain about how they are being treated, listen and adjust. Unfortunately the typical response in the industry is to tell them to stop complaining.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[Sockatume]

I shouldn't have to dig up an uncontroversial result from a decade and a half ago, but the classic study would be:

http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf

Which of course is the first Google result for "study gender cv name". The remainder of the results will point you to several modern replications. Enjoy.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[TheRaven64]

If they were predominantly picking the man previously in this situation, then women were discriminated against. If they are picking women if they have under a certain percentage and men if they have over a certain percentage then they are effectively doing round-robin selection.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[h4rr4r]

A better solution is to just pick the best candidate no matter what. If that means having to hide the candidates identity that is fine.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[TheRaven64]

The problem is that there often isn't a better candidate. There are two candidates who have slightly different strengths. Either can do the job you need, and either will bring something extra (but not the same thing) to the team. So you pick one because of some subconscious factor, which you're probably not aware of. Picking based on some algorithm that attempts to guarantee fairness helps suppress these biases.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[h4rr4r]

Then use some actual random function. A coin toss should be fine. That will at least be fair.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[firex726]

If you're referring to that wage gap crap, it's been debunked time and time again.
In terms of education, more women are graduating than men.
Women have the advantage of affirmative action.
Women have the advantage of women only scholarships.

So where is the tilting of the scales for men in nursing, teaching and early child development?
Where are the employment campaigns for more women in dangerous or hard labor jobs?
Where is the outrage that women are only getting 60% of the jail terms men do for the same crimes?

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[Ben4jammin]

FTA:

Don’t lower hiring standards, or make exceptions or compromises.

Bring in as many candidates as possible.

My take away from this is that while the historical hiring they did was "best candidates available" they realized that there were things they could do to expand the hiring pool that may change how many of the "best candidates available" are women.
Not surprising to see a company try to improve their hiring practices.

Doesn't mean they are going to discriminate against men.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[Vaphell]

no, not really.
You can't blame nordic countries for sexism or discrimination, yet in Norway they still have only 10% female engineers. Paradoxically, the more people are free, the more likely they are to pursue stereotypical gender roles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ2xrnyH2wQ @5:30, 29:30

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[somersault]

So you pick one because of some subconscious factor, which you're probably not aware of

Like you're ever unaware of the cleavage.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[Alomex]

Would you want someone of lower capability than an other applicant working on your team just because some bureaucrat thinks a quota of $gender/race is the correct way to bring diversity to the workplace?

I dunno, you seem perfectly comfortable with a bunch of undeserving white professionals who got there simply because they were born in first/second base thanks to past discrimination and they would not have made it at all, had they started from the dug out, like a kid from the ghetto.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Wait? Are you telling me that females are supposed to be the ones with the cleavage in IT?

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[MacGyver2210]

That is incredibly ignorant. No, women were NOT being 'discriminated against'. There just weren't anywhere near as many women applicants. The tech sector is rife with complaints about the lack of women, and yet, women go into technical fields and apply for jobs in that area a fractional percent as often as men do.

If you have a pool of applicants, hire the most qualified ones. If women are pissed they weren't chosen, they should work harder and get better at what they do so they will be chosen the next time. It's better than complaining that they didn't get the job due to lack of a penis.

If there is any evidence of impropriety or discrimination, that shit should be dealt with immediately. Short of that, don't hire based on gender or race. Hire based on ability.

Re:Anti sexist policies are almost always sexist

[erice]

You just redefine what 'best' means.

Not necessarily. If you improve benefits in such a way that the job becomes more appealing to women, more qualified women will apply. Child care, for instance. It would be a benefit for any employee that has children but, statistically, women are more likely to be single parents and take greater responsibility for children in a two parent family.

It's to bad

[Murdoch5]

The problem is most women just aren't interested in engineering type roles. I know 1 female engineer out of the 40+ women I know, all the rest can't stand doing math, physic's or even intense thinking. I think part of the problem is that when kids grow up boys are taught to build and women are taught to be pretty, when a boy plays with Lego or other similar products in a sense he's engineering. On the other hand girls are given a barbie and a easy bake oven and told to have fun, how is that going to lead to a career in engineering. I think the problem needs to be fixed at the child level.

Re:It's to bad

[Murdoch5]

ya what woman would want someone who supports women in engineering! I know right, unthinkable, ass.

Re:Headline

[drinkypoo]

I think the headline should read:

Changing the ratio of women to men in tech How they did it.

Is that because you think a reasonable person would otherwise assume that the ratio is women to cheeseburgers or women to solar flares or women to rutabagas?

A different perspective.

[thesandtiger]

I'm a woman and I was recently doing a job search and interviewed at a dozen places before settling on one that I liked (and have since come to love).

It was, overall, a very uncomfortable experience for me. I was, at many of the places, subjected to comments along the lines of "I've worked with a female developer before, and it was really difficult because she didn't have a sense of humor/couldn't take a joke/made us feel like we had to be on our best behavior - would you be like that?" Seriously. I was repeatedly told that one concern was the rest of the team feeling like they might have to walk on eggshells around me.

When I heard these things I essentially shut down the interview and let them know I would not be interested. I explained that I appreciated their honesty, but the fact that they had concerns along those lines made me know it wasn't the place for me, and I thanked them for their time.

It isn't that I don't have a sense of humor, or that I'm easily offended - it's that I really don't want to have to be responsible for all women ever, and I don't want to have to worry that my co-workers are continually holding me accountable or interpreting things I say or do as if I were somehow the same as the other women they had worked with. And despite my shutting it down, I was *still* offered jobs at half the places.

The place that I liked - and have come to love - gender never came up during the interview. We talked about the tech, we talked about the work, we talked about the long term goals for the position, and we talked about the culture. The only time gender has come up was when one of my co-workers, who has a daughter, asked me how I came to get so interested in technology and science because he wanted to encourage his daughter as much as possible without pushing her.

Looking at the comments here, there's a whole lot of "othering" going on. A lot of comments that seem to treat women as members of some kind of hive mind wherein certain behaviors are just expected. This is completely unfair - it would be as unfair as me treating all men like rapists just because some men are. There's also a lot of anger I'm sensing from a lot of the guys - feeling like they're being discriminated against in some cases by quotas (real or imagined) or whatever. You guys are certainly entitled to your anger, just like I'm entitled to be bugged when idiots can't distinguish me from some other woman despite us being entirely different people.

The thing I would recommend to people - all people - is to take everyone you will be dealing with as an individual AS an individual. Just as you wouldn't want to be held responsible for things you had nothing to do with, so, too, other people don't want to be made responsible for everyone who shares their gender, race, ethnicity, or other arbitrary trait.

For the record, I think hiring quotas are stupid. Affirmative action is "good intention, wretched implementation." That said, the people saying they've been turned down for developer/in demand jobs because they are white/male/other majority class must be incredibly unimpressive candidates. If you were such hot shit that you "deserved" the job, you would have gotten the job. Businesses are in business to make MONEY, they will hire whomever will make them MONEY, and if you couldn't make it clear you would make them more MONEY than some other random person, that's on you.

Re:Cry me a river.

[meta-monkey]

I agree. Are men being "discriminated against" in these circumstances? Is it "unfair?" Maybe. But my father raised me to be a man, and one of his frequent lessons was "life isn't fair."

Part of being a man is accepting that life isn't fair. You have to shoulder responsibilities and make sacrifices that others do not. We do not complain that women and children get the lifeboats before we do. We do not complain about opening doors for women, or giving up our seats on busses so they can sit, or picking up the check. When the nutjob opened fire in the Colorado theater, many of the men (boys, even) died using their bodies to shield others. Those were Men.

This does not mean women are not ALLOWED to do these things. By all means, grab the check. By all means, fight for your country (my wife was in the Army for 9 years and carried her M-16 through Bosnia and Kosovo, helping protect the people there from each other). If you are a man who feels "threatened" by strong women, then you are not much of a man.

So men, do not whine about "discrimination." It's unmanly. Suck it up, find a better job, or make your own job. Women, what you choose to do is up to you. I hope you choose to compete as the best candidate for whatever position you apply. If you don't, and would prefer special treatment, that's fine. Ignore the crying whiners on their way out. They're not really men. And yes, I'll hold the door open for you.