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Fighting Tech's Diversity Issues Without Burning Down the System
reifman writes: Fizzmint CEO Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack says she "never had a problem with Mitt Romney's use of the phrase 'binders full of women.' ... Instead of congratulating him for his realization and his attempt to (awkwardly) rectify the situation, we crucified him for not already having a network of accomplished women." The scarcity of women in tech is a central issue in Seattle, where Amazon's growth is literally reshaping the city. The company refuses to release its technology workforce diversity numbers, and it's been criticized for interviewing practices that put female candidates on a "horrifying steeplechase [by] careless and non-people-oriented technologists." Van Vlack says, "It's stupid on every level not to acknowledge the obstacles women face when they try to join a tech company." She suggests three concrete steps for technology leaders to attract more women into the fold: 1) Push your technical recruiters to hit 20% thresholds for female candidates 2) Challenge and question your personal assumptions about the leadership skills of women in technology and 3) Transparently and openly take a stand to improve your company's diversity figures.
I'm at a loss here so I might as well ask cowardly and anonymously.
Why do we need women in tech so bad? Seriously, why? Is there something I'm missing that makes women super heroes at programming?
I'm not even trying to troll at this point, I can do that much easier on other sites and get way better reactions.
Oblig: You forgot the sudo
"1) Push your technical recruiters to hit 20% thresholds for female candidates"
At the expense of the qualified candidates?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
And here we go again. 'You need to do... You need to ensure... You need to....' The mantra of the everyone should be clones brigade.
From TFA: " the applicant was escorted to an undecorated office the size of a closet. There she sat as a procession of seven guys filed in one at a time to ask her questions, often the same questions as the guy before. Few made eye contact, none offered her so much as a drink of water or a bathroom break. The whole day she didn’t lay eyes on a woman. She was there for five hours. "
That happens to the men as well. It's not a gender thing.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I do not understand the self-flagellation of the tech world over "diversity."
Where's the bitching about the under-representation of men in nursing and teaching? The demand for more female garbage collectors? Construction workers?
Oh. I get it. It's only "inequality" if it's about a cushy desk job.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What's so good about diversity anyway?
What percentage of the people graduating with qualifying degrees are women? If the hiring is close to that, is there a problem?
I've worked at a lot of tech companies and done lots of interviewing on behalf of management and have never seen one hiring decision where the most qualified engineer didn't get the job, be they male or female. Tech is the most meritocratic industry in the American economy.
>Push your technical recruiters to hit 20% thresholds for female candidates
In other words, actively discriminate against dudes.
"It's stupid on every level not to acknowledge the obstacles women face when they try to join a tech company."
I have no problem acknowledging that sexism exists, and working to correct sexism in the workplace. But requiring that a certain percentage of your workforce consists of a particular gender? That does not solve the problem of sexism, that IS sexism, regardless of which gender is being favored.
From the content of the post, it seems women are being given a different interview from men. That's wrong and has to stop. Fortunately, that's also illegal. Why are women not reporting it?
This Wikipedia project is an excellent example of why this issue will never be "solved" to the satisfaction of those hell bent on seeing the number of women expanded. Briefly, for those who want a TL;DR take, the project's goal is to create a "safe space" for women where among other things, they don't have to deal with men "attacking them," "trashing them" or even really criticizing them.
There is something that all of the groups that demand a "safe space" all have in common and that's that they cannot function in a competitive workplace. If it's not completely "consensus-driven" without overt competition, they can't function. Most men and many women who do stick it out have no respect for this sort of person be it some male geek mentally stuck in high school even at the age of 30 or a woman who cannot bear normal male group dynamics.
And before someone tries to throw out a red herring about Linus Torvalds or some extreme case of sexual quid pro quo, I'd like to point out that most of the stories you see about why women leave come down to a few factors:
1. Uncomfortable with competitiveness.
2. Total lack of empathy with how men and certain types of women often see the world.
3. Not warmly, enthusiastically embraced as a "woman in STEM."
Just look at the Matt Taylor issue. If that is the sort of thing that makes you change your life direction, you don't deserve dreams. You're just too weak and pathetic of a human being to deserve even a day dream about where your life could go. That's so banal compared to real sexism like telling a woman that she has to advance on her back if she wants to advance at all that even uttering such a complaint takes you outside the realm of having anything authentic grievances.
We all need to realize that Mitt Romney is an old politician. He's not a computer guy. 'Binders' of candidates I can easily see. Again, not something to get uptight over.
I do get a bit irked with Van Vlack though - 20% goal for women? That low? In addition, it implies that women can't even make 20% without being chosen simply for the fact that she's a woman. More women are going to and graduating college today than men, and it's by a substantial fraction 43.6% male vs 56.4% female in public universities alone. Private universities the average is closer to 40-60. Her third statement amounts to a repeat of the first, implying that you can't simply have a policy of hiring the best employees - you have to hire looking to diversify. Does diversification even improve outcomes if you're a business? Please note that diversity of talent and experience is still a positive factor, hiring somebody with experience different than what's already in the group is generally beneficial. I'm talking about hiring somebody for a position substantially because the color of their skin is under-represented in your workcenter.
If women are still under-represented in some fields despite being the majority of college students, I think we need to look closer at social traditions and policies, because I think they might be the bigger factor at this point. Not much point at looking to hire women in a certain field if they're not even entering it due to 'reasons'.
Questioning my assumptions about the leadership skills of women, I can't really say. I don't really think I have any.
I don't read AC A human right
You make the assumption that there is some magical, single number which represents the qualification status of everyone in the world and that everyone applying for a job is ranked exclusively by that number, allowing the HR department to send offer letters to the top n candidates without regard to race/gender/etc. The reality is that there is no such number. If you were to actually rank people, there is going to be an error band and that within that error band you either (a) randomly choose or (b) choose a representative sample which accounts for diversity.
If you're really worried about losing out to a woman who is insignificantly (in the statstical sense) less qualified you should go learn more or be better so you're never in the bottom 20% of qualified applicants.
tl;dr: don't suck so bad at what you do and it won't matter.
Quit making excuses for yourselves ladies, you are just as capable of math and tech and science stuff as men are.
Hogwash. Every male in the tech industry I know would love to see more females in technology companies. Show me all the women who are interested and qualified. Give me one of those who wants the job and knows how to do the job and I'll hire her instantly.
The tech consultant couldn’t understand why it was starting to seem so hard to find a date. So he crunched census numbers and Amazon hiring guesstimates—they’re notoriously close mouthed—and blogged, in an infamous post in May, that, thanks to Amazon’s gender distribution (which payscale.com reports as 76 percent male), Seattle had “passed the tipping point” of gender imbalance.
And ..
(a Harvard study found that 56 percent of female computer professionals leave the field midcareer)
Those stats show nothing. And neither do the others.
I don't see the cite for that Harvard study. But how many men leave mid-career? And why? I left because because two companies in a row that I worked for replaced us with H1-Bs or off-shored our jobs. I saw the writing on the wall. And I got tired of spending 10--12 hours a day/6 days a week in front of a computer. (I tell you programming is MUCH more fun as a hobby!).
How about another profession: medical. In 1975,
females represented only 22.7 percent of
all applicants to medical school (Figure
1). By 2003, females reached 50.8 percent
of the applicant pool. Since then, the
percentage of all female applicants
to medical school has been declining
And? My interpretation is that most women are smart enough not to get into a deadend career like technology and go for the big bucks in medicine - that view is just as valid as this article's based on what little information is offered.
Instead of posting these stories, how about some studies? How about asking girls what their career aspirations are?
Anybody can "run numbers" and find patterns.
And statisticians here, why aren't you raising hell over the shitty interpretation of statistics?
I don't see what all the fuss is about. No one turns down candidates because they're female, there are just very few candidates. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip, folks.
The problem isn't at the company level. There just aren't a lot of qualified female tech workers out there, the ones that exist get snatched up, promoted, and put on a pedestal because of the perceived problem and the ones that aren't qualified stay on low level work, even if they're an anchor to the qualified men on the team. Even some of those get promoted, and on equal job descriptions where cabling has to be done, attics have to be crawled through, sub floors pulled, and dirt is to be had the women do the paperwork for the same or better pay. SAME JOB TITLE
I've seen it in many, many places.
Why aren't we complaining about the lack of female sanitation engineers? What about the lack of female construction workers? What about the lack of female auto mechanics?
It's perception. I don't see a problem here, if women want the jobs they have them. Women want IT jobs like straight men want to be fashion designers. Sure they exist, but there's a lot more competition from one gender than the other.
"horrifying steeplechase [by] careless and non-people-oriented technologists"
Amazon is an internet logistics company, not a health spa. They solve difficult problems that require sharp thinking and logic. Kissing asses and holding hands isn't part of their business model.
If you want to be surrounded by people orientated luddites, go work in the service industry
"Flamebait" my ass. The perpetual whining about "diversity" in the media is a freakin' JOKE. Heaven forbid I shouldn't kiss the media's ass and those of the uber-liberal "elite" who keep wringing their hands about it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As long as they're female, a minority, LGBT, etc.
We all know that the exact same resume with a female name is much more likely to be rejected without being considered.
I have been in a hiring position before, and had to review resumes - it makes no sense at all that ANYONE would be rejected because of the name. I never did, I accepted or rejected candidates based on the resume, not the name. I have never seen any other co-worker doing anything different either (but then why would they when some of them were also women).
If anything because of many articles like this one, I would assume a female name at this point would make it MORE likely you'd be considered as a candidate. I have a friend graduating soon with a CS degree, she has interviewed at every company she sent a resume to...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One guy couldn't get a date and he blames diversity in the workforce.
And that's a problem in tech: your entire life has to be devoted to it to the point where your friends and lovers are found at work.
What does it tell you that the only place an Amazon employee can meet people is at work?
That he has no life outside of work? Amazon works their employees so hard that they can't have a life? Seattle really sucks?
In Metro Atlanta, half of my tech co-workers were female. Same in South Carolina.
I think this is a West Coast problem myself.
And it's also funny that we have no tech shortage or any other STEM shortage here.
Women complain a lot. Always something about the man keeping the woman down. Don' t like it, start your own god damn company and make it a big deal that you're all girls - no boys allowed.
Why should a technologist business owner do any of this stuff? None of it will inherently improve their business. Hiring the best PERSON for the job will, however.
Come *on*, you expect HR departments to *find*, much less hire qualified women? Most hiring managers have a hard enough time finding *any* qualified candidates, since about 80% or more of HR departments are completely staffed by people who have NO IDEA of what the company actually does, NO IDEA of what they're hiring for, and DON'T CARE TO LEARN.
Come on - for anyone working for any medium to large size, do *you* think HR knows their ass from a hole in the ground? When I was last looking, around '09, Grumman wanted you to upload your resume (Word format only, please), and not even a cover letter, and they said that they found "qualified candidates" by DOING DATABASE SEARCHES. So, you with the six years of Oracle, you're not qualified to work on MySql, or Sybase. And oh, you haven't done this, and don't have that certification, never mind how many years you've been doing it, you're not qualified.
Come the Revolution, we're going to lead HR departments into the parking lot, throw asphalt on them, and PAVE THEM INTO THE ROADWAY, and *then*, and only then, will they have any social or corporate utility....
mark
PS: and for those of you who think women aren't good enough, I'd suggest that one of my daughters who's a programmer and tester for a major aerospace firm is a *hell* of a lot better than you are at her job.
Well, we could look to both the legal and medical professions.
For example, back in 1970, about 8% of all doctors were women. Today, roughly 1/3 of all doctors are women--hardly parity, but a significant improvement, nonetheless. Similarly, about 1/3 of all lawyers are now women; back in 1970, that number was closer to 5%.
So what happened between the 1970s and today in the legal and medical professions? For one, there was a concerted effort to even make these professions accept that there was a problem. In both the industry and the public eye, it was generally accepted that women weren't lawyers or doctors because women simply weren't cut out for that kind of work--it was too demanding, too rigorous, too technical, too high-stakes, and required an 'instinct' that women just generally didn't have.
Additionally, there was a very active and ongoing effort to encourage women to enter these fields--efforts that took a long time to gain steam, as these fields require years of specialized study and training on top of a sound primary and secondary education. Professional organizations dedicated to supporting and encouraging women in these fields were created. Major existing professional organizations--like the AMA and the ABA--started paying attention to the issue, as well.
Today, you won't find many people defending the position that women are somehow less fit to be doctors or lawyers than men. That's gone. It took a long time, and it took a lot of people--mostly women--fighting a grueling and protracted battle against a broader community that was, at best, condescendingly tolerant of them, so long as their numbers were small enough and they accepted adapting themselves to life in a man's profession. You still see gender disparity, both in pay and people, and you still see a lot of the vestiges of the old system that need to be retooled, but there's been real progress.
Getting a solid number on how many women are employed as software engineers/programmers is tricky, but one recent effort compiled information from around 200 companies and found that about 15% of software engineers are women. Certainly not as bad as the medical and legal professions in 1970, but a far cry from what you'd expect--and, frankly, a far cry from where software engineering and programming has been in the past.
So here we are, in 2015. There's a lot to be done. We've barely even begun to accept that this is a problem yet, and the backlash against this concept is virulent, to put it lightly. That said, there's momentum building, and I'm hopeful that we're finally--finally--starting to move in the right direction.
The system won't be burned down, but the system won't survive in its current form, either. With any luck, 40 years from now, we'll be looking back on this with the same incredulity as we do on the legal and medical professions of yore.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I don't buy into he shell-game concept where you try to increase "diversity" numbers at a company, especially if the number is higher than the overall percentage of qualified candidates - you are just shuffling a limited supply of a category of worker at the expense of some other companies numbers. Even just trying to maintain an average makes no sense, what if there's a company somewhere that has a much higher percentage of woman than normal because women really love working there? Isn't that OK?
To me if a workplace is not welcoming to women, it's probably not very welcoming to men either, so simply making the workplace better for everyone is the right thing to do, and will attract better candidates of all genders.
What I prefer to do (apart from treating women no different professionally than men) to address the lack of women in technical jobs is put money and effort towards increasing the supply in the first place. Efforts that try to help young girls learn to program or otherwise engage them in technical subjects are the way to truly improve the industry. By the time women (and men for that matter) are out of college it's very hard to move into a technical field, so it's really important to get someone interested while they are young.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>> Instead of posting these stories, how about some studies? How about asking girls what their career aspirations are?
Brilliant lets do just that.
Because many actual "heads of household" are single mothers these days. I really think we should probably try and end the whole rise of the single mother (or single parent in general) as a thing, but if you want to give money to the people who are using that money to keep the children educated and under control, you want to give more to women these days.
Men used to support families, not exclusively, but by and large they did. Now that has changed, but if the workplace still favors men based on that previous understanding, then we need to modify that understanding to reflect current realities.
If men aren't supporting anyone but themselves, why do they get to be the ones who get the jobs?
What exactly the problem is.
I have worked in the tech industry for almost 20 years, Before that I studied in it, and before that it was a hobby.
I have met very few women that had any interest in it over the years.
The few women there was where treated like queens and superstars (quite frankly because they where soooo rare).
IMHO there was nobody that I personally knew that behaved in such a manor that would have discouraged women. In fact they would have been treated far better than the average Joe.....
And many times we actually complained to our bosses to hire more women....and the response we got....was there was NONE applying.....
Is there immature jerks? Of course! But no more and no different than any other industry. From my perspective, it seems like Computer Science is not appealing to most women. Why? I do not know, but in my opinion I believe there are some activities that will appeal more to men and vice versa. We are a species that is sexually dimorphic.....so expecting both sexes to be 100% identical is stupid, no matter how much these feminazis scream sexism.
I wonder what % of maids out there are men. Or what % are nurses. Or what % of daycare workers are male....And yet nobody is screaming bloody sexism in those situations. I personally believe the whole caregiver role appeals more to females than males. Same with computer science, it likely appeals more to those inclined to think logically rather than emotionally (again this is my opinion, not a fact).
I also agree with those who raised the point above; That articles such as this do more harm than good at attracting women into the industry, when all the read is all the horror stories of how they will be raped and harassed and not taken seriously. Which of course is likely to be mostly BS. A few bad apples ruining it for all kind of thing....
Selecting candidates from a broader range of experiences and viewpoints adds value to a company by allowing it to create a product that appeals to a larger portion of consumers. In this regard, the most technically qualified candidate may have equal or less value than a less qualified candidate who can lend a different perspective to development.
Dilbert’s user interface design is an amusing example of monoculture and the need for diversity. (If you haven’t seen a terrible UI, consider taking some design classes.)
http://dilbert.com/strip/2002-09-23
So then you only ask "Why are there no women in tech", but the answer is the same for all of them. Its not socially acceptable for a woman in Today's society, be it either it materialist pop culture, nor traditionalist culture, does not promote of women in engineering. Not for any class of machine. Not for wood choppers,, not for automobiles, and computers is no diffrent.
You want women in tech, then change society to make it more acceptable as a career path. I think you can start by stop dehumanizing the tech nerds with horrid stereotypes that drive women away.
The fundamental issue is one of training and remaining current in your skills. Women, for the most part, will drop out of the workforce for 5-7 years early in their careers to start a family, and try to return to their careers after the kids are in school.
Nursing? Not an issue -- the way you dispense pills and clean a patient doesn't change much in 5-7 years.
Teaching? Not much of an issue. Course materials don't change that fast in education, nor do the modes and styles of teaching.
Programming? HUGE issue. 5-7 years is an eternity in technology. Entire product lines and languages can come and go in that time frame. Anyone who is out of the tech workforce for that long has virtually zero chance of finding a job.
So they don't return to IT, which would require retraining and starting at the bottom because they're now inexperienced juniors. Instead, they enter other workforces and leave tech behind.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Competence should be the one criterion used to judge whether a prospective
employee is worth hiring.
Affirmative Action programs have led to idiots being placed in jobs where they
cannot perform well. No one is served by this except the idiots who have a job
they don't deserve to have.
how do you know diversity is a religion? when it's completely lost on people that to say: "google, amazon, etc are NOT diverse!!!" is inherently & inescapably to say that: "page rank, map reduce, goggles, adwords, autocomplete, gmail, android, glass, maps/streetview, translator, drive/apps, aws, kindle, etc were ALL built w/o diverse workforces...". if m$, hp & oracle are more diverse than google/amazon/apple that strikes me as more of a pretty damning indictment than a call to arms...
"It's stupid on every level not to acknowledge the obstacles women face when they try to join a tech company."
Seriously, just fuck off already.
(And I'm not saying that because you have a vagina, I'm saying it because you're stupid.)
Quick quiz: you're a HR manager. You have 14 positions to fill this quarter, and likely will interview at least 300 people. You have about a million other things on your desk to deal with.
Two equally qualified candidates are interviewed for a job, one male, one female.
The male candidate, particularly if he's white, will likely as not take the job and do the work (unless he's a millenial, then all bets are off about the 'do the work' bit, but that's not a gender thing). If he doesn't do the work, or doesn't fit in with the rest of the team, or for whatever reason, you can get rid of him. Done.
The female candidate you need to evaluate how 'sensitive' this applicant is to diversity, and whether turning her down is going to (at the best) dump a crapton of nonsense on your head from higher-ups about filling gender quotas and making sure you're 'sensitive' enough to see her abilities, making sure the interview and setting are 'people oriented' enough, or (at worst) get you a call in 3 days from legal saying that somehow you said/did the wrong thing and now you're getting sued....and then understanding that if you DO hire her, you may have to walk on such eggshells every flipping day, waiting for some unsocialized geek in your engineering department to have the unmitigated gall to, I dunno, ask her out, at which point legal WILL be on your phone about the 'hostile' work environment.
So please, tell me again how CONSTANT bitching about gender diversity in tech and how unfair it is that "nobody offered her a potty break" is going to possibly encourage that HR person to go ahead and give that job to a woman?
-Styopa
And he must be made to release his taxes if we are to vote for the bastard. How come we give these people all this attention? They are the worst kind of snake oil salesmen and hucksters on the planet. What is wrong with us??! People like Romney and Kissinger and Bush and Cheney and Clinton and Reid and Conyers etc etc etc should all be in prison, and the only camera they should be in front of is the closed circuit surveillance kind.
We as a society need to get over our cultural double standards regarding gender because they are a cause of systemic inefficiencies in the allocation of labor that reduce the productivity of our society and by extension quality of life.
The whole quotas things is just asinine metric optimisation because it's easier to say "we want 20% women in field X by Y date" than it is to overhaul popular culture and stop teaching children that "men are from Mars and women are from Venus", and instead teach them that we're all people and that in most practical situations the differences between men and women are trivial compared the the differences between individuals within either sex.
A lot of that is just that parents are uncomfortable raising their children differently from how they were raised. So ideas like ending segregation by gander in eliminatory school, marketing toys as "for children" not "for boys" or "for girls", and not freaking out when you get a daughter that likes dropping bugs down her brotehr's dress to hear him scream are a really hard sell.
Interviewer: Do you have any experience with XYZ tech?
Invterviewee: Nope
Interviewer: Do you have a degree in this field?
Interviewee: Nope
Interviewer: What do you have that makes you a candidate for this job?
Interviewee: A vagina
Interviewer: Welcome aboard!!
When did we arrive at this moronic era where we MUST have x number of because someone (and this is probably the MOST important question) says so. If I want to hire a staff of white men... well that's unacceptable. However if I want a room full of brown guys it's fine? We've moved passed racism to full on idiocy..
Age. Race. Gender. Sexual Preference. Programming Ability.
Only one of these is relevant in the tech industry.
The one who gets the job should be the one who is most qualified. It shouldn't and largely doesn't matter what is or isn't between their legs.
My boss has stated outright that he will never hire another woman several years ago an he hasn't since. currently, he is no longer our boss but not due to that statement alone. this is in a non-IT STEM field. leaning over the desk to point where you can see down to their waist line and everything along the way, on travel answering the hotel door in skimpy clothes to meet up and finish a presentation. guys fawning over them to help them do their job. some use their talents on purpose some may just have not been focused on the work and not aware that they probably shouldn't have bent over that far to reach for a paper in that particular blouse.
This conversation rationally and logically devolves into the following:
Companies
"Our company doesn't discriminate against females for any position. The problem is that there aren't enough competitively qualified female candidates. Blame the universities."
Univerisities
"Our University's STEM programs don't discriminate against females. Hell, we have multiple support programs for females, an Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and outreach programs into K-12 education to encourage young ladies to explore STEM subjects! If anything, we're doing the work that the secondary schools should be doing."
High Schools
"Our high school is pressed for money. We can't afford the teachers we need, PE has been cut, and there is absolutely zero funding for programs within STEM to do anything but prepare students to take tests. Do you even know what it's like to shove STEM education into the minds of teenage girls? Maybe if they had some earlier primering, we would have a chance, but their interests are formed far earlier than high school."
Middle Schools
"Junior high is too weird for anything purposeful to happen. Every day is a mix of hormones, fights, and liability risk assessments. Try the elementary school."
Elementary Schools
"Us? Seriously? We can't even teach real American history without receiving wrath from Tea Party Parents or teach evolution without getting sued by the religious right. We can't send home technical projects because it ends up being homework that Mom and Dad end up doing because they don't want their child to miss soccer practice or kid's cheer. Try getting the parents on board with education, first, then come to us."
Parents
"Hell yes, I voted against the new taxes to fund schools! I have a mortgage, two car payments, and a $150/month cable bill. The kids both have braces, I'm on anxiety meds, and Bill, when he gets to come home, just doesn't have time to deal with anything. The dog has renal failure. Did I mention that? It's costing $300/month to keep the dog alive. So, no. I don't feel bad for voting against overpaid teacher scam artists getting more money. And to top it off, then send home these computer projects that require Jessica to learn some foreign computer language to show she can make a computer add "2 + 2". This isn't right. We have calculators already. Now, I have to call my brother (he's a computer whiz) to help my daughter do the homework that's meant for boys. And that's another thing! Why don't they just let girls be girls?! My Jessica has loved dolls and dresses since she was born! I'll not have her become some sad computer nerd, dressing in black flannel and black denim only for her to get teased at school. NO WAY. My kid's going to be a cheerleader like I was. And I turned out pretty damn well, thank you very much."
A better goal for companies that hire more than a few dozen people for the same type of position a year and whose recent hiring for that type of position is far from a 50% male/female mix:
* Set a reasonable future goal - say, eventually no less than 1/3 (or 2/5, or 45%) of our new hires for that type of position will be men and no less than that same number will be women.
* Know and monitor your current industries' average new-hire gender mix.
* If you are well behind your industry - if you are more than 10 percentage pionts behind the industry average for the "minority" gender, try to bridge half of the gap this year with respect to new hires.
* If you are within 10 percentage points or he industry average or if you are "leading" your industry for the "minority" gender but you are not within percentage points of where you want to be, try to get 5 percentage points closer to your goal
* Even if your hiring was all-male last year, if you are able to do the above, within 10 years you should be at a 50/50 mix of new hires, if that is your goal. Personally, I see a goal of 33%-45% as being much more realistic, especially given year-to-year gender variations in the available talent pool.
* The only real "excuse" to not be able to reach your goal within 10 years is a severely gender-imbalanced talent pool or a combination of a gender-imbalanced talent pool and nearly-full employment for the type of position you are hiring for. If a gender-imbalanced talent pool is a significant problem, show some leadership in your industry and invest time, money, and energy into getting kids and teenagers of both genders interested in the jobs you want to hire, but put a strong emphasis on the under-represented gender.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Bullshit.
Hire the best people you can.
If they happen to be 5%, 20%, 60% women, so be it.
Threshold? KMA. Let's see who applies and walks throught e door.
For those who might not know: a lot of RNs earn over $100K a year.
I know, that is nothing especially extraordinary these days. But it's a fairly decent salary, even for a college graduate.
Men are hugely under-represented in the nursing field. Why isn't everybody having a hissy fit about that?
Noticed this recent trend.
Gender equality. Diversity. More female leaders. More females in tech.
Is Slashdot catering to a different demographic so as to attract more clicks and ad revenue?
Good lord. Can we stick to the techy and fun stuff and leave out the theatrics of the gender social justice warriors?
Hey you champions of 'gender equality': we need more female representation in construction and manual work. Will you do something about this obvious gender disparity, or will you cherry pick 'gender equality' as and when it suits your preferred agenda of female empowerment?
Hows about instead of trying to force a certain percentage they only take the qualified people? Let say we look at the qualified talent pool for a certain madeup job, using random numbers to show my point. talent pool is 70% type A 20% type B 5% type C 4% Type D and 1% type E normally in a perfect system the company would hire 70% A, 20% B, 5% C etc etc... right? However, IF said company is forced to maintain a balanced percentage, 20% of each of the 5 types what would that do? Type B is perfectly represented (YAY!) Type A gets the shaft, HARD, and types C, D, and E are all vastly over represented, forcing a sense of discrimination against type As. But I guess us Type A's deserve getting the shaft?
In my experience, the people who don't get jobs interview a lot more. People who get jobs easily, don't do as many interviews.
It only takes a few women working full time to provide 20% of the interview candidates for most of the interviews in silicon valley.
The tech companies should interview women for the position of full time bad interviewees and pay them to do it. Instant quota filling.
Meanwhile, men and women who like tech and are good at it can get on with making chips and software and little boxes with leds on them.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I can't think of anything less relevant to this story than the opinions of a bunch of male Slashdot readers.
Nobody cares what any of us think and for good reason. The "nerd" is over. Everyone works in tech now. Deal with it and move along.
You are welcome on my lawn.
or maybe they have a lot of illegal labourers.
It's pretty much impossible to have 50/50 men/women in programming without completely ignoring ability, as there just aren't that many female candidates. In university I saw three women in CSci. Opening up their books will make any company face lawsuits, lawsuits that could cost billions, even if they are proven completely innocent.
There are women in tech (Lady Ada anyone?) but, instead of trying to blame everything on today's coders, techs, and companies, we really need to pay attention to the hurdles that were put in place during the '90s and the early '00s.
- "Math is hard" - Barbie-based brainwashing.
- The "Pink Aisle" Ghetto - Go to into a 'normal' toy store. You will not find _ANY_ tech/hardware dev toys in the "Pink Aisle"
- Parental Disinvolvement - Plop the kid in front of the TV and let them sit there. Brainwash by Madison Avenue.
- Helicopter Parenting - Kids, especially girls, are no longer allowed to "fail" and learn how the world works.
Several friends of mine have "Geek" daughters - an ME, an EE, two CS majors, one Chem, and one Bio - And the reason is that they were not "pinkified" as children and told that Lego Star Wars toys were only for boys. They weren't "mommy-tracked" from birth.
Until the idiots who think that there is no problem with the way "gender appropriate interests" get a clue, there will be a shortage of women in Tech. Unless the "culture" that Madison Avenue and the educational system created is fixed, we are f*cked.
On the one hand, the explanation for a "shortage" of women in tech fields is that somehow they are excluded because of gender in spite of being otherwise indistinguishable from men (for example, no different than men in skills, desires, education, or training).
On the other hand the linked article includes, without critique or outcry,
without being slammed for sexism by implying that women tend to be stronger in some skills (in this case social skills) than men because of gender.
Let's try some word substitution and see how that might fly
There seems to be a double standard here. It's unreasonable to fail to label a claim that "women have better social skills" due to gender as sexist while labeling a claim that "men have better technical skills" due to gender as sexist.
In my career in systems software development, the overwhelming majority of my colleagues and reports have been male. In senior positions, I think the average skill set of females has been higher than the average skill set of males. However, in junior positions, I think the average skill set of males has been higher than the average skill set of females.
What I have noticed is that the less skilled females seem to drop out of the development arena more quickly and in larger percentages than males. I don't know why this is. Perhaps...
males have fewer options outside of software development (perhaps because Megan Tweed's apparent premise that females have superior social skills is accurate so jobs requiring those skills are less available to mediocre male developers)?,
males are more likely to have some form of ASD and that helps with concentration, obsession, and attention to fine detail which can be quite useful in systems software development?,
males and females are socialized differently at an early age and (unsurprisingly) that is reflected in their priorities and interests?,
males are less willing to admit that they made a bad career decision and then take action to rectify that?,
males feel more pressure to earn as much money as they can for their families so try to stay in higher paying positions?,
males are (much) less likely to have babies and decide not to return from maternity leave after realizing how much it sucks to be towards the bottom of the skill heap.
Who knows...
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
"Apparently, companies are supposed to hire women based only on their gender now"
You didn't say sudo mod parent up. (and yes I have mod points)
everyone's dream job is to be a programmer at an insurance company?
people need to get a grip. functionality is key. if you build it, they will come.
I despise Romney, I have never voted for him and unless he's running against a demon I won't ever vote for him.
That being said, the "Binders full of women" controversy was bullshit. It was a manufactured controversy. It was in line with the Alinsky method of turning your opponents strength into a weakness and using ridicule as a weapon.
Romney has spent the past 30 years making himself acceptable to the center-left contingent of American politics and I have no doubt that he seriously looked at every qualified female prospect when he was recruiting. The operatives in service to the Democrat National Committee had to do something to de-emphasize the fact that Romney was much better on women in the workplace than they were.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Many modern development shops face an environment in which the client changes the requirements on a regular basis (daily, or weekly). They *think* they know what they want at the outset, but as soon as the have something to play with, they see new potential (or new problems) and want to change it.
This isn't because the client is just incompetent and wishy-washy (though such clients DO exist). It is because normal human powers of visualization have limits, and once someone has a real tool to work with, that stimulates their mind to see new possibilities (or pitfalls that they didn't realize were there until they actually tried it).
Planning out a 6 month project means that (typically) half the features you build will never be used (unforseen pitfalls or just "yeah that sounds useful" but turns out not to be useful), and the half that are used will motivate people to complain about all the "obvious" useful features that were missed. It is extremely wasteful of time and money, which can make or break a business. Further, such projects are never delivered on time because these changes always ruin the schedule.
Being able to adjust the plan every couple of weeks means that you avoid a lot of that waste and instead develop something more valuable.
In such an environment, Agile is exactly the right development methodology.
Your original post is well reasoned, intelligible and convincing (and I speak as someone who is somewhat on the other side of the fence). A rarity in the discussions on this subject.
Clickbait. There's no shortage of stories and they get tons of comments. It's the same reason why sites like Gawker media are doing the same thing; they don't give a shit about sexism, not even the hypocritical, warped kind that's so popular today. They want clicks.
The pragmatists' view is that there is no diversity problem.
People self-select for jobs, lifestyles and locations that appeal most to them.
Expecting an organization or industry to change in order to accommodate the personal preferences of a small number of individuals is simply childish and immature.
... why aren't women clamouring for all the DANGEROUS jobs that are done by a 99.999% MALE workforce?
All non-whites need to be deported from white countries NOW.
But wouldn't that just be AWFUL for them - they'd have to live around their own race! That must be terrible! Now you know how white people feel, being FORCED to live around YOU...
The issue isn't whether or not there is a shortage, but whether there is a shortage of qualified people willing to accept a low-ball salary.
Women in IT jobs, hahahahaha, that's a good one. On a serious note, I think the thing to be looking at here is how many women are coming over in with the H1B Visa program. I would bet next to none. It isn't just a U.S. issue. It is a world issue. There just aren't that many women who chose to go into IT as a career. You can do all the outreach you want in schools. A good number of women in tech would much rather be scientists or engineers or biologists. IT jobs are for those who really can't make it in true STEM jobs. And the women with talent that are in STEM education programs don't see IT jobs as anything they want to do.
may because men are the ones who actually *do* the work? just a thought.
(1) is a terrible idea, and should be only "Push your technical recruiters to ignore sex completely and hire the most qualified person for the job, while pushing those who create the requirements for the jobs to stop requiring the ridiculous"
(2) meh. Just stop thinking about sex as an employment qualification. Stop it. Right now.
(3) No, definitely not, and also, fuck no. See (1) -- just behave reasonably and "diversity figures" will settle wherever they should be.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"take a stand to improve your company's diversity figures."
Diversity is a code word. It means "not a straight white male".
An honest answer that is at least a good deal of the cause is that tech people are, broadly speaking, considerably smarter than garbage collectors, cops, and (sadly) most teachers. Consequently we see the problem more clearly, and feel the inequity more deeply when it is, in fact, an inequity and not just a result of "no qualified female (or any female) applied for the job." Exceptions exist, particularly where the people who do the hiring are mostly not tech types, and frankly, even leaving the issue of sex aside, they do a freaking terrible job of it.
"Ruby Programmer" Ok, fine.
"Must have 4 yr degree" arbitrarily prejudicial, counter productive. Also, fuck you.
"Offshore" seriously, just fuck you in the ass with a pineapple.
"Must be local" why, are your tech people/managers incompetent? Must the hire attend the company picnic? Offshore ok but Wyoming isn't? Add poison ivy wreath to pineapple
"Male" fuck you with a BIG pineapple that's on FIRE
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Funny how its not one word about the fact that US Citizens RARELY get hired for IT jobs anymore.
I have had to sit through stupid interviews like the one at amazon. Where its one person after another coming in asking the same questions. Telling you about the same work over and over and over again. No one asks you if you need a drink. I usually ask for one. This is sexist? Same thing happened to me more than once. Its a stupid interview. Just have them all interview me at the same time. Some companies have a really weird way of interviewing you. They think if they keep there for a long time and cause you to take more time off of work its a better interview. Google amazon workplace. Working there appears to suck. I wouldn't want to work there. Looks awful. I would have to be desperate to interview there.
I have had male bosses and female bosses. Some I like. Some I hate. I did not notice any difference between male and female managers based on gender.
This whole 'brogrammer' thing is BS. Maybe its that way with 22 year old kids. All the people I work with are married and have families. There isn't any going out and drinking after work. We don't go to lunch much. There isn't that much socializing. We have work to do. If you think there is alot of socializing in a work environment you watch too much TV. If I socialized all the time, I'd get fired because I don't produce.
This is really annoying. Basically I see blogs by alot of women who are too lazy to learn technical skills so instead complain about how sexist IT is. If you want more gender diversity, learn how to code. I taught myself 15 years ago. It was a ton of work. I then spent 6.5 years (year round) in graduate school (after work) getting 2 masters degrees. Blog about how hard it is so that woman can get an idea of what it takes to learn to be technical. Then get a job in the profession. Its very hard getting in. These days you almost always need a Computer Science degree. Its true for guys. If you have trouble getting a first job, its not cause its sexist its cause its hard to get in. It was hard for me and I got in during the 1990s tech bubble when people who didn't bath got hired.
No you won't do that. Cause complaining is easier and you can get your little articles on the web and get your salary at your non-technical article writing job.
I've seen people talk about hiring women in the executive suite at tech firms and in tech itself for decades, but little action.
1. Make sure you get as many female interns as male interns. If not, go back to how you recruit, cause you're doing it wrong.
2. Pay women the same as men. Period. No exceptions. Yes, I know you pretend you do, but internal data shows it's a lie.
3. Actually hire twice the industry standard percent of women. Require double the promotion rate per unit of women. There are many excuses, but they are always excuses, and in my long history in tech, I've rarely seen unqualified women. You just shut them out cause they don't get obsessed by the same stuff you do, and you have 1960s visions of gender roles in actual practice.
4. As to other diversity, a lot of the comments are the exact same as 1-3. And you know it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That was a while ago; there were different precursors in effect.
Here's a relevant true story -- anecdote -- for you. My SO, who I assure you is demonstrably smarter than I am (and I am a very accomplished tech person), was told (approximately, this is from my memory... but it's close) by her guidance counselor after testing that if she were a man, she should go for mechanical engineering or science, or some other kind of technical field, but since she wasn't a man, perhaps hairdressing or something like it where she could potentially use her intelligence, creative bent and strong spatial skills."
That kind of thing at least tends to not lead you to having a c64 under your arm.
Although she saw to it, while married to a decidedly non-technical person, that her kids had computers ASAP, the Internet ASAP, and eventually, with my assistance, that they all had the opportunity to go to college. They're all fellows, but she insists, and I believe her, that it would have made no difference whatsoever if they'd been female.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Moderated off-topic. Quoting from TFS and commenting on the advisability of its absurd recommendations is "off topic"? In what alternate universe? Some idiot moderators are just hilarious.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That fits with the Life of Julia. Women, owned by the government, cradle to grave. At least when women married and worked as a team with men, they got a choice -- now, just have to rely on what papa gov does for them.
Well, with 70% of divorces filed by women and who knows how many filed by men because women left (my own two divorces were filed by me but my wives were the ones who wanted the divorce), is it any wonder more women are heads of households?
http://www.psychologytoday.com...
Plus with the divorces, men need the jobs in order to continue to pay child support and alimony. So technically men are still supporting the family but not a part of the family any more.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
My company is currently hiring Unix sys-admins in US. I'm part of the team doing the interviews. Out of over a dozen applicants until now there was only a single girl.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Any article that includes terms like 'broverwhelmed', 'socially inept mansplaining tech geniuses', 'odds-are-good-but-goods-are-odd phenomenon' (presumably some woman insider term for 'not enough men who will listen & care for my needs'), and last but not least 'arrogant brogrammer culture'...can be immediately tossed in to the same pile of crap as toilet paper.
The hypocrisy of a topic that wants to focus on 'equality' and 'diversity' but allows such overwhelmingly negative, stereotypical & insulting terms to be perpetuated & even invented is just bizarre.
Yet another article by crusading women against men who they 'want to change' using language that if turned around would be grounds for burning the male author at the stake!
Who do you expect to interview candidates for tech jobs, other than technologists? And "people-oriented technologists" is a contradiction in terms; there are some few technologists who are good with people, but that's by definition not their focus.
I work for another tech firm, and while we DO in fact offer candidates refreshments and bathroom breaks (and I'm sure Amazon interviewers are supposed to), it's STILL a grueling process. If you want an interview where you deal with outgoing people who engage in all the proper extravert body language and who are evaluating you on your own conversational skills rather than on technical merit, tech jobs probably aren't right for you, whether you're a man or a woman.
But then, the article shows itself to be BS when it talks about "brogrammers". Folks, brogramming was and remains (aside from some cases of life-imitating-art) a hoax. Further, careers where the men ARE actual bros have a far higher proportion of women in them than programming. So if culture is the issue, a "brogramming" culture would probably be an improvement.
What I prefer to do (apart from treating women no different professionally than men) to address the lack of women in technical jobs is put money and effort towards increasing the supply in the first place. Efforts that try to help young girls learn to program or otherwise engage them in technical subjects are the way to truly improve the industry.
I've noticed that when stories about these kinds of programs are discussed on Slashdot, one of the prevailing opinions is "shouldn't boys also get equal treatment and opportunities?"
I don't necessarily disagree with what you're proposing, but it seems like a difficult goal to reach without potentially fostering inequality somewhere else. But then again, I don't know if girls are truly at some sort of disadvantage in the US education system that would cause it to be necessary to "bring balance" through these kinds of programs. Is the system really that bad?
To me if a workplace is not welcoming to women, it's probably not very welcoming to men either, so simply making the workplace better for everyone is the right thing to do, and will attract better candidates of all genders.
I agree 100%. Sometimes I wonder if the effort spent on "getting women into tech" would be better spent on "making tech workplace environments better for everyone".
Put down the bong.
Are all tech workplaces just not attractive to women? What is different between a typical office, where people type spreadsheets and documents all day, and one where people type code all day?
Are efforts to help girls program going to be helpful if your workplace is just unwelcoming? So you increase the supply of people who for some reason you can't articulate don't want to be a part of tech?
It's pretty simple answer.... Women want the excitement of pop culture drama. There are LOTS of people women could have supported, who have no problem with women doing anything they want. In fact, I pretty much call this down home normal humanity. But that's not what women really want. There is not meeting at the middle. But, these people women do not support, are unassuming, trustworthy, honorable, and therefore not dynamic. A woman MUST have a dynamic man. When WOMEN THEMSELVES can treat everyone fairly they'll have a lot less trouble.
What everyone seems to be forgetting in this is that employment is a zero sum game. If HR picks a female for the job ( to satisfy diversity quotas) all that does is put a white male out of work. What does that accomplish? Other than some feel good vibe for righting some supposed wrong. And if the woman is not very good at the job, what will that lead to? Her fellow employees will resent her.
I'll put it as succinctly as I can - if the female is better qualified than the male applicant then by all means hire the female. If the male is better qualified then hire the guy.
All of this "we should have X % of _whatever_ in a job" is nonsense.
By the way, where does Van Vlack get this 20% number anyhow? Based on what, exactly? Is she seriously suggesting that 1 out of 5 IT employees be female simply because they are women? With no regard to education, experience, aptitude and other qualifications? I suspect that she just pulled this number out of her ass.
Did it ever occur to Van Vlack, or any of these other diversity do gooders, that maybe just maybe women don't WANT an IT career? And that is why they are "under represented".
Are all tech workplaces just not attractive to women? What is different between a typical office, where people type spreadsheets and documents all day, and one where people type code all day?
The spreadsheet/document office requires much less specialized training and also lower skill.
But from what I have seen, it's also generally a more sexist environment than a tech workplace. That's why I'd like to see as many women get into tech as possible, because it's a way healthier work environment with people generally more welcoming and accepting women as equals.
Are efforts to help girls program going to be helpful if your workplace is just unwelcoming?
Actually yes, it's pretty simple math. The more women candidates there are, the more that will be hired. The fact is that MOST workplaces outside the startup scene around Silicon Valley are really good places for women to work. SV can do whatever to clean up their act, but for women overall in a technical field they are already better off in a technical job than most other fields.
So you increase the supply of people who for some reason you can't articulate don't want to be a part of tech?
That doesn't even make any sense. If you show more women more about what technical jobs entail earlier, more women who find it interesting that do currently, and will carry through. There's no need to quantify WHY they find it interesting, you simply need to show more young women what technical work is really like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1) Some of those links are about the ETHNICITY of the name/ Here we are talking about gender.
2) Not a single link as far as I could tell was about TECHNICAL positions. I make no claims for other parts of a business; in fact I would be inclined to believe they are a little racist or sexist. But Technical workers and hiring I have see is usually much more simply based on ability, and does not care about gender or race and therefore certaintly would not screen resumes because of those factors - if your resume is put aside it's because you don't know SQL, not because of your name.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I’m appalled, shocked even, by the disparity of women in the work place. This isn’t right! It’s not fair! Why if, as we all know, women are equal to men does this terrible phenomenon happen? I can’t understand So let’s destroy this injustice!
Ladies , feminists, girls lend me your ears : Apply ! Apply! Apply! To all the jobs where you are underrepresented ! Because we know this under-representation has but one cause : the horrible patriarchy! So start at the bottom to uproot the whole system!
Become miners! The under-representation is horrendous there! Don’t tell me you can’t do it, I know you can! Down the mine shaft you go ..up comes the coal/gold/uranium! You can do it!
After that apply for jobs as welders ! The pay is good , and women are underrepresented ! Become construction workers! Why not ? If a guy can put some bricks one over the other, I’m certain you can too! And so on,and so on, after the under-representation of women in all male dominated jobs ends, we can focus on jobs like CEO or CFO or any other CxO type job.
Sincerely , :)
an INTJ IT expert (I hear the term “arrogant asshole” a lot as well)
I was made redundant from a well-respected company in Silicon Valley. As part of the package, they sent us to professional resume writers...one of the first things he said was that, if he was given a resume that detailed sex (as well as other things like 'age'), the resume would immediately be thrown in the bin. The reason was that there could be accusations of discrimination and that would make them legally 'exposed'.
It seems to me that companies are doing this openly these days...
Max.
Whatever happened to hiring the best person for the job? *
It won't. The presumption underlying your idea is that hiring less qualified candidates will sink a company, and that is by no means a given. All it is sure to do is reduce the performance of the company to an unknown degree, and that reduction can manifest in all manner of ways non-fatal to the company's survival. Also, if the nature of the problem is not understood, which it may well be because in your scenario, no one has to specifically look out for it, it may remain perpetually unsolved.
Every problem demands that someone hunt it down, determine a remedial approach, and actively utilize that approach to eliminate the problem. Short of this, problems will remain. We see it everywhere, from user interfaces that are horror shows to unfixed functional bugs, to incompetent hires, to imbalances and inefficiencies in addressing technical tasks of all kinds. Think of it as testing and debugging. You wouldn't want to let software out without testing for problems and debugging them if found, would you? Yet that's what you're advocating when you say "Economics will solve this problem." Only in the case of complete failure is the problem "solved", but in that case, a lot of innocents can be harmed. Otherwise we just end up with somewhat sub-optimal results (slightly to moderately buggy software, for instance) and continue cruising along. So it's a very poor solution no matter how well it works or doesn't work.
"The market" is not a binary problem solver in a black cloak carrying a scythe; it is a fairly forgiving collection of not-all-that-interested-in-anything-but-themselves collection of people with highly individual outlooks and limiting criteria.
Concrete example (using Apple because I work with Apple products): Apple ships OS X 10.6.8 for core-duo silicon with a bug that completely breaks UTF-8 printing. I need the feature, and I expect it to work because the docs tell me how to get the exact results I want. Because the bug is only in the core-duo version of the OS, development on my Mac Pro goes perfectly smoothly. So I spend X amount of time writing the appropriate code and get it all running smoothly, but when I go to test on the actual target machine... it doesn't work. I spend (lots of) time trying to find the error in my code, because hey, it's supposed to work, so it must be me, right?
Well, no, turns out it's not me. Many phone calls and cries for help later, it is revealed, by Apple, that they have a serious crashing bug produced by the core-duo code generator of their compiler. They confirm the bug to me, and inform me, no doubt because I'm a very small noise in the big picture, that they have no intention of fixing it by issuing a fixed 10.6.8 for core-duo, thus rendering this particular machine completely unable to perform the task I had planned for it to do.
Did the market (me, finding and reporting the bug, and in fact complaining about the lack of solution publicly in quite a few venues) solve the problem? Nope. Did it hurt Apple in any significant way? Nope. Screwed me solid to the tune of having to replace the entire machine, though. It was about a $1000 kick in the pants for me.
That's exactly how problems that can be quite serious in nature enter the market without undoing the perpetrators. The only thing that would have solved the actual problem would be a policy at Apple that "if we say it is going to work like X, then if it doesn't, we will make it do so, and in this way we stand behind our software." But Apple has no such policy. Apple's policy can be summed up as "we don't stand behind our software."
In hiring, if the problem doesn't rise to the level where it causes the company obvious problems that hurt it, then it isn't likely to be addressed. And that's precisely the nature of prejudice in hiring. Got 100 jobs to fill? Filled 'em? Good deal, next on the agenda, the new cafeteria -- WTF was up with them serving liver? Half the staff had to lea
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The question should be: why should anyone have a problem with there being more women? It's not so much a "need" for women as it is a "need" to eliminate any social or cultural problems which may be keeping them out or discouraging them, imo.
we need a meritocracy - to have that all people need a chance to perform. If we have a culture and a practice of driving half the population away from a field we make both the group and the field poorer. So the idea that we have to have some specific number of women in tech may be faulty but the idea that we should examine how we do things and insure qualified and talented women get a chance to contribute seems pretty sensible. Having some kind of quantifiable target to insure actual effort is made is not unreasonable unless the target itself is. Pushing to get 20% candidates (didn't say hires) doesn't seem wildly off the wall. This is the last step in a chain of education and training that may all need examination but the creation of role models changes cultural expectations.
Let black Police deal with black Culprits;
Casteism
Its not fair to give one group special treatment
So how do you know they simply don't want to go into the field, and that no sexism exists to any great degree therein, and furthermore, that the reasons for which they don't want to go in to the field have nothing to do with sexism in any way, shape, or form?
Pretty sexist to suggest that women need a special recruitment process that is more "people oriented" as if they can't get hired based on their technical skills like any other candidate.