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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 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.
"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
"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.
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
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
Well as someone else pointed out, it is more like:
Tech recruiter has a target of 10 candidates to be considered. Instead of stopping at 10, they now work to provide 2 more, but all female. It doesn't change the qualifications of who gets hired, it just means that the recruiter's job isn't done until they at least gave 2 women a chance to be considered.
I have serious problems with hiring quotas, but I don't have a huge problem with minimum levels of a gender in a candidate pool. As long as they are actually qualified. If you're going to throw me 20 affirmative action candidates who I'd have to lower my standards to hire, then don't bother. If you have done the work to dig up some qualified females to bring in, then please do that work.
Diversity isn't worth lowering your standards for, but it may be worth putting in a little more effort to uncover people who meet the requirements. That feels more like equal opportunity to me, as opposed to quota hiring.
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
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...
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..
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?
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?
Diversity is discrimination, period. Dance around the issue and wave your hands all you want, doesn't change that it's discrimination. Saying it is a good thing in any venue at any time is saying that you believe in gender, ethnic and racial set-asides which are by their nature discriminatory.
It just preserves the issue for another generation. Yay, great progress. Until it boomerangs back. Dividing people like this is never a good thing.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
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"
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
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.
I'm glad to hear it--thank you!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
(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.
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.
Yes - I'll admit to being a bit pedantic on this topic. I've always worked in systems software development where you can't ship the product, or let the customer try it out in a meaningful way, without about 90% of the core capabilities being implemented and those capabilities are often most of the work in meaningful features. As well, there is no "single customer" - every feature is available to all customers (sometimes at an additional cost) so for long term success one must think beyond just the few situations that might have motivated a particular feature's development at this time - indeed, most eventual users of the feature may not be customers yet but may eventually become customers, in part, because the feature meets their needs.
In these environments, Transaction Management is not optional, Recovery is not optional, Redundancy is not optional, avoiding Performance degradations is not optional (i.e., the addition of a new feature must not degrade existing features beyond some minimal amount and the feature itself must perform adequately to be useful). Every new feature needs to take these, and other, aspects into account and they often represent the bulk of the work. Once in the field, one will discover that there are additional things that would be "nice to have" (either based on customer feedback or your own support issues) but these are often known in advance and were simply deferred as a feature not essential to the first release of the new feature and fell off the schedule to meet customer delivery commitments.
As well, in these environments, using "agile" methodologies as a substitute for up front architecture can end up with a horrible hack of an architecture and a system that, after a few years, is extremely expensive to add new features to. For example, I've heard the "agile" argument that feature A "didn't need recovery because the customer wanted it to be super fast [who doesn't want "super fast"!] and will deal with recovery for that feature in the application". As a result, feature A gets implemented outside of the system's consistent recovery model. Of course, we know what comes next, it turns out several customers really wanted some recovery so partial recovery gets added to A (largely outside of the main recovery model though - because that's really costly now because it wasn't done in the initial implementation and adding it now will degrade performance of the feature for the few customers who really don't care about recovery of the feature and have had their expectations set unnecessarily high for performance of the feature). Now, for years, you have two recovery models to consider in implementation of every feature - which can break your business far worse than having made feature A simply "very fast" and fully recoverable rather than an infected pus sack on the architecture that everyone needs to avoid puncturing when working around it.
However, I think the closer you are, for example, to the View of MVC, the more sense agile makes (or, maybe I'm just not very good at human factors aspects so my first pass usually sucks and I don't know why -- so user feedback is very helpful as early as possible -- I think a shell is a fine UI).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
Its easier to pick on a few nerds.
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 tend to agree that it is an issue with society rather than any instance of sexism...but *how* does one 'challenge larger cultural institutions'? I'm not convinced (yet) that positive discrimination is the right/only way - that seems equally sexist to me...but it seems to be the option chosen by employers.
If I were passed over for a position in favour of a women, when I was equally qualified (or even *more* qualified), then I would consider legal action. I suspect I wouldn't get very far though (several issues would be difficult to prove), but IMO it should be illegal.
Max.
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.
I just love the fact that some idiot modded my post down.
Slashdot is like yin and yang.
The posts contain some of the most intelligent remarks on blogs in general, while moderation seems to be a process identical to random poo-flingery.
You just can't beat that for being red hot and ice cold at the same time.
Could it be that Slashdot has been data mining, and is preferentially giving mod points to those with IQs under 50?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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?