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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.
"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.
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.
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
The problem that Wikipedia has is that of fighting biases.
The solution is a site sort of like Wikipedia, where multiple articles can be posted on the same subject, and where the community can vote on their quality. Articles don't even need to be deleted, they can just sink into the muck. Text is small. And the well-voted articles can be used as Wikipedia citations...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"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
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
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....
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."
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?
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
(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
Prove it. Show some quantifiable metric that supports what you postulate, and attributes it *purely* to diversity. Until then, diversity is nothing but a feel-good buzzword at best, and at worst, a legalized method of enforcing workforce sexism and racism.