I’m An Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader And I’m Sick Of Our Approach To Diversity!

[Rhaide]

History doesn't back up women who were until that same time period delegated to the kitchen and babymakers while men were not? Wow color me shocked . You do realize having a head start going generations back is a huge boon correct?

I think you're misreading him. He isn't saying women can't be successful, he's saying diversity isn't REQUIRED for success. And his correctness is self-evident. He stated facts. Could there be a statistical difference if women had been afforded the same options as men in this time? Yes, it's very possible. However, that doesn't negate the fact that low-diversity organizations have been successful in the past, proving that diversity isn't a requirement for success.

Please don't read this as 'low-diversity is good'. I don't believe that, I believe that if 90% of the best candidates for a job at Nasa are gay black women then I believe that 90% of Nasa should probably be gay black women. Go with merit, ignore skin color, sexual organs, and which of the aforementioned sex organs you enjoy in others.

People are people and forcing diversity for diversity's sake does no good when the majority of all candidates for a job will have a similar collegiate and intellectual background. That ISN'T diversity, it's expanding your color pallet. We should be hiring for qualifications.

[Livnthedream]

....it's statistically false that all members of a gender don't all like the exact same things?

So...you and I like the exact same things?

It is almost like they hate stereotypes because they believe in stereotypes. Go figure.

[unbound]

We must stop fucking it up for the amazing women in tech!

So here are some of the problems that the author doesn't get.

- Diversity is a long game, not a short game. If your evaluation criteria is immediate impact, of course your pool of talent is amazingly small.

- Diversity is about changing your game for the better, not staying mired in the same game. You can't fit a square peg into a round hole, but the goal of diversity is to understand that the square peg can be leveraged for great value too.

- Technical diversity has to start somewhere. Engineering degrees are hard and are generally not degrees people get just for fun. An engineering degree results in getting a good job. If you don't think your hiring potential is good, or that you will face harassment by getting into the field, then why would you start down that path? Tech companies signal to future candidates that, yes, if you have potential, regardless of gender/color/etc, then you will have a good environment to work in.

- Once tech companies get serious about diversity, colleges become enabled to get more candidates. This means that the pool for diverse candidates grows after 5+ years, not immediately. Again, this is a long game, not a short game.

And, BTW, I've actually brought on diversity to great success. In fact, the best technical person I've ever had was a minority woman. She was hired as a tester because, of course she was. I gave her the opportunity to try reading some server documentation to find that she, on her own, installed the server software and was playing with it. Within 2 years, she was my go-to tech arch resource.

And, also BTW, one of my current bosses (managing director) is pretty close to my equal in regards to technical prowess. The only reason she might be slightly less is, as a managing director, she spends far more time working with clients than on technical issues for many years now.

That is the reality of the situation.

[Livnthedream]

That is the reality of the situation.

You having a substantial mix of misunderstanding what is being said and ignorance? I agree.

It is almost like no one is saying that women aren't capable, or shouldn't be in these positions. Better yet, just how long of a game are you wanting to play? Since these same tactics have been in use in places like Norway for fifty years with no noticeable moving of the needle.

[Spacewalrus2010]

Now compare the percentage of men in the applicant group to the percentage of men selected.

What you apparently need assistance with is comparing the number 90 with the number 97.

First off, no need to be rude. And this whole thing is about the 97% is greater than 90%? You do realize there is context correct? There are two different groups of people that these numbers are referring to. One is candidates the other is the recruited/hired.

I.E. There is difference between saying 97% of selected candidates and saying 97% of all candidates. You seem to believe she was saying the latter?

Yeah, no one gets your point. What, that 90 doesn't equal 97? Well, no shit. Did you expect her hiring numbers to line up exactly with her applicant numbers? That wouldn't even be likely in the first place, and hell, half the article was dedicated to explaining WHY the numbers didn't line up in the end.

I don't know what possessed you to act like such a smartass over something so trivial, but you've only managed to make yourself look ridiculous, especially given the context of the article.

I just cannot have myself believe that it's just that.

[Deleted]

Diversity? Lol.

[Forogil]

Yeah, no one gets your point. What, that 90 doesn't equal 97? Well, no shit. Did you expect her hiring numbers to line up exactly with her applicant numbers?

Everyone with a decent mathematical education gets the point: that 97% is significantly higher than 90%.

If she hired 100 persons the probability that such a small number of female hires was just a random occurrence is 0.78%; and it seems she hired more - and thus the probability that this is just random would be smaller. If the numbers are accurate this will likely add to the discrimination lawsuit against Google (it is below the 5% mark they use for pay): https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...uit?CMP=twt_gu

Obviously it doesn't prove discrimination - it could be that female members of the candidate pool were for some reason less qualified (doesn't say - and doesn't explain why), the numbers are wrong, or the good female applicants often rejected the offers (seems to contradict the article).

There are many possible explanations for this - it could be discrimination; it could be that women aren't encouraged enough to study programming (the author implies this - but also seems to fail with her own daughter), it could be that men are on average better suited for these jobs, or it could be that there are more men that are suited for the job without men on average being better suited for them.

The reason for the last point is that many traits (e.g. intelligence) have higher variance among men than women; so a man is more likely to be a genius or moron. If you only want the brightest (or dumbest) you are thus more likely to get disproportionally more men, but there are still bright women (just fewer), and the average man is about as intelligent as the average woman (depends on how you average).

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First off, no need to be rude. And this whole thing is about the 97% is greater than 90%? You do realize there is context correct? There are two different groups of people that these numbers are referring to. One is candidates the other is the recruited/hired.

There are not two different groups - the recruited/hired is a sub-set of the candidates. That is sort of the definition of candidates for recruitment.

Thus if you were a male candidate your chances of getting hired were more than three times greater than if you were a female candidate; even if there were few female candidates and even if she strongly argued for some non-traditional candidates (who were even more male).

[Forogil]

It is? Wow. I didn't even notice. I guess my lack of a PhD education in mathematics just didn't allow me to discover the fact that 97 > 90.

Seems that way, and that you still don't understand the problem seems to confirm this. I guess you are not getting hired by Google.

Sad, but no sarcasm.

The numbers also aren't even expected to line up that way. You don't hire at random, so just because you get 90% X applicants and 10% Y applicants doesn't mean you're going to hire 90% X and 10% Y the way you'd expect from a sufficiently large sample size of random selections. This is especially true if your applicant pool remains static in any way.

Not exactly 90% - but perhaps 86-94%, and certainly not 97%; and the number is so unlikely that it seems significant enough for a gender-discrimination law-suit.

The possible explanations are thus that the numbers in article are wrong, the female applicants are for some reasons not as good as the male ones (which the article doesn't say), or Google discriminated when hiring.

Compare with Blizzard - https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/19/h...rns-in-1-year/ says that 78% of game developers are male (and 79% of Blizzard employees), and of new paid interns Blizzard went from 88% to 68% male.

[Katchii]

One chick isn't going to sway the mind of anybody on here. I don't have a single problem with tech jobs being 100% men and nursing jobs being 100% women. But people don't like that because diversity is super important for no reason other than to make people feel good they helped a minority.

Pretty much this.

You should hire the person who can do THE JOB, not the person that fulfills some arbitrary and ultimately meaningless quota.

[Forogil]

At this point you're trying too hard. Seriously, I get that everyone on the internet wants to make themselves feel better by putting down everyone else, but you guys trying to paint this as some complex mathematic problem that only you understand, while everyone else is fully aware of what's going on.

So, everyone is aware of what's going on? If so that seems like a significant change from earlier replies.

It doesn't say that about the Google applicants, but she's pretty explicit about the quality of female hires in the technical side of her business. Which reasonably could also apply to the Google applicants - but again, she doesn't come out and say that.

But if she did that at Google that would mean hiring a larger percentage of women, not smaller.

There is nothing in the article suggesting that she had specifically tried to get "feminist computer scientists" to apply for the jobs, and thus become candidates. If she did it seems like a spectacular failure.

For her startup she indicated that she was willing to pay premium wages to attract women - but she didn't directly indicate that they were underqualified. One would assume Google could do the same if they were interested in diversity, they don't seem to lack the money (but there is a law-suit pending about low wages for women).

However, she indicated that the female over-paid employees dragged the team down - it could be that they were qualified - but not ready to work long enough hours; if so that seems like something that it something that should be addressed instead of trying to get women interested in computer science. (Or it could be that others resented the higher wages.)

[Video Games]

What the hell are you talking about? If someone wants to be in a professional field and is able to prove they can do the job it doesn't matter what gender or race they are. Making entire careers gender based is ridiculous. And that opinion has nothing to do with "making myself feel good". That is called logical thinking.

I never said the contrary.

[Mistame]

Now compare the percentage of men in the applicant group to the percentage of men selected.

What you apparently need assistance with is comparing the number 90 with the number 97.

There is nothing wrong with the discrepancy between the two percentages. The way you're presenting it is that, because the percentage of men hired is higher than the percentage of male applicants, this is indicative of discrimination. This is illogical and not at all how statistics work. Sure, there could be some bias there but in all likelihood, this is just a case of the women who weren't hired not being as qualified as the men who were. You digging your heels in on the former and questioning the intelligence of those who disagree under the guise of being a "mathematician" is infantile.

[Forogil]

The problem with earlier replies wasn't a lack of understanding from anyone, it was one specific poster who kept on acting like a smug jackass about their education and how everyone else was dumb, but refused to discuss it beyond that. Once that's out of the way and we can just talk about the topic, things are a lot easier.

Suuuure, everyone just feigned ignorance.

There's also an interesting point that the author makes in the comments about skillsets. She says that when it comes to general software engineering with one language, the gender mix is a lot better and actually reflects the population we see in universities. (70/30)

But once they started looking for people with more diverse skillsets willing to grow, they lost an equal number of women and men - but of course that resulted in a much higher percentage of women lost. (100% in their case!)

But it doesn't explain why; and that statement hides that 100% of the women were unwilling to grow in that way and perhaps 5% of the men. That seems like a major difference - and such diverse and specialized skillsets are often needed.

If the women aren't interested in such skill growth they are recruited into software engineering under false pretenses.
On the other hand the recruitment ad for Blizzard have a female programmer (and mother) that discusses learning a new language and toolset on the job as I recall.

[Noomz]

Diversity of thought is far more important that gender and race quotas. These companies are going to have to take a big hit before they come to realize that Identity Politics is not a good business model.

Though genders do tend to have diversity of thought, if you haven't noticed. Ethnicites have diversity of thought because of the many varying cultural backgrounds they come from.
I don't think any company has suffered as a result of it.

When certain jobs are dominated by certain groups, other groups tend to not want to seek that job out because they feel they wouldn't fit in or be welcome. That's why diversifying is something that's often said is important, because it's a part in motivating new groups to seek out jobs. And those jobs might actually NEED more people. The tech industry as I understand it needs a lot of people, so of course you'll want to make sure you get what you need.
If only one ethnicity and/or economical group seeks out a job, you'll have less people to hire from.

So in that regard, it's desirable. Though diversifying through hiring is only a part of it.

[Forogil]

No one feigned anything. It was a series of replies that looked like:

A: Here's an article.
B: 90% and 97%? Ha! She's bad at math!
A: What's so wrong about it?
B: Ha! You're dumb!
A: Er, ok, but what's wrong with it?
B: Ha! You're still dumb and I'm a PhD!

It was pretty ridiculous and made it sound like he had some super secret deep insight into the topic that he was just keeping a secret...but no, he was just acting like a smug asshole because 90% -> 97% was a big difference and that somehow couldn't be possible. (Even though she later states 98% in the article so who knows. And even if the numbers are all accurate, it still doesn't mean that she's somehow bad at math.)

The 90% and 97% numbers hide something else; and the reverse of those numbers is that there were 10% women among candidates and 3% women among recruits.

It indicate that women are hired at a rate which is 28% of that of the rate for men.

That is far below 80% and thus it seems the hiring practice has a disparate impact on the hiring of women which can be illegal gender-discrimination according https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact - and thus in a law-suit it would be up to her (or her former employer Google) to show that the hiring practice was in fact fair; i.e. the burden of proof would be on the employer to show the absence of discrimination.

It could be that the female candidates were that unqualified, but it is not even stated and the implication not considered.

[Mormolyce]

There is nothing wrong with the discrepancy between the two percentages. The way you're presenting it is that, because the percentage of men hired is higher than the percentage of male applicants, this is indicative of discrimination.

Nope, still not what I was saying. Try again.

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First off, no need to be rude. And this whole thing is about the 97% is greater than 90%? You do realize there is context correct? There are two different groups of people that these numbers are referring to. One is candidates the other is the recruited/hired.

Oh boy, this really hurts my head.

And how am I being rude?

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Yeah, no one gets your point. What, that 90 doesn't equal 97? Well, no shit. Did you expect her hiring numbers to line up exactly with her applicant numbers?

Oh dear god. This is embarrassing.

[Nasuuna]

100% correct

why do we NEED diversity? what's wrong with certain jobs being male/female dominated if that's just the way it is?


Do we want diversity in dishwashing and child care?

Fun fact, I'm male

A Village Inn was hiring dish washers and hosts

I applied for host

They put me as dish washer.

Only reason I didn't decline is because I was broke and had no job.

[Fencers]

I worked in "tech"; two video game developers and a educational software developer. My sister is a software developer who worked on some of the first software modems.

Can confirm, lots of dudes like computers.

To my knowledge, any woman skilled &/or qualified was hired by every company I worked at thus far.

The issue is simply a lot of women take dominant interest in Humanist and Relations orientated fields.

We had female programmers at Sony, at Field Works. But the majority we're dudes. Go to the art department, closer to a 50/50 split. Walk down to human resources or client services- a sea of vaginas.

I don't agree with the need to push women towards STEM. I think it is nice to encourage women and girls as such and make the interest less "gendered", if you will. But it's not like the women who go into tech, engineering or heavily mathematical fields are not getting jobs.

In short, people are stupid and get worked up over the wrong things.

[Grapemask]

It's kind of hard to explain to people that these gender issues don't just get wished away. We can't just say how nice it would be if women were in tech. We kind of have to force the issue. It's sort of like how affirmative action worked (which is pretty much what some of these companies use, or try to use, regarding women).

A field with mostly men is going to continue feeling as if it's for and about men. Men will continue to feel superior to women. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: Women don't join the field, you lower the pool, and it's simple statistical math that you're far less likely to meet a highly competent woman in tech than a competent man. It has nothing to do with their gender abilities; it's culture that continues to propagate this idea that women can't or should not be in the field.

So we're at a place where you can go to any school in the country and ask the typical male what they think of their female classmates, and they'll say that they're A) a minority, and B) seem less likely to be capable. Or they'll say things like "it's so cool that you're a woman and you want to be in computer science/systems engineering/xyz!" Or the one I've heard male student say to female students more than once, "You're way too cute to be a comp sci major!"

You basically have to force women in as much as possible until the idea that they're an oddity goes away. Then the culture fixes itself. Then more of them enroll. Then they actually do become naturally equal in number rather than artificially. We've seen it work this way with every minority group in the history of minority groups starting from either a culturally or legally oppressed or hindered state.

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I also have to add, there's actually some interesting research suggesting we should push more women into software engineering, because they seem to be noticeably better at it. This study is probably the most easily readable/easily accessible for those not into programming shenanigans.

That article breaks down the numbers from the study into a pretty legible state, but just an extra summary:

Women are much more likely than men to produce code that is accepted into a project's commit. Or, basically, their code is better than their male counterparts'.
But, only if it's not known that they're women. Women whose genders can be identified are more likely than men to have their code contributions rejected.

We'd be silly to waste that kind of potential.

[elaina]

OP is this supposed to be bait? It's not really hitting the spot...

Um...

I know engineers are bad at maths but...

Lol so even outnumbered 9:1 women were not even hired proportionately to the applicant pool (or close)