One of my undergrad math teachers once held a job as a computer. She liked to tell the story of how she once spent about a week solving a complex integral. The answer turned out to be 1. She said she felt both elated and kind of disappointed.
I don't understand how people continue to expect that it is nearly their right to not be spoiled about every book, movie, and so on. You're on the internet, on a website with public comments. If it is such a big deal to not be spoiled about an old book you probably weren't even going to read, then maybe you should reconsider your browsing habits.
It's a biased and charged term. Anticipating a plot-point does not necessarily ruin the pleasure of experiencing the work — most of the enjoyment comes from the artistry of manufacture (the prose, the cinematography) than discovering the eventual outcome. Nobody who ever went to an art gallery complains about photographs of the works in the catalogue ‘spoiling’ the paintings.
> Anticipating a plot-point does not necessarily ruin the pleasure of experiencing the work
No, actually, it does significantly decrease the pleasure of the work for me. I get the most enjoyment from narrative work the first time through, when everything is a surprise, and if it's been spoiled I never get that experience, and my enjoyment is considerably muted.
So are you asserting that I'm a liar, or that I'm somehow confused about the inputs and outputs of my own mind, or...what? I'd honestly like to know; this is not the first time someone has told me that I'm not qualified to describe my own emotional experiences, and I do not understand it.
Depends on who you are. The element of surprise is a huge part of works, esp horror or suspense movies. Eliminating the surprise leaves out a big chunk of the experience.
In what way is anybody ever ‘surprised’ by a horror movie's relatable narrative (as opposed to those entirely circumstantial moments that “make you jump” and that — significantly — you cannot really express)?
I'm not sure you'd get it if you haven't experienced it up to this point. Maybe just how your mind works.
I know some people walk into a movie consciously or unconsciously determined to not be surprised. They're usually disappointed to varying degrees or at least not surprised by many things. Best way to experience those movies is mentally go with the illusion for at least the duration of the movie rather than try to outsmart the director. I mean, common tropes you'll see coming anyway but one gets more out of it overall.
There are smart people of both sexes and all races, and I always assumed that an organization as focused on problem solving as NASA would employ the smartest people and ignore the discrimination that was all too commonplace at the time this occurred. While I'm glad to see that my assumption was grounded in facts, articles like this, in 2016, seem divisive to me.
> While I'm glad to see that my assumption was grounded in facts
Sadly, you're wrong. For years the route to become a NASA astronaut included being a military test pilot. That position was not available to women, and so NASA prevented women from becoming astronauts.
They continued to do so even when testing showed that women were at least as good as men, and often better, and had other advantages. (Smaller, and thus lighter, and thus considerably less expensive to send into space).
I was just referring to the article. Apparently the "computer" position was open to the best applicants, regardless of sex or race. You know, the way things are supposed to be.
> articles like this, in 2016, seem divisive to me.
I dunno, this seems kinda like the "racism is over" argument. As long as there are many, many people who (consciously or unconsciously) believe that nothing of value was ever accomplished by a non-white non-male, there's value in pointing out that they're wrong.
>"As long as there are many, many people who (consciously or unconsciously) believe that nothing of value was ever accomplished by a non-white non-male"
Nothing good will come of trying to forcefully change those peoples' minds. Because such actions are incredibly divisive, even if you sugar-coat it with noble ideals.
The old expression about bringing a horse to water comes to mind. Doing divisive things that constantly beat the war-drum of past wrongs is "physically" forcing the horse to drink. Living peacefully and treating everyone around you equally (including those with views you disagree with) is akin to bringing them to the water and drinking it next to them.
Your use of the word "force" when talking about race is an odd choice when we consider the huge amounts of force coming from the other side - the armed militarised police who seem to want to escalate every confrontation; the lynchings; the red lining; the jim crow laws; the terrorist racist groups who firebomb churches; the "lone wolf" extremists who murder people.
"someone wrote a blog post" seems pretty mild in response.
So mentioning that black women accomplished cool stuff one time is "beating the war drum of past wrongs" and "trying to forcefully change peoples' minds"?
Basically, you're saying we should cover up any history that might make people uncomfortable?
Some would say calling an article that highlights history and achievements of an underrepresented group "divisive" is an example of unintended systemic racism.
Any organization where bosses care about results will discriminate far less than others. I am not surprised about NASA because you either send a rocket to moon or you do not. But local DMV office might discriminant without impunity.
But given the smartness thing, it turns out that IQ varies a lot by race. African Americans are the only race where IQ of women is on an average far better than man. (I don't vouch for the science here, I come from a country without concept of race and hence cant read racist context in academic articles).
Pretty cool. They used to have a position at NASA whose job title was "computer", which was typically filled by women. They would compute whatever was necessary, and invent any tools they needed to make those computations.
When I was about 10, I loved the idea of technology. I knew (loosely) about 50 people (all male) who were interested in computers and technology. There were no sign posts, ads, encouragement - it was binary: you were either interested or you weren't. I fought my parents and got a job at 8 to get a computer because my parents wouldn't buy me a glorified toy.
When I watched an old documentary from the 70s a few months ago, they had boys going around junk shops sniffing at junk parts to put together their own systems.
Now, revisionists talk about women being barred, ostracised, etc - but the only people I ever saw ostracised were the geeks like me. We didn't care what gender you were: you either were interested or you weren't. Even my nerdy female friends thought I was odd back then.
I hear these revisionists like you and it annoys and disappoints me.
When we were in computing classes, girls and boys wanted to be my friend in equal measure. When we left the room, us nerds were scorned by both sexes in equal measure.
It most probably doesn't surprise me, but my wife (the same age as me) was in the same boat as me - but I didn't meet her until we were adults.
In short, I never met a girl in my childhood that was interested in computing. I am not inclined to agree with the "social conditioning" excuse as everyone I knew motivated themselves. Two years of paper round tells you how dedicated I was.
Ditto. I get incredibly irritated with this naïve revisionism.
I spent a lot of my child hood seeking out broken and junk electronics anywhere it could be found, including dumpster diving behind the high school and businesses. One of the opening scenes in Robert Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds is most instructive. In the first few minutes, you're introduced to a 10 year old kid named Edwin Chin. Take a good long look at that kid, imagine yourself being back at that time and ask yourself, "What adult, except an adult nerd, would ever encourage any kid, male or female, to be like Edwin?". I was like Edwin myself.
The number of people that I knew that were adults interested in computers and technology was exactly one, Murali Mani, and I lived in Chappaqua, NY, which was the very model of a privileged well educated community. This was a community where many people worked at IBM's headquarters at the time, but every person I knew that worked for IBM, were suits. The successful people at IBM were not the engineers, but the suits. No one encouraged you to be an engineer. Everyone encouraged you to be interested in being a doctor, a lawyer or a suit. Engineering really only started to become a desirable career around the first dot-com boom. And even in the first dot-com boom, mostly founding engineers did very well. After the founding engineers, suits still took home a lot of the winnings. It was only post-dot-com bubble that engineering truly became a desirable career that people encouraged and supported you in pursuing instead of pushing you to be a doctor, lawyer or suit.
Beyond Murali, exactly no one encouraged me to get involved with computers. I eventually moved to Raleigh, NC and went to a small private school, that like most private schools, preps you for university. Tech and engineering was never a focus even when I graduated in 2000 at the height of the first bubble. Guy or girl, you were not encouraged to go into tech at all. You would be more likely to be encouraged to play a musical instrument, do art or some sport than do anything tech related.
The revisionists really need to spend some time reading Meredith Patterson's "When Nerds Collide" essay, since most of their real beef is not with hacker culture, but with bro culture that became a part of tech at best a few years after the first dot com bubble.
Another thing worth considering about computing history is that that there is a huge huge huge difference between computing pre mini-computer and post-mini computer. The culture in tech from the 80s and 90s didn't destroy the culture in tech pre-1980s described in this article because #patriarchy, but because the tech industry 1980s was entirely wiped out like dinosaurs with the move from 5" HDDs to 3.5" HDDs and the move from mainframes to hobby personal computers. Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" and AnnaLee Saxenian's "Regional Advantage" will do far more to explain why the engineering/computing world pre-1980s disappeared than any revisionist explanation.
I grew up in a pretty different milieu -- no IBM employees, no friends into computers. My dad knew one woman who worked at Cray and I visited her office once. Very super cool. I never bought a computer until I was in grad school as I was able to dumpster dive them all until then, other than the first, which my mom bought.
But I'll tell you this: being a girl, I never hung out with the boy computer nerds doing computer nerd stuff because they didn't seem to want to hang out with a girl. (I did hang out with the boy math nerds, so I don't think it's all boy/girl junior high awkwardness.) So I'm probably one of those people who didn't exist especially in the grandparent post, a non-existent girl computer nerd motivated by herself, because I too was too socially awkward to come in and somehow magically charm a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers.
Thank god for college and moving away from hometown.
Curious to hear more about the difference between the boy computer nerds and the boy math nerds, especially the differences in the computer or math based hanging out activities (i.e. extra curricular subject matter activities)
Also, re: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers."...
Did they say things along those lines or was this an assumption you made at the time? You clearly didn't hate computers, so I don't know how they would figure that unless you never demonstrated your interest in computers to them.
If they were actively discriminating against you because you were a girl, I'd expect you to have said something like: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because I was a girl despite the fact that they knew I loved computers."
"If they were actively discriminating against you because you were a girl, I'd expect you to have said something like: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because I was a girl despite the fact that they knew I loved computers.""
Why? This type of sexism or bias is well-known to the point that I'm surprised you asked her to explain it. Here it is: our culture molds men and women into different roles at an early age that shapes the average person's expectations of what's a "man's thing" or a "woman's thing." Although early technicians were women, men eventually took over the field and computers were another thing they played with while women did other things.
Although I'd like the specifics, I could easily see a group of male, computer nerds assuming she was a waste of time because "women don't hack on computers." Just like how [male] mechanics would likely roll their eyes if a woman suggested the answer to a mechanical problem that wasn't obvious to them. Whereas anyone can do math.
"This type of sexism or bias is well-known to the point
that I'm surprised you asked her to explain it."
Completely agree that those bias' exist. What I contest is the assumption that you hold and that I've seen many others hold that this is the only factor or overwhelmingly primary factor and that it's somehow inappropriate to even consider look for other explanations, and the assumption that the magnitude off all other factors (if any) contribute inconsequentially to the problem we're trying to address here. I really don't see why my questions I asked to gain greater understanding of specific circumstances of anecdotal information should warrant surprise or should be seen as inappropriate. The scientific process involves inquiry, hypotheses and observations. You can't start at a conclusion and work your way backwards.
Personally, I find the Occam's Razor, Hanlon's Razor and the null hypothesis to be remarkably useful tools when trying to gain a greater understanding of the World.
The reason I ask for explanation is because I can also see that exact same group of male computer nerds assuming that most of their colleagues, male or female are a waste of time because "few people hack on computers". You can't expect people (especially children in the context of the educational "prison industrial complex") are going to magically overcome this assumption for one subgroup of the general population when they likely hold a belief that applies generally to the entire population.
The reason I ask about the difference between the math and computer nerds is because there is a far greater chance that a child can identify a math nerd over a computer nerd because math is a required course at school every year. I was very much both a math nerd and computer nerd through elementary school to the end of middle school. I knew who the other math nerds were because we were the ones that were most active in math class and were known to have the highest grades on our math tests and we stayed after the bell to talk to the teacher about math. I didn't know who were the other computer nerds were throughout school except for the two semesters in elementary school that we got exposure to programming in Logo. In high school, I only knew about the computer nerds (all ~5 of us) because we all signed up for AP Comp Sci the first time it was offered at our school. Besides that course, there were 2-3 of us that would program TI calculators, but that was the extent of us hanging out. If there were other computer nerds in elementary school, middle school or high school, I didn't know about them because there wasn't a known venue to congregate and discover each other.
Basically, any time someone's assertions are based on assumptions and not on facts, I think it's reasonable to be suspect of those assertions. There are three sides to every story. In this case, there is her side, the side of the male computer nerds and there are the facts. I want to know the facts. Assumptions are by and large useless.
Related Reading from Meredith Patterson, "The Null Hypothesis Loves You and Wants You to Be Happy":
"The reason I ask for explanation is because I can also see that exact same group of male computer nerds assuming that most of their colleagues, male or female are a waste of time because "few people hack on computers". "
BOOM! You got me there. I overlooked the obvious counter to my own statement for whatever reason. I retract it.
"Related Reading from Meredith Patterson, "The Null Hypothesis Loves You and Wants You to Be Happy":"
I appreciate the article but I'm not sure it applies. The approach is certainly useful when you can do that. There's too many things, especially in social decision-making, that involve multiple factors working together in non-linear or inseparable ways. So, it's more like trying to identify the various factors, look at how they often play out, assess how they apply to a certain situation, and make an educated guess about what's likely to apply. Probabilistic and case-based reasoning dominates most things of any significant complexity and uncertainty.
We get a ton of mileage out of null hypothesis and associated analysis, though. Way more than I'd expect on occasion. The tricks people used to eliminate all variables but race or gender are a good example. Otherwise, we'd be looking at social situations weighing the odds as I described above. So, null hypothesis has limits but still worth attempting to use since we can't be sure of its real limits yet.
That's what's fun about it to me, though. So reliable, relatively simple, and yet so much more potential to find cool new ways to use it. :)
1) Math nerdery was indeed easily identifiable through classes. In addition, I went to schools with math teams, and was recruited in junior high/high school, because the team leaders wanted to win (and win we did).
2) Computer "talent" wasn't selected for. Using the computer lab in high school if you were not in the programming class was about being friends with a certain social group and being friends with the guy who ran the lab -- it was a social construct. I was quite shy at the time, painfully honest, and sensitive to rejection or dislike rather than oblivious to it. A brusque "Why do you need to use the lab?" would be enough to get me to say, "Well, I don't need to use the lab.....??...." (exit)
3) In the end, it was made clear that I belonged in math, while when it came to computers the guys were showing each other how to find the naked dancing girls in the computer games and glancing guiltily at each other when I saw. It didn't offend me, I want you to understand, but I just didn't really felt like I was part of the group, bonded by common interests. And I wasn't. I think the majority of these guys were there because their friends were in the computer lab, not because they loved hacking. In college I met guys who really did like making frankencomputers and we had fun together, as we really did have a common interest and were a bit more mature.
I'll make one last point: I had a very traumatic (to a junior high girl) summer class in math. The 7 other boys knew each other and wouldn't talk to me and wouldn't eat lunch with me, even though I did demonstrate that I loved math (skipped to 2nd year of program) and was good with computers (configured email system for myself fixing teachers mistakes). Were they discriminating? Were they sexist? They were not nice, or welcoming, and I don't have a single good memory of a conversation with a single one of those boys, but I liked the teacher. But at the same time, your previous comment puts this emphasis on discrimination/sexism/etc. Those are bad habits that come out of unexamined behavior that result from social fallacies we carry around. In particular, seventh graders are just awkward, for so many reasons. I don't find it useful to think that those 7th grade boys were just male chauvinists. They were awkward 7th graders who were afraid to talk to a girl. That unremarkable fear had an unfortunate interaction with a class in which I was outnumbered and "other", in a field with historical baggage. As a mathematician, I know that rules and patterns make outcomes of a certain shape, and intent is largely irrelevant as we filter through time and society.
First I want to thank you for your well considered and detail response. It's a huge breath of fresh air and reason in a debate that often include people who are quick to cry foul, jump to conclusions or condemn without stopping to think if they are succumbing to the fundamental attribution error.
1) Awesome. I'm happy your math experience was great.
2) That sucks. Fortunately access to a computer lab or the internet is sufficiently democratized that the unfortunate scenario you encountered shouldn't occur anymore. Having access to any computer and the internet today provides any child today orders of magnitude more privilege to learn and explore their passions than any kid growing up in the 80s, 90s and even 00s. I think there are still many communities that are still computing and internet poor, but we're getting closer and closer to the point where access to computing and the internet is inching closer to being considered a fundamental human right. At least now, it's only a minor socio-economic barrier and the height of that barrier is dropping rapidly, such that in the developed world, more and more people have access to a computing device and internet and the cost of acquiring a minimum viable general purpose computing device with a screen and keyboard can be had for less than $100.
3) From your description, it doesn't sound like many (or possibly any) of those boys were hackers (or became hackers). I think this is an important distinction to make that few people debating these issues do. If none of these boys were hackers, it sounds like you didn't really lose out socially from not being one of them. Hanging out with boys in the computer lab just to download porn sounds about as valuable as hanging out with a clique whose common bond is smoking weed. Not exactly a huge loss in the grand scheme of things. That said, it does sound like you lost out on access to the physical computing resources that would have allowed you to better partake in computing. Do you think this is a fair assessment in hindsight?
This difference between hackers and bros is actually a point Meredith Patterson astutely pointed out in her "When Nerds Collide" essay. Historically, software engineering culture since the birth of the mini-computer has been "hacker culture". It's only in the past 10 years, perhaps as long as 20 that two distinctly new groups become not only part of the industry, but part of the engineers in the industry: Brogrammers and Geek Feminists. Hacker culture on the other hand was born at a time where many people rarely met IRL (or did so long after forming a common bond), where you had short ungendered handles, where the cost of transferring bytes of an image were sufficiently costly that you didn't have avatars and photos that let people know you weren't a dog. It was only in the late 90s to the mid 2000s that people became involved in the industry as a career and not out of natural nerd proclivities. The big change was money. Once Bill Gates made a ton of money and then Google became huge, did people start looking at tech as a way to become rich and a viable career. That's when the Brogrammers and Geek Feminists showed up. The inability of many in this debate to distinguish between male hackers and bros is a huge frustration of mine and is as exemplary of the fundamental attribution error as anyone making assumptions about computing ability based on gender.
Out of curiosity, when were you in middle school? Middle school for me was 1992-1995. I'm particularly curious about dating when you'd be in school because it would help me get an idea of what you meant with some things you said like "a field with historical baggage", which is very very very different if you were in middle in the 80s, 90s or 00s.
Lastly, one particular type of intersectionality I take interest in is neurological diversity. Not everyone has the same brain chemistry and responds the same way to different stimuli (from social situations to loud noises for example) and when they do respond, the range of ways people respond can be direct and unfiltered to shy and measured. One of the concerns I have with neurological intersectionality, is that there is a fundamental incompatibility between an environment that is accommodating and comfortable for the unfiltered and an environment that is accommodating of the sensitive. An environment that tolerates the unfiltered is uncomfortable for those that are sensitive and and environment that is comfortable for the sensitive somewhat necessitates rules, policing and admonishment for violation of behaviors that cause discomfort for those that are sensitive. As someone who identifies as being sensitive, I'm curious about your thoughts are for this dilemma. On a related note, I'm also curious about your thoughts on this somewhat old essay about tact filters: http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
Given my interest in neurological diversity and my belief that there is a fundamental incompatibility between environments that are safe, welcoming and comfortable for the unfiltered versus the sensitive, I think it's important that we, as an industry recognize that need for multiple environments that are supportive of the breadth of cognitive diversity of people that can contribute to our field. Awareness of this cognitive diversity and the creation of well labeled spaces at least creates environments (a) where the unfiltered can participate knowing they need to police themselves in that sensitive space and environments where they can participate and not worry about being sensitive or tactful, and (b) where the sensitive can participate knowing they need to be tolerant of unintentional insensitivity and lack of tact and environments, where they can participate with little risk of being offended, hurt or triggered.
I had those experiences as a youthful nerd too. There are some fond memories and some bitter ones.
I'm not sure why you think that your experiences as a youthful nerd make some sort of point about racism and sexism in modern tech-corporate culture, though. I mean, your entire post seems like a non sequitur in the context of the post you're responding to.
I think the article posted is excellent and was an amazingly good read. The comment that I and rustynails replied to added absolutely nothing of value and was an admonishing post suggestive that the lack of surface diversity* in our industry is largely the result of discrimination and not other factors like base rates and natural nerd proclivities.
The people described in the article worked as computers and mathematicians at NASA because of:
- talent
- born, raised and lived in the right place at the right time (propinquity)
- self interest (they applied for jobs doing work they were interested in performing)
- health (reasonably good enough not to be a distraction)
- education
People who worked as engineers in Silicon Valley since the mini-computer revolution have done so because of:
- talent
- born, raised and lived in the right place at the right time (propinquity)
- self interest (they applied for jobs doing work they were interested in performing)
- health (reasonably good enough not to be a distraction)
- education
Notice that those two lists are largely the same? While I'm not saying discrimination isn't at play or non-existent, it's at best a minor factor relative to lots of other issues. Let's take what is likely to be one of the biggest issues that everyone loves to conveniently ignore, base rates:
In Hampton, Virginia, the birthplace of NASA, the African American population is 49.8% and in Virginia it's 19.7%, whereas in the Bay Area it's about 6.7%, most of which is largely concentrated in Alemeda, Contra Costa and Solano counties. Furthermore, these counties are not the locus of Silicon Valley, San Francisco (5.8%), San Mateo (3.0%) and Santa Clara (2.9%) are. Even the entire state of California is only about 6.5% black. This means, that to have a percentage of the Silicon Valley work force be black at approximately the same rate as the rest of the United States, black people need to move here either for work or for school.
As someone who's moved countries 4 times and states 2 times, this is non-trivial and unpleasant for those without a disposition to tolerate such a jarring change where you're an adult and responsible for supporting yourself and financing your own move. You lose support networks of family and friends. It's a non-trivial cost, especially if you need to move belongings. You need to rebuild and re-purchase the things you didn't bring.
The base rates above are the general population. If you assume that most people in tech have a bachelor degree or better (we no this isn't universally true since many software engineers are self taught), then the base rates gets worse. For people between 25 and 29 years of age, about 20% of black people have a bachelors degree versus 15% for Hispanics, 40% for white people and 58% for Asians.
Furthermore, 52% of college students attend a university within 100 miles of home and only 15.5% attend a university farther than 500 miles away. And a mere ~1.5% of Americans move across state lines each year.
Honestly, most people debating diversity as so incredibly awful at understanding statistics and performing a basic root cause analysis. It's like people start asking the 5 Whys, but the moment diversity is involved people's minds automatically short circuit and jump straight to because #racism or because #patriarchy. I'm not saying neither of those contribute to the problem, but they are far from the biggest factors. There are a LOT of filters that do a lot to modify/distort the available pool of people who would get even as far as applying for a job (which is for the most part a prerequisite for discrimination, active or unconscious)
Basically, if you want to make it so racial diversity in tech approximates the general population in the US, the best solution is not to try to change Silicon Valley, but to help more places like Silicon Valley exist in places with base rates that more closely match the racial distribution you believe is ideal. AnnaLee Saxenian's books are instructive if you're curious how such regions are formed: "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" and "The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy". A big part of what you need to move is money (i.e. you need a robust angel investor and venture capital industry).
* surface diversity - when you define diversity based on genetics and not content of character and live experiences.
yes, I'm aware that you could argue that recruiting mostly from people who live in the same city, county or state is a form of unconscious bias, but you're going to have a hard time arguing against that one ( http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/05/28/you-cant-look-... )
It all looks nice until we get numbers from groups like GapJumpers that institute blind auditions for hiring or performance evaluations where evaluator can't identify what group they are. Starting out, these "fair" companies are usually under 10% minority or women. Once they see only performance, it's suddenly closer to 50/50. Hmm.
Would you work in a place or field like that if all you heard was what's in above link? And people justified it instead of solved it? And hard data, such as pay or hiring w/ performance in context, showed they discriminated in both hiring and advancement? Probably not.
The problems are in the Valley's culture and decision-making, not anything intrinsic. Same as in most other places. Good policies on professionalism, hiring, and promotion which focus on performance instead of identity would go a long way. Have, in few companies that did it.
I would be interested to see a source for the "blind auditions" claim.
Some reasons for skepticism about blind auditions making a difference in tech:
1. Github provides a potential blind audition scenario - don't mention your race or age or gender or weight or anything else. Just submit code and prove yourself. Yet, diversity advocates generally see this as not helping minorities in tech.
2. Tech companies constantly publish their diversity stats. They are trying to hire more women and minorities, and are motivated to do so. Blind auditions tend to help in industries where the opposite is true.
Still, I'd love to see a source for your claim, and I'd be happy to be convinced otherwise.
Regarding the one link you do provide: The headline figure is meaningless without some more data on the survey - such as how was the survey conducted, and is it random. If it's not random, then it's very hard to judge how valid it is.
I too want to see citations for the above poster's assertions.
I'm also curious to see a citation for this statement, "Just submit code and prove yourself. Yet, diversity advocates generally see this as not helping minorities in tech.", since I'm curious to read their reasoning.
I actually would expect and hope that such a process doesn't help minorities. I also would expect and hope that it also doesn't help those that are not minorities. After all, isn't a fair, blind process the most just approach we can hope for? However, I think this is where there is a big, largely unrecognized schism, and that is the schism between those that advocate for equality and those that advocate for equity. Those two unfortunately are not the same. I personally am an advocate for equality.
+1 for understanding study methodology and what biases may be present. AFAIK, the study is this one here, http://elephantinthevalley.com/
They state the criteria for including a respondent in the survey, but I didn't find out if the 200+ women included in the study were randomly sampled from all women they "found" who met the criteria or if this represented the entire population of all the women they "found" who met that criteria. An explanation of how they were "found" was also absent.
The final sentence in the introductory block "We encourage you to read, discuss, and add your anonymous stories to this initiative." suggests that self selection bias may influence these figures.
I submitted the following comment on the site: "Could you please add a section on your site describing in detail the study/survey methodologies used? I'm particularly interested in knowing more about how survey participants were selected.". I wish all studies and surveys like this voluntarily shared their methodology along with their results.
Citation for that first paragraph and last sentence please.
I can see a demonstration of 50/50 in a controlled study, but I don't see how you get to 50/50 at a real company in this industry in the Bay Area without actively discriminating against those who meet the hiring criteria and are not women or minority, since 50/50 is so far from the base rate of potential applicants available to hire from.
To answer your question, yes, I would work in a place or field like that if that is all I heard in the above link, because I also know that nothing I read in that article is isolated solely to tech companies in Silicon Valley. AFAIK (and I haven't seen numbers otherwise), everything described in that article happens in many industries and many regions, including other industries I've personally worked in or with previously that weren't tech and weren't in the Bay Area (or necessarily the United States) (including one industry that is mostly female).
I'm not saying that we shouldn't address and change the culture so these unfortunate problems don't happen to anyone, but painting one industry and region as being uniquely a bad apple does a lot to deprive good people interested in that industry from entering it in the first place, leaving those already there further isolated.
I work/worked at one of Silicon Valley's many unicorns on the same team as one of the women who founded the female engineering group at the company and who champions the hiring of more women and one of the greatest challenges I heard her complain regularly about when trying to recruit women to improve our ratios was trying to overcome how the biased tech media likes/liked to portray our company (and any unicorn once it starts experiencing success). I heard of several instances where a woman turned down our offers and went to work elsewhere merely on account of what the media said despite my colleagues claims to the candidate otherwise. The way I see it, the chicken little sky is falling way of talking about things highlights problems but also actively discourages people from joining and making it better. Lots of great female engineers declined a seat on a rocket ship on account of what was being said, and I have no idea how many more didn't even consider applying in the first place.
There are ways to highlight and address the problem without discouraging people from coming to work in tech. I would love to see a comparative analysis of the transgressions in your linked article across multiple industries. Raising awareness for these problems everywhere helps get them solved, but raising awareness for these problems in one particular industry is both productive and counterproductive as it highlights the problem while simultaneously discouraging people from entering that industry to expedite those solutions.
Before I conclude this comment, I want to be very clear that I wholeheartedly agree that everything in that linked article is a problem and needs to be improved, but my particular complaint above and in this comment is about people who seek results without applying logic and rationality to understand the problem and don't also apply logic and rationality before arriving at solutions. Basically, a society that demonstrates logic and rationality is the social cause I most advocate for above all other social causes because it keeps all other social causes and those that advocate for them honest and grounded in reason.
In fact, this colleague who took on the important work of trying to recruit more female candidates started out as one of those women who had a job offer at our unicorn and went to work at another unicorn on a different coast with a better reputation first and ended up back at our unicorn less than a year later finding out that while our reputation was worse, our conditions were better (but still need improvement).
I appreciate that you've taken the time to back up your argument. Generalizing from oneself and one's friends to an entire culture is the reason that "not all men" has become a nasty cliche.
But your numbers are focused on race and ignore gender, which from what I've read is the much bigger problem in modern American tech. GapJumpers' blind auditions, for example, seem to indicate that the "women aren't interested in tech" assertion is less true than people want it to be. Nickpsecurity mentioned GapJumpers by name and you and Brighteyes both asked for citations; it's https://www.gapjumpers.me/ if you don't want to Google.
I didn't touch gender because it's an equally long post with an entirely different set of base rate figures.
With gender however, the base rates are more directly influence by society's treatment of gender in the many years between being born and arriving at the point where you start looking for a job. Girls are treated differently by adults and expected and encouraged to take interest in different things. I think that's unfortunate and I hope that changes.
That said, it doesn't do anyone any good when people complain about a problem and only focus on a single contributing factor like racism and sexism instead of scientifically and methodically brainstorming all possible causes and contributing factors, measuring the magnitude of impact of each and then determining which of all the contributory factors provide the most bang for the buck in changing.
There is an entire discipline for improving things you can measure. It's called statistical process control and its a much smarter way of going about improving things than debates we have today where people arguing from either side have no measurements or statistics or a poor understanding about how to measure things and use statistics or some combination of both.
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As someone with a strong interest in the social history of how the hardware and software industries evolved since WWII, I've provided some other possible explanations, in addition to sexism, that likely contributed to the gender imbalance we see today:
The big questions that remains in my mind after the observation I made in that second post are:
- "Are there conditions that when afforded to boys and girls equally, generate equal interest in computer science and engineering in people regardless of where they lie on the gender spectrum?"
- "If there are equal conditions that foster equal interest, does that equal condition generate maximal interest from anyone on the gender spectrum, or should we consider a offering a variety so that greater interest if fostered by pairing a person with the environment that is optimal for him her or anything in between?"
- "If no condition exists where you can generate equal interest, how do you design two or more separate set of conditions that approximates equality by being equally equitable without necessarily being truly equal.
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on race and ignore gender, which from what I've read is
the much bigger problem in modern American tech
I'm just curious how you arrived at that conclusion or where you got that conclusion from? I ask because it's strange to me to compare the "magnitude" of those two problems because to me those are apples and oranges and incomparable. You may measure both with the same final figure, but the moment you start investigating causes, you end up with more incomparable contributing factors than comparable ones.
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Re: Gapjumpers
Now that I've googled "gapjumpers" and seen what it is, I'm very inclined to give far less credence to the claims of nickpsecurity because I now know that gapjumpers is a startup selling a product based on their claims and not some non-profit funding independent academic resource with all the hallmarks of good science. I was really hoping for scholarly research and not an organization with a clear financial conflict of interest that is very likely to be hyperbolic or suffer from confirmation bias.
I even went a bit farther and decided to look at some of their jobs and the blind audition task. Here are two engineering ones:
Those have 32 and 36 applicants respectively. While I have no doubt that their process helps create a more equal process, what is see isn't suggestive of a large sample size to make firm claims from like nickpsecurity did.
The figures on their home page are 54%/44% female to male. You can get at these figures with 9 females and 8 males. There is no indication that these results scale to dozens to hundreds of employees. If there were just 17 hired employees for those figures, the margin of error would be mega high (+/- 23.77%) margin. Furthermore, this hiring process is likely to suffer from confirmation bias, since those with the greatest interest in an unbiased process are those that hold the believe that they are most disadvantaged by the bias. This means that the pipeline of applicants into their process isn't representative of the base rates of available candidates in our industry currently.
I'm really not trying to tear their startup apart because I think they are part of the solution, but bad science, bad statistics and unsubstantiated or misleading claims do deserve to be challenged and torn apart all day long.
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Re: "not all men"
Generalizing ... is the reason that "not all men" has
become a nasty cliche.
While I won't argue the merit of the "not all men" position (which is no more fallacious that the argument to which it is a response), I would like to point out that there is a certain irony that those that complain about others using that defense are engaged in generalizing themselves. Basically, someone makes a generalization (all/most X are), which is rebutted with another generalization (not all X are).
Essentially this boils down to the immature playground argument of "Are too!", "Are not!", "Are too!", "Are not!", ad nauseam.
"Hello Pot, this is Kettle calling..."
Those who make generalizations about white people or men are as guilty as those who make generalizations about non-white people or women (or any other discretely identifiable group on the gender spectrum).
"Now that I've googled "gapjumpers" and seen what it is, I'm very inclined to give far less credence to the claims of nickpsecurity because I now know that gapjumpers is a startup selling a product based on their claims and not some non-profit funding independent academic resource with all the hallmarks of good science. "
And yet you've not cited a single, scholarly treatment of anything you're claiming. You immediately moved to an anecdote to save yourself time and facilitate explanation. Like I did. Upon request and when I found time, I dropped around 3 hours digging up old and some new references that supported my claims including scholarly work and experimental studies. Should I doubt all your future claims because you saved yourself time or didn't drop a Pastebin-sized set of references and commentary in your first comment?
"Now that I've googled "gapjumpers" and seen what it is, I'm very inclined to give far less credence to the claims of based on work by gapjumpers"
The reason I made the jump to putting your name in their is because gapjumpers was your primary reference in a few comments, but no link was provided.
I have few doubts that a blind interview process of capable candidates will approximate the base rate of available candidates that participate in the interview process (or mock hiring process for the purpose of demonstrating that a blind interview process eliminates or greatly reduces identity-based biases). I was never debating this claim. Providing references to this claim is tangential to the point I was making. I was debating your original claim.
Your original claim:
It all looks nice until we get numbers from groups like
GapJumpers that institute blind auditions for hiring or
performance evaluations where evaluator can't identify
what group they are. Starting out, these "fair" companies
are usually under 10% minority or women. Once they see
only performance, it's suddenly closer to 50/50. Hmm.
From what you wrote, I think it's fair to assume that companies exist that implemented blind auditions that are 50/50. Furthermore, since this debate is in the context of tech and because this was a reply to my comment about base rates, I also think it's fair to assume that the companies in question are tech companies.
I'm also making a minor assumption that we're talking about engineering positions at these companies since that is where most of the debate regarding the gender ratio is centered at. For non-engineering positions, I've not noticed a huge discrepancy in hiring. At the tech companies where I've worked, the non-technical side of the business is very balanced gender-wise. FWIW the technical recruiting departments responsible for sourcing most of the engineering candidates we interview are mostly women. I don't know if that's important at all, but it's an interesting observation.
With those two fair assumptions, both me and the other commenter considered your claim as written to be a very very bold claim. Your claim was tantamount to "blind auditions are a panacea to the gender (or other identity) diversity problem in hiring". Given that claim, that's was we want a citation for. Where are these mythical 50/50 tech companies and how to they achieve 50/50 without being discriminatory when the base rate they are drawing from is approximately 88/12 (the approximate distribution of men to women with CS degrees)?
Given this, the "scholarly work and experimental studies" you found are interesting, but not really relevant because I never once challenged what blind auditions can achieve in an academic or experimental setting. I wanted a citation that references the "fair" companies you mentioned. because I was challenging that blind auditions can automagically achieve 50/50 without reverse discrimination in an industry where the population from which you draw candidates is far from 50/50. Had you limited your claim to academic and experimental studies, I wouldn't have challenged it at all. I probably wouldn't even had asked for a reference, since that's not even an extraordinary claim.
With respect to your other comments. I'm not sure which claims of mine in particular you're addressing or what anecdote in particular you're talking about. I wrote a lot across several comments. The original claim I made, which was about the relevance of base rates with respect to race didn't require a scholarly citation since I cited the data directly, much of which was US Census data, which is as authoritative as you get for the claim I'm making. For the other references I used, I could try to find the original source material instead of secondary references. Let me know which secondary references you have doubts about and I'd be happy to scrounge up the primary sources so we can debate the likelihood that they are valid.
FWIW, I'm 100% in favor of blind auditions. I would love to be able to reduce a candidate's identity down to a hash. I miss the internet back in 1995/6 when the only identity you had online was the one you created for yourself.
And, yet, the percentages of hired and remembered are similar despite women usually making it in blind auditions. Are they really different worlds for black women in engineering?
It can be as simple as looking at the quality and metrics of the work while not seeing name, gender, race, etc. Most experiments where they can see it lead to different results than where they cant. That's evidence of a discriminating bias plus a start on removing it on part of hiring process.
Im on mobile and at work right now. Hence holding off on real reply. I never downvote here unless spam or pure hate. I even upvote opponents when they make good points or state common misconceptions worth visibly debunking. Just for future reference. ;)
