Ask HN: Is it ok to make a list of female software devs available for hire?
54 comments
Sorry to say, but even though as a woman I technically benefit from things like this, this is yet another form of sexism. I want to be hired and reached out by companies because they value my skills and experience, not because I lack a certain genital so their company can show off at some diversity reports.
If you want to bring your team to more balance in diversity, try letting more people with diverse backgrounds to do the interviews when hiring. This is one thing I don’t see nearly enough in companies, then they wonder why they don’t get any successful minority hires.
If you want to bring your team to more balance in diversity, try letting more people with diverse backgrounds to do the interviews when hiring. This is one thing I don’t see nearly enough in companies, then they wonder why they don’t get any successful minority hires.
I wonder how you feel about taxi firms who focus on female drivers or construction firms with female only employees? Would you also see this as sexist?
Depends, for taxi drivers, it's a job that directly involves customer service, and many female clients may feel more safe riding alone if the driver is female. So if that's the problem they're hoping to solve by focusing on hiring female drivers then I don't think it's sexist.
But for construction and software, I don't see what this practice is trying to gain besides waving around the industry telling everyone they have diversity, when they're treating female employees as victory tokens instead of valued workers.
In general I feel the whole diversity practice recently is missing a huge point of the movement in the first place -- to not discriminate, and let everyone have a fair chance based on their abilities. How it has played out has just been discrimination in a different way. When companies do shit like this, minority groups feel their credits are being disregarded, and non-minority groups feel the other side have it easy by pulling a gender or race card, then they proceed to disregard minority group's ability when they're hired. Nobody is winning.
I've had more than one male friends that told me "You're a girl, you'll get hired even when you don't do so well at the interview", and who do you think are to blame?
But for construction and software, I don't see what this practice is trying to gain besides waving around the industry telling everyone they have diversity, when they're treating female employees as victory tokens instead of valued workers.
In general I feel the whole diversity practice recently is missing a huge point of the movement in the first place -- to not discriminate, and let everyone have a fair chance based on their abilities. How it has played out has just been discrimination in a different way. When companies do shit like this, minority groups feel their credits are being disregarded, and non-minority groups feel the other side have it easy by pulling a gender or race card, then they proceed to disregard minority group's ability when they're hired. Nobody is winning.
I've had more than one male friends that told me "You're a girl, you'll get hired even when you don't do so well at the interview", and who do you think are to blame?
Thanks. I like your point how some diversity practice can be counter productive. I often observe incidents were people become more polarised in the name of diversity. Back to front really.
I see the impulse here, an attempt to correct historic discrimination through proactive action. There are a couple of problems here:
1. If you inverted this equation, it would be pretty bad (can I create a list of "white male" engineers to hire). Do we have a rational reason why we should be discriminating against certain groups and not others?
2. You are hiring based on gender, rather than purely on skills. This has the chance to make teams function less well, if they believe someone was hired not due to merit, but merely on gender. This could also make the person hired feel unworthy if they think it was only due to gender. In the worst case this could make team / company performance worse. Only a company who can spare efficiency could use this policy. The best would be to take the best possible candidates, some of whom are bound to be female (unless you presume there are no qualified female engineers).
3. Historically programming and computer field was dominated by women, we don't fully understand the reason for the shift, so fixing things at the endpoint (hiring) may or may not be "fixing" the root of the problem (possibly education bias?). If you can't explain why the situation is as it is, then you're just changing random lines of code and hoping that each "commit" will fix the bug, even though you have no idea why its broken.
4. Every situation humans find themselves in is the result of an unbroken chain of historic conditions, but attempting to correct for it usually creates more problems due to arbitrary decisions, which fail to account for all those causes, and which result in unforseen future consequences. The best policy given that you don't know anything about those circumstances is meritocracy (just hire the best). This allows those who were disadvantaged to eventually come to equal footing (we take our foot off the gas of arbitrary discrimination), but also means that we aren't making things worse due to ignorance (e.g. the daughter of a wealthy engineer with admission to ivy league tech program vs being "while male" the son of poor russian immigrants with no education, being "woman" here isn't the disadvantaged state).
1. If you inverted this equation, it would be pretty bad (can I create a list of "white male" engineers to hire). Do we have a rational reason why we should be discriminating against certain groups and not others?
2. You are hiring based on gender, rather than purely on skills. This has the chance to make teams function less well, if they believe someone was hired not due to merit, but merely on gender. This could also make the person hired feel unworthy if they think it was only due to gender. In the worst case this could make team / company performance worse. Only a company who can spare efficiency could use this policy. The best would be to take the best possible candidates, some of whom are bound to be female (unless you presume there are no qualified female engineers).
3. Historically programming and computer field was dominated by women, we don't fully understand the reason for the shift, so fixing things at the endpoint (hiring) may or may not be "fixing" the root of the problem (possibly education bias?). If you can't explain why the situation is as it is, then you're just changing random lines of code and hoping that each "commit" will fix the bug, even though you have no idea why its broken.
4. Every situation humans find themselves in is the result of an unbroken chain of historic conditions, but attempting to correct for it usually creates more problems due to arbitrary decisions, which fail to account for all those causes, and which result in unforseen future consequences. The best policy given that you don't know anything about those circumstances is meritocracy (just hire the best). This allows those who were disadvantaged to eventually come to equal footing (we take our foot off the gas of arbitrary discrimination), but also means that we aren't making things worse due to ignorance (e.g. the daughter of a wealthy engineer with admission to ivy league tech program vs being "while male" the son of poor russian immigrants with no education, being "woman" here isn't the disadvantaged state).
> The best would be to take the best possible candidates,
I find this idea to be pervasive and completely inaccurate.
The hiring process we all go through is flawed and can at best say, "this person is likely capable of doing the job as required" and sometimes they even get that wrong! There's no way to accurately rank candidates by determining Person A earned 943 Qualification Points and Person B earned 894. So you might as well take the list of people you like, and hire from that based on other qualities you want from your team.
Trying to achieve a balance of genders is important on a lot of teams. A hospital might want to hire more male nurses because certain situations might call be better handled by a male, i.e., lifting heavy patients or for patient comfort during certain procedures. Thus, if you have a list of nurses you feel are qualified, you may favor hiring male candidate if your team has a huge gender imbalance.
Our field is no different, may you'd prefer to hire a female tech lead because of an influx of female interns from the local college or because your clients/customers have a female bias and hiring that candidate may provide intangible benefits.
I find this idea to be pervasive and completely inaccurate.
The hiring process we all go through is flawed and can at best say, "this person is likely capable of doing the job as required" and sometimes they even get that wrong! There's no way to accurately rank candidates by determining Person A earned 943 Qualification Points and Person B earned 894. So you might as well take the list of people you like, and hire from that based on other qualities you want from your team.
Trying to achieve a balance of genders is important on a lot of teams. A hospital might want to hire more male nurses because certain situations might call be better handled by a male, i.e., lifting heavy patients or for patient comfort during certain procedures. Thus, if you have a list of nurses you feel are qualified, you may favor hiring male candidate if your team has a huge gender imbalance.
Our field is no different, may you'd prefer to hire a female tech lead because of an influx of female interns from the local college or because your clients/customers have a female bias and hiring that candidate may provide intangible benefits.
Yes, this is a good point. Hiring "the best" is more like a multi-variable optimization problem. Pareto showed mathematically its very unlikely that there is a single "best", instead there is a population of non-dominated solutions that form the "Pareto frontier" which is a population of "less bad than other" choices. One variable in that might be gender. But again, forming a list of female engineers seems like its premature optimization on a single axis.
The best approach in these cases is as I said on another comment, take your top candidates, some are likely to be female and you can weight that dimension fittingly (e.g. we have no women, its slightly more important than having just any another C++ dev).
The best approach in these cases is as I said on another comment, take your top candidates, some are likely to be female and you can weight that dimension fittingly (e.g. we have no women, its slightly more important than having just any another C++ dev).
Thanks for the substantial comment!
This is exactly the point: you see the problem in the present state and also can envision (and like) the state where this problem is solved.
The tricky part is usually how you get from NOW to THEN :).
There are some other ways you can pose this question: 1) Can female gender be seen as an additional advantage by the hiring party? 2) Do women developers need any extra help to eventually get parity with men in the software development industry?
There are some other ways you can pose this question: 1) Can female gender be seen as an additional advantage by the hiring party? 2) Do women developers need any extra help to eventually get parity with men in the software development industry?
Good points, it is totally possible that 1 would be the case -- although we in tech like to think it would not be a factor (e.g. its all just logic), it actually probably is, since there are so many other factors that go into successful employee.
2. This one is tough -- defining and executing "proper help" this is so specific to each person (again like an heiress who might just need english tutoring vs son of the dish washer who needs money for college) that our attempt to fix with something simple like a "list of females" likely won't have the right effect without more insight. Not saying impossible, just difficult.
2. This one is tough -- defining and executing "proper help" this is so specific to each person (again like an heiress who might just need english tutoring vs son of the dish washer who needs money for college) that our attempt to fix with something simple like a "list of females" likely won't have the right effect without more insight. Not saying impossible, just difficult.
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One word: Prejudice.
Sure, it can be done. But do they really need to be set apart that way?
You'd be saying "These people we judge to be good because they have <quality they were born with>. They are different and better, and we appreciate them more than other developers because of this."
All the SJW political BS aside, this is simply prejudice.
Can you not imagine that it would feel uncomfortable to them-- they'll be pedestalized. And they'll be wondering why only they are on the pedestal, not others. Why they were singled out.
Only because of (recently trendy identity politics-motivated recognition of) <skin color/gender/etc.> not because they're a good engineer?
Do you really think that's what they want:
to be valued because of how they were born?
to be valued because of something that is not in their control, versus the skills the worked so hard to build and be recognized for?
And you think they want recognition as part of a certain grievance group, which only recently became "fad" political norm?
I wouldn't operate a business based on ideological fads or movements such as identity politics. (Nor would I work with one as an employee or customer of such a business-- I would avoid them because of their politically-possessed animus which could impact business).
That just sounds like bad business sense. And it sounds like you're OK with representing your company as a company captured, possessed, and influenced by ideological trends (which vary over time and space-- making political movements & political ideology a terrible thing to base business policy on).
Sure, it can be done. But do they really need to be set apart that way?
You'd be saying "These people we judge to be good because they have <quality they were born with>. They are different and better, and we appreciate them more than other developers because of this."
All the SJW political BS aside, this is simply prejudice.
Can you not imagine that it would feel uncomfortable to them-- they'll be pedestalized. And they'll be wondering why only they are on the pedestal, not others. Why they were singled out.
Only because of (recently trendy identity politics-motivated recognition of) <skin color/gender/etc.> not because they're a good engineer?
Do you really think that's what they want:
to be valued because of how they were born?
to be valued because of something that is not in their control, versus the skills the worked so hard to build and be recognized for?
And you think they want recognition as part of a certain grievance group, which only recently became "fad" political norm?
I wouldn't operate a business based on ideological fads or movements such as identity politics. (Nor would I work with one as an employee or customer of such a business-- I would avoid them because of their politically-possessed animus which could impact business).
That just sounds like bad business sense. And it sounds like you're OK with representing your company as a company captured, possessed, and influenced by ideological trends (which vary over time and space-- making political movements & political ideology a terrible thing to base business policy on).
Both of those already exist. There are coding groups and pages for black software engineers as well as outreach programs for the handicapped. The point is that historically various kinds of people are underrepresented in companies. More exposure seeks to help reduce that gap and mind you, this is not discrimination. People are conflating hiring practices with exposure.
As an aside, you're engaging in identity politics right now.
As an aside, you're engaging in identity politics right now.
I don't see the importance in making a distinction. I can think of a very limited number of reasons a company would _specifically_ want to hire female devs? Why not hire the person best-suited regardless of gender?
...maybe I'm missing the point.
...maybe I'm missing the point.
Well, the idea is pretty similar to that behind "Women in Tech". Women have long been discriminated in the workplace - and they still are (take the wage gap). A pro-active effort must be made to bring the balance.
Does this make sense?
Does this make sense?
It does make sense.
How does a curated list of women in tech available for hire help solve that? Won't both companies that pay and treat women fairly in line with men already be hiring them... and women already be choosing to work for them?
I think a gender-specific list of people available for hire isn't conducive to the actual goal. We need a way to change the culture of bigoted companies.
I agree a pro-active effort makes sense... just the question is: By doing what?
(Not trying to be difficult).
How does a curated list of women in tech available for hire help solve that? Won't both companies that pay and treat women fairly in line with men already be hiring them... and women already be choosing to work for them?
I think a gender-specific list of people available for hire isn't conducive to the actual goal. We need a way to change the culture of bigoted companies.
I agree a pro-active effort makes sense... just the question is: By doing what?
(Not trying to be difficult).
Yes, but how about the remote developers?
I see the sense in curated lists of remote developers, if that's what you're asking?
- Some companies are 100% remote
- Companies in unfavourable locations may want to expand the talent pool they can hire from
- Timezone coverage (on-call, support, etc)
- etc
- Some companies are 100% remote
- Companies in unfavourable locations may want to expand the talent pool they can hire from
- Timezone coverage (on-call, support, etc)
- etc
> take the wage gap
There are many other issues but the wage gap is the least of them. When you control for all variables it's far less impressive than the "women get paid 70ct when men get $1". The wages are the same (legally enforced in any first world country), what they earn is less _on average_ based on many factors like career choices, pregnancy, &c.
I'd be more concerned about harassment, patronisation, &c which are much harder to tackle and much less visible.
There are many other issues but the wage gap is the least of them. When you control for all variables it's far less impressive than the "women get paid 70ct when men get $1". The wages are the same (legally enforced in any first world country), what they earn is less _on average_ based on many factors like career choices, pregnancy, &c.
I'd be more concerned about harassment, patronisation, &c which are much harder to tackle and much less visible.
I would not suggest advocating for "positive" sex discrimination in hiring to "bring the balance". It's still discriminatory and illegal, and doing it overtly opens you up to legal action and reporting to the US Dept of Labor.
Why not celebrate women in tech by highlighting their work?
It's not like anyone has to hire anyone based on criteria different than qualification
It's not like anyone has to hire anyone based on criteria different than qualification
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Why celebrate anyone's specific gender, race, or ethnicity in tech instead of solely their skills and accomplishments?
There's an issue of accessibility in the tech industry caused by tradition that still is influencing people's life decisions. Changing outdated stereotypes is worth a celebration (skills are getting quite enough well-deserved attention)
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Isn’t this illegal? You are not allowed to discriminate by gender.
On the other hand, you can promote your postings through women-targeted meetups (women in tech, geek girls carrots).
On the other hand, you can promote your postings through women-targeted meetups (women in tech, geek girls carrots).
No affirmative action is not 'illegal'. Nobody is being hired by just making the list. Its a recruiting effort, right?
Now, if a company said "We're only hiring from this list" then that's a problem.
Now, if a company said "We're only hiring from this list" then that's a problem.
Ehh... Never thought about it from this perspective.
Thanks for bringing attention to the legal aspect.
If the list is a source for recruiting, I don't see it as being all that different from recruiting from a predominantly female college. No one says that's a bad thing.
Here's a real-world situation from a previous job of mine: We hired heavily from a local college. Hiring there became a habit as the candidates we got were qualified and well suited for the jobs available. As it turns out, that school is VERY white. We were always hiring "the best candidate", we just weren't hiring from a big enough pool for that to be sufficient to create diversity.
A lack of diversity is a business problem with negative business impact. I'm not going to defend that; that there a people who can't imagine why diversity is a business advantage boggles my mind.
It's a hard problem to solve. Please keep working at it.
Here's a real-world situation from a previous job of mine: We hired heavily from a local college. Hiring there became a habit as the candidates we got were qualified and well suited for the jobs available. As it turns out, that school is VERY white. We were always hiring "the best candidate", we just weren't hiring from a big enough pool for that to be sufficient to create diversity.
A lack of diversity is a business problem with negative business impact. I'm not going to defend that; that there a people who can't imagine why diversity is a business advantage boggles my mind.
It's a hard problem to solve. Please keep working at it.
I have no info on whether using such a list is legal, but it could be helpful and (as a white male) I'm not offended.
A small software team I know of ran a job ad on stack overflow with over a hundred applicants completing a preliminary ~8 question typeform-powered questionnaire. Not a single woman among them.
You could say that there was something about the job posting or the questionnaire that didn't speak to or even alienated women, and you might well be right, but if you're that team and you'd like to have a decent chance of hiring women, just hearing "hey, you're doing it wrong" isn't as helpful as having someplace specific to look for candidates.
A small software team I know of ran a job ad on stack overflow with over a hundred applicants completing a preliminary ~8 question typeform-powered questionnaire. Not a single woman among them.
You could say that there was something about the job posting or the questionnaire that didn't speak to or even alienated women, and you might well be right, but if you're that team and you'd like to have a decent chance of hiring women, just hearing "hey, you're doing it wrong" isn't as helpful as having someplace specific to look for candidates.
As someone firmly on the "women in tech side", this is an awful method of attack. Gender should be a consideration but it should truly be (one of) the last one(s), way after skills, work history, personality, etc. Measures like this are dehumanizing and useless, and more importantly they provide fodder for actual sexists with which to undermine their female colleagues.
Affirmative action can work when it's considerate and sensitive and humane--which sounds like the polar opposite of everything you're trying to do here.
Affirmative action can work when it's considerate and sensitive and humane--which sounds like the polar opposite of everything you're trying to do here.
Statistically, hiring minorities who are being underpaid is the most cost effective decision. If market pay for job X is $M, and a woman makes 11% less, therefore, hiring women at $M will result in 11% higher quality.
Ideally, I'd fill a team with women and other underpaid minorities. Add in some old people and you've got a hell of a team.
Plus with a team of minorities, it's easy to get underestimated by the competition. "Oh look that team is full of old ladies who code in PHP!"
Ideally, I'd fill a team with women and other underpaid minorities. Add in some old people and you've got a hell of a team.
Plus with a team of minorities, it's easy to get underestimated by the competition. "Oh look that team is full of old ladies who code in PHP!"
Jeez, I understand the business logic but that’s pretty brutal.
Ideally instead of perpetuating and banking on women and minorities being paid less, you could, I dunno, pay them a fair wage for their labor.
Ideally instead of perpetuating and banking on women and minorities being paid less, you could, I dunno, pay them a fair wage for their labor.
I meant paying them the fair market rate and getting more than you would from the market. You can choose to pay double market rate and you'd get 2.2x the quality instead of 2x with a non minority.
I was being a little facetious, though.
I was being a little facetious, though.
Yes, and if few successful startups have employed this strategy, it suggests that there may not actually be an 11% penalty for women when you control for all relevant factors.
Thank you!
This is exactly the idea
This is exactly the idea
I dont see a problem with it. You are providing a pragmatic solution to a problem: HR people wanting to build "artificial diversity" will find your lists useful. Of course, as a side casualty, some others will use it to select on standards like beauty. No good thing comes without drawbacks.
Aside from the others who’ve chimed in with great points to consider, I would research blind hiring techniques instead.
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My understanding is that you can make a list of female developers and contact them to ensure that there are women in your hiring pool, but you cannot rely exclusively on that list to find candidates because that would amount to excluding men from consideration.
Relying on such a list also gives members of that list many more opportunities allowing them to get more practice with interviews and more offers.
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For the sake of maintaining an equal hiring playing-field (Which is by law in most countries in the western world), It also makes sense to put up pages about devs that are males and other minoritity only hiring pages. But that's if you decide to do such a thing. If it were up to me, I would list developers only by the competence of their technical knowledge and stack choice or whatever it is and nothing else. Which is already equal and fair enough.
So to answer your question:
> Is it good to make a special page for female developers?
If you support double-standards based on one's sex then yes.
If not, do not bother.
So to answer your question:
> Is it good to make a special page for female developers?
If you support double-standards based on one's sex then yes.
If not, do not bother.
Thanks rvz!
The simple answer is that this matters to many people: e.g. a company wants to get closer to a gender balance in their workforce. Also, only 14% of engineering jobs in teh US are currently occupied by women: https://insights.dice.com/2018/01/12/relatively-few-women-en...
The simple answer is that this matters to many people: e.g. a company wants to get closer to a gender balance in their workforce. Also, only 14% of engineering jobs in teh US are currently occupied by women: https://insights.dice.com/2018/01/12/relatively-few-women-en...
Hey, guys, let's check ourselves right in this thread.
Do we really have just one female participant in the discussion?
Do we really have just one female participant in the discussion?
No, sex discrimination is a bad thing.
Did you try to poll the female developers themselves? What do they think about the idea?
Make a list and allow filtering. Don't make a separate list.
From one side it looks like a good thing — all these movements for Women in Tech and other organisations, but from the other side... I don't know ️