Re:Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
by cantastoria on Saturday February 16, 2013 @06:18PM
(#5233464)
And that's fine but did you get a 2 to 1 f/m ratio after you increased your female recruitment? That's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of.
Why does an investigation need to be launched?
Having worked with Kamens, including interviewing the same candidates, I can't even entertain the idea that the interviews were rigged in some way, which is you abhorrent implication.
We see 2:1 male to female ratios all the time, and no one bats an eye. But when it gets flipped we need to figure out why?
Regardless of how it came to be, this is a win for our industry, as it sets an example that the numbers don't need to be so heavily skewed towards men.
Re:Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
by yummyfajitas on Sunday February 17, 2013 @08:22AM
(#5235112)
We see 2:1 male to female ratios all the time, and no one bats an eye. But when it gets flipped we need to figure out why?
Simple probability. A 2:1 male environment is completely reasonable in a gender neutral process, whereas a 2:1 female environment is exceedingly unlikely to occur under such a process.
The problem is that there are few female developers to start with, and they are all heavily recruited by large software companies (Google, Microsoft, etc) already. The larger companies have big budgets to devote to this and encourage the very small number of women developers to go work there.
If you just sit back and wait for more women to apply, they are going to get picked up by the bigger companies before you even get a chance to interview them.
It's also difficult to attract that small group of women devs to apply to work at your company when there are no women developers there currently. The larger companies already have a bunch of women developers, so it can suggest to future candidates that these companies are great places for them to work (i.e. they won't be discriminated against at these companies). It may be that your small company is also a great place, it's just that you don't have any women to vouch for that.
So in Fog Creek's case, we increased the number of women applicants by making it our goal to get more women to apply. That's the only thing we changed. Our interview process stayed exactly the same.