[Gustomaximus]

> (women) hold only 20 percent of the company’s higher-paying engineering jobs.

I believe women make up less than 20% of comsci graduates? So wouldn't this be about right then.

Also I'm assuming women in comsci have lower workforce participation than men do (as in broader economy) so Google must be hiring women at a higher ratio than men from the available pool.

I'm 100% in support of open workplaces for gender/race/politics/sexuality/dress and whatever 'work ability' irrelevant preferences. And cases like Susan Fowler are absolutely disgusting. I also feel a bunch of people increasing complain about their lack of success due to gender or race and are not willing to see they have a fair crack at their career but dont have the talent/drive etc and cant see this lack of ability in themselves.

[fujiters]

This. Men make tons of excuses for their lack of success as well, it's just they can't get in on the discrimination complaint wagon. The Lake Wobegon effect and all that. I think a bit of the anti-"workplace diversity" movement is driven by this as well though. "I'd totally be division chief if the higher ups weren't working so hard to make their diversity numbers work out".

[uiri]

In software engineering, the figure is much lower than 20%. It is at most 15%. The 20% figure includes anyone within a Tech department in the org chart. This means PMs, UX/UI designers, etc.

I don't mean to minimize the level of technical competence in these roles. It is great that there are SWE-adjacent roles with 30%+ women. It irks me deeply that Google puts out these misleading statistics which then get parroted by the media and then everyone else.

[waqf]

> dont have the talent/drive etc

Don't have the talent/drive/connections/hustle/luck …. There are more possibilities than just sexism vs. meritocracy.

Edit: hey downvoters, I'm talking about why a random given person of any gender may not be progressing in their career. Read the context.

[kevmo]

What percentage of programmers at Google have compsci degrees? What's the split like within that subset?

[osmala]

What percentage of HIGH PAY ENGINEERING jobs in google have comp sci degrees, that's the true comparison. And then there is bigger issue here. It's really the obsession about percentages of women in X position. Here's another percentage what percentage of women and men didn't waste a thought on how they looked in their teenage years because they where so obsessed on how computers worked? I believe it is both very small and men are over represented there, and they are over represented in high paying computer jobs.

[kamaal]

>>Here's another percentage what percentage of women and men didn't waste a thought on how they looked in their teenage years because they where so obsessed on how computers worked?

Most people are not in the job because they like create things or build things. They are there because they want a job and nothing more. And they want a job where (unit of money)/(unit of work) has a higher value.

That means they have to either figure out a way to make more money or do less work, or both.

Therefore the question of early interest or passion is meaningless to most people. So as far as they are concerned, it rarely matters how set of people of identity A got to it. They think regardless of that if set A got it, other sets should get it too.

This also creates other problems. Set A is likely to do side projects, write programs and hacks out of personal interest. Other sets looking at job as a return/effort metric will likely see why they are expected to do anything all all apart from working 5 hrs a day between 9 - 5.

The problem is merit is heavily at the side of A and other sets want the reward to not go with merit, but rather with participation itself.

[zaptheimpaler]

So true.

People didn't give two shits about the nerds and the tiny useless portion of the world known as computing they occupied 20 years ago - back then it was less glamorous and less money involved. They scoffed at the morons who not only did computers at work but continued to think, write and do "work" after work!

Now theres money involved everyone wants in! Now those same leeches demand to be given the same roles/money as those who worked much harder for it , because its so unfair that people who put have more experience and passion are rewarded while they are not!

[linkregister]

So true.

People didn't give two shits about the ladies and doing the tiny useless portion of the world known as software they occupied 50 years ago - back then it was less glamorous and less money involved.

Yes, women used to dominate software development. Until the money and prestige started coming in, then men started dominating the profession.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmin...

[in3d]

The article you cite is fluff and doesn't support the statement that "women used to dominate software development." It mentions the "Computer Girls" article from the 1967 Cosmopolitan, but here is what's in it: "At one point the author speculates, seemingly without irony, about the “ the chances of meeting men in computer work. ”(The conclusion she comes to is that these are “ very good, ” as the field was currently “overrun” with men.)"

http://homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/files/Ensmenger2010-M...

Apparently, the best guess is that between 11% to 50% of programmers were women back then.

"Mandel suggests that one out of every nine working programmers was female. This is probably overly conservative. The exact percentage of female programmers is difficult to pin down with any accuracy—even figuring out the total number of programmers in this period is difficult—but other reliable contemporary observers suggest that it was closer to 30, or even 50, percent.3 The first government statistics on the programming profession do not appear until 1970, when it was calculated that 22.5 percent of all programmers were women—an estimate more than twice Mandel’s.4"

"Of course, computing itself is a very broad term covering a multitude of occupational categories, including high - status jobs like computer programming and systems analysis as well as low - status jobs such as keypunch operator. Women tended to congregate in the lower end of the occupational pool in computing"

[kamaal]

Not justifying anything. But wasn't early programming two distinct tasks?

1. Writing the Program(On Paper).

2. Feeding the program to the computer.

People in 2. were called 'Programmers' because that is what they did literally- 'Program the machine'. Also early programming had all sorts strange situations where a large part of programming was actually getting results by plugging values in largish math formulas. So there were a range of people who did just that. Generating graphs, being the human equivalent of source control etc.

The 2. part wasn't exactly a very glorifying role and was more like borderline stenographer.

By some definition that is still true. Notice how many programmers there are who probably write MVP web apps for a living copying code from stackoverflow/internet, but there are also people doing all the real work thinking about stock markets, security, medical devices, writing compiler patches, building tools.

I've always thought as coding as a mere ritual the real work always happens on the paper.

[sidlls]

I don't know what's more funny (or sad): that you think engineers are no longer as looked down on or compensated at a lower rate than their "work" should otherwise merit or that you seem to have completely missed the part about "equal experience" in your haste to poohpooh them that desire equal treatment for it as inferior.

[zaptheimpaler]

Thanks for the condescension sensei.

I think your position is equal work experience should merit equal pay.

You seem to have missed my point also - experience outside work also counts as experience. And millions of things besides experience determine your salary. So we should not be so quick to assume that 2 people with the same years of experience "should" merit equal pay - its obviously false.

If all people with equal work experience are simply equal in the value they bring to the company then why do we conduct interviews or ask for resumes or anything? Lets just set everyone's salaries to "$100K + 10K * (years worked)" no?

[kamaal]

>>that desire equal treatment for it as inferior.

The kind of equality that you are aiming for is meaningless, it doesn't exist and attempts to create this have lead to far bigger problems than they have tried to solve.

This is the equivalent of asking why we don't handover gold, silver and bronze medals to the people who came last in the race instead of the top 3. This isn't discrimination. The sheer concept of effort vs reward in human psychology is designed such that "Humans are unequal by merit of our actions"

Also the fact that some people are better than others is here to stay and not just restricted to software. Most of us are not going to be Neil Armstrong or Richard Feynman. That's not discrimination.

There is only equality of access and opportunity. Outcomes are not going to be equal.

[linkregister]

I find it interesting that HN commenters frequently take it for granted that someone who tinkered with programming at an early age and do side projects is a better performer at work.

I have never seen any multiple-data-point evidence presented to support it. Sure, various prominent entrepreneurs used computers as hobbyists (Gates, Zuckerberg), but does that apply to the typical programmer?

We all encountered students in classes who didn't study yet completely grokked their mathematics and algorithms coursework. Why is it so hard to believe that those quick learners use their time effectively at work?

Additionally, a multiplier to good engineering is strong communication and organizational skills; those can be enhanced through social recreational activity, and diminished by spending leisure time in solitude.

I'm not claiming either method is better, and intuitively the passionate engineer should win, but we shouldn't take it for granted until we get some actual information.

Edit: there seems to be some belief that I don't value experience. It is extremely important. We just shouldn't take it for granted that programming at home is as valuable as work experience.

[zaptheimpaler]

In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less.

There is little difference between "experience programming during a job" and "experience programming for fun". It is the same activity.

So of course those with more experience should be expected (on average) to better than those with less. Of course those who seek out more experience due to passion will (on average) be better than those who don't.

It's not an unusual thing to expect at all. People who care more do better.. in every human endeavor, and this is widely accepted by society. It only seems unusual when newcomers cry "unfair" when they see others enjoying the fruits of their labor.

You can ask for data - great, we don't know the answer. But if I had to guess one way or the other, based on all human experience, yes I would lean heavily towards experience. Its why professors know more than students, why Edison invented a lightbulb after a thousand other failed inventions, it is the basis for the very concept of an expert - its why we appoint a doctor instead of a physicist to run a hospital. Its pretty goddamn fundamental - people get better at things with time, so those with more time tend to be better.

[tbrownaw]

There is little difference between "experience programming during a job" and "experience programming for fun". It is the same activity.

Over of my more recent hobby projects was writing an RSS->IMAP bridge in maybe a couple hundred lines of Python. It has one user (me). This is fairly typical.

Until this year, my primary work project was a toolset for streamlining one-off ETL projects. It has parts written in I think five different languages, it has parts that run on Windows user machines and other parts that run on unix servers, it was built to reduce the annoying parts of a business process, it evolved over the course of almost a decade, etc. It has a couple dozen users (the team I used to be on).

The two are about as different as adding a new attached garage and workshop vs building a dollhouse.

[linkregister]

> In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less.

This isn't true. Those who do more with their work experience are paid more.

We all know engineers who have been at the same company for over a decade, but have practically nothing to show for it. There is an enormous disparity between engineers.

There's a reason why Google and Facebook allow engineers to stay Senior Engineers for an entire career: most don't actually progress beyond a certain point.

Jeff Dean and Rob Pike aren't good because they've been programming for a long time. They're good because they've developed their organizational skills, architectural skills, communication skills, and excellent public speaking (this is vital as a tech lead and higher). None of those can be developed by programming on something cool on the weekend.

None of what you said actually disputes my statement; we both value experience. I'm just trying to communicate to you that extra hours programming at home might not be as intrinsically valuable as you might think.

[watwut]

Tinkering in teenage years does not give you more professional experience 10 years later. It gives you a bit advantage around early 20ties. It is essentially irrelevant at 26. As technologies change and develop, that get lost and become useless.

Also, imo, important predictor of how good you will be later on is more your willingness to learn tech you don't like in the beginning. If you don't have that, changes will leave you behind.

[kamaal]

Its not necessarily starting early in programming. Its being in general being good at 'scoring marks' vs 'doing projects'. The former and latter take very different skill sets, and their returns too are often very different.

If you are good at doing projects. Along the way you learn a lot of other very important life skills. Things like resourcefulness, persisting at things, immunity to failure, trying many times etc. And these come handy and are usable to to many things that actually matter in the real world. That is building things.

These things are harder to gain at a later stage in life because expectations from one's life at that time are different and you have to worry more about monthly payments and putting food on the table. You don't have 10 - 15 years lying around to do what other programmers have done in their early years where it was cheap to that in terms of time.

You are also discounting the accumulative effects of these things. After a while due to years of practice, early starters are likely to get very good at things in a far more disproportionate way than those who come later.

[linkregister]

Would participation in athletics or math competitions fulfill your requirements for early hard work and adversity? I do agree with your premise. I just don't see where you actually disagree with mine.

I'm not discounting anything. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be a given that engineers who got into the field late are automatically less able.

> early starters are likely to get very good at things in a far more disproportionate way than those who come later.

We think that but it's not actually demonstrated. Entering a field at the age of 18 or 20 isn't actually late. Until we actually have evidence that people who programmed before college have better outcomes, we need to stop talking about it as if it's a known truth.

[flukus]

It would be a hard study to do, many of the non-tinkerers will never enter the industry in the first place. For a fair evaluation I think you'd have to look at first year comp-sci students and then see where they are in 10 years.

Personally I think the correlation I've seen personally is strong enough that I'd be shocked if a study proved it otherwise.

[kamaal]

>>It would be a hard study to do, many of the non-tinkerers will never enter the industry in the first place.

They will if there is enough incentive. They won't other wise. For example: CS definitely sees more diversity than mechanical engineering, simply because its easier to get paid and higher in CS.

Even in CS a lot of people eventually hop to MBA as that is even more better in terms of making low-effort big-money.

[vt100]

If we did manage produce a study with multiple-data-point evidence supporting it, then should we legislate to compel all businesses to adopt the conclusions and recruit the same way?

The free market already allows founders and backers to back their theories with money and compete in the marketplace.

[watwut]

The teenage years are completely utterly irrelevant to this. They are super irrelevant to high tech positions and definitely anything related big data software. Video games are irrelevant too.

Who play with dolls and who plays with action figures or cars is even moremember irrelevant.

High paying computer jobs are not filled with nerds nor high funstional autistic while we ate at it too.

[Chris2048]

> High paying computer jobs are not filled with nerds

I beg to differ

[Eridrus]

I'm just going to go out on a limb here based on personal experience and say like 95%+ have a bachelor's degree or higher.

[rhizome]

Sure, lack of advancement indicates a lack of ability. It's an old rationalization, but it's a post hoc fallacy.

That is: lack of ability to do what? Can you clarify?

[Spivak]

Or just a lack of drive/desire. In my office almost all of the management positions are filed by women while almost all the technical people are men. I asked about it when I was first hired and most of the people in the office had been offered management positions at some point during their career and they tuned them down because they'd rather do engineering work than human work.

Looking at the demographics you might suppose that there's a lot of bias and discrimination but it couldn't be further the truth. We just have lot of mobility and many options for salary increases without 'climbing the ladder' so everyone individually wound up where they wanted to be.

[kamaal]

>>In my office almost all of the management positions are filed by women while almost all the technical people are men.

This again creates a new problem of 'Smart engineers' Vs 'Dumb managers'. To a point eventually you get to reducing management to routine supervision work.

In the past I have seen a situation where a program manager was routinely pissed because he was barely able to understand what engineers were talking about. After routinely under estimating time estimates he came to a point where the entire argument on him could be reduced to a rude statement: 'Why don't you stick to your spreadsheet cell filling work, and let us engineers do real work. Work that matters isn't your cup of tea'

I can see where this would go in case of women managers. In only some time, men would be accused of things like 'mansplaining'.

[linkregister]

It sounds like your workplace doesn't suffer from the same issues addressed in the article. The women managers at Google were not being offered the same compensation increases, despite performing at or above the level of their male counterparts (all allegedly).

You shouldn't take it on faith that the women were being underpaid. The case will reveal what happened.

You also shouldn't derive from your experiences that just because you have only seen good outcomes, another workplace or team is similarly good. You only know what you actually know.

[Gustomaximus]

This is a broad and complex question with many variables, especially the human element and needs deep context to answer. From this I am going to avoid the question as as I get the feeling this becomes 'internet nitpicking' at specifics on a broad issue. But if you'd be more specific in the question I'd be happy to discuss. Apologies if I have misunderstood.

[rhizome]

The Fundamental Attribution Error comes to mind, but the last time I mentioned it someone jumped on me a little about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

[strken]

It seems more like a faulty null hypothesis. Instead of assuming zero correlation between ability and pay, some people start from the assumption of perfect correlation.

With regards to ability, we seem to intuit the existence of an unmeasurable "ability factor" that underlies real, measurable metrics of performance. I have no idea how Google measure this kind of thing or any statistics qualifications, but a very dumb first attempt might be to get all the engineers to recommend five top co-workers, break the recommendations up into male/female groups and discard cross-group recommendations, then look at the attributes of the most recommended co-workers in each group.

[manigandham]

> lack of ability to do what

To be recognized as more valuable.

[rdtsc]

It seem there are two issues at hand:

1) Women who are in tech get paid less then men.

2) There are less women in tech to begin with.

They are related, in multiple ways perhaps and it's possible tease some links and accompanying explanations:

a) Maybe women know they'll be paid less so they don't go into tech to start with. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem.

b) As you've identified, because of so few women in tech, individuals who end up in well paid positions by chance are less likely to be women as well. So it's a statistical explanation in way.

c) There is sexism. I've seen it, together with xenophobia and other prejudices. And because of that women are rejected, as in not getting offers to start with, or even if hired not taken seriously.

d) In order to fix 2) women were hired but they didn't have an equivalent skill set or experience as men, so they got the job, perhaps to fill some diversity metric, but they did worse in performance reviews later on so they get a smaller salary, less bonuses etc.

Regarding d), I remember going out of the way to bring more women for onsite interviews trying to "fix" 2), that is I wanted to provide more opportunities for success and wanted to increase the diversity in the office. Most of the women failed the interview. I am sure c) was a contributing factor in some cases why the higher ups rejected them. But many simply didn't have their skill set at the level we were looking for. Had they've been offered and taken the job, they might found themselves in the position of getting a smaller salary and poor performance reviews down the road.

Now this doesn't present any good solutions, and doesn't address the lawsuit at hand because I don't know enough details about it. So it is mostly a breakdown of the issue as I see and from personal experience, as I was in charge of recruiting and interviewing for a good number of years.