Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sz4kerto 2235 days ago
I see what you mean I think but it's really not a mathematical given. If you have two groups where group 1 with size S scores X with variance V==0.4X on average in a given skill (score means competence), and group 2 with size S/2 scores 0.8X with variance V on average; then it's possible to recruit a set of people from group 2 and the same number of people from group 1 so that the average competence level of people hired from group 2 is higher. All you need to do is to pick more carefully (invest more resources, etc.).

So even if we accept that the average female engineer is not as good as the average male, and there are less female engineers than male, and that Google hires more female engineers than other players in the industry (relative to male hires), it is still absolutely possible that the bar is not lower. Maybe they look harder, maybe they pay more to female engineers with a given competence level, maybe there's no difference, etc.

3 comments

I dont think you understand the hiring pool available to mountain view at all.

The rate of female attendance in comp sci has been in decline since the 70s. At my university it was quite literally 100 to 1.

You cant have a 50-50 hiring pool without some fuckery there.

And for what its worth i absolutely do not accept that the avergage female engineer is not as good as the average male engineer.

If anything, they are anecdotally better equiped.

> All you need to do is to pick more carefully (invest more resources, etc.).

So what amounts to increase their total comp because theyre female and you have a quota to fill?

Thats sexual discrimination is it not?

I really need to say while im passionately pissed off about the way identity politics has infected this industry i am more than welcome to more females joining the industry and more than hapoy to see the broculture fuck right off.

What University has 100 to 1? That's way, way more unbalanced than the typical cs program.
> All you need to do is to pick more carefully (invest more resources, etc.).

This needs fleshing out. One goal is to give equal preference to equally deserving candidates, say candidates with individual score x, regardless of their group membership. It's not clear that you can pick based solely on score x and still achieve that goal, no matter how carefully you pick. If you're picking on x and group membership, you're harming one group of people with score x (assuming a fixed headcount, where advantaging one person means disadvantaging another).

It’s not hard to imagine that Google simply hired an enormous outsized chunk of the top female talent via outreach and just making vastly better offers to industry leading women.