[cantastoria]

Want cognitively diverse teams? It’s not as simple as hiring more female technologists.

I'm sorry, is the author implying that men and women approach engineering problems differently (i.e. they think differently)? Is there any evidence of this? I thought "essentialism" was anathema in contemporary diversity circles.

Eighty percent of Etsy customers are female, but the company itself used to be known in startup circles as engineer-centric and something of a dude-fest

So the fact that eighty percent of Etsy users were women despite having an all-male engineering team apparently means that you have to hire more women engineers to attract female users? Again I'd love to see evidence that once a core of female engineers were hired significant changes where made to the site that could only have come from a "woman's intuition" (natch). It seems to me that having a female dominated user base in spite of an all male engineering team disproves the assertion that you need hire women to achieve "cognitive diversity".

[yummyfajitas]

Also consider the converse of this theory - should you avoid hiring women if your customer base is primarily male?

[mbesto]

This is all suggesting that developers have a say in product design. I assume developers at Etsy do...

In that case, I find developers and product managers (including myself) are sometimes way too bias to give valuable feedback to product decisions. On the other hand, the big advantage I could see would be if the developers are constantly having conversations with their friends about the usability and design of the site. In this case, I could see an advantage.

[JohnBooty]

  I'm sorry, is the author implying that men and 
  women approach engineering problems differently 
  (i.e. they think differently)? Is there any evidence 
  of this?

I don't think it's controversial to believe that one's best chance at achieving "cognitive diversity" comes from having a variety of genders/backgrounds/ages/etc/whatever on your team.

That's not incompatible with rejecting the belief that one gender/race/whatever is "better" at something.

[cantastoria]

I would think it's controversial when applied to engineering. This implies that the basic tools of software development are somehow viewed/used differently by people of various genders/ethnicities/etc... solely because of this "diversity" which I think most people would disagree with. And if one were to argue that being asian/female/poor somehow effects how you develop software I would love to know how those differences manifest in day-to-day software development.

It's not really a question of believing one gender/etc... is better at something here it seems to be a question of not believing it as the author seems to think "cognitive diversity" can be achieved simply by adding women to your dev team.

[nemothekid]

While 2+2 will remain 4 under every gender, race and social status, it is important to realize that there are insights that aren't taught out of a textbook. If all you are doing is building objective software with the basic tools of software development, you are no better than a code monkey.

Etsy needed women because their customers were women. They needed engineers that would help them understand or uncover the point of views of their customers. At the end of the day you are serving people, not machines, and it makes more sense to optimize for the needs of customer, instead of assuming every programmer with git experience make a good engineer for Etsy.

[JohnBooty]

  I would think it's controversial when applied to
  engineering. This implies that the basic tools of 
  software development are somehow viewed/used 
  differently by people of various genders/ethnicities/etc

We're probably operating with different definitions of "software engineering."

I understand software engineering to encompass much more than just using "the basic tools of software development." Within that scope, you're definitely right: I don't think one gender can use Eclipse (or vim, or whatever) better.

I'm thinking of a broader definition of software engineering that involves understanding problems and choosing from many viable solutions, each with their own trade-offs in terms of implementation difficulty and end-user experience. There are a lot of people who feel that process, and our industry as a whole, would benefit from having a greater variety of perspectives.

  the author seems to think "cognitive diversity" can be achieved
  simply by adding women to your dev team.

It can be a step towards it.

[readme]

Unfortunately, when approaching an issue like this you cannot do so without adopting a sexist viewpoint yourself. To begin to analyze workers in terms of sex or gender to begin with, itself is sexist, the same way that affirmative action is racist.

It's fine and good that companies want to hire more female engineers. But this article is lame, which you should have picked up on when the author used the word "rockstar"

[warmwaffles]

I hate being referred to as a rockstar developer as a male. I couldn't agree more. I want more engineers, not tokens. If I can work with competent people, I am happy. Even if it's an all male or all female workplace.

[steveklabnik]

> To begin to analyze workers in terms of sex or gender to begin with, itself is sexist, the same way that affirmative action is racist.

Which is, again, not sexist or racist at all. *-ism implies institutional bias of a society, not an individual instance of discrimination.

It is _discriminatory_ against men, for sure. But not 'sexist.'

[cantastoria]

-ism implies institutional bias of a society

Sexism/racism et al. can exist outside of institutions no? "Hate crimes" for instance clearly do not involve any recognizable institutions yet clearly involve an -ism of some kind. Nor do -isms only exist at the society level. For instance it would be possible for a female owned company to not hire men (female hiring bias/sexism) which would run counter to larger societal biases.

[steveklabnik]

> "Hate crimes" for instance clearly do not involve any recognizable institutions yet clearly involve an -ism of some kind.

Only in the sense that they 'reproduce' the broader -ism. The individual act is one of discrimination, the sum of all acts collectively is an *-ism.

> For instance it would be possible for a female owned company to not hire men (female hiring bias/sexism) which would run counter to larger societal biases.

Studies and discussion on this topic are scoped specifically at the societal level for a reason.

[steveklabnik]

> I thought "essentialism" was anathema in contemporary diversity circles.

You are absolutely right that essentialism is not generally accepted any more, but you're mistaking essentialism a bit. Essentialism is not 'women do things differently than men,' essentialism is 'Women are x.'

As an example, certain feminists don't believe that trans women are women, because they are not born with sexual organs that are the essence of 'woman.'

In contrast, population thinking would assert some number of a portion of a population has some trait, but it's not required, or 'essential.' Saying that 'many women have vaginas' is not an essentialist statement, it's a population-ist one.

Therefore, "many women approach problems differently than many men" is not essentialst. "All women _must_ approach problems differently than men" is essentialist.

[cantastoria]

But the author is stating that "woman are x" by stating they bring more "cognitive diversity" to a team. In order for this to be true, woman in fact "must" approach problems differently than men or there would be no diversity benefit (whatever that may be in this case).

[steveklabnik]

If it's not a rigorous philosophical work, people will not be very precise with their qualifiers.

For example, in the previous sentence, I said 'people' and not 'most people.' Especially in the social sciences, people assume you're discussing populations, and words like 'most' impede clarity more than aid it.

That said, I don't know the author, and they may be a gender essentialist; they do still exist.