[m-photonic]

"When I'm hiring, I have an HR intern (or the external recruiter) strip anything that could indicate gender or race from the résumés before they get their initial evaluation. For the ones that make the first cut, I have the recruiter print out code from Github, with the username redacted. This has resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of women who make it through to an actual interview."

https://devmynd.com/blog/2015-2-mind-the-gap

[Anderkent]

Show us the data. Unless you believe an average woman is better at the job than the average man, stripping all gender / race information should at best bring it up to the baseline; with the huge skew at the college level (maybe 10% of my year at graduation were women) this doesn't really result in a 'tremendous increase in the number of women'.

[SeanDav]

Of course it could. If only say 4% of their workforce was women before, and this increased to 8% after stripping out gender identity, then that is a huge increase (double) the amount of women. This is because women are being hired at the rate of 10% (using your figure), which would increase the number of women dramatically over time.

I agree that if the initial starting proportion was 10% (again assuming your number is correct) then gender stripping should make no difference - just pointing out that unless you know the starting proportion then the OP's statement is perfectly valid.

[TeMPOraL]

Wish I could upvote twice. Very important insight, and one that is constantly missed in gender discussions. One shouldn't expect any change downstream to suddenly cancel out the effects of something high upstream. BTW. the huge skew at college level seems to be a result of a skew in as early as high-school, or maybe even earlier. [0] has an interesting discussion on the topic.

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of-required...

[PeterisP]

You can get a reversal effect by self-selection.

Let's assume a simplified model of reality that has exactly two biased filters - an "upstream" bias that causes the pool of qualified candidates to contain only (as an assumed example) 10% women, and a "downstream" bias that causes qualified women candidates to disproportionally not get chosen or get worse offers, that results in a majority of companies hiring only (again, assumed example) 5% women.

If your company gets publicly known for hiring fairly, avoiding the second filter, then it may actually result in an effect that would "cancel out the effects of something high upstream" - simply because qualified women candidates may preferentially choose to apply at your organization, and your pool of candidates may contain significantly more qualified women developers than the national average, and thus also the people you hire would contain more qualified women developers than the national average.

A company with a reputation "if you're of group X, you'll hate it here" can have a perfectly fair hiring process, but still won't get much of group X simply because they will avoid that organization. An organization like Ku klux klan doesn't really need to do racial discrimination when hiring as most black people simply won't apply.

A fair hiring process would result in a proportion of women employees that generally matches the proportion of qualified women applicants, but the proportion of women among qualified applicants may vary significantly between different companies.

[sokoloff]

It doesn't even need that feedback-to-candidates loop to work.

Imagine that the female population of developers is 10%, that they exhibit in every way a performance distribution equal to males in job and interviewing performance, but that every company except yours is half as likely to hire a female candidate as the straight odds would suggest.

The candidate pool as experienced by all companies would consist of more than 10% females (as they would need to apply to twice as many places on average) and the average quality of the female candidate may well be higher than the average male candidate because of the adverse selection at play. (Qualified female candidates are being preferentially passed up in favor of inferior male candidates, leaving the residual female candidate pool more talent-rich than the male pool.)

[TeMPOraL]

Ok, I haven't considered that. That could indeed explain the results. Thanks.

[pron]

It is not missed at all. But the reality of discrimination at a young age is no excuse for not fighting it in software companies, where women constantly report hostile working conditions.

The article you linked to is quite good, but it ignores the very real decline over the past few decades[1] in women participation in software relative to other professions.

[1]: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...

[lmm]

So these two things don't seem to fit together. The linked article seems to provide pretty solid evidence that women are just as successful as men when you control by numerical SAT score. But some[1] women do indeed report hostile working conditions.

How can this be? Is it:

* Working conditions are hostile to women, but this doesn't actually affect anything in terms of income, number of women in the industry and so on?

* More cynical variation: any woman who makes it to graduation in a STEM field has already taken a lot of hostility; those who hostility can affect are driven out earlier?

* Women and men actually experience equal amounts of hostility, and simply interpret it differently?

* Women are better at their jobs (or somehow have it easier) in a way that doesn't show up in numerical SAT scores, and this effect is exactly equal and opposite to that of a hostile work environment?

* Something else I haven't thought of?

[1] though by no means all, I remember lorettahe's post here a year or so ago

[belorn]

It seems that any work environment with a homogeneous group over 90% has reports of hostile working conditions for minorities. Reading reports about women entering a workplace dominated by men, men entering a a work place dominated by women, or blacks entering a predominated white work place, I constantly hear the same kind of abuse.

"By being the only Y in the work place, people expect me to represent the whole Y group just because I am Y."

"Because I am Y, everyone assume {common fear about group Y} about me".

"People think something is wrong with me because I applied to a X dominated work place and not one of the Y dominated ones."

It seems to me that the hostile working environment is the result of human nature when confronted with a minority. When the number of women in the industry increases, then the hostile working conditions will likely go away as quickly it initial started.

[pron]

Probably, but I'd like to point out that this subject has been studied for the past forty years or so, so we can do better than conjecture. While it is true that minorities often feel left out in homogenous groups, there is a big difference between cases where that minority is simply a numeric difference and those where that minority has less power[1] in society. We now know that the discussion of sexism and racism is not about numbers and differences but about certain groups having more power than others, and that causes some very specific behaviors.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)

[pron]

I don't think you can combine different statistics of such high dimensionality like that. Unless women math GRE scores are in decline since the eighties -- and they don't correlate with success in science or medicine -- they don't explain the decline in participation in this industry alone. Also, the correlation of women participation and GRE math scores can remain just as strong regardless of the actual participation rates: the high correlation does not explain sex differences (as in this illustration http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Heritabil...)

There is also a danger in looking at statistics about human behavior that only take a snapshot in time, because the data itself changes all the time. For example, it is very possible that ever since women participation started to decline, there have been few role models for women, less desire to participate, and therefore less desire to excel in math.

It is as impossible to study social dynamics from a statistical snapshot as it is to study planetary motion from a still photograph of the sky.

[lmm]

> the correlation of women participation and GRE math scores can remain just as strong regardless of the actual participation rates: the high correlation does not explain sex differences (as in this illustration http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Heritabil...)

I don't understand what you're claiming. The differences in numeric GRE scores absolutely do explain the post-graduation sex differences. Are you claiming that low numeric GRE scores and low workplace success might have some common cause? Sure, but that cause would necessarily be pre-graduation, meaning that's the place to tackle it, and efforts to e.g. make workplaces less hostile aren't going to make any difference.

[TeMPOraL]

Of course it's not an excuse. But you should not expect to get results that defy statistics.

[pron]

Defy what statistics? What statistics explain the constant decline in the last few decades? Are women getting dumber?

[TeMPOraL]

The ones that say, e.g. that if you have 10 men educated in software engineering per one woman and you change your hiring practices to be less discriminating, you shouldn't suddenly expect to have 50/50 gender balance among tech workers in your company. You should see that 10/1 proportion reflected in your staff, if you hire based on merit alone.

[rockmeamedee]

What? There is a strong bias against hiring women. Read about it and steps to reduce it here:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Reducing_male_bias_in_hir...

Everyone (including women) is biased against hiring women in tech. Even if it is tiny, why wouldn't you take steps to reduce your own bias? Even if "the pipeline is the problem", why wouldn't you take all possible steps to reduce the bias at your stage of the pipeline?

[tomjen3]

If the industry hires 2% women, out of 10% talent then there is 8% _of the entire industry_ that this company could snag. This could easily mean more than the entire company being women.

Your intuition is right when/if this gets implemented everywhere.

[cbd1984]

Wonderful. It's the "symphony orchestra" method of finding the best, which also works to fight discrimination:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/b...

[jobu]

Kudos to you, that's a great way of doing it.

I've worked with a few women in technical roles that decided to take more masculine versions of their names (Jackie -> Jack, Ashley -> Ash, Jessica to Jesse). For two of them it started out as a way of getting hassled less online, and the other did it as an experiment to see which resume got more interviews (surprise, the masculine name got more than double the callbacks.)

[m-photonic]

Not me, I'm just linking this here. It was submitted the other day but didn't get much attention.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9092545

[mc32]

Now, if only German companies would do away with requiring, photos, place of birth and marital status in their Lebenslaufs... I mean, this is a good thing to do, but wish it would happen overseas as well. Could you imagine requiring photos and marital status in the US (aside from modeling and the like)

[pgeorgi]

I haven't added marital status, place of birth or birth name in my Lebenslauf, ever.

But then I never listened to teachers or any public employment agencies and their leaflets since I had HR people in family who knew more contemporary habits (eg. that handwritten long-form CVs mean pretty much immediate rejection, while they were sold in class as the best thing ever)

The photo requirement is still rather annoying though.

[raverbashing]

Yeah, most elaborate "somersaults" guidance in CVs (or Lebenslaufen) are usually BS

Go with the basics and it should be ok. Especially in more modern companies (IT, etc)

[jkot]

Interesting. Most american companies I interviewed with, were asking me very personal questions, such as race and sexual orientation.

[DanBC]

That's very poor recruiting practice. Why bothe asking questions if you can't use the answers as part of your recruitment process?

[belorn]

What kind of work place uses the sexual orientation of employees for the benefit of the company?

[jkot]

It was for equal oportunity or something.

[collyw]

I always find this very ironic.

[gamechangr]

I have interview with numerous companies in America and have NEVER been asked personal questions.

What industry? What city? How many companies = "Most"?

[jkot]

All were major corporations. I had to apply for job interview using their website. After I would fill out CV and relevant information, I was redirected to survey or something like that. This was in Ireland, since 2006.

[joshuapants]

I think you're referring to an optional survey. Companies ask that so that they have metrics on what kind of people they get applications from. You can choose not to answer.

[gamechangr]

"most" = which ones?

List them

[nailer]

Which ones?

[leohutson]

The sanitization process should also be repeated in the interview process. Only objective information is taken down by the interviewer, and this is passed on to someone else, who can make a value judgement about the candidate without that judgement being coloured by the candidates gender, race, looks, height, perfume or whatever else is considered to be extraneous information.

[hobs]

Are you being sarcastic? This would be expensive, and is that how you are going to work with them?

I know that HN and the world in general is on a kick about equality of everything, but when your interviewee wears 100 gallons of perfume to the interview that is a problem I have to address even before they start working.

I absolutely think that the work can have objective measures, but back in reality much of work is not based around how good the candidate fits the job description exactly as described in the requirements.

[leohutson]

Include personal hygiene as a criteria that you are interested in then.

[hobs]

That is a somewhat fair response, that I be honest in what I ask for.

However, it seems like at some point these basics are societal norms, and I am going to ridiculous lengths to specify what I want for a position.

Personal hygiene is pretty much the criteria for ANY job.

[Already__Taken]

That's not really fair to the candidate when you remember the potential employee is also interviewing the employer. I don't think I'd want to work somewhere that thought myself and my boss' should not meet.

[vishaldpatel]

This is brilliant.