However playing Devil's advocate it is justifiable by the fact that hiring decisions are naturally risk adverse. The difference between a perfect hire and a merely good one is typically not that big. The difference between a hire that works out and one that does not is huge. It does not take many wrong hires to destroy a working team.
If you've ever been burned by a hire where a person did not work out for reason X, then you're going to naturally think 2 and 3 times before making a similar hire. I personally have seen a couple of situations where a black person had credentials only because of affirmative action and did not deserve those credentials. I've also have seen multiple cases where a woman gets hired, gets pregnant, and then you lose that employee in a painful way.
Can you really blame an employer for leaning towards being risk adverse in this situation?
(Turning it around, if everyone else is discriminating to an unfair degree against a specific group of people, a company that merely discriminates less will enjoy a competitive advantage. A while ago I ran across a fascinating study of how much better South Korean companies that were willing to hire women into management do than ones who are not. I've seen no data either way on whether the USA is past this tipping point for women in various professional careers.)
Also, read the studies. Black people and women actually have a harder time getting a job. So by your logic, of people getting jobs that they may not be the most qualified for, you'd be better off hiring women or black people. They have to be more qualified into to be seen as equals.
The specific situation that is burned in my mind was a black girl who was in a math PhD program at the same time that I was. The department wound up bending their rules to the breaking point to give her a Masters on her way out because nobody wanted to risk the discrimination lawsuit that she was threatening. Her actual math knowledge was not even to the level that I would expect from a BSc in math.
I have never witnessed anything involving a white person that was anywhere near being similarly egregious. And I had experiences with that department which demonstrated in spades that white people were not given anywhere near as much leniency.
As for your final point, I thought I pretty much said that. I've not seen the specific studies that you're referring to.
That's one of the better arguments against "affirmative action". Competent minorities and women are naturally lumped in with people working the system and pay the price in terms of reputation.
Yes. It's called "the right thing to do", not "the easy and convenient thing to do", and for a reason.
Discriminating by race is convenient, but it puts a number of people in a dead end through no fault of their own. Had everyone done the convenient thing to do, those people would be locked out forever. For employers it's a matter convenience, for recruits it's a matter of having or not having a life. The impact is disproportionate.
According to you a couple black people got farther than they should have because of affirmative action and because of that you wouldn't blame an employer for considering all black people "risky" hires. Doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? Put another way, has anyone ever said "a couple white people screwed over the team a few years back so we think twice nowadays before hiring white people". Or "we found that guys seem to slack more during work hours and now we shy away from hiring men". Of course not, because white and male are normal when it comes to jobs in tech and so they enjoy the privilege of being treated as individuals. To drive the point home your bias is obvious in your comment - "you're going to naturally think 2 and 3 times before making a similar hire" - "similar" applies to black or female because it's understandable to aggregate those individuals, their actions easy fit into a narrative that already exists in your mind. Pick two white men at your work who consistently perform poorly and I don't think you would be as comfortable attributing their behavior to their race or gender.
Also did you read the final paragraph?
That said, I am sympathetic to the position that employers tend to unfairly overestimate that risk. And furthermore US law is very clear that discriminating against women based on that risk is illegal. (But, laws notwithstanding, I've seen it happen in practice. Both directly in my workplace, and indirectly in my wife's.)
While I can't comment on the personality of the author, from the picture in the article it seems as though she is attractive. Is that enough to set her apart? Would she have seen the same possibilities if she wasn't so attractive? Would she have seen the same possibilities if she didn't have the novelty (not sure what to call it) of being an attractive, capable woman in a male-dominated field?
Could you provide a source on that please? Because from the wording of your statement it seems that what you are claiming is completely anecdotal. I remember studying in one of my psychology courses that attractive people are instantly assumed to be smarter and more successful than unattractive people. It even has a name although I can't think of it right now. If I could I would provide a source.
edit: Here is a source, not really great but it's something. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201108/why...
edit2: The word I was looking for was halo effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness_stereot...
People can exploit any number of traits to help them accomplish things, be it connections, looks, charms, etc.
(1) You can't assume that there are a lot of equally qualified A players for those companies. In fact, those companies struggle to hire enough qualified engineers.
(2) You're assuming that those companies, if they were presented with multiple qualified people, can only hire one of them. In many cases, they would just hire all of them.
(3) You're assuming that, if a company has to decide between multiple qualified people, it would use personality or looks as a dividing factor. Obviously, the people aren't actually identical, other than looks. The companies could instead decide based on a preference for public universities over equally ranked private ones, or what city the people are from, or whatever. There are many differences between people.
(4) You're assuming that attractiveness would help someone's candidacy for an engineering role, and not hurt it. If you were talking to two people -- one was a very attractive woman and one was a very unattractive woman -- which would you assume is more technical, if you had to bet? You'd probably bet on the less attractive person.
(2) Even large companies have needs that wouldn't allow them to hire 5 great individuals for a singular position.
You seem to just be complicating the argument with undue thoughts about the position and a company. My post was trying to remove the job-specific factors and think about how personality and looks affect hiring.
(3) I've interviewed a lot of people for various positions that were all capable, that when it finally came down to it we argued more over team fit than anything else. If you had a grumpy, divisive individual or a friendly, articulate individual, which would you chose? This happens in 'A' player companies as much as any.
(4) I'm not assuming anything about attractiveness of an individual. I merely presented a couple (albeit somewhat loaded) questions to invoke a conversation.
I'm all for giving disadvantaged people a chance over advantaged ones, but it's offensive when you pretend "Oh no, the odds are totally even!" No. They're not. You're lying to protect your ego.
1) Some people get benefits undeservedly.
2) People will often rationalize after the fact to say that they deserved to get those benefits.
3) Women are people, so sometimes women will get benefits undeservedly but lie to themselves after the fact by thinking that they deserved it.
All certainly true. But I'd like to offer another claim:
4) Men are people, so sometimes men will get benefits undeservedly but lie to themselves after the fact by thinking they deserved it.
Is 4) unlikely, particularly relative to 3)?
How likely do you think it is that you might be deceiving yourself in the same way, about the relative benefits of being a man versus being a woman in tech?
The problem is that (as far as I know) nobody's explicitly told "congratulations, you have gained additional benefits due to your gender and/or race!" It's easy to pinpoint moments of discrimination when you're the victim, but it's not so clear-cut when it ends up in your favor.
(I would very much believe, however, that in bartending, it's stacked against men.)
OTOH, bartending is a customer-facing business, and partially entails "entertainment" (e.g. the bar-tender talking with the customers), so in many cases there's an actual business reason to prefer female bartenders (when most customers are men who prefer talking to a woman bartender).
No such excuse exists in software development...
I also think being female made it a little easier to get my resume noticed, coming from a large state school. It probably helped me get my Google interview, but I don't think it actually helped me get the job much.
There have also been some negative things about being a woman in technology. Everyone has their advantages and disadvantages in life.
You're telling me that a set of unrelated teams decided interdependently to specifically offer positions to women from your college? Why? Why your college? It just doesn't make sense.
My guess is that there's something much less sinister going on, such as: -- It's just a weird coincidence. (After all, they recruit from many schools.) -- Some professor referred mostly female students, perhaps even being under the mistaken impression that they were asking for good female candidates. -- The female students are your schools are actually more qualified than the male. (This is not particularly unlikely, if your school is really less than 5% female. To get numbers that low, there may be some pressure to drop out, leaving only the best women there.) -- Microsoft hires mostly PMs from your school, which are more likely than devs to be female. -- Microsoft extended offers to a number of men too, who happened to not take the offer. -- Many of these 5 students were actually given offers for a specific program dedicated to minorities. -- You're wrong about the percent of women in your CS program (very likely). -- You're wrong about the number of women / men hired.
These are just a few of the possibilities I can think of. What seems incredibly unlikely is that a bunch of unrelated teams all decided to hire only women from specifically your university. I just don't understand how that would work.
By the way, are you sure your school is <5% female? That is WAY under the national average.
2003/2004 was 8.7% female in that program, but that was after my year. The statistic I remembered from around 2000 was 4%. Three of the five MS interns that year were also Cpr E, the other two might have been computer science, for which I don't know the ratio. I don't think there was conspiracy among groups at MS to only hire women, I think the only people from my school who got interviews that year were women. And my impression was that MS handles intern recruiting differently than fulltime.
It's possible that something in the middle is going on -- a recruiter asked a professor for recommendations and he/she happened to recommend mostly women.
It is reasonable to conclude that those decisions were not independent. But you're absolutely right that the correlation may come from the school rather than from Microsoft.
I don't have a solution here, I'm sorry. But whenever I read a comment that sounds too cool, even-headed, and rhetorical, I know I'm going to be hit with some contrived hypotheticals and not much supporting data.
I don't know how to address the issue of prejudice. I just dislike it when people engage in discussion and pat themselves on the back for having taken a "reasonable" position. Not that I think arguments should be unreasonable, I simply see in practice that most "reasonable" arguments don't actually illuminate and are simply exercises in rhetoric.
I refuse to believe that this person (although she is qualified) managed to be hired completely free from any bias and only on her skill.
edit: I don't want anyone to believe I am trying to undersell the prejudice women have to experience daily. It's absolutely horrible that it still happens. I just posted the rest of this because I'm a nihilist and have trouble seeing good things with humanity....
In certain circumstances, this bias manifests as favorable, and sometimes it is unfavorable. (A particularly company might go out of their way, or be negatively prejudiced, respectively.)
Also, some particular people are able to use bias to their advantage overall in their lives. Whereas other people are harmed by bias, overall, because they don't work around it.
It's a really tricky issue.
Global research group Catalyst recently interviewed 325 American chief executives and 10,000 female executives around the obstacles to womens' progression into senior leadership roles. 52% of women cited male stereotyping, but only 25% of the male chief executives identified it as a problem - so there's definitely unconscious stereotyping at play.
There are two major problems with that. First is that it's just correlation, "greener" companies also do better but it's quite likely that they simply can afford to be greener.
Second why is no one buying that? I mean, if companies with many women at senior levels really did significantly better, speculators would bet on those companies, their stock prices would jump and there would be a boom for female execs (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/femfirmfinance.html). That is not happening.
The only research that I am aware of along those lines was specific to South Korea.
"Companies with more women at senior levels earn upwards of 33% more on important financial metrics. Failure to resolve the obstacles that keep women from these roles means executives are leaving money on the table."
(Oh yeah I'll deserve the down-votes for that one, go ahead!)
Some people are born rich, into high society etc and some are not. I don't see people unhappy that others are saying they "got the job because their dad was powerful".
Whether or not there was a real advantage doesn't matter. If there was a real advantage, well thank you, I'd take that advantage. If not, prove it. Either way, you still don't deserve to feel upset over it.
Second, the point of the article is not the being a woman is an advantage but rather, that there's good evidence that it's a disadvantage. When you have a group that is already unrepresented in the sciences who face additional disadvantages, that IS a problem.
Yes, of course you play the hand you're dealt. What other choice do you have? That doesn't mean you shouldn't fight for equality for everyone.
