I am a creative, passionate, full stack web developer. I love technology! Currently I'm really into Node & React but I am very experienced in PHP, Drupal 8, accessibility, CI/CD #WomenWhoCode
As I've mentioned in the post, it isn't just women that this applies to, but all diversities, however I'm writing from a female developer point of view. The reason why this process affects diversity more, is because you have a small pool of potential diverse candidates, so then you either put them off before they even apply, or you cut them out due to the process being too harsh.
Now GOOD men get knocked out of this process too, but this is simply pointing out to companies, who let's be honest really do not care if they knock out a good white male when they have a tonne applying, that it does matter that you're putting off good people AND that's why your diversity is so poor.
I don't know why some males get so wound up by any article that mentions gender. We're not trying to harm males in the industry, we're trying to get more women into the industry.
With regards to the GitHub issue you are talking from personal experience too, you say you don't judge but you can't speak for everyone. The point that the statistics are showing is that when gender is revealed then female code is rejected at a higher rate.
And as for the unnecessary personal attack; I've actually not appeared out of nowhere. I've been working for over 11 years in industry as a team lead, architect, senior developer. I've decided to start sharing my knowledge in blog posts since I left my last permanent position, which I was busy working on all hours so apologies if I don't have open source code for you to judge me on. If you look back through my twitter you'll see I've actually been posting for years in the Drupal community.
Those women you mention who are trying to be influencers; they're trying to influence the younger generation of females. Why do you see that as such a bad thing and why does it mean that because they're on social media that they aren't skilled?
Passionate generalist conquering the web one project at a time. Whether authoring libraries for node, JS, PHP, or Rust, I am always on the lookout for better solutions to common problems.
Location
USA
Work
Lead Developer & Co-founder at corpscrypt, CTO at REtech
Those women you mention who are trying to be influencers; they're trying to influence the younger generation of females.Why do you see that as such a bad thing and why does it mean that because they're on social media that they aren't skilled?
No, you misunderstood me here. I mentioned that as one of the indicators of our industry being relatively advanced when it comes to diversity. Maybe "respected individuals" would have been a better term than influencers. I meant influencing technology, not influencing in the sense of being a role model (which they are, or course, but that wasn't my point).
I don't know why some males get so wound up by any article that mentions gender. We're not trying to harm males in the industry, we're trying to get more women into the industry.
I don't know which of my words let you come to that conclusion. And I also don't know which "we" are you referring to here in particular. I am certainly not motivated by "protecting male dominance", I would love to live in a world where my peers can be whoever they are and from whatever background without that being a basis of judgement or evaluation. As such, I evaluate opinions and actions based on whether I see them as beneficial or counterproductive towards this goal. So assuming your intentions are honest, we do have the same goal. I just don't find it productive to separate humans into groups and identities while having the declared goal of overcoming exactly that.
The point that the statistics are showing is that when gender is revealed then female code is rejected at a higher rate.
Well, that is the question, isn't it? I assume you read the actual publication, so I'll get into detail:
We have one dataset that examines pull requests based on gender only. The identification of gender was generated by external accounts (namely Google+).
In this scenario we found that female coders had a higher acceptance rate.
Now, statistically speaking, this is already a problem as we can only work with a subset of participants, as contributers needed to provide their gender in the first place while requiring additional platform memberships in the second place, potentially missing a relationship between competency and social media membership here. As pointed out in the peer reviewed version, this alone already questions whether the dataset is meaningful. But it get's worse when we start looking at a subset of people who are identifiable as being a member of a certain gender based on GitHub profile alone. Only that did not happen. Rather, a subset of that group (identifiable as female) was compared against the rest. But what they should have done is using their first dataset as a control group and then compare the differences within each gender (so does it make a difference for both genders whether or not their gender is easily revealed) and then compare the outcome. And personally, I would also be interested in statistics about what gender distribution exists in that realm (e.g. are men more likely to reject PRs from women than women themselves.)
This does not mean I cannot imagine that such a bias exists or manifests in such a way. But this study is not suited to isolate what your source derives from it.
And as for the unnecessary personal attack;
I did not mean to attack you, but am aware that this impression was unavoidable as my eloquence in this language has its limits.
so apologies if I don't have open source code for you to judge me on.
Yes. I know you probably meant that differently but that is indeed the problem. And I fully admit that this is exactly what I would have done as I believe that is the basis a developer should be judged on. Not on gender, ideology or political affiliation. But that does not mean that my intend would have been to identify flaws in your code. It would have given me the opportunity to evaluate whether you are in this community as a valuable member or as a political agitator. And again, sorry if this sounds like a personal attack, but I don't know you or anything about you and can therefore only judge you based on what you share.
I am a creative, passionate, full stack web developer. I love technology! Currently I'm really into Node & React but I am very experienced in PHP, Drupal 8, accessibility, CI/CD #WomenWhoCode
I just feel as though you are arguing unnecessarily about something you've never experienced. Had I have come in as a less experienced developer, it still shouldn't require judgement of my code in order to write an article about the recruitment process. I'm sorry if you feel it's your right to be able to judge me, but I have no motives apart from to get to know like minded people, share and improve my knowledge. You should probably also look up Women Who Code too as it's not just a hashtag, it's an organisation that many of us are members of that is doing amazing work.
Passionate generalist conquering the web one project at a time. Whether authoring libraries for node, JS, PHP, or Rust, I am always on the lookout for better solutions to common problems.
Location
USA
Work
Lead Developer & Co-founder at corpscrypt, CTO at REtech
Could your recruitment process be discouraging female developers?
and I happen to look for developers. So naturally, I was interested in finding out whether you have valuable insight into that BECAUSE I have not personally experienced it from a female perspective. In other words, I am here to find answers to the question your article is about.
I'm sorry if you feel it's your right to be able to judge me
Yes. Let me make one thing absolutely clear to avoid misunderstandings: It is my right to evaluate any information I process. It is an intellectual necessity to judge and it is correct to judge. We just all need to be very cautions about what we base our judgments on as we are terribly flawed in that respect and must therefore be able to change our judgement when additional information comes in (you know, fighting one's own confirmation bias). And I think we would agree on what judgement should not be based on. As a matter of fact, you have responded very judgmental to all my remarks and I ignored it as it is your right to do so. You assumed my gender, my motivation and my intent and talked about "men" vs. "we". And that's all fine, that's all human. But I can only have a meaningful conversation with you if we accept that undeniable fact: Yes, I judge you and yes, you judge me. Let's go from there.
I know Women Who Code is not just a hashtag. But that does not mean that everyone using the hashtag is affiliated in any way. But since they are globally active and you mentioned it: When you say "amazing work", what do you mean by that? And there is probably many things, but besides the mission, what does the existence of this organisations do for female coders in your mind? Or, maybe females to become coders, if you think that is their strong suit. And I am not asking to provoke you, I am really curious as it seems hard to carve out what they are about. And BTW, I think that would interest a broader audience as well, should you want to make that a post rather than a comment.
// , “It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness... but the monkey is serious because he itches."(No/No)
Let me make one thing absolutely clear to avoid misunderstandings: It is my right to evaluate any information I process.
It troubles me that the word "discrimination" has been conflated somehow with gross injustice. "Indiscriminate" has not somehow become a compliment, however.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
As I've mentioned in the post, it isn't just women that this applies to, but all diversities, however I'm writing from a female developer point of view. The reason why this process affects diversity more, is because you have a small pool of potential diverse candidates, so then you either put them off before they even apply, or you cut them out due to the process being too harsh.
Now GOOD men get knocked out of this process too, but this is simply pointing out to companies, who let's be honest really do not care if they knock out a good white male when they have a tonne applying, that it does matter that you're putting off good people AND that's why your diversity is so poor.
I don't know why some males get so wound up by any article that mentions gender. We're not trying to harm males in the industry, we're trying to get more women into the industry.
With regards to the GitHub issue you are talking from personal experience too, you say you don't judge but you can't speak for everyone. The point that the statistics are showing is that when gender is revealed then female code is rejected at a higher rate.
And as for the unnecessary personal attack; I've actually not appeared out of nowhere. I've been working for over 11 years in industry as a team lead, architect, senior developer. I've decided to start sharing my knowledge in blog posts since I left my last permanent position, which I was busy working on all hours so apologies if I don't have open source code for you to judge me on. If you look back through my twitter you'll see I've actually been posting for years in the Drupal community.
Those women you mention who are trying to be influencers; they're trying to influence the younger generation of females. Why do you see that as such a bad thing and why does it mean that because they're on social media that they aren't skilled?
No, you misunderstood me here. I mentioned that as one of the indicators of our industry being relatively advanced when it comes to diversity. Maybe "respected individuals" would have been a better term than influencers. I meant influencing technology, not influencing in the sense of being a role model (which they are, or course, but that wasn't my point).
I don't know which of my words let you come to that conclusion. And I also don't know which "we" are you referring to here in particular. I am certainly not motivated by "protecting male dominance", I would love to live in a world where my peers can be whoever they are and from whatever background without that being a basis of judgement or evaluation. As such, I evaluate opinions and actions based on whether I see them as beneficial or counterproductive towards this goal. So assuming your intentions are honest, we do have the same goal. I just don't find it productive to separate humans into groups and identities while having the declared goal of overcoming exactly that.
Well, that is the question, isn't it? I assume you read the actual publication, so I'll get into detail:
We have one dataset that examines pull requests based on gender only. The identification of gender was generated by external accounts (namely Google+).
In this scenario we found that female coders had a higher acceptance rate.
Now, statistically speaking, this is already a problem as we can only work with a subset of participants, as contributers needed to provide their gender in the first place while requiring additional platform memberships in the second place, potentially missing a relationship between competency and social media membership here. As pointed out in the peer reviewed version, this alone already questions whether the dataset is meaningful. But it get's worse when we start looking at a subset of people who are identifiable as being a member of a certain gender based on GitHub profile alone. Only that did not happen. Rather, a subset of that group (identifiable as female) was compared against the rest. But what they should have done is using their first dataset as a control group and then compare the differences within each gender (so does it make a difference for both genders whether or not their gender is easily revealed) and then compare the outcome. And personally, I would also be interested in statistics about what gender distribution exists in that realm (e.g. are men more likely to reject PRs from women than women themselves.)
This does not mean I cannot imagine that such a bias exists or manifests in such a way. But this study is not suited to isolate what your source derives from it.
I did not mean to attack you, but am aware that this impression was unavoidable as my eloquence in this language has its limits.
Yes. I know you probably meant that differently but that is indeed the problem. And I fully admit that this is exactly what I would have done as I believe that is the basis a developer should be judged on. Not on gender, ideology or political affiliation. But that does not mean that my intend would have been to identify flaws in your code. It would have given me the opportunity to evaluate whether you are in this community as a valuable member or as a political agitator. And again, sorry if this sounds like a personal attack, but I don't know you or anything about you and can therefore only judge you based on what you share.
I just feel as though you are arguing unnecessarily about something you've never experienced. Had I have come in as a less experienced developer, it still shouldn't require judgement of my code in order to write an article about the recruitment process. I'm sorry if you feel it's your right to be able to judge me, but I have no motives apart from to get to know like minded people, share and improve my knowledge. You should probably also look up Women Who Code too as it's not just a hashtag, it's an organisation that many of us are members of that is doing amazing work.
Well, your post is titled
and I happen to look for developers. So naturally, I was interested in finding out whether you have valuable insight into that BECAUSE I have not personally experienced it from a female perspective. In other words, I am here to find answers to the question your article is about.
Yes. Let me make one thing absolutely clear to avoid misunderstandings: It is my right to evaluate any information I process. It is an intellectual necessity to judge and it is correct to judge. We just all need to be very cautions about what we base our judgments on as we are terribly flawed in that respect and must therefore be able to change our judgement when additional information comes in (you know, fighting one's own confirmation bias). And I think we would agree on what judgement should not be based on. As a matter of fact, you have responded very judgmental to all my remarks and I ignored it as it is your right to do so. You assumed my gender, my motivation and my intent and talked about "men" vs. "we". And that's all fine, that's all human. But I can only have a meaningful conversation with you if we accept that undeniable fact: Yes, I judge you and yes, you judge me. Let's go from there.
I know Women Who Code is not just a hashtag. But that does not mean that everyone using the hashtag is affiliated in any way. But since they are globally active and you mentioned it: When you say "amazing work", what do you mean by that? And there is probably many things, but besides the mission, what does the existence of this organisations do for female coders in your mind? Or, maybe females to become coders, if you think that is their strong suit. And I am not asking to provoke you, I am really curious as it seems hard to carve out what they are about. And BTW, I think that would interest a broader audience as well, should you want to make that a post rather than a comment.
It troubles me that the word "discrimination" has been conflated somehow with gross injustice. "Indiscriminate" has not somehow become a compliment, however.