After talking to women in the IT industry, it's clear that the reason they leave their previous companies that they do not like the culture of thei...
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Wait... I've read this issue before... And I still don't fully understand this issue... I mean, maybe it's because I'm a male (shame on me), but, are they not supposed to center on people's skills and qualifications instead of what they have between their legs or where they come from?? I mean, come on... It's 21 freaking century already... We are about to have people on Mars... Or maybe I'm missing the point on why they are not diverse?...
I studied on a class of mostly males, and the few females I've known did choose technical paths, is it because the dev. Culture is female-averse? (Damn it, who thought it was a good idea to only have guys around??!!)...
I'd love to know more about this issue. I still have questions.
What resources could you point me towards to have a solid, number based (you know, studies and charts and percentages) understanding of this matter?
Thanks.
It's not all about talent. You might have the most talented people in your team, and miss key use cases that will have a huge impact in your project. In general, we all tend to think that users are going to be like us, but that's not always the case, and the results can be really negative: websites that are not accessible for people with disabilities, face detection software that works great for white men but not so great for women or people of color, text that uses slang/terms that may have a negative connotation in some cultures, variables in units that are not the expected ones, etc. Could a more diverse team miss them too? Of course, but once you have experienced many of those scenarios first hand, you pay more attention to those "details."
Wait...
But wouldn't these details be paved on the requirements and problem assessment, even before the solution engineering starts?
Wouldn't these things be assessed before the algorithms and coding even began? I mean...
If you're gonna develop a face-recognition algorithm for "people" (generalistic approach), you need to assess first who this people would be, and indeed you would have to test your solution against these people.
For example, not only on white males, but white females, black females, black males, etc, Etc... (All people that correspond your target population), and if the algorithm is wrong, you would have to fine tune-it or retrain your models.
I mean... You wouldn't develop an app. that doesn't have accessibility options if your target is a lot of people there will be blind or deaf people.
But if the workforce doesn't include your target audience, or representing players on yur target audience, you will have issues. Is that what you mean??
What I meant was that I would like to have more resources pointing me on the conclusion that an inclusive workforce is directly related to inclusive solutions, and that the design and development can only be produced if we have a diverse workforce.
I mean... If the factor is inclusive workforce, or an inclusive solutions approach that would not necessarily depend on a more inclusive approach but a wider, more sensible analisis on the solutions and the target market.
Maybe it's the methods, not the people. That's why I would love to know more with some studies or so...
Yes, this! We like to believe we can cover every scenario, but in reality, it's harder to remember to cover scenarios we don't personally relate to or have experience with. In theory, these things /should/ be assessed before the solution starts, but in reality, it's not. For example this study I am linking below. The study was done on tech by really large tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon. You'd think as tech giants they would be careful about their process before deploying things to market, but they still failed to a certain extent.
news.mit.edu/2018/study-finds-gend...
insurancejournal.com/news/national...
Coding is just a step in the SDLC. Taking into account diversity and inclusion are things that need to be done at every step of the way, because every contributor in a project can (and should) bring concerns up.
100% agree with this... but still it doesn't happen. And there are many examples available: face recognition software is 99% effective with white men, but 65% effective with black women. Ask if Target and Domino's have blind/deaf people as their customers and how did it go for them accessibility-wise. POs, BAs, ScrumMasters, Designers, Developers, Testers... they all didn't realize something as basic as what you are saying. Again, because developers tend to think that users are like them. Even for the test data.
No, that's not what I said or meant. I said that developers tend to think users are like them. It's not bad, it's a normal bias. If you have a uniform team, chances are that some issues are brought later than what they would have been brought in a more diverse group. Different points of view and experiences enrich a team in that sense.
About some studies, you can see this Medium post about diversity statistics with links to different sources and studies. (Which doesn't mean that I endorse any of them in particular, I actually disagree with the approach of some I read in the past. This was just the result of a quick search on Google).
Thank for your patience!! This clarifies a lot of the issues. After this starting point, I can pick up searching and knowing more.
I like diversity, I don't like "diversity for the sake of diversity". I will never hire a white man, an Asian woman or a black guy just to tick some diversity checkboxes.
That's why I appreciate the selection process at my company. When I get sent a CV to review, I don't see the personal details. Just the technical skills and past experiences. I'm not hiring someone because of who they are, but because of what they can do. The human part is handled later, and by HR staff (which is much more skilled in human relations than I am)
I partially agree in your thought process behind hiring an optimal candidate. I, too, value high technical skills in anyone I meet. However, we, as humans, are much more than simple, code-pumping machines. We are more, in that, we have emotions.
These emotions allow us to best ourselves constantly or put others down. These emotions, when organized, make up our behaviors. These behaviors, in my point-of-view, make up more of who we are than our external-physical traits. If they make up more of who we are, then they should be the basis of how we categorize people.
My point is this: if you wish to get the best candidate for a job, technical skills matter but if you truly "like diversity", please consider how stable, creative and motivated a candidate displays themselves to be even if this same candidate appears to be less qualified on paper.
Yes, yes absolutely. I omitted this part because I didn't think it was relevant, but the CVs I get sent are for people I have to assess. I usually put candidates in technical situations they are not super comfortable (for example, I had many candidates who have never done Test Driven Development, and with those, we try implementing some simple feature using this methodology) to see how they work out something new.
I, of course, don't stop at the CV and meet them personally during the assessment. The HR staff is also in charge of evaluating their human side. But the fact that I don't have unnecessary clutter to dig through when reading the CV means I have a lot less bias during the first screening.
Well, I would hope you have bias toward at least the appearance of competence in the field in which the candidate would be working.
Unfortunately, by this method you are only assessing the candidates ability to write an enterprise-conformant CV.
One issue I've seen with diversity in the workplace is that each company seems to have its own interpretation of what diversity should be (many times associated to the corporation's own demons). I worked in a company in which diversity was synonym for Hispanic, in another one it was LGTBQ, another one was people of color, other was women... in some of them, being part of the diverse group was great; but being outside of that idea of "corporate diversity", even when being part of what would be considered a diversity group, could mean less opportunities and ostracism.
What would you do in those cases? How would you approach this diverse/not-really-diverse environments?
To bring a different point of view into play:
It has been proven that women increase climate and productivity in the workplace.
Psychologically men are less aggressive and the whole team works better together. In the asian region, studies have even shown that the women did not even have to contribute professionally to the success, the presence in the team was usually completely sufficient.
The female care and consideration of women leads enormously to a healthy working climate and contribute to the success of projects. Women pursue their own interests less than men and prioritise the well-being of the project.
I can't recall the source where I read it at the moment but when it comes to my mind, I will edit it.
So what you are saying is the benefits that a female colleague brings into the work environment are indistinguishable from a potted plant.
What? How is he saying that?
I hope
dev.to != reddit.com.Silicon Valley has diversity: a large foreign born male workforce (71% Spring 2018) complemented by American males. Given the huge number of male H1-Bs (primarily from India) that the government lets the companies import, I was surprised to see a group complaining about a lack of women and minority workers (presumably American) in Silicon Valley - without saying one word about the massive importation of workers.
When building something for humans, it's good to have as many different human viewpoints as possible.
Anyone can code. Put some effort into finding the ones that bring something new to your team. Not just what's on their outsides, but their ideas and what they can tell you about your applications and the assumptions you've made.
For example, does your application assume that everyone uses email? That everyone reads English fluently? That first (or last!) names never change? Or even that someone might not want to be addressed by the name scraped from their credit card? (I am still sour that Panera does this.)
We all make a ton of invisible assumptions every day, it's a completely normal thing for brains to do just to process the immense amount of data we have to sift through. The problem is when we don't have anyone to tell us when these assumptions aren't valid for what we're trying to accomplish, and that's why we need diversity in software. We have a bunch of applications that just don't meet the needs of the users they're trying to serve, and the problem could have been solved for less time and money if their teams had been more inclusive to start with.
This seems like great advice for Product Managers.