
How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome - liberatus
http://tessrinearson.com/blog/?p=564
======
codex
A long time ago, I was once a Microsoft intern attending a party at Bill
Gates' house. At that party, a high-ranking Microsoft HR employee told me that
it was Microsoft's goal to have twice the percentage of female interns in
their program than female CS majors.

For example, if women only made up 10% of college CS majors, Microsoft wanted
to have 20% female interns.

I replied that, if that were their goal, they would most likely have to lower
the bar as compared to a male intern, or else pay the female interns more,
give them more perks, or purposefully interview fewer qualified male interns.

My argument was that if Microsoft's hiring bar was the top 1%, most likely
only 10% of that candidate pool is female. So, one must either drop the bar
for females, interview more females in that pool than males, or somehow double
the chance that a female in that 10% of 1% accepted your internship offer.
However, in those days almost nobody rejected Microsoft offers, so that last
route seemed difficult.

The only way to maintain equality of pay and skill without purposefully
rejecting male applicants is to spend a huge amount of effort finding more
female applicants than male applicants in that 1% and persuading them to
apply. But that's still not really fair, as that really implies that recuiters
pay less attention to males, e.g. spending less time and money finding them
and recruiting them.

The HR representative got very angry, but couldn't articulate why.

~~~
nostrademons
Not really - there's a really simple solution for hiring more women without
dropping the bar for them. Make your company the most desirable place for
_anyone_ to work, so that you have vastly more applicants than positions, and
then you can pick whoever you want as the incoming cohort. Math:

Say that your goal is to hire from the top 1% of the field, and the top 1% is
indistinguishable from each other. There are 1 million people in the field,
and you will be hiring 1,000 this year. Also say that women make up 10% of the
field. In this scenario, there are 10,000 people that you would be happy to
work for you, and 1,000 of them are women.

If only 10% of prospective employees would even consider working for you
(which is the case for many startups, and probably for present-day Microsoft),
then you're trying to fill a class of 1000 from a universe of 1,000
candidates, and only 100 of the women both apply and meet your hiring
threshold. The best you can do is 10% female interns.

If, however, _everyone_ in the field wants to work for your company, you have
a universe of 10,000 candidates, 1,000 are women, and you're trying to fill a
class of 1,000. You can have a female proportion anywhere from 0-100% with no
loss of quality.

~~~
codex
The strategy you describe drops the bar for all employees in order to achieve
a gender target.

This is not how companies operate, for the most part. If a company wants to
hire 1,000 people and 10,000 applicants are in the top 1%, they will move the
bar up to hire the top 0.1% instead.

Given a normal distirbution of applicants, there is a huge difference in
talent (10x?) between top 1% and top 0.1%. The bar always automatically
adjusts higher; otherwise, a competitor will hire the fraction of the 0.1%
that you've passed over. Now the competitor has a 1,000 workers, and you have
1,000 workers, but the competitors are 10x more talented for the same pay
(most of the 0.1% didn't get an offer from you, so there's no bidding war for
their talents).

Actually, if a company spends more money recruiting each equivalent female
employee than male employee, they do effectively drop their total hiring bar
if spending more money lets the company climb the bell curve, because it's
effectively a reduction in spending efficency, but that effect is small, and
skill parity is still achieved.

~~~
nostrademons
You're assuming you can continuously & linearly rank every single applicant.
The labor market doesn't work that way. Typically, it's organized into tiers -
you have your superstars, and then you have a pool of developers that are good
enough, and then you have a bunch of clueless n00bs. Within a tier, it's rare
to find significant, measurable performance differences. The studies showed a
10x difference in productivity between the best _teams_ and the worst _teams_
\- that does not mean it applies to individuals, or that it means the best
developer is 2x as good as the second best developer, at least on an industry-
wide level.

(How would you stack-rank John Resig against Rob Pike? The two of them against
Zed Shaw? The three of them against Guido van Rossum? Note also that even if
you can stack rank their _accomplishments_ , that won't necessarily reflect in
their day-to-day performance. Guido van Rossum wrote Python, but he also wrote
a bunch of AppEngine code that isn't all that much beloved.)

~~~
codex
Even if the population is divided into discrete tiers, the process is still
rife with unfairness no matter how you dice it.

If you have 1,000 slots, 10,000 candidates in your tier, and 1,000 of them are
women, you can hire any ratio of women to men that you like and all will be
equally talented. Great, right? It's great for those that are hired; not so
much for everyone else.

Say you make the gender ratio 50%. You hire 500 women and 500 men from the top
tier. Every first-class company like Google or Facebook adopts this strategy.
This means that the odds of being hired at a first-class company is 50% for
women in the top tier, and only 5% for men in the top tier. For every
interview a woman does, a man must do ten. Eventually all the slots in all
first-class companies are filled up, leaving some top-tier men working for
second class companies--but no top tier women are working for second class
companies.

~~~
nostrademons
Right, but you're going to get this unfairness no matter what criteria you
use, gender or otherwise.

Say you leave the gender ratio unspecified and instead decide based upon the
interviewer's gut feeling. Then you'll bias the hiring process toward
schmoozers with good social skills.

Or you decide based on which college the applicant went to. Then you bias it
towards people who were willing to shell out for a prestigious piece of paper.

Or you decide based on whoever responds to your offer first. Then you bias it
against people who have lives and better things to do with their time than
refreshing their e-mail waiting for a callback.

Really, the only solution is to acknowledge that life's not fair, and people
sometimes get things for completely arbitrary reasons. Which is really hard
for a lot of people to do - it was hard for me - but you end up being a lot
more successful when you don't think too hard about all the folks who get
undeserved job offers and promotions and think more about how you can tilt the
odds toward being one of the lucky ones instead.

~~~
codex
I completely agree. I make this point, though, because the parent article
begins,

“You only got that internship because you’re a woman.”

Note that this statement does _not_ imply she is unqualified. She could be
absolutely qualified (and probably is). However, in the ficticious tiering
example above, the female applicant has 10x higher odds than a male applicant
of getting a sought after job at a first-lass company, even though both are
equally qualified. For this example, at least, the above statement is
explainable (minus the "only" part, which is just mean) by the huge difference
in probability between her and her friend. Her friend would have to apply to
ten times more internships in order to land an equivalent gig.

------
esrauch
Unfortunately I think the dismissive attitude of your friend is a direct
product of very real reverse discrimination. Anecdotally it really does exist;
a female friend of mine was able to easily get interviews at Google, Microsoft
and Apple every year despite lousy technical chops and a 2.5 GPA at a mediocre
state university. My ex girlfriend had her hand held for literally years by
Microsoft recruiters on the stated basis of being a female cs major. Policies
of reverse discrimination are definitely not limited to the special programs
with women in their name.

Note that the former never was able to pass interviews, but it was only enough
to get a foot in the door. It goes without saying that I have worked with many
extremely capable women that no one would question they deserve everything
they have, but it is easy and to see why some insecure college students have
some backlash at having explicit discrimination against them (usually for the
first time ever), since they are not being able to see how the less explicit
but very real institional discrimination against women.

~~~
Smudge
> Anecdotally it really does exist

You can take just about any conceivable trend and anecdotally "confirm" its
existence based on a small enough sample size or the right anecdote. That
doesn't mean it is statistically relevant.

~~~
esrauch
Can you clarify this, are you claiming that reverse discrimination for women
in CS doesn't exist? I wasn't aware that there was any question about that; I
understand it to be publicly stated policy at all big tech companies. Note
that I'm not making a claim that women are more likely to be hired or
promoted; as I said there is a lot of discrimination against women that is
less visible which is exactly what reverse discrimination is trying to, well,
reverse.

~~~
Smudge
I wasn't claiming anything, in terms of whether it does or does not exist.

I was just pointing out that the two anecdotes you presented are merely that.
Anecdotes. I see a lot of people on HN making statements like "that claim
makes sense to me because [anecdote]," without regard for how representative
the sample size is. This is called cherry-picking and is a great way to
(unintentionally) reinforce a flawed world view.

It might be true that reverse discrimination in CS is commonly practiced, but
your initial statement did nothing in the way of proving or disproving it.

~~~
esrauch
I'm aware of what "anecdotally" means, that is exactly why I qualified my
statement with the word "anecdotally".

------
jacques_chester
Imposter syndrome is quite widespread. I first learnt about it from a law
academic: <http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2008/07/12/imposter-syndrome/>

On my office wall hangs my degree -- first class honours from a good
university. I still half expect that one day they will ask for it back, that
they were just being nice because they like me.

My Dad has it bad -- very bad. He has > 50 years experience in his field. He
knows more about electricity than most electrical engineers. I tried to
convince him to join the IEEE; with his experience and knowledge they'd
probably bump him up to Senior Member grade quick smart.

Nope. Not good enough.

This can actually be quite crippling -- he used to _give away his services_
rather than charging for them. "Too simple a job, I couldn't possibly charge
for it". He was not a successful small businessman, thinking like that.

It takes most of my willpower to ask people for money. Because surely, I'm not
that good. _Surely_.

~~~
AngryParsley
That's interesting. Has your dad ever tried partnering with some sort of
agent/hustler (I don't know the right term) to do business deals? A confident
front-man might be able to sell your dad's expertise to businesses for a
pretty penny.

~~~
jacques_chester
Oh, my mother tried. In her prime she was a formidable people-person, a savvy
deal broker. And she pushed Dad very hard to charge more, but he really does
have crippling modesty.

Another anecdote. He applied to work in Antarctica, a lifelong dream of his,
for ANARE (now the Australian Antarctic Division). His CV listed at that point
nearly 40 years of experience working on every major class of communication
known to man -- radio, microwave, telephone, fibre optic -- and throughout
South East Asia and Russia.

So which position did he apply for?

The _junior_ communications officer.

~~~
AngryParsley
I'm sorry, I'm confused. If she was the deal-broker, why didn't she dictate
the prices?

~~~
jacques_chester
Sometimes you can't get someone to do something they don't want to do.

One of the things about my father that I most admire is his inviolable
integrity. He felt that he couldn't morally charge for a lot of what he did
and no force on earth, even my mother, could change his decision.

He was wrong, in my opinion. But that's how it was.

------
petercooper
_Say, "You so deserve that promotion/scholarship/interview offer."_

I read something recently that suggested using language like "You really
_earnt_ that [whatever]" when complimenting people. That is, you define the
merit in terms of the person's effort which, hopefully, the recipient of the
compliment is less able to deny. We often _deserve_ nice things, but when we
think we _earnt_ them it's a more concrete achievement that's harder to wave
away with impostor syndrome.

~~~
shrikant
From here perhaps:

> The point is to praise children's efforts, not their intelligence, she said.

<http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2007/pr-dweck-020707.html>

~~~
petercooper
It wasn't that, but it does seem to tie into that whole idea for sure. Good
link.

------
xibernetik
I'm a former and returning Microsoft intern, who interviewed in her freshman
year. I strongly suspect I got the interview as a result of being female and
facing discrimination early on (but not because I was female and they wanted
to hire someone of my gender).

Long story short, I'm used to being dismissed or looked over by my male peers
- often in CS, but also in the hobbies I've taken up over the years. I found
the only way to be listened to or respected was that I had to prove myself
very quickly to anyone I had to work with. I got my interview after talking to
a Microsoft dev doing recruitment for 10 minutes about a project I worked on
after identifying he had a personal interest in that field. He didn't even
look at my resume, but I saw him star it when I gave it at the end of our
chat.

I would never have been able to do that if I wasn't used to being over-looked.
I can signal that I'm competent and easily discuss projects or tech interests
within a couple minutes of meeting someone because in the past few years, I've
learned that when I neglect to do that, I'm going to get ignored. Because of
that, I have an incredibly advantage in that many of my male peers CAN'T do
that, simply because they've never had to until it came time to search for a
job.

FWIW, one of the biggest reasons I'm returning to Microsoft is that it's one
of the few places I've ever felt like I was respected off the bat regardless
of age or gender. I couldn't imagine working with most of my peers back in
school because of the lack of respect. There are bad apples everywhere, and
certain teams are definitely geared towards older folk - but there are
highschool kids doing internships there, in some very coveted areas. The guy
was out of line, but he's definitely the exception and not the norm.

------
scott_s
Anecdotally, I know that myself and most of my friends deal with the impostor
syndrome.

But, I also think it's important not to fall prey to what I think is the
opposite problem: the narrative fallacy. It's easy to feel that you were
"fated" for many positions. Or, if not some form of predestination, then some
notion that things were "bound" to happen. I know that there was an enormous
amount of luck in how I ended up where I am today. While your abilities may
have enabled you to be in an elite pool of candidates, there may still be some
random chance that landed you the position instead of one of your fellow elite
candidates. I can think of three instances that afforded me opportunities that
have made enormous impact on my career that were essentially luck.

What you can control is that when you are lucky, make sure you make the most
of it. When fellow grad students would ask me for advice on finding jobs, the
best I could do was reply, "Be lucky and be good."

~~~
jobu
Your post made me think of a recent comic: Luck > Good
(<http://abstrusegoose.com/494>)

I'm not sure that's true in the long run, but in some very important
situations it certainly can be.

------
jobu
My personal belief is that a diversity of backgrounds and life experiences
outweigh intelligence and skill to a fair degree. It counteracts group-think,
and fosters more innovation and creativity.

So don't feel guilty about how or why you got an opportunity. You came by it
honestly, and whether Microsoft feels their benefit from you is due to your
ability or your gender, the fact is you are benefiting them or they wouldn't
give you the opportunity. Enjoy it and use the chance to improve yourself as
much as possible.

~~~
scarmig
In my experience, mixed-gender workplaces are a far better environment than
the alternative. Last team I worked on was 40% female on the engineering side,
and it was an absolute pleasure. Skills and productivity weren't
disproportionately on one side or another, either.

Particularly, as a grown-up with a family, I appreciate the salutory effect
that women have on subduing frat-house atmospheres. You probably find fewer
women who think of themselves as rockstar ninja pirate hackers, but I'm pretty
sure that's not a bad or uneconomic thing.

------
VMG
_> “You only got that internship because you’re a woman,” P. said. I was
floored. [...]_

 _> “Good one,” I said. After all, we were talking about my Microsoft
internship. Microsoft has a program for women and underrepresented minorities,
but I wasn’t in it. I was a regular old SDE intern._

Yes - but what _if_ you had been in one of those programs? That is the problem
with explicitly preferring some group over another, not based on their skill
level, when the people you select _want_ to only be selected for their skill
and nothing else.

I'm not saying that sexism in the industry isn't a problem, but the solution
is more difficult than "just hire more women"

~~~
masterzora
> I'm not saying that sexism in the industry isn't a problem, but the solution
> is more difficult than "just hire more women"

This is true, but one of the biggest steps you can take toward fixing the
various forms of explicit and implicit sexism in the industry _is_ to hire
more women. It's not sufficient, but it is necessary. Moreover, the existence
of such programs can be beneficial in the short term, as well. They really
only skew significantly problematic if they are willing to compromise on
standards in order to meet the goal of hiring more from underrepresented
groups but we have no reason to think they are.

That is, think of it another way: the programs exist to provide more
opportunities than would otherwise exist but getting in doesn't imply you only
got in because you were of a given demographic. You're still being selected
for your skill above all else.

------
swampthing
Deeper thoughts aside, what kind of good friend says that to someone?

~~~
espyb
Exactly. A good friend wouldn't. That's a comment from someone looking to find
a reason to explain their own lack of success. A good friend would
congratulate you, regardless of whether you beat them out for the job or not.
Sounds like a case of sour grapes to me... and some people don't just have a
few, they have entire vineyards. Nothing will ever be their fault, it can't be
because the other person was more skilled, or had more more experience, they
must have had an unfair advantage. That's easier than taking a hard look at
yourself, being honest and addressing the real issues.

~~~
kylebrown
A good but insensitive friend. And maybe he was right (though overstated),
perhaps being female was an advantage in getting the intership. If she wasn't
sensitive, she could have responded, "maybe so, but you had the advantage of
being male." And she'd be right.

~~~
espyb
I see your point, there are likely just as many people who consider being male
an advantage, as there are people who consider being female to be an advantage
in this situation. The only person(s) who actually knows why she got the
internship and he didn't is/are the person(s) making that decision. Frankly
I'm more concerned with her self-doubt than I am with his lack of tack. If you
aren't going to believe in yourself, why would you expect anyone else to?

------
dkarl
When they want to flatter students or buck up their spirits, professors at
selective colleges are prone to saying things like, "The fact that you're even
here means something." It's a good idea to let that thinking go as soon as
possible. The fact that you're here, there, or anywhere means _nothing_. The
world is complicated. In a sense her friend was right to point out that being
female in a field that is desperate for more female representation is usually
an advantage, but he was wrong to be certain -- sexism is still rampant among
computing professionals. More importantly, he was wrong to care. Actually,
they were both wrong to think that they could know the answer to the question
and both wrong to think it was important.

------
andrewguenther
I'm just going to leave this here...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rinearson>

