
Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women - samsolomon
http://www.fastcompany.com/3043082/most-creative-people/why-software-maker-fog-creek-is-helping-its-competitors-hire-women
======
skywhopper
I'm glad the "rigorous testing process" was mentioned. The facade of "we only
hire superninja-kickass-hyperexperts and we will verify that you are such a
programmer before we hire you" attracts a certain type of person, and
intimidates another. And it may be that it intimidates more women than men.

But the article seems to glide past that and presents the idea that five years
of experience might change someone's willingness to apply. And it probably
will help, but that amount of experience is unlikely to change someone's basic
perception of their ability to succeed in a high-stakes one-chance prove-
yourself situation.

~~~
api
"And it may be that it intimidates more women than men."

I've been looking around for a developer recently, and in looking at the
profiles of women vs. men at places like AngelList I noticed a few key
differences in how they described themselves. We're talking about people with
very similar academic backgrounds here with similar levels of experience.

Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who
obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X." Women would
highlight the cooperative nature of their work, while men would give the
impression that they did it all themselves. In my experience the former is
typically more honest, especially if you actually were working on a team or on
a team-oriented college project.

Women also tend to highlight team-oriented and non-technical skills more than
men in general, which to techie-minded hacker types gives the impression that
they are not strong on the technical end.

I also noted my reaction to these differences. Introspecting, I noticed that I
tended to assume that "being on a team" meant riding the coattails of the
other team members. If I noted this bias in myself, it's probably pretty
common.

I decided to try to de-program myself of this bias by thinking of all the
counter-examples I've seen.

I do believe in the "10X programmer" \-- for the simple reason that there are
10X everything elses. There are 10X athletes, 10X businesspeople/salespeople,
10X artists, 10X anythings. When we look for employees or contractors we are
looking for that 10X standout, or at least someone who's going to grow into
one. But being really good at something is not mutually exclusive with working
on a team or highlighting non-technical skills, and the inverse is also not
correlated. I've met plenty of monomaniacal "closet programmers" who really
aren't any good. They sit alone stewing in their huge egos and churn out crap.
(But then again I've met some who are. There does not seem to be a strong
correlation.)

There's probably quite a few really talented female programmers out there who
are being passed over because they don't conform to the "whip it out and let
me measure it" customs of technical recruitment. I also suspect that this does
drive women from the field.

~~~
tenpoundhammer
I worked with a 10x developer once, he was awful and I couldn't stand to work
with him. Although he could produce an insane amount of code and functionality
his presence was like throwing a grenade into the middle of the dev team
everyday. He left to take a job at google and the overall team productivity
went up significantly. He basically did 10X individually,but took 11x away
from the team. So team work is pretty darn important.

~~~
yurymik
Here's my favorite quote by @bmdhacks that reflects my experience dealing with
such people:

How to be a 10x engineer: Incur technical debt fast enough to appear 10x as
productive as the ten engineers tasked with cleaning it up.

[https://twitter.com/bmdhacks/status/560949130999365633](https://twitter.com/bmdhacks/status/560949130999365633)

~~~
dayone
Spot on!

> How to be a 10x engineer: Incur technical debt fast enough to appear 10x as
> productive as the ten engineers tasked with cleaning it up.

We have a guy in our onsite team that keeps making our user facing application
suck with his changes one day and then fix those every other day. So lots of
git commits but limited productivity in the team, and a very tough
maintainence task for every developer in the team.

------
geebee
Several people have already mentioned it here, but I'm also very pleased to
read this line:

"Hall asked a simple question: Why didn't Chipps, a brilliant engineer, ever
apply to work at Fog Creek? Chipps said she didn't think she would make it
through their rigorous testing process."

I do think that the grueling and intimidating software interview process is a
very serious problem in our field. This one sentence hints at the extent of
the harm.

~~~
mooreds
It's tough though, because when you are a small company that expects
developers to jump in and be productive, you do need some kind of process.
That process can be referral based, in which case testing isn't as necessary
because you can rely on past shared experience, but that obviously limits your
talent pool.

When you are interacting with an unknown (or a less known) person, you have to
have some kind of vetting process. And with a small company culture, typically
false negatives are far less harmful than false positives.

~~~
protonfish
Only if you have a policy of not having positions for Junior programmers.

Fog Creek has the same hypocrisy as any other company that demands X years of
experience from applicants but consider it somebody else's problem how they
get that.

~~~
tomjen3
Worse: they demand that you can code, and don't consider it their problem to
teach you how to do that.

Anyway I thought it was well established that years of experience is a
bullshit measurement anyway and you should just apply no matter what - worst
thing happens, you end up getting hired.

~~~
Retra
The worst that happens is that you have a bunch of go-nowhere time-wasting
interviews with people who can't properly evaluate you anyway.

That time is certainly valuable to me.

~~~
tomjen3
That would be bad, but consider the time wasted if you ended up being hired by
them.

------
xigency
I applied for a job at Fog Creek Software in 2012 where I was accepted for an
internship, and I would have to say the application process was difficult, but
fair. I was told that there were hundreds of applicants, so being one of five
interns selected seemed rather prestigious at the time, but it was still just
an opportunity to work on my skills as a developer.

I don't think there is anything that would preclude women from getting
technical jobs at a company like Fog Creek except maybe, as was said in the
article, a self-selecting attitude. These companies are looking for well-
rounded individuals and people who are competent with their skills. It's
nothing beyond impossibility to get a job there, it just takes determination.

~~~
NotOscarWilde
_> I applied for a job at Fog Creek Software in 2012 where I was accepted for
an internship _

Does this mean you applied for a position but you were offered an internship
instead?

~~~
gecko
No; they don't do that. He means he applied for an internship and got an
internship.

------
moron4hire
I have a very small consulting company. Both of my employees right now were
non-traditional students when they finished their CS degrees. Actually, I'm
not even sure the one guy has finished his degree yet. Regardless, neither of
them had their degrees when they started working for me.

And honestly, I didn't really even know. I never asked them for a resume and
they never provided one.

I don't really test the people I hire. I get to know them on a personal level.
I meet them at parties, at meetups, conferences, etc. I then ask if they'd
like to make a little side money with a freelance gig. We talk about the work,
and if the person says they can do it, I give them a task. A real task, it
goes right into the project I'm working on. It usually takes about a week or
two.

And if they do a good job, I ask them to do more. If they don't, I pay them
for the work they did, thank them, and don't mention they were ever
interviewing for a more long-term relationship.

This has been so incredibly much better of an experience than the hiring
processes I was involved with as a working stiff. Resumes that don't say shit.
Stupidly simplistic coding tests. Interviewing anxiety. All of it, a
nightmare.

And it didn't seem to make any difference. We would put more and more effort
into hiring, to the point I was spending 10 to 15 hours interviewing and
reviewing candidates a week, for weeks on end. It was having a detrimental
impact on _my_ performance, without any correlated impact on the performance
of the people we hired.

So when I went independent, I decided that, if the results are really,
actually random, then that means the inputs have no impact. So I threw away
the interviewing process. I just ask people, "can you do this job"?

And really, I don't need to know anything else. That's what it all boils down
to. They can lie on their resume just as much as they can lie to the question.
They can cram on interview questions the night before. They can be really good
at regurgitating academic theory but complete crap at thinking creatively. So
I just ask, "can you _do_ this job?"

And then I let them prove it.

~~~
pkaye
I think this method doesn't work in all situations. For example in embedded
programming. First there are not many of those who actually work in this field
so unlikely to just meet up with them. Most are stabily employed. Secondly,
there is lots of proprietary hardware and knowledge. Third, hard to work on a
trial job when you are already working. Lastly there are a good number of
people who are just not skilled enough and will waste your time during the
trial period.

~~~
moron4hire
Actually, one of them does do some embedded programming for me.

Granted, my sample size is small, but traditional hiring practices are
completely ineffective, so you shouldn't waste your time thinking you have any
influence over the process.

------
dominotw
There is a war for Women Dev's in silicon valley. Google's HR head mentioned
in a podcast that they are simply poaching female devs' from smaller players
to get their diversity numbers up. This puts smaller players at a major
disadvantage as VC's have started tying their funding with diversity numbers.
There is no way a startup can compete directly with Goog for the female dev's
who are in major short supply.

This diversity madness is putting SV at a major disadvantage.

~~~
ForHackernews
> This diversity madness is putting SV at a major disadvantage.

On the contrary, evidence suggest Silicon Valley is putting itself at a
disadvantage by failing to attract talented women. Other non-SV technology
markets do far better: [http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/women-tech-problem-
silico...](http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/women-tech-problem-silicon-
valley.html)

------
protonfish
Maybe Joel needs to add another point to his "test"

13\. Do you foster Junior/Mentor relationships?

~~~
mason240
What company is not going to check that box?

I've worked for a company that claimed they did and it was always talked about
internally in their "look how great our culture is" corporate-speak. Some
developers even had the title of "mentor," but there wasn't any actual time
allocated for it and no one ever took it seriously. In my entire time there I
never met with my "mentor."

~~~
s73v3r
The same can be said for just about every item on the Joel test

------
jnbiche
I agree that lack of gender diversity in tech is an obvious problem, and I
laud Fog Creek for trying to address this problem.

However, I'd like to strongly emphasis the fact that one of the main problems
Fog Creek identified as hindering the most talented female developers from
applying to Fog Creek, is _also_ a huge problem that prevents many of the most
talented male developers from applying to Fog Creek. Ironically, these
companies, with their legendarily difficult and arduous application processes,
are _selecting for_ mediocre developers:

1) We all know that the Dunning-Kruger effect is real: there's an abundance of
quantified and repeatable psychological research that demonstrates that the
_least_ skilled individuals are on average the _most_ likely to estimate their
skill to be above average. Likewise, the _most_ skilled individuals are the
most cautious in estimating their skill level.

So who applies for more of these types of jobs? Well, based on what I've
heard, Google, Fog Creek, and many other top employers receive a huge number
of grossly unqualified applicants. And while I'm sure they'd like to think
they're getting the majority of their desired candidate pool to apply,
research on Dunning-Kruger, as well as anecdotes like the one on the article,
all suggest that's probably not the case.

This isn't the first time I've read about a top employer asking a highly-
desired employee why they'd never applied in the past, and receiving as an
answer, "oh, I didn't think I'd make it through your interview process". (btw,
I love watching these kinds of interactions)

2) The most qualified developers can make a nice consultant salary without
ever having to go through the headache of a demeaning 5-day interview process
that often treats developers like disposable commodities. Why would you want
to subject yourself to that kind of process if you're making $100,000-200,000
a year as a contract software dev (which is the range my colleagues working
contract tend to make, depending on their hours and expertise)? So whenever I
get an email from employers like Facebook, I say thanks but no thanks.

This is not to say that these employers _never_ get highly-skilled employees.
That's obviously not the case. But they get a very specific type of highly-
skilled applicant: from top CS departments, coming right out of college.
They're much less likely to get a highly-skilled dev to apply who has taken an
alternate route to the top of his or her profession.

So what happens on average? "Top" employers like Google, Facebook, and smaller
"desirable" employers like Fog Creek, effectively scare off a large number of
the devs they want the most, both male and female. And they simultaneously
attract a large number of unqualified applicants.

Yet again I ask: maybe the software developer interview process is completely
broken? Are employers in enough pain yet that they're willing to revisit their
hiring process? Or does it need to get worse?

~~~
brudgers
It's a provocative thesis that Fog Creek hires mediocre developers. The
evidence of their products suggests otherwise.

Of course as Atwood's friend Scott says, "We're all amateurs," so perhaps Fog
Creek just hires the less mediocre on an absolute rather than relative scale.

~~~
gaius
Does it? I don't know a single person who uses any of their products. And I
don't think it is plausible that the best devs in the world are flocking to
work on a website for project managers.

~~~
thedufer
To add to what brudgers said, Trello also came out of Fog Creek (and somewhat
more recently).

~~~
gaius
I don't know what that is, or anyone who uses it.

~~~
thedufer
Oh. Well, in my defense that was pretty unlikely. Hacker news search shows
that it's been mentioned in the title of 475 stories, at least 25 of which hit
the front page.

Well, we've still got Stack Exchange. Surely you've heard of that?

~~~
gaius
Atwood is clearly the brains behind that.

~~~
brudgers
Having listened to nearly all the StackOverflow/StackExchange podcasts,
there's as much Spolsky as Atwood in StackExchange. Spolsky was the grisled
veteran when it came to building products and companies. Atwood more the tech
hotshot.

------
boothead
Any softare company that has their developers working on a component called
DonutCounter has my vote as an awesome palce to work! :-)

------
matart
As a younger male about to finish his software engineering degree and start
applying I agree with these points. I am intimidated at the rigorous testing
some companies use. I don't have the confidence that others might have in
there ability.

I am ultimately looking for a mentoring workplace ( just to start) where I can
build my confidence quickly and start producing for the company.

~~~
marktangotango
>>just to start

One place I worked at had a senior dev slash architect who really enjoyed
mentoring green developers. This company did tend to hire people straight out
of college, and this guy was really good at bringing them up to speed. It was
really quiet nice to behold.

The problem was, the hires that were 'good' tended to leave after a year or
two, leaving the less talented and motivated to muddle along. I think this is
why you rarely see this nowadays.

~~~
dripton
I don't think that has anything to do with mentorship. I think it's just that
most companies don't give most young programmers big enough raises to reflect
their increased value on the open market.

Lots of companies don't want to hire new grads, so there's a significant price
premium for hiring someone with a couple years of experience. The companies
that are willing to hire new grads aren't always willing to give annual raises
that reflect that price premium. So lots of programmers with a couple of years
of experience see that they can get a 20% raise by switching jobs. So they
switch jobs.

(This happens with programmers later in their career too, but the difference
between 8 and 10 years of experience is much less dramatic than the difference
between 0 and 2. If a company gives the same annual raise to all its
programmers in the same performance band regardless of experience, that raise
may be too small for the newest ones, even if it's just right for the middle
ones.)

------
png_hero
30 person engineering team, and no junior devs?

~~~
LunaSea
Chhht it's only ageism if it concerns older people.

Paying older people arbitrarily more without any real reason is not an issue.

------
tempestn
> Fog Creek doesn't get any immediate benefits

I'd say articles like this one are pretty significant benefits. I doubt they
overlooked the PR benefits of this program. (Which of course doesn't mean it
isn't still a great thing. Just that "no benefit" is a bit of a stretch.)

------
easytiger
Headlines?

------
ripb
There are more women than men in employment in the US, where is the daily
articles on that? And the effort to tackle that? And the constant shaming of
companies that employ more women than men?

There are 1.4x the amount of women graduating college than men. Where are the
daily articles on that massive issue? Where is the effort to do something
about that? Where is the constant headlines on how many more women are
graduating than men, put in a very negative light as the lack of quote
underlined "diversity" in the tech industry is?

This absolute, unrelenting and incredibly transparent (tech = money, status
currently) narrative being sharted at everyone in the tech industry on a daily
basis is driving me toward getting out of it altogether.

But hey, lets ignore some massive issues on the table in favour of constantly
debating why women who never showed an interest in the industry can't pick and
choose the finest and most well paid positions in that industry and see where
that gets society in 10 years' time.

~~~
krschultz
_This absolute, unrelenting and incredibly transparent (tech = money, status
currently) narrative being sharted at everyone in the tech industry on a daily
basis is driving me toward getting out of it altogether._

It's not being thrown _at_ the tech industry. It's people within the industry
calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the
industry as a community under siege.

~~~
ripb
>It's not being thrown at the tech industry. It's people within the industry
calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the
industry as a community under siege.

Actually, the vast majority of it is being carried out by people on the fringe
of the industry in roles as "journalists" and similar who've never spent a day
working within it.

And yes, I see the tech industry as being under siege.

