
Gusto Went for Women Engineers:  How It Worked Out - tlb
https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2018/02/13/how-tech-unicorn-gusto-hired-women-engineers/#164295b36949
======
taneq
How can they title the article "How It Worked Out" with zero discussion of
subsequent performance? This push for diversity is usually justified by a
statement that diverse teams automatically produce superior products. Wouldn't
they want to at least mention how it's going now that they have improved the
team so much?

~~~
nitrogen
I've noticed a trend in headlines toward devaluing the word "how". "How X did
Y" is really an article that simply states "X did Y", with none of the details
you'd expect for a "how" article. It's frustrating because it makes it harder
to find the legitimately useful "how" articles.

------
solidsnack9000
This seems realistic and fair: a goal tied to the percentage of women in CS
and a clear cap on duration from the outset.

------
itissid
Isn't this just treating the symptoms to some extent? Sure there is a gender
bias in hiring and salaries for women. But isn't the big elephant in the room
the socio-economic and behavior bias created at a young age at homes and
schools where gender roles are assigned very early?

Women didn't just drop out of the Software tech force in the 80's. What about
all those personal computers marketed and targetted towards young nerds(ugmmmm
boys)?

Software needs to be taught at grade level in an interesting way for people to
catch on early. Natural biases and inclinations are just random noise unless
we as people perpetuate them.

~~~
photojosh
That's why they set their goal based on the proportion of female computer
science graduates. If all you hire is CompSci grads, then your hiring
proportion matching the graduate proportion is equality, no?

The gender disparity with interest in tech obviously starts from a much
younger age, but that's a separate issue to address.

> But isn't the big elephant in the room the socio-economic and behavior bias
> created at a young age at homes and schools where gender roles are assigned
> very early?

So yes!

------
raymondgh
When a company like Gusto invests in and reaches equal gender representation,
does it make it harder for smaller firms to do the same, or does it help more
women enter the engineering workforce?

------
zappo2938
If talented women are being overlooked just because they are women, doesn't it
make sense to seek them out and give them an opportunity to reach their
potential? If I look at a talent pool and see of those who haven't been hired
yet are mediocre men as the best of the men have been hired and enormously
talented women who haven't been hired because of sexism in the industry, I'm
going to hire the women based on talent.

~~~
ralusek
The problem is that the situation you just described is a fiction. Most
engineering divisions hire on talent, irrespective of gender, so the talented
woman would have been hired over the mediocre man by the system which pays no
attention to gender at all.

~~~
baddox
Perhaps so. But perhaps the talented woman also experienced a hostile or
otherwise undesirable work environment and leaves after a short period of
time. Or leaves the industry altogether.

~~~
zappo2938
A Baby Bell utilities company lost a court case in the 60s which requires them
to hire women in the field. Their argument was that women can't handle the
heavy tools. After losing they purchased aluminum ladders to replace the heavy
wooden ladders and wrenches with longer handles so they had more leverage
being easier to use. A reporter interviewed some of the men about the changes
and asked what they thought. One man replied, "Everything is so much easier
now. I wish we did this a long time ago."

Edit: I heard this story in the 80s when I was a kid. It may be real or not,
but the point is the same. I'm still looking for the FWD: FWD: FWD: but I've
never heard it again since the mid 80s.

~~~
dragonwriter
> A Baby Bell utilities company lost a court case in the 60s

No it didn't; the Baby Bells were created by the 1984 breakup of AT&T.

EDIT: As a sibling post provides details, the error was calling it a "Baby
Bell"; the essence of the story, at least the lawsuit itself, is true, but
Southern Bell was a pre-breakup Bell Operating Company (an AT&T subsidiary),
not a post-breakup Baby Bell. [Errors like pointing to a Baby Bell 20ish years
before they existed are _often_ , but as this incident shows not _always_ ,
signs of folk mythology.]

------
DoreenMichele
I have said before that we need the equivalent of a Rooney Rule for tech. I
don't know if this constitutes that.

Paying attention to how things are worded is a good first step. It fits with
my experience of using less exclusionary language instead of intentionally
inclusionary language. But the article fails to paint a compelling portrait of
a company that genuinely has it figured out. It is not possible for me to
determine if this is a defect in the writing or an indicator that they are
running an experiment and don't actually know what they are doing with some
kind of confidence (in the statistical sense).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule)

------
AdmiralAsshat
It's one thing to hire. Let's check back in three years and see how many have
stuck around.

~~~
rdlecler1
Anectodally, women may be less likely to switch jobs if they’re satisfied with
their work environment.

~~~
untog
...isn't that pretty obvious (and universal)?

~~~
TheSmiddy
Not necessarily. For example I am happy in my current job (it is, without a
doubt, the best job I have ever had) but don't get paid anywhere near what I
would like to so am actively looking for new work. If rdlecler1's anecdote is
true a woman would be more likely to stay and only start looking to leave once
the job starts making her unhappy.

------
horsecaptin
> Initial steps included writing job descriptions that avoided masculine
> phrases like "Ninja rock star coder."

When my fellow male engineers see that in a job ad, they avoid it like the
plague.

> Now that 17 of Gusto's 70 engineers are female.

After a focused campaign to hiring women, Gusto's results are nowhere near
50/50\. And they had to go out of their way to hire women and focus resources
to attracting women.

The male engineers at Gusto were no doubt happy to see diversity, especially
since Gusto did not drop their standards just because an applicant is female.

~~~
jkmcf
Not so much "masculine" as juvenile.

~~~
presidentender
Both those terms are often accurate and frankly they're correlated.

------
DidISayTooMuch
I (male) had a online coding challenge with a woman engineer from Gusto. I
could literally feel her disinterest through the phone. Now I understand why.

------
preinheimer
[My previous comment confused Zenefits with Zenpayroll, and i've removed it to
avoid further confusing the issue]

~~~
jo6gwb
You're referring to Zenefits. Gusto was originally ZenPayroll. The Article
mentions it "At the outset Gusto even had a similar name, ZenPayroll, which it
changed in 2015 when it started offering a more complete selection of
employee-tracking software."

~~~
preinheimer
thank you for correcting me!

------
faitswulff
> Gusto's women-only recruiting effort lasted six months. It stopped, Kim
> says, because "we exceeded our goals." In 2015 Gusto was trying to hit 18%
> women engineers, the proportion majoring in computer science as
> undergraduates, according to the National Center for Education Statistics,
> and it reached 21%.

This is a bit disappointing. It reminds me of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's answer to
"how many women on the Supreme Court would be enough?"

"When there are nine."

Men have been in a position of disproportionate power for so long it's
unimaginable to be on the other end of the spectrum, but shooting for 18%
representation of women will only uphold the current gender iniquities.

They should have aimed higher.

~~~
ralusek
If they hired more than the proportion with which they were graduating or even
available at, that would not make any sense whatsoever, and might not even be
numerically possible...

~~~
faitswulff
They state in the article that they exceeded it.

