

Why We're Missing Our Best Chance for Gender Parity - hugs
https://devmynd.com/blog/2015-2-mind-the-gap

======
emiliobumachar
"When I'm hiring, I have an HR intern (or the external recruiter) strip
anything that could indicate gender or race from the résumés before they get
their initial evaluation. For the ones that make the first cut, I have the
recruiter print out code from Github, with the username redacted. This has
resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of women who make it through
to an actual interview."

In orchestras, there was a tremendous increase in the number of women when the
practice of having candidates play their instruments invisible to the judges
became widespread.

------
cpks
Let me give an alternative explanation, championed by Philip Greenspun for
women in science jobs: Startup jobs suck, and women are better at recognizing
it (scroll past the description of science jobs to "Why do American men
(actually boys) do it?"):

[http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-
science](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science)

There are no economics by which working at a startup makes sense over a
Facebook or a Google. You work longer hours, and make substantially less.
Unless you're a founder, even in the event of a successful exit, the stock
options will generally barely cover the cost of the paper they're written on.
Early employees don't come out competitive with Google until you see billion-
plus dollar exits.

Philip's claim was that men tend to make decisions based on testosterone-
fueled machismo, and go into areas considered "hard-core" like theoretical
math, which rationally, are a waste of time and make no sense to study. As he
phrases it, young men make the decision based on:

1\. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group 2\. men
tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is
this peer group worth impressing?"

This matches my anecdotal experience as well. Women tend to make more rational
decisions, and pursue fields with a higher return-on-investment. Men tend to
make irrational decisions, and either realize it later (with colossal
failures, such as science jobs), or rationalize it later (e.g. "I learned a
lot" without really comparing to the alternative -- a job with formal
mentorship processes, and both pay and work/life to allow time for pet
projects and formal study).

If Philip's claim is correct -- and it does match my anecdotal experience --
the way to draw more women into startups would be to make them appealing to
rational players. Typically, an early employee ends up with a fraction-of-a-
percent equity at exit (and at best, low single-digit percent at joining).
Equity is allocated in numbers (5000 shares) rather than percent, in a
successful attempt to confuse.

Is it a full explanation for 2% vs. 28%? Probably not. Bias is surely part of
the equation as well. I have no idea what the split is, but I'd be shocked if
either explained the gap fully, and I'd be equally shocked if either were
insignificant.

~~~
eurleif
>Philip's claim was that men tend to make decisions based on testosterone-
fueled machismo, and go into areas considered "hard-core" like theoretical
math, which rationally, are a waste of time and make no sense to study.

If no one did theoretical math or startups, the world wouldn't advance. There
wouldn't be a Facebook or a Google to work at. People can rationally pursue
goals beyond their own financial interests.

~~~
cpks
1\. You're confusing theoretical math vs. applied math. Google doesn't benefit
from algebraic topology.

2\. Startups would exist -- just not as many. The cost would be slightly
higher; they'd have to pay employees either fair salaries, or give fair levels
of equity. The current situation -- long hours, low salary, crooked options --
would not persist.

~~~
eurleif
>You're confusing theoretical math vs. applied math. Google doesn't benefit
from algebraic topology.

Not yet, maybe. But it does benefit from number theory, which was considered
to have no practical applications until people realized we could do encryption
with it.

~~~
cpks
Two ways to look at it:

1\. Return on investment. Every hour spent on applied math generates a lot
more applications (not to mention elegant mathematics) than the same spent on
theoretical math. Theoretical math has about as much value as knitting and
crochet. Does someone occasionally come up with something of value? Sure. Does
it have more value than any other hobby? Not really.

2\. With encryption in particular, Diffie-Hellmen is simple enough that public
key would have been created regardless of research in theoretical math.
Furthermore, most of the people developing such (including Diffie, Hellmen,
Merkle, Rivest, Shamir, Adleman, etc.) have applied backgrounds. Indeed, most
are computer scientists, rather than mathematicians. The same goes for
cryptographic protocols, doubly so. Symmetric encryption, in contrast, does
build a _little_ bit on theoretical math, but it's also just an arms race.
More knowledge about number theory helps both cryptography and cryptanalysis
about equally. There's no reason to believe that more number theory makes us
in any way more secure. Cryptography itself would exist without number theory
(indeed, history is a bit fuzzy as to whether something like the scytale or
number theory came first, and regardless, there is no reason to believe one
fed the other).

