

Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees - raganwald
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/02/14/dropboxs-hiring-practices-explain-its-disappointing%e2%80%8b-lack-of-female-employees/

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malandrew

        "Subtle cues in the physical environment of companies such 
        as Star Trek posters and video games lead to women being 
        less interested in being a part of an organization when 
        compared to a neutral office environment."
    

It also self selects for women who dig video games and Star Trek. Liking those
things are geek things, not guy things and contrary to popular belief, women
that like those things do exist. Furthermore, I'm certain that if you ask any
male geek about the gender disparity in geek culture, I'm certain that near
100% of them lament about the lack of female geeks.

Women who show up in such an environment that don't relate with the culture
aren't not relating because of their gender but because of their interests.

At some point in the founding of those companies the people there decided that
they want their work environment to be as pleasant and fun as their home
environment, after all you are spending 40-60 hours of your week there. That's
a lot of your life. If that culture isn't your idea of fun, then you chose the
wrong company to work for and should go work somewhere that does share your
attitudes and beliefs or some soulless place that doesn't encourage employees
to express themselves at work for fear of alienating anyone.

Dropbox is a desirable place to work at because of and not despite this
culture. It's also desirable because there are a lot of smart people that are
going to be successful in their careers. It's natural that many people, that
despite their personal disinterest in the former (culture), might want to work
at Dropbox because of the latter reason (success). Unfortunately, you don't
get to pick and choose what parts of a company to accept. It was doing its
thing before you arrive and no one has a right to establish their career at
Dropbox without accepting most of the culture. Once there, you're welcome to
try to change it, but doing so comes at the risk of being ejected from that
culture because those working their may not like the changes you introduce.

Seriously, what give employee number 150 the right to reject and neutralize
parts of the company culture that attracted the first 149 employees to work
there in the first place? Don't like that? Boo-fucking-hoo. Start your own
company or show up at a company early enough to influence the culture to be
more to your liking.

I'm going to guess that those employees that left, complaining about the
culture were not among the first 20 employees. If you're not among the first
10-40 employees at a large successful venture, you have no right to complain
about culture because culture is always set by those that came before you.
Don't like it? Then show up earlier.

~~~
raganwald
Your entire comment seems to be based on the premise that either companies
have a strong insider/outsider culture or they are soulless places to work.
When in reality, there are many, many companies that have strong company
cultures without somehow alienating a large number of otherwise qualified
prospective employees.

Speaking as a person with a fair chunk of experience managing software
development, I find it difficult to believe that management's only choices are
frat-boy culture or soul-sucking bland corporation.

I'll speak very frankly. When a company has a half dozen or a dozen employees,
when a company is scrambling for traction, it can be a great motivator to have
a strong insider culture. Steve Jobs hung a pirate flag up at the Macintosh
offices for a reason.

But companies grow, and part of growing is, well, growing. You need to select
from a larger pool of prospective employees. You need to bring in some new DNA
instead of doubling up on the DNA you already have.

I can't speak to this specific company, but as a general principle, successful
companies become less exclusive and possible--I am not speaking about Dropbox
--less discriminatory as they grow.

If you want an example, look at Apple. It's hyper-successful, and famous for
how hard they work at inclusiveness and tolerance.

~~~
malandrew
You're reading my post as a false dichotomy, however that was not my intent.

The culture of companies can and do change over time and will in response to
wanting to be more inclusive if that is how it needs to change in order to be
more competitive. Every single employee that joins a company, joins it knowing
what it is and leaves their imprint on the company's culture as they spend
more time there and become part of the group. No company's culture is static.

What I was getting at is that you shouldn't complain about the culture you
willingly joined. Don't like everything you see, gain acceptance and be the
change you want to see in the company. If you do things right, the company
culture will become a little bit more inclusive without becoming soulless.

Complaining is what leads to soulless places to work at where everyone is
quietly in fear of offending anyone else.

------
raganwald
Of course, _correlation does not equal causation_. If there is something about
their "culture" that is off-putting to women, you can't "fix" it by changing
the hiring practices. You fix the culture and the hiring practices follow suit
organically.

I suspect that the title is wrong, and that the thesis of the article is that
there is something strongly biased about Dropbox's culture and the experiences
recounted about interviewing there are one symptom of many.

I'm speaking to what I read in the article, of course. I'm not a woman and I
don't work at Dropbox.

~~~
iamdave
I was busy writing a comment while you cranked this out, so I'll just reply
underneath yours since we more or less agree.

The premise of the article is a valid one but the arguments underneath are
incredibly weak.

 _Perhaps a question on how Dropbox might be used to solve income inequality
or the unaffordability of housing in San Francisco would reveal as much about
someone’s creativity—and more about their character—than questions about
superheroes_

Certainly a refined hiring protocol that asks targeted and direct questions
that allows the candidate to express and communicate their competence may
_perhaps_ improve the metrics of gender-diverse hiring. Suggesting such a
radical change like asking for an opine on economic disparity at a Cloud
Services Provider however I think is going a bit too far just to step back and
claim progress; _Post hoc ergo propter hoc_.

The author here seem to stumble across, and then walk right by a much more
interesting story in the use of demonstrably masculine conference room names
in which to conduct interviews. All we got out of that was one paragraph.

~~~
malandrew
I see why the name "The Bromance Room" is a demonstrably masculine name, but
not why "The Break-up Room" is.

The article said:

    
    
        "‘The Break-up Room,’ by a male"
    

... what if this woman had been interviewed in that exact same room by a
female? Would that have changed things? What if a male later on were
interviewed in the same room by a female? I dunno about you, but "The break-up
room" is pretty gender-neutral to me and that any gender-bias that person felt
is entirely in their own head, due mainly to the fact that her interviewer was
may (a statistical likelihood in this industry).

------
ams6110
_the male dominated frat-boy culture that Silicon Valley is increasingly being
criticized for_

I don't know if frat boys are different now than when I was in school but all
I know is you never saw them in the Computer Science building.

~~~
angelbob
Things have changed a fair bit since I was in college (1994-1998).

A lot more of computer programming is higher-status, more marketing-driven and
more about money.

You're seeing proportionally more frat guys interested now.

------
Morendil
Holy crap. An article with the words "cites research", with a hyperlink which
_actually goes to a PDF of the actual research being cited_!

Would love to see HN rise to the occasion by discussing actual facts and data,
rather than spouting opinion and speculation. (A popular pastime, to be sure,
but it's always nice to do something different for a change.)

------
duvander
To really make this point, the author should have explained why these
questions are biased toward men. It's not immediately obvious.

------
espertus
I agree with the author that asking questions about superheroes is going to
weed out qualified people (unless the project involves superheroes). When I
interview someone, I do my best not to ask questions irrelevant to the job. I
don't know why someone would ask a question biased against people from
different cultures, etc.

As for whether Dropbox should change its culture to be more attractive to
women, that's their choice. They should be aware that their decor might turn
off some otherwise qualified people, whether or not they choose to act on that
information.

I've worked for and interviewed for Google for about ten years, and our
training includes not asking irrelevant and/or culturally biased questions.

------
omonra
It appears that using the example of a super successful SV company that
doesn't seem to give a toss about diversity hurts the author's premise - that
it actually makes an iota of difference.

He might want to start with actually making that case.

------
johnbm
"Her advice to Dropbox? “Founders are looking for ‘objective’ measures such as
school ranking, GPAs, SAT scores, but fail to recognize that these are biased.
Dropbox and other start-ups should pioneer new ways to identify people who can
succeed on the core set of job responsibilities."

Yes, they're biased towards girls, who excel in school over boys from a young
age.

"Indeed, the trend is getting worse. In 1985, 37 percent of computer science
undergraduate degree recipients were women. By 2011 this proportion had
dropped to 18 percent."

In 1985, the gender ratio in colleges was 1:1. Today, it is 3:2 in favor of
women. So that means that not only did the percentage get chopped in half, but
it did so completely against the larger trend.

The actual explanation can be found in the Norwegian Gender Paradox: the more
men and women are free to choose their occupation, the more they choose
stereotypical gender occupations. When men and women actually choose what they
want to do, they don't choose equally.

To the great chagrin of feminists.

