
How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year - bberson
http://firstround.com/article/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-Female-Engineers-by-500-in-One-Year
======
pkteison
I'm disappointed that "Key Reality" #2 and #4 in an article about addressing a
gender related issue are both unsupported gender stereotypes. Those points
could just as easily say 'people' instead of 'women', and as near as I can
tell be just as true. I'm quite willing to believe that "People" tend to be
conservative about switching jobs, especially if they've had a negative
experience in the past. And I can see tech interviews set up "people" for
failure; but I don't see anything specific to women in that, unless you want
to start from some really negative stereotypes. Working on those issues will
probably help your offer acceptance rate, regardless of gender - but you need
to be sure you can still distinguish good candidates from bad candidates, so
you can't just toss them entirely.

So that leads us to the contrast between point #3, don't lower hiring
standards, and the conclusion - a method of trying to get better results from
reduced experience requirements when hiring. Getting good results from less
experience is definitely something important and useful, but less experience
-is- a lower standard, so I think the most interesting topic is there. Is
watching people in hacker school really enough of an equalizer compared to
years of experience? How does it compare to running an intern or co-op
program? Is there any problem with the sponsored hackers getting trained on
Etsy's dime but working for a competitor? How is hacker school
different/better than working with a local university?

~~~
schoper
"Unsupported gender stereotypes." Stated also as "opinions based on
experience."

Possibly also "opinions based on experience that contradict one's equality
indoctrination in kindergarten and therefore deserve loud public indignation."

~~~
fleitz
The fundamental problem with most stereotypes is that there is generally much
more information available by asking the individual.

eg. Instead of assuming women are more conservative, just ask the _candidate_
, ask questions surrounding their risk profile.

There are great tools one can use from the finance industry to assess an
individuals risk profile and tailor an employment package that meets their
profile. Some candidates like myself (a guy) want more time off because we'd
rather spend time with family than coding.

If you can create a tailored work environment you'll have no problem
attracting talent that's diverse, instead of just a bunch of people who like
to work 80 hours a week.

If you offer one size fits all employment you will hire people only for who
that size fits. If you offer bespoke employment you'll hire bespoke
individuals.

~~~
schoper
In a world of perfect information, that would work. In a Bayesian world
(ours), it doesn't work.

Say that you have two types of widgets, widget A and widget B. Both have
tolerances that fall along the same normal distribution but with different
means. The mean for widget A is off by 0.1mm, and the mean for widget B is off
by 0.2 mm.

Now, say that you measure each widget before accepting it, using a perfect
measuring function. In this case, it doesn't matter whether you use widget A
or widget B.

However, in the real world, you have an imperfect measuring function. Say that
it gives you an answer along a normal distribution with some standard
deviation.

Does this make the case for widget A or widget B different? Yes, you'll have
more widgets fall within tolerances if you only use widget A.

To further improve the model, you would want to know the rejection cost of
using an incorrectly sized widget and the supply-demand costs involved in only
using widgets of type A. The results of the optimization problem would tell
you how much of widget A versus widget B to use.

------
hjay
Yes, diversity is important.

However, if you are too focused on hiring female engineers, you can bring the
overall quality of the team down. Now I do not mean female engineers are any
less competent compared to male engineers, but I will give an example from
personal experience.

The manager at my current day job has (in a team meeting) expressed that
"females are better". The reasoning was that females are more creative and in
general, more social. This idea of "females > males" was expressed multiple
times over my time here, and it has really begun to take off. In our last
round of hiring a co-op, our team lead said "the new co-op has to be a girl".
In the screening phase, the team lead decided we would not interview a few of
the male applicants, for no specific reason. We then picked 2 people (1 male,
1 female) for interviews. The female candidate was interviewed by myself, a
co-worker, and the team lead. This candidate was not exceptional in any way
and was not more skilled than the other candidate. She was hired the second
the interview ended.

A year prior, we had a female co-op student who was on a 8 month term. 3
months into the term, she was given an offer by the manager for a full-time
position. This offer was in secret, and other teams were not to hear about it
until her last month. As she was still in school, she expressed that she
wanted the job but wanted to finish her last year and graduate. And so the
position (and budget), was saved for her for the year, regardless of whether
or not she was able to graduate.

I have no problem against hiring female engineers. However, hiring female
candidates over male candidates simply because of gender is discrimination,
and that's not something I agree with. This kind of discrimination can also be
detrimental to the success of the team/company.

Simple example: Let's assume 10 of 30 (about 33%) applicants are female. The
team decides to select 10 people for interviews (yes there are places that do
not interview based on fit alone but fit + headcount). Since there are only 10
females, if we only select females, there are a few problems. 1) We lose out
on any male candidates that may be a better fit (which also comes from a pool
of 20/30). 2) We're forced to spend money and resources on candidates that
essentially have a 0% chance of being hired because they would not have passed
the screening if sexism were not in play.

~~~
Steko
Yes tell us more about how the system is incredibly biased against men.

~~~
rmc
BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ!!!

(Often in feminist spaces, when people talk about removing systematic
disadvantages against women, someone'll suggest how it's really men that are
disadvantaged now. This has morphed into a meme-like joke of "WHAT ABOUT TEH
MENZ!")

~~~
JPKab
My son's elementary school appears to be hugely discriminatory towards men.
Less than 10% of the teachers are male, all of the leadership at the school is
female. Yet I don't see any gender equality organizations complaining about
this very widespread reality.

Gloria Steinem always argued that gender equality would only be achieved when
society believed women could do what men could do, and men could do what women
could. The latter half of that statement offers zero political advantages for
the women's studies faculty members which make up the cornerstone of the
gender equality movement of this country, and therefore Gloria's full vision
is ignored.

Girls have lower scores on math than boys. Explanation: There is something
wrong wtih the way math is being taught.

Boys have lower scores on writing than girls. Explanation: Boys are naturally
biologically inferior when it comes to processing language.

Boys have lower grades overall than girls. Explanation: Boys aren't as well
behaved or attentive as girls.

If the situation were reversed, there would be conversations about how to
redesign the school day to erase the overall grade gap between female and male
students. But because the group in question isn't a classically oppressed
category, the cause of failure is immediately considered to be an internal
factor.

See my point? Within some of the social sciences, there is a very potent
politically motivated push to search for only external, rather than internal,
causes for issues within any group which is considered socially disadvantaged.
Nobody has any doubt that Saudi Arabia's Wahabi influenced culture has major
internal influences on undermining their economy, but if the same analysis is
conducted on any disadvantaged cultural groups within a Western nation, the
group conducting said analysis is shamed as being bigoted.

~~~
rmc
Except, well, often times equality / anti-sex-discrimination law _does_
benefit men. It's now illegal for driving insurance companies to charge men
more than women (even though they are statistically worse drivers) (in EU).

Additionally there _are_ attempted to get more men into professions where they
were traditionally underrepreseted.

Here's the UK Department of Education: "Record numbers of men teaching in
primary schools - but more still needed"
[http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a00211812/re...](http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a00211812/record-
numbers-of-men-teaching-in-primary-schools)

So yes, equality and governmental agencies _are_ complaining about the lack of
men in some professions and trying to increase it. The photo on the NHS's
"Nursing" career page ( <http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-
career/nursing/> ) is a man. (The NHS is the UK's public sector health system
and is one of the largest employers in the world.)

You do not appear to have done any research and are claiming that "no-one
tackling the lack of men in some cases", when in fact, they are.

With your specific examples, you don't give any citations, so I wonder if
you're cherry picking? Humanity is big and people will have lots of opinions.
You're telling me that the most common response to lower grades for boys as
opposed to boys is an appeal to biology? Got any citations?

~~~
s_baby
But when people ask for gender neutral language in Violence Against Women Act
and family law, countless feminists scream "wut about the menz?!"

~~~
rmc
I don't know about this VAW Act (seems to be US thing), the US isn't so great
on the equality law anyway (since there is no legal maternity leave, marital
status or sexuality isn't a protected ground etc.) If I were to talk about how
China does voting, would that be a fair cop against democracy?

------
Osmium
A cynic might imagine that a percentage increase is easy if you don't have
many female employees to start with.

From the article:

"At the time of the talk, Etsy’s had twenty women on its 110-person
engineering team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half
times) increase from the previous year. It’s not quite hockey stick growth,
but it’s a huge step forward."

Still, clearly it's a huge problem in the industry, so props to Etsy for
trying to tackle it.

------
lifeisstillgood
Put it this way:

* hiring any software developer right now is seemingly an uphill task, driving up salaries.

* If women are discriminated against in IT (and lets face it ...) then there is a huge pool of under-tapped engineers out there - whilst many are not in software right now, there is an equal number of talented, driven, intelligent women who could enter the profession.

* If only we could learn from the experiences of people like etsy we could double the pool of software talent.

* If we can double the pool of available talent, hiring will become easier and salaries will plummet.

* ...

* Stuff that - lets keep being sexist, and bash etsy for trying.

~~~
jorgenev
> lets keep being sexist, and bash etsy for trying

No, lets stop circle jerking about how progressive we are at the expense of
reason.

> If women are discriminated against in IT (and lets face it ...) then there
> is a huge pool of under-tapped engineers out there

If this was actually true, then people would try and keep it secret, because
it could be so profitable. A true "huge pool of under-tapped" resources would
sell itself, not have to be pushed so mindlessly.

No one is bashing Etsy; it's just this concept is kind of silly, I could go on
Monster.com, search for software engineers and only make offers to the female
ones, that would get me an engineering team of 100% women! I am not sure that
would prove anything, though.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Put a job on monster and see if you get any women applying - in my experience
I have never had more than a handful of women applying. Build a complete team?
Unlikely.

Anyone from these follow-a-cv-through-HR-to-hire apps got actual stats on
application ratios by gender?

I have to admit I never stopped to look at why (the headlong rush perhaps) -
most women I knew in IT had come up through the ranks in that company.

And now I think I should look at what happened - I want to know how to get
50/50 applications let alone actual hires.

But sorry. I reject the idea you could easily build a (qualified or even
strong junior) team from women only by putting out an ad on a bog standard job
site

It seems to take a lot more than that and it may be a mystery why

------
sethbannon
Very encouraging article but this bit is super depressing, and speaks to
deeper problems with discrimination in our industry: "Etsy’s seen the most
success when there’s either zero or two women engineers on a team...because if
there’s only one, she’s a woman engineer as opposed to just an engineer."

------
hannahmitt
I wonder how Etsy defines "most success" in the teams of zero or two women.

I'm a female dev and I don't feel weird on all male teams. Just another team
member. But I did feel singled out when the other female developer and I were
mostly assigned to work together.

Not that I don't love working with other ladies, but making it any kind of
policy makes me feel more segregated than included.

~~~
mnicole
> I'm a female dev and I don't feel weird on all male teams. Just another team
> member. But I did feel singled out when the other female developer and I
> were mostly assigned to work together.

Could it have been to make her feel more comfortable? With certain jobs I've
had, my male co-workers would communicate differently with the other males
than they would with me. Sometimes they'd talk to me like I was removing my
training wheels, other times more formally, and other times less seriously.
This changes with time (well, okay, not sometimes), but that was the initial
approach.

------
kylec
The title of this article is misleading. From the article:

    
    
        At the time of the talk, Etsy’s had twenty women on its 110-person engineering
        team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase
        from the previous year.
    

The year over year difference in growth rate is ~500%, the actual growth rate
is 18%.

~~~
dmckeon
I read this as: 18% of 110 is 20. If they started with 4 and hired 18, that
would be a "four and half times" increase (perhaps modulo replacement or non-
FTE hires).

In any case, good for Etsy for investing in training rather than just spending
placement fees.

~~~
tomkarlo
Seems like a grammatical error in the article. They have 20 now, which is
about 18% of their eng team, and I guess they had 4 to start with. This is
~+450% growth but it's off such a negligible base (~5% assuming they also
hired some men that year) that the whole "500% growth" claim is only
interesting as a marketing statement, so it kind of undercuts the rest of the
article's value.

It's like a school with one minority student out 100 letting in two more and
then bragging about "200% growth in minority students."

I'm not taking away from what they did - just how they're positioning it based
on a growth figure.

------
speeder
Why I don't see lots of other industries that are male dominated bothered by
the fact that they don't have a "diversity" ?

And I know that there are competent women out there, but I find very hard to
believe that a sharp increase of women in your company will make your team
better.

Even them end admitting that the women they are hiring are junior engineers,
and that they could not find senior engineers (probably because the few that
exist are already happy where they are and won't switch jobs).

~~~
ericabiz
Probably because you don't regularly read news websites for those industries.

Here's a quick example: [http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing-
today/105-hospital-leads...](http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing-
today/105-hospital-leads-in-hiring-male-nurses.html)

FTA: "Pitt County Memorial Hospital...boasts one of the best records
nationally at hiring men as nurses.

About 10.5 percent of the hospital's registered nurses are male -- a stellar
showing considering that men make up only about 5.7 percent of registered
nurses nationally.

Attracting more men to nursing is seen as one way to extend the supply of
registered nurses, who perform much of the hands-on patient care in
hospitals."

~~~
speeder
First, nursing is female dominated (and I said I don't see other male
dominated industries complaining of lack of diversity).

And second, they talk there about expanding supply of workers, not having more
diversity.

~~~
jacalata
First, name a male dominated industry and I bet I can find you a group working
to make it more diverse. For instance, finance:
[http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow-a...](http://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student/workexperience/follow-
a-female-leader.jhtml)

Second, people here talk about that too. In an article that you should have
read just recently: "hiring for diversity will set up better recruiting
opportunities. Consider Harvard’s graduating computer science class: forty-one
percent of the students are women, and an inability to hire talented females
will start to significantly impact your ability to recruit altogether."

~~~
speeder
I don't said that they did not talked about more pool of people.

I said that what was mentioned was specifically talking about that, not
wanting more diversity.

~~~
jacalata
You said that nursing is only talking about increased male participation in
terms of benefits for the industry, not the men - implying (perhaps
unintentionally) that this is different to CS, because CS is focused on
benefits for women. I pointed out CS talk on diversity also talks about
benefits to the industry (/company), specifically in terms of increasing the
pool of available workers.

If I misread your implication, then I'm sorry, but I don't know what your
point was.

------
donretag
The article fails to mention how they are going to attract other minority
groups such as African-Americans and Hispanics.

Yes, I am playing the Devil's Advocate. You cannot give yourself a pat on the
back for only tackling one segment of the diversity problem and ignoring the
rest.

~~~
sequoia

        A trucker is speeding down the highway along with a few other trucks.
        He sees blue lights in his rear view mirror and pulls over.
        "Officer, how can you pull me over?! There were at least 1/2 dozen other trucks going the same speed!"
        Officer: Do you ever go fishing?
        Trucker: Well, yes.
        Officer: Tell me, did you ever catch ALL the fish?
    

Volunteering at an animal shelter does not mean you don't car about people.
Attempting to improve conditions for women does not mean you don't care about
people of color. Working to improve conditions for impoverished US citizens
does not mean you don't care about people in the third world. Is my point
coming thru?

It's irritating to always see some person chiming in about how if you are
working for women you're ignoring Hispanics or some such BS. Both efforts are
valid!! I can't believe Etsy is trying to at least make baby steps to helping
women get into a male dominated _very well paying_ field, and all you have is
criticism. phooey.

------
mberning
I find it interesting that having significantly more male than female
engineers is regarded as problem that needs to be proactively 'fixed'. There
are a vast number of occupations where the gender ratio is skewed one way or
the other. The tech industry seems to be obsessively fixated on an issue that
doesn't seem to bother most other professions where such a disparity exists.

~~~
cyen
I imagine that, being steeped in the tech industry, you pay much more to our
conversations than those of other industries. I would be hard-pressed to
believe that other male-dominated or gender-skewed don't also think about
these sorts of issues. Perhaps they just have other forums (like, say, Forbes
magazine [1] or academic/industry journals [2]) to discuss them.

1:
[http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0316/072_terminated_women....](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0316/072_terminated_women.html)
2:
[http://folk.uio.no/olegmo/Men%20in%20Nursing/Evans%20J%20199...](http://folk.uio.no/olegmo/Men%20in%20Nursing/Evans%20J%201997.pdf)

~~~
mberning
I didn't say there were none. I said most. Call me up when the trade
organizations for construction, road work, plumbing, etc. have this as a topic
of discussion on an almost weekly basis. Doesn't happen. Not to the extent it
does with the tech industry.

My own personal theory, which is completely unsupported by anything other than
my own experience and bias, is that it is a particular manifestation of the
'white knight' behavior that is so common among my peers.

Again, I am not saying that it is not a real issue, or that it is not worth
discussing. I'm just pointing out that the tech industry has an unusual level
of fixation on this issue.

------
freshfunk
The key to hiring females: Have a product that appeals to females. It doesn't
seem like rocket science in this case.

I don't want to down play hiring female engineers or hiring for diversity. I
think both of those are important.

I graduated from college over 10 years ago but the reality then was that
females made up a very minor percentage of my computer science/engineering
class. It must've been somewhere around 5% (definitely below 10%).

Of the ones I knew that started their careers in software engineering, many
(if not most) left programming for other tangential careers. That is, they
went to business school and then came back to the industry as product/program
managers.

Is that bad or is that good? Should we encourage one over the other?

I imagine that, over time, the percentage of women who stay in engineering
dwindles significantly. Considering that the initial percentages you are
working with out of school is already small, think of how much you're limiting
your application pool if you're looking for an experienced female software
engineer. Most of the good ones are probably already working at the large tech
companies since they do a good job of grabbing these women right out of
school.

While we're talking about diversity, what about other forms of it? How many
african-american/latino/native-american engineers do you see in Silicon
Valley? Why don't we talk about this more? Isn't there value in diversity
across ethnicities? Latinos are the fastest growing segment in America.

~~~
evolve2k
>> The key to hiring females: Have a product that appeals to females.

If that was the key then Etsy would have already had many female engineers,
their product hasn't changed.

------
twistedpair
"Historically we've kept all of this content locked away and only accessible
to our companies - mainly to create a sense of confidentially and openness."

? To keep it confidential (closed) and open?

~~~
rjknight
I might feel that I can be _open_ with you about my alcoholism and drug abuse
if I know that this will be kept _confidential_. It's a confusingly-written
sentence but it's not an invalid concept.

------
memset
Here is a question: I am an early employee at a small startup (5 people.) We
don't have much space, nor do we have lots of cash. Which means we couldn't
possibly set aside a few rooms to host hacker school - we just have a small
office in Brooklyn. Nor do we have the cashflow to offer scholarships like
Etsy has. We probably only have the budget to hire another engineer this year,
and we rely a lot on contractors.

Not having the means to sponsor broad programs like this, What can I do -
either as an individual, or as a company - to contribute to diversity?

~~~
mnicole
There are lots of various localized groups for women in tech in most cities,
many depending on their specialties. Some of them are mailing lists, some of
them are Meetup groups, some of them are IRC channels. Tap into those
communities with job listings and - if you're so inclined - encourage the
likelihood that one of them will apply if you state that you're explicitly
looking for women to fill the role. Good luck!

------
joe_the_user

        "Most technical interviews suck - fundamentally
        interviewers ask the question, “Quick, prove 
        to me how smart you are!"
    

I think this is an important point.

------
csense
I just read the headline, but whenever someone quotes an astounding growth
figure, you should ask about the base [1].

If you start a startup with one female engineer (maybe your total staff is 3-5
plus the founder(s)), and then you get funded and suddenly have the money to
hire a couple dozen people, it's easy to see the possibility of having 500%
growth.

[1] <http://xkcd.com/1102/>

------
mahyarm
Hasn't it been shown the more sexually egalitarian a society is, the more
likely you are to find these gender imbalances in the work place? Less
egalitarian societies have been found to have less of a gender imbalance in
stereotypically gender imbalanced professions. Engineering is usually male
dominated, and nursing is usually female dominated.

------
silentmars
Anyone else expect the article to be one sentence long: "by hiring 5 female
engineers!"

------
sitong
Here is @kellan's full presentation on youtube:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4LExVkv4Pw>

------
dudus
A company I worked for in the past increased their female engineer base by
500% in a year. They had 1 and hired 5 more.

------
speeder
How eighteen percent is four and a half time?

four a half is 450%... ???

Can someone clarify to me?

~~~
niggler
Different denominator.

If they went from 1 to 6 girls it would be 500% increase

If they hired 1 girl last year and 6 girls this year, regardless of the total
number of boys and girls at the company, it would be a 500% increase.

Basically, semantic games

------
nakedrobot2
Did they start with one female engineer or twenty?

I have increased my revenue by 50000000% this month, by the way....

~~~
scarmig
"At the time of the talk, Etsy’s had twenty women on its 110-person
engineering team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half
times) increase from the previous year. It’s not quite hockey stick growth,
but it’s a huge step forward."

------
jcromartie
Step 1: be Etsy.

------
koll24
Oh look, more sexism disguised as anti-sexism. As a man, I'm glad I don't work
for etsy.

