
Devops needs feminism - danslimmon
http://danslimmon.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/devops-needs-feminism/
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DanielBMarkham
Yeah, but people-based metrics are _subjective_ , even if they have hard
numbers stuck in there. That's the problem.

The mistake here is viewing the entire system as simple, instead of emergent.
Emergent systems are not usefully measured by simplistic top-down metrics.

You have one piece of code, yep, you set up some measurements and have fun
with it. You have a thousand programs, running across a hundred different
platforms? _The idea that you can determine cause and effect by a simple top-
down metric is a problem in itself_. Yes, you may be able to determine that
overall the system is not working as you would like it to be, and you may
certainly decide that some kind of action is required, but that gives you no
clue whatsoever what the required changes would be! In fact, by looking from
the top-down in an aggregate fashion, it's even arguable whether or not your
metric is the one to be optimized!

That's the difference between complex systems and simple systems. Stop over-
simplifying. We all might be able to agree that some aggregate statistic is
out of whack. Maybe. But that's a freaking long way from actually knowing
anything about the problem or what to start doing to address it. Instead, we
wrap it all up like that answer is straightforward, wave our arms around, get
all emotional, and demand action. This is not a recipe for success, whether in
complex systems of programs or complex systems of people.

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rayiner
I can't express how infuriating I find the "we just need to treat everyone
equally, that's it!" type of comments, and these analogies help me understand
why. It's like saying "we just need to write maintainable modular code, that's
it!"

~~~
betterunix
I am more infuriated by the idea that if women are underrepresented in
technical fields, it must be the fault of the men in those technical fields.
After all, if men would just treat women equally, then women would represent
half the workforce in those fields, right?

Women are underrepresented in _applications to engineering school_. Are adults
who are already in the workforce responsible for that? Do high school girls
somehow sense the "hostile environment" in engineering schools before they
spend a single day there? If we want to actually solve this problem, we need
to go all the way to the beginning: middle school, where girls mysteriously
start losing interest in technical fields.

~~~
rayiner
> Do high school girls somehow sense the "hostile environment" in engineering
> schools before they spend a single day there?

My wife, who has a solid head for mathematics but majored in German once
explained to me why she didn't go into engineering: 1) because she didn't want
to be surrounded by dudes all day; 2) because she didn't want to enter a field
where she wouldn't have women bosses and mentors.

So if you're a high-school girl doing even a minimal bit of career planning,
yes, of course you take into account the fact hat you'll be a minority in your
field if you go into engineering, with all of the career hurdles that being a
minority in any field entails.

~~~
betterunix
Perhaps so, but there is nothing people working in the field can do about
that. If women are a minority because they are unwilling to join a field where
they are a minority, then nothing that men do to change their behavior,
attitude, or whatever else will solve the problem.

I also have some doubts about this being the sole issue. As an undergrad, I
watched my school work hard to try to play up the fact that there were female
students, female professors, and famous women in engineering. This was done
whenever potential students were visiting. This was done in pamphlets sent out
to high schools. The effect was not even measurable. I see the same pattern in
my graduate program, and the same pattern in other engineering schools, and
even among recruiters for corporations. I am not sure what else people in the
field can do to try to dispel the notion; if indeed this is a cause, I suspect
that girls are learning to dislike engineering from somewhere else, but I
think that something happens earlier in life, at least if we believe the
research on when girls lose interest in technical fields (somewhere around
middle school or early high school).

~~~
rayiner
> Perhaps so, but there is nothing people working in the field can do about
> that. If women are a minority because they are unwilling to join a field
> where they are a minority, then nothing that men do to change their
> behavior, attitude, or whatever else will solve the problem.

Sure they can. They can simply hire more women. Once the gender ratio is
sorted out, the new equilibrium will be self-sustaining.

~~~
_dps
> Sure they can. They can simply hire more women.

You're smart enough to know it's not that simple; even if one were willing to
"just do it" it's not clear the unintended consequences would not result in a
net-negative effect on women in engineering.

Fundamentally, if the source funnel is unbalanced, and you assume that there
is a scalar "skill" quantity that is the economic factor of production
employers actually desire, then it is mathematically impossible to hire-
toward-parity without having a lower standard for hiring from the less-
represented pool [0].

If you accept that ratio-correcting hiring mathematically necessitates lower
standards for women then you need to answer some thorny economic questions.

Will the women whose skill is below the minimum skill of the men in your quota
system be paid the same as the men (all of whom by mathematical necessity,
will be more skilled)?. If they are paid the same as the men, it is a subsidy
paid by the employer, the employer's customers, and the disemployed men who
otherwise would have been hired but-for the quota. It's not clear to me that
they bear any culpability for the social problem, or that the economic costs
of this subsidy are sufficiently small not to have significant negative
effects on those businesses. I know, I know: boo hoo, those poor businesses
won't have two golden swimming pools of money, just one. But the reality is
that the margins most businesses have between the cost of employment and the
productivity of that employment is not, for most companies, rich Google-y
numbers like 50%. If the margins are more like 10% it is entirely credible to
me that such a subsidy will drive various arms of the business from ROI-
positive to ROI-negative (or at least, ROI below just investing that cash in
stocks). And then all those jobs we were planning to give to women will no
longer exist.

If, on the other hand, the lower-skill women are paid sufficiently less than
the men to balance the opportunity cost borne by the employer (for not being
able to hire everyone above a minimum skill level) then the women need to be
paid _less_ than an open market wage (i.e. less than their skills would
justify without a quota system, because the quota system is costing the
employer lost productivity in men they would otherwise hire). So now the
_women_ are paying for the parity-seeking hiring. This will exacerbate the
already high level of concern about fairness in compensation and will provide
an additional disincentive for women to join this work force. Never mind that
it seems perverse to have the women pay the employers for the privilege of
working in a quota system.

Let me make a defensive statement lest it seem I am suggesting that women are
less skilled than men: I am emphatically not. I'm saying that if you take the
best five of 30 people and the best five of 100 people, the latter group will,
with significant statistical regularity, be more skilled.

So what to do if ratio-correcting hire is DOA? It seems that there's an easier
solution that has its roots in a long history of women conquering other
obstacles; a generation of high-school aged women need to decide, en masse,
that they will join engineering departments as a group and that they will
stick to it with mutual support. This is direct action by the people whose
well-being we are trying to improve, can be done without getting permission or
cooperation from anyone outside that group, and solves the "boys' club"
problem on day 1 of freshman year classes (because the club will be, by
construction, full of women as well). I even have a slogan ready for them:
"We're here, we're engineers, get used to it." I realize that coordinating
this kind of movement is hard, but it is run-of-the-mill political and social
organizing, and it seems to me like something that can actually work (as
opposed to solutions that attack the symptoms of a skewed sourcing funnel).

[0] Proof sketch (hand-waving law-of-large numbers arguments, and assuming
women's skills are distributed identically to men's):

1) If you reject quotas and hire simply for skill >= min_skill, then you will
find more men meeting that criterion because there are men in the source
funnel. So fixed-skill cutoffs are out.

2) If you have quotas (say 1 woman for every 1 man) then you can't hire
everyone >= min_skill; you will instead hire _the best_ among the people >=
min_skill. The men will be pulled from a larger pool, and taking the best from
a larger pool will result on average in a higher minimum skill level. So
simply by taking the best N of the women and the best N of the men, the source
funnel imbalance forces you to have lower standards for women

------
return0
Lots of human groups are underrepresented in technology (africans, older
people, latinos etc). Why are feminists the only ones that always make it to
the frontpage (even superficial pieces like this one)?

~~~
scarmig
Why do people instantly put up ideological blinders at the first mention of
feminism in response to an interesting article?

I mean, do you find anything at all objectionable in what it says? Please
share! Or a subtlety that it leaves out? Totally!

I agree with you that racial issues are underemphasized in technical
communities, and in the same way we should use feminism as a framework for
achieving the organizational and social goal of equality, we should try to do
the same for race.

~~~
return0
I find it objectionable that blindly applying feminist recipes in IT will have
any effect. Feminism is not a framework but a set of ideologies, and even if
we assume it is, applying it out of context, it is just stupid (e.g. a company
claiming it is 'pro choice' in order to attract women). Most IT jobs are in
countries where feminism already works for decades. Clearly you need something
more than feminism to achieve total equality.

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aaronem
The term 'equality' is frequently used there, but never defined, which seems
odd for an article that revolves around performance metrics used as a metaphor
for feminism.

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fruzz
The biggest issue I've come to see in this industry is the denial that there's
even an issue. That's what makes sexism so hard to address.

You'll find no shortage of those who don't experience that marginalization
deny its existence. Meanwhile, those who do experience it and try to share how
they experience it are ignored or talked over.

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xkiwi
As a founder in tech field, I use a few steps to detect feminism,

1\. If they have equal opportunities/equipments?

2\. If the statements are bias based on other people instead of looking
problem within themselves first.

3\. Do they have the right/enough knowledge in the field.

In my experiences, Number 3 is very important. I never meet anyone with enough
practice & knowledge about programming complains about gender problem. Stories
I read is about people cannot write a single line of code but wants to be the
executive/Project Manger.

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wnoise
The current title on HN of "Feminism is to equality as metrics are to
performance" is far more interesting than the title at the blog of "Devops
needs feminism", but it's never really elucidated.

~~~
dllthomas
The original title was indeed interesting. I expected a different case to be
made, though - that much like metrics can be necessary to improve performance,
feminism can be necessary to improve equality, but in both cases it's possible
to focus too much on the means and not enough on the end. I'm not entirely
sure how much I'd have agreed with such a case, but it's an interesting lens.

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carsongross
Devops needs feminism like a fish needs a bicycle.

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omonra
I don't care how many women are in tech. Likewise I don't care how many
straight men are in fashion or Mexicans in the NBA.

There - I said it.

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Dewie
The author doesn't seem to know much about feminism (self-admitted); he seems
to be using the first and best definitions he can find, find that that
definition/decription resonates with him, and then tries to sell it. So anyone
who believes in equality (and isn't an asshole) is a feminist. Okay. Then I'll
similarly assert that everyone who believes in equal opportunity is a
communist, that everyone who believes in freedom is a capitalist, etc. Now,
everyone is at least superficially acquainted with these ideologies, so they
won't simply take such assertions at face value, even if I say that 'there are
many definitions and this is just my definition'. To assert that an ideology
(or school of thought, or what have you) is about this and that, a handy
'definition' is not enough for me, personally. One should perhaps make an
assessment based on what it's members do and say, such as bloggers, academics,
etc.. Or restrict oneself to a particular wave of feminism. At least a more
comprehensive description and/or analysis is in order if you want to _correct
others_ , than to simply cite a single definition from a single Wiki. That is
just my opinion, OP.

