
How Duolingo achieved a 50:50 gender ratio for new software engineer hires - doppp
http://making.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gender-ratio-for-new-software-engineer-hires
======
infinity0
This strategy implicitly assumes that reverse discrimination is an effective
policy, i.e. that achieving 50:50 in your own organisation will somehow push
the population-wide 18:82 ratio in a different direction.

This isn't justified anywhere, it's just taken as an assumption. It would be
good if these implicit positions were justified rather than imposed. The Ys
getting discriminated against, will understandly be angry about it, especially
since only a small percentage of the Ys actually benefitted from historical
discrimination against Xs, yet all of them are now eligible to be reverse-
discriminated against.

~~~
sethev
It doesn't assume that at all. Any company can choose to implement a hiring
goal for (almost) any reason they choose. Maybe they wanted a broader set of
perspectives on their team? The idea that Duolingo would have to justify their
hiring decisions in terms of changing the demographics of the whole industry
is absurd.

Also Duolingo has ~100 employees total. There's no way that the industry's
demographics are somehow limiting their available talent pool. Having a policy
like this sounds like a great way for a small company to attract highly
talented women.

~~~
infinity0
You are right, it doesn't assume that.

However if they don't assume that, then they are effectively _worsening_ the
18:82 ratio for _other organisations_ who will be logically and mathematically
unable to reach a 50:50 ratio without leaving (82-18)/82 of Y unemployed, so
they would be virtue signalling.

So either they assume that, or they are virtue signalling, or they are trying
to make (82-18)/82 of Y unemployed. Q.E.D.

I was trying to Assume Good Faith in my first comment but sure, call me out
for not including the "asshole options".

edit: yeah sure, downvote me for pointing out that badly-thought out
ideological policies _don 't work mathematically_

~~~
sethev
Even your moved goal posts still try to connect one small company's policies
to the industry as a whole. Maybe it's worth emphasizing _your_ unstated
assumption that the only reason a company would want 50:50 is to satisfy some
external ideological motive rather than careful analysis of what makes for a
good team.

~~~
infinity0
I don't give a shit about what the "motivations" of the company are. I said:

> This strategy implicitly assumes

That is the real objective assumption that any implementation of this strategy
makes (or the other "asshole" choices).

Good intentions are worthless if they can't work mathematically.

~~~
sethev
Why did you feel the need to even comment if you don't care about Duolingo's
motivations for hiring people? Of course not every company could have 50:50
with the current pool of software engineers but that's a trivial point. It's
true by definition.

EDIT: it's clear that you believe ideology is what's motivating this, despite
your claim that you don't care about motivation.

~~~
infinity0
If it's a "trivial point" why is this article hitting the front page? Why do
you feel the need to turn a "trivial point" into a discussion about
motivations and my supposed mis-assumptions of those motivations?

This article is hitting the front page because some people think it's
impressive. I don't think it's impressive nor do I think it's solving any real
issues. I pointed out in very neutral terms why it's not solving any real
issues, but some people some to feel offended by my pointing out a "trivial
point".

~~~
sethev
It's solving a real issue at Duolingo and it's their policy.

~~~
infinity0
By making it harder to solve the issue everywhere else, yes.

------
lkrubner
A thought experiment I'll quote:

"Suppose there was overwhelming evidence that 95% of women were terrible at
technology and 5% of women were awesome at technology. There are roughly 7
billion people on the planet, roughly 3.5 billion women, roughly 1.5 billion
women who work outside the house for a wage. In this scenario, where only 5%
of women love technology, there are 75 million working women who are awesome
at technology. According to the Bureau Of Labor Statics, the USA had 1,256,200
software developers in 2016. The BLS also tracks some other minor categories,
such as Web Developer, which have about 150,000 jobs. Lump all the sub-
categories together, and let’s say there are 2 million such jobs in the USA.
Let’s be wildly generous and double the number for the EU, and triple it for
Asia. That gives 12 million software developer jobs in all of the advanced and
developing economies. So even with exaggerated assumptions about women’s
inherent weakness in technology, we still end up with a scenario where every
single programming job in the world can be filled by a woman who will be
awesome at the job. There is no need for men, at all, in the tech industry."

[http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-
pus...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pushed-away-
from-the-tech-industry)

More to point, women are being pushed out of tech. Women constituted 35% of
all software engineers in 1990, but only 26% in 2015 (see above url). Given
the rough figure of about 2 million jobs, that 9% difference suggests there
are 180,000 missing women from engineering jobs right now. Initiatives like
Duolingo help reverse the trend, and therefore should be praised.

~~~
denverkarma
"Pushed out" is an odd narrative for an industry that is bending over
backwards to try and draw more women in. Is it even _possible_ that women (on
average) are less interested in tech work and thus have chosen (on aggregate)
to pursue other careers instead? It seems like even asking that question is
forbidden.

Why is the same level of angst not applied to education, where <20% of primary
school teachers are male? Have the public schools been pushing men out, or are
men just not interested? Or maybe it's some of both? Do we even know?

~~~
pwinnski
If primary school teacher was a valued (well-paid) position, I think we'd be
having that very discussion. Historically in the US, teachers were men, and
computer programmers were women. As teachers shifted more toward women, and as
computer programmers shifted more toward men, the compensation for teachers
dropped, while the compensation for computer programmers skyrocketed. The
correlation is strong, although causation is debatable.

It's no surprise that the efforts to achieve gender balance in a highly-paid
industry gets a lot more attention than any gender-imbalance in a lowly-paid
industry.

Put another way: men weren't too upset about being pushed out of teaching
positions because they were able to make better money elsewhere.

------
rdlecler1
I can understand why women wouldn’t want to be engineers because I can
understand why most men also don’t want to be engineers. Engineers are a small
subset of the total population and it’s difficulty to say whether we have
optimized for either sex but trying to make a one-size-fits all environment
seems sub optimal if the goal is to increase total numbers of CS
professionals. CS programs should be as popular as ever for males, but it does
seem like they could be more popular for females if there were environmental
adjustments. Rather than trying to adjust the entire environment (which may
discourage men from entering) to one-size-fits-all, I think it makes more
sense for some schools to specialize in attracting and training women and in
turn those companies that provide meaningful opportunities and environment
that are important to women can also more easily find a larger pool of talent.

------
eganist
The comments here are viscerally disturbing, and not for reasons that might
jump to mind, meaning I don't really mind the merit-driven mindset when it's
aptly applied. It's not in this case.

It's one thing to value merit over politics -- I'd expect nothing less from my
peers in the bay. However, it's an entirely different matter to value merit
over long term strategic objectives, and from what I can tell, an alarming
number of commenters here are bereft of any understanding of the long term
implications of not striving to increase the potential engineering talent
pool.

We in the US are in a situation where:

1) talent is scarce

2) companies, startups more specifically, are now less willing to hire
international talent for fear of visa/etc. risks in the current age,

3) politics are disincentivizing efforts to broaden the talent pool via
obvious means -- such as by reintroducing and motivating women to participate.

The end result of this isn't going to be job security for existing
participants in the tech industry here in the US. It's going to be the flight
of entrepreneurs to talent centers where talent can be acquired more
reasonably, and right now, that's starting to look less and less like the
United States given the above.

Shoot, even YC is broadening beyond these geographical and political
boundaries through tools like Startup School.

If your goal's to keep our tech industry in the US from becoming a laggard,
it's in your interest to encourage the system to _strategically_ start
motivating and representing the population space more accurately. Otherwise,
the talent drought will just drive ideas overseas.

(I apologize to any overseas readers reading my comment. I hope you
understand.)

TL;DR: very few people here are thinking about this from a long term strategic
angle; it seems like everyone's just concerned about their own jobs.

~~~
vdnkh
> 1) talent is scarce

Can I get a source for this?

~~~
eganist
[https://hackernoon.com/2018s-software-engineering-talent-
sho...](https://hackernoon.com/2018s-software-engineering-talent-shortage-its-
quality-not-just-quantity-6bdfa366b899)

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/19/the-war-
for-...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/19/the-war-for-tech-
talent-escalates/ejUSbuPCjPLCMRYlRZIKoJ/story.html)

[https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3900575](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3900575)

And a seemingly contrarian source which actually supports the argument I made:

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/the-tech-talent-
shortage-i...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/the-tech-talent-shortage-is-
a-lie/)

> Racial And Gender Inequality

> Opportunity inequality has become so pervasive that minority tech employees
> are banding together with the explicit purpose of increasing their numbers
> in the space. If you’re a tech leader, you must fight against this
> inequality to benefit from talented people of all stripes.

> Racial minorities are woefully underrepresented in the tech industry. And
> it’s not just a matter of race, either. Many don’t remember it, but women
> were once much more prevalent in tech. However, the proportion of female
> computer science students has halved since its heyday in the mid-1980s. And
> the women who do enter engineering are leaving at an astonishing rate.

> These problems aren’t self-correcting; their resolution requires dedication
> from leadership. We’re all obligated to take the first step to reverse this
> worrisome, decades-long minority flight by acknowledging the issue and
> magnifying diverse voices.

> If our industry has any hope of becoming more inclusive — which is a key
> step to solving our so-called “talent shortage” — we must be understanding,
> empathetic and open to others’ viewpoints.

Would you like me to go on? I thought the talent scarcity problem was obvious,
but I've got no qualms with more sourcing.

------
HarryHirsch
That's nice. Now that we have successfully defeated gender discrimination in
tech, can we proceed to defeat age discrimination?

------
11thEarlOfMar
This approach is not a solution to anything. The 18:82 ratio needs to be
addressed, which basically means starting to build interest in high school.
Duolingo (etc.) would be better served by sponsoring interest groups and clubs
in high schools, offering scholarships to graduating high school seniors,
offering internships to high school students, etc. They need to market high
tech careers to those high school girls who have the interest and proclivity
for tech, but not the exposure that helps them realize it.

~~~
ap3
What better way to market to high school girls than to send a team of women
engineers to show them there is a spot for them in the workplace ?

You can do all the clubs and scholarships you want, but the proof is in the
hiring

------
pedrorijo91
why would anyone want to achieve a 50:50 gender ratio for new software
engineer hires? you should simply aim for hiring the best software engineer
despite their gender/age/color. The only ratio you could try to achieve would
be to have 50:50 applicants for the roles and the select the best candidates.

Or will you hire a female even if she sucks at the job because your team is
only made of males? Are you filling a sticker collection or building a team?

------
vergessenmir
I like the approach here. Follow the data. It keeps everyone honest.

All companies cherry pick from the best Universities. The fact they've had to
look elsewhere means they're not getting the best from the best Universities
(based on rankings). They're getting the best female graduates possible. I
assume these are good enough but not the best.

Male hires are probably still from the best universities. This creates an
imbalance in competence. The female hires are good enough, the male hires are
exceptional. Male hires move up the ranks on virtue of their competence. Other
male hires leave after a couple promotion cycles expire.

Now we have situation where male hires are predominantly in coveted positions
in the company and female hires are mostly junior mid hires.

The equality problem has now shifted up. What do you do then? How far is a
company willing to go with an equality experiment before shareholders start
noticing the erosion of the companies competitive advantage and start
protesting.

I appluad Duolingo for it's boldness. Am doubtful on its sustainability
without either the rest of the industries following suit while pre university
educational centres attempt to rebalance.

~~~
greenyoda
> Male hires are probably still from the best universities. This creates an
> imbalance in competence.

Is there any objective evidence that people who graduate from the "best
universities" become the most competent engineers?

~~~
vergessenmir
Depends by which metric you use to evaluate the hires. The University where
the candidate graduated is certainly used as a metric for predicting
competency.

Regardless whether this is the right thing to do companies fall back to this
approach time and time again.

------
Croso
Unfortunately, due to the lack of female engineers, this will be impossible to
implement everywhere. Also, it's kind of counterintuitive to equality, as you
basically just guarantee women get a job in Tech. Regardless of skill set.
Which in itself is kind of sexist. In my opinion anyways, based on my
anecdotal experience holding the door for feminists.

I don't know why people think turning women into "butts in seats", as opposed
to genuine respect and admiration of skills and abilities is going to make
this problem better.

~~~
spraak
> you basically just guarantee women get a job in Tech. Regardless of skill
> set

But how do you know they weren't hired for their skill set? Like, if you have
two equally good apples in flavor, but you want to balance the profile of
varieties, choose the one you're most lacking?

~~~
skellera
It’s literally just has to do with numbers. If men and women are equally good
at the job and there are less total women, forcing a 50% split at all jobs
means that eventually places need to take on lower skilled workers from the
smaller group.

~~~
pwinnski
These numbers only makes sense if there are literally zero skilled women.
Otherwise, you're not dealing with the whole of the industry, you are dealing
only with your own team, the one or two positions you are currently trying to
fill. The question isn't therefore, "What systemic biases in the pipeline can
we have addressed in the past to ensure that I have a reasonably set from
which to draw today?" It's simply, "Today, right now, is there one qualified
woman that I'm likely to overlook if I don't make an effort to remind myself
that being surrounded by nothing but men isn't ideal?"

There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively from
the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much easier.

~~~
sagebird
RE > There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively
from the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much
easier.

I don't know of any large companies that only hire from candidate pools of
men. Does anyone know of an example?

~~~
pwinnski
You moved the goalposts with your question. I said that the set of companies
which hires only men is large. You asked specifically about the hiring
practices of large companies, which is a different question.

Recently, 88.6% of developers surveyed identified themselves as men[0]. That
ratio alone suggests that the vast majority of teams and companies have zero
female developers. In my experience, women developers often cluster at
companies (usually large companies) so that they are not isolated, which might
make the numbers even more extreme.

[0]
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics)

------
kingjacob
Sidebar: Do any software co’s complaining about a lack of quality female
engineering talent have real apprenticeship programs like Parker Hannifin or
Chevron?

------
jankotek
Why not hire remotely, if you care about diversity soo much?

------
throwaway0255
Fewer women go into STEM because women have more and better options in life.

STEM is hard and it sucks.

Same reason women don’t have to mine coal. They have the luxury of being able
to choose not to.

Men don’t have that luxury. We either earn or we live under a bridge eating
food out of cans. Society puts an enormous pressure on men with the threat of
homelessness and isolation, which doesn’t exist to anywhere near the same
degree for women, because women have inherent value.

Men have no inherent value to society, their only value to society is realized
through their work.

The result is men work harder and endure harder shittier jobs, including STEM.

If you want more women in STEM, then just eliminate all of their societal
privileges, consider them inherently valueless like men, and put them under
the same level of threat men are under of being isolated and going homeless.

~~~
icebraining
Women disliking STEM doesn't explain stuff like this:

 _In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-
intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was
randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager
position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more
competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant._

[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full)

~~~
tomp
cherry-picking studies is easy

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/04/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-
stem/)

> And according to their latest study, published Monday in the Proceedings of
> the National Academy of Sciences, women are no longer at a disadvantage when
> applying for tenure-track positions in university science departments. In
> fact, the bias has now flipped: Female candidates are now twice as likely to
> be chosen as equally qualified men.

------
tzahola
I wonder how it feels like to be a female engineer, trying to figure out
whether your skills were indeed above the bar, or you got hired only to fill
the gaps in some diversity officer’s spreadsheets. Sounds like a recipe for
impostor syndrome to me.

~~~
denverkarma
One of the very best programmers I've ever worked with is female. She said
almost this exact thing to me, basically: "On the one hand it's awesome that I
can have my pick of any job in the business, on the other hand it sucks that I
don't know if I'm just a statistic for them."

------
reader5000
How is this not illegal?

~~~
eganist
Because they're not declining candidates because of their gender. They're
hiring from talent pools where both genders are more properly represented.

None of this stops a candidate from applying to duolingo directly. There's no
discrimination going on against humans, and discriminating against a school is
totally fine so long as there's no suspect reason to do so (e.g.
discriminating against Howard because they've got primarily African-descended
students).

Not a lawyer. Would welcome a legal opinion.

~~~
adamnemecek
This seems to be some double speak.

~~~
eganist
Interesting. What didn't you understand?

~~~
adamnemecek
You misunderstand. I'm saying you just restated something illegal in a way
that might make it seem less illegal when it fact it's not.

~~~
fixermark
Does title IX dictate where a company is required to focus its talent
recruiting process?

------
realPubkey
The duolingo CEO must be so bad in statisics..

~~~
andrewem
I've downvoted your comment because it's only an insult (to a person who
doesn't even seem to have been directly involved in this work), rather than an
argument that you put forth and which others can attempt to either support or
refute.

------
tgafpc
Unless their applicant pool is exactly 50/50 with no influence, this is even
worse because they are actively and purposely discriminating against people.
This is not a company that puts it's employees and customers at the top of
it's priority list.

------
microcolonel
> _We started our hiring reboot by analyzing where we were spending our hiring
> time and effort. Perhaps not surprisingly, we were spending time at colleges
> and universities based on past experience, rather than their percentage of
> female computer science undergraduate majors. The national average of female
> computer science degree graduates is 18%.2 We made a decision to revisit our
> typical list of schools and only visit the universities that had more than
> 18% of female undergraduate computer science majors._

More or less "We realized we were looking solely at candidate performance when
we were selecting a candidate pool. That wasn't producing the warm fuzzies, so
we ignored our best indications of candidate performance, and instead hired
from a pool that made us feel good about our arbitrary political goal while
hopefully just stopping short of illegal discrimination.".

~~~
tomlock
> They also came up with other great ideas, including adding a tool that
> automates the first coding task and removes a candidate’s identifying
> information.

This doesn't really fit that narrative.

~~~
tomp
Hm... I wonder what the influence of that process was. I.e. how does the
outgoing percentages (50:50) compare with the incoming percentages? The
article doesn't say, but unless it's also 50:50, their process is still biased
/ sexist, possibly even more than at companies that don't achieve a 50:50
outcome.

