Facebook Rejects Female Engineers’ Code More Often

[Jon855]

Man writes sloppy code = YOU SUCK!
Woman writes sloppy code = DISCRIMINATION!

I hope that isn't the issue but clearly there appears to be a trend moving towards that.

Whoa there dude ....... You don't capitalize "kitchen."

Why not? Seeing as kitchen can be a proper noun thus we could capitalize it.

When you push affirmative action for a sex because you think it is needed, when reality is that there are just less in the field, it means you have to hire more and more unqualified people for those jobs to keep this magic ratio everyone wants, as such one should expect lower quality of work, and when you have lower quality of work/less skill you should expect those people to get promoted less often if at all.

That's my beef with AA.

The numbers simply aren't in women's favor at Facebook.

They only hold 17% of the technical roles at the company. That's not a large pool to begin with. The men have 83% of the remaining tech roles. The men simply have the numbers in their favor that suggests better code is statistically more likely to come from that larger group than the smaller group.

I don't think this has much to do with any sort of gender bias either when it comes to hiring. Women just don't have the same interest as men in these technical fields. I went through a Computer Science undergrad and each class had maybe, 1-2 women in it. The most one of my classes had was about 4 out of an average class size of 25+.

BINGO!

I shouldn't say this as if it's the golden rule. I am sure Facebook has some talented female code hacks. But I think there could still be some validity to what I said even if it doesn't answer for all the rejected code events.

Ask me if there are female devs that are as good as they come, I am sure there are. But if you set hiring quotes to boost diversity ratings there will have to be an impact.

AA + agenda = unwanted results... Who suffers? The company not the feelings of people.

People don't fail a code review to be mean. They fail a code review because the code has problems. Occasionally, the feedback will be somewhat frivolous or a matter of stylistic preference. Are the female coders more prone to frivolous feedback or are the criticisms typically valid?

Well stated.

It's a terrible social experiment that we're all going to have to pay the price for.
It's now hip to be diverse. Diversity in modern terms has nothing to do about intellectual diversity, but rather things people were born into like color of their skin, gender, sexual preference, religion.
If your hiring practices aren't only focused on getting the best person for the job, then you're not doing a good job in hiring. Eventually your company will suffer because your workforce isn't able to compete with others.

QFT

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

when i say boiled bacon i gag.

then i googled it.

why? why is this a thing?!

for Asians it is.... for us normal people it is blasphemy to boil bacon.... it was one of those rare times I told my wife to get *out* of the kitchen....

 

[Lakados]

when i say boiled bacon i gag.

then i googled it.

why? why is this a thing?!

Because some people hate life and they are crying for attention and help? Or maybe they just want to watch the world burn and desecrate the remains of an animal while they are at it?

 

[GlowingGhoul]

Another fallacy, this time a straw man. I spelled it out pretty clearly. Both sexes have mental health issues. They simply have different mental health issues. The kind that men suffer from just happen to lead to illegal behavior. That doesn't make anyone inferior or superior.

Do not misrepresent me.

I'm representing you perfectly, as the smug, logically challenged, emotionally motivated shallow thinker you are. You can save your demands about what I will and will not say, you won't find me compliant.

I'll keep it short and simple. Is there a difference, on average, in the relative strength in areas of aptitude between men and women, which would go a long way towards explaining the outcomes we see?

You will never accept that the results could very well be because of the males producing superior code. The possibility can not be there, you insist. This is quite common these days, and ironically those who preordain that drawing certain conclusions is forbidden, not because of evidence, but for other reasons, often crow about how open minded they are.

 

[Cyraxx]

To suggest that both males and females should have the same number of code changes approved would insinuate that they have equal skills in coding. So if that were the case, please show me some type of study showing that men and women had equal grades in their coding classes. Not to say that is an equal comparison either, but at least that holds some kind of weight vs. simply saying that you expect both to equal for no reason.

Otherwise, you're just using another biased BS comparison of strawman arguments. Just because A = B, does not mean B = C.

 

[Deleted member 184142]

The numbers simply aren't in women's favor at Facebook.

They only hold 17% of the technical roles at the company. That's not a large pool to begin with. The men have 83% of the remaining tech roles. The men simply have the numbers in their favor that suggests better code is statistically more likely to come from that larger group than the smaller group.

I don't think this has much to do with any sort of gender bias either when it comes to hiring. Women just don't have the same interest as men in these technical fields. I went through a Computer Science undergrad and each class had maybe, 1-2 women in it. The most one of my classes had was about 4 out of an average class size of 25+.

Considering women who get degrees in computer sciences hovers around 15-20%, yet they hold 25-30% of the jobs in the field, one could claim women are actually over represented.

 

[ianken]

LOL.

I've worked in tech for well over 30 years (you fucking newbs) as a developer.

I've seen women who could code their peers into the ground get nowhere and men who can't do shit without Stackoverflow make it to "partner." I've been on interview loops where women were passed over even though they were clearly more talented.

I've seen an entire Q/A department leadership cadre terminated because it was a fucking BYU/LDS frat-boy circle jerk club that only hired "hot chicks" then abused them constantly in email and in public. In addition to being assholes, they were shitty managers (unless you were Mormon (and a dude), then CA-CHING).

The dudebro techdouche thing is real.

 

[GlowingGhoul]

LOL.

I've worked in tech for well over 30 years (you fucking newbs) as a developer.

I've seen women who could code their peers into the ground get nowhere and men who can't do shit without Stackoverflow make it to "partner." I've been on interview loops where women were passed over even though they were clearly more talented.

I've seen an entire Q/A department leadership cadre terminated because it was a fucking BYU/LDS frat-boy circle jerk club that only hired "hot chicks" then abused them constantly in email and in public. In addition to being assholes, they were shitty managers (unless you were Mormon (and a dude), then CA-CHING).

The dudebro techdouche thing is real.

Well, I guess your anectdote settles it. Not only is there no way the males could have provided better code, on average, it's likely their code was inferior to their female counterparts and Facebook just hates women.

 

[nilepez]

The fact that you are so certain, without any evidence whatsoever, again, without any evidence whatsoever, that statistically, code written by females is rejected at a higher rate because of gender discrimination, shows how eager you are to join into a victimhood narrative because it appeals to the social justice warrior in you.

Is the fact that males are imprisoned at far higher rates than women evidence of blatant gender discrimination? By your reasoning, we should see men and women convicted of crimes at the same rate, because you know, equality, right?

I don't know jack on this. But the certainty on this board that women are inferior and that they're just whiners who aren't worthy of being there is palpable.

 

[GlowingGhoul]

No nilepez, it's just pushing back against the notion that any negative result for women in the workplace can only be the result of discrimination and any other possibility must not be considered.

 

[Deleted member 184142]

LOL.

I've worked in tech for almost 30 years (you fucking newbs) as a developer.

I've seen women who could code their peers into the ground get nowhere and men who can't do shit without Stackoverflow make it to "partner." I've been on interview loops where women were passed over even though they were clearly more talented.

I've seen an entire Q/A department leadership cadre terminated because it was a fucking BYU/LDS frat-boy circle jerk club that only hired "hot chicks" then abused them constantly in email and in public. In addition to being assholes, they were shitty managers (unless you were Mormon (and a dude), then CA-CHING).

The dudebro techdouche thing is real.

Men tend to advance faster even if of equal skill to a woman, however that has been shown to be due to personality, time spent in the job and aggressiveness. Men tend to push for raises or advances FAR more often than a woman.

That is not to say there is no bad management anywhere, but as a whole. In those cases it should be documented and brought up to HR if it is real. These kind of cases also happen in fields that are over represented by women, where men are passed over who have greater experience/skill. In cases like this, the code is being corrected, it is not sex related, the code is either right or its not, this is not a rejection of them to the job or the like, it is black and white, it's either good or its not.

I don't know jack on this. But the certainty on this board that women are inferior and that they're just whiners who aren't worthy of being there is palpable.

I think this board for the most part has stated, time and time again, that for the number of women who get degrees in this field are correct for the number in the job field, if not more so than should be expected. That has nothing to do with being inferior, if only 15-20% of degrees given out are to women, but they hold 25-30% of the jobs, does that seem like discrimination to you?

 

[nilepez]

That explains hiring practices, but code is pretty ambiguous....you'd have to be pretty daft as a project manager or whatnot to reject perfectly good code from a current employee just to spite women.
And COMPLETELY agree I'd never last in one of those hot box jobs. I'm a IT grunt, anything above that is someone else's problem. My district IT department head is a woman so is what it is.

Maybe. Maybe not. Look I don't know, but my comment has more to do with the anti-woman bias on this board. It's been here for years. As for code reviews, unless the code is reviewed blindly, there's bias. It doesn't even have to be intentional. If the people on [H] made up the reviewers, women would not do as well, because so many assume the women MUST be inferior. And it's not just this thread. It's anytime there's an article that deals with women in S/W or H/W. It's remarkable, because in College, the only person with this type of attitude was the guy who, AFAIK, never graduated and god did he hate that women were in CS.

 

[Cyraxx]

LOL.

I've worked in tech for well over 30 years (you fucking newbs) as a developer.

I've seen women who could code their peers into the ground get nowhere and men who can't do shit without Stackoverflow make it to "partner." I've been on interview loops where women were passed over even though they were clearly more talented.

I've seen an entire Q/A department leadership cadre terminated because it was a fucking BYU/LDS frat-boy circle jerk club that only hired "hot chicks" then abused them constantly in email and in public. In addition to being assholes, they were shitty managers (unless you were Mormon (and a dude), then CA-CHING).

The dudebro techdouche thing is real.

Good ol' liberals.... fighting and tearing down stereotypes and discrimination....with....stereotypes.

Keep on keeping on. I'm sure you will help bring everyone together instead of segregating people further.

 

[nilepez]

No nilepez, it's just pushing back against the notion that any negative result for women in the workplace can only be the result of discrimination and any other possibility must not be considered.

On [H] it's EVERY negative result is because women are inferior. Over and over and over. Same thing and mostly the same guys. I don't know the details of this, but I do know that if there is an article about women in IT, the same people can be relied on to talk about how the women are inferior. They're only their for Affirmative action. Men are better than women....on and on. It's like [H] is populated by a bunch of guys from the 60s and 70s.

 

[nilepez]

Men tend to advance faster even if of equal skill to a woman, however that has been shown to be due to personality, time spent in the job and aggressiveness. Men tend to push for raises or advances FAR more often than a woman.

That is not to say there is no bad management anywhere, but as a whole. In those cases it should be documented and brought up to HR if it is real. These kind of cases also happen in fields that are over represented by women, where men are passed over who have greater experience/skill. In cases like this, the code is being corrected, it is not sex related, the code is either right or its not, this is not a rejection of them to the job or the like, it is black and white, it's either good or its not.



I think this board for the most part has stated, time and time again, that for the number of women who get degrees in this field are correct for the number in the job field, if not more so than should be expected. That has nothing to do with being inferior, if only 15-20% of degrees given out are to women, but they hold 25-30% of the jobs, does that seem like discrimination to you?

Um...who's talking about the percentage of female workers? I certainly wasn't.

 

[STR]

I'm representing you perfectly, as the smug, logically challenged, emotionally motivated shallow thinker you are. You can save your demands about what I will and will not say, you won't find me compliant.

TL;DR version: GG likes fallacies and being rude.

I'll keep it short and simple. Is there a difference, on average, in the relative strength in areas of aptitude between men and women, which would go a long way towards explaining the outcomes we see?

You will never accept that the results could very well be because of the males producing superior code. The possibility can not be there, you insist. This is quite common these days, and ironically those who preordain that drawing certain conclusions is forbidden, not because of evidence, but for other reasons, often crow about how open minded they are.

The ol' genetic fallacy combined with ad hominem. You've hit a fallacy hat trick.

You've spent more time telling me what I think (and getting it painfully wrong) than you've spent backing up your argument.

So how about you stick to the topic. You're rebutting the OP study. You need to provide an alternative hypothesis that's a lot more detailed than "men are better coders because reasons".

 

[Deleted member 184142]

Um...who's talking about the percentage of female workers? I certainly wasn't.

You said the board holds that women are inferior, where is that at exactly?

People pointing out the facts is not stating they are inferior.

 

[Kelter]

I would say on average, equivalent male and female candidates, the male candidate will make more. Offers to females tend to be lower. Is it justified or not? I don't know. Offers go out depending on what the lowest you think that person would take vs what they know. Why do you think they ask if you are currently employed and if so, how much you currently make? Could the wages for women be affected by the fact that they may end up going on maternity leave for 6 months? It's a huge stress on the team when this happens, so I'm sure it's a concern for some managers.

Anyways, more so than gender or skillset, it's who you know. I've seen women given fantastic jobs just for being the sister of an exec's g/f. I've also seen execs becoming execs because their dad is the CEO... lol.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

This is totally understandable, it's hard to code while you're making sandwiches.

 

[ssnyder28]

I rate this thread a C++

 

[Logan321]

Clipped from Facebook's response "Any meaningful discrepancy based on the complete data is clearly attributable not to gender but to seniority of the employee."

They go on to state that significantly more men are promoted to higher swe ranks than women compared to their hiring percentages.

Basically, women are either passed over for promotions or quit more frequently than men. That sounds like a problem to me.

 

[Dman014]

LOL.

I've worked in tech for well over 30 years (you fucking newbs) as a developer.

I've seen women who could code their peers into the ground get nowhere and men who can't do shit without Stackoverflow make it to "partner." I've been on interview loops where women were passed over even though they were clearly more talented.

I've seen an entire Q/A department leadership cadre terminated because it was a fucking BYU/LDS frat-boy circle jerk club that only hired "hot chicks" then abused them constantly in email and in public. In addition to being assholes, they were shitty managers (unless you were Mormon (and a dude), then CA-CHING).

The dudebro techdouche thing is real.

And I have been on interview panels where we had a woman being interviewed who we practically would give the answers to in the interview and we still hired her because we simply did not have enough women on the IT team; All the while our finance team and CFO was 90% women..... Whats your point. I have worked with some women who were really great at their job in IT, but as it has been said already you shouldn't just jump immediately to bias just because two different groups had two different outcomes.

reread that, should point out that as far as I know the CFO was 100% woman

 

[Seelenlos]

Sure is possible. I've seen more than one article talking about authors and how women will change their pen name to some ambiguous or just out right male name and see improved responses to their work. Read a post from one guy who didn't' believe it and changed his name to a lady's name and was shocked at how different the response was from publishers he worked with. You would think code would be free from this kind of thing but...people are morons. Need further proof? Turn on the TV or go for a walk. Morons everywhere!

 

[Dman014]

That's a pretty lousy red herring. Men are more prone to violence and aggression than women, who tend to have more problems with depression and anxiety. Since anxiety isnt illegal while violence is, one would expect higher male incarceration holding all else equal and fair.

Culture, however, plays a huge part. Social stigmas are why men have higher suicide rates even though women are more likely to suffer depression.

.

There have been studies that show that women are more likely to be physical aggressors in domestic relationships(perhaps from the sandwich comments), but men are less likely to report it. Just because there is a different result from two groups does not necessarily mean bias.

 

[NickJames]

On [H] it's EVERY negative result is because women are inferior. Over and over and over. Same thing and mostly the same guys. I don't know the details of this, but I do know that if there is an article about women in IT, the same people can be relied on to talk about how the women are inferior. They're only their for Affirmative action. Men are better than women....on and on. It's like [H] is populated by a bunch of guys from the 60s and 70s.

Well most long term [H] users are older men in their 40s. I myself just don't care for all the "all men hate woman" bullshit. This is not true, what we hate is confirmation bias. Woman and men will never be equals because biologically they can't, and this should be ok with people. Our brains are programmed a certain way and this will never be fixed unless every man turns gay.

 

[Tawnos]

Why are so many of you [H] folks acting like this is a personal criticism or demand? Eesh, you'd think it was a proposal to require you to turn in your left nut by Tuesday.

 

[Maxx]

Obligatory mention of the Silicon Valley episode where Dinesh falls for Gilfoyle's code when he thinks a chick wrote it. ("you're gay for my code")

This has been brought up before in articles over the last decade and one from last year regarding pull requests on ./ may be relevant for those interested in related research and comments from those in the industry.

 

[Bobert]

 

[Riouken]

Sure is possible. I've seen more than one article talking about authors and how women will change their pen name to some ambiguous or just out right male name and see improved responses to their work. Read a post from one guy who didn't' believe it and changed his name to a lady's name and was shocked at how different the response was from publishers he worked with. You would think code would be free from this kind of thing but...people are morons. Need further proof? Turn on the TV or go for a walk. Morons everywhere!

Ahh the Implicit Bias tag line.

If your a white male your automatically : Racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamophobic etc... and the only way you can solve it is "Social Justice"....

Dont worry though because I can sell you some "Anti-implicit Bias" training classes to have you and all of your employees correct all of your social wrongs.

/sarcasm

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...-study-disputes-effects-unconscious-prejudice

 

[HammerSandwich]

They only hold 17% of the technical roles at the company. That's not a large pool to begin with. The men have 83% of the remaining tech roles.

The word "remaining" just kills your argument. Or are 17% of FB's tech positions filled by hermaphrodites?

 

[kinjo]

Hey I have a simple f*^&%ing solution how about make code submissions anonymous for 6 months and then re check the data. If the rejection rates are still higher for the submissions by female engineers then they just suck at their job if they even out then Facebook has some corporate culture issues to address. boom problem solved. My guess is that the data would come back the same as it has been to this point and then women's rights groups will just tell us it's because Women code differently and men just need to learn to understand the unique female coding process to realize that it's actually better code or some BS like that; but I could be wrong either way it's pretty simple to test.

 

[STR]

There have been studies that show that women are more likely to be physical aggressors in domestic relationships(perhaps from the sandwich comments), but men are less likely to report it. Just because there is a different result from two groups does not necessarily mean bias.

That was kinda my point. Abused men are victims too, both of the actual violence, and a society which doesn't take them seriously. Sexism hurts almost everyone, often in different ways.

I myself just don't care for all the "all men hate woman" bullshit.

Did anyone here say this? People keep bringing up this strawman (straw-woman?) rather than debating the points raised in this discussion. Why are we talking about people who aren't here, and aren't even part of the OP report?

Woman and men will never be equals because biologically they can't, and this should be ok with people. Our brains are programmed a certain way and this will never be fixed unless every man turns gay.

Citation required. (EDIT: it occurred to me that you might mean "men and women will never be the same" which is true. If you actually mean that, and not what you literally wrote ("never be equals"), let me know. There's more than a little difference in wording there.)

Also, and I don't know if this applies to you, but I've learned a lot of "soft skills" in the last couple of years that changed my perspective and it hasn't made me lust after dong. In fact, it's made me a lot better at getting clear requirements from clients, which means less time spent rebuilding projects.

Finally, gayMan != straightWoman. Like, not even close.

 

[Malcador]

it's like this site is in the 1% left that actually thinks! Must be the result of some social injustice!

 

[SPARTAN VI]

Good timing on this article.

Just had a female "systems consultant" rage quit from my team's Lync Group Chat because she thought she knew something about database design and SQL. Basically our company just made a catastrophic mistake with multiple impacted customers due to a single digit transposition in the Unique_ID on their SQL query. So once we triaged the issue, I logically proceeded with a root-cause analysis. From there we can make process improvements because we don't want this catastrophic failure to happen again, right? Well it became about emotion... her reply was that "ANYONE could have made that mistake." Okay sure, which is why we need to improve the process, to prevent that mistake from the future and y'know keep our customers.

I made an off-the-cuff suggestion that the responsible contractor(/s) (read: H1B workers) compose their query in such a way that it search both Unique_ID AND Tax_ID (an example for your eyes, not the real attributes). She said that wouldn't work since one Tax_ID may belong to multiple different customers. Uh... that's only a problem if we query solely by Tax_ID, I proposed a WHERE clause with multiple conditions/filters. A semi-logical exchange ensued... my half was logical, her's was quite spiteful. To shut it down, I came back with a carefully crafted example query and instead of continuing the discussion she rage quit from the group chat. I thought maaaaybe she had just logged off without telling anyone, but I could see she was still logged into Lync. What a bitch.

 

[MrBonk]

No nilepez, it's just pushing back against the notion that any negative result for women in the workplace can only be the result of discrimination and any other possibility must not be considered.

This. I'm sure women are more than competent. But the default reasoning and answer is always "Gender bias" for just about everything.

So you can forgive any skepticism right?

 

[Seelenlos]

Ahh the Implicit Bias tag line.

If your a white male your automatically : Racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamophobic etc... and the only way you can solve it is "Social Justice"....

Dont worry though because I can sell you some "Anti-implicit Bias" training classes to have you and all of your employees correct all of your social wrongs.

/sarcasm

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...-study-disputes-effects-unconscious-prejudice

I repeated what someone said they experienced. They didn't mention race. They also said women reacted the same and that not all of the male publishers acted that way. Not everyone is biased that way but some people are. Too ignore that is silly.
I'm not sure why you want to turn what I typed into a broad sweeping statement that everyone is like that. If I wanted to say all white men are assholes I would have wrote that, I didn't.

 

[collegeboy69us]

you know as a guy... if I wanted to go into the field of child care or baby sitting, or something like that I'd face massive rejection as well from most people because "omg he must be a pedo!" Now imagine if I was a really crappy child care provider, what do you think would happen? That's right! I probably wouldn't get promoted, or accepted with open arms by my peers.

This is an extreme example of course, but if I'm running a business and need good solid code I don't give a crap who actually writes it for me. If statistically more women are turning in sub-par code that doesn't mean I hate women it just means they need to learn to code better or get their head into the game. For decades women have been tooting the equality trumpet, and that's great., but are they just now realizing that equality means not holding them to a different set of standards just because they have a set of tits?

 

[Loose Nut]

How about we stop the click bait crap and get back to [H]ardIOCP quality topics.

We miss you Steve.

 

[Dr. Righteous]

Man writes sloppy code = YOU SUCK!
Woman writes sloppy code = DISCRIMINATION!

Women are good at abstract thinking this is essential for programming. And some are exceptional at it .
BUT, what cannot be ignored is most women have no interest in technical minutia and that is all that programming is. Even though they might code for a living if their heart isn't in it, they are not going to be very good at it.
This is usually how it works out in most technical fields. They are qualified, they can do the job but their heart isn't really in it. Reminds me of a technician they hired at a company I use to work for. She was qualified as any of the men that held the same position, so why not? I asked her why she decided on a technical field. I was floored by the answer. "Well, I wanted to be with my boyfriend and he was going to ITT, so I signed up too. But after a while we broke up and I spent a lot of money on the education so I had to finish." She really had no desire to work in the field at all. How was her work? Mediocre at best. After a while she quit and opened a bake shop. She loved to bake and turned out to a successful venture.

 

[Ducman69]

We have the opposite trend at my company. The more a woman sucks, the faster she gets promoted. Has to suck the right things though, office politics and all.