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Comment by Kluny | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the women just hustled harder. I know that was the case in the program I went through. 30 of us passed; 3 were women. All 3 women and about 20% of the men got good industry jobs. However, I and the other two women were hustling for jobs, sending resumes, networking and going to interviews 6 months before graduation. Most of the men, assuming they were telling the truth when I casually asked them about it, didn't even start to write their resumes until the resume-writing workshop during the last week of school. Of the men who got jobs, one was given a position by his brother who had a hip startup; 3 showed up to a FAST consulting recruiting event and all three got hired there; one already had a degree in software engineering and a job waiting for him at his old employer; and several others went back to their old jobs as well.

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It's entirely possible that the women just hustled harder, thus explaining while all the qualified ones were hired.

The problem is with the one who failed the class. What do we know about her? We know that she either was too lazy to pass the class--implying she doesn't hustle--or she is simply unable to pass the class, implying she isn't qualified.

Combine this with the current political climate, in which a company looks like its trying to solve problems if it employs more women; and the fact that women joining male-dominated fields tends to cause a reduction in wages in those fields, and the fact that this seemingly unqualified and/or non-hustling woman was hired while many men were not, and its suggestive of a gender bias.

That is not to say the other women who were hired aren't qualified or don't deserve those jobs. Merely that there may exist a gender bias which is problematic in that it is focusing a particular outcome (equality of gender) at the expense of economic sense and efficiency; not to mention the personal expense of the qualified men and also at the expense of the unqualified woman who, if such a bias exists, is really being exploited.

It's also possible that she had qualifications in the industry she was hired for besides web design. It's not suggestive of bias at all - it simply tells us that there's something about the candidates that we don't know.

Anything is possible, but gender bias seems a much likelier conclusion than that she was hired as a dev because she has skills other than dev.

> Maybe the women just hustled harder.

Doubt that explains it.

I went through a large software development course, about 70 people. 60-40 male-female. Was a positive experience. The women all landed jobs instantly. As in, the day the camp ended, they all had jobs. The men, mostly, did not. It took months and multiple interviews for the men to get hired.

The demand for female developers is higher than the demand for male developers. (not that the demand for male developers is low). This doesn't particularly bother me, but it does appear to be a thing.

The way I look at it, most of the personal attributes that get you an entry-level job will end up having nothing to do with how well you will perform in that job. Gender is just another one of those.

40% female? That's extremely high. Wonder how they accomplished that.

That seems like a reasonable ratio considering that bootcamps are a popular way for women to break into the industry.

No, it is not a typical ratio. Bootcamps often have cohorts where there are 10 percent or even fewer women. For a bootcamp to have 40 percent ratio is impressive and unusual. Also - remarkable for all women to have a job at graduation. The bootcamp described sounds very unusual and the numbers are so very different from industry standard - that I encourage anyone reading to do their own research.

Which sites do you suggest for research?

I suggest talking to most recent grads of a program as things change all the time. For example, schools which previously had good placement may hugely expand number of cohorts - and not scale out job-finding resources or company partnerships.

Maybe so. But your experience is slightly different from what I'm objecting to most - which was a woman failing the programme and getting a development job, while men passed and no jobs or irrelevant jobs.

No amount of hustle puts a candidate that failed a 'boot camp' above one that passed in a merit-based evaluation.

Unless she got hired in an industry where she already had experience, and the bootcamp qualification was only tangential to that.

"One already had a degree in software engineering..." There's a whole other issue right there.

You can conclude whatever you want from it, but in this case the gentleman in question had a good government job with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, where he still works, as far as I know. He left his job temporarily to take a 2-year programming diploma on top of his software engineering degree. I don't think he did it to get a job since he already had one. It was more that his whole department was on the chopping block under the previous federal administration, and he thought it would be wise to get off of their payroll for a couple of years to avoid losing his job altogether. As far as I can tell it worked, as the federal administration has changed and he still has his job.

I promise, there wasn't any sexism involved.

Sorry, I was not being clear - I wasn't thinking of sexism, but what a person with a software engineeing degree was doing at a programming boot camp. I realize that software engineering is not programming, but if the term has any meaning, I would expect anyone with such a degree to know enough about what it takes to make software as to be able to pick up common languages by self-study. Your reply hints that his attendance at boot camp might be as much about certification and documented hands-on experience as education.

Ah, I see. Yes, you're right. I wondered what he was doing there myself. The "keeping my government job" story was reasonable, but you'd think he could have found a private industry job easily enough.

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