Facebook staff reject female engineers’ code more often, former employee claims

The Verge is using the WSJ as the source.

Maybe this is a "Facebook rejects..." story. Maybe it's a story about how bad Facebook is.

But if you keep reading past the introduction it sure sounds a lot more like a "male engineers reject..." story.

And then if you keep reading some more it sure sounds like a "code is rejected proportionally to engineer seniority..." story, which is not a story.

And then at the very very end, you finally get to the only part of this terrible article that makes any sense:

> the current representation of senior female engineers both at Facebook and across the industry is nowhere near where it needs to be.

Facebook talking about itself is the only honestly presented thing on the page.

* the data itself hasn't been released so no one outside of Facebook has in any way analyzed it, we're relying on their analysis and reportage of that analysis to be correct

* the rejection rate is not just higher for female engineers, it's a lot higher: 35%

* Facebook is confident that the effect is not due to gender bias (scrutinizing female workers' code more closely) but that it's due to a confounding effect of engineering rank (females tend to be lower rank, and lower ranks tend to have more rejections through some mechanism)

In other words, we definitely need more study in the area before I would be confident drawing any important conclusions. It is a fascinating step forward though.

That Facebook hasn't achieved gender parity yet would suggest to me that the world hasn't yet caught up with supplying the demand for female employees at various levels of the corporate ladder without it impacting their business operations.

If the stereotype for a senior engineer is a balding white male with glasses, and you have two prospective engineers with otherwise identical resumes and work histories: one balding white male with glasses and even a pocket protector on his white shirt, and one black woman with a wild T-shirt, which would you hire? The answer I'd heard before was that you should hire the non-conformist, because they've risen to identical positions and accomplishments despite the bias against them at each step, while the stereotypical engineer was probably assumed to belong in the positions they attained. So you should choose the stuttering surgeon and the messy lawyer when given the opportunity.

(No idea where I heard it or what the phenomenon is called, though - anyone remember this?)

And then of course any disparities, properly normalized for alternative factors (or not), have to be corrected. Very messy science. It's also easy and politically expedient science - these days we're obsessed with inequality, and if you just comb around you're bound to find some statistically significant disparities and that gets everyone's attention. If researchers were trying to investigate population-level thoughtcrime, this is what it might look like.

If higher rank of coder would make rejection less likely, it would also not bear well on the code reviews.

Given that the engineer-lead study found this impact when controlling for seniority at FB while the suit-lead one didn't for rank, it certainly raises the question of why women have a lower rank for a given seniority. Charitably maybe men have more experience coming in, but if that was truly the case they could have used that as their input variable to avoid the obvious follow up concerns.

I think this could be improved by a system of code review anonymization that sends code reviews out - company wide - without identifying author info.

The enphasis of this boundary creates a space for privileged information amongst the network. those internal to the network have access to resources others do not, most often in the form of people and the information in their head. The actual quality of information amongst groups is probably roughly the same, but with in-network information, there is more willingness to be open about this information. This is because information can be infinitely duplicated. Giving out information reduces your competitive advantage just as teaching someone everything you know would as well.

Take away the concept of groups and you remove overt hazing. However, individuals exist along with their gated information. This information includes their deepest secrets and fears, their de-facto model of the organization, as well as the secrets to their strengths. Regarding this last one, if you have a high enough gated privilege, he may just give you a link to the resource he used. If you don't, he may just try and explain it himself. And if you have low privilege, he'll be too busy.

Most organizational skills are NOT generic skills learned in school. They are often tips about organizational management, who to ask about what as well as the hidden mental models that keep the legacy code running.

Take this potential acenario: If a women asks a man how the fuck the shitty legacy code works, there is a threat. The woman who is fresh from school has some ivory tower ideas and the man is threatened because he knew he took some shortcuts. This manifests itself as arrogance when explaining, perhaps even just telling the woman to just figure it out as some sort of hazing test. One she is jaded enough by organizational existence will no longer be a threat.

So there is a constant dynamic of men needing to orove themselves to other men and women. When women are involved, the need is higher, creating more arrogance and a higher power distance. Many woman know this, which is why they are more likely to say: "I heard you were the expert in this area, could you give me a few pointers? I'm SOOO bad at this stuff. " while other men might "What the fuck is this shit?!"

Men basically have 2 choices to extract information. Playing the mentee, or playing a high status individual that the other person has to prove themselves to. Women often only have the first because culturally they are socially punished for aggressive behavior.

One root cultural stem is that a man mist be in some eay superior to a woman to "deserve" her. Gender roles have the man playing the hero. This imperative prevents men seeking help from women but also systematically prevents women from reaching high status without overt and obvious superiority in an aspect.

This last part is very important. The issue is NOT about actual skill. Out society is set up fairly well in that it is still mostly a meritocracy. The best rise to the top, and this includes women.

The issue is that your ability is determined by your access to experience and attitudes. (No longer knowledge, e.g. Blacks being banned from libraries or similar) This can create a headwind or tailwind for you in different directions.

Also, in places where measuring skill is flawed and has huge variance, women often have to doubly prove themselves because their "scores" are artificially deflated while an extroverted tall white males might be inflated. From an organizational standpoint this is in some ways even "good" because the org may bot be sexist, but it sure as hell wants its ICs to fall in line. That entails a manager or leader that can utilize aggression and status.

So, to sum up, culturally women are often forced to play a low status role, and men are forced into high status and often more high pressure roles. From a romantic but somewhat chauvanistic view, this is "protecting our daughters and wives". In reality, you fake it till you make it. Men have the paths to power opened for them while women are stuck having to out on fake smiles. (Though often self imposed due to fear. But then again, that fear is another cultural manifestation of boys being taught to face their fears to protect the girls who aren't expected to do anythinf)