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Comment by rad88 | Hacker News Reader

No doubt. I'm not here to say any company can have ~50% female engineers if only they did what we do, but this idea that a more reasonable expectation would be 16% strikes me as bullshit.

So I'm boasting a bit, not claiming this is normal, but just to say... come on guys, think bigger.

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iirc male CS grads outnumber females by more than 4:1, so ~20% seems about spot on, no? It's something that would have to be attacked at a level far before employment, e.g., social constructs and the education system. Once it comes down to the employer they only have one pool from which to draw applicants.

20% would be a lower bound. I majored in a hard science, not CS. Two great programmers I know, in senior positions, don't even have a degree. At my last company there was a decent Rails engineer who studied communication in college and had worked in affiliate marketing at his previous job. There was also a guy who was a lawyer and then went to code camp and got hired as an engineer.

The pipeline isn't sufficient to explain the gender ratio.

Ok, but if we assume that the number of non-CS grads who work in software development is proportional (seems fair) between males and females you're still in the same boat. Are you saying that women far out number men when it comes to sw devs who didn't major in CS?

I just don't see any data that supports what you're saying. 20% is the _upper_ bound.

Your question is about people who have already become employed software developers. Obviously those women don't far outnumber men in any respect. What I'm saying is the candidate pool of women is much larger than is assumed here (the candidate pool of men is as well). It wouldn't take a "magic wand" to start hiring them. Maybe doing so would amount to discrimination in some people's eyes, but I think this business of hiring professional models to entertain the men and give the appearance of parity is pretty sketchy as well. Corporations are apparently willing to take drastic measures to create the a certain kind of gendered workplace experience. Given the choice I would rather the results of their actions actually benefit society in some way.

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