Hacker News Reader

Comment by kamens | Hacker News Reader

And what I'm asking you is: can you come up with any possible explanations for an increase in women devs over time that should be celebrated, especially at an organization that values equal education for everyone, without first wondering if our interview questions have changed?

View on HN

Can you come up with any possible explanation period? You're dodging my question.

An increase in women in tech majors and a company mission that strongly appeals to both women and men.

I'm pretty sure most universities have a company mission that appeals to both men and women and they haven't suddenly seen a 2:1 f/m ratio in CS majors. What makes Khan so different?

He might have a point in that a lot of women seem to aspire to be teachers. For example when I got my maths degree, 99% (estimated) of the women sitting in the lectures with me were studying to become teachers. Perhaps working for Khan Academy somehow seems close enough to teaching.

What % of the applicant pool was women?

Some hard numbers would help this discussion.

Why is an explanation required? Any developer worth his or her salt knows that, statistically, something like this is bound to happen over enough companies and enough years, even if the trend is so heavily skewed the other way.

Is this a 3 sigma deviation? Maybe. Or could it be that, on average, women might be drawn to educational software more than other types? Doesn't sound unreasonable.

Regardless, your insistence on an explanation shows that you're still stuck in the bad old days.

I don't think you have to feel attacked, isn't it natural to ask what is going on if you produce an outlier? It could be genuine curiosity.

In the same vein it is interesting to ask why most companies receive more male applications. Without asking these questions, how can there ever be an improvement (except for random luck)?

As a hiring manager for over a decade, I can't recall the last time I received a resume from a qualified female applicant for a full-time software position.

Internships tend to be a bit less one-sided, but the skew is still quite high.

This sucks. I want to receive those resumes, for what I hope are obvious reasons, but I don't ever receive them.

Given that, I can't help but wonder whether:

1) You have a completely different applicant pool

2) You somehow changed your application process in a way that resulted in a 2:1 female:male ratio.

I don't think those are terrible questions to have. The answers could be enlightening.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com