How to Hire More Women at Your Startup | Hacker News Reader

How to Hire More Women at Your Startup

cristinajcordova.com

How about, just hire the people who can do the work, as verified by a work-sample test, and set up a company culture that welcomes everyone who can do the work?

AFTER EDIT: Another reply asked, "How about a guide to hiring the best person for the job?" I notice that the user's username is green, which means he is new here, so perhaps he hasn't yet seen my FAQ on that subject, which I compiled from the helpful comments of many other HN participants. The latest full posting of that FAQ

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923

provides lots of details.

While I agree with you completely, I think what you are saying isn't at odds with what she is saying.

While most pieces of writing about getting more women in tech seem to propose the problem as "How to Add Women to Tech", the real issue they're addressing is "How to Remove the Unnoticed Barriers to Women in Tech".

Like any other majority, the male majority of the tech industry often take for granted a number of things as "normal", "everyone does them".

People should absolutely "just hire the people who can do the work", but they should assure that their company and process are not set up in a way that, unbeknownst to them, turns off a certain minority whose needs they fail to recognize. These posts are trying to highlight those needs or differences so that it's easier to break that "normal" barrier.

I think the article might blur the line in some places between things that really are invisible barriers to hiring women and some that are just about hiring who you want.

For example I could totally see the point about making sure at least one woman interviews every new hire to be a great policy. You always want to feel like you will fit in wherever you work, and being a woman and then seeing only men can feel a bit disconcerting and alienating. However I am lucky enough to work with a lot of great female coders and for some of them free chips and beer (and especially whisky shots!) would be a great perk.

I have to agree with you there. That comes back to the biggest problem when dealing with any group of people:

No two people are alike, despite whatever label you give them. There will always be exceptions, and no list of simple statements will cover all of them.

However, that doesn't mean that an effort to compile a reasonable set of standards based on inputs from a large number of that group can't make significant strides in improving their situation, which is what really should be the focus.

Fantastic comment. I care a lot about diversity in tech because I fully believe it will make tech better, but ultimately for me in my company I am always going to hire the best person for the specific job being considered - that's never a question and I'm not sure where the jump usually happens between "don't turn off minorities in your process" and "hire with a priority on minorities"

Great reply, you said exactly what I was thinking when I read the parent comment.

While I think using women applicants and hires as a proxy for a healthy company culture that welcomes diversity, I can't think of anything quite as simple, measurable or elegant as measuring the number of women applicants. Can you?

Even before you get to the point of hire, you still have to advertise for the position. If you have the word "ninja" in there or only work through existing networks, you'll obviously get a skewed applicant pool.

So really, these kinds of suggestions can help you increase the overall quality of hires. Not sure why people think this is discrimination when it's actually rather elitist.

Which part of for instance "be conscious of gender differences" didn't you get?

You cannot "just" hire people who can do the work if your selection process or company culture is gender biased from the first line of your job posting. You'll end up with "just" men who can do the work.

It's all good advice, and you'll not only increase the quality and quantity of your potential female applicants but the male ones as well. I think, however, that there are many women who like beer, know what "hacker" means, and can manage a traditionally masculine environment very well, probably better than many men. I did find it a little insulting that the OP thought these values are somehow unique to women. Well this is of course silly. The image of a coder with the hygiene and social skills of a teenage boy and the social skills to match has always been exaggerated (see: Grandma's Boy), probably to negative effects for women considering CS as a career.

My point is, most of those things are just good advise for companies regardless of gender. I sure don't want to work in a "dirty hacker house".

Agreed, this is not solely for recruiting women, but also for building a team that is more accepting of diversity in general.

Note this video of a messy hackerhouse: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/04/tc-cribs-likealittle-lal/ Not a single commenter is a woman.

> Most people understand why it’s important to have more women in the workplace (and more diversity in general beyond gender).

Actually, I have never heard a satisfactory explanation of why this is important.

Data shows that companies with more women in leadership roles outperform companies with fewer women in leadership roles. [1]

Women drive economic growth. Women went from holding 37 percent of all jobs to 47 percent over the past 40 years. This has accounted for about a quarter of current GDP. [2]

If your company is selling products to women or households (for which women do the majority of spending), it makes sense to have people on your team who can understand what they want.

Studies show diversifying the workplace helps businesses increase their market share. [3]

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/katetaylor/2012/06/26/the-new-ca...

[2] http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/organization/latest_t...

[3] http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Ass...

1. How muc of the growth in women's share of those employed comes from growing female labour force participation and how much is declining male labour force participation?

2. A quarter of current GDP? How much of that is accounted for by the movement of goods and services from the non-monetarty sector to the monetary sector? Because that's not growth, that's accounting.

Is it better to have access to 50% of talent or 100% of talent?

Being willing to hire whoever is best for the job gets you there though. The statement above seems to be about diversity for diversity's sake.

Some startups are 'willing' to hire whoever is best for the job but have invisible (to them) obstacles that may prevent them from doing so. I thought the article explained some of those obstacles well.

The post assumes that the women you are trying to recruit are qualified.

Sure. I was questioning the assumption that a diverse workforce is better than a non-diverse workforce. It's not clear to me that you can actually do better through pursuing diversity than you can through simply being willing to interview and hire whoever is best for the jobs. Now, not setting up unintentional barriers to hiring women, as you discuss, is sort of a prerequisite for that.

I think the post is more about not driving off women who are qualified.

correct, that was my goal.

How about a guide to hiring the best person for the job? Given that's what actually matters and not the gender of the person.

If your workplace culture is getting in the way of hiring the best person for the job, then that's a problem that transcends gender. By the logic that women won't be comfortable taking a job where there aren't other women, then businesses should make sure to have someone of every race, gender, religion and age so they don't put off any potential applicants.

I'd love to see any empirical evidence whatsoever to support the myriad assumptions made in this article.

Don't say that "we only hire the top 1% of candidates" because women aren't confident enough to apply to those jobs? Female tech workers don't know/like what the word "hacker/hack" means?

This quote in particular seems to sum up a bizarre focus on gender above all issues:

"If you can’t find potential female candidates, you’re just being lazy."

An employer being lazy about hiring people? We live in a society where there are often hundreds or even thousands of applications for a single position because of a massive labor surplus.

The vastly disproportionate effort that's being recommended towards hiring women smacks of rank tokenism.

It's hard to see how the women that Cristina Cordova envisions inhabit the tech industry have the necessary metacognitive skills to be an effective/assertive member of any workforce. If they're so insecure as to be put off from a good position by the term "hacker", or so intimidated by groups who don't look like them, how can they be expected to handle other tasks that require confidence, assertiveness, and ability to deal with people different from yourself?

Thankfully all the women I've met in the tech industry seem to be a far cry from this stereotype. They've all been perfectly capable and confident, and the only effort I needed to extend to them is the same I'd extend to any colleague; respectful professionalism, aka not being an asshole and not letting other people down.

> We live in a society where there are often hundreds or even thousands of applications for a single position because of a massive labor surplus.

You must be new here.

At least that's entirely inconsistent with my experience in technology; there are a huge number of companies looking for talented developers and very few developers to fill those positions.

"talented", "huge number" and "very few" are all very subjective descriptions. For example, try posting a regular senior software developer position in Java or C# on monster.com: you will get at least 100 resumes. If you are looking for "superstars" or "ninjas", you might be unimpressed, but many of these people are perfectly able to do the job.

No joke. Been looking for a mid Java dev for a year. 4 C#/C++/Python/Ruby applicants later, we promoted from within.

What I see from your comment is: 1) There was no immediate need to hire 2) You turned down 4 candidates. C#/C++ experience is quite transferrable to Java except at very advanced levels 3) Finally, you promoted the guy who was there all along and could have been doing the job for the whole year already

Basically, there is a shortage of software engineers, but they must possess very specific skills and have lots of experience. All the others are not considered suitable candidates for most positions.

Do you live in a major tech center?

"The vastly disproportionate effort that's being recommended towards hiring women smacks of rank tokenism."

There are very important distinctions between tokenism and disproportionate effort. In my view, tokenism is choosing someone for superficial characteristics that have no bearing on their performance. Disproportionate effort gets you a wider pool of applicants from underrepresented groups, which raises the probability of the best applicant being a minority.

Your post reeks of mansplaining: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/a-cultural-...

You are saying that "I have female co-workers who aren't put off by this culture! See, because I know them and they work in this culture, it's not sexist!" Which is a far cry from reality. At the very least, it's a far cry from Cristina's experience.

Not only is "mansplaining" the type of destructive insult that has no place in reasoned discourse, it's also pretty sexist in itself. Your comment would be much better without that first line.

"Mansplaining". But if we had a specific term to tell women their opinions were invalid simply because they were women, that would be sexist. I want to agree with your comment but the misandry makes me feel angry instead.

Every time a "how to hire women" article pops up on HN, there's a flurry of comments that argue we should hire whoever can do the work best. That isn't what this article is about. In order to bring more diversity into your workplace or community, you have to consciously make the environment more welcoming to people who are different from you. When you let the "who can do the work" question decide your hires, prejudices control your decision without you even noticing. We must fight prejudice consciously or we contribute to oppression--not just the oppression women, but the oppression of any disadvantaged or underrepresented group.

I had a really bad feeling reading this article. Especially the parts about cleanliness and alcohol. Empathy's always a tricky thing, but I'm picturing something like this:

Welcome to $company. Here at $company we understand that $your_group people are different from $most_of_us_group people, especially with regards to $list_of_old_stereotypes, and we've made accommodations on that basis to make you feel more comfortable. We hope you appreciate this.

If this philosophy is antithetical to your culture, you certainly don't have to follow it. These were not meant to be hard and fast rules, but something companies might want to take into consideration when recruiting.

For example, while I certainly enjoy chips and beer, it's not the first thing I want to see on a company's recruiting page.

It's not about culture. It's about assumptions.

If my employer tried to support my masculinity by giving me beer, I would be offended.

Sure, but supporting femininity with significant paid maternity leave would be welcome support.

I'm all for diversity on the team. Strong efforts should be put forth to hire the best person for the job, regardless of their sex, etc., though. I have all daughters, so I want them to be able to be considered, hired, etc. on an even playfield with men. I don't expect special treatment for them, just respect and equal opportunity.

And, I like almost everything in this post, except that I think the OP might be playing to stereotypes a little too much; some of these are not problems specific to women. Like not playing oneself up as much or focusing on the actual monetary results of work.

Something I experienced that wasn't mentioned related to hiring women was "same sex competition" (which I'm sure is not specific to women, but I've never worked on a team with all women where I was the only male). When only one woman was on a team with a bunch of other men for a long time, that woman was much more critical of female interviewees. After the hire of another woman on the team, this competition continued for the first several months, before they became friends.

I thought "If you think a woman is going to join your company for free whiskey shots, you can stop reading here" was a bit stereotypical.

I'm sure there are women who would love free whiskey shots, and men who hate them.

Are you saying women and men are equally likely to be attracted to a company by free whiskey shots?

Because, unless you are, the comment was NOT stereotypical.

This is a 25-minute video given by Shelley Correll, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, Director of the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She discusses some ways to try and counter known biases when hiring and promoting.

http://leanin.org/education/creating-a-level-playing-field/

All the same advice applies if you're trying to hire someone over the age of 30.

Of course, if you prefer NOT to hire anyone over 30, and you don't want your hiring process to appear illegally discriminatory, then advertising your alcohol culture (etc.) can be a great way to induce those applicants to weed themselves out. I do believe some company founders thought of this before I did.

More over, this article should be how to hire people who fit in with your culture better. I find many of the key points to be satisfying to me.

People ask me about this, too. I think I don't want to knowingly bring people into a harsh environment (that being certain nontrivial parts of the industry). That leaves me conflicted with how I should answer.

I came up with an analogy about this. It might not be a good one, but it's a start of trying to express my mixed feelings on the matter. http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/10/14/fish/

If I were running a company, I think I'd try the following approach to hiring: Every time I received a resume or job application, I would run it through some script that would find the individual's name, store it somewhere hidden, and then replace it with a unique id. Only after the applicants' names were blocked out like this would I read through the resumes or job applications.

I think not knowing a person's name would prevent some of our unconscious biases about the person's gender or race from entering into the early-stage hiring process, and promote a culture of meritocracy. Of course, this only works until you give somebody a phone screen or invite them in for an interview, but it's a step towards a more meritocratic hiring process.

>So, you’re doing all of the above, but you still don’t have any women applying to work at your startup? Well go out and find them. As someone who was recruited or referred to each of their last four jobs, I know that most of the candidates you want aren’t out there looking. Take the situation into your own hands and search Github, LinkedIn, Facebook or whatever other networks you frequent. One day, in about two hours, I put together a list of about 50 prospective female candidates. If you can’t find potential female candidates, you’re just

Isn't this illegal in America? That would be considered a discriminatory hiring practice.

No, it's not illegal to engage in recruiting efforts aimed at diverse candidates. Many large companies have programs to specifically to recruit historically under-represented candidates: http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/students/sga/undergrad/in...

It is discriminatory, but that's a pejorative term in the US. It's generally called affirmative action and is somewhat controversial, especially on HN.

Personally, it just makes sense to me how valuable diversity is to a healthy company. If everyone comes from basically the same demographic (say, [upper-]middle class white male?), then you're most likely restricting your market, but also internal culture.

People often forget that there are other benefits people bring to a company aside from skills directly related to product development, so it makes sense to take that into consideration. It just so happens that it's currently accepted in the US to discriminate benefiting minorities or under-represented groups, so you might as well take advantage of that to build a more representative and diverse work place.

Interestingly enough, the article was ALL about how to expand your available candidates to include more qualified women and had absolutely not even a whiff of "hire the less qualified candidate if a women".

Contrast with the number of comments here about affirmative action and steorotypes and gender bias ...

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