That's the thing about IT. Almost all of the best IT people and technologists are self-taught, usually beginning in their teens.

So, if there is a gender diversity issue here, it comes even before finishing University. Possibly even before STARTING University.

I applaud efforts to balance opportunities for everyone, honestly. But I shy away from those efforts that take the form of "giving special treatment to xx group".

It's disheartening to see that approaching 65% of University applicants are now female. IT is an isolated area where there is a huge disparity, but it isn't too much different from other fields, such as education, where it is 80% female. That certainly is a field where there is active discrimination going on, in the other direction.

But placing the blame on IT shops and their hiring managers is misguided and wrong. There are fundamental demographic issues that can't be addressed by short-term fixes and "diversity hiring" programs.

I'd say it's pretty much the same now.

But I'm hiring right now. I have 117 resumes on my desk. 116 are males, as best I can tell.

I'm someone who really dislikes affirmative action and "gender equalization", but I wholly support Google's approach here. It's rational and sane, and totally reasonable.

The bulk of Apple's employees are outside California. Apple has almost 80,000 employees, only 10,000 or so are at the corporate headquarters.

Also, Palo Alto and Cupertino are approximately 60% white. You have to drive 2-6 hours to get to many of the areas that are predominately latino.

But regardless of this, more than 70% of Apple's workforce is distributed around the US (outside California) and Western Europe. About 5% are in Asia.

Why is this about minorities? Whites represent almost 70% of the population, when you exclude the deep south. How does 55% white (when the population is 70% white) represent favoritism?

You are clearly good at your job, then.

It's only white males in the bottom quarter of the pile who would really be affected. The most qualified people (regardless of gender or race) will always have opportunities.

If I'm only half Dutch, do I only get half a job?

I chuckled. I ran a business with a black friend years ago, and I had to do the opposite. If I gave him my share outright and we made him a 100% owner, we got all sorts of grants and preferential treatment for RFP responses, bonus points on scoring metrics, tax breaks, the works. We opted not to do that, because we wanted to protest the unfair business practice, but we went out of business. You learn. :-(

I don't think this explains much. But of course, it is probably some component. It might also explain why women don't become IT workers, too, no? Other girls look down at those who are loners and spend their evenings tinkering...

Obviously, this is anecdote, but I had two friends who were elementary school teachers who eventually felt SO uncomfortable in their positions that they quit to pursue another career.

The cause what, absolutely NOT, other men. It was the recent social stereotype of "men=predators". Female teachers would play board games with kids during lunch, and have students in their classroom after school, but the men were advised, both through "unspoken" rules, as well as format advice from administrators, that they were not to see kids after class and should never engage in any friendly activities with students.

This attitude of "men=evil" is pervasive in western culture, to the point that men aren't allowed to sit next to unrelated children on many airlines, despite the prevalence of "airplane molestation" being exactly ZERO.

I'm not the OP, but I wanted to point out a few things.

Unpaid internships are illegal where I live. Also, IT workers can't be "trained from nothing" in a year.

But I've had "entry level" job postings up for several months, requiring nothing but a basic background in computers. You should know what TCP is and how IP packets are routed, at a high level. All other experience is entirely optional.

I have 116 male resumes and 1 female.

70 of the males have extensive experience in the field. 30 are extremely qualified.

What exactly compels me to throw away 116 of the resumes, hire that single poorly qualified female sight-unseen and then spend a year training her, only to have a candidate that is paid the same and still has way less experience than half of my original applicants did?

I don't think you have ANY idea how unequal the experience level is in the field. It's wild.

And for your information, I did hire a woman in our last round. She was very qualified and we're happy to have her. She is one of the higher paid techs, because she's damn good at her job.

But I won't hire some random person with no qualifications, while tossing out 30 qualified applicants, simply because of their gender. That's just a silly business decision.

Also, according to my reading of anti-discrimination laws, I simply CANNOT hire someone unqualified, based solely on their gender. That's illegal. The law is very clear that I cannot "discriminate based on gender", and I could potentially have 30 qualified applicants filing a lawsuit if I trash their applications and hire a completely untrained person instead, based solely on their gender.

Just imagine if it were the opposite and I trashed 30 qualified female applications so that I could hire the sole, unqualified, male? Shitstorm....

In my employment, it's strongly prohibited, in some cases, you can be terminated for discussing this.

I make about 30% more than my boss, and 50% more than one of my co-workers with the same job title (who is the same gender and race as I am). It really depends on your value to the business, but it doesn't benefit the business very much to reveal those numbers to everyone.

The "study" makes this claim:

Given an equal number of candidates of each gender, who are all roughly similar qualifications, when using a strictly competitive process men may be favored, but if women are given a slight inherent advantage and/or competition is not emphasized, it does not appear harm group cooperation in subsequent testing.

Be careful not to go too much further than this with the data given. There is absolutely no performance metric for the outcome, there is no thought of unequal pools of applicants, there is no reference to the relative levels of qualifications. There is no data to support really much of anything, except that "if women are given favor in assessments of an equal-input application process, it doesn't necessarily harm cooperative nature of the resulting team".

The real trick is that in fields like very specialized areas of IT, the applicant pool is 90-95% men (in my last round of hiring. I have 117 resumes, 116 male, 1 female). It really doesn't matter what kind of selection criteria I use, up to and including "hire all women with a pulse", I will still end up with an unequal gender balance.

What kind of changes to the 'competitive process' do you propose?

Sorry... but... what?

Scientific proof that if you have an equal pool of men and women, that the group "behaves cooperatively", regardless of whether or not women are given a *slight* preference in selection.

Go try hiring in IT. Applicants are 99.95% men. In order to hire even 40% women, you have to hire EVERY SINGLE ONE who applies, sight unseen. And then you get to select the 0.05% of men who are qualified.

If you want to gripe and moan, go train some female IT workers. Seriously. Until then, don't place the blame on corporate HR departments and hiring managers. That's just asinine.

1) This study assumed an equal pool of men and women (it breaks, badly, if there is an unequal pool)
2) This study assumed or selected men and women who are very closely matched in terms of problem solving skill
3) This study simply concluded that affirmative action does not impact "the ability of the group to cooperate".

I hire for technical computer-related positions. I advertise in all the standard places, ranging from craigslist to the variety of job boards, as well as on our website. I will interview EVERY SINGLE woman who sends me a resume with even the most remote bit of experience. To contrast, I only interview about 5% of men who do.

I have hired EVERY SINGLE women who has come through the door for an interview. EVERY SINGLE ONE. (That is 3 people in the last 2 years)

I hire about 2% of men who apply. My standards for the men we hire are EXTREMELY strict.

I still hire over 80% men.

I'm not sure what kind of affirmative action would be required to rectify this, but it certainly isn't up to my HR department to go out and train more women, or convince them to look for jobs.

My boss is female. Our CEO is an immigrant who is decidedly not white. But we end up with a bunch of white guys applying for positions. That's just the nature of it and Apple, being ONLY 55% white and 60% male has done something remarkable with their diversity... In my experience, that level of diversity is unheard of...

Only ones who speak the truth.