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tptacek ◴[] No.15009988[source]
Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak.

It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year olds --- let alone 9 and 7 year olds --- neither has any clue what they're really going to end up doing.

The piece culminates in a recommendation that we focus our diversity efforts on college admissions and earlier stages in the pipeline. But that's a cop-out. We should work on all stages of the pipeline. It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline, but the fact is that virtually none of the software engineering we do in the industry --- very much including most of the work done at Google --- requires a college degree in the first place.

Most importantly, though, the only contribution this post makes to the discussion is to add "I'm a woman and I agree with one side of the debate" to the mix. Everything in it is a restatement of an argument that has been made, forcefully and loudly, already. Frankly: who cares?

Edit: I added "some of the" to the beginning of the comment, not because I believe that, but because I concede that there are arguments in the post that can't be dispatched with a single paragraph in a message board comment (through clearly there are some that can.)

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1. klenwell ◴[] No.15010194[source]
It also conflates the hiring needs of a large mature corporation like Google with those of a struggling startup:

We try hard, but again find ourselves with a 98% male candidate pool. You should know that we are an early stage startup that cannot afford market salaries. Despite that, we paid premium salaries to bring a few women who did well in our interviews. But, they lacked the energy to put us into overdrive.

A lot gets muddied in these few lines. One way to read this: as a startup, we usually pay below-market salaries. But we really wanted some experienced women on the team, so we offered them market salaries. They weren't ready to sign on to 60-70 hour weeks like the men on our team. So we let them go.

With the salty language, I gather the real intent of this blog post was to ride the tails of the Google memo backlash and draw attention to her startup. And maybe find some more male engineers to join her startup at below-market salaries.