“Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women.”
Related…
h/t Joe
After 35 years in consulting engineering I had a woman supervisor/manager, once.
I’ve been in software engineering and conventional engineering for near twenty years. The women just weren’t as good as the men on average. They also didn’t suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect as much. They were good jobbers, neither rock stars nor incompetents.
I know nothing about new hires … but every woman I have ever worked-with, who has survived working in engineering firms … has been outstanding. Most likely for the same reason a man would do well – a passion, desire, and competency for the job. Period.
Yep, that old thing called MERIT
At one place I worked at nearly 35 years ago, one of my colleagues was an early version of a radical feminist SJW. It didn’t take much to set her off and I myself felt her wrath soon after I started. Mind you, that wasn’t unusual. She didn’t hesitate to tear a strip off anybody if that person did something to displease her, making a lot of enemies in the process.
Her main excuse would be that something or another was “offensive to women”, though, out of the several female employees in our department, she was the only one to ever say so. When that didn’t work, she claimed favouritism or some other form of discrimination against her personally.
The managers kept wimping out and bowing to her demands because our client thought that we needed to keep her due to her apparent abilities. Each time, though, it didn’t take long for her to throw another tantrum as there was always something else for her to complain about.
It got so bad that nobody wanted to work with her and, eventually, the management had gave her the boot, having had enough of her antics. Morale in the department quickly improved.
While I was teaching at a certain post-secondary institution, our department shared facilities with several others. In one of them, there was a particularly cantankerous instructor who often gave her last supervisor a lot of grief. (Apparently, she resented her boss as she thought the position was rightfully hers when the former department head retired.)
The institution put up with it for about a year and then bought her out of her contract. End of process. Her replacement started the following term.
RE: the hand grenade throw. That is absolutely not the woman’s fault. You don’t simply hand someone a live grenade, pull the pin, and tell them to throw. No qualified instructor would EVER do this. Anyone who has been in the army knows better than to buy into that clip. It’s either staged or it’s an instructor problem (incompetent/unqualified).
Re: Women in tech fields. First off, the sample is too small to draw conclusions from. It’s probably not that controlled either. Second, it depends on what you define as a “technical” field. For example, women do as well as men in the life sciences (biology, zoology, medicine, etc). My observation is that in mathematics dependent fields, engineering, statistics, et al, women don’t do well for reasons unclear.
Women in supervisory positions in any field are neither better nor worse than men. A bad supervisor/manager is bad regardless of their gender.
Most female engineers I’ve worked with are less than competent and have a huge ‘feminist’ chip on their shoulders. It’s even worse if they’re immigrant or French. In most cases I won’t even bid on jobs they’ve designed. There will always be problems and they won’t listen to reason or the voice of experience. It’s a standing joke that we hope they get knocked-up and go on maternity leave.
Female tradespersons are almost always just the opposite. Most are very competent, hard working, and enjoyable to work with.
I transferred to a new facility with about 150 engineers. They hired three female engineers the same month.
One was relatively incompetent, and a year later quit to become a ski instructor/ ski patrol out west with her boyfriend. Another quit after her husband was transferred. One was really good, and I could see she had the skills to become a good manager. After four years, she was my supervisor and doing well. She became pregnant, and after returning decided she wanted to be a full time mother instead. She still takes short time gigs with the corporation as her family expands.
I shall use my Michael Jackson in my next interview.
`Been in engineering business for over 30 years, retired out of it 16 years. Not an engineer.
For the first, perhaps 10 or more years there were no lady engineers.
In later years there were a few though never matched the numbers of men.
Working for a major Canadian corporation in the late 80`s and whole of 90`s of the past century things changed though not drastically.
As one can expect, there were good ones and then some different, liked to hit the bottle, though as far as the job went they were competent.
Had to suggest firing of few male engineers that were completely incompetent. They were gone in days.
Ladies in the supervisory positions were a whole different ball of wax, though no different from men in the same positions. Call it wannabees.