We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring
I don&#x27;t think the point of criticizing &quot;it&#x27;s a pipeline problem&quot; is that there isn&#x27;t a pipeline problem, but that it&#x27;s an easy out to avoid taking action at whatever stage of the &#x27;pipeline&#x27; you happen to be working at.<p>If, as an manager at a FAANG, you say &quot;it&#x27;s a pipeline problem&quot; you&#x27;re probably saying that there aren&#x27;t enough candidates because not enough women graduate from ST programs. If you&#x27;re a program development person at a university you&#x27;re probably saying not enough enroll. If you say it as a high school guidance counsellor you probably are saying there&#x27;s not enough push for girls to do well in science and math classes and apply that to their higher education even if there is.<p>The point is that whatever stage of the pipeline you&#x27;re at, if you want things to improve, you have to work with the tools at your disposal. You can&#x27;t wait for universities to both increase enrollment and increase graduation (two separate problems as well). As this post points out you need to look for other ways to find talent that bypass that problem and recognize that the path to your job for a minority in your field will probably look drastically different to yours. It&#x27;s just never going to be enough to wave your hand at the problem and blame the stage before you.<p>The post does get at this for sure, so I&#x27;m not really criticizing it for its conclusion, but the first couple of paragraphs build a strawman that I think is very unhelpful to understanding the nature of the problem.