How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year

I think it’s great the Etsy found a new way to think about things and realized that the old ways were depriving them of quality people. I hope that others adopt newer ways of thinking as well. (I’m looking at you, my physics brethren, and by the numbers, physicists are more than likely brethren.)

But way down in the story (not quite paragraph 19, but it’s close)

At the time of the talk, Etsy’s had twenty women on its 110-person engineering team, which is a roughly eighteen percent (or a four and half times) increase from the previous year. It’s not quite hockey stick growth, but it’s a huge step forward.

18%/4.5 is 4%, and since we need a whole number, my guess is that there were 3 women out of ~75 the previous year (I assume they were expanding), unless they fired a bunch of engineers as well as hiring new ones, and had 4 out of ~100. The fantastic growth trumpeted by the headline obscures the reality that their starting numbers were craptacularly low and have been improved to merely poor.