The best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain to you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation.
For people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor or use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about simple biology you should have learned in school.
> Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation.
There is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological sex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the other sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology.
Which, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines, everything about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology is, ultimately, biology.
> by that same token, all of psychology is also physics.
Yes, it is, which would be relevant if someone suggested there was no physical explanation for a psychological phenomenon (which is, in fact, what they are usually claiming when they claim it is not biological.)
I wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the genetic (biological) basis for brain function/behavior [0]. Once you're at the level of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a level of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as chemistry.
The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology.
Your first sentence seems like it's conflating correlation with causation.
As for the second, saying psychology is ultimately biology is reductionist in a way that dismisses the context and environment biology gets expressed in. You would be a much different person if the same set of genes was born in a different place, or at a different time, or if your life circumstances were different in any mild way.
Biology is the study of living organisms. Psychology is the study of the human mind and its functions. A mind is a part of an organism, not a discrete one itself. The study of the part is not the same thing as the study of the whole. Psychology is not biology. This is not a controversial thing, every person who has graduated college in the past 30 years should know this, besides it being illogical.
Would you please not break the HN guidelines by (a) arguing snarkily and superciliously or (b) going on about downvotes? Trainwrecks though these recent threads have been, we're still trying for a higher standard of discussion on HN, and comments like this one make take us all in the wrong direction.
Someone posts an ignorant comment. I provide a relevant, actually helpful and fact-based reply and get downvoted. So I get pissed off, say something pissy, and then provide a ton of supporting evidence in response. But it doesn't affect the votes, and probably hasn't changed any minds at all.
Comments are the problem if you find civility more important than rationality.
I wonder about this as well. Specifically, how does one define "gender" as distinct from "opinion", without being recursive (as in "a man is someone who feels like a man")?
Is it chromosomal, such that XY makes you male? Wrong. People with total androgen insensitivity are XY but look and act and feel female, because the androgens they produce never took effect. Their bodies and minds feminized, so they're female in every respect except their karyotype.
Your simple definition is only simple because you punted the complex part, and no amount of screaming about how words don't have meanings anymore is going to change the level of complexity surrounding this subject.
You are too ignorant to know what you don't know, so you think you're a goddamned expert.
Thanks for your reply. I rarely get a chance to learn from someone who feels so passionately about these issues.
These range of conditions are interesting, we are truly a varied species.
Let us do a thought experiment.
We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys. Now, if I say the word “monkey”, what comes to mind? If the 10 monkey-monkeys AND the 5 human-monkeys does, then that means I no longer have a word to describe what I originally thought was a monkey! The word itself has been destroyed by making it stretch beyond the category which it originally described. Words by their very nature are to form categories, to differentiate is their power, and why we find them useful.
Now, we can both agree that the range of conditions you listed are rather rare, and this is the crux of the matter. If we use the word man to stretch beyond the more stereotypical definition, what does it even mean to be a man anymore? What does it mean to be masculine? That is, what do the WORDS mean?
The word man is, as words work, defined by the average man. The fact that it allows us to speak of a large category of people is what gives it its utility. That is why you can say things like “their bodies and minds [are] feminized”, you must have the words to express such a thought! If you proceeded down the self-identification path, how would you make that sentence? That is why we have words like “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome”, which describes another idea.
First of all, let me say that I am in no way opposed to men dressing in women’s clothes, or men being effeminate, or women having sex with women, or any other non-conservative human expressions; they are what lend colour to humanity, and we would be much poorer without it, and without letting humans be fully expressed.
Now, what about the rarer cases, what do we do here?
But how should such a person describe oneself?
Just because a man cannot have the confidence to be effeminate and own that identity, does not mean that he needs to redefine the word woman to accommodate himself. I think the problem here is that people want to fit into categories that are traditionally recognised by society. Instead people should just appreciate that everybody is unique, and that they should be comfortable owning their own unique identities. They should not have to derive their own identities from the words that other people call them, worse off by forcing other people to use specific words, in a meaning that they want other people to use them in, because then everything is reduced to just noise.
> We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys.
Bad analogy. Really bad analogy. The boundaries between species can be fluid, but they're nowhere near as fluid as the definitions of 'male' versus 'female' in either sex or gender.
My whole point is that even if you restrict everything to verifiable biological observation, with no reference to psychology, there are still myriad corner cases which cannot be classified in a simple dichotomy. Therefore, insisting the division is simple is obtuse.
The division is not simple, there's no way to make it simple, and bringing in this analogy with monkeys versus humans as your proxies for the sexes is misunderstanding the subject. There is no overlap between humanity and any species of "monkey" as the term is commonly understood, although I have known a biologist who would insist that "monkey" was synonymous with "ape" and therefore all humans are monkeys. That's not the common understanding of the term "monkey", certainly.
There is overlap between "male" and "female" regardless of what you define them to be, assuming you define them in any useful fashion. There is no boundary anywhere in this subject which is impermeable. That's why gender studies is an entire field of study, like astrophysics or English literature.
In short, you could write entire textbooks on one aspect of being "male" or "female" and still be incomplete even in terms of that aspect. So you'll forgive me if I'm not prepared to define either term in this forum, or bothered by how people describe themselves.
Linguistic precision is nice where you can get it, and we can't get it here. Not if we're being entirely honest.
It's not as simple as that. The word 'gender' has a history of being used for biology - think of every form you've ever filled out. The OED [1] says:
> Either of the two sexes (male and female)
before following up with:
> especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.
And also notes:
> The sense denoting biological sex has also been used since the 14th century, but this did not become common until the mid 20th century. Although the words gender and sex are often used interchangeably, they have slightly different connotations; sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender more often refers to cultural and social differences and sometimes encompasses a broader range of identities than the binary of male and female
If it's unclear, I'm not saying either is correct. Many people don't like saying 'sex' as its also a verb for copulation hence use 'gender' as a polite alternative. The idea of gender as an entity separate from biology is from Dr John Money, who has his own sad and controversial history [2], though his ideas have gained more popularity recently.
Language is a living thing. The meanings of words change over time, and that's normally a helpful thing, which lets us express culturally relevant concepts.
In this case, it's pretty useful to have words which distinguish between biology and culture.
If you use “ascribed gender” and “gender identity” to describe the (external and internal, respectively) social traits, you avoid the confusion between the two and with the biological trait that comes with using bare “gender” for that purpose.
Webster's define (the relevant meaning of) gender, as:
"b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
(...)
Origin: Middle English gendre, from Anglo-French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender — more at kin.
First use: 14th century"
So it would seem gender has started out as a term that groups "indivuduals that are of a kind" - not necessarily based on (biological) appearance, but just as much on behaviour/social grouping.
There are several cultures that have arisen independently and have had more than two genders. Many of them are still extant today, despite the best effort of colonialists.
So that's gender down.
Intersex individuals exist. Intersex conditions range from physiological to karyotypes with variant sex chromosomes.
Transgender individuals are very varied but there are indications that it is partially heritable with genetics and the prenatal environment hypothesized to explain some of that.
And that's biology.
I could write a 100 page essay about how loaded your question was, the implicit assumptions in the way it was written, the way that "BIOLOGICAL" is implied to be a way to ignore social conditions, and the contempt for ""Gender Studies"". But I won't, it's very tiring and there will be 10 other people like you tomorrow.
It was a question about categories. Are there two categories of gender / sex? The answer is no. These people exist. They have entire lives which are as meaningful as any other. Why wouldn't they matter?
When it comes to policymaking, any prudent work requires the analysis of how many people would be impacted. It's not enough to just say "well there's like 100 people in a population of 300M we should change everything just for them".
The OP asked what evidence exists that gender and sex are non-binary. It's in reference to the words someone said in the article, not hypothetical policymaking.
Intersex traits cover a fairly broad range of things, and there's a reasonable argument that up to 1.7% of people are intersex. Visibly atypical genitals are fairly rare (1 in 1500 births or so), on the other hand, but don't cover the entire range of intersex traits.
Complicated, but simplest explanation is from wikipedia:
In biological terms, sex may be determined by a number of factors present at birth, including:
the number and type of sex chromosomes;
the type of gonads—ovaries or testicles;
the sex hormones;
the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females); and
the external genitalia.
People whose characteristics are not either all typically male or all typically female at birth are intersex.
Sure, but what are the rates for things like that? And in the case of different chromosomes, what are the variations that still result in a fertile and "normal" human being?
My concern is that people are attempting to use the existence of intersex folks (at widely varying claimed incidence rates) to make faulty arguments about what is and is not normal physiology.
The criticisms are more about terminology than the core argument though - they mostly argue that "intersex" should only cover a small number of conditions that result in an arbitrarily substantial differentiation from a "normal" male or female, rather than any significant differentiation. So if the question is about sexual dimorphism, those criticisms are mostly irrelevant.
But here's a question: why is it important that they can reproduce? Gay men and women are unlikely to reproduce either, so should we ignore them in policy-making too? Are gay people abnormal?
Are intersex or transgender considered to be viable sexes though?
What seems reasonable to me is M/F/N where N is not capable of reproduction due to some kind of outlying error, so they cannot be a part of sexed reproduction. Are they omitted?
Sex and reproduction seem binary to me and most people. We should ignore technological or medical assistance and sort those results through the gender buckets which are more important to how they are perceived semantically, as you said.
Gender is usually considered indicative or coupled with cultural behavior and performative behavior, i.e. in the U.S. barbie dolls are 'toys for girls'. Sex begins and ends at the biological level and is strictly related to the organs and biological makeup you have and what you can do with those. I know less about how sex isn't binary, but in the case of gender it's fairly evident these days.
At least that's how I've understood it in layman's terms and with my very basic knowledge--it's very complex, as with anything worth studying. The seminal text on the issue in the eyes of many is Judith Butler's Gender Trouble--If you truly are serious about wanting to learn about this stuff I suggest you check it out.
A good example is Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which Slate Star Codex has made so much of in this debate. Excess androgens from CAH can lead to ambiguous genitalia.
Biology get's odd when you start looking at 0.01% cases.
Some people have both sets of reproductive organs at birth. Others lack many such structures which is arguably just sterility but in some cases no gender is closer to the truth.
Genetically you have XX (female), XY (male) but also XXY or XXXY. There are even Chimera where you can have both male (XX) and female (XY) cells in the same body.
I think this misses the real point. The idea is presenting a reason why google (and all of tech) has more male engineers than female that aren't based totally on bigotry and discrimination. He is right. Google isn't hiring female engineers because they simply aren't applying.
In reality their aren't enough trans-gendered people to really involve that in this conversation.
Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you.
Sex is basically binary in mammals (do you have the gene that triggers producing sperm versus the gene that triggers you producing eggs), the only exception being incredibly rare intersex disorders. Read more here: http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-sex-is-binary-but-gende...
Based on sex, people have different traits, physical and mental. Some of these traits are close to binary between the sexes (having a uterus, etc.). Some traits are a matter of distributions (such as differences in physical strength, or willingness to take risks).
Society then considers certain behaviors and traits more masculine or feminine, and creates norms and roles around these. Some of these norms and roles exist on a spectrum, some are more binary.
Gender for a long time was used either as a synonym for sex, or only this case of describing language (gendered pronouns). In the mid-1900s academics in the social science used it to mean "the social norms and roles society creates based on biological sex." Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity." There isn't any scientific proof that such a thing exists or doesn't exist, nor can there be, because we don't have mind reading machines.
Sexual identity has also been redefined recently. So now if you were born with the egg producing equipment, but are taking male sex hormones some people will now define you as of the male sex. Frankly, I find this redefining of words to be pretty Orwellian.
| Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity."
Nope. What you are talking about is Gender Identity. There is pretty good evidence for this being real and linked to prenatal testosterone exposure at certain periods in the womb, as with traits like digit ratio. Between cases like David Reimer's (a biological boy who was raised as a girl after a surgical accident as an infant, but whose gender identity stayed true to his birth sex - with tragic consequences) and the phenomenon of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (where genetically male XY are born with female-looking genitalia and raised as any other girl, but overwhelmingly continue to identify as women even after the condition is discovered in puberty), the existence of a gender identity that is separate from both chromosomal sex and social influence is not really in doubt.
I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down.
Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm.
He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm, you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made it public.
There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.
Again, only if you believe a line was crossed, or whether he wrote a well-intentioned memo with the goal of supporting and increasing diversity that had some dubious conclusions based on controversial research.
He is also young and just starting his career. If this had been addressed calmly maybe he could have learned from this situation. Zero tolerance for a young man's folly instead turned him into a sympathetic figure and an alt-right star. It has reinforced the perception that the PC left is oppressive and reactionary. And worse of all he will never learn from his experience because the reaction confirmed his natural bias.
I guess there is no cutting people a break anymore in this era of shouting into the ether, virtue signaling, and political hellfire.
Would you please not poison the discussion like this? Regardless of how correct your underlying points might be, it amounts to arson in a fire zone, and we ban accounts that do it.
Plenty of other users are able to express similar views to yours without violating the site guidelines. Please follow in their footsteps and post only comments that make the forum better, not worse.
It's extremely charitable to assume that he is naive enough to not understand the implications of his associations with those alt-right sites. If he had been on techcrunch or some other media platform it would be one thing but he immediately started showing up on those websites with interviews.
Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked.
The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article-
> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it’s also a pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: “Will the team/manager/VC I talk with today realize I’m qualified, or will they be making stereotypical assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my job?” To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day.
That quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused by it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who work at a company don't feel they are welcome there.
In this case, it's not about "should factual discourse be allowed or not," that's a false dichotomy. It's whether the author of the memo knowingly took an approach to interpretation of the "facts" he selected that was actively harmful to his co-workers by creating a toxic and hostile work environment.
I believe he did, and the parent you're responding to seems to as well, but they didn't say anything about "spar[ing] factual discourse." You seem to be reading that into their comment.
And I would definitely say there are factual discussions that can be had privately between individuals who already trust each other that are better kept private in order to spare the feelings of non-participants. Other humans have feelings, taking them into consideration is not weakness.
"by creating a toxic and hostile work environment" can only be defined as such by those within it. I could say anything was toxic and hostile for any subjective reasoning. And it becomes "true" by your definition if enough people agree with me?
I'm arguing that line of reasoning is not constructive, and the collective's agreed upon opinions should not act as a barrier for scientific discourse. (which is what the memo was asking for)
Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them. People are individuals and not statistics. You can quote statistics and average all day long, but if you offend, anger, or harm someone with your words, that person will not listen to you.
No, not really. For this specific example, Damore knew the issue is a divisive one. If he didn't, then he does need to have some basic sensitivity training. From what I remember reading, he did acknowledge the issue was contentious. In that respect, there are ways and techniques to have that conversation. What Damore did was not that way. He should have consulted a resource like Crucial Conversations (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...) first.
That's victim blaming. His claims that he supports diversity are nothing more than false virtue-signaling. I have yet to find a person who would say there are no biological gender differences. The problem is assuming those differences are the underlying cause for why women and minorities are under represented in technology. Were you aware the first programmers were females? There are -many- reasons why women and minorities are underrepresented. The biological differences are not a significant one.
> Were you aware the first programmers were females?
That was when there were some low thousands of software engineers in total. Hardly statistically significant to compare with today's population.
The first few engineers were female because of sexism in the 1970s. The only mainstream jobs they were allowed to have were teaching and programming. There are fewer females now because of lack of sexism not due to it. As society became liberal, women started becoming doctors and lawyers, which matches with their interests much more than programming.
Damore self-identifies as autistic [1]. Are you seriously suggesting that the proper course of action is that a mentally ill individual should receive training on how to speak and think from his corporation? What has the world come to where this is sanity.
Liberals today: "Embrace diversity of thought, color, and sexual genitalia! Wait I don't like that thing he said, fire him. Wait, he's mentally ill and thus persecuted, he needs to be protected. Wait, autism isn't a metal illness, he's fine just the way he is. Wait, he's a white male, he's not fine just the way he is, he's evil. Wait, he's self-identifying as autistic, he's not really autistic, a doctor has to diagnose him. Wait, no, that's different than self-identifying your gender, that's totally fine."
Thanks for the link, but I disagree with your interpretation and the analogy here. I interpreted this link as saying "don't speak in absolutes", not "don't hurt someones feeling". More often than not, there's information you find out later, and its very likely that you could be wrong. EG: nobody can run a 4 minute mile.
>The sloppy scientist says, "on average, across populations, left to its own devices, this group is [not as skilled] [neurotic] [hard to work with] [not as smart] [not as strong] [slower]" etc. They make assumptions without sufficient data, and the rigor is missing.
Here's the line:
>The first problem is that human beings aren't averages, they're individuals.
His core argument was that there are biological reasons why women are under-represented in technology and that the initiatives taken by Google to reach out to females were illegal and discriminatory. He attempted to use science to justify his beliefs. That would lead many women, who already are self-conscience about their position, into wondering if they are present to their own merit, or because Google is trying to fill a quota.
The problem is anger and offense are caused by, and mechanisms for dealing with, having our minds changed. The only things you can attempt to persuade someone to change his mind about, without making him angry, is something he doesn't much care about in the first place.
The situation is more dire than that link suggests.
It isn't just that some people are too emotionally reactive to be directly involved in a reasonable conversation.
We are currently shutting down even the possibility of a conversation among any set of a large group of people, because some people in that group are uncomfortable with it.
They aren't even willing to sit out the conversation that makes them uncomfortable, they are insisting that nobody else be allowed to have the conversation within the larger community.
This is not the case, strictly speaking. It instead results from people perceiving there to be a lower bar for diversity hires; whether or not it is rational to describe things in that manner based on empirical data or what not is ultimately inconsequential. In that context, it is entirely possible for a poorly formulated memo to cause this type of damage, and likewise entirely possible for this perception to be perpetuated if institutions like Google do not properly back up its practices with compelling arguments to people who might otherwise have doubts.
Damore advocates removing "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar", so he's actually proposing a solution to this problem. Also, he himself isn't stereotyping women as crap engineers. He says "Many of these differences
are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women".
But Damore didn't do anything to make women think they were hired only because of diversity initiatives. It's common knowledge that Google makes an effort to hire more women. That was already the case, and Damore merely brought attention to the negative aspects of it.
There's a huge difference between increasing outreach and lowering the hiring bar. One shields more candidates, the other one increases the chances of hiring someone from the same pool of candidates. The reason why Google (and many other companies) are increasing outreach is because they want to maintain a high-quality of engineers, otherwise they'd just open the floodgate and let everyone in and solve their diversity problem once and for all.
Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them.
> Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them.
That's true and an excellent point. If he's lying about Google's recruitment practices, either by misunderstanding or by outright false accusation, then large parts of the memo are moot.
On the other hand, I would make the counterpoint that the only reason his honesty has come into question is because of the negative reception his memo has had. Also, what are the odds that Damore misunderstood things? I'd say low.
Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see.
> I would make the counterpoint that the only reason his honesty has come into question is because of the negative reception his memo has had
I'll be honest, that's what ticks me about Damore: after presenting the ideas in his memo a couple times and not getting any traction, he made a case of sharing them publicly inside Google. Not with a group of friends, not with the diversity team, but publicly. As you say, he's not a dummy, so he probably expected this whole controversy. His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it. I'm not 100% sure he's being honest about his intentions to "help Google."
> Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see
As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)
> His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it.
Which alt-right media did he reach out to? I've been paying pretty close attention and I saw him being interviewed by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, but they are not alt-right media. They are both classical conservatives.
> As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)
Then all we have to go on are theories and the question: what's to be gained from him lying about this?
His very first interview was with Stefan Molyneaux, a self-described "fighter for men's rights" (yeah, I know.)
> what's to be gained from him lying about this?
I don't think he was outright lying, I think he was just uninformed and made a lot of assumptions and drew
conclusions (biased by his own political views) out of those assumptions. I do think his inflammatory approach to accusing Google and Googlers of "leftist bias" was a way to get attention.
About what's to be gained? Well... he's been interviewed by the New York Times and he'll probably get a book deal out of it, plus whatever money he might get if he manages to successfully sue Google.
I've been told that his first interview was actually with Jordan Peterson. The Stefan interview with simply the first to be published maybe, or widely seen.
> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?
Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem.
From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to suspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem.
Totally different interpretations of cause and effect.
The author of that quote clearly wasn't describing her fears that she had been hired only because of affirmative action, but the claims about her innate inabilities, however slight.
Yes, but this raises the issue of affirmative action causing bias about innate abilities, and that's absolutely true.
If you knew there were a lower bar for people who had red hair, for example, because there's a pay gap and their population ratio isn't represented equally, every time you'd have someone on your team with red hair, you'd wonder if they were there because of the exception made for them or if they got there on pure merit. Thus, affirmative action causes people to question that merit (bias).
Worse, the redhead who got in never knows if they got accepted based on merit or based on some quota, which contributes heavily Impostor syndrome, negative self image and confirmation bias based on that negative self image.
You combine these two things over time and there is absolutely an impact.
Damore's ultimate points were: let's discuss this and, by the way, please don't ignore me just because my opinion is unpopular.
You can flip this argument on its head. As a man I'm often thinking about why the unequal gender distribution of roles and salary within my company is the way it is. I often wonder how much of my own success is due to opportunities and encouragement that women generally don't receive.
> Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem.
It's not about self-doubt, it's about creating a stereotype by which other people (managers, peers) will prejudge you even before you write the first line of code. This prejudice already exists as is, Damore's memo doesn't do anything to help it. If improving women's opportunities at Google was his objective, he failed miserably at it.
I don't think the memo does that. I've not been convinced by anything I've read trying to indicate that it does. I am convinced that people saying it does seem to read more into it and are upset by perceived implications.
If I felt the memo implied or created that stereotype I'd denounce it as well.
It is widely acknowledged that there are social factors that might affect the number of women entering the field. He could've made as valid an argument about the hiring practices affecting diversity, without bringing up the supposed "biological" factor altogether. Not bringing it up would have probably put him in the right side of the Code of Conduct.
At best, it was poor judgement for him to bring it up when it didn't add anything to the conversation. At worst, it betrays a certain level of misogyny. Those of us who tend to assume the worst, might be more inclined to believe the latter, but I wouldn't blame people for believing the former.
I appreciate your response and insight into how people might arrive at a more negative conclusion based on what values they read into the text.
One takeaway I have from this is that discussion about biological differences between sexes is often misused, so should be avoided in discussion related to diversity if you want people to not form an emotional reaction.
The whole thing was a meandering stroll of possible reasons. I absolutely don't see this memo creating a hostile workplace or illiciting the pushback it has garnered simply by what I read in the text. I read a document referencing population level differences between sexes(relevant in the context of attempting to explain differences in preferences that account for the difference in size of the groups) that have no bearing on individual differences between sexes(not even slightly relevant in hiring)
My internal reader probably filled in the benefit of the doubt.
> One takeaway I have from this is that discussion about biological differences between sexes is often misused, so should be avoided in discussion related to diversity if you want people to not form an emotional reaction... I absolutely don't see this memo creating a hostile workplace or illiciting the pushback it has garnered simply by what I read in the text
Right! There's been enough people using biological differences as excuses for all kinds of things before, so it's probably better to resort to that argument only once all other factors have been removed. I believe that's one of the biggest reasons people reacted so badly to this memo. It certainly was the first thing that popped into my head as soon as I started reading his reasoning.
A bit of context is important. Anonymity on the internet has facilitated a rebirth of the "men's rights" movement. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a place for "men's rights" when it comes to recognizing that sexual abuse happens to men too, which is what some of the groups got started, but some of the notorious forums (like the now banned "TheRedPill" subreddit) are virulently misogynistic. There are people openly defending rape, calling women "inferior" and posting fantasies about what they'd do to women who they perceive as "pushy" or holding some power over them. Feminists are demonized to no end. A lot of the rationalization around their rhetoric builds on some of the same bases Damore used for his "biological argument." I'll leave it to your judgment to decide if Damore giving one of his interviews to Stefan Molyneaux - known men's right activist - has anything to do with that or not.
It's that context that made my internal reader go for the worst possible scenario instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt. I guess I'm way more jaded person than you :)
The memo didn't cause self doubt, the memo was intended to inspire others to look for doubt (hence the "lowering the bar").
The memo specifically targeted diversity hires as a lower bar. Imagine if a memo started circulating that asked everyone to question whether or not you were hired for your skill. That's a terrible environment to create.
Lowering the bar for a cohort is going to create different distributions of skill in that cohort, this person wasn't the first and won't be the last to come to this conclusion. I think damaging organizational cohesion is never the right choice but both sides of this argument contribute to that damage.
I'm telling you in plain mathematical terms that the way you go about hiring effects the distribution of candidates skill if you introduce any bias into the system regardless of whether or not its a literal or figurative bar or a bias on any parameter. I don't think anyone is going to disagree that biases exist on both sides of the aisle. Arguing about what google does or does not do is futile exercise I made zero claim about google and only believe they have introduced some biases in their hiring in some form.
There's no evidence they lowered the bar on skill level. This entire thread is a demonstration of "it's much easier to fool someone than to convince someone they've been fooled"
I've met engineers who have expressed a belief that women are often hired if the recruiter found them attractive, and that those women shouldn't have been hired. While those engineers are able to find employment there will always be places where women don't feel welcome, even with diversity programs in place. It is simply the case that some engineers are grossly sexist and will always think a woman has been hired for some other reason beside technical merit if they have an opportunity to. If Damore can't see that then he hasn't enough experience to be talking about hiring.
Google doesn't operate that way, they has strict hiring policies and procedures. Recruiter or anyone else has no way to influence hiring without doing something shady (doing selective interview like what Damore claimed they were doing).
He said "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate".
He did not say they were lowering the bar, but that by rejecting (proportionally) a greater number of qualified male candidates than qualified female candidates, the bar is effectively lowered.
If what he says is true, that there is a higher false negative rate for men, it's hard to imagine a system where the bar isn't effectively lowered.
The one possibility I saw argued elsewhere is that you could take all qualified men, and randomly reject some of them. At that point, you would expect the bar to be level.
If however you rejected qualified men in a non-random way, which is more plausible, the effect would be to change the bar.
I hadn't ever really thought about this kind of selection effect on the statistics of populations, so would love to hear if this sounds wrong or what the real expected outcome should be.
I suspect both sides of the debate are now realizing what a hostile work environment preferential-hiring and rampant PC-culture is causing. One side has to walk on egg-shells scared of what they might let slip in conversation if they don't share the prevailing opinion of the loudest among-them. While the other side is constantly forced to question their abilities because preferential hiring appears to devalue their individual abilities, experiences and achievements.
When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?
Isn't this an argument against any form of different hiring practices based on race/gender? Even if distributions of abilities are equal in nature, if a college has a lower bar based on gender, then abilities won't be equal among graduates of that college. Conversely, even if abilities are on average different, if a college has the same bar and same standards based on gender, then you won't have to question if a graduate really deserved to have that credential.
Google's stance, as stated in the article, is that they divert more energy in to finding minority candidates. That's not the same as a lower bar. Abilities are expected to be distributed equally still.
In an interview, Damore said part of the "lowered bar" is extra interview rounds for minority candidates. You could call that "more energy", but it also reduces the chances that a given candidate suffers from bad luck.
Consider a 90% free throw shooter vs. a 50% shooter. To get the job, you have to make 3 shots. But the 90% shooter gets 3 shots and the 60% shooter gets 5 shots. All of a sudden the 60% shooter is more likely to get the job.
It highly depends on the details of the interview process, which I don't know, but just to discount it with that logic is impossible.
This analogy doesn't work at all. 3/3 shots is 100% success rate whereas 3/5 shots is 60% - you're literally describing lowering the bar for the 60% shooter.
Additional rounds of interviews are more like trying to accurately diagnose a condition using multiple different tests because the initial test is known to have poor sensitivity and will produce false negatives. Doing multiple rounds may, of course, increase the chance of false positives (reduce specificity); but the assumption in this case is that when hiring minorities the sensitivity of the interview process is much worse than the specificity.
Right, that's why I said it depends on how the interview process is done. Some companies do thumbs up / down by round.
On a reread, Damore actually implies that Google's policies as applied to their interview process are "decreasing the false negative rate" for minorities. Whether this is harmfully discriminatory or not is open to opinion, but what I think is clear there is that the statement is favorable and understanding of his minority peers - the policies did not let anyone through who should not have been. I certainly don't think he should be fired for having given that statement.
I don't see how you don't recognize this as effectively lowering the bar (if not intentionally).
>Additional rounds of interviews are more like trying to accurately diagnose a condition using multiple different tests because the initial test is known to have poor sensitivity and will produce false negatives.
The difference is that what they're testing for isn't a binary proposition (do you have the disease or not), but a spectrum (what is your skill level). Viewing this in terms of false-positives or false-negatives is insufficient. If we think of programming skill as a spectrum, we can ask what is the average top-% of candidates who pass the interview (we might guess its top 5% of all developers). If everyone has the same test then the average top-% is unchanged regardless of any efforts to get more minorities to take the test. But once you start giving more tries to minorities your average top-% necessarily reduces.
Whatever your test is designed to admit (say you're interested in hiring only the top-10% of developers), the average of those who pass will be higher precisely because of the chance factor. Being significantly better than the intended cutoff gives you a better chance at passing and so those who pass skews towards better than the intended cutoff.
I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad thing, but the average skill of those who pass must reduce. It is very straightforward to see this as effectively lowering the bar.
Imagine that if you're a minority, you have nearly a 0% chance of getting hired if you're the only minority in the hiring pool [1]. As an employer, wouldn't you want to counteract that by making sure that the decision to hire/not-hire isn't affected by status-quo bias, so you don't overlook qualified candidates?
This analogy fails to mention that the 90% free throw shooter is much more likely to have the chance get a free throw than the 60%, and that the 90% shooter might be hitting a 90% rate because they've been given a disproportionate amount of free throws in the past.
I will agree with you that this is much more complex than simple logic/analogies.
This argument reminds me of the "waterboarding is not torture" argument, both suffer from slothful induction fallacy.
If waterboarding is not torture then why would you apply it to detainees to confess information they otherwise wouldn't?
Equally, if diverting more energy in to finding minority candidates is not lowering the bar for them then why would you need to divert more energy to find them?
"If waterboarding is not torture then why would you apply it ..."
This applies to any sort of interrogation tactic along the spectrum between The Comfy Chair and Execution. Each step would not be applied if the detainees confessed at the next-below step.
>Equally, if diverting more energy in to finding minority candidates is not lowering the bar for them then why would you need to divert more energy to find them?
reply
The point is to find the ones that can pass at a higher rate than you normally would. No bar is lowered, and your representation increases.
That doesn't follow if they're passing the same hiring process. It's not hard at all to get a contact for a phone screen with Google: I've been contacted by Google recruiters on linkedin with a barely filled out profile with one or two unremarkable positions listed. If you're counting the initial discovery phase as part of the hiring process, you're mistaken.
> Google's stance, as stated in the article, is that they divert more energy in to finding minority candidates. That's not the same as a lower bar. Abilities are expected to be distributed equally still.
That has a very pernicious effect across the industry though. Think about what that policy does to other companies.
The other companies won't have as many high quality women because Google scouted and hired them already, but will have just as many low and medium quality women who aren't good enough for Google, and more high quality men who were displaced from Google. Which skews the gender ratio even more and creates the impression that women at those companies are lower quality than the men there or else they would have been hired away by Google -- because it causes that impression to be the truth.
And you can't fix it by having all companies adopt that policy, because it would still transfer high quality women from lower tier companies to higher tier companies, causing problems for all the women who don't get to work for the companies in the highest tier. Even the high quality women who are still in second tier companies.
The lower tier companies are where almost everybody actually works -- small and medium companies employ more people than huge companies because there are so many more of them.
Google is being quite selfish with a policy like that.
And then watch out if your company bases its diversity targets on numbers from the rest of the industry. All the good ones may be taken (in order to get to the mythical 50%), but now we want to follow suit (to get to 50%), but what's left? What a mess.
Proof for what? Smaller number of available women? That's obvious. That if larger companies hire the best of them, the remaining supply/quality will shrink? That's obvious too.
It sounds like they kept meetings deliberately off-the-record, but then again here on https://www.google.com/diversity/index.html there's stuff like "we’re committed to making our workforce more reflective of the world we live in". Number goals are unlikely to be published for obvious liability reasons.
Only if you assume that finding qualified minority candidates is just as easy as finding other qualified candidates. Or that hiring chances are equally distributed.
HBR found there's an innate bias against any minorities in hiring pools [1], and considering that women make up a much lower percentage of potential CS positions, the deck is probably stacked against them. This means that for other companies, they have already passed on hiring the qualified minority candidates. Speculatively, Google could be trying to counteract this by diverting more energy into finding minority candidates.
Also, is it Google's responsibility to make sure other companies have the best candidates, minority or not?
> Only if you assume that finding qualified minority candidates is just as easy as finding other qualified candidates. Or that hiring chances are equally distributed.
Nope, it's independent of any of that, because the effect is relative to what other companies do rather than any of those things.
And when you do that experiment in the real world rather than a lab, you get the opposite result anyway:
> Also, is it Google's responsibility to make sure other companies have the best candidates, minority or not?
It's not about who gets the best candidates -- presumably the men who are displaced are of equal quality and then go to work for the same other companies. The problem is that it creates an unfair black mark against every woman who doesn't get hired at Google despite Google having a special preference for them, and then leaves them in an environment with an even worse gender ratio than it was already.
And these other companies feed into Google. Plenty of women get their first jobs there and go work for Google later. If Google makes it harder for the women there and increases the number who drop out as a result, that's bad for everyone including them.
Suppose there are 5,000 women and 20,000 men with CS degrees who are seeking new employment right now. 500 women and 2000 men are above the 90th percentile, 500 women and 2000 men are between the 80th and 90th percentiles, etc.
Google has 2000 job openings. If they hired without gender preference they would end up with 1600 men and 400 women, but they make an effort to seek out women specifically and instead they hire 1200 men and 800 women. They've now hired all of the women above the 90th percentile and 300/500 between the 80th and 90th.
The gender ratio below the original 80th percentile is still 4:1, but above the 80th percentile it's 14:1 and above the 90th percentile there are no remaining female job seekers. People notice things like this -- that none of the available top engineers are women, even though there are still less talented or experienced female applicants. It creates stereotypes. It deprives the women below the 80th percentile of their role models and mentors. People start expecting women to be worse on average, because of those available to hire, Google has actually caused that to be the case.
And things go downhill from there very quickly if more large companies do the same as Google.
It's not a hypothetical, it's arithmetic. The only hypothetical parts are the number of job seekers and the number of hires, but change them to whatever you like, as long as the proportion of women hired is different than it is in the applicant pool the effect still persists.
> The other companies won't have as many high quality women because Google scouted and hired them already, but will have just as many low and medium quality women who aren't good enough for Google, and more high quality men who were displaced from Google. Which skews the gender ratio even more and creates the impression that women at those companies are lower quality than the men there or else they would have been hired away by Google -- because it causes that impression to be the truth.
At some point people are going to have to start presenting evidence to back up these sorts of fanciful claims. I've heard lots and lots of wild claims about how industry practices are being harmed and absolutely zero evidence.
You can make up all sorts of stories based on your preferred biases. You can claim that Google hiring many high quality women forces other firms to hire low-quality women and high-quality men. I can claim that Google hiring many high quality women actually attracts more high-quality women to the industry raising the quality of the talent pool across the board.
Both of these claims are completely baseless. There is zero evidence either way. Like the memo itself which made all sorts of wild and extraordinary claims these claims should be recognized for what they are: unsupported agenda pushing and not valid argument.
> ...it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day.
Maybe. There's a lot of diversity within the male gender.
I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background. I sometimes wonder which of my coworkers have something against me. I know all of them don't (or at least they are professional regardless), but people from my background are absolutely in a minority and are publicly ridiculed on a regular basis, including in HN comments.
I don't care to compare my experience to being a woman engineer, but the feeling described isn't foreign to me.
> I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background.
Right. Now imagine being an outlier due to your biology in a way that's impossible to conceal. I'm an outlier in some ways from my peers as well. But I just don't talk about those beliefs or those parts of my life. You don't have the option to do that if you're female or a visible minority.
Critical difference that you fail to understand is that you have a choice as to how you are perceived. You have a choice about whether to blend in where a woman or visible minority would not.
The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way.
Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together. The only exception to this rule seems to be around leftist issues, where if you disagree you are out of luck.
You would expect, for example, the Jewish people and the Islamic people at a company to work together.
The idea that toleration for one memo form a nobody employee marks an entire company as unwelcome is insane. This zero tolerance attitude is a recipe for disaster.
> The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way.
Considering how all sixteen of my female teammates were pissed off about it, I'm going to go ahead and say you are demonstrably wrong.
>You don't get to determine how people receive a message. You
>can only take care to send it in a way that would be
>received well. If everyone in a large and diverse group >
>receives the message poorly, the problem is not with the
>group.
>If you're worried about an angry mob firing you, start
>communicating with care.
This is absolutely false I do get to tell the group how to receive the message. When a group is intolerant the problem is with the group. When people were against interracial marriage and intolerant of other opinions the problem was with the group. When people were against African Americans riding in the front of the bus, the problem was with the intolerant group.
No candy coating, sensitivity training, or messaging was required to tell the angry, intolerant mob that they were wrong, just like they are here.
Suppose that fifteen of them were pissed off and one was not. Would the sixteenth have felt psychologically comfortable in your team expressing the fact that she was not pissed off?
I am saying that they shouldn't have been so pissed off. The bar shouldn't be so low for defining a hostile workplace. Anyone could then get an intolerant mob together and get someone fired for expressing themselves.
You don't get to determine how people receive a message. You can only take care to send it in a way that would be received well. If everyone in a large and diverse group receives the message poorly, the problem is not with the group.
If you're worried about an angry mob firing you, start communicating with care.
Apparently one of the things that prompted the memo is that google is not diverse. There are plenty of different skin colors and genders, butit's an ideological echo chamber.
Additionally people are not protected from offense in the workplace. They're protected from harassment and an abstract memo that doesn't single out individuals is not harassment.
The post I was responding to said that it did not create a hostile working environment. I explained how it did do that. Are you trying to claim that causing offense to a large group is not creating a hostile working environment?
It's too fickle a criterion for fairly firing someone. Especially if you consider he likely didn't mean to offend anyone.
If you think he did mean to offend people, the firing makes more sense.
I don't think "he should have known better" is very fair when neck deep in a discussion about diversity. Sometimes diversity looks like someone not knowing cultural rules.
Hostile work environments are created because of impact, not intent. It doesn't really matter what you meant to do if your actions made thousands of women feel diminished in the workplace.
I also don't think Damore's totally naive when it comes to diversity issues. He did a lot of research and evidently even discussed his concerns with HR. I think it's pretty clear he knew what he was getting into.
(let me just disclaim right away that I'm pretty liberal)
> So it's objective and fair? Or it is too fickle but it doesn't matter?
Whatever the ideological or scientific opposite of Damore's memo is, I would never publish it to anyone -- not even a single person -- at work. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that discussing race or gender issues at work is out of bounds, regardless of your position.
> I think he would have hired a publicist and lawyer before publishing the memo if he knew what was coming.
Aha that's probably true but I'm not talking about the backlash. I'm saying he knew he wasn't just asking to be proven wrong about migratory patterns of ducks. He's aware diversity is a sensitive topic.
> I don't think I'm alone in thinking that discussing race or gender issues at work is out of bounds, regardless of your position.
But most tech employers already broach the subject in many ways. It's not right that employers get to have controversial opinions, including during work hours, but employees do not.
Things like this need to be addressed if we want corporate power to be moderated.
> But most tech employers already broach the subject in many ways. It's not right that employers get to have controversial opinions, including during work hours, but employees do not.
What controversial opinions are you talking about?
Well, apparently all this is still controversial. There are rumors that Zuckerberg might be running for office. CEOs and other leaders giving speeches about politics and participating in political demonstrations. Lobbying the government about political issues unrelated to the core business of the company.
To be clear, I don't think all those things are necessarily bad. But I think letting corporations and corporate leadership have free reign and a big microphone while expecting employees to censor themselves is inconsistent to say the least.
One person taking offense is not demonstration of anything. Sixteen out of sixteen taking offense comes a lot closer to demonstrating that it was offensive, though.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? We're trying for a higher level of discussion here. (Trying and failing, but we can always fail a bit better.)
Some people take offence to the fact humans are related to apes and that the earth is more than 6000 years old. Doesn't mean we should tip toe around their ridiculous sensitivities.
Does your workplace have a very large group of young Earth creationists? Does it go out of its way to recruit them? If so, have you posted a ten page memo that says that the hiring bar has been lowered by that effort?
Ok, what happened to Demore would be like me working at a company of young Earth creationists who had an internal message board for discussing controversial religious subjects and then firing me because I brought up natural selection. Is it wrong for me to bring up natural selection or is it wrong for my hypothetical company to entrap me?
Yes, it would be wrong of you to do that. You remember how in the Big Lebowski, Walter asks The Dude "Well, am I wrong?" and The Dude replies "You're not wrong, Walter. You're an asshole."
The problem is that 'asshole' is completely subjective. You can have someone state a fact that a tiny hurts a tiny group of peoples' feelings and they will think he/she is an asshole. That can't be a fireable offense.
Suggest that a piece of code is un-maintainable and that the group should rebuild it and there is a good chance someone will think that makes you an asshole.
You can't go around firing everyone because some idiot gets triggered.
I wouldn't even think about bringing up natural selection to my young Earth creationist coworkers. Not touching that with a 10 foot pole, it would only end badly. There's a reason they say don't talk about politics or religion with your coworkers. Harmony is good for getting work done and I go to work to work.
I'm saying that as some who has actually worked with young Earth creationists before.
I won't speak for all young Earth creationists, but I don't have a problem with natural selection as a means of selecting from existing genetic diversity within a kind, especially as that process is observable and repeatable around us.
Where I contend with evolutionists is the typical narrative that the existence of natural selection implies a process that creates said (structured, positive) genetic diversity from which to select. This latter process is disputed, not the former.
I would be curious to hear your colleagues perspective.
How many men take offense to hiring quotas but keep their mouths shut so they don't end up like Damore? You just set up an environment where how someone feels is more important than logic/reason/truth and that is never a good position to be in.
> for example, the Jewish people and the Islamic people at a company to work together.
But you wouldn't expect a Muslin to work with an Jew who had decided to share a memo internally about how she thinks Muslims aren't actually, on average, as well suited for positions at their company and are only present in the percentages they are due to a lower bar to entrance based on their "diversity" quota.
At which point any reasonable Muslim would think, "What the fuck. So I'm just a diversity hire? I don't deserve my spot here? You don't think, on average, people like me can do this job as people like you?"
Understandably that sounds like a damn hostile environment to put someone in. In the case of sex, it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I know I certainly wouldn't be comfortable working with him in a professional capacity. I would feel like I was being judged every moment to see if I deserved my spot here and that the baseline assumption was no, I don't.
> You would expect, for example, the Jewish people and the Islamic people at a company to work together.
No one wrote a memo claiming that Google hires too many Jews who don't meet the same quality bar due to diversity efforts.
No one wrote a memo claiming Google needs to have mandatory anti-terrorist training because they've recruited a lot of Muslims lately (putting aside the fact that white christian terrorists are far more likely to be your cause of death in the USA).
>Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together.
Yeah and the way this works is not to bring up potentially offensive or sensitive topics except with coworkers you know really well. When you do bring it up acknowledge other people's viewpoints and ask lots of questions instead of making grand pronouncements.
All workplaces are political. Software development is about working with people and that is inherently a political activity. Took me a very long time to realize that but it is 100% true. The quicker you accept it the further you will go in your career.
>The idea that toleration for one memo form a nobody employee marks an entire company as unwelcome is insane. This zero tolerance attitude is a recipe for disaster.
What if his memo was arguing that black people aren't suited to be engineers period?
What if his memo argued that black people should be sent back to Africa and that the USA should be for white people only? What if he said he only believes this should be the law but so long as it isn't the law we must respect that and treat people equally until the law is changed?
Should Google "tolerate" someone being openly racist simply because they haven't called for violence?
Let's make this even more abstract: what if an employee openly states they think the company is evil and they disagree with the entire mission and direction of the company? Do you really think they won't spread cynicism and negativity? Do you really think they can be effective? Is there really no risk to morale?
Even if he were completely correct (he wasn't) by doing such a sorry ham-fisted job he made himself a liability. Even if he only angered or offended 10 other engineers that alone is reason enough to get rid of him. Hiring and training engineers is expensive.
Corporations are not free speech zones. If you become a liability the company will drop you like a hot-potato and don't you ever forget it.
>(putting aside the fact that white christian terrorists are far more likely to be your cause of death in the USA).
This is not true. Even ignoring the 3,000 people killed in the twin towers, the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting alone killed more people than all right-wing attacks since 9/11/2001 combined. And that includes non-Christian attackers. And such things as neo-Nazis killing pedophiles in prison.
>When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?
That is a result of affirmative action, not of the memo. Shooting the messenger, if you will.
Exactly. Affirmative action causes everyone, including the person, to question whether they got there on merit or based on filling some quota. Multiple biases are created.
> Affirmative action causes everyone, including the person, to question whether they got there on merit or based on filling some quota.
Affirmative Action does not require
having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies). So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.
> Affirmative Action does not require having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies).
Fair enough -- quotas aren't the issue, but affirmative action is the issue.
> So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.
That's a concrete conclusion based on unprovable/shaky reasoning.
And even if that were true and you could prove it, it wouldn't change the fact concerning affirmative action (in this case, lowering hiring standards for certain groups) causing bias for both coworkers and the employee. How do coworkers know an individual got there on their own merit? How does an individual who is on/above par, yet who happens to belong to an affirmative action group, shake the internal/external stigma that they got there based on the lowered bar? These things contribute to bias whether or not we like the overall idea behind affirmative action (which is to level the playing field). Nothing comes for free.
Do you completely reject the prescence of existing biases, conscious or unconscious, that give an advantage to males? I would hope not, since such biases have been clearly shown in blind studies by e.g. swapping names on resumes, etc.
But unless you do, you should agree that the choice is not between some biased "affirmative action" and a perfectly unbiased, meritocratic alternative, because the latter does not exist. The real choice is whether we try, in some least-bad way, to level the playing field or not.
>Do you completely reject the prescence of existing biases, conscious or unconscious, that give an advantage to males?
What the glass ceiling builds, the glass cellar destroys. Biases that exist when looking up reverse when looking down.
>swapping names on resumes, etc.
Recent study found an interesting result doing this.
>to level the playing field or not.
And thus some groups will always be looked at, internally and externally, as having the benefit of a better playing field. Perhaps that cost is worth it, but we shouldn't blame the ones pointing out the cost as if they were the source of it.
Affirmative action is strictly a US federal government policy. Google cannot implement affirmative action, however it can implement pro-diversity hiring policies. I honestly don't know what those policies are though, and reading through the thread it's unclear.
Affirmative action isn't actually a specific policy directive, so it's not like a checklist or a set of guidelines for hiring or anything. Every department does it differently. But the main idea is that Kennedy and later Johnson told the government to get its diversity house in order, and it did. Some private institutions choose to implement pro-diversity policies, for hiring and otherwise, but they're not in any way related.
What you're referring to is tokenism, which is an old concept: people of color, LGBTQ people, or women feel like they're only there because of their minority status. It's a familiar trope, especially amongst people of color because they've often been exploited that way.
It's certainly the case that at some point, someone gets a job or gets into a school because they're a minority. That's gotten a lot of play in this thread and in the broader debate. But what I haven't seen, and this happens far, far more often, is that minorities don't get jobs because they're minorities. It is hard to get a job as a software engineer if you're Black, if you're a woman, if you're a Black woman, or at all queer.
This happens far more often than White men losing out to "diversity hires", and I think we should start focusing on the fact that for minorities, you're often occupy a space between discrimination because of who you are, or tokenism because of who you are.
But at least with tokenism you have a job. I'm in no way saying we should settle for this; the situation's unacceptable. But let's stop acting like tokenism is the worst thing in the world for minorities and then use it as an excuse to get rid of pro-diversity policies and affirmative action; policies that have probably done more for minorities than any other policy initiative past like, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Reconstruction Amendments, the 19th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Acts.
I would say that women already know that affirmative action hiring practices negatively affect people's perception of the abilities of those who benefit from them. And even if they didn't know, the hostile work environment[1] would already exist in the stereotypes women overcome, so publishing the memo would only give the opportunity to fight it more effectively for women who do not realize they face discrimination.
[1] I am not certain the extent to which this stereotype exists, so I am not sure it rises to the level of making the work environment "hostile", but I see that it could be the case.
So if I say "the average women is shorter than the average man", am I now liable for being fired for creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers?
That leap of logic - taking a general statement and interpreting it as a personal attack - strikes me as something I'd read in Dilbert. It strikes me as a justification for the outrage people want to feel.
Well, I agree with the spirit of your argument. However:
> So if I say "the average women is shorter than the average man", am I now liable for being fired for creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers?
You wouldn't just be saying that. You'd be saying, "we know about implicit/explicit biases, but maybe short people are less interested in tech and that helps to explain the hiring gap." That and a series of studies about how short people, on average, have biological qualities that differentiate them from taller people, which you use to bolster your supposition. In effect, you'd be saying that, on average, short people are possibly just less interested in technology because they like other things, respond differently to stress and don't have the drive for status that tall people do.
So, while you wouldn't necessarily be _wrong_ for supposing that and people would be wrong to impute any further meaning than is represented (such as, short people aren't fit for tech, short people are not as good as tall people, etc.), you might be at least partially wrong for not being as clear as possible in your phrasing ... but not much else. Mainly, because his intention isn't to say women aren't fit for tech, but to point out why they might, on average, be less interested in tech, which would help to explain the gap in STEM interest.
Quoted argument doesn't make sense. If the hiring standards are the same for women an men then you know that any women at the company is as qualified as any men at least until you get to know more about them, there is just less of them - no reason to prove anything.
If on the other hand any kind of affirmative action is in place then you would be right to assume average women is less qualified than an average man because that's what affirmative action is: lowering the bar for certain groups.
The very presence of affirmative action ("diversity efforts") should be the reason for women at the company to feel unsafe because then the prejudice against them becomes rational.
This should be obvious in my view. The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool.
If what you say is true then in workplaces without affirmative action programs we should not expect to find any workers who thinks the women that work there are less qualified than the men who work there. (Because the "cause", affirmative action, is not in place.)
Do you really think that is the case?
> The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool.
Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do.
>>If what you say is true then in workplaces without affirmative action programs we should not expect to find any workers who thinks the women that work there are less qualified than the men who work there. (Because the "cause", affirmative action, is not in place.)
Sadly that's not the case. Affirmative action makes prejudice rational but it's not the only reason people display prejudice.
If A implies B then removing A doesn't make B false.
>>Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do.
Good for them. They really should keep discrimination when hiring away from it. "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among X group" is discrimination.
The same way "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among white people" is discrimination based on race.
The only way to not have to feel discriminated like that would be if you could control minds of all relevant people in the workplace and make absolutely sure they don't have any bad thoughts towards you. Otherwise if you're a type of person who worries about what others think about you, you'll always have a reason to feel crappy, imagining whatever negative thought may be going through other people's minds.
Way out of this is to find a way not to care so much about what others think. Or if you suspect particular person of actual discrimination, talk to them, or report them specifically if you can't do that or it doesn't work.
Solution is not to suppress discussion by firing people for discussing diversity. That just creates a truly hostile environment of fear of being fired for others. And discussion is not really suppressed anyway. Quite the opposite.
I find it frustrating that this is being downvoted - this is about the most universal piece of advice to be given to anybody in any job that uses computers to communicate with each other. I literally just read this exact line in "The Hard Thing About Hard Things," a book recommended to me on this forum.
Those that are downvoting, why do you disagree that this statement is not relevant to the current discussion?
I agree, and I suspect the attitude of cooler heads may act in Damore's favor when all is said and done.
The number of leakers has to be quite the headache for Google's StopLeaks folks. Between people leaking Damore's memo because they were upset by it, and people talking to Breitbart because they were angry he was fired, there's been a LOT of leaks. How Google approaches handling this issue is going to be interesting, there's a lot of hurt feelings on all sides.
That's a huge one. I can easily see anyone who operates an internal "blacklist" of other employees as creating a hostile work environment. And from my understanding, those who did posted as such under their real names, so there's no investigation needed to track down who is doing it.
If there's an employee conduct we should all be able to agree is hostile, blacklisting coworkers would be it.
If I had been passed over for promotion or denied an internal transfer I was well qualified for, especially if I had gotten good performance reviews, I'd certainly be looking to have a judge subpoena those lists. That those managers felt so bold as to brag about it indicates that most of them are at it, or that they have tacit support from HR. And if I wasn't on one of the lists revealed, then we'd have to keep digging, or suspect someone had destroyed the evidence.
Yep. No one is stopping them from having personal black list and refuse to work personally but they were claiming to ruin people's career inside and outside of Google and they were proud of it which is scary. Also someone was proposing public blacklist...
If you distribute material like that, it will get leaked. That should be taken foregranted. If I got that memo I probably would have leaked it to the press, too.
As far as I have been able to put things together as a non-Googler he went to an unrecorded "diversity summit" about a month and 1/2 ago, where, according to his statements in the Jordan Peterson interview, practices where put forward that he considered to be potentially illegal. He then wrote the document in his free time and posted it to a forum dedicated for feedback to the summit (? or more general diversity related). After engagement has been nothing to low he also posted the memo to an internal Google Group called "Skeptics" because he wanted to be proven wrong. Shortly after that the memo was leaked to the public (either without citations or the citations were then removed by the respective media), indicating that someone from this community did so.
I'd appreciate if someone could confirm/deny or add anything to this timeline.
I have no factual information, but I know that when I write papers where I want to invite discussion, I don't make blatant statements based on a subset of the evidence I have and then expect people to dispassionately pick them apart for me.
Rather, I present my honest assessment of the strengths of the various pieces of evidence, pro and con. If I "want to be proven wrong", I certainly wouldn't present a falsely certain argument. That is not arguing in good faith.
And that's how I would argue a scientific question, not an argument about my coworkers ability.
1. He went to the summit, which wasn't recorded mostly to allow people to be open and share their private stories without fear
2. Something about that summit didn't sit right with him, so he wrote up this document and send it as feedback directly to the organizers (not openly)
3. When he got no response back (it's arguable if organizers should reply to every single feedback, but you can also argue that this was a pretty big one), he posted it to an open but not huge discussion board (skeptics) specifically made for people to argue ideas and have discussions.
4. Eventually, it caught some attention outside of the board and it blew up across the entire company
You were pretty close but just wanted to clarify a couple small points.
I am 100% certain that the trackiest company in the world is perfectly capable of knowing exactly who leaked it. They have chosen to protect that person, for reasons unknown at this time.
How? Presumably tens of thousands of employees read it; how can you possibly know which needle in that haystack converted it to a different format and then sent it to a reporter? Especially if it was done over Tor or similar? How exactly do you track that? There are technologies that work that allow for anonymous means of communication.
How? Presumably tens of thousands of employees read it; how can you possibly know which needle in that haystack converted it to a different format and then sent it to a reporter? Especially if it was done over Tor or similar? How exactly do you track that? There are technologies that work that allow for anonymous means of communication.
Is there some positive net benefit of Google releasing the details of the person they fired for leaking the internal information? Companies rarely mention details about firing employees for misconduct.
Well, they didn't and it resulted in a war of leaks. Now anyone with inside information knows they can settle scores by doing it. I think we will see a lot more of it. Good for justice, not so good for Google...
> There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe.
I feel unsafe as a Man when people advocate that employers should engage in gender discrimination against Men to enforce an arbitrary ratio of Men/Women the workforce.
Do I have the right to feel safe? Do Men have the right to get Women fired because they feel unsafe and threatened by the ideas they express?
There is a double standard and institutional bias that is being perpetrated by corporations like Google. I see no attempt to address these issues in away that changes there institutional bias and affords equity to the opponents to these ideas. This is simply damage control.
LinkedIn doesn't allow one to differentiate between being enrolled in a PhD program, or having completed a PhD program
The common practice when enrolled in a PhD program is to list using a future completion date, making clear that you have not yet completed the program.
Google knew he was enrolled in this program when they hired him.
Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0] It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference for "people" jobs vs "things" jobs.[1]
Sorry, you would probably need to read through the parent article (from the comment) for the broader context ...in which Scott makes the claim in the form of a rebuttal to another article by Grant, to which Grant replied (who also did not find biologically driven human female preference for "people" vs "things." convincing), and I gave you the link to Scott's reply to that!
A forward: Grant is a professor of Economics at Wharton, and Scott is a Psychiatrist and author of a popular blog - both agree that biological differences in ability are small (for the field of CS at large).
Scott contends:
> It’s a very common and well-replicated finding that the more progressive and gender-equal a country, the larger gender differences in personality ... become (aggressiveness, horniness, language abilities, mechanical abilities, visuospatial skills, mechanical ability, tendermindness, assertiveness, comfort with body, various physical abilities ...)
Concomitantly, those countries display the worst gender imbalance in CS graduates while the countries with poor GDI do well on their ratios! Outright discrimination does not look plausible. Maybe its just socialization?
Scott looks backwards in time. Only 20% of high school students who take AP CS are women... which is about the number of US CS graduates. You can trace roughly equal numbers (in terms of interest) back to middle school and even earlier... and even to Rhesus monkeys apparently! However,
> One subgroup of women does not display these gender differences at any age. These are women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition that gives them a more typically-male hormone balance
Scott then applies the theory of preferences (objects versus systems) to other professions, such as medicene, where roughly equal numbers of women and men exist, but they dominate different specialties (women in Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Physciatry, Family Medicene, and men in Surgery, Radiology, etc). Women make up ~40% of US math grads, but they mostly go on to teach math! He contends women have left CS since the 70s out of personal preference, as it was one of only a few socially acceptable jobs for women at the time. Instead, they now choose to be a doctor or lawyer, and this OK.
edit: I also forgot to mention that he asks if discrimination/socialization are the chief culprit, why do they only affect CS and not other high status/high paying jobs (like being a doctor) which previously exhibited the same gender ratio.
Thank you. As a psychiatrist, Scott ought to know better than to cite these things as gospel...
"the more progressive and gender-equal a country, the larger gender differences in personality ... become"
I suggest you read Lippa's papers and survey paper and draw your own conclusions. These inferences are drawn from very limited observations, and generalizing so far from the observational context is totally unconvincing.
What do Rhesus monkeys have to do with CS graduates?
The CAH studies I've been able to unearth are very underpowered. Maybe there are better ones, though. Also, CAH affects genitalia, which affects gender identity, which affects socialization. Not at all surprising that some CAH females would exhibit masculine characteristics, through socialization alone.
> why do they only affect CS and not other high status/high paying jobs (like being a doctor)
Outside SV and similar areas, CS has nowhere near the same status as medicine. How many TV shows can you list about software developers? How many about doctors?
The heterodox article is one of them, but they also link to several others they saw as reasonably backed up by the literature cited. The included counter points as well if they were written by people in that field.
I've only read one of them [1] in full, so it's hard to say with any depth my opinions of the others. Some of the findings listed in the abstracts have varying mentions of biological involvement. The larger point they were trying to make is that there are differences _now_, and given some of the research that's influenced as far back as at least middle school for the cultural part of it. Where the ratio is for nature/nurture they leave open for a future post (which they claim to be working on).
Not the OP, but more and more it seems that if you are not 100% unequivocally clear, someone will attack you as if you agreed with a polemical point.
I think this is in part due to the "chilling effect". I've been there myself. I have to be super clear that I don't endorse nor necessarily agree with some point lest I find myself being equated with the worst of the worst...regardless if I agree or not with said point.
That's it in a nutshell, yes. And I agree that it's sad, but it's something I only tend to feel compelled to do on very divisive political topics, so it's not too bad, really.
Sure! It's solely based on my experience with commenters, who sometimes view statements like that as endorsements or as indicators that personal beliefs align with those who are being quoted or described.
I watched some youtube interviews of him, one on Bloomberg where he seemed pretty nervous and not as articulate or as relaxed as on this longer interview https://youtu.be/SEDuVF7kiPU with some Canadian professor who apparently has a bad rap of his own. Still an interesting discussion with some odd 3rd party alternate Googler in the background who speaks up every now and then but who has an obscure role in the context of the overall discussion. I was pretty curious too who this fella was that stirred up the hornet's nest.
Google, like all corporate structures is hierarchical.
Corporations recognize "success" for employees through promotion. Promotion usually includes higher pay.
Men are taught from a young age that they need to "compete" for "success"
There is no way to win the game for all players inside corporate hierarchy.
If you can't win the game, but wish to remain (or are trapped by your economic situation) you will have pressure to feel validated.
Throughout history, dominant majorities (men, whites, etc) succumb to this same problem of "not enough winners." This format breeds a type of resentment instead of introspection.
Instead of facing the truth: the game is stacked against you, you may just not be that good etc., it is far easier to devise some sort of massive conspiracy or pseudo-science to justify your prejudice.
White men feel that they "deserve" things moreso now than ever because women, POC etc represent another competitor in their weird corporate power fantasy game.
It feels increasingly "Unfair" and contrasts to the cultural narrative we continue to endorse (especially here in SV) - that success is economic based, and based on merit.
Women and POC will continue to be the scapegoats until culturally we decide that "success" isn't about being an individual that becomes rich or powerful.
> Instead of facing the truth: the game is stacked against you, you may just not be that good etc., it is far easier to devise some sort of massive conspiracy or pseudo-science to justify your prejudice.
I suspect that you do not see the irony in this statement.
> "success" isn't about being an individual that becomes rich
Independent of the rest of your comment: the quoted concept is trivially false as long as resources are scarce. (i.e. the foreseeable future; barring severe, draconian and arguably-unethical controls on population size)
("Powerful" being an additional non-redundant qualifier, is merely a consequence of the monopoly called "government".)
Resources aren't actually that scarce and haven't been for quite a while. The Breadbasket of America can feed everyone. Population growth isn't really a scarcity problem, it's an organizational and structural one. Unless you think we're at max efficiency!
Food is one resource. Energy and topsoil are others, needed for food production. Thanks to (U.S.) government subsidies for farming, farmers can purchase those resources unusually easily; some argue that this will lead to faster depletion of those resources since farmers aren't under sufficient economic incentive to conserve them.
Are women not taught to compete? I do not remember girls being any less competitive (in school, in sports, etc.) Almost everyone wants to stand out and be better than others in some aspects and is proud when they can achieve that.
Life is very competitive, I am not sure why need to de-emphasize it to much. Making it "us" vs "them" is the more problematic part, but individual competition is a pretty constructive force overall, for men and women of all colors.
Everyone is taught to compete. But I don't think competition is the sole driving force, or even the major one that makes sense for humans. Collaboration seems to always be better for people than conflict.
Poker is a niche hobby, not some metaphor of competition in life. That picture says more about poker as a way to spend time than about competing. You might as well show pictures from a fly-fishing competition. I don't play poker, yet I am pretty competitive in many aspect of life. All I know is that pretty much every woman I have talked to wants to be more popular, more famous, more successful. And I have seen girls compete for influence, and grades, and victory in sorts from a very young age.
> Women and POC will continue to be the scapegoats until culturally we decide that "success" isn't about being an individual that becomes rich or powerful.
I am a "POC". I would very much like it if you and others of your ilk (leftists/liberals) stop speaking for me. I am not a scapegoat and have never been one. I take ownership of where I am in life.
Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.
I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.
I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong".
I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as inappropriate work communication.
It was apparently a live-document (like etherpad) and the intention was get feedback directly in-line if I understood correctly. Not an unusual way of doing things for an engineer.
It's usual for an engineer to understand something outside their field of expertise by submitting a draft of what they know to others who aren't domain experts, either?
Wouldn't an actual engineering process have started by submitting a document for feedback from somebody whose field of expertise deals with unequal gender representation in the workplace?
I disagree. He mentioned in an interview[1] that he was looking to be proven wrong which is what led him to share it with the Skeptics group at Google, which is when the document propagated. He had actually wrote the document weeks prior but was unsatisfied with the lack of discussion on his document.
That seems an odd approach tbh. Many 'Skeptics' groups (Skeptic / Rationalist YouTube) online at least would agree with his reasoning. It strikes me as odd that he was seeking to take down an ideological echo chamber but published it initially in the echo chamber most likely to agree with him.
His first group he sent it to was a diversity group. I think it reasonable that a skeptic group who, ostensibly, would side with reason would be a next logical step.
> If that's odd, then what is firing just to prove him right?
Google is a company with shareholders and P/L. It's not a thought experiment, a family, a social commons, or a debating society. It exists to make money.
Google took the decision to fire him based on what was likely to create a conducive atmosphere for its workers.
His memo, however construed, made it likely that he could no longer be able to contribute as effectively to some teams.
Google's responsibility to Damore begins and ends at their mutual alignment of economic interests.
> Google took the decision to fire him based on what was likely to create a conducive atmosphere for its workers.
They did the opposite, someone said it's not okay to shame people into silence, and then they did just that.
> made it likely that he could no longer be able to contribute as effectively to some teams.
What does "as effectively" mean? What are "some teams"? If someone sweats a lot, and a million other things, the above would also be technically true. Or hey, if a company fired someone over something like this. That will make a lot of bright people, both male and female, think twice before even giving Google a consideration.
> Google's responsibility to Damore begins and ends at their mutual alignment of economic interests.
It's not about responsibility to him, but about their responsibility for themselves to not shit the bed like they did.
Then Google's calculus is simply different to yours. For what its worth, I don't think Google's response to this is going to have a significant impact on Google's ability to hire talented people, or that white, heterosexual, cisgendered people are going to feel that their opportunities at Google are likely to be curtailed. Females, I would say, or any other minority within Google, are even less likely to.
Would someone please explain what this means, wouldn't an anti-regressive be a progressive? If so, why not state it that way?
Also, I thought the term "skeptic" had been hijacked by conspiracy wackos. When I think of a classic skeptic, I look to James Randi and the like; critical thinkers who expose quackery. But, for the last 15-20 years, conspiracy theorists have taken the term over (e.g. vaccine/climate/GMO skeptics). I fall into the Randi group of skeptics, but I sure as hell don't describe myself using that word, for fear of being lumped in with the second lot.
Real skeptics tend to be progressive, conspiracy skeptics tend to be regressive.
Based on the spelling, I'll assume emsy is a Brit... maybe things are different over there, but Randi was always more popular in England than in the US. I'm missing something.
I'm German. The skeptics I were talking about and presumably the comment I answered on, were the YouTube skeptics. What I meant with anti-regressive was that these skeptics mostly tackle so-called progressives that use racism and sexism for their arguments or policies.
I've never heard the conspiracy theorists called skeptics, so I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been written from the opposite side that have not been criticized in the same way.
And for the record, I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I thought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats. I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.
> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).
This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.
The burden of responding to something that is (at the very least presented as) evidence? I don't think it's possible to have a discussion if you don't expect and allow pro-affirmative-action stakeholders to respond with their own evidence and reasoning, in turn.
He could have brought up his concerns to hiring authorities in the company, whose job it is to refute diversity myths. Not expect people who have had this burden placed on them for their entire adult life to do it yet again.
The result from HR was silence. He never intended for the memo to go public, but he did want feedback from his colleagues. If HR didn't want the issue going further, they should have actually responded to him.
But he saw a problem and wanted to fix it. You're basically saying he should have left the problem where it is and pretend itsr not there, which is not what engineers typically do. Can you blame him for that?
Not just engineers...That kind of mentality does not advance society.
Imagine..."She thought black people should not have to sit at the back of the bus. She told authorities who just remained silent. She should have sucked it up and moved to the north!"
It's not just "pro-affirmative-action stakeholders" that are expected to respond. _As referenced in the article_, it's extending to expecting women to come up with responses just because they are women. You're talking about a situation where one side (the side of the manifesto) has dropped an "evidence bomb", some of which may be valid, some not, and is now complaining "why won't you have a discussion?" They weren't invited to a discussion, they weren't talked _to_, they were talked _at_, and are now being looked to as the defenders of their gender when they just want to do their damn job.
this is textbook tone policing. it's an essay, not a spoken dialogue. you could say this about, say, a published study about climate change projections.
You can throw buzzwords designed to shut down discussion at me all you want, that's irrelevant. He claims his goal was to have a dialogue, the fact is that he chose a very poor way of doing that. Either his goals aren't what he claims or he misunderstood how to accomplish them.
Considering this is one of the most explosively discussed topics on HN and in the industry I would say he's been wildly successful at starting a discussion.
I can start a discussion about racism in the US by going on TV and yelling the n-word, that doesn't mean that I did a good job of opening a constructive dialogue.
This is exactly it. Women in spaces (virtual, in-person, in their workplaces) are being forced into this conversation to defend ourselves, because this "bomb" was dropped/leaked, outside of all relevant context, and now hype and focusing illusions have made it our job to make evolutionary psych-based arguments against it. I don't know what Damore's intent was, but the effect was to put people who disagreed with him, and especially women who disagreed with him, at an immediate disadvantage, rather than to reach out to them for the sake of a conversation.
It seems like the disadvantage fell squarely on Damore's shoulders here, considering he was the one who was actually fired.
It's definitely horrible for people to feel like they don't belong. But I would argue that feeling like your job is at risk is a lesser threat than actually losing your job, no?
I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so.
I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man?
Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.
Exactly. If Damore had focused his comments purely on hiring practices, quotas, discriminatory policies etc he would still be there and almost all would've found his comments constructive.
But he didn't do that. He brought up scientifically baseless, insulting and emotionally immature rationales for an important and sensitive topic. Working around people in a professional environment requires nuance and tact. He showed none of this.
The fact that so many in IT seem to miss this point and defend him explains so much about why many men and women stay away from this field.
From what I've seen, much of the anti-memo invective is based on (a) not reading it, or (b) an extremist interpretation of what he says, or (c) outright denial of scientific facts.
It really is easier to join a lynch mob, than to say "Hmm... perhaps we want a cold, cautious examination of the facts"
These things are talked about at the workplace, however. Just around the water cooler in private rather than out in the open. It is getting super weird and awkward these days where many people claim to adhere to the accepted diversity story in public but obviously don't in private.
I think it's a weird dance we play with polite society and reality. Sometime last year it was pointed out that being called a racist is worse than actually being a racist. After years of political correctness, racist people have "learned the language" but you still see conscious and unconscious racism all the time. Does that fix systemic racism? Is it a step forward or a step backward?
These are just tough problems. How do you make up for a system that is biased against you? At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's.
It's hard to have an honest conversation because it's easy to police words, but tough to police thoughts and motivations.
> Sometime last year it was pointed out that being called a racist is worse than actually being a racist.
This is pretty interesting. At this point I accept that I'm both racist and sexist because of the culture I grew up in. But there was a time when I took the suggestion that I was racist or sexist as a deep assault on my character and intellect.
I think it's hard to admit, probably especially for software engineers, that we're biased in some way, but the truth is that this stuff is insidious. It's somehow true that boys are called on more than girls, and they're given more positive feedback for participation in the classroom. Or like earlier in this thread I referenced Dr. Sadedin's Quora post and someone responded to it assuming that she's a man. Or I remember a prominent woman feminist on Twitter talking about how she was confused why a woman flight attendant was talking about the weather forecast, potential turbulence, and landing time when she realized the woman was actually the pilot.
No one's immune from this. It's pernicious, it's embedded in our culture, and it pervades our entire society.
> At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's.
This is a fair point. I think (to use a corporate term I kind of disdain) we need buy-in from white men and we don't have it right now. Most of us don't believe that a problem exists, or that we are sexist and racist (importantly, just like everyone else), or that we personally need to do anything about this. Until that changes, we'll still feel cheated by pro-diversity policies, and issues like this will keep flaring up.
I think the fix is simple but not necessarily easy (oh no, accidental Rich Hickey reference haha), and it's to just keep talking about these issues. Not, of course, in the workplace, but in your social circles. And if you can't learn about this stuff in your social circles, do some research online or broaden your social circle to challenge yourself a little (I use theflipside.io and it's been surprisingly illuminating). Because the facts are that current US society and culture puts over 2/3 of us at a significant disadvantage, and the sooner the dominant group (straight cis white men) gets wise to it the sooner we can fix it.
Most of us don't believe that a problem exists, or that we are sexist and racist (importantly, just like everyone else), or that we personally need to do anything about this. Until that changes, we'll still feel cheated by pro-diversity policies, and issues like this will keep flaring up.
I don't think that's a fair characterization. I think a lot of white men recognize that a problem exists. It's just that there are so many other problems in this society right now that it seems low on the totem pole. Personally, I'm more afraid of an outbreak of violence between neo-Nazis and radical Marxists. It's hard not to draw parallels to 1920s Europe.
> It's just that there are so many other problems in this society right now that it seems low on the totem pole. Personally, I'm more afraid of an outbreak of violence between neo-Nazis and radical Marxists. It's hard not to draw parallels to 1920s Europe.
Yeah things seem pretty fucked right now, and it's kind of hard to believe it all happened in less than a year. Not really confidence inspiring.
> I think a lot of white men recognize that a problem exists.
Honestly, I'd like to hear from them. Just look at this thread, the ratio of anti-Damore to pro-Damore people is like 1-to-10, and the other threads are even worse.
I will say I pushed it too far when I said "[m]ost of us". Looking at this Gallup poll 58% of White men support affirmative action for women and 52% of White men support affirmative action for racial minorities. The MoE is 5% and that's pretty close, affirmative action questions are subject to social desirability bias, I would assume numbers have dropped in the Trump era, and I don't necessarily think support for affirmative action translates into "I'm cool, and maybe even happy with the idea that a similarly qualified woman might get a job instead of me", but hey 58 is 58 :)
But I don't really accept the explanation that "there are so many other problems". This is a huge problem if you're a minority in the US. It's really an issue of perspective here.
> Honestly, I'd like to hear from them. Just look at this thread, the ratio of anti-Damore to pro-Damore people is like 1-to-10, and the other threads are even worse.
How is not smearing the guy who said there is a problem equal to not wanting to accept there is a problem?
> Honestly, I'd like to hear from them. Just look at this thread, the ratio of anti-Damore to pro-Damore people is like 1-to-10, and the other threads are even worse.
I'm white and I agree a problem exists, although I'm not American. I'm also basically on the "pro-Damore" side in this thread, although I don't necessarily agree with everything he wrote in the document. You seem to take this as an indication that I'm sexist or denying sexism exists, and I think a big part of the problem is exactly this kind of "you either agree with me or you're a sexist pig" approach.
A person can be pro-equality and even for encouraging more women to go into tech, without agreeing that all gender differences are caused by social conditioning or that affirmative action is the proper way to fix it.
> I'm white and I agree a problem exists, although I'm not American.
Oh cool, hi!
> A person can be pro-equality and even for encouraging more women to go into tech, without agreeing that all gender differences are caused by social conditioning or that affirmative action is the proper way to fix it.
Sure, alright. What do you think about the problem? I guess, what are your ideas for addressing the gender gap without pro-diversity policies and affirmative action?
Sure, alright. What do you think about the problem? I guess, what are your ideas for addressing the gender gap without pro-diversity policies and affirmative action?
I'm not the person you asked this question but I'll give my take:
I don't think the gender gap is the problem. Sexism and harassment are the problems. The evidence for that is very clear from the first-hand accounts of women in industry. The gap itself, on the other hand, is not evidence of sexism. There are many, many factors that go into people's choice of career path long before some entitled boss decides not to keep his hands to himself.
That's pretty Orwellian. Sort of like loving big brother. You "accept" that you're racist and sexist, although you can't identify any actual beliefs you have in this regard? And you once rejected it?
Sounds like you've been brainwashed dude.
> I remember a prominent woman feminist on Twitter talking about how she was confused why a woman flight attendant was talking about the weather forecast, potential turbulence, and landing time when she realized the woman was actually the pilot
In the unlikely event that actually happened and wasn't just someone shit-stirring on Twitter, it seems she's blaming society for her own problems. I've never experienced anything like that. So when you say "nobody is immune from this" speak for yourself.
Shouldn't employers abstain from controversial subjects as well, then? It seems one sided to hold employees to that standard but not the corporations and bosses they work for.
Every day the "pro-diversity" (in the sense of preferentially hiring practices) don't abstain... they tell you a viewpoint and force you to adopt it even when you disagree. The fact people keep their mouth shuts shouldn't be a surprise. That doesn't make the pro crowd any less controversial. It's just they don't get fired for their controversial opinions.
I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll disagree with you.
The workplace was the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in another part of the comment section for this very article.
Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective, introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire' among other things.
What it did not do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him.
Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo, and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally introduced it to, at least at that point in time.
Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial. It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.
It isn't a question of whether it's the right place to have it.
A corporation may not be the best place to bring up these topics, if your goal is to avoid getting fired. Otherwise, it is a place full of smart engineers and the guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation in a corporate setting about a policy which Google as a corporation faces external and internal pressure about.
But as far as receptiveness, yes Google was a great venue for this, given who works there. Do you think hacker news is a better venue in that respect?
Even on this very board, that same exact seemingly harmless claim, given and elaborated on in a talk about men and women given by a professor of psychology at FSU, was downvoted and bashed in a TL;DR manner:
"A corporation may not be the best place to bring up these topics, if your goal is to avoid getting fired"
Agree. In fairness to James, however, I believe HR solicited feedback.
"[T]he guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation"
Seriously, what a let down. The "Sergey" and "Larry" who created Google would not have stood for this. Either they have lost control of their company, or they have changed.
Working proactively to address racism/sexism/n'ism: Good, not evil
Demanding orthodoxy of thought (or enabling those who do): Bad; EVIL
Google was being already investigated/accused of extreme gender pay discrimination. I'm not sure how anyone could think they'd want to engage in any kind of discussion that could be interpreted as discriminating to women while being under investigation for discriminating women. sigh
Shutting down an honest discussion of something because there is an investigation and it might be revealing is pretty high up there on the immoral scale.
I think your mixing two separate things here. The discussion was shut down not because it "might be revealing". It's plain and simple because they think is more harmful to have the discussion at a point when they're in legal trouble (with the corresponding financial penalty) than the argued loss of honest discussion (whatever exactly that means for you). It's because work is not a frigging politics/social debate club. You go to work to do whatever it is you were hired to do, not to discuss topics that may actually reduce productivity on your diverse work force for feeling discriminated.
I understand there's an inevitable social/political aspect of working together, but is not the focus and if you don't agree with the political views/decisions of a company, and you can't get them (through proper channels, your manager, HR) to change, no one grants you the right to say whatever you want in the work place, especially when what you say is widely considered (by the company) as harmful to their interests.
No. I think you're jumping to conclusions. It only implies they may need to look harder to find equally skilled people in a smaller talent pool (e.g minorities interested in tech). Sure, it'd be somewhat cheaper to not worry about those constraints (if the laws were different), but I think in the grand scheme of things the different in cost is largely irrelevant.
> Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage
I think the larger problem is that this is an overstatement. Women might not be interested in joining the current tech culture, but that doesn't mean they aren't interested in tech to a larger extent than the current numbers suggest.
Part of the disconnect is that these initiatives are aimed at changing the culture to be more attractive to women, and the people who really like the culture don't see the need.
Certainly the current tech culture is effective and fairly productive, but I certainly don't know that it will be more, equally, or less productive with these culture changes.
I don't think you can claim that "tech" and e.g. civil engineering have much in common in terms of culture, but they still share the lack of men/women parity.
Seems like you're arguing semantics, as the phrase could easily be changed to "current engineering culture" to invalidate your point.
If you find it objectionable to change the phrase in such away, consider the fact that, as a computer scientist, I went to school and took classes with many mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers. I'm still friends with them today. The cultures are intertwined.
But why does the same trend persists across cultures? The same is true for any developed country in the world. Do you think your tech culture is also interwined with that of Australia, Poland, Sweden and Italy?
Yes, to an extent it is. But it's very difficult to quantify how big the effect on culture is on womens choices to not even pursue education in tech. It seems, for an example, extremely unlikely that a young woman basically anywhere in these countries, would say to herself, "hmm, I've heard that there's mansplaining at Google, so I think I'll go into law or investment banking or medicine instead".
The misogynism we're imploring ourselves to eradicate is so subtle, it's unconscious biases and micro-aggressions (that is, agressions you don't know you're committing). When we can barely detect them ourselves, how would they be able to embed themselves into the subconscience of millions of young girls across dozens of quite different cultures?
And that's without considering the quite numerous fields with a high degree of misogyny embedded as a broad popular culture trope. "Suits" does not envision a law-field that is particularly friendly to women, "Billions" : finance, "Scrubs" : medicine. Women have no issue with pursuing careers in those fields. That's not excusing bad behaviour, just observing that this behaviour, and broad knowledge of it, does not appear to deter women, and to serve as a counterpoint to the assertion that the far more subtle and much less broadly portrayed alleged misogynism of tech should be detering women.
Yet somehow, programming is considered a woman's job throughout vast swathes of India. China is much closer to parity in engineering as well.
You're ignoring that girls are socialized to think they're bad at math, science, etc. Boys are told the opposite and are pushed in this direction. I certainly was. My parents were drilling me on math by age five.
In all developed countries, only 10-25% of engineers are female. An American society in is very different from that of Australia, Sweden, Greece or Germany.
Not sure why, but I know one possible explanation.
In developing countries, people are pressured by their basic needs. An engineering job generally pays well. People in such countries are less likely to do what they want and more likely to do what pays well, so gender ratio in engineering is close to 50/50.
In developed countries, people are guaranteed to survive even without a profession or job. Less financial pressure, more freedom of choice, less women in engineering.
A very good point. Women don't go to STEM jobs because they get sufficient compensation in work that they like more, on the average. And it's easier to do what other women do.
That factor hasn’t stopped women from becoming e.g. doctors and lawyers.
Just 50 years ago, very few women did that, because discrimination (e.g. for healthcare in America, gender-based discrimination was only banned in 1975) and culture norms.
But now it’s pretty close to 50/50 gender ratio in these areas (females are 47.3% of law students in 2007, 46.7% of medical students in 2013).
Yes, we can conclude that structural discrimination of women in law and medical students has largely gone away. Why does anyone think that STEM subjects would somehow retained such discrimination?
I consider it more likely that now women do what they want to do. And that is in many ways a good thing.
Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."
Well doesn't this sort of support Damore's hypothesis ? Some of the smartest girls I know went into marketing, purely because they just loved that field. Somehow to them sitting in an office in front of a computer all day didn't seem that appealing.
Is it safe to infer that, in th developed world, given a career choice women have a propensity to not choose tech ?
On the contrary, it sort of refutes Damore's hypothesis: the difference is not inherent but merely societal, because we observe that, when encouraged, women can succeed at engineering as much as men.
In other words, if true, we should strive to understand why fewer women choose tech in developed countries and fix it, not automatically assume it's because they are inherently less interested.
That's one kind of encouragement, sure, but not the only one. I'm not even arguing money is necessarily the best reason. All I need to show is a refutation of the notion that there is some kind of biological/inherent impediment for women to be successful at tech.
PS: for that matter, my personal experience -- coming from a family of scientists who aren't rich, and which includes my mom -- is that there are other factors at play beyond money. Note I don't live in the US.
Succeeding at engineering is not the same as having the desire to do engineering. If it takes encouragement to push women into the field, that says the desire is not there.
I am going to go further and suggest that software engineering is just not that desirable of a career, no matter who you are. Given that compensation is a function of supply and demand, and this career is fairly well compensated, the lack of people – both male and female – entering the career path would suggest is not the top choice of anyone.
What appears to be happening is that some men are willing to put up with an undesirable career because of the higher than average compensation, while women are less wooed by those monetary factors.
The only 'fix' here is to drive home the importance of doing unhappy careers for big money towards the female population. But do we really want to do that? That does not really seem like a great goal. There is more to life than money.
All of that enters the realm of the highly subjective, with some parts I may agree with and other I don't. I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money. Other people I know did. I certainly cannot generalize to large groups of people. I disagree with your observation about "some men" and "women", or rather, I'd say "what happens is that some men are willing (and some, like me, are not) and some women aren't", and furthermore, I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things. I happen to think working long hours is crap, and something that needs to change (and the reason I find startups unattractive).
What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about.
> I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money.
But we're talking about the population at large, not the tiny group of 'geeks' who revel in the tech environment. There are always outliers.
If the general population – both men and women – wanted to do this kind of work, they would be falling all over each other to do it, just as they do in careers that are desirable. Instead, you see businesses falling over the few people who are willing to do it. That is not a sign of an attractive career path. Quite the opposite.
Again, not even men want to do this type of work. This is not even a gender issue at the heart of it.
> I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things.
But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the general population? Programming is simply an awful time that most people wouldn't wish upon their worst enemy. It is as simple as that. We can go around and try and blame things like culture, but at the end of the day the work that has to be done sucks.
Yes, some people are wired strangely and happen to like it. Pick anything you find distasteful and I can find you at least one person who loves it. That's the nature of having 7 billion people and all of their random mutations. That does not mean the masses have any interest whatsoever.
> What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about.
Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed. The fact that women can be as successful as men in the field does not mean that there is not some biological reason to not want to do the job.
You're mixing highly subjective aspects that I don't find worthwhile to debate here ("the job sucks") and that I disagree with. No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices. Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?
> But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the general population?
But it's not the general population we're talking about; that's a straw man. We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice. And yes, not excluding a segment of the population just because of irrelevant biological traits is desirable and worth the effort.
> Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed
To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow explained biological differences. Money is not a biological factor, it's a societal one! The logical disconnect is so pronounced that it must point to an emotional blind spot.
> No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices.
Then why are men and women alike rejecting the field? Men less so, perhaps, but neither gender are jumping at the chance to have the job. Not even the well above average compensation that attempts to attract them to the industry.
> Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?
This is not my opinion, this is what the data shows. I'm glad you do not feel that the professional is awful. I personally do not feel that way either, but we cannot use our biases to believe that everyone feels the same way. Be very careful of your biases.
> We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice.
In order to even think about whether the workplace is hostile to women, we first have to determine why neither gender is interested in the profession. Again, this is not my opinion. This is what the data is telling us.
> To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow explained biological differences.
Let me be clear: I am not saying it is explained by biological differences. I am saying that your explanation does nothing to exclude biological differences. Women proving success in the tech workplace does nothing to discount a biological aspect, and it is flawed logic to believe otherwise.
But this possible explanation, even if true (which I don't know), is still a refutation of Damore's argument: there is no biological or inherent basis for having fewer women in engineering. If women, when they see the need (e.g. for economic reasons) or are otherwise encouraged, can successfully tackle engineering fields, then surely the difference is societal and not inherent, unlike what Damore seemed to claim?
This is how I read the idea in the comment you replied to: external factors (namely, needing money to satisfy even the most basic life needs), not biological ones, are the ones that drive some places to have a more evenly split men/women ratio. When the environment is "safe" enough that you don't need to worry about how you're going to survive, that's when the biological predispositions come to light, and you get women going to what they inherently prefer, and move away from the things they don't.
I don't think the point is that women can't successfully tackle engineering, they can. But that doesn't mean that they have a predisposition towards it. If you encourage (or even force) someone into a particular profession, they might excel at it, but that doesn't imply that they would've picked it on their own.
Men and women living in richer and mostly western countries have the luxury to choose the jobs they are attracted to even if that attraction is to some extent based on biological factors and not societal or economic factors.
I personally wouldn't go as far with that claim, but young girls are certainly discouraged from pursuing STEM careers either actively or unintentionally (representation/role models, toys etc.)
What I (and I suspect others) want to see is proof of active discouragement, rather than the lack of encouragement.
The link between wealth, marriage suitability and social status is well observed for men, and in stereotypical pattern boys are pushed towards professions which maximize the potential for high income. Since society do not measure the value for women on how much money they bring, it follows that girls are not pushed with the same fever towards high paying jobs except if local situation causes families to do so by necessity (which is one explanation why certain countries have higher ratio of women in typical high paying profession).
I have the theory that if you want to get equal amount of young girls and young boys in STEM careers you need to remove focus on how such choice can lead towards high income. It would not increase the encouragement for girls, but fewer boys would be pushed in that direction and as a result the difference between the sexes would decrease.
The fact that in India and China (very different cultures) there are a lot of female programmers doesn't say anything about cultural influences in the West. Being encouraged to do maths at age 5 is not the norm (regardless of gender).
> Yet somehow, programming is considered a woman's job throughout vast swathes of India. China is much closer to parity in engineering as well.
More women choose engineering when they have fewer career choices, because they take the freedoms they can get; Iran also has a high ratio of female engineers. In virtually all countries where women are free to choose any career, they largely don't choose engineering.
it is probably true that women are less interested in current tech culture and this was his entire point. He literally stated how to change culture to be more welcoming to women and make them more interested in tech, for example make pair programming more common and have more part-time engineering positions... that's just small piece of possible changes and he welcomed honest discussion to figure out what is actually feasible for Google...
> but I certainly don't know that it will be more, equally, or less productive with these culture changes.
Nor does Damore.
In Damore's memo, the table of left vs right bias was ridiculous, even if we agree on those biases, which we don't, I'd argue why use those, and why pick n number of biases and leave out others? This isn't a rigorous paper.
The toy hypothetical following the table is such a overly simple contrivance, are we supposed to be taking this seriously? So many assertions...
To be fair... How often do you create "a rigorous paper" before you engage in an internal discussion at your company? Is that the standard? And if so, when do you have time to do actual work?
Try at least not to have completely unreasonable expectations.
Nope. You are wrong. Here's why: Damore is not the first time any of the women who work at Google encountered this sort of idea. He isn't even the hundreth person any of them would have encountered telling them that they are simply inferior.[1] It might have been the first time that HE argued it, but surely the female engineers he was talking about (but not to) have seen it all before.
So it was incumbent upon Damore to do a lot of work, and come up with something both rigorous and novel. If he didn't, and he still thought that rehashing a whole bunch of stuff that had been discussed before was sufficient to "advance the conversation" about such a controversial topic he is an idiot who deserved to be fired and forgotten.
The nicest way to say this is the way one of the women the TFA put it: 'a general lack of consideration for his female colleagues.' Then again, she has a lifetime of politely dealing with male chauvinist idiots, and has learned that calling them out doesn't get her far.
If you are going to write on such a controversial topic and don't want to be seen as a self absorbed attention seeking polemicist [1], you ought to be more careful. In other words, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard than normal office write-ups. Otherwise, you take an unnecessary risk drawing the wrong conclusions and do a lot of inadvertent harm to your fellow human.
[1] Still learning to politely deal with male chauvinist idiots.
I think focusing on "current tech culture" is likely to misdiagnose the problem. There are way more women in investment banking than tech, and I really struggle to believe that Wall Street has a better culture than Silicon Valley, at least a long the lines typically being emphasised, including misogyny, micro-aggressions and mansplaining. If the prevalence of these phenomenon are repulsive to women to the extent that they will forego even educating themselves in a field, much less join top companies in it (the underrepresentation of women in tech go all the way back to high school, it doesn't start at the hiring processes, biased or not, of tech firms), we would expect to see many fewer women in Wall Street. Instead we see many more.
I dunno I hate banks but when I worked for one I worked for a black woman who worked under a black gay man who worked under another woman and at that level she had 9 call centers under her and gave birth on a conference call. This really isn't their weak point.
(Also, the relevant number for Google is 20% of tech employees. They have 48/52 balance in non-tech. The BI link similarly provides business area breakdowns.)
I would ask, using the current age of well placed woman engineers in Google, back when they were going through middle and high school to even college years, was the general view of society that women should strive for engineering degrees or that line of work common? The personal computer affect on society opened a lot of doors, the internet opened more because both men and women finally were exposed to more ideas and history than ever before.
I think being exposed to history in greater depth and variety was a greater boon than suspected because there have always been great women in science and engineering, they just rarely if ever got a line of mention in common text books. how was society to interest women in such careers? Television surely wasn't, it was always wives, nurses, and secretaries, for the most part.
i would love to see a yc article from the same women and more revealing their generation and what influences they experienced that led them to their career and where they think we are doing it right and wrong this day. we will eventually arrive at a time where memo's like this don't even come about
People, especially groups used to enjoying privilege, always mistake what “free speech” is. Free Speech is the right to be free from GOVERNMENT suppression of speech, not prevailing attitudes, not private companies and institutions and not public sentiment. Expressing racist, homophobic and sexist ideas in a private company that has employee guidelines that forbade expressing hurtful speech has just consequences.
Privileged people feel they are above repercussion because to admonish them encroaches on their sense of entitlement to privilege.
You're confusing free speech and first amendment. Free speech is an Enlightenment ideal much like the golden rule, i.e. "treat others the way you want to be treated". It's a good thing to strive for in a society, whether the first amendment exists or not.
> because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company.
I am not sure I follow exactly. Is there evidence that Google's diversity efforts hurt the company? I don't find the memo offers any evidence. If evidence, even anecdotal evidence, were provided of that harm and of the ideological intolerance I might find the memo more compelling. As it stands, it seems like a book report.
The memo doesn't offer direct evidence of Google's diversity initiatives causing harm because the original audience for the memo solely consisted of employees of Google (who would have seen its effects and formed their own opinion from first hand experience). It's often forgotten that the memo wasn't originally meant for the general public.
I think he was just asking official investigation to see if there are problems:
1. he made point about ideological echo chamber and wanted everyone to look to see if it's true
2. he saw potentially illegal practices, produced what you call a book report and asked this to be officially discussed to figure out if there is any merit to it
I see it as honest call for discussion but everyone is treating this as some malicious attempt to exercise sexism. We are all educated and civil people please have some dignity and apply Hanlon's razor to these kind of things: "Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding."
Your '2' all by itself if you are not invited to do so by your employer is most likely going to get you fired especially if you document said potential illegal practices in a widely shared memo.
Most companies would - right or not - try to keep their dirty laundry indoors and the right way to deal with such stuff is to first try to take it up the chain and if you are ignored you can decide if you're brave enough to become a whistle blower with all the fine consequences that tends to have, one of the most likely results of which is that you will find yourself suddenly unemployed and if you're unlucky also unemployable.
This type of discussion is protected by law, which is why Damore is suing Google. Also he didn't leak the memo, merely posted it on an internal board which has the intent of discussion; someone else made it public.
When you write a memo and distribute it to a group as large as he did you can bet that it will go much further and in fact the usual goal of writing such memos is to aim for widespread distribution.
So, tip for future memo writers: stay in control of the narrative. That's easier said than done.
> Is it still fair to fire the original author?
That's a moot point, companies do not like political activism within their ranks whether or not it spreads to the outside world and affects the image of the company in a negative way or not. But when and if it does you can be pretty sure heads will roll.
Second tip: If you do wish to write that memo try to get buy-in from your higher ups (and in writing) before releasing your memo to your peers.
Third tip: don't do it. Unless your position is absolutely ironclad and you don't care about your future employment writing memos will probably not make a difference in a positive way and there is plenty of downside with the memo writer holding the bag in almost all cases, especially when such memos target controversial subjects, they will almost certainly end up being used for political football.
> Is there evidence that Google's diversity efforts hurt the company?
Here's one example. Google has spent over a quarter of a billion dollars on diversity efforts in the last 3 years, and has barely moved the needle in terms of diversity in their workforce [0].
Some of that can be explained by long-term efforts that will take more than 3 years to show dividends, but not all of it, and given the lack of results, you'd think that it's worth considering if current efforts are addressing the actual problem or if they're just throwing money in the wrong direction.
You can't do that without questioning the current methods and examining other ideas, but when the reaction to questioning current methods and examining other ideas is to stifle discussion and say 'no, this is right, you are wrong, and btw you're fired', then you may well find you keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars, for little to no result.
You could argue that a quarter of a billion dollars is pocket change to Google (and it is) and therefore doesn't represent any real harm, but it's still a lot of money to throw around on something that might not actually solve the problem.
You're analyzing this problem independent of context: women graduating in software engineering is decreasing over time, and they are more likely to exit the profession.
> women graduating in software engineering is decreasing over time
That's right, but what's the cause of that?
Is it solely down to sexism and discrimination, or are there other causes?
For example, studies have shown that the more egalitarian a society becomes, the greater the difference in personality between genders is, which affects things like job and career selection. This makes sense because in an egalitarian society, men and women are more free to choose careers based on interest rather than on preordained acceptable roles based on gender [0].
I'm not saying this is what's happening in tech, but there's enough research around it that it's a plausible explanation for some of it. And if you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars but are not in any way interested in investigating (or even contemplating) whether this might be one of several factors leading to a decline in women entering software engineering, then that's probably a problem.
That's not because women are incompetent. It's because the workplace is putting so much pressure on engineers that even some men prefer to be promoted to management level after a decade of technical work.
So then the solution would be to search for ways to make more women graduate, instead of hiring more from a pool that becomes smaller every year (not sure if the decrease is in absolute or relative terms, it doesn't really matter if the end goal is a 50/50 gender balance).
I don't think it was just the "harmless claim" that was the issue. Many of his points were objectionable if not outright offensive. The obvious example of an offensive claim is that women are more prone to be neurotic. Also, can you really assert that you've checked your biases if you claim that people who agree with you (conservatives) are "pragmatic" while those who disagree (liberals) are "idealistic". I'm sorry, but that is complete and total BS. It's not hard to see that there are pragmatists and ideologues in both the liberal and conservative political movements.
As a white male engineer, I will tell you thing the that most white dudes like me fail to understand about micro-agressions- and the document was chock full of them-is that they are not really significant when they only happen once, in isolation, it is the constant, droning repetition of them that makes them harmful.
Asking someone where they're from isn't offensive when considered in isolation. But if 90% of the white people you meet ask you this immediately, while it comes up only occasionally or late in the conversation when meeting other people, it makes you wonder.
One thing my mixed race friends get asked a lot by white people is "what are you?". At first I found that hard to believe, but I've seen it happen over and over again--random chitchat at the park with a nice lady who stopped to pet my dog; for some reason she has to ask my friend "what are you?" She's too nice to say "not racist, how about you?" or anything harsh in response, but it makes my blood boil.
Imagine being expected to defend and define your presence everywhere you go.
So, yeah, the idea was harmless. The presentation was part of the constant barrage of gatekeeping behavior that women and people of color are sick of dealing with. That's why it's offensive, that's why people are angry.
> The obvious example of an offensive claim is that women are more prone to be neurotic.
As a personality researcher, I feel obligated to chime in and clarify that the memo wasn't stating that women are "neurotic", neither in the colloquial nor clinical sense, but that they are on average higher in the trait of Neuroticism in the Big 5 personality dimensions[0], which is a very specific and well defined term, and the scientific literature actually does support that statement when it is presented using those academic definitions. There's nothing opinionated about this, just as much as saying that men on average test higher in the trait of 'Conscientiousness' according to the same model; they're just population statistics based on the most reliable personality measure we have in the field of psychology today. It is a plain misunderstanding of the academic term to suggest that the memo says women are "neurotic" in any other way.
He uses this result to claim they are less able (on average) to deal with stress and that's why men have better paying jobs though.
I believe autistic people also score higher on that neurotic scale, so it's ironic someone who self-identifies as being on the spectrum would highlight that result and, given the general stereotypes, for it to be held up as a difference from other software professionals
Well he does cite "the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist". If that's true, the female employees at Google themselves contributed to a meaningful statistic behind the claim.
He goes onto mention that men take on dangerous high stress jobs in far greater numbers than women, such as coal mining and fire fighting. If men account for 93% of work related deaths, it says a lot about their drive for that sort of work.
Quoting from the memo itself, "Women, on average, have more: [...] Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)".
I don't believe there is any other context to it. It is not at all clear to me that the author is not referring to neuroticism in the colloquial or clinical sense. If he did want to use such a potentially emotionally-loaded term in that sense he should have made it clear how he was using it.
I looked up the memo (assuming I have the found the original version; I checked several and they all claim to be the unedited version) and it links to a general Wikipedia article about the term.
Women on average score higher on neuroticism. This is uncontroversial. Neuroticism is associated with some positive outcomes, like longer lifespan. It is not a negative trait, as you might think by the connotations the term has in nonclinical contexts.
You would know all this if you did some fact-checking. The carelessness with which you approach his claims is typical and indicative of a much larger problem.
Yes but Seenti has a good point, it's not necessarily a negative trait. The memo could have explained this, if he didn't want so much outrage. The guy is methodical and very clear, but probably could have padded out the information with some disclaimers. His interviews since clearly show him as respectful and a nice guy, not at all the kind you'd expect to be sexist or bigoted.
I think this is a very good post. It's too bad people seem to have seized on the fact that you weren't aware that "neurotic" is a technical term in psychology. Since it's a word that has also been part of popular culture for decades, with a rather derogatory connotation, I think this is understandable, and I don't think Damore should have used it.
I hadn't heard about people asking "what are you?". That is indeed infuriating. I don't think such people deserve any answer beyond "human".
So, you say "what it did not do was claim his female coworkers are inferior". First off, that's your opinion of the paper, ok? That's not a fact about the document. That's your assessment. You might believe it in so strongly it's basically fact to you.
But here's the deal, a bunch of other really smart people think it did do exactly what you claim it didn't. Now what? Are they wrong, you're right? On what basis?
Besides which, if you write "effectively lowered the bar for 'diversity' candidates", actually yes you just claimed that women at Google are less qualified.
Many voices are loudly explain why this memo is offensive. Shelve your own ideas of what you think this memo is saying, and consider them.
As for the emotions, there's a huge veiled anti-woman slant to arguments that take the paper on it's "logical" face value and dismiss emotions. First off, dismissal of emotions is a classic anti-woman tactic. Secondly, you're a human male, you have as many emotions as anyone else. You can separate emotion and "rational" thought.
>First off, that's your opinion of the paper, ok? That's not a fact about the document.
Of course it's a fact about the document. Damore does not say this. If you claim he did, you should easily be able to prove it by quoting him saying it. No one has done that, because the accusation is false. The burden of proof is on the accuser. The accuser is not presumed to be telling the truth on the basis of their social standing, gender or the emotional intensity of their reaction.
>But here's the deal, a bunch of other really smart people think it did do exactly what you claim it didn't. Now what? Are they wrong, you're right? On what basis?
On the basis of the content of the memo, they are wrong.
He claimed that Google's diversity policy lowered the bar for hiring, how can you read that and not think he was claiming that a portion of his female/minority coworkers were underqualified for their jobs?
> He claimed that Google's diversity policy lowered the bar for hiring, how can you read that and not think he was claiming that a portion of his female/minority coworkers were underqualified for their jobs?
This is the full quote, "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate." Latter emphasis mine.
I read this the same way that he writes it: that Google takes steps to reduce the false negative rate for diverse candidates but does not take these steps with non-diverse candidates. Policies like re-trying failed phone interviews, or automatically passing resume review for diverse candidates are examples of this (these are examples I've witnessed, I don't know if they in place at Google). They still need to pass the final interview loop, so they're not underqualified. But extra steps earlier in the interview process reduce the false negative rate.
Personally, I think these steps are an acceptable means of getting a more diverse group of candidates but I'd still respect my co-workers if they disagreed. To point out the fact that this results in some non-diverse candidates being denied when they could have gotten offers is factually correct. More importantly, to point this fact out is not to call the diverse candidates passed under such a system underqualified - as I pointed out earlier all candidates pass the final interview loop so all candidates are qualified.
No matter what qualifiers he tries to put on it, saying the bar is being lowered implies there are people at Google that he thinks do not deserve to be there.
The author deliberately stated that the "lowered bar" only goes insofar as reducing the rate at which qualified and diverse candidates are rejected. Disregarding the words that the author intentionally wrote - likely to prevent the interpretation that underqualified candidates are accepted - is a significant disservice, in my view.
To better illustrate what it means to reduce the false negative rate without admitting underqualified candidates, consider the following scenario:
* Phone interviews have a 50% false negative rate.
* On-site interviews have a 0% false negative rate.
* Neither type of interview has a false positive rate.
* Non-diverse candidates get one phone interview, and if the interview is positive they go on to an on-site interview. If the onsite is positive, the candidate gets an offer.
* Diverse candidates get two phone interviews. If either is positive, they move on to the onsite which, if passes, gets an offer.
In this setup, no candidates are underqualified since there are no false-positives in either the phone interview or the onsite. Non-diverse candidates have a 50% false negative rate; 50% are erroneously disqualified at the phone interview stage. Diverse candidates have a 25% false negative rate. Since they go through two phone interviews, there's only a false negative if both (0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25) phone interviews are false negatives.
It is under the section talking about the harm to Google. How is decreasing the rate at which qualified candidates are rejected harmful?
He is saying that this is harmful to Google, so he is saying it shouldn't be done, so he is saying that certain people who have been hired should not have been hired.
No matter what qualifiers you put on the statement he is saying that some of his former coworkers should not have been hired.
At most he's saying some of his coworkers would not have been hired and the non-hire decisions would be incorrect. I think the harm comes in as follows: suppose you have a way to drastically reduce false negatives without increasing false positives. Suppose you also have difficulties hiring enough engineers. Should you apply these programs to improve the demographics of your company (potentially to reduce lawsuit risk) or should you apply these programs more broadly to reduce the hiring shortage and reduce overwork and stress on all the engineers in your company that are on teams with people shortages? I think that's a question that can at least warrant a conversation, although I see good arguments for both sides.
His claim was that "lowering the bar" was hurting Google, not that Google should "lower the bar" further by expanding those policies. Using the term "lower the bar" has negative connotations and he is using it in reference to minority employees.
He also doesn't cite any proof that these hiring policies he is against actually exist, or even define what policies he believes exist. There is just some undefined diversity policy that he is against.
That would be a false positive rate, and it would be a reasonable interpretation if you deliberately ignored the rest of the sentence. There is no justification for ignoring the rest of the sentence.
He tried hard not to say that. But if he had, so what? Maybe he'd have been right?
If Google has lowered the bar for women in various ways, why should it be impossible to point that out? Just because some women would be offended by it? So what? Nobody has the right to be offended by facts.
> Nobody has the right to be offended by facts.
What are the "facts"?
He doesn't back up his claim with any data at all. Where is his supporting data that Google's hiring practices in regards to minorities hurts Google? He's just making a baseless claim that doesn't logically follow from any of the evidence he provides before it.
> I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll disagree with you.
OK :)
I think some of Damore's complaints were, on the surface, about Google. But they're all rooted in some old and incorrect ideas.
Damore advocates against Google's diversity programs, arguing that diversity programs can't be fully effective because fundamental biological differences between women and men are responsible for the gender gap, not social or cultural disadvantage, and further that these programs are discriminatory against men.
This is an old idea. Women's rights activists have heard this time and time again, whether it was for the right to go to school (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_education_in_the_Uni...), the right to have a job (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights#Equal_employm...), or of course, the right to vote. The argument, every single time, is "women and girls aren't really interested in reading/writing/working/politics". But in each case, we discovered that women were discouraged (and often outright punished) in strong, varied, and complex ways from being involved in these things, and when we investigated and removed those impediments suddenly the "interest gap" disappeared.
But the main reason that Damore's argument is outrageous is that the arguments about interest and fundamental biological differences have been used to hold women and people of color back since the inception of the US. Reverse discrimination belittles and dismisses the experiences of women and people of color by falsely equating systemic sexism and racism with isolated incidents, or in this case with gender-conscious diversity programs.
I'd also like to address the free speech issue a little. The US concept of free speech protects citizens from government retaliation. It doesn't mean I have to tolerate speech of all kinds in my home, and it doesn't mean that businesses have to tolerate speech of any kind in the workplace. With that in mind, it's obvious that you can't say whatever you want at work even though e we may disagree on where the line is.
>But the main reason that Damore's argument is outrageous is that the arguments about interest and fundamental biological differences have been used to hold women and people of color back since the inception of the US
What you do with the information that science provides is your problem. If a society (such as a workplace) doesn't have the capacity to logically process the scientific facts, and uses them to enforce psycho-sociological diseases like racism or discrimination, the solution is not to deny the scientific facts or erase the question. The solution is to foster capacity in society to process and respond to scientific facts in a logical manner
> The US concept of free speech protects citizens from government retaliation.
This is true, but California presciently has other laws in place to protect workers that want to discuss potentially illegal behavior in good faith. This is why Damore is suing Google, and why it's quite likely that he will win.
Why would that apply here? He didn't discuss anything illegal.
Sorry I'm unfamiliar with California state law, and besides I don't really know why it pertains to a misunderstanding of speech protected under the 1st Amendment.
The memo itself describes at least some of Google's diversity efforts as potentially illegal. Firing Damore for speaking up about illegal actions committed by management is a no-no.
But wasn't he arguing the opposite; that Google's efforts to comply with US law were working to the detriment of men? I thought the US' case was essentially "Google is overwhelmingly White and Asian men", and Damore's case is "policies that decrease the numbers of men have got to go".
It's like the government is indicting you for making gingerbread houses, and one of your employees argues against your policy prohibiting gingerbread in the workplace. Isn't it?
EDIT: Oh it's gender pay, not diversity. Then I really don't at all get the relevance, Damore only mentioned the pay gap in a footnote that was totally unrelated to Google.
to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several
discriminatory practices
[...] Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal
discrimination [6]
[6] Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better
environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it
done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create zero-sum struggles between orgs.
> But wasn't he arguing the opposite; that Google's efforts to comply with US law were working to the detriment of men?
I worked at Google. I've seen this before. "Desired" candidates (women, especially black and Hispanic) were hired on two occasions where the interviewing team gave them an average of 2s. Upper management took the "best" they could get of a certain "highly desired" demographic...I'm not sure how these two individuals made it past the hiring committee but they did...
Why are women disadvantaged by the fact that men outnumber them as programmers, but women aren't disadvantaged by the fact that men outnumber women as Mechanics, Architects, Electricians, Sheet metal workers, Engineers, and Lawyers?
Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?
> Why are women disadvantaged by the fact that men outnumber them as programmers, but women aren't disadvantaged by the fact that men outnumber women as Mechanics, Architects, Electricians, Sheet metal workers, Engineers, and Lawyers?
I don't think I made that claim, but still it has merit. Women face challenges in workplaces where there are few of them, sometimes benefits don't handle birth control, or maternity leave is non-existent or laughably short, or there are few women in leadership roles, or there is a workplace culture that is overtly sexist, or there are persistent sexual harassment problems, or they get paid way less for the same work, or they get stuck with "women's work" and treated like secretaries and assistants.
> Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?
Men actually do face their own set of challenges. Consider all the jokes in popular culture about male nurses or male cosmetologists. Or consider Mississippi v. Hogan where a man sued successfully for the right to be admitted to the Mississippi University for Women School of Nursing, a historically all-woman school: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/81-406
I'm not super clear if I understood your question, let me know if I didn't get it right and I'll try again haha.
Pretty sure the question was "why is this tech discussion board always focusing on women in tech and not some random other industry, and is this evidence that nobody really cares about equality and it is all just a horrible conspiracy to make people think tech has issues with gender equality?"
Well that's very obvious, it's just that it's uncomfortable to say it out loud: tech jobs are nicer and more desirable than most. We have very nice working conditions of many types and get well paid for it.
No significant amount of equal-rights activists will ever take up the torch to fight for <insert discriminated group>'s to be able to have more of said undesirable jobs. It's hypocritical but entirely understandable.
The gist of the question was that if you follow that link you can see that it is the case that most jobs have a sex ratio that is far off from 50/50, jobs with a ratio closer to 50/50 are the exception rather than the rule. I don't think this is a problem, or "problematic" as the kids like to say. I think this is just the way things are. You can learn a lot about the world just by looking.
The interesting thing that I raised in the question above is that some people do think these divergent sex ratios are "a problem," well sort of, the interesting thing is that they think in only a narrow selection of occupations is this a problem, totally ignoring that there is nothing particularly unusual about a divergent sex ratio for a given job. This may not be the case for you, but for the vast majority of problem addicts it is a very narrow focus on just a few occupations, totally ignoring the fact that it is a totally natural and normal thing.
It's like saying that something broadly true about the world is a problem. I can see the Vox headline now, Asians like rice, that's a problem
I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is? The people constantly going out and raising a ruckus about this or that issue would do far more good for the world by simply putting their own lives in order first.
> The interesting thing that I raised in the question above is that some people do think these divergent sex ratios are "a problem," well sort of, the interesting thing is that they think in only a narrow selection of occupations is this a problem, totally ignoring that there is nothing particularly unusual about a divergent sex ratio for a given job.
This is a misrepresentation of the "pro-diversity" argument. The vast majority of the "pro-diversity" posters do not think that every industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. They don't even think the tech industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. A better summary of the argument is this:
1. The tech industry has a tendency to be sexist towards women (which comes in many forms: whether they are subconscious cultural biases, or explicit sexual harassment, or sexist behaviors).
2. This tendency causes the gender ratio to be lower than what it would otherwise be in a "sexism free" tech industry.
3. We should work towards reducing these sexist tendencies because that is a worthy goal in and of itself.
4. If we succeed and reduce the sexism in the tech industry, the gender ratio will increase. It will not necessarily land at 50%, because there are other reasons that the gender gap exists.* But that is okay, because that was never the goal to begin with.
(Note that this is much different from saying "the gender gap is bad and is caused by sexism".)
> I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is?
Because the "world as it is" with regards to the tech industry tends to be sexist towards women, and we should work towards fixing that?
* Yes, I do think lack of interest is a valid reason for this. But it's not the only reason, and attempting to reduce such a complex issue into a single root cause is rather misguided.
> Reverse discrimination belittles and dismisses the experiences of women and people of color by falsely equating systemic sexism and racism with isolated incidents, or in this case with gender-conscious diversity programs.
Although most claims of reverse discrimination are probably false, this doesn't mean that none are justified.
For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators. (Says Damore in his memo and I haven't seen anyone disagree.)
I think that is doubly sexist. First, it perpetuates stereotypes about women, maybe even using some hand-wavy biological explanation like "woman have less testosterone and are too timid to negotiate efficiently". That isn't really better than Damore's reasons for advocating more pair programming.
Second, it doesn't target the people it would help the most , but at best a subset. What about black men who are bad negotiators? Do they get their own program? What about white men who are bad negotiators? Are they left in the dust because white men good at negotiating are already privileged, so people who are superficially similar don't deserve any help?
I think it is both morally wrong and economically inefficient to have a program to help people get better at X that selects on any criterion other than their current ability to do X. I don't care whether you call it discrimination or something else, I just don't want to see this kind of divisive catering to interest groups identified by arbitrary lines.
I should start out by saying what I know about Stretch I learned from Damore's memo.
> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators. (Says Damore in his memo and I haven't seen anyone disagree.) I think that is doubly sexist.
There's research that shows that some of the gender pay gap can be attributed to women being less likely to negotiate pay raises and promotions. I think if you were Google and you were trying to close the gender pay gap, it's reasonable to take a look at that data and start something like Stretch.
> ...maybe even using some hand-wavy biological explanation like "woman have less testosterone and are too timid to negotiate efficiently". That isn't really better than Damore's reasons for advocating more pair programming.
It is actually much better. First, they aren't using any biological explanation. The studies [1][2] I found are experiments and surveys. Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up. On the contrary, Google is offering to help them. Damore's argument is that some studies kind of show women might be somehow biologically predisposed against tech (the copious hedging here is because he makes all the connections himself; the studies he cites don't actually make his point and consequently can't at all quantify the effect), and therefore Google should replace the programs most effective at increasing diversity with initiatives that have no basis in science and are mostly just bad ideas like "more pair programming", "more part time work", and "make work less stressful".
So in favor of Stretch:
- Research directly addressing and quantifying the issue
- No biological explanation
- Google directly addressing the issue
Against Damore's initiatives:
- No direct research to justify a policy change
- Unsupported leaps from indirect research to "biological differences explain the gender gap"
- No direct addressing of the issue
- Replacement of programs that do directly address the issue with those that do not
> I think that is doubly sexist. First, it perpetuates stereotypes about women....
I think it's a good instinct to critique policies from a gender perspective. And I think on its face you're right, Stretch seems to assume that women are bad at negotiating and has a program based on that assumption.
But look at how the program came about. This isn't a program rooted in stereotype; it's rooted in research. And the result of the program is to help women become better negotiators, not to disadvantage them. In applying a feminist critique, we have to evaluate all these things, otherwise we often come to the conclusion, as you did, that any policy based on gender entrenches harmful stereotypes.
> Second, it doesn't target the people it would help the most , but at best a subset. What about black men who are bad negotiators? Do they get their own program? What about white men who are bad negotiators? Are they left in the dust because white men good at negotiating are already privileged, so people who are superficially similar don't deserve any help?
I can't find any research showing that Black or White men are bad negotiators, so I think that's why Google didn't start a program to help them. There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.
> I think it is both morally wrong and economically inefficient to have a program to help people get better at X that selects on any criterion other than their current ability to do X.
I think this is super interesting! I just read a piece in the Atlantic that offered the insight whereas liberals often argue for fairness of outcome, conservatives often argue for fairness of approach. I'm not saying you're a conservative or that that's what yo...
> I can't find any research showing that Black or White men are bad negotiators, so I think that's why Google didn't start a program to help them.
Unless you assume that all Black or White men are good negotiators, then the grandparent's argument holds: you're helping only at best a subset of people who would most benefit from it.
I agree with the grandparent: a program to help people become better negotiators should target people who are bad negotiators to begin with, and nothing else. Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.
> There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.
Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?
> Unless you assume that all Black or White men are good negotiators
The context of all this is "addressing the gender pay gap", which policies like try to do using the salaries of men as the baseline. We already know that women are working as hard and as effectively as men, but that they're getting paid less and we're looking for reasons why.
When you argue to also help men that may be bad negotiators you're missing the point, which is that these policies address the gender pay gap.
> Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.
Discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing. Policies intended to address gender issues need to be gender conscious. For example, affirmative action policies at universities need to know information about ascribed statuses like race and gender, otherwise they can't be effective. And they have absolutely been effective; public universities are some of the most diverse institutions we have in the US.
The point isn't to be gender-blind. That only entrenches the favored statuses that men already enjoy. The point is to be aware of the challenges women (and LGBTQ people and people of color) face in order to compensate for them.
> > There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.
> Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?
Again this is in the context of the gender pay gap. I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men, but please don't derail a discussion about the gender pay gap with other issues. And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
Or, more concretely, feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men and start advocating for programs based in research to address the causes. This isn't a zero sum thing.
Since when has this thread been about the gender pay gap? In my experience, threads on HN tend to be about whatever the people commenting in the thread choose to comment on.
Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.
They can be helped by attacking any mechanism of causality (including those that are not mentioned above): preventing bad negotiators from being underpaid (e.g by helping bad negotiators become good negotiators) and preventing women from becoming bad negotiators (e.g. by specifically mentoring them). But the farther removed the factor you are targeting is, the less efficient your efforts become. I think it is shortsighted to limit a program to women when it could just as well be applied to other people (unless something about Google's negotiation training is explicitly gender-specific).
> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
I'm certainly not advocating that women shouldn't get help with negotiating if they need it, but I am advocating that other people should also receive that help.
> Since when has this thread been about the gender pay gap?
We're discussing Stretch, which is a Google program designed to narrow the gender pay gap by teaching women negotiating skills. You're the one who initially brought it up:
> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators.
> Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.
Sure, OK. This whole thread is (I thought clearly) about gender issues. If you have thoughts about how to address the pay gap between various different groups of White men, feel free to advocate for them. But don't derail a conversation about gender inequality like this; this is not a zero sum issue. We can have programs that address this issue for women and programs that address this issue for other groups too, or programs designed to address this issue for all groups. But this thread is about gender, so let's not stray too far OT.
> Please don't derail a discussion about the gender pay gap with other issues
This discussion, as initiated by the original parent, is about the gender pay gap and other issues. It's somewhat ironic that you'd accuse me of derailing this discussion.
> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
Please don't put words in my mouth.
>>> There's also not a pay gap for White men
> I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men
> feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men
I'm glad that Google's reasons for their diversity efforts are supported better research than one guy found in his free time. That said, [1] says in its abstract "... the overall difference in outcomes between men and women was small ..." which reminds me of the point about distributions and averages made in the memo. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a long tail of men who fall below the average woman for a variety of reasons (e.g. autism?).
> Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up.
I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.
> initiatives that have no basis in science and are mostly just bad ideas like "more pair programming", "more part time work", and "make work less stressful".
There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming (although maybe not in a gender context). I read https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/16/interactions-of-individu... just today. I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.
> liberals often argue for fairness of outcome, conservatives often argue for fairness of approach
I'm not sure where I'd place myself on the liberal-conservative plane, but I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. (Alternatively, sabotage the good negotiators, but I don't support that.) Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.
> I think you can't treat people fairly unless you take into account their ascribed statuses.
If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.
> For example, if we return to entirely gender-blind hiring practices, we'll see the gender gap skyrocket (see 538's article on affirmative action [3]).
The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?
Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, most racial differences in the distribution of applicants are due to economic reasons. In that case, it would be more appropriate to support students from low-income households, rather than sorting them into arbitrary buckets based on ethnicity.
> To ignore or not adjust for these biases is what's unfair here.
I agree that biases shouldn't be ignored, but I don't like it when the countermeasures assume that disadvantages only happen across a few categorizations. There are all kinds of reasons some people have worse outcomes than others, and to only pay attention to them when they coincide with membership in one of your favorite protected groups, is a kind of bias in itself.
> > Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up.
> I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.
I only mean that Damore's argument is (roughly, mind you) "studies show the gender gap is likely due to biological differences so we should give up", and if we're comparing Google's pro-diversity hiring initiatives to Stretch, it's important to note that when Google noted the research on women and negotiating, their response wasn't "oh it's biological differences, we should give up". I don't know if Stretch is effective, but at least it's a proactive, supportive response rooted in research.
> There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming... I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.
I don't think they're universally bad ideas, but Google's gender gap is something like 70-30. There's no research to support the notion that pair programming, part time work and low stress jobs can address a 40 point spread like that, but there is research that pro-diversity hiring and support policies do, so I think it's actively harmful to advocate for replacing the latter with the former.
> I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. ... Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.
Sure that makes sense, but the goal isn't to get every employee's negotiating skill to a certain level, it's to narrow the gender pay gap. In that context, it makes sense to work only with women.
> If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.
It is really hard to quantify, definitely. But these issues aren't limited to "that person"; we're all, every single one of us, subject to unconscious bias when it comes to race, gender identification, sexual orientation, and other ascribed statuses because of the culture and society we grew up in. Therefore we all need to adjust, and pro-diversity policies and affirmative action policies help us do that.
> The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?
Sorry "skyrocketing" was a poor characterization (it was laaaaaaate :) Here's what 538 says about Black enrollment:
"...only two research universities in states with affirmative action bans have at least the same proportion of black students as the state’s college-age population, and one of those, Florida A&M University, is a historically black college or university (HBCU). ...only one school, Florida International University, has at least the same proportion of Hispanic students as the state’s college-age population.
...
Researchers looked at the effect race had on admissions and saw a 23 percentage point drop in the chance of admission for minority students in states with bans, compared with a 1 percentage point drop in other states, relative to nonminority students."
That's rough, no matter how you look at it.
> Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, mo...
> The argument you make here is that it's unfair to treat people differently based on ascribed statuses (race, sexual orientation, gender identification, etc.). But I think exactly the opposite;
I have been thinking about it and I believe that neither correct or wrong. It seems it is about how one defines fairness: Is is fairness of opportunity or fairness of outcome?. I would like to know more about this. Is there any paper, book, analysis that tries to tackle with it? I would love to learn about philosophical approaches, attempts to resolve it based on solid rational reasoning in the context of some moral values. Anyone?
It's very simple. It's morally wrong to enforce fairness of outcome, for a few reasons:
1. Doing so requires taking away from those who have, whether property or opportunity. This is theft and oppression.
2. Doing so requires an unbiased party to make judgments about what shall be taken from whom and to whom it shall be given. Humans are biased, so this cannot be done fairly.
3. Doing so restricts others' freedom.
Those who want to enforce equality of outcome want to rule over others, because they think they are qualified to make such decisions. By calling for it, they have already decided that there is a problem, and that they have the solution, and that everyone else is wrong.
In contrast, those who want equality of opportunity do not want to rule over others. They want power to be decentralized so people can make their own decisions.
It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine who is more trustworthy: he who would decide for you, or he who would have you decide for yourself.
Damore should sue Gizmodo. Big companies like Google and IBM and the military though, they usually have CoC requirements that essentially boil down to don't embarrass them in public.
Unless I've misunderstood your tone, you seem to be implying complicity even conspiracy. Surely the obvious explanation is "anyone could have leaked it and it's very hard to prove who did it"?
Women aren't interested in tech because they grow up with social blockers, such as his memo. That's the point everyone seems to miss. Imagine a girl interested in tech when only a handful of her peers understand her interest. Then, she reads such an article and bullshit social studies passed on as evidence and gets socialised that tech really isn't for women.
Until you remove social blockers that prevent women from entering tech, you cannot claim legitimacy of any social survey in regards to that. This letter belongs to a time when a generation of women are equally pushed to enter tech as men. Then we can debate whether it's their lack of interest of not.
I strongly disagree with the claim that there is no gender difference (implied by what you wrote) and that imbalance in gender representation is 100% due to social blocking.
When I was a student in computer science more than 30 years ago, in our class of more than 30 students there was only one female. There was no entrance selection or any filter or money involved (not in USA).
We are dealing with overlapping gaussians.
Girls and boys are today educated without making a difference through all their childhood, and I think that this may give the false impression to them that there is no difference. But whoever had children or has seen many children will see that some differences in behavior and interest are blattan and can't be socially induced.
I do not deny that blocking MAY exist and some men are sexists, I have seen such discusting behavior. I considr them disfunctional. But this is not 100% the cause of gender imbalance in tech.
There is no blocking to contribute to OSS, and good programmers get hired regardless of gender. You should read back the [Donner Kruger effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect) to remind you of you own bias when evaluating your competence.
I strongly disagree with the claim that there is no gender difference
I sincerely don't think that anyone is proposing that there is no difference between men and women, the discussion is over the extent of the differences.
We are dealing with overlapping gaussians.
The question is the extent of the overlap. If the overlap is very close on many abilities, men exceed women on some (like say maths), and women exceed men on some others required for a programming job (like say, empathy), then you'd expect distribution of jobs to be around 50% with slight variations. There is no indication that they vary by the amount required to explain the disparity of jobs in tech, indeed, this is easily refuted by looking at the number of women in technical jobs in the US in the 70s.
>>indeed, this is easily refuted by looking at the number of women in technical jobs in the US in the 70s.
You could make your point stronger if you propose an explanation to what changed since then. It's very unlikely that men (and society in general) become more sexist, if anything we have made a lot of progress.
I can tell you what the opposing side says though. They say women had little choice back then and just did what was needed. Today women have more choice, freedom and there is less discrimination so they feel free to pursue what is interesting to them which is not tech more often than in case of men.
"You make your counterexample stronger by giving your opponents, who have proven they are uninterested in actual debate, something else to latch on to in order to try to make you look wrong or stupid"
Seems like a bad tack to me - staying on topic is good enough for this kind of corrective comment.
> Girls and boys are today educated without making a difference through all their childhood, and I think that this may give the false impression to them that there is no difference.
You should really just google 'gender difference education' and you'll see there's dozens and dozens of papers that say education is very gendered. The experience of girls in pre-college (and college too for what it's worth) is very different from that of boys.
> I do not deny that blocking MAY exist and some men are sexists... [b]ut this is not 100% the cause of gender imbalance in tech.
The "percentage" thing is something that comes up in global warming discussions too; people will ask "what percentage of global warming is caused by humans", and because the issue is extraordinarily complex, the answer comes out sounding like equivocation.
You're probably right, social cues are probably not 100% the cause of the gender gap in tech. But the issue is complex; it's not like you're gonna see a pie-chart of simple gender gap explanations and then say, "we'll just 'allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive' and crank up pair programming and part time work; that should cover 80% of it".
You can get complex reasons though, i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/14/many-women-i.... But good luck fixing "balancing work-life responsibilities" and "workplace culture"; those are complex issues that deal with early education, social and cultural expectations of women (and men), federal and state social policies and workplace policies, politics, and deep-seated gender roles. There's not really a knob you can turn to fix this stuff, and that's why we don't use percentages to talk about it.
Please read this [1] and tell me if you still hold the same opinion. There is absolutely some social impact that lowers the number of women entering tech as a career, and we should work to fix it. However, there's more to it than just that, including studies on young children and statistics showing that other previously male-dominated careers (like doctors and lawyers) don't suffer from the same gender gap as tech. That's the point Damore was trying to make that people don't want to hear - there might be more to the gender gap than just social blockers, and if so, we should be aware of that at the same time we're working to solve the existing issues around bias, harassment, etc. Saying "nope, it's all social blockers and bad workplaces, and any other reasons are sexist falsehoods" is putting on blinders.
I agree with OP, I read that post, and I disagree with it.
Medicine and law are not like engineering. Engineering is particularly gendered; you can look at medicine and see "caregiving", or you can see law and see "people" and "social issues". It's not easy to look at engineering and see any stereotypically female attributes there.
Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially. The social blockers between girls and engineering are particularly acute compared to those between them and law or medicine. You can look at college degree numbers for example. Women now outnumber men when it comes to college enrollment and graduation, but women are far more likely to pursue "soft sciences" like psychology or sociology.
> That's the point Damore was trying to make that people don't want to hear - there might be more to the gender gap than just social blockers, and if so, we should be aware of that at the same time we're working to solve the existing issues around bias, harassment, etc.
In fairness, Damore was advocating for the ending of Google's pro-diversity policies in hiring and minority support for employees. It wasn't just a "truth telling", he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity. I'm not saying he didn't suggest alternatives, but those alternatives had no basis in research and felt pretty thin. Like "[a]llow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive"; honestly what does that even mean?
> Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially. The social blockers between girls and engineering are particularly acute compared to those between them and law or medicine. You can look at college degree numbers for example. Women now outnumber men when it comes to college enrollment and graduation, but women are far more likely to pursue "soft sciences" like psychology or sociology.
This point keeps getting brought up, but the actual statistics are quietly ignored.
Women make up over 40% of math and statistics graduates; A majority of accountants and biologists are women; Chemistry majors are evenly split between the genders.
If girls are socially discouraged from pursuing math and hard-sciences, why does this not actually manifest itself across fields requiring math and hard science? Does a math major require less mathematics than an engineering one? Is accounting not mostly about math and numbers any more? Are chemistry and biology no longer considered hard sciences?
I'm not saying the cause is necessarily not societal pressures, but this popular assertion being repeated ad-nausea seems to be, at best, incomplete. Women that have been told their entire lives that math is for boys seem to have no problem pursuing a higher-education in math in droves; Why?
We must have taken away different conclusions and data from that post. It goes to great length to refute exactly the point you just made. As slavak also mentioned in his reply to you, engineering is not unique among professions in requiring math and hard science, but it is unique in its gender imbalance. Math and science teachers - people who literally use math and science every day - are 44% female nationally, and over 60% female in Texas, a socially conservative state [1]. Women represent a solid 50% of accountants, and I'm having a hard time fitting "caregiving", "people", or "social issues" to that profession. How about lab technicians, who sit in a lab all day doing science? 53% women [2].
> Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially.
The data simply does not support this statement. Take a look at [3]. Relevant quotes for you: "Girls are equitably represented in rigorous high school math courses.", "Girls outnumber boys in enrollment in AP science", "Girls are evenly represented in biology and outnumber boys in chemistry, but are underrepresented
in physics." Even when it says "In AP mathematics (calculus and statistics), however, boys have consistently outnumbered girls by up to 10,000 students." this is only about a 5% difference.
> he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity
What dramatic, positive effect are referring to? Google's self-reported numbers on the impact of its programs are laughable. We're talking single percentage point increases at best in percentage of women and minorities in tech positions and leadership roles [4]. Damore wanted Google to take a long, hard look at its diversity programs and have an open discussion about whether they are actually 1) the right tool for the job, 2) accomplishing what they are trying to do, and 3) making progress without alienating existing and new hires.
> honestly what does that even mean?
I thought it was fairly clear, actually. He pairs statements like that with suggestions to encourage more collaborative workplace practices, like pair programming. The idea is that Google and other tech companies should encourage and reward individuals who cooperate with each other on teams, help train and mentor each other, and actively try not to alienate anyone for arbitrary reasons. The negative alternatives are to have a workplace with a bunch of lone wolf technical workers who don't help each other, or to have a workplace composed of cliquey groups that ostracize individuals who don't fit norms (ex. "brogrammer" culture fit).
You seem to be creating your own narrative here, which I interpret to be, "women are socially discouraged from pursuing careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and that's why we don't see them entering tech." But the equally plausible alternative interpretation is, "women don't want to pursue careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and particularly don't want to pursue engineering, thus expecting there to be gender balance is unrealistic."
> Saying "nope, it's all social blockers and bad workplaces, and any other reasons are sexist falsehoods" is putting on blinders.
Is this a common belief? Nobody I've read has claimed this, just that the known social effects are so large as to legitimise efforts to improve the situation regardless of whether or not there is some minor biological factor at play here too.
That's what I found strange about the memo. It spends lots of time arguing for the existence of biological differences between men and women and then draws the conclusion that diversity programs should be stopped. The existence of biological differences is not surprising to me or probably to the people who came up with the diversity programs and nor is it likely relevant to whether the diversity programs are a good idea or not.
Studies show prenatal testosterone affects differences in that men tilt towards an interest in intresting things, and women in insteresting people. Damore has the scientific literature behind him (which others can then dispute if they'd like). Also look to scandinavian attempts to flatten out differences. Thousands were involved, and the diffrences were simply exasturbated. Interesting talk on just this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSIEs1ngNiU
Loads have very much taken the social aspect into account. What I think everyone in the dominant culture seems to miss, are the relevant scientific biological and psycological findings.
Yes, there are certainly "social blockers" for women interested in technical and scientific careers. I mean, they're pervasive in Western societies. And it's even worse in some other societies.
But given that, how is it possible to discuss the possibility of gender differences? Without the discussion itself being a social blocker?
I'm not sure. Certainly by experts. And certainly around debate on legislation. Also in whatever social forums allow it. Such as here. But arguably not in discussion among staff at Google or wherever. There are likely no experts there, so it all comes down to bullshit. But among senior management, in private, sure.
Is there any evidence that woman face more social blockers than men? Being a teenage computer geek comes with a range of negative social pressures from peers.
If your theory were correct, that it is "social blockers", then you would predict that as societies get more egalitarian, you would get more equal representation. The opposite happens.
And this is not about absolute levels, this is about the direction of the arrow, which is pretty binary, and the "social pressures" theory makes exactly the wrong prediction.
> interested in tech when only a handful of her peers understand her interest
Doesn't stop the guys interested in tech. Being a "nerd" or a "geek" is the surest way to social ostracism, and yet these guys do it anyway.
> Until you remove social blockers that prevent women from entering tech
Again, this experiment has been done, on a society level, and the outcome is the opposite of your prediction: as "social blockers" are removed, you get fewer women going into tech fields.
> the "social pressures" theory makes exactly the wrong prediction.
To be honest, the "social" sciences have rarely been interested in scientific accuracy, more than they have been interested in promoting specific political ideologies.
I doubt they will consider this a problem with their "science". To them it will probably be obvious that the problem here, again, is with society.
In short: When you're stuck inside a delusion, it's everything on the outside which looks crazy.
> it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage
His claim is much stronger: he claims that women _working at Google as engineers_ are less interested in tech than their male colleagues. This debate is about stopping internal diversity programs within Google, not about women in general in tech.
> women _working at Google as engineers_ are less interested in tech than their male colleagues
I wonder if this argument could be made? Stats show that men work more hours than women whereas women prefer a more of a work-life-family balance. So given that, you could say that the women in tech there are less interested. At least, in terms of hours and dedication to the job. I don't think it holds too much water. You can be interested in the subject matter but not work as much. But there is some truth to it in a way.
> You can be interested in the subject matter but not work as much. But there is some truth to it in a way.
c'mon, pick a side ... you can't argue both ways. The constructive takeaway from this is not that women are a "lesser" value because they crave work-life-family balance. The takeaway should definitely be that we should figure out how to help the overworked individuals who work too much, find a better balance.
Who are you to decide what the right balance for other people should be? If they are happy working 11 hours a day while you only work 8, what is wrong with that? Are you actually intervening because you are concerned for them or are you simply worried that their choice to work more than you will result in them correctly being valued more than you by your mutual employer?
They can continue to do so just fine ... but I much prefer employers who don't overvalue overworking their employees, thereby implicitly creating a de-facto requirement. Of course, sometimes overtime is needed, believe me I've done it plenty of times to hit a deadline or release. However, I'm just plain happier working for employers, and with colleagues who don't create a hostile working environment for people with families.
Many of these [biological] differences are small and
there’s significant overlap between men and women, so
you can’t say anything about an individual given these
population level distributions.
That would imply that there will be women at Google who are more inclined towards software engineering than some of the men.
As a measure of how easily talk of averages degenerates into talk of individuals, let me point out that the comment you're replying to is talking about averages and you are talking about individuals. Your response to "hey this memo is talking more specifically about women at Google being less suited to tech on average" is to say "well I mean there are these weasel words about individuals standing out so I don't see how Damore could be talking about women at Google on average" -- I mean, no, that's exactly what Damore is talking about, averages.
You ask "Where did he say that?" and I'd be surprised if there's any one succinct place -- it's one of the two main topics of the whole memo, and the memo does not have a coherent topic sentence or even really a coherent argument, so I think it's likely absent.
But, like, Damore makes a case to the effect that "biological explanations can't be ruled out" and then reverses those weasel-words by suggesting that his biological explanations be used to guide policy by, say, encouraging pair programming which he supposes to be something that women are likely better at on average. This sort of move suggests that he thinks the biological effects that he's citing (see note [1]) are big enough to guide policy, which they're not. You don't need to take my word for it -- the main author of the article Damore is citing was asked to read Damore's memo and this is his take on it [2].
Of course the problem is even worse in that this article which Damore used to write his article is psychological; it is based on doing a personality test in a bunch of different nations. That makes it very hard to conclude anything biological about it, so every time that Damore mentions "biology" in his memo, that is an interpretation of his own devising. The original personality-study article also interprets its findings biologically but it is really tenuous [3]. In fact neuroscientists have also been studying the brain and they have not found a clear biological difference between male and female brains [4].
[1] He gives a summary of a Wikipedia summary of an article by Schmitt et al. (2008). The PDF is freely available by the university at http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf but the sample sizes were I believe later corrected as an erratum, so I am not sure which one this has.
[2] Schmitt, evaluating later research as well, summarizes by saying that sex differences are only "accounting for less than 10% of the variance" and that using this to guide policy is "like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm," in an article at http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... .
[3] The argument in the article involves their surprise that the majority of the discovered effect apparently disappeared in Africa and East Asia. Their interpretation is literally that those cultures are so much less economically developed than we in the West are, that their women must feel so much less free to just be themselves, and therefore they act more like men as a sort of baseline survival tactic. Read the paper; it's a very 'you cannot possibly be saying what I think you're saying, can you?' type of experience.
But, like, Damore makes a case to the effect that
"biological explanations can't be ruled out" and
then reverses those weasel-words by suggesting that
his biological explanations be used to guide policy by,
say, encouraging pair programming which he supposes to
be something that women are likely better at on average.
But the very fact he made that suggestion implies that he also wants to narrow the gender divide. By your logic, if he wanted to reduce the number of women in tech, he'd be advocating less pair-programming.
It also seems to me that the pair-programming idea was plucked out of the air to be used as an example to further a discussion, not a solution to be implemented.
This sort of move suggests that he thinks the biological
effects that he's citing (see note [1]) are big enough
to guide policy, which they're not
I'm inclined to agree with that. But his memo was written in response to policies that are already being implemented, which he thinks are bad.
I'm really not concerned about whether his ideas are good or bad - the experts on this subject can work that out between themselves. What concerns me is that, while he was confident enough in his theory to put it forward for wider scrutiny, the makers of the policies he is objecting to weren't. And when they were presented with a counter-argument anyway, they had to set an example to everyone else who might wish to speak up by having its author fired and smeared with accusations of bigotry.
> Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage.
It is only hard to believe if you are entirely unfamiliar with the history of this discussion.
Let's take a more obvious example: the common racist claim that black people are lazy. It is possible to dress this up in neutral, scientific-sounding language. Someone ignorant of the history of racism in America could be fooled into saying, "Gosh, we should consider that as an explanation for why tech is disproportionately white." (That someone could harbor racial bias, but that need not be true.)
That would correctly generate outrage, because a) one should not be ignorant about the history of these things when jumping into a discussion with such impact on people's lives, and b) there is a long, long history of virulent racists edging their way into the mainstream by dressing up their prejudices just enough to sound reasonable to the ignorant.
Returning to Damore, the fact that a bunch of white men ignorant of the history of gender bias can't spot the patterns does not mean the patterns aren't there. The benefit of the doubt only applies to educated doubt, not the doubt that comes from not knowing what's going on.
That you were surprised by the outrage only means you haven't been paying attention.
And these are all points that apologists don't seem to understand. Why we can't just have rational discourse, debate about these issues, come to a middle ground. You know middle ground and compromise means in issues like gender and race inequality? That at the end of the day, the minority is still treated as less than. Hey there's been some progress, isn't that good enough? No, of course not.
We've been discussing these issues for generations. At some point the discussion has been had. No one is saying anything new. But every new group of people believe they have something worthwhile to say about it and until they get to regurgitate their own brand of ignorance they'll whine and cry about how they're being oppressed for not being able to maintain the status quo.
People's humanity and civil rights are not topics that should be open for debate. But the people who want to debate that start with "science" as the thin end of the wedge.
Of course, the thing that's always up for question is the participation of minorities. It's never a guy saying, "Fellas, the science shows that men are poor at cooperating and highly prone to aggression and violence, so let's debate whether we men should be allowed to manage or supervise other people."
> That would correctly generate outrage, because a) one should not be ignorant
Then the [racial|gender|*] discrimination would never go away because there will always be some history. Damore or whoever wouldn't ever be able to talk neutrally and society will live forever with that discrimination.
I'm not surprised this is happening during Trump's term.
You have a poor understanding of AI. It's not magic. It just looks that way because we throw it a bunch of data and it learns to mimic parts of it without us having to understand what's going on at the level we would if we'd had to build the machinery ourselves.
It is in fact quite easy to do machine learning work and come out with what is effectively racist AI. People have already done plenty of it accidentally.
> It is only hard to believe if you are entirely unfamiliar with the history of this discussion.
Completely disagree. The crux of most historical discussions were based on ability and was blanketed to all individual women, as they were implying that gender was the only causal factor. Discussing how prenatal testosterone may be a factor in influencing decisions for a distribution of a group is a completely different beast.
The thing that bothers me about the left is their inability to accept any sort of biological determinism as a possible large contributing factor to anything. Out of curiosity, if we were to use your analogy loosely:
> Let's take a more obvious example: the common racist claim that black people are lazy.
If evidence came out that a certain portion of blacks were missing some sort of hormone that is almost completely causal in lack of desire to eat apples, so that it skewed their distribution in a statistically significant way, would you accept it? If it pertained to something considered more valuable, like say, intelligence or athletic ability, would you still accept it? Do you see that this shirks the definition of racism since it is talking about distributions and not individuals?
> That would correctly generate outrage, because a) one should not be ignorant about the history of these things when jumping into a discussion with such impact on people's lives….
Anyone can take offense to anything and be “outraged.” What good does that do? A sliding metric of people being sensitive and getting emotional is no reason to not have discussions. In fact, some people have disorders making it difficult for them to navigate social contexts tactfully. Are you saying people on the autism spectrum shouldn’t be a part of the discussion? This could possibly apply to James (I don’t know), especially if you’ve watched any of his interviews.
>b) there is a long, long history of virulent racists edging their way into the mainstream by dressing up their prejudices just enough to sound reasonable to the ignorant.
> Discussing how prenatal testosterone may be a factor in influencing decisions for a distribution of a group is a completely different beast.
No. It is the same discussion, just revised for fancier modern science. But it's the same deal: "I, a man, have noticed a possible fact about women. That proves that the status quo is awesome, and let's talk about going back to a simpler time before civil rights were such a thorn in my side."
The reason nobody on the left will discuss biological determinism with you is because of its rich history as a tool of oppression. The discussion has happened a zillion times over hundreds of years.
It's the same reason that most people who understand evolution won't bother to debate with hardcore creationists: it's a fucking waste of time. The creationists will never come around and say, "Oh, gosh, guess I was wrong." Motivated reasoning driven by deep bias is just not a fertile ground for discussion. Anybody who's sincerely interested in the history of evolution or the history of racism or the history of sexism can take a class. That somebody wants to strongly argue a point without having done that work is a big sign it's useless.
> Anyone can take offense to anything and be “outraged.” What good does that do?
This is a fine example of motivated reasoning. Nicolashahn, who at least has the decency to write under his own name, was clearly talking about morally justified outrage. If you would like to argue that people on the receiving end of sexist and racist bias don't deserve to be upset, make the argument. But you can't slip it like this.
> Are you saying people on the autism spectrum shouldn’t be a part of the discussion?
No. But as someone on the spectrum, I will say you're an asshole for using me as a strawman in a dumb argument.
> Would you mind giving a modern example?
Oh, modern. You mean after racism and sexism ended? When did that happen exactly?
If you're serious about all this, open an account in your actual name, stop with the bad rhetorical techniques, and carry on with the discussion. But as far as I can tell, you're yet another bigot who popped on a mask.
>No. It is the same discussion, just revised for fancier modern science.
You seem to be missing the nuance of distribution vs every individual. To me, this is a big distinction.
>"I, a man, have noticed a possible fact about women."
Actually, the vast majority of people in the social sciences are women, many of whom found this correlation with prenatal testosterone despite the evidence running counter to their ideology. If you would prefer, I can cite you many female researchers' names on peer reviewed articles. Regardless, why does it matter what gender the person is, if the science is sound?
>The reason nobody on the left will discuss biological determinism with you is because of its rich history as a tool of oppression.
That's too bad. As the confidence of a fact increases because of corroboration of evidence, the history of a more generalized, historical concept of the specific claim should have less bearing on whether it is true or not. If the issue doesn't appear sound, simply find evidence to refute the claim; the main concept behind the scientific method. Moreover, I debate this with people on the left all the time. If they aren't far left, they usually just downplay the amount the hormones affect decision, but they don't rule out there is any correlation.
>It's the same reason that most people who understand evolution won't bother to debate with hardcore creationists: it's a fucking waste of time.
False analogy. Yes, evolution is the only theory that has significant corroborating evidence and bringing up "designers" with mountains of evidence to the contrary (and no supporting evidence) is just faulty reasoning. Also, many times creationists make claims that are unfalsifiable and thus useless. On the contrary, though, people working hard to isolate independent variables in the messy field of cognitive psychology to find correlations to other attributes is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
>This is a fine example of motivated reasoning. Nicolashahn, who at least has the decency to write under his own name, was clearly talking about morally justified outrage. If you would like to argue that people on the receiving end of sexist and racist bias don't deserve to be upset, make the argument. But you can't slip it like this.
It isn't sexist or racist if you talk of distribution instead of every individual. Is it racist to ask for someone's race on a medical form? No, it's highly useful. Black males have a higher incidence of prostate cancer... or is that racist by your reasoning?
Why does using one's actual name make any difference to the content of the discussion? Are "Mark Twain's" literary works worthless because that is a pseudonym?
>No. But as someone on the spectrum, I will say you're an asshole for using me as a strawman in a dumb argument.
How is that a strawman? You implied that tact should be used when discussing things with strong historical contention. I brought up the fact that a certain proportion of people with a social disorder can't meet you metric because of materialistic deficiencies and that your requirement ostracizes those people. It's simply a further example of why I think emotions and feelings have little place in a discussion.
> Oh, modern. You mean after racism and sexism ended? When did that happen exactly?
No. I was genuinely curious what you were referencing.
>If you're serious about all this, open an account in your actual name, stop with the bad rhetorical techniques, and carry on with the discussion. But as far as I can tell, you're yet another bigot who popped on a mask.
Once again, why does my actual name matter or have any bearing whether I am "serious?" I am serious or else I wouldn't have taken the time out of my busy schedule to reply.
Vaguely saying I'm using "bad rheteorical techniques," isn't very useful. I assume y...
Yes, it matters whether you are owning your words.
This discussion is about how we structure society to serve its members. It has a long history of bigots cloaking their bigotry in a zillion ways. It is rife with people putting on masks -- from white hoods to anime avatars -- as a way of manipulating the discourse and avoiding social accountability for their attempts at social change.
If you want to be taken seriously -- certainly by me, probably by anybody -- then step up. Otherwise you're indistinguishable to me from the thousand other people I've dealt with who are happy to support self-serving sexism and racism from the shadows.
> Yes, it matters whether you are owning your words.
Well, clearly, superficial things to the actual content of the discussion like who I am, matters to you. A blanket statement that "it matters," is too reductive.
> This discussion is about how we structure society to serve its members.
Agreed.
>It has a long history of bigots cloaking their bigotry in a zillion ways. It is rife with people putting on masks -- from white hoods to anime avatars -- as a way of manipulating the discourse and avoiding social accountability for their attempts at social change.
Social accountability? You'll have to define this and why this is important in a discussion.
I find it interesting that you are equating an anonymous discussion about how to best serve society to white supremacists running around assaulting and killing people. Rather an extreme jump.
>If you want to be taken seriously -- certainly by me, probably by anybody -- then step up. Otherwise you're indistinguishable to me from the thousand other people I've dealt with who are happy to support self-serving sexism and racism from the shadows.
Interesting. You still cling to this belief that I'm supporting "self-serving sexism and racism" without specifics and not rebutting anything I've said. I'm starting to think you are currently incapable of being nuanced in thought. I hope this changes for you.
I don't have to define anything. I don't have to rebut anything. Somebody who is putting on a hood to discuss their opinions is the one who has to earn a response.
The norms of academic debate are decent ones, but they evolved in a very particular context, one where people committed to a lifetime of study and public service to earn their right to participate. You have done nothing here to earn similar consideration.
>I don't have to define anything. I don't have to rebut anything.
Certainly not. The request for a definition was meant to imply I can’t talk to the claim about “social accountability,” not knowing your definition. Unfortunately, you not rebutting anything just appears like you can’t, not that you won’t. You are definitely practicing what you preach; You are letting emotion ruin a conversation. In fact, it smacks of a tactic my 4 year-old daughter would use.
> Somebody who is putting on a hood to discuss their opinions is the one who has to earn a response.
I find it amusing that you use these “powerful” historical symbols to conjure up condemnation and emotion, when they have very little to do with anything I’ve discussed. It must be an easy life when you just dismiss things without observing or thinking about them. I find this is the most common feature among leftists and rightists and is predominantly why you guys are unable to come to an agreement on anything. Truly a spectacle.
>The norms of academic debate are decent ones, but they evolved in a very particular context, one where people committed to a lifetime of study and public service to earn their right to participate. You have done nothing here to earn similar consideration.
This is a website dedicated for people to “... make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.” This isn’t a place of academia, but the principles behind having a good discussion remain, regardless of the context.
I’m sure you don’t decry the use of pseudonyms when women in the past used them so that the quality of their work wasn’t judged by their gender. I find it funny you can’t abstract that same concept to now. It almost seems like you desire to know who I am, so you can place me in a box like the many misogynists did to those women in the past. Seems to me, perhaps you are the new form of racist/sexist.
Lastly, people don’t necessarily have to devote a lifetime of study to be cited in the academic community. That comes with the merit of the research. There are many people who dedicate their life to academia, but are cited very little due to quality of their research.
I was hoping to actually have a discussion where we could each learn something from the other, but you make this impossible. You could have reached a moderate, but instead you alienated me. Really, all you did was prove one of the points I made in the beginning, that emotion is the heighth of irrationality and shuts down conversation.
Ah, the brand new account created just to push against an antisexist position suddenly has well-developed opinions on the history and the purpose of this website. What a surprise!
Self-proclaimed "moderates" in hoods are a dime a dozen. If you aren't going to take your words seriously enough to take the minimal step of owning them, there's no reason I should. I can get poorly argued pro-sexist waffle anywhere.
> Ah, the brand new account created just to push against an antisexist position suddenly has well-developed opinions on the history and the purpose of this website. What a surprise!
I copy and pasted the intent from the welcome tab. "Well-developed?" It took me about 30 seconds.
I've just found out about y-combinator from a coworker fairly recently. I'm looking forward to contributing more, since I am in the technical industry. I hope my future interactions are more interesting and with significantly less assumptions about people and their intents. Speaking of which, instead of making assumptions, you could just ask people questions... but I guess that is too difficult.
> Self-proclaimed "moderates" in hoods are a dime a dozen. If you aren't going to take your words seriously enough to take the minimal step of owning them, there's no reason I should. I can get poorly argued pro-sexist waffle anywhere.
I lean "right" and "left" depending on the issue and your definitions for "right" and "left." Most of the time, my beliefs are rather balanced and not really "right" or "left," but a mixture of both. I don't know what else moderate could mean.
I don't know why you feel "owning my words" matters in a discussion, as you won't discuss it. You've simply thrown out the word "social accountability" without a definition.
> What it did not do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him.
He didn't say it directly, but he strongly implied that female coworkers were inferior. Among other things he claimed that women were less able to handle stress and have a harder time speaking up.
The document claims a lot more than just "women aren't interested in tech".
The workplace shouldn't be the venue, except many companies are kind of forcing this issue into the workplace by making valiant and public-relations-tinged efforts at diversity. I think Google even has a Vice President for Diversity -- which to me seems a bit silly because unless there's a business case to be made, it's just feel-good self-congratulation for how "progressive" you are. Perhaps having a diversity manager -- but an actual Vice President level executive? That seems like that should already be in the portfolio of whomever is in charge of Human Resources -- certainly not a separate executive role.
Is a Diversity executive actually impacting the bottom line of the company? Are there any actual quantitative facts that indicate that "diversity" improves a business's profitability? I am not arguing against diversity, please don't misunderstand. But it feels to me that this violent desire for diversity is something rather unique to SV tech. For example, the lack of men in the mental health professions barely raises any mention aside from the quadrennial NY Times think piece. The lack of men kindergarten teachers also barely makes a dent in the national discussion. The lack of women in building trades (despite those jobs being extremely well paying compared to "white collar" mid-level marketing jobs often dominated by women.) There's also not a big emphasis on the lack of women working in aviation or firefighting, despite those also being very well paid positions.
But for tech, for some reason it's a "big deal."
Fighting discrimination is obviously important as a basic matter of human rights, but much of tech's diversity push isn't about fighting discrimination as much as it's about actively recreating the balance of men and women in the field based on an arbitrary desired ratio.
If men and women are different, then it follows that they will have different desired vocations to a similar degree that they are different. If we argue that men and women are exactly the same, then why aren't more men working in mental health or social work -- those fields are about 80% women. We can't use the discrimination argument because that would imply that women discriminate against men -- and that doesn't fit the narrative that the straight white male is the bane of society.
But it is when the problem he was trying to address was the effect of diversity politics at google. Where else should that be discussed than in a small closed group of people.
The interesting thing is it seems on the surface that Google did invite these kind of discussions in their forum probably by the nature of forum, the explicit rules about sharing ideas to improve the company, the product etc.
Now one of the valuable lessons one learns operating in any large institution is that yes there are stupid questions no matter if the policy explicitly states there aren't, and there are always unwritten rules. Failure to discover the unwritten rules leads to getting fired, let go, skipped by during a promotion, etc.
Just curious, what do you think would be a proper venue. Tweeting at Google HR publicly, private emails to owners / upper management?
I entirely disagree. Of course this is personal preference but I firmly believe that the best way to fix a broken or flawed system is to place as much stress on it as possible in order for it to break down completely which in turn will force action to be taken by whoever is in charge of it which leads to a system that won't suffer from the same flaws.
I feel it we owe to society that we should try to improve it at every opportunity and allowing ourselves to adapt to a bad system instead of trying to break it is doing society a disservice. In other words: I feel it is our duty to try and provoke changes to what we perceive as bad instead of exclusively trying to adapt to the conditions presented.
In this case, he felt the system in the workplace is wrong then he should try to stress it into breaking so it can finally get fixed.
Another example: lets say that because of a bad bureaucratic process a certain action causes long queues on some service. I feel that it's everyone's responsibility to do that very action in order for the service to stop working entirely, which would force a change to it by whoever is in charge. I see it as "voting with your actions".
> You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them
You can, and some people have, and that's okay. It's not clear whether you're making the implication here, but commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate.
> I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way
Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".
Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering. He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.
Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse. This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.
Further, Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification, let alone evidence. That's either more confirmation bias or conscious sleight-of-hand, either way, it's certainly not intellectual honesty.
I don't bear Damore any ill will, he should be forgiven, but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias. These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.
Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits.
> Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest.
If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which.
> Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits.
Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".
You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.
>That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which.
You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination.
I can't imagine you're being driven to apply this standard to him by anything other than a preconceived notion that women are underrepresented in engineering due to sexism and that anyone that disagrees is a misogynist.
>Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".
Damore did not target anyone as below the bar. He made a statistical observation about the distribution of personality types among gender groups and how that would play out in gender representation in various occupations, to counter the discrimination-as-cause-of-disparity narrative. No individual was cast as below the bar due to their gender. The threat response was immature.
> You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination.
No, this is wrong. Societal discrimination is directly measurable at the point of hiring. There are a mountain of studies measuring this. It simply doesn't require modelling the effect as it propagates through society.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, nobody is claiming that bias is the only factor involved, but it's one we can measure and act on.
> Damore did not target anyone as below the bar... The threat response was immature
Aside from explicitly saying "lowers the bar", explicitly saying "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes" and making multiple references to lower drive, mathematical ability, etc. Please.
As you know, threat responses aren't driven by 'maturity' they're driven by percieved threat. Damore's clumsy language caused people at Google to be afraid, and justifiably so. He may have intended to spark a dialog but his words are confrontational. Don't confront people on this topic because you'll often get a fight/flight response. Instead you must engage and build trust.
As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more.
Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable. It's also another example of different standards being applied to liberal groups vs conservatives groups (offending conservative groups is basically a sacrament, but saying anything that can be remotely twisted into an offensive statement toward a liberal group is nearly criminal). I've never seen anyone make any sort of threat-response/justifiable-offense argument when conservatives are upset about, say, "blasphemy day" or just the constant misrepresentation in the media. In particular though, there's nothing which should remotely cause offense, even in the selection of quotes you shared (but good on you for quoting and not taking offense at strawman--very few of Damore's critics have been so kind). Damore's arguments (however factual) were better than I could make, but it's ridiculous that the criticism is that he didn't successfully prevent everyone from taking offense. He couldn't have done more to prevent offense without damaging his own case. I think this is another case of the left refusing to be pacified by anything less than complete political capitulation. Meanwhile any sort of expression from liberal groups, even defamation or riots, are defended, and any one who criticizes them have impossible standards. The double standards here should be unbelievable.
> As I understand it, the data about discrimination in hiring are mixed, but I'm interested in learning more.
Great, do that.
> Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable.
Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable.
There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level.
> Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable.
I think it is unreasonable. Damore took every precaution to avoid offense without changing his position. Perhaps more importantly, we go so far as to censor someone who makes any statement that can possibly be spun as a criticism of women, yet we permit and even encourage all manner of absurd, anti-male speech.
> There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level.
First of all, I'd like not to use "threat-response" as a synonym for "taking offense", because the former could be easily conflated with an actual threat (damage to person or property vs damage to hubris). That said, Damore went to every conceivable length to avoid causing offense; I think you and his other critics are effectively asking him not to criticize at all. Not speaking about a sensitive topic at all is hardly empowering oneself to "engage this topic on any useful level".
I think it's also worth pointing out that the left has nurtured a culture in which some groups are encouraged to take offense, and this is used to silence and shame other groups. I think that's what's happening here--a lot of people have been relentlessly fed propaganda about privilege and patriarchy and oppression have been trained to see it everywhere. I think this is a better explanation for the events that transpired than "Damore is evil/insensitive/etc".
> Damore took every precaution to avoid offense without changing his position
Perhaps every precaution within his ability. Unfortunately he made plenty of provocative mistakes. I highlighted some in the Medium post I linked to.
> First of all, I'd like not to use "threat-response" as a synonym for "taking offense"...
If you think that's what I'm doing then you're mistaken. I'm talking about stress hormones, cortisol, fight or flight.
There are probably better [primary] sources, but Tania Singer & her team at the MPI in Leipzig do a lot of work with stress responses caused by things other than "damage to person or property".
When you use the language that Damore used, in a confrontational way as opposed to a collaborative way, that reaction can be the result. Threat responses are caused by threats, including threats to identity groups, or to future prosperity (something that significantly affects the life chances of any offspring).
Whether you consider it "unreasonable" or not is irrelevant. My advice is to approach the debate in a collaborative way, instead of being confrontational like Damore, and you'll more likely avoid that outcome.
Maybe being a world class communicator could have helped Damore avoid some of the ire, but it's plainly wrong to attribute this drama to him instead of the reactionaries who were so giddy at the opportunity to take offense that they needed to invent content and context to be outraged about. Seems like blaming the woman in the full burqa for being raped--if only she had better covered herself, she might not have caused this response in her rapist.
Damore did everything right here. Whatever you think, his post was collaborative, not confrontational (he remained focused on what Google could do to improve, repeatedly affirmed his commitment to the common goal, etc).
> Maybe being a world class communicator could have helped Damore avoid some of the ire...
So, women are a portion of society who've spent hundreds of years fighting for equal treatment, a portion of society who weren't allowed credit cards until the 1970s, who have been told their brains were too small for serious things like voting... a portion of society who still face discrimination today (although today it's usually more nuanced and less overt). Damore said openly that Google were lowering the bar to let them in and amplified ideas that make it harder for the women (and other 'diversity' hires) already in Google, and you're surprised people got cross. Really? That surprises you?
Damore did the equivalent of walking into Jerusalem, picking a side, then immediately spouting policy changes he wanted to see... then acting all hurt when he got punched in the face and kicked out of Israel for causing trouble.
This isn't about being a world-class communicator, this is about an adequate communicator for the problem he was trying to solve.
How would you react if I told you your views were biased and extreme? Even if I think they are, telling you that in the introduction of my memo (like Damore did) is not going to get the reaction I want.
> ...but it's plainly wrong to attribute this drama to him instead of the reactionaries who were so giddy at the opportunity to take offense that they needed to invent content and context to be outraged about.
Not so plain as you think.
A scientific approach to determining the 'natural' gender balance would require a lot more 'biological' data and be able to combine it in a model with cultural factors and understanding of biases. Damore does not have that evidence, and doesn't indicate that he understands it.
A model like that would need to be able to predict why womens participation in computing dropped in the 80s. It would be able to explain why women are only 10% of computer science faculty in the USA, but 40% in China.
Without that model, leaping to conclusions about how many women to expect in a company like Google is bad science, and making HR policy changes on the back of this would be bad management.
No such model exists, but Damore leapt past that stage and in doing so abandoned any hope of scientific support.
He used inflammatory terms like lowering the "bar", accused Google of bias and fostering extreme views, talking about womens biological interests and abilities, and spoke in absolutist language rather than collaborative language.
Damore wanted to effectively reduce the number of women in the workplace, that's a threat. And he used inflammatory language while doing it, so the threat was as clear as day. I find it amazing that you're surprised by the reaction.
> Seems like blaming the woman in the full burqa for being raped--if only she had better covered herself, she might not have caused this response in her rapist.
I'm not going to respond to that, but I consider that comment both inaccurate and inappropriate.
> Damore said openly that Google were lowering the bar to let them in and amplified ideas that make it harder for the women (and other 'diversity' hires) already in Google, and you're surprised people got cross. Really? That surprises you?
So you agree it was the content and not the presentation? At any rate, Damore didn't say that Google lowered the bar, he said that diversity policies can devolve into that, but some people are addicted to outrage and will hear what they want.
> Damore did the equivalent of walking into Jerusalem, picking a side, then immediately spouting policy changes he wanted to see... then acting all hurt when he got punched in the face and kicked out of Israel for causing trouble.
No, Damore worked at Google; his everyday life is affected by Google's policies and rhetoric and general ideological-bubble-ness. He didn't "walk in and start espousing policies". It's also worth noting that he posted in response to a request for opinions on a skeptics message board; he didn't shout it from a mountain. Your analogy is completely divorced from reality.
> This isn't about being a world-class communicator, this is about an adequate communicator for the problem he was trying to solve.
This still sounds like victim blaming. Maybe we shouldn't be critiquing the guy who pointed out a few injustices and maybe we should look at the people who feigned outrage to silence him.
> Without that model, leaping to conclusions about how many women to expect in a company like Google is bad science, and making HR policy changes on the back of this would be bad management.
Yes, but he wasn't "doing science", he was posting on a message board. Besides, his point isn't "Here's a model that explains the disparity"; it's "the current model--discrimination hypothesis--has inconsistencies". Finally, being wrong (even about a contentious topic) doesn't merit public damnation, slander, excommunication, etc. That his model is incomplete is a red herring; he wasn't at fault, Google, Gizmodo, and the hoard of slanderous SJWs here and across the Internet are at fault.
> He used inflammatory terms like lowering the "bar", accused Google of bias and fostering extreme views, talking about womens biological interests and abilities, and spoke in absolutist language rather than collaborative language.
Sorry, none of this remotely merits the response he received. In fact, if anyone else spoke in this manner about any other topic, it would be a significant improvement. If the discrimination-theory folks were held to this standard, it would be a massive improvement. I'm not going to punch a guy for being in the 98th percentile of communicators instead of the 99th, especially when his critics and opponents are largely shouting lies and profanity.
> I'm not going to respond to that, but I consider that comment both inaccurate and inappropriate.
That's fine, but that's basically what's happening here. Damore went far above and beyond what was reasonable, and you're blaming him for not doing more. This is inappropriate.
> So you agree it was the content and not the presentation?
No... I don't agree.
Both Damore's content and the way it was communicated contain serious flaws. The content contained conclusions unsupported by evidence, and the communication (amongst other problems) contained pointlessly divisive and inflammatory comments that he really didn't need to make to address his concerns.
> At any rate, Damore didn't say that Google lowered the bar, he said that diversity policies can devolve into that, but some people are addicted to outrage and will hear what they want.
Oh please. Damore literally used those exact words.
He said Google policies "effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate".
The most generous interpretation of that statement is that a greater percentage of candidates from under-represented demographics are hired, but that bends the word "bar" to mean something other than its actual meaning... i.e. turns an otherwise weak point into inflammatory rhetoric.
> ... the people who feigned outrage to silence him.
I'm curious. So you think a large group of people is pretending to be outraged about something they're not actually outraged about? Does this behaviour require coordination or happen naturally? If it's coordinated, where is the evidence of collusion, is there an email list? If this collective outrage-feigning happens naturally then under what other human circumstances do humans exhibit this group mock-outrage behaviour, other than when the 'right' complaints about the 'left'? How do you know this outrage is "feigned" and not real?
Why should I believe this is more than just partisan bias on your part? Outgroup biases are well documented, after all, and your use of 'SJW' seem to put you in or near one of the right/alt-right/gamergate/white-supramacist camps, no idea which.
> Sorry, none of this remotely merits the response he received.
What do you mean by the response he received?
If you mean the loss of his job... then in no other context would someone be able to retain their job after undermining so many of their own colleagues or causing so many negative news headlines for their company... let alone both.
If you mean something else then I don't feel a need to be part of that discussion.
Yeah, the outrage is fake or they wouldn't have to invent statements he didn't make. Fake outrage is pervasive among progressives. It mostly spreads as ideology. It seems to be attractive to exaggerate one's hardships to amplify the perceptions of one's accomplishments while diminishing the accomplishments of those you hate.
Regarding the response received, I was talking about the firing and public flogging. And Google created the headlines for firing him so questionably.
> Yeah, the outrage is fake or they wouldn't have to invent statements he didn't make.
> ...public flogging...
Uh huh... tell me again about inventing things that didn't happen?
[Edit]
Seriously though; I've already corrected you on two things you fiercely claimed never happened but actually did (Damore mentioning ability, and Damore mentioning lowering the bar).
If you want credibility in your statements you're going to need to back them up with evidence otherwise you just seem like you're having some kind of partisan emotional experience throwing mud at people you see as your enemies.
And while it's always interesting to observe irrational behaviour, perhaps not the way you'd rather be seen.
The public flogging bit was figurative. You're mistaken about my claims, but since you're resorting to ad hominems, I feel pretty good about my case. I think you're more determined to have an unproductive conversation than I am to salvage it, so I'll let you have the last word, but I won't stick around to read it.
> You're mistaken about my claims, but since you're resorting to ad hominems
At no point have I "resorted to ad hominems", nor do I see anything that could have been misunderstood that way.
Perhaps you're referring to when I asked you to differentiate your position from partisan mud-slinging?
Note that I made that request after you'd written a diatribe about how the left manufactures feigned offence to silence its critics. And now you're upset that I'm using ad hominem attacks?
Fascinating.
> I feel pretty good about my case
You haven't made a case. A case involves making a point and then supporting it using evidence, which at no point have you done. Instead you've argued using rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims, which is a very different thing.
> If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which.
I've never been on a discussion board where this was the norm. More importantly, and to repeat my earlier point, this isn't even the norm for well-regarded, published content on the subject. It appears the standards are very high for dissenting opinions.
> You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.
Maybe, but given that Damore's memo is largely criticized for causing offense (despite doing more than what is reasonable to avoid it), it certainly seems pertinent that other points of view aren't held to the same scrutiny.
> Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".
Probably, but he did a much better job of mitigating it than I could have, and we never, ever hold liberal viewpoints to this standard. In particular, it's positively mainstream to publish absolutely brutal criticisms of men; we don't even feign sensitivity.
You may well have a point that people too readily make scathing assessments of 'men' as a group.
Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it.
As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences
>Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it.
No, but I don't think stating an observation about a group as politely as possible is a bad thing. It's not like saying "women may be less interested in tech" or "diversity quotas can lead to bar-lowering" are even unflattering or absolute observations. We just live in a culture of professional victims who are ever-primed to take offense at anything. The moral thing isn't to critique Damore's communication--better communication wouldn't have helped; only capitulation. The moral thing to do is to oppose the victimhood culture.
> As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences
I don't have that model, and I never claimed to. Moreover, no one needs a model to point out inconsistencies in the current model, especially inconsistencies which are mutually harmful.
Scott Alexander has a pretty good one in the link referenced in the post. But why spend time investigating when challenging the discrimination hypothesis can cost you your job, reputation, etc.
> Scott Alexander has a pretty good one in the link referenced in the post.
I must have missed where he proposes a model. By all means point that out. Specifically one that can predict how many women should work at Google in California, and in Boulder, and in New York, and in London, and in Mumbai... year by year.
> *But why spend time investigating when challenging the discrimination hypothesis can cost you your job, reputation, etc.
Challenging a hypothesis didn't cost Damore his job. Undermining his own colleagues by promoting negative stereotypes cost Damore his job. That was totally unnecessary to his argument... he could have just based it on CS graduate numbers and left the 'biology' out of it.
Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse.
I deeply disagree with this approach. You're essentially saying that unless you can come up with an alternative scientific theory, complete with predictions, it's not possible to criticise an existing theory about the world.
There's many plausible explanations why an absence of a 50:50 gender representation could be caused for reasons other than bias or average ability. That's enough to put a nail in that model of discovering bias. Coming up with a way of predicting what the right ratio is, isn't necessary to discard that metric.
I think part of the problem is what the memo says and what it doesn’t say. It’s entirely plausible that the ‘natural’ ratio is not exactly 50:50. But as of last year, among Google tech workers, the ratio was 81:19, and that’s with all the affirmative-actiony programs Damore wanted to back off on; in the past it was higher. It’s quite a bit less plausible that intrinsic differences could explain all or even most of that big a discrepancy, especially combined with the many anecdotes of discrimination we hear about. Now, to be fair, the memo never explicitly claims that it does; indeed, at one point it specifically says “in part”. But the tone of the memo, the relative lack of time spent acknowledging the large role played by cultural factors, makes it sound like Damore thinks the natural ratio is at least pretty close to the current one. And that’s simply wrong.
How do you know it's wrong? If the ratio among CS graduates is 80-20 then it's natural it's still 80-20 when hiring at Google (not taking into account other factors which may tilt it even more in direction of men).
You may ask why it's 80-20 among CS graduates. One hypothesis is that women are just less interested in tech and in presence of many other choices they choose different paths. In the past there weren't as many choices that's why women were forced to go into programming (that's why there were more women in programming several decades ago).
> I deeply disagree with this approach. You're essentially saying that unless you can come up with an alternative scientific theory, complete with predictions, it's not possible to criticise an existing theory about the world.
That's a straw man. You're suggesting I disapprove of criticism, which is not so. I disapprove of demands for policy change when you don't even have a hypothesis for what your target should be.
Unless Damore (or someone else) can reasonably estimate whether their theory around 'biological' differences result in a natural 10/90 ratio or a natural 49.9/51.1 ratio then there isn't really a case to be made to change actual real-world HR policies on that basis.
Being able to reasonably estimate that 'natural' ratio is a massive task. You'd need to account for parenting, education, popular culture, socio-economic group, dozens of biasing factors. I'd expect that model to go well beyond what's possible.
Yes, that may impose a high hurdle on criticism of HR policy via this argument, but that's also the intellectual leap that Damore has claimed to have made from the evidence presented. How exactly he's managed that leap is problematic. He certainly hasn't demonstrated full knowledge of all of the factors involved.
> There's many plausible explanations why an absence of a 50:50 gender representation could be caused for reasons other than bias or average ability. That's enough to put a nail in that model of discovering bias. Coming up with a way of predicting what the right ratio is, isn't necessary to discard that metric.
Of course, and it's certain to be a combination of factors, some historical, some current that pushes representation away from 50:50. I don't think anyone is pretending that bias alone is responsible. But there's a mountain of direct evidence that bias is a significant problem. On the other hand the chasm between this biological source evidence and an actual hypothesised effect on representation is vast.
It was pointed out in this thread many times: one good way to approximate what the ratio should be at the point of hire is the ratio among CS graduates. It's 80-20 so it's natural it's also 80-20 among Google employees. If you force it to be say 70-30 then you are discriminating against men based on sex.
> It was pointed out in this thread many times: one good way to approximate what the ratio should be at the point of hire is the ratio among CS graduates.
While this sounds reasonable on the face of it the reality is different.
Where are you sourcing these graduates from? In the USA computer science departments are barely above 10% women faculty, in China it's closer to 40%. Student numbers tell a similar story... so it matters where your graduates are coming from. For a multinational like Google this is a real question.
> If you force it to be say 70-30 then you are discriminating against men based on sex.
This is a loaded statement, based on the assumpions that (a) hiring if left alone is broadly meritocratic and (b) quotas are the only game in town. There's enough evidence to say that neither of those assumptions is true.
First of all, it's been proven many times that bias in hiring is a real problem and has a large effect. Hiring is not meritocratic. Second, Google doesn't use quotas, no bar-lowering occurs (Damore hinted at this but gave no specifics and no evidence... we have to reasonably discount it unless someone can prove otherwise). Instead diversity programs mainly exist around sourcing and trying to avoid false negatives in order to counteract systemic biases.
> Unless Damore (or someone else) can reasonably estimate whether their theory around 'biological' differences result in a natural 10/90 ratio or a natural 49.9/51.1 ratio then there isn't really a case to be made to change actual real-world HR policies on that basis.
I agree with your argument but fail to see how it allows you to defend a discriminating policy. It's the other way around: You can't discriminate people without evidence that what you are doing is reasonable. You're the sexist in this case.
You can't defend a discriminatory policy by saying you understand it's discriminatory but to keep it because no one can tell how much.
This line of reasoning is inconsistent unless you are only opposed to discrimination of some groups. In that case I think we sadly have to agree to disagree.
I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, that was not my intention. Could you explain when you find the time? I reread your posts and don't see where i am putting words in your mouth.
Do you agree with my argument apart from whether it applies to you or not?
I'm not a fan of the trend for sorry-you-feel-that-way apologies. On the other hand it's possible I let this seemingly-unending argument get to me and got defensive, thanks for not taking it badly. Suggest we move on. For reference (no need to explain) the trigger was "You're the sexist in this case" which I now assume was hypothetical rather than accusatory.
The words you're putting in my mouth is defence of specific policies. I'm not aware that I'm defending any specific policies.
One policy that's come up (not sure which thread, I've lost track and can't be bothered to reorient) is Google's policy (as I understand it) of ensuring 'diversity' candidates get considered, reducing the false negative rate. This was inaccurately described by Damore as lowering "the bar", which is quite inflammatory. That policy is designed to specifically redress two things; (a) decreased confidence in under-represented groups resulting in low numbers of applicants, and (b) unconscious bias in hiring processes resulting in fewer under-represented groups getting through.
While there are more elegant solutions (vested interest disclaimer here) this type of policy tries to address measurable issues and does not reduce quality of hires.
Perhaps it leaves fewer roles open for others, but ultimately you have to make a choice between Hire A benefitting from a diversity program or Hire B benefitting from hiring bias in their favour.
You're right, I assumed you defend the type of policies I disagree with without clarifying whether that is the case - I'm sorry for doing that, you were right.
Regarding your reply: I agree with most of your reply and enjoyed reading your blog post. I feel I understand your position much better now and can see where you are coming from.
> Is there a different policy you want to discuss?
I'd like to clarify whether we agree or disagree on the original argument - hypothetically, regardless of any specific policy. I hope I don't misrepresent your views in the following.
In your blog post you seem to argue that feelings of unfairness by the over-represented group in response to positive discrimination are built on a misconception [1]. My original reply to you was in the same vein and I'd like to understand where exactly we disagree on that.
I believe discrimination based on group membership is not justifiable. The only way in which positive discrimination can be justified is therefore if its application does not actually cause discrimination but only corrects for existing discrimination.
As we don't know for sure yet how much of the representation gap can be attributed to discrimination, we should not use positive discrimination to correct for it as we potentially do more than correcting for it but actually discriminate.
Hypothetically, if the split would be 45/55 in a perfectly just world, aiming for 50/50 through positive discrimination would in practice discriminate and not just correct for discrimination.
Please note that I agree with the outcomes of positive discrimination until the effect of the original discrimination is canceled out - I just don't feel we can distinguish both cases and should not dismiss feelings of injustice in response to that as "built on a misconception".
[1]
> In any discussion of positive discrimination there’s a risk that the overrepresented group (usually white men) may feel threatened. Unsafe. People aren’t born aware of their comparative advantage or disadvantage, and sometimes never see it, so when other groups seem to be given a leg up it can feel unfair.
> Feelings of injustice may be built on a misconception, but they still exist and are natural
Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering.
He didn't. He just claimed that they are on average less interested in those areas. There is no mention at all of ability in the memo, only in the manipulated press pieces.
Google apparently already had a women-only program that was predicated on the assumption that women have a harder time leading than men. So it doesn't seem like Damore's claim was particularly unusual within Google.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
>Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering.
His claim was that women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He said nothing about ability.
>It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse.
He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.
>Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification
I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.
>>He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.
>This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.
>it's certainly not intellectual honesty...
>stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.
I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.
It's very easy to learn about biases like confirmation bias, and fall into the trap of only applying that knowledge to other people. "He only disagrees with me because of confirmation bias. He's just intellectually dishonest."
You can't possibly know the thought process behind another person. As far as we know Damore did the research and found these facts convincing and developed his view. Not the other way around. Or at least someone presented these facts to him and then he developed the view he has.
In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.
Your comments have been crossing into incivility and flamewar. Would you please make a u-turn and fix that? These threads are divisive enough without careless commenting.
This exchange is likely to get lost in the noise, but I just want to tell both of you how much I appreciate your willingness to give and receive this kind of feedback. It is so hard to get messaging just right when text is your only medium. This kind of back and forth makes it easier to focus on what we mean rather than what was perceived.
The memo is mostly about women, but race is mentioned several times in the memo - mostly in terms of training programs at Google that are only open to people of certain races.
> His claim was that women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He said nothing about ability.
Sorry, you're mistaken here. (1) Damore said "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes". (2) Damore made references to women being less able to cope with leadership positions due to anxiety (3) Studies show ability, interest, motivation and external environment are not mutually exclusive independent things like you might think. Read some of Carol Dweck's research on this for more.
> He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.
'in the USA' is missing from your sentence.
In China, 40% of faculty are women, and graduate numbers are similar. The largest democracy in the world, India, also has a similar story, close to 50% of graduates.
Google hires across the world, not just in the USA.
> I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.
It's there, look again. And you don't get the unique right to interpret the true meaning behind Damore's words. He specifically references race-related hiring policies as unfair off the back of a discussion about gender.
> I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.
I consider my comment pretty factual. Intellectual honesty has a specific meaning; the 'intellectual' isn't just there as filling. It's a method of problem solving that among other things explicitly disconnects your personal beliefs from the pursuit of the facts. I was explaining that Damore's actions were not consistent with intellectual honesty, as implied by the commenter I replied to.
Damore leapt over a vast chasm to get from 'biological' differences to HR policy. He could be right about every single thing in his memo and it still wouldn't be intellectually honest because the evidence provided doesn't explain the observable facts.
Why did representation of women in computing drop suddenly in the 1980s? Why does the USA have 20% (and falling) women CS graduates and India have closer to 50%? Why are 10% of US CS faculty women and in China 40% CS faculty are women? Why do girls interested in computers during childhood suddenly drop their interest?
It ultimately doesn't matter what his thought process is, perhaps I should have left that aspect out. Until Damore can answer those kinds of questions, leaping straight to HR policy is intellectual dishonesty. Unless I'm missing something that's an indisputable fact.
...and we haven't even opened the Pandora's Box that is less biased hiring techniques, but perhaps that's for another time.
[Edit: missed a bit:]
> In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.
This is how debates work on topics that aren't emotive. In this case, Damore promoted stereotypes of lower ability (yes, ability), and explicitly claimed that Google is lowering the "bar" to allow diversity candidates in.
That effectively tells his colleagues hired through those programs that they don't deserve to be there, and that he wants fewer people like them hired in future.
That's never going to happen like a discussion of whether the button should be #4285F4 or #3285F4. It's a threat to peoples future prosperity, and the prosperity of their familes, daughters, etc. That conversation requires empathy and trust. Instead, Da...
> Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse.
This seems to assume that the only way to measure or achieve equitable hiring is to measure the representation of identity groups across a given position and make sure it tracks their makeup in the general population. It's not clear to me that there aren't other acceptable methods of trying to make things equitable.
For example, you could check that applicants from different identity groups succeed in being hired at about the same rate. That's a practice that should direct an organization towards equitable results whether the reality is that women are underrepresented because of sexism in hiring or the reality is that women are represented in different proportion because of the endeavors they tend to prefer. And also for a reality that's a mix of both (which I suspect is the way of things).
Also: if the primary accepted standard becomes to match representation in a position with an identity's representation in the population, it seems pretty likely that over time it would become more difficult over time to predict a "natural" ratio.
I completely agree, which is precisely why I think believe the role of the employment process ought to be to screen everyone by fair (in a way that everyone agrees on) and transparent metrics. 'All fronts' hopefully means fixing every issue encountered simultaneously at the local level.
If instead we're adding a 'fudge factor' based on race, gender, or other measure of 'privilege', we're just hoping that fudge factor in hiring makes up for problems elsewhere, and it can paradoxically make things even worse.
Think about a lot of the (often very well justified) complaints that minority and other hires have with the current situation: they feel like, or they feel that other people believe, that they are simply a 'diversity hire' that doesn't deserve to be there. They feel constantly pressured to 'prove themselves' under the suspicion that the bar was 'lowered to let them in'. And the entire structure of un-blinded affirmative action exacerbates the situation, because nobody is allowed to know how big the fudge factors are, neither the minorities nor the dominant group. Under that situation, how can there anything but suspicion and mutual distrust?
Under a provably blinded hiring process, none of those should be an issue, because the process is completely transparent and agreed to ahead of time.
Other people have said this much more eloquently than me:
'Fair & transparent' and 'blind' are two different things, and neither are subsets of each other.
A 'blind' hiring process _can_ be akin to, faced with a densely connected graph, focusing only on the most immediate causal relationships.
I do agree that 'fudge factor's are clumsy at best, where all candidates are hired, and then an arbitrary number is added to candidates based on race/gender/etc.
However, 'fudge factors' have already existed in history. For a completely different example outside of hiring practices: redlining[1] was an explicit practice of denying services/mortgages to city neighborhood based on its racial makeup.
So, what now? There have been decades of racist 'fudge-factoring' in real estate and urban development. Is the right approach to fudge-factor the other way? Or is it to be 'blind' and to look purely at the financials of each individual/organization?
Obviously this is a different scenario than hiring, and cannot necessarily be directly applied back onto hiring practices. However, we can separate out a) one way to correct for historical/systematic 'fudge factors' from b) whether or not this can apply to hiring.
I would argue that yes, you need fudge factors to correct previous problems.
It should be fair and transparent, I agree, but it will not be very clear-cut. In complex systems (densely connected graphs of causality), the only clear-cut processes are creating problems, or ignoring them. Fixing complex problems are always messy.
As many people have pointed out before, making the hiring process blind doesn't do what you seem to think it'll do. There was a famous study (can't find it right this second on mobile) where researchers found that the ratio of black hires to white hires decreased when their resumes were submitted with all identifying information scrubbed.
I don't know the answer but if I cared to guess, it might be because the talent pool for orchestra performers had significantly more gender parity than the talent pool competing for elite engineering jobs at Google.
Edit: Google says that their diversity platform is non-discriminatory because they're not changing their standards, but rather looking harder for qualified diversity candidates (paraphrasing). This makes the gargantuan and probably unwarranted assumption that there are a lot of these candidates not applying and that 'looking harder' will find them.
Maybe there is pressure to hire from minority groups then. It makes sense that minority candidates are on average less qualified objectively if there is an affirmative action earlier in the process (for example at school admission level).
The results of studies like this depend strongly on the context... both the method used, and the existing hiring environment you're comparing to.
We've run a similar study and for the company we were hiring into we found blinding in that specific case had no effect on race or gender but drastically improved socio-economic diversity. The hiring company already had equitable hiring on gender & the candidate group wasn't racially diverse enough to make a conclusion.
Would I generalise that result to all organisations? No way, and neither should you.
If you can find the study you're thinking of I'd be interested to look at it.
Google's hiring rate between men and women does seem to match the relative rates that men and women graduate with CS degrees, which suggests that they're at least not discriminating at that level.
There are still arguments to be made that either more aggressively recruiting women (fattening their pipeline, even if it's zero-sum versus other players in the field) or accepting a higher rate (yes, "lowering the bar", which most colleges do quite aggressively and people seem mostly okay with) could be positive moves on many axes.
More productive overall measures involve equalizing the educational pipeline, which IMO is the real solution. Google invests heavily in that, too, though, so I'm pretty happy with their multi-pronged approach.
Ok, no one owes anyone a debate, unless you're going to call it wrong, sexist, harmful, etc. Then in that case, I'd like some reasoning behind it. Either don't debate, or do and do it right.
> women are on average less able
Please don't do this. What he claimed was that women have less inclination to go into tech due to various pressures, some biological. If you're referring to his referencing the 'big five' personality traits, you'll note that he addresses both positively and negatively associated traits of both men and women in regards to working with software. He never stated that the combination of differences makes one gender better than the other.
>until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number
Why? All he did was put forth evidence and suggest that 50/50 might not be ideal, why must another number be presented in order to have a discussion on the subject? Speculation on my part, but is it because it's an easier target to shoot down if you can point to an exact number and claim it's wrong for your own variety of reasons?
Obviously, policy changes are going to be a goal if Damore's evidence is proved right (Policy is at the root of the problem according to Damore). Why are you presenting them like two separate things? You're not even considering the fact that the evidence might support his conclusions.
>diversity as a whole(race not just gender)
Because whenever diversity is discussed, it is almost done so as a whole. Obviously Damore wanted to focus on gender, but diversity initiatives virtually always include both. It would seem awkward to avoid race entirely. And he never made any claims on just race, go to the memo and ctrl-f "race". Every time it appears, it's accompanied by "and/or gender". In several of these cases, it's because a study he's citing mentions both. I would call that being thorough, not intellectually dishonest.
>These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.
You can make this claim about any paper that claims something not trivially arguable from scientific studies. To say this, you have to go through piecewise and show why the connections he's making from solid scientific studies don't apply to his arguments.
> Ok, no one owes anyone a debate, unless... I'd like...
This is still just about what you'd like to happen. The rest of that argument is circular.
> Please don't do this. What he claimed was that women have less inclination...
Damore specifically mentions "abilities" although others have debated his exact intention in that line. I don't see value in reopening that.
Regardless, what you're missing is that interest, ability and environment are far from mutually exclusive traits. See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15026234
> Why? All he did was put forth evidence and suggest that 50/50 might not be ideal...
Because Damore went as far as policy changes. To make an HR policy you need objectives, or at least direction... to know whether you should be aiming for a 49:51 gender ratio or a 10:90 gender ratio. If there's no proposed effect size how does Google's HR team know if they're heading in the right direction?
Some people may not want employers like Google to get into 'social engineering' as Damore puts it, but the reality is that there's a mountain of evidence that hiring bias has a large effect, so the idea that a company like Google wouldn't try to measure and optimise in that area is clearly not going to fly.
> commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate.
You might be wrong, you might be right, either way that does mean forfeiting the debate. It's like folding in poker -- yeah, you might have great cards, but you folded, and nobody owes you any of the money on the table.
> Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".
Uhm, no. Might as well say assuming a 50/50 ratio to be free of bias is not intellectually honest, so "they started it". And then those could in turn point to someone else, and so on.
> ...you might have great cards, but you folded, and nobody owes you any of the money on the table.
No. Damore had to win. His opponents just had to not lose.
Google has invested massive resources and thought into their hiring process. The debate for change was started clumsily. Damore triggered a threat response that caused a good portion of one side to walk away from the debate, but he was pushed out too.
His opponents have egg on their faces, and they just keep spreading it around more. Like that cartoon dog reading sitting in a burning house saying "this is fine". That's what I see. They painted themselves into a corner they're now too cowardly to get out of, and other cowards is all they now have. Damore on the other hand is still a bright young (and cute) guy with his integrity intact.
"but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias"
"openness" and "freedom" are core values of Google. Even in a scenario where someone made effective arguments refuting all of James' key points, a "one strike and you're out" policy seems antithetical to Google's culture. Or any healthy culture for that matter.
If James wrote what you said he did above (I think you mischaracterize him greatly), and if his ideas are as poorly constructed as you suggest they are, surely Google employs someone intelligent enough to go point by point through his memo and really school him. Such a response would do more to build a case for the worldview you appear to espouse than the lazy, generalized retorts being lobbed his way.
> If James wrote what you said he did above, (I think you mischaracterize him greatly)...
By all means ignore the part relating to honesty/competence, I'd probably apologise to him for that if I met him so probably shouldn't have written it.
Most of my comments however speak to his actions so are not a matter of characterisation.
> ...surely Google employs someone intelligent enough to go point by point through his memo and really school him
They do. They have. However, Damore violated Google's code of conduct and by extension his conditions of employment. That's not a line any employer of thousands can play coy with in the name of educating one individual.
> Such a response would do more to build a case for the worldview you appear to espouse than the lazy, generalized retorts being lobbed his way.
You may be right, but my point was the ideas he brought up merited discussion. The social timing of it may be what caused it to blow up so much (that and the misrepresentation by Gizmodo), but at least personally, I had not heard the argument made before in a way that allowed it to be discussed as widely as it is.
As some one who took a sociology 101 class in junior college... nothing in his memo is original/new/insightful. This is a classic nature vs nurture argument.
> Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle.
No. Not yet. women still tend to be underpaid. Women make 72 cents to a male's $1 of wages for the same job.
As a white male, I don't care to "discuss" if women are my intellectual inferiors - which is exactly the point Damore was making ... and the point that YOU are making.
"According to data for 8.7m employees worldwide gathered by Korn Ferry, a consultancy, women in Britain make just 1% less than men who have the same function and level at the same employer. In most European countries, the discrepancy is similarly small.
These numbers do not show that the labour market is free of sex discrimination. However, they do suggest that the main problem today is not unequal pay for equal work, but whatever it is that leads women to be in lower-ranking jobs at lower-paying organisations."
Would you please not cross into incivility when commenting here? Plenty of people are arguing the same views as you without doing that, while you've been doing it pretty regularly.
If you'd correct this, we'd appreciate it, because these discussions are hard enough to keep substantive without people taking swipes at each other.
Just because someone makes points that have some relationship to facts doesn't mean they can't still be held responsible for disparaging things you say. Imagine if he had written a 10 page paper about how they shouldn't hire so many fat people because they cost more in health insurance, with all sorts of facts and numbers to back up his claim.
Or if he wrote it about short people, that they, on average, were worse coders. I am sure you could find some semi-reasonable sounding studies showing some correlation between height and some definition of success.
The argument is though that what Google is doing is hiring disproportionately from a smaller group of candidates. The argument would apply as well if they "looked for more fat candidates without lowering the bar" or "looked for more short people without lowering the bar". Those statements describe discrimination of people who don't belong to pointed group.
The argument in the memo is: hire on equal standards and if that results in less women than men then it's caused by X and here is what you can do about X instead of discriminating at the point of hire.
Isn't the onus on Damore to put forth supported arguments? He made a lot of claims that were completely unsupported.
The worst offense though was that a lot of the assertions were completely disconnected from supporting the original claim that Google's diversity efforts were misguided. In order to have an honest intellectual discussion, first there would have had to have been an honest effort at putting together a coherent argument with such controversial/incendiary points/implications made. Damore failed that miserably.
> What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did.
The memo is being discussed so much because it is controversial, which does not require originality, nor is it necessarily insightful. It shows the perspective of someone in an exclusive position which I believe adds (considerably) to the reasons it's being discussed, but to make the conclusion that it's being talked about because it adds to the discussion is incorrect.
Could not have agreed more. I do not think they should have fired him because it further validates one of the points he made about "being on the right side" (I am talking about the statement at the beginning that all women seem to agree with, do not have the exact quote on me atm.)
>Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle.
It's about the attitude. As a woman in Tech, there are so many men you don't feel like you belong. Men think you are really not very feminine anyway, you are a geek who likes programming. With memos like this more young women are going to rethink a career where they will feel alone and may have their biological identity questioned if they are successful
>This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.
You know what's ridiculous? Expecting people to magically agree with you because you're tired of arguing your position.
Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in that world, but we don't[1]. In a society where all people are equal (which is what we are aiming for, even if the debate rages on whether that's what we have), all opinions are also equal. The tipping force on the scale of debate is tangible evidence, and it's the lifelong struggle of anyone with political opinions to continually remind others of the evidence behind their standpoint.
Feel free to not bother and stuff if you're a bit tired or bored or whatever, but be aware that from a third party perspective, there's no visible difference between someone who won't provide evidence and someone who can't.
[1] edit: I thought about this for a few seconds and have decided this would be a horrible world
You (along with many others) seem to be conflating the major point of the memo between interests and abilities. Not liking something does not mean you're not capable of doing it.
Would you rather hire someone that likes what they do or someone who doesn't?
Would you intuitively think that someone who loves their job are going to be more interested in bigger challenges and doing great work, or someone who doesn't care for the job?
I optimize for productivity first, that doesn't always equate to someone who likes their job.
Regardless, I'm not sure how that's related to my comment - the memo was discussing relative interests in software engineering (and other disciplines), not capabilities of people being able to do code better than others.
By perpetuating the stereotype that "women are less interested in engineering" and suggesting that your chances of getting a good female candidate are lower, Damore is introducing an unconscious bias against women. After all, "it's likely that she doesn't really like this", "she probably went into engineering because her parents pushed her", "maybe she's great now, but she'll lose interest once anxiety kicks in."
Next time your engineers are scheduled to interview someone and they see a female name on the resume, they'll form an opinion (even if slight, and even if overridable by interacting with the person) about who the candidate is. Depending on how tired/stressed/bored they are that day, that opinion will play a smaller or bigger role in what they write down in the candidate report.
That bias, by the way, exists today. Trying to justify it on the base of biological differences does nothing to fix it.
> That bias, by the way, exists today. Trying to justify it on the base of biological differences does nothing to fix
You presupposed that the bias is why the disparity exists in the first place. Its plausible that we completely fix all biases in the industry and the gender ratio does not change whatsoever, or even gets worse.
> You presupposed that the bias is why the disparity exists in the first place
What in my comment tells you that? I made a conscious effort not to bring that up.
> Its plausible that we completely fix all biases in the industry and the gender ratio does not change whatsoever, or even gets worse.
This argument sounds like the global warming denier argument "What if it's not true? What if we make the world a better place to live for nothing?"
It is plausible, but right now we have no way to measure it. We do, on the other hand, know that unconscious bias is affecting prospective female candidates. Why don't we focus on fixing the existing problem first?
Well, really, the bias is the problem, not the disparity. So if we fix the bias, sexual harassment, and sexist behavior, that is a good outcome in and of itself, regardless of the gender ratio.
>By perpetuating the stereotype that "women are less interested in engineering" and suggesting that your chances of getting a good female candidate are lower, Damore is introducing an unconscious bias against women. After all, "it's likely that she doesn't really like this", "she probably went into engineering because her parents pushed her", "maybe she's great now, but she'll lose interest once anxiety kicks in."
A ("women in general are less interested") does not imply B ("woman job candidates are less interested"). A would only imply B if there were equal numbers of man and woman engineers. But there are fewer. It's entirely possible for "women are less interested in engineering than men" and "women that go into engineering are far more interested than men that go into engineering" to both be true.
So that hiring bias is based on non-logic in the first place. Considering the possibility of A does not legitimize B.
The problem with this view is that you assert such unconscious biases exist, but provide no evidence. Moreover it's a classic "she's a witch" kind of accusation. Nobody can refute it because the entire theory is that everyone (or every man) is guilty without even realising it.
You should know that unconscious bias training has been shown to make no difference to outcomes. The science is dubious. Of course, you can always try to fix the theory by claiming the impact is minimal but ... if the impact is so tiny, why worry about it?
Diversity initiatives have long since left the realm of debatable science and fact and turned into a new religion. Science is replaced by faith. I don't think I'm biased, I can't perceive any bias in myself, but I KNOW it's true. I must believe.
> You (along with many others) seem to be conflating the major point of the memo between interests and abilities
Sorry, this is wrong.
Direct quote (emphasis added): "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes"
On what basis do you think that preferences and abilities are two mutually exclusive traits?
We know interest is influenced heavily by environment. We also know that ability is influenced by both interest and environment. Carol Dweck's work is a good source for this type of study.
It also seems intuitive that ability influences interests, although I'm actually not aware of what studies exist in that area.
I don't think you're standing on as solid footing as you think when you're making accusations of others conflating topics.
There's another conflation between skill and ability. Lots of people can do lots of things, some are better because they're more interested (leading to more practice, etc).
Just because interests and abilities influence each other does not mean they are not exclusive. You can do a lot of things that you probably have never even considered before too.
Plus where is the outrage when newspapers title: "A scientist proves that women can do two activities at the same time" and "What makes women better at management"?
Many women believe they're statistically more intelligent than men and less violent, by fate of biology.
The important point here is that Damore triggered a massive threat response in the colleagues he characterises as being below "the bar". He explicitly talks about that bar being lowered, which by implication undermines a proportion of employees at Google (and people that are inclined to defend that group).
Furthermore he attacked 'diversity' hires as a whole, but only presented evidence on male/female differences not racial ones... so there's significant precedent for him making points that aren't backed up directly. I don't think he should get the benefit of the doubt there with regards to subtlety of meaning.
This is the funny thing about the memo. How it's read is completely determined by people's own biases.
That sentence makes it very clear that Damore considers women to be biologically differently abled from men when it comes to programming. In fact he goes on to claim that this essential biological nature is so different that the practices of programming needs to be altered to better suit women (eg more pair programming).
This is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. There is no well-understood scientific mechanism that can get us from different genotypes to a different kind of thinking. There is no evidence that men and women's brains are so different that women need their own engineering practices.
Of course it's not a new claim. Since the dawn of time it's been claimed that women can't do X. Just 50 years ago it was widely believed that women can't do law, math or science. Fifty years before that it was disputed that women were rational enough to vote. All of this claims have proved to be nonsense. But supposedly programming is different because of a study on rhesus monkeys?
Logically, the entire memo -- including its wild rantings about Marxist intellectuals -- can be dismissed on the basis of extraordinary claims. Note that if somebody did provide a genetic ability decoder -- a machine that can analyze normal-form genes and then reliably predict mental ability -- that person would win the Nobel Prize and likely become very, very rich.
But what's so interesting is that even when confronted with direct quotes about this nonsense plenty of people insist there is a more charitable interpretation of the memo. This suggests that people are actually starting at very different places.
to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.
Let's just agree on two things then.
_Every woman at google has every right to be there.
&
_The number of women at google relative to the number of men is not the result of mostly imperceptible, malicious actions by men, but rather due the fact that the personal interests between the sexes varies substantially on average, and this results in skewed sex ratios throughout the entire workforce that match nearly perfectly with what scientific evidence shows us.
Women are more interested in working with people and nurturing professions and men are more interested in working with things and abstract, theoretical, mechanical and spatial professions.
Can't agree on number 2, because it's a false dichotomy. The gender imbalance cannot be simplified to being because of any one specific cause (like a difference in personal interests). There is a whole cluster of causes, including:
1. Malicious actions by men. This undoubtedly happens, let's not pretend otherwise. However, it might not be very common.
2. Non-malicious but annoying behavior from men directed towards women. This could include unwanted flirtation, accidental condescension, inappropriate jokes, etc.
3. A male-oriented culture. Even if the guys don't act in an annoying way, being in a significant minority is usually less appealing than being in a situation where you have a more even gender split.
4. Boys and girls are nurtured in different ways, which can drive them towards having different interests as adults.
5. Biological differences between men and women. Personally, I think this is one of the least important factors, and it's also the only one that we can't change.
Whether or not (5) is an issue, (1-4) can and should be addressed, so that women who are naturally inclined to CS are not nudged away from the industry by their life experiences.
This. Attempting to reduce such a complex issue into a single root cause ("oh women simply aren't interested in this field") is deeply misguided, not to mention intellectually lazy.
This is a great point, and it highlights something about these types of conversations that is so strange to me. So many parts of the gender/workplace conversation are quite sophisticated. But when it comes to explaining why certain industries ended up with gender imbalances, people are content to assume a monocausal theory of career "preference" on the part of women. As if that "preference" isn't shaped by problematic environmental pressures.
This is so wrong and so frequently asserted that I think a better approach to any gender/workplace convo would be to start here, recognizing the falsity of the monocausal career preference hypothesis and work backward from that toward the rest of the conversation.
Super interesting. I'd love to see people in this thread comment on this. It is a little odd how "diversity in tech" is so over represented in the public debate when there are clearly many other jobs that are even more heavily skewed and in both directions, i.e., plenty of jobs with >80% men AND plenty of jobs with >80% women.
I don't think "diversity in tech" is actually overrepresented in the public, although the current affair has temporarily made it more prominent. But if you are in tech, you are more likely to hear about debates that involve tech. Diversity in tech, JavaScript fatigue, the Rust Evangelism Strike Force, whatever. Just because it's popular on HN doesn't mean it's popular everywhere.
I was about to write a reply saying whilst that might be true I'd never heard of big well funded initiatives to get women into firefighting, but then I decided to double check on Google and found this:
If you’re ever trapped in a burning building, just pray the firefighter climbing up to rescue you isn’t Rebecca Wax. Or someone like her, who’s been given an EZ-Pass through firefighting training for the sake of gender equity.
This week Wax, who repeatedly flunked the rigorous physical test required by the New York City Fire Department, will graduate anyway, The Post reported.
All over the nation, fire departments are easing physical standards, in response to litigation to increase the number of women firefighters.
I'm having trouble following the logic here. There are different gender ratios in various career fields, therefore (!?) attribute all imbalances in all cases exclusively to womens preferences and ignore any other casual inputs.
It would make more sense to say that different careers are affected by different dynamics that need to be analyzed on their own terms, with the environmental constraints that affect "preferences" being different in each case.
2. totally true and I'll go on the limb to say that part of it probably because of men biological differences which force men to be eager to reproduce at all times
3. yes, but you already addressed malicious and non-malicious annoyances so this has to be "annoyances" where men treat women as other men. If men treating women as other men is a problem then this is proof that we are not the same and need different approach. (I am open to be completely wrong about it, please educate me if you think this is wrong or I misunderstood something)
> Women are more interested in working with people and nurturing professions and men are more interested in working with things and abstract, theoretical, mechanical and spatial professions.
Don't agree with number 2 at all.
Half of all new attorneys are women. There is nothing "nurturing" about the profession--it's adversarial and conflict-oriented by nature. And you spend most of your time dealing with abstractions, not people. More than half of accountants are women. That profession isn't any more people oriented than programming, and you work entirely with abstractions. 70% of tax preparers are women. 60% of insurance underwriters are women. Etc.
Conversely, professions we think of as "people-oriented and nurturing" are dominated by men in other countries. E.g. teachers in India are 80% men.
Doesn't that vary a lot depending on what kind of law you practice?
At least for some kinds, there is a lot of non-adversarial human interaction. For example, in patent litigation you are usually part of a team and spend a lot of time working closely with the other lawyers on your side, paralegals, outside experts, inventors, and other people involved with the patent on your side.
Litigation is explicitly adversarial, and that includes many kinds of law that might seem "softer" at first blush. When you do housing law, you might spend a little time talking to an evicted old lady, but your real work is suing the landlord. Transactional is less overtly adversarial, but while the business guys are thinking about team synergies the lawyers are focusing on how the parties could try to screw each other if expectations don't pan out.
Lawyers work in teams, but programmers work in teams too. Having done both there is a lot more interactivity in programming teams (weekly status meetings, pair programming, dropping in on a neighbor to discuss APIs). (Legal teams are much smaller and cases are much less interconnected than large codebases).
Law could be nurturing. There must be thousands of people that need legal help but can't afford it, or aren't in a position to seek it out even if they need it eg victim of abuse or assault.
In which case the attorney may double as a councillor of sorts.
This dual role is common in lots of jobs though. Maybe defending people is more appealing than maybe mentoring junior devs.
Maybe accounting is due to stability? In western countries you always need an accountant. You could probably make an argument about women not being risk takers.
Your last point is why statistics in developing countries are always brought up. At least one thing is clear, we can change the environment to get more women into STEM.
The 50% number applies to new large firm lawyers, not just "public interest" law. And your examples are unrealistic. Sexual assault victims don't get legal counsel. They might have (minimal) contact with the prosecutor, who is statistically likely to be a man. The accused rapist, meanwhile, might have (again, minimal) contact with a public defender, who is equally likely to be a man or woman. Both of those positions are primarily adversarial. Public defenders don't have time to nurture their clients--they try to get they are facts necessary to argue in court or negotiate a plea.
Do men and women go equally into all fields which an attorney can practice in? As in, do corporate attorneys have the same gender ratio as family law attorneys? Do environmental attorneys have the same gender ratio as IP attorneys?
Why would this mean anyone already working in the field needs to bring any burden to the table in terms of defending themselves? The subject was centered around the probability that some recruiting assumptions may be wrong, and that there may be better approaches to recruiting or improving the situation in general.
Women that work in the field should definitely be respected as much as anyone else. They should be free of sexual harassment, and mistreatment. On the flip side, if only 20% of graduating classes in targeted STEM fields are women, and women represent a disproportionate amount of college students... then maybe the issue is broader than the affect of men on the field at that level.
I think part of it may be natural inclination... another is probably the role of movies and media. The latter likely a much bigger role on the impressions of the work and the likely types to fulfill those roles.
--- Edit:
Big example Daisy/Quake from Agents of Shield... started off as a badass hacker, best of the best... as the show moved on, the role was relegated to brawler, and the impact of intellect or technical ability was largely sidestepped, or made secondary and less.
Media portrayals of technical professionals all around are usually very unbalanced... and that doesn't even begin to go into the other fields that are disproportionately male or female, or the hindrance of men in higher education.
> Why would this mean anyone already working in the field needs to bring any burden to the table in terms of defending themselves? The subject was centered around the probability that some recruiting assumptions may be wrong, and that there may be better approaches to recruiting or improving the situation in general.
Assuming you're asking in good faith: because of the idea that diversity hiring effectively lowered the hiring bar.
Imagine for a second you have imposter syndrome. Now imagine that you've been told (not necessarily by Damore) that you're the (not quoting you here) "diversity hire". Imagine how much worse that imposter syndrome now is.
I suffer from imposter syndrome all the time... but that's on me, not someone else. If you hire someone because of diversity alone over someone with a higher level of merit, then that was wrong. Also, telling someone that they were hired for diversity reasons alone is probably a bad move as well.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't try to get more women into tech, or into trash collection, or construction, or every other male dominated occupation, or men as nurses, etc... however, that doesn't mean having to change the rules for men or women. And pointing out that there are differences between men and women shouldn't instantly start of with a storm of hate.
"the average woman is shorter than the average man" ... "typical misogynistic cis white male patriarchal bullshit" ...
I'm not saying that everyone is volatile and prone to fits of excessive rage in response, but it really feels like there's no place for civil discussion or discourse with a growing portion of the population.
You know you are being completely hypocritical, right ?
You abhor discrimination during hiring. But yet you want to be able to discuss the differences between men and women in order to use them to discriminate.
When did I say that I want to be able to use differences between men and women to discriminate?
I said that hiring on diversity over merit was wrong. That's it... I never said anything about sex in terms of merit. The only place any discussion of sex or diversity belongs is in terms of messaging and in terms of possibly promoting jobs that are disproportionate to natural propensity towards a given role.
If you can't discuss, review, document, test or otherwise examine bias in terms of nature, environment, upbringing, educational exposure and other factors, then you can't force equilibrium at the end of a long process.
You can't hire 50% women in an industry, where only 20% of those educated for that field are women. Also, so long as choosing a field of study or work is voluntary, the best you can do is maybe have a more fair representation of a given gender in a given field that doesn't show only above average looking women wearing glasses with a few geeky quirks, then relegate them to more personality quirks, or make them less capable over time.
And MAYBE it's okay to have a field where most of the people in that field are of a given sex. I don't see the SJWs trying to get women into garbage collection, or throwing a fit over the gender bias in nursing.
You're missing the point that there is a positive feedback loop at the source of the problem. The reason that women (or minorities for that matter) don't get into some fields of STEM is because there are no role models that tell them it's a good idea to do so. So there is a chicken and egg problem, and the only way do break the cycle is to give priority to such minorities. Is it fair to the members of the majority? Perhaps not. But in the end, I believe, it will justify the investment. Consider it a small price to pay for the millennia of oppression.
No there isn't positive feedback loop at the source problem and no giving priority to minorities does not make any sense. You don't have to. There is enough fight over the talent that anyone who actually has talent will get a job.
Having worked in tech for 20 years and hired and fired all sorts of people I am unconvinced there is a problem in tech as big as it's being claimed.
The idea that you can only have role models if they are your gender is really really absurd and if people are really falling for that then they have a problem not the tech-scene.
There is no actual evidence that diversity in gender does anything for a company besides creating more complex work environments. There are far more important types of diversity to strive for.
There's a difference between the two words, "reason" and "justification". I think you're confusing the two; if someone talks about X as a reason for Y, you think they're using X as a justification for Y.
It's complicated by the fact that sexist & racist people will try and use reasons as justifications, that they will use their misunderstanding of statistics to short-circuit decision-making in a faulty and biased way.
But we shouldn't outlaw talking about reasons all the same. The reason we shouldn't outlaw talking about reasons, in spite of the risk of odious people using them as justifications, is that you would otherwise proceed unscientifically. Reasons relate to theories about the world, and if you discard reasons, your theory about the world is wrong.
This is an extremely valuable insight, but I don't think it's the root cause of the screaming match we're currently observing.
Some have already decided that the REASON for gender imbalance in tech is rampant bias and male privilege, which they have publicly committed themselves to stamping out. Whether or not this is true, questioning the validity of that reason is considered an attack on their identity and value system.
Edit: I'm not sure it's clear from my comment, but to clarify, I am NOT SURE what the reason for the observed gender imbalance is. I'm not saying that it isn't bias/privilege/etc. I don't think the case has been proven one way or the other, but the personal attacks & utter misrepresentations I've seen used to try to shut down discussion is driving me pretty hard emotionally to one side at the moment.
Sure. But I think the reason people are so attached to this explanation, I think, is that other possible reasons sound like justifications for bias. I think both good and bad people get confused between the two.
> because of the idea that diversity hiring effectively lowered the hiring bar
So ? That's the company's choice to make.
Many companies take the longer term view that having a more diverse workforce is more important than hiring the most technically adept candidates. Especially since having different viewpoints can aid in innovation and creativity.
The idea of gender diversity in a company itself being good has absolutely no evidence in reality.
It all depends on what kind of company, what product industry etc. and it might not be about gender or minority diversity but something completely different.
This is what I think is wrong with this whole discussion. Diversity has become a goal in itself yet no evidence to support it's positive impact.
It's not because discriminating based on sex is illegal.
If you lower the bar for white people because you take long term view that having more white people in your workforce is more important than hiring the most technically adept candidates then it wouldn't be "your call to make". In fact you would be sued into oblivion and rightly so.
>>Especially since having different viewpoints can aid in innovation and creativity.
Yes, that's why the memo mentions diversity of opinions. You don't get that by discriminating based on sex or race. You could get some of it by not firing people for expressing their views though.
> Imagine for a second you have imposter syndrome. Now imagine that you've been told (not necessarily by Damore) that you're the (not quoting you here) "diversity hire". Imagine how much worse that imposter syndrome now is.
I've actually heard where this exact thing has happened at Google, in a very high profile team. This isn't just a hypothetical, it's a reality.
And that's in incredibly poor taste to disclose... I'm not a fan of jobs going for reasons beyond merit, but it's not fair to the hire to put that on them... and I never meant to state that it is. I'm only saying diversity over merit is wrong.
It wasn't even disclosure. The person that said it wasn't involved in hiring if I understand correctly, but basically didn't like the person and thought they were unqualified, and said that.
I guess what I'm saying is when there's even a feeling that there is a system that is diversity over merit, people will assume that people they don't like who are minorities, are somehow less able to do their job, even when that's not the case.
I never said I believe in hiring based on diversity over merit, but I also don't mind looking for candidates in different places.
I don't believe the person was hired because of their sex or race. But again, even here, all minorites have to prove it, while the majority are assumed to be there on merit.
As someone without a formal education working with peers that have PhDs, there are lots of things one has to overcome in terms of perception in a given role. The majority of my coworkers for the past several years have not been white; however, most have been men (about 1:6 to 1:4 or so)
But it's a fact that many companies and colleges lower standards to increase diversity attendance. I think this is a good thing, but it's not a false thing.
So what did they do instead to increase diversity? Do they pay disproportionately more to certain groups? Or do they have some other way to attract more 'diverse' candidates to achieve their quotas?
If the numbers are true and the gender distribution in STEM graduates is 80/20, and you are intent on increasing your number of female employees, you have two choices. You either lower the bar on the 20% or you raise the bar on the 80%. In the end, the net effect is the same. The employees from the 20% group had a granted advantage against the 80% group. The better solution is to change the 80/20 distribution of graduates. Personally, I'm unsure of the 'proper' way to accomplish that goal.
Note: I find it interesting/disturbing/sad/telling that I've been sitting here for a long time contemplating if I should even submit this message since I use my real name here. The fact that we, as a society, have come to a point where we are afraid to even have this discussion really makes me sad. I respect every one of my colleagues deeply, male and female alike. The idea that someone could twist my words and paint me as a misogynist is beyond troubling.
If the numbers are true and the gender distribution in STEM graduates is 80/20, and you are intent on increasing your number of female employees, you have two choices. You either lower the bar on the 20% or you raise the bar on the 80%.
This seems to be the common argument against diversity programs, but it strikes me as statistically true only if we assume a very even distribution between STEM graduates and prospective employers. Given tech's reputation as being relatively hostile to women, a company could theoretically find ways to advertise to prospective women employees that their internal culture was more welcoming of them -- that, in fact, they wouldn't be subject to the sexism that the female engineers in the linked article all said that they routinely face. This doesn't require the company to have different hiring standards between genders, or to pay women more. It does require them to change their recruiting practices in ways that acknowledge they may have to make specific outreach to women and other underrepresented minorities, but that doesn't strike me as having to be inherently discriminatory.
Note: I find it interesting/disturbing/sad/telling that I've been sitting here for a long time contemplating if I should even submit this message since I use my real name here.
Thank you. I have been noticing this for the past year, both here and in almost all other online forums. And it's not just the ability to troll or make a comment that you know might push a few buttons.
It's questioning whether it's even safe to post a logical argument against any of the narratives deemed sacred these days by the left.
The fact that the worst offenders in this new witch hunt are the same ones who have massive amounts of data on all of us is terrifying.
I think there's something wrong with this argument. Companies don't recruit randomly from a big sea of 80/20 applicants, they recruit from a chosen set of pools, where the average of every pool they could possibly recruit from is 80/20.
Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of women is greater than 20% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar. The bar is at the same height for men and women, just with a skewed population. You're artificially excluding pools of people who would make good candidates, but since both women and men can bypass your outreach efforts by going straight to you, you're not refusing to hire anyone who is both qualified and motivated enough to apply directly.
I think proponents of the google diversity programs are arguing that they do this. I'm not sure whether they do. I think the real situation might be a hodgepodge of systemic factors and biases in both directions that sum up to something unpredictable, plus a few largely ineffectual diversity programs, and a massive question mark around why there are so few female CS grads in the first place (biology! sexism! gender roles! c64 ad campaigns! inertia!). Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.
>>Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of women is greater than 20% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar.
"Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of white people is greater than 95% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar."
I don't think it would get much sympathy but it's an equivalent with race substituted for sex (both are protected and it's illegal to discriminate based on them).
>>Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.
If you own a pub and want only white waitresses so you only invite white women for interviews you can do that without lowering the bar as well. Still you are discriminating even if you put elaborate system out there which magically result in only (to make the point stronger, substitute with a ratio like 90-10 or 80-20 to make the situation equivalent) applications from white women at the end.
I'm not defending or attacking affirmative action itself, since the topic is so politically charged that arguing about it on the internet with strangers is futile.
My claim is a much narrower one, that you can hire a disproportionate amount of female developers without lowering the bar if you bias your incoming hires. It can be simultaneously true that Google's diversity policies are harmful to quality (because they restrict where Google hires from) while their female developers are as qualified as their male developers (because they came from the same place and meet the same standards).
Yes it might be although it's very unlikely to happen. I wrote about it in another comment but in short: once you start hiring more (proportionally) from a smaller pool then that pool become less qualified on average (because you fished out better candidates). Over time this can only result in you doing more and more to overlook candidates from the bigger pool if want to sustain your policy.
If more companies are doing that then it's impossible to sustain without lowering the bar. If only you are doing that there is no point because then others will hire more men (as there is more qualified men left proportionally as you took bigger % of qualified women).
I am saying that the policy of "we don't lower the bar, we just look more into avenues to hire more women specifically" is somewhere between pointless and dishonest (dishonest as in created to hide the discrimination based on sex).
EDIT:
As to affirmative action: I agree it's not the place for debating ethics of it. I am saying that affirmative action = lowering the bar either directly or indirectly and there is no way around that fact (at least industry wise, you can maybe sustain it locally if you are ok with others skewing their ratio in the other direction).
that pool become less qualified on average (because you fished out better candidates)
This rests on the assumption that hiring from a given pool exhausts it. It seems intuitive that hiring students from a university or bootcamp would have the opposite effect, as would hiring students from a particular academic background, since unemployment/pay metrics and prestige would drive more students there.
dishonest as in created to hide the discrimination based on sex
Since the clearly stated goal of affirmative action is to hire less of a majority group, it seems more likely that such a policy would be created to prevent imposter syndrome and "my male co-workers think I'm incompetent because of all the diversity hires" syndrome. With such a policy, nobody is a diversity hire.
> I am saying that affirmative action = lowering the bar either directly or indirectly and there is no way around that fact (at least industry wise, you can maybe sustain it locally if you are ok with others skewing their ratio in the other direction).
So it implies lowering the bar unless it doesn't.
Companies can put more effort into finding woman candidates without caring whether the whole industry does so. If some companies bias toward women (without lowering the bar), and some companies don't bias, then the overall effect is that qualified women can get hired instantly, and more of them might be encouraged to enter the industry.
I wrote some shitty code based on the official data of cs graduates in 2015-2014, every candidate was assigned a random competence score based on a Gaussian distribution with a mean of 100.
these are the results:
"there are 48840 males, we will pick only 25000(51.187551187551186%)"
"we will pick all females to represent the company reaching out to them"
"let's say the company is going to hire 5000"
"hiring based on competence and taking females when equal"
"results:"
"male: number: 3505 percentage: 70.1% average score: 123.81256204767604"
"female: number: 1495 percentage: 29.9% average score: 123.75346343448992"
"if we force the 50% ratio"
"the average male score: 126.26036797470225"
"the average female score: 119.60577230318559"
so forcing a 50% ratio does indeed lower the bar. data for
males and females were generated using the same function so arguments about biological factors are not even needed.
"Note: I find it interesting/disturbing/sad/telling that I've been sitting here for a long time contemplating if I should even submit this message since I use my real name here. The fact that we, as a society, have come to a point where we are afraid to even have this discussion really makes me sad. I respect every one of my colleagues deeply, male and female alike. The idea that someone could twist my words and paint me as a misogynist is beyond troubling."
The difficulty is that "this discussion" can be - and usually is - conducted in a way that is harmful to women, either on a broad scale (specious arguments / failure to understand systemic bias) or an individual scale (wrecking someone's day / making a formerly welcoming environment feel hostile).
Those real consequences are on the line every time someone hits "Post" in this sort of discussion, and are a really good reason for any thoughtful person to pause and contemplate before doing so... perhaps do some additional self-education, or take the time to pose genuinely explorative-questions rather than rhetorical-questions or flat-out conclusions. If more people did that, I think you'd eventually see a lot less fiery refutation and much better discourse.
"If the numbers are true and the gender distribution in STEM graduates is 80/20, and you are intent on increasing your number of female employees, you have two choices. You either lower the bar on the 20% or you raise the bar on the 80%. In the end, the net effect is the same. The employees from the 20% group had a granted advantage against the 80% group."
This logic assumes that the 80% and 20% are functionally equivalent? (Which can be so if there's, eg, no systemic bias, but seems rather less likely when such is present.)
Another option would be to realize the the 20% already had to overcome substantial hurdles to get where they are, and to factor that into your decision-making.
Silly. Those 20% are currently shelved in low-end dead-end jobs. If your company were to offer a friendly environment for them, they would flock to you. You'd have your pick of top-flight people.
Its so easy to make up crap about how its impossible to fix the issue without (made-up strawman). How about turning our intelligence toward useful comments? E.g. you could look harder for truly qualified candidates from among the 20%?
I was at an all hands meeting at a previous employer when the big boss was introducing new employees. After he introduced a new female employee, he went into a long speech about how diversity was important to the group. That was just super awkward, and whether true or not, made it feel like to everyone the employee he just introduced was a diversity hire.
I think there are definitely a few companies out there who are playing with the hiring bar to improve diversity in an easy but ultimately harmful way. Probably not google, but these bad actors poison the well in these discussions, so to speak.
My sister was considering going into CS, until the career adviser at her school told her it's a great idea to go into CS since companies have gender quotas and someone will have to hire her so going into CS basically guarantees her a job.
Yep. Not because CS is a popular field where there is a shortage of skilled professionals, but because she's a woman. She was so upset by it that she chose something else entirely.
Ya, a lot of crap like that is why the imposter syndrome has so much fuel. But we aren't really allowed to talk about it, and anyways, it involves bad actors acting in bad faith.
I think going into robotics, 3-D printing, or drones (but be prepared to work outside the US) is a much better field nowadays than CS/programming etc. (Of course, if you're so inclined healthcare/physical therapy is also a great field for the foreseeable future)
One point that I do wholeheartedly agree with Damore on is that putting quotas in OKRs is a very bad idea. It's an easy feel-good number that can have all sorts of negative consequences. It casts doubt on every female hire, and IMO almost certainly invites bias in the interviewing process.
Yeah, this is why bar-lowering policies are bad. If that's not what Google is doing, then Google should explain their approach to employees so said employee doesn't need to question his or her qualification unduly.
> Imagine for a second you have imposter syndrome. Now imagine that you've been told (not necessarily by Damore) that you're the (not quoting you here) "diversity hire". Imagine how much worse that imposter syndrome now is.
And this, I believe, is the strongest possible argument against discriminatory hiring practices.
If I hire someone who's black, or female, or gay/bi, or any other 'protected group', I want them to know that I hired them for their ability, not to fill some quota. And the only way to do that is to hire based purely on ability.
By setting 'diversity hire' quotas, Google's own HR department is telling anyone who qualifies for any of those quotas that they're not good enough.
According to the PDF(0), it states on page 6, footnote 6
...Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done)....
The smoking gun here is "which is illegal and I’ve seen it done"... Well, shit. That seems to answer your question, "YES".
However... On James Damore's official website(1), it states the following from the same quote area.
...or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal).....
Which is illegal. No more claim of being a witness. How interesting. That would not validate your claim/question.
(0) was written as an internal discussion piece by an employee at Google.
(1) was written as a public statement by the center of the current moral panic. As such, it has to be hugely more careful about making unsubstantiated claims. Regardless of the truth of the matter, if he has no corroborating evidence of discriminating based on protected status, he can't make a public allegation of such without opening himself up to a defamation lawsuit.
They hired new chief diversity officer, Danielle Brown -
Brown talked with NPR last year, while at the chipmaker Intel. “I think maybe two or three specific things that explain our success,” she said. “The first thing is accountability. Setting these goals, communicating the goals, tying pay to the goals. I think that’s been key.”
She was at an important place at an important time. Intel had decided to do something no other tech giant had done before: publicly state how many women and underrepresented minorities it wanted to recruit, and how many it managed to retain. Of all new hires, Intel told the world, at least 40 percent would have to be women or underrepresented minorities.
I think you're making some pretty big assumptions here. For starters, she was hired 2 months ago. Has she even had time to put any new programs in place yet? Second, you're assuming that whatever she did at Intel, she's intends (and will be able) to do the same at Google.
Presumably the programs Damore criticizes in his memo have been around for a long time. Do any of those involve the use of quotas?
Daisy/Quake - she was great as a hacker, and I'm so sad about that electricity guy who died, but wow, someone who can fly and break bones or collapse buildings, that is not just a brawler, that is objectively more awesome than being a hacker and I'd trade my scripter job for being able to fly in a heartbeat.
> This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.
You can't have it both ways. If you don't want to get involved in the argument, you don't have to, but getting involved and then doing any of the things GP is decrying is actively toxic.
Women don't have a choice as to whether we participate. It comes up everywhere. It comes up in our workplaces, and as the minority group in conversation, we have to be there to contradict the people who take it as justification for the (evidence-based) unlevel playing field in tech, sexism etc, and we will be the ones affected if we don't ensure that our colleagues and people we respect don't go therefore shrug and decide that everyone thinks that way.
Nothing in your comment is a reason you have to participate.
> we have to be there to contradict the people who take it as justification for the (evidence-based) unlevel playing field in tech, sexism etc, and we will be the ones affected if we don't ensure that our colleagues and people we respect don't go therefore shrug and decide that everyone thinks that way.
If you are concerned about third parties being swayed if you stay silent, that makes it even more important to not engage in the behavior I am decrying. Doing nothing is unlikely to impact most people's opinions. Appealing to platitudes (or worse, actively misrepresenting your opponent) will be actively counterproductive.
Why would women need to "defend themselves"? He wasn't attacking them. The entire point of it was, that for whatever reason, women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He never said anything about their ability.
"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
>This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.
Why does research regarding this and the burden has to fall on women? If research is solid why does it matter if it was generated by a specific gender.
> This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.
See "Self made man" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book), for a real-life experience of living as a man vs as a woman. Her conclusion at the end was that women have it much, much, easier, and she would much rather live as a woman than as a man.
i.e. maybe work is sexist and makes women prove themselves more than men have to. But that's only one aspect of peoples daily lives.
IIRC at the end of those 18 months Norah Vincent had to check herself into a psychiatric hospital because of the severe depression she developed.
Besides saying that men don't really have it better[1] she also commented[2] "When you mess around with that, you really mess around with something that you need that helps you to function. And I found out that gender lives in your brain and is something much more than costume. And I really learned that the hard way," which is less "women have it much, much easier" and more "women, living as women have it much, much easier".
[1]: gender stereotypes hurt everyone, and in [2] she spoke about how "They don't get to show the weakness, they don't get to show the affection, especially with each other. And so often all their emotions are shown in rage"; but they can't be discounted because of this.
[2]: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Entertainment/story?id=1526982
Responding to tone is one level below an argument that actually addresses the point. Responses to tone can be safely dismissed as irrelevant to the debate at hand.
One of the basic contexts of the debate is the question of whether tech workplaces are hostile to women. The tone of the email making claims about women in the workplace is relevant.
Precisely, there just grasping at straw men arguments to deflect from the fact that they refuse to consider Scientifically based criticism of there polices when Science disagrees with there ideology.
> [W]hen I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. (Ida)
> I’m just exhausted by having this same damn argument over and over again since I was a teenager and the amount of time and energy I keep having to spend to counter it. (Edith)
Also, none of the "quoted phrases" that you criticized appear in TFA or in any parent comment.
I sympathise with the woman saying she'd much rather just focus on code rather than social justice debates. But, as flippant as it is for a guy to say it, it's their cross to bear isnt it? Women in tech. Because, if they don't speak up, then what? Where does that leave us? Should the "other side" also not speak up? Just focus on code? Should they suppress real emotions that they're feeling?
I'm not flaming, just wondering what the best-case way forward would be that mollifies both sides.
I don't care if the women I work with don't speak up. If I see sexism I will (and in fact have on more than one occasion) call it out. I use discussions with my wife and with women I've worked with in the past regarding how sexism in the workplace works to help me identify it in cases where it may be ambiguous or even something I'd never considered to be sexist.
It does help identify those cases when women do speak out, though. My view is we should listen more to them about what sexism is and how it works.
This seems roughly cognate to "There are people who want to do their jobs, and there are people who want to poke the people in Group A with sticks. Should an employer constrain Group B from poking the people in Group A altogether just because Group A doesn't want to participate?" I think most people would easily answer, "Yes, we should prevent people from going around poking unwilling coworkers with sticks, and they should also be prevented from getting around the rule by throwing sticks around and just 'happening' to hit those coworkers, because it's not useful to have people doing that in your workplace and it disrupts Group A." I don't think anybody would really say, "Getting poked with sticks is just Group A's cross to bear."
Fair points, and as I said, even I tend to fall in the camp of "work is for work" a lot of the times. On the other hand, to play devil's advocate, I think you're being uncharitable by comparing them to "stick pokers" as if they've nothing better to do. I tend to believe that the topic is important enough that, "just let me do my work" isn't an adequate answer, and trivialises the concerns of a sizeable swathe of even Google employees.
Except that people are just discussing ideas in a rational way, at least aspirationally. There aren't any physical sticks.
This is complex because people desire for fairness and respect in incompatible ways. If we analogize away one of those problems, of course the right decision seems obvious.
EDIT: I think the incompatibility is a result of some rules and norms that need changing. I don't think the conflict is a law of nature.
> [W]hen I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club.
Sure. But people on the wrong side of the Google monoculture feel like they have to be closeted at work. They don't want to feel that way either. There has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest here.
Good. People who think we don't need diversity efforts or that think studies of aggregates should be applied to determine efforts for smaller specialized populations or individuals should keep it to themselves. I wouldn't want a racist to feel comfortable quoting Bell Curve "research" or criminal population composition numbers at work,for many of the same reasons.
So you're saying that any research or argument that comes to a conclusion you disagree with should be equated with the research and arguments that Neo-Nazis use? How progressive, open-minded, and forward thinking.
That this is a widely held viewpoint on these things ought to be more disturbing than the memo.
Conservatives often claim to support an idea and then go on to lay out exactly how it's only on their terms (usually completely opposed to the idea) or in ways they approve, for example by providing concrete suggestions based on flawed application or understanding of research (as Damore did).
Am I correct in understanding that you think he's a conservative who is lying about supporting diversity? What led you to this conclusion? It seems odd to me to believe a conservative who doesn't support diversity would write a memo that ascribes negative consequences to right wing viewpoints and provides suggestions for improving diversity.
>There has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest here.
I agree, but just because there has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest, that doesn't mean that what Damore did was professional and honest.
I'm not prepared to fault him because I don't see how he could have been both professional and honest in discussing this issue. I think workplace norms need to evolve in one direction or another.
I'm not sure anyone can come up with a better way to discuss the issue. I'm open to ideas if you have any.
I've asked this around HN many times over the last week. Most of them boil down to letting people who probably disagree with you edit your thoughts before you release them. Or not releasing your thoughts in any meaningful way.
If you were Damore, what would have been a healthier way to start a broader discussion on the issue?
The "diversity culture" Left has been very succesful in a kind of cultural engineering where any deviation from accepted consensus is inches from being labeled "hate". Lone wolf kamikaze-type performances will only strengthen it.
What the fucking alt-right has been doing about this is trying to ignore the facts altogether, which may have populist impact but will alienate the professional/intellectual circles where this consensus takes root.
Maybe it's worth looking at the much-cited-in-this-thread Wired piece that agrees with Damore about everything substantive and then in full non sequitur condemns him.They're doing something effective.
----
Frankly, I have no idea of what to do about the toxic change in culture we have been experiencing. I try to avoid this kind of thining altogether -- it's a huge distraction from just trying to become the best version of me, etc. But I do understand that indignation and anger on our side is a windfall for theirs. If you're really willing to take them on you need to think seriously about strategy.
> Sure. But people on the wrong side of the Google monoculture feel like they have to be closeted at work. They don't want to feel that way either
Everyone has to be closed at work; it's a part of being in a professional environment. For example, you can't go up to your co-worker and tell them you think they're a complete idiot even if you think so.
In social settings this is possible because relationships can just end, but that's not the case for a business where you are expected to interact with the same people often.
> For example, you can't go up to your co-worker and tell them you think they're a complete idiot even if you think so.
Sure you can - if you are supported Trump, or were even just he prevailed over Hillary, thousands of people in Google either called you an idiot or agreed with the statement. You should have heard the tone of conversation on the 9th. Between that and the cry-ins that were hosted, it was an absolutely disgusting, pathetic display of personal bias and lack of understanding of a large swath of America.
It seems like you're holding a significant double standard here, which is exactly why Damore feels his views are systemically quashed.
For example, that line of reasoning would go: Damore saw practices he feels are discriminatory based on the available evidence. His silence could be mistaken for agreement. He should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.
Ideally, the one whose views are the least congruent with reality in a harmful way should feel more pressure and less freedom to express their opinion (because people won't be interested in hearing nonsense).
Finding the approaches and views that are most coherently grounded in reality is obviously a continuously difficult task.
We shouldn't treat people poorly just for being wrong, unless their expressions of views is actively harmful. Making that determination can also be very difficult.
Lastly, as a slight tangent, no human knowledge is or ever will be 100% certain and robust (although in some specific domains we can attain incredibly high confidence). We should keep this uncertainty in mind when we act.
This would be a reasonable take to me if the issue he took up could reasonably be described as significantly affecting his everyday work life; the key difference I see in your "double standard" is that the woman can't walk away from being a woman in a male dominated profession.
I'd argue that it's objectively aggressive. His twitter handle "@fired4truth" makes the intention to be so rather obvious (the content he's promoting on that handle is an entire additional ball of wax)...
A 10-page manifesto, regardless of the content, when circulated internally without management's consent is in itself hard to view as anything but an act of mutiny.
I actually know people who are still working on refutational evidence bombs like that. The problem is that actually finding sources and addressing his points in all their "but I really meant" vagueness is a huge piece of work, and people have day jobs. In the meantime, his shit is out there. If it's ok for anyone to read and agree with it without going through to confirm his "facts" and "citations" on the spot, then it's equally ok to read and disagree with it.
Exactly. One of the biggest wastes of time I incurred last week was trying to argue with someone here who wouldn't specify what the memo said, but would deny anything I said about it with "but he never said that!" It went on for days.
This would be good. I've seen 0 criticism of it that falls into this category so far. For the most part, it's essentially just been "I don't like the conclusion so I'm going to call you a sexist and make a straw man of your argument while ignoring the details."
I take issue with at least Slate Star Codex's 08/07 post because it focuses on interest like some black box and pre-college education as perfectly non-gendered. There is a lot of research (see below) that shows that pre-college education is very gendered.
I'm not sure I agree. I don't think we read the same memo. Additionally, while this isn't entirely rational, it's hard to take anything seriously that gets started with trying to tie it to a "covert alt-right agenda". Someone who starts off with a variant of the "you're a Nazi" argument does not come across as someone without significant ideological biases.
I think Sadedin does a great job with the biology, and is a little weaker on the morality. The one point where he really goes wrong is here:
>paradoxically insists that authoritarianism be treated as a valid moral dimension, whilst firmly rejecting any diversity-motivated strategy that might remotely approach it.
Even if we admit this is wrong he still does a good job, particularly on points #1, #3, #4, and yes, #8. I think it's important to call out the subtle racism whereby Damore attacks gender and racial diversity programs without actually providing any justification on the racial element. But I think this point (#9) is clearly wrong because if we accept it on its face it means that we cannot tolerate discussing any system of morality (in this case authoritarianism) which we do not want to see implemented, which is clearly wrong. I also cannot agree here:
>But in general, Google has done magnificently well without resorting to the binding [conservative] values — and let’s hope it continues to, because an authoritarian, fanatical and puritanical Google that dehumanizes outsiders would be very, very bad news.
First of all I don't think Google has ever truly avoided the binding values -- in fact the identity "Googler" has been more intentionally constructed, I think, than "Microsofter", "Facebooker", "Appler", etc -- and second I don't think that implementing them is necessarily "fanatical and puritanical", any more than implementing compassion is necessarily inviting to louts.
> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking ...
Well from a strategic perspective, that's a losing attitude though. You start in a defensive position in a debate you didn't call. You are stuck in the specific frame the author has decided to limit his own argument. He also restrict the time you have to prepare such a refutal piece as every minute he spend with his argument unchallenged, the weaker the counterarguments look.
Sure the average Google employee is more fact minded than emotionally driven, but it is a loaded subject in general but even more in IT.
What's the best possible outcome of crafting such a reply anyway ? Shutting down one single guy because nobody will engage in a friendly debate after live shots have been fired.
You're under no compulsion to refute the author or to engage them in a debate, except that you've taken issue with their statement of their position and you've chosen to attack it.
Do you feel that viewpoints that you disagree with should not be allowed to be stated publicly and remain unopposed?
Workplaces are not free speech zones. Employers have a legitimate interest in maintaining internal harmony and making people feel comfortable. There are lots of things that you should be able to say in general that have no place in the office. E.g. you should be able to maintain a blog detailing your sexual escapades, but emailing those descriptions to all your coworkers is quite reasonably grounds for termination.
I seriously question whether that was a minority viewpoint expressed in the memo. I went to school with loads of people like that. I think the reason such viewpoints get blowback is because they basically argue for the status quo when the system is not serving large swaths of the population.
>Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).
The brute problem is that it's too long to be addressed in a reasonable and productive debate, and because it was posted on an internal company messageboard it is his responsibility to ensure that it can be responded to in a reasonable and productive way. If he presents his complaints in a format which is likely to cause problems, he can be penalized, and a manifesto is certainly such a format because it lends itself so well to "viral" sharing, and it was precisely such "viral" reposting of the document that made it a practical problem for Google in the first place. Had he made his points in an ordinary discussion thread, it would have been harder to publish it everywhere as a unified whole, since discussion threads by their nature will contain counterarguments.
For example, if I think another employee is biased against me in code reviews, it does not do me any favors to write a multi-page manifesto indicting said employee on a variety of points for his/her alleged biased review practices. Good debates do not generally come from duelling essays, and it is unfair to participants -- practically unfair, in that it drives them from the debate and so deprives the conversation of their contributions -- it is unfair to participants who do not have the time to invest in researching every point of a ten-page document that they feel they must address the whole awful thing in order to say anything. In fact I try to limit the length of my HN comments for this very reason: long comments are hard to respond to well.
Internal company messageboards do not lend themselves to the publication of manifestos, and it is not reasonable to expect them to.
That's not the way to do it. The right way to do it is to pick one statement (the weakest one) from his argument and refute that one solidly. Then repeat the process with the next weakest, the second next weakest and so on. You only have to do that about four or five times before you have established that the author is full of shit.
That's the standard method you use for refuting arguments presented in essay form.
> I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.
You hit the nail on the head, and it isn't limited to this memo. We have a serious intolerance problem in this country that goes far beyond Nazis and racists. Over the last 25 years our culture has warped to the point where opposing viewpoints are considered by many to be offensive. Kids have been raised in an environment where they are told that they (and their opinions) are always worthy of respect (no matter how uninformed or ignorant those opinions might be). Those who show insufficient respect (in the eyes of the person being "disrespected") are seen as hateful aggressors who must be attacked or silenced. In today's society, many people (especially young people) don't want vigorous debate between those of opposing views. They don't want to live in a marketplace of ideas where logic, morality, and the ability and willingness to articulate and defend your beliefs in a public forum are valued. These younger people have been conditioned to appeal to authority when they are offended or their beliefs are challenged, rather than answer the bell and debate the merit (or lack of merit) in an idea or statement.
Unfortunately this withering of public discourse is a bellwether for authoritarianism. You need look no farther than the recent outcry against the ACLU for their defense of free speech. There are very dark days ahead.
I blame postmodernism. Really. Postmodernism says that all discourse is about power, not truth. People are starting to act consistently with what they've been taught.
Arguably the most important of the Jedi mind tricks: to install a gatekeeper wherever you know one is needed. Having one watching this hot/cold dial is important I recon. Knowing you can do this and that you have a choice about how you feel while thinking is something that ought to be taught.
Currently reading "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard. This is a really fascinating book, probably one of the biggest in Post-Modernism.
It is the primary inspiration for the movie "The Matrix". When Neo takes the disk from the hacker at the beginning he actually puts it in a hollowed out version of this book.
Anyway Post-Modernism has lots of fascinating points and sub-topics and skilled writers, however if you read too much into it you can quickly become a very annoying person.
Great stuff, but read in caution and in moderation.
When you spend 12+ formative years telling kids to sit down, be quiet and do nothing but listen to authority or else, they aren't going to somehow come out of it as stellar, well-rounded debaters.
They will, of course, project how they were treated onto others, by holding deeply ingrained beliefs such as, "When someone is being disruptive they need to be punished."
It's very difficult to convince people who aren't interested in being convinced. There are too many people out there with a different, maybe wrong, opinion.
Why waste your time with those who don't seem genuinely interested in opposing evidence?
I didn't find his tone aggressive but he didn't at all seem interested in having a discussion. If I remember correctly he didn't rebuke any opposing points, let alone present them, which makes me think he didn't bother looking for them.
It's like hey I have this point I want you to listen to but I'm not even going to make an attempt to look up answers and instead force you to listen to me before I listen to you. It's like trying to answer someone's question without even understanding what they're asking, which I am sad to say I have seen far too often at Google.
You have to remember that this was a rough memo that he never meant to spread as widely as it has been. More like "here's some ideas I've been kicking around and some evidence for them, someone want to take a look and see what I'm missing or mistaken about?"
This was originally just posted to the Google Skeptics group, with the implication that it would be (fairly) contested and debated.
People keep presenting it as a "manifesto" but that's a term that Gizmodo used, not him. I really would like to have seen what would have come from it being fairly critiqued by his peers and edited until it was presentable to the public (if that's even possible).
> I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I thought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats.
I agree with this too. There were issues of perception since the Gizmodo version had no sources, links or charts. Later leaked version had the charts and a full version was put up on diversitymemo.com (which no redirects to Damore's official website).
So a lot of people didn't get the full version, even if they read the whole thing. Overall I thought we was pretty tactful and did his best to express what he knew would be an unpopular viewpoint.
It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong".
We shouldn't really take someone's degree of divergence from reality as somehow being a point in favor of their argument.
When people remove themselves so far from reality, ignoring significant mounds of evidence, nearly anything not divorced from reality is going to have the effect of an "evidence bomb."
I read the full memo ( https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso...) and it didn't seem like that at all. Saying that discrimination exists but differences in gender representation aren't necessarily caused by discrimination didn't seem like 'you're all wrong', not do the 'suggestions' seem like something someone writing authoritatively would make. Not a female engineer so appreciate I may be missing something - what is it?
The first page or so is not about gender diversity, but about "Left biases" and "Right biases" and the statement that "the media, and Google lean left".
He then follows with "Google's left bias has created a politically correct monoculture".
So the difference is between these two statements:
a. I believe X, and
b. You are all leftists. Leftists believe Y. Y is wrong. The answer is actually X.
Saying Google's culture leans left doesn't mean everyone in Google is a leftist. Nor does acknowledging bias imply that people with that bias is wrong - just biased, Eg looking at a specific part of a larger picture. There's a difference.
Be honest here -- do you _really_ think there's a way to present the argument that --gasp-- men and women might be different in their abilities that _wouldn't_ trigger a meltdown? I think this memo really highlights the fact that there are Some Things You Just Can't Talk About.
No, you can't, because there isn't evidence that biological differences cause people to choose different careers.
Why would put forth a theory that is opposed to a company's values of equality if you don't have proof?
Most evidence points to socialized factors, not biological ones.
If Damore really cares about this issue, he should study biology and make his case there. He will do more to move the debate forward from within the relevant scientific community by gathering evidence than from the outside.
Not sure what got you downvoted. There's even a South Park episode about it where Kyle has a surgery to become a black basketball player, which kind of goes in the same direction.
I was just thinking about height. Of course biology affects career choice, and a lot of other things. Doesn't mean men are engineers and women are nurses, but to pretend biology doesn't affect anything is more than hilarious. Which makes people who think that laughable, and they probably don't like it. But hey, you can't prove obedience by agreeing that the sky is blue or a circle is round, it's gotta be something more, like "biology doesn't affect career choice". So whatevs, if it's not that it's something else ^_^
But it would likely cover topics which would suggest differences in gender. This entire debate is absurd. The link between gender and behavior is beyond plausible. Something as simple as psychological effects of being physically smaller than another gender could affect behavior; there are hormonal differences, and we know that decision making is influenced by hormone response. If physical differences between men and women are so obvious, why can't people accept the possibility of sexually dimorphism in psychology? How can one claim to be rational or objective while denying such a possibility?
> why can't people accept the possibility of sexually dimorphism in psychology? How can one claim to be rational or objective while denying such a possibility?
I don't see people denying the possibility that biology plays a role. I see people saying it hasn't been determined to play a role in determining which sex is better or more likely to choose complex modern professions such as software engineering. Damore makes it sound as if this has already been demonstrated by science:
"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
"This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."
The latter is a conclusory statement. Meanwhile, he continues to claim that his essay is fully backed by research. He denies that anyone has made a proper rebuttal, despite many scientists directly refuting his claims, including one he cited.
But there is nothing to rebut for a scientist without an agenda. Look around you; the plan of egalitarianism transitioned from experiment to propaganda decades ago. We do have scientific evidence of predictable gender differences in ability, the issue is that people like you are SO DESPERATE to deny these cracks in equality theory that such research into gender or racial differences has become taboo. Which means the scientific establishment has been biased and subjective in handling this topic.
Want more proof of bias? The google letter writer was attacked for his writing style and choice of discussion venue, not the contents of the letter. His subject was taboo and so people are still adamant about not discussing it, because in their mindminds, the science is settled. Thats the propaganda talking.
We can give people equal treatment before the law, but we need to recognize that differences in hiring ratios for not have to be indicitave of race or gender bias. It is possible for the numbers to be an emergent effect of group differences.
> But there is nothing to rebut for a scientist without an agenda
Science is the right place to have this discussion, not politics. Scientists have theories, not agendas. True scientists are not ideologues.
> The google letter writer was attacked for his writing style and choice of discussion venue, not the contents of the letter
People have pointed to flaws within both his conclusions and his writing style. His defendants first claimed that media is mischaracterizing what he said; they said they do not understand why people are upset. Then, when someone starts citing his words, Damorians complain they're cherry picking, being nitpicky, or being a grammar nazi.
The way one writes a scientific argument is important. Peer reviewed research goes through many drafts before it's even presented to the public. Thereafter, it can still be the subject of much scrutiny. One cannot simultaneously claim that Damore's paper is both,
(1) Representative of a scientific consensus, and
(2) Undeserving of critique for his writing style simply because he didn't intend for it to be released
> people are still adamant about not discussing it
I find this comment ridiculous as we're discussing it right now, and this has been national news for weeks with hundreds of articles written on the subject, commentary from scientists, etc. If you mean "not discussing in in the right way", then I don't know what to tell you. You don't get to decide how someone else makes their arguments. "Why don't you see it my way?" is not a useful debate strategy.
> We can give people equal treatment before the law, but we need to recognize that differences in hiring ratios for not have to be indicitave of race or gender bias. It is possible for the numbers to be an emergent effect of group differences.
Many do recognize that racism or sexism don't always play a role. I don't work at Google, but, I don't see women assuming sexism every time a male coworker gives a bad review of a prospective female candidate. The question here is whether affirmative action is an appropriate strategy for reducing gender imbalances. I understand many conservatives feel it's not. But, when asked how to correct for various socialization factors (not all of which are sexist or racist -- they can just be habit), their solutions would seem to keep the status quo. One of Damore's suggestions is to "reduce empathy". I can't think anything more inhumane.
"Most evidence points to socialized factors, not biological ones."
I'm loathe to post in discussions like this because it's so useless, but points like this make me wonder if I'm just living on a different planet. Do you have children? Of different genders? Because literally every parent I know who has both boys and girls has the simple, non-ideologically-biased experience that boys and girls are vastly different, even if you treat them just the same. My youngest is a boy who was surrounded by pink fairy castles and butterfly coloring books until he was 2 or 2,5. And yet the moment he got his hands on a stick, he'd use it as a play weapon.
And from that observation that boys and girls are different, I wouldn't call it a stretch to assume that men and women might not be exactly the same, either. Why is this not blindingly obvious? I mean, how is saying otherwise not the very essence of "post truthiness"?
I have a similar experience with my children. From an extremely early age, my daughter has "tucked in" toys to bed, rocked them to sleep, etc. She was NOT taught to do this, but just did this as play. My sons can't seem to find a toy that cannot be used as a sword or a gun, to my wife's constant annoyance.
Even with the SAME toys, they are used very differently. For example, all of my kids play minecraft. My daughter loves to build houses with kitchens and bathrooms, bake, and invite people into her house for dinners and parties. My sons fight the monsters, build elaborate towers and castles, and play with explosives.
The question is: Who has tucked in your children? You or your wife? Children know which parent has the same sex and they like to play grown up.
Regarding the shooting and the building, are you sure that you have encouraged your daughter the same way as your sons? Have you looked your daughter into the eyes and smiled when she first tried to fight with you?
And even if you were all supportive in that development, it's still not a fair experiment. As long as your children have friends with traditional values and your children watch TV with advertisements that present pink female princesses and male worriers and builders, children are locked down into their roles.
Well this one is easy to answer, because there have been (over the last 6 years) less than say 50 occasions where we didn't put them to bed together; apart from those 50 occasions, my wife travels a few months out of the year, in which periods I put them to bed. So overall, there is no doubt (no matter how subconsciously biased my 'accounting' might be) that I did the majority of the putting to bed. (to bed putting?)
And well of course there's always the no true scottsman argument - no matter what, one can always put the 'true' equal treatment to question. If you're asking whether I ran a double blind experiment in my home, no I didn't. But we're nit talking about a tiny difference in one observation here. We're talking massive differences in dozens of families (from my observations). And this is for a social context where the ratio if dads and mums and the school gate is roughly 50% (yes I count sometimes), and where the lowest level of education is a bachelor's degree and the median is a PhD. Meaning, we're not talking about representative sample of the population, which you would expect to show the same properties as the population overall; we're talking about a population here that shows high levels of gender equally along many metrics. And despite that, the children show (very) unequal behaviour.
"Equal treatment" is not enough to remove socialization factors.
Kids learn from what their parents do. If a boy's dad is a truck driver, he may prefer playing with trucks, even if given a choice of truck vs. doll. The boy could similarly pick up non-verbal gestures from the dad or mom handling a doll vs. a truck.
Research is often inconclusive or difficult to replicate for these reasons.
Putting forth a theory that gender, on its own, impacts career choices is pretty useless. It probably does, but not in a way that we can adequately quantify. It depends on too many things.
"Putting forth a theory that gender, on its own, impacts career choices is pretty useless. It probably does, but not in a way that we can adequately quantify. It depends on too many things."
head explodes
So you're saying it probably exists, but then conclude it doesn't because it can't be quantified how much? I'm not even saying biological differences explain everything, or even a substantial part; just some part, but you deny that any aspect of difference between preferences in men and women is due to biology? I mean I cannot interpret what you're saying in any other way no matter how hard I try - you're saying that if we can't measure something exactly, it doesn't exist?
> you deny that any aspect of difference between preferences in men and women is due to biology?
head explodes
I don't know how you can read what I wrote and come away with that interpretation. I said it probably does.
I said links between biology and occupation are extremely difficult to measure and there isn't research that does so. This is why a lot of research focuses on babies.
The question has been answered. The dimorphism in gender preferences has been demonstrated (a decade ago) in a very similar fashion in primates who are really not inculcated with "traditional values" or "cultural role models":
I don't think that the study directly answers the question. Choosing role models is different from choosing toys.
If anything, the study suggests that women are equally capable of becoming engineers:
>Unlike male monkeys and like girls, female monkeys did not show any reliable preference for either toy type.
If you follow the pattern of the study, then men would reject 'female' jobs but women are interested in both 'male' and 'female' options. Women not only tuck in toys but also like playing with guns.
However, according to that article, male monkeys like to play more. You could argue that IT is all play and thus it's a better environment for men.
Do you teach your children everything, or send them to school / daycare?
> And from that observation that boys and girls are different, I wouldn't call it a stretch to assume that men and women might not be exactly the same, either
It is a giant leap in logic to conclude that a slight difference in average personality must undermine women's professional abilities in software engineering.
There is no scientific consensus that toy preferences are linked to prenatal testosterone or career choice. Those who say they are linked, such as Damore, are pushing scientism– using undercooked research to back up the status quo.
For me personally, my children went to daycare since they were 3 months old, but for people I know who stayed at home until the children were 2.5 or 3, it's the same. So from observation, I don't find your argument convincing.
I mean, let's be clear here - are you saying that if boys and girls would be kept in isolation, well at least not exposed to the outside world which would fill them with tradtional gender role behaviours, until they are say 3 years old, you're claiming that boys and girls would end up both playing with dolls and playing dressup, and play fight with sticks and climb trees, in equal amounts? Or at least that the ratio of boys/girls having a preference for one thing or another would be the same? Because to me that sound just as preposterous as denying climate change, and it requires a similar level of fact distortion to believe.
As to the second point, I'm not going to argue here what this google guy did or did nit say, I didn't read the thing and frankly I don't care much either. But if one would assume (humour me here) that men and women and not the same (as in, have different preferences - not morally or so), how would that not logically lead to some professions being more preferred by one gender? It would be an extraordinary claim that despite differences, the outcome would be that every profession had people to a ratio matching society in general, along many axises - gender, skin color, etc.
I realize that it's easy to spin my argument as saying that some people are good managers and others can run very fast and that's just the natural order of thing, but that's not what I'm saying at all, so let's all spare ourselves the effort of going there.
And then finally, if some people with certain traits prefer one thing over another, is it then not perfectly obvious and even inevitable that there will be more people of that group doing that thing, and just as inevitable that that does not mean that those who are not like that, aren't automatically unqualified? If you combine two normal distributions, with different modes, isn't the outcome then a mathematical certainty? Including an explanation for the statistically expected properties of each individual?
I'm not saying anything here about software engineering, just trying to establish a baseline to understand your argument. Because you seem to be saying that there can be no differences ever, which is so obviously non-intuitive and irrational that I can't believe this would actually be your standpoint.
> you seem to be saying that there can be no differences ever, which is so obviously non-intuitive and irrational that I can't believe this would actually be your standpoint
Where did I say that?
The notion that either biology or environment determines everything is outdated, according to one environmental biologist [1]. She says modern research is based on the view that "neurological traits develop over time under the simultaneous influence of epigenetic, genetic and environmental influences. Everything about humans involves both nature and nurture"
That said, it's a huge leap to assume that sex differences can determine whether or not someone is likely to be a good software engineer. You said you didn't read it. Well, Damore wrote this,
"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
"This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."
He goes on to claim that there is a scientific consensus showing this, however, it's easy to see from his sources that there is no scientific basis for that claim.
"There is no scientific consensus that toy preferences are linked to prenatal testosterone or career choice"
This is weasel wording for "there are no difference". But just in case, let me ask flat out - do you think there are any differences between men and women in what sort of activities and/or behaviour they prefer to do, take part in or be around? If so, would it not be reasonable to assume that this would result in different preferences in job choice?
"Everything about humans involves both nature and nurture"
Well yeah that was obvious I thought, but at least we agree on this. So then, if preferences and behaviour are at least partially explained by biology, does it then not follow that men and women would have different preferences? Otherwise, to reach parity, the 'nurture' part should cancel out the nature part.
Again, I'm not going to be lured into saying something specific about software, but wouldn't it follow naturally from what you said (which is the uncontested scientific consensus) that women would, in the aggregate, prefer some other professions than men do, in the aggregate? Furthermore, even if you for some reason say no, do you find it offensive when people say so? Or do you feel that how people answer reflects on them as a person? Because to me, it's like liking hot dogs or not - something that does absolutely nothing to the way I think about someone. Whereas I get the impression that simple, factual things like this is really an identity thing for some - which I just cannot wrap my head around.
>> "There is no scientific consensus that toy preferences are linked to prenatal testosterone or career choice"
> This is weasel wording for "there are no difference".
Demanding research back up your claims is weasel wording? Okay..
> do you think there are any differences between men and women in what sort of activities and/or behaviour they prefer to do, take part in or be around?
Yup.
> If so, would it not be reasonable to assume that this would result in different preferences in job choice?
Yes, but not to the extent the differences affect gender capability overall in roles like tech or leadership, which is what Damore was talking about. That's far from the scientific consensus.
> does it then not follow that men and women would have different preferences?
Biology can play a role in forming different choices of two men. It does not follow that all men would be more suited, on average, than women for roles in tech or leadership.
> I'm not going to be lured into saying something specific about software
Not sure why you feel lured into saying something specific about tech or leadership. If you don't think there are differences there between men and women on average, then we agree.
> wouldn't it follow naturally from what you said (which is the uncontested scientific consensus) that women would, in the aggregate, prefer some other professions than men do, in the aggregate?
Perhaps, but research has yet to show it. I wouldn't assume this is true for things like tech or leadership.
> do you find it offensive when people say so?
No, however it is misleading to say there is scientific consensus about something when there isn't. If I had this kind of discussion with Damore in person, like some at Google did, and he persisted in believing that science says something it didn't, then I would believe he has some ulterior agenda. That politics was a primary agenda of his paper says something. Politics shouldn't be the basis for scientific discussion, in my opinion.
> Or do you feel that how people answer reflects on them as a person?
Everything does. Not much you can do about that is there.
> I get the impression that simple, factual things like this is really an identity thing for some - which I just cannot wrap my head around
I don't know how science is an identity. It can be discussed on its evidence, methods and conclusions. Identity doesn't need to play into it. Science can definitely be misconstrued. But I would say today's top peer-reviewed journals are all of high quality, and if you find a scientist who's published in that sphere, they can give a better overview of this subject than Damore did.
Exactly. I'm afraid my only takeaway here is I can never talk about this stuff if I don't want to end my career right there. They'll always win the argument because they can simply destroy everyone who disagrees with them.
Yep, I had to create a separate account for this comment for fear of retribution.
As someone with a very debate-loving personality, I disagree. Saying how I'm wrong is the best way to start discussion.
Now of course, not everyone will be the same. But for those that like to debate and have discussions, then just tell me why you think I'm wrong and we can go from there. I don't need you to coddle me.
I think a large number of people in tech simply have a straight-to-the-point style of talking. They don't follow through with the HR-like "we appreciate your thoughts and comments, but going forward, we must politely decline to touch base again" style because the expectation is just to say "you're wrong and here's why." What's inviting to some people is insincere to others. What's straight-faced discussion is rude and problematic to others. It's hard reaching a middle ground, because when you try finding a middle point for a group the size of the whole tech industry about such a divisive topic, at least one person will accuse you of trying to appease (insert enemy political group here) and see it as worse than just taking a side.
I don't see what's wrong with an "evidence bomb" and I've never seen the complaint that someone's position had too much evidence behind it. If Damore had no evidence, he'd be dismissed as a misogynist with no evidence. When he presents evidence, you dismiss him as an evidence bomber.
One thing I find problematic about the memo is that it conflate three issues: Google's diversity programs, Google's echo chamber, and the left/right politics.
If you want to talk about diversity programs, the other two appear to be attempts to shut down further discussion. If you want to talk about the problem of living in an echo chamber, diversity is, or ought to be, an example, not the focus. If you want to talk politics at work, don't.
I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.
You are completely right, but on the other hand if you are going to invoke "science" and you present your writing as scientific (he did), you have a higher bar. If you fail to be objective (see semi-related assertions about Marxism), or your writing obscures the point you are attempting to make, then you've failed as a writer of scientific content.
If your writing isn't good enough, then don't release a memo to your workplace of tens of thousands of smart and ideological people. Put it on a blog, write it anonymously, but expect whatever criticism you get.
It seems to be completely lost on a lot of HN people that Damore's memo was not very scientific at all for the subject matter he was tackling. It was written in a certain intellectual language that often provides a veneer of authority for those who agree with his conclusions and lack the domain knowledge to understand the nuances of why he's wrong. But a lot of these "bio-truth" type of arguments do the same thing.
Google had plenty of reason to rethink his employment, not just because of his poor judgement, but because of the fact that he tackled a new (to him) science is such an unreasoned and unscientific way.
All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective.
As people have pointed out on HN before, there is something about computer science that leads people to believe they can out-think experts in other fields at their own game. And while reaching outside of your expertise is to be encouraged, it should come with a certain humility that is not common in our industry.
>>All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective.
I don't think this squares with truth. There is at least one PH.D psychologist who mentioned the memo was generally correct.
Your third source claims that there is evidence of gender gap being due to biological differences that result in different interests. But Damore also made the claim that there is a biological difference in ability. Your source strongly disagrees, saying that "gender differences in math/science ability, achievement, and performance are small or nil." So they agree with some of Damore's memo and were careful to point out that they disagree with his claim about ability. If Damore had been that careful, he might still have a job.
Your fourth source includes one of the scientists who Damore cited. David P Schmitt's take is that "using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm."
Hardly "many agree with him". And it bears repeating over and over that cherry-picking science facts (or even the opinion of scientists who agree with you) is not science. It's the same exercise those who believe in chem trails engage in. Let's stop. If you want information about the population Google hires from, do research on that population not the general public. You would be studying the smartest of folks, who are likely to graduate from the elite universities of the world. Studies of biological differences in the general population might have little bearing on the specific population Google hires from.
The people he cited told reporters they disagree with his interpretations of their research. There's a wired article going around with direct quotes but I'm mobile and can't find it easily.
Of course they did. When the press is on a witch hunt, and somebody is made to be the scum of the earth, people want to distance themselves from them. And if they hear what said person said framed as an "anti-diversity manifesto" (as if that was what it was), "sexist" etc, they would obviously say they "disagree with his interpretations of their research".
No, I'm mentioning a common reaction during witch hunting / moral panic / etc scenarios.
(Plus I don't consider people as solid blocks. One's reaction towards the media is not representative of the integrity of their work, one's family life is not representative of their public persona, and so on. Galileo bowed to the Inquisition, but his work is still solid).
Doubly so if, as it often happens, what they were asked to comment on were not the writings themselves in full, but a straw-man summarisation of them by journalists and related pundits (on which everybody seems to argue about).
You can always find a quack. Science is largely about consensus, and the consensus is that Damore's memo doesn't even come close to science, even if it tries to be sciency.
> he tackled a new (to him) science is such an unreasoned and unscientific way
So very much this. He presented very few facts and a tiny bit of cherry-picked research. He decided to tackle a big-boy subject with a sixth-grader's game.
Pro-tip: Don't dress up your opinions as fact.
Pro-tip #2: Don't tackle large or sensitive topics with an air of authority
Pro-tip #3: When addressing your colleagues find people who disagree with you or question you and incorporate their feedback.
#3 is the most difficult step. If you perform true self-reflection it can often lead to abandonment of the argument you were attempting to make because you realize you were wrong or simply that you don't know much about the topic.
> there is something about computer science that leads people to believe they can out-think experts in other fields at their own game.
This is very common among many fields of expertise. Go ask any physicist at your local university about crank papers claiming to have overturned Einstein (and possibly all of science). First of all they'll have a drawer full of them. Secondly you'll see over half are written by someone with an engineering degree.
No one outside of science should be able to talk about scientific subjects or reference science? Really? Do you apply these arguments equally to people you agree with as those you don't?
As far as I can tell, nothing in the memo was wrong or "cherry picked". He presented some evidence that women have statistically different personality traits than men. That's absolutely correct! That's not very controversial. Then he suggests that different personality traits might lead to different choice of professions and interests. That shouldn't be a terribly controversial idea either.
Your response is the kind of response that just builds support for him more.
What have I seen since this memo came out, from people who disagree with it?
His words are offensive. Poorly written. Yes there's science but it was cherry picked. He's a "sixth-grader" and "not a pro". He's wasting work time. He's naive. He's a bad person. He's "alt right". He wrote his memo with an air of authority that he should not have used. He doesn't understand the topic. OK, he's studied biology but not the right kind of biology. He said women suck compared to men. OK, maybe he didn't but he implied it. His memo was too long. Or maybe it was too short, because he cited 'very few facts'. Why is he "evidence bombing" people. He should have known readers would misinterpret it and that's his fault. He shouldn't have given interviews to YouTubers I don't like. OK, he interviewed with the WSJ but he was wearing a dumb t-shirt. He's the face of Silicon Valley sexism. Some women are offended and that's enough to stop discussing it. It's ridiculous that anyone agrees with him. He posted it to the wrong forums. Maybe he posted it to the right forums but he should have known it'd go viral. Why is he so naive? He deserves everything he gets.
These are all excuses to shoot the messenger. I am tired of reading them. They do not advance the debate at all, they are just ways to try and shut it down. And every time I see someone attack James Damore, or his writing style or whatever, instead of talking about the actual issues, I feel these people are losing the debate.
I don't understand why this means that Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion.
We absolutely should not construct a credentialist edifice that says only people certified to have gone through brainwa---err, regent-approved programs--- can comment on a topic. That would prevent discussion on most topics, as virtually all topics of interest are complex and have many years of study behind them.
Overall, these comments are still criticizing the how instead of the what, which is what people do when they don't know how to criticize the what but want to express their offense anyway. It's much easier to criticize delivery and in fact it will always happen whenever anyone cares, because delivery is inherently contextual/subjective.
If Damore's paper was rejected from Nature or another peer-reviewed journal, that'd make sense, as it is not a rigorous academic work. It's just a conjecture on the state of diversity hiring and it expresses his reasoning for believing the way he does. If he is so wrong, it should be simple to disprove him, and we can all move on without anyone having to get fired.
>I don't understand why this means that Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion.
"Shouldn't have shared his opinion" and "should have shared his opinion in a different way" are two completely different things, and I don't see many people saying the first.
I think "should have shared his opinion in a different way" is moving the goalposts too far. I think anything that would have placated critics on this point would have neutered Damore's position.
Can someone produce a "diversity culture" critic (for lack of a better term) who provides a good example for Damore? One that is well received across the board?
To be fair to Damore, his paper wasn't intended for wide publication. It was a quick internal write-up intended to generate discussion among people who already had some frame of reference for Damore's background and professional trajectory. There was very little chance he would've been mistaken for a biology professor within the Google Skeptics discussion group.
A big four-paragraph disclaimer at the beginning would've been a big waste of everyone's time, and it could just as easily be interpreted as a sign of hostility or malfeasance. If people want to dislike something, there is an infinity of potential nits to fixate on.
I've always been brash so I've been through the "delivery ringer" many times. The conclusion I've reached is that frequently, the only way to avoid it is to be so opaque and listless in your communication that people aren't sure what you meant.
If you say something people don't like in a non-ambiguous way, they will be mad, and they will insist on finding a reason to dismiss it.
Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion (the way he did) because there is a huge gap between what he claims to aim for and what he actually does. He claims that open discussion, diversity and helping to improve the situation are what important to him. But in practice he does right the opposite: creates a hostile working environment with perverted reasoning, loads of bias perpetuating harmful stereotypes, ignoring how his tone will affect others and pretty agressive promotion of these views instead of politely sharing a well thought out intellectually honest opinion.
Given the sensitivity of topic he tries to discuss, 'how' is an extremely important part of 'what', still he manages to twist his declared 'what' to the 180 degree with his 'how'. It seems that he was fired exactly for showing strong intention to continue the promotion of his highly biased opinions while completely ignoring what it actually does to people around him. Disproving the memo wouldn't help to stop it if this was the case.
First, you've crossed over from criticizing delivery into criticizing content, so it's clear that's actually the part that offends you. What you're saying is that Damore shouldn't have delivered his opinion unless it was first made to match something reasonably close to your own opinion. There is nothing inherently "dishonest" or "perverted" about Damore's memo; that is a subtext that you are choosing to read in because you disagree with its conclusions.
If Damore had pined on the tragedy of the modern economic structure while exhaustively disclaiming every potential discriminatory implication before he began the memo, I guarantee people would've read just as much "intellectual dishonesty", "perverted reasoning", and "loads of bias" as they did now. In fact, they very likely would've read more, taking the content that initially appeared friendly to their POV as a sign that Damore had malicious intent and that he was attempting to hoodwink people by pretending to be "on their side".
As discussed below, if someone wants to dismiss something they don't like, airy, abstract terms like "perverted reasoning" will get bandied around no matter what. These terms are great precisely because their subjective interpretation allows the writer to sound semi-credible in their condemnation without having to specify further.
Damore was fired because once this hit the mainstream press, it was the only way for Google to preserve a strong defense against inevitable discrimination suits.
> Google had plenty of reason to rethink his employment, not just because of his poor judgement, but because of the fact that he tackled a new (to him) science is such an unreasoned and unscientific way.
This is emphatically not the issue. Suppose for argument's sake that he had made an air-tight case. Wouldn't he still be advancing "harmful gender stereotypes?" It wouldn't void a single one of Sundar Pichai's points when he fired him.
And turn it around; suppose an activist had sent around a poorly argued pro-diversity screed that "cherry-picked" shoddy research on implicit association tests, stereotype threat, etc. Would Google seriously be rethinking her employment for tackling research in an "unreasoned and unscientific way?"
Damore is out because he took on the left's sacred beliefs.
I'm glad to see that people are admitting that the memo wasn't a screed after all, and pointing out that Damore brought up some good points that are worth discussing.
But I would like to push back on the idea that it was poorly written.
Is he an expert in these fields? No.
Was his memo completely unassailable? No.
Did he anticipate every possible response? No.
But he was still quite careful about the conclusions he was trying to draw from the research, and a number of scientists from different fields have all defended the research he cites (to be fair, many criticize the research, too).
If his opponents and critics truly value dialogue, they'll show it by actually engaging in dialogue.
Your criticism is that he shouldn't have released a poorly-written memo to an enormous company. I would agree, however, I don't think that's what happened. I thought he brought it up in the internal Google Skeptics group, and then it got leaked and went viral. I doubt he wanted such an enormous audience for this draft, but I'm open to hearing statements to the contrary.
That wired article was excellent. And it proves one thing to my mind. Regardless of everything else, Damore's memo has lead me to vastly expand my knowledge of the debates in this domain, through just being a curious observer watching it all unfold. It's been wonderful, if extremely provocative, in generating proper debate on the subject, focussed on all possible angles, from writing style, to science, to hiring policies.
Amidst all this, Google firing him is the biggest shame.
Different strokes I guess. I liked that the authors took great pains to stick to highlighting the nuanced nature of the debate. They agreed with Damore where pertinent, but also disagreed with a lot of the conclusions that he derived.
I.e. the authors had to concede to Damore on the science, but proceeded to claim the conclusions where worthless because the science sucks. Note that the Slate Star Codex articles that have addressed the science in detail point out these are actually strong, large N studies and not just nitpicking. (They are, besides, echoed by studies in other fields showing that _gibbon and chimpanzees_ already present similar gender-behavioral differences re: which toys very young individuals prefer.)
Wired even feels the need to add a parenthetical reinforcing climate change is true because this is the general strategy of climate deniers: they have to accept the laws of physics and the general mechanism of GHG warming and hold on to the nonsequitur conclusion of "huh uh but this isn't the consensus/established science/it's just a theory" and come up with their own conclusions.
(Edit: GHG warming, not GHC. GHC is actually getting cooler all the time.)
The Wired article gets quotes from researchers cited by Damore and their interpretations vis-à-vis Damore's presentation of their work. In my opinion they remained respectful throughout but firm in their assessment that Damore really didn't go about using scientific research in a responsible way and drew rather specific conclusions from broad research.
On the flip side, his memo wasn't meant for wide release and he had to act as sole writer, editor, and fact-checker. So I can forgive his mishandling of facts to an extent. But he's been stirring the pot a lot since his firing and I don't think this will end well for him.
In what relates to winning the respectability game, he's already lost. He could have definitive algebraic proof; it wouldn't matter.
I haven't seen a single thing that Damore has said after the firing (I haven't seen the memo either; I don't care much for the subject, it's the reaction that bothers me) -- but I'd bet a burger with fries that he's going the Milo Yanopopopopoulos route: a provocateur that's admired for being a provocateur.
It's a living. How long has Ann Coulter been around?
'Page' argues that because Damore didn't mention that men score higher on aggression and lower on cooperation, this is evidence of motivated reasoning.
Counterpoint: Damore only lists personality traits that lead to interest in engineering, thus leading to an imbalance in the talent pool from which Google hires. Rarely is an extremely high propensity for agreeableness a motivating factor for getting an engineering degree at Stanford.
I'd actually say just the opposite - the memo seemed to be written as well and in as conciliatory manner as it could be written and the memo made good (or at least plausible) point and bad points. But the bad points were so bad that it was appropriate and necessary to fire Damore.
Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast through their entire workplace, and not have that person be creating a hostile work environment for African Americans. If that person says "I don't mean in general, I mean inferior just for this occupation, I don't mean inferior, just 'differently talented, they've got great rhythm'", it doesn't matter, if that person says "here's a study which says this, we should consider this in an open minded fashion" it doesn't matter. The message is unacceptable. That person is done, that person should be done.
The memo makes a whole case against "the Left" (capitalization from the memo) and how "leftists" are violent. That doesn't sound like "conciliatory manner" to me, especially considering he makes a blanket statement about Google "leaning left."
The blanket statement that Google leans left is empirically true. You also seem to have misread his comments about violence, as he claims the left tends to be more compassionate. Did you read the memo?
Today's left has went a far way from socialism and whatnot. It's funny how today's far right cares about "common man" and labour rights more than far left which is busy with identity politics.
For example, in Europe more and more labour is voting for right wing parties. While left is becoming more and more rich/educated urbanite.
I don't want to go into a whole politics discussion about it, but while I do agree with you regarding the left/right switch on the working class voters, I don't necessarily agree that it comes from the right being about "working people" but rather about working people feeling threatened by recent cultural/economic changes brought by globalization. It's not a coincidence that both American and British people voted against their own interests because they were concerned about "immigration".
In any case, it's not a discussion for HN, but I wouldn't mind having it over a few beers/coffees.
Eh, HN has went enough political recently... But personally I enjoy a diverse set of reasonable people to talk politics with. There're little places with not much echo chamber AND not much shouting at each other at the same time...
The major question is what does count as being "about working people". Is it claiming you're for equality/diversity/whatever? Or working to make working people life better?
Labour feel threatened by globalisation, migrants and so on. Today's left is very clearly for that. Thus labour feels left is no longer working for their interests. The right, which is against migrants, feel much ore for their interests.
Of course, there's an economic theory that migrants help the host country's economy and everyone end up being better off. But a "working man" only see his wage stagnate due to increased competition and his rent raise. Or his work place gone completely due to outsourcing.
The left just declaring that they're for the working man is not enough. Their recent actions very clearly don't ring a bell for the working man. The feels (as much as I don't like that) is very important in politics. People are tired of politicians talking about several-degrees-removed benefits. Although sometimes (but, as we can see, not always) politicians are totally right and it is actually the right thing to do, public needs at least some direct benefits right away. Although this is frequently called as populism in a derogatory way, I believe it's a crucial part of democracy. And it especially rings true to less educated and less well off people which happened to be core electorate of the left.
Which is not a sign of "bigotry" or being "backwards" or whatever. Better off people have more wiggle room, can take more risks (e.g. voting for people who offer few-degrees-removed benefits in the future) and generally care about higher level stuff in Maslow pyramid. The labour don't have this luxury.
> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.
What he does is list "compassion for the weak" as a "left bias". That's not necessarily a statement in support of leftist ideals when combined with this two assertions:
> In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards protecting females.
> The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause
(Which, BTW, is right before the first thing I quoted.)
What's your point? The same could be said of "conservative parties are a platform to neo-Nazis and white supremacists" it doesn't imply all conservatives are neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but... "the implication."
Those are different statements. The memo didn't say "liberal parties are a platform to authoritarians and antifascists". If it had, I would agree with your characterization. The strawman arguments in this drama are staggering. I guess Damore couldn't have been all wrong if his critics depend on mischaracterizations and other fallacies.
So you don't think that singling out "leftist violence" in events where there were "alt-right violence" is choosing one side?
Or accusing "PC authoritarians" of stifling diversity of opinion? (violence is not just punching people)
Or accusing "the Left" of denying science regarding biological differences between individuals? (there's a huge difference between "taking with a grain of salt, considering there's a lot of societal factors that might play a bigger role" and "denying")
Damore does a really good job of adding a lot of disclaimers and caveat emptors around a lot of his arguments, but he really didn't put that much effort into hiding his derision for "the Left."
You still haven't acknowledged that you wrote something that has since been proven incorrect. I'm reluctant to continue the conversation because of that, but:
> So you don't think that singling out "leftist violence" in events where there were "alt-right violence" is choosing one side?
James's discussion of left violence is because Google is a left wing company.
If Google was a right wing company, then saying "Google has mainly right wing politics but has avoided the violence associated with far right groups" would indeed by apt.
Oh really? Left and right imply different sides from a center. Do you have evidence that google "leans left" versus merely embracing majority positions? A sizeable majority of Americans believe in things like LGBT rights and the value of diversity. Those aren't "leftist" positions, they're widely popular American values.
Left and Right alike favor diversity, it how you get there where they disagree.
Diversity does not mean supporting the thought police, encouraging mob mentalities, and adopting zero tolerance attitudes.
A sizable majority of Americans do support gay marriage by almost 2:1, but they are very closely divided on other LGBT issues, particularly around what should and shouldn't be funded by the tax payer, etc.
And while Americans value diversity they also value freedom.
Scientifically the role of biology in gender behavior is not a settled issue, despite the many wishing to declare it so. I do not agree with the conclusions to which Damore jumped, nor do I feel strongly that biology was particularly relevant to the point he was trying to make. But it amazes me how even broaching the discussion triggers people.
Right. Anytime I read or hear someone stress the left or right (lib/con, etc) in an argument, it is often a warning sign that the person watches too much corporate television and that a low-quality argument is on its way.
> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.
Also, I'm not sure I'd qualify it as "simply a factual statement" when there were a bunch of alt-righters participating in the violence. Ever heard of alt-right hero "Based Stickman"? People pay for his tickets to go incite violence across the US. Such a symbol of peace!
Huh, I was going to complain about it being a direct cut and paste from the document, but it does look like I managed to stick an 's' in there after I copied the text. Sorry, didn't notice.
The actual quote is:
> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftist protests
Still doesn't change the meaning, my point being that the "violent leftist protests" he talks about don't happen in a vacuum. On the other side of the 'violence' there's always been lovely people like the alt-righter "hero" Based Stickman inciting violence.
To me, his choice of side to blame for the violence is pretty telling of what he thinks about "the Left". Whether correctly or incorrectly identifying them as the culprits of the violence, he's making a statement about the "movement" and not the particular instance of violence.
On a different note, Damore chose to include mention of "leftist protest" because Google's culture is left-leaning – he's explicitly saying that Google is very left, while not so left as these violent protests. Mentioning "violent rightist protests" wouldn't be germane to his statement about Google here.
His point isn't to compare the left and the right, so it doesn't make sense to bring up the right. "Google is an ideological bubble that suppressed free speech and we should change that." "Yeah, but conservatives are bad too, and therefore we should continue being a bubble".
> "Yeah, but conservatives are bad too, and therefore we should continue being a bubble"
I'm curious, why do you think Damore's position is "right" but that position is not? Aren't the coworkers and higher-ups entitled to an opinion just as much as Damore?
I don't think his position is right, I'm pointing out that it's not dishonest to omit irrelevant details. That said, others don't need to change their opinions in order to become a more diverse, tolerant workplace, they simply need to not go out of their way to shame and intimidate those who are different from them.
Women are more "left" than men generally. They're also less violent than men, so a) you'd think that would make the right more violent, and b) it puts his stated goal of more right-wing thought at Google in direct opposition to hiring more women.
Again, like many others you are confusing "less people from this group are qualified" with "people from this group are less qualified". The first doesn't say anything about single individuals, and doesn't suggest any discriminatory practice against the group. The second does.
I can understand this. But things can be offensive and still be true. It's a possibility. I'm not particularly fond of pointing out, or even researching, possible differences between groups of people; however, the insistence on the opposite, when it's not perceived as backed up by substantial proofs, ends up provoking a response from those who value truth at least as much as harmony.
One of the women in the article addresses that very aptly:
> Assuming that it’s true that women on average are more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job performance?
Creating a stereotype generates distrust in the individuals that are part of the group described by the stereotype. You yourself had to delve on the wording of the phrase to explain why you think it's different. Do you think the average person would put as much thought on the wording?
Women, or better, individuals, don't have to overcome any "additional barrier". They have to prove they have the qualifications for the job they want, as everybody else. Each person is a different individual and has to be judged as such, as simple as that.
And yet, stereotypes do play a role in generating prejudice. In a utopic unprejudiced society, where all people are treated exactly the same by everyone and where there's no pre-conceived notion of "gendered careers", then each person would stand for themselves and their choice of career wouldn't be affected by externalities.
As is, this is 2017 and we have white supremacists chanting about Jews and ramming cars into people. Clearly, we are not even close to that Utopia.
That in companies like Google people are not treated the same, and in what measure, is something that is open for debate, not an assumption.
But besides that, if the solution is to dedicate any special effort in hiring from this or that group, then employees from that group will feel they have to prove they really are at the same level as the others. Which is the opposite of what you wanted, and exactly what the female engineers in this interview complain about.
99% of humanity wouldn't get hired at Google, male or female. As long as the hiring bar is kept high enough, there's no reason for Google employees to especially distrust women over men.
And yet, this is my opinion, the software quality could be a lot better at google. For example google docs was broken in Firefox for over a day for me. Google Maps crashes on certain routes preventing me getting a route. Whatever they are doing isn't enough. Also the UX at google is a mess.
Sometimes poor UX seem to be for a reason. Be it Facebook or Google, I feel like extorted product rather than the user. I wish someone created a search engine that I could pay for.
It's entirely possible for an argument to be correct, but too narrowly focused.
If you're saying "group X is inferior and and I can prove it mathematically", that's still wrong because those people don't have a choice about being a member of that group and still exist in society. Discriminating against them drags society down. It's a prisoners dilemma. If everybody hires fairly then the relative drag is spread across the entire economy and everyone comes out better in the end. If they try to cheat then they'll have a local advantage but in the end it only encourages everyone else to cheat and you end up in the worst case scenario with the massive drag on society as a whole.
So the only rational solution for these corporations is to pretend to be as inclusive as possible while secretly trying to cheat as much as possible, which is exactly what we see. When some dumbass publishes a paper to the entire world saying "Hey, we should openly cheat.", of course he's going to get fired.
Or you can just move most of your operations to Asia or Eastern Europe where they don't have these western liberal ideological impediments to business. And Ironically provide a higher percentage of highly qualified Women in STEM professions.
Well what do you know, I think you just proved that the ratio of qualified women in STEM professions in the Western world is due to cultural discrimination or disincentivisation instead of inherent capability!
Point being it is too complicated to nail down a biological factor that was determined from birth.
No culture is completely free from environmental influence. As we age, the influences from our youth act like compound interest. These can change the way we think. Nurture impacts nature, and vice versa. The generally accepted view these days is the process is cyclical,
"neurological traits develop over time under the simultaneous influence of epigenetic, genetic and environmental influences. Everything about humans involves both nature and nurture" [1]
Men are impacted the same way. The argument in the memo is that (1) tech jobs are passion jobs for men to a greater degree than women, hence in societies where people are more able to follow their passion you'd see relatively more men in tech (2) men compete on financial success to a greater degree than women, even if this is not required for survival, so in affluent societies you'd see relatively more men in tech. This would explain why the difference is greater in societies where there is less economic pressure, even though those societies are on average more egalitarian.
I'm always amazed at how touchy discussions on that topic are, even more so than the Male/Female ones. I personally wouldn't bring up any studies/factual-statistics regarding it in polite conversation with a member of the relevant race being present.
There is a whole wikipedia article devoted to it with a range of information on the topic:
"I personally wouldn't bring up any studies/factual-statistics regarding it in polite conversation with a member of the relevant race being present. [links to studies]"
Which is to say you either A: don't consider hn polite conversation or B: don't imagine the "relevant race" is present.
That's a really inflammatory and totally inappropriate analogy.
Downvoters, please cite which part of Damore's essay you think is comparable to overt racism. He explicitly said that he thinks women are capable, and should be hired.
"the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)"
IQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it?
The quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in discussions over racial differences [2].
It begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we replace "IQ" with "race", would that change the meaning he meant to convey?
Are you saying that even if it is true the message is unacceptable and you cannot say it? I think you just made the point that we cannot talk about some things.
Damore never said that women were worse engineers or that biology makes them worse engineers. There was no implied inferiority.
It is largely the PC crowd who read implied-inferiority into any study of biological differences between male and female.
If you look carefully at some of the comments from female Googlers after the memo was leaked, they talk about fears of being perceived as less capable based on their biology.
See the memo itself isn't only dangerous, it is what it could lead to.
If we really dig for an example - mountain climbing guides for Mount Everest, certain groups of people have evolutionary advantages that make them more suited for the job.
In an extreme environment where advantages of the tail end of population distributions are important then it's less likely the market will choose a diversified workforce.
>He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities. I think it's awfully charitable not to infer that he considers the women/minorities at Google (on average) to be inferior engineers.
Yes, but that's simply how statistics work. If you require one group of people to score 90 on some test in order to be hired, and another group to score 80, then among successful applicants the second group will have lower average scores than the first. There's no getting around that.
The argument should be over whether or not Google's hiring practices lower the bar for particular groups of people. If they do, then the above conclusion about the average talent of various groups is inescapable.
Indeed, however Google have said that their hiring practices for minority groups involve looking harder in those groups for candidates, not hiring candidates who don't meet the usual standards.
He does however claim he'd learned of questionable/unethical hiring practices as part of a "secret" diversity hiring meeting he'd been invited to attend, and this is what prompted the memo in the first place.
What I inferred from this, is that he learned that at least in some cases, there's aspects to Google's diversity hiring that they'd rather people not know about.
Now I don't know if this is false, true, or true within a small subset of Google; but his claim of the secret meeting does change the narrative somewhat in his favour.
I mean yes, one needs to be skeptical of "secret meetings". But it doesn't actually change his argument, it just reduces the validity of certain claims of subtext that he believes his female coworkers are inferior.
Basically, you're asking for evidence so that he can prove himself plausibly innocent of a crime that there's no evidence for in the first place.
> If you require one group of people to score 90 on some test in order to be hired, and another group to score 80, then among successful applicants the second group will have lower average scores than the first.
That's not necessarily so; you could require mice to be heavier than 90 grams, and elephants to be heavier than 80 grams, and still have your elephants be heavier on average.
(I don't want to wade into the bigger argument, just pointing out that "that's simply how statistics work" only under certain conditions (which most likely apply here, but you wrote "there's no getting around that" when there is)).
I think this is the fallacy of hiring that every startup makes, the idea that only Linus is good enough to write your CRUD app.
Incidentally, we do not know whether his statement is true, or whether the changes to Google's hiring practices have changed the employees' operational capability.
In the absence of this information, with such a clearly (if somewhat subtly) stated opinion, it's natural that one would be offended by his words.
Before accepting a statement like his, it would behoove us to know what the actual policy changes are.
This is the type of resentment / thinking that he wants the company to steer away from. If they do encode 'lower bar' policies, it's an inevitable and rational conclusion to draw, which is incredibly toxic I agree. By taking other approaches to diversity at different stages in the funnel, that toxic inevitability is avoided.
I'm not sure how you're privvy to his thought process.
Also, the idea that finding ways to employ more women+minorities leads to poorer employees is exactly what many people don't after about - essentially, your argument is taking his opinion as fact, while I only wanted to point out the underlying message to his words.
Do you understand what's happening here? Whether or not google "lowered the bar" (i.e. had distinct hiring criteria for men or women) is a fact and only a fact. It may be a true fact, or it may be a false fact. But it is not an opinion.
But somehow it gets turned into "This means he thinks women are worse, therefore he's insulting women, therefore it's a hostile workplace, therefore he got fired." That reasoning is a major leap, and it's not Damore's leap.
Taking a fact and turning it into a hostile-workplace-opinion is the real problem.
You are completely incorrect. Whether or not Google did in reality lower the bar to hire more women is a matter of fact. That Damore felt that in order to meet the goal of hiring more women Google had to lower the bar is his _opinion_, and it is a telling opinion about how he thinks about the capabilities of women.
"You had to buy inferior wood to get enough to build this house. I don't think there's enough good wood to build the house, therefore in order to get enough you had to buy inferior wood."
The fact of the quality of the wood is separate from the opinion of the availability of quality wood.
Except no, he did not say google "had to lower the bar." If you read the memo, he says :
"Google has created several discriminatory practices: ...
Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" [Mind you _lower the bar_ is a hyperlink, to a gdoc I don't have access to, so he's citing another document as evidence of this practice].
So he is in fact arguing a factual claim, that google has applied inconsistant standards in practice, as I suggested in my prior post.
You say he didn't say that Google had to lower the bar, then you quote where he says explicitly that? "Google does X. X lowers the bar."
>So he is in fact arguing a factual claim, that google has applied inconsistant standards in practice, as I suggested in my prior post.
Yes. Re-read my comment. Whether or not they apply inconsistent hiring practices is a factual claim. The idea that the only way to achieve the goal of hiring more women is to apply inconsistent hiring practices is his opinion.
I don't know what you're arguing anymore. I'm thoroughly convinced you either haven't read the relevant sections or have forgotten them since this discussion started.
Please show me where he says anything like "The idea that the only way to achieve the goal of hiring more women is to apply inconsistent hiring practices is his opinion."
>Yes. Re-read my comment. Whether or not they apply inconsistent hiring practices is a factual claim. The idea that the only way to achieve the goal of hiring more women is to apply inconsistent hiring practices is his opinion.
It looks like a logical conclusion to me. Care to explain why you think it's not?
He "merely" says that Google is doing it, and that doing it lowers the bar. Therefore he's saying that Google lowered the bar. It's a pretty simple a = b = c scenario
>It looks like a logical conclusion to me. Care to explain why you think it's not?
Because women can achieve at the same level as men? I thought it was pretty obvious.
>Because women can achieve at the same level as men? I thought it was pretty obvious.
No one would find it weird if I claimed that women aren't able to run a 100 as fast as men. Yes, there might be some exceptional cases where women can compete, but they are just that, exceptions to the rule. Most of the time women compete among themselves since they would never qualify for anything if they competed in the same category as men.
Why is it unacceptable to make the same observation about intellectual endeavors, or programming specifically?
You claim that women can achieve at the same level as men. Let's assume they can for now. However, your gripe is with the under-representation of women at tech companies. So that claim doesn't really help you, you would need to show that women perform as well as men on average. Can you?
>Why is it unacceptable to make the same observation about intellectual endeavors, or programming specifically?
Because the observation is inaccurate. There is no evidence that it is true.
>However, your gripe is with the under-representation of women at tech companies. So that claim doesn't really help you, you would need to show that women perform as well as men on average. Can you?
We have no evidence they can't, why would we assume that to be the case?
> "Google has created several discriminatory practices: ... Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate"
Please note the last 5 words. Damore wasn't saying that diversity candidates got jobs in spite of being below the bar. He was saying that decreasing the false negative rates for certain groups is discriminatory towards those who don't belong to said groups.
E.g., the point is that focusing on decreasing false negative rates for group A but not for group B, will mean that, on average, more people who are close to the bar will be hired from group A than from group B. This is unfair to group B, since they are much less likely to get "the benefit of the doubt".
In essence, the quote relates to how Google deals differently with uncertainty depending on the gender of an individual.
I made this comment a few days ago, but I think a lot of readers are getting tripped up in his (likely very artfully deployed) wording and avoiding his underlying messages.
The passage in which that quote occurs clearly implies that the bar has already been lowered - in fact, the second half of the sentence offers the mechanism through which the 'bar had been lowered' ("Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate")
> No one would find it weird if I claimed that women aren't able to run a 100 as fast as men. Yes, there might be some exceptional cases where women can compete, but they are just that, exceptions to the rule. Most of the time women compete among themselves since they would never qualify for anything if they competed in the same category as men.
Why is it unacceptable to make the same observation about intellectual endeavors, or programming specifically?
I guess I'm surprised that this is controversial (in response to your most recent comment to a sibling poster) - the reason we don't accept that women are worse programmers than men is... we don't have evidence that women are worse programmers than men.
There are data about physical strength (and amazingly clear biological correlates - most HN posters will never outmatch a top female athlete, and we only need to do a quick lab test to determine this). However, female/minority intelligence has been, and continues to be, a politicized issue - until the more overt instances of discrimination are eliminated, how can we jump from blaming the obvious societal barriers to blaming biology?
If the supply of qualified female candidates ready to be hired now is thought to be restricted (so that the bar must be lowered), that does not imply the same thought about the capabilities of women. The problem with diversity could be thought to be in the talent pipeline: young girls wanting to be programmers, gaining interest and experience in high school, going to college to study computer science, staying the field to reach higher levels, and so on.
In fact, we find that the field was way more diverse before the 1990s, and the talent pipeline for female programmers only started choking in the late 80s (for reasons we could argue, but one popular theory involves boy-oriented PCs and video games).
> it is a telling opinion about how he thinks about the capabilities of women.
No, assuming that men and women who applied have the exact same distribution of 'good qualities', you have twice as many male applicants as female applicants, and you want to hire as many women as men, you have to lower the bar for women.
That's a completely made-up scenario. Google themselves have said that the way they're trying to hire more women is by looking harder for qualified candidates, not by lowering the level that meets "qualified".
> And then he talks about "Google lowering the bar".
Strange how you directly quote parts that don't mention the lowering of the bar, then suddenly paraphrase the lowering the bar part, and put quotes around a non-quote. This is the sort of intellectual run around that is really common.
I searched the doc, and Damore uses this word "bar" exactly once (if the search function can be believed - lowering zero):
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
And this links (via the text "effectively lower the bar for") to an internal Google chat I can't see.
So ten pages, and lower(ing) the bar is mentioned once, in which he links to some discussion which I assume is relevant to the quote. How can anyone know what that quote means with out reading the internal google chat? For all I know, it links to an chat discussing false negatives in hiring, because I find that whole sentence confusing - how is decreasing false negatives bad? Is he saying they only use practices which reduce false negatives on diversity hires and not other hires? That would actually be really interesting - Google conducting different interviews based on "diversity" and finding they get better candidates as a result would be weird not to replicate.
In any case, that internal chat must clear up at least part of that context, and I can't read it so I have no context for this single line. Given this was an internal memo, however, the author gave its intended audience full access to the context, so even then, I can't see how this can be used as a sweeping statement by those externally of much of anything.
> He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities.
He basically said the opposite, but people have been so interested in triggering off the 'lowered the bar' phrasing to show their outrage that they're (seemingly willfully) ignoring the rest of the sentence which completely changed the meaning.
But 'by lowering false negatives' is hugely important. Google's hiring process has a lot of false negatives. These are qualified engineers who weren't hired that could have been successful at Google. This allows for 'lowering the bar' without sacrificing quality by not subjecting minority/female candidates to the more arbitrary/capricious stages of the Google hiring process that eliminate so many otherwise-qualified candidates.
Imagine if one of the ways that we chose to address diversity in the tech workplace was to exempt qualified female/minority H1-B candidates from the lottery and automatically approve their visas? It wouldn't make them any less qualified, since they could've gotten their visa through the normal lottery process. But it would 'lower the bar' by making it significantly more likely that they'd get visas. The post-interview stages of Google's hiring process are similar in their often-arbitrary selecting of who gets through.
It's also, on Google's part, a smart move to address their PR concerns. It allows them to increase female/minority hiring, thereby satisfying public calls for more diversity, without sacrificing quality. All they have to do is look into their process at where qualified diversity candidates are getting rejected and stop doing that. It's a luxury that other companies with fewer surplus potential hires don't have when trying to improve the diversity of their workforce. But possibly more importantly, it's not helping to improve the diversity of the industry as a whole, it only helps to make Google's stats look better. Google's standards for engineers mean that their false negatives can usually get jobs elsewhere without much difficulty. By taking this approach to diversity hiring, they're just shifting their own workforce demographics without helping the industry as a whole do the same.
If he didn't mean to say that, he should retract that phrase and apologize for saying something he didn't mean to say.
You getting "triggered" by people using the standard definition of a common idiom isn't helpful.
Parents often tell their children that a lie about what they did is worse than the original crime. I hope Mr. Damore didn't take this smug "I didn't actually say that women were inferior, it's all about preferences" tone that seems to be the first line of defence online, in his HR meetings only to be asked "So, what's this bit about race and the "science" of IQ you mentioned? Is IQ a preference?"
I'll note that the argument you present about Google only diversity-washing themselves at the cost of others having lower diversity, is the same argument that people make about their green energy efforts. In that area at least they've gone to great lengths to ensure that they actually improve the whole industry, not just steal the glory for themselves and I wouldn't be at all suprised if they had some very smart people ensuring the same was the case in this instance.
He should call out his mistake, yes. But apologize? Expecting that from him seems beyond the pale. Language isn't like contracts where any mistake by the author gets to be interpreted however the reader chooses. Instead, we're supposed to look for the intended meaning, either using context or by asking for clarification. If you use the definition you cited, his sentence becomes self-contradictory and, thus, requires clarification, not an immediate rush to judgment. Instead, everyone has assumed the worst about what he said, gotten him fired and vilified him. I'd have a hard time apologizing to people who overreact like that.
Had the reaction been one of kindness, understanding and a desire for cohesiveness where people tried to point out misconceptions and alert him to how his language was being received ("when you say 'lowered the bar' it makes me think 'less qualified', so perhaps you didn't meant that?"), this whole blow-up could have been avoided. Instead people reacted with righteous indignation and jumped to labeling him a misogynist and a bigot. At that point, all hope of a productive outcome, for him and Google at least, was lost.
For my part, I'm less interested in whether Damore really is bigot and a misogynist or any virtue of his opinions. I'm only defending what he could have possibly meant because I see so many people jumping to their own incomplete conclusions. This whole incident, to me, was more about how unproductive our reactions are to anything relating to a sensitive subject. People are so quick to trigger off anything resembling an assault on one of their sacred cows that they never take the time to figure out the intended meaning. I'm so sick of walking on eggshells knowing that I have to watch every single sentence and word choice because they'll be taken out of context and used against me. We're losing nuance in our discussions and it's creating a polarization of thought on each side that I find dangerous and divisive...there's no room for middle-ground thinkers to participate without being attacked by one or both sides. This makes those people either gravitate towards one of the extremes or disengage entirely.
You're just saying "He couched the point well-enough", he didn't say they were worse engineers, he just said they weren't naturally inclined to work with things. Sure that doesn't literally state that women as worse, it just casts an equivalent shadow on a woman wanting to be an engineer.
He didn't imply that either. Are there no criticisms that don't depend on mischaracterizations? He's citing a study of gender differences which purportedly shows gender differences which might explain part of the gap. The point is that the data don't unanimously support the discrimination hypothesis and it might merit looking at other hypotheses.
> It is largely the PC crowd who read implied-inferiority into any study of biological differences between male and female.
He mentions aptitude right here,
"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
That doesn't imply inferiority. There are a lot of characteristics in which men exhibit more variance than women, but the average for both genders is the same. It might just mean there are more men at the top and bottom, not that women are inferior.
"Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems."
This is conciliatory to you? Implying that the opposing side is blind to the truth and such blindness is preventing them from actually solving problems? Because to me this comes across as hostile and condescending.
No. Note that my post makes no argument as to whether the claim "all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination" is accurate or not. I could have left that part out, but didn't want to only quote half a sentence.
My only point was that the sentence, as written, was hostile and condescending and does not represent a conciliatory approach to conversation.
you were opposing "not all ..." as a construct that was hostile and condescending.
I don't think that cherry picking one line out of a 10 page document with significant number of disclaimers, and which was originally presented in a way and desire to evolve and gather opinions represents the overall intent and tone of the document.
> Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence
> but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology[7] that can irreparably harm Google [[ citation talks about Communist/Marxist ideals, directly equating Google with a Communist/Marxist organization ]]
> Google’s left leaning makes us blind to this bias and uncritical of its results, which we’re using to justify highly politicized programs.
> Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased [[ says this without citing any evidence at all of this happening ]]
The "tone" of the document is pretty aggressive, even if Damore throws a lot of fluff and "but I don't mean..." in the mix. In general it sets it up as "Left is bad and violent, Google is left, FIX IT."
Is it really that much different than a great deal of feminist propaganda, statements or actions? It doesn't mean the entire message is bs, or that there's no opportunity for discussion.
Please, quote feminist propaganda with the same level of invective that has been circulated at Google and maybe we have something to talk about. Otherwise, you are just trying to justify the author of a memo that was released at a work place by suggesting there's literature released elsewhere that is as inflammatory.
Some go beyond propaganda and get close to calling for violence. Quotes include: "…you deserve what's coming to you." and "Yes this is silencing. I intend to silence these views. They are violently offensive."
As far as I know, none of these people were fired for their posts.
On the other hand, their names were leaked so that now alt-right trolls can make their life miserable. Don't you think that's a way of silencing people?
Sure, but that's a totally different argument. The one I was responding to was:
> Please, quote feminist propaganda with the same level of invective that has been circulated at Google and maybe we have something to talk about.
I showed a half-dozen examples of Googlers being far more insulting and threatening than Damore's memo. As far as I know, none of them were fired. The double-standard could not be more obvious. Damore was fired for the ideas he expressed, not the tone he used.
You might view it as cherry picking (even though it's not the only line in the memo written with a condescending tone), but to me it is a big clue that the memo was not written in good faith to solicit discussion, but rather to push a pre-conceived agenda. As one of the interviewees says in the original article:
There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”
there are plenty of left-leaning memos and examples that show similar tone towards right-leaning and/or conservative or libertarian thinking. That doesn't imply not being open to discussion so much as showing one's bias. There's definitely a matter of levels to one's opinion, experience and yes, some level of conflict.
When going into a situation where you've been at the back hand of such bias, specifically in a workplace, it's often hard not to show at least some condescension. Look at any number of public feminist actions and statements, for example.
> in as conciliatory manner as it could be written
Strongly disagree. I think emphasis is a really big deal here. Here's a key line from the memo:
> Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.
This runs right into the Jon Snow line, "everything before the word 'but' is horse____." It comes across that the author doesn't think workplace bias is as important as [other stuff], or maybe that he doesn't think it's important at all, which is understandably hurtful to tons of people. Maybe that's an uncharitable reading, but can you really write about something like this and ask your readers to be unusually charitable to you?
Unfortunately for him, he did basically say that about African-Americans.
How else am I supposed to take it when a self-identity right wing person claims the left don't believe some science related to IQ in the context of a diversity memo.
What "science" could he possibly be referring to other than the Bell Curve BS?
Didn't he also refer the bell curve studies that claim that despite the same average intelligence, there are less 80 IQ women than men and there less 120 IQ women than men? So why wouldn't it be reasonable to assume when he was talking about IQ differences, he was talking about that?
Why do you jump to the conclusion he must be talking about ethnicity? Afaik ethnicity wasn't referred to at all in his memo.
He repeatedly refers to race in the context of diversity in his memo, at least 9 times the word "race" is used for example. Notably, he doesn't seem to feel the need to back any of that up with science, apart from (maybe!) the casual reference to IQ.
Sometimes you'd think there were two completely different memos under discussion given the lack of basic agreement on facts as relate to the memo itself, never mind it's arguments and sources.
Though, I guess you're right, he may have left it ambigous about exactly which IQ differences he believes in that "the left" don't. People seem to think it's wrong to complain about his communication style, but as this example illustrates, peppering a memo with alt-right buzzwords and then being ambiguous about which particular controversial IQ studies you support can just as honestly be interpreted as dog-whistling rather than incredibly high levels of naivety. I think most people suggesting his communication skills are lacking are actually just giving him the benefit of the doubt.
> If that person says "here's a study which says this, we should consider this in an open minded fashion" it doesn't matter. The message is unacceptable.
Ah, the famous, "I don't agree with it so it must be wrong" argument. I can see how the smart and well-reasoning people on HackerNews would use that. Yes...
I am well aware of my inabilities to tackle this issue properly, so ... I don't write a big document about it and circulate it. Discretion is an issue here too. If you are not capable of addressing an issue in a productive manner, then don't, especially if it's not even related to your job. James was hired as an engineer to work on engineering stuff; he wasn't hired as a sociologist to work on diversity stuff. He made the choice to inject himself into something in an ill-advised manner when he could've instead simply not done so.
right... and i was just hired to pour this Zyklon B down this chimney... why should i question any other aspect of my employment or my employer's actions.
He was like it or not thrust into it though by the choices google has made, or appeared to make. When your hiring demographics do not roughly match graduation demographics you are not being honest. There is every appearance that google is discriminating against males in their efforts to search out women. This might be best for google overall, but he is a male which means it is not in his personal favor.
If they were thinned out in primary, middle, high school, or in university, how does Google bring those women back with their hiring practices? The premise here did involve "biased graduation demographics", which I assume to mean proper educational credentials for the job.
There are still more qualified women making it through university than Google could possibly hire. Google just has to try a bit harder to find them.
Example: Men and women are equally qualified by nature, but the graduating class contains 800 qualified men and 200 qualified women due to unfair "thinning". Google needs to hire 200 people, so they hire 100 men (1 out of 8 in the graduating class) and 100 women (1 out of 2 in the graduating class).
Google has to compete with all the other companies for the same pool of talent. They can out compete them with more money, but that would raise eye brows after awhile. Something has to give somewhere when supply is constrained.
The only real solution to the gender gap involves fixing the talent pipeline and then waiting N years for the talent to start coming through. Everything else is just a stop gap that is bound to create distortions.
It would be different if there was lots of talent that just couldn't get jobs because of overt discrimination (e.g. as is the case with ageism), but the gender gap is not that easy of a problem.
Much of Google's diversity work goes toward fixing the talent pipeline by working with students. In the memo Damore criticizes these attempts by saying something like these programs are misleading female students into thinking that programming is more people-oriented (i.e. suitable for women) than it is.
Sure, but that is a different point entirely. Even if Google was getting that wrong, it isn't really that controversial to almost all of us; programming has always been prone to misrepresentation and taught in wrong ways to both boys and girls.
Incidentally, working in a big corp, programming these days is more of a social activity than it once was for reasons completely unrelated to gender. The day of the lone wolf programmer is long past!
> The day of the lone wolf programmer is long past!
I wish this disastrous extrovert invasion were more clearly disclosed. It took me a long time to realize that my maddeningly arthritic big corp experience wasn't just an outlier.
Yes, your answer is clear but isn't correct. It doesn't actually correct any biases, it doesn't create female talent out of thin air. It only moves them from other companies to one company.
But to do that they have to consider and then discriminate using the gender of their applicants. The position in your example seems to be that two wrongs make a right - discrimination favored men at some point and so discriminating against men in the hiring practice is reasonable.
I strongly disagree with that position - as far as is possible that conversation has been had and settled; companies shouldn't be discriminating on gender. I dunno what the law in California is but my stance is that discriminating on gender should be illegal. Even if the people doing the discriminating might feel they have a moral right to it :P.
Lots of folks seem to think merit, which I'd define as "ability to be successful in a role" is based solely on one metric: their ability to assemble more widgets than the next person.
Through human history a pretty obvious pattern that isn't the case appears very obvious to me. Humans rely heavily on the feels to promote and lift up ideas and the people attached to them.
There's been study after study in neuroscience and psychology concluding that we don't come to our final decision based solely on available facts. Pre-conceived conclusions rule our decision making in day-to-day life.
It's something all these "smart" males raging over this crap would do well to consider. No one really gives a crap that you did well on Google's hiring exam. You're still a disposable cog. You're good at computers. STFU and learn about all the other things out there. Cause just being good at that isn't good enough anymore.
It probably never was, and the whole tilt towards males was riding on cultural rails.
Humans are not machines. Something that is lost on our culture. Certain voices were warning us about this very scenario of being solely concerned with social statuses:
To be fair, from his perspective it appears he was trying to discuss discrimination taking place against him. I'd think long and hard before I told a woman to shut up if they were talking about the same. There's actually a reasonable argument that his document is protected speech and Google violated federal employment law by firing him.
Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.
Advice Damore would have done well to heed when writing his essay. You should also note there are serious questions about its validity - this is not just a matter of tone or style.
So I read that, and it's not so much "serious questions about validity" as "overall weak agreement disguised as rebuttal". The main takeaway in the form of disagreement is that social science findings are mostly untrustworthy/not usable?
Please don't post ideological snark to HN, regardless of what your underlying point is. It poisons discussion and we can all use less poison right now.
The point I took away was that this is not settled science at all and he was cherry picking results in order to buttress a conclusion which he'd already made, but also that the differences between men and women on average simply are not large enough to explain the disparities in tech, not even close. There are many other rebuttals which focus on other points, for example if the reason for disparities in women and men in tech is biological, why was the balance significantly altered within a few decades from the 70s to now?
From outside, there's no fundamental difference between a good argument and a persuasive one, even though they're ideally orthogonal. If there's an argument that seems good, and you don't understand why people don't accept it, the delivery is the simplest (or perhaps just least well understood) thing to update.
This interview is literally a criticism that says very little about his style of writing. When they talk about "how" he approached this subject, it has to do with overall tone and the medium of delivery, not the nuances of his writing style.
> If he had spoken with some of them individually and spent some time trying to better understand their views on the issues, I suspect he would have done a better job choosing words that would have inspired debate rather than hostility.
That's it. He didn't talk to a single woman at Google about this manifesto before spreading it like gospel. All he had to do was talk to other people.
I have some people at work whose opinions I value highly that I occasionally run ideas and documents by before disseminating things to a wider group. It's very helpful, and has sometimes caught potential damaging misinterpretations before they were spread too widely, allowing me to reword things.
I definitely agree that if he'd simply had a few women he knew and trusted at work read it before he disseminated it widely then this all might have been avoided. If he didn't know any women at work that he trusted with this then that itself is a huge problem.
> If he didn't know any women at work that he trusted with this then that itself is a huge problem.
Given the fact that he was fired over this, i.e. Google thinks it's very bad, and assuming he had a hunch this was so, is it reasonable to believe he should be able to trust a female coworker with this memo not to file a complaint?
Put more generally: is it reasonable that one should expect one's coworkers to keep silent about a fireable offense?
For what it's worth, he did run the document by others at Google and -- based on what I've read -- they were the ones who spread the document, not he. That's not to say he didn't intend to do it at some point, but that it was through his efforts to get said feedback that the fire started.
He was a "coder" for Google, not a writer.And even for his status the memo was written pretty-well, people are just still questioning it for mostly other reasons.
It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion.
The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provocative way people write about such things on twitter/reddit/here.
In a work environment, that approach can and will get you fired. It should cause you career problems even if you do it for mundane things like type theory, or memory management, or distributed systems. Do it on something controversial and cause a huge problem for the company, and of course they are going to fire you. Especially since in this context adversarial = hostile work environment.
Why is a debate worse than a discussion? We strive for debate on all other topics? If you actually want to challenge assumptions you must debate and evaluate the merits of someone else's argument. A discussion would just be you think x and I think y. A debate puts warrants behind the claims in those beliefs.
Adversarial debate is worse than discussion for reasons that these interviewees said:
>The discussion around this has followed the trajectory of most of the polarizing mass discussion in the last few years; everyone comes out the other side with their opinions more calcified than ever, and more convinced than before of the intractability of the other side.
Damore wasn't walking into this ready to discuss and/or learn, he wanted to blast his opinion internally with no intention of attempting to change it.
I've reiterated what the person said in the article. If your burden of proof is word semantics, then do I really need to elaborate to you more on the definitions of debate vs discussion?
1. All parties are experienced with debates and enjoy debates. In particular, they can partake in a debate and then, afterward, dispassionately evaluate the arc of the debate; OR
2. The setting is inherently adversarial and there is a third party who will ultimately decide the outcome.
Almost all workplace conversations -- and indeed almost all life conversations -- do not fall into one of these two buckets. In particular:
1. Making use of debate in a search for truth is a difficult and non-universal skill.
For individual debaters to get something out of a debate, they need to know how to disengage from their advocacy and evaluate the arc of the debate from an objective vantage point. This is a skill that requires training. Discussions, on the other hand, allow people to perform this switching between viewpoints as the discussion unfolds. This is much more natural.
2. Adversarial settings create emotional attachment. In debates, people very often become emotionally attached to their arguments and advocacy, causing ego to get in the way of a search for truth. In contrast, discussions do not require a stable advocacy, they are non-adversarial, and no one "wins". These characteristics de-emphasize ego and place the emphasis on whatever actually important issue is at hand.
3. Debates often end up confusing quality of argument with ground truth.
It's always important to remember that constructing arguments is a skill and is time-consuming. It's certainly possible to "win" a debate and still be dead wrong about ground truths -- either by refining debating skill or by throwing more resources into argument construction.
4. Most people don't enjoy debates. I don't have any evidence here, but I think it's probably true. And in a work place, keeping your co-workers happy is probably a lot more important to achieving the company's goals than whatever epsilon benefit debate has over discussion.
Maybe if universities looked more like The Academy everyone would be competent and comfortable in debates, and also understand their inherent limitations as a mechanism in the search for truth. But that's not the world we live in.
So, although I enjoy a good debate as much as the next person, I've found that debates are a truly terrible method for making decisions in most professional settings.
I'd say that this conversation fits under the first criteria I listed for circumstances where debate makes sense. Do you disagree?
If you read my post, it's immediately apparent -- from the very first sentence!!! -- that I am not stating that debate is always worse than discussion. I'm providing a list of reasons why debate is often not preferable to discussion, and particularly in workplaces (e.g., bullet point 4).
So I'm not trying to stifle this debate at all. In fact, exactly the opposite. I explicitly identified one class of circumstances -- which encapsulates this thread -- where debate actually works very well.
Rather, I'm explaining why debate is an objectively bad communication mechanism in many circumstances, and particularly in typical work places.
> stifle debate
Return to your original comment.
WHY is stifling debate bad? Basically, because debate forces us to substantiate our beliefs+. Why is substantiating our beliefs good? Presumably because we're interested in truth. So debate is not some inherent good; it's a useful and indeed sometimes indispensable tool for finding truth.
But I've claimed (points 1-4) that debate, in some circumstances, actually actively harms our search for truth. Again, not all circumstances, but some.
So it's very unclear to me why you would claim that stifling debate is a bad thing without responding to my four critiques of debate as a mechanism for finding truth.
Is having debates more important than finding truth? Is robust debate more important than getting things done? ++
> you think is so self evident that it does not need any
Oh cool, now I get to yell at you about dubious unwarranted claims ;-)
--
+ It's possible to have non-argumentative discussions in which everyone is forced to substantiate their claims; this is about good communication and critical thinking, not debate vs. discussion. Backing off from a combative tone is only equivalent to "stifling" when your communication skills are sub-par.
++ Finally, on a personal note, this realization that debate is often counter-productive was a huge turning point in my career and in my personal life. Identifying when debates are and are not appropriate is an important professional and life skill. E.g., I never, ever start a debate when I'm trying to convince someone to change a workplace policy. It's totally and completely unsurprising to me that doing so backfired in a big way, because the same thing has happened to me.
I don't get any of that from the memo. Neither did the woman developer who made me aware of it's existence. She marveled at the media response, saying she found nothing provocative or adversarial about the memo.
See for example "Edith's" point in the linked article "Edith: There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”"
To me, it's really hard not to imagine the author being the type of person who would have a "I'm an Atheist, debate me" shirt. It's written in that style.
Beyond that I don't really know what to say. Technical discussions unfortunately frequently end up this way too, so maybe its easy to get used to it. But its counter-productive.
And note, I'm suggesting why it pissed people off at google and should have got him fired. It isn't an explanation of the media reaction per-say because in the context of a public discussion there is no precept that you are cooperating with people (unlike your co-workers) and your audience isn't going to repeatedly interact with you. So adversarial arguments are common and generally accepted. It would have been fine as an op-ed in a news paper (though IMHO doesn't make the quality bar). Its not in a discussion with co workers.
Many people initially responded angrily because it was reported on by the media as an anti-diversity memo and purposely mischaracterized Damore's intentions. Also the versions initially published had all citations removed making it look like he was just pontificating.
I don't get any of that from the memo. Neither did the woman developer who made me aware of it's existence.
If we're going with anecdote, the memo sure read as a hostile dropped-bombshell to every female Googler I've talked to on the subject.
Regardless of whether it was the author's intent to do harm, or to be antagonistic, he absolutely did - both to individuals and the company as a whole.
I strongly agree. The double-standard is remarkable though. Merely questioning the liberal position with less than a perfect rhetorical command is nearly criminal, but if you endorse a liberal position, you can be incorrect and even downright hateful toward your position, and lots of respectable (sometimes powerful) people will defend you against any criticism. I always catch a lot of flak for calling out liberal advantages (I'm a moderate liberal, for whatever that's worth), but pretending they don't exist hasn't exactly been doing wonders for the tone of our political discourse either.
What I understand from this situation is that he ran through a minefield and stepped on a few mines. Could someone else have run through that minefield and not stepped on any mines... probably. Is it reasonable to expect some one to be able to run through a minefield and not step on mines? No. Should we prevent people from running through the minefield...?
Is it worth it? As far as I can tell, it's a voluntary initiative by Google which is well meaning. And I question if it really "hurts" anyone. Hiring processes are never perfect but Google seems to do a good job out of anyone.
> I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.
I'm a huge proponent of the principle of charity, but I found it impossible to apply to the Google Memo. Not because I'm deeply mired in political correctness (I have a range of views people in my circle consider right-wing) but because it's so badly reasoned it makes it hard to presume good faith on the part of the writer.
Damore points to studies showing that, e.g. women are more agreeable and more people-oriented. From that, he concludes women on average are less likely to prefer programming. We can diagram this reasoning as follows (the arrow with the line through denotes a contraindicator):
Women -> (agreeable + people-oriented) -> [???] -\-> programming
As you can see, there is an unstated premise:
(agreeable + people-oriented) -\-> programming
Damore's argument thus reduces to a bit of begging the question. We assume that programming is a "masculine" profession. Thus, being agreeable and people-oriented, which are feminine traits, must be contraindicators for preferring a career as a programmer. We have no studies that show this--we just assume it.
Edith, by the way, demolishes that assumption: "For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work." That demonstrates how the "gender" of various professions is a social construct. In India, where men are over-represented in teaching, it's not considered a job for "agreeable" "people-oriented" women. It's men's work. Law was historically considered men's work (it's analytical and adversarial, and could be called "people oriented" only if you hate people). But that view has been redefined as more women enter the profession. Likewise for medicine, accounting, etc. Accounting is an archetypally "masculine" profession (locked away in a back closet crunching numbers), but today more than half of accountants are women.
The moral of the story is that if you're going to make a controversial point, it had better be a good point. Damore's memo wasn't just badly written, it was badly reasoned, and deserved the scorn heaped on it.
Well said. I thought the memo was well written with poor reasoning as to causation. Though the memo said there were influences outside of biology, it spent no time exploring them.
> Since the Communist Revolution of 1917 and during the ensuring Soviet times, the role of women in engineering and engineering education was strong with almost 60% of the engineers being women. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian women in these engineering careers has fallen to below 40% of the engineering workforce with a continuing downward trend.
I had completely forgotten about this - my own mothers' class in Moscow Aviation Institute (rocket engineers) in early 80s had more women studying than men.
does this not provide support for Damore? Once Russian women had a greater choice of career opportunities in post-soviet russia STEM participation declined.
Absolutely not - Russian women had less choice following the collapse as the country's economy declined.
The paper I cited does not claim that USSR had managed to transform an otherwise very prejudice society into an equal egalitarian one. Instead, soviets focused on full employment AND full Labor participation as part of ideology, leaving less room for contradictions such as gender discrimination on employment or education itself. Salary and promotion discrimination remained as there ideology provided less cover. Following the collapse, Russian society reverted to its old prejudice self. Lookup домострой if you don't believe me.
Another less from USSR for gender/family stays equality is that childcare access makes a huge difference. In USSR, parents were guaranteed state funded care from the point maternity leave ended to college. On paper that still exists, but in practice it's a shadow of what it used to be.
The role of women in Russian society is very complex, but its not accurate to say that Russian women have more choices post-USSR. The best way to understand the situation is Soviet idealism against the reality of longstanding Russian patriarchy. The Soviets were at the forefront of encouraging women to enter the workforce, making abortion legal in 1920, making divorces easier, providing child care, etc. Those policies suffered fits and starts (Stalin rolled back abortion from 1936-1955) but were still in many ways far ahead of Western Europe. Post-USSR the idealistic stuff died out and there was a strong reversion to patriarchy (not to mention per-capita GDP dropped by half and only returned to peak Soviet levels in 2008).
> Damore points to studies showing that, e.g. women are more agreeable and more people-oriented. From that, he concludes women on average are less likely to prefer programming.
"Although women have nearly attained equality with men in several formerly male-dominated fields, they remain underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We argue that one important reason for this discrepancy is that STEM careers are perceived as less likely than careers in other fields to fulfill communal goals (e.g., working with or helping other people). Such perceptions might disproportionately affect women's career decisions, because women tend to endorse communal goals more than men. As predicted, we found that STEM careers, relative to other careers, were perceived to impede communal goals. Moreover, communal-goal endorsement negatively predicted interest in STEM careers, even when controlling for past experience and self-efficacy in science and mathematics."
"Participants were 333 introductory psychology students (193 women) who participated for
partial course credit, and 27 paid participants (14 women) from STEM classes. The majority (86.94%)
were of European American descent. The median age was 19 years, ranging from 18 to 43. "
"For each of the core careers, participants rated how much the career fulfills agentic goals (“power, achievement, and seeking new experiences or excitement”) and
communal goals (“intimacy, affiliation, and altruism”; definitions from Pohlmann, 2001). Participants rated goals according to “how important each of the following kinds of goals is to you personally."
I really found this study not very compelling as jumping from point A to conclusion B. It seems more than they've proved that women from the small subset in this study prefer more "communal goals" and the STEM careers are not perceived that way.
I can say as a women in STEM, I sort of choose tech on a whim. I came to see coding as a tool for many of the creative aspirations I had. If anything, I think some of the STEM career paths are poorly understood and marketed to women. Though I probably would have answered my questions about my career decisions in one way when I started college, it would have been different by the end of it. And after understanding what to expect out of a career, being years into my career, I would answer what's important to me in yet another way. So I really question this study.
Let me just say this is why "show me the study" is never a productive line of debate.
If someone agrees with the point the study seems to support, they say, "Hah! Studies!" and call anyone who disagrees "anti-science".
But if someone disagrees with the point, they pull up the study, pick out some section of it where any type of subjective judgment call was made (usually the details of the sample, because that's the most clearly subjective thing, making it the easiest thing to criticize), and say "There are real problems with this study, how about a real study? [that is, a study that agrees with my point]". Also popular is "Yes, but this author is affiliated with former employer x, y, or z".
This is true of all sides, all the time. Very rarely do you see a study actually impact anyone's opinion about an important topic. It is usually only the impression that more studies support a specific position (that is, "the consensus", aka social pressure to appear studious and informed, which affects academics as much or more than it affects non-academics), that does it.
Given the power we see in 100+ study meta-analysis in medicine, I think we have to move towards a model where research grants in other fields (psych, sociology, etc.) are jointly awarded to multiple independent groups to jumpstart the meta-analysis for a given new topic from the outset. How to keep the "independent" groups from colluding will be a challenge unfortunately. As will funding for the extra replications. For the reasons you cite, single, stand-alone studies are almost useless these days.
> But if someone disagrees with the point, they pull up the study, pick out some section of it where any type of subjective judgment call was made (usually the details of the sample, because that's the most clearly subjective thing, making it the easiest thing to criticize), and say "There are real problems with this study, how about a real study? [that is, a study that agrees with my point]". Also popular is "Yes, but this author is affiliated with former employer x, y, or z".
This is virtually impossible to do effectively unless one is an expert in the field. Studies that have been published by reputable journals have gone through a rigorous peer review process. A layperson criticizing such a study is highly unlikely to discover any valid points that have escaped the experts.
That study doesn't support either of Damore's premises. It doesn't address biological tendencies--it was conducted on adult women. Nor does it address traits actually linked to professions. It focuses on perception. That's an important distinction. In the age of the internet, software is much more about fulfilling communal goals--e.g. helping people communicate with family and friends--than many women-dominated professions like accounting. To the extent women perceive the opposite to be true, a strong argument can be made that it is the result of a male-dominated profession characterizing itself as such, rather than anything inherent about the profession.
Peoples' perceptions of various professions are the result of socialization. For example, my mom grew up in a society where teaching was a male profession--it was characterized as being about instilling wisdom and discipline in children. She found it very upsetting that teachers in the US were overwhelmingly women.
> Peoples' perceptions of various professions are the result of socialization.
But interests come first. If women on average perceive technology as not fulfilling communal goals and therefore avoid the field, they must first be interested in communal goals. It's also not controversial that interests have some biological component. So both here and in your original comment, I'm not sure exactly what specific criticism of Damore you're making. Maybe a quote would help?
Generally, you raise the possibility that software engineering could be a very people-oriented profession now but misportrayed as such by male engineers. But surely there must be some non-people, thing-oriented job that is just hours of long hacking at a keyboard with zero to minimal social contact, completely male-dominated, which women on average would tend to avoid. Why wouldn't that be some form of software programming?
Sometimes if you are wrong enough and offend enough people you are guilty of violating a code of conduct. No one is sending him to hell or even jail. He just lost his job. We are not schoolboys. We are adults with a responsibility to follow the code of employee, or face the consequences.
The memo attempts to use references to what the author sees as well accepted science. If you have a disagreement with the science, you can disagree. However, the method the author to used construct the memo, i.e. referencing studies, is the correct method. At worst you could attempt to call it bad science mixed with ignorance.
I've always assumed this was an official rule of Hacker News commentary, but now that I look for it, I don't see it explicitly mentioned in the guidelines. Yet it somehow seems to be woven into the fabric here.
The opposite is to paint your opposition as despicable as possible to show that you are righteous and just. I feel like I've been getting way too much of this from Facebook in the last couple weeks.
One interesting point that hasn't attracted much attention is that the author self-identifies as being on the autism spectrum [1]. If this fact were better-known, would accessibility advocates defend his memo — and possibly even attack its detractors for not being sensitive to his neurological differences?
Here's the flowchart:
If you have a personality behavior disorder, you are entitled to respect as a person, but you aren't entitled to behave poorly at your job. Similarly, if you cannot fulfill the physical requirements of a job due to disability, you are not entitled to that specific job.
He uses high neuroticism as part of his argument against female software engineers, high neuroticism is associated with autism. So it seems that even he isn't being sensitive to his own neurological differences.
Apart from say the bit where he said women couldn't cope with stressful jobs as well as men and that's part of why they're underrepresented at Google i.e. the bit about neuroticism, that I was talking about.
I think the most empathetic comment on the memo that I read was that it would have been to everyone's benefit if Damore had showed it to several more experienced engineers and incorporated suggestions. No matter who you are, you can use an editor.
I don't think you can honestly say publishing it to 10's of thousands of readers constitutes editorial consultation and advice.
Editing and review consists of find a small (one handful) number of trusted friends and mentors whose insight you value, having them read it and make suggestions and comments, perhaps multiple cycles, and only then publish to people you don't know and are hoping to persuade.
It troubles me that this kind of (IMO) disingenuousness shows up again and again in regard to the memo. Not just in this specific comment, but multiple times whenever someone points out a flaw there is always a response of "but he really did do that, you just took it wrong". No, I didn't, and neither did others. He screwed up.
To wit, basically no one did read it, or at least no one responded to it. Until it was leaked to the media and became the media storm we're now witnessing.
As I understand it Damore did seek out feedback from smaller groups of people before releasing it company wide but even if he didn't, who cares? It's very common to publish documents to the entire world asking for review. That's what the RFC processed for digital standards is, that's what arXiv does for academics.
You are the one being disingenuous with this inane critique of the specifics of how Damore sought out feedback for his ideas. He really did do that, he really sought out criticism and continues to do so, you didn't take it wrong though... you're just critiquing it in an inane way. If you disagree with his points, then engage with the points. If the way in which it was written is so deeply flawed then it shouldn't be hard to refute them.
> As I understand it Damore did seek out feedback from smaller groups of people
Not in the least the same thing as seeking editorial comment from a set of volunteers who know what they're reading. But I can see you are insistent that he did in fact do something he didn't do, which is the definition of disingenuousness.
I wish you good fortune in your future HR counseling sessions.
My main criticism of the memo has been the external discussion it provoked. Like anyone who's been following the story I obviously have my own feelings on it. But, what seems to be missing is the social context to judge if he was out of line in how he delivered his memo or simply because he delivered it at all.
I don't know how often memos of this nature circulate around google and that's important context because a lot of the discussion really seems to boil down to "How do we feel that this guy got fired". Do other employees send out memos that also contemplate diversity in tech/google with similar length and calls to action? If so, do those employees send out their messages via the same channels that this employee sent out his memo? Without understanding more about the social context the employee was operating in a lot of necessary context is missing imo.
There is some irony there, because a common tactic for derailing complaints of sexism towards women is "maybe you're right but you said it in a way that hurts people's feelings, so we're going to ignore you. Try again next time."
I think the challenge is there is disagreement about who is the aggrieved party. Are women aggrieved because the memo made them feel unwelcome, or is Damore the aggrieved party because he was raising a grievance?
I think Damore is aggrieved because Google leadership had chances to provide more constructive criticism, missed those chances, then resorted to a draconian resolution.
Also, I don't know why aggrievement needs to be exclusive. More than one party can be aggrieved.
Interesting is that all Google related news (in the last two weeks) got flagged/hidden ("it's the algorithm", "it's the user", blabla). And now HN had time to post their own opinion piece - this one stays.
That's false and nasty. You've made up so many groundless insinuations against us over so many years that at some point I'm just going to give up and ban you; I don't think it's reasonable to expect patience with false accusations to be infinite.
In the meantime, here are three comments that explain how moderators had nothing to do with this.
I don't think it's false and nasty. I was thinking the same thing ... quite objectively. There were at least two discussions that I thought were very reasonable, and they got flagged into oblivion very quickly. So I don't know why the YC link gets to be the exception. It feels wrong.
Maybe it is due to the users, but if that is so, it feels wrong enough to give me a pretty big loss of faith in the dynamics of the community.
It occurs to me, maybe this is another instance of the left engaging in silencing tactics and maybe that is a weakness in the flagging algorithm.
I can't vote "don't flag this". So if there are approximately two sides to a discussion, and one side wants to flag it to silence the discussion, then the discussion is going to get flagged no matter what.
So the side that wants to silence just selectively silences the opinions they don't agree with, and they win.
The silencing happens because there is a huge left/right discrepancy on this site and because silencing your opposition became acceptable, due to victimhood culture.
One thing I would be very curios to know is the age distribution of people advocating silencing and no platforming.
I suspect that younger people support this due to the helicopter parent style they were more likely to have grew with, where the parent suppresses anything discomforting for the child instead of letting the child deal with it on it's own. So when that child grows it's normal for him to demand 'the state' or 'the corporation' to do the same thing, because only his comfort and views matter.
If you look at the full range of such 'discrepancies' people report perceiving on this site, it's unmistakeable that they are in the eye of the beholder. Each side says HN is dominated by the opposite site. It's a cognitive bias: the comments you dislike stand out more and seem more prominent than the ones you like, leading to the impression that the community is against you. Both sides feel this way (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15027667, in the same thread!) and the irony is that the impression gets stronger, not weaker, the closer the community is to evenly divided.
You don't typically comment, so I'm unsure if I should consider this as some sort of a (pre?) warning.
I'm a leftist. But what I see right now on the left deeply concerns me and makes me reconsider, stuff like black people advocating black only areas or events, which is ironic, because in the 60 they were fighting exactly against this, or leftists justifying and advocating violence against the extreme right, using the all time favorite excuse that "bad people deserve to be beaten".
FWIW I also got the impression that certain kinds of articles quickly disappear from the front page, and you can see on them more comments than upvotes, which is in general unusual and which suggests heavy downvoting. So to me it doesn't appear that the community is balanced. Which is not to say that this is a bad thing, many times some views are better than others.
I didn't intend the comment as a warning. Note that the word 'please' did not appear :)
No, it's really just that this misperception is so universal that I can't help but answer it even though I know it will do no good. Maybe it's a Beckett play.
Interesting you say that Jonathan. As someone who you would identify as part of the left, I noticed the pro-diversity posts were always flagged. I assumed it was by the right or whatever group you identify with...or maybe people on HN want to avoid the shouting matches that always come with these topics.
I've personally flagged far more articles on this topic than I usually do. However I am not "on the left". I consider my politics to be slightly right of centre. I have expressed no public view on the content of the Damore memo. But there's been so much sound and fury that only the strongest signal is now welcome in my feed. I did not flag this YC posting; it is, by contrast, very low noise.
I thought you can repudiate a flagging, isn't that the "vouch" control? I'm not familiar with exactly when it is or isn't offered.
Re-reading my comment I realize that the context was obviously missing, so here's some context.
The issue isn't that you or other users had that perception; that's natural, which is why I've posted half a dozen explanations of what actually happened, i.e. moderators didn't touch the post (other than in one routine way I described) and its prominence on the front page was because user upvotes dramatically outweighed flags. It was purely a community response.
The reason I used the word 'nasty' is because this user has a long history of insinuating that we're lying (("it's the algorithm", "it's the user", blabla)), when they have more reason than any other HN user to know we don't do that. I've spent hours personally, patiently explaining this to him over at least a dozen occasions where he has made stuff like this up (most often, accusing us of moderating HN to be shills for Microsoft, which is silly). Good faith doesn't act this way.
I've wondered about the whole flagging algorithm. I've never tried flagging anything; I just move on.
However, flagging does seem to serve a purpose while at the same time it could be abused. Could a throttle for flagging be introduced to slow down abusive flaggers? What I mean is maybe the ability to flag postings is only possible if you haven't flagged something in say 7 days.
Most importantly to me, it was written directly as a response to a request for comments on the subject. People made it out to be a rant someone just threw out there, but it wasn't. It was also published a month before, and internal polls at Google found it to be non-offensive.
That doesn't stop people from whipping up mass hysteria about it.
Personally, I like how the criticisms have shifted from outrage over statements Damore never made (and contexts in which he never posted) to sharp criticisms of his "unprofessional delivery" as though a post on a discussion board needed to be better than most published academic content. I can't frankly imagine a more conciliatory delivery. Of course, we mustn't blame the folks who are cultivating faux outrage; this is clearly James' fault... /s
The memo suffered from a lack of 2nd order thinking. If Google really is using its diversity programs to "lower the bar", that's what should have been proven and addressed, whether men and women have innate differences in talent for certain occupations is irrelevant. It's Google's perogative/obligation to find and retain the best talent. I suspect that's what the purpose of their diversity programs are for. If they're not, and they are truly attempting to "lower the bar" for ideological reasons, then by all means call them on it, but the labor market will punish them for you. The whole memo was an irrelevant red herring to the topic of Google's hiring practices.
I don't see the correlation between diversity programs and retaining the best talent. Not because diversity isn't important, or because it's a negative thing, but because in general diversity programs function by more closely examining/attracting a subset of a larger total population of workers. You could still of course find the best talent within those subsets, but the implication is still that you could just as easily miss the top talent that isn't in those subsets.
Why is it binary? I'm pretty sure you can focus on both. Also, it's not hard to get candidates that are non-diverse, almost by definition the status quo favors their hiring, hence the diversity programs.
I didn't mean to imply that both can't be done at the same time. I thought you meant that diversity programs were an inherent part of finding the best talent when you wrote
> "It's Google's perogative/obligation to find and retain the best talent. I suspect that's what the purpose of their diversity programs are for."
To me this meant that to find the best talent it's more effective to focus on subsets of the total talent pool, which didn't make sense to me.
The purpose wasn't to prove that Google is using its diversity programs for nefarious purposes; only to raise the question that Google's diversity aims might be misguided and even potentially harmful per their stated goals. He supports his argument by pointing to studies that suggest men and women may be differently interested, in which case we shouldn't expect 50/50 distribution.
Perhaps whether or not Google's diversity programs are lowering the bar is the more important question; it's also one he likely wasn't well-positioned to tackle (it requires a lot more resources to prove/disprove bar-lowering compared to writing a memo to express a concern).
> I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion.
And perhaps it shouldn't! It might, however, limit their ability to write at length about sensitive, culturally-deep issues at work without getting fired and having their career stained.
Similarly, perhaps one's ability to write code shouldn't disbar them from a hackathon, but if they write a bunch of hacky code for a quadcopter and it flies into the audience, well, then they're in a bit of a pickle indeed.
> I’m just exhausted by having this same damn argument over and over again since I was a teenager and the amount of time and energy I keep having to spend to counter it.
This is a human being and a colleague. I really think people ought to satisfy a very, very high evidential and expressive bar before they do this to other people. I don't say this as a dictum or law, but as an ethical suggestion.
There are socially appropriate ways to start a discussion. Taking your concerns directly to a senior leader -- who can explain the other pieces that are being missed here, such as empathy for end-users -- provides a wider view of why diversity programs exist and why companies consider them critical to success.
If you want to build products exclusively for men, by all means, staff your teams with all men. But bringing a diversity of experience into all levels of a company makes that company's products and engagement experience better for everyone. This is especially true when you're talking about a consumer-focused product (like many of Google's products are).
I agree that we need to treat James as a human being who is allowed to be flawed, but there's something to be said about why he added the biology component to his argument that wasn't necessary and simply distracted from the core argument. I would simply say that if he had cut that portion out, the conversation that is happening right now might become more productive and focused on hiring practices outside of Google.
While I do agree that sometimes these new practices fail, it has done more good for organizations implementing similar practices than bad.
Speaking as a minority engineer, I don't like the fact that I have to constantly prove myself just to have people then assume that my beyond-the-norm performance is simply middling for my ethnicity; I've had to eat a lot of crow, but I take solace in the fact that others are able to come on-board because of these moments where you take the hits.
I don't known if I'm being clear, I empathize with Edith and all about having to "overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills" and I wish there was a better way but I feel like there is some cultural requirement that we have to bear the burden for the people who come after.
> there's something to be said about why he added the biology component to his argument that wasn't necessary and simply distracted from the core argument. I would simply say that if he had cut that portion out, the conversation that is happening right now might become more productive and focused on hiring practices outside of Google.
I'm not sure I agree. First of all, the article by Scott Alexander referenced in this post makes mostly the same arguments, and the post praises its content for being better presented. I can't tell much of a difference in presentation; certainly not one that justifies praise for Alexander and crucifixion for Damore. Secondly, 99% of Damore's critics are outraged about things he never remotely said; it was only after their accusations were thoroughly debunked that they shifted their criticism to his presentation. I seriously doubt any of the outrage is sincere; it seems far more likely that Damore made a suitable target for folks projecting their insecurities or even their legitimate victim experiences.
We'll have to agree to disagree then, I'm not trying to compare what he has written to others; I realize that others are reacting more strongly, but I only mentioned that point to move past it. The rest of what I said is more towards how it feels as a minority and how it feels to me being affected by diversity policies (that isn't to equate what every minority, race/gender/etc., experiences in the way of adversity, etc.).
Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific progress.
I disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process.
Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing in good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that evidence should be discounted.
Of course it isn't. When establishing narratives and complex causalities, you don't use scientific (inductive) reasoning, you use abductive reasoning. You use inductive and deductive reasoning to fill in points, but you have to use abductive reasoning to reach a broader conclusion.
> Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process.
Indeed, but I didn't read Damore's memo as being intellectually dishonest in this way. He presented (with citations) some views that are held by most psychology researchers. And then he drew a few of his own (possibly flagrant) conclusions and speculations.
This sparked debate, and it is getting us talking. Damore wrote some great points (especially on free speech and intellectual diversity) and some terrible ones. This is the kind of free exchange of ideas that a successful and vibrant tech company should encourage.
Absolutely. This and the suggestion that he phrase his ideas as questions and more openly invite discussion helped me put into words my own discomfort with the memo. Of course the conclusion he draws that because of biological differences women are less suited to software engineering work remains the biggest problem.
I've tried asking evenhanded questions in the past (on other topics). They usually get corporate-speak responses that don't really say anything.
Pointed questions provide more information at the expense of goodwill.
What I'm saying is that I think people ask these kinds of questions and don't get honest answers. At least the firing of Damore was a concrete answer, though it was a partial one.
Having read and just reread the memo, I don't think a better starting point for this discussion could've come from somebody on his side if Google had specifically asked for it. Maybe a professional journalist or someone with too much time could've spent some time dancing around the issues to make it less offensive, but I don't think that would've been productive.
EDIT: Apologies for answering a question before it's been asked, but to clarify my point I don't think the quality of writing is that amazing (or relevant). I'm more speaking towards the general tone and content of the memo, which is far more polite and open than most editorials I read by professionals.
This is literally what almost all persuasive writing is about. I cannot recall the last time I saw someone write or heard someone speak the words "let's have a discussion" to people who didn't already agree without really meaning "you people need to shut up and listen". I actually find it refreshing when people say that instead. But seriously who is writing to this standard we seem to have suddenly adopted for this one thing?
> I’m also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about.
...means she's frustrated that more men weren't saying what she was thinking. So "speak up" also means agreement.
And, as an aside, I've seen lots of men criticizing Damore. I don't know what more needed to happen. Maybe she has particular people in mind.
The author opens the memo explaining that google needs to have a discussion and subsequently starts the discussion.
again critics of the author actually agree with him.
anyone who supports "let's have a discussion" can not support google who the author believes (and seems to have been proven right) does not want a discussion.
Why has this topic exploded like it did now especially in the software engineering context? Whatever talent or affinity to abstract and inanimate things we do or don't assume being correlated with gender, isn't software engineering just a lighter version, compared to mathematics and physics?
Did math and physics communities already have their internal crisis/debate on these things, perhaps a decade or two ago? Or have they been able to cope without lighting such a fire?
Hmm, anectodally, both math and physics communities have significantly larger percentage of actual women graduating and working. At least here in EU - it's somewhere between 40-60% split depending on generation.
I guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working with women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove how women aren't worthy .
I mean, whatever propensity to mathematical-logical thinking, or being interested in working with things not people, we attach to software engineering, aren't these qualities useful even more when doing math and physics?
Lots people from math and physics have jumped over and become decent, some even great, software engineers. Not many software engineers have successfully switched over to math or physics.
So if gender is not so much an issue for a successful career in, I don't know, algebraic topology (math) or quantum field theory (physics), it surely should be less of an issue in software engineering ...when talking about whatever effects there may or may be at a biological level. So if it's not such a big issue in academia, the problems in software engineering must be more about what kind of workplace culture has grown around in software engineering, not the proposed underlying human biology.
Right on the nose. And in fact, the proportion of women in computer science was tracking with other sciences until the mid-eighties, when it started to dive, while women's representation in other sciences continued to climb.
One of the more glaringly inconsistent observations with Damore's claims.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
You explained it yourself. It was initially a science, and in the 80's it became engineering and now, a get-rich scheme. Each era attracts a different set of people.
Hmm, Computer Science is most definetly a science (which shares quite a bit with maths as expected). A lot of algorithms and data structures you use under the hood when doing engineering were born as a paper in academic CS sphere.
Of course, most CS graduates don't do science, but actual engineering work. That doesn't make CS any less of a science though, it just means that most people employed in private companies don't do it.
And thus employment of CS graduates should be compared with employment of Engineering graduates, except in the case of Academia, where it ought to be compared with other sciences.
The math and physics communities aren't dominating business in the US. Four of the top five companies by market cap (Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon) are exclusively software or employ an oversized number of software developers compared to similarly sized non-technology companies. If there are reasons that groups of people are being systematically excluded from employment in those companies and others like them, it's worth at least trying to understand why (race? gender? other factors?) and wherever possible, worth trying to correct it.
"Why now" is a lot more complicated than just that, but that's the reason I keep in mind why it's worth fighting for.
> Why has this topic exploded like it did now especially in the software engineering context?
Theories:
- Especially acute gender gap
- Tech getting attention for its gender gap affecting corporate policies
- Culture of valuing merit of people and ideas. Coders generally think the best idea should win, regardless of where it comes from.
- Software engineering is probably more collaborative (on many scales) than research science. Teamwork is a day to day reality and culture issues are more important.
- Top talent in research science isn't as concentrated as it is in the case of software talent. Big companies literally buy small companies for the market share of talent. Culture issues in the big software companies will get much more attention.
- Software engineers are online more. The memo was originally a Google+ post, I gather. It's probably easier for electronic discussions to leak onto the internet.
Ezra Klein argued[1] that this is really a fear of the opaque power that software has in our lives. We know that software and algorithms run the world, and that only a few people will ever even see the algorithms, let alone understand them afterwards, and yet they determine so much of the world around us. This leads everyone to fear that the wrong sort of people (for whatever definition of "wrong" you hold) are putting their thumb into the algorithm.
This is why math and physics aren't getting the same level of attention. They don't decide what news articles get viewed and what don't. They don't decide what companies can advertise to customers and what companies are beyond the pale, etc.
I'm going to disagree with you there. 'PC' ideas and speech are those that are popular enough to be said in the company of a diverse crowd. This doesn't mean that they have to be bland or inoffensive to absolutely everyone; just popular enough that any dissenters will be a small minority and pressured against speaking up in fear of social punishment.
sure, you can find a niche (even if rather large) where this would be true and PC ideas are more popular. goes the other way around too though as there are plenty of places where today's PC ideas are frowned upon.
the kicker is - the PC crowd is so used to their opponents being quiet (primarily due to extreme intolerance of the "left" towards dissenting opinions - as illustrated by this whole memo ordeal) - that they actually start believing that their views are shared by just about everyone around.
PC and popular are not at all the same. A vocal minority gets to define PC, and that minority happens to be on the left.
If the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say "Talking about baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if it is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment"
I will absolutely agree that there's a minority a very vocal people, but they themselves could not maintain a PC atmosphere. If they were truly in the minority they would be easily dismissed as overly sensitive. It's the large body of moderate people, who in general agree with the idea, that provide the muscle for enforcing a PC atmosphere.
I think a vocal minority (10%) has bullied the silent majority into a position of "If you're not on our side you're hurting us and should be fired." They did this by controlling the language, by getting to define who's a victim, who's a minority, what's "offensive," what's a "safe-space."
We're seeing the backlash now, because people are finally admitting it's gone too far.
Of course we should all have equal opportunity to express our feelings, just as we should have equal opportunities to become software engineers.
That said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time stating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are hurt/offended.
And a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy for women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women can have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be absurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward a free/equal society.
All that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be repression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society is in general not good for anyone.
I think Dar Williams puts it well in her song "When I was a boy":
Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological differences mapped to job performance?
I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.
Nobody can because he never claimed that. This is what strikes me the most about the whole diversity memo gate: even the most high profile responses, including this one, contain straw man arguments and not many people seems to care. The engineer Edith goes as far and completly and uterly disagreeing with something that is NOT IN THE MEMO.
On pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added):
- On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...the distribution of PREFERENCES and ABILITIES of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
- Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men
- These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
- Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
- This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
And later proposes these solutions:
- We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming
and more collaboration.
- Make tech and leadership less stressful.
So he has 1) cited biological differences between men and women in their abilities (not simply preferences) and 2) claimed that these lead to suitability for different jobs and also indicated the specific jobs would need to be changed in order to be more suitable for women, which strongly implies differing performance levels.
note that "differ in the distribution of abilities" does not mean the average is different, it can also mean the outliers are more extreme, and as I understand it research supports just that.
For what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or less, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable career choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently nonverbal jobs (programming) less often.
"For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer."
Yeah, I still think that's transparently BS. His source there is another opinion piece.
That said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices.
As someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and co-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All of this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in one AMA answer, it might by "cultural." I believe that is a far more acceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology.
> Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.
That, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and probably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his "dialectical skills." That's the very definition of creating a hostile environment, where people feel forced into actions they normally wouldn't engage into just for the gratification of a single person's whims.
But Google was and is a debate club - there is extensive information about Google's multiple discussion boards and lively cluture of dialectics. Why do you object/punish a single discussion that you happen to disagree with?
There's a slight difference between technical flamewars, pointed debates about expanding the amount of bathrooms available per building and Damore's post. If you can't see the difference, honestly I can't help you.
>Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that’s where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to complement it).
This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community.
Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance.
Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.
> That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance
I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post.
Could you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other opinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in the other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion.
Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free.
I'm afraid I'm not following you. I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other threads. The main difference in this one is that the comments are more civil and substantive across the spectrum of opinions. That's a great thing.
Perhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's not so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed users. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to the conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about this tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter. Indeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on! This bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being bothered by an optical illusion.
Those threads were all extremely active and most if not all spent significant time on HN's front page, so I'm not sure what your point is? More generally: these perceptions are strongly in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you that someone with opposite views to yours sees the opposite bias on HN. This obviously doesn't vary with HN, but it does vary with the perceiver—specifically with the perceiver's beliefs and their intensity. It comes down to sample bias and other cognitive biases. Even the most perfectly even-handedly moderated site (which I'm not saying HN is!) would get all the same perceptions and accusations.
They might have been discoverable via the "comments" link (lots of active comments still going on) well after the stories have dropped off the front page.
I have also been checking the Algolia "Last 24h" view to find flagged discussions that I missed, however.
"Provenance" means origin, which in this case is the Ycombinator blog. It's very unlikely that anything from the ycombinator blog would get removed, given that this is itself a ycombinator site.
As for the memo itself, I think it's a bit of a Rorschach blot: people are seeing what they want to see in it, largely because the writing is so poor that the author fails completely to get his own points across in a coherent manner.
The conversation about "women in tech" is severely hamstrung by folks conflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two very different problems requiring two very different conversations.
Lastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic to be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially pointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up focusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men, hispanic men, etc.
I'd like to think it's everyone seeing what they want to see in it, but that's not really a fair description.
The writing's not ideal, but truly if opponents can read even this and frame it as "women have inferior genes," then this is a discussion that can't be had. There is no way to make the case that sexism and oppression are not the only causes for inequal representations in tech that will not be an "anti-diversity" position that makes some coworkers uncomfortable.
> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly. And we know – and many of us have experienced – that interest levels are also heavily influenced by social and cultural factors.
This is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science.
It's absolutely necessary that we start to break down ideological echo chambers, but I'd argue that Damore's memo and his subsequent actions ('Goolag' etc) haven't done much other than entrench people in the positions they already have.
this highlights the insanity of the response to this memo.
What Edith "completely and utterly disagrees with" is actually not in the memo. And she actually agrees with what is in the memo "Interest in certain jobs."
Except the fact that those physiological differences have nothing to do with any ideology,none that he mentioned anyways.And why should one matter if it wasn't even named in his memo?
You're just projecting and putting words in his mouth.
If you call his attack on Google an echo chamber("entrench people in the positions they already have" means exactly that) on itself then you clearly didn't get the core point of it.
"Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors."
Socio-cultural factors are not the ones that make "genetically inferior" people be competitive/exceed the more "gifted" ones, willpower is.
>> Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science
If you are a man I dare you to use that argument to get yourself appointment at gynaecologist's :)
That wasn't the point. I think that Americans in particular are too obsessed with their "American dream", their belief that "you can be whoever you want if you work hard enough" that they cannot even accept basic facts from their own biology.
There's a reason why all sports, including non-physical ones, like chess, have separate competition for women - and when there is mixed competition women get places below 100th. Try to explain that with "socio-cultural factors" or other gender pseudo-science.
> A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected, given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all. Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
> In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self-selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial assumption, the researchers say. That is, it requires that there is an innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support it.
Luckily, people have studied this, and in the case of chess, it's simple. More men play chess. And did you just dismiss the entire field of sociology?
> that these arguments about innate biological traits are complicated by trans, non-binary, and intersex folks.
2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong.
> I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.”
Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?
> there have been some really fabulous responses, including many laying out a lot of research that counters what was in the memo
I'm interested in this research. I have not seen it, nor has it been made available. The following book, with 2 female authors who seem genuinely interested and informed in related topics:
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-More-Women-Science/dp/15914...
Let's at least present the field studies/research, which can throw existing clinical views into doubt. eg Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences by Cordelia Fine is at least a rigorous critique of possible flaws.
It's a little saddening, to have this dialog represent the views of an average engineer.
>2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong.
This is a strawman. She said "complicate" not "invalidate".
>Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?
What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Damore didn't just reach scientific conclusions about differences in genders. He went further and suggested actions based on these population differences.
To continue your analogy, one could say that Damore's argument comes down to "We only want white furred animals in our zoo, and gorillas typically have black fur, therefore we should ignore gorillas and look for Polar Bears instead". Whereas the other side might be "Given that gorillas typically have black fur, and we think Gorillas are a valuable part of a zoo, we should do extra work to locate the rare white-furred gorillas that do exist".
That's true. However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers. Her statement was meant to throw trending into question and I overstated by taking a bad position (phrase-wise).
> What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas?
Provide more shaded areas (canopy or artificial), of course. I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy" (populations vs individuals turned into a warped "industry is a zoo" metaphor?) is supposed to help.
> However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers.
Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people and how they interact with the trends. But such an analysis would be more complicated than the binary trends in the original document. That is, such trends are an imperfect model of reality, and to better match reality, one needs a more complex model.
>I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy"
Nor am I, you're the one that felt the need to bring up Gorillas. I felt that was a bad analogy, and that by continuing it, it would reveal why it was bad.
> Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people and how they interact with the trends.
How about this: the memo was about men and women. The 98%.
>This is a strawman. She said "complicate" not "invalidate".
To what extent do specialized species (like ring species) complicate the concept of species in general? It lets us know that there are outliers that are complicated, but it doesn't complicate dog vs cat at all.
I don't, but I was pointing out the annoyance of such a statement. You could probably scrounge up such a paper on google scholar.
For example, black lives matter 's point was simply that some specific white people were biogted, and yet all lives matter is a thing. Which is an example of the inverse (generalizing specific complaints, vs. in this case, specifying general complaints).
To be clear this was meant to be a tongue in cheek rephrasing to point out what was problematic about the gorilla statement and the google memo, I do not believe this.
"Applied science incorrectly to confirm a bias or advance an opinion incorrectly" and "applied science to form an opinion" are different things. Damore did the former.
Except "what is correct" is the whole point of the debate, so nobody knows which side is doing the former until everybody agrees, which they most certainly do not agree yet.
Mind you that to the other side, it looks to us like what you're doing is the former and not the latter (until some common ground is found).
If someone approached this problem with a blank slated, looked at the evidence, formed an opinion, then wrote something to back their opinion, how could you tell them apart from someone who had an opinion and applied science to just advance their opinion? Assume both are average, and thus imperfect, writers.
He wrote the article as a research article. So every time he put an statement he referenced it with a research article which supports that statement. I don't understand why this is wrong. All research papers are written this way.
What? Research papers tend to also present data and research that arrive at different conclusions when such things exist, or show how the existing body of knowledge is deficient in some way. Usually the point is either accounting for the difference or showing how the authors' research refutes, modifies, or augments the body of knowledge as it stands. Damore didn't present a research paper. He presented an accusation of left-bias and poorly argued his case.
Yes, but they do it in the topic they are discussing. The manifest was focused in changing the diversity programs in the company and was presenting facts to consider that option. In no way it was focused in discussing the differences between gender as a lot of people is try to claim. And it makes quite clear the difference between average and individuals.
It's a problem with phrasing, here. "Disagree with the specific methods he used", not "disagree with the fact that he used any methods at all". "Consider his particular use of science and data to be sketchy", rather than "consider that it was sketchy for him to use science and data".
> Consider his particular use of science and data to be sketchy
I can say this for any research paper I have read in my life as all of them are incomplete and doesn't include all the research done (because you fill the top limit pages only with the bibliography). Given that it is impossible to put all the references, I want to understand why his use of science was sketchy?
Here's a (perhaps controversial) view: people have no rational basis to equate the freedom to speak with freedom from marginalization.
If a person presents beliefs that are incongruent with facts, or that attempt to use facts in a way that isn't compatible with advancing an opinion, I think that person's views should be marginalized. I put climate change deniers, anti-evolutionists, and people who use questionable application of psychological studies to generalize about gender-based proclivities in roughly the same boat.
I also think there is no small amount of fear of a loss of status and privelege being expressed by conservatives when they claim to be marginalized: not having their views taken as gospel by virtue of their privileged position is different from being marginalized.
Well, by the same token, being fired is a completely different beast than having to suffer the tragedy of being afraid a coworker might think a negative stereotype about you.
These comments are largely directed at a straw-man, and in many cases actually agree with the memo, when they think they disagree.
"I disagree with...his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary reason that there aren’t more female software engineers"
- straw-man - he argues that biology may in part explain the lack of 50/50 representation.
from the TLDR: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not “socially constructed oppression”) may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership"
"I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly."
- you actually agree with the memo. From the memo: "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men...These...differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas"
"It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn’t seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups."
- The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other opinions.
"differences are so significant as to suggest that men or women are better or worse on average at any job that relies on mental work."
- straw man. men or women being "better" is not the concern of the memo.
"his skepticism of his own views deserves a much more prominent placement in the text than a footnote – had he led with this and made it clear he wasn’t sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview), he likely would not have been blasted the same way."
- the first "background" paragraph literally is this.
"Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills."
- the author is also concerned with harm to female employees in the form of increased tension resulting from hiring practices that are perceived as lowering the bar. Google obviously would not do this intentionally, but the author felt the practices "effectively" lowered the bar.
"It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn’t seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups."
- The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other opinions.
Pure gold. This is exactly what I was thinking when I read that.
What troubles me is the resolution. Man who spoke out is fired everything is now fine at google. Google will remove anyone who dare speaks out. Managers will create blacklists now and singled out. Anyone with oppposing views will be pushed down and/or pushed out.
What troubles me is how easily this community, who typically values employer discretion in how they run their businesses, turns into labor-protection lefties when someone gets canned for crapping on half the workforce.
Even more harm is done by Affirmative Action for women now being implemented in all companies. Feminism has given up on the aspect of competing and turned to shaming all men. There are several professions where women dominate with > 80%. Where's all this fucking outrage in those?
Considering women make up >50% of college graduates, for every profession that has more men there are more profession that have more women (or a greater imbalance).
How about:
People are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices and don't second guess them.
That doesn't account for the cultural pressure on girls throughout childhood to be princesses, like pink things and cooking and babies and ponies, while boys are supposed to like computers and engineering and guns.
We're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while the men go out and earn the money.
This nonsense is being propagated by idiots. Nobody is now forcing dolls on girls and guns on boys. The aggression in men is built by evolution. Again, we only talk in averages. There are idiots again who point to aggressive females to try to make me sound sexist.
There are diversity efforts in the fields of teaching and nursing to hire more women, as the dominance of women in those fields in harmful in much the same way that the dominance of men in software engineering is harmful. Teaching especially needs more men, most especially at the elementary school level, as many children are not exposed to many positive male role models.
An important factor here is that software engineering is a highly desired and highly compensated field, which aren't true of nursing and teaching. Having an imbalance of gender in software engineering thus contributes to inequality in social status and compensation in a way that imbalances in female-dominated fields do not.
The right way for women to do that is developing interest in the field and being good at it and working hard. Thats how women/men got into fields they respectively dominate now. Not by forcing affirmative action and shaming.
Edit: since this account has been using HN just for ideological flamewar (and personal attacks), we've banned it. Doing this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't do it.
I think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an employer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will and relationships can end over personal differences.
One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their genius findings or deluded beliefs (either way), it's not unreasonable that they might be let go without anyone reading it. (The action of sending around an opinionated piece of information without authority could be grounds for dismissal.)
In the past, there have been incidents like Steve Y's note where a smart person weathered a major faux pas for better or worse, which might make one think that all forms of speech are encouraged at this company. But I think Damore made some unique foibles when publishing this note and assumed that his outlook and motivation would be either respected or endorsed. Again, it is not a necessity for any corporation or organization to do so.
I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. Given that the adversaries that Damore faces in this debate have most liked studied diversity and human resources at the graduate level, peppering survey references into a narrative argument will not be sufficiently persuasive of anything. The correct forum for this discussion is an anthropology thesis or something similar, or a very finely combed, deeply vetted, considerate action to a relevant party or audience.
If it were a collective issue for employees, then it should be organized outside of work without using any company resources. There an upset employee could vent and strategize for change in a non-destructive way, and find support from his peers.
If it were an issue that needed to be specifically addressed by management, then it should be elevated to each level of management in turn (immediate superior, superior's superior, VP, CEO, board) in a tactful way.
There's no reason Damore couldn't have done both of these, and as was said by one of the female engineers, advertise his own opinions publicly himself as they apply to all companies. It's still possible that making so many waves like that would get him dismissed, but certainly not in the same way.
Reading the letter, this is clearly something that James is passionate about. If he can find a way to channel that in a professional and constructive way, maybe he can make positive change. But as it were, he did say some offensive things publicly.
For this conversation? A woman. He should have given that document to a female friend, told her it would probably offend her, and ask for her advice on how to improve it. He should have been there and watched her reaction as she read it. the single greatest fault of forums is that they do not give people a chance to read someone else's body language.
As I understand it he was raising on an internal issue that was generally accepted as open for discussion (hiring and quotas). I think likening it to "mailing a manifesto out" is a deliberate mischaracterization.
This article is the first I've seen on this memo and by the spread of it inside and outside the company that's what it appeared to be. I'm not trying to mischaracterize the issue. In fact, I don't have all of the information.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 512 ms ] threadIs there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you.
For people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor or use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about simple biology you should have learned in school.
https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-...
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
There is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological sex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the other sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology.
Which, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines, everything about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology is, ultimately, biology.
https://xkcd.com/435/
Yes, it is, which would be relevant if someone suggested there was no physical explanation for a psychological phenomenon (which is, in fact, what they are usually claiming when they claim it is not biological.)
The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
As for the second, saying psychology is ultimately biology is reductionist in a way that dismisses the context and environment biology gets expressed in. You would be a much different person if the same set of genes was born in a different place, or at a different time, or if your life circumstances were different in any mild way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Comments are the problem if you find civility more important than rationality.
The words themselves no longer have any meaning.
- "Man" is to no longer define any category except for people who self identify as men.
- And at the same time, it is sexist to say that girls prefer dolls.
Regardless of the correctness of either statement, to say both in the same breath is simply contradictory.
Here are some definitions:
Man: Adult human male
Woman: Adult human female
Is it chromosomal, such that XY makes you male? Wrong. People with total androgen insensitivity are XY but look and act and feel female, because the androgens they produce never took effect. Their bodies and minds feminized, so they're female in every respect except their karyotype.
There's a ton of other conditions which make the definition of sex complex. Read this essay, which lists a lot more of them: http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Essays/marriage.html
Your simple definition is only simple because you punted the complex part, and no amount of screaming about how words don't have meanings anymore is going to change the level of complexity surrounding this subject.
You are too ignorant to know what you don't know, so you think you're a goddamned expert.
These range of conditions are interesting, we are truly a varied species.
Let us do a thought experiment.
We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys. Now, if I say the word “monkey”, what comes to mind? If the 10 monkey-monkeys AND the 5 human-monkeys does, then that means I no longer have a word to describe what I originally thought was a monkey! The word itself has been destroyed by making it stretch beyond the category which it originally described. Words by their very nature are to form categories, to differentiate is their power, and why we find them useful.
Now, we can both agree that the range of conditions you listed are rather rare, and this is the crux of the matter. If we use the word man to stretch beyond the more stereotypical definition, what does it even mean to be a man anymore? What does it mean to be masculine? That is, what do the WORDS mean?
The word man is, as words work, defined by the average man. The fact that it allows us to speak of a large category of people is what gives it its utility. That is why you can say things like “their bodies and minds [are] feminized”, you must have the words to express such a thought! If you proceeded down the self-identification path, how would you make that sentence? That is why we have words like “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome”, which describes another idea.
First of all, let me say that I am in no way opposed to men dressing in women’s clothes, or men being effeminate, or women having sex with women, or any other non-conservative human expressions; they are what lend colour to humanity, and we would be much poorer without it, and without letting humans be fully expressed.
Now, what about the rarer cases, what do we do here?
But how should such a person describe oneself?
Just because a man cannot have the confidence to be effeminate and own that identity, does not mean that he needs to redefine the word woman to accommodate himself. I think the problem here is that people want to fit into categories that are traditionally recognised by society. Instead people should just appreciate that everybody is unique, and that they should be comfortable owning their own unique identities. They should not have to derive their own identities from the words that other people call them, worse off by forcing other people to use specific words, in a meaning that they want other people to use them in, because then everything is reduced to just noise.
What do you think?
Bad analogy. Really bad analogy. The boundaries between species can be fluid, but they're nowhere near as fluid as the definitions of 'male' versus 'female' in either sex or gender.
My whole point is that even if you restrict everything to verifiable biological observation, with no reference to psychology, there are still myriad corner cases which cannot be classified in a simple dichotomy. Therefore, insisting the division is simple is obtuse.
The division is not simple, there's no way to make it simple, and bringing in this analogy with monkeys versus humans as your proxies for the sexes is misunderstanding the subject. There is no overlap between humanity and any species of "monkey" as the term is commonly understood, although I have known a biologist who would insist that "monkey" was synonymous with "ape" and therefore all humans are monkeys. That's not the common understanding of the term "monkey", certainly.
There is overlap between "male" and "female" regardless of what you define them to be, assuming you define them in any useful fashion. There is no boundary anywhere in this subject which is impermeable. That's why gender studies is an entire field of study, like astrophysics or English literature.
In short, you could write entire textbooks on one aspect of being "male" or "female" and still be incomplete even in terms of that aspect. So you'll forgive me if I'm not prepared to define either term in this forum, or bothered by how people describe themselves.
Linguistic precision is nice where you can get it, and we can't get it here. Not if we're being entirely honest.
Let's say you have a new born child. Since there is so much overlap between men and women, how can we EVER attribute gender to the child?
Whatever gender the child chooses, won't it still have a huge overlap with all the other genders?
If that's so, on what basis can the child choose?
On the topic of monkeys: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvxgwa/from-dragons-to-fo...
A transexual speaking of genders as a rainbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drSXRW-4j5o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
So no, there isn't a biological basis for this, because gender isn't biological.
> Either of the two sexes (male and female)
before following up with:
> especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.
And also notes:
> The sense denoting biological sex has also been used since the 14th century, but this did not become common until the mid 20th century. Although the words gender and sex are often used interchangeably, they have slightly different connotations; sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender more often refers to cultural and social differences and sometimes encompasses a broader range of identities than the binary of male and female
If it's unclear, I'm not saying either is correct. Many people don't like saying 'sex' as its also a verb for copulation hence use 'gender' as a polite alternative. The idea of gender as an entity separate from biology is from Dr John Money, who has his own sad and controversial history [2], though his ideas have gained more popularity recently.
[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
In this case, it's pretty useful to have words which distinguish between biology and culture.
"b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
(...)
Origin: Middle English gendre, from Anglo-French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender — more at kin. First use: 14th century"
So it would seem gender has started out as a term that groups "indivuduals that are of a kind" - not necessarily based on (biological) appearance, but just as much on behaviour/social grouping.
There are several cultures that have arisen independently and have had more than two genders. Many of them are still extant today, despite the best effort of colonialists.
So that's gender down.
Intersex individuals exist. Intersex conditions range from physiological to karyotypes with variant sex chromosomes.
Transgender individuals are very varied but there are indications that it is partially heritable with genetics and the prenatal environment hypothesized to explain some of that.
And that's biology.
I could write a 100 page essay about how loaded your question was, the implicit assumptions in the way it was written, the way that "BIOLOGICAL" is implied to be a way to ignore social conditions, and the contempt for ""Gender Studies"". But I won't, it's very tiring and there will be 10 other people like you tomorrow.
In biological terms, sex may be determined by a number of factors present at birth, including:
the number and type of sex chromosomes; the type of gonads—ovaries or testicles; the sex hormones; the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females); and the external genitalia.
People whose characteristics are not either all typically male or all typically female at birth are intersex.
My concern is that people are attempting to use the existence of intersex folks (at widely varying claimed incidence rates) to make faulty arguments about what is and is not normal physiology.
The criticisms are more about terminology than the core argument though - they mostly argue that "intersex" should only cover a small number of conditions that result in an arbitrarily substantial differentiation from a "normal" male or female, rather than any significant differentiation. So if the question is about sexual dimorphism, those criticisms are mostly irrelevant.
But here's a question: why is it important that they can reproduce? Gay men and women are unlikely to reproduce either, so should we ignore them in policy-making too? Are gay people abnormal?
What seems reasonable to me is M/F/N where N is not capable of reproduction due to some kind of outlying error, so they cannot be a part of sexed reproduction. Are they omitted?
Sex and reproduction seem binary to me and most people. We should ignore technological or medical assistance and sort those results through the gender buckets which are more important to how they are perceived semantically, as you said.
Also there are various hormonal insensitivities, so a person won't display the typical sexual characteristics associated with their chromosomes.
At least that's how I've understood it in layman's terms and with my very basic knowledge--it's very complex, as with anything worth studying. The seminal text on the issue in the eyes of many is Judith Butler's Gender Trouble--If you truly are serious about wanting to learn about this stuff I suggest you check it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia...
Some people have both sets of reproductive organs at birth. Others lack many such structures which is arguably just sterility but in some cases no gender is closer to the truth.
Genetically you have XX (female), XY (male) but also XXY or XXXY. There are even Chimera where you can have both male (XX) and female (XY) cells in the same body.
This is a question you can answer for yourself trivially by googling the relevant terms as well as learning about intersex individuals.
In reality their aren't enough trans-gendered people to really involve that in this conversation.
Sex is basically binary in mammals (do you have the gene that triggers producing sperm versus the gene that triggers you producing eggs), the only exception being incredibly rare intersex disorders. Read more here: http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-sex-is-binary-but-gende...
Based on sex, people have different traits, physical and mental. Some of these traits are close to binary between the sexes (having a uterus, etc.). Some traits are a matter of distributions (such as differences in physical strength, or willingness to take risks).
Society then considers certain behaviors and traits more masculine or feminine, and creates norms and roles around these. Some of these norms and roles exist on a spectrum, some are more binary.
Gender for a long time was used either as a synonym for sex, or only this case of describing language (gendered pronouns). In the mid-1900s academics in the social science used it to mean "the social norms and roles society creates based on biological sex." Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity." There isn't any scientific proof that such a thing exists or doesn't exist, nor can there be, because we don't have mind reading machines.
Sexual identity has also been redefined recently. So now if you were born with the egg producing equipment, but are taking male sex hormones some people will now define you as of the male sex. Frankly, I find this redefining of words to be pretty Orwellian.
Nope. What you are talking about is Gender Identity. There is pretty good evidence for this being real and linked to prenatal testosterone exposure at certain periods in the womb, as with traits like digit ratio. Between cases like David Reimer's (a biological boy who was raised as a girl after a surgical accident as an infant, but whose gender identity stayed true to his birth sex - with tragic consequences) and the phenomenon of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (where genetically male XY are born with female-looking genitalia and raised as any other girl, but overwhelmingly continue to identify as women even after the condition is discovered in puberty), the existence of a gender identity that is separate from both chromosomal sex and social influence is not really in doubt.
Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm.
He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm, you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made it public.
There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.
He is also young and just starting his career. If this had been addressed calmly maybe he could have learned from this situation. Zero tolerance for a young man's folly instead turned him into a sympathetic figure and an alt-right star. It has reinforced the perception that the PC left is oppressive and reactionary. And worse of all he will never learn from his experience because the reaction confirmed his natural bias.
I guess there is no cutting people a break anymore in this era of shouting into the ether, virtue signaling, and political hellfire.
Google shouldn't be soaking up all these ignorant young college boys if they're not mature enough to handle a workplace.
Plenty of other users are able to express similar views to yours without violating the site guidelines. Please follow in their footsteps and post only comments that make the forum better, not worse.
The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article-
> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it’s also a pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: “Will the team/manager/VC I talk with today realize I’m qualified, or will they be making stereotypical assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my job?” To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day.
That quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused by it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who work at a company don't feel they are welcome there.
Others disagreed.
Even slatestarcodex argued a little for both sides.
Its clear scientific consensus has not been reached, and people need to discuss this openly with out censors.
I believe he did, and the parent you're responding to seems to as well, but they didn't say anything about "spar[ing] factual discourse." You seem to be reading that into their comment.
And I would definitely say there are factual discussions that can be had privately between individuals who already trust each other that are better kept private in order to spare the feelings of non-participants. Other humans have feelings, taking them into consideration is not weakness.
I'm arguing that line of reasoning is not constructive, and the collective's agreed upon opinions should not act as a barrier for scientific discourse. (which is what the memo was asking for)
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/08/sloppy-scien...
Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them. People are individuals and not statistics. You can quote statistics and average all day long, but if you offend, anger, or harm someone with your words, that person will not listen to you.
Isn't that a catch 22? How do we know their subjective feelings if we can't discuss contested issues?
He went out of his way to praise women engineers and to emphasize he supports diversity.
There are just certain that intolerant people cannot discuss rationally, like biological gender differences.
The fault lies with the intolerant minds, not Damore's approach.
That was when there were some low thousands of software engineers in total. Hardly statistically significant to compare with today's population.
The first few engineers were female because of sexism in the 1970s. The only mainstream jobs they were allowed to have were teaching and programming. There are fewer females now because of lack of sexism not due to it. As society became liberal, women started becoming doctors and lawyers, which matches with their interests much more than programming.
If we forget this, then intolerant minds will have awesome veto powers over what the rest of us will be allowed to discuss.
Intolerant people are likely to use those veto powers.
Liberals today: "Embrace diversity of thought, color, and sexual genitalia! Wait I don't like that thing he said, fire him. Wait, he's mentally ill and thus persecuted, he needs to be protected. Wait, autism isn't a metal illness, he's fine just the way he is. Wait, he's a white male, he's not fine just the way he is, he's evil. Wait, he's self-identifying as autistic, he's not really autistic, a doctor has to diagnose him. Wait, no, that's different than self-identifying your gender, that's totally fine."
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...
This memo did not say women were bad engineers.
>The sloppy scientist says, "on average, across populations, left to its own devices, this group is [not as skilled] [neurotic] [hard to work with] [not as smart] [not as strong] [slower]" etc. They make assumptions without sufficient data, and the rigor is missing.
Here's the line: >The first problem is that human beings aren't averages, they're individuals.
His core argument was that there are biological reasons why women are under-represented in technology and that the initiatives taken by Google to reach out to females were illegal and discriminatory. He attempted to use science to justify his beliefs. That would lead many women, who already are self-conscience about their position, into wondering if they are present to their own merit, or because Google is trying to fill a quota.
It isn't just that some people are too emotionally reactive to be directly involved in a reasonable conversation.
We are currently shutting down even the possibility of a conversation among any set of a large group of people, because some people in that group are uncomfortable with it.
They aren't even willing to sit out the conversation that makes them uncomfortable, they are insisting that nobody else be allowed to have the conversation within the larger community.
It's also possible, and more likely, for an overreaction to a memo to cause this kind of damage.
Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them.
That's true and an excellent point. If he's lying about Google's recruitment practices, either by misunderstanding or by outright false accusation, then large parts of the memo are moot.
On the other hand, I would make the counterpoint that the only reason his honesty has come into question is because of the negative reception his memo has had. Also, what are the odds that Damore misunderstood things? I'd say low.
Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see.
I'll be honest, that's what ticks me about Damore: after presenting the ideas in his memo a couple times and not getting any traction, he made a case of sharing them publicly inside Google. Not with a group of friends, not with the diversity team, but publicly. As you say, he's not a dummy, so he probably expected this whole controversy. His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it. I'm not 100% sure he's being honest about his intentions to "help Google."
> Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see
As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)
> His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it.
Which alt-right media did he reach out to? I've been paying pretty close attention and I saw him being interviewed by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, but they are not alt-right media. They are both classical conservatives.
> As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)
Then all we have to go on are theories and the question: what's to be gained from him lying about this?
His very first interview was with Stefan Molyneaux, a self-described "fighter for men's rights" (yeah, I know.)
> what's to be gained from him lying about this?
I don't think he was outright lying, I think he was just uninformed and made a lot of assumptions and drew conclusions (biased by his own political views) out of those assumptions. I do think his inflammatory approach to accusing Google and Googlers of "leftist bias" was a way to get attention.
About what's to be gained? Well... he's been interviewed by the New York Times and he'll probably get a book deal out of it, plus whatever money he might get if he manages to successfully sue Google.
> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?
Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem.
From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to suspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem.
Totally different interpretations of cause and effect.
If you knew there were a lower bar for people who had red hair, for example, because there's a pay gap and their population ratio isn't represented equally, every time you'd have someone on your team with red hair, you'd wonder if they were there because of the exception made for them or if they got there on pure merit. Thus, affirmative action causes people to question that merit (bias).
Worse, the redhead who got in never knows if they got accepted based on merit or based on some quota, which contributes heavily Impostor syndrome, negative self image and confirmation bias based on that negative self image.
You combine these two things over time and there is absolutely an impact.
Damore's ultimate points were: let's discuss this and, by the way, please don't ignore me just because my opinion is unpopular.
It's not about self-doubt, it's about creating a stereotype by which other people (managers, peers) will prejudge you even before you write the first line of code. This prejudice already exists as is, Damore's memo doesn't do anything to help it. If improving women's opportunities at Google was his objective, he failed miserably at it.
If I felt the memo implied or created that stereotype I'd denounce it as well.
It is widely acknowledged that there are social factors that might affect the number of women entering the field. He could've made as valid an argument about the hiring practices affecting diversity, without bringing up the supposed "biological" factor altogether. Not bringing it up would have probably put him in the right side of the Code of Conduct.
At best, it was poor judgement for him to bring it up when it didn't add anything to the conversation. At worst, it betrays a certain level of misogyny. Those of us who tend to assume the worst, might be more inclined to believe the latter, but I wouldn't blame people for believing the former.
One takeaway I have from this is that discussion about biological differences between sexes is often misused, so should be avoided in discussion related to diversity if you want people to not form an emotional reaction.
The whole thing was a meandering stroll of possible reasons. I absolutely don't see this memo creating a hostile workplace or illiciting the pushback it has garnered simply by what I read in the text. I read a document referencing population level differences between sexes(relevant in the context of attempting to explain differences in preferences that account for the difference in size of the groups) that have no bearing on individual differences between sexes(not even slightly relevant in hiring)
My internal reader probably filled in the benefit of the doubt.
Right! There's been enough people using biological differences as excuses for all kinds of things before, so it's probably better to resort to that argument only once all other factors have been removed. I believe that's one of the biggest reasons people reacted so badly to this memo. It certainly was the first thing that popped into my head as soon as I started reading his reasoning.
A bit of context is important. Anonymity on the internet has facilitated a rebirth of the "men's rights" movement. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a place for "men's rights" when it comes to recognizing that sexual abuse happens to men too, which is what some of the groups got started, but some of the notorious forums (like the now banned "TheRedPill" subreddit) are virulently misogynistic. There are people openly defending rape, calling women "inferior" and posting fantasies about what they'd do to women who they perceive as "pushy" or holding some power over them. Feminists are demonized to no end. A lot of the rationalization around their rhetoric builds on some of the same bases Damore used for his "biological argument." I'll leave it to your judgment to decide if Damore giving one of his interviews to Stefan Molyneaux - known men's right activist - has anything to do with that or not.
It's that context that made my internal reader go for the worst possible scenario instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt. I guess I'm way more jaded person than you :)
The memo specifically targeted diversity hires as a lower bar. Imagine if a memo started circulating that asked everyone to question whether or not you were hired for your skill. That's a terrible environment to create.
On the contrary, there is evidence of bias against women, which logically means that the bar is lower for men by default.
He did not say they were lowering the bar, but that by rejecting (proportionally) a greater number of qualified male candidates than qualified female candidates, the bar is effectively lowered.
If what he says is true, that there is a higher false negative rate for men, it's hard to imagine a system where the bar isn't effectively lowered.
The one possibility I saw argued elsewhere is that you could take all qualified men, and randomly reject some of them. At that point, you would expect the bar to be level.
If however you rejected qualified men in a non-random way, which is more plausible, the effect would be to change the bar.
I hadn't ever really thought about this kind of selection effect on the statistics of populations, so would love to hear if this sounds wrong or what the real expected outcome should be.
Isn't this an argument against any form of different hiring practices based on race/gender? Even if distributions of abilities are equal in nature, if a college has a lower bar based on gender, then abilities won't be equal among graduates of that college. Conversely, even if abilities are on average different, if a college has the same bar and same standards based on gender, then you won't have to question if a graduate really deserved to have that credential.
It highly depends on the details of the interview process, which I don't know, but just to discount it with that logic is impossible.
Additional rounds of interviews are more like trying to accurately diagnose a condition using multiple different tests because the initial test is known to have poor sensitivity and will produce false negatives. Doing multiple rounds may, of course, increase the chance of false positives (reduce specificity); but the assumption in this case is that when hiring minorities the sensitivity of the interview process is much worse than the specificity.
On a reread, Damore actually implies that Google's policies as applied to their interview process are "decreasing the false negative rate" for minorities. Whether this is harmfully discriminatory or not is open to opinion, but what I think is clear there is that the statement is favorable and understanding of his minority peers - the policies did not let anyone through who should not have been. I certainly don't think he should be fired for having given that statement.
>Additional rounds of interviews are more like trying to accurately diagnose a condition using multiple different tests because the initial test is known to have poor sensitivity and will produce false negatives.
The difference is that what they're testing for isn't a binary proposition (do you have the disease or not), but a spectrum (what is your skill level). Viewing this in terms of false-positives or false-negatives is insufficient. If we think of programming skill as a spectrum, we can ask what is the average top-% of candidates who pass the interview (we might guess its top 5% of all developers). If everyone has the same test then the average top-% is unchanged regardless of any efforts to get more minorities to take the test. But once you start giving more tries to minorities your average top-% necessarily reduces.
Whatever your test is designed to admit (say you're interested in hiring only the top-10% of developers), the average of those who pass will be higher precisely because of the chance factor. Being significantly better than the intended cutoff gives you a better chance at passing and so those who pass skews towards better than the intended cutoff.
I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad thing, but the average skill of those who pass must reduce. It is very straightforward to see this as effectively lowering the bar.
Imagine that if you're a minority, you have nearly a 0% chance of getting hired if you're the only minority in the hiring pool [1]. As an employer, wouldn't you want to counteract that by making sure that the decision to hire/not-hire isn't affected by status-quo bias, so you don't overlook qualified candidates?
https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-can...
I will agree with you that this is much more complex than simple logic/analogies.
If waterboarding is not torture then why would you apply it to detainees to confess information they otherwise wouldn't?
Equally, if diverting more energy in to finding minority candidates is not lowering the bar for them then why would you need to divert more energy to find them?
This applies to any sort of interrogation tactic along the spectrum between The Comfy Chair and Execution. Each step would not be applied if the detainees confessed at the next-below step.
The point is to find the ones that can pass at a higher rate than you normally would. No bar is lowered, and your representation increases.
Actually effective techniques like building rapport aren't torture, and they get applied to get information out.
That has a very pernicious effect across the industry though. Think about what that policy does to other companies.
The other companies won't have as many high quality women because Google scouted and hired them already, but will have just as many low and medium quality women who aren't good enough for Google, and more high quality men who were displaced from Google. Which skews the gender ratio even more and creates the impression that women at those companies are lower quality than the men there or else they would have been hired away by Google -- because it causes that impression to be the truth.
And you can't fix it by having all companies adopt that policy, because it would still transfer high quality women from lower tier companies to higher tier companies, causing problems for all the women who don't get to work for the companies in the highest tier. Even the high quality women who are still in second tier companies.
The lower tier companies are where almost everybody actually works -- small and medium companies employ more people than huge companies because there are so many more of them.
Google is being quite selfish with a policy like that.
Does anyone have any actual proof that Google is aiming for 50% or to represent the general population 1-1?
HBR found there's an innate bias against any minorities in hiring pools [1], and considering that women make up a much lower percentage of potential CS positions, the deck is probably stacked against them. This means that for other companies, they have already passed on hiring the qualified minority candidates. Speculatively, Google could be trying to counteract this by diverting more energy into finding minority candidates.
Also, is it Google's responsibility to make sure other companies have the best candidates, minority or not?
[1] https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-can...
Nope, it's independent of any of that, because the effect is relative to what other companies do rather than any of those things.
And when you do that experiment in the real world rather than a lab, you get the opposite result anyway:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/07/1...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
> Also, is it Google's responsibility to make sure other companies have the best candidates, minority or not?
It's not about who gets the best candidates -- presumably the men who are displaced are of equal quality and then go to work for the same other companies. The problem is that it creates an unfair black mark against every woman who doesn't get hired at Google despite Google having a special preference for them, and then leaves them in an environment with an even worse gender ratio than it was already.
And these other companies feed into Google. Plenty of women get their first jobs there and go work for Google later. If Google makes it harder for the women there and increases the number who drop out as a result, that's bad for everyone including them.
Can you elaborate on this more? Or give examples?
Google has 2000 job openings. If they hired without gender preference they would end up with 1600 men and 400 women, but they make an effort to seek out women specifically and instead they hire 1200 men and 800 women. They've now hired all of the women above the 90th percentile and 300/500 between the 80th and 90th.
The gender ratio below the original 80th percentile is still 4:1, but above the 80th percentile it's 14:1 and above the 90th percentile there are no remaining female job seekers. People notice things like this -- that none of the available top engineers are women, even though there are still less talented or experienced female applicants. It creates stereotypes. It deprives the women below the 80th percentile of their role models and mentors. People start expecting women to be worse on average, because of those available to hire, Google has actually caused that to be the case.
And things go downhill from there very quickly if more large companies do the same as Google.
At some point people are going to have to start presenting evidence to back up these sorts of fanciful claims. I've heard lots and lots of wild claims about how industry practices are being harmed and absolutely zero evidence.
You can make up all sorts of stories based on your preferred biases. You can claim that Google hiring many high quality women forces other firms to hire low-quality women and high-quality men. I can claim that Google hiring many high quality women actually attracts more high-quality women to the industry raising the quality of the talent pool across the board.
Both of these claims are completely baseless. There is zero evidence either way. Like the memo itself which made all sorts of wild and extraordinary claims these claims should be recognized for what they are: unsupported agenda pushing and not valid argument.
Maybe. There's a lot of diversity within the male gender.
I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background. I sometimes wonder which of my coworkers have something against me. I know all of them don't (or at least they are professional regardless), but people from my background are absolutely in a minority and are publicly ridiculed on a regular basis, including in HN comments.
I don't care to compare my experience to being a woman engineer, but the feeling described isn't foreign to me.
Right. Now imagine being an outlier due to your biology in a way that's impossible to conceal. I'm an outlier in some ways from my peers as well. But I just don't talk about those beliefs or those parts of my life. You don't have the option to do that if you're female or a visible minority.
Who said I was concealing anything?
Even if it were, aren't we supposed to be moving past the point where people need to closet who they are so as not to offend everyone else?
Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together. The only exception to this rule seems to be around leftist issues, where if you disagree you are out of luck.
You would expect, for example, the Jewish people and the Islamic people at a company to work together.
The idea that toleration for one memo form a nobody employee marks an entire company as unwelcome is insane. This zero tolerance attitude is a recipe for disaster.
Considering how all sixteen of my female teammates were pissed off about it, I'm going to go ahead and say you are demonstrably wrong.
This is absolutely false I do get to tell the group how to receive the message. When a group is intolerant the problem is with the group. When people were against interracial marriage and intolerant of other opinions the problem was with the group. When people were against African Americans riding in the front of the bus, the problem was with the intolerant group.
No candy coating, sensitivity training, or messaging was required to tell the angry, intolerant mob that they were wrong, just like they are here.
I only hope for your sake that you learn otherwise before you put your foot in your mouth in a very big way someday, rather than after.
If you're worried about an angry mob firing you, start communicating with care.
Additionally people are not protected from offense in the workplace. They're protected from harassment and an abstract memo that doesn't single out individuals is not harassment.
Someone taking offense is not demonstration of anything, other than someone taking offense.
If you think he did mean to offend people, the firing makes more sense.
I don't think "he should have known better" is very fair when neck deep in a discussion about diversity. Sometimes diversity looks like someone not knowing cultural rules.
I also don't think Damore's totally naive when it comes to diversity issues. He did a lot of research and evidently even discussed his concerns with HR. I think it's pretty clear he knew what he was getting into.
So it's objective and fair? Or it is too fickle but it doesn't matter?
> I think it's pretty clear he knew what he was getting into.
I think he would have hired a publicist and lawyer before publishing the memo if he knew what was coming.
> So it's objective and fair? Or it is too fickle but it doesn't matter?
Whatever the ideological or scientific opposite of Damore's memo is, I would never publish it to anyone -- not even a single person -- at work. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that discussing race or gender issues at work is out of bounds, regardless of your position.
> I think he would have hired a publicist and lawyer before publishing the memo if he knew what was coming.
Aha that's probably true but I'm not talking about the backlash. I'm saying he knew he wasn't just asking to be proven wrong about migratory patterns of ducks. He's aware diversity is a sensitive topic.
But most tech employers already broach the subject in many ways. It's not right that employers get to have controversial opinions, including during work hours, but employees do not.
Things like this need to be addressed if we want corporate power to be moderated.
What controversial opinions are you talking about?
To be clear, I don't think all those things are necessarily bad. But I think letting corporations and corporate leadership have free reign and a big microphone while expecting employees to censor themselves is inconsistent to say the least.
> It's not right that employers get to have controversial opinions
They tend to be offended if you criticize Trump.
Therefore, you are not allowed to criticize Trump.
> Are you trying to claim that causing offense to a large group is not creating a hostile working environment?
What is truth when you have a gun to your head.
To substantiate that comment:
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/
What powers should define truth? Sensory / populist / ability to take life.
Yes, it would be wrong of you to do that. You remember how in the Big Lebowski, Walter asks The Dude "Well, am I wrong?" and The Dude replies "You're not wrong, Walter. You're an asshole."
You don't want to be Walter.
Suggest that a piece of code is un-maintainable and that the group should rebuild it and there is a good chance someone will think that makes you an asshole.
You can't go around firing everyone because some idiot gets triggered.
I'm saying that as some who has actually worked with young Earth creationists before.
Where I contend with evolutionists is the typical narrative that the existence of natural selection implies a process that creates said (structured, positive) genetic diversity from which to select. This latter process is disputed, not the former.
I would be curious to hear your colleagues perspective.
But you wouldn't expect a Muslin to work with an Jew who had decided to share a memo internally about how she thinks Muslims aren't actually, on average, as well suited for positions at their company and are only present in the percentages they are due to a lower bar to entrance based on their "diversity" quota.
At which point any reasonable Muslim would think, "What the fuck. So I'm just a diversity hire? I don't deserve my spot here? You don't think, on average, people like me can do this job as people like you?"
Understandably that sounds like a damn hostile environment to put someone in. In the case of sex, it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I know I certainly wouldn't be comfortable working with him in a professional capacity. I would feel like I was being judged every moment to see if I deserved my spot here and that the baseline assumption was no, I don't.
No one wrote a memo claiming that Google hires too many Jews who don't meet the same quality bar due to diversity efforts.
No one wrote a memo claiming Google needs to have mandatory anti-terrorist training because they've recruited a lot of Muslims lately (putting aside the fact that white christian terrorists are far more likely to be your cause of death in the USA).
>Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together.
Yeah and the way this works is not to bring up potentially offensive or sensitive topics except with coworkers you know really well. When you do bring it up acknowledge other people's viewpoints and ask lots of questions instead of making grand pronouncements.
All workplaces are political. Software development is about working with people and that is inherently a political activity. Took me a very long time to realize that but it is 100% true. The quicker you accept it the further you will go in your career.
>The idea that toleration for one memo form a nobody employee marks an entire company as unwelcome is insane. This zero tolerance attitude is a recipe for disaster.
What if his memo was arguing that black people aren't suited to be engineers period?
What if his memo argued that black people should be sent back to Africa and that the USA should be for white people only? What if he said he only believes this should be the law but so long as it isn't the law we must respect that and treat people equally until the law is changed?
Should Google "tolerate" someone being openly racist simply because they haven't called for violence?
Let's make this even more abstract: what if an employee openly states they think the company is evil and they disagree with the entire mission and direction of the company? Do you really think they won't spread cynicism and negativity? Do you really think they can be effective? Is there really no risk to morale?
Even if he were completely correct (he wasn't) by doing such a sorry ham-fisted job he made himself a liability. Even if he only angered or offended 10 other engineers that alone is reason enough to get rid of him. Hiring and training engineers is expensive.
Corporations are not free speech zones. If you become a liability the company will drop you like a hot-potato and don't you ever forget it.
This is not true. Even ignoring the 3,000 people killed in the twin towers, the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting alone killed more people than all right-wing attacks since 9/11/2001 combined. And that includes non-Christian attackers. And such things as neo-Nazis killing pedophiles in prison.
Do you think she was unaware of Googles strong push for women in the workplace?
That seems unlikely.
Do you think she was previously unaware that many people might think diversity hires are less qualified?
That seems unlikely.
Did the memo guy state that diversity hires are lowering the bar? No. He went out of his way to say the opposite.
The most likely scenario is she has felt this way since she was hired and now has a specific person she can direct her anger/frustration/hurt onto.
> and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day.
This is demonstrably false. Imposter syndrome is quite common for men in tech.
I would be interested to see studies on imposter syndrome between genders and between fields.
That is a result of affirmative action, not of the memo. Shooting the messenger, if you will.
Affirmative Action does not require having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies). So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.
Fair enough -- quotas aren't the issue, but affirmative action is the issue.
> So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.
That's a concrete conclusion based on unprovable/shaky reasoning.
And even if that were true and you could prove it, it wouldn't change the fact concerning affirmative action (in this case, lowering hiring standards for certain groups) causing bias for both coworkers and the employee. How do coworkers know an individual got there on their own merit? How does an individual who is on/above par, yet who happens to belong to an affirmative action group, shake the internal/external stigma that they got there based on the lowered bar? These things contribute to bias whether or not we like the overall idea behind affirmative action (which is to level the playing field). Nothing comes for free.
But unless you do, you should agree that the choice is not between some biased "affirmative action" and a perfectly unbiased, meritocratic alternative, because the latter does not exist. The real choice is whether we try, in some least-bad way, to level the playing field or not.
What the glass ceiling builds, the glass cellar destroys. Biases that exist when looking up reverse when looking down.
>swapping names on resumes, etc.
Recent study found an interesting result doing this.
>to level the playing field or not.
And thus some groups will always be looked at, internally and externally, as having the benefit of a better playing field. Perhaps that cost is worth it, but we shouldn't blame the ones pointing out the cost as if they were the source of it.
Affirmative action isn't actually a specific policy directive, so it's not like a checklist or a set of guidelines for hiring or anything. Every department does it differently. But the main idea is that Kennedy and later Johnson told the government to get its diversity house in order, and it did. Some private institutions choose to implement pro-diversity policies, for hiring and otherwise, but they're not in any way related.
What you're referring to is tokenism, which is an old concept: people of color, LGBTQ people, or women feel like they're only there because of their minority status. It's a familiar trope, especially amongst people of color because they've often been exploited that way.
It's certainly the case that at some point, someone gets a job or gets into a school because they're a minority. That's gotten a lot of play in this thread and in the broader debate. But what I haven't seen, and this happens far, far more often, is that minorities don't get jobs because they're minorities. It is hard to get a job as a software engineer if you're Black, if you're a woman, if you're a Black woman, or at all queer.
This happens far more often than White men losing out to "diversity hires", and I think we should start focusing on the fact that for minorities, you're often occupy a space between discrimination because of who you are, or tokenism because of who you are.
But at least with tokenism you have a job. I'm in no way saying we should settle for this; the situation's unacceptable. But let's stop acting like tokenism is the worst thing in the world for minorities and then use it as an excuse to get rid of pro-diversity policies and affirmative action; policies that have probably done more for minorities than any other policy initiative past like, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Reconstruction Amendments, the 19th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Acts.
[1] I am not certain the extent to which this stereotype exists, so I am not sure it rises to the level of making the work environment "hostile", but I see that it could be the case.
That leap of logic - taking a general statement and interpreting it as a personal attack - strikes me as something I'd read in Dilbert. It strikes me as a justification for the outrage people want to feel.
It's an excuse; nothing more.
> So if I say "the average women is shorter than the average man", am I now liable for being fired for creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers?
You wouldn't just be saying that. You'd be saying, "we know about implicit/explicit biases, but maybe short people are less interested in tech and that helps to explain the hiring gap." That and a series of studies about how short people, on average, have biological qualities that differentiate them from taller people, which you use to bolster your supposition. In effect, you'd be saying that, on average, short people are possibly just less interested in technology because they like other things, respond differently to stress and don't have the drive for status that tall people do.
So, while you wouldn't necessarily be _wrong_ for supposing that and people would be wrong to impute any further meaning than is represented (such as, short people aren't fit for tech, short people are not as good as tall people, etc.), you might be at least partially wrong for not being as clear as possible in your phrasing ... but not much else. Mainly, because his intention isn't to say women aren't fit for tech, but to point out why they might, on average, be less interested in tech, which would help to explain the gap in STEM interest.
How is this harm? And how is that alleged harmed Damore's fault?
If on the other hand any kind of affirmative action is in place then you would be right to assume average women is less qualified than an average man because that's what affirmative action is: lowering the bar for certain groups.
The very presence of affirmative action ("diversity efforts") should be the reason for women at the company to feel unsafe because then the prejudice against them becomes rational.
This should be obvious in my view. The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool.
Do you really think that is the case?
> The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool.
Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do.
Sadly that's not the case. Affirmative action makes prejudice rational but it's not the only reason people display prejudice. If A implies B then removing A doesn't make B false.
>>Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do.
Good for them. They really should keep discrimination when hiring away from it. "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among X group" is discrimination. The same way "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among white people" is discrimination based on race.
The only way to not have to feel discriminated like that would be if you could control minds of all relevant people in the workplace and make absolutely sure they don't have any bad thoughts towards you. Otherwise if you're a type of person who worries about what others think about you, you'll always have a reason to feel crappy, imagining whatever negative thought may be going through other people's minds.
Way out of this is to find a way not to care so much about what others think. Or if you suspect particular person of actual discrimination, talk to them, or report them specifically if you can't do that or it doesn't work.
Solution is not to suppress discussion by firing people for discussing diversity. That just creates a truly hostile environment of fear of being fired for others. And discussion is not really suppressed anyway. Quite the opposite.
Using that logic, should every male feel unwelcomed because of the pro-female activity at google and in corporate america?
Can't damore and every male make the same argument?
Should men feel offended that ycombinator has a "Ask a female engineer" segment but no "Ask a male engineer" segment?
Those that are downvoting, why do you disagree that this statement is not relevant to the current discussion?
The number of leakers has to be quite the headache for Google's StopLeaks folks. Between people leaking Damore's memo because they were upset by it, and people talking to Breitbart because they were angry he was fired, there's been a LOT of leaks. How Google approaches handling this issue is going to be interesting, there's a lot of hurt feelings on all sides.
If there's an employee conduct we should all be able to agree is hostile, blacklisting coworkers would be it.
It'll be open season on Google now, and they deserve it if the blacklists and age blacklist is true.
And everyone maintaining age blacklists or ideological blacklists should be fired.
I'd appreciate if someone could confirm/deny or add anything to this timeline.
Rather, I present my honest assessment of the strengths of the various pieces of evidence, pro and con. If I "want to be proven wrong", I certainly wouldn't present a falsely certain argument. That is not arguing in good faith.
And that's how I would argue a scientific question, not an argument about my coworkers ability.
1. He went to the summit, which wasn't recorded mostly to allow people to be open and share their private stories without fear
2. Something about that summit didn't sit right with him, so he wrote up this document and send it as feedback directly to the organizers (not openly)
3. When he got no response back (it's arguable if organizers should reply to every single feedback, but you can also argue that this was a pretty big one), he posted it to an open but not huge discussion board (skeptics) specifically made for people to argue ideas and have discussions.
4. Eventually, it caught some attention outside of the board and it blew up across the entire company
You were pretty close but just wanted to clarify a couple small points.
I am 100% certain that the trackiest company in the world is perfectly capable of knowing exactly who leaked it. They have chosen to protect that person, for reasons unknown at this time.
I feel unsafe as a Man when people advocate that employers should engage in gender discrimination against Men to enforce an arbitrary ratio of Men/Women the workforce.
Do I have the right to feel safe? Do Men have the right to get Women fired because they feel unsafe and threatened by the ideas they express?
There is a double standard and institutional bias that is being perpetrated by corporations like Google. I see no attempt to address these issues in away that changes there institutional bias and affords equity to the opponents to these ideas. This is simply damage control.
It's just as likely he was fired for lying about having a PhD from Harvard.
Edit: I stand corrected, he was just enrolled in a PhD program.
LinkedIn doesn't allow one to differentiate between being enrolled in a PhD program, or having completed a PhD program
The common practice when enrolled in a PhD program is to list using a future completion date, making clear that you have not yet completed the program.
Google knew he was enrolled in this program when they hired him.
An internal discussion board intended for controversial discussion no less!
a month ago.
> ... said he initially shared the 3,300-word memo internally a month ago.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/fired-goo...
Anyone got a link?
I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.
Perhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did you feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence:
> He stated on ....
Thanks!
Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0] It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference for "people" jobs vs "things" jobs.[1]
[0] https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucke...
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...
A forward: Grant is a professor of Economics at Wharton, and Scott is a Psychiatrist and author of a popular blog - both agree that biological differences in ability are small (for the field of CS at large).
Scott contends:
> It’s a very common and well-replicated finding that the more progressive and gender-equal a country, the larger gender differences in personality ... become (aggressiveness, horniness, language abilities, mechanical abilities, visuospatial skills, mechanical ability, tendermindness, assertiveness, comfort with body, various physical abilities ...)
Concomitantly, those countries display the worst gender imbalance in CS graduates while the countries with poor GDI do well on their ratios! Outright discrimination does not look plausible. Maybe its just socialization?
Scott looks backwards in time. Only 20% of high school students who take AP CS are women... which is about the number of US CS graduates. You can trace roughly equal numbers (in terms of interest) back to middle school and even earlier... and even to Rhesus monkeys apparently! However,
> One subgroup of women does not display these gender differences at any age. These are women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition that gives them a more typically-male hormone balance
Scott then applies the theory of preferences (objects versus systems) to other professions, such as medicene, where roughly equal numbers of women and men exist, but they dominate different specialties (women in Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Physciatry, Family Medicene, and men in Surgery, Radiology, etc). Women make up ~40% of US math grads, but they mostly go on to teach math! He contends women have left CS since the 70s out of personal preference, as it was one of only a few socially acceptable jobs for women at the time. Instead, they now choose to be a doctor or lawyer, and this OK.
edit: I also forgot to mention that he asks if discrimination/socialization are the chief culprit, why do they only affect CS and not other high status/high paying jobs (like being a doctor) which previously exhibited the same gender ratio.
"the more progressive and gender-equal a country, the larger gender differences in personality ... become"
I suggest you read Lippa's papers and survey paper and draw your own conclusions. These inferences are drawn from very limited observations, and generalizing so far from the observational context is totally unconvincing.
What do Rhesus monkeys have to do with CS graduates?
The CAH studies I've been able to unearth are very underpowered. Maybe there are better ones, though. Also, CAH affects genitalia, which affects gender identity, which affects socialization. Not at all surprising that some CAH females would exhibit masculine characteristics, through socialization alone.
> why do they only affect CS and not other high status/high paying jobs (like being a doctor)
Outside SV and similar areas, CS has nowhere near the same status as medicine. How many TV shows can you list about software developers? How many about doctors?
1) http://sci-hub.io/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x
I think this is in part due to the "chilling effect". I've been there myself. I have to be super clear that I don't endorse nor necessarily agree with some point lest I find myself being equated with the worst of the worst...regardless if I agree or not with said point.
It's very sad actually.
Unfortunately... it seems like, as time passes by, more and more subjects require such careful treatment. I absolutely hate it...
So it's sort of a disclaimer.
I'll go further and say that it's close to something like a real root problem, that exhibits symptoms in various ways.
The overall 'noise level' is so high, and most everyone is so 'high strung'....that assuming the worst appears to be the default.
Corporations recognize "success" for employees through promotion. Promotion usually includes higher pay.
Men are taught from a young age that they need to "compete" for "success"
There is no way to win the game for all players inside corporate hierarchy.
If you can't win the game, but wish to remain (or are trapped by your economic situation) you will have pressure to feel validated.
Throughout history, dominant majorities (men, whites, etc) succumb to this same problem of "not enough winners." This format breeds a type of resentment instead of introspection.
Instead of facing the truth: the game is stacked against you, you may just not be that good etc., it is far easier to devise some sort of massive conspiracy or pseudo-science to justify your prejudice.
White men feel that they "deserve" things moreso now than ever because women, POC etc represent another competitor in their weird corporate power fantasy game.
It feels increasingly "Unfair" and contrasts to the cultural narrative we continue to endorse (especially here in SV) - that success is economic based, and based on merit.
Women and POC will continue to be the scapegoats until culturally we decide that "success" isn't about being an individual that becomes rich or powerful.
I suspect that you do not see the irony in this statement.
Independent of the rest of your comment: the quoted concept is trivially false as long as resources are scarce. (i.e. the foreseeable future; barring severe, draconian and arguably-unethical controls on population size)
("Powerful" being an additional non-redundant qualifier, is merely a consequence of the monopoly called "government".)
Go to one and tell me how many women are competing.
Here's a typical picture: http://i.imgur.com/h6cDkDB.jpg
There are zero hiring biases at a poker tournament.
So why isn't the gender distribution close to 50/50, instead of 99/1?
I believe that's what Damore was saying in the first place.
I am a "POC". I would very much like it if you and others of your ilk (leftists/liberals) stop speaking for me. I am not a scapegoat and have never been one. I take ownership of where I am in life.
I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.
I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as inappropriate work communication.
You put it more concisely than I have previously.
But by phrasing the memo the way he did, he covered himself legally.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear everything was run by a lawyer first.
Wouldn't an actual engineering process have started by submitting a document for feedback from somebody whose field of expertise deals with unequal gender representation in the workplace?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU
If that's odd, then what is firing just to prove him right?
Google is a company with shareholders and P/L. It's not a thought experiment, a family, a social commons, or a debating society. It exists to make money.
Google took the decision to fire him based on what was likely to create a conducive atmosphere for its workers.
His memo, however construed, made it likely that he could no longer be able to contribute as effectively to some teams.
Google's responsibility to Damore begins and ends at their mutual alignment of economic interests.
They did the opposite, someone said it's not okay to shame people into silence, and then they did just that.
> made it likely that he could no longer be able to contribute as effectively to some teams.
What does "as effectively" mean? What are "some teams"? If someone sweats a lot, and a million other things, the above would also be technically true. Or hey, if a company fired someone over something like this. That will make a lot of bright people, both male and female, think twice before even giving Google a consideration.
> Google's responsibility to Damore begins and ends at their mutual alignment of economic interests.
It's not about responsibility to him, but about their responsibility for themselves to not shit the bed like they did.
Amazon attracts talented staff despite a widespread perception that it's a hellhole to work at (https://www.theverge.com/2015/8/15/9159309/you-probably-dont...). Google, to most people, will continue to represent a dream job.
Yet you don't know if they would have even more talented staff being more decent. They're by definition stuck with what they can get.
Would someone please explain what this means, wouldn't an anti-regressive be a progressive? If so, why not state it that way?
Also, I thought the term "skeptic" had been hijacked by conspiracy wackos. When I think of a classic skeptic, I look to James Randi and the like; critical thinkers who expose quackery. But, for the last 15-20 years, conspiracy theorists have taken the term over (e.g. vaccine/climate/GMO skeptics). I fall into the Randi group of skeptics, but I sure as hell don't describe myself using that word, for fear of being lumped in with the second lot.
Real skeptics tend to be progressive, conspiracy skeptics tend to be regressive.
Based on the spelling, I'll assume emsy is a Brit... maybe things are different over there, but Randi was always more popular in England than in the US. I'm missing something.
I've never heard the conspiracy theorists called skeptics, so I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
Now I need new words. Damned kids and your identity politics!
Kind of, but just like skeptic the word "progressive" was hijacked by groups like BLM that started advocating for things like a return to segregation.
I used to be happy to call myself a skeptic and a progressive, but that was 10 years ago when the world made more sense.
And for the record, I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I thought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats. I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.
This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.
Also, please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not.
Imagine..."She thought black people should not have to sit at the back of the bus. She told authorities who just remained silent. She should have sucked it up and moved to the north!"
It's definitely horrible for people to feel like they don't belong. But I would argue that feeling like your job is at risk is a lesser threat than actually losing your job, no?
Shouldn't women inherently be part of a conversation about systematically augmenting their gender's presence in the workplace?
Or do you believe that beneficiaries of affirmative action should not be expected to comment on its existence and validity from time to time?
Not a rhetorical question. Either position is potentially defensible IMO. Just want to know where you stand.
I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man?
Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.
We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.
But he didn't do that. He brought up scientifically baseless, insulting and emotionally immature rationales for an important and sensitive topic. Working around people in a professional environment requires nuance and tact. He showed none of this.
The fact that so many in IT seem to miss this point and defend him explains so much about why many men and women stay away from this field.
The science behind it is well established.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manif...
From what I've seen, much of the anti-memo invective is based on (a) not reading it, or (b) an extremist interpretation of what he says, or (c) outright denial of scientific facts.
It really is easier to join a lynch mob, than to say "Hmm... perhaps we want a cold, cautious examination of the facts"
These are just tough problems. How do you make up for a system that is biased against you? At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's.
It's hard to have an honest conversation because it's easy to police words, but tough to police thoughts and motivations.
This is pretty interesting. At this point I accept that I'm both racist and sexist because of the culture I grew up in. But there was a time when I took the suggestion that I was racist or sexist as a deep assault on my character and intellect.
I think it's hard to admit, probably especially for software engineers, that we're biased in some way, but the truth is that this stuff is insidious. It's somehow true that boys are called on more than girls, and they're given more positive feedback for participation in the classroom. Or like earlier in this thread I referenced Dr. Sadedin's Quora post and someone responded to it assuming that she's a man. Or I remember a prominent woman feminist on Twitter talking about how she was confused why a woman flight attendant was talking about the weather forecast, potential turbulence, and landing time when she realized the woman was actually the pilot.
No one's immune from this. It's pernicious, it's embedded in our culture, and it pervades our entire society.
> At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's.
This is a fair point. I think (to use a corporate term I kind of disdain) we need buy-in from white men and we don't have it right now. Most of us don't believe that a problem exists, or that we are sexist and racist (importantly, just like everyone else), or that we personally need to do anything about this. Until that changes, we'll still feel cheated by pro-diversity policies, and issues like this will keep flaring up.
I think the fix is simple but not necessarily easy (oh no, accidental Rich Hickey reference haha), and it's to just keep talking about these issues. Not, of course, in the workplace, but in your social circles. And if you can't learn about this stuff in your social circles, do some research online or broaden your social circle to challenge yourself a little (I use theflipside.io and it's been surprisingly illuminating). Because the facts are that current US society and culture puts over 2/3 of us at a significant disadvantage, and the sooner the dominant group (straight cis white men) gets wise to it the sooner we can fix it.
I don't think that's a fair characterization. I think a lot of white men recognize that a problem exists. It's just that there are so many other problems in this society right now that it seems low on the totem pole. Personally, I'm more afraid of an outbreak of violence between neo-Nazis and radical Marxists. It's hard not to draw parallels to 1920s Europe.
Yeah things seem pretty fucked right now, and it's kind of hard to believe it all happened in less than a year. Not really confidence inspiring.
> I think a lot of white men recognize that a problem exists.
Honestly, I'd like to hear from them. Just look at this thread, the ratio of anti-Damore to pro-Damore people is like 1-to-10, and the other threads are even worse.
I will say I pushed it too far when I said "[m]ost of us". Looking at this Gallup poll 58% of White men support affirmative action for women and 52% of White men support affirmative action for racial minorities. The MoE is 5% and that's pretty close, affirmative action questions are subject to social desirability bias, I would assume numbers have dropped in the Trump era, and I don't necessarily think support for affirmative action translates into "I'm cool, and maybe even happy with the idea that a similarly qualified woman might get a job instead of me", but hey 58 is 58 :)
But I don't really accept the explanation that "there are so many other problems". This is a huge problem if you're a minority in the US. It's really an issue of perspective here.
How is not smearing the guy who said there is a problem equal to not wanting to accept there is a problem?
I'm white and I agree a problem exists, although I'm not American. I'm also basically on the "pro-Damore" side in this thread, although I don't necessarily agree with everything he wrote in the document. You seem to take this as an indication that I'm sexist or denying sexism exists, and I think a big part of the problem is exactly this kind of "you either agree with me or you're a sexist pig" approach.
A person can be pro-equality and even for encouraging more women to go into tech, without agreeing that all gender differences are caused by social conditioning or that affirmative action is the proper way to fix it.
Oh cool, hi!
> A person can be pro-equality and even for encouraging more women to go into tech, without agreeing that all gender differences are caused by social conditioning or that affirmative action is the proper way to fix it.
Sure, alright. What do you think about the problem? I guess, what are your ideas for addressing the gender gap without pro-diversity policies and affirmative action?
I'm not the person you asked this question but I'll give my take:
I don't think the gender gap is the problem. Sexism and harassment are the problems. The evidence for that is very clear from the first-hand accounts of women in industry. The gap itself, on the other hand, is not evidence of sexism. There are many, many factors that go into people's choice of career path long before some entitled boss decides not to keep his hands to himself.
Sounds like you've been brainwashed dude.
> I remember a prominent woman feminist on Twitter talking about how she was confused why a woman flight attendant was talking about the weather forecast, potential turbulence, and landing time when she realized the woman was actually the pilot
In the unlikely event that actually happened and wasn't just someone shit-stirring on Twitter, it seems she's blaming society for her own problems. I've never experienced anything like that. So when you say "nobody is immune from this" speak for yourself.
I don't have discussions at work or at the bar wondering if women are inferior.
I really do think women are my intellectual equal.
The discussions are more like: is there a quota? Is the hiring bar being lowered? etc...
The workplace was the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in another part of the comment section for this very article.
Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective, introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire' among other things.
What it did not do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him.
Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo, and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally introduced it to, at least at that point in time.
Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial. It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.
A corporation may not be the best place to bring up these topics, if your goal is to avoid getting fired. Otherwise, it is a place full of smart engineers and the guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation in a corporate setting about a policy which Google as a corporation faces external and internal pressure about.
But as far as receptiveness, yes Google was a great venue for this, given who works there. Do you think hacker news is a better venue in that respect?
Even on this very board, that same exact seemingly harmless claim, given and elaborated on in a talk about men and women given by a professor of psychology at FSU, was downvoted and bashed in a TL;DR manner:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844777
It fared better a year ago, but not by much:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909954
EDIT: curious, why the downvotes?
Agree. In fairness to James, however, I believe HR solicited feedback.
"[T]he guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation"
Seriously, what a let down. The "Sergey" and "Larry" who created Google would not have stood for this. Either they have lost control of their company, or they have changed.
Working proactively to address racism/sexism/n'ism: Good, not evil Demanding orthodoxy of thought (or enabling those who do): Bad; EVIL
Why did more people not mention this fact? The guy wrote on a topic that the corporation could not afford to indulge him on.
I understand there's an inevitable social/political aspect of working together, but is not the focus and if you don't agree with the political views/decisions of a company, and you can't get them (through proper channels, your manager, HR) to change, no one grants you the right to say whatever you want in the work place, especially when what you say is widely considered (by the company) as harmful to their interests.
Being "investigated" implies government intervention. Being "accused" implies lawsuit.
Which is it?
Big companies like Google are likely engaged in litigation over personnel matters on a constant basis, a majority of which are settled privately.
I'd like to coop your "sigh" ... i'll trade you a <headslap>
I think the larger problem is that this is an overstatement. Women might not be interested in joining the current tech culture, but that doesn't mean they aren't interested in tech to a larger extent than the current numbers suggest.
Part of the disconnect is that these initiatives are aimed at changing the culture to be more attractive to women, and the people who really like the culture don't see the need.
Certainly the current tech culture is effective and fairly productive, but I certainly don't know that it will be more, equally, or less productive with these culture changes.
I don't think you can claim that "tech" and e.g. civil engineering have much in common in terms of culture, but they still share the lack of men/women parity.
If you find it objectionable to change the phrase in such away, consider the fact that, as a computer scientist, I went to school and took classes with many mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers. I'm still friends with them today. The cultures are intertwined.
The misogynism we're imploring ourselves to eradicate is so subtle, it's unconscious biases and micro-aggressions (that is, agressions you don't know you're committing). When we can barely detect them ourselves, how would they be able to embed themselves into the subconscience of millions of young girls across dozens of quite different cultures?
And that's without considering the quite numerous fields with a high degree of misogyny embedded as a broad popular culture trope. "Suits" does not envision a law-field that is particularly friendly to women, "Billions" : finance, "Scrubs" : medicine. Women have no issue with pursuing careers in those fields. That's not excusing bad behaviour, just observing that this behaviour, and broad knowledge of it, does not appear to deter women, and to serve as a counterpoint to the assertion that the far more subtle and much less broadly portrayed alleged misogynism of tech should be detering women.
You're ignoring that girls are socialized to think they're bad at math, science, etc. Boys are told the opposite and are pushed in this direction. I certainly was. My parents were drilling me on math by age five.
Not sure why, but I know one possible explanation.
In developing countries, people are pressured by their basic needs. An engineering job generally pays well. People in such countries are less likely to do what they want and more likely to do what pays well, so gender ratio in engineering is close to 50/50.
In developed countries, people are guaranteed to survive even without a profession or job. Less financial pressure, more freedom of choice, less women in engineering.
That factor hasn’t stopped women from becoming e.g. doctors and lawyers.
Just 50 years ago, very few women did that, because discrimination (e.g. for healthcare in America, gender-based discrimination was only banned in 1975) and culture norms.
But now it’s pretty close to 50/50 gender ratio in these areas (females are 47.3% of law students in 2007, 46.7% of medical students in 2013).
I consider it more likely that now women do what they want to do. And that is in many ways a good thing.
Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321
Is it safe to infer that, in th developed world, given a career choice women have a propensity to not choose tech ?
In other words, if true, we should strive to understand why fewer women choose tech in developed countries and fix it, not automatically assume it's because they are inherently less interested.
PS: for that matter, my personal experience -- coming from a family of scientists who aren't rich, and which includes my mom -- is that there are other factors at play beyond money. Note I don't live in the US.
I am going to go further and suggest that software engineering is just not that desirable of a career, no matter who you are. Given that compensation is a function of supply and demand, and this career is fairly well compensated, the lack of people – both male and female – entering the career path would suggest is not the top choice of anyone.
What appears to be happening is that some men are willing to put up with an undesirable career because of the higher than average compensation, while women are less wooed by those monetary factors.
The only 'fix' here is to drive home the importance of doing unhappy careers for big money towards the female population. But do we really want to do that? That does not really seem like a great goal. There is more to life than money.
What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about.
But we're talking about the population at large, not the tiny group of 'geeks' who revel in the tech environment. There are always outliers.
If the general population – both men and women – wanted to do this kind of work, they would be falling all over each other to do it, just as they do in careers that are desirable. Instead, you see businesses falling over the few people who are willing to do it. That is not a sign of an attractive career path. Quite the opposite.
Again, not even men want to do this type of work. This is not even a gender issue at the heart of it.
> I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things.
But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the general population? Programming is simply an awful time that most people wouldn't wish upon their worst enemy. It is as simple as that. We can go around and try and blame things like culture, but at the end of the day the work that has to be done sucks.
Yes, some people are wired strangely and happen to like it. Pick anything you find distasteful and I can find you at least one person who loves it. That's the nature of having 7 billion people and all of their random mutations. That does not mean the masses have any interest whatsoever.
> What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about.
Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed. The fact that women can be as successful as men in the field does not mean that there is not some biological reason to not want to do the job.
> But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the general population?
But it's not the general population we're talking about; that's a straw man. We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice. And yes, not excluding a segment of the population just because of irrelevant biological traits is desirable and worth the effort.
> Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed
To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow explained biological differences. Money is not a biological factor, it's a societal one! The logical disconnect is so pronounced that it must point to an emotional blind spot.
Then why are men and women alike rejecting the field? Men less so, perhaps, but neither gender are jumping at the chance to have the job. Not even the well above average compensation that attempts to attract them to the industry.
> Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?
This is not my opinion, this is what the data shows. I'm glad you do not feel that the professional is awful. I personally do not feel that way either, but we cannot use our biases to believe that everyone feels the same way. Be very careful of your biases.
> We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice.
In order to even think about whether the workplace is hostile to women, we first have to determine why neither gender is interested in the profession. Again, this is not my opinion. This is what the data is telling us.
> To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow explained biological differences.
Let me be clear: I am not saying it is explained by biological differences. I am saying that your explanation does nothing to exclude biological differences. Women proving success in the tech workplace does nothing to discount a biological aspect, and it is flawed logic to believe otherwise.
This is false.
> but we cannot use our biases
Exactly. Please re-examine what you're saying in light of your own advice.
Where can we find data to support or refute this point.
I don't think the point is that women can't successfully tackle engineering, they can. But that doesn't mean that they have a predisposition towards it. If you encourage (or even force) someone into a particular profession, they might excel at it, but that doesn't imply that they would've picked it on their own.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15014895
Men and women living in richer and mostly western countries have the luxury to choose the jobs they are attracted to even if that attraction is to some extent based on biological factors and not societal or economic factors.
Does Zimbabwe have better or worse gender equality than the USA or other Westernized nations?
That's a bold claim with zero sources. Consider this a "citation needed".
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/girls-stem-parent-stereotypes-may-dis...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_role#Gender_stereotypes...
The link between wealth, marriage suitability and social status is well observed for men, and in stereotypical pattern boys are pushed towards professions which maximize the potential for high income. Since society do not measure the value for women on how much money they bring, it follows that girls are not pushed with the same fever towards high paying jobs except if local situation causes families to do so by necessity (which is one explanation why certain countries have higher ratio of women in typical high paying profession).
I have the theory that if you want to get equal amount of young girls and young boys in STEM careers you need to remove focus on how such choice can lead towards high income. It would not increase the encouragement for girls, but fewer boys would be pushed in that direction and as a result the difference between the sexes would decrease.
And yet over 40% of graduates majoring in math and statistics are women. How does this sit with your explanation of social conditioning?
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...
In the west women have more choice. So why do they choose not to do technology once they are free to choose what they want.
More women choose engineering when they have fewer career choices, because they take the freedoms they can get; Iran also has a high ratio of female engineers. In virtually all countries where women are free to choose any career, they largely don't choose engineering.
Nor does Damore.
In Damore's memo, the table of left vs right bias was ridiculous, even if we agree on those biases, which we don't, I'd argue why use those, and why pick n number of biases and leave out others? This isn't a rigorous paper.
The toy hypothetical following the table is such a overly simple contrivance, are we supposed to be taking this seriously? So many assertions...
Perhaps the bar is too low at Google.
To be fair... How often do you create "a rigorous paper" before you engage in an internal discussion at your company? Is that the standard? And if so, when do you have time to do actual work?
Try at least not to have completely unreasonable expectations.
So it was incumbent upon Damore to do a lot of work, and come up with something both rigorous and novel. If he didn't, and he still thought that rehashing a whole bunch of stuff that had been discussed before was sufficient to "advance the conversation" about such a controversial topic he is an idiot who deserved to be fired and forgotten.
The nicest way to say this is the way one of the women the TFA put it: 'a general lack of consideration for his female colleagues.' Then again, she has a lifetime of politely dealing with male chauvinist idiots, and has learned that calling them out doesn't get her far.
[1] Source: my own life experience.
If you are going to write on such a controversial topic and don't want to be seen as a self absorbed attention seeking polemicist [1], you ought to be more careful. In other words, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard than normal office write-ups. Otherwise, you take an unnecessary risk drawing the wrong conclusions and do a lot of inadvertent harm to your fellow human.
[1] Still learning to politely deal with male chauvinist idiots.
This link tells a different story, and in complete sentences: http://uk.businessinsider.com/wall-street-bank-diversity-201...
(Also, the relevant number for Google is 20% of tech employees. They have 48/52 balance in non-tech. The BI link similarly provides business area breakdowns.)
I think being exposed to history in greater depth and variety was a greater boon than suspected because there have always been great women in science and engineering, they just rarely if ever got a line of mention in common text books. how was society to interest women in such careers? Television surely wasn't, it was always wives, nurses, and secretaries, for the most part.
i would love to see a yc article from the same women and more revealing their generation and what influences they experienced that led them to their career and where they think we are doing it right and wrong this day. we will eventually arrive at a time where memo's like this don't even come about
Privileged people feel they are above repercussion because to admonish them encroaches on their sense of entitlement to privilege.
I am not sure I follow exactly. Is there evidence that Google's diversity efforts hurt the company? I don't find the memo offers any evidence. If evidence, even anecdotal evidence, were provided of that harm and of the ideological intolerance I might find the memo more compelling. As it stands, it seems like a book report.
I see it as honest call for discussion but everyone is treating this as some malicious attempt to exercise sexism. We are all educated and civil people please have some dignity and apply Hanlon's razor to these kind of things: "Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Most companies would - right or not - try to keep their dirty laundry indoors and the right way to deal with such stuff is to first try to take it up the chain and if you are ignored you can decide if you're brave enough to become a whistle blower with all the fine consequences that tends to have, one of the most likely results of which is that you will find yourself suddenly unemployed and if you're unlucky also unemployable.
Also: regardless of the actual outcome, going to court is not a guarantee either way.
He didn't widely share his memo. Someone else inside Google leaked it to Gizmodo, which widely misrepresented it and started this shitstorm.
Who gets the blame in such scenarios? Is it still fair to fire the original author?
So, tip for future memo writers: stay in control of the narrative. That's easier said than done.
> Is it still fair to fire the original author?
That's a moot point, companies do not like political activism within their ranks whether or not it spreads to the outside world and affects the image of the company in a negative way or not. But when and if it does you can be pretty sure heads will roll.
Second tip: If you do wish to write that memo try to get buy-in from your higher ups (and in writing) before releasing your memo to your peers.
Third tip: don't do it. Unless your position is absolutely ironclad and you don't care about your future employment writing memos will probably not make a difference in a positive way and there is plenty of downside with the memo writer holding the bag in almost all cases, especially when such memos target controversial subjects, they will almost certainly end up being used for political football.
Here's one example. Google has spent over a quarter of a billion dollars on diversity efforts in the last 3 years, and has barely moved the needle in terms of diversity in their workforce [0].
Some of that can be explained by long-term efforts that will take more than 3 years to show dividends, but not all of it, and given the lack of results, you'd think that it's worth considering if current efforts are addressing the actual problem or if they're just throwing money in the wrong direction.
You can't do that without questioning the current methods and examining other ideas, but when the reaction to questioning current methods and examining other ideas is to stifle discussion and say 'no, this is right, you are wrong, and btw you're fired', then you may well find you keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars, for little to no result.
You could argue that a quarter of a billion dollars is pocket change to Google (and it is) and therefore doesn't represent any real harm, but it's still a lot of money to throw around on something that might not actually solve the problem.
0: https://www.axios.com/googles-diversity-efforts-are-making-l...
That's right, but what's the cause of that?
Is it solely down to sexism and discrimination, or are there other causes?
For example, studies have shown that the more egalitarian a society becomes, the greater the difference in personality between genders is, which affects things like job and career selection. This makes sense because in an egalitarian society, men and women are more free to choose careers based on interest rather than on preordained acceptable roles based on gender [0].
I'm not saying this is what's happening in tech, but there's enough research around it that it's a plausible explanation for some of it. And if you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars but are not in any way interested in investigating (or even contemplating) whether this might be one of several factors leading to a decline in women entering software engineering, then that's probably a problem.
0: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
As a white male engineer, I will tell you thing the that most white dudes like me fail to understand about micro-agressions- and the document was chock full of them-is that they are not really significant when they only happen once, in isolation, it is the constant, droning repetition of them that makes them harmful.
Asking someone where they're from isn't offensive when considered in isolation. But if 90% of the white people you meet ask you this immediately, while it comes up only occasionally or late in the conversation when meeting other people, it makes you wonder.
One thing my mixed race friends get asked a lot by white people is "what are you?". At first I found that hard to believe, but I've seen it happen over and over again--random chitchat at the park with a nice lady who stopped to pet my dog; for some reason she has to ask my friend "what are you?" She's too nice to say "not racist, how about you?" or anything harsh in response, but it makes my blood boil.
Imagine being expected to defend and define your presence everywhere you go.
So, yeah, the idea was harmless. The presentation was part of the constant barrage of gatekeeping behavior that women and people of color are sick of dealing with. That's why it's offensive, that's why people are angry.
As a personality researcher, I feel obligated to chime in and clarify that the memo wasn't stating that women are "neurotic", neither in the colloquial nor clinical sense, but that they are on average higher in the trait of Neuroticism in the Big 5 personality dimensions[0], which is a very specific and well defined term, and the scientific literature actually does support that statement when it is presented using those academic definitions. There's nothing opinionated about this, just as much as saying that men on average test higher in the trait of 'Conscientiousness' according to the same model; they're just population statistics based on the most reliable personality measure we have in the field of psychology today. It is a plain misunderstanding of the academic term to suggest that the memo says women are "neurotic" in any other way.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
I believe autistic people also score higher on that neurotic scale, so it's ironic someone who self-identifies as being on the spectrum would highlight that result and, given the general stereotypes, for it to be held up as a difference from other software professionals
He goes onto mention that men take on dangerous high stress jobs in far greater numbers than women, such as coal mining and fire fighting. If men account for 93% of work related deaths, it says a lot about their drive for that sort of work.
No need to take offence. It's just data.
I don't believe there is any other context to it. It is not at all clear to me that the author is not referring to neuroticism in the colloquial or clinical sense. If he did want to use such a potentially emotionally-loaded term in that sense he should have made it clear how he was using it.
Links which gizmodo conveniently removed.
You would know all this if you did some fact-checking. The carelessness with which you approach his claims is typical and indicative of a much larger problem.
Have a look at the comments its being taken as an insult.
I hadn't heard about people asking "what are you?". That is indeed infuriating. I don't think such people deserve any answer beyond "human".
But here's the deal, a bunch of other really smart people think it did do exactly what you claim it didn't. Now what? Are they wrong, you're right? On what basis?
Besides which, if you write "effectively lowered the bar for 'diversity' candidates", actually yes you just claimed that women at Google are less qualified.
Many voices are loudly explain why this memo is offensive. Shelve your own ideas of what you think this memo is saying, and consider them.
As for the emotions, there's a huge veiled anti-woman slant to arguments that take the paper on it's "logical" face value and dismiss emotions. First off, dismissal of emotions is a classic anti-woman tactic. Secondly, you're a human male, you have as many emotions as anyone else. You can separate emotion and "rational" thought.
Of course it's a fact about the document. Damore does not say this. If you claim he did, you should easily be able to prove it by quoting him saying it. No one has done that, because the accusation is false. The burden of proof is on the accuser. The accuser is not presumed to be telling the truth on the basis of their social standing, gender or the emotional intensity of their reaction.
>But here's the deal, a bunch of other really smart people think it did do exactly what you claim it didn't. Now what? Are they wrong, you're right? On what basis?
On the basis of the content of the memo, they are wrong.
This is the full quote, "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate." Latter emphasis mine.
I read this the same way that he writes it: that Google takes steps to reduce the false negative rate for diverse candidates but does not take these steps with non-diverse candidates. Policies like re-trying failed phone interviews, or automatically passing resume review for diverse candidates are examples of this (these are examples I've witnessed, I don't know if they in place at Google). They still need to pass the final interview loop, so they're not underqualified. But extra steps earlier in the interview process reduce the false negative rate.
Personally, I think these steps are an acceptable means of getting a more diverse group of candidates but I'd still respect my co-workers if they disagreed. To point out the fact that this results in some non-diverse candidates being denied when they could have gotten offers is factually correct. More importantly, to point this fact out is not to call the diverse candidates passed under such a system underqualified - as I pointed out earlier all candidates pass the final interview loop so all candidates are qualified.
To better illustrate what it means to reduce the false negative rate without admitting underqualified candidates, consider the following scenario:
* Phone interviews have a 50% false negative rate.
* On-site interviews have a 0% false negative rate.
* Neither type of interview has a false positive rate.
* Non-diverse candidates get one phone interview, and if the interview is positive they go on to an on-site interview. If the onsite is positive, the candidate gets an offer.
* Diverse candidates get two phone interviews. If either is positive, they move on to the onsite which, if passes, gets an offer.
In this setup, no candidates are underqualified since there are no false-positives in either the phone interview or the onsite. Non-diverse candidates have a 50% false negative rate; 50% are erroneously disqualified at the phone interview stage. Diverse candidates have a 25% false negative rate. Since they go through two phone interviews, there's only a false negative if both (0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25) phone interviews are false negatives.
He is saying that this is harmful to Google, so he is saying it shouldn't be done, so he is saying that certain people who have been hired should not have been hired.
No matter what qualifiers you put on the statement he is saying that some of his former coworkers should not have been hired.
He also doesn't cite any proof that these hiring policies he is against actually exist, or even define what policies he believes exist. There is just some undefined diversity policy that he is against.
If Google has lowered the bar for women in various ways, why should it be impossible to point that out? Just because some women would be offended by it? So what? Nobody has the right to be offended by facts.
He doesn't back up his claim with any data at all. Where is his supporting data that Google's hiring practices in regards to minorities hurts Google? He's just making a baseless claim that doesn't logically follow from any of the evidence he provides before it.
OK :)
I think some of Damore's complaints were, on the surface, about Google. But they're all rooted in some old and incorrect ideas.
Damore advocates against Google's diversity programs, arguing that diversity programs can't be fully effective because fundamental biological differences between women and men are responsible for the gender gap, not social or cultural disadvantage, and further that these programs are discriminatory against men.
This is an old idea. Women's rights activists have heard this time and time again, whether it was for the right to go to school (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_education_in_the_Uni...), the right to have a job (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights#Equal_employm...), or of course, the right to vote. The argument, every single time, is "women and girls aren't really interested in reading/writing/working/politics". But in each case, we discovered that women were discouraged (and often outright punished) in strong, varied, and complex ways from being involved in these things, and when we investigated and removed those impediments suddenly the "interest gap" disappeared.
The "discriminatory against men" argument is essentially a reverse discrimination argument, and I'll leave it to Jamelle Bouie to explain why those are wrong: https://www.thenation.com/article/race-millennials-and-rever....
But the main reason that Damore's argument is outrageous is that the arguments about interest and fundamental biological differences have been used to hold women and people of color back since the inception of the US. Reverse discrimination belittles and dismisses the experiences of women and people of color by falsely equating systemic sexism and racism with isolated incidents, or in this case with gender-conscious diversity programs.
I'd also like to address the free speech issue a little. The US concept of free speech protects citizens from government retaliation. It doesn't mean I have to tolerate speech of all kinds in my home, and it doesn't mean that businesses have to tolerate speech of any kind in the workplace. With that in mind, it's obvious that you can't say whatever you want at work even though e we may disagree on where the line is.
What you do with the information that science provides is your problem. If a society (such as a workplace) doesn't have the capacity to logically process the scientific facts, and uses them to enforce psycho-sociological diseases like racism or discrimination, the solution is not to deny the scientific facts or erase the question. The solution is to foster capacity in society to process and respond to scientific facts in a logical manner
This is true, but California presciently has other laws in place to protect workers that want to discuss potentially illegal behavior in good faith. This is why Damore is suing Google, and why it's quite likely that he will win.
Sorry I'm unfamiliar with California state law, and besides I don't really know why it pertains to a misunderstanding of speech protected under the 1st Amendment.
It's like the government is indicting you for making gingerbread houses, and one of your employees argues against your policy prohibiting gingerbread in the workplace. Isn't it?
EDIT: Oh it's gender pay, not diversity. Then I really don't at all get the relevance, Damore only mentioned the pay gap in a footnote that was totally unrelated to Google.
to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices
[...] Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination [6]
[6] Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create zero-sum struggles between orgs.
> But wasn't he arguing the opposite; that Google's efforts to comply with US law were working to the detriment of men?
And illegally so.
Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
I don't think I made that claim, but still it has merit. Women face challenges in workplaces where there are few of them, sometimes benefits don't handle birth control, or maternity leave is non-existent or laughably short, or there are few women in leadership roles, or there is a workplace culture that is overtly sexist, or there are persistent sexual harassment problems, or they get paid way less for the same work, or they get stuck with "women's work" and treated like secretaries and assistants.
> Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?
Men actually do face their own set of challenges. Consider all the jokes in popular culture about male nurses or male cosmetologists. Or consider Mississippi v. Hogan where a man sued successfully for the right to be admitted to the Mississippi University for Women School of Nursing, a historically all-woman school: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/81-406
I'm not super clear if I understood your question, let me know if I didn't get it right and I'll try again haha.
No significant amount of equal-rights activists will ever take up the torch to fight for <insert discriminated group>'s to be able to have more of said undesirable jobs. It's hypocritical but entirely understandable.
The gist of the question was that if you follow that link you can see that it is the case that most jobs have a sex ratio that is far off from 50/50, jobs with a ratio closer to 50/50 are the exception rather than the rule. I don't think this is a problem, or "problematic" as the kids like to say. I think this is just the way things are. You can learn a lot about the world just by looking.
The interesting thing that I raised in the question above is that some people do think these divergent sex ratios are "a problem," well sort of, the interesting thing is that they think in only a narrow selection of occupations is this a problem, totally ignoring that there is nothing particularly unusual about a divergent sex ratio for a given job. This may not be the case for you, but for the vast majority of problem addicts it is a very narrow focus on just a few occupations, totally ignoring the fact that it is a totally natural and normal thing.
It's like saying that something broadly true about the world is a problem. I can see the Vox headline now, Asians like rice, that's a problem
I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is? The people constantly going out and raising a ruckus about this or that issue would do far more good for the world by simply putting their own lives in order first.
This is a misrepresentation of the "pro-diversity" argument. The vast majority of the "pro-diversity" posters do not think that every industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. They don't even think the tech industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. A better summary of the argument is this:
1. The tech industry has a tendency to be sexist towards women (which comes in many forms: whether they are subconscious cultural biases, or explicit sexual harassment, or sexist behaviors).
2. This tendency causes the gender ratio to be lower than what it would otherwise be in a "sexism free" tech industry.
3. We should work towards reducing these sexist tendencies because that is a worthy goal in and of itself.
4. If we succeed and reduce the sexism in the tech industry, the gender ratio will increase. It will not necessarily land at 50%, because there are other reasons that the gender gap exists.* But that is okay, because that was never the goal to begin with.
(Note that this is much different from saying "the gender gap is bad and is caused by sexism".)
> I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is?
Because the "world as it is" with regards to the tech industry tends to be sexist towards women, and we should work towards fixing that?
* Yes, I do think lack of interest is a valid reason for this. But it's not the only reason, and attempting to reduce such a complex issue into a single root cause is rather misguided.
Although most claims of reverse discrimination are probably false, this doesn't mean that none are justified.
For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators. (Says Damore in his memo and I haven't seen anyone disagree.)
I think that is doubly sexist. First, it perpetuates stereotypes about women, maybe even using some hand-wavy biological explanation like "woman have less testosterone and are too timid to negotiate efficiently". That isn't really better than Damore's reasons for advocating more pair programming.
Second, it doesn't target the people it would help the most , but at best a subset. What about black men who are bad negotiators? Do they get their own program? What about white men who are bad negotiators? Are they left in the dust because white men good at negotiating are already privileged, so people who are superficially similar don't deserve any help?
I think it is both morally wrong and economically inefficient to have a program to help people get better at X that selects on any criterion other than their current ability to do X. I don't care whether you call it discrimination or something else, I just don't want to see this kind of divisive catering to interest groups identified by arbitrary lines.
> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators. (Says Damore in his memo and I haven't seen anyone disagree.) I think that is doubly sexist.
There's research that shows that some of the gender pay gap can be attributed to women being less likely to negotiate pay raises and promotions. I think if you were Google and you were trying to close the gender pay gap, it's reasonable to take a look at that data and start something like Stretch.
> ...maybe even using some hand-wavy biological explanation like "woman have less testosterone and are too timid to negotiate efficiently". That isn't really better than Damore's reasons for advocating more pair programming.
It is actually much better. First, they aren't using any biological explanation. The studies [1][2] I found are experiments and surveys. Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up. On the contrary, Google is offering to help them. Damore's argument is that some studies kind of show women might be somehow biologically predisposed against tech (the copious hedging here is because he makes all the connections himself; the studies he cites don't actually make his point and consequently can't at all quantify the effect), and therefore Google should replace the programs most effective at increasing diversity with initiatives that have no basis in science and are mostly just bad ideas like "more pair programming", "more part time work", and "make work less stressful".
So in favor of Stretch:
- Research directly addressing and quantifying the issue
- No biological explanation
- Google directly addressing the issue
Against Damore's initiatives:
- No direct research to justify a policy change
- Unsupported leaps from indirect research to "biological differences explain the gender gap"
- No direct addressing of the issue
- Replacement of programs that do directly address the issue with those that do not
> I think that is doubly sexist. First, it perpetuates stereotypes about women....
I think it's a good instinct to critique policies from a gender perspective. And I think on its face you're right, Stretch seems to assume that women are bad at negotiating and has a program based on that assumption.
But look at how the program came about. This isn't a program rooted in stereotype; it's rooted in research. And the result of the program is to help women become better negotiators, not to disadvantage them. In applying a feminist critique, we have to evaluate all these things, otherwise we often come to the conclusion, as you did, that any policy based on gender entrenches harmful stereotypes.
> Second, it doesn't target the people it would help the most , but at best a subset. What about black men who are bad negotiators? Do they get their own program? What about white men who are bad negotiators? Are they left in the dust because white men good at negotiating are already privileged, so people who are superficially similar don't deserve any help?
I can't find any research showing that Black or White men are bad negotiators, so I think that's why Google didn't start a program to help them. There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.
> I think it is both morally wrong and economically inefficient to have a program to help people get better at X that selects on any criterion other than their current ability to do X.
I think this is super interesting! I just read a piece in the Atlantic that offered the insight whereas liberals often argue for fairness of outcome, conservatives often argue for fairness of approach. I'm not saying you're a conservative or that that's what yo...
Unless you assume that all Black or White men are good negotiators, then the grandparent's argument holds: you're helping only at best a subset of people who would most benefit from it.
I agree with the grandparent: a program to help people become better negotiators should target people who are bad negotiators to begin with, and nothing else. Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.
> There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.
Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?
The context of all this is "addressing the gender pay gap", which policies like try to do using the salaries of men as the baseline. We already know that women are working as hard and as effectively as men, but that they're getting paid less and we're looking for reasons why.
When you argue to also help men that may be bad negotiators you're missing the point, which is that these policies address the gender pay gap.
> Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.
Discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing. Policies intended to address gender issues need to be gender conscious. For example, affirmative action policies at universities need to know information about ascribed statuses like race and gender, otherwise they can't be effective. And they have absolutely been effective; public universities are some of the most diverse institutions we have in the US.
The point isn't to be gender-blind. That only entrenches the favored statuses that men already enjoy. The point is to be aware of the challenges women (and LGBTQ people and people of color) face in order to compensate for them.
> > There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.
> Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?
Again this is in the context of the gender pay gap. I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men, but please don't derail a discussion about the gender pay gap with other issues. And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
Or, more concretely, feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men and start advocating for programs based in research to address the causes. This isn't a zero sum thing.
Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.
They can be helped by attacking any mechanism of causality (including those that are not mentioned above): preventing bad negotiators from being underpaid (e.g by helping bad negotiators become good negotiators) and preventing women from becoming bad negotiators (e.g. by specifically mentoring them). But the farther removed the factor you are targeting is, the less efficient your efforts become. I think it is shortsighted to limit a program to women when it could just as well be applied to other people (unless something about Google's negotiation training is explicitly gender-specific).
> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
I'm certainly not advocating that women shouldn't get help with negotiating if they need it, but I am advocating that other people should also receive that help.
We're discussing Stretch, which is a Google program designed to narrow the gender pay gap by teaching women negotiating skills. You're the one who initially brought it up:
> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators.
> Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.
Sure, OK. This whole thread is (I thought clearly) about gender issues. If you have thoughts about how to address the pay gap between various different groups of White men, feel free to advocate for them. But don't derail a conversation about gender inequality like this; this is not a zero sum issue. We can have programs that address this issue for women and programs that address this issue for other groups too, or programs designed to address this issue for all groups. But this thread is about gender, so let's not stray too far OT.
This discussion, as initiated by the original parent, is about the gender pay gap and other issues. It's somewhat ironic that you'd accuse me of derailing this discussion.
> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
Please don't put words in my mouth.
>>> There's also not a pay gap for White men
> I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men
> feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men
I'm sorry, but you lost me here.
> Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up.
I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.
> initiatives that have no basis in science and are mostly just bad ideas like "more pair programming", "more part time work", and "make work less stressful".
There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming (although maybe not in a gender context). I read https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/16/interactions-of-individu... just today. I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.
> liberals often argue for fairness of outcome, conservatives often argue for fairness of approach
I'm not sure where I'd place myself on the liberal-conservative plane, but I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. (Alternatively, sabotage the good negotiators, but I don't support that.) Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.
> I think you can't treat people fairly unless you take into account their ascribed statuses.
If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.
> For example, if we return to entirely gender-blind hiring practices, we'll see the gender gap skyrocket (see 538's article on affirmative action [3]).
The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?
Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, most racial differences in the distribution of applicants are due to economic reasons. In that case, it would be more appropriate to support students from low-income households, rather than sorting them into arbitrary buckets based on ethnicity.
> To ignore or not adjust for these biases is what's unfair here.
I agree that biases shouldn't be ignored, but I don't like it when the countermeasures assume that disadvantages only happen across a few categorizations. There are all kinds of reasons some people have worse outcomes than others, and to only pay attention to them when they coincide with membership in one of your favorite protected groups, is a kind of bias in itself.
> I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.
I only mean that Damore's argument is (roughly, mind you) "studies show the gender gap is likely due to biological differences so we should give up", and if we're comparing Google's pro-diversity hiring initiatives to Stretch, it's important to note that when Google noted the research on women and negotiating, their response wasn't "oh it's biological differences, we should give up". I don't know if Stretch is effective, but at least it's a proactive, supportive response rooted in research.
> There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming... I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.
I don't think they're universally bad ideas, but Google's gender gap is something like 70-30. There's no research to support the notion that pair programming, part time work and low stress jobs can address a 40 point spread like that, but there is research that pro-diversity hiring and support policies do, so I think it's actively harmful to advocate for replacing the latter with the former.
> I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. ... Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.
Sure that makes sense, but the goal isn't to get every employee's negotiating skill to a certain level, it's to narrow the gender pay gap. In that context, it makes sense to work only with women.
> If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.
It is really hard to quantify, definitely. But these issues aren't limited to "that person"; we're all, every single one of us, subject to unconscious bias when it comes to race, gender identification, sexual orientation, and other ascribed statuses because of the culture and society we grew up in. Therefore we all need to adjust, and pro-diversity policies and affirmative action policies help us do that.
> The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?
Sorry "skyrocketing" was a poor characterization (it was laaaaaaate :) Here's what 538 says about Black enrollment:
"...only two research universities in states with affirmative action bans have at least the same proportion of black students as the state’s college-age population, and one of those, Florida A&M University, is a historically black college or university (HBCU). ...only one school, Florida International University, has at least the same proportion of Hispanic students as the state’s college-age population.
...
Researchers looked at the effect race had on admissions and saw a 23 percentage point drop in the chance of admission for minority students in states with bans, compared with a 1 percentage point drop in other states, relative to nonminority students."
That's rough, no matter how you look at it.
> Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, mo...
I have been thinking about it and I believe that neither correct or wrong. It seems it is about how one defines fairness: Is is fairness of opportunity or fairness of outcome?. I would like to know more about this. Is there any paper, book, analysis that tries to tackle with it? I would love to learn about philosophical approaches, attempts to resolve it based on solid rational reasoning in the context of some moral values. Anyone?
1. Doing so requires taking away from those who have, whether property or opportunity. This is theft and oppression.
2. Doing so requires an unbiased party to make judgments about what shall be taken from whom and to whom it shall be given. Humans are biased, so this cannot be done fairly.
3. Doing so restricts others' freedom.
Those who want to enforce equality of outcome want to rule over others, because they think they are qualified to make such decisions. By calling for it, they have already decided that there is a problem, and that they have the solution, and that everyone else is wrong.
In contrast, those who want equality of opportunity do not want to rule over others. They want power to be decentralized so people can make their own decisions.
It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine who is more trustworthy: he who would decide for you, or he who would have you decide for yourself.
Unless I've misunderstood your tone, you seem to be implying complicity even conspiracy. Surely the obvious explanation is "anyone could have leaked it and it's very hard to prove who did it"?
Until you remove social blockers that prevent women from entering tech, you cannot claim legitimacy of any social survey in regards to that. This letter belongs to a time when a generation of women are equally pushed to enter tech as men. Then we can debate whether it's their lack of interest of not.
When I was a student in computer science more than 30 years ago, in our class of more than 30 students there was only one female. There was no entrance selection or any filter or money involved (not in USA).
We are dealing with overlapping gaussians.
Girls and boys are today educated without making a difference through all their childhood, and I think that this may give the false impression to them that there is no difference. But whoever had children or has seen many children will see that some differences in behavior and interest are blattan and can't be socially induced.
I do not deny that blocking MAY exist and some men are sexists, I have seen such discusting behavior. I considr them disfunctional. But this is not 100% the cause of gender imbalance in tech.
There is no blocking to contribute to OSS, and good programmers get hired regardless of gender. You should read back the [Donner Kruger effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect) to remind you of you own bias when evaluating your competence.
I sincerely don't think that anyone is proposing that there is no difference between men and women, the discussion is over the extent of the differences.
We are dealing with overlapping gaussians.
The question is the extent of the overlap. If the overlap is very close on many abilities, men exceed women on some (like say maths), and women exceed men on some others required for a programming job (like say, empathy), then you'd expect distribution of jobs to be around 50% with slight variations. There is no indication that they vary by the amount required to explain the disparity of jobs in tech, indeed, this is easily refuted by looking at the number of women in technical jobs in the US in the 70s.
PS It's Dunning-Kruger
You could make your point stronger if you propose an explanation to what changed since then. It's very unlikely that men (and society in general) become more sexist, if anything we have made a lot of progress.
I can tell you what the opposing side says though. They say women had little choice back then and just did what was needed. Today women have more choice, freedom and there is less discrimination so they feel free to pursue what is interesting to them which is not tech more often than in case of men.
Seems like a bad tack to me - staying on topic is good enough for this kind of corrective comment.
You should really just google 'gender difference education' and you'll see there's dozens and dozens of papers that say education is very gendered. The experience of girls in pre-college (and college too for what it's worth) is very different from that of boys.
> I do not deny that blocking MAY exist and some men are sexists... [b]ut this is not 100% the cause of gender imbalance in tech.
The "percentage" thing is something that comes up in global warming discussions too; people will ask "what percentage of global warming is caused by humans", and because the issue is extraordinarily complex, the answer comes out sounding like equivocation.
You're probably right, social cues are probably not 100% the cause of the gender gap in tech. But the issue is complex; it's not like you're gonna see a pie-chart of simple gender gap explanations and then say, "we'll just 'allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive' and crank up pair programming and part time work; that should cover 80% of it".
You can get complex reasons though, i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/14/many-women-i.... But good luck fixing "balancing work-life responsibilities" and "workplace culture"; those are complex issues that deal with early education, social and cultural expectations of women (and men), federal and state social policies and workplace policies, politics, and deep-seated gender roles. There's not really a knob you can turn to fix this stuff, and that's why we don't use percentages to talk about it.
P.S., it's "Dunning-Kruger", genius.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
Medicine and law are not like engineering. Engineering is particularly gendered; you can look at medicine and see "caregiving", or you can see law and see "people" and "social issues". It's not easy to look at engineering and see any stereotypically female attributes there.
Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially. The social blockers between girls and engineering are particularly acute compared to those between them and law or medicine. You can look at college degree numbers for example. Women now outnumber men when it comes to college enrollment and graduation, but women are far more likely to pursue "soft sciences" like psychology or sociology.
> That's the point Damore was trying to make that people don't want to hear - there might be more to the gender gap than just social blockers, and if so, we should be aware of that at the same time we're working to solve the existing issues around bias, harassment, etc.
In fairness, Damore was advocating for the ending of Google's pro-diversity policies in hiring and minority support for employees. It wasn't just a "truth telling", he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity. I'm not saying he didn't suggest alternatives, but those alternatives had no basis in research and felt pretty thin. Like "[a]llow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive"; honestly what does that even mean?
This point keeps getting brought up, but the actual statistics are quietly ignored.
Women make up over 40% of math and statistics graduates; A majority of accountants and biologists are women; Chemistry majors are evenly split between the genders.
If girls are socially discouraged from pursuing math and hard-sciences, why does this not actually manifest itself across fields requiring math and hard science? Does a math major require less mathematics than an engineering one? Is accounting not mostly about math and numbers any more? Are chemistry and biology no longer considered hard sciences?
I'm not saying the cause is necessarily not societal pressures, but this popular assertion being repeated ad-nausea seems to be, at best, incomplete. Women that have been told their entire lives that math is for boys seem to have no problem pursuing a higher-education in math in droves; Why?
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor... http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-accounting https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-s...
> Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially.
The data simply does not support this statement. Take a look at [3]. Relevant quotes for you: "Girls are equitably represented in rigorous high school math courses.", "Girls outnumber boys in enrollment in AP science", "Girls are evenly represented in biology and outnumber boys in chemistry, but are underrepresented in physics." Even when it says "In AP mathematics (calculus and statistics), however, boys have consistently outnumbered girls by up to 10,000 students." this is only about a 5% difference.
> he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity
What dramatic, positive effect are referring to? Google's self-reported numbers on the impact of its programs are laughable. We're talking single percentage point increases at best in percentage of women and minorities in tech positions and leadership roles [4]. Damore wanted Google to take a long, hard look at its diversity programs and have an open discussion about whether they are actually 1) the right tool for the job, 2) accomplishing what they are trying to do, and 3) making progress without alienating existing and new hires.
> honestly what does that even mean?
I thought it was fairly clear, actually. He pairs statements like that with suggestions to encourage more collaborative workplace practices, like pair programming. The idea is that Google and other tech companies should encourage and reward individuals who cooperate with each other on teams, help train and mentor each other, and actively try not to alienate anyone for arbitrary reasons. The negative alternatives are to have a workplace with a bunch of lone wolf technical workers who don't help each other, or to have a workplace composed of cliquey groups that ostracize individuals who don't fit norms (ex. "brogrammer" culture fit).
You seem to be creating your own narrative here, which I interpret to be, "women are socially discouraged from pursuing careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and that's why we don't see them entering tech." But the equally plausible alternative interpretation is, "women don't want to pursue careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and particularly don't want to pursue engineering, thus expecting there to be gender balance is unrealistic."
[1] tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2147484887
[2] http://www.myplan.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laborator...
[3] https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equit...
[4] kybernetikos ↗ > Saying "nope, it's all social blockers and bad workplaces, and any other reasons are sexist falsehoods" is putting on blinders.
Is this a common belief? Nobody I've read has claimed this, just that the known social effects are so large as to legitimise efforts to improve the situation regardless of whether or not there is some minor biological factor at play here too.
That's what I found strange about the memo. It spends lots of time arguing for the existence of biological differences between men and women and then draws the conclusion that diversity programs should be stopped. The existence of biological differences is not surprising to me or probably to the people who came up with the diversity programs and nor is it likely relevant to whether the diversity programs are a good idea or not.
Studies show prenatal testosterone affects differences in that men tilt towards an interest in intresting things, and women in insteresting people. Damore has the scientific literature behind him (which others can then dispute if they'd like). Also look to scandinavian attempts to flatten out differences. Thousands were involved, and the diffrences were simply exasturbated. Interesting talk on just this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSIEs1ngNiU Loads have very much taken the social aspect into account. What I think everyone in the dominant culture seems to miss, are the relevant scientific biological and psycological findings.
But given that, how is it possible to discuss the possibility of gender differences? Without the discussion itself being a social blocker?
I'm not sure. Certainly by experts. And certainly around debate on legislation. Also in whatever social forums allow it. Such as here. But arguably not in discussion among staff at Google or wherever. There are likely no experts there, so it all comes down to bullshit. But among senior management, in private, sure.
Citation needed.
If your theory were correct, that it is "social blockers", then you would predict that as societies get more egalitarian, you would get more equal representation. The opposite happens.
And this is not about absolute levels, this is about the direction of the arrow, which is pretty binary, and the "social pressures" theory makes exactly the wrong prediction.
> interested in tech when only a handful of her peers understand her interest
Doesn't stop the guys interested in tech. Being a "nerd" or a "geek" is the surest way to social ostracism, and yet these guys do it anyway.
> Until you remove social blockers that prevent women from entering tech
Again, this experiment has been done, on a society level, and the outcome is the opposite of your prediction: as "social blockers" are removed, you get fewer women going into tech fields.
To be honest, the "social" sciences have rarely been interested in scientific accuracy, more than they have been interested in promoting specific political ideologies.
I doubt they will consider this a problem with their "science". To them it will probably be obvious that the problem here, again, is with society.
In short: When you're stuck inside a delusion, it's everything on the outside which looks crazy.
His claim is much stronger: he claims that women _working at Google as engineers_ are less interested in tech than their male colleagues. This debate is about stopping internal diversity programs within Google, not about women in general in tech.
I wonder if this argument could be made? Stats show that men work more hours than women whereas women prefer a more of a work-life-family balance. So given that, you could say that the women in tech there are less interested. At least, in terms of hours and dedication to the job. I don't think it holds too much water. You can be interested in the subject matter but not work as much. But there is some truth to it in a way.
c'mon, pick a side ... you can't argue both ways. The constructive takeaway from this is not that women are a "lesser" value because they crave work-life-family balance. The takeaway should definitely be that we should figure out how to help the overworked individuals who work too much, find a better balance.
They can continue to do so just fine ... but I much prefer employers who don't overvalue overworking their employees, thereby implicitly creating a de-facto requirement. Of course, sometimes overtime is needed, believe me I've done it plenty of times to hit a deadline or release. However, I'm just plain happier working for employers, and with colleagues who don't create a hostile working environment for people with families.
> women prefer a more of a work-life-family balance
You may want to rephrase that. Parallel construction, and all that.
You ask "Where did he say that?" and I'd be surprised if there's any one succinct place -- it's one of the two main topics of the whole memo, and the memo does not have a coherent topic sentence or even really a coherent argument, so I think it's likely absent.
But, like, Damore makes a case to the effect that "biological explanations can't be ruled out" and then reverses those weasel-words by suggesting that his biological explanations be used to guide policy by, say, encouraging pair programming which he supposes to be something that women are likely better at on average. This sort of move suggests that he thinks the biological effects that he's citing (see note [1]) are big enough to guide policy, which they're not. You don't need to take my word for it -- the main author of the article Damore is citing was asked to read Damore's memo and this is his take on it [2].
Of course the problem is even worse in that this article which Damore used to write his article is psychological; it is based on doing a personality test in a bunch of different nations. That makes it very hard to conclude anything biological about it, so every time that Damore mentions "biology" in his memo, that is an interpretation of his own devising. The original personality-study article also interprets its findings biologically but it is really tenuous [3]. In fact neuroscientists have also been studying the brain and they have not found a clear biological difference between male and female brains [4].
[1] He gives a summary of a Wikipedia summary of an article by Schmitt et al. (2008). The PDF is freely available by the university at http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf but the sample sizes were I believe later corrected as an erratum, so I am not sure which one this has.
[2] Schmitt, evaluating later research as well, summarizes by saying that sex differences are only "accounting for less than 10% of the variance" and that using this to guide policy is "like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm," in an article at http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... .
[3] The argument in the article involves their surprise that the majority of the discovered effect apparently disappeared in Africa and East Asia. Their interpretation is literally that those cultures are so much less economically developed than we in the West are, that their women must feel so much less free to just be themselves, and therefore they act more like men as a sort of baseline survival tactic. Read the paper; it's a very 'you cannot possibly be saying what I think you're saying, can you?' type of experience.
[4] See the links in the article https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28584-a-welcome-blow-... for a nice summary.
It also seems to me that the pair-programming idea was plucked out of the air to be used as an example to further a discussion, not a solution to be implemented.
I'm inclined to agree with that. But his memo was written in response to policies that are already being implemented, which he thinks are bad.I'm really not concerned about whether his ideas are good or bad - the experts on this subject can work that out between themselves. What concerns me is that, while he was confident enough in his theory to put it forward for wider scrutiny, the makers of the policies he is objecting to weren't. And when they were presented with a counter-argument anyway, they had to set an example to everyone else who might wish to speak up by having its author fired and smeared with accusations of bigotry.
It is only hard to believe if you are entirely unfamiliar with the history of this discussion.
Let's take a more obvious example: the common racist claim that black people are lazy. It is possible to dress this up in neutral, scientific-sounding language. Someone ignorant of the history of racism in America could be fooled into saying, "Gosh, we should consider that as an explanation for why tech is disproportionately white." (That someone could harbor racial bias, but that need not be true.)
That would correctly generate outrage, because a) one should not be ignorant about the history of these things when jumping into a discussion with such impact on people's lives, and b) there is a long, long history of virulent racists edging their way into the mainstream by dressing up their prejudices just enough to sound reasonable to the ignorant.
Returning to Damore, the fact that a bunch of white men ignorant of the history of gender bias can't spot the patterns does not mean the patterns aren't there. The benefit of the doubt only applies to educated doubt, not the doubt that comes from not knowing what's going on.
That you were surprised by the outrage only means you haven't been paying attention.
We've been discussing these issues for generations. At some point the discussion has been had. No one is saying anything new. But every new group of people believe they have something worthwhile to say about it and until they get to regurgitate their own brand of ignorance they'll whine and cry about how they're being oppressed for not being able to maintain the status quo.
People's humanity and civil rights are not topics that should be open for debate. But the people who want to debate that start with "science" as the thin end of the wedge.
Of course, the thing that's always up for question is the participation of minorities. It's never a guy saying, "Fellas, the science shows that men are poor at cooperating and highly prone to aggression and violence, so let's debate whether we men should be allowed to manage or supervise other people."
It's highly motivated reasoning.
William Faulkner
Then the [racial|gender|*] discrimination would never go away because there will always be some history. Damore or whoever wouldn't ever be able to talk neutrally and society will live forever with that discrimination.
I'm not surprised this is happening during Trump's term.
It is in fact quite easy to do machine learning work and come out with what is effectively racist AI. People have already done plenty of it accidentally.
Completely disagree. The crux of most historical discussions were based on ability and was blanketed to all individual women, as they were implying that gender was the only causal factor. Discussing how prenatal testosterone may be a factor in influencing decisions for a distribution of a group is a completely different beast.
The thing that bothers me about the left is their inability to accept any sort of biological determinism as a possible large contributing factor to anything. Out of curiosity, if we were to use your analogy loosely: > Let's take a more obvious example: the common racist claim that black people are lazy.
If evidence came out that a certain portion of blacks were missing some sort of hormone that is almost completely causal in lack of desire to eat apples, so that it skewed their distribution in a statistically significant way, would you accept it? If it pertained to something considered more valuable, like say, intelligence or athletic ability, would you still accept it? Do you see that this shirks the definition of racism since it is talking about distributions and not individuals?
> That would correctly generate outrage, because a) one should not be ignorant about the history of these things when jumping into a discussion with such impact on people's lives….
Anyone can take offense to anything and be “outraged.” What good does that do? A sliding metric of people being sensitive and getting emotional is no reason to not have discussions. In fact, some people have disorders making it difficult for them to navigate social contexts tactfully. Are you saying people on the autism spectrum shouldn’t be a part of the discussion? This could possibly apply to James (I don’t know), especially if you’ve watched any of his interviews.
>b) there is a long, long history of virulent racists edging their way into the mainstream by dressing up their prejudices just enough to sound reasonable to the ignorant.
Would you mind giving a modern example?
No. It is the same discussion, just revised for fancier modern science. But it's the same deal: "I, a man, have noticed a possible fact about women. That proves that the status quo is awesome, and let's talk about going back to a simpler time before civil rights were such a thorn in my side."
The reason nobody on the left will discuss biological determinism with you is because of its rich history as a tool of oppression. The discussion has happened a zillion times over hundreds of years.
It's the same reason that most people who understand evolution won't bother to debate with hardcore creationists: it's a fucking waste of time. The creationists will never come around and say, "Oh, gosh, guess I was wrong." Motivated reasoning driven by deep bias is just not a fertile ground for discussion. Anybody who's sincerely interested in the history of evolution or the history of racism or the history of sexism can take a class. That somebody wants to strongly argue a point without having done that work is a big sign it's useless.
> Anyone can take offense to anything and be “outraged.” What good does that do?
This is a fine example of motivated reasoning. Nicolashahn, who at least has the decency to write under his own name, was clearly talking about morally justified outrage. If you would like to argue that people on the receiving end of sexist and racist bias don't deserve to be upset, make the argument. But you can't slip it like this.
> Are you saying people on the autism spectrum shouldn’t be a part of the discussion?
No. But as someone on the spectrum, I will say you're an asshole for using me as a strawman in a dumb argument.
> Would you mind giving a modern example?
Oh, modern. You mean after racism and sexism ended? When did that happen exactly?
If you're serious about all this, open an account in your actual name, stop with the bad rhetorical techniques, and carry on with the discussion. But as far as I can tell, you're yet another bigot who popped on a mask.
You seem to be missing the nuance of distribution vs every individual. To me, this is a big distinction.
>"I, a man, have noticed a possible fact about women."
Actually, the vast majority of people in the social sciences are women, many of whom found this correlation with prenatal testosterone despite the evidence running counter to their ideology. If you would prefer, I can cite you many female researchers' names on peer reviewed articles. Regardless, why does it matter what gender the person is, if the science is sound?
>The reason nobody on the left will discuss biological determinism with you is because of its rich history as a tool of oppression.
That's too bad. As the confidence of a fact increases because of corroboration of evidence, the history of a more generalized, historical concept of the specific claim should have less bearing on whether it is true or not. If the issue doesn't appear sound, simply find evidence to refute the claim; the main concept behind the scientific method. Moreover, I debate this with people on the left all the time. If they aren't far left, they usually just downplay the amount the hormones affect decision, but they don't rule out there is any correlation.
>It's the same reason that most people who understand evolution won't bother to debate with hardcore creationists: it's a fucking waste of time.
False analogy. Yes, evolution is the only theory that has significant corroborating evidence and bringing up "designers" with mountains of evidence to the contrary (and no supporting evidence) is just faulty reasoning. Also, many times creationists make claims that are unfalsifiable and thus useless. On the contrary, though, people working hard to isolate independent variables in the messy field of cognitive psychology to find correlations to other attributes is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
>This is a fine example of motivated reasoning. Nicolashahn, who at least has the decency to write under his own name, was clearly talking about morally justified outrage. If you would like to argue that people on the receiving end of sexist and racist bias don't deserve to be upset, make the argument. But you can't slip it like this.
It isn't sexist or racist if you talk of distribution instead of every individual. Is it racist to ask for someone's race on a medical form? No, it's highly useful. Black males have a higher incidence of prostate cancer... or is that racist by your reasoning?
Why does using one's actual name make any difference to the content of the discussion? Are "Mark Twain's" literary works worthless because that is a pseudonym?
>No. But as someone on the spectrum, I will say you're an asshole for using me as a strawman in a dumb argument.
How is that a strawman? You implied that tact should be used when discussing things with strong historical contention. I brought up the fact that a certain proportion of people with a social disorder can't meet you metric because of materialistic deficiencies and that your requirement ostracizes those people. It's simply a further example of why I think emotions and feelings have little place in a discussion.
> Oh, modern. You mean after racism and sexism ended? When did that happen exactly?
No. I was genuinely curious what you were referencing.
>If you're serious about all this, open an account in your actual name, stop with the bad rhetorical techniques, and carry on with the discussion. But as far as I can tell, you're yet another bigot who popped on a mask.
Once again, why does my actual name matter or have any bearing whether I am "serious?" I am serious or else I wouldn't have taken the time out of my busy schedule to reply.
Vaguely saying I'm using "bad rheteorical techniques," isn't very useful. I assume y...
This discussion is about how we structure society to serve its members. It has a long history of bigots cloaking their bigotry in a zillion ways. It is rife with people putting on masks -- from white hoods to anime avatars -- as a way of manipulating the discourse and avoiding social accountability for their attempts at social change.
If you want to be taken seriously -- certainly by me, probably by anybody -- then step up. Otherwise you're indistinguishable to me from the thousand other people I've dealt with who are happy to support self-serving sexism and racism from the shadows.
Well, clearly, superficial things to the actual content of the discussion like who I am, matters to you. A blanket statement that "it matters," is too reductive.
> This discussion is about how we structure society to serve its members.
Agreed.
>It has a long history of bigots cloaking their bigotry in a zillion ways. It is rife with people putting on masks -- from white hoods to anime avatars -- as a way of manipulating the discourse and avoiding social accountability for their attempts at social change.
Social accountability? You'll have to define this and why this is important in a discussion.
I find it interesting that you are equating an anonymous discussion about how to best serve society to white supremacists running around assaulting and killing people. Rather an extreme jump.
>If you want to be taken seriously -- certainly by me, probably by anybody -- then step up. Otherwise you're indistinguishable to me from the thousand other people I've dealt with who are happy to support self-serving sexism and racism from the shadows.
Interesting. You still cling to this belief that I'm supporting "self-serving sexism and racism" without specifics and not rebutting anything I've said. I'm starting to think you are currently incapable of being nuanced in thought. I hope this changes for you.
I agree, I think we are done.
The norms of academic debate are decent ones, but they evolved in a very particular context, one where people committed to a lifetime of study and public service to earn their right to participate. You have done nothing here to earn similar consideration.
Certainly not. The request for a definition was meant to imply I can’t talk to the claim about “social accountability,” not knowing your definition. Unfortunately, you not rebutting anything just appears like you can’t, not that you won’t. You are definitely practicing what you preach; You are letting emotion ruin a conversation. In fact, it smacks of a tactic my 4 year-old daughter would use.
> Somebody who is putting on a hood to discuss their opinions is the one who has to earn a response.
I find it amusing that you use these “powerful” historical symbols to conjure up condemnation and emotion, when they have very little to do with anything I’ve discussed. It must be an easy life when you just dismiss things without observing or thinking about them. I find this is the most common feature among leftists and rightists and is predominantly why you guys are unable to come to an agreement on anything. Truly a spectacle.
>The norms of academic debate are decent ones, but they evolved in a very particular context, one where people committed to a lifetime of study and public service to earn their right to participate. You have done nothing here to earn similar consideration.
This is a website dedicated for people to “... make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.” This isn’t a place of academia, but the principles behind having a good discussion remain, regardless of the context. I’m sure you don’t decry the use of pseudonyms when women in the past used them so that the quality of their work wasn’t judged by their gender. I find it funny you can’t abstract that same concept to now. It almost seems like you desire to know who I am, so you can place me in a box like the many misogynists did to those women in the past. Seems to me, perhaps you are the new form of racist/sexist.
Lastly, people don’t necessarily have to devote a lifetime of study to be cited in the academic community. That comes with the merit of the research. There are many people who dedicate their life to academia, but are cited very little due to quality of their research.
I was hoping to actually have a discussion where we could each learn something from the other, but you make this impossible. You could have reached a moderate, but instead you alienated me. Really, all you did was prove one of the points I made in the beginning, that emotion is the heighth of irrationality and shuts down conversation.
Self-proclaimed "moderates" in hoods are a dime a dozen. If you aren't going to take your words seriously enough to take the minimal step of owning them, there's no reason I should. I can get poorly argued pro-sexist waffle anywhere.
I copy and pasted the intent from the welcome tab. "Well-developed?" It took me about 30 seconds.
I've just found out about y-combinator from a coworker fairly recently. I'm looking forward to contributing more, since I am in the technical industry. I hope my future interactions are more interesting and with significantly less assumptions about people and their intents. Speaking of which, instead of making assumptions, you could just ask people questions... but I guess that is too difficult.
> Self-proclaimed "moderates" in hoods are a dime a dozen. If you aren't going to take your words seriously enough to take the minimal step of owning them, there's no reason I should. I can get poorly argued pro-sexist waffle anywhere.
I lean "right" and "left" depending on the issue and your definitions for "right" and "left." Most of the time, my beliefs are rather balanced and not really "right" or "left," but a mixture of both. I don't know what else moderate could mean.
I don't know why you feel "owning my words" matters in a discussion, as you won't discuss it. You've simply thrown out the word "social accountability" without a definition.
This will be my last post to you.
He didn't say it directly, but he strongly implied that female coworkers were inferior. Among other things he claimed that women were less able to handle stress and have a harder time speaking up.
The document claims a lot more than just "women aren't interested in tech".
Is a Diversity executive actually impacting the bottom line of the company? Are there any actual quantitative facts that indicate that "diversity" improves a business's profitability? I am not arguing against diversity, please don't misunderstand. But it feels to me that this violent desire for diversity is something rather unique to SV tech. For example, the lack of men in the mental health professions barely raises any mention aside from the quadrennial NY Times think piece. The lack of men kindergarten teachers also barely makes a dent in the national discussion. The lack of women in building trades (despite those jobs being extremely well paying compared to "white collar" mid-level marketing jobs often dominated by women.) There's also not a big emphasis on the lack of women working in aviation or firefighting, despite those also being very well paid positions.
But for tech, for some reason it's a "big deal."
Fighting discrimination is obviously important as a basic matter of human rights, but much of tech's diversity push isn't about fighting discrimination as much as it's about actively recreating the balance of men and women in the field based on an arbitrary desired ratio.
If men and women are different, then it follows that they will have different desired vocations to a similar degree that they are different. If we argue that men and women are exactly the same, then why aren't more men working in mental health or social work -- those fields are about 80% women. We can't use the discrimination argument because that would imply that women discriminate against men -- and that doesn't fit the narrative that the straight white male is the bane of society.
Now one of the valuable lessons one learns operating in any large institution is that yes there are stupid questions no matter if the policy explicitly states there aren't, and there are always unwritten rules. Failure to discover the unwritten rules leads to getting fired, let go, skipped by during a promotion, etc.
Just curious, what do you think would be a proper venue. Tweeting at Google HR publicly, private emails to owners / upper management?
So we shouldn't discuss the policies in place at our workplace... At our workplace?
Where on earth do propose we do discuss such changes then?
I feel it we owe to society that we should try to improve it at every opportunity and allowing ourselves to adapt to a bad system instead of trying to break it is doing society a disservice. In other words: I feel it is our duty to try and provoke changes to what we perceive as bad instead of exclusively trying to adapt to the conditions presented.
In this case, he felt the system in the workplace is wrong then he should try to stress it into breaking so it can finally get fixed.
Another example: lets say that because of a bad bureaucratic process a certain action causes long queues on some service. I feel that it's everyone's responsibility to do that very action in order for the service to stop working entirely, which would force a change to it by whoever is in charge. I see it as "voting with your actions".
You can, and some people have, and that's okay. It's not clear whether you're making the implication here, but commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate.
> I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way
Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".
Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering. He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.
Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse. This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.
Further, Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification, let alone evidence. That's either more confirmation bias or conscious sleight-of-hand, either way, it's certainly not intellectual honesty.
I don't bear Damore any ill will, he should be forgiven, but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias. These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.
If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which.
> Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits.
Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".
You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.
You're holding him to an unbelievably high standard that is never applied to those making the case that gender disparities are due to societal discrimination.
I can't imagine you're being driven to apply this standard to him by anything other than a preconceived notion that women are underrepresented in engineering due to sexism and that anyone that disagrees is a misogynist.
>Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".
Damore did not target anyone as below the bar. He made a statistical observation about the distribution of personality types among gender groups and how that would play out in gender representation in various occupations, to counter the discrimination-as-cause-of-disparity narrative. No individual was cast as below the bar due to their gender. The threat response was immature.
No, this is wrong. Societal discrimination is directly measurable at the point of hiring. There are a mountain of studies measuring this. It simply doesn't require modelling the effect as it propagates through society.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, nobody is claiming that bias is the only factor involved, but it's one we can measure and act on.
> Damore did not target anyone as below the bar... The threat response was immature
Aside from explicitly saying "lowers the bar", explicitly saying "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes" and making multiple references to lower drive, mathematical ability, etc. Please.
As you know, threat responses aren't driven by 'maturity' they're driven by percieved threat. Damore's clumsy language caused people at Google to be afraid, and justifiably so. He may have intended to spark a dialog but his words are confrontational. Don't confront people on this topic because you'll often get a fight/flight response. Instead you must engage and build trust.
Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable. It's also another example of different standards being applied to liberal groups vs conservatives groups (offending conservative groups is basically a sacrament, but saying anything that can be remotely twisted into an offensive statement toward a liberal group is nearly criminal). I've never seen anyone make any sort of threat-response/justifiable-offense argument when conservatives are upset about, say, "blasphemy day" or just the constant misrepresentation in the media. In particular though, there's nothing which should remotely cause offense, even in the selection of quotes you shared (but good on you for quoting and not taking offense at strawman--very few of Damore's critics have been so kind). Damore's arguments (however factual) were better than I could make, but it's ridiculous that the criticism is that he didn't successfully prevent everyone from taking offense. He couldn't have done more to prevent offense without damaging his own case. I think this is another case of the left refusing to be pacified by anything less than complete political capitulation. Meanwhile any sort of expression from liberal groups, even defamation or riots, are defended, and any one who criticizes them have impossible standards. The double standards here should be unbelievable.
Great, do that.
> Your threat response point seems like dressing up a group's overreaction to make it justifiable.
Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable.
There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level.
I wrote about threat response in my post on this: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...
I plan on it.
> Your overreaction point seems like dressing up a group's threat response to make it seem unreasonable.
I think it is unreasonable. Damore took every precaution to avoid offense without changing his position. Perhaps more importantly, we go so far as to censor someone who makes any statement that can possibly be spun as a criticism of women, yet we permit and even encourage all manner of absurd, anti-male speech.
> There are threat responses and irrational behaviour on both sides (whichever side you naturally agree with) and failing to recognise that means that you're not empowering yourself to engage with this topic on any useful level.
First of all, I'd like not to use "threat-response" as a synonym for "taking offense", because the former could be easily conflated with an actual threat (damage to person or property vs damage to hubris). That said, Damore went to every conceivable length to avoid causing offense; I think you and his other critics are effectively asking him not to criticize at all. Not speaking about a sensitive topic at all is hardly empowering oneself to "engage this topic on any useful level".
I think it's also worth pointing out that the left has nurtured a culture in which some groups are encouraged to take offense, and this is used to silence and shame other groups. I think that's what's happening here--a lot of people have been relentlessly fed propaganda about privilege and patriarchy and oppression have been trained to see it everywhere. I think this is a better explanation for the events that transpired than "Damore is evil/insensitive/etc".
Perhaps every precaution within his ability. Unfortunately he made plenty of provocative mistakes. I highlighted some in the Medium post I linked to.
> First of all, I'd like not to use "threat-response" as a synonym for "taking offense"...
If you think that's what I'm doing then you're mistaken. I'm talking about stress hormones, cortisol, fight or flight.
There are probably better [primary] sources, but Tania Singer & her team at the MPI in Leipzig do a lot of work with stress responses caused by things other than "damage to person or property".
When you use the language that Damore used, in a confrontational way as opposed to a collaborative way, that reaction can be the result. Threat responses are caused by threats, including threats to identity groups, or to future prosperity (something that significantly affects the life chances of any offspring).
Whether you consider it "unreasonable" or not is irrelevant. My advice is to approach the debate in a collaborative way, instead of being confrontational like Damore, and you'll more likely avoid that outcome.
Damore did everything right here. Whatever you think, his post was collaborative, not confrontational (he remained focused on what Google could do to improve, repeatedly affirmed his commitment to the common goal, etc).
So, women are a portion of society who've spent hundreds of years fighting for equal treatment, a portion of society who weren't allowed credit cards until the 1970s, who have been told their brains were too small for serious things like voting... a portion of society who still face discrimination today (although today it's usually more nuanced and less overt). Damore said openly that Google were lowering the bar to let them in and amplified ideas that make it harder for the women (and other 'diversity' hires) already in Google, and you're surprised people got cross. Really? That surprises you?
Damore did the equivalent of walking into Jerusalem, picking a side, then immediately spouting policy changes he wanted to see... then acting all hurt when he got punched in the face and kicked out of Israel for causing trouble.
This isn't about being a world-class communicator, this is about an adequate communicator for the problem he was trying to solve.
How would you react if I told you your views were biased and extreme? Even if I think they are, telling you that in the introduction of my memo (like Damore did) is not going to get the reaction I want.
> ...but it's plainly wrong to attribute this drama to him instead of the reactionaries who were so giddy at the opportunity to take offense that they needed to invent content and context to be outraged about.
Not so plain as you think.
A scientific approach to determining the 'natural' gender balance would require a lot more 'biological' data and be able to combine it in a model with cultural factors and understanding of biases. Damore does not have that evidence, and doesn't indicate that he understands it.
A model like that would need to be able to predict why womens participation in computing dropped in the 80s. It would be able to explain why women are only 10% of computer science faculty in the USA, but 40% in China.
Without that model, leaping to conclusions about how many women to expect in a company like Google is bad science, and making HR policy changes on the back of this would be bad management.
No such model exists, but Damore leapt past that stage and in doing so abandoned any hope of scientific support.
He used inflammatory terms like lowering the "bar", accused Google of bias and fostering extreme views, talking about womens biological interests and abilities, and spoke in absolutist language rather than collaborative language.
Damore wanted to effectively reduce the number of women in the workplace, that's a threat. And he used inflammatory language while doing it, so the threat was as clear as day. I find it amazing that you're surprised by the reaction.
> Seems like blaming the woman in the full burqa for being raped--if only she had better covered herself, she might not have caused this response in her rapist.
I'm not going to respond to that, but I consider that comment both inaccurate and inappropriate.
So you agree it was the content and not the presentation? At any rate, Damore didn't say that Google lowered the bar, he said that diversity policies can devolve into that, but some people are addicted to outrage and will hear what they want.
> Damore did the equivalent of walking into Jerusalem, picking a side, then immediately spouting policy changes he wanted to see... then acting all hurt when he got punched in the face and kicked out of Israel for causing trouble.
No, Damore worked at Google; his everyday life is affected by Google's policies and rhetoric and general ideological-bubble-ness. He didn't "walk in and start espousing policies". It's also worth noting that he posted in response to a request for opinions on a skeptics message board; he didn't shout it from a mountain. Your analogy is completely divorced from reality.
> This isn't about being a world-class communicator, this is about an adequate communicator for the problem he was trying to solve.
This still sounds like victim blaming. Maybe we shouldn't be critiquing the guy who pointed out a few injustices and maybe we should look at the people who feigned outrage to silence him.
> Without that model, leaping to conclusions about how many women to expect in a company like Google is bad science, and making HR policy changes on the back of this would be bad management.
Yes, but he wasn't "doing science", he was posting on a message board. Besides, his point isn't "Here's a model that explains the disparity"; it's "the current model--discrimination hypothesis--has inconsistencies". Finally, being wrong (even about a contentious topic) doesn't merit public damnation, slander, excommunication, etc. That his model is incomplete is a red herring; he wasn't at fault, Google, Gizmodo, and the hoard of slanderous SJWs here and across the Internet are at fault.
> He used inflammatory terms like lowering the "bar", accused Google of bias and fostering extreme views, talking about womens biological interests and abilities, and spoke in absolutist language rather than collaborative language.
Sorry, none of this remotely merits the response he received. In fact, if anyone else spoke in this manner about any other topic, it would be a significant improvement. If the discrimination-theory folks were held to this standard, it would be a massive improvement. I'm not going to punch a guy for being in the 98th percentile of communicators instead of the 99th, especially when his critics and opponents are largely shouting lies and profanity.
> I'm not going to respond to that, but I consider that comment both inaccurate and inappropriate.
That's fine, but that's basically what's happening here. Damore went far above and beyond what was reasonable, and you're blaming him for not doing more. This is inappropriate.
No... I don't agree.
Both Damore's content and the way it was communicated contain serious flaws. The content contained conclusions unsupported by evidence, and the communication (amongst other problems) contained pointlessly divisive and inflammatory comments that he really didn't need to make to address his concerns.
> At any rate, Damore didn't say that Google lowered the bar, he said that diversity policies can devolve into that, but some people are addicted to outrage and will hear what they want.
Oh please. Damore literally used those exact words.
He said Google policies "effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate".
The most generous interpretation of that statement is that a greater percentage of candidates from under-represented demographics are hired, but that bends the word "bar" to mean something other than its actual meaning... i.e. turns an otherwise weak point into inflammatory rhetoric.
> ... the people who feigned outrage to silence him.
I'm curious. So you think a large group of people is pretending to be outraged about something they're not actually outraged about? Does this behaviour require coordination or happen naturally? If it's coordinated, where is the evidence of collusion, is there an email list? If this collective outrage-feigning happens naturally then under what other human circumstances do humans exhibit this group mock-outrage behaviour, other than when the 'right' complaints about the 'left'? How do you know this outrage is "feigned" and not real?
Why should I believe this is more than just partisan bias on your part? Outgroup biases are well documented, after all, and your use of 'SJW' seem to put you in or near one of the right/alt-right/gamergate/white-supramacist camps, no idea which.
> Sorry, none of this remotely merits the response he received.
What do you mean by the response he received?
If you mean the loss of his job... then in no other context would someone be able to retain their job after undermining so many of their own colleagues or causing so many negative news headlines for their company... let alone both.
If you mean something else then I don't feel a need to be part of that discussion.
Regarding the response received, I was talking about the firing and public flogging. And Google created the headlines for firing him so questionably.
> ...public flogging...
Uh huh... tell me again about inventing things that didn't happen?
[Edit]
Seriously though; I've already corrected you on two things you fiercely claimed never happened but actually did (Damore mentioning ability, and Damore mentioning lowering the bar).
If you want credibility in your statements you're going to need to back them up with evidence otherwise you just seem like you're having some kind of partisan emotional experience throwing mud at people you see as your enemies.
And while it's always interesting to observe irrational behaviour, perhaps not the way you'd rather be seen.
At no point have I "resorted to ad hominems", nor do I see anything that could have been misunderstood that way.
Perhaps you're referring to when I asked you to differentiate your position from partisan mud-slinging?
Note that I made that request after you'd written a diatribe about how the left manufactures feigned offence to silence its critics. And now you're upset that I'm using ad hominem attacks?
Fascinating.
> I feel pretty good about my case
You haven't made a case. A case involves making a point and then supporting it using evidence, which at no point have you done. Instead you've argued using rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims, which is a very different thing.
I've never been on a discussion board where this was the norm. More importantly, and to repeat my earlier point, this isn't even the norm for well-regarded, published content on the subject. It appears the standards are very high for dissenting opinions.
> You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.
Maybe, but given that Damore's memo is largely criticized for causing offense (despite doing more than what is reasonable to avoid it), it certainly seems pertinent that other points of view aren't held to the same scrutiny.
> Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar".
Probably, but he did a much better job of mitigating it than I could have, and we never, ever hold liberal viewpoints to this standard. In particular, it's positively mainstream to publish absolutely brutal criticisms of men; we don't even feign sensitivity.
Bad Thing A doesn't justify Bad Thing B though, does it.
As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences
No, but I don't think stating an observation about a group as politely as possible is a bad thing. It's not like saying "women may be less interested in tech" or "diversity quotas can lead to bar-lowering" are even unflattering or absolute observations. We just live in a culture of professional victims who are ever-primed to take offense at anything. The moral thing isn't to critique Damore's communication--better communication wouldn't have helped; only capitulation. The moral thing to do is to oppose the victimhood culture.
> As for the high burden of proof, I invite you to suggest a model that estimates the effect size we should observe in gender representation in tech companies based on Damore's 'biological' differences
I don't have that model, and I never claimed to. Moreover, no one needs a model to point out inconsistencies in the current model, especially inconsistencies which are mutually harmful.
No. Nobody else does either.
I must have missed where he proposes a model. By all means point that out. Specifically one that can predict how many women should work at Google in California, and in Boulder, and in New York, and in London, and in Mumbai... year by year.
> *But why spend time investigating when challenging the discrimination hypothesis can cost you your job, reputation, etc.
Challenging a hypothesis didn't cost Damore his job. Undermining his own colleagues by promoting negative stereotypes cost Damore his job. That was totally unnecessary to his argument... he could have just based it on CS graduate numbers and left the 'biology' out of it.
Take my example. I have not read the memo. I shouldn't say the memo is unscientific and homophobic because I have no clue what it says.
I deeply disagree with this approach. You're essentially saying that unless you can come up with an alternative scientific theory, complete with predictions, it's not possible to criticise an existing theory about the world.
There's many plausible explanations why an absence of a 50:50 gender representation could be caused for reasons other than bias or average ability. That's enough to put a nail in that model of discovering bias. Coming up with a way of predicting what the right ratio is, isn't necessary to discard that metric.
I think part of the problem is what the memo says and what it doesn’t say. It’s entirely plausible that the ‘natural’ ratio is not exactly 50:50. But as of last year, among Google tech workers, the ratio was 81:19, and that’s with all the affirmative-actiony programs Damore wanted to back off on; in the past it was higher. It’s quite a bit less plausible that intrinsic differences could explain all or even most of that big a discrepancy, especially combined with the many anecdotes of discrimination we hear about. Now, to be fair, the memo never explicitly claims that it does; indeed, at one point it specifically says “in part”. But the tone of the memo, the relative lack of time spent acknowledging the large role played by cultural factors, makes it sound like Damore thinks the natural ratio is at least pretty close to the current one. And that’s simply wrong.
You may ask why it's 80-20 among CS graduates. One hypothesis is that women are just less interested in tech and in presence of many other choices they choose different paths. In the past there weren't as many choices that's why women were forced to go into programming (that's why there were more women in programming several decades ago).
That's a straw man. You're suggesting I disapprove of criticism, which is not so. I disapprove of demands for policy change when you don't even have a hypothesis for what your target should be.
Unless Damore (or someone else) can reasonably estimate whether their theory around 'biological' differences result in a natural 10/90 ratio or a natural 49.9/51.1 ratio then there isn't really a case to be made to change actual real-world HR policies on that basis.
Being able to reasonably estimate that 'natural' ratio is a massive task. You'd need to account for parenting, education, popular culture, socio-economic group, dozens of biasing factors. I'd expect that model to go well beyond what's possible.
Yes, that may impose a high hurdle on criticism of HR policy via this argument, but that's also the intellectual leap that Damore has claimed to have made from the evidence presented. How exactly he's managed that leap is problematic. He certainly hasn't demonstrated full knowledge of all of the factors involved.
> There's many plausible explanations why an absence of a 50:50 gender representation could be caused for reasons other than bias or average ability. That's enough to put a nail in that model of discovering bias. Coming up with a way of predicting what the right ratio is, isn't necessary to discard that metric.
Of course, and it's certain to be a combination of factors, some historical, some current that pushes representation away from 50:50. I don't think anyone is pretending that bias alone is responsible. But there's a mountain of direct evidence that bias is a significant problem. On the other hand the chasm between this biological source evidence and an actual hypothesised effect on representation is vast.
While this sounds reasonable on the face of it the reality is different.
Where are you sourcing these graduates from? In the USA computer science departments are barely above 10% women faculty, in China it's closer to 40%. Student numbers tell a similar story... so it matters where your graduates are coming from. For a multinational like Google this is a real question.
> If you force it to be say 70-30 then you are discriminating against men based on sex.
This is a loaded statement, based on the assumpions that (a) hiring if left alone is broadly meritocratic and (b) quotas are the only game in town. There's enough evidence to say that neither of those assumptions is true.
First of all, it's been proven many times that bias in hiring is a real problem and has a large effect. Hiring is not meritocratic. Second, Google doesn't use quotas, no bar-lowering occurs (Damore hinted at this but gave no specifics and no evidence... we have to reasonably discount it unless someone can prove otherwise). Instead diversity programs mainly exist around sourcing and trying to avoid false negatives in order to counteract systemic biases.
(Disclaimer, I work in this field and have written on this topic before: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...)
[edited to remove some text from parent post accidentally left at the end]
I agree with your argument but fail to see how it allows you to defend a discriminating policy. It's the other way around: You can't discriminate people without evidence that what you are doing is reasonable. You're the sexist in this case.
You can't defend a discriminatory policy by saying you understand it's discriminatory but to keep it because no one can tell how much.
This line of reasoning is inconsistent unless you are only opposed to discrimination of some groups. In that case I think we sadly have to agree to disagree.
Do you agree with my argument apart from whether it applies to you or not?
I'm not a fan of the trend for sorry-you-feel-that-way apologies. On the other hand it's possible I let this seemingly-unending argument get to me and got defensive, thanks for not taking it badly. Suggest we move on. For reference (no need to explain) the trigger was "You're the sexist in this case" which I now assume was hypothetical rather than accusatory.
The words you're putting in my mouth is defence of specific policies. I'm not aware that I'm defending any specific policies.
One policy that's come up (not sure which thread, I've lost track and can't be bothered to reorient) is Google's policy (as I understand it) of ensuring 'diversity' candidates get considered, reducing the false negative rate. This was inaccurately described by Damore as lowering "the bar", which is quite inflammatory. That policy is designed to specifically redress two things; (a) decreased confidence in under-represented groups resulting in low numbers of applicants, and (b) unconscious bias in hiring processes resulting in fewer under-represented groups getting through.
While there are more elegant solutions (vested interest disclaimer here) this type of policy tries to address measurable issues and does not reduce quality of hires.
Perhaps it leaves fewer roles open for others, but ultimately you have to make a choice between Hire A benefitting from a diversity program or Hire B benefitting from hiring bias in their favour.
Is there a different policy you want to discuss?
More background on my post on this topic if you can be bothered: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...
Regarding your reply: I agree with most of your reply and enjoyed reading your blog post. I feel I understand your position much better now and can see where you are coming from.
> Is there a different policy you want to discuss?
I'd like to clarify whether we agree or disagree on the original argument - hypothetically, regardless of any specific policy. I hope I don't misrepresent your views in the following.
In your blog post you seem to argue that feelings of unfairness by the over-represented group in response to positive discrimination are built on a misconception [1]. My original reply to you was in the same vein and I'd like to understand where exactly we disagree on that.
I believe discrimination based on group membership is not justifiable. The only way in which positive discrimination can be justified is therefore if its application does not actually cause discrimination but only corrects for existing discrimination.
As we don't know for sure yet how much of the representation gap can be attributed to discrimination, we should not use positive discrimination to correct for it as we potentially do more than correcting for it but actually discriminate.
Hypothetically, if the split would be 45/55 in a perfectly just world, aiming for 50/50 through positive discrimination would in practice discriminate and not just correct for discrimination.
Please note that I agree with the outcomes of positive discrimination until the effect of the original discrimination is canceled out - I just don't feel we can distinguish both cases and should not dismiss feelings of injustice in response to that as "built on a misconception".
[1]
> In any discussion of positive discrimination there’s a risk that the overrepresented group (usually white men) may feel threatened. Unsafe. People aren’t born aware of their comparative advantage or disadvantage, and sometimes never see it, so when other groups seem to be given a leg up it can feel unfair.
> Feelings of injustice may be built on a misconception, but they still exist and are natural
He didn't. He just claimed that they are on average less interested in those areas. There is no mention at all of ability in the memo, only in the manipulated press pieces.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
His claim was that women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He said nothing about ability.
>It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse.
He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.
>Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification
I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.
>>He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.
>This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.
>it's certainly not intellectual honesty...
>stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.
I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.
It's very easy to learn about biases like confirmation bias, and fall into the trap of only applying that knowledge to other people. "He only disagrees with me because of confirmation bias. He's just intellectually dishonest."
You can't possibly know the thought process behind another person. As far as we know Damore did the research and found these facts convincing and developed his view. Not the other way around. Or at least someone presented these facts to him and then he developed the view he has.
In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.
The memo is mostly about women, but race is mentioned several times in the memo - mostly in terms of training programs at Google that are only open to people of certain races.
Sorry, you're mistaken here. (1) Damore said "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes". (2) Damore made references to women being less able to cope with leadership positions due to anxiety (3) Studies show ability, interest, motivation and external environment are not mutually exclusive independent things like you might think. Read some of Carol Dweck's research on this for more.
> He gave lots of numbers. 20% is about the percentage of female computer science graduates. Targeting anything above that would necessarily require discriminating against men.
'in the USA' is missing from your sentence.
In China, 40% of faculty are women, and graduate numbers are similar. The largest democracy in the world, India, also has a similar story, close to 50% of graduates.
Google hires across the world, not just in the USA.
> I don't see any mention of race in the memo. When Damore is talking about "diversity" he always is talking about gender diversity.
It's there, look again. And you don't get the unique right to interpret the true meaning behind Damore's words. He specifically references race-related hiring policies as unfair off the back of a discussion about gender.
> I've been asked to edit my comment to make it less argumentative. Could you do the same for yours? Calling someone you disagree with "intellectually dishonest", etc, is not good taste.
I consider my comment pretty factual. Intellectual honesty has a specific meaning; the 'intellectual' isn't just there as filling. It's a method of problem solving that among other things explicitly disconnects your personal beliefs from the pursuit of the facts. I was explaining that Damore's actions were not consistent with intellectual honesty, as implied by the commenter I replied to.
Damore leapt over a vast chasm to get from 'biological' differences to HR policy. He could be right about every single thing in his memo and it still wouldn't be intellectually honest because the evidence provided doesn't explain the observable facts.
Why did representation of women in computing drop suddenly in the 1980s? Why does the USA have 20% (and falling) women CS graduates and India have closer to 50%? Why are 10% of US CS faculty women and in China 40% CS faculty are women? Why do girls interested in computers during childhood suddenly drop their interest?
It ultimately doesn't matter what his thought process is, perhaps I should have left that aspect out. Until Damore can answer those kinds of questions, leaping straight to HR policy is intellectual dishonesty. Unless I'm missing something that's an indisputable fact.
...and we haven't even opened the Pandora's Box that is less biased hiring techniques, but perhaps that's for another time.
[Edit: missed a bit:]
> In any case, this is how all debates work. People present evidence for their beliefs and the other side responds with refutations and evidence for theirs. There is nothing wrong or intellectually dishonest about this.
This is how debates work on topics that aren't emotive. In this case, Damore promoted stereotypes of lower ability (yes, ability), and explicitly claimed that Google is lowering the "bar" to allow diversity candidates in.
That effectively tells his colleagues hired through those programs that they don't deserve to be there, and that he wants fewer people like them hired in future.
That's never going to happen like a discussion of whether the button should be #4285F4 or #3285F4. It's a threat to peoples future prosperity, and the prosperity of their familes, daughters, etc. That conversation requires empathy and trust. Instead, Da...
This seems to assume that the only way to measure or achieve equitable hiring is to measure the representation of identity groups across a given position and make sure it tracks their makeup in the general population. It's not clear to me that there aren't other acceptable methods of trying to make things equitable.
For example, you could check that applicants from different identity groups succeed in being hired at about the same rate. That's a practice that should direct an organization towards equitable results whether the reality is that women are underrepresented because of sexism in hiring or the reality is that women are represented in different proportion because of the endeavors they tend to prefer. And also for a reality that's a mix of both (which I suspect is the way of things).
Also: if the primary accepted standard becomes to match representation in a position with an identity's representation in the population, it seems pretty likely that over time it would become more difficult over time to predict a "natural" ratio.
This solves two problems: 1) the hiring process is blinded and 2) you can demonstrate to the whole world that it's blinded.
As a side bonus, you get to eliminate other implicit biases that are part of the hiring process, like people preferring people who act like them.
Fix problems at the source, don't apply hack after hack to route around it.
If instead we're adding a 'fudge factor' based on race, gender, or other measure of 'privilege', we're just hoping that fudge factor in hiring makes up for problems elsewhere, and it can paradoxically make things even worse.
Think about a lot of the (often very well justified) complaints that minority and other hires have with the current situation: they feel like, or they feel that other people believe, that they are simply a 'diversity hire' that doesn't deserve to be there. They feel constantly pressured to 'prove themselves' under the suspicion that the bar was 'lowered to let them in'. And the entire structure of un-blinded affirmative action exacerbates the situation, because nobody is allowed to know how big the fudge factors are, neither the minorities nor the dominant group. Under that situation, how can there anything but suspicion and mutual distrust?
Under a provably blinded hiring process, none of those should be an issue, because the process is completely transparent and agreed to ahead of time.
Other people have said this much more eloquently than me:
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-pro...
A 'blind' hiring process _can_ be akin to, faced with a densely connected graph, focusing only on the most immediate causal relationships.
I do agree that 'fudge factor's are clumsy at best, where all candidates are hired, and then an arbitrary number is added to candidates based on race/gender/etc.
However, 'fudge factors' have already existed in history. For a completely different example outside of hiring practices: redlining[1] was an explicit practice of denying services/mortgages to city neighborhood based on its racial makeup.
So, what now? There have been decades of racist 'fudge-factoring' in real estate and urban development. Is the right approach to fudge-factor the other way? Or is it to be 'blind' and to look purely at the financials of each individual/organization?
Obviously this is a different scenario than hiring, and cannot necessarily be directly applied back onto hiring practices. However, we can separate out a) one way to correct for historical/systematic 'fudge factors' from b) whether or not this can apply to hiring.
I would argue that yes, you need fudge factors to correct previous problems.
It should be fair and transparent, I agree, but it will not be very clear-cut. In complex systems (densely connected graphs of causality), the only clear-cut processes are creating problems, or ignoring them. Fixing complex problems are always messy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
This is true if you consider a single subject, but no longer true if you consider different stakeholders and their needs separately.
(Disclaimer, this describes part of a service we provide)
Specific to your point, in a hiring system modelled like ours:
* Employees assessing a particular hire can operate blind (or near-blind in the case of interviews).
* Hiring managers can have access to identifying information (but by default just see aggregated scoring data).
* D&I managers can see aggregated demographic stats.
* Candidates see their own data & scoring info
So why do you think there is such a disparity in outcome?
Edit: Google says that their diversity platform is non-discriminatory because they're not changing their standards, but rather looking harder for qualified diversity candidates (paraphrasing). This makes the gargantuan and probably unwarranted assumption that there are a lot of these candidates not applying and that 'looking harder' will find them.
We've run a similar study and for the company we were hiring into we found blinding in that specific case had no effect on race or gender but drastically improved socio-economic diversity. The hiring company already had equitable hiring on gender & the candidate group wasn't racially diverse enough to make a conclusion.
Would I generalise that result to all organisations? No way, and neither should you.
If you can find the study you're thinking of I'd be interested to look at it.
There are still arguments to be made that either more aggressively recruiting women (fattening their pipeline, even if it's zero-sum versus other players in the field) or accepting a higher rate (yes, "lowering the bar", which most colleges do quite aggressively and people seem mostly okay with) could be positive moves on many axes.
More productive overall measures involve equalizing the educational pipeline, which IMO is the real solution. Google invests heavily in that, too, though, so I'm pretty happy with their multi-pronged approach.
Ok, no one owes anyone a debate, unless you're going to call it wrong, sexist, harmful, etc. Then in that case, I'd like some reasoning behind it. Either don't debate, or do and do it right.
> women are on average less able
Please don't do this. What he claimed was that women have less inclination to go into tech due to various pressures, some biological. If you're referring to his referencing the 'big five' personality traits, you'll note that he addresses both positively and negatively associated traits of both men and women in regards to working with software. He never stated that the combination of differences makes one gender better than the other.
>until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number
Why? All he did was put forth evidence and suggest that 50/50 might not be ideal, why must another number be presented in order to have a discussion on the subject? Speculation on my part, but is it because it's an easier target to shoot down if you can point to an exact number and claim it's wrong for your own variety of reasons?
Obviously, policy changes are going to be a goal if Damore's evidence is proved right (Policy is at the root of the problem according to Damore). Why are you presenting them like two separate things? You're not even considering the fact that the evidence might support his conclusions.
>diversity as a whole(race not just gender)
Because whenever diversity is discussed, it is almost done so as a whole. Obviously Damore wanted to focus on gender, but diversity initiatives virtually always include both. It would seem awkward to avoid race entirely. And he never made any claims on just race, go to the memo and ctrl-f "race". Every time it appears, it's accompanied by "and/or gender". In several of these cases, it's because a study he's citing mentions both. I would call that being thorough, not intellectually dishonest.
>These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.
You can make this claim about any paper that claims something not trivially arguable from scientific studies. To say this, you have to go through piecewise and show why the connections he's making from solid scientific studies don't apply to his arguments.
This is still just about what you'd like to happen. The rest of that argument is circular.
> Please don't do this. What he claimed was that women have less inclination...
Damore specifically mentions "abilities" although others have debated his exact intention in that line. I don't see value in reopening that.
Regardless, what you're missing is that interest, ability and environment are far from mutually exclusive traits. See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15026234
> Why? All he did was put forth evidence and suggest that 50/50 might not be ideal...
Because Damore went as far as policy changes. To make an HR policy you need objectives, or at least direction... to know whether you should be aiming for a 49:51 gender ratio or a 10:90 gender ratio. If there's no proposed effect size how does Google's HR team know if they're heading in the right direction?
Some people may not want employers like Google to get into 'social engineering' as Damore puts it, but the reality is that there's a mountain of evidence that hiring bias has a large effect, so the idea that a company like Google wouldn't try to measure and optimise in that area is clearly not going to fly.
You might be wrong, you might be right, either way that does mean forfeiting the debate. It's like folding in poker -- yeah, you might have great cards, but you folded, and nobody owes you any of the money on the table.
> Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".
Uhm, no. Might as well say assuming a 50/50 ratio to be free of bias is not intellectually honest, so "they started it". And then those could in turn point to someone else, and so on.
No. Damore had to win. His opponents just had to not lose.
Google has invested massive resources and thought into their hiring process. The debate for change was started clumsily. Damore triggered a threat response that caused a good portion of one side to walk away from the debate, but he was pushed out too.
So the status quo persists.
"openness" and "freedom" are core values of Google. Even in a scenario where someone made effective arguments refuting all of James' key points, a "one strike and you're out" policy seems antithetical to Google's culture. Or any healthy culture for that matter.
If James wrote what you said he did above (I think you mischaracterize him greatly), and if his ideas are as poorly constructed as you suggest they are, surely Google employs someone intelligent enough to go point by point through his memo and really school him. Such a response would do more to build a case for the worldview you appear to espouse than the lazy, generalized retorts being lobbed his way.
By all means ignore the part relating to honesty/competence, I'd probably apologise to him for that if I met him so probably shouldn't have written it.
Most of my comments however speak to his actions so are not a matter of characterisation.
> ...surely Google employs someone intelligent enough to go point by point through his memo and really school him
They do. They have. However, Damore violated Google's code of conduct and by extension his conditions of employment. That's not a line any employer of thousands can play coy with in the name of educating one individual.
> Such a response would do more to build a case for the worldview you appear to espouse than the lazy, generalized retorts being lobbed his way.
Who's mischaracterising now?
Sorry boss, you haven't read the right responses. I link to some better ones from mine: https://medium.com/finding-needles-in-haystacks/we-need-to-t...
I actually don't think the public response suggests insight or originality on his part. I would attribute much more of that to the social context.
No. Not yet. women still tend to be underpaid. Women make 72 cents to a male's $1 of wages for the same job.
As a white male, I don't care to "discuss" if women are my intellectual inferiors - which is exactly the point Damore was making ... and the point that YOU are making.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...
These numbers do not show that the labour market is free of sex discrimination. However, they do suggest that the main problem today is not unequal pay for equal work, but whatever it is that leads women to be in lower-ranking jobs at lower-paying organisations."
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-...
If you'd correct this, we'd appreciate it, because these discussions are hard enough to keep substantive without people taking swipes at each other.
Or if he wrote it about short people, that they, on average, were worse coders. I am sure you could find some semi-reasonable sounding studies showing some correlation between height and some definition of success.
The argument in the memo is: hire on equal standards and if that results in less women than men then it's caused by X and here is what you can do about X instead of discriminating at the point of hire.
The worst offense though was that a lot of the assertions were completely disconnected from supporting the original claim that Google's diversity efforts were misguided. In order to have an honest intellectual discussion, first there would have had to have been an honest effort at putting together a coherent argument with such controversial/incendiary points/implications made. Damore failed that miserably.
The memo is being discussed so much because it is controversial, which does not require originality, nor is it necessarily insightful. It shows the perspective of someone in an exclusive position which I believe adds (considerably) to the reasons it's being discussed, but to make the conclusion that it's being talked about because it adds to the discussion is incorrect.
It's about the attitude. As a woman in Tech, there are so many men you don't feel like you belong. Men think you are really not very feminine anyway, you are a geek who likes programming. With memos like this more young women are going to rethink a career where they will feel alone and may have their biological identity questioned if they are successful
You know what's ridiculous? Expecting people to magically agree with you because you're tired of arguing your position.
Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in that world, but we don't[1]. In a society where all people are equal (which is what we are aiming for, even if the debate rages on whether that's what we have), all opinions are also equal. The tipping force on the scale of debate is tangible evidence, and it's the lifelong struggle of anyone with political opinions to continually remind others of the evidence behind their standpoint.
Feel free to not bother and stuff if you're a bit tired or bored or whatever, but be aware that from a third party perspective, there's no visible difference between someone who won't provide evidence and someone who can't.
[1] edit: I thought about this for a few seconds and have decided this would be a horrible world
You (along with many others) seem to be conflating the major point of the memo between interests and abilities. Not liking something does not mean you're not capable of doing it.
Would you intuitively think that someone who loves their job are going to be more interested in bigger challenges and doing great work, or someone who doesn't care for the job?
I wouldn't assume someone's interest level based on their demographics. I would, you know, talk to them.
The Google firing was a really bad move if outreach programs are a good idea.
People who don't feel like sharing probably won't feel like getting talked at, so there won't be much listening in the other direction either.
Regardless, I'm not sure how that's related to my comment - the memo was discussing relative interests in software engineering (and other disciplines), not capabilities of people being able to do code better than others.
Next time your engineers are scheduled to interview someone and they see a female name on the resume, they'll form an opinion (even if slight, and even if overridable by interacting with the person) about who the candidate is. Depending on how tired/stressed/bored they are that day, that opinion will play a smaller or bigger role in what they write down in the candidate report.
That bias, by the way, exists today. Trying to justify it on the base of biological differences does nothing to fix it.
You presupposed that the bias is why the disparity exists in the first place. Its plausible that we completely fix all biases in the industry and the gender ratio does not change whatsoever, or even gets worse.
What in my comment tells you that? I made a conscious effort not to bring that up.
> Its plausible that we completely fix all biases in the industry and the gender ratio does not change whatsoever, or even gets worse.
This argument sounds like the global warming denier argument "What if it's not true? What if we make the world a better place to live for nothing?"
It is plausible, but right now we have no way to measure it. We do, on the other hand, know that unconscious bias is affecting prospective female candidates. Why don't we focus on fixing the existing problem first?
> Why don't we focus on fixing the existing problem first?
Sounds good.
A ("women in general are less interested") does not imply B ("woman job candidates are less interested"). A would only imply B if there were equal numbers of man and woman engineers. But there are fewer. It's entirely possible for "women are less interested in engineering than men" and "women that go into engineering are far more interested than men that go into engineering" to both be true.
So that hiring bias is based on non-logic in the first place. Considering the possibility of A does not legitimize B.
You should know that unconscious bias training has been shown to make no difference to outcomes. The science is dubious. Of course, you can always try to fix the theory by claiming the impact is minimal but ... if the impact is so tiny, why worry about it?
Diversity initiatives have long since left the realm of debatable science and fact and turned into a new religion. Science is replaced by faith. I don't think I'm biased, I can't perceive any bias in myself, but I KNOW it's true. I must believe.
Sorry, this is wrong.
Direct quote (emphasis added): "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes"
See Damore's own mirror: https://firedfortruth.com/
However, biological traits and abilities != career ability. Even more so since these are average indexes with vast overlap between groups.
On what basis do you think that preferences and abilities are two mutually exclusive traits?
We know interest is influenced heavily by environment. We also know that ability is influenced by both interest and environment. Carol Dweck's work is a good source for this type of study.
It also seems intuitive that ability influences interests, although I'm actually not aware of what studies exist in that area.
I don't think you're standing on as solid footing as you think when you're making accusations of others conflating topics.
Just because interests and abilities influence each other does not mean they are not exclusive. You can do a lot of things that you probably have never even considered before too.
Many women believe they're statistically more intelligent than men and less violent, by fate of biology.
"The distribution of preferences and abilities of different groups differ."
Note the binding emphasis to both sides of the 'and'.
Also the focus on any specific cause for that difference should be addressed elsewhere, if at all. Not in an over-simplified singular soundbite.
Edit: what flavor of markdown hell is HN using... I always forget.
Furthermore he attacked 'diversity' hires as a whole, but only presented evidence on male/female differences not racial ones... so there's significant precedent for him making points that aren't backed up directly. I don't think he should get the benefit of the doubt there with regards to subtlety of meaning.
That sentence makes it very clear that Damore considers women to be biologically differently abled from men when it comes to programming. In fact he goes on to claim that this essential biological nature is so different that the practices of programming needs to be altered to better suit women (eg more pair programming).
This is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. There is no well-understood scientific mechanism that can get us from different genotypes to a different kind of thinking. There is no evidence that men and women's brains are so different that women need their own engineering practices.
Of course it's not a new claim. Since the dawn of time it's been claimed that women can't do X. Just 50 years ago it was widely believed that women can't do law, math or science. Fifty years before that it was disputed that women were rational enough to vote. All of this claims have proved to be nonsense. But supposedly programming is different because of a study on rhesus monkeys?
Logically, the entire memo -- including its wild rantings about Marxist intellectuals -- can be dismissed on the basis of extraordinary claims. Note that if somebody did provide a genetic ability decoder -- a machine that can analyze normal-form genes and then reliably predict mental ability -- that person would win the Nobel Prize and likely become very, very rich.
But what's so interesting is that even when confronted with direct quotes about this nonsense plenty of people insist there is a more charitable interpretation of the memo. This suggests that people are actually starting at very different places.
Let's just agree on two things then.
_Every woman at google has every right to be there.
&
_The number of women at google relative to the number of men is not the result of mostly imperceptible, malicious actions by men, but rather due the fact that the personal interests between the sexes varies substantially on average, and this results in skewed sex ratios throughout the entire workforce that match nearly perfectly with what scientific evidence shows us.
Women are more interested in working with people and nurturing professions and men are more interested in working with things and abstract, theoretical, mechanical and spatial professions.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
1. Malicious actions by men. This undoubtedly happens, let's not pretend otherwise. However, it might not be very common.
2. Non-malicious but annoying behavior from men directed towards women. This could include unwanted flirtation, accidental condescension, inappropriate jokes, etc.
3. A male-oriented culture. Even if the guys don't act in an annoying way, being in a significant minority is usually less appealing than being in a situation where you have a more even gender split.
4. Boys and girls are nurtured in different ways, which can drive them towards having different interests as adults.
5. Biological differences between men and women. Personally, I think this is one of the least important factors, and it's also the only one that we can't change.
Whether or not (5) is an issue, (1-4) can and should be addressed, so that women who are naturally inclined to CS are not nudged away from the industry by their life experiences.
This is so wrong and so frequently asserted that I think a better approach to any gender/workplace convo would be to start here, recognizing the falsity of the monocausal career preference hypothesis and work backward from that toward the rest of the conversation.
Which of these divergent sex ratios are caused by "problematic environmental pressures," and which aren't?
[0]https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
http://nypost.com/2015/05/05/fdnys-unfit-the-perils-of-pushi...
If you’re ever trapped in a burning building, just pray the firefighter climbing up to rescue you isn’t Rebecca Wax. Or someone like her, who’s been given an EZ-Pass through firefighting training for the sake of gender equity.
This week Wax, who repeatedly flunked the rigorous physical test required by the New York City Fire Department, will graduate anyway, The Post reported.
All over the nation, fire departments are easing physical standards, in response to litigation to increase the number of women firefighters.
Disturbing.
It would make more sense to say that different careers are affected by different dynamics that need to be analyzed on their own terms, with the environmental constraints that affect "preferences" being different in each case.
2. totally true and I'll go on the limb to say that part of it probably because of men biological differences which force men to be eager to reproduce at all times
3. yes, but you already addressed malicious and non-malicious annoyances so this has to be "annoyances" where men treat women as other men. If men treating women as other men is a problem then this is proof that we are not the same and need different approach. (I am open to be completely wrong about it, please educate me if you think this is wrong or I misunderstood something)
4. Agree
5. This could be related to #2 and #3
Don't agree with number 2 at all.
Half of all new attorneys are women. There is nothing "nurturing" about the profession--it's adversarial and conflict-oriented by nature. And you spend most of your time dealing with abstractions, not people. More than half of accountants are women. That profession isn't any more people oriented than programming, and you work entirely with abstractions. 70% of tax preparers are women. 60% of insurance underwriters are women. Etc.
Conversely, professions we think of as "people-oriented and nurturing" are dominated by men in other countries. E.g. teachers in India are 80% men.
At least for some kinds, there is a lot of non-adversarial human interaction. For example, in patent litigation you are usually part of a team and spend a lot of time working closely with the other lawyers on your side, paralegals, outside experts, inventors, and other people involved with the patent on your side.
Lawyers work in teams, but programmers work in teams too. Having done both there is a lot more interactivity in programming teams (weekly status meetings, pair programming, dropping in on a neighbor to discuss APIs). (Legal teams are much smaller and cases are much less interconnected than large codebases).
In which case the attorney may double as a councillor of sorts.
This dual role is common in lots of jobs though. Maybe defending people is more appealing than maybe mentoring junior devs.
Maybe accounting is due to stability? In western countries you always need an accountant. You could probably make an argument about women not being risk takers.
Your last point is why statistics in developing countries are always brought up. At least one thing is clear, we can change the environment to get more women into STEM.
Women that work in the field should definitely be respected as much as anyone else. They should be free of sexual harassment, and mistreatment. On the flip side, if only 20% of graduating classes in targeted STEM fields are women, and women represent a disproportionate amount of college students... then maybe the issue is broader than the affect of men on the field at that level.
I think part of it may be natural inclination... another is probably the role of movies and media. The latter likely a much bigger role on the impressions of the work and the likely types to fulfill those roles.
--- Edit:
Big example Daisy/Quake from Agents of Shield... started off as a badass hacker, best of the best... as the show moved on, the role was relegated to brawler, and the impact of intellect or technical ability was largely sidestepped, or made secondary and less.
Media portrayals of technical professionals all around are usually very unbalanced... and that doesn't even begin to go into the other fields that are disproportionately male or female, or the hindrance of men in higher education.
Assuming you're asking in good faith: because of the idea that diversity hiring effectively lowered the hiring bar.
Imagine for a second you have imposter syndrome. Now imagine that you've been told (not necessarily by Damore) that you're the (not quoting you here) "diversity hire". Imagine how much worse that imposter syndrome now is.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't try to get more women into tech, or into trash collection, or construction, or every other male dominated occupation, or men as nurses, etc... however, that doesn't mean having to change the rules for men or women. And pointing out that there are differences between men and women shouldn't instantly start of with a storm of hate.
"the average woman is shorter than the average man" ... "typical misogynistic cis white male patriarchal bullshit" ...
I'm not saying that everyone is volatile and prone to fits of excessive rage in response, but it really feels like there's no place for civil discussion or discourse with a growing portion of the population.
You abhor discrimination during hiring. But yet you want to be able to discuss the differences between men and women in order to use them to discriminate.
[citation needed]
I said that hiring on diversity over merit was wrong. That's it... I never said anything about sex in terms of merit. The only place any discussion of sex or diversity belongs is in terms of messaging and in terms of possibly promoting jobs that are disproportionate to natural propensity towards a given role.
If you can't discuss, review, document, test or otherwise examine bias in terms of nature, environment, upbringing, educational exposure and other factors, then you can't force equilibrium at the end of a long process.
You can't hire 50% women in an industry, where only 20% of those educated for that field are women. Also, so long as choosing a field of study or work is voluntary, the best you can do is maybe have a more fair representation of a given gender in a given field that doesn't show only above average looking women wearing glasses with a few geeky quirks, then relegate them to more personality quirks, or make them less capable over time.
And MAYBE it's okay to have a field where most of the people in that field are of a given sex. I don't see the SJWs trying to get women into garbage collection, or throwing a fit over the gender bias in nursing.
Having worked in tech for 20 years and hired and fired all sorts of people I am unconvinced there is a problem in tech as big as it's being claimed.
The idea that you can only have role models if they are your gender is really really absurd and if people are really falling for that then they have a problem not the tech-scene.
There is no actual evidence that diversity in gender does anything for a company besides creating more complex work environments. There are far more important types of diversity to strive for.
It's complicated by the fact that sexist & racist people will try and use reasons as justifications, that they will use their misunderstanding of statistics to short-circuit decision-making in a faulty and biased way.
But we shouldn't outlaw talking about reasons all the same. The reason we shouldn't outlaw talking about reasons, in spite of the risk of odious people using them as justifications, is that you would otherwise proceed unscientifically. Reasons relate to theories about the world, and if you discard reasons, your theory about the world is wrong.
Some have already decided that the REASON for gender imbalance in tech is rampant bias and male privilege, which they have publicly committed themselves to stamping out. Whether or not this is true, questioning the validity of that reason is considered an attack on their identity and value system.
Edit: I'm not sure it's clear from my comment, but to clarify, I am NOT SURE what the reason for the observed gender imbalance is. I'm not saying that it isn't bias/privilege/etc. I don't think the case has been proven one way or the other, but the personal attacks & utter misrepresentations I've seen used to try to shut down discussion is driving me pretty hard emotionally to one side at the moment.
So ? That's the company's choice to make.
Many companies take the longer term view that having a more diverse workforce is more important than hiring the most technically adept candidates. Especially since having different viewpoints can aid in innovation and creativity.
It all depends on what kind of company, what product industry etc. and it might not be about gender or minority diversity but something completely different.
This is what I think is wrong with this whole discussion. Diversity has become a goal in itself yet no evidence to support it's positive impact.
It's not because discriminating based on sex is illegal. If you lower the bar for white people because you take long term view that having more white people in your workforce is more important than hiring the most technically adept candidates then it wouldn't be "your call to make". In fact you would be sued into oblivion and rightly so.
>>Especially since having different viewpoints can aid in innovation and creativity.
Yes, that's why the memo mentions diversity of opinions. You don't get that by discriminating based on sex or race. You could get some of it by not firing people for expressing their views though.
I've actually heard where this exact thing has happened at Google, in a very high profile team. This isn't just a hypothetical, it's a reality.
I guess what I'm saying is when there's even a feeling that there is a system that is diversity over merit, people will assume that people they don't like who are minorities, are somehow less able to do their job, even when that's not the case.
In your example was the person in question hired because of their sex or race?
I don't believe the person was hired because of their sex or race. But again, even here, all minorites have to prove it, while the majority are assumed to be there on merit.
Note: I find it interesting/disturbing/sad/telling that I've been sitting here for a long time contemplating if I should even submit this message since I use my real name here. The fact that we, as a society, have come to a point where we are afraid to even have this discussion really makes me sad. I respect every one of my colleagues deeply, male and female alike. The idea that someone could twist my words and paint me as a misogynist is beyond troubling.
This seems to be the common argument against diversity programs, but it strikes me as statistically true only if we assume a very even distribution between STEM graduates and prospective employers. Given tech's reputation as being relatively hostile to women, a company could theoretically find ways to advertise to prospective women employees that their internal culture was more welcoming of them -- that, in fact, they wouldn't be subject to the sexism that the female engineers in the linked article all said that they routinely face. This doesn't require the company to have different hiring standards between genders, or to pay women more. It does require them to change their recruiting practices in ways that acknowledge they may have to make specific outreach to women and other underrepresented minorities, but that doesn't strike me as having to be inherently discriminatory.
Thank you. I have been noticing this for the past year, both here and in almost all other online forums. And it's not just the ability to troll or make a comment that you know might push a few buttons.
It's questioning whether it's even safe to post a logical argument against any of the narratives deemed sacred these days by the left.
The fact that the worst offenders in this new witch hunt are the same ones who have massive amounts of data on all of us is terrifying.
Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of women is greater than 20% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar. The bar is at the same height for men and women, just with a skewed population. You're artificially excluding pools of people who would make good candidates, but since both women and men can bypass your outreach efforts by going straight to you, you're not refusing to hire anyone who is both qualified and motivated enough to apply directly.
I think proponents of the google diversity programs are arguing that they do this. I'm not sure whether they do. I think the real situation might be a hodgepodge of systemic factors and biases in both directions that sum up to something unpredictable, plus a few largely ineffectual diversity programs, and a massive question mark around why there are so few female CS grads in the first place (biology! sexism! gender roles! c64 ad campaigns! inertia!). Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.
"Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of white people is greater than 95% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar."
I don't think it would get much sympathy but it's an equivalent with race substituted for sex (both are protected and it's illegal to discriminate based on them).
>>Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.
If you own a pub and want only white waitresses so you only invite white women for interviews you can do that without lowering the bar as well. Still you are discriminating even if you put elaborate system out there which magically result in only (to make the point stronger, substitute with a ratio like 90-10 or 80-20 to make the situation equivalent) applications from white women at the end.
My claim is a much narrower one, that you can hire a disproportionate amount of female developers without lowering the bar if you bias your incoming hires. It can be simultaneously true that Google's diversity policies are harmful to quality (because they restrict where Google hires from) while their female developers are as qualified as their male developers (because they came from the same place and meet the same standards).
If more companies are doing that then it's impossible to sustain without lowering the bar. If only you are doing that there is no point because then others will hire more men (as there is more qualified men left proportionally as you took bigger % of qualified women).
I am saying that the policy of "we don't lower the bar, we just look more into avenues to hire more women specifically" is somewhere between pointless and dishonest (dishonest as in created to hide the discrimination based on sex).
EDIT: As to affirmative action: I agree it's not the place for debating ethics of it. I am saying that affirmative action = lowering the bar either directly or indirectly and there is no way around that fact (at least industry wise, you can maybe sustain it locally if you are ok with others skewing their ratio in the other direction).
This rests on the assumption that hiring from a given pool exhausts it. It seems intuitive that hiring students from a university or bootcamp would have the opposite effect, as would hiring students from a particular academic background, since unemployment/pay metrics and prestige would drive more students there.
dishonest as in created to hide the discrimination based on sex
Since the clearly stated goal of affirmative action is to hire less of a majority group, it seems more likely that such a policy would be created to prevent imposter syndrome and "my male co-workers think I'm incompetent because of all the diversity hires" syndrome. With such a policy, nobody is a diversity hire.
So it implies lowering the bar unless it doesn't.
Companies can put more effort into finding woman candidates without caring whether the whole industry does so. If some companies bias toward women (without lowering the bar), and some companies don't bias, then the overall effect is that qualified women can get hired instantly, and more of them might be encouraged to enter the industry.
these are the results:
"there are 48840 males, we will pick only 25000(51.187551187551186%)"
"we will pick all females to represent the company reaching out to them"
"let's say the company is going to hire 5000"
"hiring based on competence and taking females when equal"
"results:"
"male: number: 3505 percentage: 70.1% average score: 123.81256204767604"
"female: number: 1495 percentage: 29.9% average score: 123.75346343448992"
"if we force the 50% ratio"
"the average male score: 126.26036797470225"
"the average female score: 119.60577230318559"
so forcing a 50% ratio does indeed lower the bar. data for males and females were generated using the same function so arguments about biological factors are not even needed.
the code:https://jsbin.com/nogujuqewe/1/edit?html,console,output
Or you solicit more resumes from the 20%. Or you randomly throw out some resumes from the 80%. Neither of those will move the bar.
The difficulty is that "this discussion" can be - and usually is - conducted in a way that is harmful to women, either on a broad scale (specious arguments / failure to understand systemic bias) or an individual scale (wrecking someone's day / making a formerly welcoming environment feel hostile).
Those real consequences are on the line every time someone hits "Post" in this sort of discussion, and are a really good reason for any thoughtful person to pause and contemplate before doing so... perhaps do some additional self-education, or take the time to pose genuinely explorative-questions rather than rhetorical-questions or flat-out conclusions. If more people did that, I think you'd eventually see a lot less fiery refutation and much better discourse.
"If the numbers are true and the gender distribution in STEM graduates is 80/20, and you are intent on increasing your number of female employees, you have two choices. You either lower the bar on the 20% or you raise the bar on the 80%. In the end, the net effect is the same. The employees from the 20% group had a granted advantage against the 80% group."
This logic assumes that the 80% and 20% are functionally equivalent? (Which can be so if there's, eg, no systemic bias, but seems rather less likely when such is present.)
Another option would be to realize the the 20% already had to overcome substantial hurdles to get where they are, and to factor that into your decision-making.
Its so easy to make up crap about how its impossible to fix the issue without (made-up strawman). How about turning our intelligence toward useful comments? E.g. you could look harder for truly qualified candidates from among the 20%?
I think there are definitely a few companies out there who are playing with the hiring bar to improve diversity in an easy but ultimately harmful way. Probably not google, but these bad actors poison the well in these discussions, so to speak.
Yep. Not because CS is a popular field where there is a shortage of skilled professionals, but because she's a woman. She was so upset by it that she chose something else entirely.
And this, I believe, is the strongest possible argument against discriminatory hiring practices.
If I hire someone who's black, or female, or gay/bi, or any other 'protected group', I want them to know that I hired them for their ability, not to fill some quota. And the only way to do that is to hire based purely on ability.
By setting 'diversity hire' quotas, Google's own HR department is telling anyone who qualifies for any of those quotas that they're not good enough.
According to the PDF(0), it states on page 6, footnote 6
...Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done)....
The smoking gun here is "which is illegal and I’ve seen it done"... Well, shit. That seems to answer your question, "YES".
However... On James Damore's official website(1), it states the following from the same quote area.
...or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal).....
Which is illegal. No more claim of being a witness. How interesting. That would not validate your claim/question.
(0) https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
(1) https://firedfortruth.com/
(1) was written as a public statement by the center of the current moral panic. As such, it has to be hugely more careful about making unsubstantiated claims. Regardless of the truth of the matter, if he has no corroborating evidence of discriminating based on protected status, he can't make a public allegation of such without opening himself up to a defamation lawsuit.
Brown talked with NPR last year, while at the chipmaker Intel. “I think maybe two or three specific things that explain our success,” she said. “The first thing is accountability. Setting these goals, communicating the goals, tying pay to the goals. I think that’s been key.”
She was at an important place at an important time. Intel had decided to do something no other tech giant had done before: publicly state how many women and underrepresented minorities it wanted to recruit, and how many it managed to retain. Of all new hires, Intel told the world, at least 40 percent would have to be women or underrepresented minorities.
This is obviously quotas.
Intel creates the diversity fund in 2015 for 125 million.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3047239/why-intels-capital-diver...
Then a year later in 2016, lays off 11% of their workforce.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-c...
Then in 2017, Google hires Danielle Brown the VP who pushed the diversity fund at intel.
I'm beginning to think as a minority woman in tech, These diversity funds are worse than quotas.
Whats the point in being hired, then fired a year later.
I also suspect, every group is afraid of losing their job. Intel firing 11% of its workforce is scary example.
Presumably the programs Damore criticizes in his memo have been around for a long time. Do any of those involve the use of quotas?
You can't have it both ways. If you don't want to get involved in the argument, you don't have to, but getting involved and then doing any of the things GP is decrying is actively toxic.
> we have to be there to contradict the people who take it as justification for the (evidence-based) unlevel playing field in tech, sexism etc, and we will be the ones affected if we don't ensure that our colleagues and people we respect don't go therefore shrug and decide that everyone thinks that way.
If you are concerned about third parties being swayed if you stay silent, that makes it even more important to not engage in the behavior I am decrying. Doing nothing is unlikely to impact most people's opinions. Appealing to platitudes (or worse, actively misrepresenting your opponent) will be actively counterproductive.
"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
Why does research regarding this and the burden has to fall on women? If research is solid why does it matter if it was generated by a specific gender.
See "Self made man" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book), for a real-life experience of living as a man vs as a woman. Her conclusion at the end was that women have it much, much, easier, and she would much rather live as a woman than as a man.
i.e. maybe work is sexist and makes women prove themselves more than men have to. But that's only one aspect of peoples daily lives.
Besides saying that men don't really have it better[1] she also commented[2] "When you mess around with that, you really mess around with something that you need that helps you to function. And I found out that gender lives in your brain and is something much more than costume. And I really learned that the hard way," which is less "women have it much, much easier" and more "women, living as women have it much, much easier".
[1]: gender stereotypes hurt everyone, and in [2] she spoke about how "They don't get to show the weakness, they don't get to show the affection, especially with each other. And so often all their emotions are shown in rage"; but they can't be discounted because of this. [2]: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Entertainment/story?id=1526982
The original writing is here: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
And here it is in handy-dandy picture form: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Gr...
Responding to tone is one level below an argument that actually addresses the point. Responses to tone can be safely dismissed as irrelevant to the debate at hand.
> [W]hen I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. (Ida)
> I’m just exhausted by having this same damn argument over and over again since I was a teenager and the amount of time and energy I keep having to spend to counter it. (Edith)
Also, none of the "quoted phrases" that you criticized appear in TFA or in any parent comment.
I'm not flaming, just wondering what the best-case way forward would be that mollifies both sides.
It does help identify those cases when women do speak out, though. My view is we should listen more to them about what sexism is and how it works.
This is complex because people desire for fairness and respect in incompatible ways. If we analogize away one of those problems, of course the right decision seems obvious.
EDIT: I think the incompatibility is a result of some rules and norms that need changing. I don't think the conflict is a law of nature.
Sure. But people on the wrong side of the Google monoculture feel like they have to be closeted at work. They don't want to feel that way either. There has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest here.
The memo in question explicitly supported the goal of improving diversity and provided concrete suggestions on how to do so.
i can't help but feel that this is more and more just a boo-word that doesn't actually mean much.
I agree, but just because there has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest, that doesn't mean that what Damore did was professional and honest.
I've asked this around HN many times over the last week. Most of them boil down to letting people who probably disagree with you edit your thoughts before you release them. Or not releasing your thoughts in any meaningful way.
If you were Damore, what would have been a healthier way to start a broader discussion on the issue?
Would this have happened if the paper had been written by a woman?
The "diversity culture" Left has been very succesful in a kind of cultural engineering where any deviation from accepted consensus is inches from being labeled "hate". Lone wolf kamikaze-type performances will only strengthen it.
What the fucking alt-right has been doing about this is trying to ignore the facts altogether, which may have populist impact but will alienate the professional/intellectual circles where this consensus takes root.
Maybe it's worth looking at the much-cited-in-this-thread Wired piece that agrees with Damore about everything substantive and then in full non sequitur condemns him.They're doing something effective.
----
Frankly, I have no idea of what to do about the toxic change in culture we have been experiencing. I try to avoid this kind of thining altogether -- it's a huge distraction from just trying to become the best version of me, etc. But I do understand that indignation and anger on our side is a windfall for theirs. If you're really willing to take them on you need to think seriously about strategy.
Everyone has to be closed at work; it's a part of being in a professional environment. For example, you can't go up to your co-worker and tell them you think they're a complete idiot even if you think so.
In social settings this is possible because relationships can just end, but that's not the case for a business where you are expected to interact with the same people often.
Sure you can - if you are supported Trump, or were even just he prevailed over Hillary, thousands of people in Google either called you an idiot or agreed with the statement. You should have heard the tone of conversation on the 9th. Between that and the cry-ins that were hosted, it was an absolutely disgusting, pathetic display of personal bias and lack of understanding of a large swath of America.
For example, that line of reasoning would go: Damore saw practices he feels are discriminatory based on the available evidence. His silence could be mistaken for agreement. He should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.
Finding the approaches and views that are most coherently grounded in reality is obviously a continuously difficult task.
We shouldn't treat people poorly just for being wrong, unless their expressions of views is actively harmful. Making that determination can also be very difficult.
Lastly, as a slight tangent, no human knowledge is or ever will be 100% certain and robust (although in some specific domains we can attain incredibly high confidence). We should keep this uncertainty in mind when we act.
A 10-page manifesto, regardless of the content, when circulated internally without management's consent is in itself hard to view as anything but an act of mutiny.
There is a long tradition of this kind of memo inside Google. Many products you probably use every day are better because of one or another.
This genre is not exactly encouraged, but lots of good stuff comes out of them.
Whatever else that memo was, the genre is common, and the genre itself not considered mutinous within Google.
https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20403143?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0091732X01700126...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tl.37219924906/fu...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.3660270906/ab...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4283768/
>paradoxically insists that authoritarianism be treated as a valid moral dimension, whilst firmly rejecting any diversity-motivated strategy that might remotely approach it.
Even if we admit this is wrong he still does a good job, particularly on points #1, #3, #4, and yes, #8. I think it's important to call out the subtle racism whereby Damore attacks gender and racial diversity programs without actually providing any justification on the racial element. But I think this point (#9) is clearly wrong because if we accept it on its face it means that we cannot tolerate discussing any system of morality (in this case authoritarianism) which we do not want to see implemented, which is clearly wrong. I also cannot agree here:
>But in general, Google has done magnificently well without resorting to the binding [conservative] values — and let’s hope it continues to, because an authoritarian, fanatical and puritanical Google that dehumanizes outsiders would be very, very bad news.
First of all I don't think Google has ever truly avoided the binding values -- in fact the identity "Googler" has been more intentionally constructed, I think, than "Microsofter", "Facebooker", "Appler", etc -- and second I don't think that implementing them is necessarily "fanatical and puritanical", any more than implementing compassion is necessarily inviting to louts.
Well from a strategic perspective, that's a losing attitude though. You start in a defensive position in a debate you didn't call. You are stuck in the specific frame the author has decided to limit his own argument. He also restrict the time you have to prepare such a refutal piece as every minute he spend with his argument unchallenged, the weaker the counterarguments look.
Sure the average Google employee is more fact minded than emotionally driven, but it is a loaded subject in general but even more in IT.
What's the best possible outcome of crafting such a reply anyway ? Shutting down one single guy because nobody will engage in a friendly debate after live shots have been fired.
it works rather effectively.
(seriously, the dh0 "u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!!!" is a terrifying force, when seen and used as in a group or mob.)
Do you feel that viewpoints that you disagree with should not be allowed to be stated publicly and remain unopposed?
The brute problem is that it's too long to be addressed in a reasonable and productive debate, and because it was posted on an internal company messageboard it is his responsibility to ensure that it can be responded to in a reasonable and productive way. If he presents his complaints in a format which is likely to cause problems, he can be penalized, and a manifesto is certainly such a format because it lends itself so well to "viral" sharing, and it was precisely such "viral" reposting of the document that made it a practical problem for Google in the first place. Had he made his points in an ordinary discussion thread, it would have been harder to publish it everywhere as a unified whole, since discussion threads by their nature will contain counterarguments.
For example, if I think another employee is biased against me in code reviews, it does not do me any favors to write a multi-page manifesto indicting said employee on a variety of points for his/her alleged biased review practices. Good debates do not generally come from duelling essays, and it is unfair to participants -- practically unfair, in that it drives them from the debate and so deprives the conversation of their contributions -- it is unfair to participants who do not have the time to invest in researching every point of a ten-page document that they feel they must address the whole awful thing in order to say anything. In fact I try to limit the length of my HN comments for this very reason: long comments are hard to respond to well.
Internal company messageboards do not lend themselves to the publication of manifestos, and it is not reasonable to expect them to.
That's the standard method you use for refuting arguments presented in essay form.
You hit the nail on the head, and it isn't limited to this memo. We have a serious intolerance problem in this country that goes far beyond Nazis and racists. Over the last 25 years our culture has warped to the point where opposing viewpoints are considered by many to be offensive. Kids have been raised in an environment where they are told that they (and their opinions) are always worthy of respect (no matter how uninformed or ignorant those opinions might be). Those who show insufficient respect (in the eyes of the person being "disrespected") are seen as hateful aggressors who must be attacked or silenced. In today's society, many people (especially young people) don't want vigorous debate between those of opposing views. They don't want to live in a marketplace of ideas where logic, morality, and the ability and willingness to articulate and defend your beliefs in a public forum are valued. These younger people have been conditioned to appeal to authority when they are offended or their beliefs are challenged, rather than answer the bell and debate the merit (or lack of merit) in an idea or statement.
Unfortunately this withering of public discourse is a bellwether for authoritarianism. You need look no farther than the recent outcry against the ACLU for their defense of free speech. There are very dark days ahead.
It is the primary inspiration for the movie "The Matrix". When Neo takes the disk from the hacker at the beginning he actually puts it in a hollowed out version of this book.
Anyway Post-Modernism has lots of fascinating points and sub-topics and skilled writers, however if you read too much into it you can quickly become a very annoying person.
Great stuff, but read in caution and in moderation.
When you spend 12+ formative years telling kids to sit down, be quiet and do nothing but listen to authority or else, they aren't going to somehow come out of it as stellar, well-rounded debaters.
They will, of course, project how they were treated onto others, by holding deeply ingrained beliefs such as, "When someone is being disruptive they need to be punished."
Why waste your time with those who don't seem genuinely interested in opposing evidence?
I didn't find his tone aggressive but he didn't at all seem interested in having a discussion. If I remember correctly he didn't rebuke any opposing points, let alone present them, which makes me think he didn't bother looking for them.
It's like hey I have this point I want you to listen to but I'm not even going to make an attempt to look up answers and instead force you to listen to me before I listen to you. It's like trying to answer someone's question without even understanding what they're asking, which I am sad to say I have seen far too often at Google.
This was originally just posted to the Google Skeptics group, with the implication that it would be (fairly) contested and debated.
People keep presenting it as a "manifesto" but that's a term that Gizmodo used, not him. I really would like to have seen what would have come from it being fairly critiqued by his peers and edited until it was presentable to the public (if that's even possible).
I agree with this too. There were issues of perception since the Gizmodo version had no sources, links or charts. Later leaked version had the charts and a full version was put up on diversitymemo.com (which no redirects to Damore's official website).
So a lot of people didn't get the full version, even if they read the whole thing. Overall I thought we was pretty tactful and did his best to express what he knew would be an unpopular viewpoint.
also, may be due to backfire effect? Oatmeal did a brilliant job explaining it [0]
[0] - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
We shouldn't really take someone's degree of divergence from reality as somehow being a point in favor of their argument.
When people remove themselves so far from reality, ignoring significant mounds of evidence, nearly anything not divorced from reality is going to have the effect of an "evidence bomb."
He then follows with "Google's left bias has created a politically correct monoculture".
So the difference is between these two statements:
a. I believe X, and
b. You are all leftists. Leftists believe Y. Y is wrong. The answer is actually X.
Why would put forth a theory that is opposed to a company's values of equality if you don't have proof?
Most evidence points to socialized factors, not biological ones.
If Damore really cares about this issue, he should study biology and make his case there. He will do more to move the debate forward from within the relevant scientific community by gathering evidence than from the outside.
Oh? What about basketball players or jockeys?
He has a master in systems biology from Harvard.
I don't see people denying the possibility that biology plays a role. I see people saying it hasn't been determined to play a role in determining which sex is better or more likely to choose complex modern professions such as software engineering. Damore makes it sound as if this has already been demonstrated by science:
"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
"This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."
The latter is a conclusory statement. Meanwhile, he continues to claim that his essay is fully backed by research. He denies that anyone has made a proper rebuttal, despite many scientists directly refuting his claims, including one he cited.
Want more proof of bias? The google letter writer was attacked for his writing style and choice of discussion venue, not the contents of the letter. His subject was taboo and so people are still adamant about not discussing it, because in their mindminds, the science is settled. Thats the propaganda talking.
We can give people equal treatment before the law, but we need to recognize that differences in hiring ratios for not have to be indicitave of race or gender bias. It is possible for the numbers to be an emergent effect of group differences.
Science is the right place to have this discussion, not politics. Scientists have theories, not agendas. True scientists are not ideologues.
> The google letter writer was attacked for his writing style and choice of discussion venue, not the contents of the letter
People have pointed to flaws within both his conclusions and his writing style. His defendants first claimed that media is mischaracterizing what he said; they said they do not understand why people are upset. Then, when someone starts citing his words, Damorians complain they're cherry picking, being nitpicky, or being a grammar nazi.
The way one writes a scientific argument is important. Peer reviewed research goes through many drafts before it's even presented to the public. Thereafter, it can still be the subject of much scrutiny. One cannot simultaneously claim that Damore's paper is both,
(1) Representative of a scientific consensus, and
(2) Undeserving of critique for his writing style simply because he didn't intend for it to be released
> people are still adamant about not discussing it
I find this comment ridiculous as we're discussing it right now, and this has been national news for weeks with hundreds of articles written on the subject, commentary from scientists, etc. If you mean "not discussing in in the right way", then I don't know what to tell you. You don't get to decide how someone else makes their arguments. "Why don't you see it my way?" is not a useful debate strategy.
> We can give people equal treatment before the law, but we need to recognize that differences in hiring ratios for not have to be indicitave of race or gender bias. It is possible for the numbers to be an emergent effect of group differences.
Many do recognize that racism or sexism don't always play a role. I don't work at Google, but, I don't see women assuming sexism every time a male coworker gives a bad review of a prospective female candidate. The question here is whether affirmative action is an appropriate strategy for reducing gender imbalances. I understand many conservatives feel it's not. But, when asked how to correct for various socialization factors (not all of which are sexist or racist -- they can just be habit), their solutions would seem to keep the status quo. One of Damore's suggestions is to "reduce empathy". I can't think anything more inhumane.
I'm loathe to post in discussions like this because it's so useless, but points like this make me wonder if I'm just living on a different planet. Do you have children? Of different genders? Because literally every parent I know who has both boys and girls has the simple, non-ideologically-biased experience that boys and girls are vastly different, even if you treat them just the same. My youngest is a boy who was surrounded by pink fairy castles and butterfly coloring books until he was 2 or 2,5. And yet the moment he got his hands on a stick, he'd use it as a play weapon.
And from that observation that boys and girls are different, I wouldn't call it a stretch to assume that men and women might not be exactly the same, either. Why is this not blindingly obvious? I mean, how is saying otherwise not the very essence of "post truthiness"?
Even with the SAME toys, they are used very differently. For example, all of my kids play minecraft. My daughter loves to build houses with kitchens and bathrooms, bake, and invite people into her house for dinners and parties. My sons fight the monsters, build elaborate towers and castles, and play with explosives.
This image summarizes my experience: http://imgur.com/AT2Ak
Regarding the shooting and the building, are you sure that you have encouraged your daughter the same way as your sons? Have you looked your daughter into the eyes and smiled when she first tried to fight with you?
And even if you were all supportive in that development, it's still not a fair experiment. As long as your children have friends with traditional values and your children watch TV with advertisements that present pink female princesses and male worriers and builders, children are locked down into their roles.
And well of course there's always the no true scottsman argument - no matter what, one can always put the 'true' equal treatment to question. If you're asking whether I ran a double blind experiment in my home, no I didn't. But we're nit talking about a tiny difference in one observation here. We're talking massive differences in dozens of families (from my observations). And this is for a social context where the ratio if dads and mums and the school gate is roughly 50% (yes I count sometimes), and where the lowest level of education is a bachelor's degree and the median is a PhD. Meaning, we're not talking about representative sample of the population, which you would expect to show the same properties as the population overall; we're talking about a population here that shows high levels of gender equally along many metrics. And despite that, the children show (very) unequal behaviour.
I still think that peers and media consumption could explain the development but I don't have any data to back that up.
Kids learn from what their parents do. If a boy's dad is a truck driver, he may prefer playing with trucks, even if given a choice of truck vs. doll. The boy could similarly pick up non-verbal gestures from the dad or mom handling a doll vs. a truck.
Research is often inconclusive or difficult to replicate for these reasons.
Putting forth a theory that gender, on its own, impacts career choices is pretty useless. It probably does, but not in a way that we can adequately quantify. It depends on too many things.
head explodes
So you're saying it probably exists, but then conclude it doesn't because it can't be quantified how much? I'm not even saying biological differences explain everything, or even a substantial part; just some part, but you deny that any aspect of difference between preferences in men and women is due to biology? I mean I cannot interpret what you're saying in any other way no matter how hard I try - you're saying that if we can't measure something exactly, it doesn't exist?
head explodes
I don't know how you can read what I wrote and come away with that interpretation. I said it probably does.
I said links between biology and occupation are extremely difficult to measure and there isn't research that does so. This is why a lot of research focuses on babies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
Is that a "fair" experiment?
If anything, the study suggests that women are equally capable of becoming engineers:
>Unlike male monkeys and like girls, female monkeys did not show any reliable preference for either toy type.
If you follow the pattern of the study, then men would reject 'female' jobs but women are interested in both 'male' and 'female' options. Women not only tuck in toys but also like playing with guns.
However, according to that article, male monkeys like to play more. You could argue that IT is all play and thus it's a better environment for men.
Do you teach your children everything, or send them to school / daycare?
> And from that observation that boys and girls are different, I wouldn't call it a stretch to assume that men and women might not be exactly the same, either
It is a giant leap in logic to conclude that a slight difference in average personality must undermine women's professional abilities in software engineering.
There is no scientific consensus that toy preferences are linked to prenatal testosterone or career choice. Those who say they are linked, such as Damore, are pushing scientism– using undercooked research to back up the status quo.
I mean, let's be clear here - are you saying that if boys and girls would be kept in isolation, well at least not exposed to the outside world which would fill them with tradtional gender role behaviours, until they are say 3 years old, you're claiming that boys and girls would end up both playing with dolls and playing dressup, and play fight with sticks and climb trees, in equal amounts? Or at least that the ratio of boys/girls having a preference for one thing or another would be the same? Because to me that sound just as preposterous as denying climate change, and it requires a similar level of fact distortion to believe.
As to the second point, I'm not going to argue here what this google guy did or did nit say, I didn't read the thing and frankly I don't care much either. But if one would assume (humour me here) that men and women and not the same (as in, have different preferences - not morally or so), how would that not logically lead to some professions being more preferred by one gender? It would be an extraordinary claim that despite differences, the outcome would be that every profession had people to a ratio matching society in general, along many axises - gender, skin color, etc.
I realize that it's easy to spin my argument as saying that some people are good managers and others can run very fast and that's just the natural order of thing, but that's not what I'm saying at all, so let's all spare ourselves the effort of going there.
And then finally, if some people with certain traits prefer one thing over another, is it then not perfectly obvious and even inevitable that there will be more people of that group doing that thing, and just as inevitable that that does not mean that those who are not like that, aren't automatically unqualified? If you combine two normal distributions, with different modes, isn't the outcome then a mathematical certainty? Including an explanation for the statistically expected properties of each individual?
I'm not saying anything here about software engineering, just trying to establish a baseline to understand your argument. Because you seem to be saying that there can be no differences ever, which is so obviously non-intuitive and irrational that I can't believe this would actually be your standpoint.
Where did I say that?
The notion that either biology or environment determines everything is outdated, according to one environmental biologist [1]. She says modern research is based on the view that "neurological traits develop over time under the simultaneous influence of epigenetic, genetic and environmental influences. Everything about humans involves both nature and nurture"
That said, it's a huge leap to assume that sex differences can determine whether or not someone is likely to be a good software engineer. You said you didn't read it. Well, Damore wrote this,
"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
"This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."
He goes on to claim that there is a scientific consensus showing this, however, it's easy to see from his sources that there is no scientific basis for that claim.
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
This is weasel wording for "there are no difference". But just in case, let me ask flat out - do you think there are any differences between men and women in what sort of activities and/or behaviour they prefer to do, take part in or be around? If so, would it not be reasonable to assume that this would result in different preferences in job choice?
"Everything about humans involves both nature and nurture"
Well yeah that was obvious I thought, but at least we agree on this. So then, if preferences and behaviour are at least partially explained by biology, does it then not follow that men and women would have different preferences? Otherwise, to reach parity, the 'nurture' part should cancel out the nature part.
Again, I'm not going to be lured into saying something specific about software, but wouldn't it follow naturally from what you said (which is the uncontested scientific consensus) that women would, in the aggregate, prefer some other professions than men do, in the aggregate? Furthermore, even if you for some reason say no, do you find it offensive when people say so? Or do you feel that how people answer reflects on them as a person? Because to me, it's like liking hot dogs or not - something that does absolutely nothing to the way I think about someone. Whereas I get the impression that simple, factual things like this is really an identity thing for some - which I just cannot wrap my head around.
> This is weasel wording for "there are no difference".
Demanding research back up your claims is weasel wording? Okay..
> do you think there are any differences between men and women in what sort of activities and/or behaviour they prefer to do, take part in or be around?
Yup.
> If so, would it not be reasonable to assume that this would result in different preferences in job choice?
Yes, but not to the extent the differences affect gender capability overall in roles like tech or leadership, which is what Damore was talking about. That's far from the scientific consensus.
> does it then not follow that men and women would have different preferences?
Biology can play a role in forming different choices of two men. It does not follow that all men would be more suited, on average, than women for roles in tech or leadership.
> I'm not going to be lured into saying something specific about software
Not sure why you feel lured into saying something specific about tech or leadership. If you don't think there are differences there between men and women on average, then we agree.
> wouldn't it follow naturally from what you said (which is the uncontested scientific consensus) that women would, in the aggregate, prefer some other professions than men do, in the aggregate?
Perhaps, but research has yet to show it. I wouldn't assume this is true for things like tech or leadership.
> do you find it offensive when people say so?
No, however it is misleading to say there is scientific consensus about something when there isn't. If I had this kind of discussion with Damore in person, like some at Google did, and he persisted in believing that science says something it didn't, then I would believe he has some ulterior agenda. That politics was a primary agenda of his paper says something. Politics shouldn't be the basis for scientific discussion, in my opinion.
> Or do you feel that how people answer reflects on them as a person?
Everything does. Not much you can do about that is there.
> I get the impression that simple, factual things like this is really an identity thing for some - which I just cannot wrap my head around
I don't know how science is an identity. It can be discussed on its evidence, methods and conclusions. Identity doesn't need to play into it. Science can definitely be misconstrued. But I would say today's top peer-reviewed journals are all of high quality, and if you find a scientist who's published in that sphere, they can give a better overview of this subject than Damore did.
Women choose to become professional basketball players at a much lower rate than men. Is there no biological difference that can explain that?
Yep, I had to create a separate account for this comment for fear of retribution.
Now of course, not everyone will be the same. But for those that like to debate and have discussions, then just tell me why you think I'm wrong and we can go from there. I don't need you to coddle me.
One must note that it is not a roadmap the left uses. Ever.
It doesn't seem like Damore really tried to do that. His apparent goal with the "memo" was to change the policy of his company.
So much of philosophy is really just identity politics disguised as rational inquiry.
If you want to talk about diversity programs, the other two appear to be attempts to shut down further discussion. If you want to talk about the problem of living in an echo chamber, diversity is, or ought to be, an example, not the focus. If you want to talk politics at work, don't.
You are completely right, but on the other hand if you are going to invoke "science" and you present your writing as scientific (he did), you have a higher bar. If you fail to be objective (see semi-related assertions about Marxism), or your writing obscures the point you are attempting to make, then you've failed as a writer of scientific content.
If your writing isn't good enough, then don't release a memo to your workplace of tens of thousands of smart and ideological people. Put it on a blog, write it anonymously, but expect whatever criticism you get.
Google had plenty of reason to rethink his employment, not just because of his poor judgement, but because of the fact that he tackled a new (to him) science is such an unreasoned and unscientific way.
All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective.
As people have pointed out on HN before, there is something about computer science that leads people to believe they can out-think experts in other fields at their own game. And while reaching outside of your expertise is to be encouraged, it should come with a certain humility that is not common in our industry.
I don't think this squares with truth. There is at least one PH.D psychologist who mentioned the memo was generally correct.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
Your fourth source includes one of the scientists who Damore cited. David P Schmitt's take is that "using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm."
Hardly "many agree with him". And it bears repeating over and over that cherry-picking science facts (or even the opinion of scientists who agree with you) is not science. It's the same exercise those who believe in chem trails engage in. Let's stop. If you want information about the population Google hires from, do research on that population not the general public. You would be studying the smartest of folks, who are likely to graduate from the elite universities of the world. Studies of biological differences in the general population might have little bearing on the specific population Google hires from.
(Plus I don't consider people as solid blocks. One's reaction towards the media is not representative of the integrity of their work, one's family life is not representative of their public persona, and so on. Galileo bowed to the Inquisition, but his work is still solid).
Doubly so if, as it often happens, what they were asked to comment on were not the writings themselves in full, but a straw-man summarisation of them by journalists and related pundits (on which everybody seems to argue about).
You can always find a quack. Science is largely about consensus, and the consensus is that Damore's memo doesn't even come close to science, even if it tries to be sciency.
So very much this. He presented very few facts and a tiny bit of cherry-picked research. He decided to tackle a big-boy subject with a sixth-grader's game.
Pro-tip: Don't dress up your opinions as fact. Pro-tip #2: Don't tackle large or sensitive topics with an air of authority Pro-tip #3: When addressing your colleagues find people who disagree with you or question you and incorporate their feedback.
#3 is the most difficult step. If you perform true self-reflection it can often lead to abandonment of the argument you were attempting to make because you realize you were wrong or simply that you don't know much about the topic.
> there is something about computer science that leads people to believe they can out-think experts in other fields at their own game.
This is very common among many fields of expertise. Go ask any physicist at your local university about crank papers claiming to have overturned Einstein (and possibly all of science). First of all they'll have a drawer full of them. Secondly you'll see over half are written by someone with an engineering degree.
Which is why he brought it to the Google Skeptics group.
Edit: and it was they (or someone they shared it with) that leaked the document.
As far as I can tell, nothing in the memo was wrong or "cherry picked". He presented some evidence that women have statistically different personality traits than men. That's absolutely correct! That's not very controversial. Then he suggests that different personality traits might lead to different choice of professions and interests. That shouldn't be a terribly controversial idea either.
What have I seen since this memo came out, from people who disagree with it?
His words are offensive. Poorly written. Yes there's science but it was cherry picked. He's a "sixth-grader" and "not a pro". He's wasting work time. He's naive. He's a bad person. He's "alt right". He wrote his memo with an air of authority that he should not have used. He doesn't understand the topic. OK, he's studied biology but not the right kind of biology. He said women suck compared to men. OK, maybe he didn't but he implied it. His memo was too long. Or maybe it was too short, because he cited 'very few facts'. Why is he "evidence bombing" people. He should have known readers would misinterpret it and that's his fault. He shouldn't have given interviews to YouTubers I don't like. OK, he interviewed with the WSJ but he was wearing a dumb t-shirt. He's the face of Silicon Valley sexism. Some women are offended and that's enough to stop discussing it. It's ridiculous that anyone agrees with him. He posted it to the wrong forums. Maybe he posted it to the right forums but he should have known it'd go viral. Why is he so naive? He deserves everything he gets.
These are all excuses to shoot the messenger. I am tired of reading them. They do not advance the debate at all, they are just ways to try and shut it down. And every time I see someone attack James Damore, or his writing style or whatever, instead of talking about the actual issues, I feel these people are losing the debate.
We absolutely should not construct a credentialist edifice that says only people certified to have gone through brainwa---err, regent-approved programs--- can comment on a topic. That would prevent discussion on most topics, as virtually all topics of interest are complex and have many years of study behind them.
Overall, these comments are still criticizing the how instead of the what, which is what people do when they don't know how to criticize the what but want to express their offense anyway. It's much easier to criticize delivery and in fact it will always happen whenever anyone cares, because delivery is inherently contextual/subjective.
If Damore's paper was rejected from Nature or another peer-reviewed journal, that'd make sense, as it is not a rigorous academic work. It's just a conjecture on the state of diversity hiring and it expresses his reasoning for believing the way he does. If he is so wrong, it should be simple to disprove him, and we can all move on without anyone having to get fired.
"Shouldn't have shared his opinion" and "should have shared his opinion in a different way" are two completely different things, and I don't see many people saying the first.
Can someone produce a "diversity culture" critic (for lack of a better term) who provides a good example for Damore? One that is well received across the board?
A big four-paragraph disclaimer at the beginning would've been a big waste of everyone's time, and it could just as easily be interpreted as a sign of hostility or malfeasance. If people want to dislike something, there is an infinity of potential nits to fixate on.
I've always been brash so I've been through the "delivery ringer" many times. The conclusion I've reached is that frequently, the only way to avoid it is to be so opaque and listless in your communication that people aren't sure what you meant.
If you say something people don't like in a non-ambiguous way, they will be mad, and they will insist on finding a reason to dismiss it.
If Damore had pined on the tragedy of the modern economic structure while exhaustively disclaiming every potential discriminatory implication before he began the memo, I guarantee people would've read just as much "intellectual dishonesty", "perverted reasoning", and "loads of bias" as they did now. In fact, they very likely would've read more, taking the content that initially appeared friendly to their POV as a sign that Damore had malicious intent and that he was attempting to hoodwink people by pretending to be "on their side".
As discussed below, if someone wants to dismiss something they don't like, airy, abstract terms like "perverted reasoning" will get bandied around no matter what. These terms are great precisely because their subjective interpretation allows the writer to sound semi-credible in their condemnation without having to specify further.
Damore was fired because once this hit the mainstream press, it was the only way for Google to preserve a strong defense against inevitable discrimination suits.
This is emphatically not the issue. Suppose for argument's sake that he had made an air-tight case. Wouldn't he still be advancing "harmful gender stereotypes?" It wouldn't void a single one of Sundar Pichai's points when he fired him.
And turn it around; suppose an activist had sent around a poorly argued pro-diversity screed that "cherry-picked" shoddy research on implicit association tests, stereotype threat, etc. Would Google seriously be rethinking her employment for tackling research in an "unreasoned and unscientific way?"
Damore is out because he took on the left's sacred beliefs.
That's the same stereotyping generalization found in the doc you oppose.
But I would like to push back on the idea that it was poorly written.
Is he an expert in these fields? No.
Was his memo completely unassailable? No.
Did he anticipate every possible response? No.
But he was still quite careful about the conclusions he was trying to draw from the research, and a number of scientists from different fields have all defended the research he cites (to be fair, many criticize the research, too).
If his opponents and critics truly value dialogue, they'll show it by actually engaging in dialogue.
Had he been fired from a research position, I would see your point.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-dam...
https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
Amidst all this, Google firing him is the biggest shame.
Wired even feels the need to add a parenthetical reinforcing climate change is true because this is the general strategy of climate deniers: they have to accept the laws of physics and the general mechanism of GHG warming and hold on to the nonsequitur conclusion of "huh uh but this isn't the consensus/established science/it's just a theory" and come up with their own conclusions.
(Edit: GHG warming, not GHC. GHC is actually getting cooler all the time.)
On the flip side, his memo wasn't meant for wide release and he had to act as sole writer, editor, and fact-checker. So I can forgive his mishandling of facts to an extent. But he's been stirring the pot a lot since his firing and I don't think this will end well for him.
I haven't seen a single thing that Damore has said after the firing (I haven't seen the memo either; I don't care much for the subject, it's the reaction that bothers me) -- but I'd bet a burger with fries that he's going the Milo Yanopopopopoulos route: a provocateur that's admired for being a provocateur.
It's a living. How long has Ann Coulter been around?
"The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore"
https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said...
Counterpoint: Damore only lists personality traits that lead to interest in engineering, thus leading to an imbalance in the talent pool from which Google hires. Rarely is an extremely high propensity for agreeableness a motivating factor for getting an engineering degree at Stanford.
Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast through their entire workplace, and not have that person be creating a hostile work environment for African Americans. If that person says "I don't mean in general, I mean inferior just for this occupation, I don't mean inferior, just 'differently talented, they've got great rhythm'", it doesn't matter, if that person says "here's a study which says this, we should consider this in an open minded fashion" it doesn't matter. The message is unacceptable. That person is done, that person should be done.
For example, in Europe more and more labour is voting for right wing parties. While left is becoming more and more rich/educated urbanite.
In any case, it's not a discussion for HN, but I wouldn't mind having it over a few beers/coffees.
The major question is what does count as being "about working people". Is it claiming you're for equality/diversity/whatever? Or working to make working people life better?
Labour feel threatened by globalisation, migrants and so on. Today's left is very clearly for that. Thus labour feels left is no longer working for their interests. The right, which is against migrants, feel much ore for their interests.
Of course, there's an economic theory that migrants help the host country's economy and everyone end up being better off. But a "working man" only see his wage stagnate due to increased competition and his rent raise. Or his work place gone completely due to outsourcing.
The left just declaring that they're for the working man is not enough. Their recent actions very clearly don't ring a bell for the working man. The feels (as much as I don't like that) is very important in politics. People are tired of politicians talking about several-degrees-removed benefits. Although sometimes (but, as we can see, not always) politicians are totally right and it is actually the right thing to do, public needs at least some direct benefits right away. Although this is frequently called as populism in a derogatory way, I believe it's a crucial part of democracy. And it especially rings true to less educated and less well off people which happened to be core electorate of the left.
Which is not a sign of "bigotry" or being "backwards" or whatever. Better off people have more wiggle room, can take more risks (e.g. voting for people who offer few-degrees-removed benefits in the future) and generally care about higher level stuff in Maslow pyramid. The labour don't have this luxury.
> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.
What he does is list "compassion for the weak" as a "left bias". That's not necessarily a statement in support of leftist ideals when combined with this two assertions:
> In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards protecting females.
> The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause
(Which, BTW, is right before the first thing I quoted.)
> the memo makes a whole case... how "leftists" are violent.
Which isn't true.
Or accusing "PC authoritarians" of stifling diversity of opinion? (violence is not just punching people)
Or accusing "the Left" of denying science regarding biological differences between individuals? (there's a huge difference between "taking with a grain of salt, considering there's a lot of societal factors that might play a bigger role" and "denying")
Damore does a really good job of adding a lot of disclaimers and caveat emptors around a lot of his arguments, but he really didn't put that much effort into hiding his derision for "the Left."
> So you don't think that singling out "leftist violence" in events where there were "alt-right violence" is choosing one side?
James's discussion of left violence is because Google is a left wing company.
If Google was a right wing company, then saying "Google has mainly right wing politics but has avoided the violence associated with far right groups" would indeed by apt.
Left and Right alike favor diversity, it how you get there where they disagree.
Diversity does not mean supporting the thought police, encouraging mob mentalities, and adopting zero tolerance attitudes.
A sizable majority of Americans do support gay marriage by almost 2:1, but they are very closely divided on other LGBT issues, particularly around what should and shouldn't be funded by the tax payer, etc.
And while Americans value diversity they also value freedom.
Scientifically the role of biology in gender behavior is not a settled issue, despite the many wishing to declare it so. I do not agree with the conclusions to which Damore jumped, nor do I feel strongly that biology was particularly relevant to the point he was trying to make. But it amazes me how even broaching the discussion triggers people.
> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.
Emphasis mine.
>While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftist protests that we’re seeing at universities
He's saying the leftist protests at Berkeley were violent. Which... is simply a factual statement.
Also, I'm not sure I'd qualify it as "simply a factual statement" when there were a bunch of alt-righters participating in the violence. Ever heard of alt-right hero "Based Stickman"? People pay for his tickets to go incite violence across the US. Such a symbol of peace!
Seems more like a lie by omission to me.
The actual quote is:
> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftist protests
Still doesn't change the meaning, my point being that the "violent leftist protests" he talks about don't happen in a vacuum. On the other side of the 'violence' there's always been lovely people like the alt-righter "hero" Based Stickman inciting violence.
To me, his choice of side to blame for the violence is pretty telling of what he thinks about "the Left". Whether correctly or incorrectly identifying them as the culprits of the violence, he's making a statement about the "movement" and not the particular instance of violence.
On a different note, Damore chose to include mention of "leftist protest" because Google's culture is left-leaning – he's explicitly saying that Google is very left, while not so left as these violent protests. Mentioning "violent rightist protests" wouldn't be germane to his statement about Google here.
I'm curious, why do you think Damore's position is "right" but that position is not? Aren't the coworkers and higher-ups entitled to an opinion just as much as Damore?
> Assuming that it’s true that women on average are more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job performance?
Creating a stereotype generates distrust in the individuals that are part of the group described by the stereotype. You yourself had to delve on the wording of the phrase to explain why you think it's different. Do you think the average person would put as much thought on the wording?
And yet, stereotypes do play a role in generating prejudice. In a utopic unprejudiced society, where all people are treated exactly the same by everyone and where there's no pre-conceived notion of "gendered careers", then each person would stand for themselves and their choice of career wouldn't be affected by externalities.
As is, this is 2017 and we have white supremacists chanting about Jews and ramming cars into people. Clearly, we are not even close to that Utopia.
But besides that, if the solution is to dedicate any special effort in hiring from this or that group, then employees from that group will feel they have to prove they really are at the same level as the others. Which is the opposite of what you wanted, and exactly what the female engineers in this interview complain about.
If you're saying "group X is inferior and and I can prove it mathematically", that's still wrong because those people don't have a choice about being a member of that group and still exist in society. Discriminating against them drags society down. It's a prisoners dilemma. If everybody hires fairly then the relative drag is spread across the entire economy and everyone comes out better in the end. If they try to cheat then they'll have a local advantage but in the end it only encourages everyone else to cheat and you end up in the worst case scenario with the massive drag on society as a whole.
So the only rational solution for these corporations is to pretend to be as inclusive as possible while secretly trying to cheat as much as possible, which is exactly what we see. When some dumbass publishes a paper to the entire world saying "Hey, we should openly cheat.", of course he's going to get fired.
I would have preferred to be an artist or a philosopher, bu t my family was poor and had bills to pay.
Point being it is too complicated to nail down a biological factor that was determined from birth.
No culture is completely free from environmental influence. As we age, the influences from our youth act like compound interest. These can change the way we think. Nurture impacts nature, and vice versa. The generally accepted view these days is the process is cyclical,
"neurological traits develop over time under the simultaneous influence of epigenetic, genetic and environmental influences. Everything about humans involves both nature and nurture" [1]
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
There is a whole wikipedia article devoted to it with a range of information on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
Which is to say you either A: don't consider hn polite conversation or B: don't imagine the "relevant race" is present.
It is my understanding that this community makes a point about sharing "anything that a good hacker would find interesting".
Downvoters, please cite which part of Damore's essay you think is comparable to overt racism. He explicitly said that he thinks women are capable, and should be hired.
He brings up IQ here,
"the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)"
IQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it?
The quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in discussions over racial differences [2].
It begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we replace "IQ" with "race", would that change the meaning he meant to convey?
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
[2] https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-bla...
It is largely the PC crowd who read implied-inferiority into any study of biological differences between male and female.
If you look carefully at some of the comments from female Googlers after the memo was leaked, they talk about fears of being perceived as less capable based on their biology.
See the memo itself isn't only dangerous, it is what it could lead to.
But that isn't at all what the memo said.
He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities.
I think it's awfully charitable not to infer that he considers the women/minorities at Google (on average) to be inferior engineers.
Still, it's true that he never said that...
Is saying "we need more diversity" code for "white men are inferior"? You might be on to something.
If the goal is to have a diverse group then a group composed only of women isn't ideal either. Diversity is not about raising or lowering the bar.
In an extreme environment where advantages of the tail end of population distributions are important then it's less likely the market will choose a diversified workforce.
Yes, but that's simply how statistics work. If you require one group of people to score 90 on some test in order to be hired, and another group to score 80, then among successful applicants the second group will have lower average scores than the first. There's no getting around that.
The argument should be over whether or not Google's hiring practices lower the bar for particular groups of people. If they do, then the above conclusion about the average talent of various groups is inescapable.
What I inferred from this, is that he learned that at least in some cases, there's aspects to Google's diversity hiring that they'd rather people not know about.
Now I don't know if this is false, true, or true within a small subset of Google; but his claim of the secret meeting does change the narrative somewhat in his favour.
Basically, you're asking for evidence so that he can prove himself plausibly innocent of a crime that there's no evidence for in the first place.
That's not necessarily so; you could require mice to be heavier than 90 grams, and elephants to be heavier than 80 grams, and still have your elephants be heavier on average.
(I don't want to wade into the bigger argument, just pointing out that "that's simply how statistics work" only under certain conditions (which most likely apply here, but you wrote "there's no getting around that" when there is)).
Incidentally, we do not know whether his statement is true, or whether the changes to Google's hiring practices have changed the employees' operational capability.
In the absence of this information, with such a clearly (if somewhat subtly) stated opinion, it's natural that one would be offended by his words.
Before accepting a statement like his, it would behoove us to know what the actual policy changes are.
Also, the idea that finding ways to employ more women+minorities leads to poorer employees is exactly what many people don't after about - essentially, your argument is taking his opinion as fact, while I only wanted to point out the underlying message to his words.
But somehow it gets turned into "This means he thinks women are worse, therefore he's insulting women, therefore it's a hostile workplace, therefore he got fired." That reasoning is a major leap, and it's not Damore's leap.
Taking a fact and turning it into a hostile-workplace-opinion is the real problem.
"You had to buy inferior wood to get enough to build this house. I don't think there's enough good wood to build the house, therefore in order to get enough you had to buy inferior wood."
The fact of the quality of the wood is separate from the opinion of the availability of quality wood.
"Google has created several discriminatory practices: ... Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" [Mind you _lower the bar_ is a hyperlink, to a gdoc I don't have access to, so he's citing another document as evidence of this practice].
So he is in fact arguing a factual claim, that google has applied inconsistant standards in practice, as I suggested in my prior post.
>So he is in fact arguing a factual claim, that google has applied inconsistant standards in practice, as I suggested in my prior post.
Yes. Re-read my comment. Whether or not they apply inconsistent hiring practices is a factual claim. The idea that the only way to achieve the goal of hiring more women is to apply inconsistent hiring practices is his opinion.
Please show me where he says anything like "The idea that the only way to achieve the goal of hiring more women is to apply inconsistent hiring practices is his opinion."
He merely states that it can have that effect.
>Yes. Re-read my comment. Whether or not they apply inconsistent hiring practices is a factual claim. The idea that the only way to achieve the goal of hiring more women is to apply inconsistent hiring practices is his opinion.
It looks like a logical conclusion to me. Care to explain why you think it's not?
He "merely" says that Google is doing it, and that doing it lowers the bar. Therefore he's saying that Google lowered the bar. It's a pretty simple a = b = c scenario
>It looks like a logical conclusion to me. Care to explain why you think it's not?
Because women can achieve at the same level as men? I thought it was pretty obvious.
No one would find it weird if I claimed that women aren't able to run a 100 as fast as men. Yes, there might be some exceptional cases where women can compete, but they are just that, exceptions to the rule. Most of the time women compete among themselves since they would never qualify for anything if they competed in the same category as men.
Why is it unacceptable to make the same observation about intellectual endeavors, or programming specifically?
You claim that women can achieve at the same level as men. Let's assume they can for now. However, your gripe is with the under-representation of women at tech companies. So that claim doesn't really help you, you would need to show that women perform as well as men on average. Can you?
Because the observation is inaccurate. There is no evidence that it is true.
>However, your gripe is with the under-representation of women at tech companies. So that claim doesn't really help you, you would need to show that women perform as well as men on average. Can you?
We have no evidence they can't, why would we assume that to be the case?
> "Google has created several discriminatory practices: ... Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate"
Please note the last 5 words. Damore wasn't saying that diversity candidates got jobs in spite of being below the bar. He was saying that decreasing the false negative rates for certain groups is discriminatory towards those who don't belong to said groups.
E.g., the point is that focusing on decreasing false negative rates for group A but not for group B, will mean that, on average, more people who are close to the bar will be hired from group A than from group B. This is unfair to group B, since they are much less likely to get "the benefit of the doubt".
In essence, the quote relates to how Google deals differently with uncertainty depending on the gender of an individual.
The passage in which that quote occurs clearly implies that the bar has already been lowered - in fact, the second half of the sentence offers the mechanism through which the 'bar had been lowered' ("Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate")
> No one would find it weird if I claimed that women aren't able to run a 100 as fast as men. Yes, there might be some exceptional cases where women can compete, but they are just that, exceptions to the rule. Most of the time women compete among themselves since they would never qualify for anything if they competed in the same category as men. Why is it unacceptable to make the same observation about intellectual endeavors, or programming specifically?
I guess I'm surprised that this is controversial (in response to your most recent comment to a sibling poster) - the reason we don't accept that women are worse programmers than men is... we don't have evidence that women are worse programmers than men.
There are data about physical strength (and amazingly clear biological correlates - most HN posters will never outmatch a top female athlete, and we only need to do a quick lab test to determine this). However, female/minority intelligence has been, and continues to be, a politicized issue - until the more overt instances of discrimination are eliminated, how can we jump from blaming the obvious societal barriers to blaming biology?
In fact, we find that the field was way more diverse before the 1990s, and the talent pipeline for female programmers only started choking in the late 80s (for reasons we could argue, but one popular theory involves boy-oriented PCs and video games).
No, assuming that men and women who applied have the exact same distribution of 'good qualities', you have twice as many male applicants as female applicants, and you want to hire as many women as men, you have to lower the bar for women.
> Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace
> differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole
> story. On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways ..
And then he talks about "Google lowering the bar".
I'm not sure how can I parse part "... but it's far from the whole story" with "Google lowering the bar".
I'm not racist, but...
Strange how you directly quote parts that don't mention the lowering of the bar, then suddenly paraphrase the lowering the bar part, and put quotes around a non-quote. This is the sort of intellectual run around that is really common.
I searched the doc, and Damore uses this word "bar" exactly once (if the search function can be believed - lowering zero):
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
And this links (via the text "effectively lower the bar for") to an internal Google chat I can't see.
So ten pages, and lower(ing) the bar is mentioned once, in which he links to some discussion which I assume is relevant to the quote. How can anyone know what that quote means with out reading the internal google chat? For all I know, it links to an chat discussing false negatives in hiring, because I find that whole sentence confusing - how is decreasing false negatives bad? Is he saying they only use practices which reduce false negatives on diversity hires and not other hires? That would actually be really interesting - Google conducting different interviews based on "diversity" and finding they get better candidates as a result would be weird not to replicate.
In any case, that internal chat must clear up at least part of that context, and I can't read it so I have no context for this single line. Given this was an internal memo, however, the author gave its intended audience full access to the context, so even then, I can't see how this can be used as a sweeping statement by those externally of much of anything.
He basically said the opposite, but people have been so interested in triggering off the 'lowered the bar' phrasing to show their outrage that they're (seemingly willfully) ignoring the rest of the sentence which completely changed the meaning.
But 'by lowering false negatives' is hugely important. Google's hiring process has a lot of false negatives. These are qualified engineers who weren't hired that could have been successful at Google. This allows for 'lowering the bar' without sacrificing quality by not subjecting minority/female candidates to the more arbitrary/capricious stages of the Google hiring process that eliminate so many otherwise-qualified candidates.
Imagine if one of the ways that we chose to address diversity in the tech workplace was to exempt qualified female/minority H1-B candidates from the lottery and automatically approve their visas? It wouldn't make them any less qualified, since they could've gotten their visa through the normal lottery process. But it would 'lower the bar' by making it significantly more likely that they'd get visas. The post-interview stages of Google's hiring process are similar in their often-arbitrary selecting of who gets through.
It's also, on Google's part, a smart move to address their PR concerns. It allows them to increase female/minority hiring, thereby satisfying public calls for more diversity, without sacrificing quality. All they have to do is look into their process at where qualified diversity candidates are getting rejected and stop doing that. It's a luxury that other companies with fewer surplus potential hires don't have when trying to improve the diversity of their workforce. But possibly more importantly, it's not helping to improve the diversity of the industry as a whole, it only helps to make Google's stats look better. Google's standards for engineers mean that their false negatives can usually get jobs elsewhere without much difficulty. By taking this approach to diversity hiring, they're just shifting their own workforce demographics without helping the industry as a whole do the same.
"To lower the standards of quality that are expected of or required for something." -- http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/lower+the+bar
If he didn't mean to say that, he should retract that phrase and apologize for saying something he didn't mean to say.
You getting "triggered" by people using the standard definition of a common idiom isn't helpful.
Parents often tell their children that a lie about what they did is worse than the original crime. I hope Mr. Damore didn't take this smug "I didn't actually say that women were inferior, it's all about preferences" tone that seems to be the first line of defence online, in his HR meetings only to be asked "So, what's this bit about race and the "science" of IQ you mentioned? Is IQ a preference?"
I'll note that the argument you present about Google only diversity-washing themselves at the cost of others having lower diversity, is the same argument that people make about their green energy efforts. In that area at least they've gone to great lengths to ensure that they actually improve the whole industry, not just steal the glory for themselves and I wouldn't be at all suprised if they had some very smart people ensuring the same was the case in this instance.
Had the reaction been one of kindness, understanding and a desire for cohesiveness where people tried to point out misconceptions and alert him to how his language was being received ("when you say 'lowered the bar' it makes me think 'less qualified', so perhaps you didn't meant that?"), this whole blow-up could have been avoided. Instead people reacted with righteous indignation and jumped to labeling him a misogynist and a bigot. At that point, all hope of a productive outcome, for him and Google at least, was lost.
For my part, I'm less interested in whether Damore really is bigot and a misogynist or any virtue of his opinions. I'm only defending what he could have possibly meant because I see so many people jumping to their own incomplete conclusions. This whole incident, to me, was more about how unproductive our reactions are to anything relating to a sensitive subject. People are so quick to trigger off anything resembling an assault on one of their sacred cows that they never take the time to figure out the intended meaning. I'm so sick of walking on eggshells knowing that I have to watch every single sentence and word choice because they'll be taken out of context and used against me. We're losing nuance in our discussions and it's creating a polarization of thought on each side that I find dangerous and divisive...there's no room for middle-ground thinkers to participate without being attacked by one or both sides. This makes those people either gravitate towards one of the extremes or disengage entirely.
You're just saying "He couched the point well-enough", he didn't say they were worse engineers, he just said they weren't naturally inclined to work with things. Sure that doesn't literally state that women as worse, it just casts an equivalent shadow on a woman wanting to be an engineer.
He mentions aptitude right here,
"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
He also mentions it in an interview:
https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s
This is conciliatory to you? Implying that the opposing side is blind to the truth and such blindness is preventing them from actually solving problems? Because to me this comes across as hostile and condescending.
My only point was that the sentence, as written, was hostile and condescending and does not represent a conciliatory approach to conversation.
I don't think that cherry picking one line out of a 10 page document with significant number of disclaimers, and which was originally presented in a way and desire to evolve and gather opinions represents the overall intent and tone of the document.
Not to have to retype: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022769
> Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence
> but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology[7] that can irreparably harm Google [[ citation talks about Communist/Marxist ideals, directly equating Google with a Communist/Marxist organization ]]
> Google’s left leaning makes us blind to this bias and uncritical of its results, which we’re using to justify highly politicized programs.
> Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased [[ says this without citing any evidence at all of this happening ]]
The "tone" of the document is pretty aggressive, even if Damore throws a lot of fluff and "but I don't mean..." in the mix. In general it sets it up as "Left is bad and violent, Google is left, FIX IT."
edit: Also, I'm pretty sure there was internal "feedback" related to this memo that was equally hyperbolic towards the author.
Some go beyond propaganda and get close to calling for violence. Quotes include: "…you deserve what's coming to you." and "Yes this is silencing. I intend to silence these views. They are violently offensive."
As far as I know, none of these people were fired for their posts.
> Please, quote feminist propaganda with the same level of invective that has been circulated at Google and maybe we have something to talk about.
I showed a half-dozen examples of Googlers being far more insulting and threatening than Damore's memo. As far as I know, none of them were fired. The double-standard could not be more obvious. Damore was fired for the ideas he expressed, not the tone he used.
There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”
When going into a situation where you've been at the back hand of such bias, specifically in a workplace, it's often hard not to show at least some condescension. Look at any number of public feminist actions and statements, for example.
Strongly disagree. I think emphasis is a really big deal here. Here's a key line from the memo:
> Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.
This runs right into the Jon Snow line, "everything before the word 'but' is horse____." It comes across that the author doesn't think workplace bias is as important as [other stuff], or maybe that he doesn't think it's important at all, which is understandably hurtful to tons of people. Maybe that's an uncharitable reading, but can you really write about something like this and ask your readers to be unusually charitable to you?
https://www.economist.com/news/international/21726276-last-w...
(Paradoxes FTW!)
The disclaimer before the 'but' reads quite clearly to me.
This sounds like willfull ignorance, no matter how true something is you aren't allowed to say it because it might hurt some feelings.
I'd prefer to acknowledge reality.
How else am I supposed to take it when a self-identity right wing person claims the left don't believe some science related to IQ in the context of a diversity memo.
What "science" could he possibly be referring to other than the Bell Curve BS?
Why do you jump to the conclusion he must be talking about ethnicity? Afaik ethnicity wasn't referred to at all in his memo.
Sometimes you'd think there were two completely different memos under discussion given the lack of basic agreement on facts as relate to the memo itself, never mind it's arguments and sources.
Though, I guess you're right, he may have left it ambigous about exactly which IQ differences he believes in that "the left" don't. People seem to think it's wrong to complain about his communication style, but as this example illustrates, peppering a memo with alt-right buzzwords and then being ambiguous about which particular controversial IQ studies you support can just as honestly be interpreted as dog-whistling rather than incredibly high levels of naivety. I think most people suggesting his communication skills are lacking are actually just giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Ah, the famous, "I don't agree with it so it must be wrong" argument. I can see how the smart and well-reasoning people on HackerNews would use that. Yes...
Or maybe the graduation demographics are biased and Google is just trying to correct them?
Example: Men and women are equally qualified by nature, but the graduating class contains 800 qualified men and 200 qualified women due to unfair "thinning". Google needs to hire 200 people, so they hire 100 men (1 out of 8 in the graduating class) and 100 women (1 out of 2 in the graduating class).
The only real solution to the gender gap involves fixing the talent pipeline and then waiting N years for the talent to start coming through. Everything else is just a stop gap that is bound to create distortions.
It would be different if there was lots of talent that just couldn't get jobs because of overt discrimination (e.g. as is the case with ageism), but the gender gap is not that easy of a problem.
Incidentally, working in a big corp, programming these days is more of a social activity than it once was for reasons completely unrelated to gender. The day of the lone wolf programmer is long past!
I wish this disastrous extrovert invasion were more clearly disclosed. It took me a long time to realize that my maddeningly arthritic big corp experience wasn't just an outlier.
I strongly disagree with that position - as far as is possible that conversation has been had and settled; companies shouldn't be discriminating on gender. I dunno what the law in California is but my stance is that discriminating on gender should be illegal. Even if the people doing the discriminating might feel they have a moral right to it :P.
Through human history a pretty obvious pattern that isn't the case appears very obvious to me. Humans rely heavily on the feels to promote and lift up ideas and the people attached to them.
There's been study after study in neuroscience and psychology concluding that we don't come to our final decision based solely on available facts. Pre-conceived conclusions rule our decision making in day-to-day life.
It's something all these "smart" males raging over this crap would do well to consider. No one really gives a crap that you did well on Google's hiring exam. You're still a disposable cog. You're good at computers. STFU and learn about all the other things out there. Cause just being good at that isn't good enough anymore.
It probably never was, and the whole tilt towards males was riding on cultural rails.
Humans are not machines. Something that is lost on our culture. Certain voices were warning us about this very scenario of being solely concerned with social statuses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
EDIT: Piling on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020683
Advice Damore would have done well to heed when writing his essay. You should also note there are serious questions about its validity - this is not just a matter of tone or style.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-...
Then why don't you summarize the article's points so people are free to give a rebuttal
No, I think they're fine as long as they're consistent with the idea that sexism and oppression are the only relevant factors.
Otherwise, better keep that science to yourself.
> If he had spoken with some of them individually and spent some time trying to better understand their views on the issues, I suspect he would have done a better job choosing words that would have inspired debate rather than hostility.
That's it. He didn't talk to a single woman at Google about this manifesto before spreading it like gospel. All he had to do was talk to other people.
I definitely agree that if he'd simply had a few women he knew and trusted at work read it before he disseminated it widely then this all might have been avoided. If he didn't know any women at work that he trusted with this then that itself is a huge problem.
Given the fact that he was fired over this, i.e. Google thinks it's very bad, and assuming he had a hunch this was so, is it reasonable to believe he should be able to trust a female coworker with this memo not to file a complaint?
Put more generally: is it reasonable that one should expect one's coworkers to keep silent about a fireable offense?
The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provocative way people write about such things on twitter/reddit/here.
In a work environment, that approach can and will get you fired. It should cause you career problems even if you do it for mundane things like type theory, or memory management, or distributed systems. Do it on something controversial and cause a huge problem for the company, and of course they are going to fire you. Especially since in this context adversarial = hostile work environment.
>The discussion around this has followed the trajectory of most of the polarizing mass discussion in the last few years; everyone comes out the other side with their opinions more calcified than ever, and more convinced than before of the intractability of the other side.
Damore wasn't walking into this ready to discuss and/or learn, he wanted to blast his opinion internally with no intention of attempting to change it.
Debate works really well in two situations:
1. All parties are experienced with debates and enjoy debates. In particular, they can partake in a debate and then, afterward, dispassionately evaluate the arc of the debate; OR
2. The setting is inherently adversarial and there is a third party who will ultimately decide the outcome.
Almost all workplace conversations -- and indeed almost all life conversations -- do not fall into one of these two buckets. In particular:
1. Making use of debate in a search for truth is a difficult and non-universal skill.
For individual debaters to get something out of a debate, they need to know how to disengage from their advocacy and evaluate the arc of the debate from an objective vantage point. This is a skill that requires training. Discussions, on the other hand, allow people to perform this switching between viewpoints as the discussion unfolds. This is much more natural.
2. Adversarial settings create emotional attachment. In debates, people very often become emotionally attached to their arguments and advocacy, causing ego to get in the way of a search for truth. In contrast, discussions do not require a stable advocacy, they are non-adversarial, and no one "wins". These characteristics de-emphasize ego and place the emphasis on whatever actually important issue is at hand.
3. Debates often end up confusing quality of argument with ground truth.
It's always important to remember that constructing arguments is a skill and is time-consuming. It's certainly possible to "win" a debate and still be dead wrong about ground truths -- either by refining debating skill or by throwing more resources into argument construction.
4. Most people don't enjoy debates. I don't have any evidence here, but I think it's probably true. And in a work place, keeping your co-workers happy is probably a lot more important to achieving the company's goals than whatever epsilon benefit debate has over discussion.
Maybe if universities looked more like The Academy everyone would be competent and comfortable in debates, and also understand their inherent limitations as a mechanism in the search for truth. But that's not the world we live in.
So, although I enjoy a good debate as much as the next person, I've found that debates are a truly terrible method for making decisions in most professional settings.
If you read my post, it's immediately apparent -- from the very first sentence!!! -- that I am not stating that debate is always worse than discussion. I'm providing a list of reasons why debate is often not preferable to discussion, and particularly in workplaces (e.g., bullet point 4).
So I'm not trying to stifle this debate at all. In fact, exactly the opposite. I explicitly identified one class of circumstances -- which encapsulates this thread -- where debate actually works very well.
Rather, I'm explaining why debate is an objectively bad communication mechanism in many circumstances, and particularly in typical work places.
> stifle debate
Return to your original comment.
WHY is stifling debate bad? Basically, because debate forces us to substantiate our beliefs+. Why is substantiating our beliefs good? Presumably because we're interested in truth. So debate is not some inherent good; it's a useful and indeed sometimes indispensable tool for finding truth.
But I've claimed (points 1-4) that debate, in some circumstances, actually actively harms our search for truth. Again, not all circumstances, but some.
So it's very unclear to me why you would claim that stifling debate is a bad thing without responding to my four critiques of debate as a mechanism for finding truth.
Is having debates more important than finding truth? Is robust debate more important than getting things done? ++
> you think is so self evident that it does not need any
Oh cool, now I get to yell at you about dubious unwarranted claims ;-)
--
+ It's possible to have non-argumentative discussions in which everyone is forced to substantiate their claims; this is about good communication and critical thinking, not debate vs. discussion. Backing off from a combative tone is only equivalent to "stifling" when your communication skills are sub-par.
++ Finally, on a personal note, this realization that debate is often counter-productive was a huge turning point in my career and in my personal life. Identifying when debates are and are not appropriate is an important professional and life skill. E.g., I never, ever start a debate when I'm trying to convince someone to change a workplace policy. It's totally and completely unsurprising to me that doing so backfired in a big way, because the same thing has happened to me.
See for example "Edith's" point in the linked article "Edith: There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”"
To me, it's really hard not to imagine the author being the type of person who would have a "I'm an Atheist, debate me" shirt. It's written in that style.
Beyond that I don't really know what to say. Technical discussions unfortunately frequently end up this way too, so maybe its easy to get used to it. But its counter-productive.
And note, I'm suggesting why it pissed people off at google and should have got him fired. It isn't an explanation of the media reaction per-say because in the context of a public discussion there is no precept that you are cooperating with people (unlike your co-workers) and your audience isn't going to repeatedly interact with you. So adversarial arguments are common and generally accepted. It would have been fine as an op-ed in a news paper (though IMHO doesn't make the quality bar). Its not in a discussion with co workers.
If we're going with anecdote, the memo sure read as a hostile dropped-bombshell to every female Googler I've talked to on the subject.
Regardless of whether it was the author's intent to do harm, or to be antagonistic, he absolutely did - both to individuals and the company as a whole.
I'm a huge proponent of the principle of charity, but I found it impossible to apply to the Google Memo. Not because I'm deeply mired in political correctness (I have a range of views people in my circle consider right-wing) but because it's so badly reasoned it makes it hard to presume good faith on the part of the writer.
Damore points to studies showing that, e.g. women are more agreeable and more people-oriented. From that, he concludes women on average are less likely to prefer programming. We can diagram this reasoning as follows (the arrow with the line through denotes a contraindicator):
Women -> (agreeable + people-oriented) -> [???] -\-> programming
As you can see, there is an unstated premise:
(agreeable + people-oriented) -\-> programming
Damore's argument thus reduces to a bit of begging the question. We assume that programming is a "masculine" profession. Thus, being agreeable and people-oriented, which are feminine traits, must be contraindicators for preferring a career as a programmer. We have no studies that show this--we just assume it.
Edith, by the way, demolishes that assumption: "For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work." That demonstrates how the "gender" of various professions is a social construct. In India, where men are over-represented in teaching, it's not considered a job for "agreeable" "people-oriented" women. It's men's work. Law was historically considered men's work (it's analytical and adversarial, and could be called "people oriented" only if you hate people). But that view has been redefined as more women enter the profession. Likewise for medicine, accounting, etc. Accounting is an archetypally "masculine" profession (locked away in a back closet crunching numbers), but today more than half of accountants are women.
The moral of the story is that if you're going to make a controversial point, it had better be a good point. Damore's memo wasn't just badly written, it was badly reasoned, and deserved the scorn heaped on it.
> Since the Communist Revolution of 1917 and during the ensuring Soviet times, the role of women in engineering and engineering education was strong with almost 60% of the engineers being women. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian women in these engineering careers has fallen to below 40% of the engineering workforce with a continuing downward trend.
I had completely forgotten about this - my own mothers' class in Moscow Aviation Institute (rocket engineers) in early 80s had more women studying than men.
The paper I cited does not claim that USSR had managed to transform an otherwise very prejudice society into an equal egalitarian one. Instead, soviets focused on full employment AND full Labor participation as part of ideology, leaving less room for contradictions such as gender discrimination on employment or education itself. Salary and promotion discrimination remained as there ideology provided less cover. Following the collapse, Russian society reverted to its old prejudice self. Lookup домострой if you don't believe me.
Another less from USSR for gender/family stays equality is that childcare access makes a huge difference. In USSR, parents were guaranteed state funded care from the point maternity leave ended to college. On paper that still exists, but in practice it's a shadow of what it used to be.
That's Diekman 2010:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20631322
"Although women have nearly attained equality with men in several formerly male-dominated fields, they remain underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We argue that one important reason for this discrepancy is that STEM careers are perceived as less likely than careers in other fields to fulfill communal goals (e.g., working with or helping other people). Such perceptions might disproportionately affect women's career decisions, because women tend to endorse communal goals more than men. As predicted, we found that STEM careers, relative to other careers, were perceived to impede communal goals. Moreover, communal-goal endorsement negatively predicted interest in STEM careers, even when controlling for past experience and self-efficacy in science and mathematics."
"Participants were 333 introductory psychology students (193 women) who participated for partial course credit, and 27 paid participants (14 women) from STEM classes. The majority (86.94%) were of European American descent. The median age was 19 years, ranging from 18 to 43. "
"For each of the core careers, participants rated how much the career fulfills agentic goals (“power, achievement, and seeking new experiences or excitement”) and communal goals (“intimacy, affiliation, and altruism”; definitions from Pohlmann, 2001). Participants rated goals according to “how important each of the following kinds of goals is to you personally."
I really found this study not very compelling as jumping from point A to conclusion B. It seems more than they've proved that women from the small subset in this study prefer more "communal goals" and the STEM careers are not perceived that way.
I can say as a women in STEM, I sort of choose tech on a whim. I came to see coding as a tool for many of the creative aspirations I had. If anything, I think some of the STEM career paths are poorly understood and marketed to women. Though I probably would have answered my questions about my career decisions in one way when I started college, it would have been different by the end of it. And after understanding what to expect out of a career, being years into my career, I would answer what's important to me in yet another way. So I really question this study.
If someone agrees with the point the study seems to support, they say, "Hah! Studies!" and call anyone who disagrees "anti-science".
But if someone disagrees with the point, they pull up the study, pick out some section of it where any type of subjective judgment call was made (usually the details of the sample, because that's the most clearly subjective thing, making it the easiest thing to criticize), and say "There are real problems with this study, how about a real study? [that is, a study that agrees with my point]". Also popular is "Yes, but this author is affiliated with former employer x, y, or z".
This is true of all sides, all the time. Very rarely do you see a study actually impact anyone's opinion about an important topic. It is usually only the impression that more studies support a specific position (that is, "the consensus", aka social pressure to appear studious and informed, which affects academics as much or more than it affects non-academics), that does it.
This is virtually impossible to do effectively unless one is an expert in the field. Studies that have been published by reputable journals have gone through a rigorous peer review process. A layperson criticizing such a study is highly unlikely to discover any valid points that have escaped the experts.
Peoples' perceptions of various professions are the result of socialization. For example, my mom grew up in a society where teaching was a male profession--it was characterized as being about instilling wisdom and discipline in children. She found it very upsetting that teachers in the US were overwhelmingly women.
But interests come first. If women on average perceive technology as not fulfilling communal goals and therefore avoid the field, they must first be interested in communal goals. It's also not controversial that interests have some biological component. So both here and in your original comment, I'm not sure exactly what specific criticism of Damore you're making. Maybe a quote would help?
Generally, you raise the possibility that software engineering could be a very people-oriented profession now but misportrayed as such by male engineers. But surely there must be some non-people, thing-oriented job that is just hours of long hacking at a keyboard with zero to minimal social contact, completely male-dominated, which women on average would tend to avoid. Why wouldn't that be some form of software programming?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
I've always assumed this was an official rule of Hacker News commentary, but now that I look for it, I don't see it explicitly mentioned in the guidelines. Yet it somehow seems to be woven into the fabric here.
The opposite is to paint your opposition as despicable as possible to show that you are righteous and just. I feel like I've been getting way too much of this from Facebook in the last couple weeks.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...
At no point did he argue "against female software engineers"
I don't think you can honestly say publishing it to 10's of thousands of readers constitutes editorial consultation and advice.
Editing and review consists of find a small (one handful) number of trusted friends and mentors whose insight you value, having them read it and make suggestions and comments, perhaps multiple cycles, and only then publish to people you don't know and are hoping to persuade.
It troubles me that this kind of (IMO) disingenuousness shows up again and again in regard to the memo. Not just in this specific comment, but multiple times whenever someone points out a flaw there is always a response of "but he really did do that, you just took it wrong". No, I didn't, and neither did others. He screwed up.
You are the one being disingenuous with this inane critique of the specifics of how Damore sought out feedback for his ideas. He really did do that, he really sought out criticism and continues to do so, you didn't take it wrong though... you're just critiquing it in an inane way. If you disagree with his points, then engage with the points. If the way in which it was written is so deeply flawed then it shouldn't be hard to refute them.
Not in the least the same thing as seeking editorial comment from a set of volunteers who know what they're reading. But I can see you are insistent that he did in fact do something he didn't do, which is the definition of disingenuousness.
I wish you good fortune in your future HR counseling sessions.
I don't know how often memos of this nature circulate around google and that's important context because a lot of the discussion really seems to boil down to "How do we feel that this guy got fired". Do other employees send out memos that also contemplate diversity in tech/google with similar length and calls to action? If so, do those employees send out their messages via the same channels that this employee sent out his memo? Without understanding more about the social context the employee was operating in a lot of necessary context is missing imo.
I think the challenge is there is disagreement about who is the aggrieved party. Are women aggrieved because the memo made them feel unwelcome, or is Damore the aggrieved party because he was raising a grievance?
Also, I don't know why aggrievement needs to be exclusive. More than one party can be aggrieved.
[1]: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands...
In the meantime, here are three comments that explain how moderators had nothing to do with this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15023538
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15023498
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15023486
Maybe it is due to the users, but if that is so, it feels wrong enough to give me a pretty big loss of faith in the dynamics of the community.
I can't vote "don't flag this". So if there are approximately two sides to a discussion, and one side wants to flag it to silence the discussion, then the discussion is going to get flagged no matter what.
So the side that wants to silence just selectively silences the opinions they don't agree with, and they win.
The silencing happens because there is a huge left/right discrepancy on this site and because silencing your opposition became acceptable, due to victimhood culture.
One thing I would be very curios to know is the age distribution of people advocating silencing and no platforming.
I suspect that younger people support this due to the helicopter parent style they were more likely to have grew with, where the parent suppresses anything discomforting for the child instead of letting the child deal with it on it's own. So when that child grows it's normal for him to demand 'the state' or 'the corporation' to do the same thing, because only his comfort and views matter.
I'm a leftist. But what I see right now on the left deeply concerns me and makes me reconsider, stuff like black people advocating black only areas or events, which is ironic, because in the 60 they were fighting exactly against this, or leftists justifying and advocating violence against the extreme right, using the all time favorite excuse that "bad people deserve to be beaten".
FWIW I also got the impression that certain kinds of articles quickly disappear from the front page, and you can see on them more comments than upvotes, which is in general unusual and which suggests heavy downvoting. So to me it doesn't appear that the community is balanced. Which is not to say that this is a bad thing, many times some views are better than others.
No, it's really just that this misperception is so universal that I can't help but answer it even though I know it will do no good. Maybe it's a Beckett play.
I thought you can repudiate a flagging, isn't that the "vouch" control? I'm not familiar with exactly when it is or isn't offered.
Ironically, but not surprisingly, you're down voted for sharing that possibility.
The issue isn't that you or other users had that perception; that's natural, which is why I've posted half a dozen explanations of what actually happened, i.e. moderators didn't touch the post (other than in one routine way I described) and its prominence on the front page was because user upvotes dramatically outweighed flags. It was purely a community response.
The reason I used the word 'nasty' is because this user has a long history of insinuating that we're lying (("it's the algorithm", "it's the user", blabla)), when they have more reason than any other HN user to know we don't do that. I've spent hours personally, patiently explaining this to him over at least a dozen occasions where he has made stuff like this up (most often, accusing us of moderating HN to be shills for Microsoft, which is silly). Good faith doesn't act this way.
However, flagging does seem to serve a purpose while at the same time it could be abused. Could a throttle for flagging be introduced to slow down abusive flaggers? What I mean is maybe the ability to flag postings is only possible if you haven't flagged something in say 7 days.
That doesn't stop people from whipping up mass hysteria about it.
> "It's Google's perogative/obligation to find and retain the best talent. I suspect that's what the purpose of their diversity programs are for."
To me this meant that to find the best talent it's more effective to focus on subsets of the total talent pool, which didn't make sense to me.
Perhaps whether or not Google's diversity programs are lowering the bar is the more important question; it's also one he likely wasn't well-positioned to tackle (it requires a lot more resources to prove/disprove bar-lowering compared to writing a memo to express a concern).
And perhaps it shouldn't! It might, however, limit their ability to write at length about sensitive, culturally-deep issues at work without getting fired and having their career stained.
Similarly, perhaps one's ability to write code shouldn't disbar them from a hackathon, but if they write a bunch of hacky code for a quadcopter and it flies into the audience, well, then they're in a bit of a pickle indeed.
This is a human being and a colleague. I really think people ought to satisfy a very, very high evidential and expressive bar before they do this to other people. I don't say this as a dictum or law, but as an ethical suggestion.
If you want to build products exclusively for men, by all means, staff your teams with all men. But bringing a diversity of experience into all levels of a company makes that company's products and engagement experience better for everyone. This is especially true when you're talking about a consumer-focused product (like many of Google's products are).
While I do agree that sometimes these new practices fail, it has done more good for organizations implementing similar practices than bad.
Speaking as a minority engineer, I don't like the fact that I have to constantly prove myself just to have people then assume that my beyond-the-norm performance is simply middling for my ethnicity; I've had to eat a lot of crow, but I take solace in the fact that others are able to come on-board because of these moments where you take the hits.
I don't known if I'm being clear, I empathize with Edith and all about having to "overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills" and I wish there was a better way but I feel like there is some cultural requirement that we have to bear the burden for the people who come after.
I'm not sure I agree. First of all, the article by Scott Alexander referenced in this post makes mostly the same arguments, and the post praises its content for being better presented. I can't tell much of a difference in presentation; certainly not one that justifies praise for Alexander and crucifixion for Damore. Secondly, 99% of Damore's critics are outraged about things he never remotely said; it was only after their accusations were thoroughly debunked that they shifted their criticism to his presentation. I seriously doubt any of the outrage is sincere; it seems far more likely that Damore made a suitable target for folks projecting their insecurities or even their legitimate victim experiences.
This line really struck me as being spot on:
>There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”
Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific progress.
Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing in good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that evidence should be discounted.
Of course it isn't. When establishing narratives and complex causalities, you don't use scientific (inductive) reasoning, you use abductive reasoning. You use inductive and deductive reasoning to fill in points, but you have to use abductive reasoning to reach a broader conclusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
Indeed, but I didn't read Damore's memo as being intellectually dishonest in this way. He presented (with citations) some views that are held by most psychology researchers. And then he drew a few of his own (possibly flagrant) conclusions and speculations.
This sparked debate, and it is getting us talking. Damore wrote some great points (especially on free speech and intellectual diversity) and some terrible ones. This is the kind of free exchange of ideas that a successful and vibrant tech company should encourage.
Pointed questions provide more information at the expense of goodwill.
What I'm saying is that I think people ask these kinds of questions and don't get honest answers. At least the firing of Damore was a concrete answer, though it was a partial one.
EDIT: Apologies for answering a question before it's been asked, but to clarify my point I don't think the quality of writing is that amazing (or relevant). I'm more speaking towards the general tone and content of the memo, which is far more polite and open than most editorials I read by professionals.
> I’m also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about.
...means she's frustrated that more men weren't saying what she was thinking. So "speak up" also means agreement.
And, as an aside, I've seen lots of men criticizing Damore. I don't know what more needed to happen. Maybe she has particular people in mind.
again critics of the author actually agree with him.
anyone who supports "let's have a discussion" can not support google who the author believes (and seems to have been proven right) does not want a discussion.
edit: for context, I'm a female engineer
Did math and physics communities already have their internal crisis/debate on these things, perhaps a decade or two ago? Or have they been able to cope without lighting such a fire?
I guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working with women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove how women aren't worthy .
Lots people from math and physics have jumped over and become decent, some even great, software engineers. Not many software engineers have successfully switched over to math or physics.
So if gender is not so much an issue for a successful career in, I don't know, algebraic topology (math) or quantum field theory (physics), it surely should be less of an issue in software engineering ...when talking about whatever effects there may or may be at a biological level. So if it's not such a big issue in academia, the problems in software engineering must be more about what kind of workplace culture has grown around in software engineering, not the proposed underlying human biology.
One answer:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...
http://news.janegoodall.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/perce...
So the mystery is not why it went down, it was why it was higher initially.
Of course, most CS graduates don't do science, but actual engineering work. That doesn't make CS any less of a science though, it just means that most people employed in private companies don't do it.
"Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:
Arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)
Mathematics
Natural science (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth science)
Philosophy
Religious studies
Social science (anthropology, economics, geography, political science, psychology, sociology, Linguistics, history)"
Note the absence of engineering disciplines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
Vs. engineering or engineering sciences.
See for example how Stanford groups things (CS is part of the "School of Engineering").
https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment-statistic...
And then note the difference in enrollment in "chemistry" (the science) and "chemical engineering"
https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom...
However, in Germany we also have "Naturwissenschaften" and "Ingenieurwissenschaften".
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieurwissenschaften
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturwissenschaft
So it's a common distinction: figuring out how nature works vs building stuff.
"Why now" is a lot more complicated than just that, but that's the reason I keep in mind why it's worth fighting for.
Theories:
- Especially acute gender gap
- Tech getting attention for its gender gap affecting corporate policies
- Culture of valuing merit of people and ideas. Coders generally think the best idea should win, regardless of where it comes from.
- Software engineering is probably more collaborative (on many scales) than research science. Teamwork is a day to day reality and culture issues are more important.
- Top talent in research science isn't as concentrated as it is in the case of software talent. Big companies literally buy small companies for the market share of talent. Culture issues in the big software companies will get much more attention.
- Software engineers are online more. The memo was originally a Google+ post, I gather. It's probably easier for electronic discussions to leak onto the internet.
This is why math and physics aren't getting the same level of attention. They don't decide what news articles get viewed and what don't. They don't decide what companies can advertise to customers and what companies are beyond the pale, etc.
[1]: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/8/10/16119338/google-dive...
Also, people do it for interest, and not for status or the money, so it's less political.
non_PC != unpopular
the kicker is - the PC crowd is so used to their opponents being quiet (primarily due to extreme intolerance of the "left" towards dissenting opinions - as illustrated by this whole memo ordeal) - that they actually start believing that their views are shared by just about everyone around.
If the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say "Talking about baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if it is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment"
We're seeing the backlash now, because people are finally admitting it's gone too far.
I don't know, maybe everything is sexist. Maybe we should expect a society where men and women cry equally.
That said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time stating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are hurt/offended.
And a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy for women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women can have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be absurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward a free/equal society.
All that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be repression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society is in general not good for anyone.
I think Dar Williams puts it well in her song "When I was a boy":
http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-willi...
I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.
You don't think those two things are predictors for job performance?
- On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...the distribution of PREFERENCES and ABILITIES of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
- Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men
- These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
- Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
- This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
And later proposes these solutions:
- We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration.
- Make tech and leadership less stressful.
So he has 1) cited biological differences between men and women in their abilities (not simply preferences) and 2) claimed that these lead to suitability for different jobs and also indicated the specific jobs would need to be changed in order to be more suitable for women, which strongly implies differing performance levels.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...
"For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer."
That said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices.
As someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and co-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All of this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in one AMA answer, it might by "cultural." I believe that is a far more acceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology.
> Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.
That, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and probably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his "dialectical skills." That's the very definition of creating a hostile environment, where people feel forced into actions they normally wouldn't engage into just for the gratification of a single person's whims.
This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community.
Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.
I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post.
Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free.
Perhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's not so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed users. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to the conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about this tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter. Indeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on! This bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being bothered by an optical illusion.
More about this in the many comments at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
Funny, I see a dominant opinion in the other (flagged) threads and an another dominant opinion in this one.
1695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787
754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759
590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626
448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601
I have also been checking the Algolia "Last 24h" view to find flagged discussions that I missed, however.
TLDR: Personal interests can plausibly explain the entire gender imbalance.
The conversation about "women in tech" is severely hamstrung by folks conflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two very different problems requiring two very different conversations.
Lastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic to be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially pointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up focusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men, hispanic men, etc.
The writing's not ideal, but truly if opponents can read even this and frame it as "women have inferior genes," then this is a discussion that can't be had. There is no way to make the case that sexism and oppression are not the only causes for inequal representations in tech that will not be an "anti-diversity" position that makes some coworkers uncomfortable.
This is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science.
It's absolutely necessary that we start to break down ideological echo chambers, but I'd argue that Damore's memo and his subsequent actions ('Goolag' etc) haven't done much other than entrench people in the positions they already have.
Cite the passage from the memo to prove me wrong.
What Edith "completely and utterly disagrees with" is actually not in the memo. And she actually agrees with what is in the memo "Interest in certain jobs."
You're just projecting and putting words in his mouth. If you call his attack on Google an echo chamber("entrench people in the positions they already have" means exactly that) on itself then you clearly didn't get the core point of it.
"Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors."
Socio-cultural factors are not the ones that make "genetically inferior" people be competitive/exceed the more "gifted" ones, willpower is.
If you are a man I dare you to use that argument to get yourself appointment at gynaecologist's :)
Edit: But while we're at it, there are male gynaecologists too, largely because while they're studying, they develop an affinity for gynaecology.
There's a reason why all sports, including non-physical ones, like chess, have separate competition for women - and when there is mixed competition women get places below 100th. Try to explain that with "socio-cultural factors" or other gender pseudo-science.
> In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self-selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial assumption, the researchers say. That is, it requires that there is an innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support it.
Luckily, people have studied this, and in the case of chess, it's simple. More men play chess. And did you just dismiss the entire field of sociology?
https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess-biologi...
Women compete fine in competitive shooting. That requires some swrious mental skills. Source: I like to watch the national championships.
2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong.
> I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.”
Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?
> there have been some really fabulous responses, including many laying out a lot of research that counters what was in the memo
I'm interested in this research. I have not seen it, nor has it been made available. The following book, with 2 female authors who seem genuinely interested and informed in related topics: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-More-Women-Science/dp/15914...
who reached a similar conclusion to James Damore: http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-i...
Let's at least present the field studies/research, which can throw existing clinical views into doubt. eg Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences by Cordelia Fine is at least a rigorous critique of possible flaws.
It's a little saddening, to have this dialog represent the views of an average engineer.
A universal claim is invalidated if there is even 1 exception.
This is a strawman. She said "complicate" not "invalidate".
>Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?
What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Damore didn't just reach scientific conclusions about differences in genders. He went further and suggested actions based on these population differences.
To continue your analogy, one could say that Damore's argument comes down to "We only want white furred animals in our zoo, and gorillas typically have black fur, therefore we should ignore gorillas and look for Polar Bears instead". Whereas the other side might be "Given that gorillas typically have black fur, and we think Gorillas are a valuable part of a zoo, we should do extra work to locate the rare white-furred gorillas that do exist".
That's true. However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers. Her statement was meant to throw trending into question and I overstated by taking a bad position (phrase-wise).
> What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas?
Provide more shaded areas (canopy or artificial), of course. I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy" (populations vs individuals turned into a warped "industry is a zoo" metaphor?) is supposed to help.
Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people and how they interact with the trends. But such an analysis would be more complicated than the binary trends in the original document. That is, such trends are an imperfect model of reality, and to better match reality, one needs a more complex model.
>I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy"
Nor am I, you're the one that felt the need to bring up Gorillas. I felt that was a bad analogy, and that by continuing it, it would reveal why it was bad.
It appears that it worked.
How about this: the memo was about men and women. The 98%.
To what extent do specialized species (like ring species) complicate the concept of species in general? It lets us know that there are outliers that are complicated, but it doesn't complicate dog vs cat at all.
More like "white people are generally bigoted, but of course this doesn't apply at an individual level".
For example, black lives matter 's point was simply that some specific white people were biogted, and yet all lives matter is a thing. Which is an example of the inverse (generalizing specific complaints, vs. in this case, specifying general complaints).
Funny. So if you backed your opinions with science that is not right? It was hard to keep reading after that statement.
Mind you that to the other side, it looks to us like what you're doing is the former and not the latter (until some common ground is found).
He tried to be factual, balanced, fair.
His detractors mostly grossly misrepresent what he wrote, including claiming the very opposite, and then hurl ad-hominems at their straw man.
If someone approached this problem with a blank slated, looked at the evidence, formed an opinion, then wrote something to back their opinion, how could you tell them apart from someone who had an opinion and applied science to just advance their opinion? Assume both are average, and thus imperfect, writers.
I can say this for any research paper I have read in my life as all of them are incomplete and doesn't include all the research done (because you fill the top limit pages only with the bibliography). Given that it is impossible to put all the references, I want to understand why his use of science was sketchy?
If a person presents beliefs that are incongruent with facts, or that attempt to use facts in a way that isn't compatible with advancing an opinion, I think that person's views should be marginalized. I put climate change deniers, anti-evolutionists, and people who use questionable application of psychological studies to generalize about gender-based proclivities in roughly the same boat.
I also think there is no small amount of fear of a loss of status and privelege being expressed by conservatives when they claim to be marginalized: not having their views taken as gospel by virtue of their privileged position is different from being marginalized.
I know who I think the victim is.
Being fired is a discrete event. It happens, you move on with life, next job.
Now try to live your whole professional life going through the second scenario, then come back in 20 years and tell me if that was a tragedy or not.
"I disagree with...his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary reason that there aren’t more female software engineers"
- straw-man - he argues that biology may in part explain the lack of 50/50 representation. from the TLDR: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not “socially constructed oppression”) may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership"
"I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly."
- you actually agree with the memo. From the memo: "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men...These...differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas"
"It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn’t seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups."
- The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other opinions.
"differences are so significant as to suggest that men or women are better or worse on average at any job that relies on mental work."
- straw man. men or women being "better" is not the concern of the memo.
"his skepticism of his own views deserves a much more prominent placement in the text than a footnote – had he led with this and made it clear he wasn’t sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview), he likely would not have been blasted the same way."
- the first "background" paragraph literally is this.
"Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills."
- the author is also concerned with harm to female employees in the form of increased tension resulting from hiring practices that are perceived as lowering the bar. Google obviously would not do this intentionally, but the author felt the practices "effectively" lowered the bar.
Whatever happened to reading comprehension..?
Pure gold. This is exactly what I was thinking when I read that.
How about:
People are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices and don't second guess them.
We're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while the men go out and earn the money.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
An important factor here is that software engineering is a highly desired and highly compensated field, which aren't true of nursing and teaching. Having an imbalance of gender in software engineering thus contributes to inequality in social status and compensation in a way that imbalances in female-dominated fields do not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021781 and marked it off-topic.
Edit: since this account has been using HN just for ideological flamewar (and personal attacks), we've banned it. Doing this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't do it.
One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their genius findings or deluded beliefs (either way), it's not unreasonable that they might be let go without anyone reading it. (The action of sending around an opinionated piece of information without authority could be grounds for dismissal.)
In the past, there have been incidents like Steve Y's note where a smart person weathered a major faux pas for better or worse, which might make one think that all forms of speech are encouraged at this company. But I think Damore made some unique foibles when publishing this note and assumed that his outlook and motivation would be either respected or endorsed. Again, it is not a necessity for any corporation or organization to do so.
I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. Given that the adversaries that Damore faces in this debate have most liked studied diversity and human resources at the graduate level, peppering survey references into a narrative argument will not be sufficiently persuasive of anything. The correct forum for this discussion is an anthropology thesis or something similar, or a very finely combed, deeply vetted, considerate action to a relevant party or audience.
What is the right forum?
If it were an issue that needed to be specifically addressed by management, then it should be elevated to each level of management in turn (immediate superior, superior's superior, VP, CEO, board) in a tactful way.
There's no reason Damore couldn't have done both of these, and as was said by one of the female engineers, advertise his own opinions publicly himself as they apply to all companies. It's still possible that making so many waves like that would get him dismissed, but certainly not in the same way.
Reading the letter, this is clearly something that James is passionate about. If he can find a way to channel that in a professional and constructive way, maybe he can make positive change. But as it were, he did say some offensive things publicly.