"for declaring a large fraction of his co-workers sub-standard engineers"

Are you blatantly lying about the content of the memo? Like, I wouldn't think so. I think you're hallucinating your own meaning to it. Would you mind explaining the thought process that lead you form this representation?

> I think you're hallucinating your own meaning to it.

Welcome to politics. A single event merely kicks off a discussion that people want to have, not actually debating what was said/done.

It's a boring game to play over and over.

If you have an environment where anything contrary to the prevailing viewpoint is either stifled or decried as sexist/racist, you drive people to the only people who accept them: the extreme fringe.

Did you read the memo? It doesn't seem like it.

I have read the memo, and this seems like an accurate summary. It's phrased in words that sound reasonable, but the ideas aren't reasoned, and it's a particularly common trick to use reasonable words to express unreasoned ideas to fool those who only skim a text.

See, that's kind of the problem right there. You define the ideas to be "unreasoned", and therefore any presentation of those ideas is unacceptable, no matter how stated.

Can you state why you find the ideas unreasonable, without some variant of "all right-thinking people know", and without misrepresenting the ideas?

Sure. See this comment I just made in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956998

The trouble with avoiding "all right-thinking people know" is that I have no idea how to find a solid citation for the claim that, say, software engineering is at least as much about people as things. It's a thing you will find anyone senior who's good at their job to agree with. Would you accept books by experienced software engineers as evidence of this point?

Once you grant that point, much of the argument falls apart, as it's clear he's arguing about very junior-level coding and not software engineering as a whole.

I am senior at my job and I disagree with that assertion. People skills are indeed helpful and a good benefit, but they are nowhere near primary. Consider the following two people:

(A) Understands people hardly at all, is constantly confused by hem, but understands computers very well

(B) Understands computers hardly at all, is constantly confused by them, but understands people very well

Which of these two candidates is going to be able to design and build a complex software product?

B, without question! You have junior people to get unconfused by computers and tell you what they're capable of. You have a wealth of existing open-source libraries, protocol designs, whitepapers about private products, etc. You need to understand what the documentation of those products are, that is, what humans are claiming about those components and what humans have successfully done with them. You don't need to be able to tell a double from a lambda to design and lead a team building a complex software product.

Candidate A is going to build a technically impressive product, sure, but we have no idea whether it's what the customer wanted. Candidate A will be a fantastic research scientist or lone-wolf open source hacker, but not a product builder.

What's your source for "large fraction"?

It's claimed in internal documents excluded from the gizmodo story that in an anonymous survey approximately 36% of Googlers largely agreed with the essay. Without knowing the survey methodology it's basically impossible to interpret that result, though. E.g., how was the survey advertised within Google? how many respondents? what were the actual questions? was any effort taken to prevent repeat votes? to ensure that only people who'd actually read the document voted? The only info is a couple of pie charts.

Links to the leaked documents are available via Google.

It seems pretty clear that you either didn't read the memo, or you had a preconceived reaction that prevented you from absorbing what it actually said. It's a shame, I normally enjoy your posts because you are conscientious and even-handed about technical matters.

It's very important to remember that statistics reify to probabilities, so that statistical statements about groups can be true while individuals don't match the statements perfectly. That's how the math works. IOW, saying that in general women have less interest in tech can be perfectly true, and it simultaneously offers zero denigration toward any individual woman's ability or interest.

I'm taken aback by how many obviously smart people miss this, particularly in computing, since it seems fair to assume lots of you took statistics classes at some point.

I also take heavy issue with your idea that saying women have less interest in developing technical abilities is equivalent to calling them sub-human. There is an entire world outside of tech, and in many facets, women have greater interest and ability than men. Why is it so completely impossible for people to accept this clear empirical imbalance in this one particular field?

Definitely, I think your 2nd paragraph is the thing most everyone is missing. He basically says exactly this in the memo.

Well you cant have positive discrimination and claim it's meritocracy. It's a shame it casts a negative light on diversity people who actually joined Google through effort rather quotas.