I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought.
If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tuned to engineering prowess to the extent that men do for whatever cause, then just how does that itself prescribe that we should stop pushing for an expansion there?
Humans never evolved to fly, yet we do it all the time. By the same logic, if we weren't evolved to do it, we should probably just put our planes away because it's bad for us. Same with communicating long distances and sharing knowledge on a planet-wide scale. <sarcasm> I mean, they've caused problems themselves after all. I think we should put all these silly, limit-pushing ideas and practices aside and just go back to smashing rocks together. The ground has rocks. We all have two hands. It can work for us.</sarcasm>
TL;DR Why is a fact being accepted as sound basis for a totally disparate theory on why we should stop trying to exceed our limits? This guys post wasn't science. He used science to reason out a way to revert to a state of community where he stands to gain more. There was another theory like that, I can recall. I think it started with an 'e'.
edit: Wanted to add, a PhD of neurosexuality is probably one of the last people I would consult on philosophy, humanism or any kind of larger social issue. It's not exactly her scope. It does help to have an expert on the subject chime in on the science, though. It will help at least dispose of that less useful side of the discussion.
With respect to "why not try to solve it", it's a reasonable question. The guy answers that too - he is all for trying to solve it. He even makes suggestions about new ways to do it, like encouraging pair programming.
But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger problems. They might also be illegal. That seems like a good reason to pause for a moment and re-evaluate if the current strategy is a good one.
He also made a wider point, that was actually his main point, that Google's strategy on women in tech was breaking the internal culture and causing a severe lack of other kinds of diversity, namely, political and ideas-based diversity. He said that people couldn't challenge ideas around gender diversity and the best way to fix it without intimidation and fear. Google claimed they totally support people having discussions like that, and then immediately fired him, which shows he was right.
"* Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5]
* A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates
* Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
* Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
* Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination [6]
These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases and can actually increase race and gender tensions. We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology [7] that can irreparably harm Google."
There are some hyperlinks that are presumably citations but they go to internal links so we don't know what they say.
So that's why he thinks that.
I asked for empirical evidence that these initiatives had led to bad results at Google. If the biological research so directly contradicts Google's aims with these diversity initiatives, then we should be able to measure the negative impact, no? That Google has had these initiatives for years and still has ratios nowhere near the 50% that the author fears is a harmful goal, belies the notion that Google is conducting its recruitment in a reckless, diversity-at-all-costs way.
Of course having read the memo, I know that the author does not cite any such empirical evidence, besides begging-the-question anecdata such as "I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues". While I believe the author to be smart and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about being sincere, I question how he can fill 10 pages with observations and boilerplate (including a trite table of what he thinks "left" and "right" biases are) and not be able to mention actual observed consequences of Google's hiring practices having gone awry. It suggests to me that he hasn't really been openminded or willing to investigate both sides of the issue.
Where is the empirical evidence that these initiatives had led to good results at Google?
And assuming we can measure both the good and bad side effects of such initiatives, does the good outweigh the bad?
The biggest piece of empirical evidence that these initiatives have led to bad results at Google is everything that has happened in the aftermath of the memo being published and found considerable support both in and outside the company.
Had the initiatives been universally good and whose goodness is easy to defend empirically, I would likely have no or at most very few bad results to present to you in response to your question.
... as the memo just proved ...
Management could have put him in charge of gathering and analyzing data to prove or disprove his memo.
They fired him instead => they don't care about data => the memo was right, management is biased
Again, why should Google put the guy who lacks basic research skills (again, being ignorant of anti-discrimination cases brought by men) to be in charge of gathering and analyzing data?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-wo...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa...
What "basic facts and history" are you alluding to, and how do you think they are relevant?
Why do you feel justified saying the author is "ruled by his emotions"? You made blank assertions without explicitly backing them up ("Only someone ignorant..", "only someone ruled by his emotions..")
You say his premises are not "coherent in their arrangement" but can you give an demonstrate this? Just saying "clearly he's ignorant" etc isn't enough to convince me you are right about the quoted snippet, let alone the whole memo.
As was stated in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14974650 you are nit-picking a memo intended to invite discussion, but name calling ("ignorant") without providing at least a similar level of citation, or explanation, yourself is not constructive.
The firing is justified from the point of view of the company, they want someone that can contribute, and he's just effectively removed himself from that pool. In my opinion, this is a bigger part of why they fired him, and the fact that they disagreed with his policies was just a cherry on top.
The world is full of religious people, Trump supporters, conservatives, and people who agree that men and women are biologically different and that might affect their life choices. Adults can go to work and collaborate productively with these people.
Google is quite clearly now full of people who are not adults in this respect, and who feel it's totally OK to refuse to work with someone they never even met because of a memo they wrote on political and policy issues. And their management supports them in this.
From the companies point of view this may mean they are justified in firing him, but California law apparently disagrees - you aren't allowed to fire someone for their political affiliations, and that is true even if other employees are refusing to work with them. That would require you to fire those other employees, as they are the ones refusing to do their work unless a legally impermissible act is taken.
if he was a white-supremacist who wrote a scientifically-backed manifesto about biological differences with his black coworkers, would you still be blaming the people who are 'shunning' him?
No, how they act is their fault.
Do you have data to validate this claim?
Further, his job was to make more money for the company than he cost it. The negative publicity he generated, right or wrong, means he is no longer doing his job. Firing him meant the managers did theirs.
Damore and Google? All three that you name.
Or how about:
> We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and whiner
So the memo's author is apparently a prophet of truth but can't even use Google (or Bing, if you will) to look up the times that men have sued on allegations of discrimination? If there weren't law that protected men, those lawsuits would not be brought to court by a competent lawyer, nevermind won (as in the case of Hooter's):
- http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yahoo-lawsuit-Marissa-May...
- https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/4-3-14.cfm
- http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/01/us/hooters-settles-suit-by...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/2...
- http://thegrapevine.theroot.com/white-men-sue-diddys-revolt-...
- http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/08/02/court_rules_...
So given the memo's author inability to look up simple case law, you'll have to excuse my hesitance in not accepting that all of his premises are either true or relevant to Google's diversity efforts. Which is why I ask for any empirical evidence that would support his allegations that Google's hiring processes chase diversity in a way that is harmful to the company's performance or even in a way that is unreasonable. Given that Google's stock seems to be still doing quite well, that it still seems to be hiring people of the author's political mindset (including, obviously, the author himself), and that Google's demographic numbers are not anywhere near reaching parity with overall demographics, I'd say the burden of evidence is on the memo's author.
If that is the case, then as far as I'm concerned, you don't even have to show that there is a real harm to the purported victims (as Damore sees them), it is enough to question what the big charade is based on. Are the premises that this supposed diversity push is based on valid? If not, what exactly are we doing here?
But we don't have to engage in such hypotheticals. Let's consider the premise that Damore's memo is simply a call to debate based on science and facts. In my opinion, such a non-biased, open-minded essay would not include this kind of assertion:
> We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and a whiner [10]. Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn.
Only someone ignorant of basic facts and history would make this sweeping claim. And only someone ruled by his emotions would be unable to take a step back and do a Google search to see if anti-discrimination law has been used on behalf of men. Given that kind of massive error, or inability to recognize one own's ignorance, I don't think we should continue assuming that Damore's premises are factual or coherent in their arrangement. Which is why I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt in saying that it'd be better if he could have actual empirical evidence on the harm of Google's diversity programs. Just because his memo contains facts doesn't mean that it's truthful, if those facts are used loosely to further the author's emotional appeals.
edit: Fixed the formatting to show that [10], in the original memo, refers to a footnote and contains a hyperlink.
The footnote:
[10] “The traditionalist system of gender does not deal well with the idea of men needing support. Men are expected to be strong, to not complain, and to deal with problems on their own. Men’s problems are more often seen as personal failings rather than victimhood, due to our gendered idea of agency. This discourages men from bringing attention to their issues (whether individual or group-wide issues), for fear of being seen as whiners, complainers, or weak.”
The URL of the hyperlink (the text of which is "misogynist and a whiner"): https://becauseits2015.wordpress.com/2016/08/06/a-non-femini...
(Pretty sure "becauseits2015.wordpress.com" would not pass as a useful source on Wikipedia, but YMMV.)
In fact, he goes farther. He says this "Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business." Where is the science to back that up?
The same question could be asked for the converse statement that represents those pushing for these policies: "Discrimination to reach equal representation is fair, cooperative, and good for business."
The truth is that we don't know either way. My biggest frustration with those arguing in either direction is that no one has really put forth any specific and objectively measurable ways to evaluate these policies.
I personally believe that diversity is economically valuable, but that how valuable it is depends on the task/goals of a team. In some circumstances it will be very valuable and other it will be of negative value. And in many cases it may be of negligible value relative to other things you can optimize for.
What kind of diversity is another valid thing to question? Why are certain kinds of diversity like gender and race given priority over other kinds of diversity such as cognitive (aspie/autistic to neurotypical) diversity, socioeconomic diversity, national origin diversity, urban/rural diversity, etc.
If a team/company is composed entirely of the same race and or gender but every member is from a different country are they more or less diverse than a team/company composed of all Americans of various races and genders?
These are all important questions and it's good and healthy to express skepticism.
It's very hypocritical to scream how discrimination against women or POC is bad and needs to be routed out, only to turn around and start discriminating yourself.
Discriminating against anyone (yes, even people you disagree with or don't like) is unfair.
Treating people differently based on their gender is sexist.
Smearing, bullying and firing somebody for disagreeing with you is bigoted.
The hypocrisy on display in this whole brouhaha is astounding.
If you want to reach a balanced state from a unbalanced one, you need to discriminate to provide more for the people that are behind.
He is of course entitled to feel and think whatever he wants, but maybe a little old-fashioned advice would help here: measure twice, cut once. He clearly didn't think through the effects of posting a stern essay to a company-wide board on a subject that is really quite touchy in the midst of one of the more socially-turbulent periods in the past 20 years.
If he wants to prove it's that desperate, he probably should have worked harder on his essay or social skills, and found a better way to introduce discussion.
And we haven't even confronted his perceptions yet. I have to wonder who exactly feels afraid and intimidated by the conditions. Him, and who else? Instead of resigning to anxiety that he might be confronted for such a strongly-pointed diatribe, maybe he should have considered that his understanding of the situation might be skewed?
I can't speak for anybody else, but his facts didn't support his conclusions for me. His timing was even worse. If it's a discussion he wanted, then maybe he should have researched tact first.
With respect to his essay skills and tact - they are just fine. He makes it abundantly clear he doesn't want to offend people and is not describing individuals, but only the statistical preferences of large populations. You are shooting the messenger in another desperate attempt to ignore the message. Could a few words have been tweaked here or there? Sure. Should he have written it? Yes - he alleges that Google is engaged in illegal behaviour. Google, like all large firms, teaches their employees that it's their responsibility to flag illegal and problematic behaviour and writing such a well researched memo in order to do so is more than most companies could expect.
Only one (Dr Soh) has supported him that I've seen thus far - she seems to have only got her PhD this year and she studies sexual paraphilia via fMRI (which doesn't have a great reputation.) Not exactly "full time gender science study".
By way of contrast, there's PZ Myers - PhD in Biology in 1985, been teaching since 1993 - who thinks Damore is an idiot.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/08/06/what-diff...
Damore is not an idiot. The people who are attacking him in these ways are though: it's pure anti-intellectualism.
And by the way, counting experts is not a valid way to decide things, it's just a heuristic.
Damore has 5 who point out that he isn't making the science up, but what actually matters is that there are hundreds of studies and papers that support his basic position. Dr Soh points that out. It's not just her opinion vs other people's opinions. It's the opinion of thousands of scientists who have published research that shows all sorts of preference differences between gender.
> Damore has 5 who point out that he isn't making the science up
Only 4 - one of them is duplicated.
I see it as a social issue primarily, with considerations that should include gender science, but not be based solely upon it.
For reference to my thinking on the matter I'll confer to one of my favourite scientists (as he is to many), Mr Feynman:
>> "Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it."
Damore's piece can be read as supporting one of two policies, depending on how you interpret it:
1. Adopt alternative approaches to increasing the number of women at Google.
or
2. Leave things alone and don't try to interfere with the outcome of the standard hiring process.
I think he argued more for (1), in which case his "ideology" would if anything be rather close to Google's standard ideology and it's only a debate about means rather than ends.
But if you read it as (2), e.g. because he says he doesn't support socially engineering tech to get a particular outcome, that's still not an ideology. Doing nothing is not an ideology, it's an absence of ideology.
So I find myself disagreeing with you on this basic point. It's Google and Damore's opponents who are pushing an ideology here. Not him.
Here he tries to remove himself from the rankings but his rhetoric signifies a preference. The weight of the language on one side versus the other induces this effect. He produced this ranking without reference, except noting that these are his own observations at a single campus.
After displaying a chart of associative terms he goes on to implicate Google's bias as lying on the left of his custom political spectrum. Shortly thereafter, he decries Google's particular bias as being harmful. Harmful to nobody in particular, so an assumed ethereal everybody... or himself. In fact, he spends most of the rest of the paper decrying left-handed politics as he's defined them, and continues to define them. (Here his reference is to a WSJ editorial article, hosted offsite. Their editorial sections are generally known to be significantly right-leaning. It's full of conjecture without proofs in between notes about studies.)
I found this particular passage interesting:
>Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”
Now while it's a footnote, he's making severe assertions about history with no references at all.
He's also quite enthusiastically twisting the content of his sources to suit his needs. For instance, in the Scientific American article where he derives his "PC-Authoritarian" term to label Google the author of the SA article attributes that to people who declare biological differences as the source of group differences. Of course I have my suspicions he didn't use this term specifically so he could cry vindication once he was fired, but that's just me. The article in fact uses the term "PC-egalitarian"[0] (an apparent other end of the PC political spectrum) who debut programs for specific diverse groups of people to increase their inclusion in the larger community by a sort of 'hand-up'. He evades this point completely.
I could go further but it I'll try to boil down to my point, before I end up writing an essay myself.
He's pushing a hard-right ideology. One that evidenced itself by tangential ramblings about communism in the footnotes, linking to dubious blog and editorial sources (even if they were written by scientists, there are more opinion pieces than are warranted being[1]), and he's repeating (in more "smart" rhetoric than usual) far-right talking points.[2] Further, he wants to be allowed to use Google as a forum where he can say whatever he wants, and will probably cry "transgressors" if somebody tells him to stop being an asshole.
[0] "PC-Egalitarians tended to attribute a cultural basis for group differences, believed that differences in group power springs from societal injustices, and tended to support policies to prop up historically disadvantages groups. Therefore, the emotional response of this group to discriminating language appears to stem from an underlying motivation to achieve diversity through increased equality, and any deviation from equality is assumed to be caused by culture. Their beliefs lead to advocating for a more democratic governance."
[1] Majority right-wing news editorial sections, blogs that exist on scientific websites, and political studies that took place in Europe where the base level "conservatism" is probably closer to American centrism citing the conscientiousness of conservatives.
[2] Personally, it sounds like it came right out of the halls of "red pill/mens rights" forums. They will brigade an intellectual-sounding attempt at legitimacy once in a while by attempting to veil their ideas in a shroud of sloppy rhetoric and tertiary-source material.
The paper's primary focus seems to be removing the programs that were put in place to aid diversity by setting up programs for historically disadvantaged groups, and railing on the "left".
Just in case anybody was wondering: http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/08/who-is-james-damore-fired...
Who's the 5th? We've got the 4 from the Quillette article and ...?
You are wrong in this assumption. I am going to try to explain it. We have group A and group B with different genetics. We measure everybody in the groups A and B in a particular skill and we get the average of A is lower than B. We are not saying everybody of A has lower skill than B (it could be the case but we cannot say anything without knowing the distributions). For this particular case the ranges of scores for A and B overlap a lot. It means that if you take someone from group A and someone from group B, it is more probably that the person from group B have a better score than the person of A, but you find a lot of cases where someone from group A is better than the person of group B. If you repeat this a lot of times and take the winners you would end up with more people from B than for A. But all those people are better than the one you don't selected and probably have the same average for the skill.
What does it means in tech? that you see less women in tech positions but the ones that are there are as same as good or better than the men. In other professions will happen the opposite.
Note: I am taking account only the genetic part, but there is one part that is based on the environment that can lead to sexim and alter the final distribution of the selected people. And this unfortunately happens and we should try to prevent it without having unrealistic goals in selection distributions.
That's a fair position. But it's not an indisputable position, clearly. The biggest issue here isn't about whether there are fair points against the google manifesto. It's about whether thoughts, hypotheses, and opinions like this are harmful and punishable.
> ...many people feel very bad...
And many people feel bad that someone expressed himself earnestly in good faith and has been treated this way. Do we decide where to go from here from how people feel? How do we decide which feelings are important to us?
No, the person or persons that leaked it to the press did that.
Will google go on a witch hunt to fire all those people too? Likely not...
I though google was an open company when anyone can raise a concern when they feel like. It is what the CEO said after firing him probing that the company is not that open.
He send the manifest to a select closed group of people, not all the company. But it got leaked. You can blame him and you can also blame all the people who get angry with his opinions, because his intention was to improve the company not hurting people.
If you select all persons from groups A and B that pass a certain threshold, then you will have a smaller number of A than B. Let's say the split is 40% A and 60% B.
We then analyze the population at our company and find we have 7% A and 93% B. Does this mean the company has a bias towards B, and needs to take special action to search for more A candidates to bring the ratio closer to 40/60?
It's not a question of "diversity", just an optimal hiring algorithm - the company is not utilizing a pool of hireable people in a time of scarcity, and its in their best interest to source more from that pool.
Of course the math gets more complicated when the supply of A is drastically different than the supply of B.
Without more information maths says you probably have a bias. I am assuming your company is big enough and the pool of candidates represents the 40/60.
I not sure I understood your point, can you explain it more?
His argument is moot if Google still does need further optimization in its gender ratios. I don't know what the real-world ratio is for this problem, but it appears the author of the manifesto doesn't either?
Also another argument from him was that 50/50 is impossible to achieve and if you do you are being unfair and lowering the bar for one of the classes.
The real ratio in unknown, but some people here commented that you can get some approximation taking into account the graduates, the statistics about the applications etc. But for sure the ratio is not going to be 50/50 and positive discrimination is still discrimination.
So, as you said, if you don't know the real ratio why do you have positive discrimination policies? You might be doing it wrong. I think this is the discussion he wanted to bring, review the diversity programs because they can harm the company creating an artificial proportion far from the reality. Given that some other actions could be made like adding more "female skills" to the positions for example. Instead of starting a discussion of this issues based on his biological theory most people pointed at him as a sexits and other stuff. And Google shut him up firing him. So now noone will raise any concern because you can be fired.
To sum up: the big issue is that they are not having the conversation we are having here now, regardless of who is right or wrong.
Would the diversity program at Google encourage the committee members to looks for biases against female/minority candidates and compensate accordingly? In essence, giving the said candidate more benefit of the doubt than male/Asian candidates? All candidate passed the technical bar, but may be treated differently based on their ethnicity/gender at the hiring committee, with preference for minority/female candidates.
> Would the diversity program at Google encourage the committee members to looks for biases against female/minority candidates and compensate accordingly?
I don't know, and I would want to know how the really work. One girl here commented she was hired by one of this programs, so at least I know the candidate know he/she is in on of this programs when they apply. Other girl commented that she heard in one of her interviews (I don't know the company): "+1 point because you are a girl and diversity make us pay less taxes". I wouldn't be surprised if something like this also happens internally at Google. A googler also said the hiring process is the same for everybody, but giving the evidence of the document I don't think is exactly the same.
I cannot say more. I do not have more information. If you find it, let me know.
The memo, and your argument, is all about summing the parts instead of measuring the whole.
1) If you hire more from group B other company cannot hire them. So you will have imbalance in another place. You don't solve the problem but move it to another company.
2) Skills usually are related. If you need some set of skills for a position I don't see how not having them is going to increase the productivity.
3) I never said we are assigning the right skills to the positions. I strongly believe that we should have more "female" skills in more tech positions because they add value and we are not doing it now.
4) When you are not good at one skill you don't want to have a position where that skill is valuated. You are happy working in positions that fit the skills you have. This fact decrease the number of women that want go into tech because they don't like it. We can solve this if we add more "female" skills to tech positions and learn to assess everybody by their skills even when they are different.
2-4) I get the feeling we're probably on the same side but maybe arguing for it differently. I think tech positions already need "female" skills (however sexist that may sound) but we just ignore it in favor of programming abilities as if we all work in silos. That's just my opinion.
Women are one of the groups you can hire. Salaries would only increase if you force the companies to have a higher number of women that they are really are (supply/demand).
> I think tech positions already need "female" skills (however sexist that may sound) but we just ignore it in favor of programming abilities as if we all work in silos.
Exactly this. What I am saying is that the solution might be to put those skills in written for those job positions and taking them into account in the hiring process. I think we are not doing it now. Also creating programs to teach everybody that other skills are also valuable for the job, and not because we don't have them we should under valuate who have them. I think something like this was the goal of the person who wrote the doc, but unlikely us, they fired him before open a discussion like we are doing now. In the first comments it seemed that we were having different opinions and look now, it wasn't really the case.
Sorry for the "female skills" sentence. I only wanted to explain it in an easy way. Those skills I refer like empathizing or social skills are more frequent in women but they are in men too.
EDIT: to make clear my position about the salaries: same position = same salary (no discussion here, if you want different salaries justify that person should be in a different position with more/less salary)
That's not the main argument and I think you should re-read the "manifesto" if that's what you walked away with.
> it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this
The prevailing (cultural) attitude is clearly against plain facts. The question should be why the prevailing attitude is against facts and real solutions but embraces lies and bad solutions. That is what is getting to intelligent people no matter their sphere.
> If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tuned to engineering prowess to the extent that men do for whatever cause
It's not an argument that women's brains are structural and chemically different than a male's brain. Also, there are time tested (1000s of years of history) of observations as to what these differences (generally) manifest in. This is also not an argument.
> then just how does that itself prescribe that we should stop pushing for an expansion there
Socially, you can do whatever you want. However, each such action caries consequences. A company that silences inconvenient truths and doesn't promote those capable of root cause analysis but instead promotes group think centered on flawed thinking and those that skirt around root causes will face the consequences of such a decision. As far as I'm concerned, it's a self-correcting problem. There are plenty of giant corporations in history that are no longer known for similar such missteps.
The rest of your post is filled with hand waiving and appeal to extremes. One group is presenting facts backed by sound logic and science you're resorting to demonization, appeal to extremes, and asserting intelligent people are incapable of philosophical/humanistic conjectures whereas observation proves the exact opposite. What's isn't the scope of a non-intelligent uninformed person is any higher minded thinking or analysis yet they feel the need to constantly interject their half witted opinion into matters and strong arm intelligent people's more accurate and thought out commentary. In the age of intelligence, it will be the half witted opinions that get disposed of and the opinions of entities in support of it and for good reason so that we can truly explore our humanity and our reach without being stunted by those who seek to hold back the truth or progress that can be made embracing it.
Misapplying a wikipedia link brings zero support to the parent comment. It possibly demonstrates that you have no truthful, factual, or logically sound arguments against the facts/science that have been stated thus can only resort to demonization .. Aka trying to thinly imply what has been presented is scientific racism.
I'm African American and I'd hire this guy in a minute. Why? because I can be assured that he is capable of sound root cause analysis and wont hold back his tongue w.r.t to presenting his findings... Even if the document was 100% about the inadequacies of African Americans, Id still give him the opportunity to debate and highlight his supporting data/arguments. This is not grounds to be fired. This is grounds for a promotion.
This is invaluable in engineering... The fact that company's in the valley have grown so high and mighty that they feel that such people are dispensable is a clear sign to me that the current tech giants have no place in the future of technology that is set to unfold... As such, the problem quite clearly will resolve itself.
Good luck discovering and developing the future of technology when you can't stomach viewpoints beyond the least common denominator social consensus.... I'm so glad I ignored google's attempts to recruit me as a quota hire... which is a whole other discussion on its own (hiring minorities for market/social currency and to pad your statistics while throwing them into b.s roles that don't allow them to develop further). I went through enough of that crap in my internships. Ironically,many times I was overqualified yet constantly was looked at and treated like the dumb minority who is there to fill a seat.
The problem and wrong minded culture that select people have embarked and forced on society is clearly going to fix (sink) itself.
I think they are saying that descriptive scientific observations have limited utility as prescriptive devices if we are to make progress because descriptions are based on how things have been rather than how things could be (or even could have been).
Especially in soft sciences, the /cause/ of what is described can be hard to reliably tease out. To assume the same cause is an unchangeable aspect of the human condition and that cause, even if true, will only ever lead to one end-state is often a mistake.
Please respect all the researches, they usually read out of their main topic to get more data and more opinions. She works in neursexuality and probably has read a lot more from philosophers, humansims and other larger social research than you.
I keep hearing "well the scientists say so!", but it's simply not enough. For instance, I am enamoured with the work of physicists and their unique ability to explain the beauty of the "clockwork of the universe", so to speak. Outside of my personal sphere, I wouldn't consult a PhD Physics for advice on breaking up a fight between friends, necessarily.
Also, I didn't attack anyone here so please leave the ad hominem jabs at home.
edit: typo
I did imply that it's no more her position to conclude the subject of the original essay than anybody else's, and cautioned against taking words of any number of scientists as canon on the understanding of both the original essay and any social implications it may or should have.
edit: Rereading my original statement, I could have certainly made my implication more clear. I'll concede that point.
The main argument isn't about prowess; it's about preference.
"Galpin investigated the percent of women in computer classes all around the world. Her number of 26% for the US is slightly higher than I usually hear, probably because it’s older (the percent women in computing has actually gone down over time!). The least sexist countries I can think of – Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, etc – all have somewhere around the same number (30%, 20%, and 24%, respectively). The most sexist countries do extremely well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non-Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%. Needless to say, Zimbabwe is not exactly famous for its deep commitment to gender equality."
Source: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
I don't think it's clear why both of these occur however and I haven't been convinced that people who try to derive a position solely off societal level trends tend to do anything other than show off their ideological preference on both ends of the debate.
Places where women also have less choice / self-determination. When women get to choose their career path, they do not choose tech. That is the relevant correlation suggested as a cause.
The "young males prefer trucks, young females prefer dolls" split is also found in chimps FWIW.
Interest drives practice and practice drives skill.
Even more generally, transcription factors, and the way they cascade.
The major concerns being how some perceive their prowess -- and who's preference is really deciding the solutions.
Aside: I've been around enough people in the general field to have heard enough thoughts about women in tech... and they're too often ill-reasoned and ill-positioned (relating to prowess and potential)... but that's more circumstantial, I admit.
That's not the main point. We need to establish truth first, then act on it.
What is discussed here is the underlying truth, not how we should act on this truth.
This is spot on right here and the main difference between the memo and this article. The memo might have cited real science but it arrived at grossly inappropriate conclusions.
Which conclusions were inappropriate, specifically? The memo I read made several suggestions that would only help women in tech. If that's "inappropriate", then it proves his broader point: our biggest diversity problem is really the lack of diversity of thought.
If any of the conclusions are wrong, then no amount of shouting or complaining should be necessary; just refute the basis of those conclusions using facts rather than feelings.
What we need more in this discussion is more emotional intelligence, not less.
We're programmers/engineers, not painters/artists. Hence I don't see where that statement doesn't hold absolutely true for us. (Except perhaps for management, team leads and entrepreneurs.)
Have a quick look at new pursuits such as:
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/magazine/features/empathy...
https://phys.org/news/2015-11-empathy-faculty.html
I could discuss this at length because it's a subject that really interests me, and I'm severely biased because I started out in the humanities with my main pursuit being an understanding of the human condition. I've brought those learnings with me into my current software engineering career and it's serving me well.
Simple being able to place yourself in the shoes of an end user, rather than dictating to them what they necessarily have to learn (and even better, when you know they should learn something with improved understanding of how to implement such a feature) saves everybody a lot of time and frustration. Your estimates will improve in accuracy as well. You'll see less scope-creep.
It's especially important in critical-systems work.
Plus I consider it a bit of a boon to someones character if they care about what they're putting into the world. Most people do. Hint: it won't inhibit your technical understanding.
(But each manager or lead usually has more than one report, so there are likely very few managers/leads compared to everyone else. Hence the general sentiment.)
"Inappropriate conclusions" resembles "thought crimes" applied to a corporate/social context.
I'm fine if people think his conclusions are "incorrect", "garbage", "shoddy", "poorly argued", "unsubstantiated", and a whole host of other adjectives. These are all responses that can be part of a discussion, even a healthy one in the right context.
But "inappropriate" is a lot more puritanical. It implies the thoughts are unwelcome and should be shunned (or worse). It implies that the appropriate response isn't reason-based but power-based. Some power is social (shunning, blacklists, twitter shaming) and some is corporate (HR training, formal reprimands, notes in files, demotions, firings).
It frames everything through a lens of identity power struggles. Therefore, whether an argument is scientific and factual is secondary to what identity group the person making it belongs to, and what their group stands to gain from it.
This ideological lens is anti-science, anti-cooperation, extremely racist/sexist and ultimately focused on only one objective: reducing the power of the group perceived as being at the top of the social dominance hierarchy.
To quote the memo:
"As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”"
The author literally thinks 'Left' policies are part of a Communist power struggle.
If the above comment is toxic, then so is the original memo.
Turns out I'm a hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist as well as a malevolent nihilist, postmodern feminist, and a Marxist to boot.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Those -isms really snuck up on me (they really are an insidious bunch, aren't they?). Good thing there are people out there that know way more about people's position and why they have them than they do themselves. Otherwise, we may have to picture the world we want to live in and work toward it without thought to all of the pseudo-cruft attached to specific iterations of ideas throughout history in various places and times by specific individuals that some people might highlight and promote as The One Truth of an Idea to further their own political agenda. It's all very obvious, now that you bring it up.
Very few people subscribe to all of the beliefs of a particular ideological and philosophical framework. But the tenets of an ideology are there, even if a particular adherent is unaware of them.
An ideology manifests itself in its effects on the world. In postmodernism and feminism, we see that in the completely dogmatic and anti-science reaction to the memo. Here was a memo that was produced in good faith, stayed fully within the realm of established science in its assertions, and within the realm of the reasonable in its opinion, and yet we have absolute lies being trotted out by its critics about its content, and an ideologically motivated firing of its author.
This is not an accident. It's a result of an anti-science dogma that frames the world as a power struggle between identity group, and where facts are only acceptable when they aid in the fulfilment of the postmodernist/feminist agenda: which is to flatten the social dominance hierarchy that, according to the postmodernist/feminist framework, is formed by various identity groups. This is inspired by Marxism (as the historical record shows), whether or not you personally identify as a Marxist yourself.
I see the memo and the citations it trots forth, not as an authoritative treatise with well sourced, scientifically sound backing, but as a cherry picked hodge-podge of descriptive science (where the citations were, in fact, scientific publications - many were blog posts and opinion pieces) abused to support a prescriptive framework.
This is not an anti-science position. It is a position that understands the limitations of science. A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward. Descriptive science can tell us the process that gave giraffes their long neck but doesn't have much to say about why other creatures didn't select for long necks as well under similar conditions but instead found a different niche nor does it have anything to say about niches left unfilled. It also doesn't have much to say about what giraffes will look like in 10,000 years under different conditions. It's the difference between analysis and synthesis. Turning successful analysis into successful synthesis is only possible under very simple conditions relative to the messiness of the world[1] and the complex and chaotic interactions that are possible. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of human behavior.
This is one reason the memo only had the veneer of reasonableness. Either the author was unaware of what he was doing (deeply misguided but in good faith) or thought others would not catch on to the bait and switch (in which he was promoting his own agenda in bad faith). I lean toward the former since he seems genuinely surprised that other people had a problem with his analysis and cherry picking facts and abusing statistics to make a political point is very common (on the other side of the political specturm too, of course).
[1]Which is why we've had better luck as a species crafting synthesis in different fields from mathematics -- building from the ground up rather than trying to tease the relevant parts from the morass where we are in danger of missing important ingredients or making effort killing assumptions.
Instead of responding to the memo, and proving the assertions contained in it wrong, Google's executives fired him, and Google VP Daniele Brown justified the reaction by claiming that the memo advanced "incorrect assumptions about gender".
And you claim this is not an expression of dogmatism, and is not hostile to science, which I see as yet another manifestation of this anti-science dogmatism.
>A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward.
That's a sweeping and over-simplistic generalisation, and trying to justify the extreme rejection of and intolerance toward the memo based on it is a stretch, to say the least.
The individual was fired for stating facts and an opinion (which any society that values rational debate and dialogue will tolerate) that went against an unscientific dogma. A dogma that is as certain of the correctness of its own conjecture about gender as it is about the inapplicability of science to understanding statistical differences between genders in socioeconomic outcomes. An individual, especially a male, is not permitted to express an opinion that contradicts the dogma on the causes of differences in gender outcomes, and the proper reaction to said differences.
That's what the Google engineer's firing demonstrates.
Also, if the upvote/downvote ratio is any indication, many people appreciate my contributions, even if they're not agreeable.
One final point I'd add is that this is an explicitly ideological issue. A Google engineer was fired for violating Google's corporate ideology (on diversity and gender). There is no way to address the issue in a meaningful way without addressing said ideology.
Let me ask this: what difference does the statistical differences found between genders in the general population matter for any small subset of that population?
If I had test scores from 1-1000 with 1 being the worst and 1000 being the best for a million people that match a normal distribution and I told you that I have a set of 10 that I picked non-randomly but I don't tell you how, what can you tell me about that sub-set of 10?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
What does it say about how that set of ten will do on the next test given only that you know the test will be an iteration on the last with some differences?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So, why would it matter if, statistically, females exhibit certain behaviors more or less than males in the general population when applied to the subset that apply and work for Google?
Same. Answer.
What disturbs me (having Google stock, as many do) is how a person that doesn't understand this basic fact got past the Google hiring process and ended up an employee.
With all due respect, this is an absurd question. Statistical differences between the genders in the general population will very plausibly cause differences in the representation of each gender in a particular field, like computer science.
Do I really need to elaborate more on why this is the case?
To claim that the causes of gender differences are a settled science, that agrees with the postmodernists and feminists, and so assuredly that an opinion based on a different interpretation deserves to be punished and otherwise ignored, is absolute nonsense.
If anything, the social constructionist position on gender differences has been thoroughly discredited by the experimental evidence, to the point where the media and Google's reaction to the memo is, without a doubt, an expression of anti-scientific dogma.
Google is not selecting their employees at random. Google is not promoting people at random. Google is not placing employees in a neutral environment relative to the rest of the population. Google is not providing neutral support to employees relative to the general population.
There is no reason to expect that their subset of the population should conform to a general population skew.
In short, plausibility =/= probably.
You repeat yourself a lot for someone who keeps bringing up dogma in this conversation like it means something in context. Can you point to my dogmatic position?
The guy was fired because he let everyone know that he is more than happy to point to descriptions of the general population and sinister world spanning conspiracy theories in order to maintain a dismissive and belittling attitude within the work environment toward women that happens to support a status quo that directly benefits himself rather than support the stated goals of the company.
Absurd. Differences in the general population will translate into differences in the number of men that pursue CS and related fields, which will affect the gender composition of the applicant pool that Google recruits from.
>Can you point to my dogmatic position?
The dogma is in you ignoring and denying basic statistics and common sense in order to defend the ideological premise underlying Google's discriminative (affirmative action) policies.
>The guy was fired because he let everyone know that he is more than happy to point to descriptions of the general population and sinister world spanning conspiracy theories in order to maintain a dismissive and belittling attitude within the work environment toward women that happens to support a status quo that directly benefits himself rather than support the stated goals of the company.
This grossly mischaracterizes the content of the memo and the veracity of his arguments. Your comment displays utter and unscrupulous intolerance to opinions that disagree with your postmodernist viewpoint on gender.
It rejects the relevance of overwhelming empirical evidence on the causes of gender differences in the general population, that are manifestly relevant to gender representation in tech. Your comment embodies the prioritisation of dogma over science, and the willingness to use any means, including blatantly mischaracterizing the arguments made by ideological opponents in order to justify their being fired, to achieve one's ends.
Edit: I appreciate all of the vote downs. Empiricism is as guilty in choosing models according to power dynamics as any ideological endeavor. See phrenology. To suggest science isn't political and ideological is absolutely delusional.
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has the most relevant writing on this.
One might disagree with his language, but this post is remarkably insightful to begin such a dive:
http://fucktheory.tumblr.com/post/57633497486/in-which-steve...
[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368
No, not being a smart ass. "Science" as we know it today is an invention. It hasn't been around forever. It is relatively new. Yes it is political. Yes it is epistemological. Yes it is ideological.
In terms of social sciences, it is far harder than we like to think.
What we choose to measure, how we choose to measure it, what we choose to ignore, diversity of contexts, etc. are political and ideological decisions.
If you would be interested in reading a rather dense and difficult text, Foucault's Discipline and Punish might be of interest.
As the other commenter has noted, you need to historcise.
Continental philosophers didn't just plop onto the scene buoyed by multimillion dollar marketing budgets; the epistemology issues they raised are real. Your ridiculous claims of Marxist thought, Feminist thought, etc. betray your ignorance.
So yes, I disagree with every single one of your assertions, but RTFM isn't applicable here, so I avoided stating it outright. Your valuing and clinging of random opinion over informed knowledge is at least as telling as your initial professions. You may have been able to fake it around your equally uniformed peers.
Replace the term "Feminist" with "A person believing in equal rights for women" and your deeply seated, neurologically stuck repetition of misogynist statements rings clear across all communications.
The philosophy very openly calls for deconstruction of all existing values and power structures, and a radical rejection of what the modernist interpreted as reason.
I think you are deliberately downplaying this element of postmodernist philosophy and I don't think you're doing the discussion any favors by casting your opponents as bigots.
> They themselves described their philosophies as evolutions of Marxism.
Citation needed certainly in the case of Derrida.
With that said, to have a peek at J's posts. Every single message is prefaced with the rubbish connection, and by suggesting that there is some lineage to Marx is giving the individual more credit than he is due. Doubly so that it is clear he has never read a Postmodern text.
Also, as I have been citing Foucualt, it might be worth noting that his view of power contrasted against Marx's.
To suggest that the toolbox of Postmodern thought is all Marxism and Feminist is absolutely ridiculous.
[1] In terms of critiquing capitalist thought alone it would be almost mandatory to explore Marxist thought. It would also seem that Derrida wasn't quite the Marxist cited. http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/grappling_with_specters_of_m...
While postmodernism differs from Marxism in many ways, and while its progenitors were inspired by and attempted to build on top of Marxism to different degrees, it certainly comes from the same intellectual tradition of radicalism, and advocacy of overthrowing power structures, as Marxism, and was formulated mostly by intellectuals that accepted several of the basic suppositions of Marxism.
This shouldn't be surprising, considering how prevalent Marxism was among French intellectuals in the postwar period.
As for whether Marxism has any redeeming value, I'd argue that even if it did, the recklessness of its attacks on the capital owning class, in concepts such as surplus value, exclude it as a perspective worthy of being given that level of respect. Marxism crosses a line in human relations that is hard to come back from, and hard to build a humanistic society on top of.
Key point is that his readings of Marxism weren't central to his core tools of Postmodernism, nor is that reading indicative of any fervent Marxism from "before". Wrong on all counts.
> its progenitors were inspired by and attempted to build on top of Marxism to different degrees.
> and was formulated mostly by intellectuals that accepted several of the basic suppositions of Marxism.
Again, citation needed on the majority of the tenuous connections. You are being a tad too obsessive here.
Sorry, but being a green account to respond to my single post screams another J account. "The lady doth protest too much." The rest of your post? Equally misguided with nothing to do with Postmodernism, and less relating to the Foucaultian aspect I referenced.
If the information is right, it completely changes the case, and the guy was fired for Wrong reasons.
I hope he'll sue and win his job back (yes, I think Google needs this guy more than ever).
High-visibility lawsuits have been brewing already:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-wo...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa...
It doesn't. There are just different ways to get there.
One way is to eliminate unjust barriers that discourage females from participating in the industry. Another way is to explicitly discriminate against males. The second category has been used in practice and people reasonably object to it.
Not creating bias against men doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't eliminate any existing bias against women.
But it's also possible that even if we do strike down all the unjust barriers, most women would still prefer to be veterinarians or nurses or psychologists. Are we then supposed to pass laws to coerce them to become programmers?
You are the only one being "prescriptive". If a class of people doesn't prefer (in aggregate) to do the kinds of work you want them to do, what right do you have to insist that it is better for them if they are forced to do this work? When did it become feminist to lecture women about the sort of work environment they should want?
You write as if you know what is best for society, yet where do you get this knowledge? It seems to me you do not even understand the points you are criticizing. The author of the Google piece was arguing that Google should change its work environment if it is serious about changing its workforce composition. He didn't tell women what they should want or how they should behave -- you are the only one doing that.
To add, I started out as an English major. While I did well in most things I applied myself to, I spent the largest part of my youth studying humanities, the human condition, social mores (first hand, from the 'dirt' to the most pious), and art. I'm now back working in amongst the tech world, and studying science again, and that's how you have me here, contributing.
I'd also like to add that my grandmother was an early systems analyst and programmer (FORTRAN, COBOL) and had to work so hard to even be recognized that she wore it as a badge of honour the rest of her life. I didn't understand at the time she told me. I do now.
My mother on the other hand, left her career to look after my siblings and I to the chagrin of her feminista detractors who thought it was a move of weakness. She rallied against that her whole life, and I supported her then, too.
This wavering from one extreme to the other is really harmful, emotionally, on a large scale. However, sometimes we have to dig a little deep to make sure our colleagues, friends, and others get to see a little light. Somebody who's never had to struggle will never understand that fully.
The immediate and harsh backlash for proposing that science is not a good sole means for rationalizing how to work through social issues is pretty striking to me. Anyway, I never claimed to -- and certainly don't -- know what's best, but I know a slippery slope when I see one.
And silence your mouth? There is a big difference between "I'm fine with this" and "Anyone who isn't should be fired".
If I'm not mistaken, he was fired for breaching the company's civil code of conduct. That's different than being fired for an idea. If I started onto my company's social intranet and posted essays citing references about why something should change, I'd probably face equal back lash because it's abrasive and not at all socially graceful. There's a lot of conjecture flying around in all directions...
Anyway that's a whole other discussion, because I primarily disagreed with his issue in the first place. His being fired was most likely twofold: he created a hostile atmosphere either knowingly, or because of social ignorance or naivete. This resulted in bad press, the whole lot, and corporations are [probably inarguably, on average] heartless institutions that seek to maintain an even keel -- bad press is bad for business. That's again a whole other discussion, but it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.
We've yet to hear details of what this really mean, and if this CoC is applied fairly. It sounds like the violation i a) based on a particular interpretation of the memo, or b) based on the subjective offense of other employees. This sounds like the "cultural fit" loophole of the left.
> That's different than being fired for an idea
Is it? Have all the ideas you want, just don't express them, even in forums than are specifically for that purpose? Why isn't the leaker being punished?
> If I started onto my company's social intranet
There are plenty liberal/left essays floating about the google intranets, this is not you average employer.
> he created a hostile atmosphere
Did he? The leaker, and those who misrepresented the content of the memo seem to be implicit in that.
> This resulted in bad press
So does any whistle-blower. But again - He did not leak the memo.
Yeah, but do they call a third of their coworkers incompetent?
It's not the fact that it's an opinion piece, it's that it's a very tactless way of approaching the situation. I'm not defending the leaker here, but once it did get leaked, there really was little the company could do to keep him a productive member of the workforce.
the memo doesn't either - If you disagree please quote the part that does.
And if you want to empower women in your own corporate environment you should read his paper carefully, since part of his criticism is that Google's diversity programs are self-defeating: trying to induce women into engineering by lying about the nature of the work rather than changing the corporate culture so it attracts more women in the first place.
I don't think we should dismiss the ideas because of the person presenting them. In fact, the original Google Memo was written by a man in tech, but this open from Global and Mail was written by a woman in academia. What does she have to gain from the state of tech? Regardless, let's not focus on the people but instead on the ideas.
> how does that itself prescribe that we should stop pushing for an expansion there?
The call is not to stop pushing for an expansion there. It's that our approach is wrong. And we're not able to even see that our approach is wrong because in this liberal bubble we're not allowed to talk about the differences between men and women.
Their conclusion was ultimately that the more equality and freedom of choice you have for genders, the more uneven the split between genders in careers as preferences tend to skew by gender. You can't force 50% of women to like or want to be engineers. So the more they tried to give women a choice, have equal pay, etc, the greater the imbalance became. It certainly means many women can enter STEM positions when they want to and are just as good as their male counterparts, but the opposite was true as well, as they weren't just complaining about lack of women in STEM, but lack of men in fields like healthcare and teaching. The cognitive dissonance is that "equality" means everything has to be 50/50, and attempts to do so is naive and wasted effort.
That said treat people individually. If a coworker sucks at their job, stop thinking about it in relation to their gender, their are plenty of men in tech who just cruise or who are barely adequate or worse. Don't make it about their biology. But at the same time realize you can't force diversity either, it has to happen organically, all you can do is maybe let there be a little bit of fertilizer to help the process, and setting quotas or special programs just for certain people is not a formula for equality or natural increase in diversity or interest from typically under represented groups.
That said, its obvious Google is just as much trying to protect a legal position, these programs are in response to law suits or protection from law suits to say "we're doing something about this", even if they don't produce results. Just like the terrible sexual harassment videos and anti fraud videos you have to watch at work, that are more to check a box when legal issues arise then actually fix the problem (because in the end a company can only control a person's behavior or choices so much).
Why do we need expansion there in the first place and where is the science behind that?
It's not the biological claims, it's the conclusions he draws from it.
Here's the thing. Let's stipulate that all the biological (and esp. neuroscience-related) claims are 100% true. What follows?
Let's look at nursing. Clearly, it should be a male-dominated profession, right? The work-life balance (all the night shifts) is horrible and the stress is high (lives in the balance and all that). This is a profession that women should not want, right?
Same for accounting. Few professions are less about people and more about things. No room for "gregariousness". Again, a man's job.
In contrast, management positions (at least mid-level leadership positions) should be a great fit for women. All about interacting with people and that "gregariousness".
Obviously, this is not how the real world works. My point is that we're dealing with wishy-washy criteria here that you can use to argue whichever way your personal biases lie. They are inherently unfalsifiable and hence, unscientific. It's like the story about the blind men and the elephant [1], drawing bold macrosociological conclusions from fairly raw biological and psychological data.
You are forgetting one huge thing. Lots of women doing something make it automatically attractive to women just because it'll be common in their circles.
You can make the same argument about IT. My point is not that what I'm saying is true, but that (like the macrosociological claims in the paper) it sounds plausible, yet is unfalsifiable and hence, unscientific.
> You are forgetting one huge thing. Lots of women doing something make it automatically attractive to women just because it'll be common in their circles.
I am not forgetting anything. My argument was in essence a reductio ad absurdum. If you want to advance a social argument why women are over- or underrepresented in certain professions and why Damore is therefore wrong, that would be an entirely separate argument. You're welcome to make it on your own, but I don't think the memo is worth that much of a time investment myself.
I think nursing trades stress for job security.
There are many places like this in tech world as well. SDET positions in most big web companies. First 1 - 3 line support groups in big outsourcing firms etc etc.
The job is stress full, but the return for that is not money, its job security.
The problem is that the gender differences cited cannot, in aggregate, explain the 70/30 bias toward men in the industry.
There's a real similarity to the global warming debate, here. There are many factors that affect global mean temperature. For example, over the very long term, the sun will get brighter. But that can only account for an astonishingly tiny fraction of the warming observed on the planet.
Someone who wishes to debate honestly would admit that, while there are many factors that affect global mean temperature, the rise on CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is significant, and has a demonstrable effect on temperature, making it by far the strongest influencer.
Someone who wishes to debate dishonestly will use these other explanations as a method to muddy the debate and try and turn attention toward lesser factors that cannot explain the whole effect.
Now, if you look at this current "debate", yes, there are undoubtedly biological gender differences that can explain some male/female bias in engineering (among many other disciplines).
But no serious psychologist or sociologist would claim that those differences can account for the dramatic real world bias in the industry. It simply doesn't follow.
So to claim those gender differences lie at the root of bias in the industry is a distraction. At best it's a gross misunderstanding of the science and statistics. At worst, it's a deliberately dishonest attempt to muddy the waters and confuse the debate. Personally, my bet is it's more the former than the latter.
What's your evidence for this? Debrah Soh, the author supposedly has a PhD in sexual neuroscience so one would think she is qualified to make comments about this. And although I can't confirm this myself, the article does say that societies with greater gender equity also have greater gender gaps due to the differences in what each gender values.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sexual-personalities/20...
The article points out that for most of the biases cited in the memo, the differences are on the order of a few percentage points, which cannot account for the real-world outcomes we see. To quote:
Still, I think it's important to keep in mind that most psychological sex differences are only small to moderate in size, and rather than grouping men and women into dichotomous groups, I think sex and sex differences are best thought of scientifically as multidimensional dials, anyway (see here).
To be honest, I'm not sure how Ms. Soh can seriously argue the merits of the memo, here. Yes, technically the memo is not itself inaccurate, in that there are gender biases that result in practical population-level effects. But how one can seriously use those facts to conclude that the 70/30 population split in the valley is a product of those differences, I really don't know, unless confirmation bias is at play. It just doesn't make any sense.
Heck, just looking historically it doesn't follow... it's not like the biases we see are inevitable. Our industry used to have a different composition. And other STEM fields have seen gender disparities even out. So neither facts nor history support the conclusion.
What nobody seems to consider is that an initial small biological difference may very well be amplified into a large cultural preference over time, due to network effects. A self fulfilling prophesy, if you will.
I'm just speculating here, but it seems plausible to me, at least.
> Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated[1] by men.
Using this source [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140
But the published article makes no claim about any causation between STEM preference and actual employment in a field. We can only speculate on causation.
I know in my job as a programmer there is certainly a great deal of "Social" interaction. Agile programming certainly benefits from "Conventional" thinking that women prefer. A graphic designer on my team is highly "Artistic" and we pull him into design decisions for engineering choices all the time.
So why did Debrah Soh neglect to provide supporting citations for the claim that societies with greater gender equity have greater gender career gaps, given that it's the one most central to supporting the Anti-Diversity Manifesto?
Is Debrah going to dispute the claim that Engineers — having to deal with people — need "soft" skills? Is she going to claim that all STEM work is necessarily playing with wheeled toys?
How does Debrah explain that "Gender equality closes the math gap[1]"?
"For science literacy, while the USA showed the largest gender difference across all OECD nations, d = .14, gender differences across OECD nations were non-significant, and a small female advantage was found in non-OECD nations, d=-.09."[2]
It's one thing to be "good at mathematics", quite another to be "a good engineer."
Nobody who participates in quota systems or diversity hiring believes that what they are doing is sustainable in the long term. The point of attempting to hire more people from under-represented portions of the populace is to counter-balance institutionalised sexism.
Debrah Soh does raise one important point: sexism doesn't come from knowledge of a subject, but what we do with that knowledge.
1: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gender-equality-closes-m... 2: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
I can only provide my own anecdote. I come from third-world country, where women's right is a laughable word. Women are mostly controlled by the males in the family. Even with almost no women's rights, women presence in my undergrad STEM school was around 20%. OTOH, when I came to Canada for my grad school, I've never seen any class where presence of women in STEM classes was more than 10%. Even then, most of them women are immigrants from China or South Asia.
That's "sexual" in the sense of "sexology", not "gender", though. She studies sexual paraphilia ("why people are into what they’re into sexually"), not gender differences as they pertain to society.
Then uses the existence of those small differences to justify fundamentally changing their hiring policies.
The latter does not follow from the former.
Again, as with the global warming debate, it makes a lot more sense to tackle the larger influencers first, before addressing these smaller factors.
Even achieving a 30/70 split in a male-dominated industry will help defuse some of the rampant masculinity which passes as social interaction (aka primate chest-beating). Having people around who think differently and don't want to conform to the established practices of pissing contests, dick-measuring and chest thumping will help establish better modes of operation and contribute to better decisions being made (no more buying product X because the saleswoman had huge breasts or the salesman displayed dominant primate behaviour).
Consider a business where 90% of applicants are female and 10% male. If the business chooses to hire 50/50, they are probably getting some sub-par males assuming the distribution of qualifications between male and female for the two sets of applicants are similar (which we don't have much reason to believe they differ much). In this case the females might be annoyed with the "special" treatment given to male hires that perform worse. And male hires might wonder if they got the job because they were well qualified or maybe just because they were male. In my opinion, this kind of "reverse" discrimination perpetuates bitterness and discriminatory thinking on all sides. I don't think of myself as a strongly religious person, but I think Christ had something when he was teaching that an "eye for an eye" was the old way, but the better way to live is to treat others how you want to be treated.
In scenario (1) otherwise qualified female candidates are overlooked during the hiring process due to systemic biases in the industry. Programs are instituted to reduce these biases. This puts men at a disadvantage (relative to the status quo), but actually merely equalizes the playing field.
In scenario (2) there are not enough qualified female candidates. If that is the case, then any program which increases the hiring of female candidates will likely cause the hiring of sub-par candidates, causing all of the issues you describe.
I can understand why people would object to (2) but I don't really see a problem with (1). I also don't understand why people assume that these programs actually lead to the hiring of sub-par candidates? I would think that Google's hiring practices would filter out unqualified candidates regardless of gender.
That means it's impossible to achieve a 1:1 gender ratio for all companies. A few may succeed, but only by heavily biasing their recruitment against men, since their recruitment pool of women is so small in comparison. Given the 4% number above, there will by 30 great male candidates for every great female candidate.
I don't think the argument ever was that unqualified candidates got a job. Rather, the reality is that if several candidates are qualified, and one of them happens to be a woman, she must be the one who gets the job offer, if a company wants to aim for a smaller gender gap.
Is this fair?
To some people this may seem perfectly OK (everybody was qualified; after that, it's more important to reduce the gender gap). Others might think it isn't (it's unlikely that the best of the qualified candidates got the job). In my opinion, both viewpoints are valid.
What personally irks me, however, is that someone was fired for asking the question. That was decidedly unfair.
I'm not sure, especially for a company like Google, I would assume they get plenty of great candidates of either gender such that hiring from either pool would not require reducing their hiring standards.
> I don't think the argument ever was that unqualified candidates got a job. Rather, the reality is that if several candidates are qualified, and one of them happens to be a woman, she must be the one who gets the job offer, if a company wants to aim for a smaller gender gap.
> Is this fair?
If under the status quo male candidates are hired the majority of the time over otherwise qualified female candidates, then the status quo is already unfair towards the female candidates. Working to correct the imbalance may be perceived as "unfair" to the group whose advantage is lost, but that doesn't necessarily mean it actually is.
> What personally irks me, however, is that someone was fired for asking the question. That was decidedly unfair.
Unfortunately his memo went much further than that. I mean, is someone who concludes that Google's hiring programs are "veiled left ideology that can irreparably harm Google" really interested in honest debate? Much of his writing comes across as a highly politicized rant that detracts from the actual topic.
I just realized my comment mostly consisted of questions. I have way more questions than answers.
How exactly do we quantify the difference between "best" and "qualified" and is Google's hiring process granular enough to tell the difference? If a candidate goes through the interview process and the company decides "yes, this person is worth hiring" do you then stop and say "well, this person is qualified, but we're not sure if they are the best, so let's wait and see if someone better comes along"? I'm sure every company wants to hire the "best" candidates but what exactly does that mean and how exactly would that translate to their hiring process?
Besides, it's an open question as to whether or not Google's CS-puzzle-gauntlet interview process is actually effective at hiring the "best" candidates in the first place. But that's an entirely different discussion...
> Is it best for Google and/or society if Google skips out on the best to only hire qualified people just because they are shooting for arbitrary group ratios?
Probably not. Do you think that is what is happening here? That Google's diversity programs are actually causing Google to hire "worse" candidates than they would otherwise?
> Did he really go "much further than [asking the question]"?
He spends several pages trying to justify the status quo with regards to the gender gap in the tech industry, and then calls for the elimination of Google's hiring programs designed to encourage diversity. So... yeah.
I will also point out this particular quote because it is incredibly condescending and makes me suspect the memo was not necessarily written in good faith:
"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."
The first part is an obvious strawman that mischaracterizes the opposing viewpoint, I don't think many people would actually agree that "all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination". Then the second part implies the opposition is blind to the truth that he clearly sees, and furthermore is not capable of actually solving problems. I'm not sure how you could read this and conclude that he's "just asking questions".
> What would all those heavily criticizing him on the basis of not toeing the company line say if an equivalent "reverse" situation had occurred with a right-leaning corp and a left-leaning employee? I think most would feel the same way as right-leaners.
I don't think so. The last time I can recall that a right-leaning corporation fired an employee for expressing a left-leaning viewpoint was when Tomi Lahren was fired from The Blaze for saying she was pro-abortion, and I don't recall there being any backlash to that. These are private corporations, they can hire and fire who they want. (Protected classes excepted, of course.)
Would you agree that, if the gender disparity in an industry is caused by factors outside of the "natural ratio", then correcting those factors does not necessarily imply perpetuating discrimination? Or put another way, if you are holding a race where person A starts at the 0-yard line and person B starts at the 25-yard line, and you make them start from the same place, you are not actually favoring person A and discriminating against person B, but merely equalizing the playing field?
It is a hard problem, and I think most people want the same/similar outcome. We just need to acknowledge that we don't all know the best way to get there and be able to talk about it. I think that is what the memo writer was really saying is that these are important issues with lots of things to consider - we can't afford to silence voices - especially relatively rational ones.
What evidence is there for advertisement stereotyping being the causal factor? Wasn't advertisement stereotyping just as powerful in non-STEM fields like law? medicine? journalism? Why did they break the gender curse whereas STEM did not?
In reality most of these levels have only clerical work to do. Sometimes things like writing down on a register that you issued somebody a Screw gauge. So basically book keeping, secretarial work, data entry etc etc.
But yeah, on the ground every gets to be called a 'Scientist'.
...sending rockets to the moon...
Until people stop focusing on where there women aren't, and instead focus on where the women are, we aren't going to figure out what the problem is in programming, or even figure out if there actually is a problem with programming.
There's a graph here [1] showing percent of bachelor's degrees going to women in several different fields over time, from 1970 through 2010.
The decline in women getting CS degrees starting in mid '80s really stands out. However what also stands out is that nothing else seems to have gotten a noticeable bump around the same time, so assuming that those women who are missing from CS did not leave college entirely, where are they?
It's possible that there is a bump but we just can't see it. There were only about 40000 BS CS degrees granted per year in the middle '80s. Some other fields beat that by a large factor, and so it is possible the missing CS women could have been absorbed into a few of those big majors where the bumps might be small enough to be lost in the noise.
Another interesting thing is that if you look just at CS, the total number of CS BS degrees was growing through 1985, then started falling [2]. If you look at just men, and just women, the same thing happened for each. For both, from 1970 to 1985 they were on an accelerating growth curve (almost exponential), and then for both it turned around and fell quickly (also almost exponentially) then leveled off.
During that growth phase the women's growth curve was accelerating more than the men's curve. During the decline phase, the women's decline was faster, too.
[1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...
[2] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/wome...
For example, one of the studies that showed boys were better than girls at math showed that if you chose a random boy and a random girl, there was a 55% chance that the boy was better at math. Not very much different from flipping a coin at an individual level, but quite significant in a population.
> PhD in sexual neuroscience
> female
There's a LOT that's new here, relative to Damore's memo.
Oops, sorry I guess my comment was worded a bit confusingly there. When I said "backed by links to scientific studies" I was referring to the original memo. The Gizmodo article which originally leaked the memo omitted those links, but they're present in the original document: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
> PhD in sexual neuroscience
> female
These qualities are helpful for getting other people to take the article seriously instead of just immediately dismissing it as an "anti-diversity screed", but they don't in and of themselves affect the factual accuracy of the statements being made. As I said, this author is mostly just re-affirming the same points that were made in the original memo; those underlying points are equally valid regardless of who's making them.
And for the gender of the person advancing an argument to matter seems only to strongly confirm the memos points about discrimination against men.
Counter-factuals are always difficult, but it seems unlikely that we would ever have heard about this memo, much less seen its author fired, had the exact same text been written by a woman.
Because most of the reactions were emotional, not rational. If we were rational beings it wouldn't matter, but we're not and never have been.
I regularly see psueodo-science blog posts that are "backed by links". Let's pick one of Soh's claims that are backed by a link:
> As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated[1] by men.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140
Soh uses [1] to claim that Holland Categories and STEM interest have a causation for employment in related fields. In fact, the article merely supports the claim that women have statistical preference for certain Holland Categories and STEM interests.
So why did she use this as a reference to support her claim about employment in the field? It's certainly a reasonable logical step to make, but the citation should be moved back one sentence.
Besides, I'm very curious how that source controlled for cultural influences. Women are regularly discouraged from expressing STEM interests culturally, so it's no surprise to me that they don't express a preference towards it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
One of the major giveaways that the Diversity VP at Google is incompetent came when she criticized the author for attacking women simply because he used the terms "conscientiousness" and "agreeability" and "neuroticism". You are not doing much better by insinuating that science can only be correct when it supports your ideological position.
The lack of intellect and integrity displayed by the attacks on the fired Google employee is really disturbing.
Can you back up this claim with a citation from the document? If not, can you explain your thought (feeling) process?
> Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths. - This defends putting women into less-desirable jobs because desirable ones are not really that desirable? This argument is self-defeating.
> I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principles reasons for why it helps Google; - Discrimination is justified if it helps the bottom line.
> We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology that can irreparably harm Google. - You're not allowed to believe that discrimination will hurt the bottom line. Even if senior management tells you so.
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate - The alternative is to increase the false positive rate for those candidates.
> Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX. - Having representation is leadership is not important.
> Prioritize intention. - This is also illegal. Google is a government contractor and will be required to implement affirmative action policies if its employees are too different from the general population. That's because they're taking money from all taxpayers and redistributing it to or away from certain groups. Intention here is irrelevant.
> Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
Serious question: does your mind think they actually do? This might be a good illustration of why people differ so much on the same objective facts, the human brain automatically adds additional context (that isn't necessarily physically present) into perceptions.
Can you give me some indication that you understand what I'm talking about? You don't have to agree, just a sign that you know what I'm saying. I'm wondering if your brain maybe censors certain sorts of ideas, such that you effectively don't even "see" them.
The truth you are missing about the world is contained right within that statement. I recommend printing it out and hanging it on your wall as a reminder, and let your mind chew on it for a few months. Resist the urge to draw conclusions, just mull it over, you might be surprised.
Strip away his science and his words, he's a misogynistic techbro (I'm reminded of ESR) who wants to pretend technology is some sort of meritocracy and that a woman doesn't play well in that situation. Almost every one of his claims has a hanging but attached to it.
The author suggests that when these average statistics propagate into life decisions and employment preferences, you end up with an equilibrium with less females in these roles.
You write 'This can be used again to claim women don't belong in those roles' but the author did not use this to claim such a thing! 'I know several women' precisely coincides with what the author wrote. Again, he pointed out multiple times throughout that he was not generalizing but was merely looking at average trends.
In the aggregate, this is objectively true based on my observations, and you can see this exact same sentiment passionately expressed by feminists.
> ...there are some roles they might not be able to perform.
This part is your mind playing tricks on you. You have certain beliefs, and you are trying to find anything to confirm them.
You have misunderstood what the author was saying, I would suggest because you are not trying to understand it, but rather are trying to find examples to substantiate your worldview.
> Strip away his science and his words
....leaving us....your imagination?
>Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be
The line immediately before states that women tend to be more people-oriented than object-oriented. The line between these 2 states is crystal clear: women are more people oriented than men, and there are limits to how people oriented certain roles and the company can be, therefore, women will not have the same opportunities as men. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but his entire essay is for Google to stop programs aimed at gender inclusion.
> If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead
Very interesting, to me.
> his entire essay is for Google to stop programs aimed at gender inclusion.
Is anyone disputing that? This conversation is beyond confusing.
That's absurd. You're not even interpreting his comments at face value. You're attributing a subtext to them that only exists in your imagination.
>Strip away his science and his words, he's a misogynistic techbro
What an absolutely hateful and sexist comment. It amounts to: "strip away his message and judge him by what identity group he belongs to"
Really? The first bullet point is "women are more people oriented". The second bullet point is that there are limits to how people oriented specific roles or even Google as a whole can be. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but the belief that there are some roles than women cannot do due to their differences is consistent with the rest of his essay.
The only way I can think of how one could come to this conclusion is a lack of either:
- knowledge of what a statistical average is
- capacity for basic logical thought
You are mixing up your imagination with reality.
So, what exactly am I supposed to draw from this? You're insistent I am wrong, but you're offering no explanation as to why I am wrong. I don't disagree that women are more sociable than men. I disagree this means certain roles within the company cannot support that trait.
Further down: "Women value work life balance" "Men are status achievers" "Because of that, men will appropriately be in leadership and technology roles, also women suffer anxiety more." Side note, convenient he leaves out that women are statistically able to deal with stress better than men. His conclusion is that rather than creating programs that encourage women to enter leadership positions, leave that to the men and give women access to part time roles.
If you want to say I am wrong, so be it, disagreement is fine, but you have yet to counter anything I have said with an opposing understanding, just ad hominen attacks and criticism.
The explanation was in my previous comment.
I will give you another hint: you are misinterpreting the meaning of "women" in your excerpted quotes.
> If you want to say I am wrong, so be it, disagreement is fine, but you have yet to counter anything I have said with an opposing understanding, just ad hominen attacks and criticism.
I don't think there's a way to reply that will satisfy you, there is a crucial part of objective perception that you are lacking.
It does no such thing, because:
(1) STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things
(2) While in some STEM fields gender disparities are apparent from fairly early in career progression, that's not true of all STEM fields; in some (many of them around biosciences) women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement (problematically for the “it's about men wanting to deal with things and women wanting to deal with people” explanation of STEM gender disparities, this leaves women dealing more with things while the men move to higher levels where they deal with people.)
This doesn't negate my point.
You're correct that I oversimplified: some STEM fields are indeed less 'biologically geared' to men. But the principle remains: biologically established differences in interest can very plausibly explain the differences seen in gender representation in some STEM fields. It is the assertion of this fact that has invited unfounded accusations of sexism.
>women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement
That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.
And, you'll note, I never claimed it did: I cited it as a fact about the gender imbalance in STEM which is not explainable by the facile “men like dealing with things while women like dealing with people” explanation which you described upthread as being, on its own, a refutation of the idea that gender imbalances in STEM are in any part due to systemic discrimination (which could only be true if it explained all aspects of STEM gender imbalance and left no room for systemic discrimination.)
Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.
Yes that is a more accurate construction. For the sake of expedience I wasn't this precise, and left it to the reader to sauce out this more precise meaning, which given the format, I think was entirely reasonable.
Then you're choosing to not be constructive. Sexism and racism are not constructive, and they are hurtful to innocent people.
I know it's trendy to defend feminist talking points, but it ultimately leads to what we see now with the Google firing: a public conversation where facts take a secondary role to ideology/dogma.
On the other hand, there is evidence that cultural biases specifically discourage women from entering, and push women out of, STEM careers.
1. It used strawman arguments. Notably that the world is looking for a 50/50 split in gender ratios. Most reasonable people believe that even in ideal equilibrium state that this is not the expected outcome (although I'm sure there exist some people that push for 50/50 or greater). But that the current ratio is not the ideal equilibrium state. The author of the paper seems to point out that 50/50 isn't likely the expected ratio -- and then jumps to trying to dismantle affirmative action.
2. He selectively uses research and data from research. For example the impact of stereotypes and individuating. But the research shows that while individuating is effective when it shows clear discrepancy, it isn't effective when there is any ambiguity. That is Maryam Mirzakhani will likely make someone who thinks women aren't good at math think, "But yes, she's actually quite good." But when it comes to more nuanced decisions and decision with a lot less data (which is more commonplace in the workplace), individuating isn't so effective. Determining who should be promoted to lead or VP from a group of pretty strong candidates, will often have the stereotype bias still play a role (and in fairness, depending on exactly the role -- it can benefit females too). This is meant to be an example of research where in the memo one part of the story is told, but not the other. Based on my limited investigation, I don't trust him being impartial in presenting these facts. In much the same way that climate change deniers often point to facts too -- its what they don't point to that is worrisome.
Lastly, there is a difference between speaking truth and how you speak truth. This seems obvious to most people outside of engineering. Putting "Catherine has big boobs and I'd have sex with her, if she consented" as part of your sig may be completely factually she true. In fact, it may be obvious to everyone who reads it, but there is a time and a place. If I were a female, I'd have a hard time reporting to Mr. Damore. If I didn't get a promotion, I don't think it would be out of line, to consider what he wrote in the memo. If Mr. Damore ignores my suggestion in a design review, I'd have to again strongly consider if he did so because of my gender. If he rejects all of his women interview candidates -- is that a problem or not? The context of what he wrote, even if done in good faith, creates a more difficult working relationship.
My hope is that if Mr. Damore wrote that in good faith, he will take this feedback and make things better for everyone, male and female. He certainly won't have trouble getting job offers (if he wrote it in good faith or not -- there are enough people in tech who don't like women in the industry) -- and if his end goal was to create the environment for the discussion, then he's done that too.
Yes, this seems to be the thing that most people are missing. He didn't release a study in a scientific journal, he shared a document with his coworkers while at work. The things he talks about are what his Women coworkers are living through. He made this about their experience. It doesn't matter how much is true, it was incredibly unprofessional and absolutely something you can be fired for.
This exact target has made it into more than just a few institutions.
> He selectively uses research
In inviting discourse, he is also inviting "the other side" of the argument to do as much the same. I think his effort was big enough without raising the bar - why not bear the burden of evaluating the evidence alone? This memo is explicitly a work in progress, the choice to cherry-pick sources that support his conclusions is purposeful, since he is trying to demonstrate the that the status-quo might be wrong.
> climate change deniers often..
There is something of an active debate on that topic, I haven't heard of any tech worker fired for discussing the issue.
> but there is a time and a place
Did he not release to the correct forum? What is the correct time and place? I'd also note: statements have implied/pragmatic meanings. A statement like "I'd have sex with [Catherine]" would be assumed to have an implicit meaning. The memo, in contrast, is pretty explicit in its stated aim.
> then he's done that too
Well, maybe. He certainly lit a match..
I don't really understand the forum he submitted to. It sounds like a huge public internal mailing list. That sounds like the wrong forum to me. This probably could've gone to the new VP of diversity directly.
Maybe I'm overly paranoid but I pretty much never write anything about race, religion, gender, disabilities, age, etc... at work. And if I ever felt I needed to I'd do so very carefully, probably with the assistance of HR.
It's easy for the dominant majority in power to see this as holding back the one aspect in their life where they feel as if they are limited in what they can do/say. But these limits and implied apprehensions exist for good reason, IMO.
> Maybe I'm overly paranoid
Maybe you aren't, and maybe you shouldn't have to be?
> the dominant majority in power
Who is this? Men? Liberals? The 1%?
What is the expected outcome? It's somewhat of a rhetorical question, but I am curious. I guess it's somewhere between status quo and 50, but how do we know if we have reached equilibrium?
If anything, isn't status quo an equilibrium based on all current inputs to the system? So at what point do we stop tweaking inputs to the system and declare done? I would love to hear some kind of target/KPI that the Google diversity initiative is trying to hit.
Edit: also, if we don't know what the expected outcome is, how do we know when the process has been over compensated and is actually skewed in the other direction?
It's hardly a strawman; even people in this thread believe that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970828
"mainstream gender equality says there should be a roughly equal split"
"50/50 split might be naive. It assumes men and women should be equally represented and that makes liberally minded folks feel good. But what's the alternative? Status quo? A different and arbitrary split? I don't see any good arguments against equal representation."
Before you say "hostile work environment", keep in mind that lots of people find firing someone for this to be hostile as well.
I would be open to going directly to HR to discuss it. I, for example, have done this to discuss team vs individual compensation at my job. While not the hot topic that this was, HR was super responsive.
In general, I think before you try to present on a public work forum one side of an argument about some biological subclass and their on average work ability/habits -- I'd think twice. Even with the absolute best intentions you can really isolate and offend people. And when this subclass is already a minority and less powerful, the effect can be compounded (at the end of the day, even the affirmative action programs are designed and implemented largely by white men).
I think you might be wrong regarding which subclass is more powerful. It certainly wasn't Damore's.
The subclasses I refer to are not based on gender, but on opinion. If diversity based on superficial attributes is so important, why isn't diversity of opinion?
Should Google start hiring more flat Earthers too?
Also, I'm not sure what you're getting at with the distinction between perspective and opinion. Regardless of whether you think Damore presented opinion or perspective, it surely wasn't random.
To reiterate my previous point: considering how things played out, it's obvious that the subclass that you called 'less powerful' is actually quite powerful.
I don't find rehashing the wisdom of his decision to speak his mind as important as how everyone else responds to it. That's where the real controversy is.
Original evil evil author had a PhD/MS in Biology from Harvard
Anyone who wants to use "science" in this way needs to read "The Golem" by prominent sociologists of science Collins and Pinch. It's a short, enjoyable read. One of the things you'll learn is that science can only ask the questions humans want to ask, and science often says exactly what people want it to say.
https://www.amazon.com/Golem-Should-About-Science-Classics/d... online link: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/collins_the_gol...
Even a brief analysis of sociology would reveal a deeply seated counter argument to much of the "fact" present in the screed and the OP link.
That's the bigger point here. Not that there is a slam dunk argument on the side of biology or society, but that we don't know where the exact truth lies, and we need to be open to discussion about it in order to find out. As scientists have been saying all along, both biological and societal factors matter.
What I hope we can all agree is unreasonable is to fire someone for just trying to discuss this.
It is remarkable how the need for debate is disproportionately forwarded from the side with power.
It's not like phrenology or Nazis which are tiny minorities we can just cast out and ignore.
And I'm not sure I agree with you on which side has power here. Look who got fired.
Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusing her of sexism).