> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?

Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem.

From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to suspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem.

Totally different interpretations of cause and effect.

He did not say they were lowering the bar, but that by rejecting (proportionally) a greater number of qualified male candidates than qualified female candidates, the bar is effectively lowered.

If what he says is true, that there is a higher false negative rate for men, it's hard to imagine a system where the bar isn't effectively lowered.

The one possibility I saw argued elsewhere is that you could take all qualified men, and randomly reject some of them. At that point, you would expect the bar to be level.

If however you rejected qualified men in a non-random way, which is more plausible, the effect would be to change the bar.

I hadn't ever really thought about this kind of selection effect on the statistics of populations, so would love to hear if this sounds wrong or what the real expected outcome should be.

It's not about self-doubt, it's about creating a stereotype by which other people (managers, peers) will prejudge you even before you write the first line of code. This prejudice already exists as is, Damore's memo doesn't do anything to help it. If improving women's opportunities at Google was his objective, he failed miserably at it.

If I felt the memo implied or created that stereotype I'd denounce it as well.

It is widely acknowledged that there are social factors that might affect the number of women entering the field. He could've made as valid an argument about the hiring practices affecting diversity, without bringing up the supposed "biological" factor altogether. Not bringing it up would have probably put him in the right side of the Code of Conduct.

At best, it was poor judgement for him to bring it up when it didn't add anything to the conversation. At worst, it betrays a certain level of misogyny. Those of us who tend to assume the worst, might be more inclined to believe the latter, but I wouldn't blame people for believing the former.

One takeaway I have from this is that discussion about biological differences between sexes is often misused, so should be avoided in discussion related to diversity if you want people to not form an emotional reaction.

The whole thing was a meandering stroll of possible reasons. I absolutely don't see this memo creating a hostile workplace or illiciting the pushback it has garnered simply by what I read in the text. I read a document referencing population level differences between sexes(relevant in the context of attempting to explain differences in preferences that account for the difference in size of the groups) that have no bearing on individual differences between sexes(not even slightly relevant in hiring)

My internal reader probably filled in the benefit of the doubt.

Right! There's been enough people using biological differences as excuses for all kinds of things before, so it's probably better to resort to that argument only once all other factors have been removed. I believe that's one of the biggest reasons people reacted so badly to this memo. It certainly was the first thing that popped into my head as soon as I started reading his reasoning.

A bit of context is important. Anonymity on the internet has facilitated a rebirth of the "men's rights" movement. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a place for "men's rights" when it comes to recognizing that sexual abuse happens to men too, which is what some of the groups got started, but some of the notorious forums (like the now banned "TheRedPill" subreddit) are virulently misogynistic. There are people openly defending rape, calling women "inferior" and posting fantasies about what they'd do to women who they perceive as "pushy" or holding some power over them. Feminists are demonized to no end. A lot of the rationalization around their rhetoric builds on some of the same bases Damore used for his "biological argument." I'll leave it to your judgment to decide if Damore giving one of his interviews to Stefan Molyneaux - known men's right activist - has anything to do with that or not.

It's that context that made my internal reader go for the worst possible scenario instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt. I guess I'm way more jaded person than you :)

If you knew there were a lower bar for people who had red hair, for example, because there's a pay gap and their population ratio isn't represented equally, every time you'd have someone on your team with red hair, you'd wonder if they were there because of the exception made for them or if they got there on pure merit. Thus, affirmative action causes people to question that merit (bias).

Worse, the redhead who got in never knows if they got accepted based on merit or based on some quota, which contributes heavily Impostor syndrome, negative self image and confirmation bias based on that negative self image.

You combine these two things over time and there is absolutely an impact.

Damore's ultimate points were: let's discuss this and, by the way, please don't ignore me just because my opinion is unpopular.

The memo specifically targeted diversity hires as a lower bar. Imagine if a memo started circulating that asked everyone to question whether or not you were hired for your skill. That's a terrible environment to create.

On the contrary, there is evidence of bias against women, which logically means that the bar is lower for men by default.

Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together. The only exception to this rule seems to be around leftist issues, where if you disagree you are out of luck.

You would expect, for example, the Jewish people and the Islamic people at a company to work together.

The idea that toleration for one memo form a nobody employee marks an entire company as unwelcome is insane. This zero tolerance attitude is a recipe for disaster.

Considering how all sixteen of my female teammates were pissed off about it, I'm going to go ahead and say you are demonstrably wrong.

Yes, it would be wrong of you to do that. You remember how in the Big Lebowski, Walter asks The Dude "Well, am I wrong?" and The Dude replies "You're not wrong, Walter. You're an asshole."

You don't want to be Walter.

Suggest that a piece of code is un-maintainable and that the group should rebuild it and there is a good chance someone will think that makes you an asshole.

You can't go around firing everyone because some idiot gets triggered.

I'm saying that as some who has actually worked with young Earth creationists before.

Where I contend with evolutionists is the typical narrative that the existence of natural selection implies a process that creates said (structured, positive) genetic diversity from which to select. This latter process is disputed, not the former.

I would be curious to hear your colleagues perspective.

Someone taking offense is not demonstration of anything, other than someone taking offense.

If you think he did mean to offend people, the firing makes more sense.

I don't think "he should have known better" is very fair when neck deep in a discussion about diversity. Sometimes diversity looks like someone not knowing cultural rules.

I also don't think Damore's totally naive when it comes to diversity issues. He did a lot of research and evidently even discussed his concerns with HR. I think it's pretty clear he knew what he was getting into.

So it's objective and fair? Or it is too fickle but it doesn't matter?

> I think it's pretty clear he knew what he was getting into.

I think he would have hired a publicist and lawyer before publishing the memo if he knew what was coming.

> So it's objective and fair? Or it is too fickle but it doesn't matter?

Whatever the ideological or scientific opposite of Damore's memo is, I would never publish it to anyone -- not even a single person -- at work. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that discussing race or gender issues at work is out of bounds, regardless of your position.

> I think he would have hired a publicist and lawyer before publishing the memo if he knew what was coming.

Aha that's probably true but I'm not talking about the backlash. I'm saying he knew he wasn't just asking to be proven wrong about migratory patterns of ducks. He's aware diversity is a sensitive topic.

But most tech employers already broach the subject in many ways. It's not right that employers get to have controversial opinions, including during work hours, but employees do not.

Things like this need to be addressed if we want corporate power to be moderated.

What controversial opinions are you talking about?

To be clear, I don't think all those things are necessarily bad. But I think letting corporations and corporate leadership have free reign and a big microphone while expecting employees to censor themselves is inconsistent to say the least.

> It's not right that employers get to have controversial opinions

They tend to be offended if you criticize Trump.

Therefore, you are not allowed to criticize Trump.

> Are you trying to claim that causing offense to a large group is not creating a hostile working environment?

What is truth when you have a gun to your head.

To substantiate that comment:

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

What powers should define truth? Sensory / populist / ability to take life.

This is absolutely false I do get to tell the group how to receive the message. When a group is intolerant the problem is with the group. When people were against interracial marriage and intolerant of other opinions the problem was with the group. When people were against African Americans riding in the front of the bus, the problem was with the intolerant group.

No candy coating, sensitivity training, or messaging was required to tell the angry, intolerant mob that they were wrong, just like they are here.

I only hope for your sake that you learn otherwise before you put your foot in your mouth in a very big way someday, rather than after.

If you're worried about an angry mob firing you, start communicating with care.

Additionally people are not protected from offense in the workplace. They're protected from harassment and an abstract memo that doesn't single out individuals is not harassment.

No one wrote a memo claiming that Google hires too many Jews who don't meet the same quality bar due to diversity efforts.

No one wrote a memo claiming Google needs to have mandatory anti-terrorist training because they've recruited a lot of Muslims lately (putting aside the fact that white christian terrorists are far more likely to be your cause of death in the USA).

>Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together.

Yeah and the way this works is not to bring up potentially offensive or sensitive topics except with coworkers you know really well. When you do bring it up acknowledge other people's viewpoints and ask lots of questions instead of making grand pronouncements.

All workplaces are political. Software development is about working with people and that is inherently a political activity. Took me a very long time to realize that but it is 100% true. The quicker you accept it the further you will go in your career.

>The idea that toleration for one memo form a nobody employee marks an entire company as unwelcome is insane. This zero tolerance attitude is a recipe for disaster.

What if his memo was arguing that black people aren't suited to be engineers period?

What if his memo argued that black people should be sent back to Africa and that the USA should be for white people only? What if he said he only believes this should be the law but so long as it isn't the law we must respect that and treat people equally until the law is changed?

Should Google "tolerate" someone being openly racist simply because they haven't called for violence?

Let's make this even more abstract: what if an employee openly states they think the company is evil and they disagree with the entire mission and direction of the company? Do you really think they won't spread cynicism and negativity? Do you really think they can be effective? Is there really no risk to morale?

Even if he were completely correct (he wasn't) by doing such a sorry ham-fisted job he made himself a liability. Even if he only angered or offended 10 other engineers that alone is reason enough to get rid of him. Hiring and training engineers is expensive.

Corporations are not free speech zones. If you become a liability the company will drop you like a hot-potato and don't you ever forget it.

This is not true. Even ignoring the 3,000 people killed in the twin towers, the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting alone killed more people than all right-wing attacks since 9/11/2001 combined. And that includes non-Christian attackers. And such things as neo-Nazis killing pedophiles in prison.

Isn't this an argument against any form of different hiring practices based on race/gender? Even if distributions of abilities are equal in nature, if a college has a lower bar based on gender, then abilities won't be equal among graduates of that college. Conversely, even if abilities are on average different, if a college has the same bar and same standards based on gender, then you won't have to question if a graduate really deserved to have that credential.

It highly depends on the details of the interview process, which I don't know, but just to discount it with that logic is impossible.

Additional rounds of interviews are more like trying to accurately diagnose a condition using multiple different tests because the initial test is known to have poor sensitivity and will produce false negatives. Doing multiple rounds may, of course, increase the chance of false positives (reduce specificity); but the assumption in this case is that when hiring minorities the sensitivity of the interview process is much worse than the specificity.

On a reread, Damore actually implies that Google's policies as applied to their interview process are "decreasing the false negative rate" for minorities. Whether this is harmfully discriminatory or not is open to opinion, but what I think is clear there is that the statement is favorable and understanding of his minority peers - the policies did not let anyone through who should not have been. I certainly don't think he should be fired for having given that statement.

>Additional rounds of interviews are more like trying to accurately diagnose a condition using multiple different tests because the initial test is known to have poor sensitivity and will produce false negatives.

The difference is that what they're testing for isn't a binary proposition (do you have the disease or not), but a spectrum (what is your skill level). Viewing this in terms of false-positives or false-negatives is insufficient. If we think of programming skill as a spectrum, we can ask what is the average top-% of candidates who pass the interview (we might guess its top 5% of all developers). If everyone has the same test then the average top-% is unchanged regardless of any efforts to get more minorities to take the test. But once you start giving more tries to minorities your average top-% necessarily reduces.

Whatever your test is designed to admit (say you're interested in hiring only the top-10% of developers), the average of those who pass will be higher precisely because of the chance factor. Being significantly better than the intended cutoff gives you a better chance at passing and so those who pass skews towards better than the intended cutoff.

I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad thing, but the average skill of those who pass must reduce. It is very straightforward to see this as effectively lowering the bar.

Imagine that if you're a minority, you have nearly a 0% chance of getting hired if you're the only minority in the hiring pool [1]. As an employer, wouldn't you want to counteract that by making sure that the decision to hire/not-hire isn't affected by status-quo bias, so you don't overlook qualified candidates?

https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-can...

That has a very pernicious effect across the industry though. Think about what that policy does to other companies.

The other companies won't have as many high quality women because Google scouted and hired them already, but will have just as many low and medium quality women who aren't good enough for Google, and more high quality men who were displaced from Google. Which skews the gender ratio even more and creates the impression that women at those companies are lower quality than the men there or else they would have been hired away by Google -- because it causes that impression to be the truth.

And you can't fix it by having all companies adopt that policy, because it would still transfer high quality women from lower tier companies to higher tier companies, causing problems for all the women who don't get to work for the companies in the highest tier. Even the high quality women who are still in second tier companies.

The lower tier companies are where almost everybody actually works -- small and medium companies employ more people than huge companies because there are so many more of them.

Google is being quite selfish with a policy like that.

HBR found there's an innate bias against any minorities in hiring pools [1], and considering that women make up a much lower percentage of potential CS positions, the deck is probably stacked against them. This means that for other companies, they have already passed on hiring the qualified minority candidates. Speculatively, Google could be trying to counteract this by diverting more energy into finding minority candidates.

Also, is it Google's responsibility to make sure other companies have the best candidates, minority or not?

[1] https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-can...

Nope, it's independent of any of that, because the effect is relative to what other companies do rather than any of those things.

And when you do that experiment in the real world rather than a lab, you get the opposite result anyway:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/07/1...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

> Also, is it Google's responsibility to make sure other companies have the best candidates, minority or not?

It's not about who gets the best candidates -- presumably the men who are displaced are of equal quality and then go to work for the same other companies. The problem is that it creates an unfair black mark against every woman who doesn't get hired at Google despite Google having a special preference for them, and then leaves them in an environment with an even worse gender ratio than it was already.

And these other companies feed into Google. Plenty of women get their first jobs there and go work for Google later. If Google makes it harder for the women there and increases the number who drop out as a result, that's bad for everyone including them.

Can you elaborate on this more? Or give examples?

Google has 2000 job openings. If they hired without gender preference they would end up with 1600 men and 400 women, but they make an effort to seek out women specifically and instead they hire 1200 men and 800 women. They've now hired all of the women above the 90th percentile and 300/500 between the 80th and 90th.

The gender ratio below the original 80th percentile is still 4:1, but above the 80th percentile it's 14:1 and above the 90th percentile there are no remaining female job seekers. People notice things like this -- that none of the available top engineers are women, even though there are still less talented or experienced female applicants. It creates stereotypes. It deprives the women below the 80th percentile of their role models and mentors. People start expecting women to be worse on average, because of those available to hire, Google has actually caused that to be the case.

And things go downhill from there very quickly if more large companies do the same as Google.

Does anyone have any actual proof that Google is aiming for 50% or to represent the general population 1-1?

If waterboarding is not torture then why would you apply it to detainees to confess information they otherwise wouldn't?

Equally, if diverting more energy in to finding minority candidates is not lowering the bar for them then why would you need to divert more energy to find them?

This applies to any sort of interrogation tactic along the spectrum between The Comfy Chair and Execution. Each step would not be applied if the detainees confessed at the next-below step.

The point is to find the ones that can pass at a higher rate than you normally would. No bar is lowered, and your representation increases.

Actually effective techniques like building rapport aren't torture, and they get applied to get information out.

Maybe. There's a lot of diversity within the male gender.

I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background. I sometimes wonder which of my coworkers have something against me. I know all of them don't (or at least they are professional regardless), but people from my background are absolutely in a minority and are publicly ridiculed on a regular basis, including in HN comments.

I don't care to compare my experience to being a woman engineer, but the feeling described isn't foreign to me.

Right. Now imagine being an outlier due to your biology in a way that's impossible to conceal. I'm an outlier in some ways from my peers as well. But I just don't talk about those beliefs or those parts of my life. You don't have the option to do that if you're female or a visible minority.

Who said I was concealing anything?

Even if it were, aren't we supposed to be moving past the point where people need to closet who they are so as not to offend everyone else?

The only way to not have to feel discriminated like that would be if you could control minds of all relevant people in the workplace and make absolutely sure they don't have any bad thoughts towards you. Otherwise if you're a type of person who worries about what others think about you, you'll always have a reason to feel crappy, imagining whatever negative thought may be going through other people's minds.

Way out of this is to find a way not to care so much about what others think. Or if you suspect particular person of actual discrimination, talk to them, or report them specifically if you can't do that or it doesn't work.

Solution is not to suppress discussion by firing people for discussing diversity. That just creates a truly hostile environment of fear of being fired for others. And discussion is not really suppressed anyway. Quite the opposite.

That is a result of affirmative action, not of the memo. Shooting the messenger, if you will.

Affirmative Action does not require having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies). So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.

Fair enough -- quotas aren't the issue, but affirmative action is the issue.

> So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.

That's a concrete conclusion based on unprovable/shaky reasoning.

And even if that were true and you could prove it, it wouldn't change the fact concerning affirmative action (in this case, lowering hiring standards for certain groups) causing bias for both coworkers and the employee. How do coworkers know an individual got there on their own merit? How does an individual who is on/above par, yet who happens to belong to an affirmative action group, shake the internal/external stigma that they got there based on the lowered bar? These things contribute to bias whether or not we like the overall idea behind affirmative action (which is to level the playing field). Nothing comes for free.

But unless you do, you should agree that the choice is not between some biased "affirmative action" and a perfectly unbiased, meritocratic alternative, because the latter does not exist. The real choice is whether we try, in some least-bad way, to level the playing field or not.

What the glass ceiling builds, the glass cellar destroys. Biases that exist when looking up reverse when looking down.

>swapping names on resumes, etc.

Recent study found an interesting result doing this.

>to level the playing field or not.

And thus some groups will always be looked at, internally and externally, as having the benefit of a better playing field. Perhaps that cost is worth it, but we shouldn't blame the ones pointing out the cost as if they were the source of it.

Affirmative action isn't actually a specific policy directive, so it's not like a checklist or a set of guidelines for hiring or anything. Every department does it differently. But the main idea is that Kennedy and later Johnson told the government to get its diversity house in order, and it did. Some private institutions choose to implement pro-diversity policies, for hiring and otherwise, but they're not in any way related.

What you're referring to is tokenism, which is an old concept: people of color, LGBTQ people, or women feel like they're only there because of their minority status. It's a familiar trope, especially amongst people of color because they've often been exploited that way.

It's certainly the case that at some point, someone gets a job or gets into a school because they're a minority. That's gotten a lot of play in this thread and in the broader debate. But what I haven't seen, and this happens far, far more often, is that minorities don't get jobs because they're minorities. It is hard to get a job as a software engineer if you're Black, if you're a woman, if you're a Black woman, or at all queer.

This happens far more often than White men losing out to "diversity hires", and I think we should start focusing on the fact that for minorities, you're often occupy a space between discrimination because of who you are, or tokenism because of who you are.

But at least with tokenism you have a job. I'm in no way saying we should settle for this; the situation's unacceptable. But let's stop acting like tokenism is the worst thing in the world for minorities and then use it as an excuse to get rid of pro-diversity policies and affirmative action; policies that have probably done more for minorities than any other policy initiative past like, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Reconstruction Amendments, the 19th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Acts.

That leap of logic - taking a general statement and interpreting it as a personal attack - strikes me as something I'd read in Dilbert. It strikes me as a justification for the outrage people want to feel.

It's an excuse; nothing more.

> So if I say "the average women is shorter than the average man", am I now liable for being fired for creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers?

You wouldn't just be saying that. You'd be saying, "we know about implicit/explicit biases, but maybe short people are less interested in tech and that helps to explain the hiring gap." That and a series of studies about how short people, on average, have biological qualities that differentiate them from taller people, which you use to bolster your supposition. In effect, you'd be saying that, on average, short people are possibly just less interested in technology because they like other things, respond differently to stress and don't have the drive for status that tall people do.

So, while you wouldn't necessarily be _wrong_ for supposing that and people would be wrong to impute any further meaning than is represented (such as, short people aren't fit for tech, short people are not as good as tall people, etc.), you might be at least partially wrong for not being as clear as possible in your phrasing ... but not much else. Mainly, because his intention isn't to say women aren't fit for tech, but to point out why they might, on average, be less interested in tech, which would help to explain the gap in STEM interest.

Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them.

> His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it.

Which alt-right media did he reach out to? I've been paying pretty close attention and I saw him being interviewed by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, but they are not alt-right media. They are both classical conservatives.

> As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)

Then all we have to go on are theories and the question: what's to be gained from him lying about this?

His very first interview was with Stefan Molyneaux, a self-described "fighter for men's rights" (yeah, I know.)

> what's to be gained from him lying about this?

I don't think he was outright lying, I think he was just uninformed and made a lot of assumptions and drew conclusions (biased by his own political views) out of those assumptions. I do think his inflammatory approach to accusing Google and Googlers of "leftist bias" was a way to get attention.

About what's to be gained? Well... he's been interviewed by the New York Times and he'll probably get a book deal out of it, plus whatever money he might get if he manages to successfully sue Google.

That's true and an excellent point. If he's lying about Google's recruitment practices, either by misunderstanding or by outright false accusation, then large parts of the memo are moot.

On the other hand, I would make the counterpoint that the only reason his honesty has come into question is because of the negative reception his memo has had. Also, what are the odds that Damore misunderstood things? I'd say low.

Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see.

I'll be honest, that's what ticks me about Damore: after presenting the ideas in his memo a couple times and not getting any traction, he made a case of sharing them publicly inside Google. Not with a group of friends, not with the diversity team, but publicly. As you say, he's not a dummy, so he probably expected this whole controversy. His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it. I'm not 100% sure he's being honest about his intentions to "help Google."

> Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see

As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)

If on the other hand any kind of affirmative action is in place then you would be right to assume average women is less qualified than an average man because that's what affirmative action is: lowering the bar for certain groups.

The very presence of affirmative action ("diversity efforts") should be the reason for women at the company to feel unsafe because then the prejudice against them becomes rational.

This should be obvious in my view. The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool.

Do you really think that is the case?

> The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool.

Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do.

Sadly that's not the case. Affirmative action makes prejudice rational but it's not the only reason people display prejudice. If A implies B then removing A doesn't make B false.

>>Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do.

Good for them. They really should keep discrimination when hiring away from it. "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among X group" is discrimination. The same way "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among white people" is discrimination based on race.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/08/sloppy-scien...

Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them. People are individuals and not statistics. You can quote statistics and average all day long, but if you offend, anger, or harm someone with your words, that person will not listen to you.

It isn't just that some people are too emotionally reactive to be directly involved in a reasonable conversation.

We are currently shutting down even the possibility of a conversation among any set of a large group of people, because some people in that group are uncomfortable with it.

They aren't even willing to sit out the conversation that makes them uncomfortable, they are insisting that nobody else be allowed to have the conversation within the larger community.

Isn't that a catch 22? How do we know their subjective feelings if we can't discuss contested issues?

Liberals today: "Embrace diversity of thought, color, and sexual genitalia! Wait I don't like that thing he said, fire him. Wait, he's mentally ill and thus persecuted, he needs to be protected. Wait, autism isn't a metal illness, he's fine just the way he is. Wait, he's a white male, he's not fine just the way he is, he's evil. Wait, he's self-identifying as autistic, he's not really autistic, a doctor has to diagnose him. Wait, no, that's different than self-identifying your gender, that's totally fine."

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...

He went out of his way to praise women engineers and to emphasize he supports diversity.

There are just certain that intolerant people cannot discuss rationally, like biological gender differences.

The fault lies with the intolerant minds, not Damore's approach.

If we forget this, then intolerant minds will have awesome veto powers over what the rest of us will be allowed to discuss.

Intolerant people are likely to use those veto powers.

That was when there were some low thousands of software engineers in total. Hardly statistically significant to compare with today's population.

The first few engineers were female because of sexism in the 1970s. The only mainstream jobs they were allowed to have were teaching and programming. There are fewer females now because of lack of sexism not due to it. As society became liberal, women started becoming doctors and lawyers, which matches with their interests much more than programming.

This memo did not say women were bad engineers.

>The sloppy scientist says, "on average, across populations, left to its own devices, this group is [not as skilled] [neurotic] [hard to work with] [not as smart] [not as strong] [slower]" etc. They make assumptions without sufficient data, and the rigor is missing.

Here's the line: >The first problem is that human beings aren't averages, they're individuals.

His core argument was that there are biological reasons why women are under-represented in technology and that the initiatives taken by Google to reach out to females were illegal and discriminatory. He attempted to use science to justify his beliefs. That would lead many women, who already are self-conscience about their position, into wondering if they are present to their own merit, or because Google is trying to fill a quota.

I believe he did, and the parent you're responding to seems to as well, but they didn't say anything about "spar[ing] factual discourse." You seem to be reading that into their comment.

And I would definitely say there are factual discussions that can be had privately between individuals who already trust each other that are better kept private in order to spare the feelings of non-participants. Other humans have feelings, taking them into consideration is not weakness.

I'm arguing that line of reasoning is not constructive, and the collective's agreed upon opinions should not act as a barrier for scientific discourse. (which is what the memo was asking for)

Others disagreed.

Even slatestarcodex argued a little for both sides.

Its clear scientific consensus has not been reached, and people need to discuss this openly with out censors.

It's also possible, and more likely, for an overreaction to a memo to cause this kind of damage.

[1] I am not certain the extent to which this stereotype exists, so I am not sure it rises to the level of making the work environment "hostile", but I see that it could be the case.

How is this harm? And how is that alleged harmed Damore's fault?

Do you think she was unaware of Googles strong push for women in the workplace?

That seems unlikely.

Do you think she was previously unaware that many people might think diversity hires are less qualified?

That seems unlikely.

Did the memo guy state that diversity hires are lowering the bar? No. He went out of his way to say the opposite.

The most likely scenario is she has felt this way since she was hired and now has a specific person she can direct her anger/frustration/hurt onto.

> and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day.

This is demonstrably false. Imposter syndrome is quite common for men in tech.

I would be interested to see studies on imposter syndrome between genders and between fields.

Using that logic, should every male feel unwelcomed because of the pro-female activity at google and in corporate america?

Can't damore and every male make the same argument?

Should men feel offended that ycombinator has a "Ask a female engineer" segment but no "Ask a male engineer" segment?