But it might impact supply and demand of applicants with a certain background (either educational or self-study). Companies can take responsibility for the demand, but not the supply of human capital. Solutions are more likely found within education, family and youth culture. The top tier companies (like Google) can't hide behind that fact, since they generally get first pick, but that would make it even harder for lower tier companies to uphold an effective diversity policy.
There may be a strong business opportunity to exclusively invest in and hire minorities. If you have (a lot of) money and believe minorities to be discriminated against due to culture, hiring policy or financial rewards, it logically follows that you should invest in minorities. You would get, on average, better people that are more competitive.
Nothing argues quicker than profit. And the end of the day, we live in a capitalistic society. The economic arguments are the only types of arguments that will change anything.
If the invisible hand of the free market has a bias where it does not properly allocate its resources for maximum profitability, go bet against it and get rich.
There's a useful graph somewhere of various degrees earned by gender split. The numbers run the gamut.
Thanks in Advance!
https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot...
It spends a while at the beginning on credentials and the importance of using citations (something damore failed at), and starts getting into the science at 'universal across all cultures, are we sure?'
Uncivil swipes will get your account banned on HN, so please don't post like this again.
Maybe read the medium post he linked to? (The irony of your comment is killing me). If Wikipedia, The Atlantic, and the NY Post appear as citations more than primary literature, it is absolutely a failure to cite (as described in the medium post).
The one legit paper he linked to (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.173...) didn't reach the conclusion he was claiming. That paper demonstrates that in egalitarian developed societies men are less oppressed by other men, not that there are innate differences. In all cases women's behavior is the result of being oppressed to a greater or lesser degree. In other words in less developed societies many men are just as oppressed by the powerful as women and use the same coping strategies.
He also failed to address the fact that interest doesn't necessarily correlate with ability. Research shows men and women don't differ in empathy unless men know they are being judged, which suggests it is a culturally-imposed trait and definitely not universal.
He makes a lot of assumptions without bothering to explain them, eg: assuming effective meritocracy and blindly ignoring his own caveats, never resolving the conflict with his own arguments. He never once presents ANY evidence that cognitive differences between men/women influence performance in software engineering.
Here are just a few papers: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-11115-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-01642-012 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9450.1963.... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3438111 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10666324 http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-p... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951011/
There are plenty of books and articles on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troubleso... https://sites.google.com/site/dianehalperncmc/books/sex-diff... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/science/monogamys-boost-to... https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-struggle-for-equality-a-fight-... https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/sexual-body-size-... http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on-div...
One interesting result is if you can get women to picture themselves as men most of the cases where we do see differences disappears, again suggesting the vast majority of differences are cultural: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s...
Honestly it doesn't take much effort to stop with the confirmation bias. Do some actual research on your own and don't just look for sources that reinforce your existing biases.
James Damore wrote a document mostly describing his feelings and sprinkled in a few footnotes to make it look like he had done some research. He is woefully out of date with the current research (because he obviously didn't do any). That's pretty much what everyone does regarding this topic, both on HN and elsewhere.
It has become a demoralizing slog to repeatedly attempt to educate people when they are both a) so ignorant on a topic and b) so absolutely certain they are correct despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I suppose this issue falls into the category of things that "everyone knows" so people Dunning-Kruger themselves into a position without giving it any thought.
The question of whether there are biological differences that make men and women suited for different tasks has been studied for decades. There are mountains of data. Brilliant men and women have written extensively on the topic. For the love of God, please take the time to educate yourself.
Even if you want to cling to the idea that women aren't as suited to programming (despite the evidence to the contrary) you could at least avoid doing an incompetent job by being aware of the research in the field.
You say biological reasons, I say social programming. The whole nature vs. nurture debate has been going on for ages.
Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society.
Consider this: back in the 50s and 60s, women dominated computer programming. It was seen as an obvious career choice for young, talented women. This article explains the history much better:
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...
My point is women aren't into programming because lack of biological ability.
The science says biological reasons:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Baron-Cohen/publi...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spice...
Among others...
> Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society.
That isn't true, either.
Let's look at Sweden, which is a modern egalitarian society. If society is largely gender-blind, then people should overwhelmingly make "free" choices. i.e. choices which are strongly influenced by biology.
And we see that. Jobs in Sweden are still overwhelmingly split by gender. Engineers are overwhelmingly male, and people-oriented jobs (nurse, etc.) are overwhelmingly female.
Here's another discussion of gender differences:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201...
To deny that men and women are psychologically different is to claim that evolution / biology works on the physical attributes, but does not work on the corresponding mental attributes.
That claim just cannot possibly be true.
>> racism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be.
>To play devils advocate, racism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why blacks and whites are treated differently, e.g. basketball (mostly blacks) versus swimming (mostly whites)
If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.
> If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you :)
We, on HN, are keenly aware of Turing's contributions - the fact that he was gay has literally no bearing on our appreciation of his contributions;
Wifi as you know it (frequency hopping) was invented by a female
Many people with many contributions to the advancement of modern civilization were... human!!!!
Now, if we really want to be inclusionary - who are the undersung animals? The jelly fish, lab rats, telomeres of the immortal, Pavlov's dogs?
This whole argument is quite stupid (stupid that it is even an argument)
Fighting over merits is bullshit; hey Sur Gregor Clegane, squeeze through that doggy door. Hey Gary Coleman, bring me that 500 pound axel!
Physicality surely has its pigeon holes, mental capabilities do as well: clearly gender does not.
Brianne of Tarth could dig a bigger ditch than theon or Tyrion...
The sad thing is that Google has built itself on an interview process of supposed meritocracy - and witha single memo exposed themselves as not being such... wage fixing etc...
Human judgement is the real culprit. Bias. Where is it learned, innate or developed? How do personal, professional,psychological, physiological or familial bias occur and present?
Well, they clearly just present all around you! They are everywhere - so how to judge another?
The problem with the issue at hand is that we are using professional/physiological situations to judge psychological/other factors...
Bias silos exist. I'll defer my time to the gentleman with better articulation ability than I.
Wow. You realize that you, or whoever you read or heard this from, has absolutely no evidence to back this up, right? Not to mention we're talking about passing up millions because someone played Future in the locker room, if there's a white dude that'd do that, I dunno what to say. But best of all is when you listen to white players in the league and how they've picked up black colloquialisms in the speech (listen to Dirk Nowitzski talk), or are rather comfortable doing shit like that time fucking Doug Collins and Jalen Rose were quoting "What happened to that boy?" by Baby and Clipse.
(it's a play on current PC tropes on the lack of women in tech and how insane they sound when applied to race/nba)
Replace with religion and blacks and whites with Jews and muslims, sure the paragraph can still be written as such, but still doesn't change the original meaning.
If it wasn't obvious, one of my points was that being good at swimming is just that - it has nothing to do with software engineering. The whole "inherently different" argument is a red-herring if it has no provable bearing on the ability to do the (software engineering) work.
edit: my main point though, was that differences in statistical sport affinities are not, and do not explain "racism" - just as difference in statistical career-affinity is not, and doesn't explain "sexism".
>Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same.
You argued against a strawman.
That being said as long as a job/role's requirements are appropriate and fair, there should be no reason a senegalese (black) woman, philippino (asian) man, or danish (caucasian) woman can't be a software engineer, soldier, nurse, or nanny.
That makes about as much sense as saying "let me remap what you're saying to hair color"
> If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.
It does sound insane, because it is insane.
But it's your text. Not mine.
The problem is that you're making the following insinuation:
there are no more differences between men and women than between black people and white people
That statement is simply not true. In terms of physical prowess, men are stronger, faster, etc. There is just no question:
* the record for mens "clean and jerk" is as much as the womans record... plus the woman who's doing the record
* national / olympic womens teams (soccer, baseball, etc.) compete with mens high school teams... and lose.
* the records for swimming, sprinting, marathon, etc. show huge difference by sex
What is insane is denying biological reality, while insinuating I'm no better than a racist.
More importantly, your original point dodges the issue of sexism altogether. Obviously there are biological differences between men and women, but sexism is not an issue over who is able to bear children and who has more estrogen in their body. Sexism is about an unfair social power dynamic. Nobody is denying that there is a biological reality to it; the conversation is over how to work with that knowledge to give both men and women an even playing field.
Take one example that men will sometimes fall in love with women they work with, or vice versa. Without any rules or precedence you can end up with seriously messed up power dynamics, like a man in a more senior position pressuring women into unwanted sexual situations in which rejection puts them at fear for their jobs. Sexual harassment laws exist to try to protect against this, and inter-office relationships are generally forbidden as a preventative measure.
Sexism is a really difficult and nuanced issue, and to say "yeah but this will always be an issue because men and women are biologically different" trivializes it and takes away from the discussion.
Except I wasn't being sexist. The re-phrasing of my comment as racism was offensive and demeaning, and entirely not analogous.
> Sexism is about an unfair social power dynamic
Such as men dying earlier than women? Such as 80% of homeless being men? Such as 93% of "on the job" deaths being male? Such as never-married childless women earning more than equivalent men... going back to the 1960's?
I could go on.
My point is that everyone touts the party line of "OMFG women are oppressed". Very few people look into the facts. And when all the facts are presented, it's a whole lot more nuanced than "think of the Women!"
> to say "yeah but this will always be an issue because men and women are biologically different" trivializes it and takes away from the discussion.
You're reading a whole lot more into my comment than I said. That shows rather more projection that reality-based discussion.
To play devils advocate, sexism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why men and women are treated differently, e.g. child care (mostly women) versus hard physical labor (mostly men)
Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same.
But even with that, there may be biological reasons why men and women are interested in different things. Which may mean more women in job A, or more men in job B.
> Maybe other industries suffer less from these things because they have a longer history and have more guild-like working practices, where professional behavior is more clearly defined.
Any job which has "guild-like working practices" is very likely going to be male dominated. Because most guilds were based on men working. e.g. construction, stone masons, electricians, etc. And those jobs are rife with sexism, because of their historical roots.
> I studied CS and I never learned about what it means to be a professional software developer.
Because schools teach concepts, not social skills. They should probably teach social skills and social practices, IMHO. Everyone would be better off for it.