He was literally preaching for equality. His point was that affirmative action programs do companies a disservice by making minority/women employees seem like they didn't get there through their own merit, and also punishes companies that don't have sufficient women due to a lack of interest women have in programming - which may or may not be innate.
...and he was fired for that. Crazy.
Being blind to the widespread dismissive, discriminatory, and derogatory behavior that routinely drives women from the industry does not inspire confidence. Choosing to ignore the quantities of good science on the topic in favor of what he did does not inspire confidence.
Then he chooses to widely declare this and demean large swathes of his coworkers. I'm all for open communication, but that doesnt absolve you of social consequences. When you make a big chunk of your company uncomfortable with you and how you view them....yeah, consequences, yeah, fired.
The only reason this is a surprise is because it happened to some like him and not the groups he was pretending to defend. I assure you most of them would be outraged and frustrated but nearly as surprised had the interaction gone the other way. All you have to do is watch and listen to know that.
Nobody seems to have a problem when it comes to auto mechanics, medical sciences, teachers, social services, lawyers, etc. Why are different interests such a controversial thing to accept?
2) tech is just the latest in a series. Comp sci degree enrollment for women DROPPED for recent decades - that's not a biological lack of interest. This has occurred in many professions - when the profession becomes high profile, the women are driven out.
3) you are proving the problem in the original memo. Instead of looking into any of the research on the topic, you are repeating what feels true. You speak with such confidence on the different interests of different genders, without considering how you know what the actual interests might be. (You're assuming what you see must be the result of interests, and use that to prove a difference of interests is the cause. That's a tautology) You assert that "no one seems to have a problem" with imbalances in other professions, when it is trivial to find people definitely have problems.
The research on the topic covers what I state about different countries and societies showing how different interests affect professions. Here are some links:
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...
https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-gir...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...
I've talked to Pr. Emeritus Mallard a lot three year ago, who was a biology researcher studying genotype and phenotype in animal/vegetal populations (for context, he got his degree around the time we discovered ADN). From what he remember, there was a lot more than 50% women when he started, at least as "programmers", although they were barely viewed as clever seamstress at the time.
Each time he wanted to do a computer-assisted statistical study in the early days, the programmer was a woman (again, from what he remembers) and he always thought the field was dominated by them, at least for grunts work.
I don't know what happened, by the time my daughter was doing CS the number of woman was < 10% and she and her compatriots were literally hounded out of the course by the bro-culture - personally I blame gamer culture, there's something terribly dysfunctional with kids these days
Computer science predates gaming, particularly online gaming with a social component, by a lot. You're committing the "all things with 4 legs are elephants" fallacy.
Here's once quote: "Starting when computer technology first emerged during World War II and continuing into the 1960s, women made up most of the computing workforce. By 1970, however, women only accounted for 13.6% of bachelor's in computer science graduates. In 1984 that number rose to 37%, but it has since declined to 18% -- around the same time personal computers started showing up in homes. According to NPR, personal computers were marketed almost exclusively to men and families were more likely to buy computers for boys than girls." ( from https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-... )
Here's a graph of the data: https://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/article/ctw.... ( found via https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/women-computer... )
Those are only talking about successful degrees, there are plenty of more datapoints to look at when you consider entry vs completion, and similar stats from post-graduation careers. This doesn't prove causality, but their statement stands as viable.
This is cherrypicking in the most bizarre way: if you can't explain the earlier oscillation, why should I accept the later oscillation? Which also doesn't line up with the type internet gaming which was exploited around the 2010s mark where alt-right groups began aggressively recruiting out of the gaming community via the "gamergate" movement.
In every case you're datapoints don't make any sense - there weren't 12 years olds playing Call Of Duty in 1985 and learning to scream racial and sexual epithets in voice chat. Games with a substantial violent component - the first person shooters - Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992.
Which still doesn't actually explain anything, because it's not remotely clear how "shooting nazis" lines up with excluding women from CS.
Clearly women in the 1970s had no other obstacles - they couldn't obtain credit(!), much less be on equal footing in so many other ways. The issue is not "but there is an earlier oscillation", it's "if women have been slowly moving in direction of equality, what reversed that?" or "If women were able to 'be interested' back then, how can we claim they aren't now"?
Sexist (and racial) exclusionary behavior ticks up once a field becomes commoditized and the general populace move on in, because the general populace carry with them the prevailing attitudes of the times.
Could you elaborate? - interested in hearing more about this.
If you're going to claim that women were only hired as secretaries for software dev work I hope you have actual data behind your assertion.
* CS is notorious for its solitary aspect. Stare at a screen juggling abstractions for hours on end.
* CS is notorious for lack of career paths. Between ageism and outsourcing, once you hit 40, the perception is you are relegated to the bottom of the pile.
It's also false. Software is inherently collaborative, especially at senior levels. And it will likely stay that way as long as the job looks a lot like consulting due to lack of defined sub-specialities. There is no technician specializing in particular forms of testing in the software industry. In medicine, there is a whole host of these specialities. Point being "it's your job, so figure it out" is the rule. And that means working out not just solutions but well defined problems with peers, customers, superiors, and other stakeholders.
It's possible to do interesting Computer Science in relative isolation, but good luck making a career out if it without collaboration, publication, teaching, and other inherently social activities.
You might know all this, but I think it's important for the industry to push back on the nerd-bro in a basement imagery since it's absolutely not what actually happens.
As a medical professional, you get to interact face to face with several people every day, and have a direct observable positive impact in their lives.
As a CS professional, you spend half your waking time dealing with or dishing out style guide feedback nitpicks via email / irc / github [FAANG experience], interacting remotely with funny little avatars. You very rarely directly experience the impact of your work, and the impact itself is quite a bit less clear cut positive.
It's more difficult to negotiate your hours in tech. How many people do you know who say want to only work 2-3 days a week for 5 hours a each day? The medical/dental field (especially if you have a clinic and don't do procedures or complex operations) tends to be "independent". Meaning, each case you get is a consultation, and your "productivity" is in how many patients you see in a given timeframe. This is much harder with programming.
I've seen this idea around and I think it's quite problematic. Some countries may have relatively "free choices", but that is just one cultural dimension. A culture is an inconceivably complex phenomenon. A culture also has education strategies, gender roles, specific kinds of toys and games, specific languages and sub-languages, a myriad of sub-cultures that youth will cluster around, cultural specific concepts and ideas and so on.
I'm not ruling out that biological factors play a role, but I see biological factors as just one part of a complex, and, additionally, if you look at history, it's very clear that cultural factors can and will override just about any biological imperative, from the will to live to the will to procreate. This should make it clear that cultural factors need to be systematically ruled out before we can begin to consider that biology is to blame.
Affirmative action policies literally make it easier for one group to get a spot in [insert institution here] than another group. And yet we still see discrepancies. We publicly shame and fire anyone who says "maybe biological differences play a role". And yet we still see discrepancies.
If we haven't ruled out cultural factors in the West at this point, I'm not sure how we can.
By effectively every metric, it is easier for a woman to become an engineer in 2020 than a man. There are many, many programs and initiatives which encourage women to get into STEM from an early age – the same do not really exist for men. Women get into (and graduate from) university at a higher rate. There is more funding available specifically to women that are pursuing STEM And yet still you have more men choosing to be engineers than women.
How could they be? That is an intractable problem. Cultural factors permeate our existence from birth. You'd literally have to catalogue every single thing influencing an individual's life from birth to the time they enter the workforce.
I have two daughters and I've seen just how powerful subconscious messages from media influence the way they think. My oldest daughter is only four and she is absolutely adamant that girls can _only_ marry boys. That's clearly because the Netflix shows and Disney movies she watches all have a "girl marries boy" narrative. Think about that: my daughter is only four, I've never talked to her about marriage, and she is already firm in her belief that same sex marriage is not OK.
You are talking about funding and affirmative action, but have you considered gendered advertising towards toddlers? Have you considered gendered concepts in TV shows and movies? How about in toys? Do you know how elementary school teachers, not to mention parents, are subtly encouraging and discouraging boys and girls by their words and actions? Children absorb these things and they are solidified into semi-permanent activation pathways in their developing brains.
There are a million factors here that we will never grasp. Affirmative action is useless if people's minds are already fully constructed by the time those programs take effect.
> Affirmative action is useless if people's minds are already fully constructed by the time those programs take effect.
This is exactly my (and, funnily enough, Damore's) point. Affirmative action / quotas are a bandaid that does not solve the problem and can actually make it worse by encouraging resentment (from non-affirmed groups) and increasing self-doubt (among affirmed groups). The solution is to treat individuals as individuals and not look at their race, sex, religion, etc. The only way to move forward as a society in the long-term is to truly look past any groups a person belongs to and see them as an individual. Continuing to lump people into groups and make decisions based of those groups has the opposite effect and will only hurt us in the long run.
> Your four-year-old daughter assuming that the norm is the only way to do something is her jumping to conclusions, not a mark against society
I didn't say it was a mark against society, you read that into my argument. If I thought this was wrong or bad, I wouldn't show her that kind of media. I am simply pointing out how _everything_ in a child's environment will influence their thinking, I made no moral judgement on the situation.
> Likewise, if she grows up thinking that girls shouldn't be programmers, that is on you.
I agree, but I think most adults aren't thinking "I'd better make sure my daughter knows she can be a programmer." If they aren't, then their children will be subject to myriad influences. That flows into my last point.
> This is exactly my (and, funnily enough, Damore's) point.
I read Damore's paper and that is not the part I take issue with. He claims the scientific evidence has established that women are _biologically_ less interested in engineering. I don't believe that has been established.
The parent comment referenced a study by Jordan Peterson that shows that in countries with more freedom of choice, women continue to choose people oriented occupations. My point is that freedom of choice _doesn't matter_ unless the entire society is focused on treating children equally. Again, I'm not making a moral judgement either way, just pointing out that the study doesn't take this into account. IIRC Jordan Peterson himself remarked that the results could be the effect of gender roles or culture.
I'm sceptic to this claim because discriminatory and derogatory behavior in medicine or law are much more widespread. And female students flock to these professions.
It could mean that woman who are driven away from software engineering by discriminatory and derogatory behaviour are somehow exhibiting differences to their law / medicine counterparts.
Is there any research in to this question?
https://www.girlsglobe.org/2019/03/12/time-confront-sexism-m...
I can't imagine sexism or work environment (looong hours and exhausting shifts) are substantially worse in engineering.
What is different is, in my opinion, that medicine/law is perceived as higher status than nerd stuff. There are popular tv series idolizing the glamorous life of New York lawyers and the heroism of doctors/nurses. When are techies depicted favorably and not as social autists? The goth chic in Navy:CIS maybe, but not much else.
This is the absolute crux of the entire paper, and it's very easy to view it with whatever politicising lens you want.
So lets try to flippantly and dispassionately break down how he constructed the statement
1) Women in absolute aggregate seem to not like CompSci.
2) We want more women in CompSci.
3) We should make CompSci more attractive to women.
4) What do Women in aggregate seem to like?
5) Is there room in CompSci fields for things that women like?
6) Yes, lots, it would be absolutely amazing if we could promote the things women in aggregate prefer to do in the field compsci. Those tropes of introverted men sitting in the basement should be subverted.
7) The current method of attracting women is harmful, we should instead change our desired behaviour of engineering to incorporate feminine ideals which could easily be incorporated.
Based on what? They don't end up there, but we have evidence (based on decreasing enrollment in degrees) that they USED to be "more interested" (If you use that as criteria). Do you think they generationally are just more aware of what it really is now?
How would that happen without ALSO becoming more aware of the absolute vile GamerGate-type shit women have to face, from the smallest "let me assume you don't know anything" to the "let's make rape jokes" to the "Can a woman have confidence she probably won't be groped"?
If you start with the premise that women "seem to not like CompSci", you've already assumed the problem and normalized a lot of factors that don't have to be normalized.
Sorry for that.
> Based on what? They don't end up there, [...]
Well, yes, you can argue the factors here but there is a trend that something is off-putting. Either Gamer-gate (something which is absolutely mired in controversy of its own right) or 'rape jokes' but more likely the tropes of: long working hours with a dead end at the end of it, competitiveness, isolation and the notion that if you're in technology your job is your life.
Frankly to assume you and I know the true reason is rather arrogant, I'm not a sociologist I can only read the corpus of their work and believe that they came to the correct conclusions.
Your comment indicates that there is an aggressive amount of sexism in tech, rape jokes and groping not withstanding, and I'm not going to ask for evidence of that despite my conviction that this is not nearly as endemic as you indicate; instead I'd ask the question: If marketing is also inherently sexist (and definitely more "boys club groping the ladies" than tech) why is there a much stronger representation of Women there?
I think you have internalised a mistruth about the tech industry at large.
> We should make [x] more attractive to [singleton].
Why?
Unless the field is more toxic to [singleton] or there is more productivity due to "diversity" at which point you are admitting that people are different on biological (or social) level and have different interests, views etc.
My mother explained diversity to me this way:
"We are each of us, unique but equal. Meaning that while you will grow up and be stronger than me, I will be able to produce children. This doesn't make either of us better, both should be respected as equal. There is value but difference in both." (not verbatim)
If we assume that on average women are more prone to overthinking, then it likely follows that having a women the team designing a product with a man (who, on average are more likely to be dismissive and flippant) then there's a necessary conflict, and the product will be better for everyone if it happens.
We should not be judging a fish by it's ability to climb a tree, we should instead be asking, how do we define the value of swimming and how do we ensure we have great swimmers working with us.
Does it really make a difference if the same feature is implemented by a man versus a woman?
I think we are agreeing.
That's why I highlighted more attractive to [singleton] when you could be more inclusive by avoiding singletons.
Why shouldn't a field be attractive to everyone - blind, deaf, disabled etc equally?
Imo, focusing on singletons is detrimental because by doing so, you will end up discriminating automatically because there will always be other groups that you won't or don't see.
Why focus on women now?
Because there’s a lot of women in the world and they seem to not like this field.
I don’t really have a good answer, I thought Damores memo was pretty good and I thought it might provoke the powers that be to approach the distribution of underrepresented factions a little better.
For instance, if you want to hire blind people (and you should want to hire a few blind people) then offering accessibly tools to them is a no-brainer.
And if you’re not getting any applicants, maybe you should look at why. Maybe your job board can’t be read by blind people. (To keep the analogy going).
Source. I have seen few and they do show women working in the field not liking it. The problem with that is it could be those women are outliers given the gender ratio in some CS fields (I will ignore non biological genders), the field could be attractive but don't have good working conditions for women, women don't have much interest etc.
All of those can be true and change your steps to make the field more attractive.
As an example, you can look into construction field which is heavily dominated by men and women in the field feels the same but outside, it's a different story in terms of interest.
How do you make construction work more attractive for women?
I am curious to hear your opinion about below too. What are the problems do you see with this approach? -
You vote with your job. If you don't like things, quit. Either the people working at the company are discriminatory and don't care or you are the problematic one. If you think you are right that a big company discriminates openly, then wouldn't you have to admit that most people at your company don't care about discrimination as much as their paycheck or they are discriminatory themselves. If a company can easily replace employees, then the society doesn't value equality.
If we had UBI, wouldn't discrimination of any kind be detrimental given that workers wouldn't be forced to work for low wages and companies which discriminate based on pseudoscience be at a disadvantage because they won't get talent that other companies can. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Why are people not pursuing UBI for gender equality?
Well, what I mean is that we're not even close to a gender parity, it would be fine at 35-40% female in my opinion but the industry is closer to 14-25% (depending on country) and to me that indicates a problem.
I think quota's and the extreme bias towards education programs that favour women is problematic though, in my opinion it infantilises Women which I dislike because I really believe women are just as capable as men in this field.
That's why I liked Damores memo, it spoke to the idea that instead of having quotas we should seek to bring in a more human centred approach to asking the question: what do women bring uniquely to the table and how can we ensure that women know that this is desirable and that they're welcome.
Killing the trope that Tech work is isolationist was one example from the memo that would likely cause some traction.
> As an example, you can look into construction field which is heavily dominated by men and women in the field feels the same but outside, it's a different story in terms of interest.
> How do you make construction work more attractive for women?
I think drawing a parallel to construction is a fine one, but I would argue instead for Architecture.
Construction doesn't need a diverse set of views, neither does nursing or mining. But Architecture does because the consumers of architecture is everyone.
And I think that's the crucial difference here: things that are designed for everyone should have a diverse set of eyes on them.
Secondly, I don't understand why it has to be CS. A product requires more roles than a CS graduate. UX/UI, design, support, marketing, management, documentation, etc.
There can be more women in any of those roles and there seems to be in some.
A team of CS graduate wouldn't pull off a global product even if they are diverse because they are CS graduates.
Sorry, I thought we were still discussing the James Damore memo, because he said and backed up the assertion that women seemed to not _want_ to join compsci programs or join the associated industries in aggregate when compared to men.
I think you're assuming that I am the poster child for diversity and inclusion; I am really not. I just make my own decisions I'm definitely on nobodies side and I'm not going to go down the path of defending other industries.
I can just see a value in diversity in teams that work on products we all use, and I think I communicated that effectively enough in previous comments.
And I wasn't talking about damore memo.
I like the idea of diversity and support it but it depends on what cost. My country suffers from reservation (quota) and it's wrecked.
Although I wanted to talk more about organisational diversity. Whether organisations as a whole have 50/50 gender ratio at scale. Whether roles are "diverse".
Because that would be more interesting.
Quotas are terrible no good bad and ugly hacks which will cause a lot of harm and the reasons why are controversial.
I think 50/50 gender parity is a stupid goal too, I think more representation but if it's not 50:50 then it doesn't mean that there is sexism, 60:40 is fine even 70:30 is ok, wether it skews more to women or men, it doesn't matter, the point is that women, men, blind, black- everyone needs to have their voices heard on teams that design global products.
The closer you try to force it to 50:50 the worse and much harder it'll be, bureaucrats will love you though, at what point do you stop breaking down societal boundaries? I'd argue that getting a few voices from each are is a good thing but I don't think exactly defining the distribution of the country is a good goal.
Instead of quotas, we should investigate what would make the industry more appealing to those under-heard voices.
Damore says that women tend to favour flexible working hours, that's great Tech can support that.
Damore says that women tend to favour jobs that have a high emphasis on collaboration, excellent, tech can support that.
This is why I dislike the overwhelming criticism of Damores paper, because it's the quintessential attack on the author for daring to insinuate that women are different, instead we should boulder through the idea that Women == Men, and anything other than that is sexism, but also we want 50:50 gender parity... and why isn't it happening! sexism! therefore men are bad and we should hire women over men using quotas! that will fix it!.
It's egregious, and stupid, and harmful. And a conversation about why and trying to actually improve the situation is more fruitful than shit slinging because the only people to let Damore speak are right-wingers.
If you're left-wing (as I am) you should want him to speak, he's promoting equality and compassion.
Teaching, especially pre-school teaching, is going to be tough to make attractive for men.
And for a lot of parents too.
One of the teachers I most learned from was male, he actually sparked my interest in computers because he ran an after school computer club for 20 pence.. which for a poor household such as mine was affordable..
Then you will see gender bias. :)
I think I missed something.
You vote with your job. If you don't like things, quit. Either the people working at the company are discriminatory and don't care or you are the problematic one. If you think you are right that a big company discriminates openly, then wouldn't you have to admit that most people at your company don't care about discrimination as much as their paycheck or they are discriminatory themselves. If a company can easily replace employees, then the society doesn't value equality. We should fix that foremost.
If we had UBI, wouldn't discrimination of any kind be detrimental given that workers wouldn't be forced to work for low wages and companies which discriminate based on pseudoscience be at a disadvantage because they won't get talent that other companies can. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Why are people not pursuing UBI for gender equality?
As for an opposing view point, check this - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... which says fewer women take stem in developed countries than under developed countries. There will always be more differences. We shouldn't do a shut down case for either. It's not yet clear what percentage are affected by it. If it is, mention the source.
"Biological sex plays no role in life choices / job preferences" (which is different than: "we should not prevent people from going into X choice/profession because of their biological sex". A priori considering the former as "truth" / "obvious" etc is also a political idea.
What about all the people that were made uncomfortable by his firing? Can we fire those responsible for that? This got so silly so fast
I don’t agree with how he went about pursuing the issue but your assessment does not comport with the views he’s shared with me or our contemporaries who stay in touch with him.
No it's not. Nowhere in the paper did he say that women can't become good engineers. You're literally defaming his work. Either support your accusation with evidence, or don't comment.
> Nowhere in the paper did he say that
You both are saying the same thing- he did not use those exact words.
The parent comment is saying that despite not saying "Women can't be engineers", the entire purpose of the paper, in the view of that reader, was to insinuate that women can't be engineers. It's not terribly hard to promote an idea without ever saying it explicitly. Perhaps you didn't read the deeper meaning out of the memo.
And demanding those who interpret things differently than you "don't comment" doesn't promote discussion, it ends it. When someone says something you disagree with, don't tell them to shut up, ask them why they see things differently. Debate. Discuss. Grow.
Although his intentions were unclear by his vague approach to the subject, I believe he didn't mean to say women can't be engineers.
Most of the time he gave population-based examples of how women decided not to be engineers. His thesis was to show that forcing women in STEM fields is not a fair practice to both women and men who want to be STEM professionals.
Please take this idea with an open mind. When you arrive a singular purpose to the paper, it may say more about your views than it does about the author's. He didn't have a thesis that stated directly that he meant to "insinuate that women can't be engineers", so you're literally putting words in his mouth.
And the "don't comment" line explicitly said it was in response to statements that are unfounded, NOT statements that disagree.
Putting that all together, you seem to be having an argument with a ghost of your own making.
Ok, please explain to me how the memo suggests that women can't be engineers.
His "work" does a fine job of that on its own.
I don't have an opinion on whether he's right or wrong but I don't think he shouldn't be able to make that argument...
Yes, it still leaves open whether the following is true:
> when women do prefer the field, they tend to be amazing engineers
Hence I'd say there is nothing wrong with the statement.
If they think 50% of engineers should be women, I would like to hold them to an even higher standard by requiring that out if that 50% of women,each national origin,ethnicity,political/ideological upbringing and social status (mother,single,divorced,etc...) is also proportionally represented. If this is about making up for historical prejudice then let every women of a wronged group be equally represented. You will soon see the silliness of the pursuit.
It is the cause that needs policing and adjustment (upstream) not the effect.
Damore deliberately chose to cast doubt on whether the women Google hired were as good as the men. Otherwise, it's easier and less controversial to just argue that any form of discrimination is wrong.
You cant have so much more women than the rest of the industry without that being true. There literally is not enough women coming through engineering schools to allow for that without you a) discriminating against men based on sex, and b) lowering the bar for women.
There is no doubt. It is a mathematical given.
So even if we accept that the average female engineer is not as good as the average male, and there are less female engineers than male, and that Google hires more female engineers than other players in the industry (relative to male hires), it is still absolutely possible that the bar is not lower. Maybe they look harder, maybe they pay more to female engineers with a given competence level, maybe there's no difference, etc.
The rate of female attendance in comp sci has been in decline since the 70s. At my university it was quite literally 100 to 1.
You cant have a 50-50 hiring pool without some fuckery there.
And for what its worth i absolutely do not accept that the avergage female engineer is not as good as the average male engineer.
If anything, they are anecdotally better equiped.
> All you need to do is to pick more carefully (invest more resources, etc.).
So what amounts to increase their total comp because theyre female and you have a quota to fill?
Thats sexual discrimination is it not?
I really need to say while im passionately pissed off about the way identity politics has infected this industry i am more than welcome to more females joining the industry and more than hapoy to see the broculture fuck right off.
This needs fleshing out. One goal is to give equal preference to equally deserving candidates, say candidates with individual score x, regardless of their group membership. It's not clear that you can pick based solely on score x and still achieve that goal, no matter how carefully you pick. If you're picking on x and group membership, you're harming one group of people with score x (assuming a fixed headcount, where advantaging one person means disadvantaging another).
My take is that when you optimize for equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity you break something at the opportunity end (its either or, not both.)
Regarding a or b, this is mostly b, lowering the bar. But its also a, sexual discrimination.
If you think its not, please explain how you think it would go down if google was focusing hiring efforts to hire white males because they wanted to match the current male to female ratio seen in engineering schools and currently have too many females in the office.
Because i fail to see how aiming to hire more females than the industry schools can bare simply because there are too many men in the office is anything but sexist.
Nowadays I think it's a better strategy at Google to not discuss if you don't agree with its policies. It's still a great workplace as long as you can discard politics.
There are large swathes of people who can't just "discard politics" because they are directly affected by the current political status quo.
It's great to have empathy for people in a less fortunate position, and yes we have a lot of problems in our society, but FAANG software engineers are arguably the least oppressed people on the planet.
Or is that a too naive view of what Googlers are supposed to be capable of?
What I learned over time is that it's just better to work 8x5 days, don't do overtime/weekends, because it's not worth it anymore. For 8x5 hours of work Google is amazing.
Heterosexual cisgender white christian male FAANG software engineers may be. Racism and other bigotry doesn't stop affecting you because of economic class or other social position of advantage orthogonal to the basis of the bigotry.
Similarly, police officers are also a relatively privileged group of people, but 90% of mistaken identity shootings of off-duty police by police between 1982 and 2010 were shootings of black or hispanic officers.
That's an interesting statistic. Can I have the source? (This is a genuine question, I'm not trying to cast doubt on what you said.)
Imagine how you'd feel. Imagine people would generally claim that someone who looks like you is a bad engineer (say, someone with your hair color). And then imagine that people would expect you to constantly disprove that assumption, just because of your hair color.
You'd be on the edge all the time. You'd never feel at home in the field. And whenever you interact with someone who doesn't have past work experience with you, they'd still assume you're a bad engineer.
As the moderation bears witness, we live in an age where positive is somehow negative.
You've now rephrased your objection that you would have a problem because you would assume female programmers were less qualified, which is not what you said in your original comment.
- There is a score threshold you must cross to get a job;
- score is normally representative of competence;
- individuals belonging to group X get a score boost.
It follows that it's possible for someone to cross the minimum threshold thanks to the boost given by their belonging to the favoured group, and not because of their competence alone. It's not a matter of "the point of view of the woman" or "my point of view". It's not a point of view. It's a logical consequence that can be inferred by women, men, everyone, equally.
Lack of interest in a subject does not mean a lack of capability.
But all things being equal, I would rather hire the person who is more motivated and interested in the field than the person who isn't because skills can be learned and motivation produces results.
my point was pretty simple. If society at large, in ways small and big, encourage women from joining a field, I think it's likely fewer will participate.
This is the argument behind Sheryl Sandberg creating stock photos that demonstrate more inclusion. If all I see are white men with grey hair in photos as doctors, don't you think that might bias women to think that's who doctors are? That's not 100% of what influences an interest, but it's an important one.
Current research generally does not find evidence that variations in preferences, psychology, or personality stem from genetic or biological factors. Rather, they’re primarily attributed to culture and socialization.
A rebuttal a year later in the related section points out omissions from this paper and offers a deeper perspective on the differences
[1] http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/4753/6/symplectic-version....
Can you direct me to where I suggested there is no systematic career discrimination towards minorities? If that's how you interpreted my comment, then I apologize for that. There is absolutely substantial structural discrimination; I don't intend to minimize that.
The comment I was replying to did in fact specify as an assumption (the antecedent of the conditional) that "society tells a woman she's not likely as interested in something." This framing excludes the possibility that something else (namely biology) may affect a person's preferences.
I don't think that's a reasonable assumption - again, little scientific evidence supports that view. (Even intuition does not support that view: I don't think most people would argue that men for the most part are "brainwashed" by society to have sexual preferences for women. Likely some of this is biological; in fact, there is a good evolutionary reason for it!)
20 years ago there was a lot less of a push for women in tech and you actually did hear lots of people espouse this view, now the programmes and encouragement is everywhere and the social cost of a different view is your job.
What is being argued and and what is happening don't seem to correlate.
I have, and I regularly hear depressing and disturbing examples.
"happy with" is not the same as "interested in" however it seems like the last 2 decades have had a lot of focus on letting people follow their passion.
> Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts
Edit: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo... page 4 has a diagram at the top explicitly explaining that.
Ah, the classic "so you mean (something not said, and never meant)"...
It is not what he was saying. Why do so many people absolutely insist on misinterpreting it to the point of willful distortion?
How did I "convince myself of an ulterior motive"? I read what was written, and then I asked questions and did research. Are these studies he cites credible? [No]. Why would he bring these up? What motivations would be involved? How do the people he is talking about feel? Did he consider their feelings? If I were Google, what are my options, and what are the results of those options?
Dog-whistles and micro-aggressions thrive on failure to ask these questions. It empowers the status quo to entrench so long as they avoid the absolute most stark of statements.
As someone that also read it, those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying. A facade of misrepresented psuedoscience doesnt change the intent, motivation, or reality.