
10 page anti-diversity screed circulating internally at Google - cszerzo
http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320
======
npxcomplete
My interpretation is that the author is cheifly concerned with two points:
that biology impacts performance, and that dissenting views in Google are at
time met with hostility that is more political reflex than it is critical
countenance.

The first point should be obviously true, however we live in a time were
identity politics on the left tries to shout down any but the hard line
reaction to biological determinism. Both extremes are false and saying so
should not be controversial.

"There are differences between the sexes." This is a statement about
populations not individuals. It is also not a claim of causes only the current
state of affairs.

Of all the coworkers I've had in tech, women make up a strong majority of the
top 10. Yet of all the women I've known most weren't driven to excel to the
same level of most men I've known. Whether you blame culture or biology for
that sexism play A role, not the ONLY role in creating the gender discrepancy
we see in the fields of STEM and executive management.

~~~
biocomputation
First you say this:

>> for that sexism play A role, not the ONLY role in creating the gender
discrepancy

Then you say this:

>> Yet of all the women I've known most weren't driven to excel to the same
level of most men I've known.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in that I'm going to assume that it
wasn't your intention to make a disturbingly sexist remark in a discussion
about sexism.

You can replace women with African-American, and what you wrote sounds an
awful lot like the racist drivel that came out of the South for 200 years. If
anything, the author of the memo's attempts to argue that there is some
biological basis for discrimination only serve to weaken his position.
Furthermore, this 'biological differences basis' for discrimination eventually
leads us to eugenics if taken to its illogical extreme. And yes, people have
taken it that far in the not so recent past.

In the cases where what you wrote is even partially true, that some women
(appear on the surface) to be less ambitious and less driven than men, did you
ever stop to ask yourself why?

I've worked in tech my entire career, and I've witnessed appalling sexism. I
have watched with my own eyes while women suffered humiliations like being
told things like "no one invites you to meetings because you can't keep
anything secret". Then there are things like code reviews. At work we recently
had to institute a 'no abusive code review' policy because a small cadre of
the men were using the code review process to hammer several of the few female
engineers we've managed to somehow convince to come work for us. Like most
places, our workplace policies are required largely due to behavior that was
originated by men.

It seems like it's awfully easy to forget that women are half our species! How
can anyone in their right mind think that sexism, unconscious or otherwise, is
okay? How can anyone think that it's because 'women are less driven to
succeed'? How can anyone think this when half their DNA comes from a man and
the other half from a woman?

As a gay man (a gender/sexual minority), I can actually relate to how awful it
feels to be treated like a second class citizen simply because of something
that I do not feel like I can change (my sexual orientation). I'm not sure how
much money it has cost me, but at the very least it has cost me the difference
in filing single vs. filing jointly for the first 17 years of my marriage.
Women pay similar costs when they're paid less over the course of their
career, and/or when they're denied promotions for 'being ambitious'.

The attitude that underlies your comment -that you could actually believe that
what you wrote is true and somehow justifies unequal treatment- is utterly,
totally, and exactly why we need the programs the author of the now infamous
memo argues against.

~~~
Zarath
At the risk of sounding sexist, I will say that conflating race and sex as
being roughly the same level of difference is a little bit intellectually
dishonest. I'm not going to sit here and argue about what those differences
are, but sex hormones most certainly affect behavior and emotions far more
than skin pigments.

I also appreciate you sharing your story, but I personally find it a bit
uncomfortable that these sorts of posts need to be qualified ("As a gay
man..."). While I understand you were trying to support the point you were
making, this sort of thing feeds into the notion that some opinions occupy a
privileged position within our society, which feeds such "screeds" as this.
It's almost hypocritical in a way, because I imagine that the anger and
"otherness" that oppressed or minority groups feel is not unlike what the
author of such a rant is feeling. Basically when it comes to cultural
discourse, you're wrong, evil, the enemy, or ignored.

~~~
DanBC
> because I imagine that the anger and "otherness" that oppressed or minority
> groups feel is not unlike what the author of such a rant is feeling.

No one is going to kill OP for his opinion, or try to rape his opinion out of
him, which is something that still happens to gay people.

~~~
Zarath
Fair point. Job loss is non-trivial, albeit nowhere near as bad as rape or
murder.

------
ankushnarula
A 2011 Norwegian documentary series had an episode called "The Gender
Paradox"[1] that examined this very issue in depth with interviews with
evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists and sociologists. It
arrived at the conclusion that employment disparities increase in many
professional fields due to natural divergent proclivities when socio-economic
opportunities become equal for the sexes.

ON AVERAGE in Norway (one of the top 5 most equal countries), females prefer
more people-oriented fields such as medicine and males will favor more
systems-oriented fields such as engineering. Again, this is ON AVERAGE. There
are major overlaps in many fields (e.g. arts and research sciences) - and in
some fields there is virtually none (e.g. nursing vs sanitation). This is not
controversial amongst scientists who do their best to suspend ideological or
wishful thinking.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70)

------
hw
Let's take gender, race, food preference out of the equation. Say a person
with qualities A and another person with qualities B both interview at a
company. Turns out that at the company (and in the industry in general, type
Bs are a minority), and there's a movement to hire more of type Bs.

If type A did better in an interview than type B, but the company ended up
hiring a type B because of the whole diversity thing, is that considered a bad
thing? Wouldn't that be considered preferential treatment? Why are there
company initiatives or programs for B but not for A.

As someone who is of type B, I feel offended that there are 'initiatives' that
help me get jobs at companies. I dont need my hand held or the job given to me
just because i'm the only B applicant in a pool of 10 applicants

~~~
closeparen
It doesn't make any sense in the context of an arbitrary type A and B free of
historical baggage. The idea is that we type As have, on balance, experienced
more "luck" and preferential treatment in our favor than type Bs _because_ we
are type As, so some artifically injected disfavor pushes the overall system
closer to balance. It's fighting unfairness with unfairness in the opposite
direction.

I was born to well-employed, college-educated parents in a stable marriage,
moved to my childhood home specifically for its excellent school district, had
plenty of quiet space and encouragement to do homework, funded through a top-5
university, etc. I've capitalized on those advantages and done quite well, but
I didn't earn them. I don't mind when some of the competitive power I merely
inherited is transferred to someone who inherited none. Probably they worked
even harder, they just started lower.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
The white kids with single mothers in the trailer park who have fought for a
chance to apply for these jobs might like a word with you.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
Yes and luckily for them, they don't have to additionally suffer from systemic
racial discrimination, which the equivalent member of a minority group
frequently would have.

Nowhere does it proclaim "If your X your life is hard, if you're Y your life
is easy." What is said (roughly) is that for two people otherwise equivalent,
if one is X and the other is Y, that in _general_ , in _current_ society life
is additionally harder for Xs - and this is due to for historical reasons.

~~~
cprayingmantis
I'm not sure your observation of of "white trash", "redneck", and "trailer
rats" not suffering from systemic racial discrimination is an accurate one. I
for one can assure you that people know how to suss out the difference and it
starts at a young age.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
It's not clear to me what you're saying. Unless I'm misunderstanding you,
"redneck" isn't a racial group.

No-one is arguing that class-based discrimination doesn't exist, as it
certainly does.

------
amateurpolymath
My impression when reading this was that the author intended it to be taken
seriously. It is written with a decidedly "academic" tone. However, it is very
light on actual research and evidence. Author says "Humans are inherently
cooperative" is a bias on the Left. Where does this come from? More unsourced
claims that strike me as suspect: "Respect for the strong/authority" is a bias
on the Right. Women have more "Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather
than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness."

~~~
habitue
So the gender differences he talks about are very obviously coming from this
meta-study:

[http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x](http://sci-
hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x)

He uses a lot of the same terminology as the paper, references big-5
personality traits etc, as well as the same personality dimensions like
people-object axis.

The left vs. right stuff is clearly coming from Jonathan Haidt's Moral
foundations theory:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory)

The author of the "manifesto/screed" is drawing pretty clearly from good
research, but isn't linking to it or discussing it in context

~~~
ElmntOfSurprise
Note however that Gizmodo say

> Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted

The links that were removed are probably relevant. Some passages in the text
even have quotation marks around them where I assume that links to sources
were removed.

~~~
gopz
Yeah, what was up with that? I was really disappointed that stuff was omitted
and assumed it was why some of the author's claims seemed so bold. Is there a
link to something closer to the original around?

~~~
eneveu
I think it's this one, but the links don't seem to work:
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-
Ideo...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-
Echo-Chamber.html)

Edit: Here is the PDF with working links:
[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-
Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)

------
remarkEon
>Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with
violence and isn’t backed by evidence.

This is something that's part of "training" at Google?

~~~
trav4225
In my experience, this is standard "training" almost everywhere.

------
mcphage
Simple response to his thesis: there used to be more women in programming...
back when it was harder.

~~~
jorgemf
was it harder before? Are you sure? I think your response doesn't change his
argument, before tech was less relevant for the economy, so it was less
stressful and had less status. That is why it wasn't interesting for men to
get into it and preferred other jobs with more status and stress (and bigger
salaries). But now the top companies are tech companies.

~~~
mcphage
Less status, absolutely. But much harder. We work at such a high level of
abstraction,we don't need to care about our resource usage much, we don't need
to care much about what the machine is doing, we don't have to write
everything ourselves because there are thousands of powerful libraries
available for free.

So yes. Before, programming was hard, and low status. Now it's easy and high
status, and men think that women aren't there because it's too hard. No, they
were there when it was hard.

~~~
jorgemf
> men think that women aren't there because it's too hard

Who thinks that? Hard is something relative. The author says that men could be
more prepared to tech because a biological predisposition that makes tech
easier positions for them (better abstract thinking and more tolerance for
stress, for example), while women are more prepared for other things likes
taking care of others (because they are better in socializing and empathy). As
tech became more competitive the women just left it for other things while men
get into to get more status.

~~~
mcphage
If you think that programming is a more stressful job than traditionally
female jobs like nurse, teacher, or childrearing, then I've got a bridge to
sell you in Brooklyn.

~~~
jorgemf
Yes I think so. I have been a teacher and CS engineer so for me it is clear
that CS is more stressful. Nurse is something I couldn't do and when I always
ask them why are they nurses they say they feel great when they help people
and they know they cannot help everybody. I don't know anyone in CS who feels
great when writting software.

You can keep the bridge you bought in brooklyn.

~~~
jacoblambda
I might have to disagree with you on two things.

I know plenty of people who are in CS for the challenge. They absolutely love
writing software.

Also, nurses do what they do because they feel great helping people but in no
way is that easy. Working in terminal care is extremely mentally taxing as
many to all of the people they work with are preparing to/going to die. In the
same way, nurses in the ER/ICU have to deal with people dying that are in no
way prepared to die and that is also extremely mentally taxing. In regard to
being physically taxing, much in the same way that people in CS have to deal
with deadlines and long stressful working hours, nurses can often end up with
up to 18-20 hour shifts with their off-hours and off-days classified as on
call hours that they will usually get called in to work for.

Nurses definitely are in the field because they enjoy helping people but that
in no way means that they have an easier job than people in the CS field.

~~~
jorgemf
I don't think nurses have an easy job. I don't think I could do it. I am
saying people have different skills, for some of them is easier to be a nurse
for others to be a CS engineer. I wouldn't enjoy to be a nurse the same way
another person wouldn't enjoy to be an engineer. What I am saying that there
could be biological reason why some people suits more for one job or another.
And gender is only one expression of the ADN and can be linked with those
biological reasons.

We should respect all the jobs and understand that all of them required
different skills and also that different people have different skills. And we
should try not to force people into jobs or discrimine (either negative or
positive) because of the gender or height or race or whatever. We should
evaluate the skills and give them something they will enjoy doing and will do
great.

------
nyxtom
While some of the points are worth exploring, and have actually with Google's
own research (aka psychology safety and Google's project Aristotle on what
makes a great team), much of this essay becomes immediately discredited by
creating suspect on the premise of questioning employment opportunities for
women.

I thought about this a bit but let's say it was indeed a factor of employment
and advancements over some men in roles.

There is signifant research on the benefits of a diverse culture.

Decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists,
economists and demographers show that socially diverse groups (that is, those
with a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) are more
innovative than homogeneous groups.

I would argue that it isn't a problem that diverse members are indeed advanced
because of ONE of the factors being their contribution to a diverse group.
That doesn't negate the necessity that they must also be good at their job.

Furthermore, great engineers are people oriented. Anyone can learn how to
write code, but it takes skill to hone in on necessary insights that deal with
people, interaction, and the nature of finding solutions that I suspect are
meant to help people.

~~~
marcell
> Decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists,
> sociologists, economists and demographers show that socially diverse groups
> (that is, those with a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual
> orientation) are more innovative than homogeneous groups.

Can you point to the two or three best studies showing this? It seems really
hard to study objectively--how do you measure innovativeness? how do you
control for all sorts of potentially confounding variable?

------
jorgemf
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
> and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences
> may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and
> leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant
> overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual
> given these population level distributions.

What are your opinions about this? Do you think biological differences leads
to social differences (not only gender but race, height, etc)? Do our
"intelligences" [1] differ based on our gender? [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligenc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences)

[2] [https://www.elsevier.com/connect/can-brain-biology-
explain-w...](https://www.elsevier.com/connect/can-brain-biology-explain-why-
men-and-women-think-and-act-differently)

~~~
wpietri
The right topic isn't biology, it's history.

Historically, for millennia women were treated as property of men. This was
justified with all sorts sexist jabber. The same is true of race; ou can read
all sorts of racist nonsense from the era of slavery. E.g., the Cornerstone
Speech, in which the vice-president of the Confederacy said straight out: "Our
new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are
laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal
to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his
natural and normal condition."

The important thing to note from this is that people will justify the status
quo, whatever it is, in terms of what is "natural". They are not really
rational, but rationalizing.

For the last hundred years or so, we've been struggling our way out of that
long era of institutionalized sexism and racism. If we don't fuck it up, we
might be truly out of it in another hundred years. Until we have ripped up its
roots, then questions of biology should be ignored.

Why? One good reason is that historically those arguments have proven
incredibly wrong over and over. There's a whole host of things that women
supposedly couldn't do that they now do just fine.

Second, we should learn a lesson from the long history of rationalizing the
status quo. People who do well by the current system will tend to argue to
maintain the system. Whenever we find ourselves arguing like that, we should
be very suspicious.

Third our enormous history of discrimination by gender and race entirely
confounds attempts to answer questions of what is truly innate. If we want to
get any sort of real answer, we need to build a world with no remaining trace
of bias. Only then can we start to see the nature that might exist behind
culture.

Fourth, and most importantly, it doesn't fucking matter. If men turn out to be
naturally, as a group, less good at math than women, does that mean we should
stop training men on math? No. We should train men _more_ at math, because
math is a valuable skill, humans are very plastic, and nobody should be denied
an opportunity just because somebody reduced them to a single bit, and then
condemned them to ignorance. It's dumb, it's unkind, it's wasteful.

TL;DR: Let's focus on the well-documented historical distortions of massive
gender and race bias, not subtle, possibly imaginary gender and race
differences that have been used over and over to justify that bias.

~~~
jorgemf
watch this:
[https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=1851](https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=1851)
(even better if you see it all)

biology comes before history, history can be a consequence of biology

> If men turn out to be naturally, as a group, less good at math than women,
> does that mean we should stop training men on math? No. We should train men
> more at math, because math is a valuable skill

This is what scares me of this society. If someone is bad at something lets
force him/her to improve at the things he/she is bad at. Instead of focusing
on the things a person is good at and try to put them on the next level and
make a difference that way, let's focus on the bad things and get a mediocre
individual.

I love maths, but are you saying art is not a valuable skill compare with
maths? Should the great artist bad at math study math and give up in art?

You might think that not training someone at something that he/she is bad at
is stupid, but some people like me think the stupid thing is to no to focus in
what make someone special and good at.

And finally, why do you think there is a bias? Couldn't be the reason that
there are not more female CS engineers that they choose freely not to be
because they just don't like it? The answer is in the video I put before.

~~~
wpietri
This is basically a long exercise in missing the point.

That I think one skill is good does not mean all other skills are bad.

Your basic notion seems to be that even though most historical bias has turned
out to be totally unjustifiable, maybe the exact amount of bias we have today
is perfectly justifiable by facts that we just don't know yet.

I can't say that's impossible, but I can say that a) it's not a smart or
useful argument, and b) it totally ignores the actual harm done by today's
bias in favor of worrying about what might happen if we're just too good to
everybody regardless of gender.

Maybe you're the one guy in the world who spends a lot of time arguing in
favor of gender bias not because he benefits from it and has soaked up
society's pro-bias conditioning. Maybe you're the one pro-bias dude who comes
upon it for purely intellectual reasons. But per Occam's Razor, you can guess
which way I'm betting.

~~~
jorgemf
I am against any bias, I want to asses people by their skills. What I am
saying is that some skills are in our genes and we cannot/shouldn't change
that (not even with positive discrimination).

And you, instead of taking a look to the video I put in my previous comment,
you decided to call me stupid. Great, do you know how I try to cure my
stupidness? Reading and watching videos of people who knows more than me.

Food for your brain: how created a prejudice first about the other in our
conversation?

~~~
wpietri
Yes, I will not be watching any videos. I don't like videos. If you have a
point, feel free to make it.

I also didn't call you stupid. Sorry if I was unclear. I am suggesting you are
a bigot.

~~~
jorgemf
The video is called Hjernevask [1] and it is a Norwegian documentary.
Norwegian is one of the highly gender equal countries [2], for your
information. The reporter is interviewing Norwegian social scientists about
their theories of gender and social constructionism. The documentary generated
much public debate in the country.

I knew you weren't calling me stupid. I called you stupid because you weren't
able to spend 1 minute to check a reference and decided to throw up all your
speech without even knowing what I was talking about.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask)

[2]
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153857)

------
EGreg
I recommend to all gender warriors on either side of the debate to read this
talk given by Baumeister, which later became a book by Baumeister + Tice. It
has a lot of insights into origins of the differences between men and women.

[http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm](http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm)

One should not discount the additional biased inherent in the discussion, by
the way. This is the corporate world and people are talking about selling
their time or money. Perhaps one answer to all this is to opt out of the full-
time corporate treadmill, start your own business or be self-employed.

------
1337biz
Makes me actually respect Google! Would have not expected them having such an
open culture that lets controversial viewpoints survive.

~~~
jorgemf
Do you think the person who wrote this will survive (not being fired)?

~~~
ehsankia
I surely hope so. I think people should be allowed to discuss things like this
in an open and civil manner, no matter how wrong or flawed their arguments
are. As long as they are not openly hurting or disrespecting their coworkers,
I don't see the issue with a document like this exploring ideas. When we
promote "challenging ideas" and discussion, it applies to everyone, not only
those we agree with.

~~~
wpietri
That you don't see the harm doesn't mean there's harm. If you would care to do
a little work, you can find plenty of people explaining what the particular
harm here is.

You might also try studying history; you can find many examples of people
civilly discussing absolutely horrific ideas that resulted in enormous harm to
people. That civil discussion enabled the harm.

~~~
jorgemf
I am scared of your response, do yo mean we cannot discuss things because of
the consequences? even if we try to improve and fix things with the
discussion?

~~~
wpietri
It depends on the discussion.

If you would like to civilly promote your notion that black people aren't
really human and are only fit to be slaves, then no, we can't do that. If you
bring it up I will tell you are an asshole, and if you persist, I will shun
you and tell everybody else to shun you.

You are free to say terrible things. I am free to exercise freedom of speech
and freedom of association in response. Your freedom of speech is not freedom
from consequences.

If you are scared of that, then maybe take some time to think about the
opinions you're so excited to share. Maybe they're harmful to others.

~~~
jorgemf
So... In this article we have a person talking about the positive
discrimination in a company and how it can harm the company. This topic can
harm some people even when the author doesn't want to. You can think he is
saying terrible things (like some people thinks indeed), so you are not open
to discuss with him about the topic?

> then maybe take some time to think about the opinions you're so excited to
> share

I am not going to shut up if I think I am right and it is the best for
everybody even if my opinion hurts some people. I shouldn't do it indeed.

~~~
wpietri
> so you are not open to discuss with him about the topic?

Am I personally interested in discussing this guy's bad ideas with him? No, I
have better things to do than try to get him to examine the prejudices that
he's so energetically hiding under a mountain of justification. History
suggests that most bigots will literally die before they'll change their
opinion. And from what I've seen, those who do change don't do it because of
reasoned discussion; they instead have an emotional epiphany of the impact of
bigotry.

> I am not going to shut up if I think I am right and it is the best for
> everybody even if my opinion hurts some people. I shouldn't do it indeed.

How brave! If you look at the US's historical record, you can find a great
number of (white) people arguing that the institution of slavery is the best
for everybody even if it hurts some people. Try the Conerstone Speech, for
example, or the Texas Declaration of Secession.

Of course, you aren't that brave. Like most pro-discrimination people you
comment from the shadows.

------
sattoshi
Diversity always seems like a silly objective.

Of all things, why focus on race and gender? How about hairstyle? Why not
height? Maybe I feel like my weight is not represented fairly!

I'm just poking fun. Those aren't real questions.

The author promotes the only diversity that matters: diversity of thought.

Anything else should at worst a proxy to get some.

~~~
mempko
The only response to his post that matters are from the women in tech. Do they
appreciate it? What's your guess?

~~~
manigandham
What does that even mean? You have to be a women in tech to have your opinion
valued? Your statement is far worse than anything written in this manifesto.

~~~
mempko
What I'm saying is either this rant will put women off to tech or bring more
in. Their decision to pursue this industry is what matters. Do you think this
will be looked at positively by women currently outside tech?

------
abalone
This is not merely sexist. Amidst his rambling "evolutionary psychology"
argument he also protests racial diversity programs.[1] And his explanation
for that? It's buried here:

"Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people
(e.g., _IQ_ and sex differences)." (emphasis mine)

So women are bad at programming because of evolution and non-whites/asians are
bad at it because they're dumb. According to _science_. Does dressing this up
in pseudo-academic prose make it any less racist?

[1] "Stretch, BOLD, CSSI, Engineering Practicum (to an extent), and several
other Google funded internal and external programs are for people with a
certain gender or race"

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Why did you say women are bad at programming because of evolution and non-
whites/asians are bad at it because they're dumb?

I read his paper 3 times, and from what I can tell, that claim didn't exist
until you made it.

This is why we can't have honest conversations. By all means, disagree with
things that he is saying, and engage him on any points that you feel need to
be corrected. But don't disagree with things he quite obviously _isn 't_
saying. That doesn't get us anywhere.

~~~
abalone
_> I read his paper 3 times, and from what I can tell, that claim didn't exist
until you made it._

I literally directly cited the "paper", as you call it. Specifically
"evolutionary psychology" and "IQ" explaining the gender and race performance
gaps, respectively.

------
joycey
Anyone who says that this guy's opinion shouldn't matter should consider that
he likely interviews female candidates, sits on hiring committees that
evaluate female candidates, decides whether or not female engineers get
promoted, etc.

~~~
remarkEon
I'm sorry, but you're mischaracterizing what he wrote and by doing that making
his point. There's no "genetic predisposition" for not liking tech, but there
are biological differences between the sexes that affect a great many things
and he's arguing that career choice might be one of them - which seems a
pretty boring observation to me to be quite honest. I think it's weird that
you've extrapolated that to conclude that he'll be discriminating against
women in hiring decisions.

------
nyxtom
Probably would of been a good idea to have references to all those claims.

~~~
wolf550e
they were there but gizmodo removed them

------
wonderwonder
I can understand the authors point of view but he presents several points as
fact but provides no links to data supporting those points so they come across
as stereotypical generalizations.

That women and people of color have been historically discriminated against
and in many cases still are cannot be denied, especially in my personal
experience, women of color. I have seen this both in tech and outside of it.

Is there a biological or chemical component to people excelling in certain
fields? I have no idea but people must be judged as individuals not on any
conceived notions of gender or race. I am a white guy and there are tons of
women and people of color who are brighter than me or better than me at what I
do. They should not be denied a role over me because an interviewer does not
like their gender or ethnicity. If they are better than me they should get the
position, period.

On the other hand, I am white with two white sons. I in no way agree with
hiring practices or college admission policies that would put my kids at a
disadvantage based on the color of their skin or gender. If my kids want to go
to an ivy league school, and they invest the time and effort to to attain
entry they should be granted it. I would be furious if they were declined in
favor of another student if that student had worse grades and entry test level
scores but were chosen based on the color of their skin. I would be very
resentful.

If there is an issue with interviewers showing bias, we need to address that,
not establish quotas which disadvantage others. A good solution should never
involve pulling others down, a good solution lifts everyone. Bad solutions
spread resentment.

We need to stop judging others on what they are and focus on who they are. I
don't claim to be smart enough or educated enough to know the solution but i
do know what it should feel like, it should feel like a good thing to all
individuals. All individuals, not parties because we are all unique and should
be treated and judged as such.

Edit: Personal story. I was in charge of hiring for a role in a non tech
position. I interviewed several people for the position. My favorite was a
black woman, she was awesome; smart and driven. I was over ruled by my
director in favor of a decidedly less intelligent attractive white woman. His
choice was fired after 6 months for poor performance and inappropriate
behavior. Racism is absolutely alive and well in hiring. I think the solution
needs to be addressed on the hiring manager level though, not by artificial
quotas. By the same token that black woman was absolutely discriminated
against.

I don't have the answers and all of the above is just the opinion of one
person.

~~~
chippy
> but provides no links

The Gizmodo foreward say they have removed several links and a couple of
graphs. I think I also recall googlers saying that the manifesto had links to
various papers etc.

------
meowface
This document conveys its message poorly and comes across as far less neutral
than I think it's intending to be.

It raises some valid points, but it kind of feels like an extremely hamfisted
interpretation of a recent blog post by Scott Alexander:
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-
are-m...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-
not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/)

I don't think Google's official response to it is very good either, though.

~~~
ElmntOfSurprise
"Not writing as well as Scott Alexander" is a pretty high bar you're setting
there.

While the document may have been influenced by that post, and while both
authors seem to have a similar "non-feminist left" political position, it has
a different focus: Acknowledge people's natural strengths, weaknesses,
preferences and accept diversity of political views vs. influence of sexist
microagressions on gender representation.

------
Moshe_Silnorin
Deleted

~~~
jazoom
Can you please expand on the moving to Singapore part?

------
logronoide
Somebody should explain this guy that companies hire _individuals_. And these
individuals can be men or women, just like they can be tall or short, fat or
thin.

~~~
factsaresacred
He covers that right at the beginning:

> you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level
> distributions.

His screed is instead concerned with distribution across _populations_ (such
as Google's).

~~~
olliej
Somehow I don’t see a guy who says that women “in general” aren’t as
technically capable giving similar weighting’s to a woman who went to a
women’s college to a man who went elsewhere.

~~~
jorgemf
I think it is clear that he complains the company promote women over men to
increase the diversity and that the company should look to the individual
skills. That the reason of the difference in the diversity could be biological
and not gender bias and that the company should study this as a possibility
too. Not ignore it and try to equally the number of females and males in the
company

------
nyxtom
It's hard to have a serious discussion on merit based employment in a culture
of "rest and vest" where employees literally do nothing.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/rest-and-vest-millionaire-
eng...](http://www.businessinsider.com/rest-and-vest-millionaire-engineers-
who-barely-work-silicon-valley-2017-7)

------
zilchers
If you haven't, read and listen to this excellent podcast:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
women-stopped-coding)

The gender issues from this paper have been pretty well hashed out, but one
really interesting thing, he makes the point about being conservative at a
tech company. I actually think this is a bit misleading. I know a large number
of tech people who would consider themselves libertarian (fiscally
conservative), but NOT socially conservative. So, at least from my experience,
I have to interpret his comments about conservatives vs. progressives as about
social conservative, in which case I would say he does himself a disservice -
a lot of the modern American social conservative movement is explicitly about
exclusion and is anti-diversity. So, I think it's fair to say, if you're
socially conservative and subscribe to the modern platform (believing LGBTQ
individuals don't deserve full rights, for instance), it may be expected to
feel a bit uncomfortable at a tech company, just like I would probably feel
uncomfortable working for a defense contractor.

