
The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore - supercanuck
https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said-alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal
======
brandonhsiao
This started out pretty good (and on the whole was fair and measured), but
then at one point included this:

 _> Then you seem to make a giant leap from group differences between men and
women on such measures as interest in people rather than things, or
systematising versus empathising, to differences in men’s and women’s ability
to code. At least that’s what you seem to be doing; you don’t quite say so._

Well, if he "doesn't quite say so," how do you know that's what he seems to be
doing? If you analyze his essay without searching desperately for subtexts,
and if you listen to his clarifications in his interviews, it's fairly clear
he's talking about interest, not ability. Unfortunately much of the next seven
paragraphs then consists of breaking down their presumed argument as if it
were the one he made.

It wasn't until this memo that I realized how many people, when presented with
a body of text, immediately start performing motive inference, subtext
analysis, dogwhistle detection, etc.

~~~
trendia
It's pretty amazing to watch the news responses to his article, because so
many respond to what they wanted to see in his article rather than what he
wrote.

What he wrote: "Men and women have different interests."

What everyone pretends he said: "Men and women have different abilities."

~~~
burkaman
His points about stress tolerance and anxiety are clearly ability-related. He
didn't say women are less interested in stressful work, he said they are
biologically inclined to be less capable of handling stress.

Which might be true, I have no idea, but it's not true that he only talked
about interests.

Edit: When I say "might be true", I mean it academically might be true, but it
clearly has no practical application to job performance. If women can perform
equally well at a job as stressful as surgery, they obviously will not have a
problem helping Google sell more ads in one of the most comfortable offices in
the world.

~~~
turtleofdeath
This was posted the other day: [http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-
modulation-to-mas...](http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-
to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/)

It's a great read and the sort of lead-out at the end yields some more useful
insight:

> Prior art aside, I would like to leave off on a high note. I mentioned
> earlier that men are doing a lot better on the platform than women, but
> here’s the startling thing. Once you factor out interview data from both men
> and women who quit after one or two bad interviews, the disparity goes away
> entirely. So while the attrition numbers aren’t great, I’m massively
> encouraged by the fact that at least in these findings, it’s not about
> systemic bias against women or women being bad at computers or whatever.
> Rather, it’s about women being bad at dusting themselves off after failing,
> which, despite everything, is probably a lot easier to fix.

To me this is more useful than "women are less interested in tech on average,"
or "there's a hiring bias in favor of men over women."

~~~
burkaman
It's also not just about self confidence and "dusting yourself off", but about
being immersed in the field and understanding how the process works. If you're
a CS major, and all your friends are CS majors, you've heard everything there
is to know about the interview process, you know it's normal to bomb one or
two, it takes some practice, maybe you borrow someone's copy of Cracking the
Coding Interview to get better, etc.

But if you come from outside that culture, and you don't have many friends in
the industry, you might bomb one algorithms and data structures interview and
think "wow I guess I'm not cut out for this". The only reason I didn't think
that after my first interview was because I knew so many people who had been
through it before me.

It might be easier to frame the problem as "how can we reach people outside
our circle" rather than "how can we reach more women", even if it amounts to
the same thing.

------
joelrunyon
> I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your
> part would have made it unnecessary

This line seems really over the top. If you're the leader of your company -
it's your JOB to write to the team, correct them where they're wrong and steer
the conversation in a productive manner.

Not really a fan of this overall post (50% of Googler's still don't think he
should have been fired). If you think he should have been fired - that's fine
- but I think if you watch his interviews, he was earnestly looking for a
discussion. Feel free to write a letter or explain in real terms why he was
wrong if you feel like that - but all these pieces about "why we shouldn't
even have to have the discussion" \- are sort of missing the point he brought
up - which was that he didn't feel they could even have a discussion on this
topic.

------
guardiangod
"You" \- 82 counts

"I" \- 30 counts (cap letter)

"we" \- 44 counts

"pdf" \- 0 counts

"http" \- 0 counts

"www" \- 0 counts

".edu" or ".gov" \- 0 counts

I was very excited to read a rebuttal of the memo from the Economist. I've
read arguments from both sides extensively and wanted to see The E's take. The
original memo was almost naive in its argument; it's not hard to pick its
argument chain apart.

Then I got to the mid section of the letter and the whole letter just fall
apart.

Shame on the Economist for publishing such an ill-argued letter.

The author listed 6 logical flaws in the original memo (even though the the
author said he found 1 + 6 more flaws). The listed flaws overlap too much, and
3 of them can be directly rebutted using lines from the memo.

"First, you ignore many other gender differences, basing your argument only on
a few that you think support your conclusion. Second, you’re ignoring
everything else that could explain the gender gap. Third, the gender
differences you cite differ between countries and over time. Fourth, they
don’t even support your argument, because you don’t seem to understand what
makes a great software engineer. Fifth, you clearly don’t understand our
company, and so fail to understand what we are trying to do when we hire. And
sixth, even if you are right that more men than women are well-suited to the
job of software engineer at google, you are wrong that taking steps to recruit
more women is inherently unfair to men."

The rest of the flaws I agree with (depending on the reading of the text), but
there's no citation for anything. So even though the conclusion might be
correct, the arguments are weak.

BTW- "Fifth, you clearly don’t understand our company, and so fail to
understand what we are trying to do when we hire."

Such a great line. So "inter-dimensional" that I can't put this as mere
ironic.

------
burkaman
The best way to approach people who agree with Damore and will shut down at
the mention of anything like "sexism" or "discrimination" is to just explain
that software engineering is really not a particularly stressful job. Many of
Damore's arguments, if they were true, would apply to nearly any job in the
world.

Specifically, you can compare software engineering to something like surgery.
It is not controversial to claim that surgery is more stressful, more detail
oriented, requires more dedication, etc. than software engineering. Yet the
gender ratio of surgeons is about 60-40 male to female, far more equal than
software. How can this be, if Damore's arguments have any merit? Affirmative
action can't explain this, because if you're a bad surgeon, you'll be sued for
malpractice and fired. If you're a bad software engineer, it's much easier to
kind of muddle through and do well enough to not get fired.

~~~
vkou
Or, take PhDs. Working towards, writing, and defending your PhD is more
stressful then anything half of Silicon Valley's engineers will ever do.

Yet, more women receive PhDs in the US then men do.

~~~
burkaman
You're right, but if you're trying to win an argument, I would stick to on-
the-job examples. You need to preemptively shut down any possibility of
affirmative action explanations. If you talk about PhDs, I guarantee someone
will claim that schools intentionally lower standards for women to inflate
their diversity numbers.

------
rndmwlk
>Your memo was a triumph of motivated reasoning

The irony is palpable. "Larry" cites a bunch of well reasoned essays that
support his view, but there were plenty of the same supporting James'.

>Teamwork, in particular, is important

At this point I feel they didn't even read James' essay. He points this out,
and as a potential solution suggests pair programming should be emphasized.

I don't agree with everything James put forth in his "manifesto," but I don't
think he should be demonized for putting forth a well reasoned argument. I
think he brings up a great point in this "diversity equals morality" culture
stifles real discussion and real solutions. He attempted to put forth a few
solutions, which is more than I can say for this article.

~~~
humanrebar
> diversity equals morality

Good point. The "Larry" memo does nothing to promote healthy discussion. It's
just a longer form rebuttal that more or less says, "You're wrong enough to be
despicable, so we fired you."

------
Noxchi
Is anyone else disgusted by these "X should have responded like this"
articles?

They are so cringy. It's like asking a kid what he would do if he was
president... but actually taking it seriously.

The problem with critics is that they have no skin in the game. If they're
wrong, they just shrug their shoulders.

You're a paid (if that) journalist writing for profit. Figure out some other
angle for peddling your gossip.

------
trothamel
Is there a difference between this and fanfiction other than most fanfiction
authors being willing to at least put a pseudonym on their work?

It seems kind of wrong to avoid staking a position by phrasing your arguments
in the mouth of someone else, using words that person didn't use.

~~~
tantalor
Are you referring to the absence of a byline? That's because The Economist
generally does not attribute editorials to authors. This one is not special.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonym...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonymity)

~~~
trothamel
It's the mix of the lack of a byline, and the basic premise of putting words
in someone else's mouth that kind of rubs me the wrong way.

"It is my position that it is only honorable that people should talk about
James Damore under their own names." \- Abraham Lincoln

------
thedevil
> Why did we fire you?

> You’ve driven the point home with your “Goolag” T-shirt and new twitter
> handle, @Fired4Truth.

> You're wrong.

> I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your
> part would have made it unnecessary

> Your chain of reasoning had so many missing links that it hardly mattered
> what you based your argument on.

> We try to hire people who are willing to follow where the facts lead,
> whatever their preconceptions. In your case we clearly got it wrong.

This is how political bloggers write. It's not how executives write.

Bloggers fan the flames for readership. Executives face legal and PR risks.

~~~
humanrebar
Well, executives and modern presidents.

------
dnautics
Statistics are even more insidious. We know empirically on average women are
smarter than men, but also men are, from a particular perspective, genetically
defective, which causes a wider variation in a non-insignificant set of
traits.

You can still get a heavy tailing effect when on average population 1 is worse
than population 2. This comes at the expense of the other fat tail:. Men are
more likely to be mentally defective, commit suicide, die on the job, choose
to go to war, choose to join gangs, etc.

------
ludicast
Something funny just happened. I clicked the link and the economist told me
"you've reached your article limit".

For a moment I thought that was the rebuttal.

~~~
taivokasper
You were not the only one. Larry should have relied: "You’ve reached your
article limit".

Why does Hacker news allow paywalled articles!?

~~~
collyw
Right click open in a private window works for most of those. Maybe you are
expected to know this as an HN reader.

------
chickenbane
John Gruber perceptively pointed out that Page/Brin/Schmidt have been taking
the backseat for this ordeal, putting Pichai solely responsible. I assume this
is intentional to ensure Pichai's opinion on the matter is clearly that of
Google.

However, aside from Damore himself, the only Googlers I've seen make comments
are:

* Sundar Pichai

* Danielle Brown, VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance

* Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO

To be very honest, it would be helpful if white male Googlers spoke out for
diversity. I know this is a sensitive and heated topic right now, but
especially after seeing the (unrelated, but very fresh, and the video is
really worth 1000 words):

[https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news-tonight-full-
episode-c...](https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news-tonight-full-episode-
charlottesville-race-and-terror)

it would be really nice to see actual individuals standing up for the beliefs
their company purports to have.

~~~
humanrebar
> To be very honest, it would be helpful if white male Googlers spoke out for
> diversity.

Do you mean spoke out against Damore? Damore lauded diversity himself. Being
"for diversity" doesn't carry much water, it seems.

EDIT: Just watched (enough of) the video. Are you equating Damore with
skinheads?

~~~
chickenbane
> Are you equating Damore with skinheads?

Of course not. But honestly, until Charlottesville I didn't think Nazis were a
serious influence in the US. I no longer think that.

I also assumed the President of the United States would have no issue
immediately condemning Nazis, but here we are.

David Brooks asked for Pichai to resign
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990494)).
Brooks has written many op-eds, so I searched for other times he's asked for
CEOs to resign. Weird, nothing came back aside from Sundar Pichai. Not Travis
Kalanick, even when Uber had much worse news? Not Marissa Mayer, when Yahoo
had huge data breaches?

Sorry if asking white guys to support their CEO is too much. After seeing the
skinheads it'd be nice to reminded the good guys haven't lost their voice and
are a serious influence as well.

~~~
humanrebar
I wouldn't extrapolate the boorishness of Trump into a serious Nazi presence
in the U.S.

~~~
chickenbane
I didn't extrapolate. I got that idea from watching the video. After
Charlottesville, are you unconcerned about Nazis in the US?

Also I notice you haven't commented on my point - is it just a coincidence
that only women Googlers have supported Pichai? From my pov it's a bad look if
no white male execs at Google support Pichai's decision to fire Damore.

~~~
humanrebar
> After Charlottesville, are you unconcerned about Nazis in the US?

Compared to what? I wouldn't put Nazis in my top ten list. I'm honestly not
sure what I should be advocating for, to be honest. Nazis are horrible people.
Racism is evil. Is there any substantial controversy over that?

As far as the male Google executive part, I don't support Pichai's decision,
so I'm probably not qualified to answer the question to your satisfaction. I
don't envy his job right now, to be sure.

------
anabis
I thought this e-mail was sent in a happy world where Damore was not fired,
but no, paragraph 3:

> Why did we fire you?

This is a much higher bar than just pointing out how the points in the memo
were wrong. Damore's memo was not a peer reviewed paper, and even those have
mistakes which are tolerated.

> Your memo was a great example of what’s called “motivated reasoning”—seeking
> out only the information that supports what you already believe. It was
> derogatory to women in our industry and elsewhere. Despite your stated
> support for diversity and fairness, it demonstrated profound prejudice. Your
> chain of reasoning had so many missing links that it hardly mattered what
> you based your argument on. We try to hire people who are willing to follow
> where the facts lead, whatever their preconceptions. In your case we clearly
> got it wrong.

This is unsatifactory. Are you fired from Google if you display biases all
humans have? How can we notice and overcome them if we can't have discussion
without getting fired?

The Economist should have said the firing was wrong, and changed the premise
to no fireing, or 80% of the e-mail should be about the justification of the
firing.

------
swanson
PSA: Never write an email this long to be sent to "all-employees@company.com",
"Larry" should know better!

------
gnarbarian
This is a much better response but it could use more citations and quite a bit
less sanctimony.

The big issue to me is how Google has already let ideology creep into what
should be impartial.

The first one I noticed is when they removed guns from online shopping search
results.

More recently there has been talk of doctoring search results to remove
controversial content:

[https://www.mintpressnews.com/youtube-censor-
controversial-c...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/youtube-censor-
controversial-content-adl-flagger/230530/)

Google is a private company, so they don't have to respect anyone's freedom of
speech legally. But we do need to consider the implications of this when they
are one of the largest conduits of information out there and they are using
that position to ideologically alter what we can and can't see on their
platforms. They never would have been able to get away with this kind of
censorship earlier when there was more competition in this space and now that
they're the 800lb gorilla it is just another case of 'absolute power corrupts
absolutely'.

If Google refuses to be a platform that allows the free exchange of ideas then
we need an apolitical platform who will.

~~~
observation
I have noticed that my searches on certain wrongthink topics bring up a slew
of supposed 'rebuttals' to the information I was searching for. I did look at
the rebuttals, but they were all non-sequiturs coupled with fury and not,
well, reason.

A little while ago a Socialist website argued they were being demoted in the
search results and only typing their explicit domain name alongside the search
terms brought up their arguments.

I know this is a complex topic far beyond my tiny snippet of text here, but I
do not think this is good.

I also think this website (its owners and management) has a bias, towards
Liberalism. I do not mean 'Democrats'. I mean the political thought of the
upper middle class. This isn't a Red Team vs Blue Team thing the way most
people seem to assume, there's a third actor. It believes itself correct,
rationally and morally but naturally has its own vices.

Remember Orwell's discussion of class in 1984!

~~~
gnarbarian
Ya, more and more large tech companies are oblivious to the practice of not
mixing politics with business. It will always alienate and anger a large
fraction of your customers. Off the top of my head: Github, Mozilla, and
Google all seem to be doing this unfortunately.

This is especially ironic to me when measures are taken to ensure some tiny
quantity of people don't feel uncomfortable in exchange for angering a huge
swath of their customers.

The Crockford/Nodevember thing is a perfect example of this:

[http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford](http://atom-
morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford)

~~~
observation
> The Crockford/Nodevember thing

That's the sort of thought process I expect from a totalitarian regime, not
being humorous. What's next? Slashdot looks too similar to a Heil Hitler
salute?

Peter Thiel made a bunch of observations on this kind of thinking. It's in
1996 if the C-SPAN camera's date is correct, but very relevant I think.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6cxRYgqfHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6cxRYgqfHY)

~~~
gnarbarian
Awesome video. Thanks for sharing it.

------
bassman9000
I stopped when I got to

 _Here’s why, in the words of Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones”_

Can't we make an argument without having to resort to popular culture? Does
the author think we're that stupid than we're not going to understand his
point? Or is he projecting?

------
metaphorm
the unbelievable irony of a a fake letter dressing down someone for "motivated
reasoning" by explicitly using motivated reasoning.

------
FlashGit
Is this your homework Larry?

