
Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo - cbcowans
https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-on-the-google-memo/
======
hedgew
Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written
well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better
language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is
used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and
most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever
matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch
up.

I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from
discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to
understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and
kindness.

~~~
ryanbrunner
I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that
the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a
chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong".

I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion
rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion.
And if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as
inappropriate work communication.

~~~
nicolashahn
Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence
bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of
claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever
other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting
his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more
aggressive articles and essays have been written from the opposite side that
have not been criticized in the same way.

And for the record, I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I
thought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats. I
think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an
opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.

~~~
Blackthorn
> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence
> bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit
> of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or
> whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully
> misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).

This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they
were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend
themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.

~~~
nicolashahn
I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her
male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's
bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so.

I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest
way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about
them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about,
but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for
picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least
some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten
nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if
it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man?

Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of
Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should
be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling
back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

~~~
camgunz
> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally
> without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is
that the workplace isn't the venue for this.

~~~
nicolashahn
I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll
disagree with you.

The workplace _was_ the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that
Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the
company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in
another part of the comment section for this very article.

Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he
received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he
decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective,
introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and
help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire'
among other things.

What it did _not_ do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel
the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that
many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it,
they vilified and ousted him.

Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless
claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as
interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo,
and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about
what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some
credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did
not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally
introduced it to, at least at that point in time.

Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial.
It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the
company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point
is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it
especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent
of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it
looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.

~~~
naasking
> Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly
> harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not
> as interested in it) has created such outrage

I think the larger problem is that this is an overstatement. Women might not
be interested in joining the _current tech culture_ , but that doesn't mean
they aren't interested in tech to a larger extent than the current numbers
suggest.

Part of the disconnect is that these initiatives are aimed at changing the
culture to be more attractive to women, and the people who really like the
culture don't see the need.

Certainly the current tech culture is effective and fairly productive, but I
certainly don't know that it will be more, equally, or less productive with
these culture changes.

~~~
delroth
If this is a "current tech culture" problem, how do you explain the fact that
this is a trend shared across most of the engineering professions? Example:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-
business/11692996/Wo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-
business/11692996/Women-In-Engineering-Day-Gender-gap-in-male-dominated-
industry-falls.html)

I don't think you can claim that "tech" and e.g. civil engineering have much
in common in terms of culture, but they still share the lack of men/women
parity.

~~~
nostrebored
Yet somehow, programming is considered a woman's job throughout vast swathes
of India. China is much closer to parity in engineering as well.

You're ignoring that girls are socialized to think they're bad at math,
science, etc. Boys are told the opposite and are pushed in this direction. I
certainly was. My parents were drilling me on math by age five.

~~~
Const-me
In all developed countries, only 10-25% of engineers are female. An American
society in is very different from that of Australia, Sweden, Greece or
Germany.

Not sure why, but I know one possible explanation.

In developing countries, people are pressured by their basic needs. An
engineering job generally pays well. People in such countries are less likely
to do what they want and more likely to do what pays well, so gender ratio in
engineering is close to 50/50.

In developed countries, people are guaranteed to survive even without a
profession or job. Less financial pressure, more freedom of choice, less women
in engineering.

~~~
deepGem
Well doesn't this sort of support Damore's hypothesis ? Some of the smartest
girls I know went into marketing, purely because they just loved that field.
Somehow to them sitting in an office in front of a computer all day didn't
seem that appealing.

Is it safe to infer that, in th developed world, given a career choice women
have a propensity to not choose tech ?

~~~
the_af
On the contrary, it sort of refutes Damore's hypothesis: the difference is not
inherent but merely societal, because we observe that, when encouraged, women
can succeed at engineering as much as men.

In other words, if true, we should strive to understand _why_ fewer women
choose tech in developed countries and fix it, not automatically assume it's
because they are inherently less interested.

~~~
randomdata
Succeeding at engineering is not the same as having the desire to do
engineering. If it takes encouragement to push women into the field, that says
the desire is not there.

I am going to go further and suggest that software engineering is just not
that desirable of a career, _no matter who you are_. Given that compensation
is a function of supply and demand, and this career is fairly well
compensated, the lack of people – both male and female – entering the career
path would suggest is not the top choice of _anyone_.

What appears to be happening is that some men are willing to put up with an
undesirable career because of the higher than average compensation, while
women are less wooed by those monetary factors.

The only 'fix' here is to drive home the importance of doing unhappy careers
for big money towards the female population. But do we really want to do that?
That does not really seem like a great goal. There is more to life than money.

~~~
the_af
All of that enters the realm of the highly subjective, with some parts I may
agree with and other I don't. I, for example, definitely didn't enter this
field because of the money. Other people I know did. I certainly cannot
generalize to large groups of people. I disagree with your observation about
"some men" and "women", or rather, I'd say "what happens is that _some_ men
are willing (and some, like me, are not) and _some_ women aren't", and
furthermore, I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things. I
happen to think working long hours is crap, and something that needs to change
(and the reason I find startups unattractive).

What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as
successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This
automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of _biological_ (or
inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was
fundamentally about.

~~~
randomdata
_> I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money._

But we're talking about the population at large, not the tiny group of 'geeks'
who revel in the tech environment. There are always outliers.

If the general population – both men and women – wanted to do this kind of
work, they would be falling all over each other to do it, just as they do in
careers that are desirable. Instead, you see businesses falling over the few
people who are willing to do it. That is not a sign of an attractive career
path. Quite the opposite.

Again, not even _men_ want to do this type of work. This is not even a gender
issue at the heart of it.

 _> I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things._

But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the
general population? Programming is simply an awful time that most people
wouldn't wish upon their worst enemy. It is as simple as that. We can go
around and try and blame things like culture, but at the end of the day the
work that has to be done sucks.

Yes, some people are wired strangely and happen to like it. Pick anything you
find distasteful and I can find you at least one person who loves it. That's
the nature of having 7 billion people and all of their random mutations. That
does not mean the masses have any interest whatsoever.

 _> What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as
successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This
automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or
inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was
fundamentally about._

Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed. The fact that
women can be as successful as men in the field does not mean that there is not
some biological reason to not want to do the job.

~~~
the_af
You're mixing highly subjective aspects that I don't find worthwhile to debate
here ("the job sucks") and that I disagree with. No, the job doesn't suck more
than other career choices. Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing
jobs?

> _But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the
> general population?_

But it's not the general population we're talking about; that's a straw man.
We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women
and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice. And yes, not
excluding a segment of the population just because of irrelevant biological
traits is desirable and worth the effort.

> _Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed_

To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when
shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do
it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow _explained_
biological differences. Money is not a biological factor, it's a societal one!
The logical disconnect is so pronounced that it _must_ point to an emotional
blind spot.

~~~
randomdata
_> No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices._

Then why are men and women alike rejecting the field? Men less so, perhaps,
but neither gender are jumping at the chance to have the job. Not even the
well above average compensation that attempts to attract them to the industry.

 _> Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?_

This is not my opinion, this is what the data shows. I'm glad you do not feel
that the professional is awful. I personally do not feel that way either, but
we cannot use our biases to believe that everyone feels the same way. Be very
careful of your biases.

 _> We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to
women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice._

In order to even think about whether the workplace is hostile to women, we
first have to determine why _neither_ gender is interested in the profession.
Again, this is not my opinion. This is what the data is telling us.

 _> To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and
when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course,
they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow
explained biological differences._

Let me be clear: I am not saying it is explained by biological differences. I
am saying that your explanation does nothing to exclude biological
differences. Women proving success in the tech workplace does nothing to
discount a biological aspect, and it is flawed logic to believe otherwise.

~~~
the_af
> _neither gender is interested in the profession_

This is false.

> _but we cannot use our biases_

Exactly. Please re-examine what you're saying in light of your own advice.

------
belorn
A common criticism by each four of the female engineers is how the memo
effected them in their job and how they had to prove themselves afterward.
This strongly reminds me of about a case a year ago when a kindergarten
teacher was tried and charged for rape against several children. After a lot
of media attention, many male teachers all over the nation reported to
constantly having prove to parents and fellow female teachers that just
because they are male and chosen that profession it doesn't mean that they are
criminals or are higher risk employees. Not only that, but many school
implemented procedures that limited what male teacher were allowed to do,
furthering pushing a second class status on them. Many also received threats
of violence, and since both the left, the feminist movement, and the right
fanned the flame against male teachers, many just gave up and left the
profession. If memory is right, one news article ended with "I just wish I
could go to work and do my job, but that is no longer possible".

I would very much like to see a discussion on how to solve this kind of
problem.

~~~
azernik
The feminist movement as a whole is very much _against_ gendered norms about
who should and shouldn't be a kindergarten teacher. Which feminist movements
did you see fanning these particular flames?

~~~
ryanx435
3rd wave, whose actions betray their true goals: men as second class citizens.

~~~
dang
Please keep ideological talking points off HN. If you have a substantive point
to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.

~~~
rublev
The onus is on you to disprove them, they made no irrational claims. If you
have some problem with any of their concepts, say so.

Your attack on whether his comment is 'thoughtful' or not is weak.

~~~
igravious
If you could point out to us here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-
wave_feminism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism) where it
says that all so-called or self-described third wave feminists see men as
second class citizens that would be super helpful in this debate.

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads further down generic ideological rabbit holes, or
rather black holes. Nothing good comes of them and the thread never returns.

~~~
igravious
Understood. No problem.

------
rpiguy
I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive
dialog is happening now that people have calmed down.

Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the
comment that Damore did the company harm.

He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked
this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore.
In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was
leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm,
you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made
it public.

There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for
offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that
is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending
strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.

~~~
tedivm
Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never
leaked.

The document _still_ did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article-

> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my
> colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired
> because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove
> myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional
> burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it’s also a
> pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: “Will the team/manager/VC I
> talk with today realize I’m qualified, or will they be making stereotypical
> assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my
> job?” To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it’s
> an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day.

That quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused
by it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who
work at a company don't feel they are welcome there.

~~~
mizzack
From your quote:

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

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

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

Totally different interpretations of cause and effect.

~~~
onion2k
I've met engineers who have expressed a belief that women are often hired if
the recruiter found them attractive, and that those women shouldn't have been
hired. While those engineers are able to find employment there will always be
places where women don't feel welcome, even with diversity programs in place.
It is simply the case that some engineers are grossly sexist and will _always_
think a woman has been hired for some other reason beside technical merit if
they have an opportunity to. If Damore can't see that then he hasn't enough
experience to be talking about hiring.

~~~
e9
Google doesn't operate that way, they has strict hiring policies and
procedures. Recruiter or anyone else has no way to influence hiring without
doing something shady (doing selective interview like what Damore claimed they
were doing).

~~~
tedivm
Damore literally said they were "lowering the bar". You can't have it both
ways here.

~~~
Cogito
He said "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity”
candidates by decreasing the false negative rate".

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

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

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

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

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

------
jdoliner
> He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar.
> Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more
> resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than
> lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to
> those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based
> other factors beside our skills.

This to me is the most interesting question that hasn't been answered about
the memo. There seems to still be two camps, those who believe Google does not
lower the bar for women and those who do. They can't both be right and I'd
imagine if we could take a look at Google's hiring practices it wouldn't be
too hard to tell which is which. Of course, we can't Google keeps its hiring
practices, at least the ones relating to diversity very hush hush. This was
actually Damore's impetus for writing the memo, he attended a diversity summit
at Google where he learned about his employer's hiring practices and also
observed that this summit was, unlike other meetings at Google, not recorded
for later viewing. Damore's conclusion was that the hiring processes were
unethical and likely illegal, although afaik he's yet to say specifically what
it was that he observed. Still I don't think it's very reasonable to say that
Damore has caused harm with this misrepresentation unless you can show
conclusively that it is indeed a misrepresentation, and so far I haven't seen
anything conclusive that shows that.

~~~
pj_mukh
He specifically mentions in an interview that minority interviewees get
assigned to a second interviewer if one interviewer doesn't like them in the
first round. He saw this as a 'second chance' when the committee might just be
controlling for interviewer biases. Though, the fact that he jumped to this
'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a
conclusion.

~~~
jdoliner
> Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking
> shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion.

Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about
Damore's state of mind.

I'd ask a few questions about this interview practice though.

1) Is this the entirety of Google's diversity practices in hiring? I'd be
surprised if it is. So even if this isn't lowering the bar it still doesn't
prove conclusively that's not what they're doing. Again I'd like to see a more
complete accounting of what exactly it is they do. However, I'm certainly not
saying that you need to provide this in order to have a legitimate argument,
you don't have access to this information any more than I do.

2) This practice seems to have a somewhat narrow view of what a interviewer
bias looks like. In particular it only tries to eliminate bias in the case of
a minority being rejected. What would happen if we were to instead attempt to
detect interviewers who were prone to bias by randomly giving rejected
candidates second interviews and seeing which interviewers wound up frequently
disagreeing with their peers? If the assumption that bias only effects
minority candidates is true this would have much the same effect.

3) What if it wasn't a second chance but 100 chances? I.e. if you're a
minority you get to interview for Google 100 times and if any of those say yes
your in. White people only get 1 shot. Unless you think Google's false
positive rate is 0, this would have to lower the bar wouldn't it?

~~~
pj_mukh
"Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about
Damore's state of mind."

So let us extend him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't extend the hiring
committee? How about we extend the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved,
which would result in him never writing this memo and second guessing the
hiring process.

The rest of your points seem to be just a whole lot of speculation, which you
just told me not to do. The article shouldn't have been written without
clarification on these points and conclusive evidence. Maybe go talk to the
hiring committee about their motives/state of mind first Mr. Damore?

~~~
jdoliner
We're not extending Damore any benefits by not speculating about his state of
mind. We're just avoiding discussing a topic about which we can't hope to
learn the truth and which isn't necessary to understand whether or not
Google's hiring processes do indeed lower the bar.

My "points" are indeed speculative, that's why they were presented as
questions. I don't know the truth and it's impossible for us to talk non-
speculatively about Google's hiring process because we simply don't have that
information.

The original memo (not article, this distinction matters) did indeed cite a
great deal of evidence, you may or may not consider it conclusive, I found it
quite compelling. But I think it's important to remember that the memo itself
was a request for clarification, posted to an internal message board for
skeptics in the hopes that somebody would be able to tell him why he's wrong.

~~~
pj_mukh
It was a lot of scientific studies he cited (since contradicted by meta
studies), nothing about Google's processes. Another commenter on this thread
seems to suggest that almost all interviewers can get second shots, which
(albeit anecdotally) makes his argument weaker (showing restraint here in not
calling him an outright liar)

I know with my (again anecdotal) experience with large SV firms, if Google had
these kinds of holes in their hiring process they would be standing alone in
the valley. Also, "lowering the bar" is not consistent with their absolute
global market dominance.

He also claims in the same interview that he had already done his fact and
opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted
it[1], so I don't know how much of this was a "request for clarification". He
even had action items.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng)

~~~
jdoliner
I've yet to see a meta study which contradicts those studies. Would be
interested to see one. I've seen studies that say in X% of studies about
differences between men and women the differences found are negligible. That's
not a contradiction though, and it's not really meaningful at all. The % of
studies which find negligible differences can be arbitrarily inflated because
it's simple to find as many axis along which there are no gender differences
as you want. It doesn't matter how many you find, even if it's .000001% of
studies that find a difference if those differences happen to be particularly
important that still means there's a meaningful difference. Scott Alexander
has a more in depth explanation of this here:
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-
exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-
differences/)

If all interviewees have the same access to second interviews then I agree
that it does nothing to lower the bar. In general if a policy doesn't concern
itself with the identity of the candidate I don't see a way that it could be
lowering the bar. However, my understanding, based on previous comments, is
that diversity interviewees get a second chance immediately while the others
must wait 12 months before they get a second chance. If that's the case then
Damore's argument (and mine) stand.

I don't think Google's market dominance can be used as evidence of good hiring
practices since I believe in the early days they didn't have such practices
and wound up with a very undiverse company. This didn't seem to stop them
achieving market dominance, draw from this what you will about how much they
need diversity to succeed.

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how you simultaneously believe that
he "had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback
into the memo by the time he posted it" and "The article shouldn't have been
written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence." It
seems to me that not only did Damore make an honest effort to seek out
clarification but that you're well aware of this fact.

~~~
pj_mukh
Tonnes of speculation. So I'm just gonna stop refuting all that.

"had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into
the memo by the time he posted it"

I didn't claim this, he did (see: Youtube link). My point is that he didn't
actually look into or ask hiring committees why they were doing what they did.
Instead, he made bold recommendations, that (like the OP link shows) made
women in tech feel like they didn't belong.

He wasn't open to a discussion as many characterize, in his mind, he'd already
had discussions and incorporated feedback (his words)

------
corndoge

      Frances: ...if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement.
      I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.
    

And then

    
    
      Frances: ...I’m also disappointed that the men I know,
      including most of my male colleagues, remained silent
      on the topic.
    
      Frances: ...Many powerful men in Silicon Valley have
      huge bases of social media followers. By remaining
      silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore,
      they are sending a message that philosophical arguments
      and principles take precedence over the lived
      experiences of many smart, talented female engineers
      and technical founders.
    

So, what? Is it just impossible to stay out of the issue if my silence is
sending a message that philosophical principles and whatever matter more than
women in technology? What if I just want to work my 9-5, treat all my
coworkers well regardless of sex or gender, and let the PC warriors duke it
out in the streets away from me? Can't even stay silent without sending a
message.

While I agree with much of what is said in this piece, I find this pretty
demonstrative of the "damned if i do, damned if I don't" situation I'm in as a
male trying to survive in this PC crucifixion culture.

~~~
droopybuns
This section struck out to me too.

what I realized is that I am older, more world wary and far more cynical about
anyone looking out for me than your average young millennial.

I think the dividing line is in that cynicism. I have never felt like anyone
looked out for me.

"How do I prove myself to people one way or another?"

I have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very
wary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how
you prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always
risk being cast out.

If young social activists were less strident about how society stacks the deck
for all white people- even the ones who have been abused, who had a shitty
childhood, who have had bad relationships, who are suffering from depression
or chemical abuse or other problems, then I think we'd stop running into this
very boring and predictable conflict.

Everyone is suffering on some level. Stop talking about white men like we've
never experienced pain.

I do think the memo was foundationally stupid. Compassion is needed on all
sides.

~~~
kevinwang
>"How do I prove myself to people one way or another?"

I don't think this was about generic proving-to-others. I think it's about
being prejudged by others at first glance which minorities in tech get in
every interaction they have. I think that it's valid to say that's a
significant struggle.

I have no expertise in this field of social ethics, so I'm hesitant to
critique your comment when I'm as uninformed as anyone else, but I also think
that your following comment shows an ignorance of that struggle:

>I have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very
wary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how
you prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always
risk being cast out.

If I'm interpreting this correctly as "This is what I did in response to my
impulse to prove myself. This is what women in tech should do about their's as
well.", then I think you are not considering the fact that you have the
privilege of not needing to prove yourself. When people meet you, they don't
assume a baseline level of incompetence. This same strategy that you use
wouldn't apply to minorities who always feel like they need to prove
themselves because of what they look like.

So I think this need to prove yourself stems from a serious, real issue, and
so it's wrong to downplay this issue by equating minorities' perpetual feeling
of needing to prove themselves with your feelings, to conclude that the
problem exists inside them, and not outside them.

Apologies if I misinterpreted your words, but if not, I'd like to hear your
response, because this is something I've been thinking about lately.

~~~
jack_h
> I think it's about being prejudged by others at first glance which
> minorities in tech get in every interaction they have. I think that it's
> valid to say that's a significant struggle.

> When people meet you, they don't assume a baseline level of incompetence.

In a way they are prejudging him though. They consider the baseline for him to
be one who assumes they're incompetent. He has to prove otherwise. Or perhaps
not quite as severe, he is assumed to have privilege which you yourself
stated.

It seems to be a problem with assuming things about an individual from
population distributions. Perhaps we've forgotten how to treat others as
individuals and be treated by others as an individual.

------
dreta
All i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and
others managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there
are biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being
less interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's
sexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity
hires.

Was i reading the wrong memo? Because everybody, including the 3 interviewees,
no matter if they seem calm and collected, keep attributing malice, and
talking about how the author said women are less suited to being good
engineers, and that women shouldn't be encouraged to get interested in STEM.
Where was that stated?

~~~
humanrebar
One of the women said:

> I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general
> populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an
> individual level.”

She goes on to say that people will likely misapply the ideas and judge her.
It seems a lot of detractors think Damore should have known better and he
takes responsibility for how his ideas affect people.

Another says:

> I don’t really see how it’s useful to have a discussion of general group
> traits in a work setting. Assuming that it’s true that women on average are
> more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the
> additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women, or that if
> she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job
> performance?

Again, she's not really disagreeing with Damore in this snippet. She's saying
the ideas themselves are counterproductive and shouldn't be discussed.

~~~
Danihan
Sure, but it's the hypocrisy of saying, "stereotyping people by group is
productive sometimes (when hiring and trying to hit quotas)" but any criticism
of it is unproductive, in fact, how dare you even discuss it at the
workplace."

------
freetime2
So firstly - let me say that this has been one of the most level-headed
responses to the memo that I have seen so far. I personally found it very
constructive. Bravo to the author and the interviewees.

I did want to discuss one particular line of thought from the interview
though:

 _I can see that there are wide swaths of people who would refuse to work with
him_

Two of the interviewees gave this justification for why he should have been
fired, and I have seen it elsewhere as well. I disagree, though. I have worked
with with people in the past with whom I have ideological differences. But it
has never stopped me from at least trying to get along and work productively
with that person.

We just don't know from the evidence presented thus far what James Damore is
like to worth with. Maybe he's a sexist asshole who is incapable of treating
women fairly (in which case he does deserve to be fired). Or maybe we can take
him at face value when he says he appreciates diversity and prefers to judge
people as individuals rather than as a group. We just don't know.

On the other hand, if there are employees at Google who despite having never
met James Damore before are telling their managers "I can't work with him
based on this thing he wrote or this idea he believes", aren't they also in
the wrong here?

~~~
spydum
fully agree here.

If you can't put aside your personal feelings based on someone elses political
views to get work done, YOU are the one with the problem. I'm sure plenty of
us have worked with people who have lifestyles, beliefs, and demonstrated
actions we personally deeply disagree with. Heck, I've worked with people
where we legitimately disliked each other. Yet when I come into the office to
work, we sit down together and get stuff done.

Now, my personal opinion is: leave your politics at home, don't spend company
time on such things. I'm glad you think of work as a family, but it's not
(regardless of the HR feel-good marketing).

However, if they are asking for commentary and feedback on diversity
initiatives, and you provide it honestly, it's extraordinarily poor form to
then fire you. They had the responsibility to respond to him, and address it
privately. I think the more troubling problem was as others have commented:
the fact that it was leaked from an internal conversation and turned into such
a contentious issue for google.

------
mastazi
So the takeaway is: you should become extremely proficient at writing memos
and back them up with vast amounts of research, or be fired. But all of the
above applies only if your memo expresses conservative ideas. I don't consider
myself a conservative but I find all of this disturbing.

~~~
dguaraglia
Maybe the takeaway is: you shouldn't write "memos" that generate a lot of
noise and lost productivity in your work environment and affect your company's
external image. If you have political points you want to make, go find a group
of like-minded individuals and discuss with them first.

~~~
lliamander
What if you think the issues you are bringing up are already a problem for the
company, and the company just isn't willing to admit it?

~~~
dguaraglia
In that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to
validate your idea. If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at
the next TGIF (the internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully
and without making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory
arguments against your perceived political leanings of the company.

I was there during the whole Nest reorg/culture drama for crying out loud.
I've seen people lob _really hairy_ questions at the TGIF panel and I don't
recall a single one of them getting fired.

~~~
lliamander
> In that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to
> validate your idea.

He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason.

> If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at the next TGIF (the
> internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully and without
> making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory arguments
> against your perceived political leanings of the company.

What point would that be?

~~~
dguaraglia
> He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason

That's not an off-line resource. That's a public mailing list reachable by any
employee. It's not even remotely what I am suggesting.

> What point would that be?

"I believe our current hiring practices might be affecting certain candidates
because A, B and C mechanism stop/hinder/disproportionally-favor X, Y, Z
groups" No need for building an argument about biological differences between
men and women, no reason to build an antagonistic recount of what _you think_
the motivations are, no need to call your peers and higher ups "Leftist."
State the facts, ask the question, move on.

Assuming he really cared about hiring practices (which is purportedly the
reason he wrote the memo), that would've gotten everyone's attention and I can
guarantee that nobody would've gotten fired.

------
framebit
As for the memo itself, I think it's a bit of a Rorschach blot: people are
seeing what they want to see in it, largely because the writing is so poor
that the author fails completely to get his own points across in a coherent
manner.

The conversation about "women in tech" is severely hamstrung by folks
conflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two
very different problems requiring two very different conversations.

Lastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic
to be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially
pointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up
focusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men,
hispanic men, etc.

~~~
moduspol
I'd like to think it's everyone seeing what they want to see in it, but that's
not really a fair description.

The writing's not ideal, but truly if opponents can read even this and frame
it as "women have inferior genes," then this is a discussion that can't be
had. There is no way to make the case that sexism and oppression are not the
only causes for inequal representations in tech that will not be an "anti-
diversity" position that makes some coworkers uncomfortable.

------
ATsch
I think it's interesting how the Edith stated Damore had said women were worse
at their job, while one of the other women explicitly said he didn't, and the
other only mentioned interest in programming.

This is similar to the divide I've seen in the media. I have not read the memo
in it's entirety, but since the impression I got from reading a few news
stories was that Damore had only made his controversial statements in regard
to the population, not skill of programmers, I'm curious what causes this
disagreement.

I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a
discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job,
considering that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either
have at least one Y chromosome or you don't. (I'm not a biology nerd so feel
free to correct me on this.)

~~~
jorgemf
> I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in
> a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job,
> considering the fact that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary,
> you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't.

I think she refers that gender is not binary as you can be straight male,
straight female, gay male, gay female, bisexual, asexual, etc.

I am not completely sure but I think there can be mutations where you have 2
chromosomes X and 1 Y. So XXY [1]

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

~~~
bumblebeard
Sex, sexual orientation, and gender are different things. By gender spectrum
she means that most people's behavior is somewhere along a continuum between
completely masculine and completely feminine and that virtually nobody is at
one extreme or the other.

I think the point she's making is that while men and women have different
interests as groups, there are plenty of women who are interested in what are
perceived as masculine things (in this case probably computer programming) and
vice versa.

------
jccalhoun
I think this is one of the better responses I've seen

This line really struck me as being spot on:

>There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you
what’s up, all you wrong people.”

~~~
Will_Parker
On the other hand,
[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law)

Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what
points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form
of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific
progress.

~~~
lutorm
I disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you
are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific
process.

Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve
apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are
making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing
in good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that
evidence should be discounted.

~~~
Will_Parker
> Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware
> of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process.

Indeed, but I didn't read Damore's memo as being intellectually dishonest in
this way. He presented (with citations) some views that are held by most
psychology researchers. And then he drew a few of his own (possibly flagrant)
conclusions and speculations.

This sparked debate, and it is getting us talking. Damore wrote some great
points (especially on free speech and intellectual diversity) and some
terrible ones. This is the kind of free exchange of ideas that a successful
and vibrant tech company should encourage.

------
TACIXAT
>Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that’s where it mostly was
taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to
complement it).

This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned
and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in
this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality
community.

~~~
chippy
Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front
page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is
because of it's provenance.

Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are
fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more
reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at
themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.

~~~
dang
> _That this article hasn 't been flagged and remains on the front page is
> because of it's provenance_

I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN
moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar
detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're
surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly
remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple
weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other
authors put into crafting the post.

~~~
alecco
Could you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other
opinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in
the other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion.

Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free.

~~~
dang
I'm afraid I'm not following you. I see plenty of opinions on this subject in
this thread, as in the other threads. The main difference in this one is that
the comments are more civil and substantive across the spectrum of opinions.
That's a great thing.

Perhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's
not so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed
users. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to
the conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about
this tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter.
Indeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on!
This bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being
bothered by an optical illusion.

More about this in the many comments at
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20bias&sort=byDate&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20bias&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

~~~
alecco
> I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other
> threads

Funny, I see a dominant opinion in the other (flagged) threads and an another
dominant opinion in this one.

1695
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787)

754
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759)

590
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626)

448
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601)

~~~
dang
Those threads were all extremely active and most if not all spent significant
time on HN's front page, so I'm not sure what your point is? More generally:
these perceptions are strongly in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you
that someone with opposite views to yours sees the opposite bias on HN. This
obviously doesn't vary with HN, but it does vary with the
perceiver—specifically with the perceiver's beliefs and their intensity. It
comes down to sample bias and other cognitive biases. Even the most perfectly
even-handedly moderated site (which I'm not saying HN is!) would get all the
same perceptions and accusations.

~~~
alecco
Significant time? I don't recall it that way. Had to find them via algolia.

~~~
curtis
They might have been discoverable via the "comments" link (lots of active
comments still going on) well after the stories have dropped off the front
page.

I have also been checking the Algolia "Last 24h" view to find flagged
discussions that I missed, however.

~~~
chippy
I found most of these threads via comments and active.

------
sampo
Why has this topic exploded like it did now especially in the software
engineering context? Whatever talent or affinity to abstract and inanimate
things we do or don't assume being correlated with gender, isn't software
engineering just a lighter version, compared to mathematics and physics?

Did math and physics communities already have their internal crisis/debate on
these things, perhaps a decade or two ago? Or have they been able to cope
without lighting such a fire?

~~~
izacus
Hmm, anectodally, both math and physics communities have significantly larger
percentage of actual women graduating and working. At least here in EU - it's
somewhere between 40-60% split depending on generation.

I guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working
with women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove
how women aren't worthy .

~~~
mcfunk
Right on the nose. And in fact, the proportion of women in computer science
was tracking with other sciences until the mid-eighties, when it started to
dive, while women's representation in other sciences continued to climb. One
of the more glaringly inconsistent observations with Damore's claims.
[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)

~~~
mpweiher
Except that CS isn't a science, it's engineering. And it tracked down to the
level of other engineering fields.

[http://news.janegoodall.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/perce...](http://news.janegoodall.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/percent-bachelors-degrees-women-usa.png)

So the mystery is not why it went down, it was why it was higher initially.

~~~
izacus
Hmm, Computer Science is most definetly a science (which shares quite a bit
with maths as expected). A lot of algorithms and data structures you use under
the hood when doing engineering were born as a paper in academic CS sphere.

Of course, most CS graduates don't do science, but actual engineering work.
That doesn't make CS any less of a science though, it just means that most
people employed in private companies don't do it.

~~~
mpweiher
My bad, I should have been more precise: _natural_ science, which is part of a
"liberal arts" education.

"Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:

Arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)

Mathematics

Natural science (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth science)

Philosophy

Religious studies

Social science (anthropology, economics, geography, political science,
psychology, sociology, Linguistics, history)"

Note the absence of engineering disciplines.

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

Vs. engineering or engineering sciences.

See for example how Stanford groups things (CS is part of the "School of
Engineering").

[https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment-
statistic...](https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment-
statistics/enrollment-statistics-2015-16/school-engineering-
enrollment-2015-16)

And then note the difference in enrollment in "chemistry" (the science) and
"chemical engineering"

[https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom...](https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcoming/diversity/diversity-
data.pdf)

~~~
izacus
Is the difference you're trying to paint perhaps a US only thing? I've never
heard of this type of differentiation.

~~~
mpweiher
The exact delineation of "liberal arts" seems to be a US thing (not sure about
"only").

However, in Germany we also have "Naturwissenschaften" and
"Ingenieurwissenschaften".

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieurwissenschaften](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieurwissenschaften)

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturwissenschaft](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturwissenschaft)

So it's a common distinction: figuring out how nature works vs building stuff.

------
in3d
Damore is planning to sue under the National Labor Relations Act or
California's tough law against restricting political activity. The legal
experts seem to think he might have a weak to a decent case. I would think
Google would try to settle anyway, in order to prevent discovery and the
release of their internal communications about the memo and their internal
data about the performance of different groups on job interviews.

Is there anything that would prevent another Google (or Facebook, etc.)
employee (with a lower salary or thinking Google is not for him anyway) from
going completely by the letter of the law and suing when fired? That employee
could make a more limited case that Google's diversity programs discriminate
against white or Asian men in hiring, complain about diversity training
sessions, say something about agreeing with Trump's policies and with the
conservatives (to make it more explicitly about political activity), write
about organizing other employees who agree, make sure to file an NLRB
complaint before getting fired, bring up some IQ meta-analysis studies to make
sure it's scientific, yet controversial enough to get him fired, state that
he's happy to work with Googlers of all sexes and races and that he holds
their skills in high esteem and hopes everybody else does too (to make a
firing based on the employee manual less credible), use email (because that's
what's specifically in the law), run it all through a lawyer first, and don't
do any post-firing interviews as Damore has done.

Wouldn't that cause huge headaches for Google and other tech companies? If
such emails get leaked, the bad PR would force Google's hand to fire him, as
happened with Damore. It seems like companies that want to see themselves
portrayed as socially progressive might end up between a rock and a hard
place.

------
foobar_femme
As a longtime female engineer at fintech startups, there was absolutely
nothing new in Damore's memo. The only thing that gave these tired arguments
any cachet at all was Google's name.

And I really wish Google hadn't fired Damore. Special projects exists?!

For years I have worked with and continue to work with guys who think just
like this. In fact, thanks to Twitter, I now know all of my followers who also
follow Damore. Thanks for that?

When I interview you and ask you a technical question, you don't meet my eyes
and then you answer the guy sitting next to me. When I present my own ideas in
a group, you ignore them; fine, I'll pregame males colleages and let them
present my ideas instead. If I brainstorm as part of the group, you think I'm
asking you to explain basic programming concepts to me. You probably think I'm
not that smart. And that's OK. Good news: getting things done requires
multiple skills. One of mine is overtaking you from behind.

Nobody ever thinks of promoting me first. Whatever I get, I work twice as hard
and twice as long for it as you did. The existence of a female networking
group does not represent an unfair advantage: it represents barely any
advantage at all, on the basis of the ones I've attended. And anyway, I don't
have time for that, I'm trying to figure out what's caused the unexplained
performance reversion over the past two days.

Whether you think I am a diversity candidate or not, I am here to code. That
is all. Statistically speaking, biology does give me one edge: longer life
span. I'll imagine I will still be here doing just that long after everyone
else has forgot James Damore exists. ;)

~~~
zaroth
Everything you said that's wrong with the interactions you have with male
engineers, I'm not sure that James Damore would disagree with any of it, or
claim that it doesn't happen, or say that we shouldn't be trying hard to
change it.

What James argued is that the efforts Google is making and the way they are
doing it are in some ways contributing to and making all of those bad
experiences you listed _worse_.

~~~
PrimHelios
James also argued that women are biologically inferior for STEM fields, which
is objectively and demonstrably incorrect. With that, I think he'd disagree
with absolutely all of it. He clearly has a confirmation bias, and is actively
cherry picking articles (from fucking Wikipedia I might add) and
misrepresenting their contents to make women seem inferior.

~~~
Cogito
I keep hearing people say this but didn't read it in the memo.

Can you point to the bit where he says they are biologically inferior, or the
sources he links to that say it?

The best I can come up with is the bit where he says Google lowers the bar by
reducing the false-negative rate, meaning that a greater percentage of
qualified men are rejected than qualified women.

[Edit] Reading through again to see more about biology claims in the memo,
this is the one that sticks out the most:

 _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._

This sticks out because it mentions abilities - and is indeed the only place
where ability is mentioned at all. The wording doesn't say that women are
"biologically inferior for STEM fields", but I can see how it might be read
that way. I don't read it that way, but I can understand how others might. The
surrounding context is pretty much all about the preferences that people have
as well, so "women are biologically inferior" doesn't seem like a point that
is trying to be made at all.

~~~
wilde
I think it comes back to how you read this part of the TL;DR. "Differences in
distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't
have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."

Google currently has an 80M/20F split. Does that mean that very few women have
the traits to work in CS at Google? If so, another way to phrase that might be
"the large majority of women do not possess the innate biological traits
necessary to work in CS at Google". From which it's not a far leap to "the
large majority of women are biologically inferior for CS work at Google." Etc.

Normally, one might soften that by asking what population the distribution is
drawn from. Sadly, the memo author makes it explicitly clear that he thinks
it's largely due to biology: "Be open about the science of human nature. Once
we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to
discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human
condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems."

------
gavanwoolery
Interesting thoughts - I think the biggest misunderstanding thus far involves
generalizations. You can accurately make generalizations about a group of
people, without implying that a given individual necessarily falls under that
generalization. For example you could say "80 percent of males are into action
movies" \- but you should not go up to an individual male and state "you are
into action movies" if you care about factual accuracy. Whether or not
Damore's generalizations are accurate is up for debate, but lets say for the
sake of argument that they are. I do not think its harmful to say "10 percent
of women are really into engineering currently" no more than it is harmful to
say "50 percent of women are really into engineering currently." In fact, only
a subset of the male population is into engineering, so it is preferential
even within a sex. If anything, I think it makes it worth celebrating the
women who ARE into engineering even more. So (hypothetically) you could say
fewer women are interested in engineering, but it does not mean those who are
into engineering are somehow less qualified than males.

~~~
dguaraglia
I'll just refer to the women in the article:

> Assuming that it’s true that women on average are more likely to have trait
> X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving
> that she’s not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that
> the trait has no bearing on her job performance?

~~~
gavanwoolery
Statistics are statistics and I do not believe they should be censored on
behalf of being unpalatable. That said, its how we interpret statistics that
really matters. Like in my examples, a generalization is just that - a
generalization, and thus not necessarily applicable to a given individual. To
answer the question, a woman's (or man's) work should speak for itself. If
they are a good worker and still facing scrutiny, then I would reexamine if
the boss or manager questioning them is competent.

~~~
dguaraglia
Do you agree that stereotypes affect peoples choices of careers?

~~~
gavanwoolery
Its definitely possible although I personally have yet to meet someone whose
threshold for not taking a job was that a stereotype existed around it. I tend
to go with Occam's razor: I think it is far more likely that peoples choices
of careers affect stereotypes.

~~~
dguaraglia
Right, but that's not how stereotypes affect career choice. It's not like
someone is going to study 5 years for a career, and then at the last minute
say "nah, dammit, that makes me look effeminate" or "hmm... I don't know, I'm
a woman, I shouldn't be doing that." Like you, I have never heard of anyone
doing that (I have heard of someone doing a postdoc in math and then giving up
because he thought teaching was going to be boring... go figure.)

There's lots of good literature on how gender stereotyping actually affect
people's choices.

------
potatote
> For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the
> USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work. But ability to do
> those jobs?

Can anyone with similar experience comment on this? I am just surprised (if
what one of the interviewees said is true) because I'd assume the
math/engineering/science are highly regarded in the USSR and both genders
would pursue that.

Side note: People in my country (from southeast asia) don't have a notion that
girls are not as good as boys in math. In fact, when I was in
(elementary/middle/high) school, I--along with most students in the class--
always looked up to my female peers who are always the top 3 in the classroom
(from among ~80 students). In fact, it's almost always natural to assume that
girls would outperform boys in the class (meaning, more girls would become the
highest ranked student in the class and/or more girls would be ranked as top
ten in the nationwide high school exam--a.k.a. matriculation exam). As a
result, engineering classes have plenty of female population (although, of
course, the number of women in such classes is always fewer than that of men).

~~~
myth_drannon
In general after WWII women had to take traditional men's roles since entire
male generation was gone and from then on it became the new normal. STEM is
not physically hard so it can be considered a more suitable field for women,
also STEM paid less in USSR.

[http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly-
wolansk...](http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly-wolanski/)

------
Tehnix
Please note that this is a comment on a specific remark, and is not meant to
make it seem as though that invalidates the rest of the text - I’m mainly
interested in the subconscious reason why things are the way they are.

> I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages
> they’ve had

I think the reason many take annoyance with this particular opinion (at least
I do), that men had it easy, is rooted in how “nerds” were viewed growing up,
and how that has changed over time with public known successes such as
Zuckerburg or Musk.

I’m only 24, and even I remember growing up with being interested in
programming in no way being an attractive thing to be. If I revealed to people
what I did I would be called a “nerd” with a bit of a disproving look. Luckily
for me, I was quite good at socializing also, but many definitely didn’t have
that and suffered social stigma for it. Even the friends I was gaming with
didn’t quite understand my interest in that area, so I mostly relied on myself
with few to no peers to discuss that particular subject with.

This is obsviously anecdotal and I would be interested in hearing how people
had it growing up with these interests, from both sides obviously.

Now, that said, we are definitely in another age currently. These days with
the success of Silicon Valley, Facebook, heck even The Big Bang Theory, our
culture has shifted to a glorification of the field, and as such we have a
clash of what the 24+ (or there about a) generation grew up facing, and them
now being called privileged and being told they had it oh so easy, basically
casting aside all those struggles they had growing up.

I guess my point is, with is a more general point, promoting equality by
bringing down another group, is a fundamentally wrong way to go about things.
You don’t get the bars at the same place by making it worse for one group, you
do it by making it better for the other group (see they distinction?).

Anyways, I’m interested to know what people think :)

~~~
hippich
I had pretty much same experience, minus socialization skills. So you are
definitely not alone in your experience. And I observed similar from (very)
few friends in the same situation.

------
astrocat
> Edith: I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average
> differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain
> jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly.

This is, I think, the key. We can all recognize that there are REAL, _average_
differences in _interests_ between men and women, DEFINITELY driven by
society/culture, and _maybe_ by biology/genetics... BUT, this has absolutely
no correlation with performance. If fewer women are, on average, _interested_
in software engineering, this absolutely does NOT mean that women software
engineers are, on average, worse at their jobs.

The error so many "Team-Damore" men make is that they zealously stand behind
the argument that "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of
worse-performing women/minorities." And yet there is absolutely no way to
possibly back up that claim: can anyone clearly demonstrate over the course of
a statistically significant number of hirings that most of the women
candidates who were hired were A)chosen from a candidate pool that included at
least one equivalently-or-more talented man; and B) that those men who were
not picked would have been both better performing as individuals and better
employees for the team/company as a whole? No. Nobody has shown this because
it is, essentially, impossible to demonstrate. Citing studies of character
traits or interests of men and women "on average" does absolutely nothing to
support claims A and B. And so all these men end up doing is simply implying:
"well, I BELIEVE that all these _real_ women coworkers of mine are worse than
the hypothetical male candidate that wasn't hired... _on average._ " Which is
clearly an insult to your existing coworkers and toxic to your work
environment.

~~~
jorgemf
> "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing
> women/minorities."

That sentence is backed if there is a correlation between genetics and skills.

> this has absolutely no correlation with performance

if gender does not have correlation with performance, why do we split sports
into male and female? Why physical strength, endurance is related with biology
and the mind is not? when the brain is the most important organ in our bodies
and in charge of controlling all the hormones which gives us more or less
strength. In what facts do you support that claim?

~~~
taysic
The physical is different from the mental. Are you saying women are less
mentally capable? I can't tell but this is basically exactly why women feel
legitimizing this line of discussion is unproductive.

~~~
jorgemf
> The physical is different from the mental.

Why? Can you probe it? Most researchers I read says the opposite.

~~~
reitanqild
Not sure what you mean here?

Women and men are different: agree.

Physical is different than mental: yes

Example of a sport that takes really strong mental skills and where women
compete alongside men: competitive shooting.

~~~
jorgemf
> Physical is different than mental: yes

If you say that there is no relation between our biological features (like
genes or hormones) and our mental capabilities, I have to disagree completely.
And I want someone to support that affirmation with facts and research
studies. As far as I know there are a lot of mental illness treated with
chemicals and hormones and a lot of studies that link malformations in genes
with mental capabilities. There are also philosophical studies that link the
mind to the body and that claim that there cannot be intelligence without
embodiment. So all this things and other papers lead me to think that
biological traits are linked to mental skills.

~~~
taysic
At one point you're talking about malformations and in the next you're talking
about perfectly healthy people. Academically, we see that women excel up to
college with no barriers in their mental capabilities. What other evidence do
you need?

I can tell you as a women in tech, there is absolutely nothing about tech that
is that difficult to understand or comprehend. Nothing more than the many
other professions women excel in and are equally represented.

~~~
jorgemf
you are having bias with the word malformation. It is not something bad per
se, it only means it is not what you find in most people and that is have bad
consequences (or what we want to classify as bad).

> we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental
> capabilities

This doesn't mean anything. Performance is not only about mental capabilities
but also in effort. There are mentally disabled people who can pass college,
but it is so hard for them and they have to strive a lot to succeed, and this
is why you don't see so many of them in college. So this argument doesn't
probe anything.

------
throwawaygmemo
These comments are largely directed at a straw-man, and in many cases actually
agree with the memo, when they think they disagree.

"I disagree with...his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary
reason that there aren’t more female software engineers"

\- straw-man - he argues that biology may in part explain the lack of 50/50
representation. from the TLDR: "Differences in distributions of traits between
men and women (and not “socially constructed oppression”) may in part explain
why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership"

"I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences
between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest
in certain jobs, certainly."

\- you actually agree with the memo. From the memo: "Women generally also have
a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to
men...These...differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in
social or artistic areas"

"It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and
didn’t seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to
internal Google groups."

\- The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other
opinions.

"differences are so significant as to suggest that men or women are better or
worse on average at any job that relies on mental work."

\- straw man. men or women being "better" is not the concern of the memo.

"his skepticism of his own views deserves a much more prominent placement in
the text than a footnote – had he led with this and made it clear he wasn’t
sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he
subsequently stated in a YouTube interview), he likely would not have been
blasted the same way."

\- the first "background" paragraph literally is this.

"Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources
on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar
for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google
who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside
our skills."

\- the author is also concerned with harm to female employees in the form of
increased tension resulting from hiring practices that are perceived as
lowering the bar. Google obviously would not do this intentionally, but the
author felt the practices "effectively" lowered the bar.

~~~
Danihan
It's so funny (and sad) to me that you had to create a throwaway to outline
these obvious strawmen misrepresentations of what Damore wrote.

Whatever happened to reading comprehension..?

------
kbenson
The sad part about all this is that by presenting and alternative narrative to
his own in good light with a question as to how the facts presented actually
play out, we might have had a good discussion.

For example, even if it's true that on average women do worse in general in
technical or engineering fields, that doesn't necessarily mean that the women
_in those fields currently_ are worse on average. There are a few possible
reasons why they may be _better_ than the average men in those fields.

Firstly, if we accept that women have different levels of aptitude in certain
skill sets, there's no reason to assume they have the same variability. It's
entirely possible that women on average are worse in certain skills, but that
they have more exceptional outliers.

Secondly, even if there is not more variability in the female population for
the skills in question, it's entirely possible that cultural and social
pressure has resulted in those that choose careers on those skills having
higher than average abilities in them. For example, if my family has a legacy
of being fairly clumsy and uncoordinated, but my brother is a pro athlete,
what's more likely, that he's a crappy athlete, or that perhaps the criticisms
that apply well to my family do not apply accurately to him, for whatever
reason?

Providing an olive branch can make all the difference in a discussion like
this, and the fact that neither explanation put forth here is contradictory
with each other or the premise that perhaps a 50/50 gender split isn't
necessarily ideal makes this particularly lamentable, since we might have been
able to have a good discussion about gender differences while minimizing the
impact it has on individual members of that gender. Of both sides (there's
plenty of fields where men face an uphill battle too).

------
neerkumar
"He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar.
Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources
on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar
for these groups."

-> so an employee accuses a company of illegal behavior, the company denies it, and that's it? It proves the company is not doing it? No need for investigating or anything?

Elizabeth Holmes and Travis are probably thinking: damn, I wish people thought
like that for me too!

------
tracker1
First off, _nobody_ in tech, male or female is really "average". Second,
_everybody_ must prove they're good at their job by doing it well. But to
suggest that there is absolutely no correlation that makes men or women
disproportionately want to work in certain fields or have a higher aptitude to
certain roles is a bit premature.

The vitriol and disdain in response by some from the original memo, completely
discounting some of the reservations on opinion vs fact and presenting them as
only a footnote is somewhat disingenuous.

------
sniglom
"Ask a female engineer". That headline in itself implies that there are
differences between males and females, as the memo states. Why would I
otherwise listen to the opinion these engineers have over any other?

I'm from Sweden and our universities have fought for years with getting more
females to study IT. Same goes for senior highschool. And it's not only to get
you to study, it's while you study as well. Benefits just for women. Courses
just for women. Meeting people from business, just for women. And so on. The
last discussion was about whether women studying IT should pay back their
study loans, even though the education itself is already payed for.

I think the questions we should ask ourselves are, is this improving diversity
in opinions and thoughts? Is this beneficial for the field? Does this improve
the state of the companies within IT?

Otherwise we're just pushing one gender over the other, for no particular
reason, except gender. Choosing people for their gender, over their thoughts
and performance is sexist and horrible.

------
FooHentai
>I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club.
Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not
refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building
an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain
silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced
into that kind of debate at work.

Anyone else see the hypocrisy here?

>the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to
men in tech that I’m not an “average” woman

That's not the takeaway I got. What I got from it was 'Google's hiring
practices are counterproductive and will increase people's questioning of each
other's capabilities, based on their gender'.

Talk about changing the narrative and shooting the messenger.

------
nilkn
I find it interesting how much the memo is misinterpreted even by folks who
have read it multiple times and have been pretty engaged in discussions about
it. Example:

"He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar.
Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources
on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar
for these groups."

This is what he actually wrote:

"Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity”
candidates by decreasing the false negative rate"

I'll admit this is a surprisingly dense sentence. And the phrase "lowering the
bar" is controversial for an obvious reason, so it was a really bad decision
by Damore to combine such a phrase with such a dense line of reasoning. It's
just a recipe for disaster.

Some things to note:

* The use of "effectively" here is critical and means that the bar is not directly lowered in interview or technical standards. Rather, it's lowered as a (potentially complex) side effect of other more indirect policies.

* That indirect policy is to decrease the false negative rate. This doesn't mean standards are _actually_ lowered for minority candidates; rather, it means extra time and money are invested to make sure that a negative result is actually a negative result. This can cause the standards to be _effectively_ lowered, because it means that extra time and money are not invested in non-minority candidates, who therefore must overcome a higher false negative rate -- and the easiest way to do that is to be so good that none of your interviewers might feel ambiguous about your abilities.

To state that second bullet point differently and in a way that totally avoids
politics, if you imagine that the interview is producing a noisy estimate of
your technical ability, and the noise is predominantly negative/subtractive,
then the expected score of an accepted candidate is higher with the noise than
without. But if you offer a second interview to candidates and let a
candidate's final estimate be the greater of the two samples, then the
negative noise is reduced (though not eliminated), which will lower the
expectation (but NOT below the expected value you'd get by eliminating the
noise entirely).

With this analysis in place, I think it's more helpful to rephrase it as
effectively _raising_ the bar for non-minority candidates rather than
_lowering_ it for minority candidates, though ideally I'd prefer to avoid any
phrases about bars being lowered or raised in general.

------
kromem
Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological
differences mapped to job performance?

I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did
talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors
citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.

~~~
xigency
On pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added):

\- On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...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.

\- Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings and
aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in
people rather than things, relative to men

\- These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in
social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires
systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end,
which deals with both people and aesthetics.

\- Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress
tolerance).

\- This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on
Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

And later proposes these solutions:

\- We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming
and more collaboration.

\- Make tech and leadership less stressful.

So he has 1) cited biological differences between men and women _in their
abilities_ (not simply preferences) and 2) claimed that these lead to
suitability for different jobs and also indicated the specific jobs would need
to be changed in order to be more suitable for women, which strongly implies
differing performance levels.

~~~
humanrebar
For what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or
less, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable
career choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently
nonverbal jobs (programming) less often.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_james_damore_ama/dlknpme/)

"For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and
verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative
skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women
have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer."

~~~
xigency
Yeah, I still think that's transparently BS. His source there is another
opinion piece.

That said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices.

As someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and
co-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All
of this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in
one AMA answer, it might by "cultural." I believe that is a far more
acceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology.

------
ethanhunt_
> I also agree that there are differences between the behavior of men and
> women, on average.

Isn't saying that a fire-able offense at Google? I hope YC is really sure that
these are anonymous because if she gets doxxed her career is over.

------
rsp1984
Honest question: Will this thread be quickly flagged by HN moderators or taken
off the front page like many others on the topic (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819)
for more info)?

Or are there "exceptions"?

~~~
dang
You seem to be mistaken about what's been happening. Moderators haven't been
flagging those articles; users have. That's what '[flagged]' means.

The different outcome in this case is because of community response. There are
still a lot of flags, but there are many more upvotes. That, plus the
discussion quality (i.e. not a trainwreck) surprised us quite a bit. I emailed
Cadran this morning that she should probably expect the post to get flagged
the same way as others (by users) and that we wouldn't be able to intervene if
that happened. Instead, it went straight to #1. That's fine by me because the
discussion has remained relatively civil and substantive.

For completeness I should mention that we did do one intervention: we turned
off a software penalty called the 'flamewar detector' that kicks in on
discussions that get a great many comments. But that's routine: we always turn
off that penalty when the discussion isn't actually a flamewar, and this one
qualifies. Other than that, moderators haven't touched the post at all, so
yeah I think it's fair to say no exceptions.

~~~
rsp1984
Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

------
moduspol
So at the top of the article, just before the interview starts, there's this:

> There’s been a lot of anger on both sides, but I haven’t seen many
> constructive discussions between people who disagree on these issues. I and
> all the women who have contributed in this post feel that there’s forward
> progress to be made by finding common ground and discussing different
> viewpoints without yelling. I hope this will be a good forum for that.

Do you feel like this article does this?

To me, it looks like three people (two of whom openly identify as having left-
wing political views) mostly agreeing. That's still useful, but falls way
short of "constructive discussion between people who disagree on these
issues."

------
wolco
What troubles me is the resolution. Man who spoke out is fired everything is
now fine at google. Google will remove anyone who dare speaks out. Managers
will create blacklists now and singled out. Anyone with oppposing views will
be pushed down and/or pushed out.

~~~
spacemanmatt
What troubles me is how easily this community, who typically values employer
discretion in how they run their businesses, turns into labor-protection
lefties when someone gets canned for crapping on half the workforce.

------
merb
Everything I actually read about the memo (and I didn't read it besides some
points) is: \- Some Points are valid \- Some Points are discussable (that's
why this post was created, wasn't it?)

but nearly none addresses them as totally invalid. I mean even in this post of
ycombinator the person in question couldn't straight said "No! This is wrong"
and back it up with data.

I just don't get the whole gender/race discussions, but if such a memo can
exists and things like gender diversity programs do exists, than something is
probably really really wrong.

But with one thing I disagree with her, firing him was not the right thing to
do, at least not directly. I mean wouldn't it be better to just discuss this,
probably in the open, with him, the company and even more and make a great
discussion panel? I mean with just firing him, they actually just ignored all
points, even valid ones.

------
dguaraglia
From the article:

> Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a
> debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for
> agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.

That, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and
probably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his "dialectical
skills." That's the very definition of creating a hostile environment, where
people feel forced into actions they normally wouldn't engage into just for
the gratification of a single person's whims.

~~~
dandare
But Google was and is a debate club - there is extensive information about
Google's multiple discussion boards and lively cluture of dialectics. Why do
you object/punish a single discussion that you happen to disagree with?

~~~
dguaraglia
There's a slight difference between technical flamewars, pointed debates about
expanding the amount of bathrooms available per building and Damore's post. If
you can't see the difference, honestly I can't help you.

~~~
dandare
Lol, I can not argue with this :D

------
shaftoe
I'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I
haven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a
female repellant.

Look at the work/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry.
Compare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture,
women disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing.

When there's a work emergency and the kids HAVE to be picked up at daycare,
who goes? When a kid is sick, who stays home? When a child is born, who takes
several months of leave to care for them?

Consider that many women leave the tech industry or stay away from the all-
consuming work culture because they have or will eventually want a family
life. It doesn't matter what are people's abilities when they see a job as
incompatible and contrary to their life goals.

~~~
e9
But that was part of point in the memo, he was proposing how to change tech
culture to make it more appealing for women. Like one of his proposals was to
introduce part-time jobs into Google among other things. He wasn't claiming to
have all answers but wanted to start official conversation on this topic and
figure out what is truly feasible at Google...

~~~
e9
great rant by Jordan Peterson on this topic that touches on work and work
cultures that don't appeal to women: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-
xFXuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-xFXuo)

------
md224
On a side note, I would like to thank the HN mods for allowing this discussion
to take place. Previous attempts at discussion were quickly silenced by
flagging, and while it's a little weird that a piece on YCombinator just
happens to be the sole exception, I'm glad that an exception was made. These
kinds of discussions are difficult but necessary, critical to the process of
gaining a greater understanding of those we disagree with. I hope we're able
to keep having these discussions going forward.

~~~
dang
Thanks, but we didn't do anything different in this case and are as surprised
as anyone that the post went to #1 and (better still!) the discussion remained
as civil as it has. I don't want people to think that the ycombinator.com
domain affects moderation on an article like this, since our first rule is to
moderate less, not more, when YC is involved [1].

I emailed Cadran to warn her that the post would probably meet the same fate
as the others, but I was wrong—the community responded quite differently.
That's fine by us as long as the discussion meets the site guidelines, which
this one mostly has.

Edit: also, the community should know that it, not moderators, produced this
effect. IMO that makes the thread more interesting.

1\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20no...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

~~~
md224
Thanks for clarifying and correcting my assumptions. I'm guessing the content
of the article in addition to the domain led users to view this as a more
productive contribution to the debate. Apologies for assuming that it was HN
favoritism on the part of the mods... very interesting that this happened
organically.

(While I'm replying to you, one super trivial and completely unrelated feature
request... if comment forms are being submitted via JS, could you guys add
code to prevent duplicate form submission when the enter key is held down too
long? Very low priority and I know you're busy enough, but just figured I
would pass along the suggestion. I've had to go back and fix my own accidental
dupes a few times.)

~~~
dang
Could you email us about this at hn@ycombinator.com so it goes into our todo
list? sctb and I just had an idea about how we might fix this and it's been an
annoying bug for years.

~~~
md224
Done!

------
thomasfromcdnjs
"As a female engineer, you don’t get to just love coding, or love problem
solving and hacking on hardware – you also have to figure out how to navigate
men who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don’t consider
you an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they
assume you don’t have as much expertise as your peers."

Not picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sentiment more. In
my entire career I've dealt with co-workers who observably considered me less
smart. To the point I barely think it was their innate nature but more so a by
product of being a programmer. Too much isolation and brain reward circuitry
leads to inflated egos.

I understand that the comment I quoted is speaking of sexist discrimination,
but if I re-read it removing female and replacing men with people, it would be
a pretty apt description of my life as a developer.

I believe that it would be hard to delineate whether it was discrimination or
just work place egos if you weren't from a similar background e.g. minority
groups

Sidestory: I'm an Indigenous Australian, plenty of times in my life I have
seen family and friends make statements, that I'm sure plenty of you have also
seen such as "You are racist" or "That's racist" when clearly to a third party
the accuser seems way off the mark.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Wasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for
both men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work
in the industry.

~~~
thomasfromcdnjs
I didn't read it as such and I wouldn't say it was the point I was attempting
to make. (not your fault, I suck at writing sentences)

In short, apologetically generalising, I'm suggesting that humans by nature
tend to barely get along ever, and sometimes it is hard to tell what is
discrimination and what is just normal work crap.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Ah, yes, I agree.

------
token92375
_> By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are
sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence
over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and
technical founders._

In my world view philosophical principles generally take precedence over lived
experiences of others. Lived experiences are not universal, cannot be relayed
exactly (memories are often colored and retellings may be selective to make a
particular point). If we want our ethical systems to apply to everyone, to be
inclusive, we need principles that work for everyone, not just correctives for
individual cases.

A lot of TFA appears to put emotion, form, "lack of consideration" and
presentation over facts. I am abstractly aware that those things have quite an
impact on people. But it is quite alien to me, in text form the factual
content of argument is more important because text can be easily
misinterpreted and it is not a dialogue where the writer can clarify and
correct any misunderstandings.

That said, the response is still far more measured than the immediate news and
social media response.

 _> Social skills are part of a professional skillset. It is important to
learn how to handle difficult subjects in a workplace – we all have to do it.
There are consequences for doing it in a way that causes problems for your
employer_

He was not the one who leaked it. It was those people who were so offended
that they thought the world had to see it instead of engaging in a discussion
with him. If the issue is "causing problems for the employer" then aren't
those others also guilty?

------
rurounijones
[https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-
what...](https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-
the-research-say-about-gender-differences/)

This is a document that puports to examine the science as much as possible
from both sides to try and educate impartially.

------
AnimalMuppet
First, a summary: There are differences between men and women. There are
_also_ barriers to entry into tech for women. Let's try to fix those, and
_keep_ trying, without necessarily expecting that we'll have 50% of engineers
being women when we've finally fixed (all) the barriers.

And one detailed opinion:

On Edith's reply to "What do you disagree with or find objectionable?": She
complained about having to wonder whether people she encountered on the job
felt that she was qualified. I suspect that quite a few male Google employees
actually feel the same fear (call it imposter syndrome). The question to me
is, does she feel the same fear as men and wonder if, in her case, it's
because she's female? Or does she feel _additional_ fear because of being
female? (I don't know, and I'm not going to guess. I merely observe that, if
you remove the male/female aspects, what she said sounds a lot like how people
describe imposter syndrome.)

------
rllin
Are any of these engineers East Asian immigrants or Asian Americans? From my
own circles both near and extended, it seems like there is a much more even
split within especially East Asian H1Bs and to a less degree Asian Americans?
This may be from my own experience of hearing Asian parents push children
regardless of gender towards STEM.

It keeps leading me back to the idea that increased volition allows gender
differences to propagate.

I've been trying very hard to find data for say H1Bs by race and by gender at
Oracle. Any thoughts?

~~~
interlocutor
The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in
India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United
States." See
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015)

Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in
the United States are H1Bs from India, China and other Asian countries, and
Romania and other eastern-European countries. If you subtract their numbers
then the difference is more severe.

There is something in the US culture that makes American women not want to
take up tech. The diversity memo doesn't address the fact that more women take
tech jobs when impediments are removed, as evidenced by the larger percentage
of women in tech jobs in other countries.

~~~
humanrebar
I think the discrepancy between American women and immigrant women is
interesting. I'm not sure we can conclude from the given evidence that the
difference is reduced impediments. It could be that that the increased
economic opportunity (or potential immigration benefits) makes up for other
things.

~~~
rllin
I agree the increased economic opportunity could very well be the primary
factor, but why is this not enough of a factor for white American women? Or
are there other factors in raising a child in an economically stable society
lead to more "do what you want, my child, regardless of your gender"?

~~~
humanrebar
> ...why is this not enough of a factor for white American women?

Working as an engineer in America is a bigger jump in economic opportunity for
someone in India than for someone in America. Also, it's likely that Indians
are better informed about what the pay for top notch engineers is these days.
I suspect the average American underestimates what coding pays by quite a bit.

------
MichaelMoser123
I think the problem with tech is that many of us are arrogant pricks (let the
down votes start) because of this fact we are facing a lot of politics at the
workplace - all with the common source of a desire to dominate. More women
might create a more healthy atmosphere at most places, but who cares. However
this is unlikely to happen because many women are not attracted by a heavily
male dominated work environment.

The argument that women are inherently bad at tech is not based on historical
evidence - lots of women in early computing. Believe me it is very tough to
debug a stack of punch cards, much tougher than what we have today...

Are HR practices and PC the right way to solve deep problems? I don't think
so. Maybe discussions of this sort can move some people, but most people only
seek and find confirmation for their own position...

------
aidenn0
Does anyone know if there is anywhere with discussions with women who _aren
't_ engineers? I'm thinking find a dozen random women who were 95th percentile
or higher on the SATs 6 years ago and ask them 1) Why they chose their field
and 2) Why they didn't go into computer science.

At least at the college I went to, the ratio of women graduating in CS was
slightly higher than the ratio of women enrolled in my freshman CS class
(proportionally, slightly more men switched majors or dropped out than women).

Places like Google hiring more female engineers is good, and even helps with
the pipeline problem, since role-models are one way of encouraging
disadvantaged groups to pursue particular careers. However, it would be nice
to know if there are interventions we could make directly earlier in the
pipeline.

~~~
poohblahoyamo
I live in the land of prestigious doctors - we all did well on the SAT. CS was
not super prominent in my life despite me knowing some code in early high
school, but my mom is a doctor, so that was obviously a viable option in my
mind. The thought that it is a job that only lasts until you are 45 and I have
to make as much money as I humanly can before being forced to retired at
middle age is a bit unattractive. Also, the idea of doing stuff on computer
all day looking for bugs, vs playing medicine puzzles was less attractive.
LOL, medicine is fairly tedious as well now that I am in it, but yes, while I
am more interested in programming to do a few practical things, I am not
interested in working as a SWE. A lot of the med students have SWE spouses. We
do sit around and lament about how we could have done it too with much better
pay and some passes for interviewing, about the Google Hawaii powow and how
nice the Christmas party as Museum of Natural History is, while we get a
Christmad party at the local bar with the drunk emergency technicians. Tech
has a lot of glamour now, medicine doesn'.t But in the end, I don't think I
would choose differently. Female physicians really don't get any passes...
Okay, if you are lady going into Urology or trauma surgery, and a dude going
into obgyn, I hear there is a bit more help, otherwise we don't really get any
bonus points for being a woman or minority.

------
ykler
I would like to hear more about why so many people feel it would be
intolerable for a woman to be assigned to work with this guy. I'm a Jewish
man, and I feel that I could deal OK with being assigned to work with a
radical anti-Semite or a feminist who professed beliefs about men being evil,
or with someone who held me in contempt and thought my technical abilities
were subpar.

------
exelius
There's a difference between "starting a conversation" and blasting out an
e-mail to 50,000 people that doesn't really even grasp the realities of modern
software development. There's a chain of command about this kind of stuff for
a reason. The author is simply mistaken on the requirements that make a good
software developer: yes, it is true that on average, men are probably better
at heads-down software development. But that's at most half of the job of
software development, and it's honestly the least important part to get right.

On other metrics (such as interpersonal communication, conflict resolution,
etc - all critical components of modern engineering) women are better on
average. How many Silicon Valley startups fail because their product
represents the problems that the team members (who tend to be mostly white
men) are facing? How many investors went along with this because they too had
the same problem?

Point is, you don't get to cherry-pick statistics that match your perceived
criteria for the job and claim to be trying to start an unbiased dialog. I
don't think it's intentionally disingenuous -- I think that the author of the
original memo has a limited view of the job and the problems associated with
it.

That's honestly the biggest problem here: white men very often believe their
viewpoint is the only valid one, and don't even consider alternate viewpoints.
I'm not saying this as "white men bad!" \-- I'm totally empathetic to the fact
that many white men feel they are under attack -- but that misses the point.
Everyone who is not a white man has felt that way their entire lives in some
degree. Every way you deviate from the "straight white male" archetype (by
being black, gay, female, transgender, etc.) is another front you have to play
defense on.

I think the right response is something along the lines of "Your viewpoint is
valid, but please understand that it is not the only one that is valid." We
have to be careful not to invalidate someone's lived experience -- that's
exactly the problem we accuse white men of, and showing the same behavior
right back isn't going to solve the problem.

------
jmcgough
This is one of the first rational discussions I've seen of the memo.

edit: for context, I'm a female engineer

------
fche
If female engineers need to worry that, in the aftermath of the memo, people
will wonder their genuine qualifications, they should not aim their blame
toward the memo. The only people overtly and explicitly injecting non-
qualification factors into hiring are affirmative-action type people. They
created the quandary.

------
dandare
Who wants to play a game of Arguman with me?

I state that "Positive discrimination of disadvantaged groups in employment
and education is immoral"

[http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-
imm...](http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral)

------
GuB-42
I've read the memo and I don't see the part where it says that women make
worse engineers in general. It says that a lower proportion of women meet
Google's expectations for engineering positions.

This is not the same thing at all. First, he explicitly rejects the idea of a
gender binary, using an overlapping Gaussian distribution instead. Second, he
says that many positions at Google have expectations that favor men
(competition, work-over-home, ...) even though these traits don't necessarily
make better engineers.

------
thieving_magpie
>I’m also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male
colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate,
either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of
understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about.

Interesting takes on the memo. This part stood out to me.

I'm not really in a situation where I have many coworkers around but, just
knowing myself, I can say I likely would be someone that would have stayed
silent on the topic unless it was specifically brought up. That's more about
my personality than anything, I generally avoid starting conversations because
I'm bad at small talk.

I'd like to know what I can do differently. My opinion generally mirrors the
thoughts put forward by the female engineers but I feel like maybe I've let
someone in my life down by not being more vocal and supportive. Really the
only thing I've done is tried to encourage female coworkers in non-development
positions to try it out, and offer them help. I've tried to nudge our hiring
team to look at a more diverse crowd - though that's hampered by low wages and
living very literally in one of the more remote parts of the country (our town
has 3.5k people and is considered a large town for our region). I guess I'm
saying I want to do more but I don't know what to do without seeming
disingenuous.

------
alexandercrohde
Wow. I really feel like this was a missed opportunity to close the gap. I feel
like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a reasonable/polished way.

>> A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as
evidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with.
When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my
colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired
because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?

So it sounds like we're implying that anybody who presents facts to your
coworkers that might enable them to come to stereotypical conclusions has made
a hostile work environment? I find it absurd that an environment is hostile
because "maybe people are thinking X." I would think hostility would require
some form of visible action.

>> I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts.
It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn’t
seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal
Google groups.

Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to
fact. His views are certainly much more in line with the facts that what I've
heard from his opponents. For example, I don't see anybody disagreeing that
women score higher on "neuroticism" measures (wikipedia agrees).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psyc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psychology)

>> There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you
what’s up, all you wrong people.”

Great, but that has nothing to do with this. The other side certainly would
never extend him (or me) that civility. This is a power struggle and I don't
know why we're pretending it's not.

\---

As an aside, this whole debate has made me realize that I was kidding myself
if I told myself SJWs were on the side of equality. They are on the side of
politically advancing their own in-group-alliance (which doesn't include most
minorities, nor the minority most in need - the lower class).

They have no interest in fact because they aren't trying to achieve a clear
vision of a better world, rather it's because they are playing politics where
facts are just another form of weapon.

The only reason they have so much power in tech (and not say, finance) is
because we are altruists/optimists ourselves and tried to see something
greater in SJW political games.

~~~
bronson
> I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a
> reasonable/polished way.

That's a decent description of Damore's memo.

> I would think hostility would require some form of visible action.

Nope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even
though there was almost no visible action.

> Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to
> fact.

Yes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't
rigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote
preconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics,
etc).

I apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds
like you're saying the women who wrote this article are part of a powerful in-
group-alliance?

~~~
alexandercrohde
>> Nope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even
though there was almost no visible action.

What do you mean? They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently?

>> Yes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't
rigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote
preconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics,
etc).

This is fair. Except from my side, I feel like I'm seeing cherry-picking by
the other side. I studied psychology, and in college nobody seemed to dispute
innate differences between men and women (I was taught of some in infants).

So since both sides feel the other is cherry-picking, we can either A) fire
people for it B) talk it out like scientists.

>> I apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds
like you're saying the women who wrote this reply are part of some powerful
in-group-alliance?

I'm not suggesting there is an alliance of women. I'm suggesting there is a
_politically motivated_ core (SJW is the closest word I know for the group) at
google and the larger public. The fact that this group is treating science as
politics explains why:

\- They are trying to fire people for ideas (because it's US vs THEM in their
heads)

\- They are deliberately lying about what Damore said (because it's politics,
so no holds barred).

\- They are not at all expressing a coherent vision of what "equality" would
look like if they could make all the rules, but instead fighting for their own
minorities (and disregarding Jews, Mexicans, ugly people, fat people, tattooed
people, and all the other groups that certainly are slightly discriminated
against)

~~~
bronson
> They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently?

Sure, now prove it. Other than the lack of black engineers in his department
and some comments made at non-work-related functions, there wasn't anything
you could point to and say "a-ha!" It can be insidious.

> nobody seemed to dispute innate differences between men and women

I think everyone agrees there are innate differences. At least, the women who
wrote this article do as well.

Now, do those innate differences make women inferior engineers? (I know,
Damore never explicitly said this, but he implied it. Maybe it's just poor
writing? I wish he'd run his memo past some interested women before posting
internally so he'd have a chance to clarify.)

The "core" of which you speak is basically Google's exec staff. It's not a
conspiracy, it's just the company.

They fired Damore because, whether it's due to unfair implications or just bad
writing, his presence had become hostile to a good percentage of Google's
workforce. He's not going to be in a position to manage many female engineers
after posting that.

Personally, I wish Google could have condemned the memo and let HR handle it.
Their reaction seemed over the top. Ah well, sometimes life isn't fair, even
for white male engineers. :)

------
yarg
This I think is a problem with the culture and education system of our
society, by the time we reach the point of hiring someone the damage is
already done.

I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of sense to chose someone on the
grounds of what minority or oppressed group they happen to be a part of - hire
the best person for the job (this shouldn't simply take into account the
skills of the individual, but also how well they can be expected to integrate
into the group that they are becoming a part of).

We need to look into the underlying causes of the gender and race imbalances
in the pool from which we are hiring.

For women, this means looking at why it is that girls seem to be disuaded from
interest in the fields in question. From my perspective my interest in the
engineering fields emerged from being exposed to things as simple as
transformers (the toys, not the modern explosion porn), while my sisters were
playing with Barbies (a line of toys that I still consider vapid and
pointless) I was marvelling at the fact that a few joints and pivots can be
structured in such a way as to allow transition between vehicular and humanoid
forms. Allowing girls to think in mathematical and engineering terms without
attaching a social stigma of acting boyish will help in this regard.

From the perspective of racial minorities, there is a multi-generational
poverty cycle coupled with a far lower standard of education. It cuts them off
at the knees before they even get started.

Fix the education system and the discouraging culture in and of our society
and things will balance out - eventually.

But the current way of doing things is a feel good solution that deals with
the symptoms - and ignores the underlying disease.

------
phkahler
I find it annoying how all these people get to freely debate this and voice
their opinions, but the person who started it lost his job for doing the same.

------
randyrand
> particularly his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary
> reason that there aren’t more female software engineers

I believe it was just _a_ reason. Not necessarily the primary one.

I should probably go back and reread it, but I also remember the biological
points were primarily about _interest_ rather than the suitability of those
that _are already_ interested.

It seems most of the disagreement on the memo are things he never said.

------
throwaway9287
I just can't figure out why it is so difficult to even discuss the fact that
men and women are not identical. It is really difficult to research and
measure, but it is a really, really strong (and untrue) assumption that men
and women are just exactly the same in every possible way.

Now if we accept that fact, even if we are not able to quantify it, also the
demographics are going to vary by occupation, just by choice, even in a
perfect world without discrimination.

Given how impossible this is to research, how are we to know whether
occupational gender differences are good or bad? How do we know what's
discrimination and what's just choice, knowing that the two are also related,
and choice is also related with ability regardless of the gender.

We should fix discrimination by punishing the actors behaving that way, not by
establishing countermeasures that are just discriminatory in the other
direction. This is what I understood to be Damore's main argument.

------
anon0192
People wonder why there was such an outrage. This article is a good starting
point showing some of the effects that stereotypes can have on people:

[http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-
a-s...](http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-
stereotypical-male)

Two examples extracted and paraphrased:

* When women and men were both asked to "think like men" (article details how this was done) on a mental rotation test, they did about the same. When asked to think like women, there was a significant difference - around 1/3 drop of average score for women, 10% for men.

* Two groups were asked to take a test, but one of the groups was primed by the statement: “This is a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations due to various personal factors involved in performance.” - the test takers were given the impression that their score on the test was associated with their personal academic aptitude. The second group wasn't primed in this way. In the primed group, black people had a drop of performance of 2x (the number of items solved was halved).

Imagine having looked at studies like these. They show how severely people can
be affected by stereotypes - orders of magnitude more than any statistically
insignificant biological differences. If even the stereotyped are personally
affected, imagine how much worse that can be in multiple-people situations
(interviews, meetings etc) where the other people are not the target of the
stereotype but has been influenced by it in their life...

So now a colleague is seemingly perpetuating stereotypes and those stereotypes
are going viral. His argument may be more nuanced than that, but you fear that
the stereotypes are all that people will take from it. For the most part that
fear seems to be coming true. Whats the normal reaction there?

------
trophycase
After having this sort of discussion with people, there seems to be a huge
number of people, some very intelligent, that don't understand the
relationship between sex hormones and behavior

------
staticelf
Can't we just agree on that generalizing people in general is a pretty bad
idea? Better to give equal opportunity, which in my opinion doesn't mean that
you give anyone more attention because of physical factors like what sex a
person have.

I am principally against using any form of discrimination even if the reason
is to fight discrimination. Having for example courses only for women, hiring
women only because there is a disparity is bad idea.

I honestly think if we just treated everyone with the same respect that we
want to be treated ourselves a lot of these issues would disappear.

Maybe there will still be a lack of a specific sex in some jobs but honestly,
who cares? I certainly do not and do not believe in the notion that a company
is more successful because of a more mixed environment. I think the competence
of each employee and their worldview and view towards another is way more
important.

As I've written many times before, please just treat everyone the same.

------
thetruthseeker1
I for one believe James Damore wasn't fired for his views on women, but Google
fired him because he was a PR problem and that could affect their
business/financial bottom line. Google probably understands the user base and
decided they would rather not displease women (bigger group) compared to
conservatives.

My analysis adds up to what James Damore had to say as to what happened in a
WSJ article. He said his memo didn't bother many people until it was leaked,
and the google HR got many complaints from the outside world.

I think the google management fired him not because of his view, nor were they
worried that he questioned google's purported wasteful spending on diversity
programs (which for Google is drop in the bucket if it is effective...if it is
not effective I dont think they care, it makes them look good).

But google fired James because they thought he was bad for business (consumer
base).

~~~
seanmcdirmid
If thst were true, why didn't google negotiate a gag agreement (using a few
million $$$, cheap for them) with Damore to make this just go away? The fact
that they didn't take the easy way out makes me think that they didn't fire
him for business reasons.

~~~
thetruthseeker1
But that wouldn't appease the public who wanted him fired? If the public(
let's say women's group) aren't appeased and they boycott google, it affects
google ?

It is possible that google gave an offer to James D to be silent along with
the pink slip, which he might have turned down?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
There is a lot of anti-SJW sentiment these days that I'm sure even Google
doesn't really want to tap into...the public is more broadly defined than one
side of the story. Also, the longer this story goes on, the left isn't really
appeased and the right grows angrier, very much a lose-lose situation for
google right now.

The guy might have turned down a gag agreement, maybe they just didn't offer
enough money? A non-disparagement ageement would also be on the table just for
severence, but Google seems to have opted out of that already (you can't talk
about the guy and expect that him not to talk about you).

------
Ensorceled
The main issue I had with the document is that it read like an 80's USENET
posting in alt.politics. I've seen this entire discussion play out over and
over again, at multiple companies, with the same talking points, for all 35
years of my career.

My stepson just graduated from the same comp sci program I graduated from in
the late 80's and I was startled by how fewer women there were in his
graduating class than mine. I've watched my female classmates and colleagues
leave the industry. I've watched the number of female candidates for my
positions dwindle to the point where I recently hired three developers and
there was a dearth of female candidates.

There is definitely a problem and the first step is to get beyond the point
where smart, professionals in their late 20's think 80's reruns are adding to
the debate.

------
nodamage

      I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations,
      then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.”
      A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence
      that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with.
    

I strongly agree with this criticism and thought it was ridiculous that people
even attempted to use this defense in the first place, so I'm glad it's being
called out. When you are discussing statistical differences between
populations as an explanation for certain behaviors, _of course_ it is
acknowledged by both sides that there are individuals that are outliers and
that averages do not apply to every individual.

------
jansho
Fantastic interview, I relate to many of the things the engineers mentioned. I
was also disappointed by the heat and rage from both sides, IMO this whole
gender thing is _not_ a debate, it's more like a cat fight that everyone gets
hurt and become more hardened about their views. It's anti-productive and
_exhausting._

I hope that the silver lining here is that more people, particularly those who
subconsciously share Damore's views on women, understand better about the real
challenges of girls and women in the tech field. Cos it's not enough for a
small segment to drive positive change, _everyone_ needs to be onboard too.
Let's shift the debate to that level now.

------
hippich
If Google would not have such diversity program in the first place, none of
that would be happening. Reason why female engineers might have anxiety about
what male engineers think about them is exactly result of having such program
in place.

------
diedyesterday
The government and society's (including workplaces) responsibility towards
gender/race equity is to remove any legal/moral/social barriers for anyone
(provided they have the interest and qualifications) to become anything. Going
beyond that and trying to enforce a 50-50 gender quota/division in everything
is itself ideologically motivated and an idiotic attempt at fighting biology.
All you have to and should do is let anyone be anything. Whether this leads to
a 50-50 division (gender-wise) is something biology and other factors will
determine and should not concern us fundamentally.

------
simonebrunozzi
This "ask" has an issue for me already: why would a female engineer know
better than a male engineer?

As long as someone feels to have an informed opinion about the subject, he/she
should feel free to present his view.

(I am a male (ex) software engineer, and I sure as hell have an opinion about
it - to give you the TL;DR: his intention was to stimulate a conversation, he
did it in an awkward way, and he's not perfect. And no, Google should have not
fired him, but if you have ever worked in a large corporate environment, you
might have a good idea why they did anyway).

------
redthrowaway
>I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations,
then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual
level.”

I'd be curious to hear an actual defence of this line of thinking. I mean,
it's simply a fact that group differences aren't particularly useful
indicators of what an individual is like. Nevertheless, they're very _good_
indicators of what populations are like. Is there any actual criticism of that
argument, or is the objection more about how people feel about that argument?

------
sevilo
I really enjoyed this interview, finally, some voices of reasons and not blind
yelling at men for being sexist pigs just from reading some biased media's
twisted headlines.

All these times around this memo, how many people actually cared to ask for
female engineer's thoughts on this? All I see is women who don't work in
engineering positions or men trying to interpret this memo from their
perspective. How many actually cared what are the thoughts and impact on the
main subject being discussed in the original article?

~~~
someguydave
One feature of these "victim identity" wars is that a tiny number of
individuals claim to speak for an entire identity group without authorization.

These claims should be ignored as illegitimate.

------
alexryan
What bothers me most about this article is how all of us, when we feel
threatened, tend to close off our empathy for the other side which prevents us
from seeing clearly that they too feel threatened. We both come across as
selfish and uncaring to the other and are completely oblivious to the fact
that we are doing exactly the same thing ourselves.

Marshall Rosenberg used to say that “all objectionable behavior is a tragic
expression of an unmet need”. That’s worth thinking about because it points
the way towards an actual solution to the problem.

The simple “nonviolent communication” method that he developed was designed to
help people to break down the barriers of hostility and connect in a fashion
that enables both parties to achieve a mutually satisfying resolution and a
closer and more fulfilling relationship. I have found it to work very well in
my personal relationships.

As a general rule, when the other person feels that you genuinely care about
their needs and are truly committed to helping them to meet them, they are
very likely to return the favor. At that point the hostility fades and the
seeking of zero sum solutions on both sides gives way to both sides working
together to brainstorm a positive sum solution that fully meets everyone's
needs. This is really quite a beautiful process and I wish more people used it
because I truly believe it could make the world a far better place for all of
us.

------
Tehnix
First off, sorry if it seems a bit incoherent, on a mobile so hard to keep an
overview.

While it has (at least vocally) gotten a lot of backlash, the memo did give me
an opportunity to have a deep conversation about both it, and sexism in
general, not just in tech and not just towards one gender, with a female
friend of mine that I study with.

We came into a lot of what annoys us both about the way the topic is treated
in PC culture, and also gave us a bit of a better understanding of what types
of things both gender face in society as a whole. Quite enjoyable
conversation, but honestly you can do with someone you trust. So at least in
that regard the memo “worked” for us.

One thing in the OP that stuck with me was

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

Which in my opinion is what happens when you go about “fixing” the gender
disparity by such metrics as hiring. I really liked the suggestion to measure
retention, how long they stayed and how happy they were, instead of some
artificial quota for which you stop thinking after checking that box off. I
really think we need to re-evaluate what works, and I hope at least the
ongoing discussions bring us a little bit closer to that.

------
exodust
I'm baffled as to why these anonymous engineers or any female colleague would
be offended by his memo. Some of the responses are quite condescending,
calling him a "confused, questionably informed kid". Wow.

His memo is clear and reasonable. His interviews are reasonable and
respectful, he approaches the topic calmly and scientifically, the exact
opposite to the reactionary anger.

The _only_ part of the memo I can see that could cause a fuss is this:

> "distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part
> due to biological causes"

Even if true, it should be mentioned that _ability_ often stems from
preference. We are driven to invest time and effort into our preferences, so
our abilities in those areas will improve. In a population average, we should
be able to graph this difference without failing any gender bias scrutiny.

As for "native ability", all else equal except gender, you will face
opposition to the idea that your gender might start you at a disadvantage in
given disciplines.

As soon as a child starts growing up and investing time in their preference,
their abilities will cluster around those preferences. So it would be very
difficult to prove that gender abilities are present before socialisation.
Either way, it's a scientific question, and deserves respect rather than over-
sensitive knee-jerk political reactions.

------
sonabinu
Thank you for posting this! Since that memo came out, I've asked myself
several times - am I not woman enough because I love math and programming. I
didn't know I would love either till I did a bit of deliberate slogging on
both when I changed careers. Math, I deliberately learnt in high school simply
because I no longer wanted to confused. Computing I learnt the slow hard way,
again deliberately. But once I got a hang of it, it's been my passion!!!

------
xigency
I think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an
employer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will
and relationships _can end_ over personal differences.

One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is
this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city
government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their genius
findings or deluded beliefs (either way), it's not unreasonable that they
might be let go without anyone reading it. (The action of sending around an
opinionated piece of information without authority could be grounds for
dismissal.)

In the past, there have been incidents like Steve Y's note where a smart
person weathered a major faux pas for better or worse, which might make one
think that all forms of speech are encouraged at this company. But I think
Damore made some unique foibles when publishing this note and assumed that his
outlook and motivation would be either respected or endorsed. Again, it is not
a necessity for any corporation or organization to do so.

I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word
documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. Given that the
adversaries that Damore faces in this debate have most liked studied diversity
and human resources at the graduate level, peppering survey references into a
narrative argument will not be sufficiently persuasive of anything. The
correct forum for this discussion is an anthropology thesis or something
similar, or a very finely combed, deeply vetted, considerate action to a
relevant party or audience.

~~~
humanrebar
> I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word
> documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate.

What is the right forum?

~~~
Delmania
For this conversation? A woman. He should have given that document to a female
friend, told her it would probably offend her, and ask for her advice on how
to improve it. He should have been there and watched her reaction as she read
it. the single greatest fault of forums is that they do not give people a
chance to read someone else's body language.

------
throw2016
Very few social and scientific studies offer room for the average individual
to make links and draw conclusions outside the context of academic study.

For a random individual to not only draw conclusions these studies were not
designed to support, that even their authors don't, outside of context of
academic inquiry, and seek to apply it in the real world is an inexcusable
transgression.

That some should fail to register this abuse of science and fail to notice the
transgression is surprising.

What if someone circulates a memo citing studies saying introverts are not
suitable for social collaboration roles, or aggression in males makes them
unsuitable for collaboration roles and we should look for more 'suitable roles
for males'.

Studies definitively show aggression is predominant in males but no one seeks
to connect it to a real world workplace and that too without the credentials
or expertise to. Is this science?

Seeking to apply social and genetic studies that are rarely as certain as the
experimental sciences 1=1 to draw conclusions in the real world has
traditionally been the refuge of supremacists and eugenicists.

That any well adjusted individual would seek to join this group in a workplace
memo is an indiscretion too far. Individuals can't simply be reduced to
genetics.

------
bleair
Why not have a real discussion about the environmental differences that
influence interests and expectations. American society has very clear gender
roles and expectations. Why are girls by age 6 conditioned to think "math is
hard". Why are men encouraged to "crush it" or "kill it" and promoted if they
do so at work, and yet if a women took a similar approach she would be
criticized for being too pushy or bitchy.

------
suzzer99
The Economist really nails it imo. Pointing to some random stats that support
your hypothesis, ignoring others, and speculating the significance of said
stats is not science - it's motivated reasoning.

[https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-
said...](https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said-
alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal)

~~~
look_lookatme
Also known as "modern journalism".

------
unityByFreedom
Great to hear from more women.

Here's another from an evolutionary scientist who gives a point-by-point
response to Damore, using quotes from his text as a launching point for
discussion [1]

She mentions that Damore brings up IQ,

"the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between
people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)"

IQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it?

The quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in
discussions over racial differences [2].

It begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we
replace "IQ" with "race", would that change the meaning he meant to convey?

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-
bio...](https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-
claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-
August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin)

[2] [https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-
bla...](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-
iq-response-critics)

------
Noughmad
The very first answers about what they disagree with starts with

> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences
> between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs.

If you look at just about any sport, there is a big difference between men and
women. And that's not just for really physically intensive sports such as
athletics. Even in chess, only 2 of the top 100 are women.

------
MikeGale
An important part of this discussion is using general population statistics,
to describe programmers at Google.

Programmers at Google are NOT general population.

Without seeing that specific data, it may be that female programmers at Google
are better than the males. I don't know, and it varies by project and role.

Then when we are talking about specific people, all the population statistics
are irrelevant anyway.

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

Damore never said he thought this way; this is merely an implication of
something he did say.

What he did say was that he believes that - even though there are 4 times as
many men as women at Google - the men who are there deserve to be there as
much as the women. This implies that, were you to utilize quotas to achieve
gender parity, then this same equality would not be true - men would now
"deserve" their jobs more than women.

Conversely, if you think that gender parity through quotas would bring about
equality of the sexes, then that implies that you think men employed right now
are less capable then women. Men around you should then ask themselves the
inverse question: how do they know which colleagues think they were hired
purely because they are a man?

------
SOLAR_FIELDS
One of the most interesting things I got from this was referencing usage of
the term TL;DR. While it's unclear where the Term "TL;DR" originated it
certainly gained popularity in SomethingAwful and 4chan, two places that have
long been known by the general society as havens for degeneracy. It's an
interesting parallel when the term (which has obviously come a long way from
where it originated) appears in a professional discussion alongside viewpoints
that the original group of people who popularized the term would have
considered widely abhorrent.

Not that it really speaks to anything about this particular issue, more to the
fact that many people who use meme references are fully unaware that the
cesspool of places like SA and 4chan are the originators/popularizers of the
jokes that are repeated by one who might turn around and fully condemn those
communities in the next sentence without skipping a beat.

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

That's a question which will keep popping up as long as you have
discriminatory practices in the hiring process.

This memo changed nothing in this regard.

------
free2buandme
In support of workplaces in which all employees know and feel the company is
doing what it can feasibly to support them, regardless of who they are. I'm a
man, I love women, and I'm a feminist.

So, despite my thought that it was utterly moronic for someone at Google to
write out his beliefs in such a way that he would certainly get fired, unless
he plans to go into politics, I'd like to respond to something one of the
female interviewees stated in this interview:

"I also think that society should have room for the discussion of ideas that
are not in step with what is considered acceptable at a given time. There is,
of course, a difference between an unfounded opinion and the pursuit of
scientific truth, but logically, we should not avoid pursuing a scientific
truth for fear that the answer will not be aligned with currently accepted
dogmas."

While these statements are incredibly close to my own, I call bullshit.

The pursuit of "scientific truth" in such a way to not be aligned with
accepted dogmas is equivalent to having unfounded opinions in the sense that
"scientific truth" itself is a lie, and has been so since the first "truth"
was found to be "false".

Beliefs attributed to scientific work are beliefs, and modern science evolved
from philosophers who established "truths" based on speculation.

To add to that, even what's been established is suspect, even if it were true
once. Our minds believe things to be true from past experience that may not
align with recorded history. People made mistakes when recording history.
Therefore, according to "scientific truth" (which itself may be unwise!), we
cannot assume everything we believe to be true to be true.

How then could the pursuit of a truth that could easily become a lie later any
different than unfounded opinion or accepting dogma?

I'm considering a Paleo Diet now; that's full circle from our beginning.

~~~
free2buandme2
Please ignore.

------
chaostheory
> For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the
> USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work.

A few generations ago, programming was primarily a woman's job in the US.

------
fizwhiz
1058 comments all descendents of hedgew's comment. First time I've ever seen
something like that on HN.

Edit: FWIW, the best female engineers I've worked with were just as good as
the males. But yes, distribution is a thing, and we see fewer female engineers
compared to male engineers because of a pipeline problem. Lowering the hiring
bar just to converge to an unrealistic and superficial hurts everyone.
Maintain the hiring bar and address the pipeline issue by encouraging more
women to get into this field.

------
thedays
Remarkably few comments on the actual linked article. I found most of the
comments in the article calm, reasonable, nuanced and reflective. To me, this
shows the benefits of conversation and long form text, which we often seem to
forget in this age of short attention spans driven by social media.

We need more discussion like this. I for one would appreciate hearing more
about how this discussion was facilitated. Is it a transcript of a face to
face conversation, or was it done online, and if so, how?

------
perseusprime11
It was basically a bullshit memo from the beginning written to appeal to a
certain segment of the population. Google should have used this opportunity to
educate the masses on diversity and should have fired him on the basis of
hurting Google's brand & reputation and the ability to hire smart people in
the future instead of citing code of conduct. Missed opportunity and a rookie
mistake on Google's part.

------
AlexCoventry
> he wasn’t sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a
> discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview)

Anyone got a link?

~~~
ovao
He stated on Tucker Carlson that he has based his argument on what he referred
to as scientific consensus.

I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it
isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.

~~~
Diederich
> I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it
> isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.

Perhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did
you feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence:

> He stated on ....

Thanks!

~~~
AlexCoventry
> why did you feel the need to emphasize this

Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0]
It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the
supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down
to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major
undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference
for "people" jobs vs "things" jobs.[1]

[0] [https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-
fucke...](https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucked-the-
syllabus/)

[1]
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-
Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests)

~~~
seany
There are plenty of articles that touch on this.
[https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-
what...](https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-
the-research-say-about-gender-differences/)

~~~
AlexCoventry
What's the most relevant one, in your opinion?

~~~
seany
The heterodox article is one of them, but they also link to several others
they saw as reasonably backed up by the literature cited. The included counter
points as well if they were written by people in that field.

~~~
AlexCoventry
I meant the most relevant one cited by the Heterodox Academy in the blog post
you linked.

~~~
seany
I've only read one of them [1] in full, so it's hard to say with any depth my
opinions of the others. Some of the findings listed in the abstracts have
varying mentions of biological involvement. The larger point they were trying
to make is that there are differences _now_, and given some of the research
that's influenced as far back as at least middle school for the cultural part
of it. Where the ratio is for nature/nurture they leave open for a future post
(which they claim to be working on).

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

------
cp33
As a person of color, I feel the need to give my perspective here, since I am
part of an underrepresented group in tech, just like women. So I feel like I
have some insight on the issue even though my reaction may still not be the
same as what a woman would say about this.

When you are trying to make an effective argument, you have to anticipate what
the responses would be. The biggest problem with Damore is that apparently he
didn't take enough into account about what women felt about the issue, as
mentioned in the article. People in the majority are naturally the ones with
the louder voice, but it can be misleading if you are speaking on a minority
group. You probably won't have the same experiences, and one or two studies is
not enough to explain something as complicated as biology, psychology, or
sociology. This is especially true if the science is easily refuted. I really
wonder why Damore chose to write about the lack of women in tech specifically?
It seems to me so that he could better support his proposal to not focus on
diversity efforts or to face less backlash for not speaking on race. If this
is the case, strengthening confirmation bias is not an effective solution
because there may be a lot more than what meets the eye if you're not an
expert on the subject.

So from this, the two biggest questions are was he right? and was Google
right?

Was he right? Somewhat. I can't say yes or no 100%. He tried to explain his
view as best as he could but he supported it terribly. It deserved the
backlash. But he made some good points about it being unsafe to express his
opinion. If he was smarter, he wouldn't have been fired. This is the bigger
problem with the situation. A good engineer, in my opinion should be more
flexible in thought, think more about surrounding outcomes, and be better at
interacting with people.

Was Google right? Absolutely. The bigger problem is that many people think
Google fired him for having a dissenting opinion, which I think is not true
and unfortunate because it polarized America more between the left and the
right. Damore should've been smarter and we would not have this discussion.
I'm almost certain that Google wouldn't be where it is today without diversity
of thought. You can have a differing opinion and express it without pissing
everyone off. Google would have been dammed if they did fire him, dammed if
they didn't fire him, but more dammed if they didn't. It got leaked and the
media attention, complete with hostile arguments from both sides for a reason
and it harmed Google's image and female employees. We can all mostly agree
that Damore had some decent points to be made if he were a better writer and
emphasizer. Would you still say that he was fired because Google is a left
leaning organization?

You can't say women are not biologically suited for an engineering position at
Google, face harsh backlash including termination from work and say that your
views weren't respected. Come on. That's what sexism is. What if you said this
about Hispanics, or Native Americans?

If you want to say that the diversity efforts at Google are misguided, then
make a better argument than saying "we don't need diversity programs at
Google". I would say not to strive for 50% women because not all of the
engineers are 50% women. Strive for a closer percent of their actual
representation. Google can't have 50% of all women engineers because some of
them work for different companies. Google shouldn't use immoral or illegal
hiring practices to achieve this number. But Google should still have
diversity programs so that more women get into tech which would bring the
number of women in the workforce in general closer to 50% and it could benefit
everyone. Also keep in mind that a minority can possibly have more or less
qualified people as a whole proportionally within the group. Hiring more of
one minority group does not necessarily lower the bar.

Biases do exist, but it doesn't always mean it's bad. I told you I was a
person of color at the beginning of this to make you form a bias against me. I
want my voice to be heard in the hundreds of these comments when my
probability of being read is lower because there are likely a lower percentage
of women and other minorities posting. I don't think that I face tough
obstacles, which turns people off of arguments like this, but I want to say
that I do, however minor. Often times I act a certain way BECAUSE I don't want
to be seen as "the black guy" and I've done this enough of my life that people
say that I'm not the same as many other black guys. They don't say it in a
negative way, because I still act "somewhat" black, if that makes sense to
you.

------
k_sze
I haven't read the whole piece yet, but I find that the first question I ask
myself is: if the interviewees were males, would they have been given
pseudonyms?

I don't have an answer to that question. It's all hypothetical. I'm just
pondering.

------
losteverything
Were the questions asked in person and scribed "live" or submitted?

------
alecco
Every thread about the Google Memo in the past weeks got flagged (?) promptly
out of the homepage but this one stays at the top with just 400 points. I
wonder what's the difference.

1695
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787)

754
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759)

590
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626)

448
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601)

And many more.

Then people wonder how Trump got elected.

~~~
boobsbr
What's the relation with the Trump election, if you please?

~~~
alecco
Sorry I missed your reply.

To speak bluntly, white guys in US (not me!) are being shamed as being
misogynists. Now the hardcore left "liberal" groups and media turned its eyes
on STEM. See how they treated that poor guy in LHC a few years ago. See how
they ousted Brendan Eich from Mozilla.

Sure, the Uber CEO and that other VC cases are real and I support that. But
those are used as spearheads to take control. Hundreds of YouTube content
producers are being demonetized or their Google accounts frozen, like Jordan
Peterson's recently.

Bernie Sanders was attacked by BLM as an old white guy. The leftist media
turned on him, even though he was the most honest guy aligned with what they
theoretically support. It's all a big joke. So people vote something else,
whatever, even Trump. (And I think Trump is a media player and incompetent
businessman, never mind President of US).

------
dunkedonkino
at current time, 1273 comments and _no_ mention of Jordan B Peterson? I'm
disappointed in the community and lack of science based approach here. Leaving
facts at a feelings fight, I guess?

------
cerealbad
What makes female engineers different from male engineers again?

------
yy77
Take the example of plumber, any girls are expected to be a plumber? Engineer
is a bit alike as techical. The different part in google case is more mental
but not physical.

------
wellboy
Well, now this discussion should give the author of the memo enough data, to
make a follow up memo with his arguments backed up by deep research if there
is research.

Mission accomplished?

------
jack9
> that these arguments about innate biological traits are complicated by
> trans, non-binary, and intersex folks.

2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other
98% This is just wrong.

> I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general
> populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an
> individual level.”

Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?

> there have been some really fabulous responses, including many laying out a
> lot of research that counters what was in the memo

I'm interested in this research. I have not seen it, nor has it been made
available. The following book, with 2 female authors who seem genuinely
interested and informed in related topics: [https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-
More-Women-Science/dp/15914...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-More-Women-
Science/dp/159147485X)

who reached a similar conclusion to James Damore:
[http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-
women-i...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-in-
science/index.html)

Let's at least present the field studies/research, which can throw existing
clinical views into doubt. eg Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex
Differences by Cordelia Fine is at least a rigorous critique of possible
flaws.

It's a little saddening, to have this dialog represent the views of an average
engineer.

~~~
joshuamorton
>2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other
98% This is just wrong.

This is a strawman. She said "complicate" not "invalidate".

>Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?

What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Damore
didn't just reach scientific conclusions about differences in genders. He went
further and suggested actions based on these population differences.

To continue your analogy, one could say that Damore's argument comes down to
"We only want white furred animals in our zoo, and gorillas typically have
black fur, therefore we should ignore gorillas and look for Polar Bears
instead". Whereas the other side might be "Given that gorillas typically have
black fur, and we think Gorillas are a valuable part of a zoo, we should do
extra work to locate the rare white-furred gorillas that do exist".

~~~
jack9
> She said "complicate" not "invalidate".

That's true. However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers. Her
statement was meant to throw trending into question and I overstated by taking
a bad position (phrase-wise).

> What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas?

Provide more shaded areas (canopy or artificial), of course. I'm not sure who
this elaborate "analogy" (populations vs individuals turned into a warped
"industry is a zoo" metaphor?) is supposed to help.

~~~
joshuamorton
> However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers.

Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis
would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people and
how they interact with the trends. But such an analysis would be more
_complicated_ than the binary trends in the original document. That is, such
trends are an imperfect model of reality, and to better match reality, one
needs a more complex model.

>I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy"

Nor am I, you're the one that felt the need to bring up Gorillas. I felt that
was a bad analogy, and that by continuing it, it would reveal why it was bad.

It appears that it worked.

~~~
sol_remmy
> Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis
> would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people
> and how they interact with the trends.

How about this: the memo was about men and women. The 98%.

------
DinoDano
Shame on you google!

You are failing baddly. I would never think to do any adwords or youtube
moneytizing business with you.

You lie and cheat. Thats core of google today.

Google, bye bye

------
ChemicalWarfare
>> political correctness makes it hard for people with unpopular opinions to
ask questions and discuss their viewpoints...

non_PC != unpopular

~~~
Spivak
I'm going to disagree with you there. 'PC' ideas and speech are those that are
popular enough to be said in the company of a diverse crowd. This doesn't mean
that they have to be bland or inoffensive to absolutely everyone; just popular
enough that any dissenters will be a small minority and pressured against
speaking up in fear of social punishment.

~~~
alexandercrohde
PC and popular are not at all the same. A vocal minority gets to define PC,
and that minority happens to be on the left.

If the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say "Talking
about baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if
it is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment"

~~~
Spivak
I will absolutely agree that there's a minority a very vocal people, but they
themselves could not maintain a PC atmosphere. If they were truly in the
minority they would be easily dismissed as overly sensitive. It's the large
body of moderate people, who in general agree with the idea, that provide the
muscle for enforcing a PC atmosphere.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I think a vocal minority (10%) has bullied the silent majority into a position
of "If you're not on our side you're hurting us and should be fired." They did
this by controlling the language, by getting to define who's a victim, who's a
minority, what's "offensive," what's a "safe-space."

We're seeing the backlash now, because people are finally admitting it's gone
too far.

------
graphememes
Everyone is always upset when real scientific data alludes that they might be
wrong.

------
stefek99
I have nothing valuable to say.

Roughly the same time I've created #hck2fck - an analogy to pwn2own as I was
going to SHA2017 hacker camp.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to handle all the controversy related to the
project.

Intention - get some free press, media attention, eyeballs, hit to the actual
website.

------
alexmuro
just want to say thanks to all involved in this interview. This is exactly the
kind of discussion that imho can change minds and move this issue forward. I
have so much respect for these women.

------
Myrmornis
The memo contained assertions like

"women are more neurotic"

I'm a bit baffled why the author isn't being criticized more for the childish
sexism in that sentence. (This is coming from someone who despairs over the
politically correct left).

------
HillaryBriss
based on all the sound and fury, one might think that somehow Google's hands
are tied, that it has no control over who it hires.

but the reality is that it has _total_ control over who it hires.

if Google can choose to fire Mr. Damore for expressing his thoughts about
diversity, it can sure as hell extend tens of thousands of new job offers
_starting today_ to people in underrepresented groups. there's nothing to it.
they have the money and the power. so do it already and silence the critics.

it's not that hard.

------
jcmoscon
Trump is Goldstein! 1984 is now!

------
havetocharge
I think it's very ironic that males took over the discussion that intended to
seek our female opinion.

------
etiene
I actually thought the document was reasonably well written, using language
that was not confrontational or aggressive, and providing some sources. So,
from a superficial view, it looks well-thought, scientific and non-malicious.
This is why I presume it gathered a lot of supporters.

The problem is when you actually look at the message and the information
given. Some of his arguments are just wrong. And doing what he did was naive.

Biological differences between men and women are completely irrelevant to the
very few highly competitive folks in the tech industry and more precisely in
Google. Especially considering the huge chunk of the world who is illiterate,
we simply cannot have any clue how biology is actually affecting us and how it
plays with all the other variables in the game (such as being socialised for
specific tasks when growing up, or just finding the workplace hostile). On the
contrary, he shows lack of basic knowledge on history of computer science.
Since women used to be the majority in the field some decades ago, there is no
way evolution / innate difference could have worked its way in this fraction
of time. It also makes me question what are his thoughts on people who are
disabled and work for Google, for example? This discussion not only is not
productive but puts him under a very bad light.

Secondly, he seems not to understand the role of Software Engineering really
well. He argues that women are more focused on people and therefore don't feel
attracted to high pressure rational fields, but choses to ignore how important
people are to the career as a Software Engineer? It seems he is very attached
to the idea that programmers are isolated nerds on a basement, which does not
reflect at all the actual reality of successful people in the field.

Last but not least, as I said, he was very naive. He writes this 10 page thing
about how women are maybe not interested in CS for these many reasons and
criticises Google's approach to diversity, with the message that maybe it's
not worth it, proposing we use even less empathy. Google has these programs
after counselling with experts in the field, which he certainly is not. He
says Google is an echo chamber and complains they are not listening. What he
doesn't realise, however, is that by circulating that document he is shitting
on the head of many of his female co-workers with his wrong arguments, and
shitting on the head of whoever are the experts responsible for these
diversity programs. And even if he was right, it would still be a bad idea.
You don't circulate a document arguing that a certain gender may be in general
unfit for the job, and expect people of said gender to be cool with it, even
if you claim the people working with you are exceptions. Replace "women" with
different groups and how his piece really hit me may be understood better. I
don't want to hear "women are bad at math, irrational etc. but you are
different, you are cool". Imagine saying to my happily married gay friends
that gays are promiscuous but they are ok? He really did not think through how
this would sit on people's ears. I felt really disrespected and I don't even
work in Google, imagine the women who felt the same but actually had to work
with him? It's a massive disruption to the workplace. Google had no
alternative but to fire him. A bunch of people would quit if they didn't. I
know I would. So Google made the right choice for the company. They put a lot
of effort into hiring the best people. Losing one of them is better than
losing credibility and losing many.

I'm not saying he's a horrible person and deserves to be fired. I'm saying he
is wrong and he made a terrible mistake that offended many people and led
things to where they are now at no one's fault but his own. Everything related
to this document is really unfortunate, to him and to everyone else involved.
It decreased morale of women at his workplace, it got him fired. It also got a
bunch of alt-right nazis spreading hate about women using his document as a
base, which I'm certain was not his intention.

------
stillkicking
If people were willing to apply such meticulous criticism and high standards
to the Women in Tech movement in the first place, there wouldn't be an issue.
While the sober opening and acknowledgement is a refreshing start in a sea of
shitty takes, I have yet to see anyone bother to show the same kind of
psychological concern for the men in tech and the same kind of rigor for
scientific standards, when the shoe is on the other foot.

What would it do to your confidence and comfort to know you can't state
certain scientific truths without being labelled a sexist and a misogynist? To
know that there is a whole network of eager feminist writers ready to label
you a troglodyte techbro and scoff at the notion you might have something
interesting to say on an industry you've been part of for 10+ years? To know
that, if speaking at a conference, every single word out of your mouth will be
dissected for possibly implying the wrong thing, even as a first time speaker?
To carefully weigh socializing with your coworkers against the chance of being
accused of impropriety, with no practical defense accepted?

The people who complain about "an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have
to deal with every day" are showing an utterly stunning lack of empathy in the
other direction. They are wilfully ignoring the disastrous effect these
efforts can have on the people who do not share their views.

Similarly, if people are supposed to actively seek out dissenting views and
avoid cherry picking research, why is it feminists are notorious for
protesting anyone who dares to disagree? Seminars, men's centers,
documentaries, ... really, their track record in silencing and misrepresenting
dissent is impressively consistent, the Google Memo included.

The women cited in this interview feel "emotionally drained". "The onus is on
me to prove to men in tech that I’m not an “average” woman". Strange, because
all I hear from tech feminists is that men need to constantly prove themselves
to be "good allies". No amount of previous piety is sufficient to avoid being
lynched when you draw their ire. Their track record in eating their own is
equally impressively consistent.

"Who might I talk to who could tell me about their experiences working within
a system that is biased against them, so I can understand better?"

Start with James Damore, an autist who worked at a company biased against him,
sharing his experiences, and getting roasted for it. They complain his memo
wasn't written in an inquisitive enough tone, well guess what, that sort of
difference in preferred communication style is exactly the kind of thing you
should expect in a diverse environment.

On the other hand, the numerous articles in the style of "I'm a woman in tech,
let me ladysplain the google memo to you" leave no question about who is
actually parading around with the attitude of "let me tell you what’s up, all
you wrong people."

Contemporary feminism is 90% projection, this article is more of the same.

------
RealityNow
> "I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences
> between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs."

Where did the memo say this? This is the most common strawman used to attempt
to discredit the memo. The memo author never states that men are better at
software engineering, just that these biological differences may help explain
why women are underrepresented, choosing to pursue computer science and
careers in tech less than men.

> "the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to
> men in tech that I’m not an “average” woman"

> "This is literally a discussion of whether half the human race is innately
> unsuited for a certain kind of work"

See above

> "I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general
> populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an
> individual level.”

Essentially what you're saying is, "we're not allowed to talk about biological
differences that make underrepresented minorities look bad". I disagree. No
fact should be barred from mentioning, and it's not the author's
responsibility to ensure that you don't misconstrue his facts to advance your
own agenda of claiming oppression.

> "He did not address any counter arguments or research that opposes his
> views, or the validity of the studies he did cite and their
> reproducibility."

Did you address any counter-arguments in your research report? This is some
dude's memo in an opt-in internet forum, not a comprehensive/rigorous
discipline-defining research report seeking publication in an academic
journal.

> "He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the
> bar."

I agree that he should have elaborated on this bold claim. Though it's not
outrageous to suspect that this could be the case given that affirmative
action policies in higher education do lower the bar.

> "Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why
> not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time
> building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand,
> if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should
> not be forced into that kind of debate at work."

The memo was posted in an opt-in forum, you didn't have to debate it. Silence
does not imply that you agree with him.

> "I’m also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male
> colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate,
> either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of
> understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about."

Why do you think they remained silent? You said it yourself - anyone who
disagrees with you is wrong. Damore got fired for stating a well-articulated
opinion, why would any of your male colleagues jeopardize their jobs as well
by speaking honestly on the matter?

> I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages
> they’ve had – the situations in which they were more likely to be trusted,
> deemed competent, promoted, given raises, etc. as men than they would be as
> women. This exercise isn’t intended to place blame, but to inspire empathy
> toward those who feel the weight of their gender each day at work.

I wish more women in tech vilifying Damore would think about the advantages
they have received (affirmative action), think about it from the perspective
of a male in a field where we get no hand-holding or "women in tech"
scholarships and are constantly accused of being sexist oppressors, and stop
pretending like discrimination is the only or main reason women are
underrepresented in tech. I firmly believe that women chose to pursue tech
less than men and that this is the biggest driver of the underrepresentation
(posted a little about that here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364)).
If it is indeed the case that women are choosing to pursue the study of
computer science less than men, then stop placing the burden on us males to
increase your participation.

Before you automatically dismiss me and others with views differing to you as
a misogynist, consider that most of us in the first world do not consider
women as being any less capable than men at software engineering, let alone
ANY discipline. Women used to dominate the field, and no reasonable man
believes that women aren't fit for the job or shouldn't pursue this field.

> By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are
> sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take
> precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female
> engineers and technical founders

What does this even mean? It's just another way of saying "by not agreeing
with me, you're wrong"

> I think he could have written it differently, so that people who chose not
> to read the whole 10-pages could have read the tl;dr and not immediately
> concluded he was sexist.

So the onus is on the author to ensure that people don't flippantly conclude
that he's a sexist?

> This is an emotional topic

That's the problem, it shouldn't be.

> He was not fired for speaking truth to power, he was fired for mishandling a
> complex subject in a way that caused harm to his employer (and many of his
> colleagues).

He wouldn't have been fired if the memo argued the opposite viewpoint

------
jcmoscon
1984 is now!

------
jorgemf
> I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts.

Funny. So if you backed your opinions with science that is not right? It was
hard to keep reading after that statement.

~~~
sidlls
"Applied science incorrectly to confirm a bias or advance an opinion
incorrectly" and "applied science to form an opinion" are different things.
Damore did the former.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Except "what is correct" is the whole point of the debate, so nobody knows
which side is doing the former until everybody agrees, which they most
certainly do not agree yet.

Mind you that to the other side, it looks to us like what you're doing is the
former and not the latter (until some common ground is found).

~~~
sidlls
No, there is not an equivalent act that "both sides" are engaged in, here.

~~~
mpweiher
Well, true.

He tried to be factual, balanced, fair.

His detractors mostly grossly misrepresent what he wrote, including claiming
the very opposite, and then hurl ad-hominems at their straw man.

------
EGreg
Let me offer what could be a controversial opinion, but one based on faacts
neverteless.

When there is a war to fight, men are drafted far more than women (if any are
drafted at all). This is true in pretty much every country. Risky construction
jobs are mostly filled by men. The homeless and incarcerated are mostly men.

Obviously, survival and risk to life and working conditions and homelessness
are major topics. So why isn't society talking as much about balancing men and
women in these areas?

For example, in the USA, men are incarcerated 10x more often than women,
despite making up something like 50% of the population. _Why doesn 't anyone
claim this is prima facie evidence of systemic sexism?_ When it comes to race,
such claims are in fact made, but not when it comes to sex. I believe the
reason is that people really do believe that men are more prone to violence
and the "population-level differences in biology" (to put it in the Google
Guy's terms) are a totally socially acceptable answer. One that even liberals
and progresives give.

Or take another example of where sex-based discrimination against men is not
just tolerated but shrugged off, while the same would cause outrage if it was
based on sex: clubs in the city. Men have to pay a cover and stand in line,
ladies are ushered in. Men may come in if they have 2-3 good looking ladies
with them. Imagine the same business model with white/black people. It
wouldn't last.

So why is this happening? Because we all believe there are differences between
men and women that come down to biology (whether it is "really" true or not).
Our society contains many places where men are discriminated against, but they
don't make a very good cause for an activist (well, there are men's rights
activists, but not many).

Now here is what I think about the whole "women in tech" thing: it is too
corporation-centric. People's lives consist of more than working in a
corporation. A major part of life, for example, is raising children.

If you look at this aspect of life, we see women are favored in every society
to be the primary caretakers of children. Most of this is explained by - wait
for it - biological differences that supposedly make women better nurturers.
States often say it is in the _the best interests of the child_ for the mother
to get primary custody of a child in a divorce.

The consequences are plainly laid out in the statistics. Women are much more
likely to be the ones to devote their time and energy to raising children.
This is basically _another job_ which the men are not expected, by society, to
_have to do_. Certainly, many do, but it is fr more _optional_ for a man.
These days, women are graduating college at higher rates than men, and _make
more than men_ out of the gate. But when women start having children, that's
when the gender pay gap appears. This seems to be _the largest factor_ that
explains the gender gap

Someone has to raise the children, though. And this is why I say the argument
is too corporation-centric: it assumes the goal for women and men is to earn a
money in a large, hierarchical corporation. One can phrase it the other way:
_women are actually ahead of men in the work-life balance department_ , and we
should try to help everyone achieve more of THAT goal.

This is bigger than men and women. How many families today have both parents
working, or a single parent, sticking the kids into public school as a
_daycare center_? (Read what pg wrote about high school as a prison.) How
about putting parents in nursing homes? All for what?

So people can commute many miles (burning tons of fuel) to corporate jobs and
sit on their butt doing something someone else wants them to do? Why is that
considered the goal, when corporate world is only 150 years old and on its way
out when automation hits? Work-life balance is way better. Small teams and
self employment - that is what I want for more people, women and men alike!

------
pm24601
My feelings as a white male...who happens to have 2 kids.

Sometimes my kids will "why?" "why?" me to death. They really don't care about
the answer and can never be persuaded. They are just trying to stretch out the
moment of truth before they actually have to do the thing they don't want to
do.

Everyone: it is the 21st century. In the 20th century, we had that discussion
and debate about whether or not half of the human race is biologically able
comprehend CS.

At this point, there are some people who refuse to be persuaded. I feel that
Google did the correct thing.

Q: "Is it o.k. for me to have these attitudes about a high percentage of
(present, past and future) my co-workers?"

A: "No"

Q: "Why?"

A: "Because we are running the company and we said so."

Q: "Why?"

A: "We are done explaining this."

(Damore writes his memo)

A: "We said we are done explaining. Maybe you can get the answer you want at
another company."

~~~
EpicBlackCrayon
If only I could upvote twice, this is an excellent analogy.

------
0xbear
>> For example, students and professors I met in college >> that grew up in
the USSR thought engineering was >> stereotypically women’s work

Um, no. I grew up in the USSR, too, and engineering never was stereotypically
women's work. If anything, the enrollment of women in engineering programs was
even more skewed than it is in the US today. We only had 2 women out of a
cohort of roughly 40 people, and they barely managed to graduate. Ironically
neither of the two works as an engineer, but then neither do most men from
that cohort. Truth is, engineering is not actually the most lucrative
occupation in today's Russia, so I can't blame women (or men for that matter)
for not pursuing it.

Also, most people here probably don't know this, but Russian language is
gendered, and the very word "инженер" is masculine, though it can be used
unchanged to refer to women engineers. There is no special word form for
female engineers.

------
sremani
<Quote> with the recognition that gender and sex aren’t binary. </Quote>

Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies"
references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you.

~~~
peterwwillis
The best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain
to you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no
biological explanation.

For people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor
or use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about
simple biology you should have learned in school.

[https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-
genders-...](https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-are-
there)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-
are...](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are-
there.html?pagewanted=all)

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

[http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html](http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html)

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

~~~
dragonwriter
> Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation.

There is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological
sex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the
other sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology.

Which, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines,
_everything_ about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology
is, ultimately, biology.

~~~
toxik
Seems a tad reductionist; by that same token, all of psychology is also
physics.

~~~
sndean
I wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the
genetic (biological) basis for brain function/behavior [0]. Once you're at the
level of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a
level of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as
chemistry.

The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain
function/behavior stuff and psychology.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/)

------
AmIFirstToThink
Google having diversity hiring policy was what made "diversity hire"
impressions among employees.

Damore talking about it did not cause "diversity hire" impressions.

Google shot the messenger in this case.

------
glibgil
Are ten-page screeds on _any_ subject welcome and most companies? Google was
this guy's only job after academia. I value his opinions on Google and
corporate life in the same way that I value the opinions of unmarried people
or people without kids on those respective subjects. I wince a smile and nod
and think, "check back with me in ten years when you've been around the block
a few times". This is not a person to take seriously. He does not even know
what he doesn't know

~~~
Mz
_Are ten-page screeds on any subject welcome at most companies?_

Probably not. I blogged just today about my opinion that if this 10 page
screed had been about how Google was doing the office furniture all wrong, he
likely still would have ended up fired, sooner or later, for being an
egomaniac who cannot play nice with his corporate overlords, basically.

------
averagewall
If saying that female applicants are given preferential treatment is harmful
to female employees, then surely the people doing the preferential treatment
(HR?) are the ones who are actually guilty, not the messenger? Why is there no
complaints against those practices? Are they not real?

He shouldn't be criticized for raising concerns about discriminatory hiring
because, right or wrong, he had a legally protected right to do that without
suffering retaliation. If people don't like those ideas being mentioned, they
should try to get the law changed because this is one of the very few things
Californians can't be fired for yet it seems to be the main point of
complaints against Damore.

------
bluecalm
Now imagine how "we just randomly throw away some of the resumes from black
people but we are not lowering the bar" would fare in court of law or public
opinion.

~~~
Dylan16807
Sure, everyone would call that a bad policy. It's taking a minority that's
biased against and making those biases worse.

But imagine it was "90% of our hires are white, so we're trying to change that
by throwing out some white resumes". You'd get a much more mixed reaction.

~~~
peoplewindow
Hence the fact that so many people are sick of the racism card and voted for
Trump. As you point out, the same behaviour would be called bad policy (and
possibly illegal) if it's against blacks but not against whites. That seems
fundamentally problematic.

~~~
Dylan16807
Sometimes local bias can make things fairer overall. The difference is that
something anti-black is _obviously_ making things worse, while something anti-
white _might_ be helping or hurting in various ways. You have to be
intentionally myopic to think all bias is equally unfair. Especially consider
how racist you can make desegregation sound, even though it's giving everyone
the same treatment: "They're going to start sending most of the kids of one
race to much worse schools!".

------
ebbv
Anybody who sends out a political bomb like that to a large internal mailing
list should expect to get fired.

And the memo was poorly thought out and the dude was not well informed. All
this hand-wringing is silly. He deserved to get fired and he did not have any
really salient points beyond "Could Google do MORE to encourage diversity?"

------
davidreiss
Isn't a ycombinator blog dedicated solely for women sexist. Isn't "Ask a
Female Engineer" sexist? If ycombinator only had "Ask a Male Engineer"
wouldn't they be attacked for it?

------
DalaiObama
So if you argue against Google's diversity policies, you're fine as long as
you write on par with one of the greatest writers of his generation¹.

If you argue _for_ it, you can get away with any angry incoherent rant.

Isn't this what leftists call "privilege"?

¹ Scott Alexander

~~~
dang
You appear to be using HN primarily for political and ideological battle.
That's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it, so would you
please not?

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
DalaiObama
I think of it as participating in these kind of discussions without risking my
career.

But I hear what you're saying, and I agree that this post was needlessly
confrontational. I'll try to be a better HN citizen!

------
sheepmullet
More likely your female teammates are creating a hostile work environment by
being unable to handle minor ideological disagreement.

Or even more likely, you have misinterpreted them and are unaware that they
were not shaken or seriously disturbed in any way.

Edit: edited to remove the personal attack while still keeping the meaning.

~~~
Blackthorn
I was there. Literally. Why are you trying to say you understand my
colleagues, who you do not know, better than I do?

~~~
sheepmullet
Do you see what you are implying about your female colleagues?

------
baitbiter
Even more harm is done by Affirmative Action for women now being implemented
in all companies. Feminism has given up on the aspect of competing and turned
to shaming all men. There are several professions where women dominate with >
80%. Where's all this fucking outrage in those?

~~~
mpweiher
Considering women make up >50% of college graduates, for every profession that
has more men there are more profession that have more women (or a greater
imbalance).

How about:

People are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices
and don't second guess them.

~~~
mathw
That doesn't account for the cultural pressure on girls throughout childhood
to be princesses, like pink things and cooking and babies and ponies, while
boys are supposed to like computers and engineering and guns.

We're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while
the men go out and earn the money.

~~~
mpweiher
“Gender-Differentiated Parenting Revisited: Meta-Analysis Reveals Very Few
Differences in Parental Control of Boys and Girls”

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0159193)

------
Udik
No. The memo says:

"The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11],
which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-
authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause."

So it's not that "leftists are violent", it's PC that's complacent to violent
PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming. A bit different.

Again, I have the impression that parts of this debate could be avoided by
accepting some of the caveats and distinctions already made in the memo.

Edit: replaced angry outburst with more civilized one.

~~~
bjl
He explicitly mentions 'cultural marxism', which is an anti-Semitic conspiracy
theory from the 60s.

~~~
Udik
Don't know where, certainly not in the memo.

~~~
bjl
In his Jordan Peterson interview he talks about it quite extensively.

------
lsd5you
Now extend your attitude to religous belief. All the parallels are there,
including believing others are inferior (certainly islam). Should they be done
as well?

You are infact imposing a moral belief system. Once upon a time it used to be
wrong to not believe in god. Well similarly you are saying the same about
gender differences.

~~~
dang
For heaven's sake let's not take this into religious flamewar as well. (I'm
sure you didn't mean to, but we know empirically what sort of effect this
has.)

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
lsd5you
Ok, but to me it is as plain as day that there is a double standard here and
taking the debate on to that kinda territory is the only way to convince the
other side about what they are doing... i.e. shutting down people who don't
share their belief (you should believe ...). Once upon a time it was you
should believe in god. If it is ok to persecute (or at least censor) people
who don't believe in various forms of equality then it is ok to do the same to
those who don't believe in a god.

Certainly the fact that some people believe in supernatural things
(ridiculous, right?) but are allowed to state these beliefs despite the fact
that on the face of it they are far more extraordinary than the extremely
plausible some people are better than others in someway due to the differences
in their genetics...

The answer is of course that the prevailing pc mainstream does not feel
threatened by these daft belief systems (beyond fighting creationism in
schools).

Anyway, you may be right that it is currently irreconcileable.

------
xname2
When they say they feel they are hurt / offended, do they know this is a
typical easy thing for women to do in the society, not men?

I don't know, maybe everything is sexist. Maybe we should expect a society
where men and women cry equally.

~~~
e12e
Of course we should all have equal opportunity to express our feelings, just
as we should have equal opportunities to become software engineers.

That said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time
stating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are
hurt/offended.

And a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy
for women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women
can have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be
absurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward
a free/equal society.

All that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be
repression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society
is in general not good for anyone.

I think Dar Williams puts it well in her song "When I was a boy":

[http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-
willi...](http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-
williams.html)

------
toxiccwm
I'm not sure which world people live in where men are not expected to defend
their ideas against the great misunderstanding masses who don't accept them on
pronouncement, but it sounds lovely. Can I move there?

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait to HN. That's
vandalism if not arson, and ideological battle is not what this site is for.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166)
and marked it off-topic.

------
kolbe
Edith is on point.

------
kansface
A related post from SSC on the subject:
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-
exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-
differences/)

TLDR: Personal interests can plausibly explain the _entire_ gender imbalance.

~~~
cyanexttuesday
That blew my mind too. I wish that article could be pinned to the top of
hackernews forever.

------
Hermel
The term "diversity" already implies that there are differences between
genders, otherwise we would have to call it "more of the same". Everyone who
insists on valuing diversity while also insisting that man are women are equal
is contradicting herself.

------
youdontknowtho
I've been trying not to comment in these threads.

The thing that gets me though is how much people WANT to argue about this
shit. So many people on this site want to defend that guy and his ideas like
they gain something from it. It's weird.

------
Blackthorn
It really doesn't matter if the memo had any truth to it or not. At the end of
the day, that really is immaterial to the result. What happened because of the
memo is it managed to piss off virtually every woman in the company. You don't
piss off 20,000 of your coworkers in a completely avoidable manner and keep
your job.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Did the memo piss them off, or did a non-existent "Sexist manifesto" created
by click-bait sites piss them off?

~~~
Blackthorn
Considering how it pissed them off before any leaks happened, I'm going to
have to do with the former.

------
kristianc
> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences
> between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest
> in certain jobs, certainly. And we know – and many of us have experienced –
> that interest levels are also heavily influenced by social and cultural
> factors.

This is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic
differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing
people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science.

It's absolutely necessary that we start to break down ideological echo
chambers, but I'd argue that Damore's memo and his subsequent actions
('Goolag' etc) haven't done much other than entrench people in the positions
they already have.

~~~
9j9j9j9ju
>> Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far
outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy
psuedo-science

If you are a man I dare you to use that argument to get yourself appointment
at gynaecologist's :)

~~~
kristianc
Well done for proving I can't get pregnant. What else you got?

Edit: But while we're at it, there are male gynaecologists too, largely
because while they're studying, they develop an affinity for gynaecology.

~~~
9j9j9j9ju
That wasn't the point. I think that Americans in particular are too obsessed
with their "American dream", their belief that "you can be whoever you want if
you work hard enough" that they cannot even accept basic facts from their own
biology.

There's a reason why all sports, including non-physical ones, like chess, have
separate competition for women - and when there is mixed competition women get
places below 100th. Try to explain that with "socio-cultural factors" or other
gender pseudo-science.

~~~
kristianc
> A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of
> women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected,
> given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all.
> Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this
> statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the
> Royal Society B.

> In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women
> participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self-
> selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to
> drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial
> assumption, the researchers say. That is, it _requires that there is an
> innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated
> with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support
> it._

Luckily, people have studied this, and in the case of chess, it's simple. More
men play chess. And did you just dismiss the entire field of sociology?

[https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess-
biologi...](https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess-
biological.html#jCp)

~~~
9j9j9j9ju
Yes, I dismiss entire field of sociology as pseudo-science. Same as
psychology.

