
Outraged about the Google diversity memo? - rice_otaku
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/08/outraged-about-google-diversity-memo-i.html
======
kromem
An interesting anecdote regarding gender bias and tech.

In the very early stage of my company, we wanted to outsource some UX work.
After an exhausting review of applicants on one of the freelance sites out
there, we finally settled on a Pakistani woman who had the best balance of
portfolio vs cost.

At the initial Skype call, there was no video. And it turned out to be a guy
speaking in a very high voice. We didn't really care and just went along with
it (after a call or two he dropped his octave significantly, but everything
continued with the original female name). But it was curious that this
enterprising individual decided that the best way to stand out from the
countless other developers with similar demographics he was competing against
was to pretend to be a woman.

I do suspect that the presumed bias that women aren't actually as skilled and
got where they are because of gender preference, while an uncomfortable bias
for women, does make it so that a woman with equal skill to a male candidate
is perceived as a greater rarity/find because "oh wow, this one is legit."
(Not saying women are actually less likely to be legit, just saying the
perception that is true can work to board in the opposite direction). I'd be
extremely curious to see the classic "attach picture to resume/work sample"
experiment done for tech with actual hiring managers. I'd be very surprised if
the work with the female photo has a lower net score than the male photo
across the experimental groups.

~~~
mpweiher
That experiment was done in STEM academia recently, and showed a 2:1 hiring
advantage for women.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract)

It should also be noted that the earlier study, which showed a smaller effect
and only if the resumes were calibrated to be (a) mediocre and (b) precisely
calibrated to be the same, was done in _Psychology_. Which is, of course, a
field dominated by women and maybe not the typical "STEM" that we think about
when we talk about the underrepresentation of women in tech.

Those two findings in turn gel with a recent French study that showed bias in
grading in favor of the underrepresented gender in a particular field (though
the bias was stronger in favor of women than in favor of men).

[http://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46681/...](http://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46681/title/Slight-Female-Bias-in-
French-Science-Teacher-Exams/)

And of course there was the recent trial (not an experiment AFAICT) in
Australia to reduce gender bias:

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-
tria...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-
improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888)

"The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent
less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name to a CV made the
candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door."

UPDATE: I was looking for one more thing, and finally found it. Despite the
fact that the study showing bias against women is much weaker, it has been
cited several times more often than the study showing bias for women (table
near the bottom). [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707/wh...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers)

~~~
NaliSauce
>That experiment was done in STEM academia recently, and showed a 2:1 hiring
advantage for women.

Back when I was still at university I was on a hiring panel for a new prof.

In a first step we ranked all the applicants using qualitative and
quantitative metrics (the rankings across qualitative/quantitative and people
on the panel was very similar when we compared rankings at the end) and then
we handed in a shortlist with the best male applicant and best female
applicant. We did this to make the Gleichstellungsbeauftragte (="diversity
officer") shut up and thought that since the ability gap was really noticeable
it'd be a no contest. How wrong we were. Despite being in the upper part of
the bottom half of our ranking, she got the job.

That was the day I found out that I wasn't at a meritocratic institution as I
had previously thought and left a few months later. That sort of thing really
isn't good for your self confidence.

~~~
andrewprock
When you say the ranking was quantitative, what sort of quantities did you
measure? Did you ever evaluate the quality of your metrics, and how predictive
they were for future success?

IIRC, Google did the same thing and concluded their hiring metrics had very
little predictive value beyond setting a certain bar. Once you rose to that
level, most discriminatory power of the metric evaporated.

If that was the case where you were, then is probably very little predictive
value between "top scores" and "median scores".

------
jernfrost
Great perspective. As a Northern European having dealt with American company
ownership I don't think the main problem in Google's case was political
correctness but rather a general American problem with how free speech is
defined in the US. Freedom in America is always about government NOT doing
something, while in Europe government is defined as a protector of these
freedoms. This shows up clearly with respect to stating an opinion at a US
company. There is no protection of free speech on private property in the US.
I first encountered this when out company got bought by an American one and
they i sisted that religion and politics should not be discussed at work. It
surprised them that such a demand was illegal in Norway. Private property does
not trumph everything else as it often seems to do in the US.

While americans are free to utter quite inflamatory speech in the public, I
find that American culture seems to discourage any sort of controversial topic
in polite company.

That applies to conservatives and liberals alike in the US. Discussing
religion among conservatives in the US seems taboo. While liberals are not
very open to having PC opinions challenged.

~~~
vasilipupkin
To be clear, a private company in the US cannot stop you from discussing
anything at work but reserves the right to fire you at will, including for
discussions it deems unproductive. Discussing politics in polite company in
the US is indeed discouraged by culture. I personally think that's a good
thing as people on opposite sides of the spectrum often can't agree on a basic
set of facts, which makes discussions pointless. Do supporters of far right
parties in Scandinavian countries often discuss politics with supporters of
left wing parties at dinner ?

~~~
humanrebar
Sometimes the point of the conversations is reminding each other that we're
decent and intelligent humans. Giving up on engaging because you haven't
converted people is giving up too soon. Sometimes the changed mind is in how
we value political opponents, not whether we agree with them.

~~~
vasilipupkin
Yes, but you can't have a political discussion that is productive if there is
a fundamental disagreement about the facts

~~~
humanrebar
Sure you can. Sometimes it's essential so you can agree to disagree properly.

------
Const-me
IMO the best comment from there:

Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict.

Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in
academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent
from the party line.

Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to
support their family.

But they won't change their position. If anything, their position will be
radicalized. For example, from classical liberal to alt-right.

Yes, they'll stop expressing their opinion in public. But they'll express
their opinion, with a vengeance, in the only place where one can do so in
secrecy without fear of witch-hunting mobs: the voting booth.

Yes, that explains Trump.

~~~
iuguy
I made the grave mistake of trying to express that point on Twitter. Twitter
seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time, but it's a
dumpster fire right now full of raging people who don't understand what you've
just said.

I was in SV last year for a couple of months during the election, and everyone
I met were all paid up members of the church of political correctness up
front, but when you spoke to these people in private there were a lot of
people who were secretly conservative, but "It's Silicon Valley and you can't
be a Republican out here".

I'm reminded of Chomsky's words in his book, The Common Good:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the
spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that
spectrum"

Where things have gone drastically wrong here are that the spectrum is now so
tiny that any debate within that spectrum is now impossible. It becomes almost
impossible to depolarize the situation and widen that spectrum, and that's
going to lead to everything you more eloquently put above, if not more.

~~~
toyg
_> Twitter seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time_

Understatement of the century. How on earth can you expect to have "nuanced
debate" with only 140 characters?

~~~
kogepathic
_> How on earth can you expect to have "nuanced debate" with only 140
characters?_

Oh come now, it seems to work fine for Trump! /s

~~~
Chris2048
Sad!

~~~
Chris2048
I was downvoted! Sad!

------
jancsika
> And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you
> will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value
> judgement must be made here, not a logical deduction from data. Is diversity
> important enough for you to temporarily tolerate an increased risk of not
> hiring the most qualified person? That’s the trade-off nobody seems willing
> to spell out.

Perhaps because it's not a necessary trade off of diversity policies per se,
only a trade-off of the one specific type of diversity policy with which the
author happens to be familiar.

For an historical example that does not feature such a trade-off:

1\. I put up a curtain between the judges and the musician auditioning for the
orchestra.

2\. I hire whoever the judges say sounded the best.

3\. The number of women in orchestras grows.

In no case where this diversity policy is used does the policy cause a less
skilled player get chosen because that player was female.

~~~
memedtodeath
When the Australian public service experimented with blinding demographic data
on resumes, fewer women and minorities were hired:

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-
tria...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-
improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888)

A blind recruiting process only increases diversity if there exists
significant bias against diverse candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if
Silicon Valley has a bias _in favor_ of diverse candidates, like Australia's
public service.

~~~
humanrebar
You have an excellent point, but your use of the phrase "diverse candidates"
misses the concern that the most important diversity is in thought and
culture, not just predetermined demographics. A "diverse candidate" in reality
may not look like an official "diversity candidate".

~~~
mnglkhn2
Another question is what makes you think that all whites think the same and
therefore it will narrow the spectrum of ideas?

This assumption is never discussed and always accepted as true.

Why is that? Why are all the whites (or white males) identical in their
thinking?

~~~
humanrebar
It's clearly not true. Hiring a Slavic man would, in abstract, be an increase
in diversity in a lot of shops. They're likely Caucasian, though. One response
is that it's important to officially value historically disadvantaged groups,
but many Slavic groups _are_ historically disadvantaged.

So, in a weird way, diversity initiatives come from a very ethnocentric
(American) perspective.

------
supremesaboteur
This article also has a few problems

> I believe for example if it wasn’t for biases and unequal opportunities,
> then the higher ranks in science and politics would be dominated by women.
> Hence, aiming at a 50-50 representation gives men an unfair advantage. I
> challenge you to provide any evidence to the contrary.

Claim bearers are burdened with proof. Otherwise I can say 'I claim it is not
so and if you believe otherwise you provide evidence to the contrary' and we
would be a bunch of children shouting nonsense

> I’m not remotely surprised, however, that Damore naturally assumes the
> differences between typically female and male traits mean that men are more
> skilled.

He didn't say that

> The biggest problem with Damore’s memo however is that he doesn’t understand
> what makes a company successful. If a significant fraction of employees
> think that diversity is important, then it is important. No further
> justification is needed for this.

No, what makes a company successful is the positive impact it has on
employees, customers, the communities it operates in and shareholders

> Biases and unequal opportunities are real. (If you doubt that, you are a
> problem and should do some reading.)

Why assume your readers can only reach conclusions if they are dumb ? Why not
point out the specific readings that you have done ?

> And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you
> will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value
> judgement must be made here, not a logical deduction from data

Value judgements should also be subject to logical deductions

~~~
dahart
> Claim bearers are burdened with proof.

I think that was her point...

~~~
carapat_virulat
But the point of the original "manifesto" was that google makes the claim that
uneven distribution of men and women is due to discrimination, and the
"manifesto" explains how a 100% fair and non-discriminatory selection process
may result in uneven results.

In that case, there's no reason to assume discrimination unless it's proved.

~~~
dahart
> there's no reason to assume discrimination unless it's proved.

Yes there is. Cultural sexism is already widely known to be a massive problem,
and active discrimination is only a small part of that. Discrimination is
known to exist as well. At the same time there is no known, no proven
connection between sex and capacity for engineering, that doesn't even exist
as as far as we know.

The number of women in tech is changing over time, faster than evolution, the
number of women starting computer science degrees is changing over time,
faster than evolution, and many companies employ a larger percentage of women
than Google. So, there definitely are reasons to assume cultural sexism and
discrimination are involved, and there are _more_ reasons to do so than not.

Burden of proof is on Damore. He has made vague and blanket generalizations
about some of the differences between men and women to jump to very specific
conclusions that there is no proof of. The burden of proof absolutely rests on
him to back up his claims. What he's done so far is spread some FUD, he used
sophomoric logic to invent a theory that rationalizes his own desire to
discriminate. By claiming that women aren't innately as good- something for
which is there _no_ evidence- that frees him up (and anyone who believes the
same) to openly not hire women, or to pay them less, for example.

Active discrimination is only one part of the wider issue. Cultural
stereotypes, and fear and self-selection by women and men are part of the
larger cultural sexism issue too, among other things. There are fewer women
studying computer science now than 10 years ago. There are more women studying
computer science now than 40 years go. If the primary differences in the
capacity for engineering are innate, then how do you explain that? Evolution
of human capacity for engineering is not taking place on a yearly basis, so
_obviously_ innate biology is not the primary force at play here.

The number of women in the workforce has gone up over the last decade at the
same time the number of women in tech has declined, yet all the male-female
differences Damore commented on would affect all men and women in business.
Remember, he only claimed that women are more open, more agreeable, and more
neurotic, and that men are more driven for status. If this explains the gender
gap in tech, then it should also explain the same gender gap in business
globally, and it fails to do that by miles.

The same arguments that Damore is putting forward were used to discriminate
against women in tech have been used in the paste to discriminate against
women in the workforce in general, and against women in the military as well.
Maybe read a little more history.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_workforce](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_workforce)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military)
[http://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-
computer-s...](http://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-
science/)

------
dandare
Disagreeing with Damore’s arguments is perfectly ok.

Not liking the style of his memo is perfectly ok.

Calling Damore young and clueless is useless ad hominem. Chances are he is
smarter than you and me and the memo is actually well sourced.

Calling him a WHITE MAN is an essentialism that reveals the author's bias.

~~~
Frondo
I'd happily agree he's a better engineer than me. That doesn't make him
smarter, and his engineering acumen certainly doesn't give him any specific
ability to do any kind of psychology or neuroscience lit review.

Know how we get up in arms when someone with expertise one field starts going
on about some totally unrelated field and makes a lot of leaps of reasoning?

Expertise in one field doesn't make you an expert in everything. Nothing tells
me this guy can write authoritatively on this subject matter, or that the memo
is well-sourced, just cause he's smarter at writing software than me.

~~~
dandare
Nice strawman you've build there ;). "Expertise in one field doesn't make you
an expert in everything", sure! But not being an expert in given filed does
not make you clueless. And _that_ was my argument.

------
losteverything
Let me present a walmart associate opinion on the person that was fired.

Tldr - sometimes really smart people do the dumbest things. Where was his
common sense?

For the average associate i know the overarching Question would be did he not
know he could be fired?

"I would have loved to go to college. I couldn't afford it. Id love to have a
job at Google. He probably makes over one hundred thousand dollars. All those
years spent in college to get a good job and to then lose it. Didn't he think
saying something bad about your employer can get you fired? I cant go on
Facebook and write sh#! about walmart and not expect to get fired or at least
reprimanded. I just dont understand how people who are supposed to be so smart
can be so dumb."

\-- I am fortunate to have straddled upper and lower classes in my life. I
learn new things working with adults who have never known a family member who
attended college. Managers who never flew in a plane. The ground level view of
living where you work to get by. The joy of life (imo, more joy with less
wealth)

I have no outrage personally.

~~~
fulfillaneed
There is a big difference between going on Facebook to talk shit about your
employer and what happened here. The memo writer asked for feedback on his
memo and was ignored. He tried again and again to get feedback on his opinion
internally until turning to the Google internal 'skeptic' community. The
skeptics doesn't quite like what he wrote so they strung him up and made an
example of him. He was encouraged to give feedback like this so that the
company could react to internal problems and self correct before they became
worse. In a collective sense Google is acting like a child by refusing to
address this problem and their reaction will alienate employees more than this
memo ever could.

On a personal rant, I've contracted for Google doing software architecture on
a few projects. They do have practices which mildly disgust me. Stuff like
flagging people as 'diverse' and making sure the correct number of diverse
people are in attendance.

~~~
losteverything
<He was encouraged to give feedback like this so that the company could react
to internal problems and self correct before they became worse.

I never got that. Ty. But isnt one of the mechanisms to get feedback making
input anonymous? Did they ask for authored input? Really? About diversity?

~~~
yebyen
From what I gathered, yes. Unquestionably! In a message board with the name
"pc-considered-harmful"

What did they think was going to get posted onto that board, if not this memo?

~~~
jshevek
In retrospect, it almost seems like they were fishing for people who have
'unsavory opinions' so they can force them to attend diversity training (even
the name is Orwellian) and fire them if it doesn't work out.

~~~
losteverything
Do i have this right?

Google: "we want to hear how you think? It's safe."

Googler: "you suck."

Google: "just kidding. It's not safe. Bye bye."

Seems like dirty pool.

Is that what occurred?

------
sersi
I do not agree with a lot of points of that diversity memo but that means that
it's a topic that needs to be discussed instead of being censored and the
author fired.

Discussion is how people change their opinion. It's by being free to discuss
and say what you think that you can exchange ideas with other people you
disagree with and maybe change your mind once you understand their view point.

If you close discussion, then those opinions will be more radicalized and will
tend to be discussed in echo chambers where people are not afraid of being
shamed by their writings.

As Voltaire once said[1] "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to
the death your right to say it " and I think, forgetting this, is what leads
to Trump and to an increase of misogyny.

[1] It's actually apocryphal, he never actually wrote or said that but it does
illustrate his philosophy so wouldn't have been out of character for him.

~~~
tchaffee
> that means that it's a topic that needs to be discussed instead of being
> censored and the author fired.

Here is what CEO said on the about it in his response [1]:

"many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s
trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating
whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to
all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on
those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it
remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these
discussions."

The author of the original memo wasn't fired because of trying to discuss the
topic. He was fired because he violated Google's code of conduct, which
expects:

"each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of
harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."

If you intimidate enough employees via a widespread memo, you will get fired.
I see no problem with that. The freedom to discuss a topic also comes with
responsibilities.

As an example, would anyone expect to keep their job if they published a memo
with "Blacks on average are [insert negative here]." at any big company
anywhere in the world? Regardless of scientific basis? It's an absurd
expectation, unless you work at a company doing scientific research on that
specific subject.

[1] [https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/note-employees-
ceo-...](https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/note-employees-ceo-sundar-
pichai/)

~~~
sersi
The main problem I see with that is that poll that says that a third of the
employees didn't disagree with the memo. If there's such a large percentage
that agree with it then it's time for discussion. It's not a minority opinion
and that memo shows what a lot of people think but will not be afraid to
express.

So, instead of having open discussion on the topic which would help changing
ideas, those opinions are being suppressed and the people holding them will be
further radicalized.

~~~
tchaffee
In my comment I quoted the CEO saying _many_ parts of the memo _are_ open to
discussion. Discussion and debate comes with responsibilities, and one of the
responsibilities per the CoC is that you do not intimidate or harass other
employees.

Is it unreasonable to say you are not allowed to intimidate or harass other
employees?

> be afraid to express.

They should be afraid to express an opinion that violates the code of conduct.
The code of conduct values some things over others, and a workplace free of
harassment and intimidation is more important to Google than making sure no
one is ever afraid of expressing an opinion. It might well be the opinion of
some engineer in Google that all blacks should be called niggers. That
engineer should rightly be afraid of expressing that opinion no matter how
deeply held that opinion is, and no matter how many other employees share that
opinion.

> the people holding them will be further radicalized.

Source?

~~~
sersi
Ok, where is the intimidation or harassment? He expressed unpopular opinion
and unenlightened points of view but is there harassment?

In another comment, you say it's the mention that women tend to have on
average more neuroticism although you seem to acknowledge in that comment that
it has basis in research [1]. If, as you say, it's a fact, then how can it be
harassment?

You cannot have reasonable discussions, if you dismiss what you consider to be
true facts because you consider them to be harassment. There could be factors
that could cause a statistical difference between genders due to physiology or
due to culture (I disagree with the memo's author in his dismissal of cultural
and parenting influences on gender behaviors) and any discussion of diversity
would need to take those into account.

Now, the author claims that his memo had notes to supporting evidence but the
leaked copies do not have that.

[1] For the record, I haven't found the research on that and I'm rather
skeptical of that result.

~~~
tchaffee
> where is the intimidation or harassment?

Many employees felt intimidated and that they now had to prove in a work
setting that they are not "more neurotic on average than men". This is about
human relationships. If enough people say they felt intimidated, how can
anyone dispute that? Can you prove they didn't feel intimidated? Can I prove
they did feel intimidated? No to both questions. It's not in the domain of
science or facts. It's in the domain of human relationships and emotions.

> If, as you say, it's a fact,

I said it was a fact? Where? I actually don't care if it's a fact or not. It
just doesn't mean a lot to me either way.

> then how can it be harassment?

Easy. There is zero relationship between facts and harassment. I can tell the
truth and harass you. I can also lie and harass you.

If I pass your workspace every day and say "You have a smaller penis than the
average man and some people here are better at programming than you" does it
matter whether both of those are facts? It's still clearly harassment. Unless
we have an inside joke.... human relationships are far more complex than
science. No wonder so many of us would like to shoehorn everything into black
and white scientific facts!

> You cannot have reasonable discussions, if you dismiss what you consider to
> be true facts because you consider them to be harassment.

Of course you can. A reasonable discussion around your penis size at work
wouldn't include facts about your penis size. The reasonable discussion would
be "that's inappropriate and if you don't leave me alone I'll report you to HR
for harassment."

You are confusing "facts" with "appropriateness". One is a scientific concept,
the other is a social concept. The two have almost nothing to do with each
other.

> the author claims that his memo had notes to supporting evidence

It might be interesting, but it doesn't matter in the least in this case. The
domain isn't science. Per the Google code of conduct, it expects "each Googler
to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment,
intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."

Do you see anything about science in the code of conduct? Or is it talking
about culture and human relationships?

~~~
jshevek
> Many employees felt intimidated and that they now had to prove in a work
> setting that they are not "more neurotic on average than men".

Since we can't read minds, we don't know how they felt. We only know that they
_said_ they felt that way. When you believe it is for a higher cause - like
fighting the patriarchy - lying about your feelings is a minor consideration.

Witness how many of these identity activists lie about being pushed, lie about
having their space invaded to accomplish their ends:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRlRAyulN4o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRlRAyulN4o)

Not a single one of them says "Hey, no, lying isn't right." The collective
values of that massive group of identity activists has no regard for truth, on
this level.

We can't deny that there is cultural overlap between the identity activists in
this video, and the identity activists currently working at Google.

~~~
tchaffee
You're basically saying what I'm saying: harassment isn't something that can
be objectively determined. Googlers might be lying about it, they might be
telling the truth.

If you don't want to get fired for harassing folks, and you don't have great
people skills, you should probably keep your controversial opinions at home.
YMMV.

------
dahart
Really great post, and I had what I thought were some great observations about
the article I wanted to share. But then in the article's comments I read this
by Outer M.:

"By the way, in science and technology, conservatism is a minority ideology
(he says so himself in his letter). How would he feel if we start saying that
conservative people aren't apt for science and technology? That if he doesn't
feel welcome he should find a different profession? It's ironic he complains
about it even though, in a way, he understands the struggle."

After I read that, I went back and re-read the memo, but I swapped all gender
references for politics, and vice-versa, and it was _awesome_.

At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and
political orientation, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Gender is
actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that
the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean male,
we should critically examine these prejudices.

...

Possible non-bias causes of the political gap in tech

...

In highly progressive environments, women are a minority that feel like they
need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those
with different genders to be able to express themselves.

Alienating women is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because
women tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of
the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

~~~
nailer
Politics, favorite foods, religion, dress sense and other ideas aren't innate.

Gender, age, ethnicity and sexuality are.

Hence swapping gender for politics doesn't work.

Additionally Damore argued for assessing individuals as individuals rather
than as tribe members and assuming discrepancy is down to bias - even if you
did sub someone's chosen politics for their gender, Damore's proposed fix
would still require you to assess the individual.

~~~
dahart
> Politics, favorite foods, religion, dress sense and other ideas aren't
> innate. Gender, age, ethnicity and sexuality are. Hence swapping gender for
> politics doesn't work.

That is incorrect. The word "gender" is defined as the social and cultural
differences between male and female, as opposed to the biological ones.

You also meant to say "sex" and not "sexuality". Sex is the innate biology of
males & females. Sexuality refers to things like sexual preferences of
partners, sexual feelings, and sexual activity, all of which are not innate.

I wasn't arguing against Damore and I don't care whether he argued for
individuals. Except that he obviously didn't just argue for individuals,
because he complained about the plight of the conservatives at Google, _and_
suggested that women as a group are innately less capable technologists.

I just find it really funny that he took opposite stances on two minority
groups in tech, and with a straight face argued against sensitivity toward one
group and argued in favor of more sensitivity for the other. You can swap
them, and I did, and what you get is more or less the exact same, equally
wrong argument. It's very sad if what it takes is swapping them to see how
wrong it is.

~~~
tynpeddler
Your statement that "he complained about the plight of the conservatives at
Google, and suggested that women as a group are innately less capable
technologists," is not a fair recounting of his arguments. He claims that
Google's internal cultural dynamic is hostile towards conservatives, and that
Google's hiring policy towards women is inappropriately favorable. There is
nothing innately contradictory about these beliefs.

Damore never argues against using groups to make big picture, strategic
decision. Quite the opposite. What Damore is arguing is that Google's
strategic decisions are rooted in ideology, not research, and the consequences
of those decisions are discriminatory at the individual level. Worst of all is
that because those decisions are rooted in ideology, they can't be questioned.

Of course, Damore makes several other arguments. Damore suggests that Google's
minority retention practices are discriminatory and ineffective, while
agreeing that Google's corporate environment is likely a poor fit for women.

Damore does make recommendations on how to show sensitivity towards women in
order to boost retention of women and he bases these recommendations of his
understanding of current, replicable research in psychology. What's important
to note about Damore's recommendations is that while strategically they favor
women, on an individual basis they do not. The practices that Damore suggests
would be as open to men as they are to women.

~~~
dahart
Maybe you misread or misunderstood Damore's letter.

[Damore] "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."

He did exactly what I said - he complained about the plight of conservatives
at Google, and he suggested that women as a group are innately less capable
technologists. That's not just fair, it is, without judgement, completely
factually accurate.

I didn't claim these two things are contradictory, that's your own straw man.
I claim that one of them is wrong, and that if you swap them, one of them is
still wrong.

I'm a little surprised how many people are defending him. He's got no
expertise in these matters at all. Why are you so sure this is a good argument
overall? What makes you confident in his interpretation of modern psychology
and social issues?

His letter is specious - it sounds good for a bunch of reasons, and he has
many valid points, but it's wrong overall. Programmers _love_ arguments that
favor consistency, and they're convinced it's always and forever more fair,
but that's very often not true in reality. If society were already fair and if
cultural sexism didn't exist, then not being extra sensitive to women might be
the right thing to do. But the prevalence of cultural sexism is a fact, it
exists just like racism does. We have to actively get rid of it before we can
be consistent. Because it's there, suggesting that it's more fair to pay less
attention to it is actually rationalizing sexism. What you're arguing for
indirectly is to keep our level of sexism at the status quo, rather than fix
it _before_ we treat everyone exactly the same. Treating everyone exactly the
same right now assumes there's no problem right now, but there is a problem
right now.

> Damore never argues against using groups to make big picture, strategic
> decision.

Then I think your beef is with @nailer's comment above mine, and you can argue
that with him. He said "Additionally Damore argued for assessing individuals
as individuals rather than as tribe members and assuming discrepancy is down
to bias - even if you did sub someone's chosen politics for their gender,
Damore's proposed fix would still require you to assess the individual."

You are contradicting what he said.

~~~
tynpeddler
I didn't say your characterization of Damore's arguments was wrong, I said it
was unfair. What I meant by that was that you stripped statements of context
and nuance and represented them with negative connotations that are not
warranted based on the original context. My understanding of your statement
was that you were suggesting that Damore made definitive statements that are
muddled and contradictory. If that was an unfair interpretation of your
comment, then I apologize.

I consider your statement "he suggested that women as a group are innately
less capable technologists" to be unfair because it could be interpreted in
multiple ways. The danger of misinterpreting this statement is so great, that
the underlying idea can't be expressed in this manner. Damore uses the phrase
"these differences MAY explain.."(emphasis mine) to indicate that evidence
suggest, but does not prove, his hypothesis. You make Damore sound more
definitive than he actually is (or at least how I understand him to be).

The most dangerous word in your statement is "innately". If I remove it from
your statement, than it becomes incontrovertibly true. Women as a group are
less capable technologist, by simple nature of the fact that there are fewer
of them. Why is the big question, and the word "innately" is the attempted
explanation.

If "innately" means that "women are generally to stupid to grasp computes,
than that's codswhallop. There's no evidence to suggest that the mean IQ of
women is any different than the mean IQ of men.

If by "innately" you mean "men are biologically compelled to be assholes to
women, and women are biologically compelled to flee this treatment", then
that's a scary fucking problem that I hope we can solve in some manner other
than the obliteration of the male sex.

If "innately" means that "women generally don't give a shit about computers",
then there is evidence to suggest that it might be true, though of course the
evidence is far from conclusive .

If "innately" means that "Men are more represented at the extremes at of most
distributions, and since being a google engineer is an extreme position, men
should be more represented there", then that is another possibility that is
suggested, though obviously not proven, from current evidence.

For me, the word "innately" is too fuzzy in its meaning and it makes me
uncomfortable to use it in this context.

As for your concerns about his expertise, his interpretations of current
research concerning the cognitive differences between men and women are not
out of line with current research and the interpretation of that research by
well regarded members of the psychology community. Steven Pinker is a name
that has come up frequently in the past few days, whose own views overlap
Damore's to some degree.

I find your interpretation of my motives to be uncharitable. My intention is
not to argue that we should keep the status quo of sexism. I think we all
agree that judging the capabilities of an individual based on their biological
sex is bullshit. My concern (And it seems Damore shares this concern) is that
we're replacing one kind of sexism with a different kind of sexism. That's not
progress.

I think you should ask yourself how comfortable you are with the following
statement: "There are differences in the distribution of cognitive traits in
the populations of males and females based on biological sex." (I use the word
cognitive here to mainly refer to emotional differences though of course it
can have other meanings. I apologize for using such broad language here but I
felt that it was suited to this context)

Note that this statement is one of pure fact. Either there are differences in
the populations at large, or there aren't. Of course, it's a fact that will be
incredibly difficult to discern, but at some point in the future, we could
conceivably answer this question. Are you comfortable with this statement
being disproven? Are you comfortable with it being proven? If you answered no
to either of those questions, than you have an ideology that will be difficult
to update with facts.

Please note that these questions are all rhetorical. I'm not trying to attack
you personally and I appreciate the time you've taken to respond to my post.
I'm not an asshole, I just write like one.

~~~
dahart
I appreciate your response too, and I'm not impugning your motives, nor
judging you. I have no doubt you believe your motives to be good and in the
interest of fairness and equality. Many men who are siding with Damore believe
that. What I do think is that you're not fully prepared for this discussion
and not aware of the history and causes of discrimination and systematic bias.
Do you know about the book "The Bell Curve" and the controversy it caused in
the 90's?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve)
Don't skip the "criticisms" section.

> I think we all agree that judging the capabilities of an individual based on
> their biological sex is bullshit.

You're further demonstrating a misreading of Damore's letter. Yes I do agree,
judging engineers according to biological sex is bullshit. If you agree with
that, then you didn't understand what Damore said. The memo says explicitly
"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.

I think you actually don't agree with Damore, and you just don't know it yet.

Talking about how he hedged with a "may" and didn't state it as fact is a huge
cop-out. He stated as fact that abilities are different (for which there's no
evidence.) What he proposed is that the imbalance in current distribution
might be caused by a proportional imbalance of ability (for which there exists
mountains of contrary evidence). The entire point behind his statement is to
establish that biological sex could be responsible for the distribution
imbalance, and it's possible there's no sexism or discrimination against women
going on, and thus nothing to fix. This is FUD. It doesn't matter whether he's
claiming it's a fact, what he's doing is casting doubt.

The problem with denying that discrimination exists and asserting there are
other causes is obvious: it's hypocritical, it's a way of discriminating.

> The most dangerous word in your statement is "innately".

I am using 'innate' as synonymous with biological, meaning hard-wired and
unchangeable, a trait that comes with the package. Let me re-phrase, Damore
suggested that woman as a group are biologically less capable technologists
than men. This is the same sense that other people in this thread used
'innate'. It may help you to lookup the definition, e.g. "adj. Possessed at
birth; inborn. adj. Possessed as an essential characteristic; inherent."

> If I remove it [innately] from your statement, than it becomes
> incontrovertibly true. Women as a group are less capable technologist, by
> simple nature of the fact that there are fewer of them.

I know you don't mean to sound as bad as you do, but that sounds really,
really bad. The capability of any individual has nothing to do with how many
others there are. In this specific case, it's quite possible that the few
women in tech are more capable than the average man. Damore was not suggesting
that women are less capable as a group because there are fewer of them, he
suggested that it's possible that women can't do tech as well as men _because_
they're women.

> I think you should ask yourself how comfortable you are with the following
> statement: "There are differences in the distribution of cognitive traits in
> the populations of males and females based on biological sex." (I use the
> word cognitive here to mainly refer to emotional differences though of
> course it can have other meanings. I apologize for using such broad language
> here but I felt that it was suited to this context)

You might also want to look up the word 'cognitive'. It doesn't mean what you
think it does, and you just misused it pretty badly. Taken at face value, that
statement would suggest to most people that the mean IQ of women is different
than the mean IQ of men, which I already know you don't believe.

~~~
tynpeddler
Thanks for your reply. I regret that hacker news is not a great format for
engaging in these sorts of long running (and long winded!) discussion, but's
it's what we've got and so I'd like to continue if it's alright with you.

I think there are a lot of small disagreements we may have about this issue,
but there's a big elephant in the room that I would like to focus on. Namely,
my statement that women as a group are less technical capable than men, and
your reaction to that statement.

I want to focus here because it's the point where we disagree the most, and I
think it offers the best opportunity to highlight the differences in our
thinking and, most importantly, to highlight the different ways we each use
language.

'I know you don't mean to sound as bad as you do, but that sounds really,
really bad.'

First off, I agree with you. This statement could be taken in some very
terrible ways which is why I chose to bury it deep in an obscure comment
thread, surrounded by lots qualifying statements, while pleading with my
audience that my comments be interpreted charitably. I understand that you
want to interpret each statement within the context of human history but for
the time being, I would ask that we try to engage in a conversation free of
that context. From my point of view, we are hypothesizing, not proposing
policy (I think one of the flaws of Damore's memo was that he did not cleanly
separate hypothesizing from policy proposals, and so he was not able to
cleanly discuss what evidence may or may not say). To me, trying to discuss
the evidence for trait distribution in human populations while worrying about
the sad history of human bigotry is like trying to write a recipe for
spaghetti and interjecting a discussion on the weather and soil best required
to raise tomatoes. Technically the subjects are related, but I think we can
all appreciate how that could make the spaghetti recipe difficult to
understand if we don't carefully partition out all the concerns at this stage.

Do you have any objections to the statement that "Men as a group (compared to
women as a group) are less capable knitters by simple nature of the fact that
there are fewer of them"?

From my personal experience, this statement seems incontrovertibly true. If I
needed a group of highly skilled knitters to accomplish a large project, I
have no doubt that the vast majority of the people I would end up recruiting
would be women. Does this mean that men can't be good knitters? Absolutely
not. Stephen West is a male knitter who travels the world drawing (small)
audiences wherever he goes. There are knitting groups in Finland and Amsterdam
that are mostly male, which love to get together, drink beer, and knit.
Nevertheless, I am confident in my original statement that men as a group are
less capable knitters. From my perspective, this is ultimately a matter of
skill not talent. Skill by it's very definition requires time and practice,
and generally people people don't spend time and practice on things they don't
have an interest in.

Now let's assume that men as a group are biologically less interested in
knitting (obviously I'm pretty deep into the hypothetical here), from the
definition of innate we could say that men as a group are innately less
interested in knitting. If men as a group are innately less interested in
knitting, I would claim that men are less likely to acquire knitting skills.
If men as a group are innately less likely to acquire knitting skills that I
would comfortable saying that men as a group are innately less capable
knitters. 'Capable' mean competent, and if you don't have skills, you're not
competent.

With all that in mind, let's look at Damore's statement that "the distribution
of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological
causes and these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation
of women in tech and leadership".

One reading of this statement is as you have read it. Ability refers to
talent, IQ, mathematical, and technical talent. Thus the reference to biology
means that Damore believes women tend to have a lower IQ that that makes them
unsuitable to be engineers except in exceptional cases.

However, there is another way to read the statement, and from my conversations
with friends, my spouse, and reading of various articles and blogs, it is a
very common reading. Let me paraphrase Damore: "The distribution of
preferences and _acquired skills_ of men and women differ in part due to
biological causes and these differences may explain why we don't see equal
representation of women in tech and leadership." Ability means "the means or
skill to do something", thus I believe that this paraphrasing is fair.

I would argue that Damore intends the second interpretation of his statement.
He never tries to cite evidence that claims women are stupid. All his
citations revolve around the possible differences in the perceptions and
interests of men and women. He then argues that differences in interests may
result in a difference in acquired skills, which results in a large difference
in the populations of men and women who are suitable to apply to Google.

P.S. I did want to address the definition of 'Cognitive'. Ripped straight from
Google,'Cognitive' means 'the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge
and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses'. To me, innate
preferences absolutely effect how someone acquires knowledge and how they
reason about their experiences. Other definitions refer to perception and
intuition, as well as IQ and working memory. I understand 'Cognitive' to be a
grab bag word that can refer to any mental trait that effects the way you
think. I asked my question to try and understand if you were comfortable with
the idea that there are any statistically significant differences between the
populations of men and women in how they tend to view, perceive, think about,
or respond to their environment.

------
anabis
Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers being fired in 2006 showed that there
could be no rational discussion of this topic. Sad to see it unchanged in
2017.

Doubly sad because if the anonymous survey linked in the post is true, 1/3 of
Googlers agree with the memo. Only 1/3 "strongly disagree", and the people who
wanted him fired should be a further fraction of that 1/3.

[https://basicgestalt.wordpress.com/2017/08/06/press-f-for-
ja...](https://basicgestalt.wordpress.com/2017/08/06/press-f-for-james-damore-
the-only-set-of-balls-left-at-google/)

EDIT: fixed link to alternative site.

~~~
marchenko
I wish this Larry Summers martyr mythology would be revisited with scrutiny.
Summers was already unpopular with the faculty for his changes to the core
curriculum (it was argued that they reduced rigor in some tracks), endowment
strategy, and a very strange scandal involving financial wrongdoing in Russia
and a massive Harvard payout. He made his comments to a group including top
female faculty during a time when they had made specific complaints concerning
- among other things - severely family-unfriendly campus policies that
disparately impact women. The faculty, many of whom were completely on board
with the concept of sex differences in personality, saw his inartful "mama
truck, daddy truck" comments as an attempted rebuttal. His comments - in this
context - were pure toxoplasma, so of course they are what the media seized
upon.

~~~
marchenko
For example, one of the specific complaints of the faculty at the time was
that the advertised perk of on-site daycare was an extremely small number of
places in the basement of a trailer on land not owned by the University (and
so possibly subject to return to Cambridge). The environment at the time was
tense, and the faculty appear to have opportunistically seized on the brouhaha
to weaken a disliked leader. Many female faculty publicly supported the topic
of the comments themselves (as I recall, the most vocal were an economist in
favor and a very famous biologist against - the biologist appeared to
interpret to the comments as a direct comment on the ability of the Harvard
faculty)

------
mirimir
This is an excellent discussion.

I especially love this comment:

> I believe for example if it wasn’t for biases and unequal opportunities,
> then the higher ranks in science and politics would be dominated by women.
> Hence, aiming at a 50-50 representation gives men an unfair advantage. I
> challenge you to provide any evidence to the contrary.

Because arguably that's where gender differences highlighted in Damore's memo
point :)

I'm reminded of Richard Morgan's _Black Man_ aka _13_. He argues that men
basically don't play well in groups ;)

~~~
btilly
I'll take up that challenge with [https://www.edge.org/response-
detail/10670](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10670) which provides
quantitative data indicating that male abilities vary more than female ones,
and this fact is sufficient to explain why men should be overrepresented in
CEO boardrooms and prisons.

~~~
mberning
Mother nature does seem to roll the dice more when it comes to men. People
then look at the outliers to the right and scream sexism while completely
ignoring all the outliers to the left. There are many more profoundly stupid
men than women. Men are incarcerated at a higher rate. Men kill themselves at
3x the rate of women. Yet this is quietly accepted.

~~~
nbanks
Women have a much higher level of attempted suicide, possibly 3x as often as
men. [1] I once heard a theory that women don't die from suicide as often
because they tend to use less violent means of suicide. For example, if you
swallow a bottle of pills you could survive or change your mind a few minutes
later and get your stomach pumped, but this rarely applies to shooting
yourself in the head.

1\. [https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-
statistics/](https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/)

~~~
elgenie
"While males are 4 times more likely than females to die by suicide, females
attempt suicide 3 times as often as males."

So a suicide attempt by a man is 12x more likely to succeed than one by a
woman.

~~~
MagnumOpus
That is sexist! Are you suggesting that women are less skilled than men ??!!??

(/s, obviously. Sorry I have to point it out.)

~~~
mirimir
I get /s :) And maybe they're _more_ skilled. In that they get the message
across without actually dying.

------
steveeq1
> That leaked internal memo from James Damore at Google? The one that says one
> shouldn’t expect employees in all professions to reflect the demographics of
> the whole population?

I don't see how this is an unreasonable argument to make. There is a dearth of
male kindergarten teachers, for instance. This doesn't mean the school is
being "sexist". It might just mean that certain genders tend to be attracted
to certain types of professions.

~~~
GVIrish
> I don't see how this is an unreasonable argument to make. There is a dearth
> of male kindergarten teachers, for instance. This doesn't mean the school is
> being "sexist". It might just mean that certain genders tend to be attracted
> to certain types of professions.

If that's all the manifesto said, this wouldn't be a story. I am a minority in
tech and I certainly didn't see a lot of people like me in my Computer Science
program so naturally there is under-representation in the work force, it
happens.

But when you start wading into the, 'Women are biologically less well-suited
for this work...' is where you get into problems. No different than arguments
that used to be made against black people before de-segregation.

~~~
rtx
Was he making a statement or trying to find an answer?

~~~
GVIrish
I don't know how much he was trying to find an answer but he does leave a good
amount of qualifiers in there like, 'this may be the cause' or 'this could
explain'. I could be wrong, but it seems like he was trying to put forth a
argument in good faith that was not divisive, yet he got into dodgy territory
with how he constructed and executed his argument.

------
mberning
I like the discussion. I think the point about software being significantly
"people centric" is a bit off base and betrays the authors lack of experience
in the field. Working with people is certainly part of the job and in some
roles maybe a large portion of the work. Being a good communicator is an
important part of being a good developer, but it doesn't make you a good
developer. Being a talented and experienced programmer is the foundation on
which the rest is built.

~~~
ebola1717
That's a nice theory, but I fail to see any evidence of it. I see lots of
people cap out at senior engineer, cause that's how far you can get without
having strong technical skills. Staff engineers, tech leads, and managers all
get there because they're good communicators, and tbh, in those roles, their
engineering skills are secondary.

~~~
mehwoot
_I see lots of people cap out at senior engineer_

What's wrong with that? The majority of software engineers are senior engineer
or below, any skill you only need to make it past that level clearly can't be
considered core to the job.

------
tchaffee
"one also doesn’t solve a problem by yelling “harassment” each time someone
asks to discuss whether a diversity effort is indeed effective."

Google simply didn't, and neither did Google employees. The letter from CEO
Sundar Pichai makes this clear:

"many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s
trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating
whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to
all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on
those topics"

I don't understand why there is so much discussion around whether or not what
the fired employee said was scientifically true or not.

"Blacks on average are more [insert negative here]"

"Jews on average are more [insert negative here]"

"Men on average are more [insert negative here]"

How would I get away with any of the above statements in widely published memo
at any big company, regardless of basis in fact?

It's a PR disaster that costs the company money to manage, and it also
violates Google's code of conduct by having made a significant portion of
employees feel harassed or intimidated.

Here is an excerpt from the Google employee code of conduct which expects:

"each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of
harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."

The fired employee didn't do that, and that's why he was fired.

I suspect the reason so many people have trouble with the firing, and the
responsibility stated in employee CoC is that it puts a lot of power in other
people's hands. You can no longer sit behind your screen and insist that it's
a scientific fact and therefor you are right. Respecting the CoC requires
empathy, people skills, listening, perhaps sometimes even submissiveness - all
things that "technical people on average are bad at."

~~~
Caveman_Coder
> "I suspect the reason so many people have trouble with the firing, and the
> responsibility stated in employee CoC is that it puts a lot of power in
> other people's hands."

I disagree. I think people are upset, at least conservatives within Google,
because they see this "against the CoC" idea selectively applied. I can tell
you first hand that there were a lot of things said by those on the left,
especially after the election, about conservatives that many felt violated the
CoC, the issue is just that its a minority at Google that are conservative. I
mean, after the election at the TGIF, a member of management basically told
everyone to stand up and hug the person next to you and "it's going to be
alright." If this isn't alienating, lacking in empathy, and downright rude
toward the conservative Googlers, I don't know what is...

~~~
tchaffee
I'm sure it's a little of both of what we said, and other reasons as well.

One has to ask: did the conservative Googlers who felt intimidated or harassed
by the hug session report that to HR or management?

If the the CoC is selectively applied then people have to prove it, not just
have a hunch about it and moan about it. They need do what every minority
group in the past has done: collect stats, show the evidence, and take action.

If this is in fact happening, then I wish them luck, even if I disagree with
some of their politics.

------
Joeri
People are making way too big a deal of genetic predisposition. Yes, there are
genetic predispositions, like how musical talent may run through some
families, but what matters way more is how we are brought up, and how we
choose to act. If someone is a musical virtuoso, they became that way not
because of the talent they were born with, but because of the encouragement of
their parents and environment and long hours of practice they chose to put in.

Young minds are impressionable, and if you tell a young person they're
probably less capable of something, they probably will be. Even as the
stereotypical nerdy white male programmer I can see how people look
differently at a young girl who is interested in computers. It is considered
odd, if not improper. Boys never have to contend with this bias (although they
have similar yet opposite biases in different fields, like child care).
Inevitably this societal pressure will cause fewer girls to go into
programming, and in turn fewer women to end up at google. That's not a
consequence of some genetic predisposition, it is a consequence of being
brought up in a world where not everyone is treated equally.

How do you flip that around? You stop thinking in terms of averages and you
start thinking in terms of individual opportunity. We treat every child as
deserving of the same chances as any other child, and we stop trying to steer
them into directions based on their birth. That requires a modal shift in
thinking where gender is just not a factor anymore, for any profession or any
talent.

The diversity memo's failing is not the statistics it cites, it is that it
furthers the notion that diversity is a set of statistics to control for. True
diversity is about ignoring statistics and instead giving every single person
the same chances, regardless of where they came from. I want my daughter to
have the same chance of becoming a programmer as my son, and my son to have
the same chance of becoming a kindergarten teacher as my daughter, and for no
one to tell them either choice is odd or improper.

~~~
merpnderp
"The diversity memo's failing is not the statistics it cites, it is that it
furthers the notion that diversity is a set of statistics to control for. True
diversity is about ignoring statistics and instead giving every single person
the same chances, regardless of where they came from."

Your point is the memo failed because it makes exactly your point - that
people should be treated like individuals rather than their group's
statistical means.

I'm curious if you've even read it.

~~~
Joeri
I didn't read it that way. To me it was strongly making the case for
statistical differences between women and men that matter, which is what I
disagree with. I guess everyone reads into that memo what they want.

~~~
merpnderp
I don't understand how you could read it that way. In the memo's suggestions
sections he clearly states that people should be treated as individuals. Is
there some other way to read that section? Bold is my own.

> I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or
> society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases,
> or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My
> larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that
> don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict
> people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite:
> __treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group
> (tribalism) __.

------
rsp1984
Quite refreshing to hear a European voice in this debate (not suggesting that
she represents all Europeans -- but it definitely strikes a chord with me).

She's wrong about one thing though:

 _Damore was fired, basically, for making a well-meant, if amateurish, attempt
at institutional design, ... , he was fired, in short, for thinking on his
own._

No, he was fired because Google is already neck-deep into being investigated
by the DoL for gender pay discrimination [1] and they have a class action
lawsuit coming up about the same issue [2]. He was fired for the same reason
that they recently _hired_ a chief diversity officer [3].

Believe me, at that point they would do almost anything to avoid those cases
turning south (and what that would mean for the corporate public image), and
giving voice to someone who has even the slightest doubt about diversity in
the workplace is a big fat political No-Go.

James Damore made the mistake of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time,
that's all.

[1][https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-
pa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-
disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit)

[2][https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-
wo...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-women-
discrimination-class-action-lawsuit)

[3][https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/29/google-hires-intels-
former...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/29/google-hires-intels-former-head-
of-diversity-as-vp-of-diversity/)

------
d--b
I am sorry if I come across as a liberal who gets offended, but I completely
support the decision of Google to fire him. In fact, I think that Google had
no other choice than to fire him, and that's mostly because the engineer shot
himself in the foot.

Memos are not meant to express debatable personal arguments, memos are meant
to express a company position. By widely spreading a personal view, the author
impersonated the company in a way that the company does not endorse. As a
culture manager, you just cannot let this kind of things happen.

Regarding the content of the "manifesto", the author should have known better.
Even if it was genuinely true that women's biology explains the gender gap in
technology, it is not provable - as in, there is simply no way to quantify the
effect, if any. And using unprovable causes to justify a societal bias is not
acceptable. The problem is that you can use unprovable statements to justify
anything.

The debate regarding whether it is good or not to intervene at company level
to try and change an industry culture is a perfectly healthy debate. Widely
sharing one's view which uses unprovable arguments and that will offense some
people is simply a dumb thing to do.

~~~
humanrebar
> The problem is that you can use unprovable statements to justify anything.

This is _exactly_ why we can't shut down conversations the way Google did.
Saying line employees are unqualified but Google executives are qualified to
judge truth is very stifling to rational thinking and, yes, diversity that
actually means something.

But nobody really believe that Google leadership is the best arbiter of
diversity. Otherwise, everyone would be telling those class action
discrimination lawsuits to pack up and go home.

So what do you think? Does Google leadership have a monopoly on public
thought? Do the employees release all expectations of fair treatment when they
sign an employment agreements?

~~~
Frondo
Do we want the Google execs to sit there and make line-by-line technical
decisions? Would you want the head of HR to tell this guy what kind of sort
algorithm he should be using, or get into arguments about Go's lack of
generics? Or do we expect them to defer to the smart engineers they hire?

This guy is probably a very smart software writing dude, but why would that
make us want to listen to what he has to say on any other subject, whether
it's biology, evolutionary psychology, running a business, or hiring
practices?

~~~
biofox
Should employees be allowed to raise concerns about practices that appear to
waste resources or lower morale? (I'm thinking of things like compulsory
diversity / bias training)

------
ramensea
I agree that the left and the rights reaction over the memo has been
overblown. However I am unsure whether or not you think the Googler's opinion
is novel. You state both, "that Damore’s skepticism about current practices is
widespread" and "imperfect his attempt, he was fired, in short, for thinking
on his own". As someone who works in the tech industry let me tell you his
beliefs were not novel. Its a commonly held belief in the tech industry. I
have heard countless renditions of the same argument with vary degrees of
sexism.

I'm not sure whether or not he deserved to get fired. Sundar's response was
well written and is worth reading Damore, however childish his written seems,
is not young and has worked at Google for four years. He's by no means a
junior engineer. At the very least the lack of understand of software
development speaks for something.

"And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you
will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value judgement
must be made here, not a logical deduction from data. Is diversity important
enough for you to temporarily tolerate an increased risk of not hiring the
most qualified person? That’s the trade-off nobody seems willing to spell
out."

This is not how "affirmative action" works. "Affirmative action" states that
if you have two "equally" qualified candidates you favor the least represented
in your society or company. Thus there should be no added risk.

~~~
lloydde
> This is not how "affirmative action" works. "Affirmative action" states that
> if you have two "equally" qualified candidates

If you can quantify candidates' capabilities, please start your money printing
press.

~~~
ramensea
Then then why would affirmative action lead to less capable employees?

~~~
lloydde
The OP used the term "qualified" and not "capable". I also find the OP's
writing effective as they demonstrate their own conflict and lack of clarity
on the topic.

Previously in the thread my response is in protest of the reduction both of
the OPs related writing and the topic.

~~~
ramensea
I'm sorry I'm not following what you're saying.

------
chmike
The main problem is that stupidity is mainstream. The guy was fired not
because of what he wrote, but because the stupid people criticized google and
google can't afford to fight against the stupid people. This is a fight one
can't win alone. Google's goal is to make money, not to make people less
stupid.

Now regarding the firering, the lesson to learn is not that one should stop
saying that the king is naked when it is. One should use anonymizer because
the stupid people are still dominating the population.

The focus of making money of capitalizm is nurturing stupidity in the
population because it makes business so simpler. (e.g. junk food consuming)
Things need to change.

------
sidlls
I'll repeat this again here: it's very likely he wasn't fired for trying to
have a discussion. It is more likely he was fired because he did so by
propagating gender stereotypes and doubling-down on those stereotypes (his
suggestions for how to improve diversity essentially were just context-
specific extensions of these stereotypes), which both almost certainly reduced
his credibility as a coworker to the point that he could not be effectively
managed or productive when assigned to work with others. The author glides
right past the point in her article when she notes his improper application of
findings about averages.

It's possible to have a discussion about these issues today. It's not rational
to give special preference and excessive leeway to discussion that isn't
actually fact based (and is in many ways based on nothing related to facts).

~~~
nippples
> It's possible to have a discussion about these issues today. It's not
> rational to give special preference and excessive leeway to discussion that
> isn't actually fact based (and is in many ways based on nothing related to
> facts).

Well, that's great, because his points on gender differences are actually
extensively backed by research. When he's talking about that, he isn't talking
about _what should be_ or _what can be_ , he's talking about _what is_.

Even after clarifying to the poor-intended reader about _what is_ , he still
states that more diversity is _what should be_. He just doesn't agree with the
present method.

~~~
thesmallestcat
There's a penalty in society and your career for being an asshole. If you do
something to make yourself wildly unpopular at work, even if it's well within
the lines technically, you might be out of a job. The issue is that most
people at Google don't want to work with this guy. That makes for a
distraction, not to mention the obvious legal risk if the engineer ever
interacts with a woman or minority at Google again.

You can have all the opinions you want, think women belong in the kitchen,
hell, be a raging neo-Nazi, but please don't broadcast that shit at work. If
you don't like that Google's promoting diversity, there are ways to make your
voice heard like a normal adult. I would be livid if I got a link to a doc
like this. Here we're busting our asses, and this guy has the gall, time, and
energy to write a lengthy essay version of /r/theredpill and put it on a
company server.

~~~
nippples
> There's a penalty in society and your career for being an asshole.

Partially true, Gawker staff thrived on being assholes until they got the
Hogan Leg Drop. Are you implying that Damore was an asshole, though? How so?

> That makes for a distraction, not to mention the obvious legal risk if the
> engineer ever interacts with a woman or minority at Google again.

What about the legal risk of institutionalized discriminatory hiring and
career advancement practices?

> You can have all the opinions you want

Thanks.

> think women belong in the kitchen, hell, be a raging neo-Nazi, but please
> don't broadcast that shit at work.

Oh, did he broadcast any of those kinds of ideas or political leanings?

> If you don't like that Google's promoting diversity, there are ways to make
> your voice heard like a normal adult.

Like, for example, attempting to discuss a topic?

> I would be livid if I got a link to a doc like this.

[http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-
div...](http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-
screed-1797564320)

> Here we're busting our asses, and this guy has the gall, time, and energy to
> write a lengthy essay version of /r/theredpill and put it on a company
> server.

Have you even browsed that subreddit? Damore's views are nowhere even near in
the same side of the political spectrum

~~~
yorwba
[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-
Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)

is a better link, because it preserves the links to references, the
formatting, and the graphic clarifying distributions vs. averages.

------
bobstaples
looking at the men:women (8:2) ratio in software science at my university in
NL, I can perfectly understand where the inbalance in ratio in the workforce
comes from. Maybe we should focus on that first? Trying to get a different
ratio at the workforce in all companies will effectively mean you will have
less qualified women. Assuming a CS university degree is an important
qualification.

~~~
sidlls
Yes, it's important to attack the root cause. Might it be that the hyper-male
workplace contributes to the perception of technology as a place hostile to
women, and by attempting to counter that particular problem (e.g., by having
diversity initiatives) it _also_ helps attack the root cause?

I do think "diversity initiatives" are like voting in that it's the least
amount of effort to put to the issue. I agree with your comment in this sense:
I'd like very much for companies to go much further to address the root
issues.

------
williamaadams
This whole episode leaves me a bit perplexed because in tech we keep missing
the mark when it comes to diversity.

I work at Microsoft. The back of my ID badge has our mission statement:
Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

To me, that mission is a blueprint for how I can easily approach issues of
diversity and inclusion. It says "everyone". To me it's a simple matter of
gaining empathy for a wider set of customers so that I can more effectively
create software for them.

As an engineering manager, I need to somehow be able to include the views,
perspectives, and experiences of a wheat farmer in rural Kenya. Same goes for
the high speed day trader in Iceland (I've been to neither place, so how do I
know what they really need).

I want more women in engineering precisely because they're not me. Nothing
about them makes them less capable of writing code, and several of their
attributes (grossly generalizing) makes them far better collaborators than
most men I know.

So, I'm just shaking my head, and continuing to do my bit to improve things in
ways that I believe are useful: [http://aka.ms/leapit](http://aka.ms/leapit)

~~~
hnnsj
I see this mentality pop up time after time: How dare you say there are
differences in women's capabilities! Except of course, here are some things
women are _better_ at.

Sorry, but no. Either we are equally capable by nature and any differences in
outcome are due to upbringing ("nurture"), or there are biological differences
which means you have to accept there very well may be things women are less
capable of as well as the opposite.

I'm firmly in the first camp and think it's mostly if not only upbringing and
cultural biases, but you don't get to shun the notion that women are less
capable at some things while at the same time claiming there are many things
women are actually more capable of. Don't open that door.

------
wisty
> To begin with, even I know most of Google’s work is people-centric. It’s
> either serving people directly, or analyzing people-data, or imagining the
> people-future. If you want to spend your life with things and ideas rather
> than people, then go into engineering or physics, but not into software-
> development.

That's silly. Every job involves people, at some level, otherwise you wouldn't
get paid. By this logic, a lighthouse keeping is a people-centric job, because
you maintain a light that other people will look at.

> That coding actually requires “female” skills was spelled out clearly by
> Yonatan Zunger, a former Google employee. But since I care more about
> physics than software-development, let me leave this aside.

I believe this is the one that points out that managers deal with people, not
software (so why not just get MBAs?). I'd counter that _liking_ people doesn't
mean you're good with them, there's even research that introverts make better
CEOs.

Similarly, being predisposed to like programming (or any other task) doesn't
mean you're naturally good at it (though putting in the hours will help a
lot).

------
chasd00
I hate to just turn a blind eye to the issue but, man, I'm glad I work at a
place where only getting shit done, done right, and done on time matters. My
team is about 60% men 40% women and pretty much evenly distributed across
Asian, Russian, White American, and Central American races. No one cares in
the least about diversity, only the project(s) matter. I feel very fortunate.

~~~
humanrebar
Part of the problem with diversity culture is that, depending on the
circumstance, Russians and Central Americans, especially fair skinned and
Americanized ones, may not count as "diverse". And in most workplaces there is
an obvious "Asian" presence (scare quotes because Filipino and Chinese go in
the same category), so the Asian men aren't counted as "diverse" either.

Companies can't come out with official taxonomies of diversity, so it's all
vague and based on unspoken intuitions about which candidates count as more
diverse.

It's not a system someone would design from scratch.

To me, it seems like hiring the first Mormon, albino, or Thai employee would
be an obvious win from a diversity perspective, but it's not that simple.

------
Udik
As an aside, I noticed that many of the negative or outraged comments about
Damore's memo stem from some inability to grasp the difference between the
statements:

"Men are more skilled"

and

"More men are skilled"

------
jl6
In the last month I have hired 4 people in specialist technical roles. I
reviewed 15 CVs. All were from men. No women applied.

There is clearly something filtering women out. There is something deep in the
supply chain of labor (by which I mean education) which results in women being
siphoned off long before they hit my company's diversity and inclusion
policies. I believe these policies are reasonably effective at tackling
unconscious bias, but they are unable to affect the underlying talent pool.

My personal theory is that specialisms are risky (good pay if you can find
employment, no pay if not), and men are more likely to take risks than women.
There is research to support the latter point. Casual googling digs up this
for example:
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Byrnes2/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Byrnes2/publication/232541633_Gender_Differences_in_Risk_Taking_A_Meta-
Analysis/links/00b49514c47ab0f093000000.pdf)

~~~
hashberry
I'm skeptical of blaming education. For example, 69% of developers say they
are partially self-taught[0]. I've worked with many talented developers with
liberal art degrees. The main takeaway of the memo is that women are filtering
themselves out.

[0]
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016)

~~~
jl6
But how many of those self-taught developers managed to do so with the aid of
a love of mathematics/detail/technicality that survived an encounter with high
school peer pressures?

------
wvh
Oh man, voices of reason sound nice. What happened to reason instead of hollow
emotion? I am right, you are wrong, and you shouldn't be listened to, because
you are a nazi, and nazis are bad, and you deserve bad things happening to
you.

------
HumbleGamer
As a black male, I guess I just comprehend that I dont have the right to spout
off my opinions at work, at least not if I want to keep my job. If I start
rocking BLM merch around the office, I might not have a job. Feel free to
finish telling me how unfair it is that he can't express his opinions, while
we ignore the fact that he likely insulted a great deal of his colleagues
while doing so. But they don't matter, right? Whats most important is James
getting his opinions across. He is free to write what he wants, and they are
free to can him.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
> If I start rocking BLM merch around the office, I might not have a job.

You are kidding right? At least in the major tech companies of the area,
people would be out with pitchforks if a black man was fired for rocking BLM
merch around the office.

Heck, Mark Zuckerberg specifically reprimanded his employees for writing stuff
like 'All Lives Matter' over BLM posters at Facebook.

------
acjohnson55
This is a thought provoking response, but I think she's wrong to say the
firing was not justified. Simple fact is that if you whip up a shitstorm of
this caliber, you will not be long for your role.

But more importantly, if you're going to walk the path of claiming that some
of your coworkers are biologically unsuited for their roles, you'd best be
sure your research and reasoning are ironclad. There's no "just starting a
discussion" on such a topic.

------
zaccus
I don't have much to add to this discussion, except that this is why I never
respond to workplace surveys unless I'm required to, and even then, I say what
I think upper management wants to hear.

If I'm unhappy or unsatisfied with something that I'm not in an immediate
position to change, I'll get a job elsewhere. I want to control if and when
that happens, which means no whining or complaining, even if I'm asked to.
It's not worth the risk.

------
calafrax
"Worse, one of the biggest obstacles that minorities face is a chicken-and-egg
problem that time alone doesn’t cure. People avoid professions in which there
are few people like them. This is a hurdle which affirmative action can
remove, fast and efficiently."

I think this assumption is made by most people but unfortunately simply
filling slots based on socially constructed identity labels does not seem to
be effective in addressing underlying inequalities.

For instance, we have had "race" based affirmative action policies for
universities for decades but very limited effect in having those policies
translate into balancing income and wealth gaps between socially constructed
race groups. In fact those gaps have widened considerably over the past couple
decades.

I think that people still fail to understand the extent of sub-conscious
prejudice and fail to understand that the programs they are putting in place
to try to solve inequalities between socially constructed identity groups are
actually reinforcing the underlying causes of those inequalities instead of
eliminating them.

------
whistlerbrk
> Women indeed are, on the average, more neurotic than men. It’s not an
> insult, it’s a common term in psychology. Women are also, on the average,
> more interested in people than in things. They do, on the average, value
> work-life balance more, react differently to stress, compete by other rules.
> And so on.

Here's the problem. These studies model the status quo, not the way things
would be if women weren't subjected to different historical and social
pressures. I would venture that the profile distribution of women in tech is
perhaps different than the population wide distribution. Imagine a world where
women weren't told they are naturally good/bad at things, now project that
forward 50 years and redo the study.

This is my chief problem with the memo, and the fact that he launches into IQ,
the talking point of the prejudiced everywhere.

~~~
ggdG
>Imagine a world where women weren't told they are naturally good/bad at
things, now project that forward 50 years and redo the study.

I doubt you have read James Damore's memo (
[https://diversitymemo.com/](https://diversitymemo.com/) ) because he
addresses your very question explicitly by citing a scientific paper:

[http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf](http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf)

And guess what? Less constraints on gender roles lead to more sexual
dimorphism.

Here's another study, resulting in the same conclusion:

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

>This is my chief problem with the memo, and the fact that he launches into
IQ, the talking point of the prejudiced everywhere.

Damore doesn't "launch into IQ" at all. The memo mentions "IQ" only 2 times
and touches the subject very fleetingly. It appears to refer to an opinion
piece that is more elaborate on it: [https://www.city-journal.org/html/real-
war-science-14782.htm...](https://www.city-journal.org/html/real-war-
science-14782.html) . As it turns out, research on IQ has been defunded in the
past for being "racist". You can call Damore "prejudiced", but then you will
have a lot of work disproving the body of scientific research cited here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence)

Damore's memo is on solid ground regarding the scientific consensus on gender
differences in the statistical distribution of psychological traits. It's an
honest and fair attempt at describing biological reality. When reality doesn't
turn out to be as you want it to be doesn't mean that the author is
"prejudiced".

~~~
whistlerbrk
Thanks, I actually did read the memo and did also follow up on the sources.

------
danschumann
I giggled when this article said "most of Google's work is people centric".
It's data. It's an isolated intelligent person at a computer screen. At the
center is a server. On one end, a programmer, the other end, a user. People
don't enter into it.

~~~
dunkelheit
There is plenty of people-centric work in big organizations. Less charitably,
it can be described as "navigating the bureaucracy".

~~~
Khaine
Its called HR and its dominated by women

------
HoppedUpMenace
Just because there is science and studies that indicate that women and men are
"X", on average, it does not mean you can immediately dismiss people's
grievances with the fact that some people are under-represented in one area or
another.

My wife certainly does not fall under what the studies would deem a woman to
be on average (nor that of which the author of the blog describes). Therefore,
she would most definitely protest any notion that the reason why she is not
"X" is due to her biology and scientific studies and take issue with anyone in
the workplace trying to frame her current position as "she is in that job role
due to her biology."

------
pavlov
_But however imperfect his attempt, he was fired, in short, for thinking on
his own._

Why is this surprising? People get fired in America all the time for thinking
on their own. It's also called "disagreeing with the boss".

------
siliconc0w
Damore's thesis was really more around difference in personality between
populations as the likely cause of differences in the same population's
distributions in STEM Fields/Leadership. It's about the aggregate interests of
a population and not a comment on ability. The people turning it into the
latter need to re-read the memo. The gender gaps in STEM/Leadership are likely
a combination of both biological and social factors but moderate centrist
viewpoints are boring and don't get you views/clicks.

------
jorgemf
Completely right. I hope this is not banned because it is worth the read.

~~~
reitanqild
Whichever side you are on this is probably the most important topic discussed
in this forum this week.

It is also very interesting to a large number of the audience.

Yet sadly there seems to be a number of people here who think they have a
right to overrule everyone who upvote (and no, I'm not talking about the mods
but about the flaggers.)

~~~
jorgemf
I have to say that I flagged one of the other post because I was tired of the
topic and there weren't adding anything new. But this one is outstanding.

~~~
reitanqild
Upvoted. Thanks for your honesty. I think this forum could benefit from a
larger meta discussion about flagging.

I believe we could have closed this faster and with less problems if we
allowed the debate to happen and only flagged comments -on both sides- that
broke hn guidelines.

Instead we now have 50 threads and where people are getting increasingly
frustrated.

~~~
jorgemf
I don't prevent any debating flagging another post saying exactly the same
than the last 3 posts (actually I agree with most of the post). You can still
comment in the post (I did indeed).

I do think people flagged post because they didn't aline with their opinions,
but they are in their right. If this is a community site and people decide to
flag something, you should accept it (or leave the community if you don't like
it). I also consider those flags under the community guidelines because we
already have a couple of post about the topic.

The debate is happening anyway. Don't get frustrated. I am learning a lot.

~~~
reitanqild
_If this is a community site and people decide to flag something, you should
accept it (or leave the community if you don 't like it)._

Here's where I accept the current rules but suggest looking into whether flags
are given too much weight compared to upvotes.

~~~
jorgemf
Probably you are right with the weight of flaggling. Maybe it is worth to
contact the admins. But as a person who created an app for a community, this
things are very difficult and no matter where do you put the limit some people
are not going to like it.

------
throw2016
Casting aspersions on colleagues is not cool. There is no 'science' to do
this.

The science of studying gender and racial differences does not lend itself to
'easy conclusions' and generalizations and certainly not practical application
or advocacy.

Tomorrow a colleague could write a tome pointing to studies about male
aggression and the risk of putting them in collaborative environments or about
introverts unsuitability for certain roles and presume to advocate 'other
roles' for them. This is beyond the pale.

Cherry picking studies in a way they are not meant to applied in any real
world scenario is a dangerous unscientific preoccupation of bigots and
supremacists.

The fact that you are making these conclusions not as an expert in the field
trying to further knowledge but in a real world application context about your
fellow workers in an act of extreme prejudice and hostility and completely
compromises this individual and his memo.

The biggest concern of this misguided memo is the level of support for this
troubled individual. It appears women in the valley really have something to
worry about. There exist all these men and colleagues who harbor deep doubts
about their capabilities. This is alas what hostility looks like.

------
menacingly
It's funny that the outrage actually opens opportunities for white men to
feign outrage too and stay in power. That's why you keep seeing so much
agitation in this area but not much actual change, because the smart play is
to be the white male in a comfy position but distract from that by disguising
yourself as a fellow freedom fighter.

------
mpweiher
Certainly much better than a lot of the outrage that's been going on. A couple
of nits:

> I know most of Google’s work is people-centric.

Hmmm...is that really so? Last I checked a lot of Google's code output and
value-generation is backend-y, with very little interaction with humans.
Google is also notoriously bad-mediocre at UX, though this has improved
lately.

> Assuming that job skills and performance can be deduced from

> differences among demographic groups.

Hmm...he didn't do this, and in fact explicitly states that doing so is not
correct.

> Damore naturally assumes the differences between

> typically female and male traits mean that men are more skilled.

I also didn't see that in the memo. At all. First, what he talks about is
mostly _preferences_ , not _skills_. Second, there is the whole "you can't
draw conclusions about individuals from slight variations in
populations"-thing. So you can't turn "women have slightly stronger
preferences, statistically, for these things" into "men are more skilled".
Third, and maybe least intuitively, this is almost entirely about the people
who don't (yet) work at Google.

Finally, she brings up Northern Europe. I can relate, because I am also from
Germany, and yes, the country finds, for example, having a female Chancellor
simply _not remarkable_. So when people vote for or against her, it is largely
(can't speak for everyone) because of what they think about her, her party and
their policies (or in her specific case, lack thereof _g_ ), not because she
is a woman or is not a man.

And I also believe this applies to other jobs as well.

However, what Sabine misses is that this has not had the effect of gender
representation in the job market equalizing. Surprisingly, it has had the
_opposite_ effect, as has been documented many places. And yes, I want to
stress again how utterly unexpected this is.

And so:

> I believe for example if it wasn’t for biases and unequal

> opportunities, then the higher ranks in science and politics

> would be dominated by women. Hence, aiming at a 50-50 representation

> gives men an unfair advantage. I challenge you to provide any

> evidence to the contrary.

Challenge accepted (although not for politics, that's a different subject)!

If it were obstacles, countries that (as we both agree) have fewer of those
obstacles such as Northern Europeans ones would see more women in technical
fields. The opposite is the case.

And of course there is the point that the question is not "why aren't there
more women in these jobs", but "why are there any men that do them", because
they generally suck if you want to have a life. See Jordan Peterson's
excellent take on "Women in High Paying Jobs":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q)

~~~
danans
> Last I checked a lot of Google's code output and value-generation is
> backend-y, with very little interaction with humans.

Honest question: When was the last time you checked Google's code output and
how it was accomplished? Have you worked at Google for an extended period?

I've worked at Google for many years, on more projects than one can count on 2
hands, and in my experience this commonly held stereotype about working here
couldn't be more wrong.

First, there is a ton of code written all over the stack from backend through
UI, and most engineers are expected to be able to work on code from the UI
through to the backend. This was true from the early days through today. It's
been the case on _every_ project I've worked on here: One quarter I work on
the data pipeline, next quarter I work on an UI feature, sometimes both
simultaneously.

But even if you don't write a line of UI code, any non-trivial system created
at Google requires a lot of human interaction for:

\- requirements gathering and design

\- code reviews

\- justifying resource requests

\- coordinating access to services that you depend on

\- suggesting, negotiating, and advocating for improvements to those services

\- etc, etc.

It's very difficult, if not impossible, to leverage Google's environment to
succeed without a lot of human interaction.

~~~
peoplewindow
Lots of Google's software is open source. It is easily checked.

Regardless, I worked at Google for many years and agree with him.

Implementing MapReduce, BigTable, MegaStore, even things like G+ or Teams is
not a people oriented task. It involves long hours of working with machines,
alone, punctuated with code reviews in which your code is systematically
criticised by your co-workers but in a predictable and non personal way. There
are occasional meetings but most engineers I knew there saw meetings as a
necessary evil and got annoyed if they were too frequent.

When I was a SWE the bulk of my work hours were spent working entirely with
machines, or with processes that were run by people but were largely
mechanical and formalised, like resource requests.

I believe this sudden argument that coding is a highly social activity is
motivated reasoning. The motivation being to try and arrive at the politically
correct opinions required to survive in the modern Google workplace. If you
tried to describe programming as a highly social and people-oriented activity
to the average man on the street they would think you were bullshitting them,
I have no doubt about that at all.

Teaching is people oriented. Social care is people oriented. Most of your
working hours are spent in front of people, talking to them. Programming is
the opposite - _most_ of your hours are spent in front of a machine. Talking
to others is probably not the bulk of your job. If it is you probably aren't a
developer, regardless of what you might think: you might be a tech lead
manager at most.

~~~
Apocryphon
This perspective seems like to highly downplay the issues of working on a team
at a software company. Independent of the ideological and political battles
that this manifesto controversy is but one example of, there have been more
and more reports of issues at tech companies about "brilliant assholes" who
are able to do the technical work yet create toxic environments for others to
work with.

Are you saying all of those projects at Google are owned by individuals who
don't spend time interacting with others on the codebase? That doesn't sound
like a very sustainable organizational model.

The social aspect of coding may be currently trumped up, but if so, it's only
in compensation to how its social aspect has been traditionally underrated.
Any type of work at a company involves social interaction, communication,
teamwork, etc. Coders aren't solitary medieval monks illuminating manuscripts
by their lonesome

~~~
peoplewindow
_> Are you saying all of those projects at Google are owned by individuals who
don't spend time interacting with others on the codebase_

No. That's not a reasonable interpretation of anything I said.

All the programs I mentioned are written by groups of people. Despite that if
you measure each hour in their day and classify it as "in front of a machine"
vs "in front of people" you will find nearly all are in the first category.

Now if you further sub-divide "in front of a machine" and classify time by
"time spent in a text editor coding" vs "time spent emailing, filing tickets
etc" then most time will still be in the first category, unless something has
gone badly wrong at Google since I left.

Interactions with people are, in programming projects like that, a means to an
end. Usually the end being some concrete outcome like a machine allocation or
a cross-check for bugs. There may sometimes be design or brainstorming
sessions, MapReduce being famously designed over many cups of coffee between
Jeff Dean and his colleagues like Sanjay Ghemawat. But these conversations are
entirely work focused. They aren't about people or relationships. And the time
spent drinking coffee whilst figuring out the design is ultimately dwarfed by
the long term effort required to build and maintain the software itself.

~~~
Apocryphon
Coding in of itself isn't a highly social activity, but you still need people
who are reasonably competent socially to be able to handle a project that
requires teamwork. Just because communication and social interaction is a
means to an end doesn't mean they can be excessively devalued.

Sure, you can say time spent in front of a machine is the value center, and
time spent interacting with others (in interminable meetings, at stand-ups,
etc.) are cost centers. But it's generally accepted around here that
neglecting cost centers is a strategic miscalculation, no?

------
daveheq
See, just because STEM is less than 50% women means it's sexist against
them... Just like nursing, HR, home care, child care, social services,
accounting, and a bunch of other services being less than 50% men is sexist
against men! Make them equal! Begin the gender wars!

Don't take my word for it though:

[https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/professions-
wo...](https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/professions-women)

------
batushka
The most intolerant wins. Society is sinking. "We can answer these points
using the minority rule. Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy
democracy. Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world."
[https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-
of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15)

------
jamespo
It's interesting to see the right wing interest and faith in scientific papers
here, I look forward to similar enthusiasm for climate science.

------
rdlecler1
Anyone else notice how bloggers and the media emphasize 'white man' or 'white
male' to transform it into a perjorative term?

------
reubeniv
I'm trying to understand his motivations, maybe it is just naivety, but that
he wanted to talk about something that was bothering him, and didn't
understand why he couldn't (or shouldn't) talk about it publicly seems fairly
typical of a condition like aspergers, is it possible he simply has something
like that?

Either way the witch hunt needs to cease immediately.

~~~
oculusthrift
after watching his hour long interview with jordan peterson, it's almost
certain. he was painfully awkward. if not aspergers, he must have zero social
iq.

~~~
reubeniv
That's where I got that impression too. I'm not sure how that changes things,
but it does seem to make his firing especially harsh.

~~~
oculusthrift
well he's suing so i guess we'll see if he decides to try to use that as a
defense

------
evangelista
You know something? I have come around on my thinking on this topic.

There is a single central point where everyone on both sides of this debate
are getting stuck and that is in the nature of the term "Sexism." What helped
me to better understand what people mean when they say "Sexism" is to replace
that word with the phrase: "Males Competing For Limited Resources With
Females."

Once I made that mental shift I really was able to bridge to a place where I
can sort of see what people from the Left are trying to say (but the problem
is they are using a meaningless and overwrought phrase to get there and also
attempting to jam insane ideas down people's throats using Orwellian tactics
along the way while holding onto delusional optimistic views about reality).
_ahem_

There are limited jobs at Google, very very high paying jobs which everyone in
the entire world wants. There are people living in absolutely desperate
circumstances all around America (let alone the entire globe!) who would
basically kill for a job at Google. You see people lying in their own filth
every day in downtown San Francisco who can't hold a job down and pay rent.
The ones who can actually afford rent (barely) are sometimes not all that much
better off.

If you think these people are going to be nice to one another once they get
inside Google and are competing for the same promotions, you are hilariously
wrong.

I have seen myself what men in large corporations are willing to do to one
another in a closed environment with few promotions and resources: We are
f*cking really mean to one another. We back-stab. We lie. We undermine. I have
done it myself, it was fun when I was winning and awful when it was being done
to me.

Large corporations spend a tremendous amount of money on PR and marketing to
polish their images, but inside they are filled with men acting like rats
trapped in a jar with dwindling food pellets: They eat each other sometimes.
Maybe 15-35% of the time, but its enough.

Now add in a couple women to this environment: The experiment ends badly for
them unless some structures are put into place. Men can and will tend to use
whatever techniques they have at their disposal to get rid of or manipulate
those around them. This includes being condescending and demeaning to reduce
the influence of women.

However, no matter what you do. No matter how much you train your workforce,
when you lift the lid you are going to find the following: Men competing with
women and other men for few resources and promotions.

The problem is that corporations are built around making employees compete
with one another. Thats how promotions work! Thats how money and stock are
allocated: You did better than your peers or screwed them over so they failed.

The biggest lie companies like Google and Facebook tell the world is that they
are lovely meritocracies ruled by fairness when they aren't. Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, Amazon all share the same thing in common: People competing using
whatever tools they have to get few resources.

All this SJW bullshit is simply an attempt to polish what is fundamentally a
smiling bloodsport and always will be, its how corporations work.

------
rurban
Outraged about the leaked manager reactions. Will be hard to attract any
talent with such middle management.

~~~
jcadam
Nah, it's Google. They could require all employees to receive a swift kick to
the gonads when they walk into the building every morning, and they would
still have absolutely no problem attracting top talent.

------
krasicki
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707/wh...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers)

------
pi_qed
There's an irony to the downvotes in this thread. People are outraged that
this guy was harassed for expressing his opinion and then downvoting anyone
here who expresses an opinion they don't like.

Are people so afraid of having a discussion with opposing views that they shut
down any conversation they don't like with downvotes. If you disagree say why
and give the person a chance to respond.

------
crb002
Mostly shocked that Google got caught discriminating on race/gender grounds.

------
partycoder
The existing legislative context, e.g: Equal Employment Opportunity, is
incompatible with some of the things in this memo, particularly, stating that
females do not perform well at certain roles and should not be preferred. That
would not be compliant with the EEO law.

------
andreasgonewild
You can't fix inequality by discriminating; discrimination is part of the
problem, not the solution.

It's about time we started considering other, more constructive ways of
cleaning up our collective mess.

------
zaro
No, not at all.

------
tynpeddler
An interesting article, but I was baffled by this line:

'The bigger mistake in Damore’s memo is one I see frequently: Assuming that
job skills and performance can be deduced from differences among demographic
groups.'

From my understanding, Damore does not argue this. Instead, he argues that job
skill and performances _in groups_ might be deduced from differences in
demographic groups. I don't recall Damore every claiming that differences in a
group make an individual less skilled.

I think this confusion arises from a misunderstanding of Damore's argument
flow, which goes something like this:

1\. Women as a group tend to be interested in things other than programming,
so there are fewer female programmers overall relative to their population.

2\. Because there are fewer female programmers, there are fewer female
programmers applying to google.

3\. The distribution of skills in the population of female programmers that
apply to google is identical to the distribution of skills to the male
programmers that apply to Google. (This is an important assumption that we
don't have a lot of data for)

4\. Google wishes to hire women in proportion to their representation in the
general population (looots of anecdotal support for this point).

Conclusion: Google hires a larger percentage of their female applicant than
their male applicants. Because of point 3, they will end up hiring more low
skilled females than males[1].

You'll notice that a lot hinges on point 3. There is some data to suggest that
women self select much more when applying to a job than men do, thus it's
possible that the distribution of female engineers applying to google is
either more high skilled, or the distribution is right shifted, than the
distribution of skills among male engineers. If this shift was big enough,
google would not require special considerations in order to hire a larger
percentage of female, than male applicants. Since Google's discriminatory
hiring practices are one of the worst kept secrets in the tech industry, it's
unlikely that the skill distribution among female applicants is that skewed,
though there is very likely some skew.

Point 1 is interesting because it suggests that the fundamental problem is not
Google's fault so it can't be fixed by Google's hiring or retention practices.
Even if point 1 is actually "Women as a group are discouraged from being
programmers therefore there are fewer female programmers", it still puts the
problem squarely outside Google's hiring and retention practices.

[1]The actual error being made here is much more complex. Since hiring is an
error prone process, a certain percentage of unsuitable candidates will be
hired. Since there are so many more men hired by Google than women, even
lacking any positive discrimination in favor of women, there will be far more
low skilled men hired than low skilled women. What would actually happen is
that the error rate for hiring low skilled candidates would be much higher for
women than for men. Absent any other intervention, this could lead to a lower
retention rate for female hires as managers realize that their skills are not
up to par. Thus Google also introduces a plethora of retention programs
designed to raise the skill level of the female engineers.

Note that these low skilled female hires are not low skilled because they are
women, but they are low skilled because Google was less stringent while hiring
them. This argument is not sufficient to say if a particular female engineered
is low skilled, only that if you were to evaluate and group the skills of all
the female and male developers, the female skill distribution would have a
larger left tail than the male left tail. Thus for a given female engineer,
they are more likely to be low skilled, despite the fact that you will almost
certainly meet more low skilled male engineers.

------
l33tbro
Okay, slipping into my bomb-squad EOD suit to comment on this topic. But,
seriously, the more I read about Damore, the more it seems like this was a
cunning plan to get fired and then sue the roller-hockey pants off Sergey Brin
and Co.

While much has been made of a Harvard education being no substitute for social
intelligence, Damore is no slouch and really does just seem like a disgruntled
employee who devised an almost surgical peace-out that would ensure he was
compensated for life. This will be one interesting lawsuit.

~~~
Johnny555
While his plan may be to sue, what grounds do you think he can sue for?

There's no right to free speech in the work place. If he was fired for
something he wrote on his private blog, or discussed with coworkers at an off-
site bar, that might be different.

If he does sue, Google will have little problem showing that the employee,
through his memo, has created a hostile workplace for women at Google.

~~~
stale2002
California has very strong employee protection. Yes, even though it is "at
will" there are still some very strong protections.

For example, in California it is illegal to fire someone for "political
activity", which this memo, debateably, may have been.

It is also illegal in California to fire someone for bringing up workplace
concerns (this falls under union/worker organizing laws).

Finally, and most ironically, it is illegal to fire someone for bringing up
discrimination concerns, EVEN IF those concerns turn out to be false/not
illegal/not discrimination.

This guy, debateably, was bringing up discrimination concerns.

~~~
occultist_throw
Read footnote 6. That to me, is a pretty smoking gun of a comment.

"6 Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can
increase representation at an org level by either making it a better
environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or
discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it
done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create
zero-sum struggles between orgs"

....discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen
it done)....

Wonder if he has proof?

------
dvt
I know people always want to discuss the merits of the memo -- whether he was
right, wrong, or somewhere in between -- but I'd like to have a meta-
discussion.

I believe the memo is irrelevant not because of its content, but rather
because it's embarrassingly reductive. In my opinion, anyone that takes it
seriously validates Damore's ultra-reductive approach to social policy -- and
this is, I think, unequivocally wrong.

I recently wrote a blog post, _Confusing Math with Morality_ [1], in which I
touch on a similar subject matter. The problem with smart non-liberal-science
people is that they think they are just that -- smart -- when, in fact, the
emotional intelligence of STEM majors is barely average[2][3]. Now this
doesn't mean that this _disqualifies_ math-y people from having opinions on
social policy, but it certainly means I value their opinions much less. In the
market of ideas, theirs are simply not worth a whole lot.

For example, you may _think_ you have an educated opinion on abortion, or
euthanasia, or nuclear proliferation. But the reality is that you don't. And
I've been called an elitist before, but until you take a few semesters on
abortion[4] and read some court opinions, your views are simply not worth much
of a damn.

And, as far as Damore is concerned, it's a very similar scenario. He's trying
to argue for or against some kind of social policy, but he simply has no idea
what he's talking about. I doubt he's even heard of Bakke v. UC Regents,
never-mind read Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique. Knowing about these is
_very_ important in the context of gender/race/etc. policies. My point is only
that strong, sweeping opinions and viewpoints need to be properly
contextualized. There are, of course, good arguments on both sides. But Damore
makes none of them -- or even if he does, it's merely accidental to his "spray
and pray" strategy.

And to be frank, I see this at work (and saw this at school) all the time.
I've always tried to be broad in my education (both formal and otherwise) --
my grandmother was in charge of a library and I couldn't live without books.
If you talk to a programmer and ask them what's the last book that they read,
they'll probably mention something programming-related. If you ask them what
news they read, they'll probably say slashdot. I had a co-worker recently
question _why_ I read fiction -- after all, we can expense any programming
book we set our sights on. And don't think I'm ragging on programming books, I
even wrote one! My point is only about the type of person attracted to this
type of work -- and perhaps how STEM degrees have failed us. It doesn't seem
like we are educating a generation of Isaac Newtons, but rather an army of
regurgitating robots.

Damore is intellectually lazy in a sea of intellectual laziness. His views
might be wrong or might be right, but his intellectual sloth is unforgivable.

[1] [https://dvt.name/2017/07/10/confusing-math-with-
morality/](https://dvt.name/2017/07/10/confusing-math-with-morality/)

[2]
[http://www.recsam.edu.my/R&D_Journals/YEAR2008/dec2008vol2/e...](http://www.recsam.edu.my/R&D_Journals/YEAR2008/dec2008vol2/emotional\(132-163\).pdf)

[3] [http://publisher-
connector.core.ac.uk/resourcesync/data/else...](http://publisher-
connector.core.ac.uk/resourcesync/data/elsevier/pdf/068/aHR0cDovL2FwaS5lbHNldmllci5jb20vY29udGVudC9hcnRpY2xlL3BpaS9zMTg3NzA0MjgxMTAxOTg4NA%3D%3D.pdf)

[4] You could also be self-taught, but that's a slippery slope. Ethics is much
harder than Calculus.

~~~
panda88888
> The problem with smart non-liberal-science people is that they think they
> are just that -- smart -- when, in fact, the emotional intelligence of STEM
> majors is barely average[2][3]. Now this doesn't mean that this disqualifies
> math-y people from having opinions on social policy, but it certainly means
> I value their opinions much less. In the market of ideas, theirs are simply
> not worth a whole lot.

Do you realize you just used a population statistics to argue that the
population as a whole is worse at certain task than another population, and
discount the opinion of individuals in that population?

Also, based on the studies you cited, STEM majors have barely average
emotional intelligence, of which one component is empathy (your [2][3]). Is
there a reason why STEM major tend to attract people of average empathy? Could
the same reason be driving away people with higher than average empathy? Does
women have higher empathy on average as a population compare to men?

edit: added line break between quote and comment

------
SJWDisagree111
The problem here is that there actually is a biological disadvantage that
women possess in regard to career success. That disadvantage is that on
average 100% of children are born from women. Additionally on average 100% men
do not bear children. Due to this statistical anomaly even if only a small
percent of women; say 10% decide to have children there will be a measurable
disadvantage/bias towards the male gender in the workforce for a simple
reason. A person carrying a child even on a most optimistic outlook must spend
a least a tiny percent of their time dealing with the fact they are pregnant.
This includes hormone levels, energy, medical issues and general physiological
inconvenience. Furthermore this inconvenience lasts a minimum of 9 months and
reasonably even a year. During this time of less than maximum career effort a
man will never suffer such setbacks and is theoretically able to devote nearly
100% of his effort to career advancement.

Until we either have artificial wombs or completely change the laws dealing
with childbearing to deal with the actual childbearing rather than serve an
outdated form of social contract (marriage) there will never be a true
resolution.

------
doubleshame
In my opinion, a lot of this rhetoric is being repeated. But the points raised
by the original memo require a bit of perhaps subtle mathematics to
understand.

This is an attempt at curating a list of relevant math and rationality
articles, so that we can at least speak the same language when talking about
this.

Start here: I personally view it as the base model of all beliefs that we can
hold. It talks about some kinds of things that we can know and how much we
should have confidence in what we know.

Bayes theorem:
[http://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule_guide](http://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule_guide)

~~~
doubleshame
Appreciate that this notion exists: Confidence intervals

[https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/confidence-
interval.html](https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/confidence-interval.html)

Let's say I give you a biased coin, but don't tell you what the bias is. You
make 10 flips and record what you see. What can you tell about the coin and
how much confidence can you have in your assertions?

------
koolio
Before talking about gender imbalances in computer science related jobs we
should fix the imbalance in the most male centric jobs. We need more women
miners, bricklayers and mechanics along with trashwomen and oil rig workers.

~~~
notyourday
We also should limit the number of women models, especially the ones on runway
and in catalog and start paying all models the same $150/h rate non-
supermodels make.

------
kaden
I find it hilarious that this guy was somehow okay with using disparate,
unrelated facts to create detached conclusions to make a contrived political
point, and when the obvious solution is to fire him because of his toxic,
baseless beliefs that disrupt a working environment it's suddenly about free
speech? That's delusional.

You out right take an unreasonable course of action, "predict" that there will
be negative out comes from it, and cry foul when those negative outcomes come
to fruition. What's sickening is how dishonest that is, what's disheartening
is that the memo's creator is being defended by a sizable audience in the tech
community.

There's a good deal of irony where the memo wanted to remove emotion from the
conversation and face the "true" facts, yet the defenders of this guy want to
cry about free speech (that isn't being violated) and defend terribly
contrived pseudo-scientific points just to be outraged to defend some
principle that was never being threatened in the first place.

It seems to be a continuing trend that people aligning to one side of the
political spectrum are _surprised_ when the rest of society rebukes them, and
they get unimaginably offended at the reality that people actually react to
things you do and say, especially when the latter statements are completely
baseless.

~~~
akvadrako
What language is this?

I can barely understand what point you are trying to make; why don't you just
come out and say it?

~~~
kaden
The language is English. The point is pretty clear. Why don't you elaborate on
what you're confused by?

------
micahbright
Interesting perspective, but:

>I’m not remotely surprised, however, that Damore naturally assumes the
differences between typically female and male traits mean that men are more
skilled.

He never said or implied that. The whole problem is people overreacting about
what they read in to it.

------
fsaneq2
Come on, try to make an effort. Your comment is full of straw men.

~~~
dang
This breaks the HN guideline against calling names in arguments. Please don't
do that here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14977201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14977201)
and marked it off-topic.

------
bobdole1234
Because that huge California block of Trump supporters really changed the
landscape huh?

~~~
dang
Would you kindly stop posting snarky comments on inflammatory topics? These
discussions are flamewarrish enough without that. Pouring fuel on the fire
amounts to vandalism no matter how correct your underlying points are.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14976935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14976935)
and marked it off-topic.

------
mef
Yet another take on the diversity memo that doesn't mention the systemic
sexism that the 50/50 target is intended to offset. The closest she gets is
saying that having more women in the field will make their presence
unremarkable, which will reduce bias. But what about the institutionalized
sexism that prevents so many more women from ever getting anywhere near a job
at Google in the first place?

~~~
mirimir
Huh? How about this point that she makes?

> The point is, it's obvious we don't live in such a fair world, but one where
> women are kept from succeeding by sexism. By not hiring them, or not
> promoting them, or not treating them fairly otherwise, not because they as
> individuals have flaws, but just because they are women. In this situation,
> noticing this and attempting to neutralise it is actually beneficial.

Edit: Oops, that's in a comment. Sorry. So the best quote is:

> I believe for example if it wasn’t for biases and unequal opportunities,
> then the higher ranks in science and politics would be dominated by women.

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mef
No, that's in a comment.

~~~
mirimir
Thanks. I was careless in my text search.

