Honestly, I think he made the right move just from a PR perspective. His firing makes sense: the CEO and HR are both acting to protect the company. The author of the manifesto caused Google a PR disaster and created a huge state of internal conflict, valid or not. The shareholders are probably really happy that their CEO removed a person who managed to get Google so much bad press in so little time.
This is the reality of business. One does not simply create a PR disaster for the company, with no positive return, and still maintain their job.
The firing has been a PR disaster, and amplified and exaggerated the effect of this issue (not to mention that it drew attention to other factors, like Google's institutional ageism). And while I don't want to diagnose over the internet, it seems like it's attacking someone on the spectrum for traits of being on the spectrum.
By firing him they made him a hero to enormous groups, and doubled down on this discussion. By doing it in an anti-science, anti-evidence way they legitimized almost everything he said, and it makes them look reactionary.
They could have simply said that they were taking punitive actions and kept him in the fold.
> By firing him they made him a hero to enormous groups,
To a small, vocal group.
> By doing it in an anti-science, anti-evidence way
There were good reasons for doing it that had nothing to do with science or evidence.
There are women working at Google who do not need to be reminded of the genetic and biologic differences they have from their cishet male counterparts.
If Damon had issues with the policies at Google there were many other channels open to him that didn't involve circulating a manifesto. He brought it upon himself. Once word of that memo leaked there was nothing for Google to do but fire him.
There are women working at Google who do not need to be reminded of the genetic and biologic differences they have from their cishet male counterparts.
I'm a white male. I know that the average Asian has a higher IQ than the average white man. This means positively nothing when comparing me with a given Asian, however.
That is the root of this discussion that so many so profoundly miss. The average Google male is not the average male. The average Google female is not the average female. He was not saying that women who work at Google are at a biological disadvantage, in any way, and that is a perverse misreading. He was saying that on the whole there's a biological reason when you roll the dice enough that more males are suitable for that work. In the scientific community this is utterly indisputable, in the same way that there are far more exceptional males (and autistic males), just as there are far more mentally handicapped males. That doesn't preclude handicapped or exceptional females, it's just less common.
> He was not saying that women who work at Google are at a biological disadvantage, in any way, and that is a perverse misreading. He was saying that on the whole there's a biological reason when you roll the dice enough that more males are suitable for that work.
I don't understand what you said there, can you elaborate? What is the difference between males being more biologically suitable and females being at a disadvantage? From my perspective, you just contradicted yourself, can you help me understand why it's not a contradiction?
What the memo proposed is that it's "possible" there are fewer women in tech right now because of the biological differences. He may not have claimed it as fact, but he implied it. The problem I have with the implication is that it's obvious that evolutionary forces are not the primary causes of the current distribution, because the distribution of women in tech has changed drastically in the last 50 years faster than evolution's say in the matter. It's not possible that the current distribution is primarily caused by biological differences, and it's exceedingly likely that it is caused by social issues. But he suggested it is possible, and followed that by suggesting we should stop treating it like a social issue because it's possible.
And all of this so far is ignoring that the memo unironically takes the opposite stance on the minority group of conservatives.
Also Americans on average are more overweight than Japanese. This does not mean there are no overweight Japanese or thin Americans, or that either are less capable of a specific sport.
Does 60% of Americans being overweight today mean that it's likely that 60% of people are naturally and biologically incapable of maintaining a healthy weight?
There are genetic differences among underweight and overweight populations, so it is "possible" that the distribution of healthy weights to overweight people is natural a result of those genetic traits, and not the result of advertising and availability of high calorie foods.
We should stop treating obesity as though it's a problem, right?
I think you misunderstood me. I was not making a biological correlation, but a statistical one; namely that group averages doesn't say anything about an individual. The nature/nurture debate of overweight people is besides the point.
Then I think you misunderstood the memo. The memo is making a biological correlation. It suggests that the current distributions might accurately reflect differences in biology.
Nature vs nurture is completely the point here, Damore argued that nature is the primary force, not nurture, and therefore we should stop nurturing women in tech.
Maybe I should have been clearer, you stated to the parent reply that:
>> I don't understand what you said there, can you elaborate? What is the difference between males being more biologically suitable and females being at a disadvantage? From my perspective, you just contradicted yourself, can you help me understand why it's not a contradiction?
This was in response to the parent that said Damore had not singled out any female google employes. The overweight example was an attempt to clarify that even though statistical averages say something about a group, it does not say something about the individual, i.e the google females should not feel singled out by statistical averages.
As for the nature/nuture point in the memo: yes the memo is making a biological claim backed by sources. It does not suggest that current distributions are correct. No, the memo is not saying that nature is the primary force, only that it might play a part [1]:
"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."
> The overweight example was an attempt to clarify that even though statistical averages say something about a group, it does not say something about the individual, i.e the google females should not feel singled out by statistical averages.
Right. And what I've been trying to say is that the statistical averages aren't the offensive part. That's a straw man.
Google women don't feel offended when they're told they're a minority, they already know that; but they sure might reasonably be concerned when someone suggests they're a minority "in part" "possibly" because women aren't biologically as able to engineer as men.
> No, the memo is not saying that nature is the primary force, only that it might play a part [1]:
Sure, the memo didn't say it explicitly, but it did imply that. Everyone keeps defending the exact wording as if implication and misleading statements don't exist. Suggesting it's a "part" suggests it's a measurable and large part, comparable to social causes. Pointing out that women are more neurotic (which is a clinical term with very negative popular connotation, so extremely easily misunderstood) might be a part of why Google has so few women is leading the reader to conclude it's a major factor.
This argument is cherry-picking the science in favor, and completely ignoring the contrary evidence that suggests that social issues are much larger than anything we could possibly measure about innate biological ability. For example, that different countries have very different distributions of women in engineering, or that the distributions have changed wildly in the last 50 years.
You intentional misinterpret the discussion. Well hopefully intentional, because otherwise it would reflect very poorly on you.
Let me use another example: The NFL has no rules against women playing. None. Yet 100% of players are male, because biologically the exceptionally large and athletic tend to be male. I'm male, so does that mean that I could be an NFL player? Of course not, and I in no universe am in that realm.
That is a more extreme example, but patronizingly suggesting that it's all just social is utterly laughable and just outright ignorant.
"This argument is cherry-picking the science in favor, and completely ignoring the contrary evidence that suggests that social issues are much larger"
At this point you've reached utter lol territory. You are outright being dense about actual science, and then casually waving your hands and claiming that is more authoritative.
Where is the evidence that any of these biological differences actually do cause women to choose tech careers less? Sure there are links to studies about the differences themselves, but that's it. And in fact, if you look at the changing makeup of Com Sci majors and programmers over the last 60 years, it seems to be a slight possibility at best and disingenuous at the worst.
> Right. And what I've been trying to say is that the statistical averages aren't the offensive part. That's a straw man.
Well you did pose the question, I just answered it, so it was not to erect a straw man, and I was not really trying to contradict the rest of your claim by that example, maybe I should have been clearer on that.
> Sure, the memo didn't say it explicitly, but it did imply that. Everyone keeps defending the exact wording as if implication and misleading statements don't exist. Suggesting it's a "part" suggests it's a measurable and large part, comparable to social causes.
Yes, he certainly does imply that biological causes has a measurable effect, and a large enough effect that it should be taken into consideration for measures (that he also suggests) in order to change work practices so as they might better fit females and thus increase diversity.
> Pointing out that women are more neurotic (which is a clinical term with very negative popular connotation, so extremely easily misunderstood) might be a part of why Google has so few women is leading the reader to conclude it's a major factor.
I agree that it is unfortunate that neurotic is easily misunderstood, but if he didn't use the correct clinical term he would be critized for not being scientific enough, which you are already critizing him for.
> This argument is cherry-picking the science in favor, and completely ignoring the contrary evidence that suggests that social issues are much larger than anything we could possibly measure about innate biological ability. For example, that different countries have very different distributions of women in engineering, or that the distributions have changed wildly in the last 50 years.
I don't agree with you that science has concluded that biological factors don't play a role in what professions people go into. I saw an interesting Harvard debate between Steven Pinker and Elisabeth Spelke on this [1]. The two examples you present does not explicitly contradict that it might be part biological reasons [2], the provided link has a fascinating discussion in the comment section that gives you both sides of the discussion.
I quite appreciate your measured response, thank you for that.
> I don't agree with you that science has concluded that biological factors don't play a role in what professions people go into.
I don't recall saying nature isn't a factor at all, and if I did I take it back. But I do personally believe that right now nurture, which includes social and historical gender issues plus all forms of implicit and explicit social biases and discrimination, is the biggest factor. And enough bigger that it doesn't make any sense to talk about nature yet.
I didn't really intend to contradict the possibility of any biological factor, what I'm saying is that social issues appear to me to be a far larger influence than, say, any discernible difference in IQ. The memo either disagrees or ignores that.
Given that social factors were >99% of the distribution discrepancy less than a century ago, and that we're still working through huge social issues, and that workforce distributions of women both locally and globally are far from settled, I find it pretty hard to accept the idea that we should look at anything other than social factors.
It is possible that biological differences explain some of the workforce distributions. It's also possible that nature's effect on the current sex distribution of women in US tech is not even large enough to be measurable. It's possible that should we eradicate social gender inequality globally, biology's role will even out to a 0.0001% distribution discrepancy. It's also possible that Sabine Hossenfelder is right, and that once we have equal opportunity, "the higher ranks in science and politics would be dominated by women". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14976028
I will check out the videos, thank you for the links.
Social issues is quite a clearly a problem, I just guess we disagree on the degree of biological influence, although there are some interesting points you bring up.
This whole memo thing has certainly led me down the rabbit hole. Not being an actual scientist with insight into both biological and social factors, I find it hard to be to sure of where I stand on the issue, and the current political climate is certainly helping to muddy the waters.
As long as an individual person is the sum of both nature and nurture, then regardless of the exact ratio of influence, nature will continue to make a difference.
> Damore argued that nature is the primary force, not nurture, and therefore we should stop nurturing women in tech.
No, he argued that nature in part, may explain the gender mismatch. That really cant be denied. It was also specifically talking about interests rather than capabilities of working in tech. Saying you might not be interested in programming software does not mean you're not able to.
The memo also never said we should stop nurturing women but that we should use different tactics that are more of match to their common on average biological traits and avoid any other discrimination based on race/gender, instead treating everyone as individuals.
Actually, if you read it closely, this is not true. True, he does suggest a lot of potential actions that could create a more beneficial tech culture for women, but then he goes on to suggest that Google needs to determine if these types of changes would impact Google's productivity in a negative way.
This is a pretty heavy implication that these programs do not in fact have any value and that diversity is not valuable. I can agree that a perfect 50/50 split is unattainable and the wrong goal, but there are studies that show diversity confers an advantage. And as Yonatan points out, I think the author has a misunderstanding of what is valuable from an engineering culture perspective.
I didn't see that clause about productivity, can you quote that piece of the memo? https://diversitymemo.com/
Yonatan's response was an emotional tirade, refusing to debate any of the cited research and using a different context of empathy. Nobody is debating the value of empathy in engineering (and it's good to have for any job and life in general, nothing specific to tech), but empathy in setting policy is completely different.
Rules should be set based on rational analysis instead of feelings. We argue for science/math-based policies in government so asking for the same in such a large corporation with regards to such a sensitive subject seems perfectly logical.
Here is the section from the memo that I'm referencing:
> Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principled reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with Google’s diversity being a component of that. For example currently those trying to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep in mind that Google’s funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally acknowledged.
In general I agree that a rational analysis and science based approach is valuable. In fact, I think research into diversity actually does support the idea that it provides benefits. But it's not simply as black and white as science good, empathy/moralizing bad.
For instance, it may be objectively better for a company to do a lot of things that we consider immoral or harmful to society. For instance, how much does maternity and paternity leave cost a company in productivity, time, and the expense of providing a replacement worker? In fact, it might just be more profitable not to hire women of childbearing age at all, which actually was socially accepted for a long time. But these days our society has come to the general conclusion that this is actually morally unacceptable, and the benefits to parents and society outweigh the costs to the company. A very similar argument could be employed regarding the hiring of employees in the reserves or national guard.
I think you have to look at things holistically, as an entire system, and yes, morally.
From my perspective, you just contradicted yourself, can you help me understand why it's not a contradiction?
The IQ distribution of men and women is slightly different, and this is essentially settled science (it really is, however much we might pontificate -- our genetic past rolls the dice more with males). The male curve is slightly fatter, yielding larger numbers of exceptionally high and exceptionally low members. This means absolutely nothing if you have a male with an IQ of 140 and a female with an IQ of 140, however. Nor does it mean a 100 IQ male should be working at Google because there are slightly more high IQ males born.
We are smart enough to understand the difference between set probabilities and individual traits. Right?
because the distribution of women in tech has changed drastically in the last 50 years faster than evolution's say in the matter
Obviously there are social factors. That is indisputable. But at a point the gains in leveling the sexes for some domains become harder to get because there are confounding factors. Women in engineering has stayed virtually constant for several decades now.
> The IQ distribution of men and women is slightly different, and this is essentially settled science
How different? Can you source this claim? Are the means & medians at different places? How far apart are they? Are they far enough part to justify a male/female ratio in the tech workforce of 4x? I'm not arguing with you, but you are contradicting the article at hand.
"the mainstream view is that male and female abilities are the same across the vast majority of domains — I.Q., the ability to do math, etc."
> Women in engineering has stayed virtually constant for several decades now.
Which decades are you talking about? Which countries are you talking about? Please source this wildly inaccurate claim.
"According to studies by the National Science Foundation, the percentage of BA/BS degrees in engineering awarded to women in the U.S. increased steadily from 0.4 percent in 1966 to a peak of 20.9 percent in 2002"
That's a factor of 40x in 40 years. That doesn't sound super constant to me. How fast does evolution work again?
"Only 9.6% of engineers in Australia are women"
Interesting. Does that mean it's likely that Australian women are biologically only half as engineering capable as American women?
The difference between male and female IQ curves is easily found, and is scientifically settled. I don't particularly care if I'm contradicting the article at hand -- I'm not trying to vouch for it, but am saying that it's a rational discussion.
>Please source this wildly inaccurate claim.
I said for several decades. You cite the change for over five decades.
From 1990 to today -- closing on three decades -- women in engineering has stayed virtually unchanged in the US.
You seem to be taking the shotgun approach, and seem wholly ingenuine in discussing this rationally, so I would say this discussion is done.
> The difference between male and female IQ curves is easily found, and is scientifically settled.
Can you either source this or summarize, assuming that I genuinely want to know? How big is the difference in mean & median? Do you believe the difference is primarily responsible for the difference in distribution?
> I said for several decades. You cite the change for over five decades.
You're going to nitpick over 3 vs 5? Are you saying that the distribution of women wasn't in a steady state in the 1970's but it reached steady state in the 1990's, and that now the distributions are primarily reflective of innate biology and not social causes?
The distribution of women in computer science is quite different than the distribution of women in engineering - very roughly 2x as I understand. Do you think that computer science is significantly and measurably more prone to being affected by our biological differences than engineering?
I'm think I'm bringing up reasonable points, is it really a stretch to ask about different countries and different disciplines? The memo's reasoning should reasonably apply to all women in all businesses in all countries, not just engineering or tech. He even cited gender discrepancies that are cross-cultural, this is absolutely fair game.
> You seem to be taking the shotgun approach, and seem wholly ingenuine in discussing this rationally
I'm sorry that it's getting tough for you. I'm very genuine and very serious. I disagree that I'm being irrational, but you are entitled to your opinion.
I'm just hearing defensiveness about the claims stated as fact being true. I willingly accept that there are biological differences between men and women. What I don't see clearly is a rational justification for ignoring cultural sexism.
Thank you. So, tell me if I'm summarizing correctly. The currently accepted state of things is there's no difference in average IQ between men and women, but there is a known difference in variance which is symmetric. The variance discrepancy may be associated with specific subjects.
So if we assume that the US tech sector hires only above-average people, the difference in variance could lead to some difference in mean IQ, for certain subjects, in theory.
The question of what social factors bias IQ measurements is ongoing, but the top-line summary is that general intelligence is believed by many to have no sex difference.
Is that accurate?
I am cherry picking this one, but it's one of the most directly relevant studies cited here, and I find it interesting:
"Stoet and Geary concluded that sex differences in educational achievement are not reliably linked to gender equality."
The lack of concrete numbers has been bugging me, so I decided to hunt down the variance differences and calculate the expected percentage of women in tech.
I found a paper (http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf) that reports a variance ratio of 1.15 for the maths scores of boys vs girls. Interestingly, they showed a negative correlation between variance ratio and gender gap for students in different countries. (In countries where boys have higher variance of maths scores, they tend to do worse on average than girls.)
However, the hypothesis that gender ratios in CS are influenced by the higher variance additionally involves a highly selective environment. So I decided to compute how the ratio changes when a minimum score is imposed. Python code below.
To fully explain 80% men in a profession using only higher variance as the criterion, you need a threshold of at least 4 standard deviations above the norm. In terms of IQ, that is at least 160. I don't think programmers have to be quite that smart.
Nice work!! I wish I was that quick with scipy. I too was very curious to get a better sense of what kind of absolute numbers it might take before the effects are noticeable.
Would you be willing to walk me through the steps? Specifically (I'm sure this is a dumb question) what is gender ratio to population ratio?
And in the male_female_ratio_above_threshold function, why is the female part scaled to 1/1.15? Shouldn't that value be 1.0? You'd have to skip the ratio_above_threshold function and factor in a norm.cdf call directly, but I don't see why it makes sense to compare normal distributions of 1.15 and 1/1.15, it should be comparing a 1.15 times normal to a 1.0 times normal, right?
If I replace the 1/1.15 with 1.0, I get that the 80/20 split happens at an IQ of just over 195 (6.44 std devs). If I'm right, this would mean that for IQ to explain the 80/20 split completely, tech people would have to be in the top ~0.000000006% of the general population. BTW, just for perspective there are 45 such people in the entire world.
> I don't think programmers have to be quite that smart.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but programmers would have to be that smart, it would still have to be absolute IQ of 165 or above (or maybe >195). If we assume the average programmer has an IQ of 125, the 165 threshold is ~2.6 std devs above the norm, rather than ~4.3 std devs above the norm, right? We'd be talking about the top 0.5% of the programmer population, rather than the top 0.001% of the general population.
Relatively speaking, the threshold isn't as far above the average programmer as it is above the average person, but the 80/20 split depends on the absolute threshold, yes?
> To fully explain 80% men in a profession using only higher variance as the criterion
And we'd better qualify that this is assuming 1.15 is the right number globally, and that 1.15 is valid for subjects other than math, and that using only the higher variance means that percent of women in tech ratio is 100% dependent on IQ, which in turn means that hiring and job performance and ability all correlate 100% with IQ and nothing else, and finally that IQ itself is free of social biases.
Right? Even with a better understanding of what it might take, we're still pretty far into an imaginary land built on a long series of assumptions, some of which we know to be iffy at best. Not to mention that if any other factors are involved (and we know there are) then the IQ threshold is even higher.
You got me there. After I did the calculation I got too lazy to explain it in detail, so I hoped dumping it would be enough.
The variance ratio was calculated in the paper as (variance of the boy's scores)/(variance of the girl's scores), and the most natural way of computing the effect of a threshold is (men above threshold)/(women above threshold). But we are usually more interested in the relation of individuals to the overall population. So I needed a helper function to change the male/female ratio into a male/(male + female) ratio.
However, when you directly apply this function to the variance ratio, you get the part of the overall variance that is caused by the men. For the distribution, I actually wanted the standard deviation in multiples of the average deviation. Luckily, male/(average person) = male/((male+female)/2) = 2 * male/(male+female). Take the square root to get the standard deviation from the variance.
As mentioned above, (men above threshold)/(women above threshold) gets you the male/female ratio of people above the threshold. The cumulative density function gives you the probability someone is below the threshold, but because the normal distribution is symmetric, you can just flip the sign.
Because I'm expressing the variances of both sub-populations in relation to the total population, the variance for men comes from the male/female variance ratio 1.15, while the variance for women comes from the female/male variance ratio 1/1.15. If you use sqrt(1.15) and sqrt(1.0) as standard deviations instead, your threshold is in units of female standard deviation, which is slightly lower than that of the overall population.
I think that should have answered some of your questions, but not all of them.
> Relatively speaking, the threshold isn't as far above the average programmer as it is above the average person, but the 80/20 split depends on the absolute threshold, yes?
I actually hadn't thought to put it in relation to the population of programmers, but what you are saying makes sense (with the caveat that the standard deviation of programmers might differ from the general population). However, it seems that the 80/20 split isn't just at Google, but also close to the industry average and to enrollment in CS majors, which definitely don't just include the top programmers.
> And we'd better qualify that this is assuming 1.15 is the right number globally,
Actually, 1.15 isn't the right number globally: in different countries, the variance ratio was as low as 0.9 and as high as 1.5, so it isn't actually very stable. In the US, you have the choice between 1.19, 1.11 and 1.08, depending on the test and the year of testing. 1.15 is just the average over all countries and tests.
> and that 1.15 is valid for subjects other than math,
It probably isn't, but if you have no numbers, you just take what seems closest and run with it. Another caveat is that this number was for elementary/middle school students, and it could be different for adults, either higher, because the students were not fully developed yet, or lower, because the students were in different stages of development.
> and that using only the higher variance means that percent of women in tech ratio is 100% dependent on IQ, which in turn means that hiring and job performance and ability all correlate 100% with IQ and nothing else,
If there were some other normally distributed property, e.g. "programming ability", you could use that to make a similar argument, but it would have to fulfill these requirements to be the only explanation. Modeling the hiring process as a binary threshold is also quite simplistic, but I don't think I could compute it for anything more realistic.
> and finally that IQ itself is free of social biases.
You only have to assume that if you want to make IQ (or something else) the only explanation and claim that social bias is not involved. It would absolve Google of immediate responsibility if they simply administered an IQ test to candidates, but there would still be ways bias can influence the outcome.
> Not to mention that if any other factors are involved (and we know there are) then the IQ threshold is even higher.
Don't you mean lower? There are a whole bunch of other factors that make women less likely to go into CS, stay as programmers, apply to Google (like social bias) that would lower the remaining difference the "higher variance" hypothesis would have to explain. Of course that would leave it with little overall influence, but it might be the case that all individual factors are only able to explain a small part, and it's their interaction that causes the huge difference.
Thank you, thank you, for taking the time to explain!! This makes sense to me, and this analysis is fantastic.
I see more clearly the issue with 1/1.15 that I was worried about, and what I missed was the gener_ratio_to_population_ratio inside the variance_ratio_to_standard_deviation. I was worried the variance ratio was being double counted, but I see now that it's not, you just made it symmetric.
> It would absolve Google of immediate responsibility if they simply administered an IQ test to candidates
Isn't there a very high probability that this would implicate Google rather than absolve them? I'd be really pretty extremely surprised if Google had managed to hire tens of thousands of people that are all at least 165 IQ. If they prove the average IQ is 130, they then potentially have to take responsibility for the remainder of the discrepancy.
> Don't you mean lower? There are a whole bunch of other factors that make women less likely to go into CS
I did mean higher, but you're absolutely right to call BS on that. Any factors that alone would result in a lower female ratio than 20/80 would push the IQ threshold lower. Factors that alone would result in anything higher than 20/80 would raise the IQ threshold. My assumption was that, being at a very extreme end of the spectrum more than 4(!) standard deviations from the general population, almost all other factors would be closer to 50/50 than to 0/100, and would thus raise the IQ threshold. But that is my assumption and belief, not any established fact.
Since the actual ratio is 20/80, and I believe that IQ is at best a small factor, then for my hypothesis to be right, some other actual factor must be closer to 0/100 than 50/50. That means I'd better accept your suggestion that what I really meant to say is other factors would push the IQ threshold lower not higher, because there's evidence for that. You've done me a favor. ;)
2) "IQ" (or math ability, or whatever) does not measure if someone is an effective engineer, which is what Google actually wants.
3) Women are also underrepresented throughout software engineering, at places far less rarified than Google. You don't have to be a genius to write a CRUD app--but somehow it's still mostly dudes. I wonder if there could be any other effects that would discourage women from taking those jobs?
4) Have you ever asked a women in tech--any woman, grab the nearest one--if she's had negative experiences in tech? Say, being dismissed, ignored, talked over, harassed?
Your first points are nonsensical and requires that we believe that technical/problem solving skills and IQ have no correlation, when actual reality demonstrates a very strong correlation. Not a perfect correlation, obviously, but very high.
Your third point again is based on a bogus premise. To get those CRUD jobs the developers often went through a gauntlet of CS (or shining independently through projects, etc), hiring selectivity (everyone hires the "top 2%", etc). Even if the job is banal, the road to get there is often very demanding.
As to your fourth, I have no doubt that many women in tech have negative experiences. Having said that, many males in tech have negative experiences. I'm a fairly outgoing, obstinate, outspoken type of person and I know in my career I've left a wake of male coworkers who were dismissed and talked over. This industry tends to be hierarchical, and when it's a male that's life, and when it's a female that's sexism.
> He was not saying that women who work at Google are at a biological disadvantage, in any way, and that is a perverse misreading.
Quite frankly: many people do. Some of them are at Google. James chose to run headlong into this discussion without any practical knowledge of the discourse. His point was poorly delivered precisely because it leaves open such radical room for misrepresenting it.
Discussions of social issues MUST be informed by the social discourse they enter, even if armed with science and evidence. To suggest otherwise is obviously wrong.
No one owes James a charitable reading. And if you think the "mobs" of liberals are misrepresenting his point, you should see where MRA/goreans are going with it.
A charitable reading isn't something that's owed. It's something that almost universally helps discourse. Communication is hard.
We're always willing to give Us a charitable reading, and it's a damned shame people are so unwilling to afford that to Them, regardless which side of anything you're on.
Right, but anyone familiar with this larger discussion read James's memo and knew, immediately, that he simply failed to do any research or contribute anything meaningful.
I certainly did my best to ignore it. It was poorly informed, poorly considered. His firing was inevitable and possibly even what he wanted. Certainly I can't imagine a more effective way to get fired at Google.
Since James didn't do the courtesy of being informed, it seems odd to demand that everyone offer him the courtesy of finishing his argument for him
Progress isn't made when both parties refuse to cooperate. And one side isn't absolved of responsibility just because they believe the other side to be not worth their effort. This is petty.
What do you think I am doing engaging this topic even though it's obviously time consuming and costly to me?
I'm not here dropping links about stereotypes and pointing out trivial logical errors in the discourse because it's good for my heart or my psyche.
I'm on Twitter hiatus, but I still end up wrapped in these fruitless conflicts. But please, continue arguing that what I'm doing is deleterious. I'm not friendly on this subject, but you can hardly accuse me of not engaging openly and being responsive to the dialogue.
The pain you're experiencing is cognitive dissonance. I am also very personally familiar with it, and I know how hard it is to recognize the cognitive dissonance in oneself. I also know that the pain -starts- going away when you're able to honestly confront yourself and the irrational and contradictory thoughts that are the root of the pain.
My irrationality is keeping to a promise to positively oppose the often-unconscious but perniciously misogynistic viewpoint that permeates the discourse of this site.
I recognize that giving a promise this vast in scope was a bad idea. However, I feel obligated to keep it.
I'm bored to death of men with almost no conception of the topic at hand demanding deference and respect just because they think they know how to program a computer. And yet, here I am keeping my promise.
You seem to think my intent is malicious. It's really too bad.
Nope. I think you're acting out of pain. I think you're in pain because you yourself said that your current behavior on the forum is "costly" and bad "for my heart or my psyche." Again, you're reading something that was literally never written. Hence, cognitive dissonance.
Yes, James isn't owed a charitable reading. He is owed a rational reading.
addendum: Irrational people misinterpreting a text is precisely that. Surely you can't be saying that a text having a fairly high bar for intelligent interpretation and discussion is reason for that text to not exist?
It is not irrational to misinterpret poorly written, poorly worded, and inconclusive text.
Reading a text is a dialogue. If the writer did not appropriately express the intent, then they invite the reader to finish the thought. And this even rational people can arrive at different conclusions.
To suggest every reading you don't approve of as "irrational" is a predictable, even classical tactic. Many words exist for it, but in the end the notion of blaming the reader for finishing an incomplete thought is an exercise in futility. The reader has no choice.
You said "his point was poorly delivered precisely because it leaves open such radical room for misrepresenting it," and then contrasted how "mobs of liberals" are reading it with "MRA/goreans." Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but your original post was explicitly about irrational misinterpretations.
If you want to talk about how the memo was poorly written, talk about how the memo was poorly written. The readings of others certainly can supplement your analysis, but you haven't provided that analysis.
The memo begins with it's intent, and even has a TLDR after the opening three paragraphs.
Also, while the memo was mostly trying to assess the current state and factors of the gender imbalance in tech and Google particularly, it does provide several, literal, conclusions. Here are just a few:
>We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration.
>Women on average are more cooperative [...] Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do.
>Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits.
If you actually read the memo, and have actual problems with what was actually written, then talk about that. There's certainly plenty to discuss and to rationally disagree about, but you have yet to say anything substantial about the thing you're criticizing.
> The memo begins with it's intent, and even has a TLDR after the opening three paragraphs.
Which does little to excuse the subsequent content. Why would it? Impact matters far more than intent. Asking for someone to read a paragraph in a light quite opposed to it's content in this era of Poe Principle Supremacy is essentially asking for an act of faith.
I possess no such faith. And why should I? The implicit suggestion here is that James's memo had value or novel input. Even if I fastidiously follow his intent statement, it appears misinformed and to misinterpret some findings, offering a solution I have discussed as inadequate and insulting many times on this website.
> If you actually read the memo, and have actual problems with what was actually written, then talk about that.
I have at length. I am now talking about the discourse at hand. Please find someone else to make demands of. I'm not your conversational sparring partner and even this reply is only a courtesy. Please do not exhaust my good will.
Since you haven't done it in this thread, I checked your comment history to see what you have said about the memo itself.
The only thing I could find that begins to be a direct reference is "In this memo's case, perhaps you're mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action (e.g., don't worry I am sure if we set up pair programming that will make it fair for you social women types)." The only thing I found in the memo that could be interpreted as women being less capable in something regarding tech work was, "This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading." Granted, I did not interpret "having a harder time" as meaning "is less capable of," but I do see how you could think that. However, that statement is analogous to something like "black Americans in the 50s generally had a harder time running businesses, getting quality education, and finding quality housing." Empirically true, and has nothing to do with capability.
Another point of confusion I can understand is while it mentions the fact that men and women have biological differences, it never says anything at all about what those differences are. Further, he goes on to say "many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions." Now I certainly agree that raising the topic of potential biological differences, only to instantly drop it, is poor writing, and if you justly continue reading the memo expecting more references to that topic, you could be left with a certain level of confusion.
It's fine to not agree with something or someone. It's also OK to be wrong about something, or misunderstand a given piece of material. It is not OK to dismiss out of hand perceived others or to take an emotionally vested interest in your misunderstanding when it's been pointed out.
This is a discussion board. pharrington literally and solely exists to discuss things with KirinDave (and any other accounts posting on this site).
> or misunderstand a given piece of material. It is not OK to dismiss out of hand perceived others or to take an emotionally vested interest in your misunderstanding when it's been pointed out.
I'm uninterested in James, his feelings, his emotions, his needs, his wants, his _intents_, and his plans. I've met him in passing, and he did not hold my attention anymore in person.
I've been much more focused on the flaws in the discourse here than his memo precisely because of this.
Your ultimate strategy across multiple threads appears to be: "paint this person as an irrational creature, fraught with emotion, that cannot respond rationally and therefore should be dismissed."
If you think this'll work, good luck. If the karma numbers I can see are any indication, my opinion is not being received in the light you're painting it it. If your opinion of the overall HN community is that folks here are an irrational bunch with cognitive abilities to base to catch the pitch of reason, then what sort of motivation (rational or otherwise) are you finding to stay?
And I'm also enjoying watching the numbers pop back up after a sudden depression. Why is that, I wonder? It continues to happen on some threads long after they're open.
> Another point of confusion I can understand is while it mentions the fact that men and women have biological differences, it never says anything at all about what those differences are.
I have no general posting strategy. I just respond to what I see. My opinion of the overall HN community is that there are alot of people on here with a wide range of knowledge and opinions, the vast majority of which I find informative or interesting. I disagree with alot of things people write here, but very rarely is that because I find the opinion I'm disagreeing with to be extremely irrational.
On the contrary I've been trying to keep to my chosen topic and you've been doing your best to steer the conversation away from what I was talking about and towards me and what you command me to do.
There are numerous groups of unsavory folks who have reached this conclusion, and raft in ways to form a motley political crew we call the "alt right".
> I know that the average Asian has a higher IQ than the average white man.
How can you be sure that it's the average Asia, as opposed to the average Asian in the US? IMO a better example would be to use Ashkenazi Jews... or are they too white to count?
Yeah, he slipped in a huge assumption there as if it's established fact.
Of course Asians in the US are smart. There is a high bar for foreigners entering the US.
This is the genius behind "Give me your tired, your poor". We actually end up taking the hard working, wealthy ones who've gotten into college by passing tests in their second language at the same age as we go to school.
There was an article awhile back in the NYT stating that in many cases asians people can be found cheating on those tests or lying about their educational background.
Lets face it. They have resources to both cheat and get tutoring on the ways to pass an exam. Lets see how everyone does cold turkey when all of the outside factors like money and resources other than race and gender are held constant.
What are the results of a study like that? That would be a more interesting test than saying X or Y is genetically more suited to this field.
Most if not all of that line of reasoning is based on 1000 year old social constructs...and the mountains of "research" that was later made up to give it credibility when people started to question these social constructs.
> Lets see how everyone does cold turkey when all of the outside factors like money and resources other than race and gender are held constant.
It's impossible to completely separate biological from environmental factors. They're interdependent.
I agree that better research would be the proper way to attack this problem. It seems we will be stuck perpetually debating nature vs. nurture [1] for as long as we exist.
Please visit "Asia". Don't go to Japan or South Korea or one of the city states. Go to India or China or somewhere in middle east. I don't think there are biological differences that would make people of the largest continent more smarter than another group.
The colloquial "Asian" means East Asian/Far Eastern.
This includes Japanese, Chinese, both Koreans, Taiwanese, and Mongolians. Commonly, anyone with epicanthic folds.
In this case, I don't think the OP was talking about biological differences. It's widely known that the aforementioned cultures (especially Japan and China) are very big on having their careers and studies at the center of their lives.
In this case, it would be nurture giving these groups an advantage over their Western counterparts. Who, ignoring the top-tiers, on average are not known for their industry.
You just need different relative reproduction rates or different levels of assortative mating. For example, the Khmer Rouge may have affected Cambodia's IQ distribution (negatively) but Cambodians don't now have "biological differences" per se.
He didn't circulate one. He sent it to a mailing list which purported to be a safe place for open, honest sharing of opinions regarding diversity and hiring.
Anyone who is willing to bet their job on a controversial posting about company policy to a broad company mailing list staying internal either doesn't mind being fired or is an idiot.
>Anyone who is willing to bet their job on a controversial posting
That's part of the problem.
Lots of people associate Google with research and discourse akin to a college campus without realizing that, unlike a college campus, they and their free discourse are not protected in any meaningful way.
"Let's be open and transparent and have an open and transparent culture... but don't say things that might hurt our shareholders."
Google is beginning to remind me a bit too much of the 'Bright & Shinys" from the movie 'Bubble Boy'[0]. Happy go lucky do-gooder cult that holds that image until you cross them. Things get darker after that point. That initial positive image is all that matters.
Unfortunately college campuses don't protect free discourse for certain stripes of political opinion very well these days either.
I agree with your broader point though. Different companies are more or less tolerant of free-wheeling discussion that may not reflect an official company position. But, at the end of the day, if you cause embarrassment (especially as a non-exec, non-critical employee) at most companies, you're expendable.
I don't think they necessarily can, in the interest of fostering a welcoming and safe environment for students to learn. Example: "Let's not be scared of having an open, honest, and frank discussion of how Jews have caused the decline of the country."
Do you see how ridiculous that sounds and why a university could not in good faith legitimize the proponents of that theory? Now I'm not saying all issues are as black and white as that, but it's clear to me that there is a line that needs to be drawn somewhere. Any particular issue probably has differing opinions on whether it crosses the lines. But anything that is abusive towards women, minorities, trans people, etc. as people is dangerous ground and I can't argue with not supporting that.
Words are not going to hurt anyone, actions will. Students (and all people) should absolutely be protected from harmful actions but we cannot stop discourse just because it sounds offensive to someone, no matter the subject.
Words and actions are inextricably linked in complicated ways. I don't know anything about who you are or your situation, but I will say that the "sticks and stones" attitude is much easier to believe in if you've never been in a minority group. I used to buy into it, in fact, until a big bag of empathy hit me like a truck as I got older.
Even the conservatives and alt-righters admin this, which is why they're so upset about people using politically correct language, even by their own free choice. "Happy Holidays" anyone?
I, for one, would find it pretty disadvantageous in my studies to attend classes at an institution that endorses (even silently) a viewpoint that questions my right to the pursuit of happiness, to marry who I want, to be the correct gender, or even to exist. Organizations can and do limit that speech in certain environments that they are responsible for.
That said, the first amendment is hugely important, but limited in scope in the consequences that it protects you from.
Of course, it _is_ important to not simply refuse to hear or allow speech that you disagree with. There is a balance to be struck there.
Who cares if I'm a minority or conservative? Who cares what speech I'm upset by? That's the point, being upset is not something we need to defend against.
Speech is speech, if you don't like it then ignore it. And yes, there are consequences. Most of the time it's the other side yelling back which is fine. Only when it turns into (harmful) action should be people be defended but until then it's paramount that anyone can say what they want.
I understand that only the government has protected speech. Private groups and institutions are free to invite or exclude at will and I support that as well, however public spaces and institutions should absolutely not be closed to anyone who wants to speak their mind and protecting people's feelings will never end well.
I do see your point as well. It's a very tough balance to sort out. But I don't think it's clear cut since some speech essentially _is_ a harmful action. For instance, consider a potential law that would actively discriminate against a group (think segregation, bathroom bill, whatever). Advocating for the passage of the law essentially is "just speech" but it then leads to the passage of the law. Once the law is passed the harmful action takes place, but it's too late to counter it.
So I don't think it's quite as simple as protecting people's feelings over all else. Frankly, I even have mixed feelings and unease about the fact that I think limiting speech is warranted sometimes. But there it is.
By and large, I do think that college students do need to be able to deal with viewpoints that hurt or offend them. That doesn't include signs on their dorm doors or people getting in their faces but it does include speakers who they may not like.
Google always used to make a big song and dance about how scientific and data driven it is. They even wrote about how data driven their hiring processes and HR operations are.
“What we try to do is bring the same level of rigor to people decisions that we do to engineering decisions. Our mission is to have all people decisions be informed by data.”
Damore's memo may look idiotic to people who work in "normal" workplaces, but it is consistent with Google's previous rhetoric on what sort of company it wants to be: namely, one that isn't normal.
One could say the people wanting the ex a employee fired were also a small vocal group. I really doubt more than 10% of Googlers felt personally threatened affronted by someone having a different view on advancing women in tech.
Kind of like if we extrapolate the 10% of the population who are vocally upset at google because of the dismissal we only have 30+ million upset with google the co.
Unfortunately I don't think it's that small. It's similar to saying "The Trump base is a small vocal group" - perhaps it's really larger than we care to admit?
Of course we can't reasonably assess how large these groups are, when we are all - liberals and conservatives alike - being told not to express our opinions by leaders in universities, media, and tech companies.
It's like Sundar declaring that most employees supported him - after he fired someone for questioning management.
I would argue that if a 'small, vocal group' likely had a significant hand in electing Donald Trump, we should stop trying to minimize it by suggesting it is 'small'. Either because it's larger than you think, or because it has influence that outscales it's membership severalfold.
Was that necessary? A) The women working at Google are predominantly also cishet and B) gay guys can be misogynistic too (sometimes even more, as they dont need women in any way).
By not firing him, the same thing would have happened. Except now that vocal group would be Google employees too who feel uncomfortable at their workplace.
Anti-science way? Do you realize how subjective this is and how impossible it is to prove that today there are no other influences at play than biology? And that we've maxed on the number of woman in this field and we're now at an equilibrium determined by biology?
I would have been far more convinced if he noted a dwindling amount of harassment and reported bias using studies.
You overgeneralize and mischaracterize the memo with your claims, which leads me to suspect you never read it.
>Do you realize how subjective this is and how impossible it is to prove that today there are no other influences at play than biology
He never claims there are no other influences at play -
From the memo; note the works "in part" and "may explain" -
Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
differences are “just.” 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.
> And that we've maxed on the number of woman in this field and we're now at an equilibrium determined by biology?
There is no such claim of this whatsoever. Your comment is a great example of the problems with this debate.
One of his main points in the memo is at the top:"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. "
What am I missing? This is the topic he explores the most in his memo and I don't see anything analyzing social effects.
While his paper is nuanced, he basically only focuses on the biological argument and seeks to change company policy as a result of this.
One of these being... to end the diversity goals. Yes I did read the memo.
I'm not sure what your counter argument is exactly.
He argued to change their diversity goals and implementation, with an intention to do a better job of getting a _more_ not less diverse company, including more woman and minorities. He did not argue to end all diversity goals outright, again that appears to be a mischaracterization.
I suppose you can say his argument was implied then in my eyes since he spent the first large part of the memo reviewing the biology of women and then stopped short there.
No time was spent exploring inherent biases in history or how they may affecting things today. This is why those policies were put into place so why not make it the meat of the discussion.
Though the implication may be that his approach will create a setup in which there will be more diversity that is highly debatable... again the reason why these policies are there in the first place. I don't feel the argument was so strong.
Does he have other examples in history when a minority group allowed the free market to dictate things after a long period of bias and things quickly adjusted overnight?
He concedes the very point you mention here. That there are _real_ historical biases that should be corrected and removed.
From the memo:
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.
He's saying that the inability to get to a 50/50% split on gender lines may be unrealistic. He makes no comment on if the 20/80 split that currently exists is fair or not. Just because he doesn't go into the history of all bias that did exist in the past, doesn't mean he discounts it and unworthy to be addressed. Further, at what point does a society atone for past biases? If you are even trying to correct the injustice in the past, should you not have an idea on what normalization might be like? Perhaps and this is his question, an exact 50/50 is not what a idealistic lack of bias would create in the first place. And the thesis is that it would not be created in that fashion because women self-select to enter different professions for biologically based reasons. Now all those items might be false - its a hypothesis, not a universal truth - but it appears the research from social psychologists backs up his claims as valid. Now perhaps they still want to argue between themselves, and fine I'm ok with that go for it - but it appears he's done with with good faith.
And even if you think his arguments are poor, or he's naive, or anything else, that's fine too. The problem is - and this is where my main issue and the root of all of this - is that he should not have been fired for this. This appears to be a betrayal of liberal free speech values that many people claim to support.
"He's saying that the inability to get to a 50/50% split on gender lines may be unrealistic"
Sure that's fair. I say that as a woman - I have no expectation to reach 50/50. However it's debatable if these policies are not useful yet. My mothers generation had some crazy stories to tell and that wasn't that long ago.
"And the thesis is that it would not be created in that fashion because women self-select to enter different professions for biologically based reasons."
This may be partly true but I disagree that it forms a substantial influence given my personal experience. I would give it a 1% weight anecdotally but much more if you count that many women want to be full time mothers.
The much bigger picture in my personal experience is a slew of other things including poor information, societal and parental expectations and visions for their daughters, engrained belief systems, intimidation due to biases, sticking to comfort zones or what is more familiar and so on.
I totally agree this is a discussion worth having and at some point this policies will need to be phased out. I think here the channel in which it was broadcast to the entire company was pretty uncomfortable given its such a touchy and controversial topic.
The point of these policies isn't to make things look good in a picture but to reduce the effect of existing biases in hiring woman. And to give people a chance after some questionable history. Diversity of thought is an admirable thing and can often be amplified when people from different backgrounds and perspectives gather.
> Anti-science way? Do you realize how subjective this is and how impossible it is to prove that today there are no other influences at play than biology?
First of all, the original memo said nothing of the sort.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure GP is not saying the reaction to this memo is anti-science merely because it opposes the position taken in the memo. Rather, it's anti-science because they threw all rational debate out the window and fired the guy without even trying to address the points he made.
Why even bother mentioning biology then if there are other influences more important and relevant? It seemed very emphasized.
They did not fire him because they didn't believe in the studies he linked. Obviously that's very much mischaracterizing things. This is a complicated issue with ample studies to link to from both sides. And anyway, I truly question studies on such broad topics.
> Why even bother mentioning biology then if there are other influences more important and relevant? It seemed very emphasized.
Because that portion of the essay was meant to counter what the author perceived to be Google's current position on the matter: that societal factors are the _only_ factor resulting in a lower percentage of women in tech.
From the memo:
> For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation.
Followed by a section titled:
> Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech
The author isn't saying that biological differences are the _only_ factor; only that that they are _a_ factor, and that Google has been completely neglecting that factor with the current implementation of their efforts to improve diversity within the company.
> The author isn't saying that biological differences are the _only_ factor; only that that they are _a_ factor...
This is true, but as /u/taysic pointed out elsewhere, Damore dedicates the majority of his memo on this this one factor and wishes to change corporate policy because of it.
> ... and that Google has been completely neglecting that factor with the current implementation of their efforts to improve diversity within the company
Perhaps Google is evaluating more factors than Damore? Perhaps Google concluded that social issues and gender bias play a larger role in workforce disparity than biological issues, and therefore decided to prioritize attacking the larger problem over the smaller problem?
> Damore dedicates the majority of his memo on this this one factor and wishes to change corporate policy because of it.
Right. I explained why that was in the previous part of my comment.
> Perhaps Google is evaluating more factors than Damore? [...]
Perhaps so. They made no such claim in their response to Damore's essay though. In fact, they didn't address any of his points at all; they just fired him, thus proving the main point of his essay:
> People generally have good intentions, but we all have biases which are invisible to us. Thankfully, open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots and help us grow, which is why I wrote this document. Google has several biases and honest
discussion about these biases is being silenced by the dominant ideology. [...]
> Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.
> Perhaps so. They made no such claim in their response to Damore's essay though. In fact, they didn't address any of his points at all; they just fired him, thus proving the main point of his essay
Google's firing should be seen in the context of how it affects their workplace. This notion of "anyone can say anything" does not stick in a social gathering like a workplace. Free speech is relative, in this case relative to the workplace. This memo challenges that and that was addressed by google. This is similar to firing someone making a "I will gut you if you send me a poorly constructed pull request" threat. That is not free speech. That is unsettling a social gathering. The person making the threat may be right on his intentions, but context and how he puts across matters.
> Perhaps Google is evaluating more factors than Damore? Perhaps Google concluded that social issues and gender bias play a larger role in workforce disparity than biological issues, and therefore decided to prioritize attacking the larger problem over the smaller problem?
If Google has done the research on it, I'd really like to see because it is likely to be much more extensive than what this one guy has collected in his free time. That said, I suspect bias was simply assumed as the major factor by default, since that has historically been true in lots of professions (some of which are now dominated by women).
Only on the internet. I really don't think anyone in the real world is paying that much attention, and besides Brooks, I haven't seen many mainstream writers come out against the firing.
I can't say I agree about that not paying much attention - I pretty much see/hear discussion about this incident daily since Saturday. It probably doesn't help that I am in the Valley, but I have a lot of friends not in tech across the world also discussing this as well.
Almost everyone I know/interacted with believes that Damore is wrong though, if not for the viewpoint, then for his approach to trying to create a dialogue in a suboptimal fashion & its negative effects on his former colleagues.
Seems to be same group of mainstream writers who also dished out Trump as a joke candidate and hailed Clinton as winner.
Very few had the courage to talk against that trend, one of them was Michael Moore and check how accurate he was when compared to "mainstream": https://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
Even 'punitive actions' would have been wrong as their is no punishable offence. Google supposedly wants to have an open culture so they should just have accepted the 'manifesto' as part of this open culture, something to use in discussions on the subject matter. Any other reaction - and certainly the current reaction - only goes to show the truth of the accusations about Google not having an open culture.
Open culture does not mean that actions that make environment more hostile to some group inside the company should not be punished. The 'memo' definitely did that to his female coworkers. That's why the story is not about open culture or freedom of speech, but in the first place about creating unhealthy environment for a particular group inside the company and setting a really bad precedent. Maybe the guy meant well, but the fact is his actions ended up harming both a particular group and the company.
In what way did that memo make the environment 'more hostile to... his female coworkers'? I read the thing from start to finish and back again, checked the references and did not find anything which would serve to create a 'hostile environment'. Yes, he does question some of the programs at Google which discriminate against men (by refusing them access to resources solely based on their gender) but that criticism does not create a hostile environment in itself. Actual discrimination (against any group) can create a hostile environment. I do not see where he discriminates against women - or any other group for that matter.
In a very subtle and non-evident way. He doesn't do it directly, but as a whole, given the 'memo's structure and its tone, it creates wrong assumptions, ignores important points, emphasizes secondary ones, creates doubts where there is nothing to doubt about and doesn't question things that should be questioned instead, which in general presents an incompetent and harmful way of thinking about the subject. It's like someone would write an essay with a list of science-based points on why raping children is natural and suggest to doubt that it is a crime. Its pretty easy to kind of support any bad thing with scientific facts and make it look right, but doing this is bad in the first place. His post provokes subtle doubts on very sensitive things like female competence and questions if diversity is important enough to tolerate a risk of not hiring the most qualified person. Given what we know about the hardships women often face in society and at work, provoking doubts around those subjects does no good. At least, not in the way he presented the whole topic.
“It is easy to find a stick to beat a dog” comes to mind here, also "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him".
Yes, anyone looking for ulterior motives behind the manifest will be able to find something as demonstrated in the bit of prose above which goes so far as to include references to "raping children". Going to such extents to prove a point actually weakens it considerably.
What makes it so difficult for some people to accept an open discussion on these 'touchy' subjects? What are they afraid of? If those programs which the writer questions are in fact valid and worthwhile they would stand on their own merits, if they are not they should be cancelled unless there is a 'political' reason to keep them in place in which case this should be made clear to all involved parties - employees, stock holders and regulators.
Stop the witch hunt, it didn't help Salem and it won't help Google.
In the sense that it's an argument both sides want to have. The left want to argue for better workplace treatment of women, while the right want to argue for speech without social repercussions.
It ends the news cycle. Most people outside the bubble haven't even heard of this and those who have will forget about it by next week. Right or wrong, it was the path of least resistance for Google going forward.
I disagree -- IMO, the only hope in this case to "end the news cycle" would've been to walk a very delicate line where Google's position in the debate was made known, but nobody was dramatically fired in the process.
Instead, Google's leadership decided to take an ideological stance with relatively little regard to immediate PR. The result is further churning and an intensified reaction of the public and media.
This is either a good or a bad thing, depending on a person's perspective. But surely it's a reaction which will perpetuate the intensity of drama.
The firing has only been a pr disaster in small groups. Even for me personally even though I think that he probably shouldn't have been fired I'm not super mad at Google because having him there was a liability to the company. I think it's mainly more libertarian circles that are mad but those people already generally don't like Google
"By doing it in an anti-science, anti-evidence way"
But they didn't. That man's argument was not science. It wasn't. There was absolutely no scientific evidence behind his argument. He misrepresented studied, and he cherry picked what he wanted. For more on that, check here: http://blog.goldieblox.com/2017/08/open-letter-james-damore-... It's an article from a female engineer who read the manifesto, and takes issue with the conclusions drawn from the studies.
The ones claiming that his manifesto was "scientifically sound" are those who are anti-science and anti-evidence.
"They could have simply said that they were taking punitive actions and kept him in the fold."
No, they couldn't. By keeping him, they would be legitimizing his views. And by doing that, they would be further alienating all of their female employees, and a lot of others, both current and future. Just about no woman would want to work there, knowing that they endorse those viewpoints.
>That man's argument was not science. It wasn't. There was absolutely no scientific evidence behind his argument. He misrepresented studied, and he cherry picked what he wanted.
I want to follow up on this, can you give an example? From what little I know, it's essentially settled science that men and women have statistically different interests, and those interests exist across all cultures (implying a biological cause).
I'm not sure why more people aren't pointing this out but I couldn't take his arguments seriously when he weaseled in racial diversity after the evidenc about gender differences were presented. It is pretty clear from that alone that the intent was not to have a scientific discourse, it was to dress up bias as science.
The problem isn't with the science, it's with the misuse of the science to add apparent credence to flawed logic.
So yes, across humanity there are statistical gender differences to the choices people make. The flaw in the logic is that that doesn't means Google shouldn't act on bias in its selection and retention policies. What it may well mean is that Google may need to mitigate the cultural biases both internally and externally if they are going to make more than a small dent in the imbalance.
Similarly, it doesn't follow from the argument that humanity is what it is to a position that Google shouldn't attempt gender equality. It does mean that it'll be tricky for a company their size. But whether they should or not should be a question about what's in the best interest of the company as a whole.
BTW there is often the assumption that something like gender equality is purely a political goal. And quite often it is. However, there is a very good argument that the tech pool for high potential people is quite shallow given the current and expected demand.
In my org we are taking steps to try to widen the pool of intellectually able people we can select from. One area that we are targeting is women. Another is geographical areas where we don't have traction (mainly eastern Europe and Africa). This isn't political per se. This is so we have a wider talent pool to choose from. I would be genuinely stunned if this type of thinking wasn't in part what Google senior management are also looking at.
> But whether they should or not should be a question about what's in the best interest of the company as a whole.
That reminds me of something I read recently:
For each of these changes, we need
principled reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with
Google's diversity being a component of that.
Can you guess where I read that? (Hint: It was written by James Damore).
Now it just so happens that I disagree with that opinion, because it appears to remove the corporation's decision making from any moral considerations, leaving only profit. But it appears to be a point where you agree with the memo author.
I don't have to guess, I read it. Also, I don't agree with him. His whole premise is that he doesn't think there should be major change at Google as he seems to like it like it is. I find his approach to reaching that conclusion somewhat disingenuous.
And I don't get your point on profit. He didn't mention it nor do I think that's the part of the culture he wants to retain particularly. I didn't mention it either. I want my company to succeed, I am a shareholder after all. But I also want it to be a good place to work as I spend a reasonable chunk of my week there.
I also happen to be a father of a daughter who wants her to have every possible opportunity open to her. Assuming this is one dimensional doesn't really fit the facts.
"His whole premise is that he doesn't think there should be major change at Google as he seems to like it like it is."
I had the opposite impression when I read it: there should be major change at Google (away from "echo chambers") and he absolutely does not like it the way it is.
Basically, all of them say that, while men and women are not purely identical, the differences between them are nowhere near as great as the manifesto makes them out to be. The purely biological differences have little to no bearing on coding ability, and the bigger issues are societal. Like the effect of having something like this coming out on young women who hear it as being told that they're not welcome in tech.
By and large the people outraged about this are the crazy men's rights, reactionary, Trumpist, Alex Jones mob that have been looking for things like this to be outraged for the past 30 years.
Everyone wants to be a victim. Damore isn't a victim of anything but bad judgment. If he's hero of the mob, so what.
As a Southern white male from a conservative background, I don't want to be marginalized.
But when I see the rabid way people are defending the guy like he wrote the Federalist Papers, who at best is guilty of being unaware that what he was saying is controversial, I don't feel outraged if he got fired in a massive company known for its liberal views. What did he expect?
He's not helping it by making himself a darling of the right wing media. That and lowball jabs at political correctness and Marxism make it a little too obvious where his sympathies lie and if he really wanted an objective debate picking sides doesn't help.
Some people who are outraged by this are people who are afraid to live in a society where you can be fired and your career ruined for having a political opinion (not even controversial one).
I really don't care what political opinion my coworkers have. But if they feel called to publish a memo about company policy that affects me due to this political opinion - it better be a very open discussion in such a way that they can't get the last word. I also question if a drawn out debate (which it should be) would be a waste of company time. Also this one was very controversial.
Anything you don't like will seem to be controversial. To other people - like me - the idea that males and females like different things is so obvious it is insane this debate is even being had at all. Even 10 year olds will tell you that girls like dollhouses and boys like trucks and toy guns and things. It's only after people fall into the grip of bizarre extreme feminist ideology that they start to believe that pointing out differences between men and women is offensive and controversial.
The memo in question would not have affected you, would it? Unless you're saying you were hired to fit a diversity quota and shouldn't be there at all. Even if management had agreed 100% it could only have led to changes in hiring processes, and maybe men turning up to classes and events where they were previously banned. I assume you're OK with that.
I disagree with your assessment because I haven't been exposed to extreme feminist philosophy but rather I'm speaking from my experience as a woman in tech, who loves to code, from the wisdom of my personal journey.
Ok women are more likely to like doll houses as little kids - but I don't know many women working with doll houses as adults?
Women are completely capable of doing anything they want to do. Professions like doctors and lawyers are now split 50/50 between the genders and they were long thought not for women.
And it's my experience that the by far and large reason they don't enter tech is because they think it's boring, not for them, don't understand what they can do with it or how it can appeal to them. Coding is just a tool. Period. Biological influences are not compelling enough to comvince me if anything.
I think they are very controversial if they are used to influence company policy - because they are too abstract, tenuous and there are too many other factors at play. On top of all that, I just don't think it's appropriate for a workplace to be going there.
I really don't understand your position at all, sorry.
You agree with Damore that the underlying issue is interest, not capability.
You say that biological influences on this are "not compelling enough to convince you of anything". Fine, but you offer no alternative explanation for why men find coding more interesting than women. If you have no better explanation, then the scientific papers that do provide an explanation would seem to take precedence, no?
You agree that women are more likely to like dollhouses than boys as children. But you haven't noticed or don't see the connection between what girls play with as children (dolls of babies, people) and the dominance of primary school education by girls? To me the connection is obvious. Girls are more interested in such jobs.
Finally, you say memos like Damore's are controversial if they're used to affect company policy because the problem it addresses is abstract and with many factors going into it. But this is not sufficient to make a memo controversial. Executives write memos on abstract and multi-faceted topics every day: the nature of the digital revolution, how best to motivate their workforce, etc. These memos are all designed to influence company policy around abstract topics.
So what you really mean when you say that Damore's memo is inappropriate for a workplace to be "going there" is that you wish to ban discussion of any gender diversity policies that are not Google's existing diversity policies. These policies are extreme, quite likely illegal and at the very least unfair to men.
This is why I described your views as extreme feminist. I know it won't seem that way to you, but feeling that nobody should even be allowed to voice disagreement to diversity policies - not even by citing science - simply because you feel it's "inappropriate"? That is to me an extremist position. It is the embodiment of intolerance.
Extreme beliefs manifest themselves in extreme behavior.
If you so blindly believe in the diversity of skin color or gender while neglecting the diversity of ideas, I am rather sure that says a whole lot about you as a person and as a company. That, in my opinion, is the only PR they deserve.
The firing was necessary, because not firing someone who creates a hostile working environment opens you to lawsuits from every single other person employed in your company. [1] Anyone who's taken training on sexual harassment would understand this.
His essay is not scientific, or evidence-based. It's ten pages of micro-facts, followed by his biases or misunderstands, followed by enormous leaps of logic to macro-conclusions. It wouldn't pass as a bloody undergrad essay. [2]
(It is a poster child of a techie looking at a complicated problem that they don't understand, and saying 'I'm smart! This is easy! You guys are all wrong!')
At least a few psychology professors [seem to disagree with that assessment][1]:
> Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences.
I'm sure you can probably find lot of opinions on both sides of the debate though, and that's fine. As the memo stated:
> Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In terms of political biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason. I'd be very happy to discuss any of the document further and provide more citations
Instead of "discussing the document further" though, they fired him.
And in more than one way too : 1) he didn't discuss "performance" but "affinity" 2) there was supporting evidence linked, before Gizmodo conveniently stripped it away.
> Honestly, I think he made the right move just from a PR perspective
The person who posted their thoughts did so in a _closed_ mailing list that was intentionally setup to discuss all this. The document was leaked. At best, he deserved a reprimand. Firing him makes it clear that there is no room for alternate thoughts in Google other than the ultra-progressive view point.
It was in Google Docs. When the internal storm started, he could have easily shut down permissions, buying time to figure out what to do. (It's happened before when a doc becomes controversial.)
Whether you think it should have been controversial doesn't change what you do when something goes viral; the first thing is to stop the damage.
But since then, there's some evidence that he wanted the controversy - look where he's giving interviews now.
One thing I do not get is why was the (original) memo written in "Google's voice" rather than stated as a personal point of view. Who, except maybe Sundar Pichai and the head of HR, has a right to talk for the company as a whole?
I don't think it was written in Google's voice. It was written in the voice of a young likely somewhat autistic engineer talking to his colleagues on an message board designed for discussing the topic of his memo. Then the media/Pichai sacrificed him on the alter of political correctness/profit.
> His firing makes sense: the CEO and HR are both acting to protect the company.
No. His firing confirmed part of Demore's thesis; that Google has monoculture issues and sits in some sort of bubble.
> This is the reality of business.
Is it? If that's true, we need to be much more aggressive about corporate consolidation because the only way to make room for diversity of opinion is to make sure that there's diversity of opinion at the corporate level.
If you quit Google because it's too (insert culture war concern here), which big tech employer is substantially different?
>No. His firing confirmed part of Demore's thesis; that Google has monoculture issues and sits in some sort of bubble.
We're missing a large component of the discussion when we pretend that the content of the letter is the principal issue here. The thing the C-levels are thinking about is liability, because that represents the most direct threat to the company.
Allowing Damore to remain on payroll could be interpreted as a tacit endorsement of his letter, which means in a lawsuit, a complainant can claim that Google has already proven itself to accept illegal anti-woman hiring practices by allowing an employee who espouses these things on company time and with company resources to stick around.
It can further be argued that their failure to address this bias constitutes a hostile workplace, and will greatly strengthen any potential argument that a female Googler was intentionally and/or actively discriminated against either now or in the past.
On the other hand, the consequences of terminating Damore are, essentially, limited to bad press, which is not really a large cost in itself. Google can counteract Damore's complaints with the relevant labor boards by pointing out that they are merely attempting to comply with the law that compels them to create a non-hostile work environment for women.
So why are so many CEOs so quick to jump on these diversity/inclusion bandwagons? Because a lawsuit will cost the company millions of dollars in lawyer time alone, and if they lose, potentially many millions of dollars in damages, especially if it's class action.
The factual validity of Damore's memo is immaterial. All that matters is that Google risks much more money, more aggressive regulatory oversight, and puts itself in peril of other onerous legal sanctions by keeping Damore on board, and by terminating him, they don't.
Anyone who is upset about this should look at the root cause, which is not only the set of laws that may compel such specific behaviors, but also the arcane configuration of the legal system as a whole. It is frequently wielded as a weapon, and that should not be a thing.
Nope. He doesn't like how the US legal system creates incentives to avoid litigation at all costs because it would be ridiculously onerous to prove you were right, even if you were. Which is of course wrong, since you should have the right to prove yourself innocent without going bankrupt. That's why Google took the "easy way out" of firing him.
There's plenty of diversity of opinion within a workplace. No one is obligated to listen to it. If it's made this public so as to embarrass their own company, well what can you do. People get fired for dumber reasons.
> ...is illustrating that corporations have too much power?
Compared to employees and consumers? Yes. There aren't enough options out there to let competition correct for these kinds of cultural problems.
Of course, this might be a problem that solves itself. As expectations for fair compensation trickles through the rest of the job market, maybe transferring to an equivalent job in a medium sized company in Denver would generally be a lateral move.
No, it isn't. Not when many of their female employees were willing to leave the company, and when the existence of that manifesto would make their recruiting efforts much, much harder.
Google had to decide which they value more: Damore's memo, or their legal defense against inevitable discrimination suits.
---
nb. Large companies are a constant target for litigants of all stripes. There are suits of all types filed against them regularly. They must be careful or, under current law, a bitter employee who was not in actuality discriminated against can successfully claim discrimination and pilfer millions of dollars from the company, inviting follow-on after follow-on. Because the current law is based upon reading in/assuming specific motives to otherwise-valid actions, companies are forced to assume a defensive legal position, such that the other side's lawyer will have a large amount of difficulty convincing a judge and/or jury that such motives were allowed or tolerated.
No, the right move would have been to take Damore aside, say "dude, you stirred up a mess. You aren't wrong but the mess is a PR disaster. How about we hand you a big pile of money, you go find your next job elsewhere, and we agree not to throw mud at each other?"
I can see not doing that when you are cash poor but Google is paying engineers as much as $600K/year in total comp, they could have landed $10M on Damore and never noticed it.
My personal opinion is much like Brook's - Pichai was pandering to the mob. That's not true leadership in my opinion.
Edit: don't understand the downvote, this is HR 101. Companies don't want this sort of attention and they'll pay to avoid it. I'm very surprised that a cash rich company like google didn't take that route. Are you suggesting with your down vote that it is better for google to be in the news cycle for months/years while this works its way through the courts?
I'm pretty amazed how badly google dropped the ball on this. They could have easily made the problem go away, likely with a few conversations where they agree to sit down and listen to his concerns upon his first submission of them to the diversity team or as you suggested a check and NDA.
Whoever runs the diversity team should absolutely lose their job for letting this get to this point. Following that whoever decided that flying the CEO back to publicly fire someone and denigrate them was a good idea and the best way to proceed. A CEO of one of the worlds most powerful companies publicly firing and shaming an employee who simply presented an opinion through proper channels is just not a well thought out move.
I actually find that highly unlikely. Look how fast Damore has been involved with the conservative media. That aside, if he was really convicted in his opinion, do you think he would take the money?
My take, and it's worth what you paid for it which is nothing, is that he was genuine in his opinions. I didn't get that he had a conservative axe to grind (I did get a sense that he might lean that way) but it didn't seem like he was trying to move the needle to the left or to the right, he was trying to find a better way to do what google was trying to do.
What I'm trying to say is that I think the conservative media picked him, he didn't pick them.
So yes, I think he would have taken the money. Google could have made this go away for what was a rounding error to them but retirement money to him. Nobody says no to their retirement even if they don't want to retire. It's called fuck you money for a reason, you never have to put up with a crap job again if you have that backstop.
I'm not convinced. His repeated use of the words "echo chamber" seems fairly indicative of his views, and I don't think it simply leans conservative. This is all just conjecture though.
But either way, if he didn't take the money and went public it would turn out worse for Google, possibly even legally. They really took the only action they could, in my opinion.
So why wasn't the person who released the internal memo fired? I don't agree with the memo's author, but it was an internal memo, not something released to the wild
I would argue that the author did not cause the PR disaster, Google did. They author submitted the memo directly to the diversity team months ago and they ignored it. It was posted and updated on Google provided employment forums for months and Google ignored it.
They are now publicly vilifying him for expressing opinions that are now being publicly supported by scientists. They have essentially publicly attempted to silence him because they don't like his opinion, validating his initial complaints.
I don't know if Pichai should be fired but a lot of people dropped the ball on this and they have escalated a story that could have been quietly handled in house via a few conversations months ago.
I have no idea if Damore's arguments for biological differences are valid or not, some scientists have stated they are (mileage may vary) but I don't feel that anything he said was stated with malice of with the intent to denigrate anyone. He may not have had the best communication skills but he was trying to start a conversation not a war. Google for some reason responded to his inquiry with the equivalent of scorched earth and are now realizing that perhaps they overreacted.
I know that this is an unpopular opinion on this thread, but Pinchar also made the right move from a legal perspective.
James' memo created a hostile work environment. And legally, that's all it takes to support terminating his employment for cause.
1) He claimed that biological differences were responsible for the behavior of his female co-workers. Yes, he actually says that in the section "non-bias causes of gender gap in tech." If you can't see why that's offensive, try replacing that sentence with "Biological differences are responsible for the behavior of blacks. Or latinos." Legally, this single section, by itself, disseminated on an internal company board, was enough to create a hostile work environment for his female co-workers.
2) Then he goes on to say that "diversity" candidates get special treatment. They get a lowered bar. His words, not mine. So now he's implying that many of the "diversity" candidates only work at Google because they weren't held to the same standards. And unlike his earlier statements about biological differences not applying to any specific individual women, he doesn't qualify this statement--so he's lumping all of his female and non-white co-workers together. This section, on its own, would also be enough to create a hostile work environment for all of his female and non-white co-workers.
3) Then he goes and says the Left denies science on IQ and sex. And that their behavior has created a "psychologically unsafe environment." This, by itself, would also be enough to create a hostile work environment for all of his co-workers that would define themselves as liberals. (Note: there's a reason that most companies don't allow overtly political activities or expression like this in the workolace--it's to prevent political hostilities from dividing the workplace.)
That's 3 things he said that legally would have justified firing him. It doesn't matter whether science supports the broad statements or not. It doesn't matter whether his suggestions at the end or good or not. It doesn't matter whether Google leans left or oppresses conservative expression. What matters is that he created a hostile work environment for large swaths of his co-workers with these 3 statements.
Sundar could have fired Damore without making an official statement. Or he could have made a statement that doesn't elaborate on the reasons for the firing, or that says what you did - that he's being fired for causing bad PR.
Instead, Sundar found it necessary to lie in his official statement about what Damore had said. He defamed him by saying that his memo contained things that are contrary to what the memo actually says and that Damore himself would certainly denounce if asked. Because, presumably, Sundar felt it was preferable to appease a mob by acquiescing in their villification of a Google employee.
That is what is this particular post claims makes Sundar a bad CEO. I don't know if that's true - that is, whether it makes him an ineffective CEO, whether his actions were good for Google in the long run; that remains to be seen. But the author of this piece feels that it was a morally wrong action (and I agree).
> Sundar found it necessary to lie in his official statement about what Damore had said
It could be a lie? It seems more logical that it's a misunderstanding. Neither make Pichai look good, especially since he had no discussions with Damore (according to Damore) to clear up any misunderstandings.
It's like the article says: either Sundar didn't take the time to read the memo himself (which would be stupid and dangerous), or he didn't understand it (which is another way of calling him stupid), or - as seems most likely -
he knowingly misrepresented it.
I find it unlikely that Hanlon's Razor should apply to a case of reading comprehension by a CEO of Google. But if it does, that's a different reason to want him to resign.
It was all over the media before the leak. Before it was just based on rumors of "some internal viral memo". Leaking it might even have helped calm the waters.
No, those that were most outraged about the leak internally and turned to public shaming outside Google's walls are the actual problem. Why has the CEO not publicly reprimanded these individuals as well? I'm sure many in the company see the leakers as heroes. This attitude sets your company up for a culture of leaking. You have to reprimand both leftist and rightist leaker and try to get the conversation back to being civil.
Furthermore, his memo canceling the town hall made things worse when he declared the majority agreed and that some wish he had done more. He didn't acknowledge any of the people internally that disagreed with the firing. He's probably not even aware that he's set himself up to only hear opinions that agree with the firing because others will be too afraid to question it.
Honestly, I want Google to have a third-party set up a truly anonymous poll of all employees and measure how people really feel instead of speculate on how many agree or disagree with the firing. This is a company with expertise in analytics after all.
There were not only "rumors" but biased description of the situation, incorrect representation of Damore's words, plain lies about the memo contents and blame of Google diversity policies. You'll find it all in the Motherboard's report that has revealed the story to the general public.
> One does not simply create a PR disaster for the company
The memo wasn't a PR disaster; the firing was.
Data point of one: Google has lost, just from my personal accounts alone, $40/mo in G Suite/YouTube Red revenue, and $620/mo in GCE Compute instance revenue.
Not because of the memo; because of the firing. Absolutely disgusting and unconscionable.
Incidentally, what Damore did is probably a 'concerted protected activity' (his stated goal is to take actions that improve working conditions by making the job less stressful, increase diversity, etc) covered by the NLRB, and thus Google quite possibly broke the law in firing him for the memo.
That's not protecting the company.
EDIT: I forgot to add that from the coverage I've seen, there are also claims that Google management is illegally sharing hiring blacklists (based on a person's perceived political views) with other companies. That would also be very serious.
If somebody elects to break the law because it was cheaper (even if caught), the law has to change to make it more expensive. Also, if it is perceived widely that Google broke the law, "do no evil" is out the window. That would cost them dearly.
Damore can claim he was protecting the company, but if the effect of what he said in his memo is causing the opposite of that, then it can be a fire-able offense, regardless of what he said he was trying to do.
It's not about whether Damore was trying to protect the company, it's about whether Damore was communicating with his coworkers about ways to improve working conditions. It is illegal to fire someone for doing so. Damore presents several ideas about improving working conditions, claiming this would also increase diversity. If I was paranoid I'd say he wrote the memo with the possibility of being illegally fired in mind, because it appears to have been written carefully with that angle in mind.
If you are trying to improve working conditions, and in doing so creating a hostile working environment, your employer is obligated to fire you. If they don't, they can be sued by other employees.
And let me tell you, while you may not feel that this memo has created a hostile working environment, a lot of other people do. Google would drown in lawsuits if they let him stay on.
I don't see how you can argue that a single guy who isn't in management writing a memo creates a "hostile work environment". Most of the people complaining wouldn't even be working with him at all. They can file lawsuits but would they hold water? After all, management could just tell the lawsuit filers to be more tolerant of others: it's not like Damore was attacking individuals.
So I don't see where Google's obligation to fire him comes from. Unpopularity with other employees does not make a legal obligation.
On the other hand, firing someone who is trying to raise possibly illegal conduct with management does have legal implications.
> I don't see how you can argue that a single guy who isn't in management writing a memo creates a "hostile work environment".
Employment law makes it very clear that person creating a hostile work environment doesn't have to be a manager. They can be a co-worker, a client, or a contractor.
If you are correct, and I am not saying you're wrong, the term is so vague that more or less any disagreement that gets a bit personal could be considered creating a hostile work environment. No company would be able to operate in a situation where any disagreement could be leveraged to get the other person instantly fired, regardless of level or what the comments were about.
The legal definitions of a hostile work environment is not simply based on how something makes you feel. It is very unlikely a hostile work environment suit for not firing Damore based on this memo would win, though of course Google might choose to settle.
> The legal definitions of a hostile work environment is not simply based on how something makes you feel.
No, but the the entire point of that essay was to advance the idea that women are less successful because of their biology. [1]
> It is very unlikely a hostile work environment for not firing him based on this memo would win, though of course Google might choose to settle.
Any employment lawyers want to chime in on this?
[1] "For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation."
I am not a lawyer. I'm just a guy who takes my employment rights seriously and has always tried to be up-to-date and understand them.
From my understanding, a hostile work environment is created when a reasonable person would interpret actions or speech as hostile, offensive, or intimidating, and such actions are not a one-time event, but frequent, severe, and pervasive, and they must be so serious as to change the conditions of your employment. Keeping in mind that terms like "reasonable person" are legal terms and we're not dealing in colloquialisms, it's hard to see how this memo could be interpreted by a judge as creating a hostile work environment.
Again, that's not to say people can't try to sue anyway, but in that case, there are plenty of people on the other side of the story Google should be worried about suing as well, since there appears to be some minority of (white, male) Google employees who believe (rightly or wrongly) that they are persecuted due to their gender and race, and they also claim there are written communications at Google they interpret as denigrating them. I don't think they have much of a chance either.
It's been in the news not because someone had a different, opposing view (many people have views others not us, see as deplorable)
The backlash is mostly about the firing decision itself rather than the person having been fired.
They washed their hands of the uncouth worker. They should be in the clear if that was the source of the outrage.
The disbelief is not that people have strange anti social views (we all have them to one degree or other) it's that a company feels so threatened by dissent that they swiftly want to leave themselves and absolve themselves to present themselves as pristine, unspoiled humanity.
Agreed. Science matters little for a business if it offends people who pay for the business or the people within the business. Even scientists themselves have issues with such results -- a part of the file drawer problem.
I guess a NYT columnist can say this because click-bait-y titles always help for revenue and Google does not stop giving the ad revenue when news articles are critical of its CEO. This looks like both parties doing their roles well enough.
Travis Kalanick should have resigned as a CEO, and there is a collection of reasons why. The bar is quite high in terms of how bad things have to be for how long before pressuring a CEO out makes sense.
Google does not come close to that level. If someone needs to be sacked for the diversity memo, it needs to be the author in question. At maximum, you could argue that a VP of HR could be sacked, as to 'shake up' the hiring processes and address any issues in it.
This does not go to the CEO. More damage would be done by his leaving than him staying. He reports to the shareholders, not to the moralists.
> "They aren't doing that and it's creating a perception of unfairness."
They have already been doing this...after the election a lot of my conservative co-workers at Google admitted to feeling "harassed" and "targeted." The memes posted on Memegen, the discussions on eng-misc, as well as the terrible TGIF (where the message VPs sent was basically that "Google" supported Hillary and "We" lost and it was going to be "Okay"). The unfairness is already there, this just highlights it even more.
TLDR:
1. Guy has conservative opinion against the current norms = Fired.
2. Numerous posts on Memegen/eng-misc/internal message boards hostile towards conservatives (including posts made by managers) = no action
The primary thesis of Damore's memo [1] was not that women are biologically unsuited to STEM careers. The primary thesis was that, at Google, you cannot even advance the hypothesis that biology might be a factor without putting your career at risk. Ironically, by firing Damore, Pichai proved him correct.
EDIT: if you doubt this, just look at the document's title and TL;DR section.
"Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed."
...firing him, at least the way they did it, confirmed that position.
There's nothing revelationary about that statement.
Anyone could read Google's code of conduct and know that Google would fire/reprimand someone for being toxic to their coworkers. Employees are free to debate and cherry pick evidence about their opinions on the world being flat, 9/11 being an inside job, even a fake moon landing.
James decided he wanted to debate about his opinion on his workers being biologically inferior (among other opinions). He had a chance to receive feedback on this from coworkers and change his position, the problem was he didn't and continued to broadcast his opinion which was toxic to his coworkers.
It's a strange hill to pick to die on because nothing is surprising about how this played out, other than how the media is still talking about it.
That's a loaded question. I didn't come to the conclusion, many others have based on his premise of using personality constructs as being caused by evolutionary psychology.
You can see it in the paper how he starts with the obvious, "Men and Women are biologically different" and then jumps into observable personality differences, which are not proven to be biologically driven. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't attribute these "biologically-caused" personality differences (neuroticism, agreeableness, less ambition, etc.) to women being the ones to blame for their problems in tech.
This opinion is toxic to his coworkers, which is a violation of the Google Code of Conduct.
Saying someone has racist ideas is a loaded accusation. I think it's fair to ask for elaboration.
> ...jumps into observable personality differences, which are not proven to be biologically driven.
Some personality differences in populations are supported by some studies. He cites studies about personal interests, for example. It's possible that he goes too far (scientifically speaking) with some conjecture, but he was careful to say that properties of large populations don't apply on the level of an individual or selected group.
>Saying someone has racist ideas is a loaded accusation. I think it's fair to ask for elaboration.
Except I didn't accuse James of having racist ideas, I pointed out that his opinions are toxic to his coworkers. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
It's true that he attempts to check himself throughout the paper, but it's contradictory because he then proceeds to take it too far. It's the equivalent of saying, "I'm for diversity, but...." and then demonstrating he's not for diversity by arguing against it.
Which is why this paper is a rambling rant from someone who chose to commit career suicide for his opinion, and it's surprising that the media is still focused on it.
"Racist ideas" was the wrong term to use. That was a typo. Apologies.
Is "sexist ideas" fair? "Bigoted ideas"? That seems to be the implication when labeling ideas about gender "toxic". The colloquial language around this sort of thing is imprecise. That brings me to my next point:
> ...and then demonstrating he's not for diversity by arguing against it.
The paper seems contradictory because people have definitions in mind for words like "diversity". But not everyone has the same definitions in mind. He can be for diversity of thought and want to encourage that with discussion of structural changes while still preferring a world with more women in tech. This position is not the Google HR definition of "diversity", but it's clearly part of his idea of diversity.
I'm not sure what invoking semantics on the word "Diversity" has to with this, especially since you thought I accused James of being racist (which I didn't). Despite his leaked rant, you don't know what his definition of diversity is, nor do you know what Google HR's definition is. All you know is that he was let go, the details of which are not leaked.
You seem to be reading a bit more into this, which is probably why the media is still writing about it. There's something for everyone to confirm their beliefs in the paper, whether it's to defend or attack it, and you're demonstrating that with the repeated word games.
You nailed it with your earlier comment about how James' firing had more to do with the fact that a great deal of people has interpreted his post as offensive rather whether being offensive was his ultimate intent. His memo was not clearly written, caused a scene, and damage to the brand. If he had some great idea, he has done it a disservice, and his supporters should blame him for such bad writing, rather than Google for doing the rational thing.
> ...but he was careful to say that properties of large populations don't apply on the level of an individual or selected group.
Then why bring it up if what he says doesn't matter within the context in which they are hiring people. Google isn't hiring people on a population basis. They are hiring people on an individual basis.
They are drawing candidates from populations. He's arguing the problem could be upstream from Google HR practices. As in, there aren't enough women applying (I don't think that's controversial). He elaborating on his answer to "Why not?"
I'm sure that is part of the hiring disparity among females and underrepresented minorities. As a black guy myself, I know the same is true among black people who simply aren't interested in engineering but Damon makes weird ability judgements based on the population.
This makes no sense as people with different interests would never bother in the first place no matter how much time and money you threw at them. So again I say why bring up the upstream problem to begin with as it being related to their abilities for engineering?
IMO, the only way his text makes sense is if you are someone looking to back up potentially racist and sexist biases by misusing science. It makes me question their ability to work with people different than themselves.
With that said I'm actually torn on the issue of the firing. Google says its a place for diversity of opinion etc etc...So on some level they should stick by it.
However, I understand why the firing may have needed to be done. The fact that a low level employee made the news for being controversial means you have to be fired. You can't send a memo out like that and expect there to be no career consequences at your company of employment. You will never be able to live it down.
The only point related to abilities I can see in the memo is
Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher
agreeableness.
○ This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for
raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences
and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a
women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men
without support.
So Google acknowledges this difference in ability and has a program to counter it. He points out that this is unfairly generalizing when applied to individuals, thus demanding the program to be opened to men as well. I think this is a good suggestion, regardless of what I think about the rest of the memo.
> So again I say why bring up the upstream problem to begin with as it being related to their abilities for engineering?
Well, for one, if only 45% of interested applicants are women, maybe 45% female employees and managers is a reasonable goal.
> Damon makes weird ability judgements based on the population.
I remember a lot of talk about interest levels and personality types. Not much about abilities. I also think the point about multimodal distributions fairly address my concerns about possible bigotry and stereotyping. Which ability judgments concern you? And why didn't the part about multimodal distributions vs mean values assuage your concerns?
This idea that one can only disagree with it because they haven't read it is extremely uncivil, and does nothing but attempt to shut down the discussion here.
Documents filled with political hot buttons screw up people's emotions and they can not process such documents rationally or in a balanced fashion, many people see only what offends them or what they want to defend. It is just screwed up...
Yep, it even rambles about the failure of Marxist communism at one point. It's a rant with cherry picked evidence, but people find something it in to confirm their beliefs and try to defend/attack it.
I was left with the impression he wants the introduction of a quota for sympathizers for a political organization. My takeaway was that he wants to work with people who are officially representing political parties.
Maybe it is that I have lived in a country where carrying party cards to work was a step in professional life. But the point that stuck to me was painting the situation along political spectrum.
By advancing the hypothesis that it might be a factor, without a need to do so, it's always going to be seen as advocating for it, even if he says he's not.
For example, a host on certain news channel might say, "Is Obama secretly a Muslim? I'm not saying that he is, but why can't we ask the question?"
It's easy to see why people would get upset by that comment (for multiple reasons). The fact that he says he isn't saying that doesn't matter, because he effectively just did.
If he had just limited the paper to inclusiveness as a conservative in a left leaning culture, without dragging the whole women inequality thing into the matter, it probably wouldn't have been meet with such a backlash.
No matter what he intended the thesis to be, that thing was just a bunch of dog whistles that sounded an awful lot like ignorant alt-right bullshit to me.
The memo appears to be based on actual real science that seems to be the consensus.
However, the author appears to be completely tone deaf and extremely socially awkward - he has very poor communication skills. And lacking the understanding that there is a current culture war going on - to allow himself to be taken as a champion of some of those groups seems to show he is oblivious to the greater social/political discussion out there.
It does not help his argument to be the white knight for the _actual_ misogynists and racists.
>The memo appears to be based on actual real science that seems to be the consensus.
No. See this wired article, his view is not consensus. I do agree that it was pretty poorly made though!
Professor Gina Rippon, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University in Birmingham, said it was surprising how much of the research Damore misinterpreted or got wrong. She added that sex differences backed-up by proper research scrutiny were so tiny they couldn't explain the kind of gender imbalance at Google.
"They're assuming a divide that doesn't really exist," Rippon said. "Either its biological or its social and if its biological you can't change it so Google shouldn't be wasting its time with all these high minded equal opportunity initiatives.
"But the key thing is it can be changed – we know that if women have poor spatial skills, which has been demonstrated in the past, then its easy enough to change that by appropriate training – very often its associated with video game experience for example. He seems to be saying there are fixed differences and we're wasting our time trying to gain equality," Rippon said.
I've read that critique, but I've found numerous more critiques that have supported his position. Do I have a monopoly on saying what percentage support him - No, but it appears so far, and this may turn out to be wrong, that more academics appear to support his claims than those that deny them.
They can be left to argue among themselves however just like any other scientific debate. Social sciences are further complicated due to the nature of how difficult their studies are to perform and analyze.
Perhaps some quality over quantity is needed, this answer on quora is the most in depth critique of the bad science in his paper I've been able to find so far:
Besides it's hardly fair for us to expect academics who are critical of the memo to speak publically about the issue when the alt-right is currently doxxing people for doing just that.
I don't find her critiques convincing in all respects. A couple of her answers seem to be strawmen. For example:
The passing mention of IQ is interesting, since it has nothing to do with gender, which is the focus everywhere else. He’s presumably talking about race, but he doesn’t want to be branded a racist, so he keeps the reference subtle. So why risk doing it at all? It’s a dog-whistle to the alt-right.
She admits she is _assuming_ his intentions - sets up the strawman, and counters it. BOOM - the guy is now racist.
As for Milo and his ilk - yeah they can go to hell - but what? This guy gets fired for speaking publicly? That seems a double standard.
Not the person you are asking, but since I also found some of her arguments to be straw men, I will list some parts I find convincing.
> As an evolutionary biologist, the claim that these observations are “exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective” is especially painful to read. I would not dismiss the field completely, but many of its predictions have turned out to be wildly misguided.
> All in all, we have no reason to think female software engineers should perform worse at software engineering based on female trait distributions. And there’s a huge amount of evidence that promoting diversity improves the performance of teams and companies.
Note that that was a straw man, but I agree with the denotation anyway.
> We know that negative stereotypes damage people’s performance. We know that unconscious bias influences our judgement of others’ competencies. Consequently, whenever there’s significant cultural prejudice against certain groups, as there is with female software engineers, we expect to see inequalities emerge. So it’s implausible to attribute these differences to biology alone.
This touches on the part where I disagree the most with the memo: he acknowledges that bias exists, but appears to base his recommendations mostly on his non-bias explanations. He would have done better to underline that he doesn't want all anti-bias programs to end, but instead open them to more people where that makes sense. (He mentions a program to help women get better at negotiation, which would also help men who are bad at negotiation, but who are excluded because of their gender.)
He makes references to real science, but gets nowhere close to demonstrating that the effects he references should manifest themselves as an 80/20 gender ratio -- presumably worse, if his policy recommendations were adopted. Hell, I'm not even sure if the gender differences would make women worse at engineering, on average, anyway.
And HR, instead of addressing those points, refuting what would be wrong, and leading him to apologize if so, thus sending a powerful message about the existence of debate and rationale, recommended his firing, making him a martyr, and validating the part about the lack of dissent.
If this document stated 'I can't believe we don't talk about whether or not corpses feel it if you rape them.' You probably couldn't use that argument. Google decided what he said is fucked up and that he wasn't part of their society any longer. That type of dissent excluded him from their society and therefore no discussion is necessary. He is divergent and should be removed, just like someone who can't write code.
Both of those theses are quite sexist, and no, neither one is appropriate for discussion in the workplace. Especially a workplace that wishes to appear as welcoming for all, not just conservative white men.
If the workplace wishes to appear welcoming for all and at the same time has numerous sacred topics that cannot be touched even with a mile-long stick, then it is clearly not welcoming enough.
No, his thesis was that the gender gap can be explained by biology.
Verbatim, from the manifesto:
"For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation."
The way he explains it with biology is that he rattles off a bunch of micro-facts, and then uses 'logic' with a big sprinkling of bias, to reach amazing macro-conclusions.
The line you quote is not saying that all of the gender gap can be explained by biology. It's saying that it is an extreme position to say that all of it can be explained by "differential treatment" (sexism in one form or another).
This is the first fair and balanced article on this topic I've seen.
> In his memo, Damore cites a series of studies, making the case, for example, that men tend to be more interested in things and women more interested in people. (Interest is not the same as ability.)
I've been trying to hammer this point to all my colleagues (in private of course, I wouldn't dare to post it on public channel due to high probability of getting decapitated!): interests/preferences not abilities.
Every time someone says the memo is denigrating women by telling them they are unfit or incapable of working in tech it makes me want to scream! It is not about any individual's ability but about preferences of a group. It might as well be that the arguments don't support the conclusion. But I haven't seen anyone offering a reasonable rebuttal that doesn't involve name-calling and blanket statements like "the author clearly doesn't understand gender".
I'm finding this to be a fascinating look at how people, as a group, do literary criticism.
I think, if we step back from the actual words on the paper and examine the author's intent, his choice of evidence, and the mere fact that he chose to write this, we can learn just as much as from trying to decide whether or not he was talking about a population effect when talked about women before mentioning Google employees.
This is totally different from wondering about the biology. As a biologist, I think it's preposterous to start to infer biological bases to the types of psychology experiments cited. I do, however, think this could be open to debate. I feel that the undertone to the author's message is likely less unclear.
Do we take the author at face value when they make claims about their intent?
Many critics seem to think they can see the author's "true intent", and when they can't substantiate their claim, blame others for failing to see what they see.
I think that's an issue that a lot of science-minded folks disagree with.
I happen to think there's a lot about the author's time/mental state/life circumstances that one can find in the words themselves.
A much more light-hearted example is Quentin Tarrantino's insistence that he hasn't watched the Truffaut film 'And the bride wore black' - even though Kill Bill is an eerily similar remake.
Should I believe the author's product or his rationalization?
I'll make a subtle point in a discussion that clearly can't handle the subtleties it already has.
Interest is not the same thing as ability, but interest is a great indicator of ability in technology, especially fast moving technology. In fact, I know plenty of people who are underemployed or underpaid that I say, "You, know, with your skills, you'd be great at writing software. Maybe you should develop an interest in coding." Similarly, people ask me, "How do I get a job in software?" and I suggest something very basic (tryruby.org, say) as a way for them to quickly figure out if they are interested. If they don't like problem solving and coding, they might be able to force themselves into qualifying for a job, but I'm not sure that's a good career strategy.
Point being, to some degree, interest is one key component of ability in software and some other kinds of technology work.
First, the author of this article is David Brooks -- a well known, very conservative, commentator. So, it might be fair and balanced in a Fox News sense of the phrase but not fair and balanced as most people would understand the phrase.
And for the general population skew in interests/preferences to make any difference whatsoever to the makeup of Google's technical and leadership staff the argument would have to be that the population that makes up the part of the interest curve on the 'high interest' part of the graph for the underrepresented groups is completely exhausted or would be completely exhausted before parity is reached.
I'd bet big that Google could completely fill their entire company with underrepresented people that rank very high on the interest/preference curve and never make a dent in that population. There are over 7 billion people in the world. That's a big pool. Even the thinner parts of the graph represent huge numbers of people. And Google completely controls their hiring so they can pick and choose -- they are not pulling people at random from that general population. They can easily pick people that compare very favorably with any other colleague on the interest/preference scale.
I take issue with your first point but not your second.
I don't believe that the fact that a commentator is conservative means they are spewing propaganda as Fox News is. Fox News is conservative, and Fox News is unfair and unbalanced. The conservative nature of Fox News is not why it is unfair and unbalanced.
Totally agree on the second part, though. Huge pool of candidates, honestly ridiculous to think that this would explain the imbalance at Google.
So "conservative" is the same as "unfair and/or unbalanced"? The New York Times (not exactly conservative) has considered him worth printing for quite some time now.
Isn't this attitude more or less what Damore was concerned about in his memo?
No, but he has an agenda that he's promoting with this opinion piece, which, as someone who disagrees with him, has some pretty obvious holes which I point out.
Right, but the issue right now is that everyone is pushing an agenda. The only constant is the literal text and the current research which, by accounts from qualified people, don't seem to be in conflict.
In the conversation of this issue the facts, what tribe you belong to, and what ought to be done in response to them have been tied together. Unless we can disconnect those everyone's reality is going to be shaped by the latters rather than the former.
It's strange to me that people don't recognize the disconnect within the memo itself: Basically, it starts off by saying 'Statistics of the general population don't have anything to say about individuals.' Then turns around and says 'Here's a bunch of statistics on the general population that show why there are fewer individuals in various sought after positions.'
It's like a spouse saying "I know being poor doesn't make you a bad person but here's a bunch of statistics showing otherwise which might make you change your mind about your poor friends."
Say you have a population of 10,000. You can come to some meaningful statistical conclusions about that group.
If you consciously pick 100 individuals from that original population you also have a group, it's true. But you can't use the conclusions from the first group on the second, much smaller, group.
You can discover some new statically valid facts on the new group -- they may even be similar to the original statistics -- but that is far from a given.
The only thing you can reasonably say is that the new group will fall somewhere in the domain of the original measurements.
Unless, of course, the new group is chosen at random or semi-random in regards to the measured characteristics, in which case you can have some sort of expectation for the new group and even measure (statistically) the amount of randomness.
But when it comes to the question at hand: ability to handle stress, high achievement potential, leadership talent -- these are all things I would assume Google chooses non-randomly from the overall general population pool. So there is no reason to think the relevant characteristics of the small sub set should show any similarity to the general population at all for these characteristics especially when the differences in the general population are relatively small.
The author of the memo didn't argue that the male-female ratio is where it should be. It is almost certainly skewed due to gender biases. However, eliminating gender biases from recruitment is not necessarily the same as forced diversity (forced due to ideology that dictates that anything different than 50-50 is immoral).
If Google were to announce that they will hire 50% women wouldn't that be illegal under Title VII? That would amount to affirmative action which is only allowed in certain limited situations (race can be taken into consideration for university admissions).
I don't think anyone is saying anything different from 50-50 is immoral but that anything different (in this case vastly different) than 50-50 deserves some attention.
I don't think announcing a policy of hiring 50% women is necessary. Like you said, it is 'almost certainly skewed due to gender biases' so the obvious way forward is to try to track down those biases and remove them from the process.
There is also some questions about how to make the workplace more attractive to certain employees and applicants. Putting policies and services in place to cater to those employees goes a bit beyond mere removal of bias but could help as well.
> anything different than 50-50 deserves some attention.
If what these researchers are saying about preferences is true you should be more suspicious of an exact 50-50 split than any other because it suggests that people are pulling the strings behind the scenes to make it so.
Well, the current research only shows weak tendencies that admit to wide variation. It shows what /is/ and /has been/ not what /could be/.
One thing that really bothered me about the memo is how Damore kept repeating that those he was speaking against believe /only/ culture and environment lead to differences. That he was more enlightened and believe that other things like biologically based preferences might have an effect too.
Well, of course, human beings are a complex interplay of biology and ecology and self-determination! The question is one of where the balance is when talking about individuals up to company size groups. I don't think anyone would argue against biology having some effect on behavior. But there are still open questions about where biology stops and environment begins; how much an effect can self-determination within and individual and the group can override those biological and environmental aspects to radically change outcomes (a distinguishing feature of human sapience is the ability to reflect and change, after all.)?
I am not saying Damore is lying but he sure chose what aspect of the truth to show very carefully which, in some ways, can be worse. It gives the veneer of reasonableness and logic but, in only showing part of the picture, hides the greater truths.
There are plenty of reasons to discredit Stephen Miller on the things he says.
That other people make fun of him for his looks is pretty boring and I'll leave them to their antics - hardly like this type of behavior doesn't happen with _any_ large group.
I am minded to agree. And that's a shame, because Pichai has done good things for Chrome and Android when he was leading those.
The article doesn't really touch on Pichai's biggest mistakes here.
Mistake one: Damore's memo alleged discrimination, both against men and conservatives. Gender and political affiliation are both protected classes in California and they just fired him for whistleblowing. He has now filed a complaint with the NLRB. This seems like a legal headache that a better CEO could have avoided by not firing the guy. Put him on the roof or something, wait for things to blow over, find some other solution but the moment they fired him, they set themselves up for this.
Mistake two: Google shareholders asked at the last shareholder meeting if it was true that Google was a hostile work environment for conservatives (or words to that effect). They assured shareholders that this wasn't true. Clearly that answer has problems. Employees are leaking like crazy to Breitbart of all places that Google is extremely hostile to conservatives. I don't know what happens if leadership misleads shareholders in these sorts of questions, maybe nothing. But it can't be good.
Mistake three: Google managers have been publicly announcing within the firm that they are blacklisting employees for not being sufficiently pro-feminist or even for just questioning the policies or the mob reaction to it. There are screenshots of this along with interviews, again, on Breitbart. This seems like a fantastically unhealthy culture that Pichai has allowed to grow on his watch. I have heard from other Googlers that in one incident, a manager claimed he'd blacklist anyone who was subscribed to an internal mailing list for discussion of conservative viewpoints, and then when people objected, that he'd blacklist them too (so they couldn't transfer to his team). Again this seems like a cut/dried case of discrimination against people of certain political affiliations.
Mistake four: this debate is happening because Googlers are furiously attacking each other through leaks to the press. This is happening in both directions: the original leak was clearly intended to get Damore fired and publicly shamed, now others are leaking screenshots of internal communications and Pichai's emails. Pichai has quite clearly lost control of his own workforce to a staggering degree.
How much more of Google's guts spilling out onto the street will shareholders tolerate?
This. An excellent deconstruction of the issue. A culture of silencing views a minority does not agree with for the sake of avoiding a mob has created a mob of its own against all reason.
Let me add one more mistake: Pichai was quoted as saying that the vast majority of emails he has received from Googlers have been in support of Damore's firing. How can he be so clueless to think this is a representative sample? After such a huge drama, he still doesn't realise that some people are afraid to say what they think.
(Despite all this I don't think these mistakes are enough to cost him his job, given excellent leadership of Android and Chrome)
I was repeating a claim I saw on HN earlier and went looking for references. It turns out the person who asked the question wrote a whole article about it:
At the meeting, I asked Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt about the company's actual commitment to diversity and inclusion in light of the company's public policy positions, not to mention the views of top management, that all skew to the extreme political left. I noted conservatives may not feel welcome in such an environment, let alone feel free to express their beliefs. Schmidt and other company executives dismissed my entire question by claiming everyone at the company — and in the tech industry as a whole — was in agreement with them.
After that confrontation, a strange thing happened. I started receiving messages from Google employees thanking me for challenging Alphabet's leadership. Without realizing it, I was apparently speaking for a closeted segment of Google employees with conservative beliefs.
One email read, "I'm working with a few other Googlers to fix the company's political discrimination problem. Really appreciate you shining a light on the matter."
Another said she was working closely with a group of conservatives at Google, and noted, "(t)hey're all very appreciative that you were standing up for their interests at the shareholder's (sic) meeting. The shareholder resolution your organization filed also made a lot of people happy."
Can you point to examples of large conservative corporations firing people for expressing liberal viewpoints? I feel we do not read about cases like Google's very often, so I'm not sure what you mean by "taste of their own medicine".
Just to be sure here, you would be fine with Google being hostile, like creating an uncomfortable work environment for, members of the LGBT community, environmentalists, pet owners, vegetarians, Buddhists, pro-choice members, PHP programmers, truck owners, under-roll toilet paper users, tort reform advocates, accountants, FSF members, IE users, people who want maternity leave, Bears fans, Apple users, Mr. Pibb drinkers, or any of the billion other political issues we interact with daily?
you're putting words in my mouth. I said i'm ok with hostility toward conservatives, not all the other groups you listed above. Out of the groups you listed i'd be ok with hostility toward "tort reform advocates" as they seems to be on the conservative side. All the others are either progressive or neutral so they either get my support or i don't care.
And once again, the characterization of "allowing the debate" means one thing for James (why, he "cited studies") and another for everyone else (they are an angry mob). The most telling bias in this piece is that characterization.
Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" fixes, etc) he would not have cast quite so much doubt over his intent.
What's also lost in this summary is one of the most important points: long term exposure to stereotypes has a powerful influence on people (many references of varying quality here: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/women-m...). By embracing them, we actually create self-fulfilling prophecies.
These prophecies may be based on a statistical mean, but what's lost in that simple numerical distillation is what harm befalls even modest outliers to the distribution. Stereotypes which may seem obvious and unimportant to 3/4 of a population may be a crushing burden and source of relentless stress to the remaining quarter.
It's interesting how many of my peers fought to liberate themselves from stereotypes of "weakness" and "inferiority" that were tied around them as smart teenagers. But when it comes time to recognize the harm in these stereotypes to outliers in a other group, they appeal to the same logic that oppressed them. One might argue that these traits are adopted defense mechanisms well-impressed by abuse. I'm not sure that justifies them, though.
While I agree, I think brook's argument is even more easily dismissable as the BS it is. One of several reasons for citing material on which an argument is based is to trace the flow of knowledge and tie statements to the prior research they interpret.
James fundamentally misinterpreted much of the research he cited in ways that are overly summative to make a point he wanted to make. He sought research to give his biases the veneer of science without understanding what the authors of the underlying research meant.
This whole incident, from the very beginning, represents one of the major problems with public understanding of science. There are basic ontological misconceptions about the relationship of researchers and research, about the generalizability of most scientific research, AND about how scientists within a field interpret and infer from results...and how future scientists build on that work. Because so much of that thinking work is invisible to the naked eye or is lost in media depictions, people think they have a greater understanding of how science constructs knowledge and they feel excessively qualified to infer and extrapolate research beyond what original authors had intended.
As you note, when science is discussed through means, when people attempt to decontextualize science, and try and simply apply science as a post-hoc rationalization for their fears and biases they are the problem not the science and not those who call BS on bad uses of science.
Okay, help me out here. People keep saying that he mischaracterized existing research but then we have qualified people in the field saying that he got it right.
This is deserving of a response obviously...and it is a vitally important point to understand clearly because the ramifications go beyond just this incident. I don't have a chance to write something tonight but I will try and write it up tomorrow and either post it here or post it on my blog.
>Stereotypes which may seem obvious and unimportant to 3/4 of a population may be a crushing burden and source of relentless stress to the remaining quarter.
What an excellent quote. As a politically right-leaning gay person, I feel this way basically all the time, except I'm more like the 5% or 10%. Being a minority of a minority sucks, you don't fit in anywhere.
> Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" fixes, etc) he would not have cast quite so much doubt over his intent.
I haven't heard this point before and I'd like to understand it. What's the problem here?
James essentially keeps tackling what he views as the central issue, a "pipeline" problem.
The larger body of feminist and even more centrist discourse has concluded that problem is not, in principle, what Google needs to address (other than at the very outermost edge of it's recruiting funnel, ensuring that recruiting engaged with organizations that support specific demographics). The internal problems with unfair treatment, unfair pay, and unequal opportunity need to be addressed first. James conveniently pretends these don't exist and suggests women aren't entering the field.
We can tackle the problems there in other ways, but young women are not uninformed by their predecessors or the news. They see a constant drumbeat of credible stories about how the boys world of tech both abuses women and does not reward them equally.
James's suggestion that it's merely a lack of social elements to keep women out of tech is somewhat offensive in this light, pushing the decision way from "self-defense and self-interest" to "biological predilection.'
Thanks for the elaboration. I think I understand the point now.
> James conveniently pretends these don't exist and suggests women aren't entering the field.
I'll only point out that this is an inference, not an implication. I inferred the opposite from the memo; that he recognized that sexism exists and needs to be addressed. But that only doing that is not sufficient to address the gender imbalance and that focusing on it alone is harmful.
Convincing women to focus on a career in STEM is telling them that their choices for careers in nursing, teaching, and any other career dominated by women are wrong choices. I don't believe that, they are essential to our society and are arguably more important than helping create better ads at Google and Facebook.
That's not the argument being made by advocates for women in STEM. The mission (I among one of many adherents to it) is to open pathways in STEM up to women who are choosing not to pursue it because of socioeconomic blockers.
Blockers such as this guy.
Anyway, the real position being pushed by Women in Tech/STEM movements is that anyone can/should be free to work in any career and not expect e.g. pay differences and biases against them solely because of gender. Male nurses are an example in the reverse direction.
The more free the genders are, the more they tend to polarise on certain careers.
Since they tend to pursue what they prefer.
I'm all for having no blockers for people choosing what careers they want. However people will move towards there preferences, and there preferences will be set either by nature or culture.
"The more free the genders are, the more they tend to polarise on certain careers."
Yeah, just calling a Scandinavian nation "free" says absolutely nothing about its particular societal pressures. Societal pressures which effect everyone whether they are egosyntonic or distonic to the individuals caught up in the society.
More evidence is needed to support this hypothesis.
If you think that any given woman would be dissuaded from pursuing a career in STEM by an essay that, using peer-reviewed scientific studies as supporting evidence, suggests that differences in interest levels across populations may partially but not totally explain why women as a population, not as individuals tend to choose STEM at a rate lower than men, aren't you helping advance the stereotype that women are delicate shrinking violets whose easily-hurt feelings keep getting in the way of their life goals?
We all have our opinions, but money is society’s way of prioritizing activities. And these jobs as essential as they should be, also get shittier shittier in average , as time goes on, which doesn’t help.
The median income for a pediatrician is ~170k vs the median income of software engineer at ~80k, but 75% of pediatricians are women.
So no, it's not only the "less well-paid" jobs. And even if it were, a lot of the lowest paid jobs are almost entirely men, like garbage collectors and construction workers.
This is a ridiculously cherry-picked statistic. Pediatricians are the worst paid doctors. In fact, most of the specialties in which women are more common are lower paid:
I’m not familiar enough with the field, but from what I get scanning payscale.com:
- general physician: 60% women, 137k in average
- pediatricians: 80% women, 144k in average
- obstetricians/gynecologists: 70% women, 205k in average
- radiologist: 20% women, 300k in average
Basically, in the doctors field pediatrician or gynecologist are middle range salary. Nothing to sneeze at, but the more lucrative areas pay way more and are dominated by men. And honestly I don’t think the requirements for radiologist is so much harder than gynecologists, or is it ? (I am no radiologist, that’s just my impression)
Since there isn't much difference in required skill or credentials or prerequisites (let's assume there isn't) we are back to preferences. What do we observe? The top three are high-social-interaction, nurturing-type jobs, the bottom one is technology-heavy and more solitary.
So we are back at the point that the document made - differing preferences are a far more likely explanation than discrimination.
I don’t think there is much social interaction difference or technological investment difference between the jobs...but lets assume there is.
Wouldn’t it seem reasonable to you that a young single woman getting out of years of heavy training would want a shot at the 300k job instead of the 200k one ?
Even assuming she is not that interested in radiology, the gap is wide enough she could go the 300k way for a decade or so to amass FU money and just retire or move to a more fun but less paying job afterward (I personally know medical staff going this route and semi-retiring at 35)
I mean, people have preferences, but more than half of the woman in the medical course giving up on 100k of revenure just to have a “nurturing” job seems highly artificial to me. I would highly expect a dozens of other factors pushing them that way, instead of it just being pure personal preference.
The fact that those fields are undervalued (and often underpaid) is a huge part of this discussion that anyone who fights for diversity in tech is well aware of and has been saying long before this memo was released.
And speaking for the OP, I would imagine 'easy' in this context likely includes many elements but is strongly influenced by physical demand of these activities.
Look at the output of ones work. If the output of ones work is positive, then it doesn't really matter how they got there or what they do.
The elephant wrt to "women are under-represented in stem careers" is that education is not universally applied/available.
Gender should not matter.
Provide universal education from birth to all minds and let those minds "mind their own business" as it were...
If people land in places due to their own thought, that is a true democracy of thought and freedom - but poor choices only ever occur based on poor information.
As a former medical tech developer, the problems in healthcare are almost entirely social/political and the healthcare tech business is making things worse in most respects.
Okay, you know exactly what is meant when people in this forum talk about tech. Being pedantic about the word technology isn't helping this discussion.
Fetanyl was a new drug at some point. Pharmaceuticals are over prescribed, healthcare businesses are a leech on the infrastructure, American lifestyles are inherently unhealthy, and no amount of new drug patents are going to fix those problems. Your oncologist friends might have new drugs to prescribe but that doesn't change the core problem of soaring cancer rates due to lifestyle and environmental issues.
You do know that is exactly what's going on, right? There are plenty of male only scholarships in nursing school and schools put forth considerable effort to assuage the fears that men have entering the field and provide special accommodations and support for them including campaigns to get their co-workers to stop calling them 'male nurses'.
There's a lot of effort going into this, actually. My father was a nurse for 30 years and in his nursing school graduation photo, and his retirement photo with his colleagues, he was still the only male. It's possible men view these fields as female dominated and resist applying. It also raises the awkward question of how men are treated in female dominated fields. Would a man be treated better in a female dominated field, than a female in a male dominated field, or the same? I've not seen research on this, unless someone knows of any?
Exactly. No one's worried that we have too few female coal miners or garbage collectors. These are physically demanding, not prestigious and often low-paying jobs.
Hell, no one's worried that we have too few female oil rig workers and these ARE (in my understanding) high paying jobs.
If you talk to men who worked as primary school teachers (within the last 20 years) and then changed careers, you'll hear a lot of interesting stories of discrimination.
There were more men in these roles when it was more respected and well paid. As the relative wages and notarity declined, men started targetting ‘higher jobs’
> When it comes to the genetic differences between male and female brains, I’d say the mainstream view is that male and female abilities are the same across the vast majority of domains — I.Q., the ability to do math, etc.
It's weird that Brooks paints the memo as largely factually correct, but clearly doesn't believe what is the main thrust of the memo.
The problem with the memo is not with any claims that are stated as fact, the problem is the FUD he's spreading by suggesting that the small and likely irrelevant biological differences we do know about might be responsible for the large differences in today's gender distribution in tech.
There is plenty of evidence that there are much, much larger factors in the distribution discrepancy today than any possible difference of ability, but Damore is casting doubt on that and suggesting that the current distribution might be the natural fixed point, that it could be at steady state already due to the biological differences.
Okay sure, he doesn't propose that as fact, he uses weasel words and doubt-casting to say it might be true, and that's the most damaging part. Getting people to believe it's possible is worse than any easily provable lie.
People like Brooks defending the memo's factual accuracy are hiding behind this idea that only things claimed as fact might be damaging. Not true, the things claimed as possibility are more damaging.
The obvious problem with suggesting that the current distribution might have settled to it's natural steady state is that it encourages turning a blind eye to the cultural sexism that we already know exists. It perpetuates sexism if we don't fix it first.
He seems earnest to me. If he's earnestly voicing ideas that result in fear, uncertainty, or doubt, is it his fault? What is the appropriate way to broach the subject publicly? Or are certain thoughts inherently unspeakable?
If Damore bears significant blame, what is an appropriate response for a boss to have to that situation? Why is Damore the only person in trouble if controversial discussions themselves are against the rules?
I believe he's earnest, that makes his being wrong all the worse, he doesn't know he's wrong and he's not trying to be wrong. It's more convincing, and thus more damaging, that he sounds earnest.
I don't think it makes sense to assign blame, I don't care who's fault it is, and I believe he's free to share his thoughts. I hope you're not suggesting that being fired from a company is somehow censorship.
What I care about is that his ideas are regressive and unintentionally sexist. He is using specious scientific sounding arguments to say we should turn a blind eye to cultural sexism. By ignoring it, we perpetuate cultural sexism.
The stated reason for his firing was for breaking the existing written rules of the company. That part was his choice and is his fault. I feel like the goal posts are moving. The question you asked was whether it was his fault if doubt occurred as a reaction to his ideas, not whether he was at fault for getting fired.
I guess you're right, it is censorship, so I take it back. I still feel like it applies to government and public speech, more than within companies. It feels like the wrong word when describing the legal consequences that are widely considered acceptable for breaking the rules inside a company. It feels pretty different than public speech suppression, which is, in contrast, widely considered unacceptable.
The code of conduct, I understand, banned creating an unwelcoming culture through biased behavior. Saying he's in violation of that rule is begging the question.
So I'm not moving the goalposts. They weren't really set in the first place. I'm asking, more or less, if it's fair for a code of conduct (explicit or ad hoc) to make employees responsible for how their words are taken.
> It feels pretty different than public speech suppression, which is, in contrast, widely considered unacceptable.
It's worse when governments do it because it's hard to change countries if you want your freedom to express yourself. But it's still an undue burden to have to switch jobs or even careers.
Steve jobs would have fired an Apple employee for staring at him for too long in the elevator and the press would have written fawning articles about how decisive Steve is, how secretive Apple is, and how much Apple employees fear Steve.
Take any other industry: A friend of mine working for a management consulting firm was fired for losing a presentation and making a partner look bad because the company supplied laptop had a hard disk crash. People have been fired for less.
But Sundar Pichai should take personal responsibility for firing an employee who wrote a jackass memo and caused Google PR harm. If the fellow was not fired, we'd have more articles calling for Sundar Pichai's resignation for making Google a hostile place for women and adding to gender imbalance in the industry. There's no winning strategy here.
Now, if someone is calling for Google CEO's resignation for killing reader, I wholeheartedly agree :-)
Edit: A CEO's job and responsibilities are to his/her shareholders, users and employees. Not to make decisions consistent with their personality traits.
I don't understand that statement.. or why you would agree with it. The auther of the memo was attempting to present facts. Why wouldn't I completely agree with facts that are true? Especially in this case, when most cognitive scientists seem to agree upon the facts as presented? [1]
It really doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with facts... they are still reality, regardless. And I see very, very few people arguing against the facts that Damore presented in any sort of cogent manner.
Damore's only real policy suggestion was to (gasp) treat everyone as individuals, rather than as stereotypical tribal members. And I'm personally very confused as to how anyone isn't wholly in favor of that. We are all more than our skin color or gender.
First, you have to accept that the debate isn't about all about scientific facts; it's about their implication in workplace policies. Reducing workplace interaction to science is a fallacy.
When deciding how to act in the world, you have to use your judgement. When planning your diet, do you read a bunch of nutrition papers and decide what to eat 100% on what they say, or did you apply some cultural knowledge?
Second, "facts that are completely true" does not gibe with most cognitive scientists seem to agree.
Which is it? Did you check every fact yourself, or did you just accept what he had to say uncritically?
From the article: Similarly, if you can read this guy's entire memo and find yourself blindly nodding, then you probably aren't using your brain either.
The phrase facts that are completely true sounds young and naive. Just like the left can cite studies about unconscious bias, the right can cite studies about biological differences. That doesn't mean they're all true.
Even if you accept that "scientific facts" are the way to decide the workplace policy, his article isn't complete. Where is the scientific fact that says how much discrimination against women there is? He said "I'm not denying discrimination exists" but didn't address it further.
BTW I largely defended Damore, because many people I talked with have extreme "left wing" views. His points were completely mischaracterized in the media. It became a political circus. But I will also argue against extreme "right wing" views. That was the point of the quote.
FWIW I worked at Google for 11 years, and both my parents and sister have Ph.D.'s and are in the sciences, two in biological sciences. I know how "studies" work. Both people on the left and right (at least in this debate) have a naive view of science.
Obviously I have my own worldview and biases. That being said, I've tried painstakingly to develop a worldview that is accurate and not based on wishful thinking. Yes, I do base what I eat on nutritional facts, rather than just cultural norms. For instance, I don't eat vegetable oils hardly at all. I do periods of water fasting to initiate autophagy in my body. Neither of those things is culturally common in my circles, in fact, the vast majority of people around me are fairly unhealthy.
"Everyone is equal" is absurd, fantastical thinking. A criminal serial killer with a 70 IQ is not equal to Einstein by any metric. Whereas, the precept of, "Everyone should be given equal opportunity under the ruleset," is a noble ideal worth pursuing at nearly any level of policy.
When I read Damore's memo, I was nodding, not because I was being uncritical, but because he's right, as far as I can tell.
He's saying Google is chasing a fantasy of equal outcomes, rather than providing equal opportunities. That's correct, they are. His suggestions were to treat people more as individuals, rather than ham-fisting treatment based on perceived group identity. I think that's very obviously a better approach.
And like most responses to his memo, you can't say (or haven't said) a single thing you think he is wrong about. You can't, or won't, dispute a single line he said.
Just because you come from a good family, and believe that centrism is always the way to go, doesn't mean you're automatically right.
By "you are part of the problem", and the article and I are saying the debate is too extreme.
I'm not saying he's "wrong"; I'm saying the "because science" people are just as naively contributing to the debate as the "James Damore says women are inferior" people. As I mentioned (and you didn't address), the argument that there shouldn't be any training programs directed toward women leaves out any science about discrimination against women.
It's possible that everything he said is 100% true, but that there should still be programs at Google directed toward women (as he argued against). That's what I meant by "reducing workplace policy to science is a fallacy".
The problem is the "100%, facts that are completely true" mindset. Certainly you may use nutritional science to guide what you eat, but it's not 100%. Nutritional science is a great example because many of those studies have been overturned -- some would argue MOST such studies are false. You should read a little about the philosophy of science.
I think what he said should have been said, although he could have done it in a more constructive way.
And I think it's likely that someone on the opposing side leaked the memo on purpose, to get him fired. I saw a lot of these types of internal manifestos in my time at Google. Usually they don't leak, and a logical motive here would have been to force Google's hand and get him fired.
Really? Interested in hearing more. To me a big point of his is that on average, there are innate differences between the sexes, which policy should acknowledge. Which, afaik, is scientific consensus. Yet not a single person I've read that criticizes the memo will acknowledge this.
Its simply not scientific consensus that the kind of differences he was positing actually exist. A handful of studies with tiny sample sizes and questionable statistical techniques does not a consensus make.
"Damore's only real policy suggestion was to (gasp) treat everyone as individuals"
Unforunately it takes years for a person to really known another person as an individual. And even then the preferences inherent in the first person will bias what they do with the knowledge they have of the other individual. Thus this isn't a solution.
I believe that treating everyone as individuals, rather than as tribal groups, is the only way forward. You don't have to get to know someone at a deep level to make a hiring decision.
What ever happened to the notion of being color-blind when it comes to policy enforcement? AKA, actually treating people equally, based on merit?
What exactly is wrong with "blind-hiring," rather than "diversity-conscious" hiring? It worked to remove the gender gap in orchestras. Why wouldn't it be good to use in tech?
> There are many actors in the whole Google/diversity drama, but I’d say the one who’s behaved the worst is the C.E.O., Sundar Pichai.
He is implicitly criticizing the whole drama thing. And when saying Pichai behaved worst, I understand he is saying Pichai was who contributed most to make the drama bigger.
I think Brooks is contributing a lot to make the drama bigger. That's my point.
Arguing someone should be fired from their job for doing a bad job doesn't seem to be over-outrage... seems applicable. Maybe you disagree with his arguments, but seems normal to me.
A lot of people on "our side" did a bad job of simply refuting the argument presented. Its straightforward to do in one sentence:
"While there may be scientific evidence of differences between men and women, using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts."
Then you can go on and explain why for historical and societal reasons putting forth this weak theory is highly offensive and damaging to a large group of people.
Of course, many feel that you shouldn't _have_ to explain this to people, but unfortunately in todays environment, you do!
"While there may be scientific evidence of differences between men and women, using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts."
That is not true. The facts support the exact opposite conclusion: that prenatal exposure to androgens orients a person toward things/systems rather than people. [0]
See citation above. I'm saying its much too strong a claim to go from this paper to the conclusion that women are biologically less inclined to engineering.
EDIT: To be consistent with my original statement (see child)
You are losing this argument because you aren't being consistent with yourself.
Originally you said, "using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning"
So you were talking about inclination and interest. You then claimed the facts were on your side, that it was offensive to claim otherwise, and the existence of anyone who doesn't already agree is "unfortunate".
After chongli pointed out that you're wrong about the facts, you have moved the goalposts. Now you're pretending you said "biologically ill-suited". This is not true. You said "less inclined".
As the memo in question didn't claim women are biologically ill-suited to be software engineers, only less inclined, your original statement was contradicted by science and your second try is not what anyone tried to argue.
Nobody argued with the obvious fact that people expressed outrage and took offense at the memo. The argument started with your baseless claim that "women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts."
1). "Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People"[0]
2). "Boys and men prefer occupations related to objects (e.g., auto mechanic, chemist), whereas girls and women prefer occupations involving work with people (e.g., day care worker, art teacher).[0]"
3). "Our results suggest that typical women, who are exposed to low levels of prenatal androgen, participate less than do men in STEM careers partly because they are interested in working with people. This is consistent with evidence that women value communal goals, which are perceived to be at odds with STEM careers (Diekman et al., 2010) and that women who enter STEM careers often do so in people-oriented professions, such as medicine (Benbow et al., 2000)."[0]
It's the paper that is concluding women are biologically less inclined to engineering.
I suggest you reread #3 and note the use of language like "suggest", "consistent with" and "perceived". Authors use language like this because its really hard to make definitive statements in this area. In addition, its really hard to quantify the size of the effect and how much is due to nature vs. nurture.
Furthermore, I'm relatively certain the authors are not experts on software engineering. As you have likely seen at this point, you could also claim that higher empathy actually should incline people to the job (see, e.g. https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...)
You start by saying something is not "supported by the facts" and then go on by talking about how it's "highly offensive" (i.e.: hurts your feelings). I just want you to meditate on this for a bit.
Well, saying things that are clearly wrong and offensive to large numbers of people is typically looked down upon amongst educated people and highly discouraged at the workplace.
For example, think of other stereotypes about other groups (blacks, hispanics, jews) and think about what the response would be if an employee was publishing 10 page manifestos with loosely connected scientific arguments in support of these views.
There is nothing that is clearly wrong about the memo in itself and lots of Googlers actually voiced support for it and agreed. So your comment would be equally offensive to them because you call them uneducated and their opinion invalid.
Creating a strawman argument around racial stereotypes is just an added layer of misdirection and tastelessness.
There is something clearly wrong about the memo: it uses the direction of various effects to make a qualitative argument to explain a quantitative difference in gender distribution. If he had instead used the effect sizes in his reasoning, and predicted the resulting distribution (allowing direct comparison with reality), it would be much easier to objectively determine where he is right and where wrong. I'm fairly convinced that some of the things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees, but some are guaranteed to be smaller than the noise floor. As it stands, his argument is easily dismissed as a collection of mostly irrelevant trivia.
No, there's something wrong with your reading comprehension.
>things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees,
That's not one of the points of the memo. One of (the primary) point is to potentially explain a gap instead of relying solely on the assumption that the sole cause is discrimination, or "bro culture" or whatever trash rags like Model View Culture are calling it.
The memo is not about the ability, nor the preferences, of Google employees, specifically. It's about the ability, and/or preferences, of a potential hiring pool. And, if you actually read it, you'd know that the author used a qualifier: "may." As in:
"Women are more likely to have these personality types and these interests, and this may explain the gap." As opposed to "all women have these personality types, abilities, and interests."
If women are coming out of university with a related degree or solid references for a software engineering career, at rates approximate to their original distribution (half of the population), we could say that there's obviously some sort of discrimination going on. But they are not. If they were, I would be prominent among the many who are outraged about the distribution of women in these particular careers. I believe the author of the memo would, as well.
But, again, they are not. And it is unhealthy to blame it solely on sexism, if at all.
I'm not surprised at the outrage, really. You get that when telling faux-progressives, who worship at the alter of tabula rasa social science models, that the mind is not a blank slate.
You see it in the Scandinavian countries, where certain "gendered" career choices are more clear than ever. But if we listened to the outraged mob, you'd think that these countries were some patriarchal backwater. But that's obviously not the case.
Another thing you'd have to ask yourself, if you were being honest, is: why "engineering"? The gap is bordering on nonexistent, if at all, in fields like law or medicine. So why is that this deficit exists in these vaguely related (if only by name) "engineering" careers. That's another thing the author decided to ask, and was shit on for it.
It is amusing that you accuse me of lacking reading comprehension, but then read things into my comment that I explicitly did not include because I'm tired of listing all the ways I agree with the memo.
>>things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees,
> That's not one of the points of the memo. One of (the primary) point is to potentially explain a gap
So one of the points is to potentially explain a gap, and I think his potential explanation involves mentioning some effects that might be strong enough to explain the gap. I'm not sure why you singled out that point to disagree with me.
I especially limited my statement to Google employees because for Damore's purpose of influencing Google's diversity policy, effects on software engineering in general only matter in so far as they affect Google. I have not excluded the possibility that the majority of the gap is "inherited" through the hiring pool (in fact I think it likely).
However, you should not be so quick to exclude discrimination from the possible effects that have to be taken into account. In fact, Damore himself alleges that discrimination is happening, just in favor of women instead of against them. Had he actually crunched the numbers to estimate the expected gender distribution and compare it to reality, it would have been easy to see whether discrimination is involved and in which direction. But he didn't (maybe the data isn't precise enough to allow it), and now we are left arguing about possibilities and what was said.
Lastly, while I mostly agree with the content of your comment, you would do better to exclude the name-calling. It doesn't help to convince anyone who doesn't already share your views, and it alienates others who would otherwise be willing to engage in a level-headed debate with you.
You made a blanket statement about discussing offensive things and I wanted to point out there are some limits, especially at the workplace.
In this particular case, I feel that leadership and everyone who disagreed with the memo should have at least stated explicitly (if briefly) what the flaws in the reasoning were, as I tried to do at the beginning of this thread.
Obviously, my explanation was not sufficient to convince you and you are still holding on to the belief that women are biologically ill-suited to be engineers. But at least now I have tried to make it clear to you where I think you are wrong. Thats pretty much all you can accomplish on some issues.
I'm all for people arguing against it, but your 'one sentence' doesn't argue the point at all, it just asserts it. It literally just asserts that it "is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts". I'm all for someone arguing for the points in that quoted fragment, but you can't claim that they're true just because you've said them.
You're right, my one sentence is just trying to explain the basic point to people who may not get it. Its not trying to lay out a complete thesis in support. I'm not sure if thats a necessary exercise, especially for the CEO.
I think people have done a very good job of saying that. They just get drowned out by outrage from the right, and overly clipped soundbites from both sides.
My twitter feed has tons of very thoughtful pieces responding to the memo. They just never breach the front page of Hacker News.
Maybe. I don't think Sundar Pichai or Danielle Brown did though, they just said "this is not OK" and "code of conduct". Perhaps they felt they didn't need to engage with this kind of argument, but that mentality is exactly what has a lot of people upset.
Completely nuts... and I generally agree with the guy who was fired. First, this issue has little to do with the end product of the corporation. Second, CEOs have less control of the socio-political environment they find themselves in than say the "Newspaper of Record".
Sundar Pichai does seem to be a little off balance and a bit out of his depth.
That said, why should he resign? In the overall scheme of things, this isn't much of a crisis. If this were the standard to fire CEOs by not many companies would have CEOs left.
I think that firing sets a very dangerous precedent. I think it was wrong and it's important that there are consequences to disincentivise such behaviour in the future. (Obviously, there's lots of differing opinions on this)
I'm not sure whether I think that means he should resign, though.
"He could have wrestled with the tension between population-level research and individual experience. He could have stood up for the free flow of information."
Honestly I don't agree. It's his job to facilitate an enjoyable work environment not be a champion of free speech. Free speech is plentiful outside the workplace. If you want to contact HR go for it.
But the person who wrote the memo opened a can of worms implying that his perspective was super valuable to the discussion rather than the many female employees who work there. There are a myriad of debatable perpestives but this was not the appropriate channel to vent them.
Women want to be respected by their coworkers and arguments like "biologically we've hit the max amount of women who are interested in this field" don't align with our experience.
> It's his job to facilitate an enjoyable work environment not be a champion of free speech
Obviously he hasn't been doing that. Lots of Googlers apparently feel like they can't speak out on topics that might offend hard-left sensibilities.
> Women want to be respected by their coworkers and arguments like "biologically we've hit the max amount of women who are interested in this field" don't align with our experience.
Align with your experience? How would that be a valid way to measure anything?
The reason this thesis has weight is because it aligns with hiring data. Despite huge efforts software is not 50/50 balanced. This is because there's not 50/50 male/female graduation rates, and that in turn is because there's not 50/50 male/females studying CS to begin with.
Obviously there's some cause for this. If you rule out biological causes then you're left with unconscious bias and other evidence-free theories. Biological explanations have actual scientific studies behind them.
So just because theories are "evidence-free" or too hard to make studies around, they are untrue?
My experience should count for something because I am actually a woman in tech, who loves to code, who started my own successful tech business. People like me should be a vocal part of the discussion because we're a minority who has some first hand insight. Studies have been shown time and time again to sometimes create conclusions from biased premises, to make the wrong conclusions, or simply be contradictory to a dozen other studies.
Not to say they are always wrong. I have no reason to believe biology plays no role but I personally don't believe it plays a significant role.
I also believe it was the correct move. But not because he wrote it, but because what he actually said in it. He made many generalizations that contribute to gender inequality and never backed any of those statements up with any scientific data. Thus, it could be reasoned that he clearly displayed his own biases and showed that he is a contributor to gender inequality.
Furthermore, the PR backlash against his firing is far more news worthy if it was "wrongful" and he has gone on a media tour acting as the "victim". I am not sure news outlets would approach the firing objectively.
Political debates aside (which I know is difficult to set aside since the memo is literally about politics), what is the actual threat to Google's bottom line, or its ongoing operations.
Obviously, if Damore's lawsuit succeed, Google will pay a penalty. But what other impacts will there be? This incident doesn't seem to have the same snowball potential of Susan Fowler's Uber essay, because Fowler wrote about sexual harassment, which put Uber in greater legal jeopardy than Damore has with Google (as far as we can tell, as Damore's complaint moves through the system).
#DeleteUber was a big thing on Twitter, did it have a noticeable impact on Uber's bottom line? I know Damore supporters have called for a Google boycott, but quitting Uber for Lyft seems easier than quitting Google for Bing, GMail for Yahoo, and YouTube for Vimeo/Twitch.
Damore's firing likely pissed off his like-minded colleagues. But based on what Damore claimed, non-liberal Googlers were already rare.
So what upcoming challenges/attacks would Google CEO's resignation head off?
Note to engineers. If you put your employer in a damned if you do damned if you don't legal situation, you will be fired and should be fired. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand? David Brooks should know this as he has worked at a big company for awhile now. No matter what Google did there would be people who were angry.
> Some people embrace moral absolutism in a desperate effort to find solid ground. They feel a rare and comforting sense of moral certainty when they are purging an evil person who has violated one of their sacred taboos.
I find this observation on-point and profound.
I expect this level of moral reasoning in my teenager. But I was shocked at its embrace by much of Google. It seems unlikely to me that CEO Pichai would be caught up directly in this stream of moral certitude and virtue signaling. Far more likely that influencers carried the torch.
But while I disagree with Pichai's decision, I think that firing him would be an inappropriate remedy that would represent a form of counter-extremism. I do suggest that Pichai surround himself with more able counsel (and not just legal). And that this episode be discussed at the Board level within the context of Google's culture.
I think that's even more nuts than the media response to the actual incident. Pichai is a product guy who made handled a personnel issue poorly. I think this is still a minor issue and one where he has hopefully learned some lessons and we can move on.
An excellent and relevant video to this discussion is an episode of Brainwash called "The Gender Equality Paradox." It covers the paradox of why, in more gender-equal societies, we see more separation between what men and women choose to do, and in less gender-equal societies, we see less separation between the interests. The host talks to scientists on both sides and goes back and forth relaying information and starting debate. It is fantastic.
What good would it do if Sundar resigns? If an employee, by his actions, sour the working environment in a company, I would think it's management's duty to get rid of the employee in no time.
I am not commenting about the content of the stuff Damore wrote. But why did he write it in a way that would cause harm to his workplace? If he wanted change in the organization he should have probably found less public means of doing it.
By my estimation there is about 7 layers of recursive debunkings so far. How many times you recurse before breaking out seems to depend most strongly on your initial starting biases.
If the refutals are serious, you should be able to eventually find some underlying, simpler disagreement, or some experiment that needs to be done. If we give up, and break the recursion early, we get tribalism.
I've also read several supporting takes by scientists in related fields as well. The statements Damore made are indeed supported by some studies, and science being science, there are studies which conflict it as well.
Pretending 'science' supports one political view or another is the sort of thing that got us in this mess in the first place. I think if we're going to avoid being disingenuous, we need to recognize that there is not a widely accepted consensus on this topic.
Ah, that's fair. I didn't adequately read the context in your original comment.
EDIT: (As a note, I love clarifying comments, and wish rate limiting on HN didn't force me to pick and choose where I do so. I definitely misread the original, and downvoted it, but after seeing the clarification, and re-reading, I changed my vote on the original to an upvote, as well as upvoting the clarifying comment. Sometimes I feel like the HN lean against an extended discussion between two parties can be a detriment.)
I tend to take "supported by" to mean "there is support for it" not "everything supports it". I would use "confirmed" to describe the latter. (and yes, nothing is ever absolutely confirmed, bit were talking about everyday language here)
This is by far the best reply to the memo I have seen. I wish more replies were like this.
I fear some people in the left and center don't want to honor the memo with a serious reply, and that this gets picked up by the right as inability to do so.
I read that as "Sundar Pichai Resigns as Google’s C.E.O" and was shocked for a second.
I think he made a moral mistake by firing the memo guy, but he has to worry about potential legal ramifications, should an employee sue for "condoning discrimination" or something. Too bad for diversity of opinion, can't have that under threat of lawsuit.
There are 2 sentences in the entire article about Sundar, essentially saying he should have handled this better. There is no great way to handle this. If he hadn't fired him there would be 10x more articles demanding his resignation as many outraged employees would leave and diversity efforts set back.
How would this have played in other countries? Is there someone from the U.K. or broader EU that could weigh in? I seem to recall that other countries have greater protections for speaking ones mind like this, which would have protected the author from termination.
Whether he resigned would it really make that much of a difference in grand scheme of things? He got 200 mil he can do whatever he wants and he doesn't worry about what his next job is.
Regardless of who is right or wrong here, I don't get what the point of that Memo was ? I mean there are other ways of voicing your opinions on controversial topics like these. If I work for a large organization and I send a memo that discusses a sensitive and controversial topic, I am really creating trouble. I am not supporting his firing on this but he could have just avoided doing this. Companies exist only for 1 reason: profit for their shareholders. That is the hard fact, whether we like it or not. If a company gets bad PR because of one employee, they will fire the employee.
Even if there was some merit in his argument, he could have chosen to do it differently. Bad choice which blew up pretty fast.
Going by this piece from the NYTimes no less it seems like the US university social justice warriors are starting to spill out into the mainstream population.
No he should not. That letter was a disaster. While some of the points in that letter could have sparked valuable debate, one simply can't get away with a written claim that his coworkers are biologically incompetant to do their jobs.
As with any issue worth talking about, Damore's memo isn't outright sexist or discriminatory--but it isn't the well reasoned call to arms for an individualistic approach to diversity or a reconsideration of biology that he might've hoped for it to be.
Some of Damore's footnotes reveal he lacks a certain subtly and researcher's tact and has quite a hefty number of biases of his own:
"Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt
became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal
democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned
from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but
now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.” -- Damore, note 7.
This is a polluted conceptualization of the issue and outright mythology. You can tell from his phrasing he's fallen prey to the us v. them mentality that plagues many of those who rail against the 'sjws'--linking identity politics directly to marxism and its development is patently ridiculous, a bleeding of domains, and shows that he can't help letting his own biases color his reading of contemporary situations and narratives. Sure, there are offshoots and links between these struggles but--I mean seriously--does he really believe there's some cohort of marxists who collectively decided, 'man we got to overthrow capitalism somehow but the proletariat didn't do it so lets try to level gender and race inequalities' what? Are we in fairytale land? There are people who research and write about identity politics that may draw upon marxist thought in some of their critiques, but it isn't some legion of people who just want to consistently uphold an 'opressor-opressed' dynamic regardless of the participants. There are plenty of marxists who also find identity politics to be total hogwash. For a memo that tries to "advocat[e] for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).", it fails spectacularly at its mission in this footnote.
Damore's document is not a sexist screed by any means, but it isn't some lucid reconsideration of diversity either--plenty of his word choices and preemptive defensive measures (see the several instances where he reiterates that he definitely not a sexist and definitely supports diversity) show that, even if he was making an honest effort to step back, he is still victim to particular ideologies.
We should ask ourselves why Damore would write such an memo in the first place. He makes no direct mention of an incident that prompted this call to arms. No quantitative predictive analysis into how a change in Google's diversity program would improve it and foster greater diversity and make it 'psychologically safe'. This makes one think his primary motivation was more likely a personal sense of injustice, or fueled by adherence to an ideology (his conservatism). It sounds like the result of a personal incident in which Damore's ideas were challenged, and he felt the instance was the result of company wide systemic practices and not an individual issue.
I can't say whether or not the firing was justified, but Damore definitely isn't the scientific, neutral paragon Brooks reads him to be. The memo is loaded with ideology. It is not a scientific paper--nor does it claim to be. It is a political argument that tries to mask how politicized it is under the protective badge of 'but I have science on my side'. There's some ridiculous idea that, so long as science is on your team you're in the right. People forget that science only describes the world. What we argue for using science and how we interpret it still point inevitably to our own values. Just because you can leverage scientific fact to push your agenda does not make it 'correct' or 'objective'. Yes, science tells us the world is getting really hot and we should probably stop that if we want to avoid major climactic shifts--but science doesn't tell us we should act to save the world--that's up to us. Hell, the universe might be better off if the world does go to ash. There's no way to know. you make a value judgement and you act, scientific or otherwise. Even Damore's urging that we de-moralize, and de-empathize and generally act more like inhuman robots when it comes to diversity to depoliticize it is a major value judgement (that it's valuable to be neutral and objective and science guided as possible) and is thus both moral and political.
Well, because Damore touched an extremely delicate subject, that is the relation between biology (sex/race) and behavior, and the progressive view is that the latter is influenced mostly by cultural factors, with the former playing only a marginal role. The NYT team, as a whole, is likely to hold and profess the progressive view, so defending the opposite view is something I wouldn't expect to be published, even as an opinion piece.
I agree with parent based on my own experience, and I'm sure parent bases his/her comment based on experience too.
I have been a NYTimes reader for a while and still read some of their less political articles, but when it comes to political pieces I stay away from them because I get nothing new, most of their articles are obviously left biased (For the record, I am NOT right wing. I just appreciate unbiased journalism and NYT has been failing me)
If you think NYT being left is based on some untrue propaganda by right tilting media websites, then you're the one who's mistaken, because as I said, I'm not right wing and I don't even read any right wing media.
Yes I believe so. They employ hundreds of the top journalists in the country who sincerely want to do a good job. They are like the Google of the journalism world in that the very best journalists want to work there. I'm sure some bias creeps in but for the most part they will try harder than most other organizations to play it straight.
In general, the covering of the diversity memo issue by NYT is way better than by other popular media outlets. Nevertheless, they didn't use neutral language. One of the first articles started with:
When James Damore, a Google engineer, was fired this week for writing a 10-page manifesto spelling out his grievances with the company’s progressive values and positing that biological differences explained the tech industry’s gender gap, it might have seemed like the end of a bizarre, short-lived morality tale.
The current article uses a completely different language, it really surprised me.
What was he supposed to do? He's got a workforce of tens of thousands, lots of who were offended rightly or not. To keep the guy around would've been just as bad. You publish something like that you accept the consequences. You make yourself obnoxious to your bosses who expect you to be a quiet cog in the machine, that's what happens. Duh.
It's kind of funny that Damore dropped out of Harvard to work at Google and he's now been fired from there. Kind of throwing away his advantages.
Actually the Board should make this decision for him, but looking at who the members are and who have positioned the company exactly where it sits, I don't expect any displays of leadership in this matter.
There are lots of opinions that I might hold that would open my company up to lawsuits. In this case, he posted something that dramatically increases the likelyhood that some percentage of people fired will file suit, and this memo and the failure to reprimand/fire him will be part of the legal arsenal used against the company. Firing him is a simple mitigation strategy against this attack vector. ANY company that cares about lawsuits would have to make this move completely independently of the possible merits of his article. If it hadn't been leaked, he might not have needed to be fired. But once it was public news there was no sensible choice that Google could make. Again, I'm not trying to weigh in on his paper's content here, but as a simple legal precaution he needed to be fired.
Note that this isn't just about sexism, but lots of protected class opinions could fall into this category of 'express this openly and you'll be fired'. No company of any size would be able to tolerate it.
This is comment in the memo that changed the consequences: "Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races." He's advocating restricting programs that reduce the massive gap in distributions. If he had left his arguments and asked people to make their own conclusions, he might still have a job. Brooks is wrong here.
Are we reading the same text? He says:
Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races. These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.
How is this "advocating restricting programs that reduce the massive gap in distributions"?
I must have read a different memo than everyone else. The one I read said that the massive gender imbalance in software could be due to genetics, and because of that we shouldn't try to fix it with policy. But the reality is that there is a gender imbalance in software because of the way women are treated, and the best way to correct that is through policies that treat them better.
It shouldn't be a stretch to see that arguing against treating people respectfully is offensive.
Who is arguing against treating people respectfully? For the sake of argument, if a group is less inclined towards a given profession, isn't it disrespectful to push them into it?
The goal of affirmative action in general is to make a more welcoming environment. When the status quo is disrespectful, making the argument to perpetuate the status quo is making the argument to disrespect.
sure, of course I agree that if cultural impacts or discrimination are the cause of these discrepancies, then perpetuating that is disrespectful. However, if biological differences cause them then affirmative action is disrespectful of those differences.
The big assumption in David Brooks' piece is that the so-called "manifesto" was Damore's one and only "transgression". Were there other, previous internal complaints about him, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back?
This is the reality of business. One does not simply create a PR disaster for the company, with no positive return, and still maintain their job.