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About This Googler's Manifesto

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Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#221

Post by cropsieboss »

Goladus wrote: post #195
searealist wrote: post #30

> You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it. This sets the tone for the entire article: An emotionally driven rant that refutes nothing and argues against a strawman.

And yet, it has 178 upvotes at the time of posting.

Because postmodernist and neomarxist ideas are appealing to idealists dreaming of utopia.

It's quite weird that an article with 0 citations, 0 proper rebuttals of arguments in the original manifesto gets so much attention. It is pure leftist circlejerk.

For example, show me a single study demonstrating proper effectiveness of unconscious bias training. HR departments in FB and Google have those. Studies of the effectiveness do not exist or show no effectiveness.

HR in many companies is comprised of leftist sociology, psychology majors who disregard results in their own fields which do not align with their equity for all philosophy.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#222

Post by untog »

pacala wrote: post #199

> And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just…

[I've made about four edits to this post and still can't do it justice - should have drafted it more thoroughly. Others have made my points much more effectively and this is just a distraction, so I'll remove it]

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#223

Post by jameshart »

smsm42 wrote: post #62
zorpner wrote: post #4

Perhaps more interestingly, the author does not appear to understand engineering. This guy gets it. It's a deep temptation to abstract engineering away from humanism, but the idea that code can solve problems is an immature understanding of software. People have the problems; people provide the solutions. Code is a tool & intermediary, and hardly essential to the act of problem-solving.

Yet, if we look at Google's track record, they have much better luck with technical problems than with people-interaction problems. Search driven by algorithms - excellent. Social networks - epic fail. Advertising backend - money juggernaut, mostly driven by clever algorithms, as I understand? Mobile OS backend - great (well, ok, not too bad). Mobile OS frontend - meh. Chrome is kinda borderline, but I think technolo…

If you think the defining characteristic of google search is that it is 'driven by algorithms' you are massively underestimating it.

Search is the problem of understanding what a person is looking for, and finding a resource which provides it. That is 100% about people and human factors. There's a reason why people look at google search frequencies to understand social trends; why we read meaning into the 'suggested search completions' google provides for certain terms; why an unfortunate first-placed search result for a term can make global news headlines. Search is so much more than an algorithmic problem.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#224

Post by orangecat »

interpol_p wrote: post #124
nopatternhere wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are here trying to persuade me, at least I assume that is the goal, you could just be here trolling I guess. To try to persuade by claiming you are as bad as everyone else seems, unpersuasive? You seem to think there are two sides: for or against. I have the ability to be against EVERYONE, don't I? Neither side can be convincing, or one side can. As it stands, you are just as unconvincing as the other side, which…

Fair enough. I'll do some homework. Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results. This was commonly attributed to differences in biological traits in the past, that was wrong. Here [2] is another article where spatial abilities relate to societal roles. Another area commonly attributed to biological differ…

Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results.

That is an interesting study which demonstrates the opposite of what you seem to think it does. Here's the PDF: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/sc.... It shows that the as cultural inequality decreases, the relative performance of girls rises in both math where they end up about equal to boys, and reading where they end up even further ahead. Take the sum of the gap values in the first chart; they're all between 40 and 60 except for Iceland which is over 70. (Edit: no, I'm bad at math. Iceland's relative gap is about 50 as well).

So if you point to the more equal math scores as proof that there are no innate differences between boys and girls, you now have to explain why the reading scores become even more unequal with increased gender equality. Is it just that Norway and Sweden are hotbeds of discrimination against boys?

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#225

Post by untog »

tibiapejagala wrote: post #144

I might partially or totally disagree with the original manifest, but this reply is repulsive. I would never want to have a "senior" like this. So much emphasis on how senior he is, how junior you have to write something so wrong. How OP's career is over. The 3rd point reads like navy seals copypasta but with HR instead. If you don't see any other way to deal with OP's views than described in this belittling rant, th…

> This is a non-statement. Replace 'engineering' with science, medicine, finance, customer service, politics, retail, programming etc., and it will sound as correct.

That's the entire point. That you don't get that is telling. Engineering is not some magic meritocratic endeavour where we all succeed by writing the very best code we can. It's messy, and it involves working with people just as much as it does a text editor. Hence this whole assertion of women being ill suited for the job is complete nonsense according to the logic presented in the manifesto itself.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#226

Post by stagbeetle »

nopatternhere wrote: post #179
MichaelGG wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no different than a guy in the NBA wondering out loud if the bias towards men might have a biological component, so that even if the systemic barriers are removed, we might expect far different than 50/50 female/male in the NBA. But no one thinks that - it's obviously silly because physical attributes are so obvious. So we'll use Wikipedia as a perfect summary of all the research on this topic: https://en.wikipe…

I hate the high end examples, because people want to argue them. The case is also true the other way - there are more men at the bottom of the IQ scale. Can someone come up with a reason why an IQ test would make men appear more often in the bottom of IQ distributions?

I have no evidence, only speculation, but it could be because boys do not receive the same type of nurture and care growing up compared to girls. As well as, anecdotally, being more likely to engage in dangerous (for the brain) activities and take less care of themselves. The last point manifests itself in many ways, but the most important one I can think of is diet.

Again, this is all conjecture and I don't know how I would go about finding the studies to link it together.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#227

Post by untog »

muninn_ wrote: post #201
pacala wrote: post #199

> And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just…

Tell me about it. Reading that made me sick. I don't necessarily agree with the original manifesto, but the idea that "a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face" is an acceptable thing to say is ridiculous. If this "manifesto" was actually racist and bigoted, it still doesn't excuse violence, or the suggestion of violence. That is FAR worse. It's un-American. We tolerate…

> We tolerate groups like the KKK or Black Panthers or Westboro Baptist because even if they are vehemently WRONG, they have a right to speak freely.

We also don't hire the KKK. Those of us who run companies or manage people respect our employees more than to have a gay employee pair program with a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. Free speech does not mean immunity from the consequences of your actions.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#228

Post by rainbowmverse »

untog wrote: post #222
pacala wrote: post #199

> And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just…

[I've made about four edits to this post and still can't do it justice - should have drafted it more thoroughly. Others have made my points much more effectively and this is just a distraction, so I'll remove it]

>> The manifesto clearly lays out the fact that women are genetically inferior and that most women developers shouldn't have their job.

This could be very easily misread by someone not paying close attention. Consider "argues that" instead of "clearly lays out the fact that."

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#229

Post by untog »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #228
untog wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[I've made about four edits to this post and still can't do it justice - should have drafted it more thoroughly. Others have made my points much more effectively and this is just a distraction, so I'll remove it]

>> The manifesto clearly lays out the fact that women are genetically inferior and that most women developers shouldn't have their job. This could be very easily misread by someone not paying close attention. Consider "argues that" instead of "clearly lays out the fact that."

Fair. Edited. Thanks!

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#230

Post by thehardsphere »

mcphage wrote: post #218
carsongross wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's insane. All of human moral progress can be briefly summarized as "talking, not hitting."

No. All of human moral progress can be briefly summarized as "not hurting other people". Solving disagreements through discussion is better than solving them through violence, but you don't solve disagreements via discussion if you attack them verbally.

Right, and because it's hard to have discussions that may not be easy to resolve, it far easier to re-label those disagreements as "attack them verbally." Hence, the new thoughtcrime.
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