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On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

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Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#191
post #150

I read the memo, and compared to the stuff I read from the real "deplorables" (on 4chan, The_Donald, etc.), it was pretty tame. Yes, many of his ideas are backwards and unjustified. At the same time, many of his arguments were perfectly sane (e.g. silencing all dissenting opinions leads to an increasingly toxic and divided culture). If you want people like him to actually change their minds, you have to be willing to…

A lot of these plans seem to fundamentally misdiagnose the issue. Investment banking has way better gender diversity numbers than Google, but (having worked neither at Google nor in an investment bank) it seems highly unlikely that it's because "bro-culture" or agressions, micro or macro, are somehow less prevalent there.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/wall-street-bank-diversity-201...

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#192
post #55

The major elephant in the room here, which the memo doesn't seem to address, is that as late as the 1960's, computer programming was seen as a natural career for young women. Has biology changed that much in the last fifty years?

This is the one place where I actually do agree with the author of the essay: computer programming is now seen as a high-status field, so it's worth it for men who seek high-status careers to displace women and construct rationalizations. It wasn't high-status in the 1960s.

My dad programmed computers in the 60s. He wore a coat and tie everyday. He worked for, among other places, NASA. He drove a Jag, several Jags. I wear a tie at funerals and only then when forced.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SV/YC culture is extremely toxic, and people hate having that pointed out to their faces. edit: sv/yc are toxic for how they actively shame outsider opinions, then headhunt the individuals who put said opinions forward. from sama's what i heard from trump supporters, "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried a…

I don't think it's fair to lump YC culture in with SV culture. YC is based in SV, but it seems to be an island of reasonableness.

While I think that YC tends to be a bit more reasonable on some topics, it can be pretty reactionary on others. For example, if anything to do with Facebook or Zuckerberg is posted, the level of discourse drops to the typical reddit outrage machine.

Similarly, I think that when it comes to talking about sexism in tech, the community as a whole can be pretty toxic. As someone who was annoyed by both the original manifesto, and the response to the original manifesto, it's a bit frustrating to see the conversation here take shape the way it has.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#194
post #14

It's interesting to note that the only reason this is a news story is because "a Google engineer" wrote it. If the essay had been published entirely anonymously, then it would have attracted no attention at all, like a dozen similar essays. The story is the source, not the content.

Are you sure? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/1... Justin Keller was a nobody.

Read the titles: S.F. ‘tech bro’ writes open letter to mayor: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people’, ‘riff raff’ and Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google [Updated]

A news story presents novel recent events, given context by a narrative. The title of a piece informs the reader of that narrative.

It is a given that when Breitbart posts an article about a shooting in Chicago, it's not about the shooting, it's about the narrative: Black people love doing murders. When people complain about right-wing media pushing crime stories, they're not saying that the crimes didn't happen, but that they object to the narrative being advanced.

Here, the narrative is that "tech bros" are sexists, and that SF companies are filled with tech bros, who make racist products.

(The Atlantic hot take explicitly states this: "The kind of computing systems that get made and used by people outside the industry, and with serious consequences, are a direct byproduct of the gross machismo of computing writ large. More women and minorities are needed in computing because the world would be better for their contributions—and because it might be much worse without them." Google has to have minority programmers, because otherwise Google will make sexist websites. This is something of an odd assertion-- you would figure that it would be much more important to change Google's management, but Brin, Page and Schmidt are important DNC donors, so the Atlantic can't suggest that their shares be seized.)

An anonymous essay, on the other hand, would be one where the author doesn't identify himself as a white male Google employee first, and instead just talks about the actual issue at hand. Just look at the thread here, and the one earlier, about the essay itself. Many people agreeing with the author, and yet none of them are being roasted alive on social media. Why? Because nobody's started their comment with "I'm a VP at Microsoft, and I think that..."

Without a hook for a narrative, the story would just be "sexists exist on the internet", which is very much not News.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were quite a few Medium posts as well. But no, I completely agree with you. I've discussed with others recently about how I'd love to have a tool or place where I can search for a given assertion and see the (scientific) evidence for and against it, as well as related assertions and opposing assertions. And I'm not just talking about being able to "Google it". If I use Google or a general search engine then I h…

If such a repository existed ... it would simply be dismissed as biased by whatever side of the argument it "debunked" ;)

The only way to avoid that would be to highlight the parts of the discussion that hadn't been studied or couldn't easily be replicated. In my experience, most heated arguments are based on perceptions where there is a gaping hole because science either can't or hasn't completely answered the question yet.

That stuff gets fueled by articles leaving out certain numbers to show a desired conclusion.

True or False isn't the problem. The problem is avoiding key points that you have to already be knowledgable enough to realize what's missing. That's how people end up with "facts" that are still wrong.

You leave out important information to reinforce a bias and it will get reshared as "fact".

Happens all the time with any topic that's even a little heated.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#196

Could someone opposed to the arguments the manifesto makes explain to me what quotes caused them to strongly dislike it? Reading the reactions to the manifesto I'm left feeling like I'm taking crazy pills. I must have read a different manifesto. AFAICT the main idea of the manifesto is that biological differences between men and women account for part of the representation gap. This seems to be perfectly logical and…

> Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

He's telling this to a $650B company. And then just to cover for himself, he says:

> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more.

And then:

> My concrete suggestions are to: De-moralize diversity

But my favorite is:

> Stop alienating conservatives.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#197

One of my first exposures to this "manifesto" was on Twitter with someone starting a thread with "Google has a Nazi problem." The majority of the other responses I read either attacked the author, dismissed the entire text in whole, and/or refused to actually argue the paper's points because they saw them as so ridiculous or "obviously" wrong. I read the paper. I don't see at all how it relates to fascism, Trumpism,…

Since most of these threads are pretty content free, and you asked for it, here's a rebuttal, by a woman who's good at math. https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/slideshow/embed_code/key/3... Of course men and women are different on average, but are they different enough to justify the massive disparity in tech? No.

Ugh. It doesn't matter how good your math is if your model is wrong.

Here's an outline of what I believe to be a useful model, and some useful questions to ask, and experiments to run in real life to change things.

                +-------------------+
                |                   |
                +                   |
          +---->X1+---+             |
          |           |             |
          |           +-->Q         |
  M+------+           |   +         |
          |           |   |         v
          |           |   +--------+W
          |           |             ^
          +---->X2+---+             |
                +                   |
                |                   |
                +-------------------+
  
M = male / female X1 = math ability X2, X3 ... Xn = other factors (analytical ability, ability to work in teams, ability to understand real problems, etc, also bias of interviewers against women) Q = performance on interview questions W = performance in real life work

The slides, and most peoples argument is based on the model where there is only one factor math ability, which is why people go 'oh but that doesn't account for it / the disparity is so small'.

The important question is how do all the factors ADD UP?

Now,

If Q does not correlate with W, fix your interview questions first.

Then, if you want more women to do well in the interview, well, ... -- the wrong approach is to compromise the integrity of the interview, which compromises the company's business, and which is demeaning to women, although you could use this as a proxy to make the interview more comprehensive -- the correct approach is to investigate X1, Xn factors and train to remove these discrepancies earlier on way before the interview itself, if we decide that we want to. biases in the interview processes are only biases when removing them improves the correlation between Q and W

Another thing to do is to change the nature of the work itself. In which case the factors and interview questions will change accordingly. Play to peoples' strengths!

The nature of the work must include the performance of the team including the individuals as there may be a benefit to representation when it comes to solving problems of a crowd with varied people.

Interestingly, the Google article covers a lot of this, and even suggests some changes that can be made.

A large number of factors can quickly add up even if the individual factors as small.

I welcome comments from the more knowledgable, but I feel that a lot of knee jerk reactions here are just taking individual statements from the argument and loudly saying NO, or saying well there's no difference here.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#198

One of my first exposures to this "manifesto" was on Twitter with someone starting a thread with "Google has a Nazi problem." The majority of the other responses I read either attacked the author, dismissed the entire text in whole, and/or refused to actually argue the paper's points because they saw them as so ridiculous or "obviously" wrong. I read the paper. I don't see at all how it relates to fascism, Trumpism,…

> If there were factual inaccuracies in what the author wrote, why not discuss them? Why not use high-quality sources to validate your argument?

In essence, because it's a 10-page document chock full of cherry-picked data and nonsensical conclusions - that's a ton of work to debunk. Moreover, it's just one of many such documents (though this one going viral means it probably deserves special attention).

The problem is true of fake news and alternate facts in general. From Alberto Brandolini: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SV/YC culture is extremely toxic, and people hate having that pointed out to their faces. edit: sv/yc are toxic for how they actively shame outsider opinions, then headhunt the individuals who put said opinions forward. from sama's what i heard from trump supporters, "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried a…

It is interesting how the grandchild responses to the responses to this post have been flag killed...

[deleted]

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since most of these threads are pretty content free, and you asked for it, here's a rebuttal, by a woman who's good at math. https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/slideshow/embed_code/key/3... Of course men and women are different on average, but are they different enough to justify the massive disparity in tech? No.

Rather than looking at the math ability distribution as a proxy, why not look at coding competition ability? They are pretty objective since an autograder doesn't know your gender and they are predictive of whether you can pass a tech interview since it's the same format. In that case, even at the IOI level (high school, so 14-18 year old kids) women are already severely underrepresented: https://www.quora.com/How-ha…

I see that you said "compete". Testosterone has effects on competition, so there could still be bias there.

Competitions are overrepresented by people who think they can win. We are taught that confidence and overconfidence skews male.

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