Women don't go into tech because they don't like it. Boys like legos, girls like dolls. Sure there are occasional tomboys but the fact is most girls just don't like engineering.
On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
301–310 of 443 posts
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I haven't seen a single criticism of the paper that even recognizes the author is referencing large-scale incontrovertible research involving the Big-5 personality model (the giveaway is the use of terms "agreeability", "conscienciousness", "neuroticism"). Because it isn't relevant. The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting some differences between men and women, but that it doesn't co…
What you just wrote is the equivalent of a climate change denier writing: "The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting climate change exists, but it doesn't convincingly argue why these difference are relevant to environmental policy." The author doesn't need to "prove" the science he references is real any more than I have to "prove" that climate change exists in order to discuss it. At a…
> What you just wrote is the equivalent of a climate change denier writing:
I think if you want your argument to be more convincing, it would be nice to spend less effort on trying to brand the opponents "climate change denier", which sounds like a thinly veiled attempt to capitalize on a tribal thought-terminating cliche - basically a highbrow structural equivalent of calling someone a Nazi - if you're in any way like a Nazi, you can't win an argument, whatever the argument is about, because that would mean being a Nazi is good, and we all agree it can't be true! Addressing the argument directly instead of trying to affix the killer label is what should distinguish a reasoned rational discussion from a televised political debate.
> but there is zero reason for anyone grounded in rational skepticism to take the people attacking this guy on science any more seriously than they would take climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers, etc.
There is also zero reason to consider comparing somebody do anti-vaxxers or any other outgroup a rational argument. You have many good points here, you don't have to boost them with irrational appeals to tribal cliches (even if you assume everybody is in the same tribe as you, it's still not rational argument). Pleading the rational arguments is better than pounding the table.
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is increasingly my concern-- There really seems to be a prevailing opinion that racism and sexism are just fine when directed towards white men. You can drag a white guy for pretty much any societal ill you like on the internet these days, and while there are some pretty great points to be made with respect to blaming a lot of modern society's problems on its principal architects (old white dudes), this is no wa…
>> We're currently suffering through four years of self-imposed punishment as a result of being a bunch of judgmental assholes in pursuit of a goal that any reasonable human would accept as self-evident-- that people deserve to be treated fairly and without prejudice, no matter their race, sex, gender identity, et cetera. If leftists/liberals wanted everyone to be treated fairly without prejudice of their race or sex…
I think if you take a population that has been the subject of generations of systemic government oppression, remove it (allegedly), and then declare "fairness accomplished! You are free to complete on a level playing field! Pay no attention to the effects of generational poverty!" you are on real dubious ground. This would also presuppose that we have successfully eliminated systemic racism from our society, which is... an argument that would require substantial supporting evidence.
And with respect to the whole "taking of jobs", I will add a more comprehensively researched rebuttal to my own anecdotal experience: if you're good, you're in no danger of getting caught up in a quota system. Competent white folks are doing just fine. The less-competent.... probably should cowboy up. As my exploited millennials would say: "git gud".
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quot...
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to refer to Chistopher Hitchens on this topic. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM
That's nice but how does what Hitchens says apply here? The Manifesto writer apparently still works at Google. No one is silencing him. A whole shit ton of people are disagreeing with what he says. The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. No one is enforcing his silence, though in CA, Google as a corporation could dispense with his employment at will. Are you saying that we shouldn't disagree wi…
No. I'm saying that you don't have to agree with him, but he has the right to speak and others have the right to hear him. Perhaps re-digest 1:25-3:07.
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is tempting to reduce an argument to the most uncharitable caricature imaginable. To counteract this, image I transported you to a world where there was not a subconscious misogynistic pressure keeping women out of programming and women chose not to become programmers because of some combination of average differences in personality and variance in ability. What would this world look like? How would it differ from…
Well, you probably wouldn't see women constantly exiting the field of tech because they encounter endless entrenched sexism, and endless skepticism of the existence or significance of sexism.
An interesting question. Is that a commonly cited reason for women leaving engineering programs? If we were to poll women who dropped engineering and sexism was low on the list of reasons for leaving would this reduce your certainty?
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you just wrote is the equivalent of a climate change denier writing: "The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting climate change exists, but it doesn't convincingly argue why these difference are relevant to environmental policy." The author doesn't need to "prove" the science he references is real any more than I have to "prove" that climate change exists in order to discuss it. At a…
You totally missed the point. So here it is again: even if all the research he cites is real and well-supported, he makes a logical leap that is not substantiated by any evidence he cites. There's nothing in his evidence about women's personality traits that can lead you to the conclusion that they're necessarily underrepresented in STEM and in computer science. There's also no support for his conclusion that Google…
Thank you for your (abhorrent) attempt at belittling someone who is trying to educate you about what is actually mainstream science:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042812... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201...
As for the rest of your comment, it perfectly illustrates my comment above about critics having no clue what this guy is saying. At the very minimum, you are dead wrong to claim the author does not say that diversity is important and that Google should not address it. He simply says it should be addressed in non-discriminatory ways, something any sensible reader should have noticed had they read the ENTIRE SECTION he included titled "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap".
And with that, I'm jumping out of this discussion: it pollutes the HN discussion section to have to repeatedly state what the article under discussion actually says.
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's nice but how does what Hitchens says apply here? The Manifesto writer apparently still works at Google. No one is silencing him. A whole shit ton of people are disagreeing with what he says. The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. No one is enforcing his silence, though in CA, Google as a corporation could dispense with his employment at will. Are you saying that we shouldn't disagree wi…
No. I'm saying that you don't have to agree with him, but he has the right to speak and others have the right to hear him. Perhaps re-digest 1:25-3:07.
No one is questioning the manifesto writer's right to say what he wishes to say nor others to read what he writes, although if he says what he said while in the employ of Google to others who are also in the employ of Google, he can't hang his future employment there on rights. His right to speak is with respect to the govmint and not his employer.
Again, how does what Hitchens says apply here? I think the good Christopher is on my side, not yours.
Added: I might be wrong about Google's right to fire the manifesto writer [1]. That would be something for lawyers to work over.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google...
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was the bar lowered to recruit female or minority candidates? That's not a rhetorical question and I don't presume to have an answer to it. It was, however, the subject of the original memo, which suggests that some policies or proposed policies exist that lower standards for diversity candidates in the author's opinion. One example is, in the author's words: "Setting org level OKRs for increased representation." If…
I think you are suffering from the same delusion that many have regarding this so-called bar. At the level of recruiting done by the big-five you end up with a pool of candidates who all make it over "the bar." You only need a couple, so now you get to decide on additional criteria like how well they seem to work in teams, how well they can communicate with their peers, how easily they can adapt to new situations and…
> You only need a couple
That's wrong though. Pretty much all high profile, successful tech companies right now have more open positions than they can hire for. My significant other (also a highly successful engineer) and I all get recruitment emails from Facebook/Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple/whatever every couple of weeks. They get countless applicants, but most of them are not what they want.
That means if you're trying to diversify, out of those thousands, it would be exceedingly easy to just pick all the ones that match the current flavor of the day in term of diversity, regardless of skill, and be done with it. Even though certain combinations of gender/ethnicity are (relatively) rare, there are a few, especially if you include bootcamps, self taughts, promoting from other departments, etc. If you hired 100% of them, it would probably make a bump in the company statistics.
My current employer is, IMO, doing it reasonably well. They don't lower the bar as far as I can tell, but widen the net (open offices in other regions/countries, have hiring events at more colleges/universities in more cities, organize diversity events to attract people, etc). It's not "enough", but it does move the needle and everyone that I've interacted with have been really good.
One of my previous employers straight up lowered the bar, no ambiguity. We would interview someone from a diverse background, they were obviously terrible (like, by a landslide), and they'd be like "Well...we really don't have many people from , maybe we could hire them anyway". And sometimes they did. It did not end well (and gave fodder for racist/sexist people, ugh).
There are a -lot- of companies right now that do the later, and they hurt everyone, because they force those doubts and discussions to happen. It's easy, and if the people who have to pick up the slack end up bitching, you can just call them out for discrimination. I don't work at Google and have no interest to do so, so I don't know where they fall. One of my friends who work there and is a fairly vocal activist tells me its relatively okay /shrug.
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#309Silicon Valley controls a lot of the world's communication and we should be really worried if silencing of unpopular opinions is the order of the day. As a "minority" I perhaps disagree with a lot of what this person has written but my reaction to it will be to counter his arguments with a better one rather than go on to silence him. -- I have already written about this somewhat during the past elections. https://med…
This is basically a given/open intention. There was an HN thread a week ago [0] wherein Google indicated they were using new metrics to identify and remove "terror content". The metrics include input from a variety of groups. One of the top HN comments said, "Those groups have very specific agendas. They shouldn't be allowed to block articles which disagree with their agenda." [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/ite…
That was me. I want to hear from the other side.
My main beef with Google on news is that they're terrible at provenance. I want to see the original source, not the pundit echo chamber. But the pundits probably generate more ad clicks.
Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is increasingly my concern-- There really seems to be a prevailing opinion that racism and sexism are just fine when directed towards white men. You can drag a white guy for pretty much any societal ill you like on the internet these days, and while there are some pretty great points to be made with respect to blaming a lot of modern society's problems on its principal architects (old white dudes), this is no wa…
>> We're currently suffering through four years of self-imposed punishment as a result of being a bunch of judgmental assholes in pursuit of a goal that any reasonable human would accept as self-evident-- that people deserve to be treated fairly and without prejudice, no matter their race, sex, gender identity, et cetera. If leftists/liberals wanted everyone to be treated fairly without prejudice of their race or sex…
In fairness, I'm aware of the hypocrisy in using positive discrimination to combat negative discrimination. I just haven't heard any better ideas to fix the problem. And the argument that we owe a debt to continue our forefathers' unfinished work towards a more perfect union is persuasive to me.