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On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

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Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#351

Post by jjirsa »

PrimalDual wrote: post #332
jjirsa wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be well written: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man... Notably: 1) The document makes a fundamentally flawed argument - that is, he's based his whole argument on a flawed premise that women just aren't interested in being engineers (and it's clearly wrong, because gender ratios were nearly identical until about the mid 80s; it's not a biological difference, it's a social and c…

1. I could not find the source stating that gender ratios were identical before the 80's in engineering. I do know that there used be a more even ratio of male/female programmers but I think the field has changed enough from those times that I would be wary of anyone claiming to make an apples to apples comparison. 2.His points about what makes a good engineering manager skips over the fact that to get good at engine…

> I do know that there used be a more even ratio of male/female programmers but I think the field has changed enough from those times that I would be wary of anyone claiming to make an apples to apples comparison

Yea, it's gotten a lot easier, a lot less rigorous. Problems hadn't been solved, nobody even knew if things WERE possible (let alone how to do them), and they certainly didn't have stackoverflow to go ask for help when they got stuck. Now that you mention it, perhaps you've figured it out - maybe all the women engineers have moved on to harder, more interesting endeavors.

> You have to spend a significant amount of time alone coding/engineering to grasp well enough that understanding the customer starts mattering a lot more

There is never a requirement that you have to code in isolation. Period. Paragraph. End of story. This is a fiction. Nobody should EVER code in a bubble, and especially not junior engineers.

> I think the part about alienating women comes from a fundamental misunderstanding

Nope. It comes from reading.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#352

Post by [deleted] »

sigmar wrote: post #300
blusterXY wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the paper is well-read, and the people criticizing his science understand neither the underlying science, nor what it implies for the problems they profess to care about.

He doesn't cite any science so it is hard to appreciate that any of it is based on quality research. Seems like a lot of stereotypes mixed in with hedging. For example: suggesting that women are too emotional to "reason about the facts" as well as men do.

[deleted]

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#353

Post by ameister14 »

andkon wrote: post #254
rhapsodic wrote: post #179

No matter what side of this debate you're on, I don't think you can argue against the notion that there is only one side of it whose adherents can feel completely free to express their opinions or argue their case without fear of retaliation. Many stupid, unsupportable statements have been made by people on the left side, but I've yet to see much in the way of internet rage mobs formed against them. I think if google…

Let's be super clear: if this guy gets fired, it would not be because he expressed his opinions. It would be because he has abhorrent opinions that will forever affect his ability to work with women, whom he has decided are inherently incapable of working at Google.

Exactly. It would be because he expressed the wrong opinions. If he expressed the correct opinions, he would face no backlash.

I do honestly get what you're saying - nobody is going to want to work with that guy. However, if he possessed the opinions and did not voice them, he would have been fine. So, it's not because he has these opinions that is the problem, simply that he expressed them.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#354

Post by sidlls »

warcher wrote: post #178
fnovd wrote: 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…

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…

> There really seems to be a prevailing opinion that racism and sexism are just fine when directed towards white men.

White men benefit immensely from our position of privilege. The notion that "racism" and "sexism" against white men exists in our society (the US) is just completely out of alignment with the facts as they are.

Your statement is roughly analogous to someone opining that restraining a prison guard from beating inmates is tantamount to imprisoning the guard.

This isn't to say that white men aren't victims of discrimination (race or gender-based), but only that this sort of victimization is highly context-dependent and not at all systemic. It's not on the same level as "racism" and "sexism" as it applies in this context, as these two things require a significant power imbalance. White men have no shortage of advantage on the balance of power.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#355

Post by smsm42 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #336
gerso wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I assume you're talking about footnote #7: [7] 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 o…

He seems to be claiming that black people, gay people, women, trans folk and the poor were in no way oppressed and it was all made up by Communists to take down capitalism. You can probably find some people who agree with individual parts of that but if you get a full bingo then you're basically dealing with a Nazi. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Ma...

> He seems to be claiming that black people, gay people, women, trans folk and the poor were in no way oppressed and it was all made up by Communists to take down capitalism.

No he doesn't. He says Marxists participated in gender/race politics, and the ultimate goal of Marxists was destruction of capitalism. Which, btw, if you read any of real Marxists - who aren't exactly hiding, thanks (not ironically, they shouldn't be hiding) to the wide freedoms allowed to all of us by American democracy, that's exactly what you will see, in very plain words - they blame capitalism for these problems and want it to be eliminated.

That doesn't mean, of course, that everybody who participates in gender/race politics is a Marxist. There are a lot of folks that legitimately want, e.g., for gays not to be booted off work for being gay, without necessarily buying into the whole eternal oppressor/oppressed identity/class struggle narrative. Neither it means - and nowhere it was claimed - that "black people, gay people, women, trans folk and the poor were in no way oppressed".

> then you're basically dealing with a Nazi.

You just called somebody a Nazi because he said Marxists are lefties and are against capitalism. Way to go.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#356

Post by cakedoggie »

naiveattack wrote: post #237
drngdds wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's overly simplistic. If you know with good certainty that negative discrimination against a group is pervasive and manifests itself in a certain way (say, hiring bias (though I'm not arguing that this is the case in a particular instance; that's a separate debate)) it makes sense to have positive discrimination to counteract that.

This is a good point. Here's an open question: How do you know when you have enough positive discrimination? Do you just make sure that the representation of different groups is the same as in the population? This is a poor solution because it cannot be said that this would have been the distribution without negative discrimination. Also, along what lines would you now pick your categories? Would you ensure represent…

This is probably what the debate is all about, and it is not an easy thing to answer. Some people say now, some people say not now, and they both have good reasons why.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#357

Post by AlexCoventry »

actuallyalys wrote: post #325
AlexCoventry wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a lazy slide deck. From the paper it cites ( http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1990-14384-001 ): > It is important for us to know that females begin in high school to perform less well than males on mathematical problem-solving tasks. Problem solving is critical for success in many mathematics-related fields, such as engineering and physics. In this sense, mathematics skills may continue to be a critical filter.…

Well, it's refuting a lazy argument. Why would computer science be so different from other STEM fields that have radically higher proportions of women? [0] In particular, why is math so much better? [1] If biological differences are so important, why has it varied so much over time, including a big decline since the 80s? [0] I mean, we know that gender roles play a big role in what jobs people do and that sexism is a…

I don't think biology plays a big role in this disparity, and I agree that the Google essay was poorly argued, ill-considered and harmful.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#358

Post by RangerScience »

ameister14 wrote: post #343
RangerScience wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am against discrimination, and that includes positive discrimination. I don't think it works that way. This version is problematically simplistic: I have +10 and you have -2; now add Affirmative Action and I've got +8 and you've got +2. I'm still not receiving negative discrimination. But, you're also missing the follow-on effects; specifically: 1) People who are not actually deserving on their own merits, but we…

That's not how affirmative action works. Using your example, for most of the population, there is no detraction from their score. It only comes into effect if you have +1 and they have 0 or +1, and it becomes you with +1 and them with +2. If you had +10 and they had 0, you would stay at +10 and they would go to +2, taking the place of someone else that only had +1 and leaving you alone. For you in this case it isn't…

We're using different notation systems. I'm thinking "modifier to the dice roll", you're thinking "score".

This is making it real hard to understand what you're saying.

What is your understanding of how AA works?

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#359

Post by rcoveson »

sheepmullet wrote: post #276
rcoveson wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the author used dubious rhetorical tactics (e.g. stating scientific "facts" without citation), he was never hostile towards any one person or group of people. Even if the argument he was making was that Google should fire or cut the pay of its female software engineers (which it wasn't), it wouldn't necessarily be aggressive. That word is not applicable here. And yes, I have been in a situation where my merit a…

The media stripped out the citations. I haven't checked that the citations are any good... but he certainly put them in.

That's very interesting. Where did you hear that?

Or should I say... could you please add a citation? ;)

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#360

Post by blusterXY »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #340
blusterXY wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is strong scientific evidence of at least a partial genetic/prenatal basis for homosexual expression. If this were a discussion on that topic, the writer would be pointing this out and criticizing discriminatory policies that adversely affect homosexuals.

You've missed the point. The point is that just because you've pointed out a biological fact doesn't mean that you can extend that to societal truths. Cancer also has a genetic basis. Does that mean we should stop researching how to cure it? The point is that arguing over how Homosexuality is like or unlike Cancer is completely pointless and irrelevant to the wider conversation. Likewise, biological arguments are irr…

> The argument that women aren't biologically suited for working in tech is the lazy and stupid solution

This is not what the writer says.

> I think... there are not going to be any easy solutions.

The article suggests a number of non-discriminatory solutions Google could easily implement.

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