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Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

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Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#321

Post by peoplewindow »

danans wrote: post #133
mpweiher wrote: post #37

Certainly much better than a lot of the outrage that's been going on. A couple of nits: > I know most of Google’s work is people-centric. Hmmm...is that really so? Last I checked a lot of Google's code output and value-generation is backend-y, with very little interaction with humans. Google is also notoriously bad-mediocre at UX, though this has improved lately. > Assuming that job skills and performance can be dedu…

> Last I checked a lot of Google's code output and value-generation is backend-y, with very little interaction with humans. Honest question: When was the last time you checked Google's code output and how it was accomplished? Have you worked at Google for an extended period? I've worked at Google for many years, on more projects than one can count on 2 hands, and in my experience this commonly held stereotype about w…

Lots of Google's software is open source. It is easily checked.

Regardless, I worked at Google for many years and agree with him.

Implementing MapReduce, BigTable, MegaStore, even things like G+ or Teams is not a people oriented task. It involves long hours of working with machines, alone, punctuated with code reviews in which your code is systematically criticised by your co-workers but in a predictable and non personal way. There are occasional meetings but most engineers I knew there saw meetings as a necessary evil and got annoyed if they were too frequent.

When I was a SWE the bulk of my work hours were spent working entirely with machines, or with processes that were run by people but were largely mechanical and formalised, like resource requests.

I believe this sudden argument that coding is a highly social activity is motivated reasoning. The motivation being to try and arrive at the politically correct opinions required to survive in the modern Google workplace. If you tried to describe programming as a highly social and people-oriented activity to the average man on the street they would think you were bullshitting them, I have no doubt about that at all.

Teaching is people oriented. Social care is people oriented. Most of your working hours are spent in front of people, talking to them. Programming is the opposite - most of your hours are spent in front of a machine. Talking to others is probably not the bulk of your job. If it is you probably aren't a developer, regardless of what you might think: you might be a tech lead manager at most.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#322

Post by jlouis »

GVIrish wrote: post #266
dx034 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was fired because he basically said women are underrepresented in IT because they are biologically unsuited for it. I don't understand why people keep repeating that statement. He said that biological differences explain the different ratios of men and women, NOT that women are not suited for tech jobs. He explicitely did not say (nor mean) that a woman can't be a good software engineer. Just that on average, mo…

> I don't understand why people keep repeating that statement. He said that biological differences explain the different ratios of men and women, NOT that women are not suited for tech jobs. He explicitely did not say (nor mean) that a woman can't be a good software engineer. Just that on average, more men than women will show the features needed for software engineers. The problem is that his whole argument is based…

The term "neuroticism" stems from the five factor model of psychological traits. The memo author doesn't really mention this too much, but if you know about the model, he uses the other factors throughout his work, which means he has read and understood the model.

There have been several studies showing that women scores higher in the agreeableness and neuroticism factors, on average (and with a quite large variance and a rather small effect I might add). The memo author makes it clear by writing "in part" in multiple places: a moderate effect can't explain the whole story: either there is another factor which truly dominates, or we are just looking at one piece of the puzzle as a whole.

Neuroticism has a very specific meaning in this case and it pertains to "negative emotion" in the sense that extremely high scores make you more likely to be stressed, anxious and so on. Likewise, extremely low scores make you overconfident and so stable you are unlikely to venture out into new ideas.

From an evolutionary phsych. standpoint, any score which exist tend to serve a purpose some way or the other. There are no desirable or undesirable traits, because too much or too little of a trait will be challenging in some situations, but a great advantage in others. So the question to ask is: if women scores higher in neuroticism, what advantage does that buy them in what situations? More anxiety could for instance have you second-guessing yourself in more situations, and that could lead to you finding more bugs in programs up front, which is an excellent trait to have in software development.

The other factor where there is a measurable gender difference, agreeableness, is a two-edged sword: High agreeableness scores are highly desirable for building coherent and working team/group structures. Low agreeableness allows people to pick an individualist/isolationist path when needed and make something great by ignoring the group consensus. Good group dynamic requires both traits to some extent.

My hunch is that if you scored the women at Google on the five factor model, they'd be likely to fall somewhat outside the gender norms. There is a considerable selection bias if you only consider tech people who work for Google. You are easily looking at a small fraction of the population as a whole, and the hiring selection process is likely to skew the scores quite a lot from the average norm.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#323

Post by nailer »

yorwba wrote: post #307
nailer wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics, favorite foods, religion, dress sense and other ideas aren't innate. Gender, age, ethnicity and sexuality are. Hence swapping gender for politics doesn't work. Additionally Damore argued for assessing individuals as individuals rather than as tribe members and assuming discrepancy is down to bias - even if you did sub someone's chosen politics for their gender, Damore's proposed fix would still require you…

It doesn't matter whether a characteristic is innate or not; if it isn't relevant to the job, then nobody should be judged based on it. Even if you disregard that people can choose to change their gender or that politics can be inherited from the parents, gender and politics are interchangeable as far as social treatment is concerned. If you (dis)agree with the arguments of the memo in the gender/politics-swapped ver…

First and more important things: nobody is suggesting judging individuals by their gender. Damore's post was explicitly about not doing that.

Of course an individual's suitability for a job should not be affected by anything irrelevant. However individual choices may be relevant: for example, you might not be suitable to work in the fitness industry if you're shy about showing your body. Hence distinguishing choices from innate characteristics.

This is a bit of a side track though. Basically just saying that gender and political persuasion aren't as interchangeable with each other as gender and other innate characteristics would be.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#324

Post by peoplewindow »

stale2002 wrote: post #51
Johnny555 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While his plan may be to sue, what grounds do you think he can sue for? There's no right to free speech in the work place. If he was fired for something he wrote on his private blog, or discussed with coworkers at an off-site bar, that might be different. If he does sue, Google will have little problem showing that the employee, through his memo, has created a hostile workplace for women at Google.

California has very strong employee protection. Yes, even though it is "at will" there are still some very strong protections. For example, in California it is illegal to fire someone for "political activity", which this memo, debateably, may have been. It is also illegal in California to fire someone for bringing up workplace concerns (this falls under union/worker organizing laws). Finally, and most ironically, it…

Is it debateable? It's a political document that starts by characterising differences between the political left and right. It states that Google's policies are explicitly discrimination, and not only illegal but motivated by "left ideology".

How it could be more political or about discrimination concerns?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#325

Post by dsfjksdf »

jancsika wrote: post #121

> And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value judgement must be made here, not a logical deduction from data. Is diversity important enough for you to temporarily tolerate an increased risk of not hiring the most qualified person? That’s the trade-off nobody seems willing to spell out. Perhaps because it's not a necess…

There is also the study where they changed peoples voices in phone interviews, and the women with male voice were suddenly less likely to be hired (although the effect was small, iirc).

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#326

Post by jamesrcole »

cf wrote: post #316
jamesrcole wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People can express any opinion they want in public. Inside a company isn't public. Also while you do have a right to an opinion you don't have a right to it going unchallenged and questioned. It's grossly misrepresenting the response to the memo to imply it was just a matter of challenging and questioning. A quick read of any of the forums where it's being discussed makes that clear, and remember how the author was…

I'm sorry you didn't feel any of the challenges had substance. They were still challenged.

You're misrepresenting what I said

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#328

Post by thinkfurther »

scandox wrote: post #314
thinkfurther wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a person is engaging in reasonable dissent then why is this true: "If anything, their position will be radicalized."? Uhmmmm.... because they get fired for deviating from the party line, not for being unreasonable. How can you skip that "detail"? In this case, it seems to be even lamer than that, seems like he was not fired for the memo, but the reaction to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14977750 > Dam…

I don't understand your point. Mine is that being attacked should not change one's ideas. Getting fired is bad, but it isn't new information pertinent to the original debate. It may inform your ideas about the climate in which the debate is occurring, which may radicalize you personally. It shouldn't radicalize your position.

"Getting fired" is a bit of an euphemism though, there is a lot more going on here than just that. Just start with Gizmodo leaving out some stuff at first and so on. The claim is that he is being treated unfairly, at the least.

> It shouldn't radicalize your position.

In some fantasy world, where marijuana being illegal didn't make a single person try harder drugs because shady types were the only ones they could get weed from, and so on. Where a person is somehow separate from a position they hold.

I think people shouldn't steal. Reasonable, yes? Hacking off the hand of someone who stole some bubble gum is not so reasonable and much more radical. If you can somehow treat someone so badly for suggesting stealing is not okay that they harbor murderous thoughts about thieves, does that now mean the original idea of stealing being bad is not reasonable? I don't know who is to judge a person for their reaction to mistreatment, but never the ones doing or excusing the mistreatment, that is for super fucking sure.

But even granting that this is no excuse to go off the deep end, which I did; to focus on that, instead of the original action without which the debate about the reaction to it would be completely moot is not okay, and that is my point. There can be only bad results from this, that is the takeaway. If people downstream from this could alleviate this a bit by being saints is besides the point.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#329

Post by dsfjksdf »

Isn't a minority person who decides against some career because few people "like him" are in it racist against themselves? Why do they consider their skin color their defining feature (the "like me" feature)? Most professions have a lot of humans in them. Most minority people are human - hence there are a lot of people "like them" in those professions.

It's a lie that feminist and SJWs reinforce that gender or skin color are supposedly the most defining features of a person. I'd maintain that for example a woman and a man from an affluent part of town have often more in common than an affluent man and a working class man.

Don't be racist against yourself!

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#330

Post by sheepmullet »

scandox wrote: post #312
sheepmullet wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. If you treat me with respect I will treat you with respect. We can have a civil disagreement and the next day I'll happily help you out. Being able to disagree is healthy. I disagree with my wife and with my children on some pretty important issues. On the other hand if you try and ruin my career, or if I think you will try and ruin my career, then I will knock you down at every opportunity.

Just because someone attacks you doesn't mean your hypothesis or arguments should change. If you believe what you say is reasonable then it is not rooted in a personal animus. That is all I am pointing out. Often, however, our arguments have a strong unacknowledged bias. When we're challenged the bias becomes more visible.

> Just because someone attacks you doesn't mean your hypothesis or arguments should change

In practice that is just not true.

Many of my positions are self-moderated by the understanding that smart, kind, and reasonable people have opposing views.

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