Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
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Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
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Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#2"Intellectual honesty" -- that's the phrase I couldn't think of. It seems to me the stronger the condemnation the greater degree to which his arguments were misrepresented.
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#3[deleted]
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#4Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment [0]:
Certain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability within subgroups of the population. This minefield was not put in place by a repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic band of social-justice zealots.
My observation, which I will offer without citation, is that this particular minefield was put in place, mine by mine, over a period of decades, through a process of fairly broad societal consensus.
To those who suggest clearing the minefield, thus permitting this topic to be discussed freely in public, I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970661
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#5I don’t doubt that the writer of the memo had the best of intentions with this memo. And there’s even some parts that I could support.
But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. And he was a senior engineer who was in a hiring position. Someone who is hiring engineers, that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job, allows for a system of discriminatory hiring to occur.
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#6I don’t doubt that the writer of the memo had the best of intentions with this memo. And there’s even some parts that I could support. But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. And he was a senior engineer who was in a hiring position. Someone who is hiring engineers, that views female engineers as biologi…
You shouldn't have changed your comment, even if you are scared of reprisal. Your observation about people inferring motives and being hard to argue with was on point.
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#7Author does good here, but perpetuates the same mistake most people talking about the memo do:
There were additional sections after the "hypothesis", which had specific policy suggestions--most of which were aimed at helping the situation for a broader class of people and for improving visibility into the process. That somehow keeps getting missed.
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#8I don’t doubt that the writer of the memo had the best of intentions with this memo. And there’s even some parts that I could support. But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. And he was a senior engineer who was in a hiring position. Someone who is hiring engineers, that views female engineers as biologi…
> that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job
Did you read the article? Here's the money quote:
> His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men, but that doesn’t mean any of the women at Google fall below the “qualified” threshold.
None of his expressed views lead me to assume that he'd think less of a female candidate that made it through the screening process -- and that's a viewpoint he's explicitly concerned about protecting. Even if some of his opinions did lead him to have biases at least he's open about them and interested in examining them which is the first step to fixing them.
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#9> This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it
It would be so very refreshing to hear a company just say "let's not throw incendiary memos around at work; it upsets people", instead of feeding the fire with a rationalized social stance.
Actually, I _have_ seen great CEO's defuse situations like this. I don't understand why it's not done more often.
Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
#10Author does good here, but perpetuates the same mistake most people talking about the memo do: There were additional sections after the "hypothesis", which had specific policy suggestions--most of which were aimed at helping the situation for a broader class of people and for improving visibility into the process. That somehow keeps getting missed.
And he also pointed out that people are scared to actually talk about these things at Google. Considering he was fired, that seemed like a pretty on the mark observation.