Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

juliagalef.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 194 posts

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#71

Post by shadowmint »

kobeya wrote: post #45
shadowmint wrote: post #11

> 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. I think its fair to say that not everyone shares that view. This is probably the key to controversy in my mind. You could read it that way. However, you can choose to interpret t…

He specifically said 'decreasing the false negative rate', not 'increasing the false positive rate.' That is explicitly worded (he could have been more succinct) to imply that all people hired by Google are good enough to work at Google. He is saying that IF you are already good enough to work at Google, then your odds if you are from a protected minority group are better than if you are not. You are right that peopl…

yeah, ok... but I mean, really, do you care what he said?

I mean, do you really care if people misinterpreted it? Is that what is important here? What someone did or didn't mean when they did or didn't say something?

I honestly couldn't care less if they were 'wrong' interpretations.

I mean, really, honestly, I don't give the slightest damn about this guy or what he says or thinks. Really. I don't know him, I don't care.

...but maybe the issues he's raised are worth talking about? maybe? I'm not sure.

...but that's certainly more interesting than digging over this document and what he may or may not have meant.

Forget what he said. Think on your own for a second.

Do you think that diversity programs necessarily result in lower quality candidates filling some roles, even if the program only forces a quota into the interview process?

Do you think that's a bad thing, that it has tangible negative outcomes for businesses?

How do you propose to address the issues around this stuff, or is diversity something you don't think is worth having?

Forget the darn document and have an opinion of your own for goodness sake (and be prepared to defend it and talk about).

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#72

Post by liaukovv »

hangonhn wrote: post #52
VarFarYonder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the guy. It's about what he said. And what he said is highly polarizing.

But anyone can say or write something idiotic and inflammatory (just for the sake of argument, let's assumed that the memo was such), would it have become this huge thing if he didn't work at Google? If not, then why is Google placed on such a pedestal and why do we lionize and in turn pillory Googlers? I think part of the problem is the place Google occupies in the popular imagination. It's sort of this lightning ro…

It sparkled a discussion because it wasn't idiotic. It makes sense and it causes cognitive dissonance among certain parts of the population.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#73

Post by pavlov »

freetime2 wrote: post #51
pavlov wrote: post #33

The real tragedy in the discussion is this assumption, quoted from the OP: "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" Empathy and social intelligence are actively disqualifying factors for a job at Google, or software in general? That is so wrong on so many levels. I really like Bob Wyman's take on this: htt…

I completely agree that communication and people skills are necessary to be a great programmer. But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. Sure there are oth…

...empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations.

When you put it that way, it is a shocking indictment of how little the current educational system actually serves the needs of the software industry.

Most of us work on things that interact with, and affect, real people. Yet engineers are usually hired based on how well they can memorize data structures that they will almost never need in their actual daily work. It's frustrating for the engineers who expected to work on awesome abstract CS problems, and instead have to deal with messy systems that contain messy data that users care about.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#74

Post by kobeya »

shadowmint wrote: post #71
kobeya wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He specifically said 'decreasing the false negative rate', not 'increasing the false positive rate.' That is explicitly worded (he could have been more succinct) to imply that all people hired by Google are good enough to work at Google. He is saying that IF you are already good enough to work at Google, then your odds if you are from a protected minority group are better than if you are not. You are right that peopl…

yeah, ok... but I mean, really, do you care what he said? I mean, do you really care if people misinterpreted it? Is that what is important here? What someone did or didn't mean when they did or didn't say something? I honestly couldn't care less if they were 'wrong' interpretations. I mean, really, honestly, I don't give the slightest damn about this guy or what he says or thinks. Really. I don't know him, I don't c…

Yes it is critically important what he said. He got fired, very publicly, from Google for what he said, or at least an interpretation of what he said. This probably killed his career in tech, if not generally, assuming he doesn't win a wrongful termination settlement. I think it matters a LOT if the reason he got fired was for a hysterical mob justice over a misinterpretation of something he didn't actually say. That is in fact the core issue over outrage -- that someone can get fired over making what is an objectively true mathematical argument. That has chilling effects.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#75

Post by tomp »

imron wrote: post #43
shadowmint wrote: post #11

> 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. I think its fair to say that not everyone shares that view. This is probably the key to controversy in my mind. You could read it that way. However, you can choose to interpret t…

> 'Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate' Imagine you have 100 people applying for 10 positions, and the demographic breakdown of applicants (based on current trends in tech) is 20 women and 80 men. Let's also say that being male or female doesn't give you any special aptitude, and that the aptitude of all candidates regardless of gender…

Your analysis assumes that it's always the best candidate that's hired. Given how much tech companies are afraid of false positives (i.e. hiring candidates that turnout to be bad), I'm not sure that assumption is warranted. It's more likely that there's a bar, and everyone that clears that bar could be hired, and then a (random) sample of those people are.

So in the above example, it's still top 25% of women and men that are hired, it's just that a top-25% woman has a higher chance of being hired (because of "fast-tracking" or other affirmative action policies) than a top-25% man.

Personally I find it hard to believe that the companiesdoing affirmative action manage to do it without lowering the bar, but it's definitely logically and statistically possible.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#76

Post by imartin2k »

hackpert wrote: post #54
maehwasu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example of only examining costs of a hypothesis without examining the benefits. Literally ANY opinion/fact/belief set looks like pure evil if you only examine costs.

The question in this particular case is, what exactly the benefits? The costs are quite clear. An entire generation or more of about half the population feeling demolarized and incapable of doing certain tasks as well as their peers is a pretty huge cost.

There is no reason for feeling that way though, as Julia points out in her text. The memo wasn't about the individual abilities. We are looking here at very intelligent types of persons. Shouldn't they be able to actually grasp the difference (and realize that in fact the conclusions from the memo even do allow for a hypthetical outcome of women as the qualitatively better coders -> i tried to explain this here https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probabili...).

But yes, let's say it's inevitable that many individuals nontheless respond the way you describe, considering that this was how the memo was summarized by most.

It's harder to speculate about the costs as they are less concrete in comparison, however migth be more far-reaching in the grand scheme of things. My suggestions:

- a bunch of people who share the core goals (diversity, equality) are being alienated because they disagree with the means that are being used to get there due to too big collateral damage. This is a problem if it keeps happening frequently, and that's at least my impression. One needs more allies, not less. more consensus, no less.

- a bunch of people are being pushed over the edge towards the right which gets more confirmed in their assumptions.

- general radicalization & division - which brought trump. this division will also cause massive internal trouble within the large tech companies. you don't want to have a crowd there which is terrified to bring up an opposing viewpoint.

- science is being weaponized and loses its trust, as people try to use science to prove, not to disprove ideology. i've had some discussions over the past days that clearly were in the realm of alternative realities. so far i was under the impression that this would not happen among the more educated and "well-rounded" groups of society. this realization actually shocked me, as it suggested to me that really nothing is "safe" from being lost.

- the principle that afaik was in place since the enlightenment, that more knowledge and open debates lead to better societies than the active limitation of knowledge and debates, is being sacrificed.

- to me, it is unclear how a democratic, free society can operate properly when a debate that is mostly about science is discussed mostly on an emotional and ideological level. everyone can see the erosion of the democracy rigth now, yet it seems that too few realize how this is connected to the directions discourse takes nowadays.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#77

Post by puranjay »

maehwasu wrote: post #12

> However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “inco…

I don't get this obsession with negating biology, rather than celebrating it. That men and women are biologically different is a 100% fact. Why do we have to try and make them equal?

The equality doctrines I learned growing up in India always came down to this: celebrate people as individuals. Give them freedom to do what they want and love.

Am I wrong in holding this belief to still be true?

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#78

Post by shadowmint »

kobeya wrote: post #74
shadowmint wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, ok... but I mean, really, do you care what he said? I mean, do you really care if people misinterpreted it? Is that what is important here? What someone did or didn't mean when they did or didn't say something? I honestly couldn't care less if they were 'wrong' interpretations. I mean, really, honestly, I don't give the slightest damn about this guy or what he says or thinks. Really. I don't know him, I don't c…

Yes it is critically important what he said. He got fired, very publicly, from Google for what he said, or at least an interpretation of what he said. This probably killed his career in tech, if not generally, assuming he doesn't win a wrongful termination settlement. I think it matters a LOT if the reason he got fired was for a hysterical mob justice over a misinterpretation of something he didn't actually say. That…

> He got fired, very publicly, from Google for what he said, or at least an interpretation of what he said.

I don't care. I don't know the dude. Lifes tough, people get fired. /shrug.

> That is in fact the core issue over outrage -- that someone can get fired over making what is an objectively true mathematical argument.

Ah... so what you care about it freedom of speech and expression, nothing to do with diversity?

Well, at least I can appreciate your concern on that front; I'm not really that fussed about that issue, because imo he violated their CoC during work hours; he got fired for it. Tough luck dude.

If he'd been persecuted for doing that outside of work hours, I'd have an issue with it, but... fair enough. I can see why you care about exactly what he said in that case.

I think it's important to draw the distinction on what you're getting upset by though; because a lot of people (like me) don't care at all he got fired; but we're upset by the content his memo.

That's an entirely different issue.

Re: Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

#79

Post by izacus »

freetime2 wrote: post #62
santoshalper wrote: post #53

I find the idealism present in this thread both sweet and optimistic, and simultaneously incredibly naive. In a way, it's SV/startup culture in a nutshell. "Anything is possible if we work together and use our brains!".... "Move fast and break things!"... "What could possibly go wrong?" The reality is that we are only a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs requiring intelligence or co…

That seems to me like a pretty length way of saying you agree with option 2: Say “This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it” (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest)

You should read the post again and perhaps use a bit of generosity this time.
Post reply on HN