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I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

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Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#411

Post by peterwwillis »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #405
peterwwillis wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only biological causation here is that people with penises oppress those without. You can't explain human behavior purely in biological terms because they aren't biological systems, they're social.

If your contention is true here doesn't it refute the forget argument entirely? If only males (the ones with penises) subjugate others then there must be strong sex related differences in people, no. On the other hand of it was just as hominem ...

I was being facetious in my first sentence. Obviously, there is no strong biological discriminator when it comes to oppression. There is a historic precedent for something like that, but no evidence that it's strictly due to biology.

Look at any single factor or category of factors you want, and it never applies to all groups of humans. And this is because it's a social dynamic, and so it changes between social groups. Focusing on biology is bikesheddding.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#412

Post by KirinDave »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #382
KirinDave wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you spend your days working arbitrary logic puzzles in a gross language like Python? I know I'd have never gotten into this field. It's so easy to say, "Gosh this confirms our stereotypes!" But even if there are inherently measureable and statistically significant differences that doesn't really translate to "women are worse at programming and math."

Honestly, I would prefer if my days were spent doing logic puzzles. Most of it is doing tedious uninteresting coding tasks, i.e. code that takes no insight nor provides any intellectual stimulation. But the logic puzzles are what initially drew me in. The "sexy" stuff in software engineering is built on a boat load of unsexy behind the scenes. It's easy to be mislead. >But even if there are inherently measureable and…

> True, but the critical point is that programming is very hard and if you're not the type that's naturally drawn to logic puzzles

Here I am, not that type until my late 30s. I've been programming or trying to since I was 5ish. And most folks who talk to, work with, or have worked for me regard my technical skills quite highly.

If all you want is an endless stream of puzzles with no responsibility or connection to reality, be a professional video gamer. The Minecraft folks, for example.

I tried it for awhile, but I find the life of video gaming without any real responsibility pretty empty.

> I'm just not sure I see the value in trying to engineer interest at such a young age if it doesn't come naturally.

Logic puzzles in a language founded on principle of anti-intellectualism is not software engineering.

Maybe if they made things of issuing tests that's a better idea.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#413

Post by lazy_throwaway1 »

I overheard a discussion between my HRG and department head, the discussion was about hiring temporary replacements for female employees who were on maternity leave, the HRG told that approval had to come from the country head and it will take almost 3 months because of a hiring freeze, and each case has to be dealt individually, the HOD was worried at this and said this sort of rules will hurt female hiring, the HRG was schocked to hear those words and remainded him that, all his reportees including him has an appraisal goal for diversity and he doesn't have an option

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#414

Post by canoebuilder »

nodamage wrote: post #401
canoebuilder wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key point of the Damore memo that many would do well to understand, it does not logically follow to say, "I've identified this "gap," therefore this "gap" is bad and it is caused by the big bad mean oppressive bullies, group X." So, is the identified "gap" really that bad? No, not really, not much reason to think it's bad at all in many cases. Second, and most importantly, not only is the purported cause of big b…

> it does not logically follow to say, "I've identified this "gap," therefore this "gap" is bad and it is caused by the big bad mean oppressive bullies, group X. This is a misrepresentation of the opposing viewpoint. No, the mere existence of a gender gap in an industry is not ipso facto evidence of sexism in that industry. After all, gender ratios in different industries vary widely, some industries have a higher ra…

female participation in the tech industry grew until the mid 80s where it peaked and has been going downhill ever since

I'm fairly certain that the aggregation of jobs described as "tech industry" in this statistic are a rather different collection of jobs pre-mid 80s and post-mid 80s. Not necessarily because of people massaging a statistic(but many people no doubt would be happy to overlook the previous supposition in making a case,) but because the nature of most jobs in computing has changed with the advent of personal computers. In the punch card era many "tech jobs" were more secretarial/office management/accountancy roles, nowadays with the explosion of computing devices there are many more software development and hardware engineering roles.

Engineering, broadly speaking can be seen as a "tech job," was there ever a time that the various fields of engineering weren't male heavy?

With that said, if you look at the tech industry

What about other industries with even more skewed sex ratios but fewer or no high-profile articles about sexual harassment, what's the cause in those industries?

the constant stream of reports of sexual harassment and sexist treatment from women that actually work in the industry is a pretty big clue that this industry, maybe, just maybe, has a problem with the way it treats women

Has anyone put to an analysis that these sort of events occur more frequently in the tech industry, rather than the tech industry is high profile and thus these events get more attention?

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#415

Post by sololipsist »

JimboOmega wrote: post #344
sololipsist wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it has value on it's own (which I'm not convinced of in coding). It doesn't matter. Meritocratic hiring has value on its own. The best person getting the job has value on its own. Not including OR discluding someone from a job based on their skin color or genitals has value on its own. Insisting that having people with different skin color program a piece of software makes that software better is one t…

Well, right, but there are biases that are hard to account for; and saying "I know I am probably biased, so I will act on the margins to try to correct that" is in no way irresponsible. Choosing the best team for the job is always the goal. And once again, the hard work isn't just the interviewing - it's managing the ongoing workplace environment, day to day.

> Saying "I know I am probably biased, so I will act on the margins to try to correct that" is in no way irresponsible.

Whether this is true depends on your methods of correction. That's what this whole conversation is about. If you don't KNOW you are biased (you don't), but suspect you are, and further, if you are, but don't know the extent to which you are biased or what the outcome would have been if you weren't biased (you don't; shit, the outcome may have even been the same), adding explicit discrimination that you do know is happening is stupid, unethical, and unjust.

Now, if you solution is instead to, say, "I'll do blind resume reviews, score candidates based on those, then do separate scores based on interviews, and compare them after a few dozen hires. If I see a significant and meaningful drop in acceptance rates for ANY group moving from blind resume reviews to in-person interviews, I'll do further review to see if there is good reason to believe the cause is, in fact, discrimination, rather than some benign issue like candidates of specific groups being legitimately worse at things that only come out in interviews. Then, if I don't find clear evidence of non-benign cause, I won't change anything, but if I do, I will attack those specific causes - even if we happen to find that it's actually white men that are being discriminated against, however unintuitive that is." then you'd be fine.

The response to the suspicion of injustice is key, here. Simply assuming your suspicions are correct and attacking perceived symptoms by doing exactly what you're trying to prevent, while qualifying as "trying to correct that," is not okay.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#416

Post by Powerofmene »

msla wrote: post #242
Frondo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to push back on the critique of shaming. It's literally the only consequence groups without any (economic/political) power have. It bears no force of law. It creates no consequence directly except for a little discomfort on the part of the recipient. Tell historically disadvantaged communities--the ones with decades or centuries of societal biases working against them--they can't shame people they think are…

Shaming by some groups is a badge of honor: If I'm hated by a certain unpopular political group, that's a real point in my favor in some regions. It's credibility you can't buy. And it doesn't matter if the group which hates me is powerful, as long as they're hated in turn by the people I want credibility with. The only way shaming hurts me is if the group doing the shaming is powerful among people I care about. Thus…

This goes back to that old adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#417

Post by urahara »

RealityNow wrote: post #268

Great article. Sad that if this article had been written by a man, it would not be getting any attention and the comments would be calling the author "sexist". Here are my 2 cents as a male (thus my opinion on the issue automatically doesn't carry any weight to most of you). Women chose to pursue tech less than men (just look at any open source project), and this starts way before college. I took CS in high school -…

You're completely missing one of the main points of the whole gender discrimination discourse: that there are strong social influences that prevent women from going to tech long before your 'before college', as well as during college and after college. There are many turning points at which girls are influenced the way that discourages them from tech instead of helping them to develop interest in it. So yes, discrimination is definitely the reason why women are underrepresented in tech, even if there would not be 50/50 women/men ratio without discrimination. You can claim discrimination if the environment subtly discourages you with constantly signalling that you shouldn't pursue a certain path. And yes, men who'd like to pursue 'non-male' careers also often choose not to because of the social pressure. And no, the diversity debate doesn't 'get too much attention'. It gets significantly less attention than it should, given the scale of this problem and devastating effects the lack of diversity has on societies, working environments, women, men, children - basically, any social group.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#418

Post by urahara »

ksec wrote: post #386

My Biggest grasp with the whole thing, ( If you think this is a well done post ), is that Intelligent and Wise have little correlation. It takes a person with GRE 800 to figure all this blatantly obvious answer. Now before you downvote me, it is also obvious this diversity topic is especially a problem in Silicon Valley ( Because most people in Silicon Valley are Liberal ? ) and mostly in US. We dont see this being b…

Not sure about Canada and Europe, but many countries just didn't reach the level of development where this discussion can start. They are not grown up and are stuck on the lower level, having problems like absence of basic human rights and protections.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#419

Post by [deleted] »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #406
smokeyj wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we have a straight white male telling a woman she's wrong about her experience. I don't subscribe to identity politics, but if you do - there's a fishy smell here. Of course the logical thing is to evaluate all ideas for their merit. But that's not what we're doing here.

Can't we address it like "here's a person telling a person they're wrong about the inferences they're making based on their reported experiences" and attack anything substantive rather than getting hung up on the sex of each person? I thought that was what we were trying to do here.

[deleted]

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#420

Post by nodamage »

canoebuilder wrote: post #414
nodamage wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does not logically follow to say, "I've identified this "gap," therefore this "gap" is bad and it is caused by the big bad mean oppressive bullies, group X. This is a misrepresentation of the opposing viewpoint. No, the mere existence of a gender gap in an industry is not ipso facto evidence of sexism in that industry. After all, gender ratios in different industries vary widely, some industries have a higher ra…

female participation in the tech industry grew until the mid 80s where it peaked and has been going downhill ever since I'm fairly certain that the aggregation of jobs described as "tech industry" in this statistic are a rather different collection of jobs pre-mid 80s and post-mid 80s. Not necessarily because of people massaging a statistic(but many people no doubt would be happy to overlook the previous supposition…

> I'm fairly certain that the aggregation of jobs described as "tech industry" in this statistic are a rather different collection of jobs pre-mid 80s and post-mid 80s. Not necessarily because of people massaging a statistic(but many people no doubt would be happy to overlook the previous supposition in making a case,) but because the nature of most jobs in computing has changed with the advent of personal computers. In the punch card era many "tech jobs" were more secretarial/office management/accountancy roles, nowadays with the explosion of computing devices there are many more software development and hardware engineering roles.

That's an interesting supposition but I'm not necessarily sure it's true. If you consider the number of women graduating with computer science degrees between then and now[1], the trend is the still there: growth until the mid 80s and then reversal. If the trend were merely explained by the fact that tech jobs have transitioned from "secretarial" jobs to engineering roles, why is it also present in the ratio of women studying actual computer science in college?

> What about other industries with even more skewed sex ratios but fewer or no high-profile articles about sexual harassment, what's the cause in those industries?

Since my point is that the gender ratio itself is a red herring, I'm not sure what the purpose would be in speculating about its cause in other industries.

> Has anyone put to an analysis that these sort of events occur more frequently in the tech industry, rather than the tech industry is high profile and thus these events get more attention?

That's your argument? That the level of sexual harassment in the tech industry is at a "normal" level relative to other industries and is simply over-reported?

It sounds like you're bending over backwards trying to justify the status quo here. But okay, for the sake of argument, let's assume it is simply over-reported. Does that make it any less problematic? Should we simply accept the situation as "well, that's just the way things are", instead of actively trying to improve it?

[1] https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tab33.pdf

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