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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

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Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#91
post #26
post #6

I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm. He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I t…

Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article- > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? Th…

When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?

Isn't this an argument against any form of different hiring practices based on race/gender? Even if distributions of abilities are equal in nature, if a college has a lower bar based on gender, then abilities won't be equal among graduates of that college. Conversely, even if abilities are on average different, if a college has the same bar and same standards based on gender, then you won't have to question if a graduate really deserved to have that credential.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#92
post #34
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gender is a semantic concept. Biology (and sex) is not. So no, there isn't a biological basis for this, because gender isn't biological.

It's not as simple as that. The word 'gender' has a history of being used for biology - think of every form you've ever filled out. The OED [1] says: > Either of the two sexes (male and female) before following up with: > especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. And also notes: > The sense denoting biological sex has also been used since the 14th centur…

Webster's define (the relevant meaning of) gender, as:

"b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex

(...)

Origin: Middle English gendre, from Anglo-French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender — more at kin. First use: 14th century"

So it would seem gender has started out as a term that groups "indivuduals that are of a kind" - not necessarily based on (biological) appearance, but just as much on behaviour/social grouping.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#93
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He stated on Tucker Carlson that he has based his argument on what he referred to as scientific consensus. I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.

> I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said. Perhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did you feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence: > He stated on .... Thanks!

> why did you feel the need to emphasize this

Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0] It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference for "people" jobs vs "things" jobs.[1]

[0] https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucke...

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#94
post #21

Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even…

I'd actually say just the opposite - the memo seemed to be written as well and in as conciliatory manner as it could be written and the memo made good (or at least plausible) point and bad points. But the bad points were so bad that it was appropriate and necessary to fire Damore. Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast thr…

The memo makes a whole case against "the Left" (capitalization from the memo) and how "leftists" are violent. That doesn't sound like "conciliatory manner" to me, especially considering he makes a blanket statement about Google "leaning left."

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#95
>Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that’s where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to complement it).

This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#97
post #21

Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even…

[deleted]

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#98
post #21

Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even…

I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong". I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after,…

It was apparently a live-document (like etherpad) and the intention was get feedback directly in-line if I understood correctly. Not an unusual way of doing things for an engineer.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#99
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article- > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? Th…

When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? Isn't this an argument against any form of different hiring practices based on race/gender? Even if distributions of abilities are equal in nature, if a college has a lower bar based on gender, then abilities won't be…

Google's stance, as stated in the article, is that they divert more energy in to finding minority candidates. That's not the same as a lower bar. Abilities are expected to be distributed equally still.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#100
As for the memo itself, I think it's a bit of a Rorschach blot: people are seeing what they want to see in it, largely because the writing is so poor that the author fails completely to get his own points across in a coherent manner.

The conversation about "women in tech" is severely hamstrung by folks conflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two very different problems requiring two very different conversations.

Lastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic to be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially pointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up focusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men, hispanic men, etc.

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