Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by tlogan » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

evolve2017 wrote: post #240

rpiguy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore never said that women were worse engineers or that biology makes them worse engineers. There was no implied inferiority. It is largely the PC crowd who read implied-inferiority into any study of biological differences between male and female. If you look carefully at some of the comments from female Googlers after the memo was leaked, they talk about fears of being perceived as less capable based on their biol…

I think this has been talked about multiple times over - Damore did not have a line that states that women and/or minorities are bad engineers. He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities. I think it's awfully charitable not to infer that he considers the women/minorities at Google (on average) to be inferior engineers. Still, it's true that he never s…

Here is the key part:

> Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace

> differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole

> story. On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways ..

And then he talks about "Google lowering the bar".

I'm not sure how can I parse part "... but it's far from the whole story" with "Google lowering the bar".

I'm not racist, but...

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

#422

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

evolve2017 wrote: post #240

rpiguy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore never said that women were worse engineers or that biology makes them worse engineers. There was no implied inferiority. It is largely the PC crowd who read implied-inferiority into any study of biological differences between male and female. If you look carefully at some of the comments from female Googlers after the memo was leaked, they talk about fears of being perceived as less capable based on their biol…

I think this has been talked about multiple times over - Damore did not have a line that states that women and/or minorities are bad engineers. He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities. I think it's awfully charitable not to infer that he considers the women/minorities at Google (on average) to be inferior engineers. Still, it's true that he never s…

[deleted]

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

#423

Post by mmirate » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

SandersAK wrote: post #65

mmirate wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "success" isn't about being an individual that becomes rich Independent of the rest of your comment: the quoted concept is trivially false as long as resources are scarce. (i.e. the foreseeable future; barring severe, draconian and arguably-unethical controls on population size) ("Powerful" being an additional non-redundant qualifier, is merely a consequence of the monopoly called "government".)

Resources aren't actually that scarce and haven't been for quite a while. The Breadbasket of America can feed everyone. Population growth isn't really a scarcity problem, it's an organizational and structural one. Unless you think we're at max efficiency!

Food is one resource. Energy and topsoil are others, needed for food production. Thanks to (U.S.) government subsidies for farming, farmers can purchase those resources unusually easily; some argue that this will lead to faster depletion of those resources since farmers aren't under sufficient economic incentive to conserve them.

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

#424

Post by Artistry121 » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

michaelchisari wrote: post #214

aaron-lebo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness. You are completely right, but on the other hand if you are going to invoke "science" and you present your writing as scientific (he did), you have a higher bar. If you fail to be objective…

It seems to be completely lost on a lot of HN people that Damore's memo was not very scientific at all for the subject matter he was tackling. It was written in a certain intellectual language that often provides a veneer of authority for those who agree with his conclusions and lack the domain knowledge to understand the nuances of why he's wrong. But a lot of these "bio-truth" type of arguments do the same thing. G…

>>All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective.

I don't think this squares with truth. There is at least one PH.D psychologist who mentioned the memo was generally correct.

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

#425

Post by trophycase » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #295

baitbiter wrote: post #135

Even more harm is done by Affirmative Action for women now being implemented in all companies. Feminism has given up on the aspect of competing and turned to shaming all men. There are several professions where women dominate with > 80%. Where's all this fucking outrage in those?

Considering women make up >50% of college graduates, for every profession that has more men there are more profession that have more women (or a greater imbalance). How about: People are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices and don't second guess them.

That doesn't account for choice of degree.

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

#426

Post by dguaraglia » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:34 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #321

Blackthorn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on w…

What burden are you talking about exactly? You (along with many others) seem to be conflating the major point of the memo between interests and abilities . Not liking something does not mean you're not capable of doing it.

Would you rather hire someone that likes what they do or someone who doesn't?

Would you intuitively think that someone who loves their job are going to be more interested in bigger challenges and doing great work, or someone who doesn't care for the job?

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

#427

Post by lliamander » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

poohblahoyamo wrote: post #400

belorn wrote: post #242

A common criticism by each four of the female engineers is how the memo effected them in their job and how they had to prove themselves afterward. This strongly reminds me of about a case a year ago when a kindergarten teacher was tried and charged for rape against several children. After a lot of media attention, many male teachers all over the nation reported to constantly having prove to parents and fellow female…

I desperately want make male childcare workers for my children. I honestly could careless about women in tech. Installing a more even view of gender on our kids will prob do a lot more good for women in tech in the long term than any amount of screaming now.

I've known of at least one child care/early education facility that employee fairly equal numbers. It's interesting how some kids (male and female) just respond better to men.

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

#428

Post by richmarr » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

nicolashahn wrote: post #253

Blackthorn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on w…

I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so. I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, b…

> You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them

You can, and some people have, and that's okay. It's not clear whether you're making the implication here, but commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate.

> I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way

Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty".

Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering. He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty.

Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse. This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias.

Further, Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification, let alone evidence. That's either more confirmation bias or conscious sleight-of-hand, either way, it's certainly not intellectual honesty.

I don't bear Damore any ill will, he should be forgiven, but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias. These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.

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

#429

Post by curun1r » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

evolve2017 wrote: post #240

rpiguy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore never said that women were worse engineers or that biology makes them worse engineers. There was no implied inferiority. It is largely the PC crowd who read implied-inferiority into any study of biological differences between male and female. If you look carefully at some of the comments from female Googlers after the memo was leaked, they talk about fears of being perceived as less capable based on their biol…

I think this has been talked about multiple times over - Damore did not have a line that states that women and/or minorities are bad engineers. He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities. I think it's awfully charitable not to infer that he considers the women/minorities at Google (on average) to be inferior engineers. Still, it's true that he never s…

> He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities.

He basically said the opposite, but people have been so interested in triggering off the 'lowered the bar' phrasing to show their outrage that they're (seemingly willfully) ignoring the rest of the sentence which completely changed the meaning.

But 'by lowering false negatives' is hugely important. Google's hiring process has a lot of false negatives. These are qualified engineers who weren't hired that could have been successful at Google. This allows for 'lowering the bar' without sacrificing quality by not subjecting minority/female candidates to the more arbitrary/capricious stages of the Google hiring process that eliminate so many otherwise-qualified candidates.

Imagine if one of the ways that we chose to address diversity in the tech workplace was to exempt qualified female/minority H1-B candidates from the lottery and automatically approve their visas? It wouldn't make them any less qualified, since they could've gotten their visa through the normal lottery process. But it would 'lower the bar' by making it significantly more likely that they'd get visas. The post-interview stages of Google's hiring process are similar in their often-arbitrary selecting of who gets through.

It's also, on Google's part, a smart move to address their PR concerns. It allows them to increase female/minority hiring, thereby satisfying public calls for more diversity, without sacrificing quality. All they have to do is look into their process at where qualified diversity candidates are getting rejected and stop doing that. It's a luxury that other companies with fewer surplus potential hires don't have when trying to improve the diversity of their workforce. But possibly more importantly, it's not helping to improve the diversity of the industry as a whole, it only helps to make Google's stats look better. Google's standards for engineers mean that their false negatives can usually get jobs elsewhere without much difficulty. By taking this approach to diversity hiring, they're just shifting their own workforce demographics without helping the industry as a whole do the same.

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

#430

Post by gavanwoolery » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

dguaraglia wrote: post #254

gavanwoolery wrote: post #152

Interesting thoughts - I think the biggest misunderstanding thus far involves generalizations. You can accurately make generalizations about a group of people, without implying that a given individual necessarily falls under that generalization. For example you could say "80 percent of males are into action movies" - but you should not go up to an individual male and state "you are into action movies" if you care abo…

I'll just refer to the women in the article: > Assuming that it’s true that women on average are more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job performance?

Statistics are statistics and I do not believe they should be censored on behalf of being unpalatable. That said, its how we interpret statistics that really matters. Like in my examples, a generalization is just that - a generalization, and thus not necessarily applicable to a given individual. To answer the question, a woman's (or man's) work should speak for itself. If they are a good worker and still facing scrutiny, then I would reexamine if the boss or manager questioning them is competent.