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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

#551

Post by benchaney »

Blackthorn wrote: post #156
nicolashahn wrote: post #124

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). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been writ…

> 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…

> This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.

You can't have it both ways. If you don't want to get involved in the argument, you don't have to, but getting involved and then doing any of the things GP is decrying is actively toxic.

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

#552

Post by dguaraglia »

nicolashahn wrote: post #62
tedivm wrote: 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…

But Damore didn't do anything to make women think they were hired only because of diversity initiatives. It's common knowledge that Google makes an effort to hire more women. That was already the case, and Damore merely brought attention to the negative aspects of it.

There's a huge difference between increasing outreach and lowering the hiring bar. One shields more candidates, the other one increases the chances of hiring someone from the same pool of candidates. The reason why Google (and many other companies) are increasing outreach is because they want to maintain a high-quality of engineers, otherwise they'd just open the floodgate and let everyone in and solve their diversity problem once and for all.

Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them.

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

#553

Post by cfelix »

jquery wrote: post #288
evolve2017 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By that logic, any criticism of hiring methods means you view the current crop of employees as inferior. Is saying "we need more diversity" code for "white men are inferior"? You might be on to something.

Not exactly, preferring a diverse group over a homogeneous one doesn't mean that the individuals of the homogeneous group are inferior.

If the goal is to have a diverse group then a group composed only of women isn't ideal either. Diversity is not about raising or lowering the bar.

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

#554

Post by mejari »

humanrebar wrote: post #298
jake-low wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed in TFA. > [W]hen I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of de…

> [W]hen I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Sure. But people on the wrong side of the Google monoculture feel like they have to be closeted at work. They don't want to feel that way either. There has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest here.

>There has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest here.

I agree, but just because there has to be a way for everyone to be professional and honest, that doesn't mean that what Damore did was professional and honest.

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

#555

Post by therebedragons »

tlogan wrote: post #421
evolve2017 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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

Strange how you directly quote parts that don't mention the lowering of the bar, then suddenly paraphrase the lowering the bar part, and put quotes around a non-quote. This is the sort of intellectual run around that is really common.

I searched the doc, and Damore uses this word "bar" exactly once (if the search function can be believed - lowering zero):

> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

And this links (via the text "effectively lower the bar for") to an internal Google chat I can't see.

So ten pages, and lower(ing) the bar is mentioned once, in which he links to some discussion which I assume is relevant to the quote. How can anyone know what that quote means with out reading the internal google chat? For all I know, it links to an chat discussing false negatives in hiring, because I find that whole sentence confusing - how is decreasing false negatives bad? Is he saying they only use practices which reduce false negatives on diversity hires and not other hires? That would actually be really interesting - Google conducting different interviews based on "diversity" and finding they get better candidates as a result would be weird not to replicate.

In any case, that internal chat must clear up at least part of that context, and I can't read it so I have no context for this single line. Given this was an internal memo, however, the author gave its intended audience full access to the context, so even then, I can't see how this can be used as a sweeping statement by those externally of much of anything.

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

#556

Post by sidlls »

jorgemf wrote: post #368
sidlls wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Applied science incorrectly to confirm a bias or advance an opinion incorrectly" and "applied science to form an opinion" are different things. Damore did the former.

He wrote the article as a research article. So every time he put an statement he referenced it with a research article which supports that statement. I don't understand why this is wrong. All research papers are written this way.

What? Research papers tend to also present data and research that arrive at different conclusions when such things exist, or show how the existing body of knowledge is deficient in some way. Usually the point is either accounting for the difference or showing how the authors' research refutes, modifies, or augments the body of knowledge as it stands. Damore didn't present a research paper. He presented an accusation of left-bias and poorly argued his case.

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

#557

Post by baitbiter »

mathw wrote: post #438
mpweiher wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the cultural pressure on girls throughout childhood to be princesses, like pink things and cooking and babies and ponies, while boys are supposed to like computers and engineering and guns. We're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while the men go out and earn the money.

This nonsense is being propagated by idiots. Nobody is now forcing dolls on girls and guns on boys. The aggression in men is built by evolution. Again, we only talk in averages. There are idiots again who point to aggressive females to try to make me sound sexist.

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

#558

Post by dang »

DalaiObama wrote: post #459

So if you argue against Google's diversity policies, you're fine as long as you write on par with one of the greatest writers of his generation¹. If you argue for it, you can get away with any angry incoherent rant. Isn't this what leftists call "privilege"? ¹ Scott Alexander

You appear to be using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it, so would you please not?

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772 and marked it off-topic.

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

#559

Post by jdoliner »

pj_mukh wrote: post #523
jdoliner wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion. Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind. I'd ask a few questions about this interview practice though. 1) Is this the entirety of Google's diversity practices in hiring? I'd be surprised if it is. So even if this isn't lowering the bar…

"Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind." So let us extend him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't extend the hiring committee? How about we extend the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved, which would result in him never writing this memo and second guessing the hiring process. The rest of your points seem to be just a whole lot of speculation, which…

We're not extending Damore any benefits by not speculating about his state of mind. We're just avoiding discussing a topic about which we can't hope to learn the truth and which isn't necessary to understand whether or not Google's hiring processes do indeed lower the bar.

My "points" are indeed speculative, that's why they were presented as questions. I don't know the truth and it's impossible for us to talk non-speculatively about Google's hiring process because we simply don't have that information.

The original memo (not article, this distinction matters) did indeed cite a great deal of evidence, you may or may not consider it conclusive, I found it quite compelling. But I think it's important to remember that the memo itself was a request for clarification, posted to an internal message board for skeptics in the hopes that somebody would be able to tell him why he's wrong.

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

#560

Post by moduspol »

cbanek wrote: post #499
moduspol wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bar for all candidates at a non-Google company: Pass your first interview. The bar for white male candidates at Google: Pass your first interview. The bar for minority candidates at Google: Pass your first or second interview. Of course it lowers the bar for hiring. Maybe it's justified, but it's certainly not raising it. It's not keeping it the same. Maybe it's still tougher to get hired as a minority candidate…

Google seems to track which candidates, even if you're white and male, have done well enough in the interview process where they think it's a false negative, and give you another interview after 12 months. It's not just minority hires that interview more than once at Google, so there's no bar lowering. There's just trying again, and everyone can try again. So really it's what you'd expect: The bar for all candidates…

Just some candidates get more attempts at that bar than others, systematically, as a result of explicit policy ensuring that’s the case.

You can call it justified, leveling the playing field, or whatever else, but it’s still lowering the bar to getting hired.

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