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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

#621

Post by bb611 »

zygga wrote: post #397
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…

>both the left, the feminist movement, and the right fanned the flame against male teachers I find it hard to believe that this would be generally true. Source? Edit: obviously you're always going to have some twats doing things like that, but that's true for everything. I'm looking for evidence that it's more than average here.

I second the request. I spent several years as a K-5 teacher, I didn't perceive this dynamic at all. All US teachers are rightfully extremely wary of being alone with any child, and from what I've seen that is a concern for teachers of all genders.

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

#622

Post by dang »

ryanx435 wrote: post #579
azernik wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feminist movement as a whole is very much against gendered norms about who should and shouldn't be a kindergarten teacher. Which feminist movements did you see fanning these particular flames?

3rd wave, whose actions betray their true goals: men as second class citizens.

Please keep ideological talking points off HN. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.

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

#623

Post by bduerst »

nsnick wrote: post #613
bduerst wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adversarial debate is worse than discussion for reasons that these interviewees said: >The discussion around this has followed the trajectory of most of the polarizing mass discussion in the last few years; everyone comes out the other side with their opinions more calcified than ever, and more convinced than before of the intractability of the other side. Damore wasn't walking into this ready to discuss and/or learn…

What you have posted is a claim. It needs a warrant.

I've reiterated what the person said in the article. If your burden of proof is word semantics, then do I really need to elaborate to you more on the definitions of debate vs discussion?

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

#624

Post by FabHK »

redthrowaway wrote: post #379
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…

>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. Yes, but that's simply how statistics work. If you require one group of people to score 90 on some test in order to be hired, and another group to score 80, then among success…

> If you require one group of people to score 90 on some test in order to be hired, and another group to score 80, then among successful applicants the second group will have lower average scores than the first.

That's not necessarily so; you could require mice to be heavier than 90 grams, and elephants to be heavier than 80 grams, and still have your elephants be heavier on average.

(I don't want to wade into the bigger argument, just pointing out that "that's simply how statistics work" only under certain conditions (which most likely apply here, but you wrote "there's no getting around that" when there is)).

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

#625

Post by corndoge » 

  Frances: ...if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement.
  I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.
And then

  Frances: ...I’m also disappointed that the men I know,
  including most of my male colleagues, remained silent
  on the topic.

  Frances: ...Many powerful men in Silicon Valley have
  huge bases of social media followers. By remaining
  silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore,
  they are sending a message that philosophical arguments
  and principles take precedence over the lived
  experiences of many smart, talented female engineers
  and technical founders.
So, what? Is it just impossible to stay out of the issue if my silence is sending a message that philosophical principles and whatever matter more than women in technology? What if I just want to work my 9-5, treat all my coworkers well regardless of sex or gender, and let the PC warriors duke it out in the streets away from me? Can't even stay silent without sending a message.

While I agree with much of what is said in this piece, I find this pretty demonstrative of the "damned if i do, damned if I don't" situation I'm in as a male trying to survive in this PC crucifixion culture.

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

#626

Post by joveian »

pj_mukh wrote: post #230
jdoliner wrote: post #149

> He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills. This to me is the most…

He specifically mentions in an interview that minority interviewees get assigned to a second interviewer if one interviewer doesn't like them in the first round. He saw this as a 'second chance' when the committee might just be controlling for interviewer biases. Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion.

It is an attempt to get past the type of issues that Dan Luu wrote about almost three years ago[0], where he referred someone to Google as one of the most impressive engineers he ever met in any field and that person didn't get past the phone screening as "not technical enough".

[0] https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/

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

#627

Post by AnimalMuppet »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #593
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…

> I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to. You hit the nail on the head, and it isn't limited to this memo. We have a serious intolerance problem in this country that goes far beyond Nazis and racists. Over the last 25 years our culture has warped to the point where opposing viewpoints are considered by many to be offensive…

I blame postmodernism. Really. Postmodernism says that all discourse is about power, not truth. People are starting to act consistently with what they've been taught.

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

#628

Post by Houshalter »

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…

Why would women need to "defend themselves"? He wasn't attacking them. The entire point of it was, that for whatever reason, women are statistically less likely to be interested in computer science. He never said anything about their ability.

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

#629

Post by dang »

chippy wrote: post #158
TACIXAT wrote: post #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.

Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance. Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves wh…

> That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance

I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post.

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

#630

Post by jorgemf »

reitanqild wrote: post #544
jorgemf wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The physical is different from the mental. Why? Can you probe it? Most researchers I read says the opposite.

Not sure what you mean here? Women and men are different: agree. Physical is different than mental: yes Example of a sport that takes really strong mental skills and where women compete alongside men: competitive shooting.

> Physical is different than mental: yes

If you say that there is no relation between our biological features (like genes or hormones) and our mental capabilities, I have to disagree completely. And I want someone to support that affirmation with facts and research studies. As far as I know there are a lot of mental illness treated with chemicals and hormones and a lot of studies that link malformations in genes with mental capabilities. There are also philosophical studies that link the mind to the body and that claim that there cannot be intelligence without embodiment. So all this things and other papers lead me to think that biological traits are linked to mental skills.

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