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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

#721

Post by thomasfromcdnjs »

"As a female engineer, you don’t get to just love coding, or love problem solving and hacking on hardware – you also have to figure out how to navigate men who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don’t consider you an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they assume you don’t have as much expertise as your peers."

Not picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sentiment more. In my entire career I've dealt with co-workers who observably considered me less smart. To the point I barely think it was their innate nature but more so a by product of being a programmer. Too much isolation and brain reward circuitry leads to inflated egos.

I understand that the comment I quoted is speaking of sexist discrimination, but if I re-read it removing female and replacing men with people, it would be a pretty apt description of my life as a developer.

I believe that it would be hard to delineate whether it was discrimination or just work place egos if you weren't from a similar background e.g. minority groups

Sidestory: I'm an Indigenous Australian, plenty of times in my life I have seen family and friends make statements, that I'm sure plenty of you have also seen such as "You are racist" or "That's racist" when clearly to a third party the accuser seems way off the mark.

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

#722

Post by perseusprime11 »

It was basically a bullshit memo from the beginning written to appeal to a certain segment of the population. Google should have used this opportunity to educate the masses on diversity and should have fired him on the basis of hurting Google's brand & reputation and the ability to hire smart people in the future instead of citing code of conduct. Missed opportunity and a rookie mistake on Google's part.

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

#723

Post by goialoq »

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…

> there is something about computer science that leads people to believe they can out-think experts in other fields at their own game.

That's the same stereotyping generalization found in the doc you oppose.

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

#724

Post by sgs1370 »

tracker1 wrote: post #341
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…

Why would this mean anyone already working in the field needs to bring any burden to the table in terms of defending themselves? The subject was centered around the probability that some recruiting assumptions may be wrong, and that there may be better approaches to recruiting or improving the situation in general. Women that work in the field should definitely be respected as much as anyone else. They should be free…

Daisy/Quake - she was great as a hacker, and I'm so sad about that electricity guy who died, but wow, someone who can fly and break bones or collapse buildings, that is not just a brawler, that is objectively more awesome than being a hacker and I'd trade my scripter job for being able to fly in a heartbeat.

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

#725

Post by shaftoe »

I'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I haven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a female repellant.

Look at the work/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry. Compare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture, women disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing.

When there's a work emergency and the kids HAVE to be picked up at daycare, who goes? When a kid is sick, who stays home? When a child is born, who takes several months of leave to care for them?

Consider that many women leave the tech industry or stay away from the all-consuming work culture because they have or will eventually want a family life. It doesn't matter what are people's abilities when they see a job as incompatible and contrary to their life goals.

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

#726

Post by goialoq »

sologoub wrote: post #659
rayiner wrote: post #481

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. I'm a huge proponent of the principle of charity, but I found it impossible to apply to the Google Memo. Not because I'm deeply mired in political correctness (I have a range of views peo…

Here's an actual citation to prove the USSR anecdote as true: http://www.asee.org/public/conferences/20/papers/6985/downlo... > Since the Communist Revolution of 1917 and during the ensuring Soviet times, the role of women in engineering and engineering education was strong with almost 60% of the engineers being women. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian women in these engineering careers has fallen to below…

Right-wing response: The USSR lost because the Communists forced engineering to be ~half women.

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

#727

Post by seanmcdirmid »

thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #721

"As a female engineer, you don’t get to just love coding, or love problem solving and hacking on hardware – you also have to figure out how to navigate men who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don’t consider you an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they assume you don’t have as much expertise as your peers." Not picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sent…

Wasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for both men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work in the industry.

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

#728

Post by goialoq »

013a wrote: post #568
gnicholas wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting point that hasn't attracted much attention is that the author self-identifies as being on the autism spectrum [1]. If this fact were better-known, would accessibility advocates defend his memo — and possibly even attack its detractors for not being sensitive to his neurological differences? 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...

Liberal ideology doesn't have a flowchart path for that one.

Here's the flowchart: If you have a personality behavior disorder, you are entitled to respect as a person, but you aren't entitled to behave poorly at your job. Similarly, if you cannot fulfill the physical requirements of a job due to disability, you are not entitled to that specific job.

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

#729

Post by jhayward »

jdoliner wrote: post #647
jhayward wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most empathetic comment on the memo that I read was that it would have been to everyone's benefit if Damore had showed it to several more experienced engineers and incorporated suggestions. No matter who you are, you can use an editor.

Damore did do exactly this. The memo was only ever released in the context of "I'm looking for feedback on this and open to being proven wrong.

This seems to be a disingenuous take to me.

I don't think you can honestly say publishing it to 10's of thousands of readers constitutes editorial consultation and advice.

Editing and review consists of find a small (one handful) number of trusted friends and mentors whose insight you value, having them read it and make suggestions and comments, perhaps multiple cycles, and only then publish to people you don't know and are hoping to persuade.

It troubles me that this kind of (IMO) disingenuousness shows up again and again in regard to the memo. Not just in this specific comment, but multiple times whenever someone points out a flaw there is always a response of "but he really did do that, you just took it wrong". No, I didn't, and neither did others. He screwed up.

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

#730

Post by dang »

md224 wrote: post #706
dang wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but we didn't do anything different in this case and are as surprised as anyone that the post went to #1 and (better still!) the discussion remained as civil as it has. I don't want people to think that the ycombinator.com domain affects moderation on an article like this, since our first rule is to moderate less, not more, when YC is involved [1]. I emailed Cadran to warn her that the post would probably mee…

Thanks for clarifying and correcting my assumptions. I'm guessing the content of the article in addition to the domain led users to view this as a more productive contribution to the debate. Apologies for assuming that it was HN favoritism on the part of the mods... very interesting that this happened organically. (While I'm replying to you, one super trivial and completely unrelated feature request... if comment for…

Could you email us about this at hn@ycombinator.com so it goes into our todo list? sctb and I just had an idea about how we might fix this and it's been an annoying bug for years.
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