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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

#741

Post by hippich »

potatote wrote: post #169

> For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work. But ability to do those jobs? Can anyone with similar experience comment on this? I am just surprised (if what one of the interviewees said is true) because I'd assume the math/engineering/science are highly regarded in the USSR and both genders would pursue that. Side note: People in…

I am from one of ex-USSR countries and graduated in 2008. I did not see many gals in college in CS/Engineering degrees. They were presented, but in minority. About the same I see females presented in tech companies in engineering departments.

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

#742

Post by SamReidHughes »

jhayward wrote: post #729
jdoliner wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Didn't he publish it on one internal message board, which most people generally don't read? That hardly constitutes 10's of thousands or readers.

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

#743

Post by mehwoot »

Danihan wrote: post #234
dreta wrote: post #151

All i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and others managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there are biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being less interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's sexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity hires. Was i reading the wrong memo? Beca…

Yep, the vast majority of things in this article that the interviewees said they "disagree with" are things the author never said.

talking about how the author said women are less suited to being good engineers

Quote from the memo: "I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ"

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

#744

Post by unityByFreedom »

mundo wrote: post #114
joe_the_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a really inflammatory and totally inappropriate analogy. Downvoters, please cite which part of Damore's essay you think is comparable to overt racism. He explicitly said that he thinks women are capable, and should be hired.

He may actually have referenced race.

He brings up IQ here,

"the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)"

IQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it?

The quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in discussions over racial differences [2].

It begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we replace "IQ" with "race", would that change the meaning he meant to convey?

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...

[2] https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-bla...

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

#745

Post by md224 »

dang wrote: post #730
md224 wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Done!

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

#746

Post by unityByFreedom »

roel_v wrote: post #605
unityByFreedom wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can't, because there isn't evidence that biological differences cause people to choose different careers. Why would put forth a theory that is opposed to a company's values of equality if you don't have proof? Most evidence points to socialized factors, not biological ones. If Damore really cares about this issue, he should study biology and make his case there. He will do more to move the debate forward from…

"Most evidence points to socialized factors, not biological ones." I'm loathe to post in discussions like this because it's so useless, but points like this make me wonder if I'm just living on a different planet. Do you have children? Of different genders? Because literally every parent I know who has both boys and girls has the simple, non-ideologically-biased experience that boys and girls are vastly different, ev…

> Do you have children?

Do you teach your children everything, or send them to school / daycare?

> And from that observation that boys and girls are different, I wouldn't call it a stretch to assume that men and women might not be exactly the same, either

It is a giant leap in logic to conclude that a slight difference in average personality must undermine women's professional abilities in software engineering.

There is no scientific consensus that toy preferences are linked to prenatal testosterone or career choice. Those who say they are linked, such as Damore, are pushing scientism– using undercooked research to back up the status quo.

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

#748

Post by jdoliner »

jhayward wrote: post #729
jdoliner wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I understand it Damore did seek out feedback from smaller groups of people before releasing it company wide but even if he didn't, who cares? It's very common to publish documents to the entire world asking for review. That's what the RFC processed for digital standards is, that's what arXiv does for academics.

You are the one being disingenuous with this inane critique of the specifics of how Damore sought out feedback for his ideas. He really did do that, he really sought out criticism and continues to do so, you didn't take it wrong though... you're just critiquing it in an inane way. If you disagree with his points, then engage with the points. If the way in which it was written is so deeply flawed then it shouldn't be hard to refute them.

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

#749

Post by jdoliner »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #742
jhayward wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Didn't he publish it on one internal message board, which most people generally don't read? That hardly constitutes 10's of thousands or readers.

To wit, basically no one did read it, or at least no one responded to it. Until it was leaked to the media and became the media storm we're now witnessing.

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

#750

Post by urahara »

cookiecaper wrote: post #521
michaelchisari wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't understand why this means that Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion. We absolutely should not construct a credentialist edifice that says only people certified to have gone through brainwa---err, regent-approved programs--- can comment on a topic. That would prevent discussion on most topics, as virtually all topics of interest are complex and have many years of study behind them. Overall, these comments…

Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion (the way he did) because there is a huge gap between what he claims to aim for and what he actually does. He claims that open discussion, diversity and helping to improve the situation are what important to him. But in practice he does right the opposite: creates a hostile working environment with perverted reasoning, loads of bias perpetuating harmful stereotypes, ignoring how his tone will affect others and pretty agressive promotion of these views instead of politely sharing a well thought out intellectually honest opinion. Given the sensitivity of topic he tries to discuss, 'how' is an extremely important part of 'what', still he manages to twist his declared 'what' to the 180 degree with his 'how'. It seems that he was fired exactly for showing strong intention to continue the promotion of his highly biased opinions while completely ignoring what it actually does to people around him. Disproving the memo wouldn't help to stop it if this was the case.
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