Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

First off, sorry if it seems a bit incoherent, on a mobile so hard to keep an overview.

While it has (at least vocally) gotten a lot of backlash, the memo did give me an opportunity to have a deep conversation about both it, and sexism in general, not just in tech and not just towards one gender, with a female friend of mine that I study with.

We came into a lot of what annoys us both about the way the topic is treated in PC culture, and also gave us a bit of a better understanding of what types of things both gender face in society as a whole. Quite enjoyable conversation, but honestly you can do with someone you trust. So at least in that regard the memo “worked” for us.

One thing in the OP that stuck with me was

> 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?

Which in my opinion is what happens when you go about “fixing” the gender disparity by such metrics as hiring. I really liked the suggestion to measure retention, how long they stayed and how happy they were, instead of some artificial quota for which you stop thinking after checking that box off. I really think we need to re-evaluate what works, and I hope at least the ongoing discussions bring us a little bit closer to that.

> We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.

So we shouldn't discuss the policies in place at our workplace... At our workplace?

Where on earth do propose we do discuss such changes then?

Can't we just agree on that generalizing people in general is a pretty bad idea? Better to give equal opportunity, which in my opinion doesn't mean that you give anyone more attention because of physical factors like what sex a person have.

I am principally against using any form of discrimination even if the reason is to fight discrimination. Having for example courses only for women, hiring women only because there is a disparity is bad idea.

I honestly think if we just treated everyone with the same respect that we want to be treated ourselves a lot of these issues would disappear.

Maybe there will still be a lack of a specific sex in some jobs but honestly, who cares? I certainly do not and do not believe in the notion that a company is more successful because of a more mixed environment. I think the competence of each employee and their worldview and view towards another is way more important.

As I've written many times before, please just treat everyone the same.

The very first answers about what they disagree with starts with

> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs.

If you look at just about any sport, there is a big difference between men and women. And that's not just for really physically intensive sports such as athletics. Even in chess, only 2 of the top 100 are women.

Please note that this is a comment on a specific remark, and is not meant to make it seem as though that invalidates the rest of the text - I’m mainly interested in the subconscious reason why things are the way they are.

> I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages they’ve had

I think the reason many take annoyance with this particular opinion (at least I do), that men had it easy, is rooted in how “nerds” were viewed growing up, and how that has changed over time with public known successes such as Zuckerburg or Musk.

I’m only 24, and even I remember growing up with being interested in programming in no way being an attractive thing to be. If I revealed to people what I did I would be called a “nerd” with a bit of a disproving look. Luckily for me, I was quite good at socializing also, but many definitely didn’t have that and suffered social stigma for it. Even the friends I was gaming with didn’t quite understand my interest in that area, so I mostly relied on myself with few to no peers to discuss that particular subject with.

This is obsviously anecdotal and I would be interested in hearing how people had it growing up with these interests, from both sides obviously.

Now, that said, we are definitely in another age currently. These days with the success of Silicon Valley, Facebook, heck even The Big Bang Theory, our culture has shifted to a glorification of the field, and as such we have a clash of what the 24+ (or there about a) generation grew up facing, and them now being called privileged and being told they had it oh so easy, basically casting aside all those struggles they had growing up.

I guess my point is, with is a more general point, promoting equality by bringing down another group, is a fundamentally wrong way to go about things. You don’t get the bars at the same place by making it worse for one group, you do it by making it better for the other group (see they distinction?).

Anyways, I’m interested to know what people think :)