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Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

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Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#571

Post by tptacek »

ThomPete wrote: post #560
tptacek wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe in equality of opportunity, and do not believe we have it. You're familiar with what I think of tech management culture. Hiring, in particular, but none of the rest of it is any better. The idea that anyone would feel comfortable making assertions about things our field gets right offends me. As a profession, we're clowns.

As a profession, there is hardly a better one to be in for women. It's one of the highest paid, most flexible and equal opportunity professions there are. All the biggest tech companies go out of their way to encourage women to the point where they favor women rather than men. What industry does better when you look at it on a whole? No one is claiming it's perfect but it's hardly filled with clowns IMO.

Law. Medicine. Accounting.

And yes, our entire profession is clownish. We produce shitty, unreliable software using ad-hoc methods no two teams agree about, our management processes are folkloric, our hiring procedures random. At the very peak of our profession, on teams building the most important and widely used software, we are at best working around those problems.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#572

Post by [deleted] »

ncallaway wrote: post #563
monkeywork wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That serves to do is cause those who have been destroyed to seek out others like themselves and create an echo chamber where they get more extreme, alternatively it gets others to simply go dark in regards to their thoughts -- they still have them (possibly even more re-enforced because now you have given them an enemy) and they will toe the line until they can get into a position to push back. You stamp this out ins…

Right. I agree that social media shame parties can overreact to things and create social punishments that I would agree aren't "proportional" (again, for some arbitrary definition of proportional). My general views on this are derived largely from Popper and the paradox of tolerance (though, to be honest, I've more read about his writing that his work itself; it's next on my reading list). I don't think, as a society…

[deleted]

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#573

Post by threeseed »

curyous wrote: post #559
adrianmonk wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> punished for speaking out It wasn't merely that he spoke out. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. Saying "women, on average, have more neuroticism" is not how you start a dialog. It's how you start an argument. Let's not debate whether it was a factual statement, but suffice it to say that "what I said was factual so there's nothing wrong with it!" isn't a defense. There are a million statements that a…

"women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true. It's been measured. It's a shame that we can't start a discussion with the truth

Sure.

And men, on average, have a lower emotional quotient (EQ) than women and in the case of software engineers it is significantly lower.

So given that software engineering is a social activity i.e. it involves team work with a wide variety of other people. Perhaps then we should look to hire more women since men are biologically unqualified to do the job.

Or you know this line of reasoning is asinine.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#574

Post by T2_t2 »

berberous wrote: post #311
T2_t2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to understand this better than me, so can you explain a few things to me I find (as a non-American) confusing? > The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint Can you explain where you got this idea from? Not this article, because it states several contradictory or non-commital things such as: > Damore withdrew his complaint in January And > "a federal agency lawyer concluded." And > an associate general counsel f…

You are looking at the wrong case, this is the correct one and contains a link to the Advice Memo, which is dated January 16: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351 This is what an Advice Memo is: "The NLRB analyses referred to are NLRB Advice Memos, which are prepared by the Office of the General Counsel (GC), a division within the NLRB, to respond to requests for advice from various NLRB Regions across the country…

Well played! How on earth did you find that? and why did Google return the other one? In any case, THANKS!

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#575

Post by [deleted] »

stryk wrote: post #562
curyous wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true. It's been measured. It's a shame that we can't start a discussion with the truth

source? (not trying to be snide or anything, I'm actually curious if there's a source for that)

[deleted]

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#576

Post by leereeves »

ncallaway wrote: post #570
leereeves wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we all agree that's what the NLRB said. We're discussing how they came to this conclusion. The lawyer who wrote this memo argued that Damore's statements would normally be deserving of protection, if they weren't so offensive.

They didn't say that. The lawyer who wrote this memo argued that Google had wide latitude in determining what qualified as sexual-harassment. They had a policy that pre-dated this incident such that those statements qualified. The NLRB didn't determine that the statements were offensive. They determined that Google was operating in a reasonable manner when Google decided that those statements were offensive.

Perhaps it would be helpful if we cite the statements we're referring to. Which statement do you interpret as saying "Google had wide latitude in determining what qualified as sexual-harassment"?

In at least one statement which I've quoted here too many times already ("so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected"), the lawyer who wrote this memo expressed their own opinion that these statements were too offensive to be protected.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#577

Post by PricelessValue »

dejawu wrote: post #210

The way this whole thing played out makes me sad, because the guy did bring up a good point - current-day social justice leaves little avenue for well-meaning but unaware (perhaps through privilege) people to start conversations and learn about the reasons and motivations for certain efforts such as affirmative action and changes in vocabulary. Damore was indeed punished for speaking out, just as he feared. Then he s…

> Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window

What does that have to do with his credibility or his arguments? His arguments stand on its own merits. Externalities has no bearing on argument. If he said 1+1=2 and then retweeted a breitbart article, does that mean 1+1 no longer equal 2?

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#578

Post by psyc »

sangnoir wrote: post #564
curyous wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true. It's been measured. It's a shame that we can't start a discussion with the truth

> "women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true. What does that have to do with anything? It does not support (let alone prove ) the idea that they are less capable engineers because of this. Where is the science linking this to ability? I might as well state "men, on average, are more violent", or have narrower hips - this is provably true, but it would equally uncorrelated to suitability to the life o…

In the context of the memo, he followed the neuroticism claim with a suggestion to "make tech and leadership less stressful", in order to help make the workplace more inclusive to women. You appear to assume that the whole thrust of the memo was to argue that women aren't suitable. The stated aim of the memo was to explore ways of reducing the gender gap, other than quotas. People are mad because about 4 statements out of 100 imply that women aren't suitable. The intention (road to hell and all that) seems to have been to say the reverse: that tech jobs don't suit women. Too fine a distinction to expect most people to make, I suspect.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#579

Post by Consultant32452 »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #475
Consultant32452 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point out that specific passage? As I read it he specifically went out of his way to say that all of the women he worked with were qualified.

Two sections: - In the "personality differences" section, Damore repeats broad stereotypes about behavior that might make women less interested or less effective in tech jobs. He admits these are small effects and shouldn't be used to judge individuals, but goes on to propose policy changes that would impact individuals based on the stereotypes. Institutionalizing assumptions about womens' interests and capabilities…

1. There's another way to interpret this which is that masculine interests and capabilities are already institutionalized (patriarchy). The changes he suggests create a more gender neutral environment where everyone is capable of maximal success. I'm less interested in how labor laws are currently interpreted than I am in trying to find a system that maximally benefits the most people.

2. Yes, his section about discriminatory practices does accuse Google of being guilty of the bigotry of lowered expectations. But that doesn't make Damore or the memo bigoted. Context is important here, he just came out of diversity training classes and was asked his opinion. This memo is in direct response to presumably having been trained to hire in a discriminatory way. It's possible Damore misinterpreted his training, but that's different than making him a bigot.

And further, even if you take the most egregious interpretation of these writings, take everything out of context, and try to paint it in the worst light possible, the reaction is still unreasonable. I'm not talking about him getting fired. That's fine, Google can fire him for wearing the wrong tie as far as I'm concerned, so they can surely fire him for potentially questionable opinions. The position in my original post is about the national media and general public. Fire him sure, but is this really so bad that the entire nation needed to be brought in to witness his public flogging? This is a socially awkward nobody with no power who might have some bad ideas about diversity policy, not David Duke on some white nationalist crusade.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#580

Post by ikeyany »

alsetmusic wrote: post #485
ikeyany wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true. But I ask you this: do companies hire less technically capable engineers to boost diversity numbers? Do you believe that it does not happen at all, in any sense? If you think that this does not happen, then how do companies boost the numbers of non-traditional candidates? Google, as smart as they are, should be able to easily and conclusively prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this does not happen. Ye…

> Google, as smart as they are, should be able to easily and conclusively prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this does not happen. Yet they resort to silencing. You’re suggesting that they should prove a negative. The burden of proof is on the party that accuses them of a given issue.

No, I'm suggesting that they aren't smart at handling certain topics.
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