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James Damore and three others end Google suit

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Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#241

Post by fzeroracer »

zozbot234 wrote: post #236
somewhereoutth wrote: post #226

I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things constructed by people), women previously did have a hard time, and often had to practice under their husbands/partners name. Mercifully this ended some while ago, and now architecture schools and onwards are more evenly gender balanced. Nobody suggests that women are somehow natural…

Not just architecture, also medicine and law. The whole question is what's different about math, CS, engineering and the physical sciences that makes it so much harder to reach gender balance there? If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

That doesn't follow suit with the history of computer science however. Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

Nowadays software dev is highly collaborative and social. It faced declining amounts of graduates that were women from the late-80s and onwards compared to engineering and the physical sciences which if I'm recalling correctly have steadily rose.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#242

Post by searchableguy »

dijit wrote: post #221
searchableguy wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This doesn't make either of us better, both should be respected as equal. I think we are agreeing. That's why I highlighted more attractive to [singleton] when you could be more inclusive by avoiding singletons. Why shouldn't a field be attractive to everyone - blind, deaf, disabled etc equally? Imo, focusing on singletons is detrimental because by doing so, you will end up discriminating automatically because ther…

I think we’re weaker for not including someone because of those traits either. Why focus on women now? Because there’s a lot of women in the world and they seem to not like this field. I don’t really have a good answer, I thought Damores memo was pretty good and I thought it might provoke the powers that be to approach the distribution of underrepresented factions a little better. For instance, if you want to hire bl…

> Because there’s a lot of women in the world and they seem to not like this field.

Source. I have seen few and they do show women working in the field not liking it. The problem with that is it could be those women are outliers given the gender ratio in some CS fields (I will ignore non biological genders), the field could be attractive but don't have good working conditions for women, women don't have much interest etc.

All of those can be true and change your steps to make the field more attractive.

As an example, you can look into construction field which is heavily dominated by men and women in the field feels the same but outside, it's a different story in terms of interest.

How do you make construction work more attractive for women?

I am curious to hear your opinion about below too. What are the problems do you see with this approach? -

You vote with your job. If you don't like things, quit. Either the people working at the company are discriminatory and don't care or you are the problematic one. If you think you are right that a big company discriminates openly, then wouldn't you have to admit that most people at your company don't care about discrimination as much as their paycheck or they are discriminatory themselves. If a company can easily replace employees, then the society doesn't value equality.

If we had UBI, wouldn't discrimination of any kind be detrimental given that workers wouldn't be forced to work for low wages and companies which discriminate based on pseudoscience be at a disadvantage because they won't get talent that other companies can. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Why are people not pursuing UBI for gender equality?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#243

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

ergothus wrote: post #56
daenz wrote: post #16

I remember at a previous job, a female engineer talking to other engineers when the Damore story broke. She said "I can't believe he said that women can't be good engineers" and indicated he deserved to be fired. As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. That's not what he said at all , but even making the distinction makes you one of "them" and politicizes the workplace. It's just dis…

> As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. That's not what he said at all, As someone that also read it, those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying. A facade of misrepresented psuedoscience doesnt change the intent, motivation, or reality.

There is a huge difference between "women can't be good engineers" and "women are less likely to be good engineers", and he said the latter (while, IIRC, explicitly acknowledging that variance is high enough that it shouldn't influence decisions about individuals).

Edit: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo... page 4 has a diagram at the top explicitly explaining that.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#244

Post by door99 »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #226

I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things constructed by people), women previously did have a hard time, and often had to practice under their husbands/partners name. Mercifully this ended some while ago, and now architecture schools and onwards are more evenly gender balanced. Nobody suggests that women are somehow natural…

Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women!

The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#245

Post by dirtydroog »

mabbo wrote: post #184

Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess. As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

He didn't cause a PR mess, whomever leaked his post to the wider world did. And I could be wrong, but I seem to recall he posted what he did weeks, if not months, before it was leaked (in a heavily modified form too)

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#246

Post by martin_bech »

jacobmoe wrote: post #229
gameswithgo wrote: post #174

Google has fired a few people, liberal and conservative, for being politically insufferable. Multiple people in the news about this on various places in political spectrum. It doesn’t mean they were wrong.

There's been endless discussion about Damore. In particular podcasts you'd think that the firing of a random engineer at Google ranked alongside 9/11 as a defining event in modern history. If I circulated a memo to my co-workers that not only opposed a new policy from management, but did obvious harm to the expressed intent of that policy, I might be fired. It doesn't matter if the memo I circulated would have gotten…

The fact you wrote this comment, tells me, that you never read his memo.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#247

Post by bradleyjg »

coldtea wrote: post #180
gameswithgo wrote: post #174

Google has fired a few people, liberal and conservative, for being politically insufferable. Multiple people in the news about this on various places in political spectrum. It doesn’t mean they were wrong.

> for being politically insufferable In other words for hurting their bottom line by demanding Google be better (each in their preferred way) for society and its employees?

> In other words for hurting their bottom line by demanding Google be better (each in their preferred way) for society and its employees?

Yes? If I hired someone to clean my apartment and instead of cleaning my apartment he or she spent the whole time writing up long diatribes demanding that I be better, per his or her understanding, for society and my employees you can bet I would not be hiring that cleaner again!

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#248

Post by uxcolumbo »

manigandham wrote: post #126
jashmatthews wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He skipped over classical liberal and very quickly gave interviews to prominent alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneaux.

He interviewed with Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan. Also who on the left would interview him? That's the issue with claiming that he only talked to one side.

What makes you think Joe Rogan is alt right?

Watching his interviews with various people who are more left leaning doesn't give me the impression that he is alt-right.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#249

Post by cassalian »

mabbo wrote: post #184

Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess. As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

> Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess.

I agree with you; however Damore is only partly to blame... IMO the leaker of the memo is just as responsible for the PR mess as Damore is for writing the memo in the first place (no leak = no PR mess) (no memo = no PR mess) (memo + no leak = no PR mess).

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#250

Post by [deleted] »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #226

I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things constructed by people), women previously did have a hard time, and often had to practice under their husbands/partners name. Mercifully this ended some while ago, and now architecture schools and onwards are more evenly gender balanced. Nobody suggests that women are somehow natural…

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