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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

#251

Post by dirtydroog »

darkerside wrote: post #228
mabbo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying > Nowhere in the paper did he say that You both are saying the same thing- he did not use those exact words. The parent comment is saying that despite not saying "Women can't be engineers", the entire purpose of the paper, in the view of that reader, was to insinuate that women can't be engineers. It's not terribly hard to promote an idea witho…

You're right that they both talked about exact words, but you're indexing too highly on it. Just because they used the same words in places doesn't mean they're saying the same thing. Reading again, I don't know why you start with that statement. It really muddies the rest of your comment. Please take this idea with an open mind. When you arrive a singular purpose to the paper, it may say more about your views than i…

Parent is essentially playing the 'so what you're saying is...' card.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#252

Post by LurkersWillLurk »

ryan-c wrote: post #190
koheripbal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? He was fired for his political views.

Are there protected classes based on political views? If someone is expressing political or even religious views that are so extreme that they create a hostile work environment, I don't see an issue with firing them over it. (I am not interested in debating whether or not Damore's views reached the "hostile work environment" threshold)

None federally. In California, "political activities" are a protected class. The extent to which activities and views overlap is almost certainly a messy question of law that I'm not qualified to answer with respect to Damore.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#253

Post by pinkfoot »

door99 wrote: post #244
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?

> The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women

Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise.

We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#254

Post by dijit »

searchableguy wrote: post #242
dijit wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Source.

Well, what I mean is that we're not even close to a gender parity, it would be fine at 35-40% female in my opinion but the industry is closer to 14-25% (depending on country) and to me that indicates a problem.

I think quota's and the extreme bias towards education programs that favour women is problematic though, in my opinion it infantilises Women which I dislike because I really believe women are just as capable as men in this field.

That's why I liked Damores memo, it spoke to the idea that instead of having quotas we should seek to bring in a more human centred approach to asking the question: what do women bring uniquely to the table and how can we ensure that women know that this is desirable and that they're welcome.

Killing the trope that Tech work is isolationist was one example from the memo that would likely cause some traction.

> 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 think drawing a parallel to construction is a fine one, but I would argue instead for Architecture.

Construction doesn't need a diverse set of views, neither does nursing or mining. But Architecture does because the consumers of architecture is everyone.

And I think that's the crucial difference here: things that are designed for everyone should have a diverse set of eyes on them.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#255

Post by cameronbrown »

Taniwha wrote: post #137
erik_seaberg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time when it was "systems analysts" who gathered requirements and made decisions and wrote flowcharts, and "programmer" was a glorified data entry position translating a flowchart into assembly/FORTRAN/COBOL on punch cards that the system could run. As computers became more powerful, "programmer/analysts" began writing their own source code in "higher-level" compiled languages (this meant reentrant functi…

That's a red herring, and also the 60s - I started my career in the late 70s, 1/3 of my CS class was female, my first job in the US (as a kernel hack) was almost 50% female, still some of the best engineers I've ever worked with, all doing the same job I was. I don't know what happened, by the time my daughter was doing CS the number of woman was < 10% and she and her compatriots were literally hounded out of the cou…

> personally I blame gamer culture, there's something terribly dysfunctional with kids these days

Could you elaborate? - interested in hearing more about this.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#256

Post by roenxi »

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?

I get a strong impression that there is some begging of the question going on in that line. If someone disagrees with them, then the generic activist doesn't get automatically get cast as trying to better society. Philosophically, without specific cases, their opinions can only be equal to their opponents.

"Bettering society" is supremely complicated. There are some weird legal traditions, eg, rules of evidence, which are better for society but they sure don't look like it in the small.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#257

Post by XorNot »

Taniwha wrote: post #137
erik_seaberg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time when it was "systems analysts" who gathered requirements and made decisions and wrote flowcharts, and "programmer" was a glorified data entry position translating a flowchart into assembly/FORTRAN/COBOL on punch cards that the system could run. As computers became more powerful, "programmer/analysts" began writing their own source code in "higher-level" compiled languages (this meant reentrant functi…

That's a red herring, and also the 60s - I started my career in the late 70s, 1/3 of my CS class was female, my first job in the US (as a kernel hack) was almost 50% female, still some of the best engineers I've ever worked with, all doing the same job I was. I don't know what happened, by the time my daughter was doing CS the number of woman was < 10% and she and her compatriots were literally hounded out of the cou…

> kids these days

Computer science predates gaming, particularly online gaming with a social component, by a lot. You're committing the "all things with 4 legs are elephants" fallacy.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#258

Post by somewhereoutth »

spangry wrote: post #235
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…

What country is this? In my country (Australia), the percentage of licensed female architects is around 20%, and this percentage seems to be about the same in the USA and UK. Europe seems a little better with around 30% female representation.

UK. The architecture schools are certainly evenly mixed for students, though I agree this may not yet have fed through to the higher reaches of the profession.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#259

Post by dx87 »

ryan-c wrote: post #190
koheripbal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? He was fired for his political views.

Are there protected classes based on political views? If someone is expressing political or even religious views that are so extreme that they create a hostile work environment, I don't see an issue with firing them over it. (I am not interested in debating whether or not Damore's views reached the "hostile work environment" threshold)

California treats political views as a protected class.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#260

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

starchild_3001 wrote: post #22
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…

The dude is talking about probabilities and distributions, while the stats-ignorant public is generalizing to every individual. It's impossible to have a scientific and open minded debate about the differences between genders. Even theorizing biologic differences exist makes you a sexist. Let alone bringing up this question in public. Edit: Yes, his memo is totally tone deaf. I thought his wording was very questionab…

And it explicitly states that generalizing to individuals is wrong (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo..., page 4).
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