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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

#261

Post by throw0101a »

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…

> Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it.

It was not about "inclination", but rather that the current engineering culture tended to be lean a certain way when it comes to focus:

> Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait).[15] Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.[1][14]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...

He argued that if Google wanted to change the gender balance in their engineering divisions, they had to change the types of things that can be worked on:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory

Google wants more women in engineering (which isn't a bad thing), but do they have a similar program for getting more men into HR?

As to gender balance in professions: are there initiatives to get more men into nursing or kindergarten / primary education, and women into plumbing or carpentry?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#262

Post by jashmatthews »

sz4kerto wrote: post #169
waheoo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesnt cast doubt though.. You cant have so much more women than the rest of the industry without that being true. There literally is not enough women coming through engineering schools to allow for that without you a) discriminating against men based on sex, and b) lowering the bar for women. There is no doubt. It is a mathematical given.

I see what you mean I think but it's really not a mathematical given. If you have two groups where group 1 with size S scores X with variance V==0.4X on average in a given skill (score means competence), and group 2 with size S/2 scores 0.8X with variance V on average; then it's possible to recruit a set of people from group 2 and the same number of people from group 1 so that the average competence level of people h…

It’s not hard to imagine that Google simply hired an enormous outsized chunk of the top female talent via outreach and just making vastly better offers to industry leading women.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#263

Post by throw0101a »

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.

> If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory

Another example: what is the gender balance in pilots versus flight attendants?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#264

Post by XorNot »

searchableguy wrote: post #203
dijit wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity is a desirable trait, especially in things that produce products that are designed to be used by the entire planet. My mother explained diversity to me this way: "We are each of us, unique but equal. Meaning that while you will grow up and be stronger than me, I will be able to produce children. This doesn't make either of us better, both should be respected as equal. There is value but difference in both."…

> 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…

Whataboutism is a time-honored tradition to dismiss the concerns of a marginalized group while intending to do absolutely nothing about any other.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#265

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ralfd wrote: post #154
ergothus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing on the idea that women are biologically "less interested" (but don't worry, we aren't talking about the good ones you may know, they are just statistical outliers) and trying to twist up scientific "proof" for that does not lead me to trust him or his motives. Being blind to the widespread dismissive, discriminatory, and derogatory behavior that routinely drives women from the industry does not inspire confi…

> Being blind to the widespread dismissive, discriminatory, and derogatory behavior that routinely drives women from the industry does not inspire confidence. I'm sceptic to this claim because discriminatory and derogatory behavior in medicine or law are much more widespread. And female students flock to these professions.

If true, this is extraordinarily significant.

It could mean that woman who are driven away from software engineering by discriminatory and derogatory behaviour are somehow exhibiting differences to their law / medicine counterparts.

Is there any research in to this question?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#266

Post by pinkfoot »

dijit wrote: post #254
searchableguy wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> things that are designed for everyone should have a diverse set of eyes on them.

Teaching, especially pre-school teaching, is going to be tough to make attractive for men.

And for a lot of parents too.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#267

Post by jashmatthews »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #248
manigandham wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He didn’t appear on Rogan until a long time after his first interviews.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#268

Post by searchableguy »

dijit wrote: post #254
searchableguy wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I am not sure if you intentionally ignored it because I said the same - that women in tech is a minority - outlier. The problem with accessing whether the field is unattractive to women is asking women not in the field why they don't like the field which I haven't seen done much. This is the reason why I compared construction.

Secondly, I don't understand why it has to be CS. A product requires more roles than a CS graduate. UX/UI, design, support, marketing, management, documentation, etc.

There can be more women in any of those roles and there seems to be in some.

A team of CS graduate wouldn't pull off a global product even if they are diverse because they are CS graduates.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#269

Post by roenxi »

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)

> 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.

There is a process, and step one in that process is asking them to please stop sharing their views in the workplace.

Expressing extremely wrong views can't be the standard for creating a hostile work environment because people are wrong about a bunch of stuff and the only way to figure that out is to express the view and be told why it is wrong.

Particularly in the Damore case, the standard shouldn't be how a third party feels. There is a long history of seeing how that standard plays out, it'll end up hurting minority voices. The standard needs to be how a first party responds when asked to do something.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#270

Post by fzeroracer »

pinkfoot wrote: post #253
door99 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because something is obvious doesn't make it trivial to fix. A lot like fixing a bug you know exists, but can't fix it because it's never brought in scope.

One of the more obvious problems is that software especially seems to have issues with sexual harassment. An example of that can be readily found with Susan Fowler's blogpost about Uber's rotten workplace culture.

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