961–970 of 1001 posts
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I don't think he has to be lying. I think we've only heard one side of the story. It's the job of employees to manage their own behavior. It's HR's job to do their best to contain the problems when employees fail to do that. The dude created a go link, the purpose of which is to make something available to the entire company. Publishing it into an open internal group fits my definition of "broadly". It's not like he…
> I don't think he has to be lying. I think we've only heard one side of the story. A reasonable question I suppose, but fruitless as no-one has contradicted his timeline of events. > It's the job of employees to manage their own behavior. It's HR's job to do their best to contain the problems when employees fail to do that. You have yet to make the case that Damore's behavior was somehow irresponsible. On the other…
As to "what else should he have done", assuming that he really was trying to help with something totally outside his professional expertise and personal experience, I think a good start would have been understanding the topic on more than a superficial level before charging in to say they so blinded by their biases that they were doing it all wrong. That's not the way to get anything done anywhere. Taking a few classes in relevant topics would have been a great start. He also should have aggressively depoliticized his document.
And then if he were really serious about making change in an organization that size on such a big topic, he should have spent a lot of time getting to know the people involved, socializing his ideas, and learning how to pitch them in a way they could be heard. That's how most things get done in large companies when one isn't a high-level executive.
I'm glad we both now agree that he published it internally. Thanks.
If you honestly can't figure out how using a term of political attack is seen as an attack, I'm not sure I can help you with that one. If you're not a native speaker, I recommend reading up on the history of the term.
And lastly, what I'm saying is not "guilt by association". To the extent that there are reasonable doubts about his motivation for writing the memo, we have to look to other behavior to see what theory it fits best with. That his first choice was to get cozy with antifeminists is a piece of evidence. So is his choice of a right wing lawyer. So is his lawsuit that conservative white men were being discriminated against at Google.
There's also the lack of him doing anything particularly indicative in the other direction. If his goal was really to improve things for women, as has been claimed, he's had years to take action. Or just to write new pieces.
I'm open to new data turning up, but to me the pretty obvious conclusion is that he didn't somehow accidentally write something very similar to a lump of right-wing concern trolling. He's obviously smart, so it would be weird to think somebody normally as precise as a Google engineer was just suddenly very sloppy. Instead I assume he wrote what he meant to write and upset the people he wanted to upset. Apparently he thought he'd somehow win the day, but that's not the first time an engineer would have arrogantly leapt in to something thinking they had solved it all. Or, for that matter, somebody with a physics degree: https://xkcd.com/793/
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Are facts racist and sexist?
History shows interpretation of facts can be extremely racist and sexist. Phrenology and hysteria both come to mind.
Some facts are not open to interpretation.
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except for the fact that almost all controversial statements attributed to the memo are projections. In practice the entire content of that document sums up to "Since current diversity efforts are not solving the problem it could be time to admit that the current google structure is on average slightly less attractive or rewarding for women (or for individual in a slice of the population that contains slightly more w…
That would have been a great thing for the memo to say. That's not what the memo said. Instead, the memo claimed women were on average more neurotic.
I guess that a good deal of them are measurably more prevalent in one gender/sex or the other.
Damore point is that if you design a highly competitive system so that Quality A is rewarded but Quality B is ignored you are going to have an imbalanced workplace if women on average have slightly more B and less A than the mean and men the reverse.
The only content of the memo are suggestion on how a workplace could be both fair and more naturally 50/50 by gender.
We should design our systems so that the minuscule differences between men and women are not overly amplified and not abused, not just pretend that those differences do not exist.
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Most people are not genuinely interested in their jobs, so I doubt that variation in genuine interest a major factor in gender balance. But sure, it is impossible to disprove your speculation conclusively. The trouble is that a lot of people seem to think that the mere abstract possibility of such speculations ought to shut down any serious attempt to eliminate sexism in tech.
First off, I don't understand how my stance is "speculation", but yours is not. Even assuming that your assertion about sexism in tech is not in fact speculation, how exactly is introducing more sexist policies into tech going to help eliminate sexism in tech?
Because my stance (that sexism is a significant factor in putting women off from tech) can be trivially verified by, say, asking 10 women in tech about their experiences of sexism. Not to mention that it would be a minor miracle if tech were somehow completely isolated from the sexism that's clearly present in society as a whole.
Out of interest, have you ever tried talking to women about this issue? Or have you (ironically) formed your opinion that there is no sexism in tech without listening to their perspective?
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> I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment. Which is how I interpreted what Damore was trying to do with his memo: saying that women are capable, but that the environment was not appealing to them. Either/both of (a) what they got to work on, and/or (b) how they were treated. IMHO, men and women perceive and react to the world differently, and treating them the same is foolish…
I generally disagree with broad brush strokes of articles and books that make such cases. I find this to be a watered down variant on Phrenology[1], but rather than using physical skull measurements, people invoke the existence of two X chromosomes to offer explanations of differences. I've worked with/for brilliant female scientists and engineers before. I personally believe that what makes a good scientist or engin…
The difference in chromosomes trigger all sorts changes in the development cycle of humans. Unless you want to argue that males having 10x the testosterone levels has no effect on behaviour. Not to mention all sorts of differences in brain structures.
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Well I wouldn't put it that strongly (I didn't write the post you're quoting), but it hardly demonstrates journalistic integrity. (But then what would you expect from a site that's just Gawker rebranded?) For an example of "reporting" that comes closer to what you describe in your quote, I'd point to the pile of hot garbage that former Google exec (and deranged lunatic) Yonatan Zunger posted on Medium.com, which was…
Suppose we had data that we agreed was reliable showing that women software engineers who had read Damore's memo and Yonatan's post would overwhelmingly be unwilling to work with Damore and overwhelmingly be willing to work with Yonatan. I'm not saying I have this data, but just hypothetically, suppose we did. Would this at all influence your judgements (e.g. "deranged lunatic") of them? Why or why not?
As for Yonatan, if you don't believe he's a deranged lunatic go read the insane diatribes he was posting in 2017 about how Trump is literally Hitler and that Muslims and Latinos needed to flee the country as soon as possible for their own safety. The man is detached from reality. It disturbs me that someone so psychotic was able to occupy a senior position at Google.
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History shows interpretation of facts can be extremely racist and sexist. Phrenology and hysteria both come to mind.
Phrenology and hysteria are not facts, and their interpretations are not facts either. Some facts are not open to interpretation.
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That would have been a great thing for the memo to say. That's not what the memo said. Instead, the memo claimed women were on average more neurotic.
Neuroticism is is a personality trait, others are Obsessionality, Psychoticism, Disinhibition, Impulsivity, Rigidity, Alexithymia, Perfectionism, Sensory processing sensitivity, Novelty seeking, Harm avoidance, Self-esteem, Honesty-humility, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to experience. I guess that a good deal of them are measurably more prevalent in one gender/sex or the other. Damore…
That's two paragraphs of the memo in the middle and the bit at the end. Most of the memo is setting up a case for fundamental differences in gender, strawman depictions of the "morality of Google," a claim that men have a higher drive for status (which is, fundamentally, the sort of thing that a company would be put immediately in violation of Title VII if it agreed with), and a claim that Google's anti-discriminatory practices are discriminatory.