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Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

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Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here I would find some support for the parents point: There is a lot of room for interpretation. To me, writing an email can be the most intense "working with people" thing, more so than any amount of small talk or doing manual labor with people. The amount of stress that goes into a hard to write email – mostly because it will also be a hard to read email and then also the anticipation of some sort of unpleasant rea…

See, I find writing an email to be a totally straightforward, impersonal task. Like writing code, but in English rather than a programming language. Just the facts, no sugar-coating or other nonsense!

Then you end up on the job market.

I know the emails they’re talking about. They’re not as simple as writing the facts. Writing an extremely complex technical email in jargon and ways for people who aren’t familiar with any of it - even slightly - and explaining each detail concretely is quite the process.

It’s annoying when I have to write a 6,000 word email that is easily misunderstood because most others barely have an idea of the subject matter but it happens more often than I’d like to say.

Tbh - I find the emails pointless but this is what happens in low trust (dysfunctional) organizations.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe grow up & don’t circulate political manifestos at work?

1. The memo was feedback that was explicitly solicited 2. He didn't circulate it, others did.

> He wrote the essay and submitted it to other attendees for feedback but received no response. He then submitted it to another group within Google which he referred to as “the skeptics”.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#223

Does this mean James Damore was right? Or is there something wrong with this research?

Yes, he was very careful in his wording and close to 100% correct. What the outrage mob did was as follows: 1. Change preference to ability: so "the research suggests that women, on average, prefer to do things other than code" to "women can't code" 2. Change a statistical argument to an essentialist one. So "on average" to "no women" 3. Change the population/sample from the general population to "people who work at…

[deleted]

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#224
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austria ranks 79 on masculinity. Japan ranks 95, probably one of the highest. >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. This definitely does not sound like the Japan I live in, almost the opposite in fact. Japanese people are absolutely not known for assertiveness in particular; it's very much the opposite, the…

The page explains that Japan is ranked highly "masculine" because of how competitive the society is. > What you see is a severe competition between groups. From very young age at kindergartens, children learn to compete on sports day for their groups (traditionally red team against white team). In corporate Japan, you see that employees are most motivated when they are fighting in a winning team against their competi…

So they explain away why their number is completely opposite of what it should be, given their definition of "masculinity" in a culture. Their explanation is BS: Japan is a very consensus-oriented society, not one based on individual heroism, at all. So one thing must be a lie: either their definition of "masculinity", or their ranking of Japan. They can't be simultaneously true.

Their actual definition says nothing about workaholism, or drive for excellence and perfection. In fact, I don't see how those are "masculine" in the slightest (nor are they "feminine", they're orthogonal issues).

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what was advocated. He recognised, as a manager, that Damore was that person that provokes people to the point where normal everyday people want to punch him. Part of being a good manager is recognising people's traits.

I would argue that Damore when writing his memo acted out his autism. A neurotypical person would probably understand that within the culture in Google at the time, such a memo would be seen as sacriligeus. An autist is more likely to just say what they believe to be true, with no such filter. Essentially, it was a direct assault at some of the fundamentals of an entire belief system. Now let's imagine for a moment t…

I'm not sure what autism has anything to do with this

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when that hypermasculine Russian military recruiting commercial went viral? They only give Russia 36 on the masculinity index. (US gets 62) Here's the construct description: >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, Femininity, stands for a preference…

Austria ranks 79 on masculinity. Japan ranks 95, probably one of the highest. >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. This definitely does not sound like the Japan I live in, almost the opposite in fact. Japanese people are absolutely not known for assertiveness in particular; it's very much the opposite, the…

> being a reliable company workers and breadwinner is definitely highly valued, but not being a high achiever the way American culture, for instance, would value

I've always thought academic achievement and money mattered quite a bit in Japan. I've heard the phrase "high achievement, high income, high stature" as a description of the traits desired/expected in Japanese men.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Damore when writing his memo acted out his autism. A neurotypical person would probably understand that within the culture in Google at the time, such a memo would be seen as sacriligeus. An autist is more likely to just say what they believe to be true, with no such filter. Essentially, it was a direct assault at some of the fundamentals of an entire belief system. Now let's imagine for a moment t…

I'm not sure what autism has anything to do with this

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Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#228
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Or maybe grow up & don’t circulate political manifestos at work?

Yeah? The people who don't like the opinions that are aligned with his are the same people who bring up all sorts of social justice and political issues to the work place. But only narrative is allowed of course.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#229
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you're saying here.

That an old man with dementia who feel he has to defend himself will use full force while the people who the nurse/caregiver will consciently and inconsciently restrain themselves in order to not break any bones or harm the person they are taking care of.

How does this relate to my anecdote about old men having more strength than you might expect?

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austria ranks 79 on masculinity. Japan ranks 95, probably one of the highest. >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. This definitely does not sound like the Japan I live in, almost the opposite in fact. Japanese people are absolutely not known for assertiveness in particular; it's very much the opposite, the…

> being a reliable company workers and breadwinner is definitely highly valued, but not being a high achiever the way American culture, for instance, would value I've always thought academic achievement and money mattered quite a bit in Japan. I've heard the phrase "high achievement, high income, high stature" as a description of the traits desired/expected in Japanese men.

Sure, academic achievement is valued, as is making money (which is valued in every capitalist society). But the definition given is:

"The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success."

The type of individualistic, heroic achievement that American culture values isn't valued here. Being a high achiever so you can be a great worker for your company is, and of course women want men who are tall and earn a lot of money, which again seems somewhat universal.

But going back to the definition as given, there are 4 specific things listed here. Two of them are "heroism" and "assertiveness". Neither of these things are cornerstones of Japanese culture at all. Japan is a collectivist society where people are anything but assertive. Yet Japan is ranked 95. This makes no sense to me. These 4 traits together seem to accurately describe American society, yet America is 62. If anything, these numbers are reversed.

Another thing I'll point out: in America, CEOs make tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year, orders of magnitude higher than the lowest-paid workers. In Japan, this is not the case at all. Top company executives aren't paid remotely as much as America's highest-paid execs, and the gap between the lowest and highest paid is a fraction as much. (The execs at the biggest companies are paid a lot of course, but not compared to the truly obscene compensation packages American CEOs get.) There's a definite sense of one's duty to the society here that simply does not exist in the US. So yes, "material rewards for success" is valued here, but not the way it is in the US. In the US, people seem to literally worship wealth and wealthy people; here in Japan, rich people are generally not celebrities. So I would say even this factor, "material rewards for success" is not as valued here as in the US.

In summary, Japan's ranking simply does not fit the definition of "masculinity" given, in comparison to other nations, particularly the US.

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