Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#141

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

kristianc wrote: post #122
annexrichmond wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. He mentioned in an interview[1] that he was looking to be proven wrong which is what led him to share it with the Skeptics group at Google, which is when the document propagated. He had actually wrote the document weeks prior but was unsatisfied with the lack of discussion on his document. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU

That seems an odd approach tbh. Many 'Skeptics' groups (Skeptic / Rationalist YouTube) online at least would agree with his reasoning. It strikes me as odd that he was seeking to take down an ideological echo chamber but published it initially in the echo chamber most likely to agree with him.

The skeptic tribe is extremely politicly polarized.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#142

Post by lutorm »

Will_Parker wrote: post #113
jccalhoun wrote: post #38

I think this is one of the better responses I've seen This line really struck me as being spot on: >There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”

On the other hand, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific progress.

I disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process.

Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing in good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that evidence should be discounted.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#143

Post by dandare »

kromem wrote: post #80

Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological differences mapped to job performance? I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.

Nobody can because he never claimed that. This is what strikes me the most about the whole diversity memo gate: even the most high profile responses, including this one, contain straw man arguments and not many people seems to care. The engineer Edith goes as far and completly and uterly disagreeing with something that is NOT IN THE MEMO.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#144

Post by bluGill »

CydeWeys wrote: post #76
hedgew wrote: post #21

Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even…

I am well aware of my inabilities to tackle this issue properly, so ... I don't write a big document about it and circulate it. Discretion is an issue here too. If you are not capable of addressing an issue in a productive manner, then don't, especially if it's not even related to your job. James was hired as an engineer to work on engineering stuff; he wasn't hired as a sociologist to work on diversity stuff. He mad…

He was like it or not thrust into it though by the choices google has made, or appeared to make. When your hiring demographics do not roughly match graduation demographics you are not being honest. There is every appearance that google is discriminating against males in their efforts to search out women. This might be best for google overall, but he is a male which means it is not in his personal favor.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#145

Post by humanrebar »

xigency wrote: post #137

I think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an employer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will and relationships can end over personal differences. One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their gen…

> I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate.

What is the right forum?

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#146

Post by kansface »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #93
Diederich wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said. Perhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did you feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence: > He stated on .... Thanks!

> why did you feel the need to emphasize this Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0] It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven prefer…

Your cited study is certainly not the only one that exists on the topic. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger....

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#147

Post by [deleted] »

jandrese wrote: post #105
joe_the_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually say just the opposite - the memo seemed to be written as well and in as conciliatory manner as it could be written and the memo made good (or at least plausible) point and bad points. But the bad points were so bad that it was appropriate and necessary to fire Damore. Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast thr…

It's entirely possible for an argument to be correct, but too narrowly focused. If you're saying "group X is inferior and and I can prove it mathematically", that's still wrong because those people don't have a choice about being a member of that group and still exist in society. Discriminating against them drags society down. It's a prisoners dilemma. If everybody hires fairly then the relative drag is spread across…

[deleted]

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#148

Post by e12e »

xname2 wrote: post #78

When they say they feel they are hurt / offended, do they know this is a typical easy thing for women to do in the society, not men? I don't know, maybe everything is sexist. Maybe we should expect a society where men and women cry equally.

Of course we should all have equal opportunity to express our feelings, just as we should have equal opportunities to become software engineers.

That said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time stating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are hurt/offended.

And a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy for women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women can have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be absurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward a free/equal society.

All that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be repression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society is in general not good for anyone.

I think Dar Williams puts it well in her song "When I was a boy":

http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-willi...

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#149

Post by jdoliner »

> He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills.

This to me is the most interesting question that hasn't been answered about the memo. There seems to still be two camps, those who believe Google does not lower the bar for women and those who do. They can't both be right and I'd imagine if we could take a look at Google's hiring practices it wouldn't be too hard to tell which is which. Of course, we can't Google keeps its hiring practices, at least the ones relating to diversity very hush hush. This was actually Damore's impetus for writing the memo, he attended a diversity summit at Google where he learned about his employer's hiring practices and also observed that this summit was, unlike other meetings at Google, not recorded for later viewing. Damore's conclusion was that the hiring processes were unethical and likely illegal, although afaik he's yet to say specifically what it was that he observed. Still I don't think it's very reasonable to say that Damore has caused harm with this misrepresentation unless you can show conclusively that it is indeed a misrepresentation, and so far I haven't seen anything conclusive that shows that.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#150

Post by dguaraglia »

Udik wrote: post #101
joe_the_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually say just the opposite - the memo seemed to be written as well and in as conciliatory manner as it could be written and the memo made good (or at least plausible) point and bad points. But the bad points were so bad that it was appropriate and necessary to fire Damore. Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast thr…

Again, like many others you are confusing "less people from this group are qualified" with "people from this group are less qualified". The first doesn't say anything about single individuals, and doesn't suggest any discriminatory practice against the group. The second does.

One of the women in the article addresses that very aptly:

> Assuming that it’s true that women on average are more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job performance?

Creating a stereotype generates distrust in the individuals that are part of the group described by the stereotype. You yourself had to delve on the wording of the phrase to explain why you think it's different. Do you think the average person would put as much thought on the wording?

Post reply on HN