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About This Googler's Manifesto

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Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#171

Post by Inconel »

nl wrote: post #169
Inconel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Section 3 is most troubling to me as well, even if I can mostly agree with some of his other points. I particularly enjoyed the notion of the manifesto's author being punched in the face while at work, and this being a reason Mr Zunger couldn't have other people working with him, rather than perhaps requiring those people not punch others in the face. In a different scenario this kind of attitude towards workplace vi…

You realize that the "punch in the face" line is a philosophical point about how angry the author made people, right? If someone did actually punch the author in the face they would (and should) be fired and charged with assault.

Hmm, I'm not a native English speaker, although I do consider myself fluent at this point, and I'm not terribly bright, so I fully admit I could be misinterpreting things, but the quote didn't seem particularly philosophical to me, it read quite literal. I suppose I might categorize it as hyperbole, although even in that case, I typically don't like the use of such hyperbole when it comes to violence. It has a habit of detracting from otherwise sensible points.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#172

Post by nl »

consz wrote: post #170
nl wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely sure I agree but talking to your point: Doesn't this support the idea that Google needs to improve their people-interaction? And one way to do that is to hire for people who are better at it?

Not necessarily -- there's an argument to focus on their comparative advantage and not bother wasting energy improving their people-interaction (something they are comparatively bad at).

Yes, fair point. Although the parent seemed to be arguing that it was the human interaction that was holding them back.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#173

Post by nl »

Inconel wrote: post #171
nl wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the "punch in the face" line is a philosophical point about how angry the author made people, right? If someone did actually punch the author in the face they would (and should) be fired and charged with assault.

Hmm, I'm not a native English speaker, although I do consider myself fluent at this point, and I'm not terribly bright, so I fully admit I could be misinterpreting things, but the quote didn't seem particularly philosophical to me, it read quite literal. I suppose I might categorize it as hyperbole, although even in that case, I typically don't like the use of such hyperbole when it comes to violence. It has a habit…

I agree it has clearly detracted from the point as this discussion shows.

But it's pretty important to realize that "punching someone in the face" is a crime, and no company can allow that.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#174

Post by josephg »

interpol_p wrote: post #124
nopatternhere wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are here trying to persuade me, at least I assume that is the goal, you could just be here trolling I guess. To try to persuade by claiming you are as bad as everyone else seems, unpersuasive? You seem to think there are two sides: for or against. I have the ability to be against EVERYONE, don't I? Neither side can be convincing, or one side can. As it stands, you are just as unconvincing as the other side, which…

Fair enough. I'll do some homework. Here [1] is an article on how cultural gender inequality leads to poorer maths results for women, and fixing that cultural inequality fixes the maths results. This was commonly attributed to differences in biological traits in the past, that was wrong. Here [2] is another article where spatial abilities relate to societal roles. Another area commonly attributed to biological differ…

Alright, I'll bite. But, I've never heard of any research suggesting women have a different cognitive capacity than men. I read some research a number of years ago suggesting cross-culturally women had better language skills than men, but I don't know if this is still considered to be true.

I can't remember reading anything in the manifesto which suggested women are less capable as software engineers. The essay did suggest women were less interested in programming than men (obviously true - see enrolment figures) and that at least some of the effect size is due to biological factors (probably true - see below).

---

None of these links suggest any capacity difference. Only that there is a biologically influenced gender difference in interests.

Here's an essay contextualising and summarising the historical specifics of male and female gender roles in society: http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

Here's a study of how prenatal androgen effects psychological thing vs people orientation, and how it influences career choice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

A summary of studies looking at big 5 personality distributions and other effects. Of note is the long section describing blindspots in current research: "Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where and Why?" http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x

Here's a Dutch documentary where they send a camera crew around asking different researchers about gender differences: https://youtu.be/cVaTc15plVs?t=30m49s The full documentary is great. Their conclusion is that biological factors result in an overlapping but different distribution of personalities between men and women. These differences result in statistically different career preferences.

A talk by researcher Steven Pinker on the subject, where he argues that biological differences result in at least some of the effect size in STEM interests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw&t=1057s This is part of a debate on the subject. (Not linked) Prof Elizabeth Spelke responds, but I found her argument to be much less convincing than Pinker. Watch both, make up your own mind.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#175

Post by hjrnunes »

Udik wrote: post #151
notjack wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a disagreement on political positions, this is a belief that women are inherently less capable than men at software engineering. It's a direct attack on the legitimacy and humanity of his coworkers. A disagreement over political positions would be if the author wrote a manifesto about the efficacy of sin taxes or nuclear treaties, not that his teammate Sandra is biologically inferior at her job and undese…

> this is a belief that women are inherently less capable than men at software engineering Should we therefore assume that women are equally capable as men at running the 100 meters, or at playing football? Don't get me wrong, I'm a male and probably half the women my age run faster than me or play football better than I do. But you know that this doesn't generalise: on average , men are faster runners and better foo…

You have committed crimethink. Exercise yourself in crimestop daily.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#176

Post by [deleted] »

dlwdlw wrote: post #122

There's a bit if immaturity in the manifesto despite it being very rational and well-reason. In my mind, it's the immaturity of a rich kid who is very intelligent, having had the best teachers, and also well meaning and trying to do good. To understand what affirmative action actually tries to do it must be understood that there are 2 primary types of moats. One is a "Test Moat" that tests required abilities. A firef…

[deleted]

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#177

Post by nopatternhere »

ggggtez wrote: post #162
tibiapejagala wrote: post #144

I might partially or totally disagree with the original manifest, but this reply is repulsive. I would never want to have a "senior" like this. So much emphasis on how senior he is, how junior you have to write something so wrong. How OP's career is over. The 3rd point reads like navy seals copypasta but with HR instead. If you don't see any other way to deal with OP's views than described in this belittling rant, th…

On that last sentence, that's the whole point. The manifesto claims empathy for colleagues and customers is not required, but clearly it is.

> The manifesto claims empathy for colleagues and customers is not required, but clearly it is.

Can you help me understand how you reached that conclusion? Here is the relevant section of the original:

> De-emphasise empathy.

> I've heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#178

Post by Grue3 »

A good example of what senior managers at Google think of people who actually write their code. The manifesto writer is an idiot, but this Yonatan Zunger guy doesn't paint himself in a good light here either.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#179

Post by nopatternhere »

MichaelGG wrote: post #142
notjack wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a disagreement on political positions, this is a belief that women are inherently less capable than men at software engineering. It's a direct attack on the legitimacy and humanity of his coworkers. A disagreement over political positions would be if the author wrote a manifesto about the efficacy of sin taxes or nuclear treaties, not that his teammate Sandra is biologically inferior at her job and undese…

It's no different than a guy in the NBA wondering out loud if the bias towards men might have a biological component, so that even if the systemic barriers are removed, we might expect far different than 50/50 female/male in the NBA. But no one thinks that - it's obviously silly because physical attributes are so obvious. So we'll use Wikipedia as a perfect summary of all the research on this topic: https://en.wikipe…

I hate the high end examples, because people want to argue them. The case is also true the other way - there are more men at the bottom of the IQ scale. Can someone come up with a reason why an IQ test would make men appear more often in the bottom of IQ distributions?

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#180

Post by lsh123 »

"It’s true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people’s emotional needs and so on — this is something that makes them better engineers, not worse ones."

Looks like the author of this blog post agrees with the author of the manifesto on his main point.

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