If all this science were the end all be all, the low level engineers would be men, and men with their evolutionary handicap for empathy would be none of the managers, leaders, designers, product managers. That's how it is right?
The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
221–230 of 684 posts
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#222The article hides a common but incorrect assumption. Look at this paragraph: > As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technolog…
But that is not related to "shortage of women in tech/STEM". More women in management wouldn't change that. Maybe it is just difficult to put managers without experience in the trenches in front of people? That is, managers who have no tech skills as such?
> That is, managers who have no tech skills as such?
There was an article on the front page earlier about how you simply shouldn't put people with no tech expertise in charge of people who have - so far as tech goes.
There is another problem here: the wage gap across industries. Some of our most important workers (teachers, nurses) are paid a pittance, whereas one industry that invents problems to solve is paid the most. The solution is to treasure the work that everyone does - irrespective of what industry they might be in. This would allow people to pursue a respected career in whatever industry they desire, regardless of what gender is typically motivated to engage in that industry.
Tech has been historically awful to women (and some places continue to do so); yet you can find industries where all genders are discriminated against (some being a social stigma) and nobody seems to give a damn about them.
One thing I can say for certain is that, as an extremely young equal society, we seem to be making a heroic effort to improve. We have a very long way to go and the extremes are probably going to be visited multiple times as the pendulum settles to the center.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the natural reaction after getting attacked by right-nationalist /pol/ trolls for years. You can't discuss with the trolls, you can't argue with them, you can only shut them down. Naturally, if someone honestly makes the same argument that the trolls copied, the reaction is also the same.
The problem with this thinking is that many of us are not extremists and genuinely want to know what the scientific truth is. And if someone prepares a text which is logically sound (but remains to be seen if scientifically sound) supported by references then it's completely a different game. And when journalists and other people criticise that text with ad-hominems, jokes and invectives but ZERO arguments, that's no…
> Those people that were shouted down continued to hold the same ideas except they hid them and acted silently.
This same phenomenon happened just this last election. Only one candidate was allowed to be publicly supported. Publicly supporting the other carried the risk of being shamed, labeled (bigot, fascist, etc.), or even being fired from your job.
By all metrics Hillary was winning. But the silenced portion of the population didn't change their minds after being shouted down and shamed; they, as you said, "hid [their ideas] and acted silently"
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#224Women work in the Berlin Post Office with calculators, 1928: http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-women-work-in-the-berlin-po... The managers, a more people-oriented activity, are all men. But the people working with actual calculators are women. And it was not just this office, this was happening everywhere. Working with a calculator was a woman's job. More: http://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa Ther…
What does mechanically typing into calculators have to do with anything? Clerical work was not the precursor to modern STEM jobs.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#225The sad thing is that people do not even understand why the memo is bad. The problem: You cannot invoke science to tell somebody: I'm better than you. Period. That causes wars.
I just CTRL+F the entire memo for "better". It was only used in two sentences:
> Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts. > We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done).
So where again does it say the he is better than someone else? These type of statements is what's causing the huge divide, because people put words into other people's mouth as and when they like just to support their own argument or agenda at the expense of everyone else.
Show me a quote where he actually says what you claim he says.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#226Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies. Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusi…
>Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience
Original evil evil author had a PhD/MS in Biology from Harvard
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#227Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies. Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusi…
I personally never called it out for sexism. I called it out for regressive-thinking as a solution based on plain fact. I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought. If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tu…
The problem is Google fired this guy for distributing WRONG information. Wrong is the important word here.
If the information is right, it completely changes the case, and the guy was fired for Wrong reasons.
I hope he'll sue and win his job back (yes, I think Google needs this guy more than ever).
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I could tell from the coverage (I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs of the memo), it asks for more diversity in terms of right-wing/conservative thinking, and for Google to stop encouraging women to apply. On the surface – that's asking for both more and less diversity, however Google rejects the idea that conservative views (that are compatible with Google's HR policies) are discouraged, which wou…
It's very odd that you admit you didn't actually read the document. Does it cause you physical pain or something? You then judged it based on a bunch of re-tellings, believe it says something it doesn't and that this is somehow virtuous and worthy of proclamation. Kind of discouraging. It didn't say Google should stop encouraging women to apply. That's simply not true. It did say it should stop giving women specific…
Did you even read the memo? He explicitly asked to end the programs Google has set up to encourage more women and minority students to study Computer Science because they weren't a good use of resources.
There is no lower bar or quota. All of the diversity programs he mentioned are to encourage more applications.
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally never called it out for sexism. I called it out for regressive-thinking as a solution based on plain fact. I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought. If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tu…
The guy's post was science, according to scientists - 5 of them have now spoken up saying that. Maybe there'll be more. With respect to "why not try to solve it", it's a reasonable question. The guy answers that too - he is all for trying to solve it. He even makes suggestions about new ways to do it, like encouraging pair programming. But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger…
Why did the memo's author think that Google's current hiring practices were flawed? I mean, what empirical evidence? Were there teams full of "diversity" hires that were performing below par?
Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science
#230Firing this guy was just a PR move in order to keep things under control. The memo was accurate and I know that Google is going to learn from it even if the guy has been sacrified.
Private companies are not free speech zones. Not firing this person would have been a Title VII violation and opened them to lawsuits.
>Not firing this person would have been a Title VII violation
I disagree. His manifesto is pretty clearly core political speech protected by the First Amendment, so Title VII would be unconstitutional as applied if it operates to force Google to suppress such speech. Unfortunately there is no precedent clearly establishing this, so the mere threat of lawsuits (and accompanying legal expenses) may have been a factor in Google deciding to fire him.