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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

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

#331

Post by ATsch »

I think it's interesting how the Edith stated Damore had said women were worse at their job, while one of the other women explicitly said he didn't, and the other only mentioned interest in programming.

This is similar to the divide I've seen in the media. I have not read the memo in it's entirety, but since the impression I got from reading a few news stories was that Damore had only made his controversial statements in regard to the population, not skill of programmers, I'm curious what causes this disagreement.

I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, considering that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't. (I'm not a biology nerd so feel free to correct me on this.)

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

#332

Post by look_lookatme »

suzzer99 wrote: post #299

The Economist really nails it imo. Pointing to some random stats that support your hypothesis, ignoring others, and speculating the significance of said stats is not science - it's motivated reasoning. https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said...

Also known as "modern journalism".

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

#333

Post by sebow »

kristianc wrote: post #102

> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly. And we know – and many of us have experienced – that interest levels are also heavily influenced by social and cultural factors. This is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed…

Except the fact that those physiological differences have nothing to do with any ideology,none that he mentioned anyways.And why should one matter if it wasn't even named in his memo?

You're just projecting and putting words in his mouth. If you call his attack on Google an echo chamber("entrench people in the positions they already have" means exactly that) on itself then you clearly didn't get the core point of it.

"Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors."

Socio-cultural factors are not the ones that make "genetically inferior" people be competitive/exceed the more "gifted" ones, willpower is.

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

#334

Post by mpweiher »

sampo wrote: post #168
izacus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, anectodally, both math and physics communities have significantly larger percentage of actual women graduating and working. At least here in EU - it's somewhere between 40-60% split depending on generation. I guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working with women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove how women aren't worthy .

I mean, whatever propensity to mathematical-logical thinking, or being interested in working with things not people, we attach to software engineering, aren't these qualities useful even more when doing math and physics? Lots people from math and physics have jumped over and become decent, some even great, software engineers. Not many software engineers have successfully switched over to math or physics. So if gender…

The question is not whether you can or will be successful, the question is what you prefer to do.

One answer:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

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

#335

Post by Blackthorn »

canoebuilder wrote: post #323
Blackthorn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on w…

to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous. Let's just agree on two things then. _Every woman at google has every right to be there. & _The number of women at google relative to the number of men is not the result of mostly imperceptible, malicious actions by men, but rather due the fact that the personal interests between the sexes varies substantially on average, and this results in skewed sex ra…

Can agree on number one. Can't agree on number two. Here's why: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

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

#336

Post by sidlls »

exergy wrote: post #267
jake-low wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed in TFA. > [W]hen I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of de…

I sympathise with the woman saying she'd much rather just focus on code rather than social justice debates. But, as flippant as it is for a guy to say it, it's their cross to bear isnt it? Women in tech. Because, if they don't speak up, then what? Where does that leave us? Should the "other side" also not speak up? Just focus on code? Should they suppress real emotions that they're feeling? I'm not flaming, just wond…

I don't care if the women I work with don't speak up. If I see sexism I will (and in fact have on more than one occasion) call it out. I use discussions with my wife and with women I've worked with in the past regarding how sexism in the workplace works to help me identify it in cases where it may be ambiguous or even something I'd never considered to be sexist.

It does help identify those cases when women do speak out, though. My view is we should listen more to them about what sexism is and how it works.

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

#337

Post by Danihan »

humanrebar wrote: post #235
dreta wrote: post #151

All i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and others managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there are biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being less interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's sexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity hires. Was i reading the wrong memo? Beca…

One of the women said: > I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.” She goes on to say that people will likely misapply the ideas and judge her. It seems a lot of detractors think Damore should have known better and he takes responsibility for how his ideas affect people. Another says: > I don’t really…

Sure, but it's the hypocrisy of saying, "stereotyping people by group is productive sometimes (when hiring and trying to hit quotas)" but any criticism of it is unproductive, in fact, how dare you even discuss it at the workplace."

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

#338

Post by bjl »

msla wrote: post #264
bjl wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He explicitly mentions 'cultural marxism', which is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory from the 60s.

The concept and term "cultural marxism" has been grabbed by such a huge swath of people, most of whom have absolutely no idea it is or could be anti-Semitic (because you have to be pretty out there to associate Marxism with Jews to begin with), that claiming all or most uses of it are anti-Semitic is wrong. There's just no way to paint that huge of a group with that brush unless you think it's so double-secret subcon…

Cultural Marxism has been explicitly anti-Semitic from the beginning, and early adherents argued that it was necessarily anti-Semitic. So people who believe in the conspiracy now are either anti-Semitic themselves, or profoundly ignorant. Neither one is a good look.

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

#339

Post by onion2k »

mizzack wrote: post #73
tedivm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article- > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? Th…

From your quote: > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem. From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of…

I've met engineers who have expressed a belief that women are often hired if the recruiter found them attractive, and that those women shouldn't have been hired. While those engineers are able to find employment there will always be places where women don't feel welcome, even with diversity programs in place. It is simply the case that some engineers are grossly sexist and will always think a woman has been hired for some other reason beside technical merit if they have an opportunity to. If Damore can't see that then he hasn't enough experience to be talking about hiring.
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