James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google • Hacker News Board

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#391

Post by lukev » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

verroq wrote: post #338

lukev wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1. Saying that women are "on average" worse programmers is exactly why people are upset with him. He doesn't need to be some kind of insane absolutist in order for what he said to be very problematic. 2. Even if there are statistically significant sex differences with regard to programming ability and inclination, there are also historical and sociological factors that are working against women in tech. D…

1. Except he never even said women on average are worse. Secondly people being upset is not an argument against the truthiness of statement, no matter how problematic . 2. “How dare he question the effectiveness of affirmative action” is also not an argument.

> Except he never even said women on average are worse.

That is literally the whole point of his memo, that women have a different (i.e, worse, in this context) statistical distribution of ability and inclination to the tech field.

> “How dare he question the effectiveness of affirmative action” is also not an argument.

Sure it is. His argument is structured as follows:

1. Negative effect Q is caused by both A and B. 2. We can't do anything about A. 3. Therefore we shouldn't do anything about B.

That's just bad reasoning.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#392

Post by pnw_hazor » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #123

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really a difference if you believe the reason women "wind up" lacking the skills for X is due to biology? Asserting biology makes it essentialist, it's the same as saying "women are worse at X."

Yeah, there is. "Women are worse" implies that there's a gendered difference after applying the "is an engineer" filter. "Fewer women gain entry into the class of engineers" doesn't imply anything about ability afterwards. And for what it's worth, James Damore explicitly called out this distinction, saying that he was not making a claim about any sort of skill differential between male engineer and female engineers.…

And he made a few suggestions that he thought may improve the situation by taking into account the differences between men and women and their respective motivations.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#393

Post by Idontknowmyuser » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

jgh wrote: post #180

john_moscow wrote: post #87

He doesn't have a choice really. With the PR mess he got himself into, no big company will ever hire him. Imagine the possible headlines "Microsoft hires the James Damore, the male supremacy advocate fired from Google". Nope, regardless the technical skill or his actual personality, his public image is forever ruined. So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organization…

I notice none of those options include "admit he was wrong and apologize". I'm sure he doesn't have to work for a top-tier tech company either.

why do you think that he is necessarily wrong. After I read his memo, I would say it is debatable, not wrong. In fact you're attitude is a very clear sign of the silence culture being pushed.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#394

Post by moduspol » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

beebmam wrote: post #319

moduspol wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that one side gets to make claims accepted blindly as fact unquestionably (unequal representation of women is solely because of sexism) and the other side must be objective / scientific?

The reality is: we don't have a complete answer as to why there is unequal representation of women in tech. Period. We can explore this issue, and in the mean time, let's not make unsupportable claims and assumptions about humans, Ok?

Sounds good! So let's just hire the best candidate regardless of race or sex. Problem solved.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#395

Post by wheelie_boy » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

ihsw2 wrote: post #321

vowelless wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. If the memo wasn't enough, him immediately going to right wing YouTubers like Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, Mike cernovich, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, etc. is suspicious. [1] Generally I wouldn't have minded if he went to right wing outlets, as long as he had also gone to left wing outlets. I was willing to listen to his reasoning. But it became clear after the memo came out that he didn…

It's no different than moderate Muslims having no social refuge other than where Salafist-Jihadists (eg: al-Qaeda, Isil) roam freely -- modereate conservatives have no social refuge other than blatant racists and sexists, neo-nazis, and other generally unpleasant undesirables. This is the danger of progressive supremacy and the only way out of this hell-hole is encouraging true diversity and inclusiveness -- diversit…

Yes, it is good and valuable for a society to be tolerant of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. The limit to tolerance is being tolerant of intolerance.

The left has intolerant people as well. "No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other."

However, somehow they aren't running the party like they are on the right.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#396

Post by jblow » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

vowelless wrote: post #248

john_moscow wrote: post #87

He doesn't have a choice really. With the PR mess he got himself into, no big company will ever hire him. Imagine the possible headlines "Microsoft hires the James Damore, the male supremacy advocate fired from Google". Nope, regardless the technical skill or his actual personality, his public image is forever ruined. So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organization…

This is true. If the memo wasn't enough, him immediately going to right wing YouTubers like Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, Mike cernovich, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, etc. is suspicious. [1] Generally I wouldn't have minded if he went to right wing outlets, as long as he had also gone to left wing outlets. I was willing to listen to his reasoning. But it became clear after the memo came out that he didn…

If people "on the left" won't allow him to speak, where exactly do you expect him to go?

It's like the people on the right saying Edward Snowden is obviously a traitor/spy because he went to Russia. Uhhh... something very obvious is being ignored there.

Also, come on ... Joe Rogan is definitely not right-wing. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin do not self-identify as right-wing. And your [1] just seems a little extreme. "The far right is just a slip away from the reasonable right, therefore the reasonable right is dangerous?" But you don't apply that same idea to the left? Why not?

The real pattern here is that he went to the shows that would have him as a guest for reasonable discussion.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#397

Post by dang » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

anonemouse145 wrote: post #155

threeseed wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with the news and everything to do with what Damore did. He was fired for a reason.

No he didn't. Stop spreading lies. This is the heart of the lawsuit. Unless you mean he was fired as part of a witch hunt which was much ado about nothing, and that's a sad fact of basing firing decisions on tweets. That is true.

This comment breaks the HN guideline against calling names in arguments. We ban accounts that do that, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that.

Edit: it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and ignoring our requests to stop. If you keep doing that we will ban you.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#398

Post by nilkn » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

praestigiare wrote: post #375

dotnetisnotdead wrote: post #296

Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth. Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech. I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It's not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are…

You claim that there is a pattern of bad diversity hires, but your anecdotes are just as easily explained by confirmation bias: You see an incompetent male engineer, and you write him off as an idiot and forget him. You see an incompetent woman, and she becomes evidence that there is a problem with diversity programs. You remember evidence that supports your narrative. Obviously my statement is not evidence either. I…

It depends on whether the incompetent male engineers are just as incompetent as the incompetent female engineers. For instance, she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries. Are the incompetent male developers at that same level of incompetence?

Of course taking this into account cannot completely eliminate selection bias, and the sample size either way is probably too small to be all that meaningful. It sounds like the attitude of her manager towards the incompetent developer is actually the most significant point here: this incompetent developer is being retained and in fact praised by her manager for diversity despite the obvious issues. Does the manager treat incompetent male developers the same way? The implication of the post is clearly "no", but again selection bias is possible.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#399

Post by mistermann » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #324

vowelless wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. If the memo wasn't enough, him immediately going to right wing YouTubers like Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, Mike cernovich, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, etc. is suspicious. [1] Generally I wouldn't have minded if he went to right wing outlets, as long as he had also gone to left wing outlets. I was willing to listen to his reasoning. But it became clear after the memo came out that he didn…

Wait, Joe Rogan is considered a right wing youtuber? I listen to his show all the time and I'm a pretty big liberal and while he sometimes does the whole "everyone is sooooo PC now" thing, he also talks negatively about Trump, the GOP and right wing politics constantly. I also listened to the James Damore episode, and while I thought James did a good job of making his point and Joe did an AWESOME job of interviewing…

> it felt like James was pretty disingenuous and lacked a general understanding of how to behave in a workplace

To be fair, it can be difficult for some people on the autism spectrum to work in environments where you have to run objective reality through various "politically correct" adjustment filters before reacting to it.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#400

Post by ryanbrunner » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #193

zamalek wrote: post #95

> illegal hiring quotas Whether or not this is illegal, or true, this is an anti-pattern. If you want representation (and PR) hiring quotas are great; however, if you truly want to empower they work against your goals. At the end of the day any person who walks into a job because of a quota will question, "did I get this job because of my gender/race/creed/orientation?" While you have provided them with opportunity i…

Making someone question whether they are qualified is better than not hiring them at all. Quotas are useful if you have reason to believe that your hiring process is biased and you are missing out on qualified candidates. That way you're not passing up too many candidates from specific groups that you're having a hard time characterizing.

I think they can be an over-simplistic solution when more effective solutions exist and can work with a little more effort, particularly for a company as large as Google where you have the volume to have meaningful data about hiring patterns.

- Outreach to under-represented groups is a no-brainer (I assume Google is already doing this)

- Look at ways to make your interview / recruiting process as blind as possible - coding exercises, resume review and even behavioural questions can be done in a way that doesn't reveal someone's gender or race.

- Where blindness isn't possible, use data to figure out where there may be bias. Do certain individuals / teams / departments show bias in who they advance through the hiring process? If at least part of your process is blind this is even easier - look for evidence of candidates who did well until the process could no longer be gender / race blind and see if there's any bias introduced at that point.

OKRs mandating a fixed gender ratio are the worst way to go about things. It's supposedly common knowledge that any metric is going to be gamed, and doubly so if your career performance is based heavily on it, so it shouldn't be surprising that basing it heavily on a 50/50 ratio can often result in "hiring to quota". Long term, this ends up casting doubt on eminently qualified women and racialized folks.