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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

#481

Post by rayiner »

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 do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.

I'm a huge proponent of the principle of charity, but I found it impossible to apply to the Google Memo. Not because I'm deeply mired in political correctness (I have a range of views people in my circle consider right-wing) but because it's so badly reasoned it makes it hard to presume good faith on the part of the writer.

Damore points to studies showing that, e.g. women are more agreeable and more people-oriented. From that, he concludes women on average are less likely to prefer programming. We can diagram this reasoning as follows (the arrow with the line through denotes a contraindicator):

Women -> (agreeable + people-oriented) -> [???] -\-> programming

As you can see, there is an unstated premise:

(agreeable + people-oriented) -\-> programming

Damore's argument thus reduces to a bit of begging the question. We assume that programming is a "masculine" profession. Thus, being agreeable and people-oriented, which are feminine traits, must be contraindicators for preferring a career as a programmer. We have no studies that show this--we just assume it.

Edith, by the way, demolishes that assumption: "For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work." That demonstrates how the "gender" of various professions is a social construct. In India, where men are over-represented in teaching, it's not considered a job for "agreeable" "people-oriented" women. It's men's work. Law was historically considered men's work (it's analytical and adversarial, and could be called "people oriented" only if you hate people). But that view has been redefined as more women enter the profession. Likewise for medicine, accounting, etc. Accounting is an archetypally "masculine" profession (locked away in a back closet crunching numbers), but today more than half of accountants are women.

The moral of the story is that if you're going to make a controversial point, it had better be a good point. Damore's memo wasn't just badly written, it was badly reasoned, and deserved the scorn heaped on it.

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

#482

Post by nodamage » 

  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.”
  A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence
  that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with.
I strongly agree with this criticism and thought it was ridiculous that people even attempted to use this defense in the first place, so I'm glad it's being called out. When you are discussing statistical differences between populations as an explanation for certain behaviors, of course it is acknowledged by both sides that there are individuals that are outliers and that averages do not apply to every individual.

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

#483

Post by richmarr »

manigandham wrote: post #321
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…

What burden are you talking about exactly? You (along with many others) seem to be conflating the major point of the memo between interests and abilities . Not liking something does not mean you're not capable of doing it.

> You (along with many others) seem to be conflating the major point of the memo between interests and abilities

Sorry, this is wrong.

Direct quote (emphasis added): "I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes"

See Damore's own mirror: https://firedfortruth.com/

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

#484

Post by dguaraglia »

Danihan wrote: post #441
dguaraglia wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The memo makes a whole case against "the Left" (capitalization from the memo) and how "leftists" are violent. That doesn't sound like "conciliatory manner" to me, especially considering he makes a blanket statement about Google "leaning left."

He said PC_authoritarians are violent. Not leftists.

Straight from the memo:

> While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.

Emphasis mine.

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

#485

Post by moduspol »

pj_mukh wrote: post #230
jdoliner wrote: post #149

> 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…

He specifically mentions in an interview that minority interviewees get assigned to a second interviewer if one interviewer doesn't like them in the first round. He saw this as a 'second chance' when the committee might just be controlling for interviewer biases. Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion.

The bar for all candidates at a non-Google company: Pass your first interview.

The bar for white male candidates at Google: Pass your first interview.

The bar for minority candidates at Google: Pass your first or second interview.

Of course it lowers the bar for hiring. Maybe it's justified, but it's certainly not raising it. It's not keeping it the same. Maybe it's still tougher to get hired as a minority candidate than as a white one, but that doesn't change what the policy does.

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

#486

Post by bduerst »

nsnick wrote: post #463
ianmiers wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion. The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provo…

Why is a debate worse than a discussion? We strive for debate on all other topics? If you actually want to challenge assumptions you must debate and evaluate the merits of someone else's argument. A discussion would just be you think x and I think y. A debate puts warrants behind the claims in those beliefs.

Adversarial debate is worse than discussion for reasons that these interviewees said:

>The discussion around this has followed the trajectory of most of the polarizing mass discussion in the last few years; everyone comes out the other side with their opinions more calcified than ever, and more convinced than before of the intractability of the other side.

Damore wasn't walking into this ready to discuss and/or learn, he wanted to blast his opinion internally with no intention of attempting to change it.

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

#487

Post by jshevek »

ianmiers wrote: post #436
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…

It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion. The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provo…

I don't get any of that from the memo. Neither did the woman developer who made me aware of it's existence. She marveled at the media response, saying she found nothing provocative or adversarial about the memo.

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

#488

Post by [deleted] »

Artistry121 wrote: post #424
michaelchisari wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be completely lost on a lot of HN people that Damore's memo was not very scientific at all for the subject matter he was tackling. It was written in a certain intellectual language that often provides a veneer of authority for those who agree with his conclusions and lack the domain knowledge to understand the nuances of why he's wrong. But a lot of these "bio-truth" type of arguments do the same thing. G…

>>All it would have taken was for him to run the essay past a couple of people with solid domain expertise, and they would have pointed out the dozens and dozens of problems with his assertions, reasoning and perspective. I don't think this squares with truth. There is at least one PH.D psychologist who mentioned the memo was generally correct.

[deleted]

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

#489

Post by killedbydeath »

Danihan wrote: post #260
killedbydeath wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are women not taught to compete? I do not remember girls being any less competitive (in school, in sports, etc.) Almost everyone wants to stand out and be better than others in some aspects and is proud when they can achieve that. Life is very competitive, I am not sure why need to de-emphasize it to much. Making it "us" vs "them" is the more problematic part, but individual competition is a pretty constructive force…

Do you have a Casino nearby? They usually have weekly poker tournaments. Go to one and tell me how many women are competing. Here's a typical picture: http://i.imgur.com/h6cDkDB.jpg There are zero hiring biases at a poker tournament. So why isn't the gender distribution close to 50/50, instead of 99/1?

Poker is a niche hobby, not some metaphor of competition in life. That picture says more about poker as a way to spend time than about competing. You might as well show pictures from a fly-fishing competition. I don't play poker, yet I am pretty competitive in many aspect of life. All I know is that pretty much every woman I have talked to wants to be more popular, more famous, more successful. And I have seen girls compete for influence, and grades, and victory in sorts from a very young age.

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

#490

Post by ovao »

saganus wrote: post #199
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!

Not the OP, but more and more it seems that if you are not 100% unequivocally clear, someone will attack you as if you agreed with a polemical point. I think this is in part due to the "chilling effect". I've been there myself. I have to be super clear that I don't endorse nor necessarily agree with some point lest I find myself being equated with the worst of the worst...regardless if I agree or not with said point.…

That's it in a nutshell, yes. And I agree that it's sad, but it's something I only tend to feel compelled to do on very divisive political topics, so it's not too bad, really.
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