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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

#501

Post by GuB-42 »

I've read the memo and I don't see the part where it says that women make worse engineers in general. It says that a lower proportion of women meet Google's expectations for engineering positions.

This is not the same thing at all. First, he explicitly rejects the idea of a gender binary, using an overlapping Gaussian distribution instead. Second, he says that many positions at Google have expectations that favor men (competition, work-over-home, ...) even though these traits don't necessarily make better engineers.

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

#502

Post by ruraljuror »

nicolashahn wrote: post #253
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…

I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so. I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, b…

>What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did.

I actually don't think the public response suggests insight or originality on his part. I would attribute much more of that to the social context.

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

#503

Post by nailer »

dguaraglia wrote: post #401
rpiguy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blanket statement that Google leans left is empirically true. You also seem to have misread his comments about violence, as he claims the left tends to be more compassionate. Did you read the memo?

No, I didn't misread 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. What he does is list "compassion for the weak" as a "left bias". That's not necessarily a statement in support of leftist ideals when combined with this two assertions: > In addit…

Referring to incidents of left wing violence does not imply all leftists are violent.

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

#504

Post by irpapakons »

jjn2009 wrote: post #353
notreallythough wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The memo didn't cause self doubt, the memo was intended to inspire others to look for doubt (hence the "lowering the bar"). The memo specifically targeted diversity hires as a lower bar. Imagine if a memo started circulating that asked everyone to question whether or not you were hired for your skill. That's a terrible environment to create.

Lowering the bar for a cohort is going to create different distributions of skill in that cohort, this person wasn't the first and won't be the last to come to this conclusion. I think damaging organizational cohesion is never the right choice but both sides of this argument contribute to that damage.

There is no evidence of lowering the bar. Companies like Google aim to cast a wider net at candidates, the bar stays the same.

On the contrary, there is evidence of bias against women, which logically means that the bar is lower for men by default.

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

#505

Post by taysic »

jorgemf wrote: post #452
astrocat wrote: post #395

> Edith: 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. This is, I think, the key. We can all recognize that there are REAL, average differences in interests between men and women, DEFINITELY driven by society/culture, and maybe by biology/genetics... BUT, this has absolutely no correla…

> "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing women/minorities." That sentence is backed if there is a correlation between genetics and skills. > this has absolutely no correlation with performance if gender does not have correlation with performance, why do we split sports into male and female? Why physical strength, endurance is related with biology and the mind is not? when the brain i…

The physical is different from the mental. Are you saying women are less mentally capable? I can't tell but this is basically exactly why women feel legitimizing this line of discussion is unproductive.

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

#506

Post by rayiner »

nicolashahn wrote: post #124
ryanbrunner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong". I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after,…

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). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been writ…

Workplaces are not free speech zones. Employers have a legitimate interest in maintaining internal harmony and making people feel comfortable. There are lots of things that you should be able to say in general that have no place in the office. E.g. you should be able to maintain a blog detailing your sexual escapades, but emailing those descriptions to all your coworkers is quite reasonably grounds for termination.

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

#507

Post by token92375 »

xigency wrote: post #313
kromem wrote: post #80

Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological differences mapped to job performance? I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.

On pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added): - On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...the distribution of PREFERENCES and ABILITIES of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. - Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings a…

note that "differ in the distribution of abilities" does not mean the average is different, it can also mean the outliers are more extreme, and as I understand it research supports just that.

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

#508

Post by alexandercrohde »

taysic wrote: post #467
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…

As a woman I can say "women are less inclined to be engineers" is only a skip and hop away from "women are not suited to be engineers. I would say don't even bother with the biological argument because as a woman you likely know all too well how it's mainly used. Anyway, its not really the business of a company to argue such abstract matters. It's one thing to be teased about these things but it's another to have peo…

So, honest question. Suppose you work at a hospital, and 70% of the nurses are women. And you're coming under fire, and a lawsuit is pending, because this indicates discrimination.

Now suppose a coworker writes a piece saying roughly "Way fewer men apply for these positions. I suspect men are less interested in being nurses, so we have fewer male nurses, but we can't lower the bar just to make it 50-50. I think it's even possible that men just biologically enjoy nursing less on average, so trying to be 50-50 isn't a reasonable goal"

A) Should this coworker be fired for expressing this idea?

B) Is this argument a skip and hop away from "men are not suited to be nurses" ?

C) Does whether or not there actually are biological factors have any bearing on questions A/B ?

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

#509

Post by unityByFreedom »

xienze wrote: post #497
ryanbrunner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong". I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after,…

Be honest here -- do you _really_ think there's a way to present the argument that --gasp-- men and women might be different in their abilities that _wouldn't_ trigger a meltdown? I think this memo really highlights the fact that there are Some Things You Just Can't Talk About.

No, you can't, because there isn't evidence that biological differences cause people to choose different careers.

Why would put forth a theory that is opposed to a company's values of equality if you don't have proof?

Most evidence points to socialized factors, not biological ones.

If Damore really cares about this issue, he should study biology and make his case there. He will do more to move the debate forward from within the relevant scientific community by gathering evidence than from the outside.

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

#510

Post by AlexandrB »

humanrebar wrote: post #109
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…

> ...it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day. Maybe. There's a lot of diversity within the male gender. I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background. I sometimes wonder which of my coworkers have something against me. I know all of them don't (or at least they are professional regardless), but people from my background ar…

> I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background.

Right. Now imagine being an outlier due to your biology in a way that's impossible to conceal. I'm an outlier in some ways from my peers as well. But I just don't talk about those beliefs or those parts of my life. You don't have the option to do that if you're female or a visible minority.

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