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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

#561

Post by taysic »

nsnick wrote: post #455
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…

What I understand from this situation is that he ran through a minefield and stepped on a few mines. Could someone else have run through that minefield and not stepped on any mines... probably. Is it reasonable to expect some one to be able to run through a minefield and not step on mines? No. Should we prevent people from running through the minefield...?

Is it worth it? As far as I can tell, it's a voluntary initiative by Google which is well meaning. And I question if it really "hurts" anyone. Hiring processes are never perfect but Google seems to do a good job out of anyone.

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

#562

Post by [deleted] »

kenferry wrote: post #18
rpiguy wrote: post #6

I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm. He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I t…

The harm would have been done even if the memo was not leaked, due to the otherwise discussed effects on google employees.

[deleted]

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

#563

Post by dang »

moduspol wrote: post #411
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I read that, and it's not so much "serious questions about validity" as "overall weak agreement disguised as rebuttal". The main takeaway in the form of disagreement is that social science findings are mostly untrustworthy/not usable?

> The main takeaway in the form of disagreement is that social science findings are mostly untrustworthy/not usable? No, I think they're fine as long as they're consistent with the idea that sexism and oppression are the only relevant factors. Otherwise, better keep that science to yourself.

Please don't post ideological snark to HN, regardless of what your underlying point is. It poisons discussion and we can all use less poison right now.

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

#564

Post by turtleofdeath »

dguaraglia wrote: post #552
nicolashahn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Damore didn't do anything to make women think they were hired only because of diversity initiatives. It's common knowledge that Google makes an effort to hire more women. That was already the case, and Damore merely brought attention to the negative aspects of it.

There's a huge difference between increasing outreach and lowering the hiring bar. One shields more candidates , the other one increases the chances of hiring someone from the same pool of candidates . The reason why Google (and many other companies) are increasing outreach is because they want to maintain a high-quality of engineers, otherwise they'd just open the floodgate and let everyone in and solve their divers…

> Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them.

That's true and an excellent point. If he's lying about Google's recruitment practices, either by misunderstanding or by outright false accusation, then large parts of the memo are moot.

On the other hand, I would make the counterpoint that the only reason his honesty has come into question is because of the negative reception his memo has had. Also, what are the odds that Damore misunderstood things? I'd say low.

Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see.

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

#565

Post by intopieces »

waqf wrote: post #390
pj_mukh wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's trading off the false positive vs. false negative rate in the hiring signal. The question is what your assumptions are about the sources of error in that signal. If you assume that the variance consists exclusively of false negatives due to discrimination, then the extra interviewers will work as Google claims and no bars will be lowered. If you assume that the variance consists of randomly distributed error tha…

>Of course it's possible that the truth is in between.

In this case, isn't the finding the truth pretty straightforward? Pull the performance reviews of the second chance hires. Check to see if there's a clear correlation in review and find a pattern.

Are we assuming that Google, which specializes in using data, does not bother to mine its own data with regards to its hiring practices?

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

#566

Post by bduerst »

jshevek wrote: post #462
bduerst wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone making arguments for/against firing him for the memo need to be reminded that we don't know why he was fired. It's just as likely he was fired for lying about having a PhD from Harvard. Edit: I stand corrected, he was just enrolled in a PhD program.

He didn't lie about having a PhD from Harvard. LinkedIn doesn't allow one to differentiate between being enrolled in a PhD program, or having completed a PhD program The common practice when enrolled in a PhD program is to list using a future completion date, making clear that you have not yet completed the program. Google knew he was enrolled in this program when they hired him.

Good point, I wasn't aware of LinkedIn's abilities with that.

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

#567

Post by throwaway9287 »

I just can't figure out why it is so difficult to even discuss the fact that men and women are not identical. It is really difficult to research and measure, but it is a really, really strong (and untrue) assumption that men and women are just exactly the same in every possible way.

Now if we accept that fact, even if we are not able to quantify it, also the demographics are going to vary by occupation, just by choice, even in a perfect world without discrimination.

Given how impossible this is to research, how are we to know whether occupational gender differences are good or bad? How do we know what's discrimination and what's just choice, knowing that the two are also related, and choice is also related with ability regardless of the gender.

We should fix discrimination by punishing the actors behaving that way, not by establishing countermeasures that are just discriminatory in the other direction. This is what I understood to be Damore's main argument.

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

#568

Post by 013a »

gnicholas wrote: post #540
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…

One interesting point that hasn't attracted much attention is that the author self-identifies as being on the autism spectrum [1]. If this fact were better-known, would accessibility advocates defend his memo — and possibly even attack its detractors for not being sensitive to his neurological differences? 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...

Liberal ideology doesn't have a flowchart path for that one.

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

#569

Post by mejari »

cookiecaper wrote: post #521
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…

I don't understand why this means that Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion. We absolutely should not construct a credentialist edifice that says only people certified to have gone through brainwa---err, regent-approved programs--- can comment on a topic. That would prevent discussion on most topics, as virtually all topics of interest are complex and have many years of study behind them. Overall, these comments…

>I don't understand why this means that Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion.

"Shouldn't have shared his opinion" and "should have shared his opinion in a different way" are two completely different things, and I don't see many people saying the first.

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

#570

Post by azernik »

belorn wrote: post #242

A common criticism by each four of the female engineers is how the memo effected them in their job and how they had to prove themselves afterward. This strongly reminds me of about a case a year ago when a kindergarten teacher was tried and charged for rape against several children. After a lot of media attention, many male teachers all over the nation reported to constantly having prove to parents and fellow female…

The feminist movement as a whole is very much against gendered norms about who should and shouldn't be a kindergarten teacher. Which feminist movements did you see fanning these particular flames?
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