Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo • Hacker News Board

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

#631

Post by rifung » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:56 PM UTC

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…

It's very difficult to convince people who aren't interested in being convinced. There are too many people out there with a different, maybe wrong, opinion.

Why waste your time with those who don't seem genuinely interested in opposing evidence?

I didn't find his tone aggressive but he didn't at all seem interested in having a discussion. If I remember correctly he didn't rebuke any opposing points, let alone present them, which makes me think he didn't bother looking for them.

It's like hey I have this point I want you to listen to but I'm not even going to make an attempt to look up answers and instead force you to listen to me before I listen to you. It's like trying to answer someone's question without even understanding what they're asking, which I am sad to say I have seen far too often at Google.

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

#632

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:57 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #377

nicolashahn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least. We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.

If your workplace is sexistly discriminating against men and firing employees that disagree, then yes it is the venue for it.

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

#633

Post by dang » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:57 PM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #419

Honest question: Will this thread be quickly flagged by HN moderators or taken off the front page like many others on the topic (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819 for more info)? Or are there "exceptions"?

You seem to be mistaken about what's been happening. Moderators haven't been flagging those articles; users have. That's what '[flagged]' means.

The different outcome in this case is because of community response. There are still a lot of flags, but there are many more upvotes. That, plus the discussion quality (i.e. not a trainwreck) surprised us quite a bit. I emailed Cadran this morning that she should probably expect the post to get flagged the same way as others (by users) and that we wouldn't be able to intervene if that happened. Instead, it went straight to #1. That's fine by me because the discussion has remained relatively civil and substantive.

For completeness I should mention that we did do one intervention: we turned off a software penalty called the 'flamewar detector' that kicks in on discussions that get a great many comments. But that's routine: we always turn off that penalty when the discussion isn't actually a flamewar, and this one qualifies. Other than that, moderators haven't touched the post at all, so yeah I think it's fair to say no exceptions.

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

#634

Post by quilliellis » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:58 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #60

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. You are completely right, but on the other hand if you are going to invoke "science" and you present your writing as scientific (he did), you have a higher bar. If you fail to be objective…

Your criticism is that he shouldn't have released a poorly-written memo to an enormous company. I would agree, however, I don't think that's what happened. I thought he brought it up in the internal Google Skeptics group, and then it got leaked and went viral. I doubt he wanted such an enormous audience for this draft, but I'm open to hearing statements to the contrary.

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

#635

Post by alecco » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:58 PM UTC

Every thread about the Google Memo in the past weeks got flagged (?) promptly out of the homepage but this one stays at the top with just 400 points. I wonder what's the difference.

1695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787

754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759

590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626

448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601

And many more.

Then people wonder how Trump got elected.

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

#636

Post by wcummings » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #612

wcummings wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully hes just ending his career now. Google shouldn't be soaking up all these ignorant young college boys if they're not mature enough to handle a workplace.

Would you please not poison the discussion like this? Regardless of how correct your underlying points might be, it amounts to arson in a fire zone, and we ban accounts that do it. Plenty of other users are able to express similar views to yours without violating the site guidelines. Please follow in their footsteps and post only comments that make the forum better, not worse.

Duly noted

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

#637

Post by briandear » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #377

nicolashahn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least. We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.

The workplace shouldn't be the venue, except many companies are kind of forcing this issue into the workplace by making valiant and public-relations-tinged efforts at diversity. I think Google even has a Vice President for Diversity -- which to me seems a bit silly because unless there's a business case to be made, it's just feel-good self-congratulation for how "progressive" you are. Perhaps having a diversity manager -- but an actual Vice President level executive? That seems like that should already be in the portfolio of whomever is in charge of Human Resources -- certainly not a separate executive role.

Is a Diversity executive actually impacting the bottom line of the company? Are there any actual quantitative facts that indicate that "diversity" improves a business's profitability? I am not arguing against diversity, please don't misunderstand. But it feels to me that this violent desire for diversity is something rather unique to SV tech. For example, the lack of men in the mental health professions barely raises any mention aside from the quadrennial NY Times think piece. The lack of men kindergarten teachers also barely makes a dent in the national discussion. The lack of women in building trades (despite those jobs being extremely well paying compared to "white collar" mid-level marketing jobs often dominated by women.) There's also not a big emphasis on the lack of women working in aviation or firefighting, despite those also being very well paid positions.

But for tech, for some reason it's a "big deal."

Fighting discrimination is obviously important as a basic matter of human rights, but much of tech's diversity push isn't about fighting discrimination as much as it's about actively recreating the balance of men and women in the field based on an arbitrary desired ratio.

If men and women are different, then it follows that they will have different desired vocations to a similar degree that they are different. If we argue that men and women are exactly the same, then why aren't more men working in mental health or social work -- those fields are about 80% women. We can't use the discrimination argument because that would imply that women discriminate against men -- and that doesn't fit the narrative that the straight white male is the bane of society.

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

#638

Post by quilliellis » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

mejari wrote: post #569

cookiecaper wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I saw so many people saying the first (on sites like Medium and Facebook). Not on HN, though.

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

#639

Post by jorgemf » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #556

jorgemf wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wrote the article as a research article. So every time he put an statement he referenced it with a research article which supports that statement. I don't understand why this is wrong. All research papers are written this way.

What? Research papers tend to also present data and research that arrive at different conclusions when such things exist, or show how the existing body of knowledge is deficient in some way. Usually the point is either accounting for the difference or showing how the authors' research refutes, modifies, or augments the body of knowledge as it stands. Damore didn't present a research paper. He presented an accusation…

Yes, but they do it in the topic they are discussing. The manifest was focused in changing the diversity programs in the company and was presenting facts to consider that option. In no way it was focused in discussing the differences between gender as a lot of people is try to claim. And it makes quite clear the difference between average and individuals.

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

#640

Post by turtleofdeath » Tue, Aug 15, 2017, 11:01 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #600

turtleofdeath wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Affirmative action causes everyone, including the person, to question whether they got there on merit or based on filling some quota. Multiple biases are created.

> Affirmative action causes everyone, including the person, to question whether they got there on merit or based on filling some quota. Affirmative Action does not require having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies). So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately sp…

> Affirmative Action does not require having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies).

Fair enough -- quotas aren't the issue, but affirmative action is the issue.

> So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.

That's a concrete conclusion based on unprovable/shaky reasoning.

And even if that were true and you could prove it, it wouldn't change the fact concerning affirmative action (in this case, lowering hiring standards for certain groups) causing bias for both coworkers and the employee. How do coworkers know an individual got there on their own merit? How does an individual who is on/above par, yet who happens to belong to an affirmative action group, shake the internal/external stigma that they got there based on the lowered bar? These things contribute to bias whether or not we like the overall idea behind affirmative action (which is to level the playing field). Nothing comes for free.