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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

#641

Post by pyronik »

Blackthorn wrote: post #177
rpiguy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way. Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together. The only exception to this rule seems to be around leftist issues, where if you disagree you are out…

> The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way. Considering how all sixteen of my female teammates were pissed off about it, I'm going to go ahead and say you are demonstrably wrong.

How many men take offense to hiring quotas but keep their mouths shut so they don't end up like Damore? You just set up an environment where how someone feels is more important than logic/reason/truth and that is never a good position to be in.

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

#642

Post by Berobero »

arcticfox wrote: post #386
jake-low wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed in TFA. > [W]hen I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of de…

It seems like you're holding a significant double standard here, which is exactly why Damore feels his views are systemically quashed. For example, that line of reasoning would go: Damore saw practices he feels are discriminatory based on the available evidence. His silence could be mistaken for agreement. He should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.

This would be a reasonable take to me if the issue he took up could reasonably be described as significantly affecting his everyday work life; the key difference I see in your "double standard" is that the woman can't walk away from being a woman in a male dominated profession.

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

#643

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#644

Post by dguaraglia »

turtleofdeath wrote: post #614
dguaraglia wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Replying here because I guess there's a limit. > His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it. Which alt-right media did he reach out to? I've been paying pretty close attention and I saw him being interviewed by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, but they are not alt-right media. They are both classical conservatives.…

> Which alt-right media did he reach out to?

His very first interview was with Stefan Molyneaux, a self-described "fighter for men's rights" (yeah, I know.)

> what's to be gained from him lying about this?

I don't think he was outright lying, I think he was just uninformed and made a lot of assumptions and drew conclusions (biased by his own political views) out of those assumptions. I do think his inflammatory approach to accusing Google and Googlers of "leftist bias" was a way to get attention.

About what's to be gained? Well... he's been interviewed by the New York Times and he'll probably get a book deal out of it, plus whatever money he might get if he manages to successfully sue Google.

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

#645

Post by dang »

md224 wrote: post #517

On a side note, I would like to thank the HN mods for allowing this discussion to take place. Previous attempts at discussion were quickly silenced by flagging, and while it's a little weird that a piece on YCombinator just happens to be the sole exception, I'm glad that an exception was made. These kinds of discussions are difficult but necessary, critical to the process of gaining a greater understanding of those w…

Thanks, but we didn't do anything different in this case and are as surprised as anyone that the post went to #1 and (better still!) the discussion remained as civil as it has. I don't want people to think that the ycombinator.com domain affects moderation on an article like this, since our first rule is to moderate less, not more, when YC is involved [1].

I emailed Cadran to warn her that the post would probably meet the same fate as the others, but I was wrong—the community responded quite differently. That's fine by us as long as the discussion meets the site guidelines, which this one mostly has.

Edit: also, the community should know that it, not moderators, produced this effect. IMO that makes the thread more interesting.

1. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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

#646

Post by briholt »

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 isn't the venue for [discussing your company's potentially illegal hiring practices]."

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

#647

Post by jdoliner »

jhayward wrote: post #618
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 think the most empathetic comment on the memo that I read was that it would have been to everyone's benefit if Damore had showed it to several more experienced engineers and incorporated suggestions. No matter who you are, you can use an editor.

Damore did do exactly this. The memo was only ever released in the context of "I'm looking for feedback on this and open to being proven wrong.

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

#648

Post by dguaraglia »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #430
dguaraglia wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just refer to the women in the article: > Assuming that it’s true that women on average are more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job performance?

Statistics are statistics and I do not believe they should be censored on behalf of being unpalatable. That said, its how we interpret statistics that really matters. Like in my examples, a generalization is just that - a generalization, and thus not necessarily applicable to a given individual. To answer the question, a woman's (or man's) work should speak for itself. If they are a good worker and still facing scrut…

Do you agree that stereotypes affect peoples choices of careers?

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

#649

Post by MikeGale »

An important part of this discussion is using general population statistics, to describe programmers at Google.

Programmers at Google are NOT general population.

Without seeing that specific data, it may be that female programmers at Google are better than the males. I don't know, and it varies by project and role.

Then when we are talking about specific people, all the population statistics are irrelevant anyway.

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

#650

Post by silencedbyfear »

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.

Exactly. I'm afraid my only takeaway here is I can never talk about this stuff if I don't want to end my career right there. They'll always win the argument because they can simply destroy everyone who disagrees with them.

Yep, I had to create a separate account for this comment for fear of retribution.

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