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James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

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Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#651
post #578

You need a very minimal amount of social skill to succeed in programming - just enough to not piss coworkers off too badly while working together on projects. Past that, you get mostly quiet and controlled environments, managers willing to let you work on your special interests, and generally get left alone to stare at your screen and type things out. This is one of the best working environments you can find for auti…

Your argument that “inclusivity-in-tech [is] ableist for wanting to destroy this niche in the pursuit of making the programming niche more welcoming to other groups” is interesting and probably a much better way to represent a claim similar to Damore in a far less offensive way to women. I can personally name a handful of non-neuro-typical people who would wholeheartedly agree (half of them females because my friends…

>However, if you check the ratio of people even moderately high on the Asperger’s scale among programmers, it is much higher than other more social profession but still a small portion overall. That difference doesn’t come close to explaining the gender gap.

That's why I included the part about the programming work environment generally being unpleasant and demanding. I didn't make the connection explicit, but "high paying job that sucks" is a preferential attractor for male workers. 90% of workplace deaths are men, men tend to do more things like "work on dangerous and dirty oil rigs", men tend to work more hours than women, and women tend to accumulate in more personally rewarding jobs such as teaching or social work. The end result is a gross earnings gap that basically disappears when you control for these sorts of choices.

So to be explicit: becoming a programmer is a choice that pays well, but is difficult work, requires a large time commitment to study, and is not intuitively gratifying. On that basis alone I'd expect outsized male participation.

>I’m not familiar with the gender distribution of introversion

In terms of big-5 personality traits, the gendered differences are that women tend to score higher on Agreeableness and Neuroticism. I don't think it's particularly relevant to this whole discussion, though.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#652
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just do what politicians do. apologize as vaguely as possible without calling yourself wrong. "Mistakes were made, and I want to move on with my life....", no details -- just pandering. He won't necessarily be dishonest if he limits the context of the apology. (I don't think one should apologize for opinions and ideas that go un-enacted. Knee-jerk reactions to opinions you don't like tend to blow them up, and that's…

Does that even work, though? We all comment critically here when we see politicians or company CEOs pulling fake-apologies. But since fake-apologies happen, I guess they must be buying the performers something ...

The key is to be sincere. A fake apology would be a terrible idea.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> due to a stupid political game he didn't even realize he was playing If he didn't know exactly what he was doing he deserves whatever happens to him for being so oblivious to the world around him.

Perhaps you should read up a little on Autism Spectrum Disorder. James Damore almost certainly tends to the autistic, and it can lead to both some insensitive statements not intended the way they were taken, and being unable to recognize some of the social situations he was put in.

If that were true then wouldn't James Damore have recanted or apologized at some point, once he realized it was offense? This isn't making an off-color remark in passing.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#654

Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth. Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech. I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It's not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are…

> Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech.

Why would it matter that you are "a mixed race woman in tech"? Your comment should be judged only by its content, not by its author's race or gender, right?

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be from US. As a European, I find all these things very absurd. Like the guys with the "dongle" joke that both got fired [1], and if I remember correctly, so did the woman reporting them. Maybe you should all start by treating each other with more respect, whoever it is. And don't go witch-hunting. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes...

I actually lived in Germany for a few years before moving on to North America, so I can somewhat compare. IMO, people in US are generally more competitive than in Europe, but in the current political climate this unfortunately leads to more backstabbing and more dirty play. Europe has its holy cows as well. Try publicly questioning the Syrian refugee program or come up with scientific evidence that nationals coming f…

> Europe has its holy cows as well. Try publicly questioning the Syrian refugee program or come up with scientific evidence that nationals coming from war conflict zones have a higher chance of becoming criminals - you'll get crucified the same way.

Boy, and don't even begin to mention that refugee programmes in Europe are probably the least effective way to evacuate people from a warzone (and that the majority of people coming in are likely not in fact refugees).

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation. Basically its lexical nature introduces perceptual bias that skews any factor analysis for biological structures - i.e. behavior between genders, for example. The way Damore uses it to support his hypothesis wasn't correct. >And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using l…

Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation. Thanks for that. I find that reaction much more informative than the name-calling sent at James Damore. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it. Well, one should expect th…

Sure, which may be fine for the burden of proof for a personal opinion.

Incorrectly using evidence to support your opinion as you broadcast it at work, and not listening, discussing, or considering critical feedback (like this) is a different matter. Especially when it means incorrectly classifying your co-workers and trying to change how your work fights social biases.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of the "diversity movement". The point is that some classes, e.g. women and minorities face discrimination that's baked into the selection process, even when they eventual selectors are not showing a preference. You might try to hire based only on "merit, motivation, and results", but any measure of those things is going to be imperfect. If those measurements are themselves biased, th…

I didn't miss that point, it was clearly stated as fighting subjective bias and making sure there is equal opportunity. Measuring performance is pretty objective, but yes it should also constantly be improved. That has nothing to do with diversity based on appearance nor will those policies help.

Which policies don't help? There have been a broad array of diversity policies attempted over the years. Do you have any evidence suggesting that they all fail?

Here's [1] an overview of a bunch of programs. It includes data on how they've affected employee composition and discusses why certain things fail or succeed. The first success it cites is voluntary diversity training. The sort Google has. The sort that James Damore attended and then got angry about.

[1]https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#658
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Most of the pieces about the memo didn't take time to highlight that "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" refer to Big-5 personality traits, not the everyday understanding of the words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between descriptive and normative statements. Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between statements about distribution of something wi…

Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation. Basically its lexical nature introduces perceptual bias that skews any factor analysis for biological structures - i.e. behavior between genders, for example. The way Damore uses it to support his hypothesis wasn't correct. >And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using l…

1. Whether or not the Big Five are appropriate for the analysis or not, or whether they're ultimate truth or not, doesn't really matter for the point I and GP were making: Damon's terminology is jargon from differential psychology and easily misunderstood. ("Women score higher on neuroticism on average" does not mean "Women are too neurotic to work as engineers in big companies", or whatever.)

2. I think it takes more than one article (which has been cited once, by the author themselves) to unseat the Big Five.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/citedby...

3. As an aside, note that the article finds significant sex differences (p=0.00) in 10 out of 12 items on its proposed scale, STQ-150, if I'm understanding it correctly.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/table/p...

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#659
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

source please (as in when he lied) ?

He previously had "PhD, Systems Biology" on his LinkedIn profile under his Harvard section - which I get that, to other academics, probably means "I was working on a PhD between these years," but sounds very much like "I have a PhD in Systems Biology from Harvard" to anyone from the outside. (I have an incomplete master's degree personally, and I'm careful to write "BS and coursework towards MEng" on my resume and no…

In my academic experience, saying "Harvard University, PhD, Systems Biology, 2011-2013" without having finished would be seen as dishonest. I have a PhD, but before I finished I always said "anticipated" or "expected". It's possible that Damore did this inadvertently, but it seems like too convenient of a mistake to leave out his MS degree, just say PhD, and leave the claim up for years.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#660
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim that there is a pattern of bad diversity hires, but your anecdotes are just as easily explained by confirmation bias: You see an incompetent male engineer, and you write him off as an idiot and forget him. You see an incompetent woman, and she becomes evidence that there is a problem with diversity programs. You remember evidence that supports your narrative. Obviously my statement is not evidence either. I…

It depends on whether the incompetent male engineers are just as incompetent as the incompetent female engineers. For instance, she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries. Are the incompetent male developers at that same level of incompetence? Of course taking this into account cannot completely eliminate selection bias, and the sample size either way is probably too small to be all that meaningf…

In a way that was my point, I just wasn't really good at relaying it. Of course there are many incompetent male engineers but it's more noticeable when they are a "diversity hire".

I don't present my situation as anything more than anecdotal, it's just what I've noticed. And to answer your question no the manager does not treat male developers the same way, they're held to a higher standard. In fact the "middle-aged white male" has to be above average at this particular company to be kept on.

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