731–740 of 1001 posts
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> When your hiring demographics do not roughly match graduation demographics you are not being honest. Or maybe the graduation demographics are biased and Google is just trying to correct them?
How is Google correcting biased graduation demographics via hiring practices?
I'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I haven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a female repellant. Look at the work/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry. Compare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture, women disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing. When there's a work emergency and the kids HAV…
How society judges a stay-at-home dad might be another issue, however.
"As a female engineer, you don’t get to just love coding, or love problem solving and hacking on hardware – you also have to figure out how to navigate men who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don’t consider you an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they assume you don’t have as much expertise as your peers." Not picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sent…
Wasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for both men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work in the industry.
In short, apologetically generalising, I'm suggesting that humans by nature tend to barely get along ever, and sometimes it is hard to tell what is discrimination and what is just normal work crap.
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Wasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for both men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work in the industry.
I didn't read it as such and I wouldn't say it was the point I was attempting to make. (not your fault, I suck at writing sentences) In short, apologetically generalising, I'm suggesting that humans by nature tend to barely get along ever, and sometimes it is hard to tell what is discrimination and what is just normal work crap.
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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.
So the takeaway is: you should become extremely proficient at writing memos and back them up with vast amounts of research, or be fired. But all of the above applies only if your memo expresses conservative ideas. I don't consider myself a conservative but I find all of this disturbing.
Maybe the takeaway is: you shouldn't write "memos" that generate a lot of noise and lost productivity in your work environment and affect your company's external image. If you have political points you want to make, go find a group of like-minded individuals and discuss with them first.
I'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I haven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a female repellant. Look at the work/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry. Compare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture, women disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing. When there's a work emergency and the kids HAV…
I'm leaving the industry for a while to take care of my 7 month old so my wife can get back into her career as a designer in the tech industry. We didn't really plan it like this, something happened, but in the end I think it's a good opportunity for our family (I get to bond with the kid, she gets to go back to developing her career). How society judges a stay-at-home dad might be another issue, however.
Welcome to the experience of parenthood. Best of luck to you, your wife, and your child(ren).
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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.
A big four-paragraph disclaimer at the beginning would've been a big waste of everyone's time, and it could just as easily be interpreted as a sign of hostility or malfeasance. If people want to dislike something, there is an infinity of potential nits to fixate on.
I've always been brash so I've been through the "delivery ringer" many times. The conclusion I've reached is that frequently, the only way to avoid it is to be so opaque and listless in your communication that people aren't sure what you meant.
If you say something people don't like in a non-ambiguous way, they will be mad, and they will insist on finding a reason to dismiss it.
When you are trying to make an effective argument, you have to anticipate what the responses would be. The biggest problem with Damore is that apparently he didn't take enough into account about what women felt about the issue, as mentioned in the article. People in the majority are naturally the ones with the louder voice, but it can be misleading if you are speaking on a minority group. You probably won't have the same experiences, and one or two studies is not enough to explain something as complicated as biology, psychology, or sociology. This is especially true if the science is easily refuted. I really wonder why Damore chose to write about the lack of women in tech specifically? It seems to me so that he could better support his proposal to not focus on diversity efforts or to face less backlash for not speaking on race. If this is the case, strengthening confirmation bias is not an effective solution because there may be a lot more than what meets the eye if you're not an expert on the subject.
So from this, the two biggest questions are was he right? and was Google right?
Was he right? Somewhat. I can't say yes or no 100%. He tried to explain his view as best as he could but he supported it terribly. It deserved the backlash. But he made some good points about it being unsafe to express his opinion. If he was smarter, he wouldn't have been fired. This is the bigger problem with the situation. A good engineer, in my opinion should be more flexible in thought, think more about surrounding outcomes, and be better at interacting with people.
Was Google right? Absolutely. The bigger problem is that many people think Google fired him for having a dissenting opinion, which I think is not true and unfortunate because it polarized America more between the left and the right. Damore should've been smarter and we would not have this discussion. I'm almost certain that Google wouldn't be where it is today without diversity of thought. You can have a differing opinion and express it without pissing everyone off. Google would have been dammed if they did fire him, dammed if they didn't fire him, but more dammed if they didn't. It got leaked and the media attention, complete with hostile arguments from both sides for a reason and it harmed Google's image and female employees. We can all mostly agree that Damore had some decent points to be made if he were a better writer and emphasizer. Would you still say that he was fired because Google is a left leaning organization?
You can't say women are not biologically suited for an engineering position at Google, face harsh backlash including termination from work and say that your views weren't respected. Come on. That's what sexism is. What if you said this about Hispanics, or Native Americans?
If you want to say that the diversity efforts at Google are misguided, then make a better argument than saying "we don't need diversity programs at Google". I would say not to strive for 50% women because not all of the engineers are 50% women. Strive for a closer percent of their actual representation. Google can't have 50% of all women engineers because some of them work for different companies. Google shouldn't use immoral or illegal hiring practices to achieve this number. But Google should still have diversity programs so that more women get into tech which would bring the number of women in the workforce in general closer to 50% and it could benefit everyone. Also keep in mind that a minority can possibly have more or less qualified people as a whole proportionally within the group. Hiring more of one minority group does not necessarily lower the bar.
Biases do exist, but it doesn't always mean it's bad. I told you I was a person of color at the beginning of this to make you form a bias against me. I want my voice to be heard in the hundreds of these comments when my probability of being read is lower because there are likely a lower percentage of women and other minorities posting. I don't think that I face tough obstacles, which turns people off of arguments like this, but I want to say that I do, however minor. Often times I act a certain way BECAUSE I don't want to be seen as "the black guy" and I've done this enough of my life that people say that I'm not the same as many other black guys. They don't say it in a negative way, because I still act "somewhat" black, if that makes sense to you.