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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

#771

Post by humanrebar »

xigency wrote: post #313
kromem wrote: post #80

Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological differences mapped to job performance? I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.

On pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added): - On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...the distribution of PREFERENCES and ABILITIES of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. - Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings a…

For what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or less, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable career choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently nonverbal jobs (programming) less often.

https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...

"For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer."

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

#772

Post by e9 »

shaftoe wrote: post #725

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…

But that was part of point in the memo, he was proposing how to change tech culture to make it more appealing for women. Like one of his proposals was to introduce part-time jobs into Google among other things. He wasn't claiming to have all answers but wanted to start official conversation on this topic and figure out what is truly feasible at Google...

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

#773

Post by EpicBlackCrayon »

pm24601 wrote: post #758

My feelings as a white male...who happens to have 2 kids. Sometimes my kids will "why?" "why?" me to death. They really don't care about the answer and can never be persuaded. They are just trying to stretch out the moment of truth before they actually have to do the thing they don't want to do. Everyone: it is the 21st century. In the 20th century, we had that discussion and debate about whether or not half of the h…

If only I could upvote twice, this is an excellent analogy.

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

#774

Post by shitRabbits »

dguaraglia wrote: post #186
mizzack wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your quote: > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem. From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of…

> Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem. It's not about self-doubt, it's about creating a stereotype by which other people (managers, peers) will prejudge you even before you write the first line of code. This prejudice already exists as is, Damore's memo doesn't do anything to help it. If improving women's opportunities at Google was his objective, h…

I don't think the memo does that. I've not been convinced by anything I've read trying to indicate that it does. I am convinced that people saying it does seem to read more into it and are upset by perceived implications.

If I felt the memo implied or created that stereotype I'd denounce it as well.

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

#775

Post by e9 »

e9 wrote: post #772
shaftoe wrote: post #725

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…

But that was part of point in the memo, he was proposing how to change tech culture to make it more appealing for women. Like one of his proposals was to introduce part-time jobs into Google among other things. He wasn't claiming to have all answers but wanted to start official conversation on this topic and figure out what is truly feasible at Google...

great rant by Jordan Peterson on this topic that touches on work and work cultures that don't appeal to women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-xFXuo

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

#776

Post by throwawayjava »

nsnick wrote: post #463
ianmiers wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion. The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provo…

Why is a debate worse than a discussion? We strive for debate on all other topics? If you actually want to challenge assumptions you must debate and evaluate the merits of someone else's argument. A discussion would just be you think x and I think y. A debate puts warrants behind the claims in those beliefs.

> Why is a debate worse than a discussion?

Debate works really well in two situations:

1. All parties are experienced with debates and enjoy debates. In particular, they can partake in a debate and then, afterward, dispassionately evaluate the arc of the debate; OR

2. The setting is inherently adversarial and there is a third party who will ultimately decide the outcome.

Almost all workplace conversations -- and indeed almost all life conversations -- do not fall into one of these two buckets. In particular:

1. Making use of debate in a search for truth is a difficult and non-universal skill.

For individual debaters to get something out of a debate, they need to know how to disengage from their advocacy and evaluate the arc of the debate from an objective vantage point. This is a skill that requires training. Discussions, on the other hand, allow people to perform this switching between viewpoints as the discussion unfolds. This is much more natural.

2. Adversarial settings create emotional attachment. In debates, people very often become emotionally attached to their arguments and advocacy, causing ego to get in the way of a search for truth. In contrast, discussions do not require a stable advocacy, they are non-adversarial, and no one "wins". These characteristics de-emphasize ego and place the emphasis on whatever actually important issue is at hand.

3. Debates often end up confusing quality of argument with ground truth.

It's always important to remember that constructing arguments is a skill and is time-consuming. It's certainly possible to "win" a debate and still be dead wrong about ground truths -- either by refining debating skill or by throwing more resources into argument construction.

4. Most people don't enjoy debates. I don't have any evidence here, but I think it's probably true. And in a work place, keeping your co-workers happy is probably a lot more important to achieving the company's goals than whatever epsilon benefit debate has over discussion.

Maybe if universities looked more like The Academy everyone would be competent and comfortable in debates, and also understand their inherent limitations as a mechanism in the search for truth. But that's not the world we live in.

So, although I enjoy a good debate as much as the next person, I've found that debates are a truly terrible method for making decisions in most professional settings.

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

#777

Post by azernik »

lliamander wrote: post #519
poohblahoyamo wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do tell me where in the country is this daycare located at....

http://hilltopcc.com/ Great place.

For the lazy, because it takes some doing to figure out - this is in Seattle.

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

#778

Post by seanmcdirmid »

shaftoe wrote: post #738
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"We didn't really plan it like this, something happened, but in the end I think it's a good opportunity for our family." Welcome to the experience of parenthood. Best of luck to you, your wife, and your child(ren).

The kid came way before this plan did :)

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

#779

Post by cookiecaper »

urahara wrote: post #750
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…

Damore shouldn't have shared his opinion (the way he did) because there is a huge gap between what he claims to aim for and what he actually does. He claims that open discussion, diversity and helping to improve the situation are what important to him. But in practice he does right the opposite: creates a hostile working environment with perverted reasoning, loads of bias perpetuating harmful stereotypes, ignoring ho…

First, you've crossed over from criticizing delivery into criticizing content, so it's clear that's actually the part that offends you. What you're saying is that Damore shouldn't have delivered his opinion unless it was first made to match something reasonably close to your own opinion. There is nothing inherently "dishonest" or "perverted" about Damore's memo; that is a subtext that you are choosing to read in because you disagree with its conclusions.

If Damore had pined on the tragedy of the modern economic structure while exhaustively disclaiming every potential discriminatory implication before he began the memo, I guarantee people would've read just as much "intellectual dishonesty", "perverted reasoning", and "loads of bias" as they did now. In fact, they very likely would've read more, taking the content that initially appeared friendly to their POV as a sign that Damore had malicious intent and that he was attempting to hoodwink people by pretending to be "on their side".

As discussed below, if someone wants to dismiss something they don't like, airy, abstract terms like "perverted reasoning" will get bandied around no matter what. These terms are great precisely because their subjective interpretation allows the writer to sound semi-credible in their condemnation without having to specify further.

Damore was fired because once this hit the mainstream press, it was the only way for Google to preserve a strong defense against inevitable discrimination suits.

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

#780

Post by futun »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #52
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 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,…

That's a good roadmap for future discussion.

One must note that it is not a roadmap the left uses. Ever.

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