Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

You specifically said that the suggestion of Pair Programming, was due to James thinking that women are "less capable of individual action".

But you also said "It's a technique to improve product reliability and give more practical mentorship opportunities." Which is also my understanding. I know at least one shop where everybody pair programs. It has nothing to do with programmers being inferior. I also agree that paring is more sociable since every day I will have to greet my team mate, talk about stuff, have a coffee, then get to work.

I'm just trying to understand how "Pair Programming" changes meaning so much just because some dude wrote a manifesto. We can't even have a discussion if our understanding of the same document is so wildly different.

The first bullet point exemplified: Let's say there's a job that requires trait openness / empathy to a certain degree (e.g. early education). Now, some given statistics show that e.g. 40% of the female population and 20% of the male population have this manifestation of the trait to the required degree. Would you still expect a 50/50 male/female representation in the field? The author makes the argument that, if the statistics he found are correct, he wouldn't expect a 50/50 split.

The second bullet point just says that discrimination for the sole sake of said equal representation is bad for business, because given the above it would have to be necessarily unmeritocratic. I would contest this point in a sense that individual merit is not the sole factor at which to look, because it is only a single factor in group success, where the availability of diverse ways of thinking and social compatibility also play major roles.

One of the best books that helped me early in my programming career was "Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In". Some other books helped to varying degrees.

But the tough news is that, in my experience, the best way to learn people skills is in a very "public" way: by interacting with people. I wish I had understood this earlier and tried to learn less from books. Learning a foreign language is not much different. You make far quicker progress by speaking with other people than from any other method.

I did attend a people skills seminar that work paid for and found that to be super helpful. That's where I had the genuis realization that you have to actually practice interacting with people to get better at interacting with people! Duh! I would highly recommend any one or two day seminar where they include practice time with the other participants. It's a safe place to make mistakes and learn - that's what everyone is there for. Accidentally walking into the women's bathroom was not one of the mistakes I planned on making there, but hey, it was possibly the best place ever I could have made that awkward mistake. Ha!

In any case, lots of progress is attainable. I went from being (sometimes) nervous if I had to speak to a room full of three (!) people, to now having made dozens of public presentations in front of audiences as large as two hundred people. I've taught many classes. I have even done sucessful sales pitches, when there is no one better around. It took me decades, and a lot of mistakes to get where I am. Am I a super star at people skills? I don't think so. But I am way better than where I started and I look forward to and enjoy situtations that usually would have made me nervous in the past.

So if you really want to improve your people skills, you'll have to put yourself in social situations. Small doses are best at first. Like anything you want to learn, you should have a specific objective for what you are trying to learn each "practice session", and a way to measure success. Like learning a musical instrument or foreign language, if you practice fifteen minutes a day, you'll see very steady progress. If you practice once a month for a few hours, you probably won't progress much at all.

I hinted at a problem with this before: when you fail at learning people skills it's in a public way. Social mistakes can have social consequences. The point here is that you might want to avoid doing much of your practicing or "experiments" in social groups that are important to you: work for example. That doesn't mean you can't learn some things at work. Study your co-workers who are great a people skills. Spend as much time with them as you can (or can bear to) and pay careful attention to how they interact with others.

But try to find other places for the really difficult learning. Does everyone who joins a wood working club do so because they want to make a table? Or is it possible some of the folks there are hoping to meet their future wood working wife? Who cares? Same for you if you joined a club that has a minor interest to you, but you want to use it to improve your social skills. And I don't mean at all to imply that you can just do social experiments on people in the club with no regard to their feelings and to just use them. Of course not. But if you make a really embarassing mistake, and just cannot bring yourself to face those people again, well, it's certainly not going to effect your ability to pay rent, is it? It's far more likely you'll make some new friends there. Casual friends, permanent friends, temporary friends, your best friends, or even if you make no friends, it's just a club. People move on and forget.

Finally, I would also say to only do what you really want. There's plenty of room in the world for people who are good at something other than people skills. But if you do manage to make improvements, I think you will see it improve your life in every area in ways you can hardly imagine now. Hope some of that helps! Best of luck.

It's like the moment you try to have a conversation about some serious topic, you feel like you are receiving youtube comments in person.

Only recently, I realized this requirement for PC is why most social talking in the US tend to be about sport (NFL, NHL, NBA), TV (Game of Thrones or some reality shows) or podcasts.

Dare to speak about a social issue or challenge a solution that's supposed to be addressing the issue, you'll be at the receiving end of a verbal lynch mob.

Every one claim I read that pointed at a specific part and said the writing here was putting forward a horrible opinion that nobody should hold, let alone express in company of others; those clauses were cited with sources and facts to show that the author's expression was of fact, or of research that justified policies and not of a personal opinion. It is vitriol and easy to read "wrong," and as I read and re-read the parts that are most quoted, I can understand how people are so offended. But it is text, not violence, and it is through text and honest discourses that progress can be made! "You don't have to apologise for your feelings," I want to tell them, "but put those down for a second so we can get something done alright?"

The part I read that in isolation, I will agree wholeheartedly is a terrible sentiment, I was able to step back and read factually instead and see where he was saying, in not so many words, "it's not my idea, this is what the research says, and that fact plus inequality is why we got these also sexist policies, a new kind of the old kind of discrimination."

You can't simply punish a man for living in the time he was born, and call it fair; expect that nobody should address the facts on paper, a discriminatory policy, the elephant in the room, or whatever. "Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining." Please note I did not read the whole memo, but that was the gist of it that I got.

We will never get to a time where we can talk about how "now we are in perfect equality, and there's no more injustice, though it was not always so;" if we can't freely talk about the ways in which we are not, equals, including honest and full discussion of programs and policies that enforce and perpetuate that inequality.

That being said, it seems that lines are being drawn and certain justifications or arguments are on that side of the line. I can fully understand how one on the receiving end of this kind of fire and vitriol might rightly react.

I do think he has a case for slander at least against the leadership. He has been smeared, I have no doubt of that from just reading the CEOs statement, but with the caveat that I don't know him personally and he could really be all those things. I'm just going off the document.