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You and I are not reading the same manifesto. This guy clearly thinks less of the women he works with. There is no way he sees his female co-workers as equal wh

You and I are not reading the same manifesto. This guy clearly thinks less of the women he works with. There is no way he sees his female co-workers as equal while publishing rubbish like this. And I doubt women engineers at Google would read that and feel very pleased about it. Yeah I understand Gaussian distributions. I also understand the emotional tone of the original manifesto and the discriminatory thinking behind it disguised in its academic, reasonable, and rational voice.

MichaelGG 9y ago
I think Asians are generally shorter than me. But if a 6'2 Asian is standing next to me, I don't think that particular person is shorter than me. It's perfectly reasonable for him to say the 50/50 ratio might not be ideal, and maybe biology plays a role, while still believing his colleagues are competent.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
  The trouble is that, whilst it's easy to determine whether or not the person stood next to you is shorter than you, competence is something far harder to assess. If your opinion is 'women are, on average, less competant', it would seem more likely than not that your default position would assume the woman stood next to you is less competent.
  - ukj 9y ago
    It would also seem that if we actively prohibit this line of enquiry we will never actually learn to accurately measure "competence" or "empathy", let alone enable humans to recognize those traits in others. Measurement is key to understanding! About the only "lie" in this debate (in so far as I can tell) is that we are all the same! Sure - at some very high level of abstraction it may be "true". But as engineers, surely we understand that failure stems from false assumptions?
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Not quite - if it's not a random person standing next to me, but someone also working in the area, I'd assume that the filtering has eliminated people less competent (if not, then we'd already be at 50/50 equality). To be concrete, I'd assume that any engineer at Google to be about the same competence as their peers. Though it sounds like if you're "diverse" you might have an easier time of getting in, similar to medical school? (Honest question.) At any rate, how do we get to the facts? Saying it must be 50% by fiat doesn't seem like a way to truth. So far I see one side proposing there might be biological reasons and the other side being offended anyone could even suggest the possibility.
  - pandaman 9y ago
    This does not seem as much of a trouble as having a preferential hiring policy for some classes of people and then having the ability of these people doubted not just at the hiring time but through their entire career. To wit: I am a foreigner living and working as a software engineer in the USA. My English is far from perfect and a lot of people assume I am dumb just because of my thick accent. I failed few interviews because of this. I have absolutely no problem with that and am happy with my career. My achievements speak for me. I would not be as happy if this had been made a "diversity" issue and people with heavy accent were given advantages in hiring. This would forever invalidate my achievements as a proof of my competence. I would actively oppose any moves to establish such policies and would not approach any company that had them in place.
ukj 9y ago
>This guy clearly thinks less of the women he works with Can you cite the part of the manifesto which made you reach this conclusion? >I doubt women at Google would feel pleased about that Why? I didn't see anything insulting or disrespectful in the article. Perhaps your mind filled in things not said? For example: I openly admit that I suck at empathy. I am socially awkward, I have hard time relating to other people. I may have EDD. Not only do I recognize that women are better at it I prefer female managers to male managers because all my female managers innately understood psychological safety. And fostered such culture. Is it anecdotal? Yes. But it is consistent with the author's observations that we are different. It is consistent with the Big Five personality trait studies in psychology. So I think shutting down this line of reasoning is effectively an attempt to block attempts at better understanding of what makes us different. And yet if we actually understand each person's strengths AND weaknesses we will be able to build better organisations!
jamesdmiller 9y ago
People have suggested that the manifesto's author is autistic. If this is true, then it is very possible that if you are not familiar with how autistics' think you will not be able to judge his mental state based on the emotional tone of his writing.

MichaelGG 9y ago

I think Asians are generally shorter than me. But if a 6'2 Asian is standing next to me, I don't think that particular person is shorter than me. It's perfectly reasonable for him to say the 50/50 ratio might not be ideal, and maybe biology plays a role, while still believing his colleagues are competent.

oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
The trouble is that, whilst it's easy to determine whether or not the person stood next to you is shorter than you, competence is something far harder to assess. If your opinion is 'women are, on average, less competant', it would seem more likely than not that your default position would assume the woman stood next to you is less competent.
- ukj 9y ago
  It would also seem that if we actively prohibit this line of enquiry we will never actually learn to accurately measure "competence" or "empathy", let alone enable humans to recognize those traits in others. Measurement is key to understanding! About the only "lie" in this debate (in so far as I can tell) is that we are all the same! Sure - at some very high level of abstraction it may be "true". But as engineers, surely we understand that failure stems from false assumptions?
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Not quite - if it's not a random person standing next to me, but someone also working in the area, I'd assume that the filtering has eliminated people less competent (if not, then we'd already be at 50/50 equality). To be concrete, I'd assume that any engineer at Google to be about the same competence as their peers. Though it sounds like if you're "diverse" you might have an easier time of getting in, similar to medical school? (Honest question.) At any rate, how do we get to the facts? Saying it must be 50% by fiat doesn't seem like a way to truth. So far I see one side proposing there might be biological reasons and the other side being offended anyone could even suggest the possibility.
- pandaman 9y ago
  This does not seem as much of a trouble as having a preferential hiring policy for some classes of people and then having the ability of these people doubted not just at the hiring time but through their entire career. To wit: I am a foreigner living and working as a software engineer in the USA. My English is far from perfect and a lot of people assume I am dumb just because of my thick accent. I failed few interviews because of this. I have absolutely no problem with that and am happy with my career. My achievements speak for me. I would not be as happy if this had been made a "diversity" issue and people with heavy accent were given advantages in hiring. This would forever invalidate my achievements as a proof of my competence. I would actively oppose any moves to establish such policies and would not approach any company that had them in place.

ukj 9y ago

>This guy clearly thinks less of the women he works with Can you cite the part of the manifesto which made you reach this conclusion? >I doubt women at Google would feel pleased about that Why? I didn't see anything insulting or disrespectful in the article. Perhaps your mind filled in things not said? For example: I openly admit that I suck at empathy. I am socially awkward, I have hard time relating to other people. I may have EDD. Not only do I recognize that women are better at it I prefer female managers to male managers because all my female managers innately understood psychological safety. And fostered such culture. Is it anecdotal? Yes. But it is consistent with the author's observations that we are different. It is consistent with the Big Five personality trait studies in psychology. So I think shutting down this line of reasoning is effectively an attempt to block attempts at better understanding of what makes us different. And yet if we actually understand each person's strengths AND weaknesses we will be able to build better organisations!

jamesdmiller 9y ago

People have suggested that the manifesto's author is autistic. If this is true, then it is very possible that if you are not familiar with how autistics' think you will not be able to judge his mental state based on the emotional tone of his writing.