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There are a few, and I'd suggest you look further, for starters scroll up here: https://twitter.com/GlennF https://twitter.com/GlennF. Arguments about gender di
by kevinburke 9y ago
There are a few, and I'd suggest you look further, for starters scroll up here: https://twitter.com/GlennF https://twitter.com/GlennF. Arguments about gender differences in CS should address the large decline in women's participation around 1984, the relatively better gender balance in other engineering/science majors, or the better gender balance for CS degrees granted in other countries.
Annie Lowrey and others argued institutional effects far outweigh biological or IQ effects; basically, there's a much larger environment of harassment and bias, and Google has so many other levers in its control that the arguments advanced in the paper aren't really salient or important to the situation at Google.
Other folks have argued the vast majority of engineers at Google are doing the equivalent of string concatenation; it's not exactly a difficult or demanding job.
I think one reason people have been so angry about this is that women in the tech industry generally deal with much more harassment and bias than men do, see for example elephantinthevalley.com. To argue these are the biggest issues requires looking past everything in that survey, and implicitly declaring it not that important or salient. Imagine going to Flint, Michigan and arguing that a lack of charter schools are the community's biggest problem; you're going to get some bad reactions.
People also tend not to like it when you suggest they're dumb or inferior.
- lisper 9y agoI think it is telling that the only actual reference you provided was to a live Twitter feed. Twitter is not the right venue for any kind of substantive debate about anything, let alone one where the opening salvo is a ten-page document.
- RodericDay 9y agoTwitter is an excellent venue for discussion. It's one thing to complain that you don't like it, and another to pretend it's widely agreed upon as an invalid source.
- lisper 9y ago> Twitter is an excellent venue for discussion. I didn't say it wasn't. Is said it was a bad venue for substantive debate. It's a fine venue for banal chitchat and voicing unsubstantiated opinions, which is what makes it so popular because that's a lot easier and more fun than actually diving into the depths of an issue.
- RodericDay 9y agoAbsurd. It's a fantastic venue for substantive debate, technical political and mediatic. You're speaking confidently about something you're ignorant about.
- stagbeetle 9y agoCan you supply examples? Twitter, by virtue of being Twitter, is not a good medium for substantive debate. The forum is the most populated one in the entire world. It is amazing for equalizing influence and allowing democratic propagation of information (which would otherwise be under the control of media firms), but this also means the bar for voicing one's opinion is in the Mariana's Trench. Anyone can butt in an derail the debate. Twitter moderation is also very clearly biased in one direction (if you were to simply compare how often each side's individual account's are banned) and thus not an open medium where those debating can speak freely without consequence. There's also the greater scheme of digital communications which are notorious for not being in anyway productive. Debate online just simply does not work with the way human communication biologically evolved.
- notreallythough 9y agoI like it because it essentially forces "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter" — I've read more than enough "limitless" threads of utter rubbish, longer garbage is still garbage. There are positives and negatives of every platform.
- chongli 9y agothe large decline in women's participation around 1984 From what I've seen, that's a decline in the proportion of women enrolled in CS, not a decline in the absolute number. So this could be adequately explained by men crowding into CS rather than women fleeing. Do you have the numbers to show otherwise?
- kevinburke 9y agoThat's not the argument made by the author, however, his argument is the gender imbalance is not concerning because women have, on average, smaller brains and lower IQ's.
- junkculture 9y ago> his argument is the gender imbalance is not concerning because women have, on average, smaller brains and lower IQ's. Where does he say that? Or are you trying to be sarcastic?
- junkculture 9y ago> his argument is the gender imbalance is not concerning because women have, on average, smaller brains and lower IQ's. Where does he say that? Or are you trying to be sarcastic?
- ctlby 9y agoThis guy takes a crack at exactly what you propose. The factors you mention do not undermine the manifesto's thesis. https://nintil.com/2017/08/07/why-so-few-women-in-cs-the-google-memo-is-right/ https://nintil.com/2017/08/07/why-so-few-women-in-cs-the-goo...
- HillaryBriss 9y ago> ... the vast majority of engineers at Google are doing the equivalent of string concatenation ... wait, what? is that even remotely true? that sounds unbelievable on its face.
- kevinburke 9y agoString concatenation is slightly facile, but in the sense that most people are writing web servers, which are largely just composing templates, and not, e.g. Working on the distributed lock service.