4 ms·

Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach. Nobody is being insulted by this. Nobody is being illegally discriminated against.

Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach. Nobody is being insulted by this. Nobody is being illegally discriminated against. His argument is that the under-representation of women in tech can be explained by biological differences that make them inferior candidates for technical and leadership positions rather than hundreds of years of disenfranchisement and misogyny that still echoes in work culture today. But you are right, "The point is to treat people with respect by building an environment where they can be their best (whatever individual skillset they have), instead of insulting them", which is antithetical to what the author did by writing the pseudo scientific trash and then widely distributing it to his colleagues. [disclaimer: I work at Google, my views are my own and not those of my employer]

lhnz 9y ago
> Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach. > Nobody is being insulted by this. Some people are insulted by this [0]. When I said these programs already do disempower women, I wasn't speaking for all women: I was referring to what I had read. We can't just ignore people's lived experiences when they don't suit our positions. [0] https://communequation.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/im-not-a-woman-in-tech/ https://communequation.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/im-not-a-wom...
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  I think you should reread that article. It is stating that this woman, someone who is already successfully integrated into the "Tech Scene" is not the problem to be solved by outreach. Which is true. That doesn't mean that she would be insulted by outreach to women. It means you shouldn't ask her how to do it.
  - lhnz 9y ago
    > I don’t want your ‘exclusively for women’ support groups > I want inclusivity, not exclusivity. > You’re victimising me when you do that. You’re indicating that it’s most > likely I need special, extra support. Just because I’m female. And then later on: > By creating special awards for women I think you’re belittling the impact > and effort a group of humans are having in their field – just because of > their gender. She is certainly insulted by these so called 'outreach' programs. She is using the word 'victimising' and 'belittling' to describe them. It can't get any clearer than this. We can't just ignore people's lived experiences when they don't suit our positions. The ensuing comments thread on HN also had many similar stories.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wang_li 9y ago
Did you see the quillette [1] article that was briefly on the front page earlier? Four different experts write briefly their thoughts on the memo. While they don't necessarily agree with the author's judgment of the value of diversity programs, they unanimously agree with his points that the sexes are different and have different personalitie. So saying that, what part of the memo was pseudo scientific drivel? 1. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
- postnihilism 9y ago
  The part where he implies the massive disparity of representation between men and women in tech (17% percent of technical roles at Google, 15% at Facebook) is due to small and inherent physiological differences, which make women inferior at performing in those roles, rather than hundreds of years of structuring our society and culture to favor men. It is an invalid argument.
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Where exactly did he argue that? I get the feeling that this document is what Scott Adams talks about when he writes that two people can sit in the same movie theater, look at the same screen, and watch two different movies play out.
  - rufus_2 9y ago
    > Hundreds of years of structuring society and culture to favor men Utterly ahistorical nonsense.
    - postnihilism 9y ago
      Could your great grandmother vote?
      - rufus_2 9y ago
        Could your great grandfather opt out of war?
waterhouse 9y ago
> Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach. At colleges, lowering the bar is in fact how they have often been implemented. This article has some decent numbers: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-un... Lowering the bar is also the easiest way for a mid-level manager to achieve a target percentage. It's probably also the first method that may come to mind for many people. Also, if you spend 3x the resources to find 3x the number of candidates (is it linear? I dunno), conduct normal interview processes, and then randomly throw out 2/3 of the male candidates that passed, while keeping all the women that passed, that is one way to triple the number of women you hire while having the same bar for men and women. However, the step where you throw out a random 2/3 of the male candidates might strike someone as highly irrational. Why not throw out the bottom 2/3 of male candidates? But then you end up with male candidates that passed a higher bar. You're not lowering your standards for women, but you're raising your standards for men, and then employees might notice and form the impression that the average male employee is better than the average female employee, which would be unfortunate. But it would probably be difficult to convince the people involved that avoiding the "unfortunate" outcome is worth throwing away 2/3 of the very best male candidates. It might be possible to spend 3x the resources in such a way that all the new candidates you find are women. That would be a way to avoid the above problems. How would this be accomplished? Perhaps you send a recruiter to a university, and have them only talk to the female students. Hmm, that might be a little weird. How about a female-only university? That would be great. Likewise any female-only programming meetup groups. And of course any qualified female engineers that anyone knows—they'll never be wanting for a job. How well will a company perform that spends significant resources recruiting from female-only groups, compared to one that recruits from groups that simply take the best candidates? How significant a fraction of company resources are normally spent on recruiting? And I did see a study indicating that demographic diversity (measured as age and sex) improved morale. I guess we'll see. What would really help is if universities published the CS accomplishments of all their female students, but not of their male students. I wonder if they'd be willing to do it. In any case, my original point was, even if a company does in fact implement its diversity program with one of the methods that does not systematically lead to higher-quality male hires than female hires, I think it is natural for someone to assume until proven otherwise that it is implemented by shifting the bar.
TimTheTinker 9y ago
> biological differences that make them inferior candidates for technical and leadership positions I didn't see that in the "manifesto" at all. The assertions that "biological differences exist" and that they contribute to the under-representation of women in tech don't at all imply the conclusion that the under-representation is due to biologically-caused inferiority. There's good evidence, summarized in this blog post, that on the average across society, equally gifted and capable girls tend to choose non-STEM careers more than their male counterparts simply because of differences in preference, combined with the fact that a wider array of career options is open to them due to their higher verbal skills (this was featured on HN a couple of weeks ago): https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh... Furthermore, it seems that unlike men, women who are capable in math also tend to be capable in both math and verbal skills (whereas on the average, men have less capability in verbal skills), thus giving women more career options. Unlike men (on the average, again), women that do choose STEM careers tend to excel at all levels, including management. > pseudo scientific trash See the above article. It references highly cited studies that seem to clearly indicate innate differences in preference (in even 2-day-old infants and primates).
eagsalazar2 9y ago
"that make them inferior candidates for technical and leadership positions rather than hundreds of years of disenfranchisement and misogyny" This is completely false! He absolutely does not say that, he says women to not prefer to compete for those jobs. He might still be wrong but you are grossly misrepresenting his statement in an attempt to demonize his lack of PC orthodoxy.
sauronlord 9y ago
We need more women to represent in coal mines

lhnz 9y ago

> Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach. > Nobody is being insulted by this. Some people are insulted by this [0]. When I said these programs already do disempower women, I wasn't speaking for all women: I was referring to what I had read. We can't just ignore people's lived experiences when they don't suit our positions. [0] https://communequation.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/im-not-a-woman-in-tech/ https://communequation.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/im-not-a-wom...

joshuamorton 9y ago
I think you should reread that article. It is stating that this woman, someone who is already successfully integrated into the "Tech Scene" is not the problem to be solved by outreach. Which is true. That doesn't mean that she would be insulted by outreach to women. It means you shouldn't ask her how to do it.
- lhnz 9y ago
  > I don’t want your ‘exclusively for women’ support groups > I want inclusivity, not exclusivity. > You’re victimising me when you do that. You’re indicating that it’s most > likely I need special, extra support. Just because I’m female. And then later on: > By creating special awards for women I think you’re belittling the impact > and effort a group of humans are having in their field – just because of > their gender. She is certainly insulted by these so called 'outreach' programs. She is using the word 'victimising' and 'belittling' to describe them. It can't get any clearer than this. We can't just ignore people's lived experiences when they don't suit our positions. The ensuing comments thread on HN also had many similar stories.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wang_li 9y ago

Did you see the quillette [1] article that was briefly on the front page earlier? Four different experts write briefly their thoughts on the memo. While they don't necessarily agree with the author's judgment of the value of diversity programs, they unanimously agree with his points that the sexes are different and have different personalitie. So saying that, what part of the memo was pseudo scientific drivel? 1. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

postnihilism 9y ago
The part where he implies the massive disparity of representation between men and women in tech (17% percent of technical roles at Google, 15% at Facebook) is due to small and inherent physiological differences, which make women inferior at performing in those roles, rather than hundreds of years of structuring our society and culture to favor men. It is an invalid argument.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Where exactly did he argue that? I get the feeling that this document is what Scott Adams talks about when he writes that two people can sit in the same movie theater, look at the same screen, and watch two different movies play out.
- rufus_2 9y ago
  > Hundreds of years of structuring society and culture to favor men Utterly ahistorical nonsense.
  - postnihilism 9y ago
    Could your great grandmother vote?
    - rufus_2 9y ago
      Could your great grandfather opt out of war?

waterhouse 9y ago

> Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach. At colleges, lowering the bar is in fact how they have often been implemented. This article has some decent numbers: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-un... Lowering the bar is also the easiest way for a mid-level manager to achieve a target percentage. It's probably also the first method that may come to mind for many people. Also, if you spend 3x the resources to find 3x the number of candidates (is it linear? I dunno), conduct normal interview processes, and then randomly throw out 2/3 of the male candidates that passed, while keeping all the women that passed, that is one way to triple the number of women you hire while having the same bar for men and women. However, the step where you throw out a random 2/3 of the male candidates might strike someone as highly irrational. Why not throw out the bottom 2/3 of male candidates? But then you end up with male candidates that passed a higher bar. You're not lowering your standards for women, but you're raising your standards for men, and then employees might notice and form the impression that the average male employee is better than the average female employee, which would be unfortunate. But it would probably be difficult to convince the people involved that avoiding the "unfortunate" outcome is worth throwing away 2/3 of the very best male candidates. It might be possible to spend 3x the resources in such a way that all the new candidates you find are women. That would be a way to avoid the above problems. How would this be accomplished? Perhaps you send a recruiter to a university, and have them only talk to the female students. Hmm, that might be a little weird. How about a female-only university? That would be great. Likewise any female-only programming meetup groups. And of course any qualified female engineers that anyone knows—they'll never be wanting for a job. How well will a company perform that spends significant resources recruiting from female-only groups, compared to one that recruits from groups that simply take the best candidates? How significant a fraction of company resources are normally spent on recruiting? And I did see a study indicating that demographic diversity (measured as age and sex) improved morale. I guess we'll see. What would really help is if universities published the CS accomplishments of all their female students, but not of their male students. I wonder if they'd be willing to do it. In any case, my original point was, even if a company does in fact implement its diversity program with one of the methods that does not systematically lead to higher-quality male hires than female hires, I think it is natural for someone to assume until proven otherwise that it is implemented by shifting the bar.

TimTheTinker 9y ago

> biological differences that make them inferior candidates for technical and leadership positions I didn't see that in the "manifesto" at all. The assertions that "biological differences exist" and that they contribute to the under-representation of women in tech don't at all imply the conclusion that the under-representation is due to biologically-caused inferiority. There's good evidence, summarized in this blog post, that on the average across society, equally gifted and capable girls tend to choose non-STEM careers more than their male counterparts simply because of differences in preference, combined with the fact that a wider array of career options is open to them due to their higher verbal skills (this was featured on HN a couple of weeks ago): https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh... Furthermore, it seems that unlike men, women who are capable in math also tend to be capable in both math and verbal skills (whereas on the average, men have less capability in verbal skills), thus giving women more career options. Unlike men (on the average, again), women that do choose STEM careers tend to excel at all levels, including management. > pseudo scientific trash See the above article. It references highly cited studies that seem to clearly indicate innate differences in preference (in even 2-day-old infants and primates).

eagsalazar2 9y ago

"that make them inferior candidates for technical and leadership positions rather than hundreds of years of disenfranchisement and misogyny" This is completely false! He absolutely does not say that, he says women to not prefer to compete for those jobs. He might still be wrong but you are grossly misrepresenting his statement in an attempt to demonize his lack of PC orthodoxy.

sauronlord 9y ago

We need more women to represent in coal mines