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My understanding is that it was shared on a message board of some kind intended for employees to share and discuss their thoughts. If that isn't true, and he s

My understanding is that it was shared on a message board of some kind intended for employees to share and discuss their thoughts. If that isn't true, and he sent this document out to some mailing list or what have you - then I take back what I said and agree with you (though firing seems a tiny bit extreme). To your second point, the document proposed multiple steps at investigating or remediating the problem, such as the author saw it. Regardless, I hope you would agree that applying the standard of "You cannot discuss a social problem unless you have a solution to it, or else you will be fired" seems suboptimal.

dymk 9y ago
> "You cannot discuss a social problem unless you have a solution to it, or else you will be fired" This isn't what happened though; this guy circulated an authoritative sounding memo accusing the women in Google's workforce as being held to a lower bar as the men, and outright stating that their "biological differences" was holding back engineering productivity.
- dijit 9y ago
  That's precisely _not_ what was said. But I guess the brigading has commenced- I would invite you to read the thing without bias and read it's citations and sources. Even if you disagree that we could do more to remove things like, stress and status to make tech less appealing to men.. you might find out why people are agreeing with him and why this piece circulated internally. Mostly, it seems, scientists agree[0] with the "facts" he states that arent' google specific. So dismissing it outright without having the discussion is only doing the women in tech a disservice. [0]: http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
  - dymk 9y ago
    > Mostly, it seems, scientists agree with the "facts" he states that arent' google specific Really? Yonatan Zunger[1] seems to disagree with you. [1] https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788 https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
    - dijit 9y ago
      Four PhDs in Social and Gender Biology disagree with him. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
    - 52-6F-62 9y ago
      He had some great thoughts and elucidated the best I've seen so far. Thanks for contributing this.
      - observation 9y ago
        Yonatan Zunger says this: > nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect,¹ and flies directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades, they should go for it. But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else. Except it turned out James Damore of the DM has a Masters in Biological Systems from Harvard. And is experienced engineer working in Search (he disputed the author's chops there too).
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  I must have missed the parts where he explained that women were held to a lower bar or that biological differences were holding back productivity. Perhaps you could quote them, or refer to the specific sections of the document, I'll reread and then be able to have an informed response.
  - IanDrake 9y ago
    Don't hold your breath. It's easier to regurgitate what you read somewhere else. Which seems like more than half the commenters are doing here. At just about every opportunity he used words and phrases like "average" and "in general" to make it clear that these metrics are just that, average. He clearly points out that any individual woman may be more suitable to leadership and tech than any individual man, but when forced to generalize, then we must be honest about the averages.
  - dymk 9y ago
    here you go. > "Women, on average, have more:" > - "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs" > - "Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness" > - "Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men..." (Ironically, this is a good thing for an engineer to have) He provides no source for this. > "Google has created several discriminatory practices: Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race, a high priority queue and special treatment for 'diversity' candidates, hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate." And blatant disregard for the social context that these groups exist in.
    - dropstickle 9y ago
      He does a provide a source in the form of a wikipedia article that uses actual citations [1]. The version with sources (gizmodo removed them in their first publication of the memo), is located at [2]. As for your comment on his "blatant disregard for social context", he explicitly mentions that he believes that biases should be corrected and that society probably also is to blame [3], he just doesn't believe that biological factors does not play any role at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#Personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#... [2] http://diversitymemo.com/ http://diversitymemo.com/ [3] http://diversitymemo.com/#suggestions http://diversitymemo.com/#suggestions

dymk 9y ago

> "You cannot discuss a social problem unless you have a solution to it, or else you will be fired" This isn't what happened though; this guy circulated an authoritative sounding memo accusing the women in Google's workforce as being held to a lower bar as the men, and outright stating that their "biological differences" was holding back engineering productivity.

dijit 9y ago
That's precisely _not_ what was said. But I guess the brigading has commenced- I would invite you to read the thing without bias and read it's citations and sources. Even if you disagree that we could do more to remove things like, stress and status to make tech less appealing to men.. you might find out why people are agreeing with him and why this piece circulated internally. Mostly, it seems, scientists agree[0] with the "facts" he states that arent' google specific. So dismissing it outright without having the discussion is only doing the women in tech a disservice. [0]: http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
- dymk 9y ago
  > Mostly, it seems, scientists agree with the "facts" he states that arent' google specific Really? Yonatan Zunger[1] seems to disagree with you. [1] https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788 https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
  - dijit 9y ago
    Four PhDs in Social and Gender Biology disagree with him. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    He had some great thoughts and elucidated the best I've seen so far. Thanks for contributing this.
    - observation 9y ago
      Yonatan Zunger says this: > nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect,¹ and flies directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades, they should go for it. But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else. Except it turned out James Damore of the DM has a Masters in Biological Systems from Harvard. And is experienced engineer working in Search (he disputed the author's chops there too).
ImSkeptical 9y ago
I must have missed the parts where he explained that women were held to a lower bar or that biological differences were holding back productivity. Perhaps you could quote them, or refer to the specific sections of the document, I'll reread and then be able to have an informed response.
- IanDrake 9y ago
  Don't hold your breath. It's easier to regurgitate what you read somewhere else. Which seems like more than half the commenters are doing here. At just about every opportunity he used words and phrases like "average" and "in general" to make it clear that these metrics are just that, average. He clearly points out that any individual woman may be more suitable to leadership and tech than any individual man, but when forced to generalize, then we must be honest about the averages.
- dymk 9y ago
  here you go. > "Women, on average, have more:" > - "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs" > - "Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness" > - "Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men..." (Ironically, this is a good thing for an engineer to have) He provides no source for this. > "Google has created several discriminatory practices: Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race, a high priority queue and special treatment for 'diversity' candidates, hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate." And blatant disregard for the social context that these groups exist in.
  - dropstickle 9y ago
    He does a provide a source in the form of a wikipedia article that uses actual citations [1]. The version with sources (gizmodo removed them in their first publication of the memo), is located at [2]. As for your comment on his "blatant disregard for social context", he explicitly mentions that he believes that biases should be corrected and that society probably also is to blame [3], he just doesn't believe that biological factors does not play any role at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#Personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#... [2] http://diversitymemo.com/ http://diversitymemo.com/ [3] http://diversitymemo.com/#suggestions http://diversitymemo.com/#suggestions