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Where is the text snippet where he writes that "straight out"? https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://

Where is the text snippet where he writes that "straight out"? https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I... Here's the unedited document with all the references. I'd like to see that. All of the data he shows are what scientific research in psychology concluded. He then does some leaps to deduce why some of these differences, that are scientific facts, could create inequalities. This part asks for discussion which he didn't get at all. Of course his theorizing is not a fact, therefore he wants discussion, additional data, and openess of some of these diversity processes. "As society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider." The above happens in Norway and Sweden where women hate STEM even more. Yet, I believe, both have schools not using any gender role bias for decades. Unconscious bias training that Google uses is in worst case brain washing, best case does not work at all. So that critique was in place.

mikeash 9y ago
From the introduction: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." The weasel-word "may" rescues this from being an outright statement of fact. However, he then spends much of the rest of the document explaining how it is this way. For example: "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)." In other words, software engineering as it currently stands is much more suitable for men than women. We may be able to modify it to some extent to help that, but we probably can't modify it so much that women become equally good at it.
- cropsieboss 9y ago
  "equally good at it". I do not think this is where we can jump from that statement. There was no where a statement saying women are of inferior abilities because scientifically, they are not. There were statements that showed women value some things differently than men. For example, lack of dress code is a big turn off for women, yet men do not care. If you need to navigate in that kind of culture you should make work positions appealing to women. Is it possible to make CS engineering appealing? Of course it is. Stanford did it. Make it more aesthetically pleasing, less sweat-stinking geeky and women will come. Can an engineering job be more social? Yes, in some engineering roles. In some it cannot. These roles will on average be less appealing to women. Maybe there's a lack of work processes making use of these social working activities. Maybe there aren't many that could incorporate a social component. This would mean women might not like these kinds of work environments. That is the only thing implied by the text you quoted. No where in the document was there an implication that women are of inferior abilities. It's just an interpretation that everyone decided to use.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Is there really a difference? If you're fundamentally skilled at something but not interested in it, are you equally good at the job as someone both fundamentally skilled and interested? For another example, he says that women are more driven to have a work-life balance. He cautions about making any changes to accommodate this, because "currently those willing to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences." His suggestion here is to let women have part-time jobs. The way I read this is: doing really good work requires extra hours and stress, which women won't do. If we try to accommodate women by no longer rewarding people who reject a work-life balance, we'll hurt the company. Women are, on average, less valuable to the company because they're less likely to work extra hours or take on extra stress.

mikeash 9y ago

From the introduction: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." The weasel-word "may" rescues this from being an outright statement of fact. However, he then spends much of the rest of the document explaining how it is this way. For example: "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)." In other words, software engineering as it currently stands is much more suitable for men than women. We may be able to modify it to some extent to help that, but we probably can't modify it so much that women become equally good at it.

cropsieboss 9y ago
"equally good at it". I do not think this is where we can jump from that statement. There was no where a statement saying women are of inferior abilities because scientifically, they are not. There were statements that showed women value some things differently than men. For example, lack of dress code is a big turn off for women, yet men do not care. If you need to navigate in that kind of culture you should make work positions appealing to women. Is it possible to make CS engineering appealing? Of course it is. Stanford did it. Make it more aesthetically pleasing, less sweat-stinking geeky and women will come. Can an engineering job be more social? Yes, in some engineering roles. In some it cannot. These roles will on average be less appealing to women. Maybe there's a lack of work processes making use of these social working activities. Maybe there aren't many that could incorporate a social component. This would mean women might not like these kinds of work environments. That is the only thing implied by the text you quoted. No where in the document was there an implication that women are of inferior abilities. It's just an interpretation that everyone decided to use.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Is there really a difference? If you're fundamentally skilled at something but not interested in it, are you equally good at the job as someone both fundamentally skilled and interested? For another example, he says that women are more driven to have a work-life balance. He cautions about making any changes to accommodate this, because "currently those willing to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences." His suggestion here is to let women have part-time jobs. The way I read this is: doing really good work requires extra hours and stress, which women won't do. If we try to accommodate women by no longer rewarding people who reject a work-life balance, we'll hurt the company. Women are, on average, less valuable to the company because they're less likely to work extra hours or take on extra stress.