17 ms·

Google’s War Over the Sexes

70 points by kushti 9y ago

honestoHeminway 9y ago
Never heard of feminists pushing for quotas for dangerous or dirty jobs.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Have you ever looked? Here's what NOW's president said about women and selective service registration back in 1981: by excluding women even from registration, the government held that “every man, regardless of any disability, must register, but that all women, regardless of competency, cannot,” a distinction which created the “myth that all men are more competent than all women.” That's the biggest (as far as I know) women's interest group and they support women being a part of the draft. Here's some more resources: http://www.explorethetrades.org/women-in-trades/ http://www.explorethetrades.org/women-in-trades/ http://chicagowomenintrades2.org/ http://chicagowomenintrades2.org/ http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-0417-biz-20150420-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-04... Health-care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to other professions by a wide margin, with attacks on them accounting for almost 70 percent of all nonfatal workplace assaults causing days away from work in the U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/epidemic-of-violence-against-health-care-workers-plagues-hospitals/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/epidemic-of-viole...
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    "NOW had previously opposed the draft, and its apparent about-face infuriated its members at the grassroots level, according to Cynthia Enloe, a research professor of political science and women's studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. Enloe, who has written extensively on women and the military, said she was just starting her research at the time, but as she recalls, "The local chapters were really angry. They were full of women activists who disagreed, who saw the draft as something to oppose." So why the switch? Enloe thinks it had more to do with NOW's then-recent defeat in getting the Equal Rights Amendment passed than it did zeal for military service. The amendment, which pacifist Alice Paul originally penned in 1923, simply states, "Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." After Congress passed it in 1972, NOW led the unsuccessful fight for its ratification at the state level during the 1970s and early 1980s. Speaking in defense of the NOW brief back in 1981, Smeal told The New York Times that wherever she lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment, male legislators frequently said to her, "When you women fight in a war, then we'll talk about equal rights." " https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/feminists-weigh-draft-registration-women https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/feminists-weigh-draf...
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      So NOW supported women in the draft and actively fought for it legislatively and what? Their motives weren't pure enough? Who cares? It's a women's organization (a huge one) trying to get women into dangerous, dirty jobs.
      - mpweiher 9y ago
        No, they actively fought the draft for women until it became politically necessary/expedient to change their position. And of course opposition to the draft for women was the primary reason for the defeat of the ERA. "Experts agree that Phyllis Schlafly was a key player in the defeat. Political scientist Jane Mansbridge in her history of the ERA argues that the draft issue was the single most powerful argument used by Schlafly and the other opponents to defeat ERA.[93] She concludes, "Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believed—rightly in my view—that the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly's early and effective effort to organize potential opponents."[94] Legal scholar Joan C. Williams argues, "ERA was defeated when Schlafly turned it into a war among women over gender roles." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment#Opposition_to_the_ERA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment#Opposit... Oh, and >90% of workplace fatalities are men.
- sctb 9y ago
  Let's please not scoot straight up to tedious generic flamewars that we've all heard before. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14973457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14973457 and marked it off-topic.
johansch 9y ago
Wow. A balanced mainstream story on the topic.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  Yeah. But the comments...wow.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  I'm impressed, too. Apart from the fact that it links to the crippled Gizmodo version of the memo (they still have the guts to call it 'full' in the title) instead of the real one https://diversitymemo.com/ https://diversitymemo.com/. The references make the whole difference.
  - johansch 9y ago
    This NYT reporter filed the first article on the topic: https://twitter.com/daiwaka/ https://twitter.com/daiwaka/ His report (and tweeting) was so partisan that I got really concerned with the integrity of the NYT as a whole. This new piece restores some of my confidence in them, even though it is just an opinion piece.' Btw - is it just me, or is he way too friendly with the people running the company he is assigned to report on?
- danso 9y ago
  FWIW, it's a column by Ross Douthat, regarded as one of the NYT's conservative opinion writers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12douthat.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12douthat.h... (Not that columns can't be well-reported stories in their own right)
  - ebola1717 9y ago
    Yeah, I mean, HN trends conservative, especially on issues of gender, race, diversity, etc. so not surprised Douthat is considered a sensible, middle-of-the-road writer here. Him and David Brooks are among the more reasonable conservatives out there, so I'm not lambasting their writing - just pointing out the biases in play.
seaknoll 9y ago
Maybe this isn't the public perception of tech jobs, but as a software engineer at my current company I collaborate far more than I did in my previous career as a consultant, have more opportunities to be creative, and get an extremely flexible schedule. Even if you accept that there are biological differences between the sexes, the hypothesis that stereotypically female attributes/desires are not as compatible with tech jobs strikes me as very wrong.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  First, see Jordan Peterson's interview with James Damore, where he goes through the memo almost line-by-line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU&spfreload=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU&spfreload=10 Second, he doesn't say that "female attributes/desires are not as compatible with tech jobs", at least not as you define them. These are his suggestions for improving diversity: "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). ● Women on average are more cooperative ○ Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do. " You are saying this is already the case at your workplace. Awesome, you already have what he suggests. Why is what he suggest wrong-headed??
  - seaknoll 9y ago
    I'm saying that IMO, the very nature of the job is compatible with the traits that he says are more common in women. I don't think that my company is an outlier here.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - gthtjtkt 9y ago
    > Second, he doesn't say that "female attributes/desires are not as compatible with tech jobs", at least not as you define them. But that's what I read in all the Tweets! Are you telling me their self-righteous outrage was really just opportunistic moral grandstanding!? It can't be true! /s Seriously, these people are all just proving his point. Ignore the facts, call him sexist, get him fired, then move on to the next target.
DataWorker 9y ago
Compromise is useful and this was on point in that regard. A good counterpoint to Wojcicki's response. That said, compromise in this case may not be technically correct and talk of brogrammers won't get much traction with centrists like the original memos author who appears to be a follower of Haidt's line of thinking. Douthat makes a good point about the precariousness of walking this line.
emtel 9y ago
> But since the usual way to reintegrate the sexes is to have them marry one another and raise kids, what Silicon Valley probably needs right now more than either workplace anti-microaggression training or an alt-right underground is a basic friendliness to family, pregnancy and child rearing. Prediction: this will be viciously misinterpreted on twitter as Douthat calling for women to stay at home and raise babies.
- freeone3000 9y ago
  He's calling for a reintegration of the sexes through marriage and children. While I wouldn't put words in his mouth as to "stay at home", he is for sure calling on women to raise babies. His repeated references to women as childbearers in the following paragraph don't help. The author appears to be stating that the solution to sexism is to have women marry the sexists and have their babies.
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    > His repeated references to women as childbearers Pardon me, but this is in(s)ane. WHO ELSE BUT WOMEN BEARS CHILDREN? Apologies, but I had to get that out of my system.
    - AckSyn 9y ago
      Don't worry. As soon as you call out things like biological facts, you're labeled as misogynistic or chauvinistic. No one else bears children, or replaces them very well as primary caregivers in their early prepubescent years. May as well enjoy the decline of the social structure that once actually made sense.
    - criddell 9y ago
      You reminded me of that great scene in Life of Brian where Stan wants to be known as Loretta and wants the right to have babies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObBA2wH5l0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObBA2wH5l0
      - 9y ago
Barrin92 9y ago
The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is, and doesn't tell us what ought to be. As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welcome a diverse workplace instead of male or female monoculture. We can shape how our society works, we're not slaves to nature. I find this discussion funny in the context of say Israel having countless women serve in the army for decades now. Someone must have forgotten to tell them about their biological limitations. Having worked in China for a while, where as a result of the one child policy pretty much everybody is expected to start a fruitful career, women just worked and had children at the same time. Someone must have forgotten to tell them that this is impossible.
- DataWorker 9y ago
  Did you read the thing? You have the greatest gender balance in comp sci in the least egalitarian societies. There's a body of scientific literature you could consult if you wanted the diversity you claim to want.
  - Barrin92 9y ago
    But that is precisely what I said! Developing countries are egalitarian out of necessity. For them economic emancipation is principally important, and just by accident lifts women and minorities up. We have grown a little too soft it seems. Our (western) over-emphasis of freedom of choice is actually segregating us. We're giving in to our worst instincts and then claim that they are biological facts that we cannot escape from. That is not a good idea.
    - mpweiher 9y ago
      > Developing countries are egalitarian Except they are not, by pretty much all measures. It's just that people are less free to choose what they want to do.
    - 9y ago
hsuresh 9y ago
At last a balanced story on the topic. The discussions online on this topic have been mind numbing - quoting out of context, ad hominem attacks, every bad form of arguments listed in PG's essay[1]. Twitter is the worst. Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform. [1] - http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- thephyber 9y ago
  > Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform. I'd considered this at one point. I marinated on the idea and decided it's not worth building (for me). The right structure for argument doesn't work in environments like Twitter/Facebook because the costs are asymmetric. It's very cheap to turn into a troll and very expensive to think through a thoughtful, balanced, nuanced argument. The platforms themselves don't afford or encourage the latter and incentivize the former. I do want to build a way to database and store lots of the most useful facts I gather on all of the topics I care about from every platform I learn/work on.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call it balanced, Ross Douthat is a conservative and it shows: >But the internet industry is also part of a wider elite culture that is trending in the opposite direction, becoming more feminized and feminist, and inclined to view male-dominated enclaves with great suspicion. >But Damore also made reasonable points about different ways to pursue diversity and the costs and benefits thereof, in an earnest and dialogic style that a healthy corporate culture would have found a way to answer without swiftly giving him the ax. That first quote is pure perception from someone looking through conservative glasses. And the second is just a farce. There's no "healthy corporate culture" that would tolerate a memo like this. It's a corporation, it's work, the idea that someone should be able to send a manifesto which not only criticizes their employer but does it while they're facing a lawsuit and is explicitly political is crazy. Leave that stuff for the other 8 hours of your day.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 9y ago
fageyogurtspoon 9y ago
New York Times once again demonstrates its alt-right philosophy by assuming a there are merely two gender (https://apath.org/63-genders/ https://apath.org/63-genders/), _in the first sentence_.
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  Winning this debate by gender-jerry-mandering is not possible.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- akras14 9y ago
  TIL, New York Times is alt-right
hyperion2010 9y ago
> This is why the new Apple headquarters, which has a 100,000-square-foot fitness and wellness center but no child care center, is a more telling indicator of what really matters to Silicon Valley Ouch. Extremely out.
gthtjtkt 9y ago
What I find odd about all this is the apparent lack of concern for other male-dominated industries like deep-sea fishing, logging, coal mining, sanitation, construction, power-line maintenance, etc. Look at all the most dangerous, physically demanding jobs in the world and what do you see? They're all more than 95% men. Where are all the women clamoring to get into those fields? Where are all the women wondering why women aren't clamoring to get into those fields? And where are all the people who want to spare men from having to bear the burden of all the most dangerous jobs?
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  They aren't precisely because those professions are hard, physical labor intensive, potentially dangerous, and sometimes outdoors. Compare that to a cushy office job in SV that pays well. It's no wonder that females have lobbied as hard as they do for the "Women in Tech" compared to say "Women in HVAC" or "Women Boiler Inspectors."
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > What I find odd about all this is the apparent lack of concern for other male-dominated industries like deep-sea fishing, logging, coal mining, sanitation, construction, power-line maintenance, etc. Except, Google “gender imbalance construction” (for instance) and you'll find lots of concern for it. Same for fisheries and most of the other fields at issue. (Maybe not coal mining, where total jobs are evaporating rapidly.) People who hang out on HN are more likely to notice concern in tech because it relates to what brings people to HN in the first place, and also is more likely to be on-topic here. And the concern over tech may be more visible because it's a white collar field connected to middle class aspirations and that is viewed as more interesting to prime media demographics, and this gets more media attention. > Where are all the women clamoring to get into those fields? Mostly, out clamoring to get into those fields, in venues that don't get a lot of attention on HN. > Where are all the women wondering why women aren't clamoring to get into those fields? Doing that, in many of the same venues. (Yes, there are both women trying to eat into the fields and people, not all women, analyzing the social factors that lead to them not trying in greater numbers.)
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
What's interesting is if you read the comment section there is literally 0 comment that agrees with the author. Even the "NYT picks" are the comments bashing on this guy. It just shows that NYT has turned itself into an opposite of Breitbart, instead of aspiring to become more unbiased news source. I'm actually surprised that they even let this guy write this piece on NYT.
- thephyber 9y ago
  "The Great Sort". Americans, the readers, are sorting themselves.

70 points by kushti 9y ago

honestoHeminway 9y ago

Never heard of feminists pushing for quotas for dangerous or dirty jobs.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Have you ever looked? Here's what NOW's president said about women and selective service registration back in 1981: by excluding women even from registration, the government held that “every man, regardless of any disability, must register, but that all women, regardless of competency, cannot,” a distinction which created the “myth that all men are more competent than all women.” That's the biggest (as far as I know) women's interest group and they support women being a part of the draft. Here's some more resources: http://www.explorethetrades.org/women-in-trades/ http://www.explorethetrades.org/women-in-trades/ http://chicagowomenintrades2.org/ http://chicagowomenintrades2.org/ http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-0417-biz-20150420-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-04... Health-care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to other professions by a wide margin, with attacks on them accounting for almost 70 percent of all nonfatal workplace assaults causing days away from work in the U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/epidemic-of-violence-against-health-care-workers-plagues-hospitals/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/epidemic-of-viole...
- mpweiher 9y ago
  "NOW had previously opposed the draft, and its apparent about-face infuriated its members at the grassroots level, according to Cynthia Enloe, a research professor of political science and women's studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. Enloe, who has written extensively on women and the military, said she was just starting her research at the time, but as she recalls, "The local chapters were really angry. They were full of women activists who disagreed, who saw the draft as something to oppose." So why the switch? Enloe thinks it had more to do with NOW's then-recent defeat in getting the Equal Rights Amendment passed than it did zeal for military service. The amendment, which pacifist Alice Paul originally penned in 1923, simply states, "Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." After Congress passed it in 1972, NOW led the unsuccessful fight for its ratification at the state level during the 1970s and early 1980s. Speaking in defense of the NOW brief back in 1981, Smeal told The New York Times that wherever she lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment, male legislators frequently said to her, "When you women fight in a war, then we'll talk about equal rights." " https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/feminists-weigh-draft-registration-women https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/feminists-weigh-draf...
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    So NOW supported women in the draft and actively fought for it legislatively and what? Their motives weren't pure enough? Who cares? It's a women's organization (a huge one) trying to get women into dangerous, dirty jobs.
    - mpweiher 9y ago
      No, they actively fought the draft for women until it became politically necessary/expedient to change their position. And of course opposition to the draft for women was the primary reason for the defeat of the ERA. "Experts agree that Phyllis Schlafly was a key player in the defeat. Political scientist Jane Mansbridge in her history of the ERA argues that the draft issue was the single most powerful argument used by Schlafly and the other opponents to defeat ERA.[93] She concludes, "Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believed—rightly in my view—that the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly's early and effective effort to organize potential opponents."[94] Legal scholar Joan C. Williams argues, "ERA was defeated when Schlafly turned it into a war among women over gender roles." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment#Opposition_to_the_ERA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment#Opposit... Oh, and >90% of workplace fatalities are men.
sctb 9y ago
Let's please not scoot straight up to tedious generic flamewars that we've all heard before. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14973457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14973457 and marked it off-topic.

johansch 9y ago

Wow. A balanced mainstream story on the topic.

mpweiher 9y ago
Yeah. But the comments...wow.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
I'm impressed, too. Apart from the fact that it links to the crippled Gizmodo version of the memo (they still have the guts to call it 'full' in the title) instead of the real one https://diversitymemo.com/ https://diversitymemo.com/. The references make the whole difference.
- johansch 9y ago
  This NYT reporter filed the first article on the topic: https://twitter.com/daiwaka/ https://twitter.com/daiwaka/ His report (and tweeting) was so partisan that I got really concerned with the integrity of the NYT as a whole. This new piece restores some of my confidence in them, even though it is just an opinion piece.' Btw - is it just me, or is he way too friendly with the people running the company he is assigned to report on?
danso 9y ago
FWIW, it's a column by Ross Douthat, regarded as one of the NYT's conservative opinion writers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12douthat.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12douthat.h... (Not that columns can't be well-reported stories in their own right)
- ebola1717 9y ago
  Yeah, I mean, HN trends conservative, especially on issues of gender, race, diversity, etc. so not surprised Douthat is considered a sensible, middle-of-the-road writer here. Him and David Brooks are among the more reasonable conservatives out there, so I'm not lambasting their writing - just pointing out the biases in play.

seaknoll 9y ago

Maybe this isn't the public perception of tech jobs, but as a software engineer at my current company I collaborate far more than I did in my previous career as a consultant, have more opportunities to be creative, and get an extremely flexible schedule. Even if you accept that there are biological differences between the sexes, the hypothesis that stereotypically female attributes/desires are not as compatible with tech jobs strikes me as very wrong.

mpweiher 9y ago
First, see Jordan Peterson's interview with James Damore, where he goes through the memo almost line-by-line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU&spfreload=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU&spfreload=10 Second, he doesn't say that "female attributes/desires are not as compatible with tech jobs", at least not as you define them. These are his suggestions for improving diversity: "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). ● Women on average are more cooperative ○ Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do. " You are saying this is already the case at your workplace. Awesome, you already have what he suggests. Why is what he suggest wrong-headed??
- seaknoll 9y ago
  I'm saying that IMO, the very nature of the job is compatible with the traits that he says are more common in women. I don't think that my company is an outlier here.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- gthtjtkt 9y ago
  > Second, he doesn't say that "female attributes/desires are not as compatible with tech jobs", at least not as you define them. But that's what I read in all the Tweets! Are you telling me their self-righteous outrage was really just opportunistic moral grandstanding!? It can't be true! /s Seriously, these people are all just proving his point. Ignore the facts, call him sexist, get him fired, then move on to the next target.

DataWorker 9y ago

Compromise is useful and this was on point in that regard. A good counterpoint to Wojcicki's response. That said, compromise in this case may not be technically correct and talk of brogrammers won't get much traction with centrists like the original memos author who appears to be a follower of Haidt's line of thinking. Douthat makes a good point about the precariousness of walking this line.

emtel 9y ago

> But since the usual way to reintegrate the sexes is to have them marry one another and raise kids, what Silicon Valley probably needs right now more than either workplace anti-microaggression training or an alt-right underground is a basic friendliness to family, pregnancy and child rearing. Prediction: this will be viciously misinterpreted on twitter as Douthat calling for women to stay at home and raise babies.

freeone3000 9y ago
He's calling for a reintegration of the sexes through marriage and children. While I wouldn't put words in his mouth as to "stay at home", he is for sure calling on women to raise babies. His repeated references to women as childbearers in the following paragraph don't help. The author appears to be stating that the solution to sexism is to have women marry the sexists and have their babies.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  > His repeated references to women as childbearers Pardon me, but this is in(s)ane. WHO ELSE BUT WOMEN BEARS CHILDREN? Apologies, but I had to get that out of my system.
  - AckSyn 9y ago
    Don't worry. As soon as you call out things like biological facts, you're labeled as misogynistic or chauvinistic. No one else bears children, or replaces them very well as primary caregivers in their early prepubescent years. May as well enjoy the decline of the social structure that once actually made sense.
  - criddell 9y ago
    You reminded me of that great scene in Life of Brian where Stan wants to be known as Loretta and wants the right to have babies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObBA2wH5l0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObBA2wH5l0
    - 9y ago

Barrin92 9y ago

The most troubling thing about this whole issue for me is the weird fetish about "biology" on both sides of the debate. As Mr. Hume told us a few hundred years ago, nature simply is, and doesn't tell us what ought to be. As such I have trouble understanding why we are approaching the issue from this angle. Instead of obsessing about biology, we should care about how we want our workplaces to look. And I would welcome a diverse workplace instead of male or female monoculture. We can shape how our society works, we're not slaves to nature. I find this discussion funny in the context of say Israel having countless women serve in the army for decades now. Someone must have forgotten to tell them about their biological limitations. Having worked in China for a while, where as a result of the one child policy pretty much everybody is expected to start a fruitful career, women just worked and had children at the same time. Someone must have forgotten to tell them that this is impossible.

DataWorker 9y ago
Did you read the thing? You have the greatest gender balance in comp sci in the least egalitarian societies. There's a body of scientific literature you could consult if you wanted the diversity you claim to want.
- Barrin92 9y ago
  But that is precisely what I said! Developing countries are egalitarian out of necessity. For them economic emancipation is principally important, and just by accident lifts women and minorities up. We have grown a little too soft it seems. Our (western) over-emphasis of freedom of choice is actually segregating us. We're giving in to our worst instincts and then claim that they are biological facts that we cannot escape from. That is not a good idea.
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    > Developing countries are egalitarian Except they are not, by pretty much all measures. It's just that people are less free to choose what they want to do.
  - 9y ago

hsuresh 9y ago

At last a balanced story on the topic. The discussions online on this topic have been mind numbing - quoting out of context, ad hominem attacks, every bad form of arguments listed in PG's essay[1]. Twitter is the worst. Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform. [1] - http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

thephyber 9y ago
> Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform. I'd considered this at one point. I marinated on the idea and decided it's not worth building (for me). The right structure for argument doesn't work in environments like Twitter/Facebook because the costs are asymmetric. It's very cheap to turn into a troll and very expensive to think through a thoughtful, balanced, nuanced argument. The platforms themselves don't afford or encourage the latter and incentivize the former. I do want to build a way to database and store lots of the most useful facts I gather on all of the topics I care about from every platform I learn/work on.
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
I'm not sure I'd call it balanced, Ross Douthat is a conservative and it shows: >But the internet industry is also part of a wider elite culture that is trending in the opposite direction, becoming more feminized and feminist, and inclined to view male-dominated enclaves with great suspicion. >But Damore also made reasonable points about different ways to pursue diversity and the costs and benefits thereof, in an earnest and dialogic style that a healthy corporate culture would have found a way to answer without swiftly giving him the ax. That first quote is pure perception from someone looking through conservative glasses. And the second is just a farce. There's no "healthy corporate culture" that would tolerate a memo like this. It's a corporation, it's work, the idea that someone should be able to send a manifesto which not only criticizes their employer but does it while they're facing a lawsuit and is explicitly political is crazy. Leave that stuff for the other 8 hours of your day.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
9y ago

fageyogurtspoon 9y ago

New York Times once again demonstrates its alt-right philosophy by assuming a there are merely two gender (https://apath.org/63-genders/ https://apath.org/63-genders/), _in the first sentence_.

honestoHeminway 9y ago
Winning this debate by gender-jerry-mandering is not possible.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
akras14 9y ago
TIL, New York Times is alt-right

hyperion2010 9y ago

> This is why the new Apple headquarters, which has a 100,000-square-foot fitness and wellness center but no child care center, is a more telling indicator of what really matters to Silicon Valley Ouch. Extremely out.

gthtjtkt 9y ago

What I find odd about all this is the apparent lack of concern for other male-dominated industries like deep-sea fishing, logging, coal mining, sanitation, construction, power-line maintenance, etc. Look at all the most dangerous, physically demanding jobs in the world and what do you see? They're all more than 95% men. Where are all the women clamoring to get into those fields? Where are all the women wondering why women aren't clamoring to get into those fields? And where are all the people who want to spare men from having to bear the burden of all the most dangerous jobs?

Caveman_Coder 9y ago
They aren't precisely because those professions are hard, physical labor intensive, potentially dangerous, and sometimes outdoors. Compare that to a cushy office job in SV that pays well. It's no wonder that females have lobbied as hard as they do for the "Women in Tech" compared to say "Women in HVAC" or "Women Boiler Inspectors."
dragonwriter 9y ago
> What I find odd about all this is the apparent lack of concern for other male-dominated industries like deep-sea fishing, logging, coal mining, sanitation, construction, power-line maintenance, etc. Except, Google “gender imbalance construction” (for instance) and you'll find lots of concern for it. Same for fisheries and most of the other fields at issue. (Maybe not coal mining, where total jobs are evaporating rapidly.) People who hang out on HN are more likely to notice concern in tech because it relates to what brings people to HN in the first place, and also is more likely to be on-topic here. And the concern over tech may be more visible because it's a white collar field connected to middle class aspirations and that is viewed as more interesting to prime media demographics, and this gets more media attention. > Where are all the women clamoring to get into those fields? Mostly, out clamoring to get into those fields, in venues that don't get a lot of attention on HN. > Where are all the women wondering why women aren't clamoring to get into those fields? Doing that, in many of the same venues. (Yes, there are both women trying to eat into the fields and people, not all women, analyzing the social factors that lead to them not trying in greater numbers.)

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

What's interesting is if you read the comment section there is literally 0 comment that agrees with the author. Even the "NYT picks" are the comments bashing on this guy. It just shows that NYT has turned itself into an opposite of Breitbart, instead of aspiring to become more unbiased news source. I'm actually surprised that they even let this guy write this piece on NYT.

thephyber 9y ago
"The Great Sort". Americans, the readers, are sorting themselves.