13 ms·

Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

183 points by kareemm 9y ago

ng12 9y ago
"Intellectual honesty" -- that's the phrase I couldn't think of. It seems to me the stronger the condemnation the greater degree to which his arguments were misrepresented.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
my_first_acct 9y ago
Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment [0]: Certain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability within subgroups of the population. This minefield was not put in place by a repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic band of social-justice zealots. My observation, which I will offer without citation, is that this particular minefield was put in place, mine by mine, over a period of decades, through a process of fairly broad societal consensus. To those who suggest clearing the minefield, thus permitting this topic to be discussed freely in public, I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970661 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
- ryan-allen 9y ago
  It's better to let people discuss these topics rather than to try to stop them talking about them. If the sentiments exist and they are repressed they will simply go underground where you cannot see them. Don't you want to know what your opposition think? Painting those you disagree with (whether you're wrong, or you're right) with the bigot brush is not going to bring any change, there's only two choices: violence or discussion, so let's discuss.
  - JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
    Part of the difficulty, in my view, is that we are thinking about this as a high level benevolent debate - in this scientific, clean and clear environment we think of where we can throw out all manner of idea and deconstruct it logically then there is no argument that is off limits. Let me say straight up, I love that kind of discussion, I often have a good chat with my right/left/feminist/religious etc. close friends about usually off limit topics... I theoretically would want to be able to do that in the broader population and in broader society. But the older I get, and the more I see where the internet has taken freedom of discourse, the more I believe that most people don't argue and debate like that. With "Fake news" and barmy political ideologies getting airtime and actually GAINING in backing, and with the quality of media dropping more and more every day with the volume of rubbish news getting regurgitated on social media as fact without journalistic standards in place, I'm more seeing that the majority of discourse is headlines and snippets thrown around with awful evidence and logic, people see it, get confirmation bias on it, or think it falls in line with their view, and then they share onwards. A post/article/clickbait arguing against it, or proving its sources as incorrect is not nearly as shared and not nearly as widely disseminated and then you end up with a debunked viewpoint being spread wider than it ever should have, because there was no curation of the evidence. The "Bigot Brush" perhaps played a part in stopping ideas being shared around that were fairly out of the normal discussion, though it also repressed peoples ability to discuss and expose their broader ideas that went against the grain too. It played its part in stopping aggressive ideas from circulating to a broad enough audience for it to damage people. (Not all the time of course, but more than it occurred in the past). Now am I saying that curation and thought policing of ideas is a good thing? No, probably not. In many cases I think the media that aims itself at the soft left issues that have realised they can turn a buck through whipping up a frenzy on inconsequential "SJW" issues are to blame for pushing away a significant portion of the population towards their own barmy news sources, but I also think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and neither complete freedom without fear of reprisal, or significant policing/social shaming of ideals is a good place to be - and somehow we have ended up with a fair bit of both.
  - santoshalper 9y ago
    I liked it better when these people were confined to ugly subreddits, Daily Stormer, and Breitbart and not working in the White House and getting attention in popular media. I hope we send them back to hell ASAP and twist the lid on a little tighter next time.
- hzay 9y ago
  It's a mine field only at work and in formal situations. Outside work, one hears slurs about women often. There's nothing "careful" about it. Women felt protected and comfortable at the work places because there were explicit and implicit rules that said you can't speak slurs, or even something that might look like a slur. Personally I don't think it's time to clear this "mine field" yet, but I think a valid argument would be "we're educated enough that both men and women today can debate about gender without the prejudices that plagued our ancestors". I don't think the valley companies are there yet.
  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    I must have missed the part of the memo where he used slurs. I've noticed this kind of statement often: "How can you say X about group A - don't you know group A suffers from Y??", as a way to try and associate X with (the clearly bad) Y.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it. That's a bit different to what the Wikipedia page describes it as. It describes it as being to important to understand the reasons for X before trying to change X. It doesn't say anything about needing to show that you understand it, and needing to explain why now is the time to remove it. Those two additional requirements seem unreasonable for wanting to talk about some topic. For example, I would imagine that, 50-100 years ago, in a lot of the world, the idea of discussing the legitimacy of gay marriage would have been mostly taboo in public. To say that anyone wanting to broach the topic needed to show why the taboo was created in the first place, and why then was the time to remove it, seems unreasonable to me. ---- As a sideline, that Wikipedia entry is, in its current state, pretty poor quality. Here is a quote from it: History is full of examples of negative outcomes that resulted from the failure to understand this admonition. Pandora opened a box containing all the world's evils. Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, despite God's admonition not to, and the whole world was plunged into original sin
  - kobeya 9y ago
    > That's a bit different to what the Wikipedia page describes it as. It describes it as being to important to understand the reasons for X before trying to change X. It doesn't say anything about needing to show that you understand it, and needing to explain why now is the time to remove it. That seems like the same thing to me...
    - jamesrcole 9y ago
      Understanding X is one thing, having to provide a demonstration of that to others, that is considered adequate to others, is another. Understanding the reasons for X before trying to change X is separate from needing to show why the present time is right for changing X.
  - my_first_acct 9y ago
    You're correct that I went a bit further than Chesterton himself did. But not a lot further. By the way, I linked to the wrong Wikipedia entry. The one I linked to (and that you found the strange quote in) appears to be an internal document, explaining the principle of Chesterton's Fence to would-be Wikipedia editors. I should have linked to the Wikipedia article instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27...
- beefman 9y ago
  Apologetics. Truth is always best policy. If you really want to live in a regime of repressive groupthink, Christianity has demonstrably better side effects this bullshit (it is possible to draw parallels to the evolution of virulence with these...). Still not as good as the truth.
- siliconc0w 9y ago
  Sure it's uncomfortable to talk about but it's becoming increasingly important that we do. Without understanding why a phenomena like the STEM/leadership gap exists we can't hope to fix it. Diversity programs really aren't working - Google is at 80/20 for tech which is just about the same as the industry (78/22) (Department Of Labor). My policy is 'Fuck Chesterton Fences'(FCF). I don't want to live in a world of rusting fences.
  - sgift 9y ago
    > My policy is 'Fuck Chesterton Fences'(FCF). I don't want to live in a world of rusting fences. I remember that policy from the time of rampant privatization here in Europe. "Why should the government provide this service .." - well, a few years later we knew why. It's also quite often the mentality of people that say "you know what? Our software sucks and the architecture is stupid, I will build a new, far better one!" ... yeah, that usually doesn't work either. I saw a comment the other day which sums the problem with that attitude up quite nicely (paraphrased, cannot find it right now): "Without inside knowledge it's hard to distinguish stupidity from good engineering"
    - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
      > I remember that policy from the time of rampant privatization here in Europe. "Why should the government provide this service .." - well, a few years later we knew why. Going roughly by what I assume to be the GP's logic then, there should be a minefield surrounding discussions of having the government provide public services at all, since, naturally, that will lead to Soviet-style communism and the deaths of tens of millions. I'd also be wary of ascribing to large-scale political sentiment (not even shared by all) the kind of purpose and wisdom involved in engineering decisions. As you quoted "Without inside knowledge it's hard to distinguish stupidity from good engineering" - in this case, there is no inside knowledge.
      - strken 9y ago
        That's not the argument at all, because there was nowhere in Europe where the government provided no services[0]. Chesterton's fence isn't an argument in favour of non-intervention or laissez-faire economics, it's an argument in favour of inertia. If anything, it implies that the Soviet bureaucracy should have been slowly and carefully dismantled, which isn't obviously wrong if you read accounts of what happened after the dissolution of the USSR. [0] At least in theory. Failing to provide a promised service is not the same as deliberately providing no service. It might not even possible for a government worth the name to do literally nothing.
- dang 9y ago
  > Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment Please don't. There's too much repetition on HN already without copy-pasting previous comments.
  - teddyh 9y ago
    What? So according to this policy, you are now no longer allowed to complain about repeating comments, because you have now written that comment, once and for all?
  - my_first_acct 9y ago
    I agree in general, but made an exception in this case: 1) The original comment appeared on a thread that fell off the front page soon afterwards, so not many people saw it; 2) I thought it offered an original point of view; 3) It received some upvotes, which I interpreted as meaning that it put into words something that others had been thinking, but hadn't quite figured out how to say. Anyway, it has now had a chance to be viewed by an appropriately large audience, so I will happily retire it.
    - dang 9y ago
      Ok, fair enough.
- JohnStrange 9y ago
  In my experience, there are three problems with these debates (incl. the Google memo) that are huge enough that I believe it's best to avoid them entirely in the general public: 1. To many opinions in them are agenda-driven. There are racists and sexists, and if they are allowed to post pseudonymously they come out in troves. For example, the memo was recently discussed on /. and this turned very, very ugly. 2. Not enough people are aware that issues of social justice cannot be backed up by scientific facts in a straightforward way. They don't distinguish between preferences and capabilities, status quo and what would be desirable, etc. It's pointless to discuss such topics with anyone who isn't aware of these distinctions. Facts do not play the role in these debates that many seemingly scientifically-minded people believe they do. I can give examples, but don't want to do that now, because these would invariably stir up some unnecessary controversy. Well, I'll give one that is perhaps not so controversial: Many women did not express any desire to vote and considered suffragettes as too radical. The preferences of these women doesn't tell you anything about whether women should be allowed to vote or not, though. The status quo can be changed at any time if there is enough of a will to do so. Women used to be executed for adultery in Medieval Europe, and this is no longer so, because we have changed society to the better over the centuries. 3. The discussions are almost always based gross and insubstantial generalizations and an inability to describe tendencies correctly or draw adequate conclusions from small tendencies. The groups chosen are also often based on superficial differences or historical accidents.
Robelius 9y ago
I don’t doubt that the writer of the memo had the best of intentions with this memo. And there’s even some parts that I could support. But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. And he was a senior engineer who was in a hiring position. Someone who is hiring engineers, that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job, allows for a system of discriminatory hiring to occur.
- angersock 9y ago
  You shouldn't have changed your comment, even if you are scared of reprisal. Your observation about people inferring motives and being hard to argue with was on point.
- ng12 9y ago
  > that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job Did you read the article? Here's the money quote: > His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men, but that doesn’t mean any of the women at Google fall below the “qualified” threshold. None of his expressed views lead me to assume that he'd think less of a female candidate that made it through the screening process -- and that's a viewpoint he's explicitly concerned about protecting. Even if some of his opinions did lead him to have biases at least he's open about them and interested in examining them which is the first step to fixing them.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  >But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. The fact that something "gets you" doesn't in any way determine whether or not it's true. >He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. No he doesn't. >that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job He doesn't appear to believe that either. I feel like for you to believe what you do about the content of that memo you either didn't actually read it or have a serious lack of understanding of statistics. This chart from the memo will hopefully help. http://i.imgur.com/IaVS70v.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IaVS70v.jpg
angersock 9y ago
Author does good here, but perpetuates the same mistake most people talking about the memo do: There were additional sections after the "hypothesis", which had specific policy suggestions--most of which were aimed at helping the situation for a broader class of people and for improving visibility into the process. That somehow keeps getting missed.
- troupe 9y ago
  And he also pointed out that people are scared to actually talk about these things at Google. Considering he was fired, that seemed like a pretty on the mark observation.
  - VarFarYonder 9y ago
    If worked at Google and thought the evidence suggests that due to natural difference in the sexes, women are less likely to seek a job in tech -- that's not an ethical opinion on whether that is as it should be, but an opinion (whether right or wrong) on how things are -- then I'd be more scared than ever of voicing that opinion.
    - troupe 9y ago
      Yes, and if the evidence he was using was wrong the best thing Google can do is to explain why it is wrong to change the perception. Instead, they are basically telling people that if they look at the evidence and reach a similar conclusion, they stand a chance of being fired for talking about it. If someone points to the fact that there are many more blacks in the NFL than can be accounted if football talent is randomly distributed in the population and points to some evidence that maybe there are biological differences behind those numbers, the worst thing you can do is try to punish them for thinking. If they are using bad data, address that. If they are making a logical error, address that. But you can't just try to punish them because they looked at the statistics and the evidence and reached a conclusion that you don't like, but don't want to explain why you think it is wrong.
avaer 9y ago
> This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it It would be so very refreshing to hear a company just say "let's not throw incendiary memos around at work; it upsets people", instead of feeding the fire with a rationalized social stance. Actually, I _have_ seen great CEO's defuse situations like this. I don't understand why it's not done more often.
- Aloha 9y ago
  I take umbrage that its actually harmful - I'd totally get behind the idea that its a gross distraction. I really believe truly that each gender (because of biology and societal gender roles) has been given some unique problems solving gifts - and that we're shoving square pegs in round holes to gloss that over - but there is no universality here - I've seen men that are amazing at 'people' problems - and women who are fantastic at 'thing' problems - gender in my opinion is just another factor - like experience, knowledge, personality, education (and even age - often in engineering older is better) and others that factor into whether someone is suitable for a role. Right now, however, we as a society are not.. 'evolved' enough to discuss stuff like this as rational adults - it turns into a very personal argument very very quickly and ends up doing more harm than the (very real, but) small good that can be accomplished by taking into account what is inherent to us.
  - vanderreeah 9y ago
    On the contrary, it's a sign of our "evolution" that sexist ideas like the one in your second paragraph are now increasingly subject to fierce rebuttal.
    - thinkfurther 9y ago
      > sexist ideas like the one in your second paragraph Calling something sexist and leaving it at that isn't a rebuttal, and the more people agree with something empty, the more they have to answer for, it doesn't give a gram of weight to the thing. But you're not wrong since evolution doesn't exclude regression.
shadowmint 9y ago
> His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men, but that doesn’t mean any of the women at Google fall below the “qualified” threshold. I think its fair to say that not everyone shares that view. This is probably the key to controversy in my mind. You could read it that way. However, you can choose to interpret the sections about 'Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate' and 'Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.' as 'some people we're hiring don't cut it, we should hire more white men'. That's not what it says. You don't have to interpret it that way. ...but clearly a lot of people did. My advice? Stop defending it. You can talk about these issues without this memo. Forget the memo. The memo was stupid and misguided. Releasing it internally at work was unreservedly stupid. ...but what's done is done. Do you want to spend the next year talking about the memo, and the specifics of 'did it or did it not technically say such and such', or the actual issues he was trying to raise?
- imron 9y ago
  > 'Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate' Imagine you have 100 people applying for 10 positions, and the demographic breakdown of applicants (based on current trends in tech) is 20 women and 80 men. Let's also say that being male or female doesn't give you any special aptitude, and that the aptitude of all candidates regardless of gender follows a normal distribution along a bell-curve. Because of that and because of Google's standards, let's say that only 25% of all candidates have the skills and qualifications necessary to work at Google, which breaks down to 5 women and 20 men. Once again assuming a normal distribution with neither men nor women over or underrepresented in skill level, then without any sort of correcting for diversity, candidates would need to be in the top 10% of all candidates to receive a job offer (10 / 100). , this is 2 women and 8 men, leaving us with a false negative rate (i.e. people skilled enough to work at Google but who get declined) of 3 women and 12 men. But with an eye for diversity, Google decides to hire all the qualified women (5), with the remaining positions taken by men, so 5 and 5, a 50/50 split. Each of the candidates is qualified and capable of working for Google, but the false negative rate for women has been reduced from 3 to 0. This is what he meant by an effectively lowered bar by decreasing the false negative rate. The women now only need to be in the top 25% of all women candidates, whereas the men need to be in the top 6.25% of male candidates. There's nothing false or wrong about that statement, it's just maths that happens as a result of the diverse hiring practices skewing the distribution of candidates, with the bar being 'effectively' lowered for the diverse candidates from top 10% to top 25%. This has the unfortunate side effect that over time, if you are taking the top 6.25% from the non-diverse group (men in this case), but the top 25% from the other group then the non-diverse group will eventually have on average more high-performers (which affects things like salaries, promotions and more). It's not to say that men are better, just that the hiring practices have been structured to select men from a higher performing percentage of the population. You would get the same results in favor of women if you were only selecting the top 6.25% of women vs the top 25% of men.
maehwasu 9y ago
> However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “incorrect assumptions.” This is quite well-put, and gets at the heart of what pisses people off. There exists a large set of hypotheses which are plausible, and not just "spaghetti-monster God" plausible, but "> 20% chance this is the case" plausible. Many of those hypotheses, however, are shouted down as "racist", "sexist", or some other "ist" when they come up, and all of their possible costs are then listed in a litany, with all possible benefits ignored. It's intellectually stifling, and I'm no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric.
- Aloha 9y ago
  Hear! hear! It's very sad to me that we as a society are not.. 'evolved' enough to discuss stuff like this as rational adults - it turns into a very personal argument very very quickly because people feel you are attacking their identity - rather than say, discussing things they have no control over because of the weird mix of nature and nurture that guides us into adulthood. I'm hoping sincerely that the era of identity politics ends soon - we as individuals are much more than the things that could lead to an "-ism" or lead to someone being branded an "-ist".
  - MattRix 9y ago
    These "facts" are used in harmful ways against individuals. Stereotypes are harmful. Unless a stereotype applies to literally 100 percent of a population then they ARE going to hurt those people who do not fit it.
    - maehwasu 9y ago
      This is a great example of only examining costs of a hypothesis without examining the benefits. Literally ANY opinion/fact/belief set looks like pure evil if you only examine costs.
gfodor 9y ago
The core of what he is asking, and failed to drilled into sufficiently in my view, is exactly what the OP says: what % of the gender gap in various fields can be explained (within that field specifically) due to demographically correlated population preferences vs other factors. I think there are two unforced errors: - Trying to tie things back to causation due to biological factors gave cherry pickers sufficient ammo to snipe him as some kind of supremacist, sexist, bigot, whatever. Explaining causation was unnecessary for his argument. All that was needed was highlighting statistical correlations measured on demographics which could influence career choice. The question then reduces down to "do these correlations actually influence career choice or not" not anything about causation. From there, it's easy to ask "if so, how much? Zero is an acceptable answer." - He should have made a good faith argument of what the world looks like if you assume these demographically correlated attributes have no effect. It was important that he really highlight other potential explanations, since to people who disagree with his premise fundamentally, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Once illustrated, leave it to readers to decide on the absurdity or validity of that counter example. Some would consider it a sufficient "proof" by counter example to make his point, others would not be convinced but at least could digest his argument more likely as one of good faith not bigotry. In general, a lack of empathy for the lens through which his biggest, most vocal critic will read his argument was his undoing. The best path to having this discussion (regardless of merit) would be to continually buttress the argument on all sides with qualifiers and signs of good faith to those who will read it in the worst possible light. He did some of that, but not nearly enough.
- Griffinsauce 9y ago
  I'd wager a lack of empathy is the source of most of humanity's problems at this moment.
  - gfodor 9y ago
    hear hear
  - vlehto 9y ago
    I think there is lack of trust forbidding that empathy. If you don't trust that this guy has good intentions, it's very very hard to have any empathy towards him.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
retube 9y ago
I don't understand why it's such big news. No matter what's in it, it's just some random guy who happens to work at google. It's not a senior exec, it's not an official google position, it's.... nothing. I just don't understand why what this guy thinks warrants discussion?
- VarFarYonder 9y ago
  It's not about the guy. It's about what he said. And what he said is highly polarizing.
  - hangonhn 9y ago
    But anyone can say or write something idiotic and inflammatory (just for the sake of argument, let's assumed that the memo was such), would it have become this huge thing if he didn't work at Google? If not, then why is Google placed on such a pedestal and why do we lionize and in turn pillory Googlers? I think part of the problem is the place Google occupies in the popular imagination. It's sort of this lightning rod and poster child of Silicon Valley. Had this happen at most company, it would have simply been an HR issue at that company.
    - liaukovv 9y ago
      It sparkled a discussion because it wasn't idiotic. It makes sense and it causes cognitive dissonance among certain parts of the population.
- Griffinsauce 9y ago
  It sparked a discussion with many participants inside Google (which is a huge company) and outside. The news was mostly related to the size of the group discussing it and then circled back to "what will the company execs do"
- needlessly2 9y ago
  for liberals, it reinforces preconceived notion in tech. and also because the media has lots of power.
matt4077 9y ago
Yes, there may or may not be biological differences. Or cultural differences. In fact, it's almost certainly both, and it really doesn't matter. The single most important argument people like this ex-Googler never seem to understand is that they're confusing what is with what ought to be. If there's one defining characteristic of humanity, it's our ability to overcome biology (the 'hardware',so to speak), using our unique 'software' of self-awareness and abstract reasoning. Even if there were jobs that women were less qualified for, or had less interest in, we would want lower the difference, with equal representation if possible. Take politics as an easy example: it's a profession that is closely associated with a bunch of stereotypical 'male' characteristics, such as the pursuit of power and the willingness to engage in conflict. BUT: even if women as a group had a lower propensity to seek elected office, they still have an interest in being represented somewhat proportionally. That argument easily extends to leadership positions in the private sector, and it has become relevant for the IT industry because of the growing power of technology over all aspects of life.
- szemet 9y ago
  One part is ok. This is not mainly about facts but value systems: For example we can decide as a society that everybody born with equal rights, and some rights are inalienable, and work out the logical consequences. On this level differences do not matter (this is exactly the content of our value proposition). But this value proposition is not against the knowledge of the differences. Knowledge may matter: Factual knowledge of differences can help towards your goals independently of the nature of these goals. If your goals are equal representation - facts help, if it is to suppress people than these facts also help. Facts do not have goals and can be equally useful for morally different goals.
- mercer 9y ago
  I'm not sure the ex-Googler would disagree with you on this, though. There's even a section titled 'Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap' that clearly indicates he at least is not opposed to reducing the gender gap.
  - ryan-allen 9y ago
mc32 9y ago
I previously mentioned that in a previous life, I worked myself thru school --somewhat blue collar jobs. People, predominantly older black and white, under-educated, had quite a few views people who go beyond high school might consider offensive or ignorant and stereotyping: about race, aptitude, gender, sexuality, weight, promiscuity, prowess, etc. You know what --people worked, they joked, occasionally scuffled --and got over it. They made their money, they saved, they retired. It could have been better. It could have been more professional. It could have been nice and bland (in a good way) You know one thing people didn't shy away from was strong opinions on things, one way or the other. No one got fired for cursing, or being un-PC. You'd get sacked for theft, but they called their managers and bosses asses all the time. I can't imagine Googlers calling their bosses arseholes [even if deserved] I sometimes miss blue collar candor. Of course, when you're in it, it gets tiresome, redundant and unproductive.
- yahna 9y ago
  You must work at a really uptight place now.
pavlov 9y ago
The real tragedy in the discussion is this assumption, quoted from the OP: "His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men" Empathy and social intelligence are actively disqualifying factors for a job at Google, or software in general? That is so wrong on so many levels. I really like Bob Wyman's take on this: https://medium.com/@bobwyman/back-in-the-1970s-when-i-first-got-in-the-software-business-i-remember-there-being-a-much-higher-f70e8197fbd9 https://medium.com/@bobwyman/back-in-the-1970s-when-i-first-...
- freetime2 9y ago
  I completely agree that communication and people skills are necessary to be a great programmer. But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. Sure there are other paths into the industry, but no matter how you get here, the fact is that learning to code is intensive. Consider also that a large portion of the population can't pass a FizzBuzz programming interview (at least if Jeff Atwood is to be believed). And if you can't write FizzBuzz, no amount of empathy in the world is going to make you a good programmer. So yes, "soft skills" are tremendously important. But "hard skills" take priority. And whatever the cause may be, the fact is that right now there is a larger proportion of men than women who possess those hard skills.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    ...empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. When you put it that way, it is a shocking indictment of how little the current educational system actually serves the needs of the software industry. Most of us work on things that interact with, and affect, real people. Yet engineers are usually hired based on how well they can memorize data structures that they will almost never need in their actual daily work. It's frustrating for the engineers who expected to work on awesome abstract CS problems, and instead have to deal with messy systems that contain messy data that users care about.
DataWorker 9y ago
What happened to the good old days of vim vs emacs? The real basilisk is believing basilisks exist. Heterodoxy strengthens us all and if you chose to exclude the smart people because their thoughts are unhelpful, or patently offensive, you might find yourself without any allies when you need them most.
- nippples 9y ago
  > What happened to the good old days of vim vs emacs? Whoa, whoa. Are you trying to start WW3?
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Nah, it's just a precursor skirmish for spaces-vs-tabs.
    - niuzeta 9y ago
      Okay, now we're talking about Armageddon. Why bring it up when one option is clearly better than the other?
      - teddyh 9y ago
        Neither! http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/
inopinatus 9y ago
This column is set in a modern edition of Baskerville, one of my all-time favourite typefaces and (unlike Garamond and Optima) one that has now transitioned beautifully to a pixel display. Ironically the first time I saw Baskerville on a screen it was the heavy glyphs of Google's early (ca.1998) logo, in which it seemed to me rather flabby and unwell. So it is delightful to see this variant, like an old friend showing up looking happy and healthy. I love the vitality of those broad-shouldered, energetic capitals, and the careful flourishes of the italic form that so gracefully engage us for asides and for emphasis! And that open bowl on the 'g' for which I am always such a sucker. One day I hope there will be a usable screen variant of Garamond. I've had a tinker and I know it's beyond my own very limited design abilities to achieve. The typography of the Google Memo, by contrast, is simply dismal and a sorry reminder of why I don't use Google Docs.
santoshalper 9y ago
I find the idealism present in this thread both sweet and optimistic, and simultaneously incredibly naive. In a way, it's SV/startup culture in a nutshell. "Anything is possible if we work together and use our brains!".... "Move fast and break things!"... "What could possibly go wrong?" The reality is that we are only a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs requiring intelligence or competence was standard operating procedure and saying out loud "You really think hiring a black/female engineer is a good idea?" would not have been considered especially controversial. Our parents (or grandparents for some of you) lived through this time, saw the incredible damage it did to millions of people, and wisely decided to seal it away with a powerful ward (laws + social taboo). This is of course an oversimplification of a process that started long ago and is not finished - but it will have to suffice as a metaphor. Keep in mind, this process was (and is) a hard fought war with many casualties - friendships, families, and of course actual lost lives. When I chastise my 73 year old father for not being progressive enough, he reminds me that his mother, who grew up during the depression in the south, did not consider black people to be human. His outspoken support for civil rights caused a major rift in their relationship that never healed before she died. Of course there are costs to this ward of taboos - as well as the similar ones we are presently building around LGBT people. Any time an avenue of discussion is cut off, we are all slightly poorer for it. I would argue however that we know what is behind that ward - awful things that hurt people - and I would argue that right now, it is just not worth it. Maybe in a century we will be ready to have more frank conversations about sex, gender, and race, but I am pretty sure we are not ready now.
- freetime2 9y ago
  That seems to me like a pretty length way of saying you agree with option 2: Say “This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it” (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest)
  - izacus 9y ago
    You should read the post again and perhaps use a bit of generosity this time.
jack9 9y ago
> 1)/[sic]he never made a case for why we shouldn’t think other factors are even bigger Really? The memo wasn't about answering life's questions, but to propose narrow solutions with based on pointed evidence. Preference or not, attacking the hypothesis because you want a different one answered is idiotic and is not a proper response. It's basically a common SJW ad hominem. "You just aren't smart enough to understand what's going on here!" Julia might want to look at the nordic countries that have pushed the gender gaps even wider with some very sophisticated progressive social policies to prevent other factors.
_pmf_ 9y ago
Note that Sundar Pichai is very clearly in category 2, i.e. he does not dismiss the memo as untruthful or expressly voices disagreement. What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo". Maybe discussions in this forum can be restricted to arguments about whether the fried chicken was particularly bad today.
- freetime2 9y ago
  What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo". Citation on this point? I have been following the news on this story pretty closely and have not been able to find out much about how the "memo" was initially "published". I agree that if true, this would be relevant to whether or not he deserved to be fired.
  - _pmf_ 9y ago
    Search for "The document was first posted to an internal company forum". I cannot find an authoritative source, but it seems much more plausible to me than James Damore mailing it to the global Google email list. If you know enterprisey social networks, posting on some forum there might send notifications to subscribers (IBM Connections does this, for example), but stating "James Damore wrote a memo" is very misleading. Now, I don't deny that Damore is somewhat of a (smart and polite) troll, but he played fair within the rules set by Google by posting to a forum dedicated to workplace issues. His message to SJWs is clearly that he hates the game, not the players, but Google responds by banning an opposing player instead of honestly acknowledging the fact that they have a large part of the workforce with a conservative mindset who are silenced by company policy.
  - needlessly2 9y ago
    as far as i know, the forum part is not true. It was emailed internally to a bunch of people
chmike 9y ago
> 2. Say “This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it” (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest) This is so wrong in so many ways. Don't call back in question that the universe was created in 7 day, that the earth is flat, global warming etc. Because it is harmful to believers ? It's not just a difference in personality. It's a difference in behavioral and intellectual capability. Denying or repressing it is plain stupid. This essay proves that something is totally wrong in the way people handle this issue. But this is sadly not a surprize.
- freetime2 9y ago
  I think it's fair for an employer to say to its employees. After all, you are there to get work done, not solve all of the problems in the world. But in this particular issue I think that Google actually opened the door by implementing a diversity program that favors one group of people over another (note: I personally have no issues with affirmative action programs, but let's at least be intellectually honest about what they are), and forcing employees to sit through special training. Now he is complaining about workplace conditions. And firing employees for complaining about workplace conditions is not ok (and potentially illegal in California).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
_pmf_ 9y ago
In addition to people in favor of affirmative action and people opposed to affirmative action, there's the large class of people who are in favor of affirmative action, but against the political correctness pressure of having to act like they believe this in for the benefit of all instead of the explicit benefit of the affected minority.
babesh 9y ago
I think very few men even if they agree with point 1, would dare advocate that at their workplaces for fear of getting fired.
JasonHalloway 9y ago
Since this is a venue of free discussion, there is another near identical argument that is also completely taboo. One possible reason there are few conservatives in top tech companies is because they don't apply as often as moderates and liberals. And this could be because of innate lower intelligent[0] Now I'm not saying this is definitely the case at all. Just that it's a possibility that we should all really start discussing including in our work places. And rather than just flat out reject it as insulting, we should also note the good that will come from accepting it, should it be true. At any rate, suppressing my topic would be an attack on free speech and makes those who honestly believe it feel oppressed when this view should be understood, discussed and given a platform. [0] https://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/SPQ2010.pdf https://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/SPQ2010.pdf
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
> However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “incorrect assumptions.” I'm sorry, the last sentence is not true - Pichai was very careful not to say which parts of the memo were "incorrect assumptions".

183 points by kareemm 9y ago

ng12 9y ago

"Intellectual honesty" -- that's the phrase I couldn't think of. It seems to me the stronger the condemnation the greater degree to which his arguments were misrepresented.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

my_first_acct 9y ago

Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment [0]: Certain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability within subgroups of the population. This minefield was not put in place by a repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic band of social-justice zealots. My observation, which I will offer without citation, is that this particular minefield was put in place, mine by mine, over a period of decades, through a process of fairly broad societal consensus. To those who suggest clearing the minefield, thus permitting this topic to be discussed freely in public, I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970661 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

ryan-allen 9y ago
It's better to let people discuss these topics rather than to try to stop them talking about them. If the sentiments exist and they are repressed they will simply go underground where you cannot see them. Don't you want to know what your opposition think? Painting those you disagree with (whether you're wrong, or you're right) with the bigot brush is not going to bring any change, there's only two choices: violence or discussion, so let's discuss.
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  Part of the difficulty, in my view, is that we are thinking about this as a high level benevolent debate - in this scientific, clean and clear environment we think of where we can throw out all manner of idea and deconstruct it logically then there is no argument that is off limits. Let me say straight up, I love that kind of discussion, I often have a good chat with my right/left/feminist/religious etc. close friends about usually off limit topics... I theoretically would want to be able to do that in the broader population and in broader society. But the older I get, and the more I see where the internet has taken freedom of discourse, the more I believe that most people don't argue and debate like that. With "Fake news" and barmy political ideologies getting airtime and actually GAINING in backing, and with the quality of media dropping more and more every day with the volume of rubbish news getting regurgitated on social media as fact without journalistic standards in place, I'm more seeing that the majority of discourse is headlines and snippets thrown around with awful evidence and logic, people see it, get confirmation bias on it, or think it falls in line with their view, and then they share onwards. A post/article/clickbait arguing against it, or proving its sources as incorrect is not nearly as shared and not nearly as widely disseminated and then you end up with a debunked viewpoint being spread wider than it ever should have, because there was no curation of the evidence. The "Bigot Brush" perhaps played a part in stopping ideas being shared around that were fairly out of the normal discussion, though it also repressed peoples ability to discuss and expose their broader ideas that went against the grain too. It played its part in stopping aggressive ideas from circulating to a broad enough audience for it to damage people. (Not all the time of course, but more than it occurred in the past). Now am I saying that curation and thought policing of ideas is a good thing? No, probably not. In many cases I think the media that aims itself at the soft left issues that have realised they can turn a buck through whipping up a frenzy on inconsequential "SJW" issues are to blame for pushing away a significant portion of the population towards their own barmy news sources, but I also think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and neither complete freedom without fear of reprisal, or significant policing/social shaming of ideals is a good place to be - and somehow we have ended up with a fair bit of both.
- santoshalper 9y ago
  I liked it better when these people were confined to ugly subreddits, Daily Stormer, and Breitbart and not working in the White House and getting attention in popular media. I hope we send them back to hell ASAP and twist the lid on a little tighter next time.
hzay 9y ago
It's a mine field only at work and in formal situations. Outside work, one hears slurs about women often. There's nothing "careful" about it. Women felt protected and comfortable at the work places because there were explicit and implicit rules that said you can't speak slurs, or even something that might look like a slur. Personally I don't think it's time to clear this "mine field" yet, but I think a valid argument would be "we're educated enough that both men and women today can debate about gender without the prejudices that plagued our ancestors". I don't think the valley companies are there yet.
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  I must have missed the part of the memo where he used slurs. I've noticed this kind of statement often: "How can you say X about group A - don't you know group A suffers from Y??", as a way to try and associate X with (the clearly bad) Y.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jamesrcole 9y ago
> I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it. That's a bit different to what the Wikipedia page describes it as. It describes it as being to important to understand the reasons for X before trying to change X. It doesn't say anything about needing to show that you understand it, and needing to explain why now is the time to remove it. Those two additional requirements seem unreasonable for wanting to talk about some topic. For example, I would imagine that, 50-100 years ago, in a lot of the world, the idea of discussing the legitimacy of gay marriage would have been mostly taboo in public. To say that anyone wanting to broach the topic needed to show why the taboo was created in the first place, and why then was the time to remove it, seems unreasonable to me. ---- As a sideline, that Wikipedia entry is, in its current state, pretty poor quality. Here is a quote from it: History is full of examples of negative outcomes that resulted from the failure to understand this admonition. Pandora opened a box containing all the world's evils. Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, despite God's admonition not to, and the whole world was plunged into original sin
- kobeya 9y ago
  > That's a bit different to what the Wikipedia page describes it as. It describes it as being to important to understand the reasons for X before trying to change X. It doesn't say anything about needing to show that you understand it, and needing to explain why now is the time to remove it. That seems like the same thing to me...
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    Understanding X is one thing, having to provide a demonstration of that to others, that is considered adequate to others, is another. Understanding the reasons for X before trying to change X is separate from needing to show why the present time is right for changing X.
- my_first_acct 9y ago
  You're correct that I went a bit further than Chesterton himself did. But not a lot further. By the way, I linked to the wrong Wikipedia entry. The one I linked to (and that you found the strange quote in) appears to be an internal document, explaining the principle of Chesterton's Fence to would-be Wikipedia editors. I should have linked to the Wikipedia article instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27...
beefman 9y ago
Apologetics. Truth is always best policy. If you really want to live in a regime of repressive groupthink, Christianity has demonstrably better side effects this bullshit (it is possible to draw parallels to the evolution of virulence with these...). Still not as good as the truth.
siliconc0w 9y ago
Sure it's uncomfortable to talk about but it's becoming increasingly important that we do. Without understanding why a phenomena like the STEM/leadership gap exists we can't hope to fix it. Diversity programs really aren't working - Google is at 80/20 for tech which is just about the same as the industry (78/22) (Department Of Labor). My policy is 'Fuck Chesterton Fences'(FCF). I don't want to live in a world of rusting fences.
- sgift 9y ago
  > My policy is 'Fuck Chesterton Fences'(FCF). I don't want to live in a world of rusting fences. I remember that policy from the time of rampant privatization here in Europe. "Why should the government provide this service .." - well, a few years later we knew why. It's also quite often the mentality of people that say "you know what? Our software sucks and the architecture is stupid, I will build a new, far better one!" ... yeah, that usually doesn't work either. I saw a comment the other day which sums the problem with that attitude up quite nicely (paraphrased, cannot find it right now): "Without inside knowledge it's hard to distinguish stupidity from good engineering"
  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    > I remember that policy from the time of rampant privatization here in Europe. "Why should the government provide this service .." - well, a few years later we knew why. Going roughly by what I assume to be the GP's logic then, there should be a minefield surrounding discussions of having the government provide public services at all, since, naturally, that will lead to Soviet-style communism and the deaths of tens of millions. I'd also be wary of ascribing to large-scale political sentiment (not even shared by all) the kind of purpose and wisdom involved in engineering decisions. As you quoted "Without inside knowledge it's hard to distinguish stupidity from good engineering" - in this case, there is no inside knowledge.
    - strken 9y ago
      That's not the argument at all, because there was nowhere in Europe where the government provided no services[0]. Chesterton's fence isn't an argument in favour of non-intervention or laissez-faire economics, it's an argument in favour of inertia. If anything, it implies that the Soviet bureaucracy should have been slowly and carefully dismantled, which isn't obviously wrong if you read accounts of what happened after the dissolution of the USSR. [0] At least in theory. Failing to provide a promised service is not the same as deliberately providing no service. It might not even possible for a government worth the name to do literally nothing.
dang 9y ago
> Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment Please don't. There's too much repetition on HN already without copy-pasting previous comments.
- teddyh 9y ago
  What? So according to this policy, you are now no longer allowed to complain about repeating comments, because you have now written that comment, once and for all?
- my_first_acct 9y ago
  I agree in general, but made an exception in this case: 1) The original comment appeared on a thread that fell off the front page soon afterwards, so not many people saw it; 2) I thought it offered an original point of view; 3) It received some upvotes, which I interpreted as meaning that it put into words something that others had been thinking, but hadn't quite figured out how to say. Anyway, it has now had a chance to be viewed by an appropriately large audience, so I will happily retire it.
  - dang 9y ago
    Ok, fair enough.
JohnStrange 9y ago
In my experience, there are three problems with these debates (incl. the Google memo) that are huge enough that I believe it's best to avoid them entirely in the general public: 1. To many opinions in them are agenda-driven. There are racists and sexists, and if they are allowed to post pseudonymously they come out in troves. For example, the memo was recently discussed on /. and this turned very, very ugly. 2. Not enough people are aware that issues of social justice cannot be backed up by scientific facts in a straightforward way. They don't distinguish between preferences and capabilities, status quo and what would be desirable, etc. It's pointless to discuss such topics with anyone who isn't aware of these distinctions. Facts do not play the role in these debates that many seemingly scientifically-minded people believe they do. I can give examples, but don't want to do that now, because these would invariably stir up some unnecessary controversy. Well, I'll give one that is perhaps not so controversial: Many women did not express any desire to vote and considered suffragettes as too radical. The preferences of these women doesn't tell you anything about whether women should be allowed to vote or not, though. The status quo can be changed at any time if there is enough of a will to do so. Women used to be executed for adultery in Medieval Europe, and this is no longer so, because we have changed society to the better over the centuries. 3. The discussions are almost always based gross and insubstantial generalizations and an inability to describe tendencies correctly or draw adequate conclusions from small tendencies. The groups chosen are also often based on superficial differences or historical accidents.

Robelius 9y ago

I don’t doubt that the writer of the memo had the best of intentions with this memo. And there’s even some parts that I could support. But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. And he was a senior engineer who was in a hiring position. Someone who is hiring engineers, that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job, allows for a system of discriminatory hiring to occur.

angersock 9y ago
You shouldn't have changed your comment, even if you are scared of reprisal. Your observation about people inferring motives and being hard to argue with was on point.
ng12 9y ago
> that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job Did you read the article? Here's the money quote: > His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men, but that doesn’t mean any of the women at Google fall below the “qualified” threshold. None of his expressed views lead me to assume that he'd think less of a female candidate that made it through the screening process -- and that's a viewpoint he's explicitly concerned about protecting. Even if some of his opinions did lead him to have biases at least he's open about them and interested in examining them which is the first step to fixing them.
Consultant32452 9y ago
>But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. The fact that something "gets you" doesn't in any way determine whether or not it's true. >He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. No he doesn't. >that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job He doesn't appear to believe that either. I feel like for you to believe what you do about the content of that memo you either didn't actually read it or have a serious lack of understanding of statistics. This chart from the memo will hopefully help. http://i.imgur.com/IaVS70v.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IaVS70v.jpg

angersock 9y ago

Author does good here, but perpetuates the same mistake most people talking about the memo do: There were additional sections after the "hypothesis", which had specific policy suggestions--most of which were aimed at helping the situation for a broader class of people and for improving visibility into the process. That somehow keeps getting missed.

troupe 9y ago
And he also pointed out that people are scared to actually talk about these things at Google. Considering he was fired, that seemed like a pretty on the mark observation.
- VarFarYonder 9y ago
  If worked at Google and thought the evidence suggests that due to natural difference in the sexes, women are less likely to seek a job in tech -- that's not an ethical opinion on whether that is as it should be, but an opinion (whether right or wrong) on how things are -- then I'd be more scared than ever of voicing that opinion.
  - troupe 9y ago
    Yes, and if the evidence he was using was wrong the best thing Google can do is to explain why it is wrong to change the perception. Instead, they are basically telling people that if they look at the evidence and reach a similar conclusion, they stand a chance of being fired for talking about it. If someone points to the fact that there are many more blacks in the NFL than can be accounted if football talent is randomly distributed in the population and points to some evidence that maybe there are biological differences behind those numbers, the worst thing you can do is try to punish them for thinking. If they are using bad data, address that. If they are making a logical error, address that. But you can't just try to punish them because they looked at the statistics and the evidence and reached a conclusion that you don't like, but don't want to explain why you think it is wrong.

avaer 9y ago

> This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it It would be so very refreshing to hear a company just say "let's not throw incendiary memos around at work; it upsets people", instead of feeding the fire with a rationalized social stance. Actually, I _have_ seen great CEO's defuse situations like this. I don't understand why it's not done more often.

Aloha 9y ago
I take umbrage that its actually harmful - I'd totally get behind the idea that its a gross distraction. I really believe truly that each gender (because of biology and societal gender roles) has been given some unique problems solving gifts - and that we're shoving square pegs in round holes to gloss that over - but there is no universality here - I've seen men that are amazing at 'people' problems - and women who are fantastic at 'thing' problems - gender in my opinion is just another factor - like experience, knowledge, personality, education (and even age - often in engineering older is better) and others that factor into whether someone is suitable for a role. Right now, however, we as a society are not.. 'evolved' enough to discuss stuff like this as rational adults - it turns into a very personal argument very very quickly and ends up doing more harm than the (very real, but) small good that can be accomplished by taking into account what is inherent to us.
- vanderreeah 9y ago
  On the contrary, it's a sign of our "evolution" that sexist ideas like the one in your second paragraph are now increasingly subject to fierce rebuttal.
  - thinkfurther 9y ago
    > sexist ideas like the one in your second paragraph Calling something sexist and leaving it at that isn't a rebuttal, and the more people agree with something empty, the more they have to answer for, it doesn't give a gram of weight to the thing. But you're not wrong since evolution doesn't exclude regression.

shadowmint 9y ago

> His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men, but that doesn’t mean any of the women at Google fall below the “qualified” threshold. I think its fair to say that not everyone shares that view. This is probably the key to controversy in my mind. You could read it that way. However, you can choose to interpret the sections about 'Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate' and 'Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.' as 'some people we're hiring don't cut it, we should hire more white men'. That's not what it says. You don't have to interpret it that way. ...but clearly a lot of people did. My advice? Stop defending it. You can talk about these issues without this memo. Forget the memo. The memo was stupid and misguided. Releasing it internally at work was unreservedly stupid. ...but what's done is done. Do you want to spend the next year talking about the memo, and the specifics of 'did it or did it not technically say such and such', or the actual issues he was trying to raise?

imron 9y ago
> 'Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate' Imagine you have 100 people applying for 10 positions, and the demographic breakdown of applicants (based on current trends in tech) is 20 women and 80 men. Let's also say that being male or female doesn't give you any special aptitude, and that the aptitude of all candidates regardless of gender follows a normal distribution along a bell-curve. Because of that and because of Google's standards, let's say that only 25% of all candidates have the skills and qualifications necessary to work at Google, which breaks down to 5 women and 20 men. Once again assuming a normal distribution with neither men nor women over or underrepresented in skill level, then without any sort of correcting for diversity, candidates would need to be in the top 10% of all candidates to receive a job offer (10 / 100). , this is 2 women and 8 men, leaving us with a false negative rate (i.e. people skilled enough to work at Google but who get declined) of 3 women and 12 men. But with an eye for diversity, Google decides to hire all the qualified women (5), with the remaining positions taken by men, so 5 and 5, a 50/50 split. Each of the candidates is qualified and capable of working for Google, but the false negative rate for women has been reduced from 3 to 0. This is what he meant by an effectively lowered bar by decreasing the false negative rate. The women now only need to be in the top 25% of all women candidates, whereas the men need to be in the top 6.25% of male candidates. There's nothing false or wrong about that statement, it's just maths that happens as a result of the diverse hiring practices skewing the distribution of candidates, with the bar being 'effectively' lowered for the diverse candidates from top 10% to top 25%. This has the unfortunate side effect that over time, if you are taking the top 6.25% from the non-diverse group (men in this case), but the top 25% from the other group then the non-diverse group will eventually have on average more high-performers (which affects things like salaries, promotions and more). It's not to say that men are better, just that the hiring practices have been structured to select men from a higher performing percentage of the population. You would get the same results in favor of women if you were only selecting the top 6.25% of women vs the top 25% of men.

maehwasu 9y ago

> However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “incorrect assumptions.” This is quite well-put, and gets at the heart of what pisses people off. There exists a large set of hypotheses which are plausible, and not just "spaghetti-monster God" plausible, but "> 20% chance this is the case" plausible. Many of those hypotheses, however, are shouted down as "racist", "sexist", or some other "ist" when they come up, and all of their possible costs are then listed in a litany, with all possible benefits ignored. It's intellectually stifling, and I'm no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric.

Aloha 9y ago
Hear! hear! It's very sad to me that we as a society are not.. 'evolved' enough to discuss stuff like this as rational adults - it turns into a very personal argument very very quickly because people feel you are attacking their identity - rather than say, discussing things they have no control over because of the weird mix of nature and nurture that guides us into adulthood. I'm hoping sincerely that the era of identity politics ends soon - we as individuals are much more than the things that could lead to an "-ism" or lead to someone being branded an "-ist".
- MattRix 9y ago
  These "facts" are used in harmful ways against individuals. Stereotypes are harmful. Unless a stereotype applies to literally 100 percent of a population then they ARE going to hurt those people who do not fit it.
  - maehwasu 9y ago
    This is a great example of only examining costs of a hypothesis without examining the benefits. Literally ANY opinion/fact/belief set looks like pure evil if you only examine costs.

gfodor 9y ago

The core of what he is asking, and failed to drilled into sufficiently in my view, is exactly what the OP says: what % of the gender gap in various fields can be explained (within that field specifically) due to demographically correlated population preferences vs other factors. I think there are two unforced errors: - Trying to tie things back to causation due to biological factors gave cherry pickers sufficient ammo to snipe him as some kind of supremacist, sexist, bigot, whatever. Explaining causation was unnecessary for his argument. All that was needed was highlighting statistical correlations measured on demographics which could influence career choice. The question then reduces down to "do these correlations actually influence career choice or not" not anything about causation. From there, it's easy to ask "if so, how much? Zero is an acceptable answer." - He should have made a good faith argument of what the world looks like if you assume these demographically correlated attributes have no effect. It was important that he really highlight other potential explanations, since to people who disagree with his premise fundamentally, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Once illustrated, leave it to readers to decide on the absurdity or validity of that counter example. Some would consider it a sufficient "proof" by counter example to make his point, others would not be convinced but at least could digest his argument more likely as one of good faith not bigotry. In general, a lack of empathy for the lens through which his biggest, most vocal critic will read his argument was his undoing. The best path to having this discussion (regardless of merit) would be to continually buttress the argument on all sides with qualifiers and signs of good faith to those who will read it in the worst possible light. He did some of that, but not nearly enough.

Griffinsauce 9y ago
I'd wager a lack of empathy is the source of most of humanity's problems at this moment.
- gfodor 9y ago
  hear hear
- vlehto 9y ago
  I think there is lack of trust forbidding that empathy. If you don't trust that this guy has good intentions, it's very very hard to have any empathy towards him.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

retube 9y ago

I don't understand why it's such big news. No matter what's in it, it's just some random guy who happens to work at google. It's not a senior exec, it's not an official google position, it's.... nothing. I just don't understand why what this guy thinks warrants discussion?

VarFarYonder 9y ago
It's not about the guy. It's about what he said. And what he said is highly polarizing.
- hangonhn 9y ago
  But anyone can say or write something idiotic and inflammatory (just for the sake of argument, let's assumed that the memo was such), would it have become this huge thing if he didn't work at Google? If not, then why is Google placed on such a pedestal and why do we lionize and in turn pillory Googlers? I think part of the problem is the place Google occupies in the popular imagination. It's sort of this lightning rod and poster child of Silicon Valley. Had this happen at most company, it would have simply been an HR issue at that company.
  - liaukovv 9y ago
    It sparkled a discussion because it wasn't idiotic. It makes sense and it causes cognitive dissonance among certain parts of the population.
Griffinsauce 9y ago
It sparked a discussion with many participants inside Google (which is a huge company) and outside. The news was mostly related to the size of the group discussing it and then circled back to "what will the company execs do"
needlessly2 9y ago
for liberals, it reinforces preconceived notion in tech. and also because the media has lots of power.

matt4077 9y ago

Yes, there may or may not be biological differences. Or cultural differences. In fact, it's almost certainly both, and it really doesn't matter. The single most important argument people like this ex-Googler never seem to understand is that they're confusing what is with what ought to be. If there's one defining characteristic of humanity, it's our ability to overcome biology (the 'hardware',so to speak), using our unique 'software' of self-awareness and abstract reasoning. Even if there were jobs that women were less qualified for, or had less interest in, we would want lower the difference, with equal representation if possible. Take politics as an easy example: it's a profession that is closely associated with a bunch of stereotypical 'male' characteristics, such as the pursuit of power and the willingness to engage in conflict. BUT: even if women as a group had a lower propensity to seek elected office, they still have an interest in being represented somewhat proportionally. That argument easily extends to leadership positions in the private sector, and it has become relevant for the IT industry because of the growing power of technology over all aspects of life.

szemet 9y ago
One part is ok. This is not mainly about facts but value systems: For example we can decide as a society that everybody born with equal rights, and some rights are inalienable, and work out the logical consequences. On this level differences do not matter (this is exactly the content of our value proposition). But this value proposition is not against the knowledge of the differences. Knowledge may matter: Factual knowledge of differences can help towards your goals independently of the nature of these goals. If your goals are equal representation - facts help, if it is to suppress people than these facts also help. Facts do not have goals and can be equally useful for morally different goals.
mercer 9y ago
I'm not sure the ex-Googler would disagree with you on this, though. There's even a section titled 'Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap' that clearly indicates he at least is not opposed to reducing the gender gap.
- ryan-allen 9y ago

mc32 9y ago

I previously mentioned that in a previous life, I worked myself thru school --somewhat blue collar jobs. People, predominantly older black and white, under-educated, had quite a few views people who go beyond high school might consider offensive or ignorant and stereotyping: about race, aptitude, gender, sexuality, weight, promiscuity, prowess, etc. You know what --people worked, they joked, occasionally scuffled --and got over it. They made their money, they saved, they retired. It could have been better. It could have been more professional. It could have been nice and bland (in a good way) You know one thing people didn't shy away from was strong opinions on things, one way or the other. No one got fired for cursing, or being un-PC. You'd get sacked for theft, but they called their managers and bosses asses all the time. I can't imagine Googlers calling their bosses arseholes [even if deserved] I sometimes miss blue collar candor. Of course, when you're in it, it gets tiresome, redundant and unproductive.

yahna 9y ago
You must work at a really uptight place now.

pavlov 9y ago

The real tragedy in the discussion is this assumption, quoted from the OP: "His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men" Empathy and social intelligence are actively disqualifying factors for a job at Google, or software in general? That is so wrong on so many levels. I really like Bob Wyman's take on this: https://medium.com/@bobwyman/back-in-the-1970s-when-i-first-got-in-the-software-business-i-remember-there-being-a-much-higher-f70e8197fbd9 https://medium.com/@bobwyman/back-in-the-1970s-when-i-first-...

freetime2 9y ago
I completely agree that communication and people skills are necessary to be a great programmer. But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. Sure there are other paths into the industry, but no matter how you get here, the fact is that learning to code is intensive. Consider also that a large portion of the population can't pass a FizzBuzz programming interview (at least if Jeff Atwood is to be believed). And if you can't write FizzBuzz, no amount of empathy in the world is going to make you a good programmer. So yes, "soft skills" are tremendously important. But "hard skills" take priority. And whatever the cause may be, the fact is that right now there is a larger proportion of men than women who possess those hard skills.
- pavlov 9y ago
  ...empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. When you put it that way, it is a shocking indictment of how little the current educational system actually serves the needs of the software industry. Most of us work on things that interact with, and affect, real people. Yet engineers are usually hired based on how well they can memorize data structures that they will almost never need in their actual daily work. It's frustrating for the engineers who expected to work on awesome abstract CS problems, and instead have to deal with messy systems that contain messy data that users care about.

DataWorker 9y ago

What happened to the good old days of vim vs emacs? The real basilisk is believing basilisks exist. Heterodoxy strengthens us all and if you chose to exclude the smart people because their thoughts are unhelpful, or patently offensive, you might find yourself without any allies when you need them most.

nippples 9y ago
> What happened to the good old days of vim vs emacs? Whoa, whoa. Are you trying to start WW3?
- kobeya 9y ago
  Nah, it's just a precursor skirmish for spaces-vs-tabs.
  - niuzeta 9y ago
    Okay, now we're talking about Armageddon. Why bring it up when one option is clearly better than the other?
    - teddyh 9y ago
      Neither! http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

inopinatus 9y ago

This column is set in a modern edition of Baskerville, one of my all-time favourite typefaces and (unlike Garamond and Optima) one that has now transitioned beautifully to a pixel display. Ironically the first time I saw Baskerville on a screen it was the heavy glyphs of Google's early (ca.1998) logo, in which it seemed to me rather flabby and unwell. So it is delightful to see this variant, like an old friend showing up looking happy and healthy. I love the vitality of those broad-shouldered, energetic capitals, and the careful flourishes of the italic form that so gracefully engage us for asides and for emphasis! And that open bowl on the 'g' for which I am always such a sucker. One day I hope there will be a usable screen variant of Garamond. I've had a tinker and I know it's beyond my own very limited design abilities to achieve. The typography of the Google Memo, by contrast, is simply dismal and a sorry reminder of why I don't use Google Docs.

santoshalper 9y ago

I find the idealism present in this thread both sweet and optimistic, and simultaneously incredibly naive. In a way, it's SV/startup culture in a nutshell. "Anything is possible if we work together and use our brains!".... "Move fast and break things!"... "What could possibly go wrong?" The reality is that we are only a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs requiring intelligence or competence was standard operating procedure and saying out loud "You really think hiring a black/female engineer is a good idea?" would not have been considered especially controversial. Our parents (or grandparents for some of you) lived through this time, saw the incredible damage it did to millions of people, and wisely decided to seal it away with a powerful ward (laws + social taboo). This is of course an oversimplification of a process that started long ago and is not finished - but it will have to suffice as a metaphor. Keep in mind, this process was (and is) a hard fought war with many casualties - friendships, families, and of course actual lost lives. When I chastise my 73 year old father for not being progressive enough, he reminds me that his mother, who grew up during the depression in the south, did not consider black people to be human. His outspoken support for civil rights caused a major rift in their relationship that never healed before she died. Of course there are costs to this ward of taboos - as well as the similar ones we are presently building around LGBT people. Any time an avenue of discussion is cut off, we are all slightly poorer for it. I would argue however that we know what is behind that ward - awful things that hurt people - and I would argue that right now, it is just not worth it. Maybe in a century we will be ready to have more frank conversations about sex, gender, and race, but I am pretty sure we are not ready now.

freetime2 9y ago
That seems to me like a pretty length way of saying you agree with option 2: Say “This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it” (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest)
- izacus 9y ago
  You should read the post again and perhaps use a bit of generosity this time.

jack9 9y ago

> 1)/[sic]he never made a case for why we shouldn’t think other factors are even bigger Really? The memo wasn't about answering life's questions, but to propose narrow solutions with based on pointed evidence. Preference or not, attacking the hypothesis because you want a different one answered is idiotic and is not a proper response. It's basically a common SJW ad hominem. "You just aren't smart enough to understand what's going on here!" Julia might want to look at the nordic countries that have pushed the gender gaps even wider with some very sophisticated progressive social policies to prevent other factors.

_pmf_ 9y ago

Note that Sundar Pichai is very clearly in category 2, i.e. he does not dismiss the memo as untruthful or expressly voices disagreement. What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo". Maybe discussions in this forum can be restricted to arguments about whether the fried chicken was particularly bad today.

freetime2 9y ago
What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo". Citation on this point? I have been following the news on this story pretty closely and have not been able to find out much about how the "memo" was initially "published". I agree that if true, this would be relevant to whether or not he deserved to be fired.
- _pmf_ 9y ago
  Search for "The document was first posted to an internal company forum". I cannot find an authoritative source, but it seems much more plausible to me than James Damore mailing it to the global Google email list. If you know enterprisey social networks, posting on some forum there might send notifications to subscribers (IBM Connections does this, for example), but stating "James Damore wrote a memo" is very misleading. Now, I don't deny that Damore is somewhat of a (smart and polite) troll, but he played fair within the rules set by Google by posting to a forum dedicated to workplace issues. His message to SJWs is clearly that he hates the game, not the players, but Google responds by banning an opposing player instead of honestly acknowledging the fact that they have a large part of the workforce with a conservative mindset who are silenced by company policy.
- needlessly2 9y ago
  as far as i know, the forum part is not true. It was emailed internally to a bunch of people

chmike 9y ago

> 2. Say “This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it” (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest) This is so wrong in so many ways. Don't call back in question that the universe was created in 7 day, that the earth is flat, global warming etc. Because it is harmful to believers ? It's not just a difference in personality. It's a difference in behavioral and intellectual capability. Denying or repressing it is plain stupid. This essay proves that something is totally wrong in the way people handle this issue. But this is sadly not a surprize.

freetime2 9y ago
I think it's fair for an employer to say to its employees. After all, you are there to get work done, not solve all of the problems in the world. But in this particular issue I think that Google actually opened the door by implementing a diversity program that favors one group of people over another (note: I personally have no issues with affirmative action programs, but let's at least be intellectually honest about what they are), and forcing employees to sit through special training. Now he is complaining about workplace conditions. And firing employees for complaining about workplace conditions is not ok (and potentially illegal in California).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

_pmf_ 9y ago

In addition to people in favor of affirmative action and people opposed to affirmative action, there's the large class of people who are in favor of affirmative action, but against the political correctness pressure of having to act like they believe this in for the benefit of all instead of the explicit benefit of the affected minority.

babesh 9y ago

I think very few men even if they agree with point 1, would dare advocate that at their workplaces for fear of getting fired.

JasonHalloway 9y ago

Since this is a venue of free discussion, there is another near identical argument that is also completely taboo. One possible reason there are few conservatives in top tech companies is because they don't apply as often as moderates and liberals. And this could be because of innate lower intelligent[0] Now I'm not saying this is definitely the case at all. Just that it's a possibility that we should all really start discussing including in our work places. And rather than just flat out reject it as insulting, we should also note the good that will come from accepting it, should it be true. At any rate, suppressing my topic would be an attack on free speech and makes those who honestly believe it feel oppressed when this view should be understood, discussed and given a platform. [0] https://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/SPQ2010.pdf https://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/SPQ2010.pdf

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago