5 ms·

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 mos

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
  I've been wondering about this. Say that we can prove the distribution of Male/Female interest in technology/no interest in technology, and for arguments sake say we can reliably measure that to be 75:25 male to female. Then we look at the industry as a whole and we discover placement is 90:10, that'd be indicative of a gap, and it'd be equitable to ensure that people who's interests lie in tech are not prevented from perusing it. Would that be a fair and honest thing to do?
  - Smutte 9y ago
    First of all, even having that conversation would be a HUGE leap forward in terms of intellectual honesty. The easy answer to you question (which I think many would agree with) is yes. However, reality is a bit more complicated. Is the 75/25 split in the total population or Google applicants? Are differences originating from things under Google control or from other parts of society? etcetcetc. This is the conversation that should be had. To see differences and honestly discuss them (including striking down on unfair discrimination), while also discussing what the goal should be and what trade-offs we might want to make to get there. But all of this is impossible when a significant and loud part of the population answer with calling people "sexist" and firing anyone who tries to broaden and nuance the conversation
  - mercer 9y ago
    I suppose it would be? But I'm not entirely sure I understand how your comment relates to mine though. Could you elaborate?
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      From how I'm interpreting it, ryan-allen is saying "If there are quantified differences between the sexes, and even with the biological differences taken into consideration we still see a gap, should we do something about it?" which is a fantastic question made more difficult by the fact that it won't ever be quantifiable. There may be legitimate biological factors affecting career preference, but how do we determine when that stops and cultural suppression begins?
throwaway91111 9y ago
Part of the problem is that even traits that are linked to better performance should not be considered qualifications.
gfodor 9y ago
> 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. I agree that a 50/50 split in men and female software engineers seems like a desirable thing. If it existed today I would not consider it surprising, and I would consider it to be a great thing. That said: is this also true for bricklayers and construction workers, who are basically 100% male? What about nurses or child care givers, who are predominantly female? How do you decide which jobs that have gender skew warrant specific attention towards a balanced gender ratio? All of them? The ones that don't involve physical labor? In sports we accept men on average have higher physical strength and endurance than women, hence league separation, so perhaps gender skew is expected here and uncontroversial for the same reasons? What about the jobs that are particularly high paying or high status? Should it be the case that everyone should get an equal share of the pie of value for these desirable fields, but less desirable fields do not matter because of their high supply? Perhaps its just the jobs that just don't seem to make any sense as to why gender would skew them that are the ones we should worry about? I think answering this question concretely and consistently is a pre-requisite to having a constructive debate about this subject. There is nothing to me particularly special or interesting about software engineering in particular that makes it stand out among other fields that are heavily gender skewed that do not seem to cause nearly as much debate, other than that it seems counter-intuitive that there should be any such imbalance, given the nature of the work. Perhaps that is enough, a "gut check" if a field should be gender dominated. If the "gut check" says "that doesn't make sense", we should strive for equality. But here we are, back at a facet of the original memo's thesis: when those gut checks pass they are probably based upon internalized models we have for gender preferences. If you are being uncharitable, stereotypes. If you are being nice, statistically significant correlations of preferences tied to gender, backed by evidence.
- mLuby 9y ago
  Unless specific sexual organs are required for a job (eg surrogate mother, wet nurse), there should be no appreciable skew in any industry.
  - gfodor 9y ago
js8 9y ago
If you wrote just the first three paragraphs, I would upvote you. I agree completely. But then: > 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. Who are we to tell people what they should do? If people want or don't want to work in some field, they should have the freedom to do so. They shouldn't be forced to work in some field just so that the society could mark the 50:50 checkbox. Now, you can say, there is "discrimination", and that's why that's somebody preference. But that shouldn't really matter, as long as you fulfill each individual's honest wishes. If I ask you about something, and there is no reason for you to lie to me, then that's your preference and it should be respected if possible. If it's respected, then there is no discrimination, doesn't matter what the group outcome is. Individuals matter, groups are just constructs. (In fact, the reason why the whole nature vs. nurture debate gets invoked is that somebody has an agenda. You can see the same thing in reverse with gays. Some people want to believe that being gay is cultural, because if it's cultural, then it can be changed, and according to them, should be.) So this worries me, by going against individual preferences, we are going to make people unhappy, just to satisfy some "higher" goal. There is always a tension like this, in the free market (which I don't believe in), the pay should resolve it, but why to add to it? Sadly, there are some women out there who are vocal proponents of for example more women programmers (I actually wish for that too, because programming is just cool, but I can't force anybody) and want positive discrimination, but if you ask them personally, if they considered programming as a career, they will tell you that it doesn't interest them for one reason or another. It's incredible hypocrisy.
- matt4077 9y ago
  This isn't about telling anyone what they should do–at least not in any new way. Everyone is in some way being told what to do by society, in that the needs of the economy are reflected in any number of mechanisms that influence peoples' decisions. I'd even say almost nobody actually gets to "work in the field they want to work in", simply because the demand for "highly paid beer tester" is lower than peoples' interest in the job.
  - js8 9y ago
naasking 9y ago
> 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. Sure, when there's a compelling benefit to doing so, we totally can. There are obvious benefits to gender diversity when it comes to political representation. Women are still oppressed when it comes to healthcare in the US. They need representation to be treated fairly. It's not as obvious that there is a need for equal representation in tech. If the current geek culture works quite well, and women by and large aren't interested in joining that culture, that's not obviously a problem as long as those who do want to join aren't prevented or discouraged from doing so. Changing that culture so that it's more appealing to women might make it better, might make it worse, or might have no effect on the effectiveness of the tech sector. It's certainly lowered productivity for now though, with all of us commenting on these frequent stories on HN!
vlehto 9y ago
One of the best ways to beat the averages is to use volunteers. If you need 100 new firefighters and pick people by random, you get absolutely average firefighters. If you just pick people who apply, without any kind of testing, you beat the average with fat margin in the quality of firefighters. Now if you would have a problem that not enough big people are applying to be firefighters, then you might increase the success rate greatly with publicity campaign with a message: "did you know that bigger people make great firefighters!" What you probably don't want to do is to send a message that "we now have special training exclusively to people over 185cm tall!" That sends two messages: 1. If you are short you might read it like this: You are doomed to be kind of "workhorse fireman". You get to do the dirty work, but the exclusive tall people club is permanently closed for you. 2. If you are tall you might read it like this: You are somehow naturally inferior to shorter people and that has to be compensated. But you get to join out of pity. Now google has been sending the latter message. Now they also send a message, that they don't give too many shits about their employees. If they genuinely care about female employees and think that memo is serious crime against them, google should have fired Damore immediately after the memo started to circulate. If Google doesn't think like that, they should have stood up for their employee Damore. This whole thing is failure from Google on quite many levels.

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
I've been wondering about this. Say that we can prove the distribution of Male/Female interest in technology/no interest in technology, and for arguments sake say we can reliably measure that to be 75:25 male to female. Then we look at the industry as a whole and we discover placement is 90:10, that'd be indicative of a gap, and it'd be equitable to ensure that people who's interests lie in tech are not prevented from perusing it. Would that be a fair and honest thing to do?
- Smutte 9y ago
  First of all, even having that conversation would be a HUGE leap forward in terms of intellectual honesty. The easy answer to you question (which I think many would agree with) is yes. However, reality is a bit more complicated. Is the 75/25 split in the total population or Google applicants? Are differences originating from things under Google control or from other parts of society? etcetcetc. This is the conversation that should be had. To see differences and honestly discuss them (including striking down on unfair discrimination), while also discussing what the goal should be and what trade-offs we might want to make to get there. But all of this is impossible when a significant and loud part of the population answer with calling people "sexist" and firing anyone who tries to broaden and nuance the conversation
- mercer 9y ago
  I suppose it would be? But I'm not entirely sure I understand how your comment relates to mine though. Could you elaborate?
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    From how I'm interpreting it, ryan-allen is saying "If there are quantified differences between the sexes, and even with the biological differences taken into consideration we still see a gap, should we do something about it?" which is a fantastic question made more difficult by the fact that it won't ever be quantifiable. There may be legitimate biological factors affecting career preference, but how do we determine when that stops and cultural suppression begins?

throwaway91111 9y ago

Part of the problem is that even traits that are linked to better performance should not be considered qualifications.

gfodor 9y ago

> 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. I agree that a 50/50 split in men and female software engineers seems like a desirable thing. If it existed today I would not consider it surprising, and I would consider it to be a great thing. That said: is this also true for bricklayers and construction workers, who are basically 100% male? What about nurses or child care givers, who are predominantly female? How do you decide which jobs that have gender skew warrant specific attention towards a balanced gender ratio? All of them? The ones that don't involve physical labor? In sports we accept men on average have higher physical strength and endurance than women, hence league separation, so perhaps gender skew is expected here and uncontroversial for the same reasons? What about the jobs that are particularly high paying or high status? Should it be the case that everyone should get an equal share of the pie of value for these desirable fields, but less desirable fields do not matter because of their high supply? Perhaps its just the jobs that just don't seem to make any sense as to why gender would skew them that are the ones we should worry about? I think answering this question concretely and consistently is a pre-requisite to having a constructive debate about this subject. There is nothing to me particularly special or interesting about software engineering in particular that makes it stand out among other fields that are heavily gender skewed that do not seem to cause nearly as much debate, other than that it seems counter-intuitive that there should be any such imbalance, given the nature of the work. Perhaps that is enough, a "gut check" if a field should be gender dominated. If the "gut check" says "that doesn't make sense", we should strive for equality. But here we are, back at a facet of the original memo's thesis: when those gut checks pass they are probably based upon internalized models we have for gender preferences. If you are being uncharitable, stereotypes. If you are being nice, statistically significant correlations of preferences tied to gender, backed by evidence.

mLuby 9y ago
Unless specific sexual organs are required for a job (eg surrogate mother, wet nurse), there should be no appreciable skew in any industry.
- gfodor 9y ago

js8 9y ago

If you wrote just the first three paragraphs, I would upvote you. I agree completely. But then: > 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. Who are we to tell people what they should do? If people want or don't want to work in some field, they should have the freedom to do so. They shouldn't be forced to work in some field just so that the society could mark the 50:50 checkbox. Now, you can say, there is "discrimination", and that's why that's somebody preference. But that shouldn't really matter, as long as you fulfill each individual's honest wishes. If I ask you about something, and there is no reason for you to lie to me, then that's your preference and it should be respected if possible. If it's respected, then there is no discrimination, doesn't matter what the group outcome is. Individuals matter, groups are just constructs. (In fact, the reason why the whole nature vs. nurture debate gets invoked is that somebody has an agenda. You can see the same thing in reverse with gays. Some people want to believe that being gay is cultural, because if it's cultural, then it can be changed, and according to them, should be.) So this worries me, by going against individual preferences, we are going to make people unhappy, just to satisfy some "higher" goal. There is always a tension like this, in the free market (which I don't believe in), the pay should resolve it, but why to add to it? Sadly, there are some women out there who are vocal proponents of for example more women programmers (I actually wish for that too, because programming is just cool, but I can't force anybody) and want positive discrimination, but if you ask them personally, if they considered programming as a career, they will tell you that it doesn't interest them for one reason or another. It's incredible hypocrisy.

matt4077 9y ago
This isn't about telling anyone what they should do–at least not in any new way. Everyone is in some way being told what to do by society, in that the needs of the economy are reflected in any number of mechanisms that influence peoples' decisions. I'd even say almost nobody actually gets to "work in the field they want to work in", simply because the demand for "highly paid beer tester" is lower than peoples' interest in the job.
- js8 9y ago

naasking 9y ago

> 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. Sure, when there's a compelling benefit to doing so, we totally can. There are obvious benefits to gender diversity when it comes to political representation. Women are still oppressed when it comes to healthcare in the US. They need representation to be treated fairly. It's not as obvious that there is a need for equal representation in tech. If the current geek culture works quite well, and women by and large aren't interested in joining that culture, that's not obviously a problem as long as those who do want to join aren't prevented or discouraged from doing so. Changing that culture so that it's more appealing to women might make it better, might make it worse, or might have no effect on the effectiveness of the tech sector. It's certainly lowered productivity for now though, with all of us commenting on these frequent stories on HN!

vlehto 9y ago

One of the best ways to beat the averages is to use volunteers. If you need 100 new firefighters and pick people by random, you get absolutely average firefighters. If you just pick people who apply, without any kind of testing, you beat the average with fat margin in the quality of firefighters. Now if you would have a problem that not enough big people are applying to be firefighters, then you might increase the success rate greatly with publicity campaign with a message: "did you know that bigger people make great firefighters!" What you probably don't want to do is to send a message that "we now have special training exclusively to people over 185cm tall!" That sends two messages: 1. If you are short you might read it like this: You are doomed to be kind of "workhorse fireman". You get to do the dirty work, but the exclusive tall people club is permanently closed for you. 2. If you are tall you might read it like this: You are somehow naturally inferior to shorter people and that has to be compensated. But you get to join out of pity. Now google has been sending the latter message. Now they also send a message, that they don't give too many shits about their employees. If they genuinely care about female employees and think that memo is serious crime against them, google should have fired Damore immediately after the memo started to circulate. If Google doesn't think like that, they should have stood up for their employee Damore. This whole thing is failure from Google on quite many levels.