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I don't really understand the negativity being leveled at this guy. He has presented an opinion, whether you agree with his opinion or his presentation format,

I don't really understand the negativity being leveled at this guy. He has presented an opinion, whether you agree with his opinion or his presentation format, he does not seem to have taken any actions in a malicious way. He appears to have simply used the approved channels provided by google to air an employment related grievance. That the memo was not addressed and discussed by Google management prior to it going viral after being available for several months is no ones fault but Googles. Especially after he specifically forwarded it to Google's diversity department. That company executives are publicly demonizing him and essentially validating his complaints in regards to the silencing of alternative view points is not a forward thinking move by the company. Looking at the percentage of computer science degrees being presented to women which currently stands at less than 15% of the total, he may be on to something. Or he may not. For a company to insist on a goal of having a percentage of its workforce comprise a gender ratio higher than that of the available market of engineers means that they would have to be giving women preferential treatment. This appears to be forcing the issue and cannot help but discriminate against men. It's simply math. I'm not arguing for or against the validity of their approach but to deny that Damore has a legitimate axe to grind, opinion and legal case is not a valid view point.

emodendroket 9y ago
People aren't offended at the way he presented his views but at the content of them.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I'm not sure people understand the content of them.
  - jjjasfdj88 9y ago
    I'm not sure he understood it either. He admits such by saying he could be biased to only see the evidence that supports his points.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    The endless hair-splitting some of his defenders want to do strikes many as an exercise in delineating distinctions without differences.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      I don't think that's really fair. There are a lot of people calling it "anti-diversity" when he clearly states that he likes diversity and would like to increase it. If there's hair splitting in that case, it's not Damore doing it. Also, I guess you could call the statistical points about bimodal distribution "hair splitting", but that's just taking sophisticated statistical discussion off the table entirely.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        I meant "hair-splitting" exactly like saying "he technically says he's in favor of diversity," even though his idea of what diversity is diverges wildly from how the term is generally understood.
        malandrew 9y ago
        “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.” ― Philip K. Dick The word diversity used to encompass all forms of diversity, including diversity of ideas. At some point in the last few years it was rebranded and narrowed in scope to be only include gender, gender identity, race (except white people), sexual orientation (except straight people), muslims (but not christians). His definition of diversity is broader than what those on the far left have narrowed it down to.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        However you want to define the terms, what people objected to was his claim that Google should pursue "ideological diversity" at the expense of ethnic and gender diversity. Frankly I think it is the term "ideological diversity" that sounds more like an Orwellian neologism, and it's really telling that defenses tend to focus on claims like "he actually wants more diversity" which obscure what is actually being proposed.
- kobeya 9y ago
  Some people are. Others are offended that he was silenced for that content.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I figured it was implied that I was only talking about people who found his original manifesto offensive.
cmiles74 9y ago
> I don't really understand the negativity being leveled at this guy. I read the memo and I'm not sure how you can overlook how sexist and demeaning the memo actually is. I'm talking about content that is front and center starting on page 3, under the heading "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech". Specifically content like... > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Right there he's asserting that there are less women in technical leadership roles because biology. That's an asinine assertion and it's insulting in a pretty aggressive way. > Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism. This is also pretty insulting to everyone who has been the victim of sexism in the workplace, during a performance review or while interviewing for employment. We know that sexism in software engineering is a real issue, yet here the author makes a sweeping dismissal. From here on the document simply gets worse and worse. There's the backhanded assertion that maybe men are in leadership because they don't value a balanced life and strive for status. There's the bit where he talks about how the work itself needs to be changed to be more social. And on and on. Remember that people aren't asking for software engineering itself to change, they are simply asking for fair and even-handed treatment despite their gender. That this person feels that, in fact, fair and even-handed treatment despite gender is unreasonable is, in fact, deeply upsetting to a lot of people (myself included). Many have tried to make the argument that he's saying something different, but I'm hard pressed to find that in the actual memo. For sure, he's talking about how maybe the gender gap in technology can never be truly eliminated and yes, I agree that may be a goal we never achieve. But he's also arguing that maybe we shouldn't bother, or maybe we should carve out a specific niche of work for a specific gender and that's unacceptable and insulting. Should he be fired? I don't know, nor care. But he's not being persecuted for his speech. He embarrassed his employer publicly and suffers the same consequences that you or I would for doing the same: he's lost his position.
- chongli 9y ago
  That's an asinine assertion and it's insulting in a pretty aggressive way. They're called person-oriented vs. thing-oriented preferences. One of the biggest smoking guns I've seen is the study on prenatal androgen and occupations. [0] It shows a marked difference between women born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and more typical women. This suggests very strongly that male sex hormones in utero affect the development of the brain in a way that orients the person towards things/systems rather than people. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

emodendroket 9y ago

People aren't offended at the way he presented his views but at the content of them.

humanrebar 9y ago
I'm not sure people understand the content of them.
- jjjasfdj88 9y ago
  I'm not sure he understood it either. He admits such by saying he could be biased to only see the evidence that supports his points.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  The endless hair-splitting some of his defenders want to do strikes many as an exercise in delineating distinctions without differences.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    I don't think that's really fair. There are a lot of people calling it "anti-diversity" when he clearly states that he likes diversity and would like to increase it. If there's hair splitting in that case, it's not Damore doing it. Also, I guess you could call the statistical points about bimodal distribution "hair splitting", but that's just taking sophisticated statistical discussion off the table entirely.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I meant "hair-splitting" exactly like saying "he technically says he's in favor of diversity," even though his idea of what diversity is diverges wildly from how the term is generally understood.
      - malandrew 9y ago
        “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.” ― Philip K. Dick The word diversity used to encompass all forms of diversity, including diversity of ideas. At some point in the last few years it was rebranded and narrowed in scope to be only include gender, gender identity, race (except white people), sexual orientation (except straight people), muslims (but not christians). His definition of diversity is broader than what those on the far left have narrowed it down to.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        However you want to define the terms, what people objected to was his claim that Google should pursue "ideological diversity" at the expense of ethnic and gender diversity. Frankly I think it is the term "ideological diversity" that sounds more like an Orwellian neologism, and it's really telling that defenses tend to focus on claims like "he actually wants more diversity" which obscure what is actually being proposed.
kobeya 9y ago
Some people are. Others are offended that he was silenced for that content.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I figured it was implied that I was only talking about people who found his original manifesto offensive.

cmiles74 9y ago

> I don't really understand the negativity being leveled at this guy. I read the memo and I'm not sure how you can overlook how sexist and demeaning the memo actually is. I'm talking about content that is front and center starting on page 3, under the heading "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech". Specifically content like... > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Right there he's asserting that there are less women in technical leadership roles because biology. That's an asinine assertion and it's insulting in a pretty aggressive way. > Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism. This is also pretty insulting to everyone who has been the victim of sexism in the workplace, during a performance review or while interviewing for employment. We know that sexism in software engineering is a real issue, yet here the author makes a sweeping dismissal. From here on the document simply gets worse and worse. There's the backhanded assertion that maybe men are in leadership because they don't value a balanced life and strive for status. There's the bit where he talks about how the work itself needs to be changed to be more social. And on and on. Remember that people aren't asking for software engineering itself to change, they are simply asking for fair and even-handed treatment despite their gender. That this person feels that, in fact, fair and even-handed treatment despite gender is unreasonable is, in fact, deeply upsetting to a lot of people (myself included). Many have tried to make the argument that he's saying something different, but I'm hard pressed to find that in the actual memo. For sure, he's talking about how maybe the gender gap in technology can never be truly eliminated and yes, I agree that may be a goal we never achieve. But he's also arguing that maybe we shouldn't bother, or maybe we should carve out a specific niche of work for a specific gender and that's unacceptable and insulting. Should he be fired? I don't know, nor care. But he's not being persecuted for his speech. He embarrassed his employer publicly and suffers the same consequences that you or I would for doing the same: he's lost his position.

chongli 9y ago
That's an asinine assertion and it's insulting in a pretty aggressive way. They're called person-oriented vs. thing-oriented preferences. One of the biggest smoking guns I've seen is the study on prenatal androgen and occupations. [0] It shows a marked difference between women born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and more typical women. This suggests very strongly that male sex hormones in utero affect the development of the brain in a way that orients the person towards things/systems rather than people. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/