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> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biolo

> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. > This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo. People encouraging a 'charitable' reading of the memo have argued that the memo says that Google shouldn't aim for 50/50 diversity as a goal (or that increasing gender representation as an end in itself is likely to lead to sub-optimal outcomes), and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles. I'm really trying quite hard to think where the misrepresentation comes in, or indeed, if it's not about that, what the memo is actually about.

smallnamespace 9y ago
It conflates suitability with preference.
- kristianc 9y ago
  That's something the memo does quite a lot as well. When it talks about "innate dispositional differences" between women and men, and uses quite deterministic language such as "as society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian innate differences have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider” it becomes increasingly unclear whether he is talking about suitability or preference or if women have the power to overcome these "innate differences." It doesn't help that in the English language the word "disposition" can be used to mean both innate tendency and preference. When I say "I have a nervous disposition" I mean "I have an innate nervous tendency" rather than "I prefer to act nervously", but "disposition" can also mean "the power to do with something as one pleases." The fact that he does pair it with "innate" suggests that this preference is something we are born with however, and something that would indeed impinge on our biological suitability for a role. He even goes as far as to suggest that "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be and "we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)." It seems clear to me that he is using quite causal language there, and this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about. Also, to be charitable to NYT, the fact that we are having to be this forensic with language over something that was written last week (as opposed to Plato's Republic, written 5000 years ago and which has been through many translations), and still can't agree what the memo is about, probably suggests that any misinterpretation is understandable and probably not borne of malice.
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    disposition -- prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup Not sure where you get "suitability" out of that. And not sure where you get "suitability" out of either "tendency" or "preference". Unless maybe the most adversarial reading possible, and even then...not really. > "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be Yes, and? In order for those who prefer more people-oriented roles to want/prefer/enjoy those roles. Incidentally: both men and women (larger overlaps, remember?) > this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about. That is exactly what he is talking about here. > having to be this forensic with language Not really. What is in the memo is fairly simple and obvious. It's the misrepresentations that twist themselves into interpretative pretzels.
    - kristianc 9y ago
      > disposition -- prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup If someone has a prevailing tendency, and it's a prevailing tendency that they are born with (i.e. an innate prevailing tendency), and that tendency impacts their ability to carry out certain roles, then they are innately less suitable for those roles. The second half is you selecting one definition of disposition (the "preference" one), and basing your argument on that.
      - barrkel 9y ago
        No, you're making the same mistake racists and antisemites make - you're trying to turn a generalization into a rule about individuals. You can't go from the group to the individual. If men are stronger on average than women (this is an incontrovertible sex difference) that wouldn't mean that women are unsuitable to be in a profession that involves strength, because differences within groups are larger than differences between groups. A particularly strong woman would be stronger than the average man. Similarly, a disposition that applies generally to a gender doesn't mean that gender is suitable or unsuitable - suitability is a term for policies that get applied to individuals.
        9y ago
- nodamage 9y ago
  "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." I don't think there's any conflating going on when he literally says biological differences in preferences and abilities explains why there aren't more women in tech.
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
> ...and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles. _Here_ is where they misrepresent what he said. He didn't suggest that men and women differ in their suitability for different roles, but rather that men and women _generally_ differ in their suitability for different roles. There will always be deviations from the norm, and given the fact that there are known physical and psychological differences between the sexes[1], I don't see why those differences wouldn't lead to differences in career choice overall. However, there are plenty of women suited to be engineers and plenty of men not. Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? If I am misinterpreting something, I would love to know the flaw in it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology
- Simon_says 9y ago
  My reading of the memo was that Damore's hypothesis was mostly centered around differences in population averages of interest, and not necessarily innate ability. Once you've had several decades of heightened interest in a subject, it's understandable that differences in effective ability would result just from that.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    That's my reading as well. He tries to distinguish between "women can't be technologists" and "women can be technologists if they want to, but they don't generally want to". I'm honestly not sure how one could in good faith make that case given the current climate. A couple weeks ago, I would have bet on his memo being generally derided but not anathematized.
    - unityByFreedom 9y ago
      Eh? He mentions abilities in the memo here: > "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." He also mentions this in one of his interviews [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s
muninn_ 9y ago
Should Google aim for 50/50 male to female ratio? Why? Do other jobs and work sectors do this? I'm all for females in the workplace, I generally work better with women than I do men (because of my personality), but can anybody point to why we need this ratio to be 50/50? What about those attending college? Should that be 50/50? If women are overrepresented in a field should we deny them entrance to that field so that we can make sure it's 50/50? Why or why not? I'm just asking this in general, not specifically of you, kristianc.
dguaraglia 9y ago
That's the thing: there is no misrepresentation. A bunch of people here are trying to use smoke and mirrors to cry "repression" of their ideas, but when you boil it down to the basics the memo just says that: "we shouldn't do anything to increase diversity, because women are biologically different and hence they won't be interested." The moment you point out that the same kind of argument was made about black people not long ago, most of the trolls just disappear.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > "we shouldn't do anything to increase diversity..." He didn't say that either. In fact, he advocates for more diversity and suggests changes that, at least according to him, should increase diversity without the negatives he's concerned about.
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    Renowned sociologist James Damore - citing a study that has been debunked about how "women focus more on people than things" - builds a case for how to improve inclusiveness. I'm a bit skeptical about that.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      OK. So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance. Just say that. Why argue that it says things it doesn't? The NYT piece could have just said something like, "...fired for harboring anti-diversity attitudes that are obvious from reading a deceptively worded diatribe," or something like that. At least be honest about what he literally said and what additional context and inferences add to the picture.
      - dguaraglia 9y ago
        > So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance By now I'm convinced he wrote the memo in bad faith. The moment he beelined to every alt-right media outlet wearing a "Goolag" t-shirt it was clear this wasn't just an honest mistake. Even an idiot would understand that writing a memo setting up a "left vs. right" argument and then attacking Googlers as "repressors misguided by leftist ideals", while laying out a flawed biological argument for why "women are not well suited for engineering" is not going to go down smoothly. It's no coincidence that he admittedly kept pushing this around when it got ignored until it eventually "made it to the public." Had he really wanted to have an honest discussion with HR about practices, he could've emailed them directly. Then he sued immediately after getting fired. Very tight timeline for a well-intentioned snafu. > Why argue that it says things it doesn't? Where did I do that? > At least be honest about what he literally said and what additional context and inferences add to the picture. At least be honest about the actual content of the memo. The additional context and inferences are just fluff to mask the base premise: "women are biologically different, that means they probably don't want to work here, please stop trying reaching out to them, you are discriminating against everyone else."
barrkel 9y ago
If there is any difference in preferences, and thus career choice and thus depth and strength of candidate pool, between men and women - and there is strong evidence that there is along one relevant axis [1] - then a policy that tries to create a 50:50 balance by fiat will create sub-optimal outcomes if we're trying to optimize for hiring strong candidates. It may be optimal for equalizing gender ratios, but that may not be as important to company performance as hiring strong candidates. Of course variance within groups is larger than variance between groups, so making discriminatory policy decisions based on group averages is deeply unfair and offensive. That doesn't mean that setting 50:50 gender representation targets in job roles wouldn't be sub-optimal for what appear to be biological reasons. A lot of stuff in that memo I thought was very offensive - reasoning about specifics based on group attributes is a logical error in the same class as racism and antisemitism - but it's also not reasonable to say that everyone is equal, and thus the distribution of outcomes should reflect the distribution of the population. Everyone is not equal. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...
- kristianc 9y ago
  > Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. The paragraph from NYT does not make any kind of normative "ought" claims at all about what is reasonable, it merely states that he was fired and this is what the memo said.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    If the author said "...fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company's gender diversity policies" full stop, I wouldn't have criticized the NYT here. But what was written was not what the memo said. And Damore has been insistent that it wasn't his intention to say anything of the sort. It's what people have inferred about the memo, and the NYT author could have easily written "and made statements that can be fairly inferred to question female suitability for technical jobs". Or something pithier along those lines (I'm not a contributor to the Times).
syrrim 9y ago
The misinterpretation comes from conflating difference in population averages with differences in population. He said that on average men and women are different, but not that all women and men are different. The statement "men and women are different" implies the latter.
JamesBarney 9y ago
I can't find anywhere we're he says that. He does say "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." And "Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business." He basically says the gap isn't 100% caused by sexism, and he thinks gender blind strategies for closing the gender gap should be used instead of non-gender blind strategies. I disagree, I'm all for programs that encourage more women in tech, even if the program has to be restricted only to women.(I think this also applies to minorities) I just don't think his argument to restrict these programs to only gender blind ones is a thought crime. P.S. I'm so tired of defending this asshole, but people are aggressively filling his mouth things he did not say.

smallnamespace 9y ago

It conflates suitability with preference.

kristianc 9y ago
That's something the memo does quite a lot as well. When it talks about "innate dispositional differences" between women and men, and uses quite deterministic language such as "as society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian innate differences have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider” it becomes increasingly unclear whether he is talking about suitability or preference or if women have the power to overcome these "innate differences." It doesn't help that in the English language the word "disposition" can be used to mean both innate tendency and preference. When I say "I have a nervous disposition" I mean "I have an innate nervous tendency" rather than "I prefer to act nervously", but "disposition" can also mean "the power to do with something as one pleases." The fact that he does pair it with "innate" suggests that this preference is something we are born with however, and something that would indeed impinge on our biological suitability for a role. He even goes as far as to suggest that "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be and "we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)." It seems clear to me that he is using quite causal language there, and this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about. Also, to be charitable to NYT, the fact that we are having to be this forensic with language over something that was written last week (as opposed to Plato's Republic, written 5000 years ago and which has been through many translations), and still can't agree what the memo is about, probably suggests that any misinterpretation is understandable and probably not borne of malice.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  disposition -- prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup Not sure where you get "suitability" out of that. And not sure where you get "suitability" out of either "tendency" or "preference". Unless maybe the most adversarial reading possible, and even then...not really. > "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be Yes, and? In order for those who prefer more people-oriented roles to want/prefer/enjoy those roles. Incidentally: both men and women (larger overlaps, remember?) > this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about. That is exactly what he is talking about here. > having to be this forensic with language Not really. What is in the memo is fairly simple and obvious. It's the misrepresentations that twist themselves into interpretative pretzels.
  - kristianc 9y ago
    > disposition -- prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup If someone has a prevailing tendency, and it's a prevailing tendency that they are born with (i.e. an innate prevailing tendency), and that tendency impacts their ability to carry out certain roles, then they are innately less suitable for those roles. The second half is you selecting one definition of disposition (the "preference" one), and basing your argument on that.
    - barrkel 9y ago
      No, you're making the same mistake racists and antisemites make - you're trying to turn a generalization into a rule about individuals. You can't go from the group to the individual. If men are stronger on average than women (this is an incontrovertible sex difference) that wouldn't mean that women are unsuitable to be in a profession that involves strength, because differences within groups are larger than differences between groups. A particularly strong woman would be stronger than the average man. Similarly, a disposition that applies generally to a gender doesn't mean that gender is suitable or unsuitable - suitability is a term for policies that get applied to individuals.
      - 9y ago
nodamage 9y ago
"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." I don't think there's any conflating going on when he literally says biological differences in preferences and abilities explains why there aren't more women in tech.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

> ...and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles. _Here_ is where they misrepresent what he said. He didn't suggest that men and women differ in their suitability for different roles, but rather that men and women _generally_ differ in their suitability for different roles. There will always be deviations from the norm, and given the fact that there are known physical and psychological differences between the sexes[1], I don't see why those differences wouldn't lead to differences in career choice overall. However, there are plenty of women suited to be engineers and plenty of men not. Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? If I am misinterpreting something, I would love to know the flaw in it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology

Simon_says 9y ago
My reading of the memo was that Damore's hypothesis was mostly centered around differences in population averages of interest, and not necessarily innate ability. Once you've had several decades of heightened interest in a subject, it's understandable that differences in effective ability would result just from that.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  That's my reading as well. He tries to distinguish between "women can't be technologists" and "women can be technologists if they want to, but they don't generally want to". I'm honestly not sure how one could in good faith make that case given the current climate. A couple weeks ago, I would have bet on his memo being generally derided but not anathematized.
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    Eh? He mentions abilities in the memo here: > "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." He also mentions this in one of his interviews [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s

muninn_ 9y ago

Should Google aim for 50/50 male to female ratio? Why? Do other jobs and work sectors do this? I'm all for females in the workplace, I generally work better with women than I do men (because of my personality), but can anybody point to why we need this ratio to be 50/50? What about those attending college? Should that be 50/50? If women are overrepresented in a field should we deny them entrance to that field so that we can make sure it's 50/50? Why or why not? I'm just asking this in general, not specifically of you, kristianc.

dguaraglia 9y ago

That's the thing: there is no misrepresentation. A bunch of people here are trying to use smoke and mirrors to cry "repression" of their ideas, but when you boil it down to the basics the memo just says that: "we shouldn't do anything to increase diversity, because women are biologically different and hence they won't be interested." The moment you point out that the same kind of argument was made about black people not long ago, most of the trolls just disappear.

humanrebar 9y ago
> "we shouldn't do anything to increase diversity..." He didn't say that either. In fact, he advocates for more diversity and suggests changes that, at least according to him, should increase diversity without the negatives he's concerned about.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  Renowned sociologist James Damore - citing a study that has been debunked about how "women focus more on people than things" - builds a case for how to improve inclusiveness. I'm a bit skeptical about that.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    OK. So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance. Just say that. Why argue that it says things it doesn't? The NYT piece could have just said something like, "...fired for harboring anti-diversity attitudes that are obvious from reading a deceptively worded diatribe," or something like that. At least be honest about what he literally said and what additional context and inferences add to the picture.
    - dguaraglia 9y ago
      > So you think he wrote the memo in bad faith and/or ignorance By now I'm convinced he wrote the memo in bad faith. The moment he beelined to every alt-right media outlet wearing a "Goolag" t-shirt it was clear this wasn't just an honest mistake. Even an idiot would understand that writing a memo setting up a "left vs. right" argument and then attacking Googlers as "repressors misguided by leftist ideals", while laying out a flawed biological argument for why "women are not well suited for engineering" is not going to go down smoothly. It's no coincidence that he admittedly kept pushing this around when it got ignored until it eventually "made it to the public." Had he really wanted to have an honest discussion with HR about practices, he could've emailed them directly. Then he sued immediately after getting fired. Very tight timeline for a well-intentioned snafu. > Why argue that it says things it doesn't? Where did I do that? > At least be honest about what he literally said and what additional context and inferences add to the picture. At least be honest about the actual content of the memo. The additional context and inferences are just fluff to mask the base premise: "women are biologically different, that means they probably don't want to work here, please stop trying reaching out to them, you are discriminating against everyone else."

barrkel 9y ago

If there is any difference in preferences, and thus career choice and thus depth and strength of candidate pool, between men and women - and there is strong evidence that there is along one relevant axis [1] - then a policy that tries to create a 50:50 balance by fiat will create sub-optimal outcomes if we're trying to optimize for hiring strong candidates. It may be optimal for equalizing gender ratios, but that may not be as important to company performance as hiring strong candidates. Of course variance within groups is larger than variance between groups, so making discriminatory policy decisions based on group averages is deeply unfair and offensive. That doesn't mean that setting 50:50 gender representation targets in job roles wouldn't be sub-optimal for what appear to be biological reasons. A lot of stuff in that memo I thought was very offensive - reasoning about specifics based on group attributes is a logical error in the same class as racism and antisemitism - but it's also not reasonable to say that everyone is equal, and thus the distribution of outcomes should reflect the distribution of the population. Everyone is not equal. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

kristianc 9y ago
> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. The paragraph from NYT does not make any kind of normative "ought" claims at all about what is reasonable, it merely states that he was fired and this is what the memo said.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  If the author said "...fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company's gender diversity policies" full stop, I wouldn't have criticized the NYT here. But what was written was not what the memo said. And Damore has been insistent that it wasn't his intention to say anything of the sort. It's what people have inferred about the memo, and the NYT author could have easily written "and made statements that can be fairly inferred to question female suitability for technical jobs". Or something pithier along those lines (I'm not a contributor to the Times).

syrrim 9y ago

The misinterpretation comes from conflating difference in population averages with differences in population. He said that on average men and women are different, but not that all women and men are different. The statement "men and women are different" implies the latter.

JamesBarney 9y ago

I can't find anywhere we're he says that. He does say "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." And "Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business." He basically says the gap isn't 100% caused by sexism, and he thinks gender blind strategies for closing the gender gap should be used instead of non-gender blind strategies. I disagree, I'm all for programs that encourage more women in tech, even if the program has to be restricted only to women.(I think this also applies to minorities) I just don't think his argument to restrict these programs to only gender blind ones is a thought crime. P.S. I'm so tired of defending this asshole, but people are aggressively filling his mouth things he did not say.