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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

• sremani 9y ago
  <Quote> with the recognition that gender and sex aren’t binary. </Quote> Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you.
  • csours 9y ago
    Yup. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html
  • peterwwillis 9y ago
    The best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain to you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. For people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor or use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about simple biology you should have learned in school. https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-are-there https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-... http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are-there.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. There is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological sex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the other sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology. Which, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines, everything about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology is, ultimately, biology.
      • toxik 9y ago
        Seems a tad reductionist; by that same token, all of psychology is also physics.
        • roninb 9y ago
          Some people, pedantically, agree xD https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
        • dragonwriter 9y ago
          > by that same token, all of psychology is also physics. Yes, it is, which would be relevant if someone suggested there was no physical explanation for a psychological phenomenon (which is, in fact, what they are usually claiming when they claim it is not biological.)
        • sndean 9y ago
          I wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the genetic (biological) basis for brain function/behavior [0]. Once you're at the level of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a level of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as chemistry. The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
      • claytonjy 9y ago
        Your first sentence seems like it's conflating correlation with causation. As for the second, saying psychology is ultimately biology is reductionist in a way that dismisses the context and environment biology gets expressed in. You would be a much different person if the same set of genes was born in a different place, or at a different time, or if your life circumstances were different in any mild way.
      • peterwwillis 9y ago
        Biology is the study of living organisms. Psychology is the study of the human mind and its functions. A mind is a part of an organism, not a discrete one itself. The study of the part is not the same thing as the study of the whole. Psychology is not biology. This is not a controversial thing, every person who has graduated college in the past 30 years should know this, besides it being illogical.
    • dang 9y ago
      Would you please not break the HN guidelines by (a) arguing snarkily and superciliously or (b) going on about downvotes? Trainwrecks though these recent threads have been, we're still trying for a higher standard of discussion on HN, and comments like this one make take us all in the wrong direction. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • peterwwillis 9y ago
        Someone posts an ignorant comment. I provide a relevant, actually helpful and fact-based reply and get downvoted. So I get pissed off, say something pissy, and then provide a ton of supporting evidence in response. But it doesn't affect the votes, and probably hasn't changed any minds at all. Comments are the problem if you find civility more important than rationality.
    • deleted 9y ago
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  • tomp 9y ago
    I wonder about this as well. Specifically, how does one define "gender" as distinct from "opinion", without being recursive (as in "a man is someone who feels like a man")?
    • doubleshame 9y ago
      This is the worst damaging consequence of this whole charade. The words themselves no longer have any meaning. - "Man" is to no longer define any category except for people who self identify as men. - And at the same time, it is sexist to say that girls prefer dolls. Regardless of the correctness of either statement, to say both in the same breath is simply contradictory. Here are some definitions: Man: Adult human male Woman: Adult human female
      • msla 9y ago
        OK, define "male". Is it chromosomal, such that XY makes you male? Wrong. People with total androgen insensitivity are XY but look and act and feel female, because the androgens they produce never took effect. Their bodies and minds feminized, so they're female in every respect except their karyotype. There's a ton of other conditions which make the definition of sex complex. Read this essay, which lists a lot more of them: http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Essays/marriage.html http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Essays/marriage.html Your simple definition is only simple because you punted the complex part, and no amount of screaming about how words don't have meanings anymore is going to change the level of complexity surrounding this subject. You are too ignorant to know what you don't know, so you think you're a goddamned expert.
        • doubleshame 9y ago
          Thanks for your reply. I rarely get a chance to learn from someone who feels so passionately about these issues. These range of conditions are interesting, we are truly a varied species. Let us do a thought experiment. We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys. Now, if I say the word “monkey”, what comes to mind? If the 10 monkey-monkeys AND the 5 human-monkeys does, then that means I no longer have a word to describe what I originally thought was a monkey! The word itself has been destroyed by making it stretch beyond the category which it originally described. Words by their very nature are to form categories, to differentiate is their power, and why we find them useful. Now, we can both agree that the range of conditions you listed are rather rare, and this is the crux of the matter. If we use the word man to stretch beyond the more stereotypical definition, what does it even mean to be a man anymore? What does it mean to be masculine? That is, what do the WORDS mean? The word man is, as words work, defined by the average man. The fact that it allows us to speak of a large category of people is what gives it its utility. That is why you can say things like “their bodies and minds [are] feminized”, you must have the words to express such a thought! If you proceeded down the self-identification path, how would you make that sentence? That is why we have words like “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome”, which describes another idea. First of all, let me say that I am in no way opposed to men dressing in women’s clothes, or men being effeminate, or women having sex with women, or any other non-conservative human expressions; they are what lend colour to humanity, and we would be much poorer without it, and without letting humans be fully expressed. Now, what about the rarer cases, what do we do here? But how should such a person describe oneself? Just because a man cannot have the confidence to be effeminate and own that identity, does not mean that he needs to redefine the word woman to accommodate himself. I think the problem here is that people want to fit into categories that are traditionally recognised by society. Instead people should just appreciate that everybody is unique, and that they should be comfortable owning their own unique identities. They should not have to derive their own identities from the words that other people call them, worse off by forcing other people to use specific words, in a meaning that they want other people to use them in, because then everything is reduced to just noise. What do you think?
  • Frondo 9y ago
    Does this do it for you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
  • yflu 9y ago
    Gender is a semantic concept. Biology (and sex) is not. So no, there isn't a biological basis for this, because gender isn't biological.
    • nailer 9y ago
      It's not as simple as that. The word 'gender' has a history of being used for biology - think of every form you've ever filled out. The OED [1] says: > Either of the two sexes (male and female) before following up with: > especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. And also notes: > The sense denoting biological sex has also been used since the 14th century, but this did not become common until the mid 20th century. Although the words gender and sex are often used interchangeably, they have slightly different connotations; sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender more often refers to cultural and social differences and sometimes encompasses a broader range of identities than the binary of male and female If it's unclear, I'm not saying either is correct. Many people don't like saying 'sex' as its also a verb for copulation hence use 'gender' as a polite alternative. The idea of gender as an entity separate from biology is from Dr John Money, who has his own sad and controversial history [2], though his ideas have gained more popularity recently. [1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
      • kemayo 9y ago
        Language is a living thing. The meanings of words change over time, and that's normally a helpful thing, which lets us express culturally relevant concepts. In this case, it's pretty useful to have words which distinguish between biology and culture.
        • nailer 9y ago
          Totally. It's just confusing when people were already using 'gender' to distinguish XX/XY from copulation (since 'sex' means both).
  • danharaj 9y ago
    The Hijra have existed for millenia and now have legal status: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/16/india-third-gender-claims-place-in-law https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/16/india-third-... There are several cultures that have arisen independently and have had more than two genders. Many of them are still extant today, despite the best effort of colonialists. So that's gender down. Intersex individuals exist. Intersex conditions range from physiological to karyotypes with variant sex chromosomes. Transgender individuals are very varied but there are indications that it is partially heritable with genetics and the prenatal environment hypothesized to explain some of that. And that's biology. I could write a 100 page essay about how loaded your question was, the implicit assumptions in the way it was written, the way that "BIOLOGICAL" is implied to be a way to ignore social conditions, and the contempt for ""Gender Studies"". But I won't, it's very tiring and there will be 10 other people like you tomorrow.
    • angersock 9y ago
      Are the numbers of intersex individuals large enough to actually matter? And how many of them are fertile?
      • danharaj 9y ago
        It was a question about categories. Are there two categories of gender / sex? The answer is no. These people exist. They have entire lives which are as meaningful as any other. Why wouldn't they matter?
        • angersock 9y ago
          When it comes to policymaking, any prudent work requires the analysis of how many people would be impacted. It's not enough to just say "well there's like 100 people in a population of 300M we should change everything just for them".
          • tiles 9y ago
            The OP asked what evidence exists that gender and sex are non-binary. It's in reference to the words someone said in the article, not hypothetical policymaking.
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • rrmm 9y ago
    There are people with XX, XY, XXX, XYY, XXYY, etc chromosomes. Also there are various hormonal insensitivities, so a person won't display the typical sexual characteristics associated with their chromosomes.
  • voidhorse 9y ago
    Gender is usually considered indicative or coupled with cultural behavior and performative behavior, i.e. in the U.S. barbie dolls are 'toys for girls'. Sex begins and ends at the biological level and is strictly related to the organs and biological makeup you have and what you can do with those. I know less about how sex isn't binary, but in the case of gender it's fairly evident these days. At least that's how I've understood it in layman's terms and with my very basic knowledge--it's very complex, as with anything worth studying. The seminal text on the issue in the eyes of many is Judith Butler's Gender Trouble--If you truly are serious about wanting to learn about this stuff I suggest you check it out.
  • AlexCoventry 9y ago
    A good example is Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which Slate Star Codex has made so much of in this debate. Excess androgens from CAH can lead to ambiguous genitalia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia#Signs_and_symptoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia...
  • tanilama 9y ago
    You can have XXY/XYY/XXX chromosomes, and appear normal though.
  • Retric 9y ago
    Biology get's odd when you start looking at 0.01% cases. Some people have both sets of reproductive organs at birth. Others lack many such structures which is arguably just sterility but in some cases no gender is closer to the truth. Genetically you have XX (female), XY (male) but also XXY or XXXY. There are even Chimera where you can have both male (XX) and female (XY) cells in the same body.
  • jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago
    It's hard not to interpret this as a dishonest question with how you've phrased it and in particular your last sentence. This is a question you can answer for yourself trivially by googling the relevant terms as well as learning about intersex individuals.
  • ovao 9y ago
    I'm not going to comment on gender, but doesn't hermaphroditism result a non-binary classification of sex?
  • mizchief2 9y ago
    I think this misses the real point. The idea is presenting a reason why google (and all of tech) has more male engineers than female that aren't based totally on bigotry and discrimination. He is right. Google isn't hiring female engineers because they simply aren't applying. In reality their aren't enough trans-gendered people to really involve that in this conversation.
  • alpsgolden 9y ago
    Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you. Sex is basically binary in mammals (do you have the gene that triggers producing sperm versus the gene that triggers you producing eggs), the only exception being incredibly rare intersex disorders. Read more here: http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-sex-is-binary-but-gender-is-a-spectrum http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-sex-is-binary-but-gende... Based on sex, people have different traits, physical and mental. Some of these traits are close to binary between the sexes (having a uterus, etc.). Some traits are a matter of distributions (such as differences in physical strength, or willingness to take risks). Society then considers certain behaviors and traits more masculine or feminine, and creates norms and roles around these. Some of these norms and roles exist on a spectrum, some are more binary. Gender for a long time was used either as a synonym for sex, or only this case of describing language (gendered pronouns). In the mid-1900s academics in the social science used it to mean "the social norms and roles society creates based on biological sex." Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity." There isn't any scientific proof that such a thing exists or doesn't exist, nor can there be, because we don't have mind reading machines. Sexual identity has also been redefined recently. So now if you were born with the egg producing equipment, but are taking male sex hormones some people will now define you as of the male sex. Frankly, I find this redefining of words to be pretty Orwellian.
    • fleetingmoments 9y ago
      | Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity." Nope. What you are talking about is Gender Identity. There is pretty good evidence for this being real and linked to prenatal testosterone exposure at certain periods in the womb, as with traits like digit ratio. Between cases like David Reimer's (a biological boy who was raised as a girl after a surgical accident as an infant, but whose gender identity stayed true to his birth sex - with tragic consequences) and the phenomenon of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (where genetically male XY are born with female-looking genitalia and raised as any other girl, but overwhelmingly continue to identify as women even after the condition is discovered in puberty), the existence of a gender identity that is separate from both chromosomal sex and social influence is not really in doubt.
  • e12e 9y ago
    You might find https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943 https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943 to be a decent starting point.
  • deleted 9y ago
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• rpiguy 9y ago
  I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm. He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm, you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made it public. There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.
  • kenferry 9y ago
    The harm would have been done even if the memo was not leaked, due to the otherwise discussed effects on google employees.
    • rpiguy 9y ago
      Again, only if you believe a line was crossed, or whether he wrote a well-intentioned memo with the goal of supporting and increasing diversity that had some dubious conclusions based on controversial research. He is also young and just starting his career. If this had been addressed calmly maybe he could have learned from this situation. Zero tolerance for a young man's folly instead turned him into a sympathetic figure and an alt-right star. It has reinforced the perception that the PC left is oppressive and reactionary. And worse of all he will never learn from his experience because the reaction confirmed his natural bias. I guess there is no cutting people a break anymore in this era of shouting into the ether, virtue signaling, and political hellfire.
      • wcummings 9y ago
        Hopefully hes just ending his career now. Google shouldn't be soaking up all these ignorant young college boys if they're not mature enough to handle a workplace.
• deleted 9y ago
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• AlexCoventry 9y ago
  > he wasn’t sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview) Anyone got a link?
  • ovao 9y ago
    He stated on Tucker Carlson that he has based his argument on what he referred to as scientific consensus. I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.
    • Diederich 9y ago
      > I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said. Perhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did you feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence: > He stated on .... Thanks!
      • AlexCoventry 9y ago
        > why did you feel the need to emphasize this Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0] It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference for "people" jobs vs "things" jobs.[1] [0] https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucked-the-syllabus/ https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucke... [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...
        • kansface 9y ago
          Your cited study is certainly not the only one that exists on the topic. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/#comment-533594 http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger....
• SandersAK 9y ago
  Google, like all corporate structures is hierarchical. Corporations recognize "success" for employees through promotion. Promotion usually includes higher pay. Men are taught from a young age that they need to "compete" for "success" There is no way to win the game for all players inside corporate hierarchy. If you can't win the game, but wish to remain (or are trapped by your economic situation) you will have pressure to feel validated. Throughout history, dominant majorities (men, whites, etc) succumb to this same problem of "not enough winners." This format breeds a type of resentment instead of introspection. Instead of facing the truth: the game is stacked against you, you may just not be that good etc., it is far easier to devise some sort of massive conspiracy or pseudo-science to justify your prejudice. White men feel that they "deserve" things moreso now than ever because women, POC etc represent another competitor in their weird corporate power fantasy game. It feels increasingly "Unfair" and contrasts to the cultural narrative we continue to endorse (especially here in SV) - that success is economic based, and based on merit. Women and POC will continue to be the scapegoats until culturally we decide that "success" isn't about being an individual that becomes rich or powerful.
  • trendia 9y ago
    > Instead of facing the truth: the game is stacked against you, you may just not be that good etc., it is far easier to devise some sort of massive conspiracy or pseudo-science to justify your prejudice. I suspect that you do not see the irony in this statement.
    • SandersAK 9y ago
      Please educated me!
  • mmirate 9y ago
    > "success" isn't about being an individual that becomes rich Independent of the rest of your comment: the quoted concept is trivially false as long as resources are scarce. (i.e. the foreseeable future; barring severe, draconian and arguably-unethical controls on population size) ("Powerful" being an additional non-redundant qualifier, is merely a consequence of the monopoly called "government".)
• hedgew 9y ago
  Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up. I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.
  • ryanbrunner 9y ago
    I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong". I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as inappropriate work communication.
    • 52-6F-62 9y ago
      This is rather the page I've been on (outside of my personal disagreements). You put it more concisely than I have previously.
    • ahugebeach 9y ago
      It was a politically charged topic, he would have been crucified either way. But by phrasing the memo the way he did, he covered himself legally. I wouldn't be surprised to hear everything was run by a lawyer first.
      • CydeWeys 9y ago
        What could possibly make you think he sought legal representation before writing that document? He was just looking for an argument/discussion.
• jccalhoun 9y ago
  I think this is one of the better responses I've seen This line really struck me as being spot on: >There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”
  • Will_Parker 9y ago
    On the other hand, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific progress.
    • lutorm 9y ago
      I disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process. Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing in good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that evidence should be discounted.
      • humanrebar 9y ago
        > ...is not scientific process. Of course it isn't. When establishing narratives and complex causalities, you don't use scientific (inductive) reasoning, you use abductive reasoning. You use inductive and deductive reasoning to fill in points, but you have to use abductive reasoning to reach a broader conclusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
      • Will_Parker 9y ago
        > Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process. Indeed, but I didn't read Damore's memo as being intellectually dishonest in this way. He presented (with citations) some views that are held by most psychology researchers. And then he drew a few of his own (possibly flagrant) conclusions and speculations. This sparked debate, and it is getting us talking. Damore wrote some great points (especially on free speech and intellectual diversity) and some terrible ones. This is the kind of free exchange of ideas that a successful and vibrant tech company should encourage.
• deleted 9y ago
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• jmcgough 9y ago
  This is one of the first rational discussions I've seen of the memo. edit: for context, I'm a female engineer
• sampo 9y ago
  Why has this topic exploded like it did now especially in the software engineering context? Whatever talent or affinity to abstract and inanimate things we do or don't assume being correlated with gender, isn't software engineering just a lighter version, compared to mathematics and physics? Did math and physics communities already have their internal crisis/debate on these things, perhaps a decade or two ago? Or have they been able to cope without lighting such a fire?
  • izacus 9y ago
    Hmm, anectodally, both math and physics communities have significantly larger percentage of actual women graduating and working. At least here in EU - it's somewhere between 40-60% split depending on generation. I guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working with women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove how women aren't worthy .
    • sampo 9y ago
      I mean, whatever propensity to mathematical-logical thinking, or being interested in working with things not people, we attach to software engineering, aren't these qualities useful even more when doing math and physics? Lots people from math and physics have jumped over and become decent, some even great, software engineers. Not many software engineers have successfully switched over to math or physics. So if gender is not so much an issue for a successful career in, I don't know, algebraic topology (math) or quantum field theory (physics), it surely should be less of an issue in software engineering ...when talking about whatever effects there may or may be at a biological level. So if it's not such a big issue in academia, the problems in software engineering must be more about what kind of workplace culture has grown around in software engineering, not the proposed underlying human biology.
      • mpweiher 9y ago
        The question is not whether you can or will be successful, the question is what you prefer to do. One answer: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...
• ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
  >> political correctness makes it hard for people with unpopular opinions to ask questions and discuss their viewpoints... non_PC != unpopular
  • Spivak 9y ago
    I'm going to disagree with you there. 'PC' ideas and speech are those that are popular enough to be said in the company of a diverse crowd. This doesn't mean that they have to be bland or inoffensive to absolutely everyone; just popular enough that any dissenters will be a small minority and pressured against speaking up in fear of social punishment.
    • ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
      sure, you can find a niche (even if rather large) where this would be true and PC ideas are more popular. goes the other way around too though as there are plenty of places where today's PC ideas are frowned upon. the kicker is - the PC crowd is so used to their opponents being quiet (primarily due to extreme intolerance of the "left" towards dissenting opinions - as illustrated by this whole memo ordeal) - that they actually start believing that their views are shared by just about everyone around.
    • alexandercrohde 9y ago
      PC and popular are not at all the same. A vocal minority gets to define PC, and that minority happens to be on the left. If the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say "Talking about baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if it is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment"
      • Spivak 9y ago
        I will absolutely agree that there's a minority a very vocal people, but they themselves could not maintain a PC atmosphere. If they were truly in the minority they would be easily dismissed as overly sensitive. It's the large body of moderate people, who in general agree with the idea, that provide the muscle for enforcing a PC atmosphere.
• xname2 9y ago
  When they say they feel they are hurt / offended, do they know this is a typical easy thing for women to do in the society, not men? I don't know, maybe everything is sexist. Maybe we should expect a society where men and women cry equally.
  • e12e 9y ago
    Of course we should all have equal opportunity to express our feelings, just as we should have equal opportunities to become software engineers. That said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time stating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are hurt/offended. And a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy for women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women can have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be absurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward a free/equal society. All that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be repression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society is in general not good for anyone. I think Dar Williams puts it well in her song "When I was a boy": http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-williams.html http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-willi...
• kromem 9y ago
  Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological differences mapped to job performance? I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.
  • dandare 9y ago
    Nobody can because he never claimed that. This is what strikes me the most about the whole diversity memo gate: even the most high profile responses, including this one, contain straw man arguments and not many people seems to care. The engineer Edith goes as far and completly and uterly disagreeing with something that is NOT IN THE MEMO.
  • dguaraglia 9y ago
    > he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction You don't think those two things are predictors for job performance?
  • xigency 9y ago
    On pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added): - On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...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. - Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men - These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics. - Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). - This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs. And later proposes these solutions: - We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. - Make tech and leadership less stressful. So he has 1) cited biological differences between men and women in their abilities (not simply preferences) and 2) claimed that these lead to suitability for different jobs and also indicated the specific jobs would need to be changed in order to be more suitable for women, which strongly implies differing performance levels.
• dguaraglia 9y ago
  From the article: > Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. That, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and probably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his "dialectical skills." That's the very definition of creating a hostile environment, where people feel forced into actions they normally wouldn't engage into just for the gratification of a single person's whims.
  • dandare 9y ago
    But Google was and is a debate club - there is extensive information about Google's multiple discussion boards and lively cluture of dialectics. Why do you object/punish a single discussion that you happen to disagree with?
    • dguaraglia 9y ago
      There's a slight difference between technical flamewars, pointed debates about expanding the amount of bathrooms available per building and Damore's post. If you can't see the difference, honestly I can't help you.
      • dandare 9y ago
        Lol, I can not argue with this :D
• TACIXAT 9y ago
  >Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that’s where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to complement it). This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community.
  • chippy 9y ago
    Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance. Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.
    • dang 9y ago
      > That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post.
      • alecco 9y ago
        Could you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other opinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in the other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion. Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free.
        • 9y ago
• kansface 9y ago
  A related post from SSC on the subject: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... TLDR: Personal interests can plausibly explain the entire gender imbalance.
  • cyanexttuesday 9y ago
    That blew my mind too. I wish that article could be pinned to the top of hackernews forever.
• framebit 9y ago
  As for the memo itself, I think it's a bit of a Rorschach blot: people are seeing what they want to see in it, largely because the writing is so poor that the author fails completely to get his own points across in a coherent manner. The conversation about "women in tech" is severely hamstrung by folks conflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two very different problems requiring two very different conversations. Lastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic to be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially pointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up focusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men, hispanic men, etc.
  • moduspol 9y ago
    I'd like to think it's everyone seeing what they want to see in it, but that's not really a fair description. The writing's not ideal, but truly if opponents can read even this and frame it as "women have inferior genes," then this is a discussion that can't be had. There is no way to make the case that sexism and oppression are not the only causes for inequal representations in tech that will not be an "anti-diversity" position that makes some coworkers uncomfortable.
• kristianc 9y ago
  > I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly. And we know – and many of us have experienced – that interest levels are also heavily influenced by social and cultural factors. This is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science. It's absolutely necessary that we start to break down ideological echo chambers, but I'd argue that Damore's memo and his subsequent actions ('Goolag' etc) haven't done much other than entrench people in the positions they already have.
  • dandare 9y ago
    It was said elsewhere in this discussion - the memo never claimed what Edith completely and uterly disagrees with. It is a straw man argument. Cite the passage from the memo to prove me wrong.
  • throwawaygmemo 9y ago
    this highlights the insanity of the response to this memo. What Edith "completely and utterly disagrees with" is actually not in the memo. And she actually agrees with what is in the memo "Interest in certain jobs."
  • sebow 9y ago
    Except the fact that those physiological differences have nothing to do with any ideology,none that he mentioned anyways.And why should one matter if it wasn't even named in his memo? You're just projecting and putting words in his mouth. If you call his attack on Google an echo chamber("entrench people in the positions they already have" means exactly that) on itself then you clearly didn't get the core point of it. "Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors." Socio-cultural factors are not the ones that make "genetically inferior" people be competitive/exceed the more "gifted" ones, willpower is.
  • 9j9j9j9ju 9y ago
    >> Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science If you are a man I dare you to use that argument to get yourself appointment at gynaecologist's :)
• jack9 9y ago
  > that these arguments about innate biological traits are complicated by trans, non-binary, and intersex folks. 2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong. > I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.” Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat? > there have been some really fabulous responses, including many laying out a lot of research that counters what was in the memo I'm interested in this research. I have not seen it, nor has it been made available. The following book, with 2 female authors who seem genuinely interested and informed in related topics: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-More-Women-Science/dp/159147485X https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-More-Women-Science/dp/15914... who reached a similar conclusion to James Damore: http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-in-science/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-i... Let's at least present the field studies/research, which can throw existing clinical views into doubt. eg Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences by Cordelia Fine is at least a rigorous critique of possible flaws. It's a little saddening, to have this dialog represent the views of an average engineer.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > 2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% A universal claim is invalidated if there is even 1 exception.
    • jack9 9y ago
      Universal claims have to be made to be invalidated, I would think.
  • joshuamorton 9y ago
    >2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong. This is a strawman. She said "complicate" not "invalidate". >Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat? What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Damore didn't just reach scientific conclusions about differences in genders. He went further and suggested actions based on these population differences. To continue your analogy, one could say that Damore's argument comes down to "We only want white furred animals in our zoo, and gorillas typically have black fur, therefore we should ignore gorillas and look for Polar Bears instead". Whereas the other side might be "Given that gorillas typically have black fur, and we think Gorillas are a valuable part of a zoo, we should do extra work to locate the rare white-furred gorillas that do exist".
• jorgemf 9y ago
  > I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts. Funny. So if you backed your opinions with science that is not right? It was hard to keep reading after that statement.
  • sidlls 9y ago
    "Applied science incorrectly to confirm a bias or advance an opinion incorrectly" and "applied science to form an opinion" are different things. Damore did the former.
    • alexandercrohde 9y ago
      Except "what is correct" is the whole point of the debate, so nobody knows which side is doing the former until everybody agrees, which they most certainly do not agree yet. Mind you that to the other side, it looks to us like what you're doing is the former and not the latter (until some common ground is found).
      • sidlls 9y ago
        No, there is not an equivalent act that "both sides" are engaged in, here.
        • mpweiher 9y ago
          Well, true. He tried to be factual, balanced, fair. His detractors mostly grossly misrepresent what he wrote, including claiming the very opposite, and then hurl ad-hominems at their straw man.
    • BearGoesChirp 9y ago
      Did he? If someone approached this problem with a blank slated, looked at the evidence, formed an opinion, then wrote something to back their opinion, how could you tell them apart from someone who had an opinion and applied science to just advance their opinion? Assume both are average, and thus imperfect, writers.
• sidlls 9y ago
  Here's a (perhaps controversial) view: people have no rational basis to equate the freedom to speak with freedom from marginalization. If a person presents beliefs that are incongruent with facts, or that attempt to use facts in a way that isn't compatible with advancing an opinion, I think that person's views should be marginalized. I put climate change deniers, anti-evolutionists, and people who use questionable application of psychological studies to generalize about gender-based proclivities in roughly the same boat. I also think there is no small amount of fear of a loss of status and privelege being expressed by conservatives when they claim to be marginalized: not having their views taken as gospel by virtue of their privileged position is different from being marginalized.
  • alexandercrohde 9y ago
    Well, by the same token, being fired is a completely different beast than having to suffer the tragedy of being afraid a coworker might think a negative stereotype about you. I know who I think the victim is.
    • hisham_hm 9y ago
      Yes, the second one. Being fired is a discrete event. It happens, you move on with life, next job. Now try to live your whole professional life going through the second scenario, then come back in 20 years and tell me if that was a tragedy or not.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
• throwawaygmemo 9y ago
  These comments are largely directed at a straw-man, and in many cases actually agree with the memo, when they think they disagree. "I disagree with...his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary reason that there aren’t more female software engineers" - straw-man - he argues that biology may in part explain the lack of 50/50 representation. from the TLDR: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not “socially constructed oppression”) may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership" "I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly." - you actually agree with the memo. From the memo: "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men...These...differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas" "It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn’t seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups." - The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other opinions. "differences are so significant as to suggest that men or women are better or worse on average at any job that relies on mental work." - straw man. men or women being "better" is not the concern of the memo. "his skepticism of his own views deserves a much more prominent placement in the text than a footnote – had he led with this and made it clear he wasn’t sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview), he likely would not have been blasted the same way." - the first "background" paragraph literally is this. "Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills." - the author is also concerned with harm to female employees in the form of increased tension resulting from hiring practices that are perceived as lowering the bar. Google obviously would not do this intentionally, but the author felt the practices "effectively" lowered the bar.
  • Danihan 9y ago
    It's so funny (and sad) to me that you had to create a throwaway to outline these obvious strawmen misrepresentations of what Damore wrote. Whatever happened to reading comprehension..?
• wolco 9y ago
  What troubles me is the resolution. Man who spoke out is fired everything is now fine at google. Google will remove anyone who dare speaks out. Managers will create blacklists now and singled out. Anyone with oppposing views will be pushed down and/or pushed out.
  • spacemanmatt 9y ago
    What troubles me is how easily this community, who typically values employer discretion in how they run their businesses, turns into labor-protection lefties when someone gets canned for crapping on half the workforce.
• baitbiter 9y ago
  Even more harm is done by Affirmative Action for women now being implemented in all companies. Feminism has given up on the aspect of competing and turned to shaming all men. There are several professions where women dominate with > 80%. Where's all this fucking outrage in those?
  • mpweiher 9y ago
    Considering women make up >50% of college graduates, for every profession that has more men there are more profession that have more women (or a greater imbalance). How about: People are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices and don't second guess them.
    • trophycase 9y ago
      That doesn't account for choice of degree.
    • mathw 9y ago
      That doesn't account for the cultural pressure on girls throughout childhood to be princesses, like pink things and cooking and babies and ponies, while boys are supposed to like computers and engineering and guns. We're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while the men go out and earn the money.
      • baitbiter 9y ago
        This nonsense is being propagated by idiots. Nobody is now forcing dolls on girls and guns on boys. The aggression in men is built by evolution. Again, we only talk in averages. There are idiots again who point to aggressive females to try to make me sound sexist.
      • mpweiher 9y ago
        “Gender-Differentiated Parenting Revisited: Meta-Analysis Reveals Very Few Differences in Parental Control of Boys and Girls” http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0159193 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
• xigency 9y ago
  I think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an employer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will and relationships can end over personal differences. One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their genius findings or deluded beliefs (either way), it's not unreasonable that they might be let go without anyone reading it. (The action of sending around an opinionated piece of information without authority could be grounds for dismissal.) In the past, there have been incidents like Steve Y's note where a smart person weathered a major faux pas for better or worse, which might make one think that all forms of speech are encouraged at this company. But I think Damore made some unique foibles when publishing this note and assumed that his outlook and motivation would be either respected or endorsed. Again, it is not a necessity for any corporation or organization to do so. I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. Given that the adversaries that Damore faces in this debate have most liked studied diversity and human resources at the graduate level, peppering survey references into a narrative argument will not be sufficiently persuasive of anything. The correct forum for this discussion is an anthropology thesis or something similar, or a very finely combed, deeply vetted, considerate action to a relevant party or audience.
  • humanrebar 9y ago
    > I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. What is the right forum?
    • xigency 9y ago
      If it were a collective issue for employees, then it should be organized outside of work without using any company resources. There an upset employee could vent and strategize for change in a non-destructive way, and find support from his peers. If it were an issue that needed to be specifically addressed by management, then it should be elevated to each level of management in turn (immediate superior, superior's superior, VP, CEO, board) in a tactful way. There's no reason Damore couldn't have done both of these, and as was said by one of the female engineers, advertise his own opinions publicly himself as they apply to all companies. It's still possible that making so many waves like that would get him dismissed, but certainly not in the same way. Reading the letter, this is clearly something that James is passionate about. If he can find a way to channel that in a professional and constructive way, maybe he can make positive change. But as it were, he did say some offensive things publicly.
• jdoliner 9y ago
  > He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills. This to me is the most interesting question that hasn't been answered about the memo. There seems to still be two camps, those who believe Google does not lower the bar for women and those who do. They can't both be right and I'd imagine if we could take a look at Google's hiring practices it wouldn't be too hard to tell which is which. Of course, we can't Google keeps its hiring practices, at least the ones relating to diversity very hush hush. This was actually Damore's impetus for writing the memo, he attended a diversity summit at Google where he learned about his employer's hiring practices and also observed that this summit was, unlike other meetings at Google, not recorded for later viewing. Damore's conclusion was that the hiring processes were unethical and likely illegal, although afaik he's yet to say specifically what it was that he observed. Still I don't think it's very reasonable to say that Damore has caused harm with this misrepresentation unless you can show conclusively that it is indeed a misrepresentation, and so far I haven't seen anything conclusive that shows that.
  • pj_mukh 9y ago
    He specifically mentions in an interview that minority interviewees get assigned to a second interviewer if one interviewer doesn't like them in the first round. He saw this as a 'second chance' when the committee might just be controlling for interviewer biases. Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion.
    • waqf 9y ago
      It's trading off the false positive vs. false negative rate in the hiring signal. The question is what your assumptions are about the sources of error in that signal. If you assume that the variance consists exclusively of false negatives due to discrimination, then the extra interviewers will work as Google claims and no bars will be lowered. If you assume that the variance consists of randomly distributed error that's the same for all interviewees, then the second interviewer is just some statistical sleight-of-hand that's, on average, equivalent to lowering the bar. Of course it's possible that the truth is in between.
• dreta 9y ago
  All i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and others managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there are biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being less interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's sexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity hires. Was i reading the wrong memo? Because everybody, including the 3 interviewees, no matter if they seem calm and collected, keep attributing malice, and talking about how the author said women are less suited to being good engineers, and that women shouldn't be encouraged to get interested in STEM. Where was that stated?
  • Danihan 9y ago
    Yep, the vast majority of things in this article that the interviewees said they "disagree with" are things the author never said.
    • mehwoot 9y ago
      talking about how the author said women are less suited to being good engineers Quote from the memo: "I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ"
    • dymk 9y ago
      This again? The memo is out in the open for you to read. > "Women, on average, have more:" > - "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs" > - "Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness" > - "Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men..." (Ironically, this is a good thing for an engineer to have)
      • UK-AL 9y ago
        Aren't all of these part of the Big Five personality traits that psychologists use to discuss differences?
• gavanwoolery 9y ago
  Interesting thoughts - I think the biggest misunderstanding thus far involves generalizations. You can accurately make generalizations about a group of people, without implying that a given individual necessarily falls under that generalization. For example you could say "80 percent of males are into action movies" - but you should not go up to an individual male and state "you are into action movies" if you care about factual accuracy. Whether or not Damore's generalizations are accurate is up for debate, but lets say for the sake of argument that they are. I do not think its harmful to say "10 percent of women are really into engineering currently" no more than it is harmful to say "50 percent of women are really into engineering currently." In fact, only a subset of the male population is into engineering, so it is preferential even within a sex. If anything, I think it makes it worth celebrating the women who ARE into engineering even more. So (hypothetically) you could say fewer women are interested in engineering, but it does not mean those who are into engineering are somehow less qualified than males.
  • dguaraglia 9y ago
    I'll just refer to the women in the article: > Assuming that it’s true that women on average are more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job performance?
    • mpweiher 9y ago
      (a) Because you're in an environment that has already selected for "not trait X" (b) Because you don't have to prove anything to anyone, especially about trait X. All you have to do is your job. (c) Everyone has something like that.
    • gavanwoolery 9y ago
      Statistics are statistics and I do not believe they should be censored on behalf of being unpalatable. That said, its how we interpret statistics that really matters. Like in my examples, a generalization is just that - a generalization, and thus not necessarily applicable to a given individual. To answer the question, a woman's (or man's) work should speak for itself. If they are a good worker and still facing scrutiny, then I would reexamine if the boss or manager questioning them is competent.
• Udik 9y ago
  No. The memo says: "The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause." So it's not that "leftists are violent", it's PC that's complacent to violent PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming. A bit different. Again, I have the impression that parts of this debate could be avoided by accepting some of the caveats and distinctions already made in the memo. Edit: replaced angry outburst with more civilized one.
  • bjl 9y ago
    He explicitly mentions 'cultural marxism', which is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory from the 60s.
    • Udik 9y ago
      Don't know where, certainly not in the memo.
      • bjl 9y ago
        In his Jordan Peterson interview he talks about it quite extensively.
      • jacalata 9y ago
        In the footnotes, iirc
    • msla 9y ago
      The concept and term "cultural marxism" has been grabbed by such a huge swath of people, most of whom have absolutely no idea it is or could be anti-Semitic (because you have to be pretty out there to associate Marxism with Jews to begin with), that claiming all or most uses of it are anti-Semitic is wrong. There's just no way to paint that huge of a group with that brush unless you think it's so double-secret subconscious that the majority of the people using it don't even know they're anti-Semites.
• alexandercrohde 9y ago
  Wow. I really feel like this was a missed opportunity to close the gap. I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a reasonable/polished way. >> A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with. When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? So it sounds like we're implying that anybody who presents facts to your coworkers that might enable them to come to stereotypical conclusions has made a hostile work environment? I find it absurd that an environment is hostile because "maybe people are thinking X." I would think hostility would require some form of visible action. >> I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts. It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn’t seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups. Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to fact. His views are certainly much more in line with the facts that what I've heard from his opponents. For example, I don't see anybody disagreeing that women score higher on "neuroticism" measures (wikipedia agrees). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psyc... >> There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.” Great, but that has nothing to do with this. The other side certainly would never extend him (or me) that civility. This is a power struggle and I don't know why we're pretending it's not. --- As an aside, this whole debate has made me realize that I was kidding myself if I told myself SJWs were on the side of equality. They are on the side of politically advancing their own in-group-alliance (which doesn't include most minorities, nor the minority most in need - the lower class). They have no interest in fact because they aren't trying to achieve a clear vision of a better world, rather it's because they are playing politics where facts are just another form of weapon. The only reason they have so much power in tech (and not say, finance) is because we are altruists/optimists ourselves and tried to see something greater in SJW political games.
  • xigency 9y ago
    This issue is much hairier because discrimination in the work place can be criminal for companies, and employees are representatives of their employers. Whether or not he crossed the line, he was close enough that he got the axe.
• potatote 9y ago
  > For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work. But ability to do those jobs? Can anyone with similar experience comment on this? I am just surprised (if what one of the interviewees said is true) because I'd assume the math/engineering/science are highly regarded in the USSR and both genders would pursue that. Side note: People in my country (from southeast asia) don't have a notion that girls are not as good as boys in math. In fact, when I was in (elementary/middle/high) school, I--along with most students in the class--always looked up to my female peers who are always the top 3 in the classroom (from among ~80 students). In fact, it's almost always natural to assume that girls would outperform boys in the class (meaning, more girls would become the highest ranked student in the class and/or more girls would be ranked as top ten in the nationwide high school exam--a.k.a. matriculation exam). As a result, engineering classes have plenty of female population (although, of course, the number of women in such classes is always fewer than that of men).
  • myth_drannon 9y ago
    In general after WWII women had to take traditional men's roles since entire male generation was gone and from then on it became the new normal. STEM is not physically hard so it can be considered a more suitable field for women, also STEM paid less in USSR. http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly-wolanski/ http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly-wolansk...
  • hippich 9y ago
    I am from one of ex-USSR countries and graduated in 2008. I did not see many gals in college in CS/Engineering degrees. They were presented, but in minority. About the same I see females presented in tech companies in engineering departments.
• rurounijones 9y ago
  https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what... This is a document that puports to examine the science as much as possible from both sides to try and educate impartially.
• SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  One of the most interesting things I got from this was referencing usage of the term TL;DR. While it's unclear where the Term "TL;DR" originated it certainly gained popularity in SomethingAwful and 4chan, two places that have long been known by the general society as havens for degeneracy. It's an interesting parallel when the term (which has obviously come a long way from where it originated) appears in a professional discussion alongside viewpoints that the original group of people who popularized the term would have considered widely abhorrent. Not that it really speaks to anything about this particular issue, more to the fact that many people who use meme references are fully unaware that the cesspool of places like SA and 4chan are the originators/popularizers of the jokes that are repeated by one who might turn around and fully condemn those communities in the next sentence without skipping a beat.
• mastazi 9y ago
  So the takeaway is: you should become extremely proficient at writing memos and back them up with vast amounts of research, or be fired. But all of the above applies only if your memo expresses conservative ideas. I don't consider myself a conservative but I find all of this disturbing.
  • jdoliner 9y ago
    Damore isn't a conservative either by any stretch of the imagination. He's a liberal that wandered into some conservative ideas. FWIW I don't think any amount of proficient writing or research is going to yield a different response.
    • abvdasker 9y ago
      If Damore is a "liberal" then I defy you to find any sitting Democratic party representative who would endorse his views. The definition of the word "liberal" itself basically conflicts with his views.
      • UK-AL 9y ago
        He a self confessed classical liberal. A classical liberal would have views similar to his own. Let people follow their own preferences, rather than trying to shape the world how you think it should be. That's issue here. He isn't against diversity, but he is against trying to shape society towards some 'ideal' using rules, and regulations.
  • dguaraglia 9y ago
    Maybe the takeaway is: you shouldn't write "memos" that generate a lot of noise and lost productivity in your work environment and affect your company's external image. If you have political points you want to make, go find a group of like-minded individuals and discuss with them first.
    • lliamander 9y ago
      What if you think the issues you are bringing up are already a problem for the company, and the company just isn't willing to admit it?
• Blackthorn 9y ago
  It really doesn't matter if the memo had any truth to it or not. At the end of the day, that really is immaterial to the result. What happened because of the memo is it managed to piss off virtually every woman in the company. You don't piss off 20,000 of your coworkers in a completely avoidable manner and keep your job.
  • alexandercrohde 9y ago
    Did the memo piss them off, or did a non-existent "Sexist manifesto" created by click-bait sites piss them off?
    • Blackthorn 9y ago
      Considering how it pissed them off before any leaks happened, I'm going to have to do with the former.
  • ksk 9y ago
    I agree with what you said, but what if the reason they were pissed off was because of external manipulation and manufactured outrage over something the author neither said nor implied?
• in3d 9y ago
  Damore is planning to sue under the National Labor Relations Act or California's tough law against restricting political activity. The legal experts seem to think he might have a weak to a decent case. I would think Google would try to settle anyway, in order to prevent discovery and the release of their internal communications about the memo and their internal data about the performance of different groups on job interviews. Is there anything that would prevent another Google (or Facebook, etc.) employee (with a lower salary or thinking Google is not for him anyway) from going completely by the letter of the law and suing when fired? That employee could make a more limited case that Google's diversity programs discriminate against white or Asian men in hiring, complain about diversity training sessions, say something about agreeing with Trump's policies and with the conservatives (to make it more explicitly about political activity), write about organizing other employees who agree, make sure to file an NLRB complaint before getting fired, bring up some IQ meta-analysis studies to make sure it's scientific, yet controversial enough to get him fired, state that he's happy to work with Googlers of all sexes and races and that he holds their skills in high esteem and hopes everybody else does too (to make a firing based on the employee manual less credible), use email (because that's what's specifically in the law), run it all through a lawyer first, and don't do any post-firing interviews as Damore has done. Wouldn't that cause huge headaches for Google and other tech companies? If such emails get leaked, the bad PR would force Google's hand to fire him, as happened with Damore. It seems like companies that want to see themselves portrayed as socially progressive might end up between a rock and a hard place.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• lsd5you 9y ago
  Now extend your attitude to religous belief. All the parallels are there, including believing others are inferior (certainly islam). Should they be done as well? You are infact imposing a moral belief system. Once upon a time it used to be wrong to not believe in god. Well similarly you are saying the same about gender differences.
  • dang 9y ago
    For heaven's sake let's not take this into religious flamewar as well. (I'm sure you didn't mean to, but we know empirically what sort of effect this has.) We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907 and marked it off-topic.
    • lsd5you 9y ago
      Ok, but to me it is as plain as day that there is a double standard here and taking the debate on to that kinda territory is the only way to convince the other side about what they are doing... i.e. shutting down people who don't share their belief (you should believe ...). Once upon a time it was you should believe in god. If it is ok to persecute (or at least censor) people who don't believe in various forms of equality then it is ok to do the same to those who don't believe in a god. Certainly the fact that some people believe in supernatural things (ridiculous, right?) but are allowed to state these beliefs despite the fact that on the face of it they are far more extraordinary than the extremely plausible some people are better than others in someway due to the differences in their genetics... The answer is of course that the prevailing pc mainstream does not feel threatened by these daft belief systems (beyond fighting creationism in schools). Anyway, you may be right that it is currently irreconcileable.
• toxiccwm 9y ago
  I'm not sure which world people live in where men are not expected to defend their ideas against the great misunderstanding masses who don't accept them on pronouncement, but it sounds lovely. Can I move there?
  • dang 9y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait to HN. That's vandalism if not arson, and ideological battle is not what this site is for. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166 and marked it off-topic.
• sheepmullet 9y ago
  More likely your female teammates are creating a hostile work environment by being unable to handle minor ideological disagreement. Or even more likely, you have misinterpreted them and are unaware that they were not shaken or seriously disturbed in any way. Edit: edited to remove the personal attack while still keeping the meaning.
  • Blackthorn 9y ago
    I was there. Literally. Why are you trying to say you understand my colleagues, who you do not know, better than I do?
    • sheepmullet 9y ago
      Do you see what you are implying about your female colleagues?
  • dang 9y ago
    > Or even more likely, you don't understand women very well Personal attacks will get your account banned on Hacker News, so please don't post like this again. It also looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's an abuse of the site, and we ban accounts that do it, so please stop doing that. More on this if anyone wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20primarily%20battle https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022218 and marked it off-topic.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• belorn 9y ago
  A common criticism by each four of the female engineers is how the memo effected them in their job and how they had to prove themselves afterward. This strongly reminds me of about a case a year ago when a kindergarten teacher was tried and charged for rape against several children. After a lot of media attention, many male teachers all over the nation reported to constantly having prove to parents and fellow female teachers that just because they are male and chosen that profession it doesn't mean that they are criminals or are higher risk employees. Not only that, but many school implemented procedures that limited what male teacher were allowed to do, furthering pushing a second class status on them. Many also received threats of violence, and since both the left, the feminist movement, and the right fanned the flame against male teachers, many just gave up and left the profession. If memory is right, one news article ended with "I just wish I could go to work and do my job, but that is no longer possible". I would very much like to see a discussion on how to solve this kind of problem.
  • zygga 9y ago
    >both the left, the feminist movement, and the right fanned the flame against male teachers I find it hard to believe that this would be generally true. Source? Edit: obviously you're always going to have some twats doing things like that, but that's true for everything. I'm looking for evidence that it's more than average here.
    • poohblahoyamo 9y ago
      I think it is a lot of crazy moms that fan the flame, just from my observation. Adn the crazy moms are fanned by the media of creepy dudes. Do you know how frequently on my mommy group will be some dude's photo show up "this guy was taking picture of my kid!!!" ....... all the other moms are like. OMG OMG OMG!! Call the police.. Then there are always a few moms go like, FOR WHAT??!! for being a dude and taking some pictures at a public place.. You know there hasn't been a child missing in this neighborhood since 1995.... Then all the other moms yell at the reasonable mom..etc etc. There is a mix, I don't think it's limited to leftist or conservative moms. If anything, I found the really really rich moms (not conservative per se, but lean that way more) to be a bit more crazy in terms of thinking the world is dangerous and if their kid scrap their knee they need to go to the ER..
• neerkumar 9y ago
  "He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups." -> so an employee accuses a company of illegal behavior, the company denies it, and that's it? It proves the company is not doing it? No need for investigating or anything? Elizabeth Holmes and Travis are probably thinking: damn, I wish people thought like that for me too!
• nilkn 9y ago
  I find it interesting how much the memo is misinterpreted even by folks who have read it multiple times and have been pretty engaged in discussions about it. Example: "He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups." This is what he actually wrote: "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" I'll admit this is a surprisingly dense sentence. And the phrase "lowering the bar" is controversial for an obvious reason, so it was a really bad decision by Damore to combine such a phrase with such a dense line of reasoning. It's just a recipe for disaster. Some things to note: * The use of "effectively" here is critical and means that the bar is not directly lowered in interview or technical standards. Rather, it's lowered as a (potentially complex) side effect of other more indirect policies. * That indirect policy is to decrease the false negative rate. This doesn't mean standards are actually lowered for minority candidates; rather, it means extra time and money are invested to make sure that a negative result is actually a negative result. This can cause the standards to be effectively lowered, because it means that extra time and money are not invested in non-minority candidates, who therefore must overcome a higher false negative rate -- and the easiest way to do that is to be so good that none of your interviewers might feel ambiguous about your abilities. To state that second bullet point differently and in a way that totally avoids politics, if you imagine that the interview is producing a noisy estimate of your technical ability, and the noise is predominantly negative/subtractive, then the expected score of an accepted candidate is higher with the noise than without. But if you offer a second interview to candidates and let a candidate's final estimate be the greater of the two samples, then the negative noise is reduced (though not eliminated), which will lower the expectation (but NOT below the expected value you'd get by eliminating the noise entirely). With this analysis in place, I think it's more helpful to rephrase it as effectively raising the bar for non-minority candidates rather than lowering it for minority candidates, though ideally I'd prefer to avoid any phrases about bars being lowered or raised in general.
• rllin 9y ago
  Are any of these engineers East Asian immigrants or Asian Americans? From my own circles both near and extended, it seems like there is a much more even split within especially East Asian H1Bs and to a less degree Asian Americans? This may be from my own experience of hearing Asian parents push children regardless of gender towards STEM. It keeps leading me back to the idea that increased volition allows gender differences to propagate. I've been trying very hard to find data for say H1Bs by race and by gender at Oracle. Any thoughts?
  • interlocutor 9y ago
    The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are H1Bs from India, China and other Asian countries, and Romania and other eastern-European countries. If you subtract their numbers then the difference is more severe. There is something in the US culture that makes American women not want to take up tech. The diversity memo doesn't address the fact that more women take tech jobs when impediments are removed, as evidenced by the larger percentage of women in tech jobs in other countries.
    • humanrebar 9y ago
      I think the discrepancy between American women and immigrant women is interesting. I'm not sure we can conclude from the given evidence that the difference is reduced impediments. It could be that that the increased economic opportunity (or potential immigration benefits) makes up for other things.
      • rllin 9y ago
        I agree the increased economic opportunity could very well be the primary factor, but why is this not enough of a factor for white American women? Or are there other factors in raising a child in an economically stable society lead to more "do what you want, my child, regardless of your gender"?
• kolbe 9y ago
  Edith is on point.
• kolbe 9y ago
  Edith is on point.
• dandare 9y ago
  Who wants to play a game of Arguman with me? I state that "Positive discrimination of disadvantaged groups in employment and education is immoral" http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-imm...
• suzzer99 9y ago
  The Economist really nails it imo. Pointing to some random stats that support your hypothesis, ignoring others, and speculating the significance of said stats is not science - it's motivated reasoning. https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said-alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said...
  • look_lookatme 9y ago
    Also known as "modern journalism".
  • mpweiher 9y ago
    He did a much more balanced job than 99% of his critics, including The Economist.
• AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  First, a summary: There are differences between men and women. There are also barriers to entry into tech for women. Let's try to fix those, and keep trying, without necessarily expecting that we'll have 50% of engineers being women when we've finally fixed (all) the barriers. And one detailed opinion: On Edith's reply to "What do you disagree with or find objectionable?": She complained about having to wonder whether people she encountered on the job felt that she was qualified. I suspect that quite a few male Google employees actually feel the same fear (call it imposter syndrome). The question to me is, does she feel the same fear as men and wonder if, in her case, it's because she's female? Or does she feel additional fear because of being female? (I don't know, and I'm not going to guess. I merely observe that, if you remove the male/female aspects, what she said sounds a lot like how people describe imposter syndrome.)
• tracker1 9y ago
  First off, nobody in tech, male or female is really "average". Second, everybody must prove they're good at their job by doing it well. But to suggest that there is absolutely no correlation that makes men or women disproportionately want to work in certain fields or have a higher aptitude to certain roles is a bit premature. The vitriol and disdain in response by some from the original memo, completely discounting some of the reservations on opinion vs fact and presenting them as only a footnote is somewhat disingenuous.
• ethanhunt_ 9y ago
  > I also agree that there are differences between the behavior of men and women, on average. Isn't saying that a fire-able offense at Google? I hope YC is really sure that these are anonymous because if she gets doxxed her career is over.
• ATsch 9y ago
  I think it's interesting how the Edith stated Damore had said women were worse at their job, while one of the other women explicitly said he didn't, and the other only mentioned interest in programming. This is similar to the divide I've seen in the media. I have not read the memo in it's entirety, but since the impression I got from reading a few news stories was that Damore had only made his controversial statements in regard to the population, not skill of programmers, I'm curious what causes this disagreement. I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, considering that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't. (I'm not a biology nerd so feel free to correct me on this.)
  • jorgemf 9y ago
    > I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, considering the fact that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't. I think she refers that gender is not binary as you can be straight male, straight female, gay male, gay female, bisexual, asexual, etc. I am not completely sure but I think there can be mutations where you have 2 chromosomes X and 1 Y. So XXY [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome
    • bumblebeard 9y ago
      Sex, sexual orientation, and gender are different things. By gender spectrum she means that most people's behavior is somewhere along a continuum between completely masculine and completely feminine and that virtually nobody is at one extreme or the other. I think the point she's making is that while men and women have different interests as groups, there are plenty of women who are interested in what are perceived as masculine things (in this case probably computer programming) and vice versa.
  • ltrcola 9y ago
    By gender, she's referring to gender identity which is certainly not binary. There is a pretty high correlation between someone's chromosomes, "equipment", and gender identity but it's not 100% and any of those can vary on a spectrum. I've been doing some reading on transgender individuals, and the current knowledge is that gender identity has some kind of durable biological basis, we just don't know quite what it is yet. It's not simply a delusion and a refusal to accept your "real biological gender" based on your chromosomes, etc. Some people don't identify as either gender. And like the other poster mentioned, there are genetic outliers like XXY chromosomes (intersex), and other things that can happen such as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (XY females due to lack of response to testosterone).
• youdontknowtho 9y ago
  I've been trying not to comment in these threads. The thing that gets me though is how much people WANT to argue about this shit. So many people on this site want to defend that guy and his ideas like they gain something from it. It's weird.
• redthrowaway 9y ago
  >I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.” I'd be curious to hear an actual defence of this line of thinking. I mean, it's simply a fact that group differences aren't particularly useful indicators of what an individual is like. Nevertheless, they're very good indicators of what populations are like. Is there any actual criticism of that argument, or is the objection more about how people feel about that argument?
• jansho 9y ago
  Fantastic interview, I relate to many of the things the engineers mentioned. I was also disappointed by the heat and rage from both sides, IMO this whole gender thing is not a debate, it's more like a cat fight that everyone gets hurt and become more hardened about their views. It's anti-productive and exhausting. I hope that the silver lining here is that more people, particularly those who subconsciously share Damore's views on women, understand better about the real challenges of girls and women in the tech field. Cos it's not enough for a small segment to drive positive change, everyone needs to be onboard too. Let's shift the debate to that level now.
• aidenn0 9y ago
  Does anyone know if there is anywhere with discussions with women who aren't engineers? I'm thinking find a dozen random women who were 95th percentile or higher on the SATs 6 years ago and ask them 1) Why they chose their field and 2) Why they didn't go into computer science. At least at the college I went to, the ratio of women graduating in CS was slightly higher than the ratio of women enrolled in my freshman CS class (proportionally, slightly more men switched majors or dropped out than women). Places like Google hiring more female engineers is good, and even helps with the pipeline problem, since role-models are one way of encouraging disadvantaged groups to pursue particular careers. However, it would be nice to know if there are interventions we could make directly earlier in the pipeline.
  • poohblahoyamo 9y ago
    I live in the land of prestigious doctors - we all did well on the SAT. CS was not super prominent in my life despite me knowing some code in early high school, but my mom is a doctor, so that was obviously a viable option in my mind. The thought that it is a job that only lasts until you are 45 and I have to make as much money as I humanly can before being forced to retired at middle age is a bit unattractive. Also, the idea of doing stuff on computer all day looking for bugs, vs playing medicine puzzles was less attractive. LOL, medicine is fairly tedious as well now that I am in it, but yes, while I am more interested in programming to do a few practical things, I am not interested in working as a SWE. A lot of the med students have SWE spouses. We do sit around and lament about how we could have done it too with much better pay and some passes for interviewing, about the Google Hawaii powow and how nice the Christmas party as Museum of Natural History is, while we get a Christmad party at the local bar with the drunk emergency technicians. Tech has a lot of glamour now, medicine doesn'.t But in the end, I don't think I would choose differently. Female physicians really don't get any passes... Okay, if you are lady going into Urology or trauma surgery, and a dude going into obgyn, I hear there is a bit more help, otherwise we don't really get any bonus points for being a woman or minority.
• losteverything 9y ago
  Were the questions asked in person and scribed "live" or submitted?
• astrocat 9y ago
  > Edith: I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly. This is, I think, the key. We can all recognize that there are REAL, average differences in interests between men and women, DEFINITELY driven by society/culture, and maybe by biology/genetics... BUT, this has absolutely no correlation with performance. If fewer women are, on average, interested in software engineering, this absolutely does NOT mean that women software engineers are, on average, worse at their jobs. The error so many "Team-Damore" men make is that they zealously stand behind the argument that "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing women/minorities." And yet there is absolutely no way to possibly back up that claim: can anyone clearly demonstrate over the course of a statistically significant number of hirings that most of the women candidates who were hired were A)chosen from a candidate pool that included at least one equivalently-or-more talented man; and B) that those men who were not picked would have been both better performing as individuals and better employees for the team/company as a whole? No. Nobody has shown this because it is, essentially, impossible to demonstrate. Citing studies of character traits or interests of men and women "on average" does absolutely nothing to support claims A and B. And so all these men end up doing is simply implying: "well, I BELIEVE that all these real women coworkers of mine are worse than the hypothetical male candidate that wasn't hired... on average." Which is clearly an insult to your existing coworkers and toxic to your work environment.
  • RealityNow 9y ago
    I can't speak to Google's hiring policy, but affirmative action indeed gives preference to underrepresented minorities at the expense of more qualified people on the basis of gender/race. If you want quantitative data, just look at test scores of underrepresented minorities vs white/Asian men at competitive high schools and universities. You can sugar coat it all you want, but it's still discrimination on the basis of gender/race.
    • astrocat 9y ago
      Sure, specifically race-related Affirmative Action programs may often (but not always) provide entrance to a minority who would on paper test lower than a non-minority. And this is intentional AND desirable. Consider it a long-term investment, or a direct attempt to break out of a feedback-loop. The historical shadow of racism is long, and even though the individual actors today (you, me) may not be explicitly racist, the trends are still there, hiding in our institutional practices, in our disparity of opportunity for the poor, and in our subconscious assessments of things that are different from us. Programs like Affirmative Action are conscious-level programs to battle subsconscious problems in our society. It's like making a chrome extension to block HN and Reddit during work hours because our subconscious habit of wanting to browse hurts our overall productivity. So we make a conscious-level decision to implement a practice that causes pain (deprivation of pleasure) in pursuit of a long-term goal (not being addicted to instant-internet-gratification and higher productivity). Affirmative Action will deprive some well qualified white students of positions at a single institution, (but not EVERY institution) and that may cause pain for an individual, but is beneficial for the society as a whole. Diversity hiring practices may sometimes have a similar outcome, but I suspect the reality at most major employers is more often "these candidates are equivalent, give preference to the minority so our team can benefit from greater diversity." Because teams CAN have real tangible productivity/quality benefits from being diverse. It's not just black and white pure individual performance. By having a team with a broader set of backgrounds and experiences it may produce more thoughtful products/services for the diverse population of users who will ultimately consume them. I won't ever argue that explicit programs like Affirmative Action and diversity hiring don't ever disadvantage any single individual - clearly, candidates get rejected. But I'm not going to join anyone's pity party over it either: there is real benefit for companies and society; in all cases, the party that gets rejected due to these policies is explicitly the party that statistically has the most opportunity in the ecosystem at large.
• token92375 9y ago
  > By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and technical founders. In my world view philosophical principles generally take precedence over lived experiences of others. Lived experiences are not universal, cannot be relayed exactly (memories are often colored and retellings may be selective to make a particular point). If we want our ethical systems to apply to everyone, to be inclusive, we need principles that work for everyone, not just correctives for individual cases. A lot of TFA appears to put emotion, form, "lack of consideration" and presentation over facts. I am abstractly aware that those things have quite an impact on people. But it is quite alien to me, in text form the factual content of argument is more important because text can be easily misinterpreted and it is not a dialogue where the writer can clarify and correct any misunderstandings. That said, the response is still far more measured than the immediate news and social media response. > Social skills are part of a professional skillset. It is important to learn how to handle difficult subjects in a workplace – we all have to do it. There are consequences for doing it in a way that causes problems for your employer He was not the one who leaked it. It was those people who were so offended that they thought the world had to see it instead of engaging in a discussion with him. If the issue is "causing problems for the employer" then aren't those others also guilty?
• ebbv 9y ago
  Anybody who sends out a political bomb like that to a large internal mailing list should expect to get fired. And the memo was poorly thought out and the dude was not well informed. All this hand-wringing is silly. He deserved to get fired and he did not have any really salient points beyond "Could Google do MORE to encourage diversity?"
• ykler 9y ago
  I would like to hear more about why so many people feel it would be intolerable for a woman to be assigned to work with this guy. I'm a Jewish man, and I feel that I could deal OK with being assigned to work with a radical anti-Semite or a feminist who professed beliefs about men being evil, or with someone who held me in contempt and thought my technical abilities were subpar.
• rsp1984 9y ago
  Honest question: Will this thread be quickly flagged by HN moderators or taken off the front page like many others on the topic (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819 for more info)? Or are there "exceptions"?
  • mberning 9y ago
    This mostly supports a highly biased reading of the memo so it will definitely stay on the front page for hours. There have been at least 3 other considerably more interesting follow ups written by women ("these are not my people" essay, the one by the physicist, and the one yesterday from the google recruiter that was "sick" of it) and all three got flagged to hell and disappeared. Anybody compaining got the stock "you are just another idealogue" admonisminet from moderators.
  • dang 9y ago
    You seem to be mistaken about what's been happening. Moderators haven't been flagging those articles; users have. That's what '[flagged]' means. The different outcome in this case is because of community response. There are still a lot of flags, but there are many more upvotes. That, plus the discussion quality (i.e. not a trainwreck) surprised us quite a bit. I emailed Cadran this morning that she should probably expect the post to get flagged the same way as others (by users) and that we wouldn't be able to intervene if that happened. Instead, it went straight to #1. That's fine by me because the discussion has remained relatively civil and substantive. For completeness I should mention that we did do one intervention: we turned off a software penalty called the 'flamewar detector' that kicks in on discussions that get a great many comments. But that's routine: we always turn off that penalty when the discussion isn't actually a flamewar, and this one qualifies. Other than that, moderators haven't touched the post at all, so yeah I think it's fair to say no exceptions.
    • rsp1984 9y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to clarify.
• fche 9y ago
  If female engineers need to worry that, in the aftermath of the memo, people will wonder their genuine qualifications, they should not aim their blame toward the memo. The only people overtly and explicitly injecting non-qualification factors into hiring are affirmative-action type people. They created the quandary.
• freetime2 9y ago
  So firstly - let me say that this has been one of the most level-headed responses to the memo that I have seen so far. I personally found it very constructive. Bravo to the author and the interviewees. I did want to discuss one particular line of thought from the interview though: I can see that there are wide swaths of people who would refuse to work with him Two of the interviewees gave this justification for why he should have been fired, and I have seen it elsewhere as well. I disagree, though. I have worked with with people in the past with whom I have ideological differences. But it has never stopped me from at least trying to get along and work productively with that person. We just don't know from the evidence presented thus far what James Damore is like to worth with. Maybe he's a sexist asshole who is incapable of treating women fairly (in which case he does deserve to be fired). Or maybe we can take him at face value when he says he appreciates diversity and prefers to judge people as individuals rather than as a group. We just don't know. On the other hand, if there are employees at Google who despite having never met James Damore before are telling their managers "I can't work with him based on this thing he wrote or this idea he believes", aren't they also in the wrong here?
  • spydum 9y ago
    fully agree here. If you can't put aside your personal feelings based on someone elses political views to get work done, YOU are the one with the problem. I'm sure plenty of us have worked with people who have lifestyles, beliefs, and demonstrated actions we personally deeply disagree with. Heck, I've worked with people where we legitimately disliked each other. Yet when I come into the office to work, we sit down together and get stuff done. Now, my personal opinion is: leave your politics at home, don't spend company time on such things. I'm glad you think of work as a family, but it's not (regardless of the HR feel-good marketing). However, if they are asking for commentary and feedback on diversity initiatives, and you provide it honestly, it's extraordinarily poor form to then fire you. They had the responsibility to respond to him, and address it privately. I think the more troubling problem was as others have commented: the fact that it was leaked from an internal conversation and turned into such a contentious issue for google.
• DalaiObama 9y ago
  So if you argue against Google's diversity policies, you're fine as long as you write on par with one of the greatest writers of his generation¹. If you argue for it, you can get away with any angry incoherent rant. Isn't this what leftists call "privilege"? ¹ Scott Alexander
  • dang 9y ago
    You appear to be using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it, so would you please not? We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772 and marked it off-topic.
    • DalaiObama 9y ago
      I think of it as participating in these kind of discussions without risking my career. But I hear what you're saying, and I agree that this post was needlessly confrontational. I'll try to be a better HN citizen!
• perseusprime11 9y ago
  It was basically a bullshit memo from the beginning written to appeal to a certain segment of the population. Google should have used this opportunity to educate the masses on diversity and should have fired him on the basis of hurting Google's brand & reputation and the ability to hire smart people in the future instead of citing code of conduct. Missed opportunity and a rookie mistake on Google's part.
• sevilo 9y ago
  I really enjoyed this interview, finally, some voices of reasons and not blind yelling at men for being sexist pigs just from reading some biased media's twisted headlines. All these times around this memo, how many people actually cared to ask for female engineer's thoughts on this? All I see is women who don't work in engineering positions or men trying to interpret this memo from their perspective. How many actually cared what are the thoughts and impact on the main subject being discussed in the original article?
  • someguydave 9y ago
    One feature of these "victim identity" wars is that a tiny number of individuals claim to speak for an entire identity group without authorization. These claims should be ignored as illegitimate.
• nodamage 9y ago
  I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.” A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with. I strongly agree with this criticism and thought it was ridiculous that people even attempted to use this defense in the first place, so I'm glad it's being called out. When you are discussing statistical differences between populations as an explanation for certain behaviors, of course it is acknowledged by both sides that there are individuals that are outliers and that averages do not apply to every individual.
• trophycase 9y ago
  After having this sort of discussion with people, there seems to be a huge number of people, some very intelligent, that don't understand the relationship between sex hormones and behavior
• unityByFreedom 9y ago
  Great to hear from more women. Here's another from an evolutionary scientist who gives a point-by-point response to Damore, using quotes from his text as a launching point for discussion [1] She mentions that Damore brings up IQ, "the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)" IQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it? The quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in discussions over racial differences [2]. It begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we replace "IQ" with "race", would that change the meaning he meant to convey? [1] https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio... [2] https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-iq-response-critics https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-bla...
• randyrand 9y ago
  > particularly his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary reason that there aren’t more female software engineers I believe it was just a reason. Not necessarily the primary one. I should probably go back and reread it, but I also remember the biological points were primarily about interest rather than the suitability of those that are already interested. It seems most of the disagreement on the memo are things he never said.
• GuB-42 9y ago
  I've read the memo and I don't see the part where it says that women make worse engineers in general. It says that a lower proportion of women meet Google's expectations for engineering positions. This is not the same thing at all. First, he explicitly rejects the idea of a gender binary, using an overlapping Gaussian distribution instead. Second, he says that many positions at Google have expectations that favor men (competition, work-over-home, ...) even though these traits don't necessarily make better engineers.
• md224 9y ago
  On a side note, I would like to thank the HN mods for allowing this discussion to take place. Previous attempts at discussion were quickly silenced by flagging, and while it's a little weird that a piece on YCombinator just happens to be the sole exception, I'm glad that an exception was made. These kinds of discussions are difficult but necessary, critical to the process of gaining a greater understanding of those we disagree with. I hope we're able to keep having these discussions going forward.
  • dang 9y ago
    Thanks, but we didn't do anything different in this case and are as surprised as anyone that the post went to #1 and (better still!) the discussion remained as civil as it has. I don't want people to think that the ycombinator.com domain affects moderation on an article like this, since our first rule is to moderate less, not more, when YC is involved [1]. I emailed Cadran to warn her that the post would probably meet the same fate as the others, but I was wrong—the community responded quite differently. That's fine by us as long as the discussion meets the site guidelines, which this one mostly has. Edit: also, the community should know that it, not moderators, produced this effect. IMO that makes the thread more interesting. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
    • md224 9y ago
      Thanks for clarifying and correcting my assumptions. I'm guessing the content of the article in addition to the domain led users to view this as a more productive contribution to the debate. Apologies for assuming that it was HN favoritism on the part of the mods... very interesting that this happened organically. (While I'm replying to you, one super trivial and completely unrelated feature request... if comment forms are being submitted via JS, could you guys add code to prevent duplicate form submission when the enter key is held down too long? Very low priority and I know you're busy enough, but just figured I would pass along the suggestion. I've had to go back and fix my own accidental dupes a few times.)
• moduspol 9y ago
  So at the top of the article, just before the interview starts, there's this: > There’s been a lot of anger on both sides, but I haven’t seen many constructive discussions between people who disagree on these issues. I and all the women who have contributed in this post feel that there’s forward progress to be made by finding common ground and discussing different viewpoints without yelling. I hope this will be a good forum for that. Do you feel like this article does this? To me, it looks like three people (two of whom openly identify as having left-wing political views) mostly agreeing. That's still useful, but falls way short of "constructive discussion between people who disagree on these issues."
• phkahler 9y ago
  I find it annoying how all these people get to freely debate this and voice their opinions, but the person who started it lost his job for doing the same.
• throwaway9287 9y ago
  I just can't figure out why it is so difficult to even discuss the fact that men and women are not identical. It is really difficult to research and measure, but it is a really, really strong (and untrue) assumption that men and women are just exactly the same in every possible way. Now if we accept that fact, even if we are not able to quantify it, also the demographics are going to vary by occupation, just by choice, even in a perfect world without discrimination. Given how impossible this is to research, how are we to know whether occupational gender differences are good or bad? How do we know what's discrimination and what's just choice, knowing that the two are also related, and choice is also related with ability regardless of the gender. We should fix discrimination by punishing the actors behaving that way, not by establishing countermeasures that are just discriminatory in the other direction. This is what I understood to be Damore's main argument.
• yarg 9y ago
  This I think is a problem with the culture and education system of our society, by the time we reach the point of hiring someone the damage is already done. I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of sense to chose someone on the grounds of what minority or oppressed group they happen to be a part of - hire the best person for the job (this shouldn't simply take into account the skills of the individual, but also how well they can be expected to integrate into the group that they are becoming a part of). We need to look into the underlying causes of the gender and race imbalances in the pool from which we are hiring. For women, this means looking at why it is that girls seem to be disuaded from interest in the fields in question. From my perspective my interest in the engineering fields emerged from being exposed to things as simple as transformers (the toys, not the modern explosion porn), while my sisters were playing with Barbies (a line of toys that I still consider vapid and pointless) I was marvelling at the fact that a few joints and pivots can be structured in such a way as to allow transition between vehicular and humanoid forms. Allowing girls to think in mathematical and engineering terms without attaching a social stigma of acting boyish will help in this regard. From the perspective of racial minorities, there is a multi-generational poverty cycle coupled with a far lower standard of education. It cuts them off at the knees before they even get started. Fix the education system and the discouraging culture in and of our society and things will balance out - eventually. But the current way of doing things is a feel good solution that deals with the symptoms - and ignores the underlying disease.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• glibgil 9y ago
  Are ten-page screeds on any subject welcome and most companies? Google was this guy's only job after academia. I value his opinions on Google and corporate life in the same way that I value the opinions of unmarried people or people without kids on those respective subjects. I wince a smile and nod and think, "check back with me in ten years when you've been around the block a few times". This is not a person to take seriously. He does not even know what he doesn't know
  • Mz 9y ago
    Are ten-page screeds on any subject welcome at most companies? Probably not. I blogged just today about my opinion that if this 10 page screed had been about how Google was doing the office furniture all wrong, he likely still would have ended up fired, sooner or later, for being an egomaniac who cannot play nice with his corporate overlords, basically.
• merb 9y ago
  Everything I actually read about the memo (and I didn't read it besides some points) is: - Some Points are valid - Some Points are discussable (that's why this post was created, wasn't it?) but nearly none addresses them as totally invalid. I mean even in this post of ycombinator the person in question couldn't straight said "No! This is wrong" and back it up with data. I just don't get the whole gender/race discussions, but if such a memo can exists and things like gender diversity programs do exists, than something is probably really really wrong. But with one thing I disagree with her, firing him was not the right thing to do, at least not directly. I mean wouldn't it be better to just discuss this, probably in the open, with him, the company and even more and make a great discussion panel? I mean with just firing him, they actually just ignored all points, even valid ones.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• chaostheory 9y ago
  > For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work. A few generations ago, programming was primarily a woman's job in the US.
• kbenson 9y ago
  The sad part about all this is that by presenting and alternative narrative to his own in good light with a question as to how the facts presented actually play out, we might have had a good discussion. For example, even if it's true that on average women do worse in general in technical or engineering fields, that doesn't necessarily mean that the women in those fields currently are worse on average. There are a few possible reasons why they may be better than the average men in those fields. Firstly, if we accept that women have different levels of aptitude in certain skill sets, there's no reason to assume they have the same variability. It's entirely possible that women on average are worse in certain skills, but that they have more exceptional outliers. Secondly, even if there is not more variability in the female population for the skills in question, it's entirely possible that cultural and social pressure has resulted in those that choose careers on those skills having higher than average abilities in them. For example, if my family has a legacy of being fairly clumsy and uncoordinated, but my brother is a pro athlete, what's more likely, that he's a crappy athlete, or that perhaps the criticisms that apply well to my family do not apply accurately to him, for whatever reason? Providing an olive branch can make all the difference in a discussion like this, and the fact that neither explanation put forth here is contradictory with each other or the premise that perhaps a 50/50 gender split isn't necessarily ideal makes this particularly lamentable, since we might have been able to have a good discussion about gender differences while minimizing the impact it has on individual members of that gender. Of both sides (there's plenty of fields where men face an uphill battle too).
• corndoge 9y ago
  Frances: ...if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. And then Frances: ...I’m also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. Frances: ...Many powerful men in Silicon Valley have huge bases of social media followers. By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and technical founders. So, what? Is it just impossible to stay out of the issue if my silence is sending a message that philosophical principles and whatever matter more than women in technology? What if I just want to work my 9-5, treat all my coworkers well regardless of sex or gender, and let the PC warriors duke it out in the streets away from me? Can't even stay silent without sending a message. While I agree with much of what is said in this piece, I find this pretty demonstrative of the "damned if i do, damned if I don't" situation I'm in as a male trying to survive in this PC crucifixion culture.
  • aeturnum 9y ago
    > Is it just impossible to stay out of the issue[...]? Yes, it's impossible to stay out of this issue. It's impossible to stay out of most issues. Certainly the ones that affect ourselves and our colleagues in everyday life. You don't have a moral obligation to throw yourself into "the fight" on one side or another, but you do have a moral obligation to consider the impact of your behavior. If you were to witness a coworker being discriminated against, silence is not the same as ignorance. To keep your head down and not get involved is going to favor one sides' agenda. If you want to do that, it's your right, but you should own that. We all have the capacity to get involved at whatever level we happen to be on. In our social circles, in our companies or in the public discourse. By interacting with those spheres, by choosing what we mention and acknowledge and consider we push on one side or the other. It's fine to not be, "in the streets," but it's not fine to pretend these issues have nothing to do with you. Edit: I've read some accounts suggesting people ask their parents what they were doing during the civil rights movements of the 1960s. People might have protested, they might have been appalled from afar. They might have thought it was much to do about nothing. Ten years from now, how would you explain how you felt today at a cocktail party? However you see it, I think we all have a responsibility to decide and not simply drift through society.
• alecco 9y ago
  Every thread about the Google Memo in the past weeks got flagged (?) promptly out of the homepage but this one stays at the top with just 400 points. I wonder what's the difference. 1695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759 590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626 448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601 And many more. Then people wonder how Trump got elected.
  • boobsbr 9y ago
    What's the relation with the Trump election, if you please?
    • alecco 9y ago
      Sorry I missed your reply. To speak bluntly, white guys in US (not me!) are being shamed as being misogynists. Now the hardcore left "liberal" groups and media turned its eyes on STEM. See how they treated that poor guy in LHC a few years ago. See how they ousted Brendan Eich from Mozilla. Sure, the Uber CEO and that other VC cases are real and I support that. But those are used as spearheads to take control. Hundreds of YouTube content producers are being demonetized or their Google accounts frozen, like Jordan Peterson's recently. Bernie Sanders was attacked by BLM as an old white guy. The leftist media turned on him, even though he was the most honest guy aligned with what they theoretically support. It's all a big joke. So people vote something else, whatever, even Trump. (And I think Trump is a media player and incompetent businessman, never mind President of US).
• MikeGale 9y ago
  An important part of this discussion is using general population statistics, to describe programmers at Google. Programmers at Google are NOT general population. Without seeing that specific data, it may be that female programmers at Google are better than the males. I don't know, and it varies by project and role. Then when we are talking about specific people, all the population statistics are irrelevant anyway.
• RealityNow 9y ago
  > "I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs." Where did the memo say this? This is the most common strawman used to attempt to discredit the memo. The memo author never states that men are better at software engineering, just that these biological differences may help explain why women are underrepresented, choosing to pursue computer science and careers in tech less than men. > "the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to men in tech that I’m not an “average” woman" > "This is literally a discussion of whether half the human race is innately unsuited for a certain kind of work" See above > "I disagree that it’s possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say “but of course it doesn’t apply at an individual level.” Essentially what you're saying is, "we're not allowed to talk about biological differences that make underrepresented minorities look bad". I disagree. No fact should be barred from mentioning, and it's not the author's responsibility to ensure that you don't misconstrue his facts to advance your own agenda of claiming oppression. > "He did not address any counter arguments or research that opposes his views, or the validity of the studies he did cite and their reproducibility." Did you address any counter-arguments in your research report? This is some dude's memo in an opt-in internet forum, not a comprehensive/rigorous discipline-defining research report seeking publication in an academic journal. > "He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar." I agree that he should have elaborated on this bold claim. Though it's not outrageous to suspect that this could be the case given that affirmative action policies in higher education do lower the bar. > "Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work." The memo was posted in an opt-in forum, you didn't have to debate it. Silence does not imply that you agree with him. > "I’m also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about." Why do you think they remained silent? You said it yourself - anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Damore got fired for stating a well-articulated opinion, why would any of your male colleagues jeopardize their jobs as well by speaking honestly on the matter? > I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages they’ve had – the situations in which they were more likely to be trusted, deemed competent, promoted, given raises, etc. as men than they would be as women. This exercise isn’t intended to place blame, but to inspire empathy toward those who feel the weight of their gender each day at work. I wish more women in tech vilifying Damore would think about the advantages they have received (affirmative action), think about it from the perspective of a male in a field where we get no hand-holding or "women in tech" scholarships and are constantly accused of being sexist oppressors, and stop pretending like discrimination is the only or main reason women are underrepresented in tech. I firmly believe that women chose to pursue tech less than men and that this is the biggest driver of the underrepresentation (posted a little about that here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364). If it is indeed the case that women are choosing to pursue the study of computer science less than men, then stop placing the burden on us males to increase your participation. Before you automatically dismiss me and others with views differing to you as a misogynist, consider that most of us in the first world do not consider women as being any less capable than men at software engineering, let alone ANY discipline. Women used to dominate the field, and no reasonable man believes that women aren't fit for the job or shouldn't pursue this field. > By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and technical founders What does this even mean? It's just another way of saying "by not agreeing with me, you're wrong" > I think he could have written it differently, so that people who chose not to read the whole 10-pages could have read the tl;dr and not immediately concluded he was sexist. So the onus is on the author to ensure that people don't flippantly conclude that he's a sexist? > This is an emotional topic That's the problem, it shouldn't be. > He was not fired for speaking truth to power, he was fired for mishandling a complex subject in a way that caused harm to his employer (and many of his colleagues). He wouldn't have been fired if the memo argued the opposite viewpoint
• stillkicking 9y ago
  If people were willing to apply such meticulous criticism and high standards to the Women in Tech movement in the first place, there wouldn't be an issue. While the sober opening and acknowledgement is a refreshing start in a sea of shitty takes, I have yet to see anyone bother to show the same kind of psychological concern for the men in tech and the same kind of rigor for scientific standards, when the shoe is on the other foot. What would it do to your confidence and comfort to know you can't state certain scientific truths without being labelled a sexist and a misogynist? To know that there is a whole network of eager feminist writers ready to label you a troglodyte techbro and scoff at the notion you might have something interesting to say on an industry you've been part of for 10+ years? To know that, if speaking at a conference, every single word out of your mouth will be dissected for possibly implying the wrong thing, even as a first time speaker? To carefully weigh socializing with your coworkers against the chance of being accused of impropriety, with no practical defense accepted? The people who complain about "an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day" are showing an utterly stunning lack of empathy in the other direction. They are wilfully ignoring the disastrous effect these efforts can have on the people who do not share their views. Similarly, if people are supposed to actively seek out dissenting views and avoid cherry picking research, why is it feminists are notorious for protesting anyone who dares to disagree? Seminars, men's centers, documentaries, ... really, their track record in silencing and misrepresenting dissent is impressively consistent, the Google Memo included. The women cited in this interview feel "emotionally drained". "The onus is on me to prove to men in tech that I’m not an “average” woman". Strange, because all I hear from tech feminists is that men need to constantly prove themselves to be "good allies". No amount of previous piety is sufficient to avoid being lynched when you draw their ire. Their track record in eating their own is equally impressively consistent. "Who might I talk to who could tell me about their experiences working within a system that is biased against them, so I can understand better?" Start with James Damore, an autist who worked at a company biased against him, sharing his experiences, and getting roasted for it. They complain his memo wasn't written in an inquisitive enough tone, well guess what, that sort of difference in preferred communication style is exactly the kind of thing you should expect in a diverse environment. On the other hand, the numerous articles in the style of "I'm a woman in tech, let me ladysplain the google memo to you" leave no question about who is actually parading around with the attitude of "let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people." Contemporary feminism is 90% projection, this article is more of the same.
• FooHentai 9y ago
  >I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying “well if he’s so wrong, then why not refute him,” but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. Anyone else see the hypocrisy here? >the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to men in tech that I’m not an “average” woman That's not the takeaway I got. What I got from it was 'Google's hiring practices are counterproductive and will increase people's questioning of each other's capabilities, based on their gender'. Talk about changing the narrative and shooting the messenger.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
  Google having diversity hiring policy was what made "diversity hire" impressions among employees. Damore talking about it did not cause "diversity hire" impressions. Google shot the messenger in this case.
• davidreiss 9y ago
  Isn't a ycombinator blog dedicated solely for women sexist. Isn't "Ask a Female Engineer" sexist? If ycombinator only had "Ask a Male Engineer" wouldn't they be attacked for it?
• thedays 9y ago
  Remarkably few comments on the actual linked article. I found most of the comments in the article calm, reasonable, nuanced and reflective. To me, this shows the benefits of conversation and long form text, which we often seem to forget in this age of short attention spans driven by social media. We need more discussion like this. I for one would appreciate hearing more about how this discussion was facilitated. Is it a transcript of a face to face conversation, or was it done online, and if so, how?
• thetruthseeker1 9y ago
  I for one believe James Damore wasn't fired for his views on women, but Google fired him because he was a PR problem and that could affect their business/financial bottom line. Google probably understands the user base and decided they would rather not displease women (bigger group) compared to conservatives. My analysis adds up to what James Damore had to say as to what happened in a WSJ article. He said his memo didn't bother many people until it was leaked, and the google HR got many complaints from the outside world. I think the google management fired him not because of his view, nor were they worried that he questioned google's purported wasteful spending on diversity programs (which for Google is drop in the bucket if it is effective...if it is not effective I dont think they care, it makes them look good). But google fired James because they thought he was bad for business (consumer base).
  • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    If thst were true, why didn't google negotiate a gag agreement (using a few million $$$, cheap for them) with Damore to make this just go away? The fact that they didn't take the easy way out makes me think that they didn't fire him for business reasons.
    • thetruthseeker1 9y ago
      But that wouldn't appease the public who wanted him fired? If the public( let's say women's group) aren't appeased and they boycott google, it affects google ? It is possible that google gave an offer to James D to be silent along with the pink slip, which he might have turned down?
      • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        There is a lot of anti-SJW sentiment these days that I'm sure even Google doesn't really want to tap into...the public is more broadly defined than one side of the story. Also, the longer this story goes on, the left isn't really appeased and the right grows angrier, very much a lose-lose situation for google right now. The guy might have turned down a gag agreement, maybe they just didn't offer enough money? A non-disparagement ageement would also be on the table just for severence, but Google seems to have opted out of that already (you can't talk about the guy and expect that him not to talk about you).
• free2buandme 9y ago
  In support of workplaces in which all employees know and feel the company is doing what it can feasibly to support them, regardless of who they are. I'm a man, I love women, and I'm a feminist. So, despite my thought that it was utterly moronic for someone at Google to write out his beliefs in such a way that he would certainly get fired, unless he plans to go into politics, I'd like to respond to something one of the female interviewees stated in this interview: "I also think that society should have room for the discussion of ideas that are not in step with what is considered acceptable at a given time. There is, of course, a difference between an unfounded opinion and the pursuit of scientific truth, but logically, we should not avoid pursuing a scientific truth for fear that the answer will not be aligned with currently accepted dogmas." While these statements are incredibly close to my own, I call bullshit. The pursuit of "scientific truth" in such a way to not be aligned with accepted dogmas is equivalent to having unfounded opinions in the sense that "scientific truth" itself is a lie, and has been so since the first "truth" was found to be "false". Beliefs attributed to scientific work are beliefs, and modern science evolved from philosophers who established "truths" based on speculation. To add to that, even what's been established is suspect, even if it were true once. Our minds believe things to be true from past experience that may not align with recorded history. People made mistakes when recording history. Therefore, according to "scientific truth" (which itself may be unwise!), we cannot assume everything we believe to be true to be true. How then could the pursuit of a truth that could easily become a lie later any different than unfounded opinion or accepting dogma? I'm considering a Paleo Diet now; that's full circle from our beginning.
  • free2buandme2 9y ago
    Please ignore.
• thomasfromcdnjs 9y ago
  "As a female engineer, you don’t get to just love coding, or love problem solving and hacking on hardware – you also have to figure out how to navigate men who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don’t consider you an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they assume you don’t have as much expertise as your peers." Not picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sentiment more. In my entire career I've dealt with co-workers who observably considered me less smart. To the point I barely think it was their innate nature but more so a by product of being a programmer. Too much isolation and brain reward circuitry leads to inflated egos. I understand that the comment I quoted is speaking of sexist discrimination, but if I re-read it removing female and replacing men with people, it would be a pretty apt description of my life as a developer. I believe that it would be hard to delineate whether it was discrimination or just work place egos if you weren't from a similar background e.g. minority groups Sidestory: I'm an Indigenous Australian, plenty of times in my life I have seen family and friends make statements, that I'm sure plenty of you have also seen such as "You are racist" or "That's racist" when clearly to a third party the accuser seems way off the mark.
  • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Wasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for both men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work in the industry.
    • thomasfromcdnjs 9y ago
      I didn't read it as such and I wouldn't say it was the point I was attempting to make. (not your fault, I suck at writing sentences) In short, apologetically generalising, I'm suggesting that humans by nature tend to barely get along ever, and sometimes it is hard to tell what is discrimination and what is just normal work crap.
      • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Ah, yes, I agree.
• shaftoe 9y ago
  I'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I haven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a female repellant. Look at the work/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry. Compare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture, women disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing. When there's a work emergency and the kids HAVE to be picked up at daycare, who goes? When a kid is sick, who stays home? When a child is born, who takes several months of leave to care for them? Consider that many women leave the tech industry or stay away from the all-consuming work culture because they have or will eventually want a family life. It doesn't matter what are people's abilities when they see a job as incompatible and contrary to their life goals.
  • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    I'm leaving the industry for a while to take care of my 7 month old so my wife can get back into her career as a designer in the tech industry. We didn't really plan it like this, something happened, but in the end I think it's a good opportunity for our family (I get to bond with the kid, she gets to go back to developing her career). How society judges a stay-at-home dad might be another issue, however.
    • shaftoe 9y ago
      "We didn't really plan it like this, something happened, but in the end I think it's a good opportunity for our family." Welcome to the experience of parenthood. Best of luck to you, your wife, and your child(ren).
      • seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        The kid came way before this plan did :)
  • e9 9y ago
    But that was part of point in the memo, he was proposing how to change tech culture to make it more appealing for women. Like one of his proposals was to introduce part-time jobs into Google among other things. He wasn't claiming to have all answers but wanted to start official conversation on this topic and figure out what is truly feasible at Google...
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• cp33 9y ago
  As a person of color, I feel the need to give my perspective here, since I am part of an underrepresented group in tech, just like women. So I feel like I have some insight on the issue even though my reaction may still not be the same as what a woman would say about this. When you are trying to make an effective argument, you have to anticipate what the responses would be. The biggest problem with Damore is that apparently he didn't take enough into account about what women felt about the issue, as mentioned in the article. People in the majority are naturally the ones with the louder voice, but it can be misleading if you are speaking on a minority group. You probably won't have the same experiences, and one or two studies is not enough to explain something as complicated as biology, psychology, or sociology. This is especially true if the science is easily refuted. I really wonder why Damore chose to write about the lack of women in tech specifically? It seems to me so that he could better support his proposal to not focus on diversity efforts or to face less backlash for not speaking on race. If this is the case, strengthening confirmation bias is not an effective solution because there may be a lot more than what meets the eye if you're not an expert on the subject. So from this, the two biggest questions are was he right? and was Google right? Was he right? Somewhat. I can't say yes or no 100%. He tried to explain his view as best as he could but he supported it terribly. It deserved the backlash. But he made some good points about it being unsafe to express his opinion. If he was smarter, he wouldn't have been fired. This is the bigger problem with the situation. A good engineer, in my opinion should be more flexible in thought, think more about surrounding outcomes, and be better at interacting with people. Was Google right? Absolutely. The bigger problem is that many people think Google fired him for having a dissenting opinion, which I think is not true and unfortunate because it polarized America more between the left and the right. Damore should've been smarter and we would not have this discussion. I'm almost certain that Google wouldn't be where it is today without diversity of thought. You can have a differing opinion and express it without pissing everyone off. Google would have been dammed if they did fire him, dammed if they didn't fire him, but more dammed if they didn't. It got leaked and the media attention, complete with hostile arguments from both sides for a reason and it harmed Google's image and female employees. We can all mostly agree that Damore had some decent points to be made if he were a better writer and emphasizer. Would you still say that he was fired because Google is a left leaning organization? You can't say women are not biologically suited for an engineering position at Google, face harsh backlash including termination from work and say that your views weren't respected. Come on. That's what sexism is. What if you said this about Hispanics, or Native Americans? If you want to say that the diversity efforts at Google are misguided, then make a better argument than saying "we don't need diversity programs at Google". I would say not to strive for 50% women because not all of the engineers are 50% women. Strive for a closer percent of their actual representation. Google can't have 50% of all women engineers because some of them work for different companies. Google shouldn't use immoral or illegal hiring practices to achieve this number. But Google should still have diversity programs so that more women get into tech which would bring the number of women in the workforce in general closer to 50% and it could benefit everyone. Also keep in mind that a minority can possibly have more or less qualified people as a whole proportionally within the group. Hiring more of one minority group does not necessarily lower the bar. Biases do exist, but it doesn't always mean it's bad. I told you I was a person of color at the beginning of this to make you form a bias against me. I want my voice to be heard in the hundreds of these comments when my probability of being read is lower because there are likely a lower percentage of women and other minorities posting. I don't think that I face tough obstacles, which turns people off of arguments like this, but I want to say that I do, however minor. Often times I act a certain way BECAUSE I don't want to be seen as "the black guy" and I've done this enough of my life that people say that I'm not the same as many other black guys. They don't say it in a negative way, because I still act "somewhat" black, if that makes sense to you.
• k_sze 9y ago
  I haven't read the whole piece yet, but I find that the first question I ask myself is: if the interviewees were males, would they have been given pseudonyms? I don't have an answer to that question. It's all hypothetical. I'm just pondering.
• pm24601 9y ago
  My feelings as a white male...who happens to have 2 kids. Sometimes my kids will "why?" "why?" me to death. They really don't care about the answer and can never be persuaded. They are just trying to stretch out the moment of truth before they actually have to do the thing they don't want to do. Everyone: it is the 21st century. In the 20th century, we had that discussion and debate about whether or not half of the human race is biologically able comprehend CS. At this point, there are some people who refuse to be persuaded. I feel that Google did the correct thing. Q: "Is it o.k. for me to have these attitudes about a high percentage of (present, past and future) my co-workers?" A: "No" Q: "Why?" A: "Because we are running the company and we said so." Q: "Why?" A: "We are done explaining this." (Damore writes his memo) A: "We said we are done explaining. Maybe you can get the answer you want at another company."
  • EpicBlackCrayon 9y ago
    If only I could upvote twice, this is an excellent analogy.
• EGreg 9y ago
  Let me offer what could be a controversial opinion, but one based on faacts neverteless. When there is a war to fight, men are drafted far more than women (if any are drafted at all). This is true in pretty much every country. Risky construction jobs are mostly filled by men. The homeless and incarcerated are mostly men. Obviously, survival and risk to life and working conditions and homelessness are major topics. So why isn't society talking as much about balancing men and women in these areas? For example, in the USA, men are incarcerated 10x more often than women, despite making up something like 50% of the population. Why doesn't anyone claim this is prima facie evidence of systemic sexism? When it comes to race, such claims are in fact made, but not when it comes to sex. I believe the reason is that people really do believe that men are more prone to violence and the "population-level differences in biology" (to put it in the Google Guy's terms) are a totally socially acceptable answer. One that even liberals and progresives give. Or take another example of where sex-based discrimination against men is not just tolerated but shrugged off, while the same would cause outrage if it was based on sex: clubs in the city. Men have to pay a cover and stand in line, ladies are ushered in. Men may come in if they have 2-3 good looking ladies with them. Imagine the same business model with white/black people. It wouldn't last. So why is this happening? Because we all believe there are differences between men and women that come down to biology (whether it is "really" true or not). Our society contains many places where men are discriminated against, but they don't make a very good cause for an activist (well, there are men's rights activists, but not many). Now here is what I think about the whole "women in tech" thing: it is too corporation-centric. People's lives consist of more than working in a corporation. A major part of life, for example, is raising children. If you look at this aspect of life, we see women are favored in every society to be the primary caretakers of children. Most of this is explained by - wait for it - biological differences that supposedly make women better nurturers. States often say it is in the the best interests of the child for the mother to get primary custody of a child in a divorce. The consequences are plainly laid out in the statistics. Women are much more likely to be the ones to devote their time and energy to raising children. This is basically another job which the men are not expected, by society, to have to do. Certainly, many do, but it is fr more optional for a man. These days, women are graduating college at higher rates than men, and make more than men out of the gate. But when women start having children, that's when the gender pay gap appears. This seems to be the largest factor that explains the gender gap Someone has to raise the children, though. And this is why I say the argument is too corporation-centric: it assumes the goal for women and men is to earn a money in a large, hierarchical corporation. One can phrase it the other way: women are actually ahead of men in the work-life balance department, and we should try to help everyone achieve more of THAT goal. This is bigger than men and women. How many families today have both parents working, or a single parent, sticking the kids into public school as a daycare center? (Read what pg wrote about high school as a prison.) How about putting parents in nursing homes? All for what? So people can commute many miles (burning tons of fuel) to corporate jobs and sit on their butt doing something someone else wants them to do? Why is that considered the goal, when corporate world is only 150 years old and on its way out when automation hits? Work-life balance is way better. Small teams and self employment - that is what I want for more people, women and men alike!
• hippich 9y ago
  If Google would not have such diversity program in the first place, none of that would be happening. Reason why female engineers might have anxiety about what male engineers think about them is exactly result of having such program in place.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• havetocharge 9y ago
  I think it's very ironic that males took over the discussion that intended to seek our female opinion.
• foobar_femme 9y ago
  As a longtime female engineer at fintech startups, there was absolutely nothing new in Damore's memo. The only thing that gave these tired arguments any cachet at all was Google's name. And I really wish Google hadn't fired Damore. Special projects exists?! For years I have worked with and continue to work with guys who think just like this. In fact, thanks to Twitter, I now know all of my followers who also follow Damore. Thanks for that? When I interview you and ask you a technical question, you don't meet my eyes and then you answer the guy sitting next to me. When I present my own ideas in a group, you ignore them; fine, I'll pregame males colleages and let them present my ideas instead. If I brainstorm as part of the group, you think I'm asking you to explain basic programming concepts to me. You probably think I'm not that smart. And that's OK. Good news: getting things done requires multiple skills. One of mine is overtaking you from behind. Nobody ever thinks of promoting me first. Whatever I get, I work twice as hard and twice as long for it as you did. The existence of a female networking group does not represent an unfair advantage: it represents barely any advantage at all, on the basis of the ones I've attended. And anyway, I don't have time for that, I'm trying to figure out what's caused the unexplained performance reversion over the past two days. Whether you think I am a diversity candidate or not, I am here to code. That is all. Statistically speaking, biology does give me one edge: longer life span. I'll imagine I will still be here doing just that long after everyone else has forgot James Damore exists. ;)
  • abvdasker 9y ago
    Thanks for this. These comments are a wasteland.
  • zaroth 9y ago
    Everything you said that's wrong with the interactions you have with male engineers, I'm not sure that James Damore would disagree with any of it, or claim that it doesn't happen, or say that we shouldn't be trying hard to change it. What James argued is that the efforts Google is making and the way they are doing it are in some ways contributing to and making all of those bad experiences you listed worse.
    • PrimHelios 9y ago
• anon0192 9y ago
  People wonder why there was such an outrage. This article is a good starting point showing some of the effects that stereotypes can have on people: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s... Two examples extracted and paraphrased: * When women and men were both asked to "think like men" (article details how this was done) on a mental rotation test, they did about the same. When asked to think like women, there was a significant difference - around 1/3 drop of average score for women, 10% for men. * Two groups were asked to take a test, but one of the groups was primed by the statement: “This is a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations due to various personal factors involved in performance.” - the test takers were given the impression that their score on the test was associated with their personal academic aptitude. The second group wasn't primed in this way. In the primed group, black people had a drop of performance of 2x (the number of items solved was halved). Imagine having looked at studies like these. They show how severely people can be affected by stereotypes - orders of magnitude more than any statistically insignificant biological differences. If even the stereotyped are personally affected, imagine how much worse that can be in multiple-people situations (interviews, meetings etc) where the other people are not the target of the stereotype but has been influenced by it in their life... So now a colleague is seemingly perpetuating stereotypes and those stereotypes are going viral. His argument may be more nuanced than that, but you fear that the stereotypes are all that people will take from it. For the most part that fear seems to be coming true. Whats the normal reaction there?
• diedyesterday 9y ago
  The government and society's (including workplaces) responsibility towards gender/race equity is to remove any legal/moral/social barriers for anyone (provided they have the interest and qualifications) to become anything. Going beyond that and trying to enforce a 50-50 gender quota/division in everything is itself ideologically motivated and an idiotic attempt at fighting biology. All you have to and should do is let anyone be anything. Whether this leads to a 50-50 division (gender-wise) is something biology and other factors will determine and should not concern us fundamentally.
• anon0192 9y ago
  Most people probably wonder why there was such an outrage. This article seems to be a good starting point: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s... The article summarises the effect that stereotypes have on people Two examples extracted from the article: * When women and men were both asked to "think like men" (article details how this was done) on a mental rotation test, they did about the same. When asked to think like women, there was a huge difference - a huge drop of average score for women, 10% for men. * Two groups were asked to take a test, but one of the groups was primed by the statement: “This is a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations due to various personal factors involved in performance.”. The test takers were given the impression that their score on the test was associated with their personal academic aptitude. The other group wasn't primed in this way. In the primed group, black people had a drop of performance of 2x (the number of items solved was halved). So imagine having looked at studies like these. They show how severely people can be affected by stereotypes - orders of magnitude more than any statistically insignificant biological differences. Then you see a work colleague who is seemingly perpetuating stereotypes and those stereotypes are going viral...
• sonabinu 9y ago
  Thank you for posting this! Since that memo came out, I've asked myself several times - am I not woman enough because I love math and programming. I didn't know I would love either till I did a bit of deliberate slogging on both when I changed careers. Math, I deliberately learnt in high school simply because I no longer wanted to confused. Computing I learnt the slow hard way, again deliberately. But once I got a hang of it, it's been my passion!!!
• syrrim 9y ago
  >When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? Damore never said he thought this way; this is merely an implication of something he did say. What he did say was that he believes that - even though there are 4 times as many men as women at Google - the men who are there deserve to be there as much as the women. This implies that, were you to utilize quotas to achieve gender parity, then this same equality would not be true - men would now "deserve" their jobs more than women. Conversely, if you think that gender parity through quotas would bring about equality of the sexes, then that implies that you think men employed right now are less capable then women. Men around you should then ask themselves the inverse question: how do they know which colleagues think they were hired purely because they are a man?
• averagewall 9y ago
  If saying that female applicants are given preferential treatment is harmful to female employees, then surely the people doing the preferential treatment (HR?) are the ones who are actually guilty, not the messenger? Why is there no complaints against those practices? Are they not real? He shouldn't be criticized for raising concerns about discriminatory hiring because, right or wrong, he had a legally protected right to do that without suffering retaliation. If people don't like those ideas being mentioned, they should try to get the law changed because this is one of the very few things Californians can't be fired for yet it seems to be the main point of complaints against Damore.
• 0xbear 9y ago
  >> For example, students and professors I met in college >> that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was >> stereotypically women’s work Um, no. I grew up in the USSR, too, and engineering never was stereotypically women's work. If anything, the enrollment of women in engineering programs was even more skewed than it is in the US today. We only had 2 women out of a cohort of roughly 40 people, and they barely managed to graduate. Ironically neither of the two works as an engineer, but then neither do most men from that cohort. Truth is, engineering is not actually the most lucrative occupation in today's Russia, so I can't blame women (or men for that matter) for not pursuing it. Also, most people here probably don't know this, but Russian language is gendered, and the very word "инженер" is masculine, though it can be used unchanged to refer to women engineers. There is no special word form for female engineers.
• MichaelMoser123 9y ago
  I think the problem with tech is that many of us are arrogant pricks (let the down votes start) because of this fact we are facing a lot of politics at the workplace - all with the common source of a desire to dominate. More women might create a more healthy atmosphere at most places, but who cares. However this is unlikely to happen because many women are not attracted by a heavily male dominated work environment. The argument that women are inherently bad at tech is not based on historical evidence - lots of women in early computing. Believe me it is very tough to debug a stack of punch cards, much tougher than what we have today... Are HR practices and PC the right way to solve deep problems? I don't think so. Maybe discussions of this sort can move some people, but most people only seek and find confirmation for their own position...
• fizwhiz 9y ago
  1058 comments all descendents of hedgew's comment. First time I've ever seen something like that on HN. Edit: FWIW, the best female engineers I've worked with were just as good as the males. But yes, distribution is a thing, and we see fewer female engineers compared to male engineers because of a pipeline problem. Lowering the hiring bar just to converge to an unrealistic and superficial hurts everyone. Maintain the hiring bar and address the pipeline issue by encouraging more women to get into this field.
• simonebrunozzi 9y ago
  This "ask" has an issue for me already: why would a female engineer know better than a male engineer? As long as someone feels to have an informed opinion about the subject, he/she should feel free to present his view. (I am a male (ex) software engineer, and I sure as hell have an opinion about it - to give you the TL;DR: his intention was to stimulate a conversation, he did it in an awkward way, and he's not perfect. And no, Google should have not fired him, but if you have ever worked in a large corporate environment, you might have a good idea why they did anyway).
• Myrmornis 9y ago
  The memo contained assertions like "women are more neurotic" I'm a bit baffled why the author isn't being criticized more for the childish sexism in that sentence. (This is coming from someone who despairs over the politically correct left).
• Hermel 9y ago
  The term "diversity" already implies that there are differences between genders, otherwise we would have to call it "more of the same". Everyone who insists on valuing diversity while also insisting that man are women are equal is contradicting herself.
• wellboy 9y ago
  Well, now this discussion should give the author of the memo enough data, to make a follow up memo with his arguments backed up by deep research if there is research. Mission accomplished?
• bluecalm 9y ago
  Now imagine how "we just randomly throw away some of the resumes from black people but we are not lowering the bar" would fare in court of law or public opinion.
  • Dylan16807 9y ago
    Sure, everyone would call that a bad policy. It's taking a minority that's biased against and making those biases worse. But imagine it was "90% of our hires are white, so we're trying to change that by throwing out some white resumes". You'd get a much more mixed reaction.
    • peoplewindow 9y ago
      Hence the fact that so many people are sick of the racism card and voted for Trump. As you point out, the same behaviour would be called bad policy (and possibly illegal) if it's against blacks but not against whites. That seems fundamentally problematic.
      • Dylan16807 9y ago
        Sometimes local bias can make things fairer overall. The difference is that something anti-black is obviously making things worse, while something anti-white might be helping or hurting in various ways. You have to be intentionally myopic to think all bias is equally unfair. Especially consider how racist you can make desegregation sound, even though it's giving everyone the same treatment: "They're going to start sending most of the kids of one race to much worse schools!".
        • peoplewindow 9y ago
          You have to be intentionally myopic to think all bias is equally unfair Intentionally myopic? Why is the law intentionally myopic? I don't see any written law that says it's OK to be racist against white people? Are you saying the law should be changed? Attitudes like this make me agree with the right-wingers who say that people who campaign against racism, sexism etc really just hate white men. A few years ago I wouldn't have agreed with that at all, but as time goes on and I see more attitudes like this, I feel more and more like it must be true.
• yy77 9y ago
  Take the example of plumber, any girls are expected to be a plumber? Engineer is a bit alike as techical. The different part in google case is more mental but not physical.
• Tehnix 9y ago
  First off, sorry if it seems a bit incoherent, on a mobile so hard to keep an overview. While it has (at least vocally) gotten a lot of backlash, the memo did give me an opportunity to have a deep conversation about both it, and sexism in general, not just in tech and not just towards one gender, with a female friend of mine that I study with. We came into a lot of what annoys us both about the way the topic is treated in PC culture, and also gave us a bit of a better understanding of what types of things both gender face in society as a whole. Quite enjoyable conversation, but honestly you can do with someone you trust. So at least in that regard the memo “worked” for us. One thing in the OP that stuck with me was > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? Which in my opinion is what happens when you go about “fixing” the gender disparity by such metrics as hiring. I really liked the suggestion to measure retention, how long they stayed and how happy they were, instead of some artificial quota for which you stop thinking after checking that box off. I really think we need to re-evaluate what works, and I hope at least the ongoing discussions bring us a little bit closer to that.
• throw2016 9y ago
  Very few social and scientific studies offer room for the average individual to make links and draw conclusions outside the context of academic study. For a random individual to not only draw conclusions these studies were not designed to support, that even their authors don't, outside of context of academic inquiry, and seek to apply it in the real world is an inexcusable transgression. That some should fail to register this abuse of science and fail to notice the transgression is surprising. What if someone circulates a memo citing studies saying introverts are not suitable for social collaboration roles, or aggression in males makes them unsuitable for collaboration roles and we should look for more 'suitable roles for males'. Studies definitively show aggression is predominant in males but no one seeks to connect it to a real world workplace and that too without the credentials or expertise to. Is this science? Seeking to apply social and genetic studies that are rarely as certain as the experimental sciences 1=1 to draw conclusions in the real world has traditionally been the refuge of supremacists and eugenicists. That any well adjusted individual would seek to join this group in a workplace memo is an indiscretion too far. Individuals can't simply be reduced to genetics.
• staticelf 9y ago
  Can't we just agree on that generalizing people in general is a pretty bad idea? Better to give equal opportunity, which in my opinion doesn't mean that you give anyone more attention because of physical factors like what sex a person have. I am principally against using any form of discrimination even if the reason is to fight discrimination. Having for example courses only for women, hiring women only because there is a disparity is bad idea. I honestly think if we just treated everyone with the same respect that we want to be treated ourselves a lot of these issues would disappear. Maybe there will still be a lack of a specific sex in some jobs but honestly, who cares? I certainly do not and do not believe in the notion that a company is more successful because of a more mixed environment. I think the competence of each employee and their worldview and view towards another is way more important. As I've written many times before, please just treat everyone the same.
• Noughmad 9y ago
  The very first answers about what they disagree with starts with > I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. If you look at just about any sport, there is a big difference between men and women. And that's not just for really physically intensive sports such as athletics. Even in chess, only 2 of the top 100 are women.
• Tehnix 9y ago
  Please note that this is a comment on a specific remark, and is not meant to make it seem as though that invalidates the rest of the text - I’m mainly interested in the subconscious reason why things are the way they are. > I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages they’ve had I think the reason many take annoyance with this particular opinion (at least I do), that men had it easy, is rooted in how “nerds” were viewed growing up, and how that has changed over time with public known successes such as Zuckerburg or Musk. I’m only 24, and even I remember growing up with being interested in programming in no way being an attractive thing to be. If I revealed to people what I did I would be called a “nerd” with a bit of a disproving look. Luckily for me, I was quite good at socializing also, but many definitely didn’t have that and suffered social stigma for it. Even the friends I was gaming with didn’t quite understand my interest in that area, so I mostly relied on myself with few to no peers to discuss that particular subject with. This is obsviously anecdotal and I would be interested in hearing how people had it growing up with these interests, from both sides obviously. Now, that said, we are definitely in another age currently. These days with the success of Silicon Valley, Facebook, heck even The Big Bang Theory, our culture has shifted to a glorification of the field, and as such we have a clash of what the 24+ (or there about a) generation grew up facing, and them now being called privileged and being told they had it oh so easy, basically casting aside all those struggles they had growing up. I guess my point is, with is a more general point, promoting equality by bringing down another group, is a fundamentally wrong way to go about things. You don’t get the bars at the same place by making it worse for one group, you do it by making it better for the other group (see they distinction?). Anyways, I’m interested to know what people think :)
  • hippich 9y ago
    I had pretty much same experience, minus socialization skills. So you are definitely not alone in your experience. And I observed similar from (very) few friends in the same situation.
• cerealbad 9y ago
  What makes female engineers different from male engineers again?
• alexryan 9y ago
  What bothers me most about this article is how all of us, when we feel threatened, tend to close off our empathy for the other side which prevents us from seeing clearly that they too feel threatened. We both come across as selfish and uncaring to the other and are completely oblivious to the fact that we are doing exactly the same thing ourselves. Marshall Rosenberg used to say that “all objectionable behavior is a tragic expression of an unmet need”. That’s worth thinking about because it points the way towards an actual solution to the problem. The simple “nonviolent communication” method that he developed was designed to help people to break down the barriers of hostility and connect in a fashion that enables both parties to achieve a mutually satisfying resolution and a closer and more fulfilling relationship. I have found it to work very well in my personal relationships. As a general rule, when the other person feels that you genuinely care about their needs and are truly committed to helping them to meet them, they are very likely to return the favor. At that point the hostility fades and the seeking of zero sum solutions on both sides gives way to both sides working together to brainstorm a positive sum solution that fully meets everyone's needs. This is really quite a beautiful process and I wish more people used it because I truly believe it could make the world a far better place for all of us.
• bleair 9y ago
  Why not have a real discussion about the environmental differences that influence interests and expectations. American society has very clear gender roles and expectations. Why are girls by age 6 conditioned to think "math is hard". Why are men encouraged to "crush it" or "kill it" and promoted if they do so at work, and yet if a women took a similar approach she would be criticized for being too pushy or bitchy.
• josteink 9y ago
  > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? That's a question which will keep popping up as long as you have discriminatory practices in the hiring process. This memo changed nothing in this regard.
• saimiam 9y ago
  Let's see: 1. women are underrepresented in politics despite nearly a hundred years of suffrage and handwringing about female participation. 2. men are underrepresented in high school teacher cohorts. Maybe men are just not interested in teaching. 3. men don't attend pta meetings at the same levels as women (I don't know how true this is - I'm going by the movies). Men don't care about their kids' education! Looks like James Damore over fit his personal views into his personal career niche of technology.
• DinoDano 9y ago
  Shame on you google! You are failing baddly. I would never think to do any adwords or youtube moneytizing business with you. You lie and cheat. Thats core of google today. Google, bye bye
• stefek99 9y ago
  I have nothing valuable to say. Roughly the same time I've created #hck2fck - an analogy to pwn2own as I was going to SHA2017 hacker camp. I'm not sure if I'm ready to handle all the controversy related to the project. Intention - get some free press, media attention, eyeballs, hit to the actual website.
• exodust 9y ago
  I'm baffled as to why these anonymous engineers or any female colleague would be offended by his memo. Some of the responses are quite condescending, calling him a "confused, questionably informed kid". Wow. His memo is clear and reasonable. His interviews are reasonable and respectful, he approaches the topic calmly and scientifically, the exact opposite to the reactionary anger. The only part of the memo I can see that could cause a fuss is this: > "distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes" Even if true, it should be mentioned that ability often stems from preference. We are driven to invest time and effort into our preferences, so our abilities in those areas will improve. In a population average, we should be able to graph this difference without failing any gender bias scrutiny. As for "native ability", all else equal except gender, you will face opposition to the idea that your gender might start you at a disadvantage in given disciplines. As soon as a child starts growing up and investing time in their preference, their abilities will cluster around those preferences. So it would be very difficult to prove that gender abilities are present before socialisation. Either way, it's a scientific question, and deserves respect rather than over-sensitive knee-jerk political reactions.
• dunkedonkino 9y ago
  at current time, 1273 comments and _no_ mention of Jordan B Peterson? I'm disappointed in the community and lack of science based approach here. Leaving facts at a feelings fight, I guess?
• sniglom 9y ago
  "Ask a female engineer". That headline in itself implies that there are differences between males and females, as the memo states. Why would I otherwise listen to the opinion these engineers have over any other? I'm from Sweden and our universities have fought for years with getting more females to study IT. Same goes for senior highschool. And it's not only to get you to study, it's while you study as well. Benefits just for women. Courses just for women. Meeting people from business, just for women. And so on. The last discussion was about whether women studying IT should pay back their study loans, even though the education itself is already payed for. I think the questions we should ask ourselves are, is this improving diversity in opinions and thoughts? Is this beneficial for the field? Does this improve the state of the companies within IT? Otherwise we're just pushing one gender over the other, for no particular reason, except gender. Choosing people for their gender, over their thoughts and performance is sexist and horrible.
• jcmoscon 9y ago
  1984 is now!
• thieving_magpie 9y ago
  >I’m also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about. Interesting takes on the memo. This part stood out to me. I'm not really in a situation where I have many coworkers around but, just knowing myself, I can say I likely would be someone that would have stayed silent on the topic unless it was specifically brought up. That's more about my personality than anything, I generally avoid starting conversations because I'm bad at small talk. I'd like to know what I can do differently. My opinion generally mirrors the thoughts put forward by the female engineers but I feel like maybe I've let someone in my life down by not being more vocal and supportive. Really the only thing I've done is tried to encourage female coworkers in non-development positions to try it out, and offer them help. I've tried to nudge our hiring team to look at a more diverse crowd - though that's hampered by low wages and living very literally in one of the more remote parts of the country (our town has 3.5k people and is considered a large town for our region). I guess I'm saying I want to do more but I don't know what to do without seeming disingenuous.
• Ensorceled 9y ago
  The main issue I had with the document is that it read like an 80's USENET posting in alt.politics. I've seen this entire discussion play out over and over again, at multiple companies, with the same talking points, for all 35 years of my career. My stepson just graduated from the same comp sci program I graduated from in the late 80's and I was startled by how fewer women there were in his graduating class than mine. I've watched my female classmates and colleagues leave the industry. I've watched the number of female candidates for my positions dwindle to the point where I recently hired three developers and there was a dearth of female candidates. There is definitely a problem and the first step is to get beyond the point where smart, professionals in their late 20's think 80's reruns are adding to the debate.
• exelius 9y ago
  There's a difference between "starting a conversation" and blasting out an e-mail to 50,000 people that doesn't really even grasp the realities of modern software development. There's a chain of command about this kind of stuff for a reason. The author is simply mistaken on the requirements that make a good software developer: yes, it is true that on average, men are probably better at heads-down software development. But that's at most half of the job of software development, and it's honestly the least important part to get right. On other metrics (such as interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, etc - all critical components of modern engineering) women are better on average. How many Silicon Valley startups fail because their product represents the problems that the team members (who tend to be mostly white men) are facing? How many investors went along with this because they too had the same problem? Point is, you don't get to cherry-pick statistics that match your perceived criteria for the job and claim to be trying to start an unbiased dialog. I don't think it's intentionally disingenuous -- I think that the author of the original memo has a limited view of the job and the problems associated with it. That's honestly the biggest problem here: white men very often believe their viewpoint is the only valid one, and don't even consider alternate viewpoints. I'm not saying this as "white men bad!" -- I'm totally empathetic to the fact that many white men feel they are under attack -- but that misses the point. Everyone who is not a white man has felt that way their entire lives in some degree. Every way you deviate from the "straight white male" archetype (by being black, gay, female, transgender, etc.) is another front you have to play defense on. I think the right response is something along the lines of "Your viewpoint is valid, but please understand that it is not the only one that is valid." We have to be careful not to invalidate someone's lived experience -- that's exactly the problem we accuse white men of, and showing the same behavior right back isn't going to solve the problem.
• alexmuro 9y ago
  just want to say thanks to all involved in this interview. This is exactly the kind of discussion that imho can change minds and move this issue forward. I have so much respect for these women.
• BrodieStead 9y ago
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• HillaryBriss 9y ago
  based on all the sound and fury, one might think that somehow Google's hands are tied, that it has no control over who it hires. but the reality is that it has total control over who it hires. if Google can choose to fire Mr. Damore for expressing his thoughts about diversity, it can sure as hell extend tens of thousands of new job offers starting today to people in underrepresented groups. there's nothing to it. they have the money and the power. so do it already and silence the critics. it's not that hard.
• etiene 9y ago
  I actually thought the document was reasonably well written, using language that was not confrontational or aggressive, and providing some sources. So, from a superficial view, it looks well-thought, scientific and non-malicious. This is why I presume it gathered a lot of supporters. The problem is when you actually look at the message and the information given. Some of his arguments are just wrong. And doing what he did was naive. Biological differences between men and women are completely irrelevant to the very few highly competitive folks in the tech industry and more precisely in Google. Especially considering the huge chunk of the world who is illiterate, we simply cannot have any clue how biology is actually affecting us and how it plays with all the other variables in the game (such as being socialised for specific tasks when growing up, or just finding the workplace hostile). On the contrary, he shows lack of basic knowledge on history of computer science. Since women used to be the majority in the field some decades ago, there is no way evolution / innate difference could have worked its way in this fraction of time. It also makes me question what are his thoughts on people who are disabled and work for Google, for example? This discussion not only is not productive but puts him under a very bad light. Secondly, he seems not to understand the role of Software Engineering really well. He argues that women are more focused on people and therefore don't feel attracted to high pressure rational fields, but choses to ignore how important people are to the career as a Software Engineer? It seems he is very attached to the idea that programmers are isolated nerds on a basement, which does not reflect at all the actual reality of successful people in the field. Last but not least, as I said, he was very naive. He writes this 10 page thing about how women are maybe not interested in CS for these many reasons and criticises Google's approach to diversity, with the message that maybe it's not worth it, proposing we use even less empathy. Google has these programs after counselling with experts in the field, which he certainly is not. He says Google is an echo chamber and complains they are not listening. What he doesn't realise, however, is that by circulating that document he is shitting on the head of many of his female co-workers with his wrong arguments, and shitting on the head of whoever are the experts responsible for these diversity programs. And even if he was right, it would still be a bad idea. You don't circulate a document arguing that a certain gender may be in general unfit for the job, and expect people of said gender to be cool with it, even if you claim the people working with you are exceptions. Replace "women" with different groups and how his piece really hit me may be understood better. I don't want to hear "women are bad at math, irrational etc. but you are different, you are cool". Imagine saying to my happily married gay friends that gays are promiscuous but they are ok? He really did not think through how this would sit on people's ears. I felt really disrespected and I don't even work in Google, imagine the women who felt the same but actually had to work with him? It's a massive disruption to the workplace. Google had no alternative but to fire him. A bunch of people would quit if they didn't. I know I would. So Google made the right choice for the company. They put a lot of effort into hiring the best people. Losing one of them is better than losing credibility and losing many. I'm not saying he's a horrible person and deserves to be fired. I'm saying he is wrong and he made a terrible mistake that offended many people and led things to where they are now at no one's fault but his own. Everything related to this document is really unfortunate, to him and to everyone else involved. It decreased morale of women at his workplace, it got him fired. It also got a bunch of alt-right nazis spreading hate about women using his document as a base, which I'm certain was not his intention.
• jcmoscon 9y ago
  Trump is Goldstein! 1984 is now!
• graphememes 9y ago
  Everyone is always upset when real scientific data alludes that they might be wrong.