15 ms·

Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted articl

• bufbupa 9y ago
  Are you arguing we should spare factual discourse for the sake of someones subjective feelings?
  • wcummings 9y ago
    Not much about that memo was "factual", whatever that means.
    • ahugebeach 9y ago
      Some scientists did agree, even said he wrote an A worthy paper. Others disagreed. Even slatestarcodex argued a little for both sides. Its clear scientific consensus has not been reached, and people need to discuss this openly with out censors.
      • sjg007 9y ago
        It's pseudoscience at best.
  • adbachman 9y ago
    In this case, it's not about "should factual discourse be allowed or not," that's a false dichotomy. It's whether the author of the memo knowingly took an approach to interpretation of the "facts" he selected that was actively harmful to his co-workers by creating a toxic and hostile work environment. I believe he did, and the parent you're responding to seems to as well, but they didn't say anything about "spar[ing] factual discourse." You seem to be reading that into their comment. And I would definitely say there are factual discussions that can be had privately between individuals who already trust each other that are better kept private in order to spare the feelings of non-participants. Other humans have feelings, taking them into consideration is not weakness.
    • bufbupa 9y ago
      "by creating a toxic and hostile work environment" can only be defined as such by those within it. I could say anything was toxic and hostile for any subjective reasoning. And it becomes "true" by your definition if enough people agree with me? I'm arguing that line of reasoning is not constructive, and the collective's agreed upon opinions should not act as a barrier for scientific discourse. (which is what the memo was asking for)
  • Delmania 9y ago
    Why don't you go ahead and read this: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/08/sloppy-science.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/08/sloppy-scien... Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them. People are individuals and not statistics. You can quote statistics and average all day long, but if you offend, anger, or harm someone with your words, that person will not listen to you.
    • humanrebar 9y ago
      > Simply put, unless you are mindful of someone's "subjective feelings" you will never be able to have a "factual discourse" with them. Isn't that a catch 22? How do we know their subjective feelings if we can't discuss contested issues?
      • Delmania 9y ago
        No, not really. For this specific example, Damore knew the issue is a divisive one. If he didn't, then he does need to have some basic sensitivity training. From what I remember reading, he did acknowledge the issue was contentious. In that respect, there are ways and techniques to have that conversation. What Damore did was not that way. He should have consulted a resource like Crucial Conversations (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second/dp/1469266822 https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...) first.
        • rpiguy 9y ago
          Sensitivity training would not have helped and is not required here. He went out of his way to praise women engineers and to emphasize he supports diversity. There are just certain that intolerant people cannot discuss rationally, like biological gender differences. The fault lies with the intolerant minds, not Damore's approach.
          • Delmania 9y ago
            That's victim blaming. His claims that he supports diversity are nothing more than false virtue-signaling. I have yet to find a person who would say there are no biological gender differences. The problem is assuming those differences are the underlying cause for why women and minorities are under represented in technology. Were you aware the first programmers were females? There are -many- reasons why women and minorities are underrepresented. The biological differences are not a significant one.
• spodek 9y ago
  The quote you mentioned results from the process he criticized, not his criticizing it.
  • joshuamorton 9y ago
    This is only true if the process he criticized is actually real.
    • turtleofdeath 9y ago
      What reasoning does Damore have to lie?
      • joshuamorton 9y ago
        You say lie. I say "be uninformed".
  • Berobero 9y ago
    This is not the case, strictly speaking. It instead results from people perceiving there to be a lower bar for diversity hires; whether or not it is rational to describe things in that manner based on empirical data or what not is ultimately inconsequential. In that context, it is entirely possible for a poorly formulated memo to cause this type of damage, and likewise entirely possible for this perception to be perpetuated if institutions like Google do not properly back up its practices with compelling arguments to people who might otherwise have doubts.
    • sheepmullet 9y ago
      > In that context, it is entirely possible for a poorly formulated memo to cause this type of damage It's also possible, and more likely, for an overreaction to a memo to cause this kind of damage.
      • Berobero 9y ago
        Surely "overreaction" is a matter of perception as well.
• cpncrunch 9y ago
  Damore advocates removing "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar", so he's actually proposing a solution to this problem. Also, he himself isn't stereotyping women as crap engineers. He says "Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women".
• nicolashahn 9y ago
  But Damore didn't do anything to make women think they were hired only because of diversity initiatives. It's common knowledge that Google makes an effort to hire more women. That was already the case, and Damore merely brought attention to the negative aspects of it.
  • dguaraglia 9y ago
    There's a huge difference between increasing outreach and lowering the hiring bar. One shields more candidates, the other one increases the chances of hiring someone from the same pool of candidates. The reason why Google (and many other companies) are increasing outreach is because they want to maintain a high-quality of engineers, otherwise they'd just open the floodgate and let everyone in and solve their diversity problem once and for all. Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them.
    • turtleofdeath 9y ago
      > Damore's memo states a lot of things about Google's recruiting practices that are still to be proven truth. Lowering the bar is one of them. That's true and an excellent point. If he's lying about Google's recruitment practices, either by misunderstanding or by outright false accusation, then large parts of the memo are moot. On the other hand, I would make the counterpoint that the only reason his honesty has come into question is because of the negative reception his memo has had. Also, what are the odds that Damore misunderstood things? I'd say low. Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see.
      • dguaraglia 9y ago
        > I would make the counterpoint that the only reason his honesty has come into question is because of the negative reception his memo has had I'll be honest, that's what ticks me about Damore: after presenting the ideas in his memo a couple times and not getting any traction, he made a case of sharing them publicly inside Google. Not with a group of friends, not with the diversity team, but publicly. As you say, he's not a dummy, so he probably expected this whole controversy. His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it. I'm not 100% sure he's being honest about his intentions to "help Google." > Additionally, I have yet to see any fellow Googlers publicly calling him a liar, but we shall see As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)
• mizzack 9y ago
  From your quote: > 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? Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem. From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to suspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem. Totally different interpretations of cause and effect.
  • and0 9y ago
    The author of that quote clearly wasn't describing her fears that she had been hired only because of affirmative action, but the claims about her innate inabilities, however slight.
    • turtleofdeath 9y ago
      Yes, but this raises the issue of affirmative action causing bias about innate abilities, and that's absolutely true. If you knew there were a lower bar for people who had red hair, for example, because there's a pay gap and their population ratio isn't represented equally, every time you'd have someone on your team with red hair, you'd wonder if they were there because of the exception made for them or if they got there on pure merit. Thus, affirmative action causes people to question that merit (bias). Worse, the redhead who got in never knows if they got accepted based on merit or based on some quota, which contributes heavily Impostor syndrome, negative self image and confirmation bias based on that negative self image. You combine these two things over time and there is absolutely an impact. Damore's ultimate points were: let's discuss this and, by the way, please don't ignore me just because my opinion is unpopular.
      • n4r9 9y ago
        You can flip this argument on its head. As a man I'm often thinking about why the unequal gender distribution of roles and salary within my company is the way it is. I often wonder how much of my own success is due to opportunities and encouragement that women generally don't receive.
• zo1 9y ago
  I suspect both sides of the debate are now realizing what a hostile work environment preferential-hiring and rampant PC-culture is causing. One side has to walk on egg-shells scared of what they might let slip in conversation if they don't share the prevailing opinion of the loudest among-them. While the other side is constantly forced to question their abilities because preferential hiring appears to devalue their individual abilities, experiences and achievements.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• alpsgolden 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? Isn't this an argument against any form of different hiring practices based on race/gender? Even if distributions of abilities are equal in nature, if a college has a lower bar based on gender, then abilities won't be equal among graduates of that college. Conversely, even if abilities are on average different, if a college has the same bar and same standards based on gender, then you won't have to question if a graduate really deserved to have that credential.
  • tiles 9y ago
    Google's stance, as stated in the article, is that they divert more energy in to finding minority candidates. That's not the same as a lower bar. Abilities are expected to be distributed equally still.
    • humanrebar 9y ago
      In an interview, Damore said part of the "lowered bar" is extra interview rounds for minority candidates. You could call that "more energy", but it also reduces the chances that a given candidate suffers from bad luck.
      • notreallythough 9y ago
        Luck doesn't reduce skill, it alters opportunity.
        • arcticfox 9y ago
          Consider a 90% free throw shooter vs. a 50% shooter. To get the job, you have to make 3 shots. But the 90% shooter gets 3 shots and the 60% shooter gets 5 shots. All of a sudden the 60% shooter is more likely to get the job. It highly depends on the details of the interview process, which I don't know, but just to discount it with that logic is impossible.
• humanrebar 9y ago
  > ...it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day. Maybe. There's a lot of diversity within the male gender. I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background. I sometimes wonder which of my coworkers have something against me. I know all of them don't (or at least they are professional regardless), but people from my background are absolutely in a minority and are publicly ridiculed on a regular basis, including in HN comments. I don't care to compare my experience to being a woman engineer, but the feeling described isn't foreign to me.
  • AlexandrB 9y ago
    > I know I'm an outlier at work due to my politics, my religious beliefs, and other details of my background. Right. Now imagine being an outlier due to your biology in a way that's impossible to conceal. I'm an outlier in some ways from my peers as well. But I just don't talk about those beliefs or those parts of my life. You don't have the option to do that if you're female or a visible minority.
    • dguaraglia 9y ago
      Beautifully put.
    • humanrebar 9y ago
      > Now imagine being an outlier due to your biology in a way that's impossible to conceal. Who said I was concealing anything?
      • abvdasker 9y ago
        Critical difference that you fail to understand is that you have a choice as to how you are perceived. You have a choice about whether to blend in where a woman or visible minority would not.
        • humanrebar 9y ago
• rpiguy 9y ago
  The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way. Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together. The only exception to this rule seems to be around leftist issues, where if you disagree you are out of luck. You would expect, for example, the Jewish people and the Islamic people at a company to work together. The idea that toleration for one memo form a nobody employee marks an entire company as unwelcome is insane. This zero tolerance attitude is a recipe for disaster.
  • Blackthorn 9y ago
    > The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way. Considering how all sixteen of my female teammates were pissed off about it, I'm going to go ahead and say you are demonstrably wrong.
    • Uhhrrr 9y ago
      How many of them read the memo, as opposed to misleading characterizations of it ("Women can't do engineering", "misogynist", etc)?
      • Blackthorn 9y ago
        All of them.
        • rpiguy 9y ago
          >You don't get to determine how people receive a message. You >can only take care to send it in a way that would be >received well. If everyone in a large and diverse group > >receives the message poorly, the problem is not with the >group. >If you're worried about an angry mob firing you, start >communicating with care. This is absolutely false I do get to tell the group how to receive the message. When a group is intolerant the problem is with the group. When people were against interracial marriage and intolerant of other opinions the problem was with the group. When people were against African Americans riding in the front of the bus, the problem was with the intolerant group. No candy coating, sensitivity training, or messaging was required to tell the angry, intolerant mob that they were wrong, just like they are here.
• sheepmullet 9y ago
  > The document still did harm. Do you think she was unaware of Googles strong push for women in the workplace? That seems unlikely. Do you think she was previously unaware that many people might think diversity hires are less qualified? That seems unlikely. Did the memo guy state that diversity hires are lowering the bar? No. He went out of his way to say the opposite. The most likely scenario is she has felt this way since she was hired and now has a specific person she can direct her anger/frustration/hurt onto. > and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day. This is demonstrably false. Imposter syndrome is quite common for men in tech. I would be interested to see studies on imposter syndrome between genders and between fields.
• BearGoesChirp 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 is a result of affirmative action, not of the memo. Shooting the messenger, if you will.
  • turtleofdeath 9y ago
    Exactly. Affirmative action causes everyone, including the person, to question whether they got there on merit or based on filling some quota. Multiple biases are created.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Affirmative action causes everyone, including the person, to question whether they got there on merit or based on filling some quota. Affirmative Action does not require having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies). So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents.
      • turtleofdeath 9y ago
        > Affirmative Action does not require having quotas (and, in fact, they are in mlst contexts explicitly illegal, even in venues required to have Affirmative Action policies). Fair enough -- quotas aren't the issue, but affirmative action is the issue. > So, insofar as it “causes” the that result, it is largely by interaction with false information deliberately spread by its opponents. That's a concrete conclusion based on unprovable/shaky reasoning. And even if that were true and you could prove it, it wouldn't change the fact concerning affirmative action (in this case, lowering hiring standards for certain groups) causing bias for both coworkers and the employee. How do coworkers know an individual got there on their own merit? How does an individual who is on/above par, yet who happens to belong to an affirmative action group, shake the internal/external stigma that they got there based on the lowered bar? These things contribute to bias whether or not we like the overall idea behind affirmative action (which is to level the playing field). Nothing comes for free.
• ErikVandeWater 9y ago
  I would say that women already know that affirmative action hiring practices negatively affect people's perception of the abilities of those who benefit from them. And even if they didn't know, the hostile work environment[1] would already exist in the stereotypes women overcome, so publishing the memo would only give the opportunity to fight it more effectively for women who do not realize they face discrimination. [1] I am not certain the extent to which this stereotype exists, so I am not sure it rises to the level of making the work environment "hostile", but I see that it could be the case.
• falcolas 9y ago
  So if I say "the average women is shorter than the average man", am I now liable for being fired for creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers? That leap of logic - taking a general statement and interpreting it as a personal attack - strikes me as something I'd read in Dilbert. It strikes me as a justification for the outrage people want to feel. It's an excuse; nothing more.
  • turtleofdeath 9y ago
    Well, I agree with the spirit of your argument. However: > So if I say "the average women is shorter than the average man", am I now liable for being fired for creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers? You wouldn't just be saying that. You'd be saying, "we know about implicit/explicit biases, but maybe short people are less interested in tech and that helps to explain the hiring gap." That and a series of studies about how short people, on average, have biological qualities that differentiate them from taller people, which you use to bolster your supposition. In effect, you'd be saying that, on average, short people are possibly just less interested in technology because they like other things, respond differently to stress and don't have the drive for status that tall people do. So, while you wouldn't necessarily be _wrong_ for supposing that and people would be wrong to impute any further meaning than is represented (such as, short people aren't fit for tech, short people are not as good as tall people, etc.), you might be at least partially wrong for not being as clear as possible in your phrasing ... but not much else. Mainly, because his intention isn't to say women aren't fit for tech, but to point out why they might, on average, be less interested in tech, which would help to explain the gap in STEM interest.
• jshevek 9y ago
  I don't see any evidence of harm being done. How is this harm? And how is that alleged harmed Damore's fault?
• bluecalm 9y ago
  Quoted argument doesn't make sense. If the hiring standards are the same for women an men then you know that any women at the company is as qualified as any men at least until you get to know more about them, there is just less of them - no reason to prove anything. If on the other hand any kind of affirmative action is in place then you would be right to assume average women is less qualified than an average man because that's what affirmative action is: lowering the bar for certain groups. The very presence of affirmative action ("diversity efforts") should be the reason for women at the company to feel unsafe because then the prejudice against them becomes rational. This should be obvious in my view. The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool.
  • nodamage 9y ago
    If what you say is true then in workplaces without affirmative action programs we should not expect to find any workers who thinks the women that work there are less qualified than the men who work there. (Because the "cause", affirmative action, is not in place.) Do you really think that is the case? > The place to take action is in early schooling to get more women interested in tech or give them more opportunities to get involved not in hiring more of them from already smaller job seekers pool. Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do.
    • bluecalm 9y ago
      >>If what you say is true then in workplaces without affirmative action programs we should not expect to find any workers who thinks the women that work there are less qualified than the men who work there. (Because the "cause", affirmative action, is not in place.) Sadly that's not the case. Affirmative action makes prejudice rational but it's not the only reason people display prejudice. If A implies B then removing A doesn't make B false. >>Yes, this is what many of Google's diversity programs are intended to do. Good for them. They really should keep discrimination when hiring away from it. "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among X group" is discrimination. The same way "We don't lower the bar but we look for more candidates among white people" is discrimination based on race.
• megous 9y ago
  It's a ridiculously high standard. The only way to not have to feel discriminated like that would be if you could control minds of all relevant people in the workplace and make absolutely sure they don't have any bad thoughts towards you. Otherwise if you're a type of person who worries about what others think about you, you'll always have a reason to feel crappy, imagining whatever negative thought may be going through other people's minds. Way out of this is to find a way not to care so much about what others think. Or if you suspect particular person of actual discrimination, talk to them, or report them specifically if you can't do that or it doesn't work. Solution is not to suppress discussion by firing people for discussing diversity. That just creates a truly hostile environment of fear of being fired for others. And discussion is not really suppressed anyway. Quite the opposite.
• davidreiss 9y ago
  > There is real harm done if women who work at a company don't feel they are welcome there. Using that logic, should every male feel unwelcomed because of the pro-female activity at google and in corporate america? Can't damore and every male make the same argument? Should men feel offended that ycombinator has a "Ask a female engineer" segment but no "Ask a male engineer" segment?