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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 th

by 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.
- token92375 9y ago
  note that "differ in the distribution of abilities" does not mean the average is different, it can also mean the outliers are more extreme, and as I understand it research supports just that.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  For what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or less, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable career choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently nonverbal jobs (programming) less often. https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_james_damore_ama/dlknpme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame... "For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer."
  - xigency 9y ago
    Yeah, I still think that's transparently BS. His source there is another opinion piece. That said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices. As someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and co-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All of this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in one AMA answer, it might by "cultural." I believe that is a far more acceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology.

by kromem 9y ago

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.

token92375 9y ago
note that "differ in the distribution of abilities" does not mean the average is different, it can also mean the outliers are more extreme, and as I understand it research supports just that.
humanrebar 9y ago
For what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or less, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable career choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently nonverbal jobs (programming) less often. https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_james_damore_ama/dlknpme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame... "For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer."
- xigency 9y ago
  Yeah, I still think that's transparently BS. His source there is another opinion piece. That said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices. As someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and co-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All of this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in one AMA answer, it might by "cultural." I believe that is a far more acceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology.