4 ms·

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 biolo

by 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?
humanrebar 9y ago
One of the women said: > 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.” She goes on to say that people will likely misapply the ideas and judge her. It seems a lot of detractors think Damore should have known better and he takes responsibility for how his ideas affect people. Another says: > I don’t really see how it’s useful to have a discussion of general group traits in a work setting. 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? Again, she's not really disagreeing with Damore in this snippet. She's saying the ideas themselves are counterproductive and shouldn't be discussed.
- Danihan 9y ago
  Sure, but it's the hypocrisy of saying, "stereotyping people by group is productive sometimes (when hiring and trying to hit quotas)" but any criticism of it is unproductive, in fact, how dare you even discuss it at the workplace."
- xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
  So she completely disagrees with sociology as an academic discipline? That's just all sorts of crazy/anti-intellectualism
- micahbright 9y ago
  > why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women. Well, she only has to prove it to men that she assumes are sexist or incapable of understanding population distributions. I mean, really? Let's fight sexism with sexism.
taysic 9y ago
As a woman I can say "women are less inclined to be engineers" is only a skip and hop away from "women are not suited to be engineers. I would say don't even bother with the biological argument because as a woman you likely know all too well how it's mainly used. Anyway, its not really the business of a company to argue such abstract matters. It's one thing to be teased about these things but it's another to have people in authority making an opinion on such abstract things. No matter how tame it was. Woman know they are capable of doing anything so they don't really want anything less than that entering the discussion.
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  So, honest question. Suppose you work at a hospital, and 70% of the nurses are women. And you're coming under fire, and a lawsuit is pending, because this indicates discrimination. Now suppose a coworker writes a piece saying roughly "Way fewer men apply for these positions. I suspect men are less interested in being nurses, so we have fewer male nurses, but we can't lower the bar just to make it 50-50. I think it's even possible that men just biologically enjoy nursing less on average, so trying to be 50-50 isn't a reasonable goal" A) Should this coworker be fired for expressing this idea? B) Is this argument a skip and hop away from "men are not suited to be nurses" ? C) Does whether or not there actually are biological factors have any bearing on questions A/B ?
  - taysic 9y ago
    Sure, honest answer. First off, saying 70% nurses are women does not indicate discrimination. Plenty of the jobs I've applied for as a woman are small startups with over 70% men but I've never thought that this was due to discrimination. We're talking here about a policy that Google engages in voluntarily. So we know that according to the memo that Google seeks to reduce the number of "false negative" rejections of diversity candidates by paying more attention to those applications. This could be to help counteract discrimination that occurs during the process. This ends up with about 20% qualified women in these positions. There is nothing here to indicate that the bar is being lowered (the interview process is just as grueling) or that 50-50 is the aim. But if men were being discriminated at when trying to get these nurses jobs, I'd have no problem whatsoever with the respective companies trying to reduce the number of false negatives during the hiring process. Or even just trying to hire more men to create an environment of more diversity among nurses. Those men who are hired there are still there because they want the job and are qualified to do it. The problem with the biological argument is that historically it hasn't been used to say that "women are not inclined to do x,y,z" but rather "women are not suited to do it". So if there was a historical parallel with nursing and men and people in the past did not think they were capable of doing this job - I'd say people should be more sensitive about what they say in the work environment in our modern day. A - Generally no, but if the memo was broadcast to the whole company and touched on this points due to the reasons expressed above - I think its ok for the company to take action in the way it deems appropriate. B - Could be, if that was the prevailing belief system. Realistically though, its not a true parallel because I don't think many people believe that men are not capable of being nurses. C - Not sure what this means. Whether they are biological factors or social ones should not be something thats asserted by a company. That's going into way too grey territory imo.
studentrob 9y ago
> the author said women are less suited to being good engineers... Where was that stated? DAMORE: "I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." EDIT: also https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s
- Lon7 9y ago
  And I think it's important to point out here that this argument is probably wrong. It is one of the many examples where Damore cites research, but puts his own spin on it. One of the researchers Danmore cited is David P Schmitt. Here [0] David states: "But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm. Moreover, men are more emotional than women in certain ways, too. Sex differences in emotion depend on the type of emotion, how it is measured, where it is expressed, when it is expressed, and lots of other contextual factors." A lot of the science that Danmore cites is correct. But he goes beyond what the science says in his memo. He misinterprets it to prove his point. This is my main problem with the memo, and why someone may call it sexist. [0] http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
  - hellopier 9y ago
    So he's wrong. People in google should have worked that out, made a point of pointing it out to others, and got on with their work. Instead they freaked out, leaked to the media, and got this guy fired.
    - 9y ago

by dreta 9y ago

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?

humanrebar 9y ago

One of the women said: > 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.” She goes on to say that people will likely misapply the ideas and judge her. It seems a lot of detractors think Damore should have known better and he takes responsibility for how his ideas affect people. Another says: > I don’t really see how it’s useful to have a discussion of general group traits in a work setting. 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? Again, she's not really disagreeing with Damore in this snippet. She's saying the ideas themselves are counterproductive and shouldn't be discussed.

Danihan 9y ago
Sure, but it's the hypocrisy of saying, "stereotyping people by group is productive sometimes (when hiring and trying to hit quotas)" but any criticism of it is unproductive, in fact, how dare you even discuss it at the workplace."
xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
So she completely disagrees with sociology as an academic discipline? That's just all sorts of crazy/anti-intellectualism
micahbright 9y ago
> why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving that she’s not like other women. Well, she only has to prove it to men that she assumes are sexist or incapable of understanding population distributions. I mean, really? Let's fight sexism with sexism.

taysic 9y ago

As a woman I can say "women are less inclined to be engineers" is only a skip and hop away from "women are not suited to be engineers. I would say don't even bother with the biological argument because as a woman you likely know all too well how it's mainly used. Anyway, its not really the business of a company to argue such abstract matters. It's one thing to be teased about these things but it's another to have people in authority making an opinion on such abstract things. No matter how tame it was. Woman know they are capable of doing anything so they don't really want anything less than that entering the discussion.

alexandercrohde 9y ago
So, honest question. Suppose you work at a hospital, and 70% of the nurses are women. And you're coming under fire, and a lawsuit is pending, because this indicates discrimination. Now suppose a coworker writes a piece saying roughly "Way fewer men apply for these positions. I suspect men are less interested in being nurses, so we have fewer male nurses, but we can't lower the bar just to make it 50-50. I think it's even possible that men just biologically enjoy nursing less on average, so trying to be 50-50 isn't a reasonable goal" A) Should this coworker be fired for expressing this idea? B) Is this argument a skip and hop away from "men are not suited to be nurses" ? C) Does whether or not there actually are biological factors have any bearing on questions A/B ?
- taysic 9y ago
  Sure, honest answer. First off, saying 70% nurses are women does not indicate discrimination. Plenty of the jobs I've applied for as a woman are small startups with over 70% men but I've never thought that this was due to discrimination. We're talking here about a policy that Google engages in voluntarily. So we know that according to the memo that Google seeks to reduce the number of "false negative" rejections of diversity candidates by paying more attention to those applications. This could be to help counteract discrimination that occurs during the process. This ends up with about 20% qualified women in these positions. There is nothing here to indicate that the bar is being lowered (the interview process is just as grueling) or that 50-50 is the aim. But if men were being discriminated at when trying to get these nurses jobs, I'd have no problem whatsoever with the respective companies trying to reduce the number of false negatives during the hiring process. Or even just trying to hire more men to create an environment of more diversity among nurses. Those men who are hired there are still there because they want the job and are qualified to do it. The problem with the biological argument is that historically it hasn't been used to say that "women are not inclined to do x,y,z" but rather "women are not suited to do it". So if there was a historical parallel with nursing and men and people in the past did not think they were capable of doing this job - I'd say people should be more sensitive about what they say in the work environment in our modern day. A - Generally no, but if the memo was broadcast to the whole company and touched on this points due to the reasons expressed above - I think its ok for the company to take action in the way it deems appropriate. B - Could be, if that was the prevailing belief system. Realistically though, its not a true parallel because I don't think many people believe that men are not capable of being nurses. C - Not sure what this means. Whether they are biological factors or social ones should not be something thats asserted by a company. That's going into way too grey territory imo.

studentrob 9y ago

> the author said women are less suited to being good engineers... Where was that stated? DAMORE: "I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." EDIT: also https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s

Lon7 9y ago
And I think it's important to point out here that this argument is probably wrong. It is one of the many examples where Damore cites research, but puts his own spin on it. One of the researchers Danmore cited is David P Schmitt. Here [0] David states: "But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm. Moreover, men are more emotional than women in certain ways, too. Sex differences in emotion depend on the type of emotion, how it is measured, where it is expressed, when it is expressed, and lots of other contextual factors." A lot of the science that Danmore cites is correct. But he goes beyond what the science says in his memo. He misinterprets it to prove his point. This is my main problem with the memo, and why someone may call it sexist. [0] http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
- hellopier 9y ago
  So he's wrong. People in google should have worked that out, made a point of pointing it out to others, and got on with their work. Instead they freaked out, leaked to the media, and got this guy fired.
  - 9y ago