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I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I

I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so. I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man? Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

camgunz 9y ago
> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least. We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.
- threeseed 9y ago
  Exactly. If Damore had focused his comments purely on hiring practices, quotas, discriminatory policies etc he would still be there and almost all would've found his comments constructive. But he didn't do that. He brought up scientifically baseless, insulting and emotionally immature rationales for an important and sensitive topic. Working around people in a professional environment requires nuance and tact. He showed none of this. The fact that so many in IT seem to miss this point and defend him explains so much about why many men and women stay away from this field.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I assume you're being sarcastic, given that your description of the memo is so perfectly opposite any reasonable interpretation, but I can't tell.
  - adekok 9y ago
    > He brought up scientifically baseless, The science behind it is well established. https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifesto-isnt-sexist-or-anti-diversity-its-science/article35903359/ https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manif... From what I've seen, much of the anti-memo invective is based on (a) not reading it, or (b) an extremist interpretation of what he says, or (c) outright denial of scientific facts. It really is easier to join a lynch mob, than to say "Hmm... perhaps we want a cold, cautious examination of the facts"
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  These things are talked about at the workplace, however. Just around the water cooler in private rather than out in the open. It is getting super weird and awkward these days where many people claim to adhere to the accepted diversity story in public but obviously don't in private.
  - pfranz 9y ago
    I think it's a weird dance we play with polite society and reality. Sometime last year it was pointed out that being called a racist is worse than actually being a racist. After years of political correctness, racist people have "learned the language" but you still see conscious and unconscious racism all the time. Does that fix systemic racism? Is it a step forward or a step backward? These are just tough problems. How do you make up for a system that is biased against you? At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's. It's hard to have an honest conversation because it's easy to police words, but tough to police thoughts and motivations.
    - camgunz 9y ago
      > Sometime last year it was pointed out that being called a racist is worse than actually being a racist. This is pretty interesting. At this point I accept that I'm both racist and sexist because of the culture I grew up in. But there was a time when I took the suggestion that I was racist or sexist as a deep assault on my character and intellect. I think it's hard to admit, probably especially for software engineers, that we're biased in some way, but the truth is that this stuff is insidious. It's somehow true that boys are called on more than girls, and they're given more positive feedback for participation in the classroom. Or like earlier in this thread I referenced Dr. Sadedin's Quora post and someone responded to it assuming that she's a man. Or I remember a prominent woman feminist on Twitter talking about how she was confused why a woman flight attendant was talking about the weather forecast, potential turbulence, and landing time when she realized the woman was actually the pilot. No one's immune from this. It's pernicious, it's embedded in our culture, and it pervades our entire society. > At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's. This is a fair point. I think (to use a corporate term I kind of disdain) we need buy-in from white men and we don't have it right now. Most of us don't believe that a problem exists, or that we are sexist and racist (importantly, just like everyone else), or that we personally need to do anything about this. Until that changes, we'll still feel cheated by pro-diversity policies, and issues like this will keep flaring up. I think the fix is simple but not necessarily easy (oh no, accidental Rich Hickey reference haha), and it's to just keep talking about these issues. Not, of course, in the workplace, but in your social circles. And if you can't learn about this stuff in your social circles, do some research online or broaden your social circle to challenge yourself a little (I use theflipside.io and it's been surprisingly illuminating). Because the facts are that current US society and culture puts over 2/3 of us at a significant disadvantage, and the sooner the dominant group (straight cis white men) gets wise to it the sooner we can fix it.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I have a hard time believing Google punishes liberal political views, based on my experience with their employees.
- calimac 9y ago
  The workplace absolutely is the venue because hr policy is built around it.
- deleted 9y ago
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- humanrebar 9y ago
  Shouldn't employers abstain from controversial subjects as well, then? It seems one sided to hold employees to that standard but not the corporations and bosses they work for.
  - pyronik 9y ago
    Every day the "pro-diversity" (in the sense of preferentially hiring practices) don't abstain... they tell you a viewpoint and force you to adopt it even when you disagree. The fact people keep their mouth shuts shouldn't be a surprise. That doesn't make the pro crowd any less controversial. It's just they don't get fired for their controversial opinions.
- nicolashahn 9y ago
  I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll disagree with you. The workplace was the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in another part of the comment section for this very article. Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective, introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire' among other things. What it did not do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him. Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo, and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally introduced it to, at least at that point in time. Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial. It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    It isn't a question of whether it's the right place to have it. A corporation may not be the best place to bring up these topics, if your goal is to avoid getting fired. Otherwise, it is a place full of smart engineers and the guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation in a corporate setting about a policy which Google as a corporation faces external and internal pressure about. But as far as receptiveness, yes Google was a great venue for this, given who works there. Do you think hacker news is a better venue in that respect? Even on this very board, that same exact seemingly harmless claim, given and elaborated on in a talk about men and women given by a professor of psychology at FSU, was downvoted and bashed in a TL;DR manner: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844777 It fared better a year ago, but not by much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909954 EDIT: curious, why the downvotes?
- Houshalter 9y ago
  If your workplace is sexistly discriminating against men and firing employees that disagree, then yes it is the venue for it.
- briandear 9y ago
  The workplace shouldn't be the venue, except many companies are kind of forcing this issue into the workplace by making valiant and public-relations-tinged efforts at diversity. I think Google even has a Vice President for Diversity -- which to me seems a bit silly because unless there's a business case to be made, it's just feel-good self-congratulation for how "progressive" you are. Perhaps having a diversity manager -- but an actual Vice President level executive? That seems like that should already be in the portfolio of whomever is in charge of Human Resources -- certainly not a separate executive role. Is a Diversity executive actually impacting the bottom line of the company? Are there any actual quantitative facts that indicate that "diversity" improves a business's profitability? I am not arguing against diversity, please don't misunderstand. But it feels to me that this violent desire for diversity is something rather unique to SV tech. For example, the lack of men in the mental health professions barely raises any mention aside from the quadrennial NY Times think piece. The lack of men kindergarten teachers also barely makes a dent in the national discussion. The lack of women in building trades (despite those jobs being extremely well paying compared to "white collar" mid-level marketing jobs often dominated by women.) There's also not a big emphasis on the lack of women working in aviation or firefighting, despite those also being very well paid positions. But for tech, for some reason it's a "big deal." Fighting discrimination is obviously important as a basic matter of human rights, but much of tech's diversity push isn't about fighting discrimination as much as it's about actively recreating the balance of men and women in the field based on an arbitrary desired ratio. If men and women are different, then it follows that they will have different desired vocations to a similar degree that they are different. If we argue that men and women are exactly the same, then why aren't more men working in mental health or social work -- those fields are about 80% women. We can't use the discrimination argument because that would imply that women discriminate against men -- and that doesn't fit the narrative that the straight white male is the bane of society.
- briholt 9y ago
  "...the workplace isn't the venue for [discussing your company's potentially illegal hiring practices]."
- ThomPete 9y ago
  But it is when the problem he was trying to address was the effect of diversity politics at google. Where else should that be discussed than in a small closed group of people.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  The interesting thing is it seems on the surface that Google did invite these kind of discussions in their forum probably by the nature of forum, the explicit rules about sharing ideas to improve the company, the product etc. Now one of the valuable lessons one learns operating in any large institution is that yes there are stupid questions no matter if the policy explicitly states there aren't, and there are always unwritten rules. Failure to discover the unwritten rules leads to getting fired, let go, skipped by during a promotion, etc. Just curious, what do you think would be a proper venue. Tweeting at Google HR publicly, private emails to owners / upper management?
- josteink 9y ago
  > We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this. So we shouldn't discuss the policies in place at our workplace... At our workplace? Where on earth do propose we do discuss such changes then?
- lagadu 9y ago
  I entirely disagree. Of course this is personal preference but I firmly believe that the best way to fix a broken or flawed system is to place as much stress on it as possible in order for it to break down completely which in turn will force action to be taken by whoever is in charge of it which leads to a system that won't suffer from the same flaws. I feel it we owe to society that we should try to improve it at every opportunity and allowing ourselves to adapt to a bad system instead of trying to break it is doing society a disservice. In other words: I feel it is our duty to try and provoke changes to what we perceive as bad instead of exclusively trying to adapt to the conditions presented. In this case, he felt the system in the workplace is wrong then he should try to stress it into breaking so it can finally get fixed. Another example: lets say that because of a bad bureaucratic process a certain action causes long queues on some service. I feel that it's everyone's responsibility to do that very action in order for the service to stop working entirely, which would force a change to it by whoever is in charge. I see it as "voting with your actions".
richmarr 9y ago
> You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them You can, and some people have, and that's okay. It's not clear whether you're making the implication here, but commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate. > I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty". Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering. He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty. Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse. This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias. Further, Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification, let alone evidence. That's either more confirmation bias or conscious sleight-of-hand, either way, it's certainly not intellectual honesty. I don't bear Damore any ill will, he should be forgiven, but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias. These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.
- weberc2 9y ago
  Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits.
  - richmarr 9y ago
    > Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which. > Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits. Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar". You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.
ruraljuror 9y ago
>What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. I actually don't think the public response suggests insight or originality on his part. I would attribute much more of that to the social context.
- nicolashahn 9y ago
  You may be right, but my point was the ideas he brought up merited discussion. The social timing of it may be what caused it to blow up so much (that and the misrepresentation by Gizmodo), but at least personally, I had not heard the argument made before in a way that allowed it to be discussed as widely as it is.
  - calibration263 9y ago
    As some one who took a sociology 101 class in junior college... nothing in his memo is original/new/insightful. This is a classic nature vs nurture argument.
pm24601 9y ago
> Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. No. Not yet. women still tend to be underpaid. Women make 72 cents to a male's $1 of wages for the same job. As a white male, I don't care to "discuss" if women are my intellectual inferiors - which is exactly the point Damore was making ... and the point that YOU are making.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  And yet you parade largely debunked factoids as supporting evidence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/02/the-equal-pay-day-factoid-that-women-make-78-cents-for-every-dollar-earned-by-men/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...
- asabjorn 9y ago
  "According to data for 8.7m employees worldwide gathered by Korn Ferry, a consultancy, women in Britain make just 1% less than men who have the same function and level at the same employer. In most European countries, the discrepancy is similarly small. These numbers do not show that the labour market is free of sex discrimination. However, they do suggest that the main problem today is not unequal pay for equal work, but whatever it is that leads women to be in lower-ranking jobs at lower-paying organisations." https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-chart https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-...
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please not cross into incivility when commenting here? Plenty of people are arguing the same views as you without doing that, while you've been doing it pretty regularly. If you'd correct this, we'd appreciate it, because these discussions are hard enough to keep substantive without people taking swipes at each other.
cortesoft 9y ago
Just because someone makes points that have some relationship to facts doesn't mean they can't still be held responsible for disparaging things you say. Imagine if he had written a 10 page paper about how they shouldn't hire so many fat people because they cost more in health insurance, with all sorts of facts and numbers to back up his claim. Or if he wrote it about short people, that they, on average, were worse coders. I am sure you could find some semi-reasonable sounding studies showing some correlation between height and some definition of success.
- bluecalm 9y ago
  The argument is though that what Google is doing is hiring disproportionately from a smaller group of candidates. The argument would apply as well if they "looked for more fat candidates without lowering the bar" or "looked for more short people without lowering the bar". Those statements describe discrimination of people who don't belong to pointed group. The argument in the memo is: hire on equal standards and if that results in less women than men then it's caused by X and here is what you can do about X instead of discriminating at the point of hire.
Bahamut 9y ago
Isn't the onus on Damore to put forth supported arguments? He made a lot of claims that were completely unsupported. The worst offense though was that a lot of the assertions were completely disconnected from supporting the original claim that Google's diversity efforts were misguided. In order to have an honest intellectual discussion, first there would have had to have been an honest effort at putting together a coherent argument with such controversial/incendiary points/implications made. Damore failed that miserably.
GrantSolar 9y ago
> What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. The memo is being discussed so much because it is controversial, which does not require originality, nor is it necessarily insightful. It shows the perspective of someone in an exclusive position which I believe adds (considerably) to the reasons it's being discussed, but to make the conclusion that it's being talked about because it adds to the discussion is incorrect.
ziikutv 9y ago
Could not have agreed more. I do not think they should have fired him because it further validates one of the points he made about "being on the right side" (I am talking about the statement at the beginning that all women seem to agree with, do not have the exact quote on me atm.)
sonabinu 9y ago
>Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. It's about the attitude. As a woman in Tech, there are so many men you don't feel like you belong. Men think you are really not very feminine anyway, you are a geek who likes programming. With memos like this more young women are going to rethink a career where they will feel alone and may have their biological identity questioned if they are successful
deleted 9y ago
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camgunz 9y ago

> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least. We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.

threeseed 9y ago
Exactly. If Damore had focused his comments purely on hiring practices, quotas, discriminatory policies etc he would still be there and almost all would've found his comments constructive. But he didn't do that. He brought up scientifically baseless, insulting and emotionally immature rationales for an important and sensitive topic. Working around people in a professional environment requires nuance and tact. He showed none of this. The fact that so many in IT seem to miss this point and defend him explains so much about why many men and women stay away from this field.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I assume you're being sarcastic, given that your description of the memo is so perfectly opposite any reasonable interpretation, but I can't tell.
- adekok 9y ago
  > He brought up scientifically baseless, The science behind it is well established. https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifesto-isnt-sexist-or-anti-diversity-its-science/article35903359/ https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manif... From what I've seen, much of the anti-memo invective is based on (a) not reading it, or (b) an extremist interpretation of what he says, or (c) outright denial of scientific facts. It really is easier to join a lynch mob, than to say "Hmm... perhaps we want a cold, cautious examination of the facts"
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
These things are talked about at the workplace, however. Just around the water cooler in private rather than out in the open. It is getting super weird and awkward these days where many people claim to adhere to the accepted diversity story in public but obviously don't in private.
- pfranz 9y ago
  I think it's a weird dance we play with polite society and reality. Sometime last year it was pointed out that being called a racist is worse than actually being a racist. After years of political correctness, racist people have "learned the language" but you still see conscious and unconscious racism all the time. Does that fix systemic racism? Is it a step forward or a step backward? These are just tough problems. How do you make up for a system that is biased against you? At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's. It's hard to have an honest conversation because it's easy to police words, but tough to police thoughts and motivations.
  - camgunz 9y ago
    > Sometime last year it was pointed out that being called a racist is worse than actually being a racist. This is pretty interesting. At this point I accept that I'm both racist and sexist because of the culture I grew up in. But there was a time when I took the suggestion that I was racist or sexist as a deep assault on my character and intellect. I think it's hard to admit, probably especially for software engineers, that we're biased in some way, but the truth is that this stuff is insidious. It's somehow true that boys are called on more than girls, and they're given more positive feedback for participation in the classroom. Or like earlier in this thread I referenced Dr. Sadedin's Quora post and someone responded to it assuming that she's a man. Or I remember a prominent woman feminist on Twitter talking about how she was confused why a woman flight attendant was talking about the weather forecast, potential turbulence, and landing time when she realized the woman was actually the pilot. No one's immune from this. It's pernicious, it's embedded in our culture, and it pervades our entire society. > At what point are you disadvantaging the incumbent group? They didn't exactly choose to be in the incumbent group as much as the oppressed group chose their's. This is a fair point. I think (to use a corporate term I kind of disdain) we need buy-in from white men and we don't have it right now. Most of us don't believe that a problem exists, or that we are sexist and racist (importantly, just like everyone else), or that we personally need to do anything about this. Until that changes, we'll still feel cheated by pro-diversity policies, and issues like this will keep flaring up. I think the fix is simple but not necessarily easy (oh no, accidental Rich Hickey reference haha), and it's to just keep talking about these issues. Not, of course, in the workplace, but in your social circles. And if you can't learn about this stuff in your social circles, do some research online or broaden your social circle to challenge yourself a little (I use theflipside.io and it's been surprisingly illuminating). Because the facts are that current US society and culture puts over 2/3 of us at a significant disadvantage, and the sooner the dominant group (straight cis white men) gets wise to it the sooner we can fix it.
weberc2 9y ago
I have a hard time believing Google punishes liberal political views, based on my experience with their employees.
calimac 9y ago
The workplace absolutely is the venue because hr policy is built around it.
deleted 9y ago
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humanrebar 9y ago
Shouldn't employers abstain from controversial subjects as well, then? It seems one sided to hold employees to that standard but not the corporations and bosses they work for.
- pyronik 9y ago
  Every day the "pro-diversity" (in the sense of preferentially hiring practices) don't abstain... they tell you a viewpoint and force you to adopt it even when you disagree. The fact people keep their mouth shuts shouldn't be a surprise. That doesn't make the pro crowd any less controversial. It's just they don't get fired for their controversial opinions.
nicolashahn 9y ago
I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll disagree with you. The workplace was the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in another part of the comment section for this very article. Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective, introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire' among other things. What it did not do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him. Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo, and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally introduced it to, at least at that point in time. Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial. It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.
- EGreg 9y ago
  It isn't a question of whether it's the right place to have it. A corporation may not be the best place to bring up these topics, if your goal is to avoid getting fired. Otherwise, it is a place full of smart engineers and the guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation in a corporate setting about a policy which Google as a corporation faces external and internal pressure about. But as far as receptiveness, yes Google was a great venue for this, given who works there. Do you think hacker news is a better venue in that respect? Even on this very board, that same exact seemingly harmless claim, given and elaborated on in a talk about men and women given by a professor of psychology at FSU, was downvoted and bashed in a TL;DR manner: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844777 It fared better a year ago, but not by much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909954 EDIT: curious, why the downvotes?
Houshalter 9y ago
If your workplace is sexistly discriminating against men and firing employees that disagree, then yes it is the venue for it.
briandear 9y ago
The workplace shouldn't be the venue, except many companies are kind of forcing this issue into the workplace by making valiant and public-relations-tinged efforts at diversity. I think Google even has a Vice President for Diversity -- which to me seems a bit silly because unless there's a business case to be made, it's just feel-good self-congratulation for how "progressive" you are. Perhaps having a diversity manager -- but an actual Vice President level executive? That seems like that should already be in the portfolio of whomever is in charge of Human Resources -- certainly not a separate executive role. Is a Diversity executive actually impacting the bottom line of the company? Are there any actual quantitative facts that indicate that "diversity" improves a business's profitability? I am not arguing against diversity, please don't misunderstand. But it feels to me that this violent desire for diversity is something rather unique to SV tech. For example, the lack of men in the mental health professions barely raises any mention aside from the quadrennial NY Times think piece. The lack of men kindergarten teachers also barely makes a dent in the national discussion. The lack of women in building trades (despite those jobs being extremely well paying compared to "white collar" mid-level marketing jobs often dominated by women.) There's also not a big emphasis on the lack of women working in aviation or firefighting, despite those also being very well paid positions. But for tech, for some reason it's a "big deal." Fighting discrimination is obviously important as a basic matter of human rights, but much of tech's diversity push isn't about fighting discrimination as much as it's about actively recreating the balance of men and women in the field based on an arbitrary desired ratio. If men and women are different, then it follows that they will have different desired vocations to a similar degree that they are different. If we argue that men and women are exactly the same, then why aren't more men working in mental health or social work -- those fields are about 80% women. We can't use the discrimination argument because that would imply that women discriminate against men -- and that doesn't fit the narrative that the straight white male is the bane of society.
briholt 9y ago
"...the workplace isn't the venue for [discussing your company's potentially illegal hiring practices]."
ThomPete 9y ago
But it is when the problem he was trying to address was the effect of diversity politics at google. Where else should that be discussed than in a small closed group of people.
rdtsc 9y ago
The interesting thing is it seems on the surface that Google did invite these kind of discussions in their forum probably by the nature of forum, the explicit rules about sharing ideas to improve the company, the product etc. Now one of the valuable lessons one learns operating in any large institution is that yes there are stupid questions no matter if the policy explicitly states there aren't, and there are always unwritten rules. Failure to discover the unwritten rules leads to getting fired, let go, skipped by during a promotion, etc. Just curious, what do you think would be a proper venue. Tweeting at Google HR publicly, private emails to owners / upper management?
josteink 9y ago
> We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this. So we shouldn't discuss the policies in place at our workplace... At our workplace? Where on earth do propose we do discuss such changes then?
lagadu 9y ago
I entirely disagree. Of course this is personal preference but I firmly believe that the best way to fix a broken or flawed system is to place as much stress on it as possible in order for it to break down completely which in turn will force action to be taken by whoever is in charge of it which leads to a system that won't suffer from the same flaws. I feel it we owe to society that we should try to improve it at every opportunity and allowing ourselves to adapt to a bad system instead of trying to break it is doing society a disservice. In other words: I feel it is our duty to try and provoke changes to what we perceive as bad instead of exclusively trying to adapt to the conditions presented. In this case, he felt the system in the workplace is wrong then he should try to stress it into breaking so it can finally get fixed. Another example: lets say that because of a bad bureaucratic process a certain action causes long queues on some service. I feel that it's everyone's responsibility to do that very action in order for the service to stop working entirely, which would force a change to it by whoever is in charge. I see it as "voting with your actions".

richmarr 9y ago

> You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them You can, and some people have, and that's okay. It's not clear whether you're making the implication here, but commonly it's implied that "if you walk away from the debate therefore you are wrong", which is fallacious. Nobody owes you a debate. > I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way Then the initial argument needs to start from a place of "intellectual honesty". Damore presented evidence to support his claim that women are on average less able than men in areas relevant to engineering. He didn't discuss veracity, or contradictory evidence. That's textbook confirmation bias, not intellectual honesty. Damore then started making HR policy proposals. We use a 50/50 gender ratio as an indicator that a particular field is free from bias. It's one thing to propose that 50/50 is not the natural ratio to end up with, but until Damore can propose a model that predicts another number then proposing HR policy changes put the cart before the horse. This indicates that the policy changes are what James in interested in, not the evidence. More confirmation bias. Further, Damore's proposals discuss diversity as a whole (race not just gender) without a single word of justification, let alone evidence. That's either more confirmation bias or conscious sleight-of-hand, either way, it's certainly not intellectual honesty. I don't bear Damore any ill will, he should be forgiven, but this memo was a mistake and showed poor judgement and more than a little bias. These studies may be good science, but stringing them together to confirm a conclusion you'd already set your sights in making is bad science.

weberc2 9y ago
Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits.
- richmarr 9y ago
  > Having unconscious bias or otherwise being incorrect doesn't make you intellectually dishonest. If you purport to be a (competent) scientist in the 21st century then personally I expected you to be highly aware of biases such as publication bias & confirmation bias and act accordingly. That speaks either to his discipline/understanding or his honesty, I don't know which. > Whether or not his claims are true, Damore presented a much more metered and reasonable argument than virtually all of his detractors or even published social pundits. Damore was metered, but understandably triggered a threat response in the people who his memo targeted as being below "the bar". You may have read a selection of counter-arguments, some of which will be less "metered and reasonable" than his. Unfortunately the emotional tenor of an argument is not the measure of its merit.

ruraljuror 9y ago

>What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. I actually don't think the public response suggests insight or originality on his part. I would attribute much more of that to the social context.

nicolashahn 9y ago
You may be right, but my point was the ideas he brought up merited discussion. The social timing of it may be what caused it to blow up so much (that and the misrepresentation by Gizmodo), but at least personally, I had not heard the argument made before in a way that allowed it to be discussed as widely as it is.
- calibration263 9y ago
  As some one who took a sociology 101 class in junior college... nothing in his memo is original/new/insightful. This is a classic nature vs nurture argument.

pm24601 9y ago

> Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. No. Not yet. women still tend to be underpaid. Women make 72 cents to a male's $1 of wages for the same job. As a white male, I don't care to "discuss" if women are my intellectual inferiors - which is exactly the point Damore was making ... and the point that YOU are making.

FireBeyond 9y ago
And yet you parade largely debunked factoids as supporting evidence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/02/the-equal-pay-day-factoid-that-women-make-78-cents-for-every-dollar-earned-by-men/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...
asabjorn 9y ago
"According to data for 8.7m employees worldwide gathered by Korn Ferry, a consultancy, women in Britain make just 1% less than men who have the same function and level at the same employer. In most European countries, the discrepancy is similarly small. These numbers do not show that the labour market is free of sex discrimination. However, they do suggest that the main problem today is not unequal pay for equal work, but whatever it is that leads women to be in lower-ranking jobs at lower-paying organisations." https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-chart https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-...
dang 9y ago
Would you please not cross into incivility when commenting here? Plenty of people are arguing the same views as you without doing that, while you've been doing it pretty regularly. If you'd correct this, we'd appreciate it, because these discussions are hard enough to keep substantive without people taking swipes at each other.

cortesoft 9y ago

Just because someone makes points that have some relationship to facts doesn't mean they can't still be held responsible for disparaging things you say. Imagine if he had written a 10 page paper about how they shouldn't hire so many fat people because they cost more in health insurance, with all sorts of facts and numbers to back up his claim. Or if he wrote it about short people, that they, on average, were worse coders. I am sure you could find some semi-reasonable sounding studies showing some correlation between height and some definition of success.

bluecalm 9y ago
The argument is though that what Google is doing is hiring disproportionately from a smaller group of candidates. The argument would apply as well if they "looked for more fat candidates without lowering the bar" or "looked for more short people without lowering the bar". Those statements describe discrimination of people who don't belong to pointed group. The argument in the memo is: hire on equal standards and if that results in less women than men then it's caused by X and here is what you can do about X instead of discriminating at the point of hire.

Bahamut 9y ago

Isn't the onus on Damore to put forth supported arguments? He made a lot of claims that were completely unsupported. The worst offense though was that a lot of the assertions were completely disconnected from supporting the original claim that Google's diversity efforts were misguided. In order to have an honest intellectual discussion, first there would have had to have been an honest effort at putting together a coherent argument with such controversial/incendiary points/implications made. Damore failed that miserably.

GrantSolar 9y ago

> What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. The memo is being discussed so much because it is controversial, which does not require originality, nor is it necessarily insightful. It shows the perspective of someone in an exclusive position which I believe adds (considerably) to the reasons it's being discussed, but to make the conclusion that it's being talked about because it adds to the discussion is incorrect.

ziikutv 9y ago

Could not have agreed more. I do not think they should have fired him because it further validates one of the points he made about "being on the right side" (I am talking about the statement at the beginning that all women seem to agree with, do not have the exact quote on me atm.)

sonabinu 9y ago

>Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. It's about the attitude. As a woman in Tech, there are so many men you don't feel like you belong. Men think you are really not very feminine anyway, you are a geek who likes programming. With memos like this more young women are going to rethink a career where they will feel alone and may have their biological identity questioned if they are successful

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