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> Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion. Let's focus on things we can ac

> Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion. Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind. I'd ask a few questions about this interview practice though. 1) Is this the entirety of Google's diversity practices in hiring? I'd be surprised if it is. So even if this isn't lowering the bar it still doesn't prove conclusively that's not what they're doing. Again I'd like to see a more complete accounting of what exactly it is they do. However, I'm certainly not saying that you need to provide this in order to have a legitimate argument, you don't have access to this information any more than I do. 2) This practice seems to have a somewhat narrow view of what a interviewer bias looks like. In particular it only tries to eliminate bias in the case of a minority being rejected. What would happen if we were to instead attempt to detect interviewers who were prone to bias by randomly giving rejected candidates second interviews and seeing which interviewers wound up frequently disagreeing with their peers? If the assumption that bias only effects minority candidates is true this would have much the same effect. 3) What if it wasn't a second chance but 100 chances? I.e. if you're a minority you get to interview for Google 100 times and if any of those say yes your in. White people only get 1 shot. Unless you think Google's false positive rate is 0, this would have to lower the bar wouldn't it?

jshevek 9y ago
Thank you for this. This is one of the most important comments on this page: " Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind." Or, at the very least, present speculation as speculation. It does "show" anything definitive.
pj_mukh 9y ago
"Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind." So let us extend him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't extend the hiring committee? How about we extend the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved, which would result in him never writing this memo and second guessing the hiring process. The rest of your points seem to be just a whole lot of speculation, which you just told me not to do. The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence. Maybe go talk to the hiring committee about their motives/state of mind first Mr. Damore?
- jdoliner 9y ago
  We're not extending Damore any benefits by not speculating about his state of mind. We're just avoiding discussing a topic about which we can't hope to learn the truth and which isn't necessary to understand whether or not Google's hiring processes do indeed lower the bar. My "points" are indeed speculative, that's why they were presented as questions. I don't know the truth and it's impossible for us to talk non-speculatively about Google's hiring process because we simply don't have that information. The original memo (not article, this distinction matters) did indeed cite a great deal of evidence, you may or may not consider it conclusive, I found it quite compelling. But I think it's important to remember that the memo itself was a request for clarification, posted to an internal message board for skeptics in the hopes that somebody would be able to tell him why he's wrong.
  - pj_mukh 9y ago
    It was a lot of scientific studies he cited (since contradicted by meta studies), nothing about Google's processes. Another commenter on this thread seems to suggest that almost all interviewers can get second shots, which (albeit anecdotally) makes his argument weaker (showing restraint here in not calling him an outright liar) I know with my (again anecdotal) experience with large SV firms, if Google had these kinds of holes in their hiring process they would be standing alone in the valley. Also, "lowering the bar" is not consistent with their absolute global market dominance. He also claims in the same interview that he had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it[1], so I don't know how much of this was a "request for clarification". He even had action items. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng
    - jdoliner 9y ago
      I've yet to see a meta study which contradicts those studies. Would be interested to see one. I've seen studies that say in X% of studies about differences between men and women the differences found are negligible. That's not a contradiction though, and it's not really meaningful at all. The % of studies which find negligible differences can be arbitrarily inflated because it's simple to find as many axis along which there are no gender differences as you want. It doesn't matter how many you find, even if it's .000001% of studies that find a difference if those differences happen to be particularly important that still means there's a meaningful difference. Scott Alexander has a more in depth explanation of this here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... If all interviewees have the same access to second interviews then I agree that it does nothing to lower the bar. In general if a policy doesn't concern itself with the identity of the candidate I don't see a way that it could be lowering the bar. However, my understanding, based on previous comments, is that diversity interviewees get a second chance immediately while the others must wait 12 months before they get a second chance. If that's the case then Damore's argument (and mine) stand. I don't think Google's market dominance can be used as evidence of good hiring practices since I believe in the early days they didn't have such practices and wound up with a very undiverse company. This didn't seem to stop them achieving market dominance, draw from this what you will about how much they need diversity to succeed. I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how you simultaneously believe that he "had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it" and "The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence." It seems to me that not only did Damore make an honest effort to seek out clarification but that you're well aware of this fact.

jshevek 9y ago

Thank you for this. This is one of the most important comments on this page: " Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind." Or, at the very least, present speculation as speculation. It does "show" anything definitive.

pj_mukh 9y ago

"Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind." So let us extend him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't extend the hiring committee? How about we extend the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved, which would result in him never writing this memo and second guessing the hiring process. The rest of your points seem to be just a whole lot of speculation, which you just told me not to do. The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence. Maybe go talk to the hiring committee about their motives/state of mind first Mr. Damore?

jdoliner 9y ago
We're not extending Damore any benefits by not speculating about his state of mind. We're just avoiding discussing a topic about which we can't hope to learn the truth and which isn't necessary to understand whether or not Google's hiring processes do indeed lower the bar. My "points" are indeed speculative, that's why they were presented as questions. I don't know the truth and it's impossible for us to talk non-speculatively about Google's hiring process because we simply don't have that information. The original memo (not article, this distinction matters) did indeed cite a great deal of evidence, you may or may not consider it conclusive, I found it quite compelling. But I think it's important to remember that the memo itself was a request for clarification, posted to an internal message board for skeptics in the hopes that somebody would be able to tell him why he's wrong.
- pj_mukh 9y ago
  It was a lot of scientific studies he cited (since contradicted by meta studies), nothing about Google's processes. Another commenter on this thread seems to suggest that almost all interviewers can get second shots, which (albeit anecdotally) makes his argument weaker (showing restraint here in not calling him an outright liar) I know with my (again anecdotal) experience with large SV firms, if Google had these kinds of holes in their hiring process they would be standing alone in the valley. Also, "lowering the bar" is not consistent with their absolute global market dominance. He also claims in the same interview that he had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it[1], so I don't know how much of this was a "request for clarification". He even had action items. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng
  - jdoliner 9y ago
    I've yet to see a meta study which contradicts those studies. Would be interested to see one. I've seen studies that say in X% of studies about differences between men and women the differences found are negligible. That's not a contradiction though, and it's not really meaningful at all. The % of studies which find negligible differences can be arbitrarily inflated because it's simple to find as many axis along which there are no gender differences as you want. It doesn't matter how many you find, even if it's .000001% of studies that find a difference if those differences happen to be particularly important that still means there's a meaningful difference. Scott Alexander has a more in depth explanation of this here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... If all interviewees have the same access to second interviews then I agree that it does nothing to lower the bar. In general if a policy doesn't concern itself with the identity of the candidate I don't see a way that it could be lowering the bar. However, my understanding, based on previous comments, is that diversity interviewees get a second chance immediately while the others must wait 12 months before they get a second chance. If that's the case then Damore's argument (and mine) stand. I don't think Google's market dominance can be used as evidence of good hiring practices since I believe in the early days they didn't have such practices and wound up with a very undiverse company. This didn't seem to stop them achieving market dominance, draw from this what you will about how much they need diversity to succeed. I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how you simultaneously believe that he "had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it" and "The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence." It seems to me that not only did Damore make an honest effort to seek out clarification but that you're well aware of this fact.