4 ms·

There are still more qualified women making it through university than Google could possibly hire. Google just has to try a bit harder to find them. Example: M

There are still more qualified women making it through university than Google could possibly hire. Google just has to try a bit harder to find them. Example: Men and women are equally qualified by nature, but the graduating class contains 800 qualified men and 200 qualified women due to unfair "thinning". Google needs to hire 200 people, so they hire 100 men (1 out of 8 in the graduating class) and 100 women (1 out of 2 in the graduating class).

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Google isn't the only company hiring women.
- brianberns 9y ago
  How is that relevant to the question?
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Google has to compete with all the other companies for the same pool of talent. They can out compete them with more money, but that would raise eye brows after awhile. Something has to give somewhere when supply is constrained. The only real solution to the gender gap involves fixing the talent pipeline and then waiting N years for the talent to start coming through. Everything else is just a stop gap that is bound to create distortions. It would be different if there was lots of talent that just couldn't get jobs because of overt discrimination (e.g. as is the case with ageism), but the gender gap is not that easy of a problem.
    - wan23 9y ago
      Much of Google's diversity work goes toward fixing the talent pipeline by working with students. In the memo Damore criticizes these attempts by saying something like these programs are misleading female students into thinking that programming is more people-oriented (i.e. suitable for women) than it is.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Sure, but that is a different point entirely. Even if Google was getting that wrong, it isn't really that controversial to almost all of us; programming has always been prone to misrepresentation and taught in wrong ways to both boys and girls. Incidentally, working in a big corp, programming these days is more of a social activity than it once was for reasons completely unrelated to gender. The day of the lone wolf programmer is long past!
        concede_pluto 9y ago
        > The day of the lone wolf programmer is long past! I wish this disastrous extrovert invasion were more clearly disclosed. It took me a long time to realize that my maddeningly arthritic big corp experience wasn't just an outlier.
    - brianberns 9y ago
      Your question was "How is Google correcting biased graduation demographics via hiring practices?". I think I've answered that quite clearly.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Yes, your answer is clear but isn't correct. It doesn't actually correct any biases, it doesn't create female talent out of thin air. It only moves them from other companies to one company.
roenxi 9y ago
But to do that they have to consider and then discriminate using the gender of their applicants. The position in your example seems to be that two wrongs make a right - discrimination favored men at some point and so discriminating against men in the hiring practice is reasonable. I strongly disagree with that position - as far as is possible that conversation has been had and settled; companies shouldn't be discriminating on gender. I dunno what the law in California is but my stance is that discriminating on gender should be illegal. Even if the people doing the discriminating might feel they have a moral right to it :P.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

Google isn't the only company hiring women.

brianberns 9y ago
How is that relevant to the question?
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Google has to compete with all the other companies for the same pool of talent. They can out compete them with more money, but that would raise eye brows after awhile. Something has to give somewhere when supply is constrained. The only real solution to the gender gap involves fixing the talent pipeline and then waiting N years for the talent to start coming through. Everything else is just a stop gap that is bound to create distortions. It would be different if there was lots of talent that just couldn't get jobs because of overt discrimination (e.g. as is the case with ageism), but the gender gap is not that easy of a problem.
  - wan23 9y ago
    Much of Google's diversity work goes toward fixing the talent pipeline by working with students. In the memo Damore criticizes these attempts by saying something like these programs are misleading female students into thinking that programming is more people-oriented (i.e. suitable for women) than it is.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Sure, but that is a different point entirely. Even if Google was getting that wrong, it isn't really that controversial to almost all of us; programming has always been prone to misrepresentation and taught in wrong ways to both boys and girls. Incidentally, working in a big corp, programming these days is more of a social activity than it once was for reasons completely unrelated to gender. The day of the lone wolf programmer is long past!
      - concede_pluto 9y ago
        > The day of the lone wolf programmer is long past! I wish this disastrous extrovert invasion were more clearly disclosed. It took me a long time to realize that my maddeningly arthritic big corp experience wasn't just an outlier.
  - brianberns 9y ago
    Your question was "How is Google correcting biased graduation demographics via hiring practices?". I think I've answered that quite clearly.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Yes, your answer is clear but isn't correct. It doesn't actually correct any biases, it doesn't create female talent out of thin air. It only moves them from other companies to one company.

roenxi 9y ago

But to do that they have to consider and then discriminate using the gender of their applicants. The position in your example seems to be that two wrongs make a right - discrimination favored men at some point and so discriminating against men in the hiring practice is reasonable. I strongly disagree with that position - as far as is possible that conversation has been had and settled; companies shouldn't be discriminating on gender. I dunno what the law in California is but my stance is that discriminating on gender should be illegal. Even if the people doing the discriminating might feel they have a moral right to it :P.