17 ms·

The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

• dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  To people who are flagging this article: why don't you read it? It's important, and the author is competent.
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  • akamaka 9y ago
    This article is trash. Who is claiming that there are no gender differences across the population? Who is she arguing against exactly? Maybe the author should have actually read the manifesto more carefully, because it is primarily an argument about Google's hiring practices and how to build the best workforce for a company, a topic which the scientific studies she cites do not address in the slightest.
    • avenoir 9y ago
      > Who is claiming that there are no gender differences across the population? About a quarter of comments on the original manifesto thread here on HN were from people who explicitly stated that there are no differences between genders and wanted scientific proof if someone were to refute their statement.
      • akamaka 9y ago
        I don't think that's accurate. Nobody was trying to refute the science that was cited by the manifesto writer. There were many comments arguing that environmental factors are more important, or pointing out that the science of testosterone's effect hasn't been directly connected to job performance, which I think are great subjects to debate.
    • jp_sc 9y ago
      She is arguing against the way the memo was reported by the media. Like this piece http://gizmodo.com/men-have-always-used-science-to-explain-why-theyre-bett-1797608461 http://gizmodo.com/men-have-always-used-science-to-explain-w...
      • akamaka 9y ago
        That article is trash as well, and it fairly got flagged when it was posted here. I think HN is a place for a more enlightened discussion.
  • marsRoverDev 9y ago
    Because it doesn't align with their worldview, and the wrong kind of thought must be quashed.
    • c0nducktr 9y ago
      Or maybe people are just tired of seeing constant posts about this story.
• EJTH 9y ago
  I fail to understand how a memo calling for MORE diversity can get headlined as "anti-diversity memo" on all big media outlets. Do journalists even do independent research anymore or are they just regurgitating whatever reuters send their way without scrutiny? Debate me instead of downvoting please. Downvoting is like forfeiting a discussion and shows that you question your own narrative.
  • danpalmer 9y ago
    As far as I could tell from the coverage (I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs of the memo), it asks for more diversity in terms of right-wing/conservative thinking, and for Google to stop encouraging women to apply. On the surface – that's asking for both more and less diversity, however Google rejects the idea that conservative views (that are compatible with Google's HR policies) are discouraged, which would suggest there isn't more diversity needed there.
    • UK-AL 9y ago
      I would think the author would encourage women to apply, but discourage making interview pass rates biased towards one group or the other.
      • pconner 9y ago
        Interview pass criteria are not based on the gender/race of the candidate. The criteria are the same for all candidates for the same role. The goal of diversity/inclusion programs is to find more diverse candidates to interview in the first place. Edit: referring to Google specifically
        • peoplewindow 9y ago
          Damore asserts that it is actually affected by gender. I used to be at Google. I heard the same thing from recruiters themselves. That a woman could fail an interview but still make it through to the next rounds. Their justification for this was like so: 1. This isn't discrimination because the final hiring decision by the committee takes into account all interviews, so the bar is equal at that point. 2. Our lawyers say this is totally OK. I heard this many years ago, when I first joined Google and was learning how to be an interviewer. It disquieted me a little but I didn't challenge it - I figured, if the lawyers say it's OK, then it's OK. And the logic that in the end, the final decision was unbiased was something I accepted. Well, I was young and naive. If men are being dropped and women are not, then more women will make it through to the final hiring decision than would naturally occur, that's the entire point of doing it. This is, in effect, a way to lower the bar for women - literally, men and women can jump to the same height and one will cross the bar and one won't, based on gender. That's what Damore meant when he said the bar was being lowered by reducing the false negative rate. Is it illegal? I have no idea. But it's definitely not fair on men.
• deleted 9y ago
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• UK-AL 9y ago
  Please don't flag the article if you simply disagree. The key to changing minds is understanding the other side. Not shutting them out of the conversation.
  • return0 9y ago
    Things like these don't belong to a corporate forum like HN
    • UK-AL 9y ago
      This issue effects the entirety of technology sector which this forum represents a large group. Simply trying to deny the debate is not how you work things out. If anything that will just annoy the group more so.
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      • and0 9y ago
        I meant to respond to the response someone else made: It's not a debate to be won. Some people just keep insisting it is with this cloying, sweaty desperation. It's embarrassing, and it's awful that these Silicon Valley ghouls have so much power that we have to consider them at all. I read the article, it didn't have any real science and made a bunch of insane, half-baked assumptions. The guy is a dumbass and deserved to be fired.
        • monktastic1 9y ago
          In other words, you're the only sane one in this world full of crazy, stupid, sweaty, sexists, and you have every right to shut them up. Sounds like a scary place to be, and I'm genuinely sorry you find yourself there.
• ainiriand 9y ago
  Firing this guy was just a PR move in order to keep things under control. The memo was accurate and I know that Google is going to learn from it even if the guy has been sacrified.
  • sethish 9y ago
    Private companies are not free speech zones. Not firing this person would have been a Title VII violation and opened them to lawsuits.
    • revmoo 9y ago
      It was ten pages, please read the whole document we're discussing before commenting about it.
    • xname2 9y ago
      Not firing this person would have been accused a Title VII violation and opened them to lawsuits.
    • hepolz 9y ago
      >Not firing this person would have been a Title VII violation I disagree. His manifesto is pretty clearly core political speech protected by the First Amendment, so Title VII would be unconstitutional as applied if it operates to force Google to suppress such speech. Unfortunately there is no precedent clearly establishing this, so the mere threat of lawsuits (and accompanying legal expenses) may have been a factor in Google deciding to fire him.
  • happyrock 9y ago
    This is correct. There is a lot being made about Google trying to enforce ideological purity, and not enough being made about why Google feels obligated to have this company culture in the first place. I speculate (without much evidence) that Google's intention is to manage PR and deflect attention away from their actual lack of diversity. http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016 http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016
  • 9y ago
• gormo2 9y ago
  Flagged. This is just a shitstorm in a teacup. EDIT: 2 minutes in and I'm already being downvoted. Stop being sexists, stop oppressing me
  • lanevorockz 9y ago
    Wrong Think ?
  • monochromatic 9y ago
    > I disagree, so I'd better flag this submission to keep people from reading it and discussing it
• alkonaut 9y ago
  Why can't the memo be both sexist and science? Arguing that there are differences between genders that make one gender unsuitable for a task can be as scientific as you want, it's still sexist. It's no different from doing the same but replacing gender with race - it's racist no matter how carefully and scientifically you worded it. It's almost as if the person writing this article believes that if the manifesto is factually/scientifically correct then it must somehow not be sexist. As if sexism consisted of lies? I don't get it.
  • lanevorockz 9y ago
    You are reading things that are not written there, take a breath and read it without bias. It talks about predisposition and how when you look into a collective you observe differences.
    • alkonaut 9y ago
      Right: I explained what I meant in another reply.
  • jazzyk 9y ago
    Your analogy to race is wrong. There is no research (to the best of my knowledge) claiming that there are biological differences between the same sex of different races. But there is enough research about biological differences between sexes (and some differences are obvious, such as different hormones, etc) to at least warrant a debate. "Sexist" is one of a handful of words that have become absolutely sacred in the US, at the expense of scientific discovery (or common sense, or both).
    • alkonaut 9y ago
      > There is no research (to the best of my knowledge) claiming that there are biological differences between the same sex of different races. I mean it's not controversial to argue that on average caucasian men are taller than asian men. I can't find a quotation for that exact fact right now but let's just assume it's true for the sake of argument. It's a toy example anyway. If it's scientific doesn't mean I can argue without repercussion that I should be allowed to cut before asian men in the line in the cafeteria because as tall people we are always hungrier. Even arguing that would (rightly) be considered racist. I tried to make a toy example but you get my drift - the use of a scientific fact in argument can be racist. Even if you don't agree with my toy example (either the made up fact or the toy argument) - would you agree that IF scientific argument is found that e.g. one race has less cognitive ability than another that might be "good science" (although ethically questionalble science) - that most uses of such facts e.g in arguments would in fact still be racist? Or do you still insist that scientific facts make all arguments and actions based on them non-racist?
• kuschku 9y ago
  This article would be a lot more worthy of a discussion if it actually discussed the actual issues. How much is nature vs. nurture? (many of the behaviours the manifesto attributed to genetics are actually purely environmental) Should that even matter? Shouldn't hiring processes be purely meritocratic? The fact that the author of the memo argued for affirmative action for hiring more conservatives shows that he doesn't have anything against discrimination, as long as he profits. If he wanted a science-backed solution, he'd have supported motions to remove the topic of gender, race, political affiliation entirely from the hiring process. (Anonymous job applications can help with that). Many of the sources were also quite misleading, or links to blogs instead of papers. The memo wouldn't pass peer review at any journal, and can, frankly said, not be called science. As we also just had a big discussion about this topic on HN, this article is misleading and from an outlet that previously has published hit pieces on diversity policies[1], I flagged it - this discussion belongs into the recent megathread, not as its own onto the frontpage again. [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/will-trump-make-america-white-again/article35904698/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/will-trump-make-amer...
  • megous 9y ago
    It's a memo, not a scientific study. Goal is to point out issues for discussion.
• jamesrcole 9y ago
  What disturbs me most about this incident is how many people's first instinct, when faced with views they strongly disagree with, is to try and suppress those views and the person speaking them. Not to engage with the argument or to try and argue against it, just to shut the other person down. It's a totalitarian kind of response.
  • kuschku 9y ago
    It's the natural reaction after getting attacked by right-nationalist /pol/ trolls for years. You can't discuss with the trolls, you can't argue with them, you can only shut them down. Naturally, if someone honestly makes the same argument that the trolls copied, the reaction is also the same.
    • blub 9y ago
      The problem with this thinking is that many of us are not extremists and genuinely want to know what the scientific truth is. And if someone prepares a text which is logically sound (but remains to be seen if scientifically sound) supported by references then it's completely a different game. And when journalists and other people criticise that text with ad-hominems, jokes and invectives but ZERO arguments, that's no longer enough. I'm afraid that the critics of this manifesto will have to put in the hard work and prove that it's wrong. The tactic of shouting the author down, as they do with typical trolls won't work in this case. But the really bad news is that it never did work. Those people that were shouted down continued to hold the same ideas except they hid them and acted silently.
      • ythn 9y ago
        > Those people that were shouted down continued to hold the same ideas except they hid them and acted silently. This same phenomenon happened just this last election. Only one candidate was allowed to be publicly supported. Publicly supporting the other carried the risk of being shamed, labeled (bigot, fascist, etc.), or even being fired from your job. By all metrics Hillary was winning. But the silenced portion of the population didn't change their minds after being shouted down and shamed; they, as you said, "hid [their ideas] and acted silently"
• toptal 9y ago
  This is actually a great scientific read.
• Ajedi32 9y ago
  Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies. Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusing her of sexism).
  • blusterXY 9y ago
    What astonishes me is that Google's VP of Diversity knows so little about the underlying science of her vocation that she confused statements of clinical fact (with the science even referenced in footnotes!) with personal attacks on women.
    • occultist_throw 9y ago
      > gender studies If I've learned anything, a "degree" in gender studies means one thing. It means that you are not a "Cis-gendered hetereosexual White Male". Gender studies is a code-word for Women Studies. It's a bone to throw, to get "VP of Diversity and Hugbox" - and those groups are the ones to twist, lie, and deform anything you said because you're a threat. As long as you toe the line, you're usually relatively safe. If you speak out about the elephant, you are not to be discussed or engaged. You're to be blackballed, fired, and worse if they could. And what those programs teach - they teach professional victimhood, professional weakness, and "Multiculturalism" in the sense of that you should hate Western Heteresexual White culture.
    • sp332 9y ago
      It was an attack on women, even if it used "science" as corroborating points.
      • Jabanga 9y ago
        This is just dogma. Making a scientifically supported argument against a position of postmodernists and feminists doesn't equal an "attack on women". The lack of intellect and integrity displayed by the attacks on the fired Google employee is really disturbing.
• slitaz 9y ago
  So I read this article and do not see any merit or value. The article mixes up genetics with what people end up doing in life.
  • monochromatic 9y ago
    > In fact, research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity have larger sex differences when it comes to job preferences, because in these societies, people are free to choose their occupations based on what they enjoy.
• snowwrestler 9y ago
  The article hides a common but incorrect assumption. Look at this paragraph: > As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men. The assumption here is that employment in STEM industries fundamentally and solely involves "mechanically interesting things". The reality is that tech companies are composed of people and make products for people. Google themselves have found through their own research that the best managers are defined by their people skills, not their technical skills. So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women? Strong technology is important for success, but so is leadership, market fit, team dynamics, understanding the customer, etc. The hardest question in tech companies is not "how" to build, but "what" to build. This is essentially a people-oriented problem, since customers are people. EDIT: this tweet puts it succinctly: > WEIRD how none of these guys ever argue that because our ladybrains are better at communication and teamwork we should be paid more https://twitter.com/kelliotttt/status/894770623611682818 https://twitter.com/kelliotttt/status/894770623611682818
  • UK-AL 9y ago
    I don't he denied that though did he. He specifically said women would prefer those roles.
  • dsfjksdf 9y ago
    But that is not related to "shortage of women in tech/STEM". More women in management wouldn't change that. Maybe it is just difficult to put managers without experience in the trenches in front of people? That is, managers who have no tech skills as such?
    • rexpop 9y ago
      > without experience... who have no tech skills Sorry, who are you describing? What group?
• smrtinsert 9y ago
  Cognitive differences observed in GENERAL != bad engineers for ALL. The memo was a rambling incoherent mess.
  • verulito 9y ago
    My company has an anonymous internal forum and I don't even like asking simple HR questions on there! I once complained about my disuse of my dependent care FSA going unnoticed. That's as far as I'm willing to go. A touchy subject like this from someone with a technical background to a large group of people... I guess Google has a lot of employees and it was bound to happen eventually but seriously, how do you hit send on something like this without some twinge of anxiety?
    • riffraff 9y ago
      AFAIU, but I cannot reference, this was sent to a limited group of people, got forwarded and then became viral.
      • mousa 9y ago
        The way it was published does not lead me to believe that story. The link to the document riffed on documents whose authors want all Googlers to read them and fix their broken ways.
        • lmickh 9y ago
          According to the interview with the author linked in comments above, he published it internally a month ago. The fact that it only got linked and went viral weeks later would indicate it was originally limited.
  • monochromatic 9y ago
    > bad engineers for ALL He didn't say that all (or even most) women were bad engineers.
• megous 9y ago
  What I find interesting about all this is how many people take personal offense from statistics. (and conclusions drawn from statistics) The author seems to put an effort into explaining statistical distribution and what it means and what not. He's explicit that statistical observations can't be used to judge particular individuals. Draws a graph of overlapping distributions to drive the point home even more. I'm not sure why would anyone get offended by statistical observation. It's not personal by definition.
  • tenaciousDaniel 9y ago
    Also interesting is that it's one of the things social justice activists constantly criticize others for. I can't count how many times I've heard the following: "when we say men are privileged, we don't mean any and all men are privileged to the same extent." Or "when we say white people are racist, we're not talking about every single individual white person." And it makes sense. Yet when it comes time for someone to say "the statistical average for career interests in females tends to lean away from technology", all observable nuance is thrown to the wind.
    • stillkicking 9y ago
      Worse, with social justice this usually takes the form of a motte and bailey argument. The statement that "we don't mean all white men" and "we mean a system of systemic biases/practices" is usually a defense in response to being called out for dismissing someone for being white or male. "Mansplaining" is the clearest example of this. Supposedly it's only used to describe a man condescendingly explaining something a woman already knows, but in practice it's used to belittle and condescend any man criticizing a woman or women as a group. i.e. "Google employees are furious following the internal distribution of a memo mansplaining away low diversity in tech" The only constant is the preconceived notion that they always know who the victims are ahead of time. The reasoning is then reverse engineered to suit the situation. A man is talking based on feelings and anecdote? He's ignorant and pathetic, and probably needs to get laid. A man is citing scientific studies and making a cohesive argument? He's a mansplaining dudebro here to dogwhistle sexism and racism. If it's woman though, she's respectively sharing her lived experience and fighting the endemic patriarchy by being forced to work twice as hard as any man.
• typicalbender 9y ago
  As an additional perspective, here's an interview from James' perspective[1]. The interviewer is clearly fairly bias and holds the same viewpoint which is unfortunate but I think hearing James' perspective on the purpose of the document is interesting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agU-mHFcXdw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agU-mHFcXdw
  • holtalanm 9y ago
    This is an interesting video to listen to, but as you said, the interviewer is most definitely leaning a certain direction. That being said, I am not informed enough on the topic of gender differences to actually weigh in on who is right or wrong in this situation.
    • typicalbender 9y ago
      I am certainly not either, I just think people grabbed their pitchforks impulsively and painted him as a misogynist monster without hearing his side of the story. From the interview it sounds like the document was sparked from an internal diversity meeting that was dubious in its intent. Whether that is actually truth or not who knows but I get the impression James was trying to have a discussion and present some evidence but ended up getting roasted instead of having the discussion he was hoping for. The issue aside, the hypocrisy in this whole situation is really what pisses me off. James appears to be soliciting discussion and trying to consider both point of views while the masses simply took whatever the media headline was an ran with it without considering both sides.
      • holtalanm 9y ago
        I do agree with you on this. It really seems like he was trying to promote/encourage a discussion around diversity. Also, it sounds like he _actually_ was more asking for feedback from a specific group within Google that in-turn decided to circulate it within the company as a whole. The most troubling thing is the claim that James makes about the 'super secret, unrecorded meeting' that he attended within Google that prompted this paper in the first place. If that meeting really did take place, that is a sign of systemic racism/sexism within Google at some of the highest levels. If. I have no idea who to believe in this situation. An investigation into the company may be called-for.
• major505 9y ago
  Welcome to the left. Where we are democratic, and suport free-speech, as long as agrees with our views. :)
  • riffraff 9y ago
    does the right differ? Is it non-democratic, against free speech, or happily accepts contrarian views? I doubt being close minded is specific to any political group.
  • malnourish 9y ago
    Welcome to the internet. Where we make generalizations about large swaths of people. This could keep up until the end of time. I'm an incredibly liberal person in most regards but I find suppressing unwanted speech to be disgusting at a base level. I think it's unfair to make that generalization; further, it contributes to the false dichotomy that exists through "left/right" politic.
    • yAnonymous 9y ago
      Generalizations can be useful and many arguments won't go far without them. As for this specific generalization: I think we wouldn't have this argument if it wasn't legitimate. The political left increasingly consists of hypocrites who advertise free speech and liberalism, but act like fascists.
    • mistermann 9y ago
      If a generalization is objectively correct, what is the harm? One could argue that suppressing such comments contributes to sustaining mental illness.
  • AlexandrB 9y ago
    I think you mean "Welcome to modern politics". Suppressing free speech you don't agree with is a time-tested tradition of most mainstream political thought. However, it's most disappointing to see from people you otherwise agree with.
• jpmattia 9y ago
  I'm surprised greater attention is not focused on the fact the "science" is in the midst of a reproducibility crisis. This is a big issue in the hard sciences; I can only imagine what it's like in the squishy science of gender behavior. Tying your reputation to such a soft foundation is just inviting trouble.
  • josephg 9y ago
    The people-things orientation has an extremely large effect size for social science. The Su et al. meta-analysis from 2009 found an effect size of 0.86 with N > 500,000 participants. Lippa (N > 200,000) found an effect size of 1.40. http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x http://sci-hub.cc/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x If you don't believe the research is solid, please post some convincing counter studies.
    • jpmattia 9y ago
      > If you don't believe the research is solid, please post some convincing counter studies. It sounds like you don't understand the reproducibility crisis: It's not up to me to produce counter studies, it's up to you to produce replications of the already published work, using the exact same methods and techniques. So far, the reproducibility in the psychological sciences has been pretty poor. Nature summarized the original test a couple of years ago: 61 out of 100 replications failed in the test. https://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 https://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-...
      • ahh 9y ago
        I think you might not know what a meta-analysis is: it's actually a summary of replications and duplicate studies on some topic. Generally (I have not read this particular one!) they are specifically designed to detect potential publication bias and other effects that would imply non-reproducibility.
        • jpmattia 9y ago
• dsfjksdf 9y ago
  If you are not bisexual or asexual, you are sexist by definition.
  • Smaug123 9y ago
    Your definition is demonstrably unusual. Remember, something is true "by definition" if it's not true for any other reason.
    • dsfjksdf 9y ago
      According to Google, the definition of sexism is "prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex." So if you don't consider dating somebody because of their sex, by that definition you are sexist?
      • alkonaut 9y ago
        > So if you don't consider dating somebody because of their sex, by that definition you are sexist? Only if not dating someone is discrimination in some useful sense (it's not).
        • dsfjksdf 9y ago
          I seem to have heard different views a lot from trans people, or the whole gender crowd. I thought the current "correct" stance is that you should not be allowed to prefer one gender over another. What makes you say it is not meaningful discrimination? Remaining alone is among the worst things that can happen to a human being.
  • monochromatic 9y ago
    Let me know when your definition makes it into a dictionary.
  • sctb 9y ago
    Please don't troll on Hacker News. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968843 and marked it off-topic.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• root_axis 9y ago
  > Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour. This is obvious and not the point of contention. The crux of the other side's disagreement is in the assumption that differences in brain chemistry attributable to sex necessarily account for all or the majority of the differences we observe in career distributions. I think the insane reaction to this memo is unfortunate because the author does appear to make an earnest effort to discuss this topic, but the memo's defenders are not doing the argument any favors by arguing against the weakest version of the opposing argument.
• piokoch 9y ago
  I am always surprised that well educated people who are definitely not "creationists" but consider evolution as a way human kind developed are ready to ignore evolution when it comes to gender. Clearly man and woman are different physically and mentally as for millenias they played different roles. Why "gender people" keep ignoring that and are claiming that sex is not something inborn and is a "cultural" phenomena is hard to understand. For me gender studies are just new incarnation of Lysenkoism. Lysenko strongly belived (and thousands of soviet scientist) that weeds could spontaneously evolve into food grains because is should cooperate with communistic party. Those who were against that obvious stupidity and claimed that genetics is the way to understand plant evolution were fired or put to jail or executed. Similarly absurdal ideas were brought by soviet lingustics - if any one wants to have good fun, there is no better reading then Stalins's "Linguistics".
  • SippinLean 9y ago
    I think they acknowledge that our society differs from that of our evolutionary ancestors, and that this context matters in determining social policy, and does not amount to "ignoring evolution".
    • Jabanga 9y ago
      Postmodernists reject the role evolution plays in human attributes. They reject its effect on intelligence, gender and race.
      • notyourloops 9y ago
        They also wield a lot of social clout, as we've all seen from this event among others.
      • SippinLean 9y ago
        Easily disproved by the entire school of evolutionary psychology and many other modern schools of thought. The question is if there is more to consider in social constructs than simply evolutionary biology.
• dm319 9y ago
  > But sexism isn’t the result of knowing facts; it’s the result of what people choose to do with them. We know that men are taller than women. I can see you agreeing, but actually this statement is ambiguous, because these two are not the same thing: A man is taller than a women On average, men are taller than women Sexism is taking a random male and a random female, and claiming that despite all the facts presented to you, the male is taller than the female. It doesn't matter that in a specific case a female is taller than a male. The same can be applied to any group and their respective stereotype. The *ism happens when we fail to assess an individual on the data given to us, preferring to fall back on mentally-lazy stereotypes/generalisations even when what we can see says something different. A single study, published in 2015, did claim that male and female brains existed along a “mosaic” and that it isn’t possible to differentiate them by sex, but this has been refuted by four – yes, four – academic studies since. This includes a study that analyzed the exact same brain data from the original study and found that the sex of a given brain could be correctly identified with 69-per-cent to 77-per-cent accuracy. Well I'd argue that isn't great accuracy as 50% is what you'd expect from chance (though I haven't read those references). In fact, I might expect a similar accuracy from a machine-learning technique to predict sex based on your height. I haven't touched on the causes of population differences. With height, I don't think anyone thinks it's anything other than genetic (by way of testosterone levels). For interests and skills, the proportion that is caused by testosterone versus culture/environment is still unclear. If we believe there is still a cultural effect, then I think positive discrimination is justified to counter this. As an anecdote, we were wondering why our four-year old son suddenly lost interest in 'Frozen'. He told us this week that a girl had told him at nursery that 'Frozen' wasn't for boys. Cultural stereotype reinforcement is alive and well, and starts early!
  • agarden 9y ago
    > Sexism is taking a random male and a random female, and claiming that despite all the facts presented to you, the male is taller than the female. It doesn't matter that in a specific case a female is taller than a male. Upvoted for this. Great definition of sexism. > Well I'd argue that isn't great accuracy as 50% is what you'd expect from chance.... In fact, I might expect a similar accuracy from a machine-learning technique to predict sex based on your height. ...With height, I don't think anyone thinks it's anything other than genetic.... If the method is probably as good at predicting sex as one based on height, which everyone agrees is genetic, then why isn't that great accuracy?
• kartan 9y ago
  Women work in the Berlin Post Office with calculators, 1928: http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-women-work-in-the-berlin-post-office-with-calculators-1928-48346914.html http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-women-work-in-the-berlin-po... The managers, a more people-oriented activity, are all men. But the people working with actual calculators are women. And it was not just this office, this was happening everywhere. Working with a calculator was a woman's job. More: http://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa http://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa There is a lot of factors to why STEM is dominated by men. Testosterone may be one, for real, but it is not the only one. And it doesn't justify such a big difference in numbers. I don't know if the engineer wrote something awful or not, but this article is just a justification for the difference as if nothing can be done. And that is not true.
  • hackinthebochs 9y ago
    What does mechanically typing into calculators have to do with anything? Clerical work was not the precursor to modern STEM jobs.
  • cpncrunch 9y ago
    >I don't know if the engineer wrote something awful or not Perhaps you should read it then. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14969705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14969705 >this article is just a justification for the difference as if nothing can be done. And that is not true. No, the memo did actually give suggestions for getting more women into programming (e.g. pair programming).
  • zach 9y ago
    Data entry has always been a strongly female occupation. Even sixty years later, data entry workers were 92% female: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-08-02/news/8702260658_1_data-entry-operators-labor-force http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-08-02/news/870226065... It seems concerning that the de-emphasis of data entry in programming in the 1970s and 1980s may have caused the loss of entry-level opportunities for women and help lead to our field's gender imbalance.
• kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
  Funny that she calls it "the Google manifesto", as if it were endorsed by Google.
• burner11 9y ago
  Why is it that nobody wants to fix the gender gap in nursing?
  • gkya 9y ago
    Because programming pays higher. That's the response you eventually get from the feminist folks. I do believe this gender gap thing is good intentions, but there's just an enormous huge colossal amount of ignorance in the general effort itself and its perpetrators. The emotion-drivenness of the online audiences is not helping either.
  • rtx 9y ago
    Greed, people want a piece of this boom.
  • rhcom2 9y ago
    People do: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/men-dont-want-to-be-nurses-their-wives-agree.html?action=click&contentCollection=Fashion+%26+Style&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/men-dont-w...
  • Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    Scores lower on goodwill points. Diversity is often used as a marketing tool. Mind you, that industry needs a lot more men - nurses move people around, people are heavy, and nobody's denying that generally, men can lift more weight than women. That's a much more obvious biological distinction than in the more brainy areas like STEM.
  • Melchizedek 9y ago
    There is money in tech so women have an interest in playing victim to gain advantages. There are also a few males who hope to gain status for themselves and securing their own position by taking the women's side (while keeping other men down). Men who play (or are) victims on the other hand are generally ridiculed or ignored, so there is no advantage in doing so. Behind ideas there is usually self interest.
  • ythn 9y ago
• alexholehouse 9y ago
  As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men. And why we see fields like law being dominated by women, right? EDIT: I, and I suspect most other scientists wouldn't disagree that there are [edit - had this as aren't previously, woops!] physiological differences between men and women, but as I read the memo, that was not what was being argued. What was being argued was that those differences were the reason for the gender imbalance in tech (i.e. women are predisposition to be less interested/capable in STEM fields), in other words, the effect size associated with biological sex is larger (and indeed must be significantly larger) than any/all combined societal/'nurture' effects.
  • UK-AL 9y ago
    This is anecdotal. But a testament on how difficult this problem is. I have two nieces and 1 nephew, all of which I've tried to encourage into programming. I have tried to get my nieces interested in programming with great difficulty but my nephew has taken to it almost instantly and effortlessly. I suspect I am framing the activity wrong.
    • scaryclam 9y ago
      This is also anecdotal. I'm a female working as a technical lead. When trying to describe what I do to non-tech-worker female friends that ask, I often find that they get a look of slight confusion and state things such as "wait, that actually sounds like an interesting job!". It's as if their entire experience of computers, maths and tech is boring, so they think working with them must be as well. I think how girls get introduced into STEM subjects has to change. I also think it would be worthwhile continuing to encourage adult females to give things like programming a go as well, even if they've tried in the past and didn't like it. Most of the barriers to interest seem to be how the subjects are talked about, as opposed to the subjects themselves.
• tptacek 9y ago
  This defense of the "manifesto" is flawed just like the others. It picks out a small subset of the claims made in the document, discards the context and all the other claims, and then harangues us for having a problem with "science". I could argue "water is composed of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, so women are bad at software development", and my argument would just be a difference of degree worse than hers. We can talk straightforwardly about what makes the document problematic: whatever the validity of the "scientific" claims it makes about gender differences, there is no support (and likely no validity) to the connections it then makes to software development work. Despite that unjustified leap, the document goes on to suggest strongly that women working at Google are less qualified than men. There is no science Debrah Soh can cite to back up that assertion, however much she might want to. Anyone can wrap an incendiary statement up in a pile of banal sentiment and ambiguous appeals to social science. When challenged, refocus the debate on the truisms and the footnotes and pretend you didn't write the nasty stuff you hid in the middle. And, as we can see, plenty of very smart people will fall for the trick. Gender equity has been improving in the United States for several generations. As that has occurred, female participation in STEM fields (and in the professions, like medicine and law) has expanded dramatically. Many science fields are now approaching parity. Most have more than twice as much participation as computer science. That includes the field of mathematics, which is closely related to computer science and is certainly more intellectually challenging than "computer science" as practiced in the industry. Among all STEM fields, computer science is distinguished for losing the participation of women over the last 10 years. Unless the women of 1950 are somehow biologically different from those of 2017, the author's theory will somehow have to address the fact that her argument would have predicted the fields or law, medicine, biochem, mathematics, astronomy, statistics, accounting, and actuary would all be bereft of women over the 20th century --- obviously, the opposite occurred, despite the sexual revolution that was immediately to come. The author of this article discusses a correlation between increasing gender equity and decreased STEM participation that does not appear in the evidence. There's a reason she does that: if you don't stipulate that correlation, the argument against gender bias in computer science has to confront another damning fact, which is that gender disparity in the field isn't global. Unless women in Asia are somehow biologically different than those of the US, her argument needs some way to address the fact that women make up the majority of STEM majors in many of those cultures. Reading this article and then this thread, I find that there's really only two aspects of it that HN finds persuasive: the headline's appeal to "science", and the footnote observing that the author is a female scientist. That's not enough. Everything in between those things is wildly off. In discussions about gender parity in CS, the word "preference" is a coded appeal to the Just World Hypothesis. There is a yawning chasm between neuroscience findings about "agreeableness" and "stress tolerance" and suitability for any particular kind of white-collar symbol-manipulation work. Ms. Soh must intuitively understand that, but mentions it not once in her piece, instead pretending that observations about the kinds of toys children play with allow us to reflect participation statistics directly into real preferences about work. Shenanigans.
• program_whiz 9y ago
  I have a question to further this debate. Would people consider it sexist to administer a completely automated test of technical and personality questions which was used by an unbiased program to hire only the best qualified candidates? What would you say if the results were essentially the same as the status quo? By the Article's Author's account, she believes that we would probably maintain the status quo with such a test, because she thinks people are self-selecting out of STEM. Others seem to think that there is some other barrier to entering -- would a test like this fix the issue, or is there something else going on?
  • Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    There's already a number of companies that do blind reviews of resumes, or applicants that intentionally hide or change their names - not sure if it makes a big difference, also because there's just less female applicants in general. Actually, how many female software developers can't get a job nowadays?
    • durgiston 9y ago
      The problem isn't that women aren't getting jobs (the market is currently in too serious of a demand for hands on keyboards for that) but that they aren't getting as good a job as you would expect from their qualifications and/or that they aren't being paid as much.
      • luckydude 9y ago
        I'll have to go see if I can find it, but recently there was a study in Britain, France and ? (Germany I think) on compensation. Ah, here it is: https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-chart https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-... While there was a definite gap for the population as a whole, when you zoomed into the same job at the same company, the pay gap disappears. No idea if that applies to women in tech but it was new info to me. Does anyone have a source for a pay gap in tech?
  • durgiston 9y ago
• Someone 9y ago
  I think it is unfair to call this "the Google manifesto". If I state here that it is scientifically expected to see more foos than bars on HN, and then get banned because of it, that wouldn't become HN's manifesto, either. I fear that, a few years from now, people will say it represented Google's official standpoints (which it doesn't) or those of a significant portion of its employees (which may or may not be the case, from what I know) "Google employee's manifesto" or "James Damore's manifesto" are better names.
  • mistermann 9y ago
    By firing him they took ownership.
    • Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      Or they firmly distanced themselves from the author, just like what happened to both sides in Donglegate. Not sure if the author can sue the company though, I mean on what grounds was he fired?
      • agarden 9y ago
        He has already filed a complain with the NLRB and is intending to sue. http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/google-memo-legal/ http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/google-memo-legal/
• apeace 9y ago
  No matter how you debate the validity of the science, I hope people pay attention to one suggestion the 'manifesto' author made: that his company should do more pair programming. Pairing has always struck me as a great way to get programmers communicating better. Without addressing any other points in the manifesto, I think he's correct that encouraging pairing would be a good way to make development environments more collaborative.
• tlogan 9y ago
  The sad thing is that people do not even understand why the memo is bad. The problem: You cannot invoke science to tell somebody: I'm better than you. Period. That causes wars.
  • dustinmoris 9y ago
    I just CTRL+F the entire memo for "better". It was only used in two sentences: > Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts. > We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done). So where again does it say the he is better than someone else? These type of statements is what's causing the huge divide, because people put words into other people's mouth as and when they like just to support their own argument or agenda at the expense of everyone else. Show me a quote where he actually says what you claim he says.
• Delmania 9y ago
  From below (I wanted to make sure this didn't get hidden under a downvoted comment): >I fail to understand how a memo calling for MORE diversity can get headlined as "anti-diversity memo" on all big media outlets. Do journalists even do independent research anymore or are they just regurgitating whatever reuters send their way without scrutiny? The author is referring to psychological diversity, in other words, Google should be more receptive to diverse viewpoints. This is both true and not true. Yes, we should listen to others and understand, but that does not mean we should accept and value everyone's viewpoints. To invoke Goodwin's Law, perhaps we should be more sympathetic to the viewpoints of Nazis? How about white supremacists? There are viewpoints that do harm people within society, and this is one of them. Strip this down, this is the basic "woman's nature" argument that was used for years in the past to keep women barefoot and in the kitchen. The underlying claim that women are bad at tech is ridiculous. As mentioned below, the early programmers and data entry workers were women as it was considered "office work". I'll also throw out names like Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace. Read a site like Godel's Lost Letter, and Lipton always points out women who have made contributions to the field. I even recall an article about a house wife who researched new fractals. Women have been engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math (and medicine) since the beginning. They were male dominated because people held the viewpoint the author does, which is essentially, "It's not a woman' place". Bullshit, plain and simple. This memo does not call for more diversity. It may cite scientific research (yes, men and women are different physically and psychologically), but it calls for the same status quo that initiatives like the ones the author lambasts are trying to overcome. Are they perfect? No. but they are a step in the right direction. We need to understand these difference and adapt to them not use those differences as a way to exclude.
  • Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    > To invoke Goodwin's Law, perhaps we should be more sympathetic to the viewpoints of Nazis? How about white supremacists? There's a movie on Netflix at the moment, a German movie called "Er Ist Wieder Da" ("look who's back") about Hitler returning in modern-day Germany. It's part movie, part documentary - the actor playing Hitler travels around the country and talks to people about politics and the like, and finds there's a lot of people agreeing with some of the standpoints. The nazis crossed a huge number of lines and had some batshit people at the helm, but I'm sure you could find some points that a lot of people would agree with even in these days. Same with white supremacists, some of which have toned down their racism and become more politically correct.
• SCAQTony 9y ago
  I think science is a bit hyperbolic a term for this fiasco. More like mere statistics at best and we know how statistics can work out. Calling psychology or psychiatry a science is a generous proclamation. None of the above practitioners, including a neuroscientist, neurologist, or a cognitive scientist, can explain completely why someone can look at a shot of whiskey, know it is an expensive whiskey, know how to balance the shot to their lips, then prepare for the burn, and then swallow it while hoping they will get "lucky" tonight but feel lousy tomorrow all at the same time. We're not there yet when it comes to classifying humanity into "phylums" or categories via science.
• dcre 9y ago
  This could have been one sentence long. "He's right! (I have a PhD.)" No content.
• gkya 9y ago
  This stuff is going all-medieval, with witch hunts and pseudo-rogues. People are going back to emotionally responding to facts and following who shouts louder. Fixing gender issues is one thing, suppressing facts yo dislike is another. We wouldn't have a percent of liberties and developments also in the anti-patriarchal quest without science and rationalism.
• markdog12 9y ago
  Was horrified to see this flagged. Why would anybody flag a scientific viewpoint from a credible source with citations? Refute and discuss it, sure, but why flag it?
  • brl 9y ago
    Why would anybody censor the viewpoint of a woman scientist in this particular debate? How much cognitive dissonance is too much?
• ebola1717 9y ago
  If all this science were the end all be all, the low level engineers would be men, and men with their evolutionary handicap for empathy would be none of the managers, leaders, designers, product managers. That's how it is right?
  • cpncrunch 9y ago
    No. Try actually reading the memo and learn a bit about statistics and bell curves.
  • mmirate 9y ago
    Independent of the other things wrong with your argument, I find it curious that you think that designers are among those who benefit from empathy. Given knowledge of aesthetics, psychology and the general identity of the target audience, empathy should be all-but-unnecessary for a designer. (Edited for clarity; namely, the italicized clause is new.)
    • ebola1717 9y ago
      ? Understanding the psychology and thought process of your target is what empathy means.
      • mmirate 9y ago
        Sorry I was unclear. I mean the field of psychology in general (or whatever parts of it are useful for marketing), and the general identity of the target market.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• nyxtom 9y ago
  The base of her argument rests on this: "In fact, research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity have larger sex differences when it comes to job preferences, because in these societies, people are free to choose their occupations based on what they enjoy." Jim Flynn's study has unequivocally proven that raising the standards of modern introduction and access to equal education, living standards, and nutrition show increases in overall propensity for cognitive achievement. Though, if you talk to an anthropologist the nature of the term "intelligence" and "cognitive ability" is used in the mixed usage term but says nothing of the nature of intelligence. Nevertheless, the entire debate is whether we are actually in an egalitarian society to begin with. The nature of even measuring cognitive ability with the g-factor is that it is derived from relative populations. Gender differences might indeed be more amplified in these type of societies but the debate is whether we are already there and to what degree sectors of our large country have access to that. I would argue, as others have, that the distribution of equal treatment, based on the evidence of exodus from the field of technology speaks far larger volumes about the industry as a whole than it does about biological differences. Indeed, let's even take into account those biological differences that are being discussed here. Just because one has the propensity to behave a certain way in front a social group of men, and different when a female is around (this too has scientific backing), you could argue that the change in behavior over time would be a product of how distributed those groups are (in thought and in numbers). Food for thought. It's also interesting to note that creative endeavors tend to lead to high correlations of neuroticism as well. If there are biological differences that show that women are, on average, tend to be more neurotic than men, it doesn't really say much about the nature of interaction or the way we behave with one another. Furthermore, to even attempt to use this as reasoning that women may not last within male-dominated environments is insulting in itself. What it really actually proves is that the inequality in both the diversity thought and in numbers only reinforces the problem. The logic is rot with flaws, (I'm paraphrasing several sections with lines of reasoning; i.e. de-emphasizing empathy) "due to the nature of the tendency for behaving a certain way, we should not make attempts at empathizing with one another because of the heightened sensitivity." Not only is this flawed logic, it's not scientific in the least bit. I would've fired him on that alone. Indeed, you can also conclude from similar studies that creative endeavors have the tendency to being higher activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661315001540 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661315...) Due to the nature of mulling over problems, the tendency is that this often is indicitive of a higher threat sensitivity (real or otherwise); hence the neurotism. This doesn't say anything about the gender differences therein, but rather the brain itself when it comes to problem solving in general. Of course, the greater problem here is about the nature of social interaction. We can take into account how men tend to behave around other men, or in the presence of women, or women around other women, or in mixed groups; we can take into account innate differences (however pronounced or not); we can even take into account the debate over the access to a population which is educated enough to enter the field of study. Even taking into account the meta-analysis study on things-people, it is a bit presumptuous to think that parity is not obtainable or necessary in STEM. The nature of STEM revolves around the problems that are being solved. One would hope that those problems are about solving them for PEOPLE. One would hope that software engineers employ creativity and artistic nuances when architecting and collaborating with others. The base of that study only speaks about the anthropologic nature of how people behave within those fields. One can speak of the people-oriented nature of mechanics, engineering, and just about all fields of study. I find it a bit simplistic to categorize STEM as a whole as purely mechanics; it's reductionist and frankly insulting.
• blahblah3 9y ago
  Seems like a lot of the controversy around these types of discussions comes from the consequences of bayesian inference. If you know that men and women differ in a distributional sense with respect to some trait, that gives you a prior to work off-of when you meet a new individual. This is rational from bayes theorem, so simply saying "you should treat everyone as an individual" is not nuanced enough. However, as you acquire more information about a particular individual (such as passing a difficult google interview, or knowing that they've succeeded in a reputable CS curriculum), this should quickly "swamp" the prior, causing it to contribute very little to the final inference. The problem is the humans are not great at adjusting like this: we're not perfect at applying bayes theorem in our heads. We tend to overstate the influence of various priors when there are stronger signals at hand. Nevertheless, incorporating prior distributional information is NOT irrational, but generally overdone. Therefore, it seems like the approach of some is to shout down information that would suggest biological distributional differences, to try guarantee that people don't overuse prior information.
  • Lon7 9y ago
    I don't think many people have a problem with any of the science or the statistics. That's not the problem with the 'manifesto'. The author of the 'manifesto' seems to think that no one else reads these studies. I can assure you that everyone who is working on these issues has already read and understood the studies. The people in charge of these programs agree with them. He presented absolutely nothing of value. There is not a single new idea in what he wrote. All the manifesto showed was that he thinks he you can just apply studies to your coworkers. He took a bunch of women he works with and turned them into statistics, into a problem that he alone can solve. It's incredible ignorant and arrogant. The science, or understanding of statistics is not the problem, it is his approach to solving it that is the problem.
• notacoward 9y ago
  As with many defenses of the Damore memo (and more than a few attacks against it as well), this completely misses the point. Let's say for the sake of argument that there are differences in ability and/or preference between men and women. Let's even say that the magnitude of those differences is sufficient to explain a 4:1 ratio between male and female engineers at Google (which is clearly not true). My response is still SO WHAT? That outlandish premise still doesn't even begin to justify his tone, his complaints, or his policy proposals. * Differences in ability do not support his accusation of silencing. They're unrelated. * Phrases like "the left tends to deny science" and "extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians" are inflammatory, prejudicial, and discriminatory in their own right, independently of whether gender differences exist. * Diversity is provably good even in the presence of gender differences. Many studies have shown that the effect of mixed teams outperforming single-gender teams far outweighs any individual differences. I could go on and on about other ways that Damore comes across as a radically intolerant jerk, a hypocrite, etc. but I'm trying to stay on one point. The "science" part of Damore's memo, which the OP is meant to support, is practically irrelevant. That's not the only part that's offensive, or dangerous, or in violation of his employee agreement. It's not even the only part that's unscientific, since sociology and economics are involved as well as biology and he doesn't even try to engage honestly with those. His belief that women are less fit to be engineers is abhorrent, but so separately are his other beliefs. Even the strongest refutation of that one point doesn't make a dent in the memo's total start-to-finish toxicity.
  • Smaug123 9y ago
    To clarify: your point is that the question of whether or not he's right is irrelevant; he shouldn't have said what he said, because what he said is abhorrent and/or dangerous?
    • notacoward 9y ago
      No, that's a total misrepresentation of what I said. I'm saying whether he's right on that one point is irrelevant, because he tries to make a hundred others that are just as bad. But thanks for showing how Damore's supporters are just as guilty of "virtue signaling" as they accuse others of being.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• Joeri 9y ago
  I have always felt very ambivalent about affirmative action. It is a form of discrimination and therefore furthers the message that discerning based on gender or race is acceptable. You can make a strong argument that it is harmful, which is what the memo did. However... In the kingdom of Belgium at some point the rule was introduced that half of all political candidates for election must be women and had to receive equally prominent placement on ballots (by alternating male and female candidates). People were still free to vote men into office, but the idea was that it would give women a fairer chance. The same criticisms were said. Before you saw a low percentage of women in politics, like most countries. This was attributed to women having less of an affinity for politics. And yet, after a few election cycles this caused a shift in mindset as well as quality of female candidates and who was elected. Women are no longer perceived to be less suited for politics, the most popular politician is a woman, and gender has gone away as a divisive issue in politics. So, it actually worked. By making people so used to women politicians the issue went away, and you could probably get rid of the quotas and still see a 50% split in the next election. So maybe our genetic predispositions matter far less than we think, and we can change mindsets through affirmative action. But it has to be all-in 50/50 % split, so that it will change people's perception of normal.
  • jorgemf 9y ago
    50/50 will imply to force people to join even when they don't want to. It works for politics because the number of politics is significative small compared to the total population. But the work force is really a big number and close the to total population. In more gender equality countries like Norway the ratios are the worse ones for things like tech. Before a huge measure like this one you should understand by gender equality countries trend to have less diversity than less gender equality countries. This is very counter intuitive and needs an explanation (for some is biology) -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVaTc15plVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVaTc15plVs
  • notacoward 9y ago
    > I have always felt very ambivalent about affirmative action. Part of the problem is that "affirmative action" takes many forms. Some people assume that it means quotas and lowered standards, but those approaches have been deprecated (and sometimes outlawed) for a long time. Outreach, anti-bias education, and support programs are generally preferred precisely because they don't lead to the same untoward outcomes that tokenism does. Sure, some people still get left out. I was "discriminated against" in that way once, but I thrived despite that and have learned to appreciate how that policy was just overall even though it was unjust to me. There is no perfect affirmative-action policy, including lack of any explicit policy. The best we can do is ensure that the burden of any policy is as small as possible, and distributed as fairly as possible.
• mbfg 9y ago
  My experience has been that i get about 10-1 resumes from men vs women. Is it possible that they are being unfairly filtered by head hunters before i receive them? Could be.. i wouldn't think so, but i don't know. Of the candidates resume's i receive, the candidates that are women tend to be good, probably better than the average male candidate i get. But they are not 10x better, so at the end of the day, following the natural course there wouldn't be an equal base of candidates. Being just one sample, mine, it is completely statistically irrelevant. But it's the only thing i personally can go on. I want good candidates, if you can find me more good women candidates, that would be great.
• throw2016 9y ago
  This is not rational science. Without specific measures on every single person in Google, and a 'bar' and methodology that meets scientific rigour no can can rationally make any claims about 'lowering the bar'. Speculation not from a social scientist as their job but a worker within Google apart from being grossly misplaced begins to sound eerily similar to the ravings of self obsessed supremacists cherry picking science. This is what hostility looks like. And women then should be rightfully wary of all these fragile men who will watch them like hawks looking for any excuse to confirm their bias. Google should send a memo explicitly stating anyone who thinks women or any group lower the bar should leave. This is not a place for bigots. It's a place for mature educated well adjusted adults to work together. Anyone who supported that letter should in good conscience leave the organization which is 'lowering the bar', a definition no random individual not suffering from extreme hubris is 'qualified' to set and the prerogative of the organization and experts qualified for it. If you are obsessed with diversity lowering the bar you can become a 'measuring the bar expert' and invest the time required educating yourself to become an expert before presuming to speak with authority you do not possess about a scientific field that does not trade in certainties.
• StrangeOrange 9y ago
  I think it's important for us to gain some kind of perspective here. Whatever current science (or "science") says on the matter, that's not the point. These arguments seem to be of the following: women are inherently less capable of being good engineers, therefore they should be underrepresented in engineering. Okay, now let's extend that argument out from the engineering sphere. Using the same logic, the following attitudes should be accepted: 1. physically disabled people are inherently less suited to being mobile, so we shouldn't put in effort to allow them to be as mobile as non-disabled people 2. Men are inherently less suited for child care, so we shouldn't put in effort to help them be as good at child care as women I wouldn't be surprised if some of you endorsed the attitudes I've just presented, but that would make you immoral by modern standards, so you could then assume that you're being immoral on the gender diversity issue. This whole thing comes down to a fundamental lack of empathy. If you're not going to have empathy for women in tech, there's no reason that anyone should have empathy for you in areas that you're not suited to. So, if you accept one, accept the consequences of the other.
  • gormo2 9y ago
    >women are inherently less capable of being good engineers The memo never argued that, no one defending it argues that. I urge you to read the original document.
  • cpncrunch 9y ago
    >women are inherently less capable of being good engineers The article doesn't say that at all. It just says that on average women have certain traits that mean they are less likely on average to want to go into an engineering job. >Men are inherently less suited for child care, so we shouldn't put in effort to help them be as good at child care as women But men are inherently less likely to want to go into child care, for obvious reasons. However nobody is saying that they shouldn't be allowed to do so. I think the main problem with the memo is this line: "Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race" I don't see any problem with those programmes myself, and I think he would have gotten more empathy and less hostility if he hadn't advocated removing those programmes to help women.
• daughart 9y ago
  Anyone who wants to use "science" in this way needs to read "The Golem" by prominent sociologists of science Collins and Pinch. It's a short, enjoyable read. One of the things you'll learn is that science can only ask the questions humans want to ask, and science often says exactly what people want it to say. https://www.amazon.com/Golem-Should-About-Science-Classics/dp/1107604656; https://www.amazon.com/Golem-Should-About-Science-Classics/d... online link: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/collins_the_golem.pdf http://cstpr.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/collins_the_gol...
  • foolrush 9y ago
    Thanks for the piece. Sadly never came across it.
• virgilp 9y ago
  There was a joke in communist times about the 5 commendments. I guess James Damore just learned them: 1. Thou shalt not think 2. If thou thought, thou shalt not speak 3. If thou spoke, thou shalt not write 4. If thou wrote, thou shalt not sign 5. If thou signed, thou shalt not act surprised.
• mygodgoogle 9y ago
  I'm very disappointed with Google and no longer hold the company in such high esteem as I once did.
• lawtguy 9y ago
  Some additional data taken from the National Center for Education Statistics (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_318.30.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_318.30.a...) Bachelor's degrees by sex from 2013-2014: Mathematics, general: 43.9% earned by women (7,420 out of 16,914) Chemistry, general: 47.7% earned by women (6,556 out of 13,730) Physics, general: 18.7% earned by women (1,124 out of 6,002) Computer Science: 14.5% earned by women (1,914 out of 13,220) It seems like all of the gender differences pointed out about women in the diversity memo would apply equally to Physics and Computer Science as they do to Mathematics and Chemistry, but they gender ratio of Mathematics and Chemistry degrees is much closer to 50/50. So why the big difference?
• t0mbstone 9y ago
  Google says they want to hire a diverse collection of employees, so that the solutions they build in the future aren't one-dimensional, possessing only the stereotypical white male's mindset and approach. The fact that they stated this very desire proves that they believe that women are different than men, and that women might theoretically approach a problem or solution differently than a man. But if someone writes a manifesto which points out that, "Hey, maybe men and women are different, with different traits and mindsets (when considered across the whole average)", suddenly that person is sexist. Google wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to pretend there are no tangible difference between the way males and females work and think, but they also want a diverse culture that can benefit from the different ways how males and females work and think.
• habosa 9y ago
  Does it matter? Ask a woman you know, preferably one in tech, to read the memo and tell you how she feels. The women in tech that I've asked felt somewhere between offended and furious and, more importantly, would not feel comfortable working with someone who wrote such a memo and distributed it to his colleagues.
• HeavyStorm 9y ago
  It seems to me that we are moving from gender equality, i.e. equal rights, to "gender sameness".
• pmlnr 9y ago
  551 points, 23 hours, and this is already not on the first 5 pages of HN. Can someone please tell me, why?
• ArenaSource 9y ago
  So, this is science too: Inmate Gender - Male: 93.3% Female: 6.7% [1] "In view of these overwhelming results measures must be taken to remove men from jobs where their predisposition to crime may have negative repercussions on society." [1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gende...
• jonssons 9y ago
  exactly
• mtimjones 9y ago
  Why are leftists so anti-science?