I personally find the whole "Goolag" thing ridiculous. I've had relatives (great grandparents/uncles/aunts) in the USSR who were removed from their homes in the middle of the night by the government. One was even shot/killed.
Getting fired from your high-paying job to go off and get another high-paying job, after you spent numerous hours writing some controversial BS about women/hiring instead of, you know, doing your actual job, is not anywhere close to the type of persecution people have faced in the past - so let's please not pretend it is.
For people that were less political danger, they usually were fired for "Political Incorrectness" and "Agitation and Propaganda", sent to re-education classes, and only given shitty job opportunities from now then. It was a convenient way to keep the less dangerous masses at bay.
If "being conservative" becomes a "fireable" offense in most large tech valleys, then we are in a path to similar stances.
Now, here where I disagree with the memo in general (it didn't seem constructive), I disagree with the way google handled the whole situation overall.
Anyway, this whole episode (if you are not a feminist you are the enemy stance and the black list that managers at google have) starts smelling more of a McCarthyism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
For people that just want to do their job and don't want to get involved in these discussions you almost are forced to do something, otherwise you are an evil/enemy/suppressor/whatever else. That bothers me, as I lived under communism and have lived the results of blind ideology.
Why are we drawing the connection that he was fired for being a conservative? Tons and tons of people in the valley are their own special breed of techno-libertarian and they seem to be totally secure in their jobs. He was fired for being political at work. Don't be political at work. No one wants someone walking around their workplace talking about the evils of abortion. No one wants your coworker to ask if you'll sign an ACLU petition on trans rights while you're microwaving your pasta. No one wants to sit down at their email and see something like FW: My Thoughts on Women and the Workplace with Damore's pdf attached.
> He was fired for being political at work. Don't be political at work.
Well, more specifically, I think he was fired for being political in a way that caught outside attention and caused bad PR. Plenty of people are political at work, whether they be work politics or otherwise. This is a "You made the company have to weigh in on something that is way over your pay grade, and that's not something we're going to take a chance happening again with you." Executives and boards don't like when they have to stop what they're doing and put out a PR fire started by a low rank employee, whether that employee expected that outcome or not. That the firing of the employee causing problems at the executive level coincides with a way to combat the PR just makes the decision all that much easier.
Whoa, there - doesn't the fact that a low ranking employee, to use the phrase, can cause a global scale shitstorm, mean that just maybe, there are actually problems which were swept under the rug for too long?
Not necessarily. All that person has to do is tap into a controversial topic that divides people and involves the company.
E.g. "Big pharma researcher says our system is killing people." If it wasn't already done and old news, if it happened to get traction we'd have the same situation. And let's not kid ourselves, he's probably not the first there to state this or even the first to share his views. He is the first that had it turn into big news because it went viral, but content isn't the only factor in something going viral.
Some of the later claims of the low-level employee absolutely justify the dumpster-fire: if diversity-related meetings go deliberately unrecorded to stop paper trails, if special second-chance privileges are given to diversity hiring candidates, .... that's pretty rotten stuff.
Would he have been fired if his position (similarly political) were for a stronger, more liberal diversity policy?
Of course not. That's the difference here. It was a work-provided place soliciting feedback on the company's diversity and hiring policies. Politics are already present in the existing policy.
Indeed, and that's where the argument that he's "all for equality" falls flat on it's ass. I call that kind of reasoning "benevolent bigotry": "ohhh, of course black lives matter! But you know, black people are predisposed to be criminals, so it's understandable if they get shot more frequently..."
It's unbelievable that in 2017, in a field that is vastly dominated by males, someone would have the gall to claim "trying to introduce more diversity is repression."
Can you imagine if the roles were reversed, and the nurses association said "well, we don't really want more males in the profession because they are clearly not biologically ready to deal with people. We'd love to have them, but clearly they are not interested so we'll set a quota on how many can be certified per year"? The same people defending Damore would be flipping their shit.
> the argument that he's "all for equality" falls flat on it's ass
Because it's not your definition of equality? Why not impress us with your own brand of philosophy by writing a cited, 10-page memo on the topic, then maybe you'll get buy-in.
> It's unbelievable that in 2017
Why? Is 2017 the year that its ok to repress individuals in favour of their respective political/identity group statistics? "introducing more diversity" is a sinister sugar-coating of what's happening here.
> we don't really want more males in the profession because they are clearly not biologically ready to deal with people
You mean imagine an entirely different thing? If someone explained why so few men chose to go into nursing using the same reasoning, they would not "[flip] their shit" - only because you manufactured an aspect not in the memo. He doubly-so didn't suggest setting a quota on women in IT, which is the cherry on the strawman.
I didn't "compare Damore to Rosa Parks", someone argued that Damore shouldn't have voiced his opinion for fear of not being hireable, and I compared this to Rosa Parks being told she'd have difficulty catching a bus. Given the comments you've posted already across HN, I believe it is you that has a problem.
> someone argued that Damore shouldn't have voiced his opinion for fear of not being hireable, I compared this to Rosa Parks being told she'd have difficulty catching a bus
Repression is is still repression, even if to an individual who is a member of a "majority" group, because they are still individuals; and who gets to decide which groupings and individual characteristics are relevant anyway?
No one is "pretending [they] are a repressed minority", you just assume this because you think that has to be the case before individual equality is necessary. Minorities and majorities, repressed or otherwise, all deserve fair treatment.
I don't know what you are advocating for, because so far you've only "advocated" on defending Damore's memo, but never specified what about it. Until you accurately portray the memo, I don't see there's anything for me to retract.
I defend Damore's memo against stuff it didn't say, what exactly can I specify, other than quote the entire thing to demonstrate what isn't in it? The memo accurately portrays itself, it even starts of with a summary stating it's main points and aims.
What I have done is repeatedly ask you which specific part led you to your conclusions. You want me to prove a negative here? The burden is on you to defend your claims.
You have also attributed a number of claims to me that I have not made (e.g. there is zero gender-bias in tech). I also do not bear a burden of proof for claims I did not make.
Very simple: tell me what exactly in Damore's memo resonates with you, why do you think it's true. That's all. Even if it's restating, in two sentences, what you believe to be the content of the memo.
> What I have done is repeatedly ask you which specific part led you to your conclusions. You want me to prove a negative here? The burden is on you to defend your claims.
And when I do, you just say "but he never said that!". Apparently there's no interpretation possible other than whatever super narrow interpretation you came to. Everything else is poppycock.
> You have also attributed a number of claims to me that I have not made (e.g. there is zero gender-bias in tech)
That's rich. You asked me to prove there's a problem. Why would you ask me to do it? If you acknowledge that there is gender bias, then how can you possibly believe there is no problem? It doesn't follow.
How so? This comment kind of sums up what Damore was suggesting.
Also, I think Damore's 50/50 diversity logic stoked lot of bad feelings both for and against. No diversity policy aims for 50/50, rather help raise the percentage of under represented (in this case women) more than what was in the past. He modelled his whole memo based on this 50/50 diversity split and went on to suggest that biologically 50/50 representation is not at all possible, which may be true but that is not the point or aim of a diverse workplace.
Actually, I don't think you can sum up a lenghty "manifest" about a tricky topic in a few sentences without misrepresenting its points and losing the nuance. That might be one of the core reasons why the whole thing got out of hand.
I read the memo 3 times over several days just to make sure that I don't miss a key thing (and I'm still no fully sure). But I bet a hell lots of people who commented on it didn't even read it thoroughly once.
One could argue though that Damore should have expected this (but maybe he actually did. I can totally imagine that he had mentally prepared himself before to get fired over this).
> Actually, I don't think you can sum up a lenghty "manifest" about a tricky topic in a few sentences without misrepresenting its points and losing the nuance
When you want to prove a paper wrong you don't need delve on every nuance, you just need to prove the base premise is flawed. Not sure why Damore deserves a different treatment, when clearly he's trying to build an argument and proposes "solutions" based on it.
> One could argue though that Damore should have expected this
"When you want to prove a paper wrong you don't need delve on every nuance, you just need to prove the base premise is flawed. "
Even if so, that assumes that the base premise actually has been correctly identified.
His base premise was not "women are worse engineers than men". Yet this is what most critics and media argued against.
His base premise was about differences in the average distribution of traits, which is a completely different thing, doesn't say anything about abilities of an individual, and actually is not that flawed. There is plenty of scientific evidence pointing towards that direction. It's not total consensus but describing it as "flawed" would be pretty ignorant, as far as I can interpret the scientific status quo.
But understanding this base premise required that people actually would have put some own thought into what they read, and were open to nuance.
No, the main premise is that Google is fostering a culture of discrimination by trying to increase diversity. The whole "women are different" argument was just a strut to build that premise. Why bring up "leftist ideals" if he's just trying to make an argument about diversity?
(That's an honest question, BTW, not trying to be inflammatory)
> It's unbelievable that in 2017, in a field that is vastly dominated by males, someone would have the gall to claim "trying to introduce more diversity is repression."
From the point of view of a young white male fresh out of school, to hold them back for no other reason than a female PoC is deemed more diversically attractive, is indeed repression.
You are OK with a woman not being hired because of gender bias
- which exists right now, instead of in a potential future imagined by Damore - as long as you get hired. In other words: let's not solve the current problems, just so that we introduce one that might potentially affect you.
Easy: people like Damore exist. You exist. With people like you in the field, it's clear that there's a segment of the population who is OK to apply gender bias.
Concrete numbers? Just look at the current 80%/20% division. Considering people like Damore exist, it's fair to assume that at least a >0% skew exists because of gender bias. But don't take it from me, just go ask any woman o(even the ones that Damore mentions in his memo.)
Next question?
(BTW, what a ridiculous argument you are trying to make. Even Damore, who you take as an eminent authority in the subject, admits there's gender bias in the industry.)
Whatever. When facts fail, thrown around labels and malicious speculation.
> people like you in the field ... OK to apply gender bias
> Even Damore ... admits there's gender bias in the industry
Please provide quotes for either me or Damore being in favor of some kind of "[application] of gender bias". Or that where I claim there is no gender bias? Please drop that strawman.
> it's fair to assume that at least a >0% skew exists because of gender bias.
And Where does Damore claim there is no gender bias? Other than right at the beginning where he says "I am not denying sexism exists".
> go ask any woman
seriously..
> what a ridiculous argument you are trying to make
Well, you are the eminent authority of ridiculous arguments.
> Please provide quotes for either me or Damore being in favor of some kind of "[application] of gender bias".
Supporting the completely out of whack status quo is enough. I know, next up you'll say "I never said I support the status quo!". Because that's what you do.
> > go ask any woman
> seriously..
Seriously. How many female engineers do you work with on a day-to-day basis? How many do you know outside of work? Ask them about their experiences with sexual harassment or gender stereotyping. Every woman I know who works in tech has had to deal with some of it at some point or the other.
> Well, you are the eminent authority of ridiculous arguments.
I wonder what your "credentials" are to speak on the subject. I grew up in the USSR. During 195x my grandfather and grandmother together with their 5 children did a number of years in a low security camp at the Russian North cutting timber.
>It's not similar. It's not even remotely similar, that's what you don't get.
It looks similar to me, very similar (and i'm ok with it because it is against conservatives this time).
I think a big difference between the USA and the USSR is that in the USA, everybody hates on their countrymen and thinks that the rest of the country is full of shit, while my understanding of the USSR is that you could only do this if you were relatively powerful. In the USA, no matter how offensive you are, you can find someone who agrees with you.
Mr. Damore has already been offered a job by Wikileaks. He's making the media rounds. He's being hailed as a hero by Breitbart and other right-wing talk shows. Chances are, he's not going to have trouble finding another job.
man, the fact that a witch hunt didn't result in the target becoming poor/homeless/imprisoned/mob-beaten, etc. doesn't make it to be not a witch hunt. It is just a result of not everybody participating in the witch hunt. As you pointed out, the US society is [God bless that] far from being single-minded/totalitarian , and thus it is hard to make everybody to participate in the same witch hunt.
That's basically how America works, though. We still have witch hunts - hell, we had the original New World witch hunt in 1692 - because we're human and humans are little shits to people they don't like. The beauty of America is that you can always find a bigger shit who doesn't like the little shits who are beating you up, and nobody will stop you from going and hanging out with them (well, except in the public school system, the most fucked up part of America).
I guess this system is not without its failure modes. Sure you can get up and leave at any time and find a tribe that will accept you, but where is the incentive to seek consensus? Then comes the election time and half of the country ends up thinking the other half has gone insane.
The only incentive to seek consensus is when the country is threatened by an outside nation even more hostile and foreign (i.e. Hitler or Stalin).
The U.S. has a super long history of half the country thinking that the other half has gone insane. See eg. the elections of 1800, 1824, 1828, 1860, 1888, 1896, 1912, 2000, and 2016, along with other watershed moments in American politics like the Alien & Sedition acts, Hamilton/Burr duel, Compromise of 1850, FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court, Civil Rights Movement, Nixon impeachment, Whitewater, Vietnam & Iraq wars, etc. Someday we'll probably break apart, but a system based on the premise that we're all little shits who need to fight each other has shown remarkable resilience.
I worked with a guy circa 2002 who emigrated from Russia in the 1990s. He was from a fundamentalist Christian sect who had _all_ his teeth knocked out by the butt of a gun in a Russian prison. This would have been sometime in the 1990s.
He was a good engineer but pretty abrasive, and ended up leaving on his own accord. But even _if_ he was fired for expressing his unorthodox political or religious ideas at work, I doubt he'd equivocate it with the treatment he received in Russia.
All these senseless equivocations do everybody harm. Supposedly liberal college students do something similar with their micro-aggression framing device; it's not reasonable in that context, either.
We can debate Damore's points endlessly. But at the end of the day plenty of women still suffer old-school sex discrimination across the board. As that disappears, I'm pretty confident we'll have less reason to discuss more abstract discrimination issues.
Basically, if you disagree with some of the approaches utilized by the left for addressing discrimination (and there's plenty that reasonable people could disagree with), then the most constructive reaction is to redirect the discussion to more concrete, historical manifestations of discrimination.
Most ideologies on the right and left are constructed of poor equivocations and metaphors. And the so-called culture war is just an endless escalation in the sophistication and depth of equivocation and metaphor.
It's like in programming. Most debate is pointless bike shedding once the discussion is divorced from a reproducible bug or well-articulated pain points. Which isn't to mean if it's not clearly reproducible that a problem can't exist; just that if the problem isn't yet empirically grounded you can't have productive discourse. Equivocation rarely helps in this regard. If you have to resort to equivocation you've all but conceded that the problem lacks the necessary qualities which make it amenable to solving.
If you can't have productive discourse, then there are better ways to spend your time. There's no dearth of reproducible bugs or well-articulated pain points, in programming or in society. And people are always free to put in the hard work of empirically grounding a debate. Unfortunately, discrimination research is inherently tendentious because of the nature of the problem, which compounds all the other shortcomings of economic, sociologic, and psychological methodologies. But it's not impossible and we should encourage people to take up the challenge. Part of that encouragement is to criticize pointless equivocations; to make it clear that they're not an acceptable substitute.
The USSR fell in 1991, the guy who went to prison in 1990s likely went there for a regular crime. Most political prisoners were released in late 80s (ones who left in 90s were people who participated in various wars of 1980s-1990s or were politicians charged with regular crimes). The whole arrest at night, the family arrested too, a trial by three ("Troika") and 10 years of camps/execution is from the Collectivization and the various Purges of 1930s.
In the USSR after the War, if you merely criticized the Party line (e.g. say "We are a Communist country but the Proletariat is rarely consulted by the Party, I think the Party has to pay more attention what the working class people think.") you'd get the treatment ardit33 described. You would not get arrested, you would not be thrown in prison, you'd just get, what they called "wolf's ticket" - a record of "anti-soviet agitation" and then you would not be able to get any decent job, ever. People worked as janitors or threw coal in the communal central heating. Usually a single case of doubting was not enough, you'd get a talking first (quite unlike Google, it seems). Only people who directly opposed the Party were repressed with prison/mental institution.
AFAIU, persecution of fundamentalist religious sects has never stopped in Russia; it preceded and succeeded the USSR. It might not often have the same imprimatur of the state as more notorious persecutions, but there's plenty of evidence that it has occurred up until this day. For example, this year there's been a crackdown on Jehovah's Witnesses, though I don't know if it's been nearly as severe as previous crackdowns. I don't care to debate whether these sects deserve to be let alone. My point is merely that the Russian police state can be exceptionally harsh. You can still find people and groups systematically traumatized by it; people and groups whose real experiences expose the ridiculousness of American conservative equivocations regarding persecution. The closest equivocation one could maybe reasonably make is to how the American state treats its black populations, but it'd still be a tenuous comparison. And even that disregards that the Soviet gulags were on another level entirely.
I can't know for sure whether my old co-worker was telling the truth. But there was plenty of circumstantial evidence that aligned well with the story. And while I don't know the precise timeline, it's not necessarily relevant.
I am not aware of anybody sent to prison for religious beliefs in Russia. I know one guy who had been in the USSR but he had been freed in late 80s. Got any links?
I have the same feeling, regardless of whether his claim makes any sense or not, "meme-fying" the company and the underlying subject only makes his argument less substantial IMO.
But religious freedom, being applied as the ability to employ, be employed, or to provide service without fear of religious violation or indignity, is something American conservatives are arguing for at the moment, and that includes the ability to fire or not serve homosexuals.
How else am I supposed to create a Christian establishment, such as school for K-12 children? What if it's part of my wholesome Christian values and worldview to create a healthy environment where children can learn, free of homosexual influence?
I agree, calling Trump a Nazi is both egregious and it also lessens any coherent argument about similarities between the populism of Trump's base and the beginnings of the Nazi party (not to imply too much similarity, but there is some). The Nazi label should not be trotted out without cause, but should be called into intelligent discussion where warranted. It seems we currently vacillate between using it too easily and too conservatively (Godwin's law).
The real problem is that both those extremes contribute to a system in which we believe a similar thing could never happen again by viewing them and their actions as distinct from us and what we are capable of, when there is no distinction. Closely related to the maxim that those that do not know history are doomed to repeat it is that those that view themselves as distinct from history are also doomed to repeat it. :/
Well, I think it was never meant to stop people from calling out real parallels, just those egregious uses where it was inappropriate and used only for shock value.
Even the more benign uses of the term probably have some eroding effect on its potency, even if small. "grammar nazi" comes to mind. People sometimes refer to themselves that way somewhat affectionately. We don't see people using "pedophile" the same way. I can't say I think Godwin's original complaint was wrong.
It was never meant to stop or do anything because it was an observation about probability - much like Benford's Law is an observation about the frequency of digits but doesn't tell you anything about a particular one. (Clumsy analogy but hopefully makes sense.)
I have no problem with it. It spreads awareness about the atrocities of communists. People get compared to Nazis all the time, because Nazi=bad is something that almost everyone agrees on. Meanwhile there are a lot of unironic communists in tech circles and everyone's okay with it. So next time you compare somebody to Hitler, consider using Stalin instead.
His take still seems a little tone deaf and defensive (e.g., repeated use of "echo chamber"). But he hits the nail on the head of why Google fired him:
... they really couldn't do otherwise.
No matter what you think about the memo, Google had absolutely no option but to fire Mr. Damore once this blew up into a firestorm (internally and externally).
They could've had a spine and supported intelligent discourse. Seems like a leadership problem.
"At Google, just as we strive for a diverse workforce, we also encourage the free flow of ideas and along with that, support the vigorous discussion around those ideas. We don't comment on specific HR issues." (EDIT: Minor grammar edits for my faux PR statement)
And that would've been the end of it, had they had the fortitude to ignore the witch hunt.
Except, as has been pretty well documented elsewhere, it was not intelligent discourse. Whatever productive content may have been present, it was overwhelmed by the senseless repetition of long-debunked stereotypical nonsense.
Endlessly, emphatically parroting what is ultimately discriminatory nonsense is an aggressive action against others, not "just an opinion". E.g. [1], and numerous other examples. My favorite, which I'm having trouble digging up the citation for, is a recent-ish study that compared test performance of various minority/gender groups based on social anxiety measures (e.g. "girls aren't good at math")... and found that it was literally possible to turn this difference on and off like a switch based on triggering vs disarming these anxieties as part of the test setup. This literally flies the in face of the schoolyard "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" mantra so ingrained in US culture. It turns out, we have increasingly good scientific evidence that humans just don't work that way.
Let's be clear about that: being a toxic jerk to {insert out-group here} actively harms those people, and can directly harm their performance orthogonally to their actual potential capabilities. "Yeah, I'm meritocratic in footraces, but only when I can stick thorns in my competitors' shoes."
> a recent-ish study that compared test performance of various minority/gender groups...
You are referring to the idea of "stereotype threat" which, alas, did not survive the replication crisis.
Quote "After correcting for publication bias, this literature shows very little evidence that stereotype threat has a notable and practically significant effect on women’s math performance (Flore & Wicherts, 2014)."
> it was overwhelmed by the senseless repetition of long-debunked stereotypical nonsense.
This is why what Damore did is important and why having the discussion is important. People like you either mistakenly believe this or are being deliberately manipulative and misleading by claiming the science is settled. In fact, the science is not settled, and if anything it is leaning in Damore's favor. That you and people like you want to believe one thing very much is not a substitute for the actual truth to the rest of us, and never will be.
You know, every single person on the internet that I've seen argue that the science is solid in the Google memo point to this article in The Globe and Mail. It's bizarre.
I've tried to toe the line and not get into the argument as much as I can because, as evidenced by the previous HN thread [1], it's just two sides yelling past each. Some are citing scientific papers stating they are correct (which a single paper does not make), others are arguing based on remembering other scientific papers and virtually no one seems to be an expert but are all commenting as such.
What I would like to point out is the article in question isn't very well sourced. It points to "four - academic studies" [2] [3] [4] [5] but none of those are actual studies; they're all replies to a single study (Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic [6]) and none include a methodology to how they came to their reply conclusion as the full text barely contains anything additional to the extract. Now I'm not writing them off as wrong but those are being misrepresented as studies without having the proper information a study or research paper would require. Unless it's available elsewhere? It's unclear at least to me and appears, again to me, as very misleading.
Ultimately there is a boat load of research out there. Some of it is going to support the Google memo writing. Some of it will not. Some of it can be used to represent both sides of the argument. I think a better article, should one exist, should be used to defect your viewpoint should you side with the Google memo. Much of science requires a consensus and rock solid testing methodologies and I'm just not seeing that sourced in the article.
Again, I am not an expert but this is my impression from this article. Feel free to make any corrections to my statement :)
That article is circulated because it showed up here and, unlike a lot of the blogspam, the author has the credentials to have an informed opinion about the current research. Here's another one, but from a Psychologist rather than a neurologist.
> the author has the credentials to have an informed opinion about the current research
If you say so. I'm not an expert but as I wrote in my comment it appears either terribly sourced or the author equates replies to research as full blown studies.
> Here's another one, but from a Psychologist rather than a neurologist.
This one, as far as I can tell, mostly ignores much of the critical feedback that I've seen so far. Again, I'm not an expert but I'm surprised it doesn't call this out explicitly and in greater detail if the critics are wrong. Like, it has some small references to it but not a lot of direct discussion around it.
Not that all of the critical articles are better in terms of sources, etc I just haven't seen any of the articles in support of the memo be very well sourced or respond to much of the criticism directly.
What's funny about that link is that when she refers to the scientific claims she mostly seems to agree that they are well founded. Apart from that she seems to reading a lot of stuff into the memo that Damore probably wouldn't agree is there, and getting offended. I.e. he is a racist/sexist/alt-right bigot.
You mean she agrees that there are differences between men and women? Sure, most people do. But she doesn't agree that there is a basis for the idea that men would make better programmers than women because of something at the biological or genetic level, which is really the contention around Damore's memo.
>Apart from that she seems to reading a lot of stuff into the memo that Damore probably wouldn't agree is there, i.e. he is a racist/sexist/alt-right bigot.
Well his first interview was with Stefan Molyneux and he's done another with Jordan Peterson. I'm assuming Mike Cernovich and Lauren Southern are next? Come on. The thing about writing a dogwhistling document like his memo is you have to keep your true beliefs secret. By running straight to some of the darlings of the alt-right he's exposed himself a bit and his dogwhistles become clear as exactly that.
>men would make better programmers than women because of something at the biological or genetic level, which is really the contention around Damore's memo.
Where does he say this?
As for the interviewers, so what? Either the claims are supported by the facts or not, who's agenda is served by those facts is an entirely separate issue.
I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
The "and abilities" part is the important bit because it's where he makes a logical leap. So here's what I'm going to ask of you as someone who seems to like Damore's document and likes the scientific process behind it. Can you find me scientific evidence that men are biologically predisposed to have greater tech abilities?
I'm not sure what Damore is referring to in that specific quote, but there is evidence of relevant differences, especially if you're talking about recruitment numbers for a company like Google:
"A 2005 study by Ian Deary, Paul Irwing, Geoff Der, and Timothy Bates, focusing on the ASVAB showed a significantly higher variance in male scores, resulting in more than twice as many men as women scoring in the top 2%"
..."the study indicated that, while boys and girls performed similarly on average, boys were over-represented among the very best performers as well as among the very worst."
Except that same wikipedia article has a whole huge section titled Researchers in favor of no sex differences or inconclusive consensus and also includes this sentence: "The current literature on sex differences produced inconsistent results depending on the type of testing used." It sorta seems like you read until you found a sentence you liked and then didn't go any further... It's not a settled issue at all AND the ASVAB study you're picking doesn't actually connect anything to a biological basis. This is why Damore's paper is bad and why I'm sad that the community is taking it seriously as a scientific source. Some of his statements are cited but plenty aren't and because a fair amount of the people reading it already agree with him, Damore's leaps of logic don't pop out to them. It's not a good paper and it's not very scientific.
> when she refers to the scientific claims she mostly seems to agree that they are well founded.
What part of this answer makes you say that? She is quoting directly from the paper a bunch of times, offering refutations, and providing sources. I agree that she is reading into the memo. I don't agree that she is agreeing with the science -- she's spent thousands of words doing the exact opposite.
The willful misrepresentation of the memo is one of the reasons he got more support than usual. Most people who argued on the scientific basis mostly concurred and a few disagreed. There is nothing "overly debunked".
Even if what Damore wrote was "long-debunked", it's the sort of thing that a pretty big chunk of the U.S. population believes to be more-or-less accurate. Lots of people are wrong about things and don't know it. Them being wrong does not justify an attempt to burn them at the stake; it justifies an attempt to calmly yet firmly explain the errors in the subjects' beliefs (and then maybe burn them at the stake - figuratively, plesse, not literally - if they choose to ignore the counterevidence).
Having read the memo, I rather strongly disagree with the "toxic jerk" characterization you've given. Yammering fool, sure, but not (deliberately) malicious.
You know what is not intelligent discourse? Equating what was said in the memo as harassment by citing this:
> They asked 114 undergraduate female students to watch a video and imagine themselves as bystanders to a situation where a man made either a sexist catcall remark (“Hey Kelly, your boobs look great in that shirt!”) at another woman or simply greeted her (“Hey Kelly, what’s up?”).
Maybe you could provide a citation instead for this?
> the senseless repetition of long-debunked stereotypical nonsense.
Especially that few scientists are on record saying that the memo is solid on science, and the quoted research is not only not debunked, but also not even controversial in sociological circles.
> They could've had a spine and supported intelligent discourse. Seems like a leadership problem.
But that's not the job of the people involved, or if you believe it is their job, only tangentially and in a way that might help in the long run.
When you have a major PR problem on your hands and you're a public company, you make it go away before it can adversely affect the stock. That's the the job of the highest executives, and that's what will be delegated to those responsible for fixing it. Would we all be better off with reasoned discourse? Probably. Would Google benefit from being the company to push it? Possibly, but I give that slim odds. The responsible thing to do for your job is to fix the problem that is immediately threatening the company.
>The responsible thing to do for your job is to fix the problem that is immediately threatening the company.
The problem is double talk. They pretend that they want open discussion and provide an internal forum for it, but when someone like Damore takes them up on it they see it as a problem. If you don't want controversy don't pretend that you do.
I hope they're willing to fire LGBTQ workers (or workers who are pro choice, or any other political third rail) when the right rages just as hard, if they're not a martyr and simply a business with no moral compass. If they're not prepared to perform those actions, they're picking sides, and should be prepared for the consequences.
This isn't about firing people with specific attributes, it's about firing people that have become associated with a particular cause publicly and drawn the company into that same discussion, whether purposefully or on accident. If enough of their workforce and enough of the public shared the opinion that LGBTQ workers should not be hired, and the company policy followed that, and someone became prominent in that discussion, I expect they would do the same.
I'm not saying I think this is how the world should work and it's the best situation, I'm saying our current mix social, political and economic systems make this the likely (but not required) outcome. It often takes a martyr to change that. We venerate those who make that sacrifice, but let's not pretend it's easy for them, or that everyone should make that choice all the time (depending on how egregious the offense being protested is).
> if they're not a martyr and simply a business with no moral compass.
There's a difference between no moral compass and picking your battles. Winning a war doesn't always require rushing the enemy with whatever is in hand immediately when sighted. You can call a strategic retreat cowardly all you want, but if it's part of a larger strategy it may not be indicative of the competency of the people involved or the future (not that Google's actions necessarily should be viewed in that light, I'm just pointing out that this is but one action and should not define them entirely).
Well, the government already said you can be fired for being queer: https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/08/f.... I feel like outrage from the right for firing someone for something they can actually choose (political ideology) would be intensely hypocritical.
Let the identification and firing of radical progressives (or even moderate progressives!) begin. Things must get worse before they will get better; otherwise, everyone will continue to seek out ways to forward their agenda in legal yet immoral ways.
If proponents of the firing encourage the use of at-will employment for the firing, I'll support its use against other activists with opposite leanings. Otherwise, this silicon valley witch hunt routine will never end.
If an LGBTQ employee publishes a 10-page diatribe about how straights are biologically less suited to working at Google, they'd have been fired too.
He wasn't fired because he was a conservative, and he wasn't fired because of his opinions. He was fired because he made hostile remarks about the majority of his co-workers that legally resulted in a hostile work environment under US law.
That's just like the Pauline Kael apprx-quote about how "no one she knew voted Nixon - how could he possibly win?". IOW, you are already in an echo chamber.
That the ratio of women:men in tech may never reach 1:1 even if historical biases against women are resolved (he lists some possible reasons). Therefore efforts by Google and others to improve this ratio to 1:1 at all costs can be counterproductive and discriminatory in and of themselves and should be re-examined.
He didn't though. He didn't say that at all. He simply said that LESS women are interested in this field than men. He didn't say NO women were qualified, or anything close to it. He said aiming for 50/50 might not be the best idea, because there simply might not be that many women interested.
As the other person said, that's a false equivalency. This memo directly affected the workplace environment by saying one group of people had less aptitude for working there. The examples you give are just groups who are seeking certain rights or equality in society have nothing to do with the workplace.
No he didn't. He said that one group of people had less desire to work there, and trying for 50/50 might not make sense. I went to a relatively small school, but there were 0 women who majored in computer science in the 4 years I was there. We certainly didn't reject anyone, there just wasn't 1 single person interested in making that their major. It's not unreasonable to suggest that computer science is a field that may not be exactly 50/50 in the type of people who want to do it.
Coal miners, fire(persons?), nurses, elementary school teachers and many many other fields are nowhere near 50/50. There are clear differences in genders and what they want out of life. He didn't in any way say the there are no women that can be good at this job. He simply pointed out that it's possible it might not be 50/50. maybe it's 60/40 or 70/30 and if you just try to hit a certain number you might not always be getting the best candidate for the position.
As a whole, if the tech industry was forced to be 50/50 tomorrow, we'd have to fire like 80% of the workforce. There simply aren't enough women interested in the field and qualified to do it right now. If you want to work towards having more women in tech, you have to start much sooner, at say the elementary and junior high age. Promote STEM more to them at those ages and maybe in 20-30 years we can be closer to 50/50. But it isn't happening tomorrow just because people want to change hiring practices. I hope that my daughter is interested in it when she grows up, and I certainly don't want her to be discriminated against, but saying it might not be 50/50 because different genders enjoy different things isn't in fact discrimination.
> They could've had a spine and supported intelligent discourse. Seems like a leadership problem.
That's not really how things work in companies. In a University? Sure. In a company that doesn't really make sense and is far too idealistic.
Regardless of whether you support the contents of the memo or not, he created a disruption within the company. A disruption that made some feel alienated and others vindicated. This is not where you have any type of discourse. This is a simple "fire the person disrupting business".
> isnt disruption the whole point of Silicon Valley?
I could stand next to your desk and smash two pots together thus disrupting your work; surely you see how disruption of a market is different than disrupting co-workers...
Simply because the word "disruption" can be used in a positive context to describe aspects of Silicon Valley doesn't mean it's always positive regardless of context.
> Capitulating due to media pressure, if that is the reason, is extremely weak leadership and only made the problem worse.
This was never stated as the reason as far as I can tell.
It would've been a week of impotent whiny tweets, then the outrage machine would've moved on to the next faux issue. What kind of insane world do we live in where leaders are too cowardly to withstand mean internet comments? Now they've got a lawsuit on their hands (which will surely open the floodgates) and an anti-science stigma that will stick with them for years.
To clarify: you are aware that, prior to the memo, Google already a lawsuit on their hands from the Department of Labor with regards to alleged gender discrimination?
Google is accused of a "left wing bias" by many defenders of the manifesto and the writer himself. And yet, they don't want to turn over information that they're fairly hiring, firing and paying wages fairly?
How is being sly and secretive about your hiring practices and wage information "left wing"? Hardly seems consistent with the idea of supporting worker rights.
So how does Google (not to mention, it is a capitalist organisation) have a "left wing bias", as they say?
Are you serious? This is exactly the criticism leveled against the left. They've abandoned free speech, they judge people based on race, they've ignored working class voters in favor of coastal elites, yet they keep telling themselves they're "liberal."
I suppose I have a different idea of what 'left' means, then. For me, 'left' is at least strong social democracy and preferably [democratic] Socialism, Communism and anarchism. Not the US Democratic Party.
> Google is accused of a "left wing bias" by many defenders of the manifesto and the writer himself. And yet, they don't want to turn over information that they're fairly hiring, firing and paying wages fairly?
Then Google should cough up the data. But they won't, because they're hiding malfeasance.
Setting this particular issue aside, this really is a weird phenomenon that I don't quite understand, yet. So, a lot of people are condemning you on Twitter? I understand that as humans we don't like that feeling, but if you don't react to it nothing happens.
Pick a topic that's really, really important to you. Let's say it's fishing.
You're known as someone who fishes a lot in your small circle on Twitter. Suddenly someone steps in and says "Fishing is stupid. Screw you, fishing people!". Maybe one of your followers explicitly tags you in it to bring it to your attention.
Ignoring it is the right thing to do but could you? You probably could since my example is extremely contrived but in general I gotta admit sometimes it's difficult to ignore something that's right in front of me that I staunchly disagree with. I try but I'm human and I fail at it sometimes. Other times if I don't respond others feel like I'm letting them down.
I hate Twitter. I also enjoy it at times, too, which keeps me on it but I really do hate it the majority of the time.
I guess a boycott could happen, or employees might get emboldened to quit or sue. Google would get lumped in with Uber and others accused of being brogrammer haven.
Dude, this is a massive, for-profit corporation, not some leafy liberal arts campus. Their cultures and priorities may align to a degree, but there are some fundamental differences between them in terms of whose interests they serve, how those interests are prioritized, and the way conflicts are resolved (something Damore discovered the hard way).
What intelligent discourse could there be had? Damore's essay is heavily premised on Google's current policies being illogical, unethical, and even illegal, and other statements of apparently self evident fact. The memo is basically a giant prompt of, "Have you stopped beating your mother?" In which engaging in a dialog forces you to implicitly acknowledge something that is a total non sequitur.
I'll give an example: (sorry, unable to copy paste from tablet)
Under the subheading of Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap, his first example refers to how "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things". That's one of the biological facts he cited and I'll accept it as true for the sake of brevity.
Damore then points out that this has a silver lining, because if programming is made more collaborative, then women can naturally benefit. OK, nothing objectionable about that, I believe some companies incorporate pair programming in their recruiting and onboarding.
And then he drops the other shoe: "unfortunately there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles a Google can be"
What the hell does that even mean? What exactly are these "certain roles" that Damore is referring to? How can this kind of assertion lead to intellectual and open debate when Damore's argument: there exists jobs are just not suited/optimal for women. I'm completely willing to meet him where he's at on biological gender differences, but Damore's memo just does not invite discussion because he makes self-evident assertions and avoids specific detail or proof that he had really looked into things.
Because after claiming that there Google jobs too technical for women's people-preferences, a Damore randomly shits on Google's female coding classes. Because there are jobs for which there's a ceiling to the effectiveness of women's people-skill..."we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise"
Does anyone have context for this? What is Google deceiving itself about? Why are students involoved? Darmore's phrasing is so sloppy and lacking in details that he leaves things open to the imagination. I'm imagining that there was an incident at Google in which a woman was diversity-promoted into a highly technical job that had been designated for men. This woman believed her people-skills would make up for her technical weakness but she ended up causing killing her entire department in a fiery explosion.
The cherry on top is Damore stating: "(some of our programs getting female students into coding might be doing this)"
Again, what the hell is he talking about? What are the Googl coding classes doing, tying girls to chairs until they master recursion? Is it an open secret that these coding programs are horrible, or has Damore actually observed classes. Can he describe an example of when a Google teacher forced coding lessons on a girl who was clearly not born to do it?
A charitable reading of what I quoted would argue that Damore believes: *as a population, women will fail to be the best they can be as programmers. Because only so much that work would benefit from women's people skills. Google has been in denial to the truth, to the point that Google's coding schools are deluding female students about learning to code.
There's a lot that bothers me about this paragraph on women's people-skills and how those skills do and don't apply to Googl's work. I'll just ask about this: why does a Damore think that Google is "deluding" itself with its female coding classes? Is the curriculum bad? Does the curriculum aspire (in vain) to teach the skills and work that Damore thinks aren't optimal for women?
> How can this kind of assertion lead to intellectual and open debate when Damore's argument: there exists jobs are just not suited/optimal for women.
Truly: Is there any valid way to say anything about women in general, at a macro level, that won't be twisted as explicitly meaning all women like has been done here?
Like, if one suggestion were to start serving salads at the company cafeteria because that is likely to appeal more to women, would this prompt claims that all women only like salads, or that women aren't suitable for eating burgers?
We can discuss how to make a restaurant appeal more to women, or an apartment building, or a car. And we can do it without jumping down each other's throats, because we all acknowledge we're not talking about all women--we're targeting general preferences to apply to a general audience. Why is it that the same can't be acknowledged for software engineering or leadership roles?
First of all, I acknowledge that Damore premises his argument on populations and distributions. My example here was to point out that he jumps into assertions that make no specific reference to populations. In his criticism of Google's initiative to teach coding to females (students, employees), Damore says:
> "Unfortunately, there maybe limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)."
How does population distributions apply here? Is Google attempting to push coding (and at what sophistication) onto far more women than is statistically sound? I had heard that Google had such classes, but that their enrollment was self-selecting and seemingly not at a scale that included the majority of girls/women. So what is the delusionary practice that Damore refers to?
I'm genuinely interested in the answers to these specific (albeit) minor questions. But I brought this up as one aggravating example of how open, intellectually honest discussion is difficult when the claims are unspecific and unsupported.
To apply my previous metaphor: We shouldn't be trying to get more women to like burgers. We should make the food we serve appeal more to women.
To step out of the metaphor: Perhaps we shouldn't be having software engineering roles that put so much emphasis on the parts that don't seem to appeal to women (generally) as much. We might have more success modifying the roles so that they appeal more to women (generally).
He's also acknowledging that some roles might inherently have facets that appeal more to men in a way that can't be easily changed. Just like a role that's inherently very social and perhaps deals heavily with small children might be difficult to make appeal more to men (generally). That in no way implies men aren't suited to be kindergarten teachers, or that the men who are kindergarten teachers aren't good at it. It just means trying to make it more competitive or take the focus off the interaction with the children isn't likely to work well.
> I'm genuinely interested in the answers to these specific (albeit) minor questions. But I brought this up as one aggravating example of how open, intellectually honest discussion is difficult when the claims are unspecific and unsupported.
Respectfully: It's difficult when any opposing claim is assumed to be sexist. Like I said, it's in fact very easy to have an intellectually honest discussion about how to make a restaurant, car, or apartment building appeal more to women--even without explicit scientific studies backing up every statement!
It is because people are choosing to infer meaning that wasn't there in order to be offended and virtue signal that it is difficult to have this discussion.
Google had a choice here. Piss off people who support intelligent discourse, or piss off the other set of people.
Personally for me I would choose to piss off the group who tends not to escalate things irrationally and let emotion drive the entire agenda until the bloody end. Not sure which group Google chose.
I disagree with your first sentiment... His take, is just that, his take. He did his own research and came to his own conclusions. They might have been flawed, but they were his own. He very well could have changed his mind, had anyone presented more convincing evidence that would lead to a different conclusion. That didn't even appear to be an option, though, and I think that is the more threatening issue.
It's remarkable how much of an uproar and distraction one fairly low level employee can cause.
Reminds me of an old Napoleon quote: "whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous." This individual conducted cursory research while thinking he was conducting in-depth research.
I fear his "echo chamber" argument will be construed to damage the diversity in tech movement.
Context is important. Maybe he can give his take on Hacker News and no one will care. But he can't say whatever he likes at work. Every company has some legal obligations. No sex discrimination is one of them.
Even if you think his take is not sex discrimination, that is a big topic in Silicon Valley right now. So to write something like this right now just says "hey everybody, I'm in my own world. I have no social intelligence, and I don't pay attention to what's going on out there."
> Context is important. Maybe he can give his take on Hacker News and no one will care.
I wouldn't even go that far. I work for a tech company and am extra careful, even outside of work — on public forums, talking about my company or even controversial issues regarding tech in general because someone might mistakenly believe I am speaking as a representative of said company. It just wouldn't be professional.
Yeah I agree, even posting on HN is fairly unprofessional. Afaik when you join certain corporations like Apple they limit what you can do online, because they don't want your comments associated with their company. Maybe Google is nice enough to not do that, but it is not uncommon.
So I'm surprised to see comments like this parent comment, saying "he should be free to say what he wants". No, that's just not how it works.
Upper management tried to placate this surge of outrage by
shaming me and misrepresenting my document, but they
couldn’t really do otherwise: The mob would have set upon
anyone who openly agreed with me or even tolerated my views.
Actually, companies mostly exist to get work done and CA is an at will state. If you get in the way of getting work done then you likely will get fired. The document was readable by anyone internally and eventually everyone externally. So there was no misrepresentation.
Google's CEO said: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K.”
He said no such thing. This is a cruel smear. Google, including its CEO and VP of Diversity & Newspeak, acted like thugs.
And no, this has nothing to do with at-will employment. It has to do with hypocrisy. Google claimed they be open and tolerant, and then they proceeded to directly contradict that ethos by firing Demore and viciously lying about him on the way out the door.
At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women
back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the
workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just
socially constructed because:
● They’re universal across human cultures
● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify
and act like males
● The underlying traits are highly heritable
● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
I agree that he doesn't use the term "biologically suited" anywhere. I would instead say that he suggested: "men and women have biological differences, and those differences partially explain why where are fewer women in tech". Do you agree with that?
>Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
>These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
...
>Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits."
I don't know how you can come away from reading his memo and not arrive at the conclusion he thinks men and women are different and those differences make them less suited to the Google workplace. His solution is that diversity efforts need to focus not just on evolving recruiting/training but the way work is structured and you can absolutely argue that's not a super-evil-misogynistic thing to say. But that's very different than pretending he didn't say women, on average, aren't well suited to the current environment.
The intentional blurring of the difference between "individuals" and "group averages" is out of control.
Here some quotes from the essay that underscore this distinction:
> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
> I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender
roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another
member of their group (tribalism).
> Yes, there was misrepresentation.
> Google's CEO said: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K.”
Possible non bias causes of the gender gap in tech
...
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways.
He says that if 10% of men and 8% of women are suitable for tech, and google hires unbiased from suitable people, then google should expect a 55:45 gender gap.
That doesn't mean that the female colleagues are unsuitable for tech, since they were exactly hired among people who were suitable.
He is also not saying that this explains the complete gender gap, just that there is no point in blindly aiming at 50:50 without considering research on the underlying distribution.
He may have the research wrong, but otherwise the point seems to stand?
EDIT: Of course, this argument only works for a binary 'suitable/not suitable' distinction. If 'tech talent' was said to be normal distributed, with men having a slightly higher expectation, it would follow that the average men above some cut was also better than the average woman above the same cut. So in that way he does attack his colleagues.
This is still misrepresenting. He said those gender-based tendencies lead men and women to prefer and be interested in different things. Preference and interest has nothing to do with "suitability".
To say that 100% of men and women are suitable to work in tech, but that maybe only 20-30% of the women would actually want to would be a more accurate representation of what he wrote.
It's hard to see what's sexist about suggesting women should work wherever they prefer to, rather than being told they should become software engineers.
Depends on what you deem suitable. If you're aiming to get people who have a strong desire for exploring and creating systems then you'd likely end up with more people with Aspergic traits, a majority of which are male.
Easy. Imagine a company that hires only people at least 6'1'' tall (1.85 for us Europeans). The employees genders ratio would be skewed towards males.
You could argue that there are biological differences that make the number of suitable female hires smaller, and you would be right.
Does that make your female colleagues shorter? Not at all. They are and remain, as all other employees, at least 6'1''.
Actually this argument only works for binary treats. Like "tall" vs "short".
If hired random people above 6'1", we would still expect that most women hired were only slightly above the cut, while the men were a bit further up.
Also most hired men would be only slightly above the cut, if I'm not wrong. In any case, I'd be happy enough of being above the cut, some people are never satisfied, really :).
No misrepresentation? Like Sundar Pichai and the media conveniently conflating neurosis with the completely unrelated theory of neuroticism? Search "Google memo neurosis" and see how many headlines contain "neurosis" when that word or concept was never referred to even once in the 10 pages.
Here's a direct quote from the "Personality Differences" section of the screed:
"Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
So yeah, it was referenced, specifically, explicitly, and used in direct support of the central argument that the preponderance of men in Google's ranks was biologically determined, meaning a number of Google's D&I initiatives were misguided, at odds with scientific consensus, and should be discontinued.
Neuroticism isn't a vague insult. It's a specific technical term in psychology and is one of the Big Five personality traits—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism
People want Damore to have written a PhD level thesis for an internally circulated document but most haven't themselves done even a basic Wikipedia level research before bringing out the pitchforks.
I think he clarifies this. Two things are germane:
1. Google is "more than just a company." It is more like an old style company-town by now.
2. They are the gatekeepers of all information ever. Perhaps we should hold them to different standards, especially when it comes to opinions and ideologies?
I encourage folks to start surveilling Google employees in public who take part in civil disobedience for progressive issues, and demand they be fired. Companies exist to get work done, and CA is an at will state.
This won't get fixed ("its okay to fire someone if they don't align with my opinions") until everyone has had their proverbial nose bloodied.
It sounds like you don't understand why he was fired. Hint: it wasn't because of his beliefs per se. It was more likely because of his repetition of gender stereotypes that impeded his ability to work effectively with his peers.
How are the facts incongruent with the narrative you object to?
Generally people who support this guy focus on only the bits of fact the memo author relied on: they ignore the context and his application of alleged facts. That's what you did, for example.
To check the full extent of CA's reasoning: Is it ok to fire someone who fights for LGBT, black or women's rights, because it doesn't align with a company's opinions?
Your opinions and beliefs aren't just on company time, and that's what this gentleman was fired for; his beliefs after presenting research that accompanied his reasoning.
It's a real problem that you can't tell the difference between what people do on their own time outside of work, and what they do at work, in a work forum.
If JD had posted his diatribe online on his own personal blog, there'd be a lot of discussion about it but he'd probably still be employed at Google.
The problem is that he posted his diatribe on a company forum. Legally, he forced the company to fire him and refute his words or else be treated as adopting his words as their own. (And yes, that is how workplace harassment laws work in the US. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Congress, not Google.)
> The problem is that he posted his diatribe on a company forum. Legally, he forced the company to fire him and refute his words or else be treated as adopting his words as their own. (And yes, that is how workplace harassment laws work in the US. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Congress, not Google.)
So, correct me if I'm wrong: You're saying that any comments, writings, or ideas Google leaves up on their internal message boards is them providing implicit support or endorsement of said writings? Because it seems like if that's the case, obtaining the contents of those forums or message boards would provide ample work for a stable of employment lawyers for years.
Take note Google employees who are currently feeling fearful and "non-compliant" with Google's corporate stance. Maybe its time to sit down with an employment attorney who works on contingency while rolling through online forum posts.
Brendan Eich was fired for things he did outside of work. There are plenty of cases of request for retaliation on the professional environment for things done outside of the professional environment (for example, the OpalGate).
I have seen this argument a lot, but there is no hard evidence there were not two options. IMHO firing him created worse PR for the company. They could have scolded him and it would have blown over within a month.
From her personal perspective and that of vicariously raising a daughter, she agrees that females tend to have certain seemingly innate preferences. However (like me) she does not believe that these preferences limit the potential of an individual, but they do provide insight into why the distribution of professions is skewed between the sexes for several fields (both in the favor of males or females depending on the field). Ill have to ask her opinion about the quora piece, but in my opinion there were a few red flags, and for a scientist the tone was not very objective and carried more than a hint of personal bias.
"That said, the argument in the document is, overall, despicable trash." < not scientific
"what appears to be a covert alt-right agenda" < this shows both a misunderstanding of the alt-right and the memo author, who hold two distinct systems of belief (in the author's memo IIRC he claims to be a classic liberal).
"based on extremely weak evidence" < prove it?
"completely fails to understand the current state of research" < prove it?
"makes repugnant attacks on compassion and empathy" < not scientific
"paradoxically insists that authoritarianism be treated as a valid moral dimension, whilst firmly rejecting any diversity-motivated strategy that might remotely approach it." < what?
Makes sense, the answer was pretty hostile. I told my mom about the incident, and her first question was: "someone leaked the paper isn't that a privacy concern?" So I also have some anecdata about a woman not being concerned about the content. Overall though i think the paper is still pretty bad for a lot of reasons!
You're Google. In a tech environment where Uber is literally falling about because of anti-diversity issues, you have employees and the public beating down your doors because one guy wrote a memo.
Let's enumerate your options:
1. Support him and try to foster a dialog. Untenable: everyone's riled up, you can't be seen to support a sexist white male, and "let's talk about it" is naive.
2. Do nothing. Probably the worst option, as it makes you look spineless and wil piss both sides off.
3. Reprimand him. What does that buy you? You still piss off the alt-right, and the left thinks you're "forgiving" it by letting him off with a slap on the wrist.
4. Fire him. Literally all you can do. The left is happy. The right expects it. It optimizes happiness, shows decisive action, appeases the status quo.
There really isn't an option once it got this far.
Meaning that they knew he would sue, they knew he had a case, they know they might lose and they're more than fine with paying him to make the problem go away because a few grand in his pocket is a lot less than a long-term depreession in your monthly average user rate (i.e. potentially less ad engagement)
2. If you are a manager, and you ignore this analysis and agree that there is a biological difference, you can use that to explain why you aren't hiring/promoting women: it's not you, it's biology!
Exactly. People just fail to think in the shoes of Google, the company. They don't gain anything by keeping him there. Getting rid of him and preparing for a few weeks of unwanted scrutiny is the best thing they can do.
I partially agree, had this been kept as an internal firestorm they could have some other solution(offer placement somewhere else within the company or another company), I have personally seen this happen elsewhere.
> When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or charge of misogyny. I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored.
Apparently he published the memo about a month ago, and was only fired when it went viral externally.
The document seems to have moved in several stages. Distributed first narrowly, before eventually going viral to the entire company, and then spreading outward from there to the tech community as a whole before the media eventually picked up on it. It's hard to gauge what the internal opinion was on the issue without knowing how long it had actually been in circulation widely within Google. It's completely possible that it took management that long to catch wind of it.
It would be nice to have a complete timeline of the memo's life.
My guess of the sequence of events is:
1. First sent to the groups in charge of diversity: "I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google"
2. Their reply was something along the line of "thanks, but no thanks": "mostly I was ignored"
3. He forwards the memo to a wider group? (My guess)
4. The memo goes viral inside and outside Google
5. Execs have no option but to fire him under the internal and external pressure
If my guess is correct it, I don't think Google execs were left with a choice. There is a time, place and way to discuss controversial topics.
If on the other hand (3) didn't happen or it was not done by Damore, then Google does seem to not be able to tolerate different opinions and does have a problem indeed.
His presentation and the way he is representing himself appears to have hit an interesting cultural middle ground. He clearly has the alt right supporting him, but he also has scientists and professors from prestigious and relatively liberal colleges publicly supporting the science of his argument. Even commentators on NPR and the Times are supporting him and blaming google.
He does not come across as vengeful, just disappointed, appearing to have just genuinely wanted to have a conversation about what he say as flaw/injustice in the way Google approached hiring.
He is well spoken for the most part and decent looking, that in itself will give this story legs and the media will want to have him on.
Google really made a mistake in their approach to this. I believe that if they had just spoken to him and heard him out in the beginning after he submitted his memo to their diversity department this never would have happened. As another poster said, they could even have just paid him off and have had him sign an NDA to go away.
This is a monumental failure of PR on Googles part.
A monumental failure of PR would've been Google getting sued for gender discrimination if this guy was ever put in charge of a mixed-gender team and someone in the team thought they were being put at a disadvantage.
This guy clearly wanted to stir controversy, that's why the memo kept doing the rounds (he says he submitted it to several diversity groups inside of google himself.) I doubt he would've put up with having a "sensible discussion" with Google HR and let it go.
Have you ever worked at Google? No? Then maybe you shouldn't give your opinion on how much it could've costed for HR to cover this fuck up. Just my 2c.
Alternative title: why I will probably never get a job in a number of companies by stringing along political controversy.
In all seriousness, he knew the climate; made a prediction about that climate and chose to prove it correct - even string it along after being fired. It is almost a tragic irony that despite his biology background, he failed (or perhaps intended to be fired) to see the evolutionary case for collective altruistic punishment. In a data oriented climate like Google, there are other approaches that could of been taken to address the individualism-collectivism/relational scales by actually conducting and collection data from employees.
The principle prediction boils down to: it is likely that I will be fired for saying these things, here is some conclusions I came across, watch as the community proves me correct.
Based on this approach and his appearance in alt-right videos/blogs, I can only conclude he wanted to instigate chaos rather than have a data driven discourse by conducting surveys and opinions from collegues. As such, it is not unlike calling your friend up and prefacing an insult by saying: you are likely to be hostile from what I am about to say. That's not being fired for group think, that's being fired for instigating chaos.
If he had done alternative approachs, it is likely things may of been better received given that a number of people within and out of the community appear to have some lines of reasoning to agree with. Heck, even Sundar saw merit in discussing some points.
It's worth mentioning (if it fancies interest) that the individualism-collectivism and relational scales vary across cultures. Conclusions about these scales and overlaps as it relates to gender and culture in and of themselves fall prey to cultural bias.
He doesn't, but he made a prediction and was proved correct and thus was fired as a result of the nature and dynamics of altruistic punishment. I claim that his observations and claims about the diversity policy were merely a footnote in a much more pointed argument. That is to say, the diversity policy was not really what he intended to gain from this controversy but rather make it a point to focus on politics, which is toxic enough in this society. We don't need another talking head (left or right)
I didn't get that impression from reading it. There seemed a "political" (if you want to call it that, but really it was more just what a person thinks is right vs wrong and voicing that to try to convince people of it - ie altruistic) part of it - his motivation had a color of mild/repressed outrage, which showed up, but it was fairly broad and illustrated with lots of points/considerations about the diversity controversy. I don't think a person can downplay the 'politics' part just because its 'toxic' in society, because that is the whole point, impetus, and the only reason readers will pay attention to a thing.
Second, do you have some jumping off point for learning about 'collective altruistic punishment'? After seeing you use that term I want to learn more about it, but Google search doesn't show results that relate to the type of situation we're talking about here (blind punishment of a wellmeaning member who actually doesn't do anything wrong other than put the majority in a position they don't want to be in and possibly confront their own 'wrongthinking' or 'wrongdoing'). I really want to learn more about the concept if you have a link or some?
Some research will attribute group cooperation as a fundamental necessity in human progress (given that it is almost impossible that we got anywhere without specialization of tasks and an inherit need to cooperate between groups). Other research points to egalitarian motives that deal with equality between people. For instance, high earners at the expense of the lower earners. Perhaps the egalitarian motives have to due with concentration of power over others. That typically access to survival becomes increasingly limited as power is concentrated. These attributes are different than the evolutionary concern of competitiveness and a will to survive; but certainly there is evidence of both being the case.
I should note that there is no way that biology will simply distinguish between a well-meaning deflector and one who is antagonizing a group (such that there is another way to explain it).
There is a lot of history of great thinkers who challenged conventional thinking and were persecuted to the fullest extent of the time. I claim that the way most groups justify moral perception and punishment inequalities can be attributed to this evolutionary concept. From justification of slavery (indeed even the repercussions of standing up against slavery was met with changes in laws, and increase deterrents). What is particularly telling is the impact of having this content go widespread in modern society on the internet in the form of social media. It truly brings all of the subgroups that participate online in this discussion to be motivated (from an evolutionary standpoint) to make their case heard in an effort to persuade the group or general direction of behavior between people (whether in small social communities like HN or larger in Twitter, or between small teams...etc).
The base of the argument is that it doesn't really matter if it's well-intended or not; whether the content of the article is factual or deliberately bias or filled with hateful rhetoric. The only thing that matters is collective moral perception and the emergent properties of social structures (from the smallest group to the largest society). This is evident in fact by how a smaller group of people were not as hostile towards the author but the large viral group was. This merits the idea that approach to varying groups dynamics is an important factor to consider when challenging the norm.
Thought provoking indeed!
Notes:
__ Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī or Rhazes was a medical pioneer from Baghdad who lived between 860 and 932 AD. He was responsible for introducing western teachings, rational thought and the works of Hippocrates and Galen to the Arabic world. One of his books, Continens Liber, was a compendium of everything known about medicine. The book made him famous, but offended a Muslim priest who ordered the doctor to be beaten over the head with his own manuscript, which caused him to go blind, preventing him from future practice.
__ Servetus was a Spanish physician credited with discovering pulmonary circulation. He wrote a book, which outlined his discovery along with his ideas about reforming Christianity – it was deemed to be heretical. He escaped from Spain and the Catholic Inquisition but came up against the Protestant Inquisition in Switzerland, who held him in equal disregard. Under orders from John Calvin, Servetus was arrested, tortured and burned at the stake on the shores of Lake Geneva - copies of his book were accompanied for good measure.
The Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei was trialled and convicted in 1633 for publishing his evidence that supported the Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. His research was instantly criticized by the Catholic Church for going against the established scripture that places Earth and not the Sun at the center of the universe. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" for his heliocentric views and was required to "abjure, curse and detest" his opinions. He was sentenced to house arrest, where he remained for the rest of his life and his offending texts were banned.
I'm still not sure where to draw the line between Google, its managers, larger society, and general ethics, in this case, or how to distinguish 'collective altruistic punishment' from 'selfish punishment to forcefully protect interests against challenges'.
One thing I'll note is that the case at hand would be the same if it weren't collective, but was only one (probably relatively powerful) person trying to protect themselves from a challenge. A second thing: that the article was a different object when it was widely circulated (not just the same object treated by a large group versus an earlier smaller group).
That being said, I had a different conclusion than you, as did many others about the intention of the article. The repressed outrage seems like a decent way to explain some of the points so I see where you are coming from.
Somewhere between 30-40 (rough estimate) percent of the people I know support Damore. Hardly a majority, but also an indicator that these are not the ideas of a lone heretic. I am not as concerned with the fact that Google fired an employee for having an opinion, but more concerned with the fact that they only fire people with opinions that do not match those of the majority. Even if Damore's opinion's were wrong (which, according to several scientists, they are not), it should be ok to pose a theory without subjecting yourself to a potential witch hunt.
I think that's what a lot of people are most concerned about: not the gender science but the new information about Google's culture.
Google isn't a normal company of normal importance. It runs the dominant search services in the western world on which over a billion people rely on for information. Bing hardly comes close.
Old media hasn't picked up on it yet, but a series of Googlers are giving anonymised interviews. They are making a lot of very disturbing allegations:
Google is manipulating recommended content on YouTube to suppress conservative videos and viewpoints. That the voices pushing to manipulate web search are very loud. That Google Research ran a programme to investigate why people who get very good interview scores do worse in their career than people who get more mixed feedback, discovered it was due to bias in hiring towards Ivy Leaguers and under-represented minorities that caused them to have a lower bar. That YouTube systematically punishes channels that cover right wing politics. Senior management being on the verge of tears after Trump won. Conservatives getting punched. Replies to people like "isn't it nice to be white" or "congratulations on your white penis". People sabotaging each others performance reviews for not being on board with social justice wars.
Google makes a lot of money because people search there and because they have little incentive to go anywhere else. Bing and other well funded search engines aren't dramatically worse than Google, they just aren't better, so they can't build up a userbase. If people stop trusting Google's results, if they start believing they're manipulated and unreliable, suddenly they have an incentive to check out the competition. That would lead to more ad clicks, more money to invest in the search engine, better results, etc.
So that seems like a problem for both Google and its users.
If you aren't allergic to Breitbart you can read the interviews here:
Google is a global company. What might pass for "right wing" in the US is lunatic fringe in many other countries. Do yes the search engine of the works should be biased towards fact based sources and away from sites like BB that preach hate and not science.
> they only fire people with opinions that do not match those of the majority.
No, they only fire people that boiled media. For Sundar, it doesn't matter what the guy actually wrote, what matters is what media wrote about it. And they pictured him as a misogynist. So that is the new truth, now deal with it.
> which, according to several scientists, they are not
Good thing that's enough for a quorum. /s
There is absolutely no evidence that there is a biological imperative that prevents women from being as effective as men at software development. None. Zero. Zilch. Just about every disparity you can imagine can be categorically dismissed by upbringing and cultural side effects.
It doesn't even pass the sniff test: do you really think there's something inherent to the Y chromosome that allows better rote analysis?
I'd just like to share, for those who didn't study psychology and don't know of the sex differences (ON AVERAGE) between men and women, it IS a scientifically established phenomenon, even at a few months of age (i.e. pre-culture).
Now I'm not going to say anything about engineering or anything like that. All I believe is that you can't rewrite science to align with your politics. Science has no political leaning.
The existence of some differences is pretty well established. The relevance of those differences to software engineering is less so. As one example, here's a pretty thorough take-down of the Baron-Cohen experiment that Damore cites as part of his evidence.
Then there's the fact that even in the presence of persistent individual differences greater diversity might be beneficial to the group as a whole. After all, if you're putting together a football team you might want more than one kind of player. Why should that same "different people for different roles" principle apply among software engineers at Google? People who harp on "the science" of Damore's memo should consider that there are plenty of scientific points involved other than the one about infant cognition.
And I think what you're bringing up here is the debate I'd like to see.
I was lamenting that I'm not seeing that debate, but rather a blanket dismissal which seems disingenuous -- which I can only attribute to misguided, but well-meaning intentions.
I think the problem is the person at the center of the debate is not good with words.
He at times simultaneously says that he merely introduces the possibility that biological differences cause genders to choose different roles, and that biological differences cause less women to enter tech and leadership roles.
One statement sounds like unestablished scientific fact, and the other sounds like it's already been established.
Note that this is exactly what Trump does, and the more he speaks, the more people he activates on both sides of the debate.
Scientifically speaking, this feels pretty disingenuous. On the other hand, if you previously felt apathy was a problem in democracy, perhaps this is a cure.
"We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure.
Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."
Don't you think that, considering trying to get women into STEM fields is a pretty recent effort, jumping to the conclusion that "it must be because of biological reasons" that they are not interested and then we "shouldn't be doing anything"?
Would you have held the same opinion, had I said "well, there might be biological evidence that African-Americans are not interested in going through higher education, so we should not worry about trying to help poor black kids go through university" 40 years ago?
The memo literally lists the biological/psychological traits of men and women that may have caused the gender gap in tech. (He tries to clarify that he is talking on a population level and not talking about individuals)
He is not talking about raw programming skills, but the tech environment. And then he goes on to point out how the tech environment could change so that more women would want to be a part of it, or to stay in it longer once they were in.
In other words, he was saying there is something in tech culture which is inherently less palatable for the average woman than the average man. He never claimed that the culture was good and the women were deficient. Instead he said the culture should change instead of artificially trying to fill it with equal ratio hires.
Did you read the thing? It was very clearly about statistics. The message of the memo was not "women are biologically unfit for tech," it was, as a biological tendency, women are more likely to have traits which disincline them to have an interest in tech-related things, and therefore end up in tech.
To me this says very obviously that women can and are intellectually superior to men on individual cases. But we would not expect an even 50/50 distribution of tech interest among genders.
Feel free to refute that as a separate claim, but if your take from the memo was "all women are biologically inferior and cannot match or be better than men," then I would say you were not being intellectually honest when reading it.
It doesn't make that argument either. It makes the argument that since less women (will on aggregate) be interested in CS then men, less women will be in CS.
And that less women being interested in CS has _some_ basis in biological differences.
Whether you agree with that or not (the research does support it pretty strongly, but is certainly not settled), it is a reasonable argument.
Can you cite where Damore explicitly states that? Or are you just regurgitating second hand information that was processed by a blogger that didn't read the memo?
> it should be ok to pose a theory without subjecting yourself to a potential witch hunt.
That theory is that a large portion of your coworkers are unfit for the job because science. And they were only hired because of misguided politicking.
> "When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or charge of misogyny."
Kind of meaningless though, could be he only sent it to people who agreed with him or who were men.
"Goolag" shirt is pretty on the nose, I guess true hardship in Silicon Valley is losing your well paid tech job for... another well paid tech job?
It's funny that he refuses to admit any fault in what he said even in a limited way when ideological rigidity and refusing to entertain other people's ideas in good faith is exactly what he's complaining about in others. Doesn't seem like this experience has resulted in him rethinking much of anything. Suppose it's true that whatever you accuse the other side of is exactly what you actually do.
> It's funny that he refuses to admit any fault in what he said
Fault as in he regrets it?, or would have done it differently another time? If his goal was to get people to discuss this topic, how could he have done much better?
> ideological rigidity and refusing to entertain other people's ideas in good faith is exactly what he's complaining about
I don't think you can fault him for the rigidity or not entertain other people's ideas. It wasn't perfect or even great in either direction, but it surely made more effort than the many internet discussions, which we don't find fault with.
> it surely made more effort than the many internet discussions, which we don't find fault with.
I wouldn't say he made significantly more effort, and people certainly (and correctly IMO) find fault with them.
> Fault as in he regrets it?
I don't think he should regret publishing it, but I also don't think it led to much productive discussion about the issues here. People on both sides just chose to ignore and distort what other people said.
I don't think it's fair to say he made a good faith attempt to engage with the other side's position and fit it into the context of his beliefs. Instead he just presented his ideas and I don't think that does much on its own to advance the discussion. Predictably led to both sides digging in rather than finding some common ground.
To be frank, after all this, I wonder what tech company would want to hire him and the baggage that entails. I'm not saying he's wrong or right but he now brings with him a lot of unwanted attention. More than anything else, he was fired for bringing unwanted attention to Google. If the media never caught on or fan the firestorm that resulted, I'm not sure if he would have lost his job. I think he recognized as much even in the WSJ article.
Then again, maybe some daredevil startup could find a way to exploit his fame.
He doesn't have a monopoly on truth, that sort of presupposes that he was completely right and handled the situation perfectly. Perhaps he'll feel differently when the dust settles as another commenter suggested.
He handled the situation poorly IMO. Didn't consider the consequences of what he was saying true or not and didn't present it in an appropriate way for how sensitive the issue was. Ultimately that's a self defeating way to get your points across.
Showing up to a photo shoot in a Goolag shirt also just undermines him as a person. It's totally hyperbolic and ridiculous and will further discredit him in other people's minds because it's an insane overreaction to make that comparison.
How about for the things in his memo that were not truth? Sure, there's a bit of truth in it. There's much more that's debatable at best, and some that's pretty clearly false. How about for the totally off-topic nastiness toward the left, and diversity advocates, and others? Even in a memo about the driest of technical minutiae, comments like "honest discussion is being silenced" and "X tends to deny science" (with not even an attempt at proof on either point) would be worthy of censure. The memo was clearly written in a style more likely to escalate conflict than to create any positive outcome, so the reaction when Damore or one of his cronies leaked it beyond its supposed original distribution was entirely predictable. If you do something that simple diligence and common sense say would lead to a massive productivity-destroying flame war, you have something to apologize for.
The memo was written before that, and one extreme case does not prove a general trend. If one person is ejected from a concert or rally or trial for being disruptive, does that prove there's a general conspiracy against people with the same beliefs?
"Telling the truth" <- that's the problem, you've just made the jump to a conclusion: he's 100% right, and everyone saying he might be wrong is just an angry liberal who doesn't want to accept reality.
Maybe there's way too much socially driven discrimination right now to jump to conclusions about him being "right"?
We should cut him some slack. Let the dust settle and he might reconsider the situation. Right now he's probably in defensive mode due to the backlash this whole situation created.
"In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment."
If that is why Mr. Damore thinks he's being lambasted, he really doesn't get it.
Not sure what you mean, because plenty of people lambasting him ARE indeed lambasting him over the suggestion that it's incorrect to insist that anything short of a 50-50 gender ratio at Google is because of discrimination against women.
Of course they are not lambasting him in those words (that would be charitable). They are saying ridiculous nonsense like "Google employee claims women are inferior than men" or "Google employee claims women are not suited to be software engineers".
> Of course they are not lambasting him in those words (that would be charitable). They are saying ridiculous nonsense like "Google employee claims women are inferior than men" or "Google employee claims women are not suited to be software engineers"
Things he wraps around in cozy wording, but essentially suggests to be true. If not, what's the point of him complaining about outreach efforts? It's not like right now we are in a scenario where, say, 45% of the engineering workforce at Google is female, and Google is trying to force a 50/50 split. It's not even close. Right now the number is 20%, are you telling me it's settled science that should be the ratio? Because if you have hard numbers proving that's the case, then by all means, Google is wasting money in outreach efforts. You should tell them right now.
I don't work there nor do I know anybody that works there personally, but I can think of at least 1 Googler who has ignited firestorms over "fringe" beliefs on personal social media before. She's still at the company.
As much as I disagree with his viewpoint I seriously doubt this would have been terribly big deal if he had approached the issue with more tact, at minimum.
Is he being lambasted for being held up as a martyr by the anti-diversity crowd, despite his memo plainly stating he values diversity wholeheartedly?
Or is it because he is able to make a cogent argument against blind dogma and fanatical ideology?
The basis of his argument is that, with regards to hiring processes, we should treat people as individuals rather than just another member of a group. Furthermore he squarely targets neo-Marxist social constructivist ideology that divides society into oppressors and oppressed, claiming it is a flawed methodology to base your company's business on.
The weird thing is that there isn't a document, anywhere, that says it's a "Google value" that all "people are equal in every capacity." Sure, Google is for diversity - as they should - but the only person making a point of bringing in biological variance or equality is Damore.
The point of diversity isn't to force everyone to think men and women are identical in every capacity. The point of diversity is to create a desired environment with different kinds of people.
> The point of diversity isn't to force everyone to think men and women are identical in every capacity.
I don't think he thinks that. At least not if we are to believe the memo.
However I do think many of the responses took offence with the idea of biological differences between men and women. And maybe rightly so, since some of them referred to seemingly good research showing that he at least overstated his claims.
What many of the responders don't seem to get, is that a good reply shouldn't dependent on whether differences exist or not. Instead it should tackle the question of how we treat different people equally. When should we try and level the playing field, and when should we accept that gender gaps (and other kinds of gaps) appear?
> When the whole episode finally became a giant media controversy
This is a bit self referential.
But seriously who cares. People get fired daily, many of them get fired unjustly... and you know what we don't write tons and tons of articles about them.
At first I felt a bit bad for the guy... socially awkward guy who jumps to some misguided conclusions based on quoted research. Ideally, he would get some kind of training maybe an explanation from a sociology researcher how he incorrectly jumped to conclusions.
But this woe is me shtick, reaching out to the alt-right publications, then continuing on to do an op-ed on the WSJ. I no longer feel bad for him; he got what he deserved.
He didn't make this a national controversy. But since it is a national controversy, and he is at the center of it, why shouldn't he make the most of this opportunity?
Yet as much as people keep saying this, few seem to be able to really make the case. Just "I'm sure someone can explain why he's wrong" - in this case some random "sociology researcher" is supposed to be able to do so.
> this woe is me shtick
He lost his job for expressing the "wrong" opinion. I think that is wrong. why are you downplaying this, and trying to make a show of your indifference?
> reaching out to the alt-right publications
Who should he have reached out to? WSJ seems fine to me.
> But seriously who cares. People get fired daily, many of them get fired unjustly... and you know what we don't write tons and tons of articles about them.
You can't dismiss fair trial for a case just because you know other cases that haven't received fair trials. I'm in the opinion that he was righteously fired, but he deserves to a chance to speak up.
If this was a trial then and I believed he was unjustly fired I'd be right there with you. But we're now in the court of public opinion and I'm not really sure it's in his best interest to speak up.
there are parts of his "manifesto" that are actually quite interesting, about the nature of diversity, its key importance for the health of a company. The supplemental implication that diversity should be able to be justified by its own terms, and not held on a pedestal, guarded by armed militia.
the problem is that he half-arsed the bit about biological differences. Firstly he didn't bother to find decent primary sources (I suspect because they didn't backup his initial point.) There are other assertions that are iffy, but they will be utterly forgotten, as they are not as simple as "he said women are Inferior"
The problem for google is this:
o If they fire the author, they create a martyr
o If they keep him on, he would have been de-anonymised
o If they didn't fire him after being found out, they would have been accused of harbouring a malfeasant misogynist.
Basically its your standard loose loose situation for a company.
All of which masks the main point of this whole cerfuffle. what is the nature of diversity
I think Diversity is good. I want people from all walks of life in my company. However I also want Equality of access and treatment.
Hiring someone because they conform to a (non work skill based) target is discriminatory. discrimination is the enemy of diversity, be it positive or negative discrimination.
I'm not an expert on the subject. However, in his interview with Jordan Peterson [0], whom AFAIK is an expert on the field, the following claim was made: "I would like to state for the record that I believe that what you said in there, if not accurate, was at least representative of the current state of the art among well-trained psychometrically informed psychologists who are experts in the field of individual difference."
Peterson points out a few issues in his writeup as they go over it. Considering the author of the memo is not an expert, I think it's reasonable to be a bit more charitable with his writeup.
> Hiring someone because they conform to a (non work skill based) target is discriminatory. discrimination is the enemy of diversity, be it positive or negative discrimination.
Not sure about this one, companies hire based on whether or not they feel like people will be a cultural fit all the time (in the positive and negative sense). Is it discriminating to avoid hiring someone whom you perhaps could expect will not keep pace with what is required of their job? Or use company hours to stir up political controversy? I realize that some of this is a straw-man argument given the overlap of the discussion, but cultural fits are something companies do whether it is direct or indirect bias. Stirring up controversy is almost by definition the antithesis of a productive work environment; this is evident by all the time now wasted in the totality of Silicon Valley at this point. Is it a bad idea to stir the pot? Absolutely not, but these are definitely causal effects of it (good or bad). That being said, there is probably some evolutionary utility in generating such polarities as I would expect a social group to address the point of controversy where they vehemently disagree.
Your observation is 100% correct, and the hardest part to overcome. How does one change practices, without imposing, or lowering standards, or deliberately introducing social 'sand' around which pearls must be built to maintain productivity.
Hiring for cultural fit is not intrinsically antithetical to diversity. Most cultural qualities that I've seen are based around universal human qualities. But you are correct that they can be an impediment. Especially as cultural fit is by its very nature difficult to define.
We must also tackle training, because we can't magic up highly skilled people out of nowhere.
Let's hope this doesn't get flagged and buried like the "Google CEO should be fired" link. This is clearly relevant to a large percentage of Hackernews readers and bears discussion. There irony of stories related to this getting flagged and hidden is rich.
I know nothing about the "CEO should be fired" link (nor does it sound like something I'd want to read).
But I can wholeheartedly agree that this is one of the deepest, most emotional divides I've seen in an otherwise fairly united community. I think it's been continually swept under the rug for years because companies don't want it associated with their name (remember the whole dongle-joke github thing?), nor should they really.
Flagged. To be fair, if we give people too much information about this issue they might form accurate opinions and that'll really dampen cult membership.
What I find very dysfunctional is that rarely anything ever happens to the ones doing the shaming.
They are most toxic to an organisation's culture in the long run.
It is a failure of management that people fuelling the outrage cycles via public shaming, virtue signalling and grandstanding feel empowered to exercise mob justice.
Are you saying that the entire concept of shame should be disregarded? On the other hand, might he be guilty of something? Of creating a hostile workplace, of destroying his own credibility with regard to performance reviews and interviewing, or at least, at Google, supporting his reasoning with bad science? Even outside of his employment environment, there's something to be said about his skills as a scientist as they are illustrated by the essay, about whether he was a false positive that slipped through GOOG's hiring filters.
> about whether he was a false positive that slipped through GOOG's hiring filters.
IIRC he mentioned in an interview that he got the highest performance rating and a promotion last cycle.
There is a middle ground to shaming. People can overshame and instances of overshaming have been very toxic. For example, calling for violence or for a coworker to be fired. These instances are never punished.
You can use the word 'censor' if you like but it's the normal action of user flags, software, and moderation and it works much the same way regardless of the story. This tends not to be so visible during turbulent periods, but what can you do.
'Google memo' stories have been on HN's front page. Many more have been flagged off it. That is understandable because they didn't contain significant new information. Quantity isn't the criterion here. Hot-topic discussions tend to all be the same, and the substantiveness quotient declines steeply under repetition.
Many of the flagged stories have still been vigorously discussed (i.e. hundreds of comments each), so I wouldn't use the word 'censor' for those. The site goal isn't to hide them, it's to preserve the variety and substantiveness of the front page, which I believe is why most people come here.
There's a lot of hypocrisy around this individual. If he were a woman facing termination for speaking out about something, then people would be referring to this media tour as "attention whoring." Instead this is being given the context of somehow speaking out against some kind of oppression.
No matter where you stand on the issue, he disseminated a company wide memo criticizing the company-wide hiring practices in a preachy way that didnt leave room for the company to answer back. In what company would that not be labeled insubordination?
"he disseminated a company wide memo criticizing the company-wide hiring practices in a preachy way that didnt leave room for the company to answer back."
Not true, he distributed the memo on a mailing list called "skeptics."
I would like to hear from someone at Google what kind of discussions happen on the "skeptics" list. Have there have been any negative stereotypes about Christians voiced on that mailing list, for instance? Was political discussion normal on that mailing list? Was criticism of Google normal?
I don't think that's true. Plenty of women spoke up against Uber, and they weren't called attention whores, they were lauded (rightly).
Of course, you can find instances of James being lauded and of Susan Fowler being called an "attention whore," if you really go searching for them. But neither are the majority, by far.
Oh lord that's note even close to a good rebuttal. Mostly because it starts off with a list of "sexist" assumptions, some of which don't even tangentially relate to the memo.
What the article says:
> Sexist assumption 6: Gender bias is not a real issue. Anyone who thinks so is blinded by political bias.
What the memo says:
> Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the
workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.
Literally, can anyone argue against the guy without misrepresenting and demonizing his argument? I don't even agree with him and find this stuff head-ache inducing.
> We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and whiner[10].
"Gender issue issue", as in complaining that gender issues are taken too seriously?
Damore kept saying he acknowledges that sexism exists, but none of his suggestions actually address it. It's as though he paid just it enough lip service to scrape by. The thrust of his argument is that the gender gap can be entirely explained by personal choices or innate qualities.
I agree the rebuttal gets off to a rocky start because the assumptions seem hyperbolic. It gets better by the end, as each one is explained.
> "When a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men"
>
> In no way is that referring to "complaining that gender issues are taken too seriously?"
Read the link cited with that sentence and you might understand it better. That also is a complete misreading of that sentence.
It is saying that gender issues which affect men are not taken seriously and are discarded. To quote the associated sources TL;DR
Both genders have issues
Also:
> The thrust of his argument is that the gender gap can be entirely explained by personal choices or innate qualities.
Let me emphasize the TL;DR from the memo for you, since you have seemed to miss it.
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women ***may in part explain*** why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.
Honest question, why is it so hard to accept that his position might be nuanced?
> Read the link cited with that sentence and you might understand it
better. It is saying that gender issues which affect men are not taken
seriously and are discarded.
I wonder what gender issue Damore found himself facing. Homelessness? Murder? And when he raised those issues he was labeled a misogynist? That doesn't seem to fit.
It's hard to accept that there is nuance in the memo, because it's only found in broad sentences like this one:
> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part
explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and
leadership.
There's nothing wrong with this sentence. The trouble is that he never concretely addresses reasons for the gender gap other than innate traits. There is some nuance in his memo, but there isn't enough.
What about all these documented biases? Surely these are affecting womens' careers too:
> I wonder what gender issue Damore found himself facing.
Homelessness? Murder? And when he raised those issues he
was labeled a misogynist? That doesn't seem to fit.
because its bluntly, quiet tone def. In many ways much more tone def than the memo. "Dalmore could not have possibly had a negative experience that had to do with male gender issues".
Being a "nerd" he almost assuredly deals with and has delt with male gender issues such as "lacking masculinity" his entire life.
Playing a game of "my problems worse than yours". Or "your problems are trivial" is not a great way to win over an audience wouldn't you agree?
You're right, I was missing this. I followed his hyperlink[0] and immediately started reading section 10.1, but he probably meant section 10.3. In that case I'll have to retract what I said. Thanks for putting me straight.
His memo absolutely fails to mention the biases women deal with on a daily bases. It fails to mention how unjust such things can be and how they must make his female colleagues feel. And that such things are well supported by research.
That failure makes his audience significantly less receptive, and puts them on the immediate defense. He should spend some serious time reading "Difficult Conversations" and other books of it's ilk. As much as he wants to avoid feelings, feelings always matter. Hence the justified accusation of his memo being "tonedef".
And you are not considering the context in which it was written, or are missing key statements like:
> For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the
extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to
differential treatment and the authoritarian element
that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal
representation.
For him it is clearly table stakes that women are discriminated against. He doesn't feel the need to argue it because he, and the Google culture which he is addressing, finds it so imminently obvious.
Something he states. Multiple times. Throughout the document.
> Sure, he says that innate traits are only part of the cause. But the rest of his essay implies they are the primary cause.
Therefore, from the inter-individual perspective,the
individuals who pursue STEM careers are more likely to
be male than female. For example, assuming that
individuals within the highest 25% of a population
interest distribution are likely to make occupational
choices consistent with an interest type, the number of
women entering the engineering occupation, then, is only
19.5% of the number of men entering the field. This
percentage is very similar to the actual female–male
ratio of individuals employed in engineering. In science
and mathematics interest distributions, the female–male
ratios in the upper 25% asymptote are 0.60 and 0.64,
respectively. However, the actual female–male ratio of
individuals employed in the field of physical sciences
is only about 0.40 and, in mathematics, it is about
0.45. This discrepancy between interest data and real
employment composition indicates that there may be
reasons other than sex differences in interests that can
account for gender disparity in science and mathematics.
A few observations though:
1) Google tends to pull a lot from Science and Math, not just engineering, in the "tech world". Dalmore is one such individual. This indicates the ratio should be much more skewed to an even makeup.
2) Even without that Google is still pretty "male" compared to what the research indicates.
3) Research on interests is largely still post social, so we don't really have a good feeling for the biological vs social components that drive the interest rates we see today. We know some pre-social effects exist, but we don't really have a good grasp on the magnitude of such effects. His memo fails to make this differentiation.
Thanks, you're right. Although the rebuttal I posted addresses the memo point-by-point, it similarly fails to reach the intended audience.
Btw, maybe I'm reading this wrong, but your block quote seems to make the opposite point that you think it does. You said the research "indicates that interests are a primary driver in the discrepancy," but the quote said:
This discrepancy between interest data and real employment
composition indicates that there may be reasons other than
sex differences in interests that can account for gender
disparity in science and mathematics.
While I think a reasonable rebuttal to the memo could be made, the assumptions at the beginning of this article are so obviously missing the point of the memo that it's hard to see justifying reading the rest of it. Many people do make those assumptions, but I don't think you can honestly parse the original memo and believe that it was truly biased by, or literally promotes, those ideas.
What media tour? I have yet to see any news organizations interview in him either in person or in print. Honestly, I have yet to even see a news organization publish verbatim excerpts from his memo.
The horror. Where should people turn to get their approval stamps before they are allowed to write documents? Is it only bad to write about things, or should thinking about things also be frowned upon? Where can I get a list of safe, government approved topics to think about?
> I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences
...and then said whole lot more. Sundar Pichai did not specify which parts of the memo were considered to have violated the code of conduct. Without that, it's disingenuous for Damore or anyone else to assume it was the one part they want everyone to focus on (because the rest are weaker).
> I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment.
OK, James, who was claiming all? Show us where that claim was made. Or is that just a strawman?
> Upper management tried to placate this surge of outrage by shaming me and misrepresenting my document
Who among Google's upper management misrepresented the document? Where, when, and how? Or is that just a Trumpian persecution complex?
If the memo was against the code of conduct, why did they wait one month to take action?
A better response from HR would have been to tell him: "this may violate our code of conduct - could you please take it down for the moment while we discuss amongst HR".
This could have turned into a reasonable internal discussion than a media circus.
Agreed. They also have now unfortunately signaled to that they will make hasty personnel decisions if enough politically-minded individuals complain at once. This encourages people to find new things to be offended by in order to advance their social cause.
I would also like to know this, Google should have fired him the same day. I have heard that it took a while to get all their legal ducks in a row before firing him.
It's nice to finally hear the other side of the story. It has been a public execution for now, and I think, even if the way he formulates it might be better, that he has got a very good point: more and more the debate is cut short on some subjects, and some people rather keep their opinions to themselves by fear of being ashamed by the 'empire of the Good'. Not that I agree or not with their ideas, but it makes me sad to see self-limitation of free speech.
Google is a particularly intense echo chamber because it is in the middle of Silicon Valley and is so life-encompassing as a place to work. With free food, internal meme boards and weekly companywide meetings, Google becomes a huge part of its employees’ lives. Some even live on campus. For many, including myself, working at Google is a major part of their identity, almost like a cult with its own leaders and saints, all believed to righteously uphold the sacred motto of “Don’t be evil.”
Google may ingratiate itself into all these parts of your life but really it only wants one thing: your work. Damore fell into the illusion that Google really was a way of life, that they ever really cared about a political debate. They don't. It's just a company. Keep your political opinions out of the workplace.
I think the inconsistency I see, is that those who wrote letters of complaint about him did so out of a political agenda. I see this argument being used unilaterally. You could just as easily say to those offended "Don't read things you are offended by. Shame on you for reading political stuff at work, keep it out of here."
[Seeing the tone of this thread I expect to lose a lot of karma for this, but it's just imaginary internet points]
>I think the inconsistency I see, is that those who wrote letters of complaint about him did so out of a political agenda.
You mean those outside of the company like on twitter and stuff? Sure I agree, but they're not bringing it up at their workplace. The people working at google who have complained I think is actually reasonable. Damore brought this issue into the workplace. When somebody brings an issue like that in, your solution is that everybody should ignore it? It has to be addressed at that point. Really I'd say if you go to your job and you bring outside political issues into your workplace you're creating a messy problem because you're piercing the work-veil so to speak.
>It went largely ignored for months. I suspect the reason this went viral was the offended parties recirculated it amongst themselves.
But we don't know how widely circulated it was during those months, in fact we don't really know anything about it's release. It seems to me that it was circulated among what was probably a small group who agreed with damore (a boys club if you will :P) and then broke out of that group, other people started reading it and all hell broke loose. The fact that no one discovered it for months doesn't really change anything about the memo or its contents.
>If the explosion is the problem, consider the gunpowder, as well as the spark.
I do consider both. Damore wrote the memo (gunpowder) then released it at his workplace (the spark.)
Or maybe there is a large community of very angry people who identify as victims (gunpowder) and this particular firing was the spark.
It's not a useful distinction. By the same argument all the people upset about his firing should stop reading the news about it and get on with their day. All these valley programmers who lean right politically do seem quite eager to play the victim after all, really they're out looking for something to set them off like Damore's firing aren't they? They obviously have a political agenda don't they? They're recirculating news about damore's firing amongst themselves aren't they?
It's inane, the problem has a defined source: Damore bringing his political opinion into the workplace.
If your facts aligned with my experience, that'd be fine.
But let me tell you a story. Once at an SF unicorn a girl said in a public slack channel "I'd feel unsafe as a woman if my manager ever said Trump isn't a sexist." She was most certainly not fired.
So it's not been my experience that politics in the workplace is the root of the issue, because I seem to see it being really enforced unidirectionally (mind you I'm on the left myself). Hell, I've worked at two places where the CEO very clearly had a strong, personal negative reaction to Trump.
The issue I think I see is the weaponizing of PC to penalize non-left opinions as "offensive/inappropriate" which I think undermines the pursuit of truth (a value I hold higher than any political affiliation)
As a thought-experiment, suppose somebody had posted a writing exactly like what Dalmore posted in tone, but had the exact opposite view. Do you think they would have been fired for bringing up politics at work? Let's be honest with ourselves here.
[Note these two issues keep getting conflated. It may be that sexism exists, as well as asymmetrical regulations on how political speech is punished at work. ]
You could just as easily say to those offended "Don't read things you are offended by
This is victim-blaming and poor reasoning that has been used for decades by spammers and their ilk. The problem is that the offense is only discovered by the thing you're suggesting they don't do. This is a Catch 22.
By the same logic, you'd advise a person in the Emergency Room, "don't stand in front a gun next time."
Who said you're not allowed to have your own opinion? I was merely reacting to it...unless that's the part you have a problem with. Google reacted to his expression, which he offered without duress.
This piece is a huge missed opportunity for Damore. He could have used this chance to reach a wide audience and explain his arguments; instead he goes for a sensationalist tone (and image with the Goolag shirt).
I don't think this article deserves to be flagged. I'm also unclear if whoever flagged it was trying to flag the article itself or the discussion it created.
So there's no way I can "vouch" for it to not be buried somewhere off the front page? That's too bad.
I understand the intent of the algorithm, but personally I feel these are some of the great conversations of our age being held by some very smart people and it seems like the discussions keep disappearing once they get good.
Can anybody please talk about the actual science here?
As far as wikipedia is concerned, yes there are biological mental differences between men and women. I see a lot of "This is so disgusting I won't even respond to it," which is a cop-out.
I think the biggest mistake he makes is about magnitude of those effects and the specific outcomes.
We don't really know how much of a difference those biological differences make. There is a lot of research that show women (on AVERAGE) are more people oriented. But the percentage and distribution of women vs men that are thing vs people oriented isn't well settled. We have some data on outlooks in adults but that is obviously _not_ pre-culture.
Therefore, from the inter-individual perspective,the
individuals who pursue STEM careers are more likely to
be male than female. For example, assuming that
individuals within the highest 25% of a population
interest distribution are likely to make occupational
choices consistent with an interest type, the number of
women entering the engineering occupation, then, is only
19.5% of the number of men entering the field. This
percentage is very similar to the actual female–male
ratio of individuals employed in engineering. In science
and mathematics interest distributions, the female–male
ratios in the upper 25% asymptote are 0.60 and 0.64,
respectively. However, the actual female–male ratio of
individuals employed in the field of physical sciences
is only about 0.40 and, in mathematics, it is about
0.45. This discrepancy between interest data and real
employment composition indicates that there may be
reasons other than sex differences in interests that can
account for gender disparity in science and mathematics.
Considering Google pulls a lot from the Science and Mathematics fields (Dalmore is one such individual), I would expect Google's 83% male to 17% female engineering composition is somewhat skewed by sexism.
So far most of the discussion has been around a. whether the facts in the memo were accurate and b. whether google was right to fire him.
Can we talk about whether putting out a memo like this is a good idea? What is the benefit of putting out a memo like this? Clearly James saw a problem and is trying to fix it.
Sexism does exist, even today, even in Silicon Valley. Why put out a paper saying that biological differences between men and women result in fewer women in tech? Women are already the underdogs in this fight. Even if it's true, what is being improved by him pointing this out?
It kind of feels like if someone was to put out a paper saying "The Koch brothers pays millions of dollars in taxes but my neighbor doesn't. That's not fair!" Why defend the side that already has too much power?
Another reasonable, fairly noninflammatory piece of writing from Mr. Damore. I'm sure this will be read carefully by his critics, so they can provide a rational, articulate rebuttal.
I think a lot of people struggle with the idea that how you say something matters as much if not more than what you say. And Damore definitely seems to suffer from that. He's focused on the fact that his document was to his mind well reasoned and factually supported (it has citations I guess), while ignoring the problem, that it was also incredibly tone deaf and to an uncharitable reader offensive. Assuming you take no issue with the evidence he cites, his reasoning is at best flawed, he ignores a lot of easily cited counter evidence, and worst of all uses a lot of strongly coded language. I'm fully willing to believe his intentions were as he stated but the fact is his memo doesn't present well unless you're already inclined to believe his argument.
Also generally speaking, upsetting a large number of people you work with is a good way to get fired. Sound arguments or not. People have been fired for repeatedly microwaving smelly food in the kitchen, and other comparably minor offenses. Releasing a document which criticizes the companies hiring practices and can be validly interpreted to call into question the credentials of many of your coworkers is a no brainer pink slip.
When has it ever been socially acceptable to demand that another individual discuss everything that you want? I would never go up to my friend and say, I want to talk about coconuts! If you don't want to talk about coconuts, then you're not really open and tolerant! You are intolerant of my affection for coconuts! Meanwhile, I'm willing to talk about coconut milk, but you require that the conversation include discussion of the shell.
Nobody would ever do that.
Damore stubbornly ignores Pichai's willingness to discuss some of what he wrote more deeply. Damore pretends that Google isn't willing to discuss any of the issues he raised, which isn't true. And, he really has no standing to demand his political beliefs be discussed at work. If people don't want to discuss them, including his managers, and they feel he's being a distraction, then he's out.
> I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored.
So as long as the memo was internal, nobody cared. It looks like he was fired because the memo went viral, not because he wrote and submitted it to the diversity groups (which happened a month ago).
Brilliant. At last Michael O. Church is not Google's silliest hire.
If only they had not fired this doofus and turned him into an alt-right martyr. They could just have assigned his silly ass to Special Projects and let him ride out the attendant humiliation.
Because his piece is filled with logical errors, makes a big noise about reason and logic while citing evopsych nonsense which isn't regarded as actual science?
I mean, beyond any discussion of his ideology, the memo is laughable trash.
The whole argument is weak simply based on his relative dismissal of societal factors because, he argues, there's proven biological differences. So, he just concludes that "meh, we shouldn't try to change the status quo, because that'd be discrimination."
He built the straw-man ("politics based discrimination"), he gave it a name ("left-wing ideals") and then proceeds to beat it. The problem is the straw-man has little merit: there's no known quantifier of how much 'lack of interest' in the field is caused by societal factors, and how much might be caused by biological factors. Without that, isn't it a bit premature to conclude that it is discrimination against men to have outreach programs for females?
The point that bothers me the most about this memo is that Damore is intelligent enough to know exactly what kind of reaction he would elicit. I'm not buying for a minute his claim that he just wanted "a healthy discussion." You don't put everything in terms of "left and right" and then say "and the left is repressive and authoritarian, and what's more, wants to discriminate against people like me" and then get to pretend you are not biased.
Huh? The fact that the majority of people dismissed this memo, and is actually a small amount of the usual suspects getting "offended" about Damore getting fired, tells me that people are more "incredulous" about his argument.
The funny bit about "my assertions" as you call them, is that actually the only "assertion" I make is: this is not settled science; trying to build an argument around it is as useless as us trying to decide policy by speculating on whether Bitcoin will destroy fiat money or not. It's people like Damore (and you, apparently) who are trying to make this a "settled matter".
Please, back your assertions. Please tell me in concrete numbers what percentage of women are not interested in STEM because of biological factors? I mean, if it's settled science, you surely know the answer, right?
Where are these "facts"? I was talking about the credulity of your comments, not the memo. But in fact I'll admit I made an error here - I misread, you aren't OP.
> trying to build an argument around it is as useless
He tried to begin a discussion. His memo was based mostly on feedback he'd received in doing so. Please quote Damore (or me) otherwise; I can't find reference to "settled matter" you put in quotation marks.
> Please quote Damore (or me) otherwise; I can't find reference to "settled matter" you put in quotation marks.
Let me break it down for you, because it seems like the inference chain is escaping you:
- The moment he starts suggesting "things we can do to fix this", it's clear that there's a problem. I mean, why suggest fixes if nothing's broken? (Engineering 101)
- What's the problem? Apparently, trying to reach a 50/50 gender parity is discriminatory. But wait a minute, that's about the split in population, so how can that be discriminatory?
- There has to be something that Damore knows that we don't know that explains why 50/50 is wrong. Turns out, Damore has solid evidence that women are not willing to participate in engineering at the same rate as men are. Never mind that only 70 years ago women couldn't even participate in the workforce, or that all the way until double-income families became necessary they were actively discouraged to participate in the workforce. Never mind that only about 30 years ago the US started programs to encourage women to participate in STEM careers. I mean, all those things wouldn't explain the disparity, so there has to be something else.
- Well, of course! It's the genes! I mean, we know (from his memo) that women are just not interested in "things" but "people" (conclusion derived by a study that has been debunked and even the author couldn't replicate) and that they "get more anxious". You know girls, they freak out and stuff! Of course that'd explain why they feel anxious in a job where they are literally surrounded by males. Nothing to do with things like "beer thirty" being the norm, but rather it's their genes. D'oh!
So that's the crux of it: Damore admits that there's social issues, but rather than addressing them and seeing if the disparity fixes itself, he'd rather call the efforts "discrimination" without any proof that actually they are affecting males. He could've made a solid argument (and one that wouldn't have gotten him fired) if he had asked, honestly, whether creating different queues for minority candidates isn't in itself a form of discrimination. Laying out his theory about women being "different" is where he went against Google's Code of Conduct. That kind of shit is better left for r/theredpill, not your work environment where you have to interact with women.
I hate reminding you, but this kind of "biological arguments" were made about black people until very recently. Going back to your "metaphor" about segregation: Damore is not Rosa Parks, he's the driver trying to tell us that "why should we let black people sit at the front of the bus, when they seem pretty happy in the backseats."
If you've read the memo, then you don't understand it if this is your conclusion.
> Turns out, Damore has solid evidence that women are not willing to participate in engineering
You've also tried to badger me with "demands" for whatever level of certainty you decide. Please quote the memo section that you are referring to when you say "Turns out".
> Never mind that..
If you think you have a better case for explaining the disparity, then do as I suggested, and create a memo of your own. Are you claiming that the memo must be a fraud, because your own opinion isn't represented in it? Maybe if you researched the matter you'd be surprised that your arguments aren't as strong as you thought.
> a study that has been debunked
But don't bother to link to the study, the line/page in the memo, or any aspect of its debunking?
You flip out over the Rosa Parks metaphor, but have no problem with saying:
> this kind of "biological arguments" were made about black people
> Please quote the memo section that you are referring to when you say "Turns out".
That was obviously tongue-in-cheek. Damore doesn't have any solid evidence, just an "intuition" (read: bias) based on some articles he's read. At least he's honest enough to admit he's not infallible. You, on the other hand...
> Maybe if you researched the matter you'd be surprised that your arguments aren't as strong as you thought.
Please, correct my wrong assumptions. You seem to be well informed in the subject, seeing as you are telling me I'm wrong. So far, you've been incapable of answering the simplest of questions: what is the number of women who are not interested in engineering because of biological causes?
> But don't bother to link to the study, the line/page in the memo, or any aspect of its debunking?
As an aside, notice that the split in the study doesn't correlate with the 80/20% gender divide at Google. So even if the study was correct, Damore's point would still be bullshit.
> You flip out over the Rosa Parks metaphor, but have no problem with saying
Awe, look at you! Trying to do the old alt-right "by pointing out someone else's racism you are the real racist" switcharoo! It would be cute, except for the unfortunate events in Charlottesville that reminds us that racism is alive and doing great in the US.
Yes, I do flip at people trying to use dubious "biological" causes to explain away clear societal issues. You, my friend, are one of them.
I've asked you to quote the memo, or provide citations. How can I correct your assumptions, if I don't know how you came to those conclusions? Do you want me to guess the ways you might have come to those conclusions, or which parts of the memo you might have misread? I'm not going to speculate if you aren't going to substantiate your assertions.
> You seem to be well informed in the subject
The subject in this case is "What the google memo says", we've yet to advance from there. Given the tone of your posts, I'm not inclined to enter into a general discussion on the topic. But you've misrepresented Damore's memo, And I think this should be corrected.
> This is the study..
Which paragraph of the memo cites the study? And where did you source your version of the memo?
> Google for more, it's not that hard.
No, it's your burden. And Google is not research.
> what is the number of women
I think I made myself clear. I'm not answering your questions until you rescind or substantiate your assertions. And this question isn't one you want answering, you are just asking it to imply it's relevant to the content of the memo, which it isn't.
> switcharoo
Problem is "pointing out someone else's racism" requires "someone else's racism". You flipped out because you don't want to conflate Damore's situation with Parks', but you'll happily conflate it with that of racists of the same era. You asked "what has [the memo] got in common with Jim Crow" in disgust, but now you're equating google engineer writing a cited memo about gender differences, to exactly that.
> racism is .. doing great in the US
So far as the events in Charlottesville are representative of the entire country - which they aren't.
> You, my friend, are one of them.
In your opinion. And you opinion is informed by a severe lack of comprehension, in both the contents of the memo, and my own posts. So long as you are not arguing in good faith, I doubt this will change.
Lesson 1: Don't talk about sex, politics,
or religion.
Source: Very, very old stuff, I got from
Mom. I wish I'd always followed it.
Lesson 2: Don't tell them ANYTHING!
Source: From an astoundingly, intensely
socially cautious person, my mother in
law. Some of the most intense brain
activity I ever saw was by her anywhere in
public. So, e.g., the woman I married
found E. Goffman, The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life easy reading and
obvious! In part the mother's intensity
came from some delicate, highly stressful
circumstances of her mother in the Great
Depression where in their small community
just a single wrong word could wipe out
the finances of the family, literally.
Lesson 3: "... keep to two subjects: the
weather and everybody's health."
Source: My Fair Lady, advice to
Professor Higgins who was socially crude!
Lesson 4: He who always calls a spade a
spade is fit only to use one.
Source: Common from some parts of the
English upper class.
I was very slow to follow this advice.
So, I had to learn the hard way, pay "full
tuition", from experience -- "Experience
is the great teacher, and some will learn
from no other."
So, Professor Higgins had to learn these
lessons the hard way. Much of the theme
of the movie Patton was that Patton
also had to learn the hard way.
IMHO, basically the advice is good. I've
been astounded at how eager some people,
how many people, are eager to attack
strongly against any violation of those
lessons. My current working guess is, TOO
MANY people are just wildly oversensitive
to even small violations of those lessons.
So, the simple solution is, when in doubt,
which means nearly all the time, follow
the lessons.
Yes, there is a downside: As in E. Fromm,
The Art of Loving, four of the keys
to intimacy (between the ears if not
between the legs) are knowledge, caring,
respect, and responsiveness. Here, for
"knowledge" he meant, roughly from memory,
"giving knowledge of one's self to the
other."
So, the lessons above conflict with this
part of Fromm's version of intimacy. So,
if have a really good relationship with
your spouse and work at a place where some
wound up clique is running the place and
has their war paint on and are on the war
path, then express your true feelings --
blow your stack, blow off steam -- in
private, at home, with your spouse.
For more examples, apparently in WWII,
both the German army and the Japanese navy
were very intense organizations.
Victorious? No. Intense? Yes!
So, can remember the movie Tora, Tora,
Tora where in the WWII Japanese navy
apparently a subordinate needed an
explicit "you may speak freely" to say
much. And in the TV series Winds of
War apparently a German officer was
encouraged to voice whatever concerns he
had until the superior issued a direct
order at which time the subordinate would
stop the concerns and just say
"Immediately".
Once around DC I was in a part-time job
working myself and my wife through our
Ph.D. degrees. At one point the US Navy
had a request: Evaluate the survivability
of the US SSBN (missile firing submarines)
fleet under a special scenario of global
nuclear war limited to sea. They wanted
the results in two weeks. Gads. Well, I
found a continuous time, discrete state
space Markov process and delivered
something in two weeks, and apparently
they liked it.
Then a few days later, some guy I'd never
seen before was in the offices. He
wandered back to my office and started
making small talk. He did this for 1-2
hours a day, for about 2 weeks. Gee, it
was no longer small talk! He got the
conversation going to current political
topics of US national security and
defense. I answered like a well informed
voting citizen with some reasonably solid,
not very unusual, opinions. Dumb de dumb
dumb, dumb. Looking back it was a high
end security interview for some high
position, and I missed out on it. Should
have followed Mom's advice: Don't talk
about politics. Certainly don't talk
about national security politics in an
office doing classified work for the US
Navy.
Another related lesson: Limit all
communications with co-workers to
objective aspects of the work, and do not
permit more than trivial instances of
small talk. Such small talk can be the
seeds of destructive office gossip,
deliberate efforts to distract from the
work, etc. Sure, the small talk should
avoid sex, politics, and religion, but
should avoid essentially everything else,
too. So, limit small talk to, say, very
short, obvious, trivial, innocuous remarks
on the weather -- of course, NEVER mention
"global warming" or "climate change"!
Apparently many HN users still don't understand how flagging is supposed to work. This is a first-person account from the subject of the controversy, so it shouldn't have been flagged. Flagging is for spam and off-topic posts. The echo chamber, attacks on heretics, and attempts to enforce groupthink are strong on HN, which should not surprise anyone given how woven it is into SV culture.
does anyone really believe that google handling of diversity, will have any impact on its future
is it easy to copy google, to build a competitor
can google competitors really beat it, by handling diversity differently
lets be realistic .. unless google breaks the law somehow in its handling of diversity .. anything they do is subjective ad of little impact on its future
> lets be realistic .. unless google breaks the law somehow in its handling of diversity .. anything they do is subjective ad of little impact on its future
Ad-words provides most of Google's revenue. As long at ad-words stays on top the rest of the company can be dedicated to summoning Cthulhu without endangering it's future.
Thanks for the link, but how cringe-worthy is this Twitter? I find memes to be very discrediting to one's claim and the Goolag bus stop felt like trying to meme out a serious issue.
See here is the extension for Chrome https://github.com/njuljsong/wsjUnblock Technically you just need to set the location referer to something like Facebook's domain.
Seems a bit much to me. When the Soviets put undesirables and political prisoners into gulags they didn't give them fabulous salaries and incredible perks.
I think the intent is for it to be over the top. Poking fun at something with excessive force with a catchy name works really well for branding. Works right in the meme culture.
> That's your opinion. You've not made the case the memo has "no merit"
I just replied to your other comment clarifying why the memo is weak at best, and a stupid violation of the code of conduct at worst.
> No you aren't, you don't have a case.
Oh, yes I do. Males working in Silicon Valley complaining about their precious feelings have 0 of my sympathy. I'm a male and work in tech. You don't see me or any of my friends whining about "discrimination" because more women are coming into the field. It's beyond ridiculous. Only people who are not very sure about their skills would be complaining about that.
> quote it specificly.
Refer to my other comments. Essentially he tries to pass the biological argument as the One True Argument, completely ignoring that while the social arguments are still there the biological argument is unquantifiable and building a case around is bullshit.
> There are citations in the original memo
The citations don't quantify, they just quote. Nobody, ever, has put a number to the percentage of women that don't go into engineering for "lack of interest" derived from biological factors. It's literally unquantifiable.
> Just because you have none? Read the memo, that's a start.
I read the fucking memo. It reads exactly like the kind of shit I'd expect from a "disenfranchised" alt-righter. I'm surprised he didn't publish it on Breitbart.
> For me to read the memo to you?
No, for you to give me a number. What percentage of women are not interested in engineering because of genes. C'mon, can't be that hard!?
> Show me the part of the memo that requires it? you are the one that suggested the memo said things that it didn't.
What, exactly does the memo say in your opinion? Because so far I hear you complain about all kinds of things it allegedly doesn't say, but I haven't heard you explain what it does say. I understand that's the semantic game most alt-righters love to play, but c'mon, if you want me to take you seriously at least argue something instead of just saying "no, didn't say so."
Oh I see, I'm an "alt-righter" now? Presumably part of the down-voting brigade from Breitbart you assumed to exist.
Sorry, but I'm not doing your work for you. You made false claims, burden on you is to back them up, or otherwise rescind your claims. I've asked you to quote, or cite the memo, and you haven't - now you want me to instead?
The burden is on you to prove I've made false claims. Again, you keep saying I said something wrong and yet never point out what. The moment I ask you to point out what, you just scurry away saying "I'm not gonna do your work". Seems to me like you don't have a point to make.
You've posted something like a hundred comments in a row engaging in flamewar and ideological battle on this site, after agreeing not to do that when I took the rate limit off your account. What do you think we should do when people promise to follow the rules and then don't?
I realize these threads have been wretched trainwrecks but it looks like you've done as much as anyone to make them so. I'm putting the rate limit back on your account, and if you continue to abuse HN by either (a) using it primarily for political and ideological battle (b) stooping to incivility and tedious tit-for-tats, we will ban you.
What defines a "battle" or "flamewar"? There are no rules that clarify this. A tit-for-tat would be if I were as uncivil, but I gave a lot of good faith before opting out.
Nice cop out. That's fine, I'm tired of going back and forth with you and so far you haven't brought up a single point, just keep accusing me of misrepresentation and saying I'm supposed to prove wrong something you didn't ever define.
I'm calling you out as an alt-righter with nothing better to do than defend gender stereotyping. Enough is enough.
You've been using HN primarily for ideological battle too, and that's an abuse of the site regardless of who does it or which side they're on.
I realize these threads have been little other than that, but that doesn't make it ok to break HN's rules, and some of the many personal attacks in your comments ("Yes, really, you have no fucking shame") are beyond the pale, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Plenty of other users are arguing for the same positions as you without stooping to this level or degrading the site so badly.
Given that HN is supposed to be a place for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, not the smiting of enemies, we have to moderate the site rather proactively when people turn it into a battlefield. It has been quite the battlefield of late, but you seem to be one of the users making this worse, so would you please not do that anymore? The test we use as moderators is: does this account use HN primarily for political or ideological battle? The key word is primarily. A certain amount of political argument is ok, but if it turns into the main use of the site, that's an abuse. You've commented on non-political topics on HN before, but frankly I had to look a long way back in your account's history to find any. That's a problem.
Most importantly, we ban accounts that do personal attacks, so no more personal attacks, please.
Sure thing. The whole thing was getting way out of hand anyway. Next time the topic comes out, I'll try to steer away from it (I've been flagging the posts regarding this trainwreck of a story already.)
Things look like they are turning around. Mainstream media wouldn't normally publish the "evil" side's story unaltered, although WSJ has always been respectable.
Please. The WSJ is owned by Murdoch, owner of Fox News, who brings you some brilliant totally not biased authors like Suzanne Venker who teaches women they are going to be way happier if they just give in and become doormats for their husbands.
That's the sort of mafia-style comment that makes people want to stand and fight. Nice career you've got there. It'd be a shame if you disagreed with us and we made you un-hireable, wouldn't it?
He was a software engineer at Google for five years, and not fired for being bad at programming. And lots of people think his firing was unfair. I think he'll be OK.
Well, I would say this particular step helped rather than hurt. It let him convey his side as other than sexist and misogynistic, which if you only go through second or third party sources could easily have been your impression. How a search for his name comes up with a WSJ article where he explains he was trying to have a reasoned intellectual discussion.
Sure, some companies will still not like his stance, but they wouldn't have hired him previously either. Some companies that would have passed will probably give him a second look with this to explain his side of the situation.
Hey can't be that common sense-less, he worked at google after all. Maybe he had a nice pile of options that were going to take a while to vest unless he was fired. If he truly didn't see this coming, he's a moron.
From reading the article he just wrote, it appears he intended it only for a smaller group within Google that he worked more closely with. But it got out, and went viral within the company.
Similar, you are correct. Except getting exiled from your home country isn't remotely similar to being fired. Also, Snowden blew the whistle, this guy from google was voicing an opinion.
> Yeah, this is clearly at the same level as racial segregation!
No it isn't, it's just the same argument. Did you really misunderstand that? because the sarcastic tone you chose to take makes me wonder otherwise.
> You people really..
What do you mean "you people"?
> No fucking shame
Really? Because if anything, I see leftist arguments purposefully conflate race and sex, and compare racism with sexism. Even the Bloomberg presenter that interviewed Damore did it. It's only shameful when dismantling poor logic of the left?
It's a metaphor, you don't get to pull whatever random interpretation you want out of thin air in order to justify being offended. However, I've now seen the strawmen arguments you've pulled in other comments: willfully or otherwise you misrepresent the google memo, and now you make big logical leaps in my comment.
> shaming you by reducing your argument to the stupid bullshit
There is no "reduction", just misrepresentation. This is fooling no one. You are the one inventing "alt-right" conspiracies.
> Trying to compare yourself to those situations is ridiculous and makes you a massive whiner.
But you the one making that conflation. "massive whiner" is the kind of insulting hurling that is getting you downvotes, among other things.
> You can't make an argument..
Yes you can, and Damore did, with nuance, in the memo - which you haven't responded to in either specific or accurate term yet.
It's a forced metaphor, trying to gain sympathy for a cause without an iota of the merit the original cause had.
> There is no "reduction", just misrepresentation
Please, explain how it is misrepresentation? I hear this a lot: "oh, you are just misrepresenting!" or "you are putting words in his mouth", so far not a single person has actually clarified how, exactly, I am misrepresenting Damore's words.
> "massive whiner" is the kind of insulting hurling that is getting you downvotes
If I gave a crap about downvotes, I wouldn't be on this forum calling out people who want to paint themselves as victims of an "unfair system", when they clearly have had the upper hand since the beginning.
> Yes you can, and Damore did, with nuance, in the memo - which you haven't responded to in either specific or accurate term yet.
Yeah, I've only stated 100 times before that his argument is incredibly weak, because he tries to build a case for "discrimination" based on "the facts" that women are not interested, and hence trying to reach out to them is "discriminating men." Weird thing is: he doesn't quantify anything, he just states - as a matter of fact - that biological differences are probably a huge driver in difference in interest in the field.
So, let me ask you: how much difference do the supposed biological "handicap" women have account for? 10%? 20%? 50%? You know the answer? No? I mean, you seem to have all the answers and have a solid grasp of the "science" behind the argument, so please, quantify it for me and make a solid argument of why outreach is wrong considering the massive disparity that exists nowadays.
>My firing neatly confirms that point. How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument?
This statement leaves me divided. One could soundly argue that Google isn't the place for "scientific debate and reasoned argument" on that topic, and there is such thing as appropriate and inappropriate topics, and correct and incorrect channels to discuss those topics in.
To say that Google is simply "intolerant of scientific debate" misses the point. I'm sure Google has research divisions in which scientific debate occurs. The point is that they're not debating whether women are more predisposed to front-end development or not.
There's a time and a place; I'm not sure what made Mr. Damore think it was either the time or the place for his "scientific debate" (which, I may be wrong, didn't actually invite debate, it was more of a rant) such that now he has sound basis to say that the issue doesn't lie with his choice of words in the document, how he approached the matter, where he published and if it was in good faith or not, and it does lie with Google simply being "intolerant of scientific debate".
I wouldn't stand up in a high school (or any level of schooling) biology classroom, read from a list of even science-based points about gender or race, which genders or races are fit for certain tasks etc. with or without citations, and complain my conservative views are being silenced. Why? Beacuse it's not appropriate for the time and the place.
I have read it, though I can't find where he calls for scientific debate (or any kind of debate) rather than reeling off a list of points with more Wikipedia links and popsci articles than someone with research skills should know not to put in. I just realised how comical the little table of "left biases" and "right biases" is, even if he does try to hedge out the unfounded categorisations with "it's not 100% accurate".
I have no idea why people are giving this guy the benefit of the doubt in absurdum. Apparently if he quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, he is a cat.
I mean heck, among the first thing the guy did is to give interviews to dubious people (with slanted views matching the docs generalizations) and printing up a damn "Goolag" t-shirt?
So even now with the benefit of hindsight people seem still convinced that this was more or less a scientific doc with no ideological bias. The ability to read between the lines seems to blinded by vague links to academic papers.
And, for those still outraged by his dismissal: Damore made a subset of his co-workers feel uncomfortable. That's all the reason any at-will employer needs in order to pull the trigger. End of.
There are constructive ways to discuss diversity in the workplace and potential ways to improve it. His memo (and the WSJ "open letter") is a great example of how not to conduct this conversation.
Oh lord that's note even close to a good rebuttal. Mostly because it starts off with a list of "sexist" assumptions, some of which don't even tangentially relate to the memo, or are directly contradicted.
What the article says:
> Sexist assumption 6: Gender bias is not a real issue. Anyone who thinks so is blinded by political bias.
What the memo says:
> Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the
workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.
Literally, can anyone argue against the guy without misrepresenting and demonizing his argument? I don't even agree with him and find this stuff head-ache inducing.
Getting fired from your high-paying job to go off and get another high-paying job, after you spent numerous hours writing some controversial BS about women/hiring instead of, you know, doing your actual job, is not anywhere close to the type of persecution people have faced in the past - so let's please not pretend it is.