It is only hard to believe if you are entirely unfamiliar with the history of this discussion.

Let's take a more obvious example: the common racist claim that black people are lazy. It is possible to dress this up in neutral, scientific-sounding language. Someone ignorant of the history of racism in America could be fooled into saying, "Gosh, we should consider that as an explanation for why tech is disproportionately white." (That someone could harbor racial bias, but that need not be true.)

That would correctly generate outrage, because a) one should not be ignorant about the history of these things when jumping into a discussion with such impact on people's lives, and b) there is a long, long history of virulent racists edging their way into the mainstream by dressing up their prejudices just enough to sound reasonable to the ignorant.

Returning to Damore, the fact that a bunch of white men ignorant of the history of gender bias can't spot the patterns does not mean the patterns aren't there. The benefit of the doubt only applies to educated doubt, not the doubt that comes from not knowing what's going on.

That you were surprised by the outrage only means you haven't been paying attention.

Then the [racial|gender|*] discrimination would never go away because there will always be some history. Damore or whoever wouldn't ever be able to talk neutrally and society will live forever with that discrimination.

I'm not surprised this is happening during Trump's term.

We've been discussing these issues for generations. At some point the discussion has been had. No one is saying anything new. But every new group of people believe they have something worthwhile to say about it and until they get to regurgitate their own brand of ignorance they'll whine and cry about how they're being oppressed for not being able to maintain the status quo.

People's humanity and civil rights are not topics that should be open for debate. But the people who want to debate that start with "science" as the thin end of the wedge.

Of course, the thing that's always up for question is the participation of minorities. It's never a guy saying, "Fellas, the science shows that men are poor at cooperating and highly prone to aggression and violence, so let's debate whether we men should be allowed to manage or supervise other people."

It's highly motivated reasoning.

Completely disagree. The crux of most historical discussions were based on ability and was blanketed to all individual women, as they were implying that gender was the only causal factor. Discussing how prenatal testosterone may be a factor in influencing decisions for a distribution of a group is a completely different beast.

The thing that bothers me about the left is their inability to accept any sort of biological determinism as a possible large contributing factor to anything. Out of curiosity, if we were to use your analogy loosely: > Let's take a more obvious example: the common racist claim that black people are lazy.

If evidence came out that a certain portion of blacks were missing some sort of hormone that is almost completely causal in lack of desire to eat apples, so that it skewed their distribution in a statistically significant way, would you accept it? If it pertained to something considered more valuable, like say, intelligence or athletic ability, would you still accept it? Do you see that this shirks the definition of racism since it is talking about distributions and not individuals?

> That would correctly generate outrage, because a) one should not be ignorant about the history of these things when jumping into a discussion with such impact on people's lives….

Anyone can take offense to anything and be “outraged.” What good does that do? A sliding metric of people being sensitive and getting emotional is no reason to not have discussions. In fact, some people have disorders making it difficult for them to navigate social contexts tactfully. Are you saying people on the autism spectrum shouldn’t be a part of the discussion? This could possibly apply to James (I don’t know), especially if you’ve watched any of his interviews.

>b) there is a long, long history of virulent racists edging their way into the mainstream by dressing up their prejudices just enough to sound reasonable to the ignorant.

Would you mind giving a modern example?

No. It is the same discussion, just revised for fancier modern science. But it's the same deal: "I, a man, have noticed a possible fact about women. That proves that the status quo is awesome, and let's talk about going back to a simpler time before civil rights were such a thorn in my side."

The reason nobody on the left will discuss biological determinism with you is because of its rich history as a tool of oppression. The discussion has happened a zillion times over hundreds of years.

It's the same reason that most people who understand evolution won't bother to debate with hardcore creationists: it's a fucking waste of time. The creationists will never come around and say, "Oh, gosh, guess I was wrong." Motivated reasoning driven by deep bias is just not a fertile ground for discussion. Anybody who's sincerely interested in the history of evolution or the history of racism or the history of sexism can take a class. That somebody wants to strongly argue a point without having done that work is a big sign it's useless.

> Anyone can take offense to anything and be “outraged.” What good does that do?

This is a fine example of motivated reasoning. Nicolashahn, who at least has the decency to write under his own name, was clearly talking about morally justified outrage. If you would like to argue that people on the receiving end of sexist and racist bias don't deserve to be upset, make the argument. But you can't slip it like this.

> Are you saying people on the autism spectrum shouldn’t be a part of the discussion?

No. But as someone on the spectrum, I will say you're an asshole for using me as a strawman in a dumb argument.

> Would you mind giving a modern example?

Oh, modern. You mean after racism and sexism ended? When did that happen exactly?

If you're serious about all this, open an account in your actual name, stop with the bad rhetorical techniques, and carry on with the discussion. But as far as I can tell, you're yet another bigot who popped on a mask.

You seem to be missing the nuance of distribution vs every individual. To me, this is a big distinction.

>"I, a man, have noticed a possible fact about women."

Actually, the vast majority of people in the social sciences are women, many of whom found this correlation with prenatal testosterone despite the evidence running counter to their ideology. If you would prefer, I can cite you many female researchers' names on peer reviewed articles. Regardless, why does it matter what gender the person is, if the science is sound?

>The reason nobody on the left will discuss biological determinism with you is because of its rich history as a tool of oppression.

That's too bad. As the confidence of a fact increases because of corroboration of evidence, the history of a more generalized, historical concept of the specific claim should have less bearing on whether it is true or not. If the issue doesn't appear sound, simply find evidence to refute the claim; the main concept behind the scientific method. Moreover, I debate this with people on the left all the time. If they aren't far left, they usually just downplay the amount the hormones affect decision, but they don't rule out there is any correlation.

>It's the same reason that most people who understand evolution won't bother to debate with hardcore creationists: it's a fucking waste of time.

False analogy. Yes, evolution is the only theory that has significant corroborating evidence and bringing up "designers" with mountains of evidence to the contrary (and no supporting evidence) is just faulty reasoning. Also, many times creationists make claims that are unfalsifiable and thus useless. On the contrary, though, people working hard to isolate independent variables in the messy field of cognitive psychology to find correlations to other attributes is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.

>This is a fine example of motivated reasoning. Nicolashahn, who at least has the decency to write under his own name, was clearly talking about morally justified outrage. If you would like to argue that people on the receiving end of sexist and racist bias don't deserve to be upset, make the argument. But you can't slip it like this.

It isn't sexist or racist if you talk of distribution instead of every individual. Is it racist to ask for someone's race on a medical form? No, it's highly useful. Black males have a higher incidence of prostate cancer... or is that racist by your reasoning?

Why does using one's actual name make any difference to the content of the discussion? Are "Mark Twain's" literary works worthless because that is a pseudonym?

>No. But as someone on the spectrum, I will say you're an asshole for using me as a strawman in a dumb argument.

How is that a strawman? You implied that tact should be used when discussing things with strong historical contention. I brought up the fact that a certain proportion of people with a social disorder can't meet you metric because of materialistic deficiencies and that your requirement ostracizes those people. It's simply a further example of why I think emotions and feelings have little place in a discussion.

> Oh, modern. You mean after racism and sexism ended? When did that happen exactly?

No. I was genuinely curious what you were referencing.

>If you're serious about all this, open an account in your actual name, stop with the bad rhetorical techniques, and carry on with the discussion. But as far as I can tell, you're yet another bigot who popped on a mask.

Once again, why does my actual name matter or have any bearing whether I am "serious?" I am serious or else I wouldn't have taken the time out of my busy schedule to reply.

Vaguely saying I'm using "bad rheteorical techniques," isn't very useful. I assume you are talking to your belief that I used a "strawman" fallacy.

Masks are useful. Often, I'll put on a devil's advocate mask when debating with myself. I find this usefully gives me a more balanced perspective.

Well, clearly, superficial things to the actual content of the discussion like who I am, matters to you. A blanket statement that "it matters," is too reductive.

> This discussion is about how we structure society to serve its members.

Agreed.

>It has a long history of bigots cloaking their bigotry in a zillion ways. It is rife with people putting on masks -- from white hoods to anime avatars -- as a way of manipulating the discourse and avoiding social accountability for their attempts at social change.

Social accountability? You'll have to define this and why this is important in a discussion.

I find it interesting that you are equating an anonymous discussion about how to best serve society to white supremacists running around assaulting and killing people. Rather an extreme jump.

>If you want to be taken seriously -- certainly by me, probably by anybody -- then step up. Otherwise you're indistinguishable to me from the thousand other people I've dealt with who are happy to support self-serving sexism and racism from the shadows.

Interesting. You still cling to this belief that I'm supporting "self-serving sexism and racism" without specifics and not rebutting anything I've said. I'm starting to think you are currently incapable of being nuanced in thought. I hope this changes for you.

I agree, I think we are done.

The norms of academic debate are decent ones, but they evolved in a very particular context, one where people committed to a lifetime of study and public service to earn their right to participate. You have done nothing here to earn similar consideration.

Certainly not. The request for a definition was meant to imply I can’t talk to the claim about “social accountability,” not knowing your definition. Unfortunately, you not rebutting anything just appears like you can’t, not that you won’t. You are definitely practicing what you preach; You are letting emotion ruin a conversation. In fact, it smacks of a tactic my 4 year-old daughter would use.

> Somebody who is putting on a hood to discuss their opinions is the one who has to earn a response.

I find it amusing that you use these “powerful” historical symbols to conjure up condemnation and emotion, when they have very little to do with anything I’ve discussed. It must be an easy life when you just dismiss things without observing or thinking about them. I find this is the most common feature among leftists and rightists and is predominantly why you guys are unable to come to an agreement on anything. Truly a spectacle.

>The norms of academic debate are decent ones, but they evolved in a very particular context, one where people committed to a lifetime of study and public service to earn their right to participate. You have done nothing here to earn similar consideration.

This is a website dedicated for people to “... make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.” This isn’t a place of academia, but the principles behind having a good discussion remain, regardless of the context. I’m sure you don’t decry the use of pseudonyms when women in the past used them so that the quality of their work wasn’t judged by their gender. I find it funny you can’t abstract that same concept to now. It almost seems like you desire to know who I am, so you can place me in a box like the many misogynists did to those women in the past. Seems to me, perhaps you are the new form of racist/sexist.

Lastly, people don’t necessarily have to devote a lifetime of study to be cited in the academic community. That comes with the merit of the research. There are many people who dedicate their life to academia, but are cited very little due to quality of their research.

I was hoping to actually have a discussion where we could each learn something from the other, but you make this impossible. You could have reached a moderate, but instead you alienated me. Really, all you did was prove one of the points I made in the beginning, that emotion is the heighth of irrationality and shuts down conversation.

This discussion is about how we structure society to serve its members. It has a long history of bigots cloaking their bigotry in a zillion ways. It is rife with people putting on masks -- from white hoods to anime avatars -- as a way of manipulating the discourse and avoiding social accountability for their attempts at social change.

If you want to be taken seriously -- certainly by me, probably by anybody -- then step up. Otherwise you're indistinguishable to me from the thousand other people I've dealt with who are happy to support self-serving sexism and racism from the shadows.

William Faulkner

It is in fact quite easy to do machine learning work and come out with what is effectively racist AI. People have already done plenty of it accidentally.

I think the larger problem is that this is an overstatement. Women might not be interested in joining the current tech culture, but that doesn't mean they aren't interested in tech to a larger extent than the current numbers suggest.

Part of the disconnect is that these initiatives are aimed at changing the culture to be more attractive to women, and the people who really like the culture don't see the need.

Certainly the current tech culture is effective and fairly productive, but I certainly don't know that it will be more, equally, or less productive with these culture changes.

I don't think you can claim that "tech" and e.g. civil engineering have much in common in terms of culture, but they still share the lack of men/women parity.

You're ignoring that girls are socialized to think they're bad at math, science, etc. Boys are told the opposite and are pushed in this direction. I certainly was. My parents were drilling me on math by age five.

Not sure why, but I know one possible explanation.

In developing countries, people are pressured by their basic needs. An engineering job generally pays well. People in such countries are less likely to do what they want and more likely to do what pays well, so gender ratio in engineering is close to 50/50.

In developed countries, people are guaranteed to survive even without a profession or job. Less financial pressure, more freedom of choice, less women in engineering.

Is it safe to infer that, in th developed world, given a career choice women have a propensity to not choose tech ?

In other words, if true, we should strive to understand why fewer women choose tech in developed countries and fix it, not automatically assume it's because they are inherently less interested.

I am going to go further and suggest that software engineering is just not that desirable of a career, no matter who you are. Given that compensation is a function of supply and demand, and this career is fairly well compensated, the lack of people – both male and female – entering the career path would suggest is not the top choice of anyone.

What appears to be happening is that some men are willing to put up with an undesirable career because of the higher than average compensation, while women are less wooed by those monetary factors.

The only 'fix' here is to drive home the importance of doing unhappy careers for big money towards the female population. But do we really want to do that? That does not really seem like a great goal. There is more to life than money.

What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about.

But we're talking about the population at large, not the tiny group of 'geeks' who revel in the tech environment. There are always outliers.

If the general population – both men and women – wanted to do this kind of work, they would be falling all over each other to do it, just as they do in careers that are desirable. Instead, you see businesses falling over the few people who are willing to do it. That is not a sign of an attractive career path. Quite the opposite.

Again, not even men want to do this type of work. This is not even a gender issue at the heart of it.

> I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things.

But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the general population? Programming is simply an awful time that most people wouldn't wish upon their worst enemy. It is as simple as that. We can go around and try and blame things like culture, but at the end of the day the work that has to be done sucks.

Yes, some people are wired strangely and happen to like it. Pick anything you find distasteful and I can find you at least one person who loves it. That's the nature of having 7 billion people and all of their random mutations. That does not mean the masses have any interest whatsoever.

> What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about.

Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed. The fact that women can be as successful as men in the field does not mean that there is not some biological reason to not want to do the job.

> But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the general population?

But it's not the general population we're talking about; that's a straw man. We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice. And yes, not excluding a segment of the population just because of irrelevant biological traits is desirable and worth the effort.

> Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed

To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow explained biological differences. Money is not a biological factor, it's a societal one! The logical disconnect is so pronounced that it must point to an emotional blind spot.

Then why are men and women alike rejecting the field? Men less so, perhaps, but neither gender are jumping at the chance to have the job. Not even the well above average compensation that attempts to attract them to the industry.

> Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?

This is not my opinion, this is what the data shows. I'm glad you do not feel that the professional is awful. I personally do not feel that way either, but we cannot use our biases to believe that everyone feels the same way. Be very careful of your biases.

> We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice.

In order to even think about whether the workplace is hostile to women, we first have to determine why neither gender is interested in the profession. Again, this is not my opinion. This is what the data is telling us.

> To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow explained biological differences.

Let me be clear: I am not saying it is explained by biological differences. I am saying that your explanation does nothing to exclude biological differences. Women proving success in the tech workplace does nothing to discount a biological aspect, and it is flawed logic to believe otherwise.

This is false.

> but we cannot use our biases

Exactly. Please re-examine what you're saying in light of your own advice.

Where can we find data to support or refute this point.

PS: for that matter, my personal experience -- coming from a family of scientists who aren't rich, and which includes my mom -- is that there are other factors at play beyond money. Note I don't live in the US.

Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321

That factor hasn’t stopped women from becoming e.g. doctors and lawyers.

Just 50 years ago, very few women did that, because discrimination (e.g. for healthcare in America, gender-based discrimination was only banned in 1975) and culture norms.

But now it’s pretty close to 50/50 gender ratio in these areas (females are 47.3% of law students in 2007, 46.7% of medical students in 2013).

I consider it more likely that now women do what they want to do. And that is in many ways a good thing.

I don't think the point is that women can't successfully tackle engineering, they can. But that doesn't mean that they have a predisposition towards it. If you encourage (or even force) someone into a particular profession, they might excel at it, but that doesn't imply that they would've picked it on their own.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15014895

Men and women living in richer and mostly western countries have the luxury to choose the jobs they are attracted to even if that attraction is to some extent based on biological factors and not societal or economic factors.

And yet over 40% of graduates majoring in math and statistics are women. How does this sit with your explanation of social conditioning?

http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

In the west women have more choice. So why do they choose not to do technology once they are free to choose what they want.

Does Zimbabwe have better or worse gender equality than the USA or other Westernized nations?

That's a bold claim with zero sources. Consider this a "citation needed".

[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/girls-stem-parent-stereotypes-may-dis...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_role#Gender_stereotypes...

The link between wealth, marriage suitability and social status is well observed for men, and in stereotypical pattern boys are pushed towards professions which maximize the potential for high income. Since society do not measure the value for women on how much money they bring, it follows that girls are not pushed with the same fever towards high paying jobs except if local situation causes families to do so by necessity (which is one explanation why certain countries have higher ratio of women in typical high paying profession).

I have the theory that if you want to get equal amount of young girls and young boys in STEM careers you need to remove focus on how such choice can lead towards high income. It would not increase the encouragement for girls, but fewer boys would be pushed in that direction and as a result the difference between the sexes would decrease.

More women choose engineering when they have fewer career choices, because they take the freedoms they can get; Iran also has a high ratio of female engineers. In virtually all countries where women are free to choose any career, they largely don't choose engineering.

If you find it objectionable to change the phrase in such away, consider the fact that, as a computer scientist, I went to school and took classes with many mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers. I'm still friends with them today. The cultures are intertwined.

The misogynism we're imploring ourselves to eradicate is so subtle, it's unconscious biases and micro-aggressions (that is, agressions you don't know you're committing). When we can barely detect them ourselves, how would they be able to embed themselves into the subconscience of millions of young girls across dozens of quite different cultures?

And that's without considering the quite numerous fields with a high degree of misogyny embedded as a broad popular culture trope. "Suits" does not envision a law-field that is particularly friendly to women, "Billions" : finance, "Scrubs" : medicine. Women have no issue with pursuing careers in those fields. That's not excusing bad behaviour, just observing that this behaviour, and broad knowledge of it, does not appear to deter women, and to serve as a counterpoint to the assertion that the far more subtle and much less broadly portrayed alleged misogynism of tech should be detering women.

This link tells a different story, and in complete sentences: http://uk.businessinsider.com/wall-street-bank-diversity-201...

(Also, the relevant number for Google is 20% of tech employees. They have 48/52 balance in non-tech. The BI link similarly provides business area breakdowns.)

To be fair... How often do you create "a rigorous paper" before you engage in an internal discussion at your company? Is that the standard? And if so, when do you have time to do actual work?

Try at least not to have completely unreasonable expectations.

So it was incumbent upon Damore to do a lot of work, and come up with something both rigorous and novel. If he didn't, and he still thought that rehashing a whole bunch of stuff that had been discussed before was sufficient to "advance the conversation" about such a controversial topic he is an idiot who deserved to be fired and forgotten.

The nicest way to say this is the way one of the women the TFA put it: 'a general lack of consideration for his female colleagues.' Then again, she has a lifetime of politely dealing with male chauvinist idiots, and has learned that calling them out doesn't get her far.

[1] Source: my own life experience.

If you are going to write on such a controversial topic and don't want to be seen as a self absorbed attention seeking polemicist [1], you ought to be more careful. In other words, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard than normal office write-ups. Otherwise, you take an unnecessary risk drawing the wrong conclusions and do a lot of inadvertent harm to your fellow human.

[1] Still learning to politely deal with male chauvinist idiots.

Until you remove social blockers that prevent women from entering tech, you cannot claim legitimacy of any social survey in regards to that. This letter belongs to a time when a generation of women are equally pushed to enter tech as men. Then we can debate whether it's their lack of interest of not.

When I was a student in computer science more than 30 years ago, in our class of more than 30 students there was only one female. There was no entrance selection or any filter or money involved (not in USA).

We are dealing with overlapping gaussians.

Girls and boys are today educated without making a difference through all their childhood, and I think that this may give the false impression to them that there is no difference. But whoever had children or has seen many children will see that some differences in behavior and interest are blattan and can't be socially induced.

I do not deny that blocking MAY exist and some men are sexists, I have seen such discusting behavior. I considr them disfunctional. But this is not 100% the cause of gender imbalance in tech.

There is no blocking to contribute to OSS, and good programmers get hired regardless of gender. You should read back the [Donner Kruger effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect) to remind you of you own bias when evaluating your competence.

You should really just google 'gender difference education' and you'll see there's dozens and dozens of papers that say education is very gendered. The experience of girls in pre-college (and college too for what it's worth) is very different from that of boys.

> I do not deny that blocking MAY exist and some men are sexists... [b]ut this is not 100% the cause of gender imbalance in tech.

The "percentage" thing is something that comes up in global warming discussions too; people will ask "what percentage of global warming is caused by humans", and because the issue is extraordinarily complex, the answer comes out sounding like equivocation.

You're probably right, social cues are probably not 100% the cause of the gender gap in tech. But the issue is complex; it's not like you're gonna see a pie-chart of simple gender gap explanations and then say, "we'll just 'allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive' and crank up pair programming and part time work; that should cover 80% of it".

You can get complex reasons though, i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/14/many-women-i.... But good luck fixing "balancing work-life responsibilities" and "workplace culture"; those are complex issues that deal with early education, social and cultural expectations of women (and men), federal and state social policies and workplace policies, politics, and deep-seated gender roles. There's not really a knob you can turn to fix this stuff, and that's why we don't use percentages to talk about it.

I sincerely don't think that anyone is proposing that there is no difference between men and women, the discussion is over the extent of the differences.

We are dealing with overlapping gaussians.

The question is the extent of the overlap. If the overlap is very close on many abilities, men exceed women on some (like say maths), and women exceed men on some others required for a programming job (like say, empathy), then you'd expect distribution of jobs to be around 50% with slight variations. There is no indication that they vary by the amount required to explain the disparity of jobs in tech, indeed, this is easily refuted by looking at the number of women in technical jobs in the US in the 70s.

PS It's Dunning-Kruger

You could make your point stronger if you propose an explanation to what changed since then. It's very unlikely that men (and society in general) become more sexist, if anything we have made a lot of progress.

I can tell you what the opposing side says though. They say women had little choice back then and just did what was needed. Today women have more choice, freedom and there is less discrimination so they feel free to pursue what is interesting to them which is not tech more often than in case of men.

Seems like a bad tack to me - staying on topic is good enough for this kind of corrective comment.

Citation needed.

If your theory were correct, that it is "social blockers", then you would predict that as societies get more egalitarian, you would get more equal representation. The opposite happens.

And this is not about absolute levels, this is about the direction of the arrow, which is pretty binary, and the "social pressures" theory makes exactly the wrong prediction.

> interested in tech when only a handful of her peers understand her interest

Doesn't stop the guys interested in tech. Being a "nerd" or a "geek" is the surest way to social ostracism, and yet these guys do it anyway.

> Until you remove social blockers that prevent women from entering tech

Again, this experiment has been done, on a society level, and the outcome is the opposite of your prediction: as "social blockers" are removed, you get fewer women going into tech fields.

To be honest, the "social" sciences have rarely been interested in scientific accuracy, more than they have been interested in promoting specific political ideologies.

I doubt they will consider this a problem with their "science". To them it will probably be obvious that the problem here, again, is with society.

In short: When you're stuck inside a delusion, it's everything on the outside which looks crazy.

Studies show prenatal testosterone affects differences in that men tilt towards an interest in intresting things, and women in insteresting people. Damore has the scientific literature behind him (which others can then dispute if they'd like). Also look to scandinavian attempts to flatten out differences. Thousands were involved, and the diffrences were simply exasturbated. Interesting talk on just this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSIEs1ngNiU Loads have very much taken the social aspect into account. What I think everyone in the dominant culture seems to miss, are the relevant scientific biological and psycological findings.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

Medicine and law are not like engineering. Engineering is particularly gendered; you can look at medicine and see "caregiving", or you can see law and see "people" and "social issues". It's not easy to look at engineering and see any stereotypically female attributes there.

Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially. The social blockers between girls and engineering are particularly acute compared to those between them and law or medicine. You can look at college degree numbers for example. Women now outnumber men when it comes to college enrollment and graduation, but women are far more likely to pursue "soft sciences" like psychology or sociology.

> That's the point Damore was trying to make that people don't want to hear - there might be more to the gender gap than just social blockers, and if so, we should be aware of that at the same time we're working to solve the existing issues around bias, harassment, etc.

In fairness, Damore was advocating for the ending of Google's pro-diversity policies in hiring and minority support for employees. It wasn't just a "truth telling", he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity. I'm not saying he didn't suggest alternatives, but those alternatives had no basis in research and felt pretty thin. Like "[a]llow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive"; honestly what does that even mean?

This point keeps getting brought up, but the actual statistics are quietly ignored.

Women make up over 40% of math and statistics graduates; A majority of accountants and biologists are women; Chemistry majors are evenly split between the genders.

If girls are socially discouraged from pursuing math and hard-sciences, why does this not actually manifest itself across fields requiring math and hard science? Does a math major require less mathematics than an engineering one? Is accounting not mostly about math and numbers any more? Are chemistry and biology no longer considered hard sciences?

I'm not saying the cause is necessarily not societal pressures, but this popular assertion being repeated ad-nausea seems to be, at best, incomplete. Women that have been told their entire lives that math is for boys seem to have no problem pursuing a higher-education in math in droves; Why?

http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor... http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-accounting https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-s...

> Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially.

The data simply does not support this statement. Take a look at [3]. Relevant quotes for you: "Girls are equitably represented in rigorous high school math courses.", "Girls outnumber boys in enrollment in AP science", "Girls are evenly represented in biology and outnumber boys in chemistry, but are underrepresented in physics." Even when it says "In AP mathematics (calculus and statistics), however, boys have consistently outnumbered girls by up to 10,000 students." this is only about a 5% difference.

> he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity

What dramatic, positive effect are referring to? Google's self-reported numbers on the impact of its programs are laughable. We're talking single percentage point increases at best in percentage of women and minorities in tech positions and leadership roles [4]. Damore wanted Google to take a long, hard look at its diversity programs and have an open discussion about whether they are actually 1) the right tool for the job, 2) accomplishing what they are trying to do, and 3) making progress without alienating existing and new hires.

> honestly what does that even mean?

I thought it was fairly clear, actually. He pairs statements like that with suggestions to encourage more collaborative workplace practices, like pair programming. The idea is that Google and other tech companies should encourage and reward individuals who cooperate with each other on teams, help train and mentor each other, and actively try not to alienate anyone for arbitrary reasons. The negative alternatives are to have a workplace with a bunch of lone wolf technical workers who don't help each other, or to have a workplace composed of cliquey groups that ostracize individuals who don't fit norms (ex. "brogrammer" culture fit).

You seem to be creating your own narrative here, which I interpret to be, "women are socially discouraged from pursuing careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and that's why we don't see them entering tech." But the equally plausible alternative interpretation is, "women don't want to pursue careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and particularly don't want to pursue engineering, thus expecting there to be gender balance is unrealistic."

[1] tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2147484887

[2] http://www.myplan.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laborator...

[3] https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equit...

[4] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/06/29/google-d...

Is this a common belief? Nobody I've read has claimed this, just that the known social effects are so large as to legitimise efforts to improve the situation regardless of whether or not there is some minor biological factor at play here too.

That's what I found strange about the memo. It spends lots of time arguing for the existence of biological differences between men and women and then draws the conclusion that diversity programs should be stopped. The existence of biological differences is not surprising to me or probably to the people who came up with the diversity programs and nor is it likely relevant to whether the diversity programs are a good idea or not.

But given that, how is it possible to discuss the possibility of gender differences? Without the discussion itself being a social blocker?

I'm not sure. Certainly by experts. And certainly around debate on legislation. Also in whatever social forums allow it. Such as here. But arguably not in discussion among staff at Google or wherever. There are likely no experts there, so it all comes down to bullshit. But among senior management, in private, sure.

His claim is much stronger: he claims that women _working at Google as engineers_ are less interested in tech than their male colleagues. This debate is about stopping internal diversity programs within Google, not about women in general in tech.

I wonder if this argument could be made? Stats show that men work more hours than women whereas women prefer a more of a work-life-family balance. So given that, you could say that the women in tech there are less interested. At least, in terms of hours and dedication to the job. I don't think it holds too much water. You can be interested in the subject matter but not work as much. But there is some truth to it in a way.

c'mon, pick a side ... you can't argue both ways. The constructive takeaway from this is not that women are a "lesser" value because they crave work-life-family balance. The takeaway should definitely be that we should figure out how to help the overworked individuals who work too much, find a better balance.

They can continue to do so just fine ... but I much prefer employers who don't overvalue overworking their employees, thereby implicitly creating a de-facto requirement. Of course, sometimes overtime is needed, believe me I've done it plenty of times to hit a deadline or release. However, I'm just plain happier working for employers, and with colleagues who don't create a hostile working environment for people with families.

> women prefer a more of a work-life-family balance

You may want to rephrase that. Parallel construction, and all that.

    Many of these [biological] 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.

You ask "Where did he say that?" and I'd be surprised if there's any one succinct place -- it's one of the two main topics of the whole memo, and the memo does not have a coherent topic sentence or even really a coherent argument, so I think it's likely absent.

But, like, Damore makes a case to the effect that "biological explanations can't be ruled out" and then reverses those weasel-words by suggesting that his biological explanations be used to guide policy by, say, encouraging pair programming which he supposes to be something that women are likely better at on average. This sort of move suggests that he thinks the biological effects that he's citing (see note [1]) are big enough to guide policy, which they're not. You don't need to take my word for it -- the main author of the article Damore is citing was asked to read Damore's memo and this is his take on it [2].

Of course the problem is even worse in that this article which Damore used to write his article is psychological; it is based on doing a personality test in a bunch of different nations. That makes it very hard to conclude anything biological about it, so every time that Damore mentions "biology" in his memo, that is an interpretation of his own devising. The original personality-study article also interprets its findings biologically but it is really tenuous [3]. In fact neuroscientists have also been studying the brain and they have not found a clear biological difference between male and female brains [4].

[1] He gives a summary of a Wikipedia summary of an article by Schmitt et al. (2008). The PDF is freely available by the university at http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf but the sample sizes were I believe later corrected as an erratum, so I am not sure which one this has.

[2] Schmitt, evaluating later research as well, summarizes by saying that sex differences are only "accounting for less than 10% of the variance" and that using this to guide policy is "like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm," in an article at http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... .

[3] The argument in the article involves their surprise that the majority of the discovered effect apparently disappeared in Africa and East Asia. Their interpretation is literally that those cultures are so much less economically developed than we in the West are, that their women must feel so much less free to just be themselves, and therefore they act more like men as a sort of baseline survival tactic. Read the paper; it's a very 'you cannot possibly be saying what I think you're saying, can you?' type of experience.

[4] See the links in the article https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28584-a-welcome-blow-... for a nice summary.

    But, like, Damore makes a case to the effect that
    "biological explanations can't be ruled out" and
    then reverses those weasel-words by suggesting that
    his biological explanations be used to guide policy by, 
    say, encouraging pair programming which he supposes to
    be something that women are likely better at on average.

It also seems to me that the pair-programming idea was plucked out of the air to be used as an example to further a discussion, not a solution to be implemented.

    This sort of move suggests that he thinks the biological
    effects that he's citing (see note [1]) are big enough
    to guide policy, which they're not

I'm really not concerned about whether his ideas are good or bad - the experts on this subject can work that out between themselves. What concerns me is that, while he was confident enough in his theory to put it forward for wider scrutiny, the makers of the policies he is objecting to weren't. And when they were presented with a counter-argument anyway, they had to set an example to everyone else who might wish to speak up by having its author fired and smeared with accusations of bigotry.

As a white male engineer, I will tell you thing the that most white dudes like me fail to understand about micro-agressions- and the document was chock full of them-is that they are not really significant when they only happen once, in isolation, it is the constant, droning repetition of them that makes them harmful.

Asking someone where they're from isn't offensive when considered in isolation. But if 90% of the white people you meet ask you this immediately, while it comes up only occasionally or late in the conversation when meeting other people, it makes you wonder.

One thing my mixed race friends get asked a lot by white people is "what are you?". At first I found that hard to believe, but I've seen it happen over and over again--random chitchat at the park with a nice lady who stopped to pet my dog; for some reason she has to ask my friend "what are you?" She's too nice to say "not racist, how about you?" or anything harsh in response, but it makes my blood boil.

Imagine being expected to defend and define your presence everywhere you go.

So, yeah, the idea was harmless. The presentation was part of the constant barrage of gatekeeping behavior that women and people of color are sick of dealing with. That's why it's offensive, that's why people are angry.

As a personality researcher, I feel obligated to chime in and clarify that the memo wasn't stating that women are "neurotic", neither in the colloquial nor clinical sense, but that they are on average higher in the trait of Neuroticism in the Big 5 personality dimensions[0], which is a very specific and well defined term, and the scientific literature actually does support that statement when it is presented using those academic definitions. There's nothing opinionated about this, just as much as saying that men on average test higher in the trait of 'Conscientiousness' according to the same model; they're just population statistics based on the most reliable personality measure we have in the field of psychology today. It is a plain misunderstanding of the academic term to suggest that the memo says women are "neurotic" in any other way.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

I believe autistic people also score higher on that neurotic scale, so it's ironic someone who self-identifies as being on the spectrum would highlight that result and, given the general stereotypes, for it to be held up as a difference from other software professionals

He goes onto mention that men take on dangerous high stress jobs in far greater numbers than women, such as coal mining and fire fighting. If men account for 93% of work related deaths, it says a lot about their drive for that sort of work.

No need to take offence. It's just data.

I don't believe there is any other context to it. It is not at all clear to me that the author is not referring to neuroticism in the colloquial or clinical sense. If he did want to use such a potentially emotionally-loaded term in that sense he should have made it clear how he was using it.

Links which gizmodo conveniently removed.

You would know all this if you did some fact-checking. The carelessness with which you approach his claims is typical and indicative of a much larger problem.

Have a look at the comments its being taken as an insult.

I hadn't heard about people asking "what are you?". That is indeed infuriating. I don't think such people deserve any answer beyond "human".

I am not sure I follow exactly. Is there evidence that Google's diversity efforts hurt the company? I don't find the memo offers any evidence. If evidence, even anecdotal evidence, were provided of that harm and of the ideological intolerance I might find the memo more compelling. As it stands, it seems like a book report.

Here's one example. Google has spent over a quarter of a billion dollars on diversity efforts in the last 3 years, and has barely moved the needle in terms of diversity in their workforce [0].

Some of that can be explained by long-term efforts that will take more than 3 years to show dividends, but not all of it, and given the lack of results, you'd think that it's worth considering if current efforts are addressing the actual problem or if they're just throwing money in the wrong direction.

You can't do that without questioning the current methods and examining other ideas, but when the reaction to questioning current methods and examining other ideas is to stifle discussion and say 'no, this is right, you are wrong, and btw you're fired', then you may well find you keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars, for little to no result.

You could argue that a quarter of a billion dollars is pocket change to Google (and it is) and therefore doesn't represent any real harm, but it's still a lot of money to throw around on something that might not actually solve the problem.

0: https://www.axios.com/googles-diversity-efforts-are-making-l...

That's right, but what's the cause of that?

Is it solely down to sexism and discrimination, or are there other causes?

For example, studies have shown that the more egalitarian a society becomes, the greater the difference in personality between genders is, which affects things like job and career selection. This makes sense because in an egalitarian society, men and women are more free to choose careers based on interest rather than on preordained acceptable roles based on gender [0].

I'm not saying this is what's happening in tech, but there's enough research around it that it's a plausible explanation for some of it. And if you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars but are not in any way interested in investigating (or even contemplating) whether this might be one of several factors leading to a decline in women entering software engineering, then that's probably a problem.

0: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

I see it as honest call for discussion but everyone is treating this as some malicious attempt to exercise sexism. We are all educated and civil people please have some dignity and apply Hanlon's razor to these kind of things: "Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Most companies would - right or not - try to keep their dirty laundry indoors and the right way to deal with such stuff is to first try to take it up the chain and if you are ignored you can decide if you're brave enough to become a whistle blower with all the fine consequences that tends to have, one of the most likely results of which is that you will find yourself suddenly unemployed and if you're unlucky also unemployable.

Also: regardless of the actual outcome, going to court is not a guarantee either way.

He didn't widely share his memo. Someone else inside Google leaked it to Gizmodo, which widely misrepresented it and started this shitstorm.

Who gets the blame in such scenarios? Is it still fair to fire the original author?

So, tip for future memo writers: stay in control of the narrative. That's easier said than done.

> Is it still fair to fire the original author?

That's a moot point, companies do not like political activism within their ranks whether or not it spreads to the outside world and affects the image of the company in a negative way or not. But when and if it does you can be pretty sure heads will roll.

Second tip: If you do wish to write that memo try to get buy-in from your higher ups (and in writing) before releasing your memo to your peers.

Third tip: don't do it. Unless your position is absolutely ironclad and you don't care about your future employment writing memos will probably not make a difference in a positive way and there is plenty of downside with the memo writer holding the bag in almost all cases, especially when such memos target controversial subjects, they will almost certainly end up being used for political football.

Unless I've misunderstood your tone, you seem to be implying complicity even conspiracy. Surely the obvious explanation is "anyone could have leaked it and it's very hard to prove who did it"?

A corporation may not be the best place to bring up these topics, if your goal is to avoid getting fired. Otherwise, it is a place full of smart engineers and the guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation in a corporate setting about a policy which Google as a corporation faces external and internal pressure about.

But as far as receptiveness, yes Google was a great venue for this, given who works there. Do you think hacker news is a better venue in that respect?

Even on this very board, that same exact seemingly harmless claim, given and elaborated on in a talk about men and women given by a professor of psychology at FSU, was downvoted and bashed in a TL;DR manner:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844777

It fared better a year ago, but not by much:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909954

EDIT: curious, why the downvotes?

Agree. In fairness to James, however, I believe HR solicited feedback.

"[T]he guy probably had some fantasy that he can have a constructive conversation"

Seriously, what a let down. The "Sergey" and "Larry" who created Google would not have stood for this. Either they have lost control of their company, or they have changed.

Working proactively to address racism/sexism/n'ism: Good, not evil Demanding orthodoxy of thought (or enabling those who do): Bad; EVIL

I understand there's an inevitable social/political aspect of working together, but is not the focus and if you don't agree with the political views/decisions of a company, and you can't get them (through proper channels, your manager, HR) to change, no one grants you the right to say whatever you want in the work place, especially when what you say is widely considered (by the company) as harmful to their interests.

Being "investigated" implies government intervention. Being "accused" implies lawsuit.

Which is it?

Big companies like Google are likely engaged in litigation over personnel matters on a constant basis, a majority of which are settled privately.

I'd like to coop your "sigh" ... i'll trade you a <headslap>

Why did more people not mention this fact? The guy wrote on a topic that the corporation could not afford to indulge him on.

He didn't say it directly, but he strongly implied that female coworkers were inferior. Among other things he claimed that women were less able to handle stress and have a harder time speaking up.

The document claims a lot more than just "women aren't interested in tech".

OK :)

I think some of Damore's complaints were, on the surface, about Google. But they're all rooted in some old and incorrect ideas.

Damore advocates against Google's diversity programs, arguing that diversity programs can't be fully effective because fundamental biological differences between women and men are responsible for the gender gap, not social or cultural disadvantage, and further that these programs are discriminatory against men.

This is an old idea. Women's rights activists have heard this time and time again, whether it was for the right to go to school (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_education_in_the_Uni...), the right to have a job (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights#Equal_employm...), or of course, the right to vote. The argument, every single time, is "women and girls aren't really interested in reading/writing/working/politics". But in each case, we discovered that women were discouraged (and often outright punished) in strong, varied, and complex ways from being involved in these things, and when we investigated and removed those impediments suddenly the "interest gap" disappeared.

The "discriminatory against men" argument is essentially a reverse discrimination argument, and I'll leave it to Jamelle Bouie to explain why those are wrong: https://www.thenation.com/article/race-millennials-and-rever....

But the main reason that Damore's argument is outrageous is that the arguments about interest and fundamental biological differences have been used to hold women and people of color back since the inception of the US. Reverse discrimination belittles and dismisses the experiences of women and people of color by falsely equating systemic sexism and racism with isolated incidents, or in this case with gender-conscious diversity programs.

I'd also like to address the free speech issue a little. The US concept of free speech protects citizens from government retaliation. It doesn't mean I have to tolerate speech of all kinds in my home, and it doesn't mean that businesses have to tolerate speech of any kind in the workplace. With that in mind, it's obvious that you can't say whatever you want at work even though e we may disagree on where the line is.

Although most claims of reverse discrimination are probably false, this doesn't mean that none are justified.

For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators. (Says Damore in his memo and I haven't seen anyone disagree.)

I think that is doubly sexist. First, it perpetuates stereotypes about women, maybe even using some hand-wavy biological explanation like "woman have less testosterone and are too timid to negotiate efficiently". That isn't really better than Damore's reasons for advocating more pair programming.

Second, it doesn't target the people it would help the most , but at best a subset. What about black men who are bad negotiators? Do they get their own program? What about white men who are bad negotiators? Are they left in the dust because white men good at negotiating are already privileged, so people who are superficially similar don't deserve any help?

I think it is both morally wrong and economically inefficient to have a program to help people get better at X that selects on any criterion other than their current ability to do X. I don't care whether you call it discrimination or something else, I just don't want to see this kind of divisive catering to interest groups identified by arbitrary lines.

> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators. (Says Damore in his memo and I haven't seen anyone disagree.) I think that is doubly sexist.

There's research that shows that some of the gender pay gap can be attributed to women being less likely to negotiate pay raises and promotions. I think if you were Google and you were trying to close the gender pay gap, it's reasonable to take a look at that data and start something like Stretch.

> ...maybe even using some hand-wavy biological explanation like "woman have less testosterone and are too timid to negotiate efficiently". That isn't really better than Damore's reasons for advocating more pair programming.

It is actually much better. First, they aren't using any biological explanation. The studies [1][2] I found are experiments and surveys. Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up. On the contrary, Google is offering to help them. Damore's argument is that some studies kind of show women might be somehow biologically predisposed against tech (the copious hedging here is because he makes all the connections himself; the studies he cites don't actually make his point and consequently can't at all quantify the effect), and therefore Google should replace the programs most effective at increasing diversity with initiatives that have no basis in science and are mostly just bad ideas like "more pair programming", "more part time work", and "make work less stressful".

So in favor of Stretch:

- Research directly addressing and quantifying the issue

- No biological explanation

- Google directly addressing the issue

Against Damore's initiatives:

- No direct research to justify a policy change

- Unsupported leaps from indirect research to "biological differences explain the gender gap"

- No direct addressing of the issue

- Replacement of programs that do directly address the issue with those that do not

> I think that is doubly sexist. First, it perpetuates stereotypes about women....

I think it's a good instinct to critique policies from a gender perspective. And I think on its face you're right, Stretch seems to assume that women are bad at negotiating and has a program based on that assumption.

But look at how the program came about. This isn't a program rooted in stereotype; it's rooted in research. And the result of the program is to help women become better negotiators, not to disadvantage them. In applying a feminist critique, we have to evaluate all these things, otherwise we often come to the conclusion, as you did, that any policy based on gender entrenches harmful stereotypes.

> Second, it doesn't target the people it would help the most , but at best a subset. What about black men who are bad negotiators? Do they get their own program? What about white men who are bad negotiators? Are they left in the dust because white men good at negotiating are already privileged, so people who are superficially similar don't deserve any help?

I can't find any research showing that Black or White men are bad negotiators, so I think that's why Google didn't start a program to help them. There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.

> I think it is both morally wrong and economically inefficient to have a program to help people get better at X that selects on any criterion other than their current ability to do X.

I think this is super interesting! I just read a piece in the Atlantic that offered the insight whereas liberals often argue for fairness of outcome, conservatives often argue for fairness of approach. I'm not saying you're a conservative or that that's what you're doing here, but I definitely feel some echoes.

The argument you make here is that it's unfair to treat people differently based on ascribed statuses (race, sexual orientation, gender identification, etc.). But I think exactly the opposite; I think you can't treat people fairly unless you take into account their ascribed statuses. For example, if we return to entirely gender-blind hiring practices, we'll see the gender gap skyrocket (see 538's article on affirmative action [3]). Or more directly, in order to be fair to women, LGBTQ people, and people of color when hiring, we have to know about their ascribed statuses and compensate, otherwise we won't hire them, and that's unfair.

This is how we combat our biases that are instilled in us because of our racist, sexist culture and society. To ignore or not adjust for these biases is what's unfair here.

[1]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1999....

[2]: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-00584-007

[3]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happens-when...

Unless you assume that all Black or White men are good negotiators, then the grandparent's argument holds: you're helping only at best a subset of people who would most benefit from it.

I agree with the grandparent: a program to help people become better negotiators should target people who are bad negotiators to begin with, and nothing else. Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.

> There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.

Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?

The context of all this is "addressing the gender pay gap", which policies like try to do using the salaries of men as the baseline. We already know that women are working as hard and as effectively as men, but that they're getting paid less and we're looking for reasons why.

When you argue to also help men that may be bad negotiators you're missing the point, which is that these policies address the gender pay gap.

> Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.

Discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing. Policies intended to address gender issues need to be gender conscious. For example, affirmative action policies at universities need to know information about ascribed statuses like race and gender, otherwise they can't be effective. And they have absolutely been effective; public universities are some of the most diverse institutions we have in the US.

The point isn't to be gender-blind. That only entrenches the favored statuses that men already enjoy. The point is to be aware of the challenges women (and LGBTQ people and people of color) face in order to compensate for them.

> > There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.

> Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?

Again this is in the context of the gender pay gap. I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men, but please don't derail a discussion about the gender pay gap with other issues. And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.

Or, more concretely, feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men and start advocating for programs based in research to address the causes. This isn't a zero sum thing.

Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.

They can be helped by attacking any mechanism of causality (including those that are not mentioned above): preventing bad negotiators from being underpaid (e.g by helping bad negotiators become good negotiators) and preventing women from becoming bad negotiators (e.g. by specifically mentoring them). But the farther removed the factor you are targeting is, the less efficient your efforts become. I think it is shortsighted to limit a program to women when it could just as well be applied to other people (unless something about Google's negotiation training is explicitly gender-specific).

> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.

I'm certainly not advocating that women shouldn't get help with negotiating if they need it, but I am advocating that other people should also receive that help.

We're discussing Stretch, which is a Google program designed to narrow the gender pay gap by teaching women negotiating skills. You're the one who initially brought it up:

> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators.

> Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.

Sure, OK. This whole thread is (I thought clearly) about gender issues. If you have thoughts about how to address the pay gap between various different groups of White men, feel free to advocate for them. But don't derail a conversation about gender inequality like this; this is not a zero sum issue. We can have programs that address this issue for women and programs that address this issue for other groups too, or programs designed to address this issue for all groups. But this thread is about gender, so let's not stray too far OT.

This discussion, as initiated by the original parent, is about the gender pay gap and other issues. It's somewhat ironic that you'd accuse me of derailing this discussion.

> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

>>> There's also not a pay gap for White men

> I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men

> feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men

I'm sorry, but you lost me here.

I have been thinking about it and I believe that neither correct or wrong. It seems it is about how one defines fairness: Is is fairness of opportunity or fairness of outcome?. I would like to know more about this. Is there any paper, book, analysis that tries to tackle with it? I would love to learn about philosophical approaches, attempts to resolve it based on solid rational reasoning in the context of some moral values. Anyone?

1. Doing so requires taking away from those who have, whether property or opportunity. This is theft and oppression.

2. Doing so requires an unbiased party to make judgments about what shall be taken from whom and to whom it shall be given. Humans are biased, so this cannot be done fairly.

3. Doing so restricts others' freedom.

Those who want to enforce equality of outcome want to rule over others, because they think they are qualified to make such decisions. By calling for it, they have already decided that there is a problem, and that they have the solution, and that everyone else is wrong.

In contrast, those who want equality of opportunity do not want to rule over others. They want power to be decentralized so people can make their own decisions.

It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine who is more trustworthy: he who would decide for you, or he who would have you decide for yourself.

> Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up.

I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.

> initiatives that have no basis in science and are mostly just bad ideas like "more pair programming", "more part time work", and "make work less stressful".

There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming (although maybe not in a gender context). I read https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/16/interactions-of-individu... just today. I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.

> liberals often argue for fairness of outcome, conservatives often argue for fairness of approach

I'm not sure where I'd place myself on the liberal-conservative plane, but I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. (Alternatively, sabotage the good negotiators, but I don't support that.) Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.

> I think you can't treat people fairly unless you take into account their ascribed statuses.

If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.

> For example, if we return to entirely gender-blind hiring practices, we'll see the gender gap skyrocket (see 538's article on affirmative action [3]).

The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?

Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, most racial differences in the distribution of applicants are due to economic reasons. In that case, it would be more appropriate to support students from low-income households, rather than sorting them into arbitrary buckets based on ethnicity.

> To ignore or not adjust for these biases is what's unfair here.

I agree that biases shouldn't be ignored, but I don't like it when the countermeasures assume that disadvantages only happen across a few categorizations. There are all kinds of reasons some people have worse outcomes than others, and to only pay attention to them when they coincide with membership in one of your favorite protected groups, is a kind of bias in itself.

> I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.

I only mean that Damore's argument is (roughly, mind you) "studies show the gender gap is likely due to biological differences so we should give up", and if we're comparing Google's pro-diversity hiring initiatives to Stretch, it's important to note that when Google noted the research on women and negotiating, their response wasn't "oh it's biological differences, we should give up". I don't know if Stretch is effective, but at least it's a proactive, supportive response rooted in research.

> There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming... I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.

I don't think they're universally bad ideas, but Google's gender gap is something like 70-30. There's no research to support the notion that pair programming, part time work and low stress jobs can address a 40 point spread like that, but there is research that pro-diversity hiring and support policies do, so I think it's actively harmful to advocate for replacing the latter with the former.

> I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. ... Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.

Sure that makes sense, but the goal isn't to get every employee's negotiating skill to a certain level, it's to narrow the gender pay gap. In that context, it makes sense to work only with women.

> If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.

It is really hard to quantify, definitely. But these issues aren't limited to "that person"; we're all, every single one of us, subject to unconscious bias when it comes to race, gender identification, sexual orientation, and other ascribed statuses because of the culture and society we grew up in. Therefore we all need to adjust, and pro-diversity policies and affirmative action policies help us do that.

> The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?

Sorry "skyrocketing" was a poor characterization (it was laaaaaaate :) Here's what 538 says about Black enrollment:

"...only two research universities in states with affirmative action bans have at least the same proportion of black students as the state’s college-age population, and one of those, Florida A&M University, is a historically black college or university (HBCU). ...only one school, Florida International University, has at least the same proportion of Hispanic students as the state’s college-age population.

...

Researchers looked at the effect race had on admissions and saw a 23 percentage point drop in the chance of admission for minority students in states with bans, compared with a 1 percentage point drop in other states, relative to nonminority students."

That's rough, no matter how you look at it.

> Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, most racial differences in the distribution of applicants are due to economic reasons.

538 addresses this too:

"Opponents of affirmative action argue that aiming for diversity in areas other than race, such as socioeconomic class, can ensure sufficiently diverse student bodies. The most common race-neutral policy used as an alternative to affirmative action is a plan that the University of Texas already uses, in which a percentage of graduates from every high school get automatic admission. These policies have been shown to increase racial and ethnic diversity on campus, but research[1] on whether they’re as effective[2] as more explicit race-based affirmative action policies has been mixed[3], and critics say that it doesn’t make sense to use a proxy when so many colleges continue to struggle with racial diversity."

There are similarities between the experience of lower income Americans and Americans of color, but not all Americans of color are lower income, and policies that focus on evening out the income divide overlook the disadvantages people of color face because of their race.

> I agree that biases shouldn't be ignored, but I don't like it when the countermeasures assume that disadvantages only happen across a few categorizations. There are all kinds of reasons some people have worse outcomes than others, and to only pay attention to them when they coincide with membership in one of your favorite protected groups, is a kind of bias in itself.

Agreed, but at the same time, I don't think we need to show up at every discussion about gender issues and remind everyone that men also face challenges. We can advocate for policies that help straight cis White men who may be disadvantaged for other reasons without derailing discussions about race and gender issues.

[1]: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003465304312...

[2]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pam.21800/abstrac...

[3]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2137126

This is true, but California presciently has other laws in place to protect workers that want to discuss potentially illegal behavior in good faith. This is why Damore is suing Google, and why it's quite likely that he will win.

Sorry I'm unfamiliar with California state law, and besides I don't really know why it pertains to a misunderstanding of speech protected under the 1st Amendment.

It's like the government is indicting you for making gingerbread houses, and one of your employees argues against your policy prohibiting gingerbread in the workplace. Isn't it?

EDIT: Oh it's gender pay, not diversity. Then I really don't at all get the relevance, Damore only mentioned the pay gap in a footnote that was totally unrelated to Google.

to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices

[...] Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination​ [6]

[6] Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create zero-sum struggles between orgs.

> But wasn't he arguing the opposite; that Google's efforts to comply with US law were working to the detriment of men?

And illegally so.

What you do with the information that science provides is your problem. If a society (such as a workplace) doesn't have the capacity to logically process the scientific facts, and uses them to enforce psycho-sociological diseases like racism or discrimination, the solution is not to deny the scientific facts or erase the question. The solution is to foster capacity in society to process and respond to scientific facts in a logical manner

Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

I don't think I made that claim, but still it has merit. Women face challenges in workplaces where there are few of them, sometimes benefits don't handle birth control, or maternity leave is non-existent or laughably short, or there are few women in leadership roles, or there is a workplace culture that is overtly sexist, or there are persistent sexual harassment problems, or they get paid way less for the same work, or they get stuck with "women's work" and treated like secretaries and assistants.

> Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?

Men actually do face their own set of challenges. Consider all the jokes in popular culture about male nurses or male cosmetologists. Or consider Mississippi v. Hogan where a man sued successfully for the right to be admitted to the Mississippi University for Women School of Nursing, a historically all-woman school: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/81-406

I'm not super clear if I understood your question, let me know if I didn't get it right and I'll try again haha.

The gist of the question was that if you follow that link you can see that it is the case that most jobs have a sex ratio that is far off from 50/50, jobs with a ratio closer to 50/50 are the exception rather than the rule. I don't think this is a problem, or "problematic" as the kids like to say. I think this is just the way things are. You can learn a lot about the world just by looking.

The interesting thing that I raised in the question above is that some people do think these divergent sex ratios are "a problem," well sort of, the interesting thing is that they think in only a narrow selection of occupations is this a problem, totally ignoring that there is nothing particularly unusual about a divergent sex ratio for a given job. This may not be the case for you, but for the vast majority of problem addicts it is a very narrow focus on just a few occupations, totally ignoring the fact that it is a totally natural and normal thing.

It's like saying that something broadly true about the world is a problem. I can see the Vox headline now, Asians like rice, that's a problem

I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is? The people constantly going out and raising a ruckus about this or that issue would do far more good for the world by simply putting their own lives in order first.

This is a misrepresentation of the "pro-diversity" argument. The vast majority of the "pro-diversity" posters do not think that every industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. They don't even think the tech industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. A better summary of the argument is this:

1. The tech industry has a tendency to be sexist towards women (which comes in many forms: whether they are subconscious cultural biases, or explicit sexual harassment, or sexist behaviors).

2. This tendency causes the gender ratio to be lower than what it would otherwise be in a "sexism free" tech industry.

3. We should work towards reducing these sexist tendencies because that is a worthy goal in and of itself.

4. If we succeed and reduce the sexism in the tech industry, the gender ratio will increase. It will not necessarily land at 50%, because there are other reasons that the gender gap exists.* But that is okay, because that was never the goal to begin with.

(Note that this is much different from saying "the gender gap is bad and is caused by sexism".)

> I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is?

Because the "world as it is" with regards to the tech industry tends to be sexist towards women, and we should work towards fixing that?

* Yes, I do think lack of interest is a valid reason for this. But it's not the only reason, and attempting to reduce such a complex issue into a single root cause is rather misguided.

No significant amount of equal-rights activists will ever take up the torch to fight for <insert discriminated group>'s to be able to have more of said undesirable jobs. It's hypocritical but entirely understandable.

Of course it's a fact about the document. Damore does not say this. If you claim he did, you should easily be able to prove it by quoting him saying it. No one has done that, because the accusation is false. The burden of proof is on the accuser. The accuser is not presumed to be telling the truth on the basis of their social standing, gender or the emotional intensity of their reaction.

>But here's the deal, a bunch of other really smart people think it did do exactly what you claim it didn't. Now what? Are they wrong, you're right? On what basis?

On the basis of the content of the memo, they are wrong.

This is the full quote, "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate." Latter emphasis mine.

I read this the same way that he writes it: that Google takes steps to reduce the false negative rate for diverse candidates but does not take these steps with non-diverse candidates. Policies like re-trying failed phone interviews, or automatically passing resume review for diverse candidates are examples of this (these are examples I've witnessed, I don't know if they in place at Google). They still need to pass the final interview loop, so they're not underqualified. But extra steps earlier in the interview process reduce the false negative rate.

Personally, I think these steps are an acceptable means of getting a more diverse group of candidates but I'd still respect my co-workers if they disagreed. To point out the fact that this results in some non-diverse candidates being denied when they could have gotten offers is factually correct. More importantly, to point this fact out is not to call the diverse candidates passed under such a system underqualified - as I pointed out earlier all candidates pass the final interview loop so all candidates are qualified.

To better illustrate what it means to reduce the false negative rate without admitting underqualified candidates, consider the following scenario:

* Phone interviews have a 50% false negative rate.

* On-site interviews have a 0% false negative rate.

* Neither type of interview has a false positive rate.

* Non-diverse candidates get one phone interview, and if the interview is positive they go on to an on-site interview. If the onsite is positive, the candidate gets an offer.

* Diverse candidates get two phone interviews. If either is positive, they move on to the onsite which, if passes, gets an offer.

In this setup, no candidates are underqualified since there are no false-positives in either the phone interview or the onsite. Non-diverse candidates have a 50% false negative rate; 50% are erroneously disqualified at the phone interview stage. Diverse candidates have a 25% false negative rate. Since they go through two phone interviews, there's only a false negative if both (0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25) phone interviews are false negatives.

He is saying that this is harmful to Google, so he is saying it shouldn't be done, so he is saying that certain people who have been hired should not have been hired.

No matter what qualifiers you put on the statement he is saying that some of his former coworkers should not have been hired.

He also doesn't cite any proof that these hiring policies he is against actually exist, or even define what policies he believes exist. There is just some undefined diversity policy that he is against.

If Google has lowered the bar for women in various ways, why should it be impossible to point that out? Just because some women would be offended by it? So what? Nobody has the right to be offended by facts.

He doesn't back up his claim with any data at all. Where is his supporting data that Google's hiring practices in regards to minorities hurts Google? He's just making a baseless claim that doesn't logically follow from any of the evidence he provides before it.