Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies.
Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusing her of sexism).
The article hides a common but incorrect assumption. Look at this paragraph:
> As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.
The assumption here is that employment in STEM industries fundamentally and solely involves "mechanically interesting things".
The reality is that tech companies are composed of people and make products for people. Google themselves have found through their own research that the best managers are defined by their people skills, not their technical skills. So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?
Strong technology is important for success, but so is leadership, market fit, team dynamics, understanding the customer, etc. The hardest question in tech companies is not "how" to build, but "what" to build. This is essentially a people-oriented problem, since customers are people.
EDIT: this tweet puts it succinctly:
> WEIRD how none of these guys ever argue that because our ladybrains are better at communication and teamwork we should be paid more
> The assumption here is that employment in STEM industries fundamentally and solely involves "mechanically interesting things".
It's not. Read the original memo.
He especially mentioned that women gravitate to the more social jobs in STEM environments, but Google's diversity programs were trying to force them into the "code monkey" jobs instead, to spread them more evenly.
> Strong technology is important for success, but so is leadership, market fit, team dynamics, understanding the customer, etc. The hardest question in tech companies is not "how" to build, but "what" to build. This is essentially a people-oriented problem, since customers are people.
Absolutely. So why waste your people-oriented employees on jobs that aren't people-oriented?
What's the proportion of people who work their way up to management from code-monkey, versus being hired directly into a management role?
If it's highly skewed towards "promoted from code-monkey", then there's a big barrier to entry if you're the kind of person who loves managing and dislikes code-monkeying.
> So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?
From my experience, women in technology have a higher chance of reaching manager level than men. I worked with plenty of female managers, and their people and communication skills were the reason that got them in those positions. Women with families, women working 4/5th.
So yes, I do think they can rise up with those skills, from a European perspective.
> So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?
In competitive environments men are more willing to fight than women, so they are more likely to get the jobs because women are more likely to give up. And I think we should try to change this because as you said "people skills" have a lot of value in management. We need both skills and try to represent both in management roles.
> WEIRD how none of these guys ever argue that because our ladybrains are better at communication and teamwork we should be paid more
There are profession typical for women like nursing that they have less salary than tech jobs. The reason is economical, tech companies produce more money. But I strongly thing the nursing job is as important as a tech job and we should try to remove the gap between professions. But with a capitalism system you cannot do this easily.
Note: I am one of the persons who agree with the biology differences between male and female.
I would imagine it is the Peter Principal to blame for lack of woman management. Even tech companies cannot seem to grasp the idea that management is its own separate skill set and simply promoting your best developers isn't going to guarantee you quality management.
When people have a scientific theory and that theory can be shown to not be good at predicting the world, it is still science. The point is to find a better theory, one which predictions better match observational data.
So what other theories are there? One that the memo mention in that controversial list is that men are pushed (incentivized) to seek higher earning. So lets put out a few predictions here. At average, jobs with higher risk and higher earnings should have more male applicants seeking them. Promotions that results in pay increase should be demanded by men more even if that risk their current job position. When there is a choice between benefits or increase pay, me should be statistically biased towards increased pay.
Is that theory better or worse? depend on the observational data that can either confirm or dispel the predictions. Personally I am more convinced by the second theory than the first, but that is purely based on the data. Make a better theory and provide convincing data and I would instantly change my mind. At that point the second theory should be abandoned with the same speed that I abandoned the first one.
I upvoted this comment since I think you made a good, salient point, but I also think that you elided the important baseline point that programming is simply more "mechanical" than work done in HR/Sales or by managers.
My impression is that most managers in the tech industry already have a good amount of experience in "mechanical" (development, etc) roles, and to even get there you need an education or experience in relevant skills (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't know about whether the proportion of women vs men with managerial roles in tech is fair, but if what the author of this article is saying is true, the required educational or professional pedigree just to get into the tech industry is probably one of the biggest causes of men vastly outnumbering women in tech already.
I didn't read a specific causality claim like that.
I think there was a purposeful gap in the logic since the causality is too convoluted to be definitive about.
1. "Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our _interests_ and _behaviour_... our _interests_ are influenced strongly by biology, as opposed to being learned or socially constructed."
2. It might be reasonable to wonder if a biological mechanism is at play here.
3. ??? some combination of things, including innate gender characteristics, but not limited to sexism ???
4. Women are significantly less likely to work in technology.
> So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?
The article does mention something about stress resistance, which would be an explanation. Of course, the best managers are able to avoid stress altogether by being effective managers.
There's also something I read elsewhere that men are / can be more competitive; both would explain why there's more men at the top, alongside blatant sexism / gender discrimination.
> So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?
Higher levels of programming may be composed of more work with people (coordinating a team, extracting requirements from clients, etc.), but the lower levels, and the education leading up to there, is tech focused. And it's from there that managers are sourced.
> Google themselves have found through their own research that the best managers are defined by their people skills, not their technical skills. So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?
That's a great point. So maybe Google should have said, 'This memo makes sense for programmers but not for managers'. Instead they said, 'You're fired!'
What I find interesting about all this is how many people take personal offense from statistics. (and conclusions drawn from statistics)
The author seems to put an effort into explaining statistical distribution and what it means and what not. He's explicit that statistical observations can't be used to judge particular individuals. Draws a graph of overlapping distributions to drive the point home even more.
I'm not sure why would anyone get offended by statistical observation. It's not personal by definition.
Also interesting is that it's one of the things social justice activists constantly criticize others for. I can't count how many times I've heard the following: "when we say men are privileged, we don't mean any and all men are privileged to the same extent." Or "when we say white people are racist, we're not talking about every single individual white person."
And it makes sense. Yet when it comes time for someone to say "the statistical average for career interests in females tends to lean away from technology", all observable nuance is thrown to the wind.
In my own experience, when one tries to talk with a woman in an impersonal way about something that is personal to her, she will tend to find that very offensive. Infuriating even, because one is ignoring her emotions, treating them as if they don't matter. And to her, her emotions really matter.
From talking to others and based on what I've read, things tend to trend this way. In fact, there was a woman neuroscientist who gave a talk at Google[1] on the differences between the male and female brains and in that she gave an example of this kind of thing. She says that when she comes home and is frustrated about a problem she has been having, her husband wants to go straight to an objective solution to her problem. It drives her nuts. She just wants to hear that he understands how she feels. Before he tries to provide a solution, he is supposed to say, "Honey, I understand how you feel."
I think Damore made this mistake. He has a footnote about the need to be objective instead of emotional about these kinds of things. And so he wrote a very objective, detached memo. I suspect that was a significant part of the problem. It's a male approach to a hot issue. He instead needed to write in a way that was very emotional about how great women are and all the unique gifts they bring to the table and how he wanted to empower them to be free to be themselves at Google and create an environment that was welcoming to all that is special about women. It could have had almost all the same content but lead with positive emotions. Had he done that, he might not have faced such a backlash from furious women.
Men, too, need to know that you care about them before they care whether or not your facts are factual or relevant. But most men do not find an impersonal approach offensive per se, the way that many women do.
> She's explicit that statistical observations can't be used to judge particular individuals.
That's perfectly fine but there's a lot more to it than the statistics, even if they're valid. Moreover statistics doesn't necessarily suggest a clear conclusion and course of action for organizations and decision makers.
That didn't stop the author of the original manifesto, however, from proceeding to make a bunch of bogus smug prescriptions for what google needs to do like "de-emphasize empathy" etc. These were way above his pay grade and I find it hard to believe that diversity has harmed this person.
The fact is, Google is doing just fine. They're not in a downward spiral because of diversity initiatives. They're thriving. At a minimum one could argue that Google's diversity programs aren't hurting the performance of the company.
The author of the manifesto clearly violated Google's Code of Conduct and got fired for it.
Do you really find that interesting though? Isn't that incredibly obvious?
My biggest problem with all this is how the author gave absolutely no thought to how his female coworkers would be affected by this. These are REAL women who have to interact with him every day. They are not just statistics who are on average less likely to be good engineers than he is. They are supposed to be on the same team. I can't see how any of his women coworkers wouldn't think of him differently after this.
This was not a paper released on the internet with no ties to his coworkers. By sharing it at work and tying it in with google he made it personal. The women reading it have no choice but to make it about them, because it is about them! They are the ones who interacted with programs that he is against. Everything he talks about is stuff they actually experience. And throughout the entire thing he shows that he does not care at all about these women.
Where he goes wrong is that he conflates statistical significance with clinical significance. Yes, his sources show that there are differences between men and women. However, the measured difference is so minute, there is little to no practical distinction.
Maybe i'm offended because, as a white man, it leaves me open to all kinds of statistics about how white men are overwhelmingly likely to be serial killers, compared to other groups. And it would follow that we could do a better of catching serial killers by assuming white men are unable to control their murderous impulses, and adjusting how our laws work so white men are diverted from jobs involving human contact. That way we don't lower the bar for the safety of our lawful citizens.
Human brains simply aren't very good at thinking statistically. You can say something totally factual and benign, like, "Most nurses are women" and someone will immediately chime in, "My uncle is a nurse!" It happens every time. It's practically a law.
We're good at noticing patterns and exceptions to those patterns, but, for whatever reason, we're just not good at distinguishing statements about populations from statements about individuals. For most people, breaking this intuition takes a lot of education and training.
So, yeah, you shouldn't really be surprised when some random person on Twitter fails to grasp the argument. It's disappointing, but it shouldn't be surprising.
I attribute this to lack of citizen sophistication. If you expect a public discourse to have clarity or nuance on statistical terms, then it probably means paying for statistics training for every citizen, even if it's just a little statistics unit as part of a larger civics course.
I am always surprised that well educated people who are definitely not "creationists" but consider evolution as a way human kind developed are ready to ignore evolution when it comes to gender.
Clearly man and woman are different physically and mentally as for millenias they played different roles. Why "gender people" keep ignoring that and are claiming that sex is not something inborn and is a "cultural" phenomena is hard to understand.
For me gender studies are just new incarnation of Lysenkoism. Lysenko strongly belived (and thousands of soviet scientist) that weeds could spontaneously evolve into food grains because is should cooperate with communistic party.
Those who were against that obvious stupidity and claimed that genetics is the way to understand plant evolution were fired or put to jail or executed.
Similarly absurdal ideas were brought by soviet lingustics - if any one wants to have good fun, there is no better reading then Stalins's "Linguistics".
> But sexism isn’t the result of knowing facts; it’s the result of what people choose to do with them.
We know that men are taller than women. I can see you agreeing, but actually this statement is ambiguous, because these two are not the same thing:
A man is taller than a women
On average, men are taller than women
Sexism is taking a random male and a random female, and claiming that despite all the facts presented to you, the male is taller than the female. It doesn't matter that in a specific case a female is taller than a male.
The same can be applied to any group and their respective stereotype. The *ism happens when we fail to assess an individual on the data given to us, preferring to fall back on mentally-lazy stereotypes/generalisations even when what we can see says something different.
A single study, published in 2015, did claim that male
and female brains existed along a “mosaic” and that it
isn’t possible to differentiate them by sex, but this has
been refuted by four – yes, four – academic studies since.
This includes a study that analyzed the exact same brain
data from the original study and found that the sex of a
given brain could be correctly identified with 69-per-cent
to 77-per-cent accuracy.
Well I'd argue that isn't great accuracy as 50% is what you'd expect from chance (though I haven't read those references). In fact, I might expect a similar accuracy from a machine-learning technique to predict sex based on your height.
I haven't touched on the causes of population differences. With height, I don't think anyone thinks it's anything other than genetic (by way of testosterone levels). For interests and skills, the proportion that is caused by testosterone versus culture/environment is still unclear.
If we believe there is still a cultural effect, then I think positive discrimination is justified to counter this.
As an anecdote, we were wondering why our four-year old son suddenly lost interest in 'Frozen'. He told us this week that a girl had told him at nursery that 'Frozen' wasn't for boys. Cultural stereotype reinforcement is alive and well, and starts early!
The managers, a more people-oriented activity, are all men. But the people working with actual calculators are women. And it was not just this office, this was happening everywhere. Working with a calculator was a woman's job.
There is a lot of factors to why STEM is dominated by men. Testosterone may be one, for real, but it is not the only one. And it doesn't justify such a big difference in numbers.
I don't know if the engineer wrote something awful or not, but this article is just a justification for the difference as if nothing can be done. And that is not true.
Would people consider it sexist to administer a completely automated test of technical and personality questions which was used by an unbiased program to hire only the best qualified candidates?
What would you say if the results were essentially the same as the status quo?
By the Article's Author's account, she believes that we would probably maintain the status quo with such a test, because she thinks people are self-selecting out of STEM. Others seem to think that there is some other barrier to entering -- would a test like this fix the issue, or is there something else going on?
As an additional perspective, here's an interview from James' perspective[1]. The interviewer is clearly fairly bias and holds the same viewpoint which is unfortunate but I think hearing James' perspective on the purpose of the document is interesting.
I have always felt very ambivalent about affirmative action. It is a form of discrimination and therefore furthers the message that discerning based on gender or race is acceptable. You can make a strong argument that it is harmful, which is what the memo did.
However...
In the kingdom of Belgium at some point the rule was introduced that half of all political candidates for election must be women and had to receive equally prominent placement on ballots (by alternating male and female candidates). People were still free to vote men into office, but the idea was that it would give women a fairer chance. The same criticisms were said. Before you saw a low percentage of women in politics, like most countries. This was attributed to women having less of an affinity for politics. And yet, after a few election cycles this caused a shift in mindset as well as quality of female candidates and who was elected. Women are no longer perceived to be less suited for politics, the most popular politician is a woman, and gender has gone away as a divisive issue in politics. So, it actually worked. By making people so used to women politicians the issue went away, and you could probably get rid of the quotas and still see a 50% split in the next election.
So maybe our genetic predispositions matter far less than we think, and we can change mindsets through affirmative action. But it has to be all-in 50/50 % split, so that it will change people's perception of normal.
> Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.
This is obvious and not the point of contention. The crux of the other side's disagreement is in the assumption that differences in brain chemistry attributable to sex necessarily account for all or the majority of the differences we observe in career distributions. I think the insane reaction to this memo is unfortunate because the author does appear to make an earnest effort to discuss this topic, but the memo's defenders are not doing the argument any favors by arguing against the weakest version of the opposing argument.
As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.
And why we see fields like law being dominated by women, right?
EDIT: I, and I suspect most other scientists wouldn't disagree that there are [edit - had this as aren't previously, woops!] physiological differences between men and women, but as I read the memo, that was not what was being argued. What was being argued was that those differences were the reason for the gender imbalance in tech (i.e. women are predisposition to be less interested/capable in STEM fields), in other words, the effect size associated with biological sex is larger (and indeed must be significantly larger) than any/all combined societal/'nurture' effects.
This is anecdotal. But a testament on how difficult this problem is.
I have two nieces and 1 nephew, all of which I've tried to encourage into programming. I have tried to get my nieces interested in programming with great difficulty but my nephew has taken to it almost instantly and effortlessly.
We do see people-focused fields like psychology dominated by women. Perhaps law is somewhere in the middle.
The memo didn't say biology was "larger than any/all combined societal/'nurture' effects". In the memo there is a section with this title:
> Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech
Note "possible". No one knows the exact combination of causes of the gap, it likely has many factors. The memo is saying there may be non-bias factors too, and that Google is blind to those, so it's pointing those out. That's not the same as saying non-bias factors are larger than everything else.
As with many defenses of the Damore memo (and more than a few attacks against it as well), this completely misses the point. Let's say for the sake of argument that there are differences in ability and/or preference between men and women. Let's even say that the magnitude of those differences is sufficient to explain a 4:1 ratio between male and female engineers at Google (which is clearly not true). My response is still SO WHAT? That outlandish premise still doesn't even begin to justify his tone, his complaints, or his policy proposals.
* Differences in ability do not support his accusation of silencing. They're unrelated.
* Phrases like "the left tends to deny science" and "extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians" are inflammatory, prejudicial, and discriminatory in their own right, independently of whether gender differences exist.
* Diversity is provably good even in the presence of gender differences. Many studies have shown that the effect of mixed teams outperforming single-gender teams far outweighs any individual differences.
I could go on and on about other ways that Damore comes across as a radically intolerant jerk, a hypocrite, etc. but I'm trying to stay on one point. The "science" part of Damore's memo, which the OP is meant to support, is practically irrelevant. That's not the only part that's offensive, or dangerous, or in violation of his employee agreement. It's not even the only part that's unscientific, since sociology and economics are involved as well as biology and he doesn't even try to engage honestly with those. His belief that women are less fit to be engineers is abhorrent, but so separately are his other beliefs. Even the strongest refutation of that one point doesn't make a dent in the memo's total start-to-finish toxicity.
What disturbs me most about this incident is how many people's first instinct, when faced with views they strongly disagree with, is to try and suppress those views and the person speaking them. Not to engage with the argument or to try and argue against it, just to shut the other person down. It's a totalitarian kind of response.
Firing this guy was just a PR move in order to keep things under control. The memo was accurate and I know that Google is going to learn from it even if the guy has been sacrified.
I think it's important for us to gain some kind of perspective here. Whatever current science (or "science") says on the matter, that's not the point. These arguments seem to be of the following: women are inherently less capable of being good engineers, therefore they should be underrepresented in engineering.
Okay, now let's extend that argument out from the engineering sphere.
Using the same logic, the following attitudes should be accepted:
1. physically disabled people are inherently less suited to being mobile, so we shouldn't put in effort to allow them to be as mobile as non-disabled people
2. Men are inherently less suited for child care, so we shouldn't put in effort to help them be as good at child care as women
I wouldn't be surprised if some of you endorsed the attitudes I've just presented, but that would make you immoral by modern standards, so you could then assume that you're being immoral on the gender diversity issue.
This whole thing comes down to a fundamental lack of empathy. If you're not going to have empathy for women in tech, there's no reason that anyone should have empathy for you in areas that you're not suited to. So, if you accept one, accept the consequences of the other.
No matter how you debate the validity of the science, I hope people pay attention to one suggestion the 'manifesto' author made: that his company should do more pair programming.
Pairing has always struck me as a great way to get programmers communicating better. Without addressing any other points in the manifesto, I think he's correct that encouraging pairing would be a good way to make development environments more collaborative.
From below (I wanted to make sure this didn't get hidden under a downvoted comment):
>I fail to understand how a memo calling for MORE diversity can get headlined as "anti-diversity memo" on all big media outlets. Do journalists even do independent research anymore or are they just regurgitating whatever reuters send their way without scrutiny?
The author is referring to psychological diversity, in other words, Google should be more receptive to diverse viewpoints. This is both true and not true. Yes, we should listen to others and understand, but that does not mean we should accept and value everyone's viewpoints. To invoke Goodwin's Law, perhaps we should be more sympathetic to the viewpoints of Nazis? How about white supremacists?
There are viewpoints that do harm people within society, and this is one of them. Strip this down, this is the basic "woman's nature" argument that was used for years in the past to keep women barefoot and in the kitchen. The underlying claim that women are bad at tech is ridiculous. As mentioned below, the early programmers and data entry workers were women as it was considered "office work". I'll also throw out names like Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace. Read a site like Godel's Lost Letter, and Lipton always points out women who have made contributions to the field. I even recall an article about a house wife who researched new fractals. Women have been engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math (and medicine) since the beginning. They were male dominated because people held the viewpoint the author does, which is essentially, "It's not a woman' place". Bullshit, plain and simple. This memo does not call for more diversity. It may cite scientific research (yes, men and women are different physically and psychologically), but it calls for the same status quo that initiatives like the ones the author lambasts are trying to overcome. Are they perfect? No. but they are a step in the right direction. We need to understand these difference and adapt to them not use those differences as a way to exclude.
> perhaps we should be more sympathetic to the viewpoints of Nazis? How about white supremacists?
Practically no one is saying that. We should cast out the tiny minority of Nazis.
What people are saying is that the views in the memo are not of a tiny minority. They are accepted by a significant part of society, by reasonable people. They are considered factual or at least debatable by many scientists. And many of the core principles are accepted by conservatives, i.e., a large wing of US politics.
What will happen to society if we aren't willing to listen across the political aisle? And if we aren't willing to listen to reasonable scientific debate?
> This memo does not call for more diversity.
It literally does call for more, including of gender and racial minorities:
> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more
You can disagree with its practical suggestions - I do, I think many of them are harmful - but it's unfair to say it's not calling for more diversity.
> To invoke Goodwin's Law, perhaps we should be more sympathetic to the viewpoints of Nazis? How about white supremacists?
There's a movie on Netflix at the moment, a German movie called "Er Ist Wieder Da" ("look who's back") about Hitler returning in modern-day Germany. It's part movie, part documentary - the actor playing Hitler travels around the country and talks to people about politics and the like, and finds there's a lot of people agreeing with some of the standpoints.
The nazis crossed a huge number of lines and had some batshit people at the helm, but I'm sure you could find some points that a lot of people would agree with even in these days. Same with white supremacists, some of which have toned down their racism and become more politically correct.
I'm surprised greater attention is not focused on the fact the "science" is in the midst of a reproducibility crisis. This is a big issue in the hard sciences; I can only imagine what it's like in the squishy science of gender behavior.
Tying your reputation to such a soft foundation is just inviting trouble.
Seems like a lot of the controversy around these types of discussions comes from the consequences of bayesian inference.
If you know that men and women differ in a distributional sense with respect to some trait, that gives you a prior to work off-of when you meet a new individual. This is rational from bayes theorem, so simply saying "you should treat everyone as an individual" is not nuanced enough.
However, as you acquire more information about a particular individual (such as passing a difficult google interview, or knowing that they've succeeded in a reputable CS curriculum), this should quickly "swamp" the prior, causing it to contribute very little to the final inference.
The problem is the humans are not great at adjusting like this: we're not perfect at applying bayes theorem in our heads. We tend to overstate the influence of various priors when there are stronger signals at hand. Nevertheless, incorporating prior distributional information is NOT irrational, but generally overdone.
Therefore, it seems like the approach of some is to shout down information that would suggest biological distributional differences, to try guarantee that people don't overuse prior information.
I don't think many people have a problem with any of the science or the statistics. That's not the problem with the 'manifesto'.
The author of the 'manifesto' seems to think that no one else reads these studies. I can assure you that everyone who is working on these issues has already read and understood the studies. The people in charge of these programs agree with them. He presented absolutely nothing of value. There is not a single new idea in what he wrote.
All the manifesto showed was that he thinks he you can just apply studies to your coworkers. He took a bunch of women he works with and turned them into statistics, into a problem that he alone can solve. It's incredible ignorant and arrogant.
The science, or understanding of statistics is not the problem, it is his approach to solving it that is the problem.
[+] [-] Ajedi32|8 years ago|reply
Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusing her of sexism).
[+] [-] snowwrestler|8 years ago|reply
> As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.
The assumption here is that employment in STEM industries fundamentally and solely involves "mechanically interesting things".
The reality is that tech companies are composed of people and make products for people. Google themselves have found through their own research that the best managers are defined by their people skills, not their technical skills. So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?
Strong technology is important for success, but so is leadership, market fit, team dynamics, understanding the customer, etc. The hardest question in tech companies is not "how" to build, but "what" to build. This is essentially a people-oriented problem, since customers are people.
EDIT: this tweet puts it succinctly:
> WEIRD how none of these guys ever argue that because our ladybrains are better at communication and teamwork we should be paid more
https://twitter.com/kelliotttt/status/894770623611682818
[+] [-] creshal|8 years ago|reply
It's not. Read the original memo.
He especially mentioned that women gravitate to the more social jobs in STEM environments, but Google's diversity programs were trying to force them into the "code monkey" jobs instead, to spread them more evenly.
> Strong technology is important for success, but so is leadership, market fit, team dynamics, understanding the customer, etc. The hardest question in tech companies is not "how" to build, but "what" to build. This is essentially a people-oriented problem, since customers are people.
Absolutely. So why waste your people-oriented employees on jobs that aren't people-oriented?
[+] [-] Smaug123|8 years ago|reply
If it's highly skewed towards "promoted from code-monkey", then there's a big barrier to entry if you're the kind of person who loves managing and dislikes code-monkeying.
[+] [-] koonsolo|8 years ago|reply
From my experience, women in technology have a higher chance of reaching manager level than men. I worked with plenty of female managers, and their people and communication skills were the reason that got them in those positions. Women with families, women working 4/5th.
So yes, I do think they can rise up with those skills, from a European perspective.
[+] [-] jorgemf|8 years ago|reply
In competitive environments men are more willing to fight than women, so they are more likely to get the jobs because women are more likely to give up. And I think we should try to change this because as you said "people skills" have a lot of value in management. We need both skills and try to represent both in management roles.
> WEIRD how none of these guys ever argue that because our ladybrains are better at communication and teamwork we should be paid more
There are profession typical for women like nursing that they have less salary than tech jobs. The reason is economical, tech companies produce more money. But I strongly thing the nursing job is as important as a tech job and we should try to remove the gap between professions. But with a capitalism system you cannot do this easily.
Note: I am one of the persons who agree with the biology differences between male and female.
[+] [-] UK-AL|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isk517|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belorn|8 years ago|reply
When people have a scientific theory and that theory can be shown to not be good at predicting the world, it is still science. The point is to find a better theory, one which predictions better match observational data.
So what other theories are there? One that the memo mention in that controversial list is that men are pushed (incentivized) to seek higher earning. So lets put out a few predictions here. At average, jobs with higher risk and higher earnings should have more male applicants seeking them. Promotions that results in pay increase should be demanded by men more even if that risk their current job position. When there is a choice between benefits or increase pay, me should be statistically biased towards increased pay.
Is that theory better or worse? depend on the observational data that can either confirm or dispel the predictions. Personally I am more convinced by the second theory than the first, but that is purely based on the data. Make a better theory and provide convincing data and I would instantly change my mind. At that point the second theory should be abandoned with the same speed that I abandoned the first one.
[+] [-] jcranberry|8 years ago|reply
My impression is that most managers in the tech industry already have a good amount of experience in "mechanical" (development, etc) roles, and to even get there you need an education or experience in relevant skills (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't know about whether the proportion of women vs men with managerial roles in tech is fair, but if what the author of this article is saying is true, the required educational or professional pedigree just to get into the tech industry is probably one of the biggest causes of men vastly outnumbering women in tech already.
[+] [-] humanrebar|8 years ago|reply
I think there was a purposeful gap in the logic since the causality is too convoluted to be definitive about.
1. "Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our _interests_ and _behaviour_... our _interests_ are influenced strongly by biology, as opposed to being learned or socially constructed."
2. It might be reasonable to wonder if a biological mechanism is at play here.
3. ??? some combination of things, including innate gender characteristics, but not limited to sexism ???
4. Women are significantly less likely to work in technology.
_ Accenting mine, not in the article.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|8 years ago|reply
The article does mention something about stress resistance, which would be an explanation. Of course, the best managers are able to avoid stress altogether by being effective managers.
There's also something I read elsewhere that men are / can be more competitive; both would explain why there's more men at the top, alongside blatant sexism / gender discrimination.
[+] [-] dsfjksdf|8 years ago|reply
Maybe it is just difficult to put managers without experience in the trenches in front of people? That is, managers who have no tech skills as such?
[+] [-] DarkKomunalec|8 years ago|reply
Higher levels of programming may be composed of more work with people (coordinating a team, extracting requirements from clients, etc.), but the lower levels, and the education leading up to there, is tech focused. And it's from there that managers are sourced.
[+] [-] rmc|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MarkMc|8 years ago|reply
That's a great point. So maybe Google should have said, 'This memo makes sense for programmers but not for managers'. Instead they said, 'You're fired!'
[+] [-] megous|8 years ago|reply
The author seems to put an effort into explaining statistical distribution and what it means and what not. He's explicit that statistical observations can't be used to judge particular individuals. Draws a graph of overlapping distributions to drive the point home even more.
I'm not sure why would anyone get offended by statistical observation. It's not personal by definition.
[+] [-] tenaciousDaniel|8 years ago|reply
And it makes sense. Yet when it comes time for someone to say "the statistical average for career interests in females tends to lean away from technology", all observable nuance is thrown to the wind.
[+] [-] agarden|8 years ago|reply
In my own experience, when one tries to talk with a woman in an impersonal way about something that is personal to her, she will tend to find that very offensive. Infuriating even, because one is ignoring her emotions, treating them as if they don't matter. And to her, her emotions really matter.
From talking to others and based on what I've read, things tend to trend this way. In fact, there was a woman neuroscientist who gave a talk at Google[1] on the differences between the male and female brains and in that she gave an example of this kind of thing. She says that when she comes home and is frustrated about a problem she has been having, her husband wants to go straight to an objective solution to her problem. It drives her nuts. She just wants to hear that he understands how she feels. Before he tries to provide a solution, he is supposed to say, "Honey, I understand how you feel."
I think Damore made this mistake. He has a footnote about the need to be objective instead of emotional about these kinds of things. And so he wrote a very objective, detached memo. I suspect that was a significant part of the problem. It's a male approach to a hot issue. He instead needed to write in a way that was very emotional about how great women are and all the unique gifts they bring to the table and how he wanted to empower them to be free to be themselves at Google and create an environment that was welcoming to all that is special about women. It could have had almost all the same content but lead with positive emotions. Had he done that, he might not have faced such a backlash from furious women.
Men, too, need to know that you care about them before they care whether or not your facts are factual or relevant. But most men do not find an impersonal approach offensive per se, the way that many women do.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_uGr1ZOn4
[+] [-] crispyambulance|8 years ago|reply
That didn't stop the author of the original manifesto, however, from proceeding to make a bunch of bogus smug prescriptions for what google needs to do like "de-emphasize empathy" etc. These were way above his pay grade and I find it hard to believe that diversity has harmed this person.
The fact is, Google is doing just fine. They're not in a downward spiral because of diversity initiatives. They're thriving. At a minimum one could argue that Google's diversity programs aren't hurting the performance of the company.
The author of the manifesto clearly violated Google's Code of Conduct and got fired for it.
[+] [-] Lon7|8 years ago|reply
My biggest problem with all this is how the author gave absolutely no thought to how his female coworkers would be affected by this. These are REAL women who have to interact with him every day. They are not just statistics who are on average less likely to be good engineers than he is. They are supposed to be on the same team. I can't see how any of his women coworkers wouldn't think of him differently after this.
This was not a paper released on the internet with no ties to his coworkers. By sharing it at work and tying it in with google he made it personal. The women reading it have no choice but to make it about them, because it is about them! They are the ones who interacted with programs that he is against. Everything he talks about is stuff they actually experience. And throughout the entire thing he shows that he does not care at all about these women.
[+] [-] sethish|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zeklandia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quxbar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionidium|8 years ago|reply
We're good at noticing patterns and exceptions to those patterns, but, for whatever reason, we're just not good at distinguishing statements about populations from statements about individuals. For most people, breaking this intuition takes a lot of education and training.
So, yeah, you shouldn't really be surprised when some random person on Twitter fails to grasp the argument. It's disappointing, but it shouldn't be surprising.
[+] [-] threatofrain|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmartinez|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy
[+] [-] staticelf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piokoch|8 years ago|reply
Clearly man and woman are different physically and mentally as for millenias they played different roles. Why "gender people" keep ignoring that and are claiming that sex is not something inborn and is a "cultural" phenomena is hard to understand.
For me gender studies are just new incarnation of Lysenkoism. Lysenko strongly belived (and thousands of soviet scientist) that weeds could spontaneously evolve into food grains because is should cooperate with communistic party.
Those who were against that obvious stupidity and claimed that genetics is the way to understand plant evolution were fired or put to jail or executed.
Similarly absurdal ideas were brought by soviet lingustics - if any one wants to have good fun, there is no better reading then Stalins's "Linguistics".
[+] [-] dm319|8 years ago|reply
We know that men are taller than women. I can see you agreeing, but actually this statement is ambiguous, because these two are not the same thing:
Sexism is taking a random male and a random female, and claiming that despite all the facts presented to you, the male is taller than the female. It doesn't matter that in a specific case a female is taller than a male.The same can be applied to any group and their respective stereotype. The *ism happens when we fail to assess an individual on the data given to us, preferring to fall back on mentally-lazy stereotypes/generalisations even when what we can see says something different.
Well I'd argue that isn't great accuracy as 50% is what you'd expect from chance (though I haven't read those references). In fact, I might expect a similar accuracy from a machine-learning technique to predict sex based on your height.I haven't touched on the causes of population differences. With height, I don't think anyone thinks it's anything other than genetic (by way of testosterone levels). For interests and skills, the proportion that is caused by testosterone versus culture/environment is still unclear.
If we believe there is still a cultural effect, then I think positive discrimination is justified to counter this.
As an anecdote, we were wondering why our four-year old son suddenly lost interest in 'Frozen'. He told us this week that a girl had told him at nursery that 'Frozen' wasn't for boys. Cultural stereotype reinforcement is alive and well, and starts early!
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kartan|8 years ago|reply
The managers, a more people-oriented activity, are all men. But the people working with actual calculators are women. And it was not just this office, this was happening everywhere. Working with a calculator was a woman's job.
More: http://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa
There is a lot of factors to why STEM is dominated by men. Testosterone may be one, for real, but it is not the only one. And it doesn't justify such a big difference in numbers.
I don't know if the engineer wrote something awful or not, but this article is just a justification for the difference as if nothing can be done. And that is not true.
[+] [-] program_whiz|8 years ago|reply
Would people consider it sexist to administer a completely automated test of technical and personality questions which was used by an unbiased program to hire only the best qualified candidates?
What would you say if the results were essentially the same as the status quo?
By the Article's Author's account, she believes that we would probably maintain the status quo with such a test, because she thinks people are self-selecting out of STEM. Others seem to think that there is some other barrier to entering -- would a test like this fix the issue, or is there something else going on?
[+] [-] typicalbender|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agU-mHFcXdw
[+] [-] Joeri|8 years ago|reply
However...
In the kingdom of Belgium at some point the rule was introduced that half of all political candidates for election must be women and had to receive equally prominent placement on ballots (by alternating male and female candidates). People were still free to vote men into office, but the idea was that it would give women a fairer chance. The same criticisms were said. Before you saw a low percentage of women in politics, like most countries. This was attributed to women having less of an affinity for politics. And yet, after a few election cycles this caused a shift in mindset as well as quality of female candidates and who was elected. Women are no longer perceived to be less suited for politics, the most popular politician is a woman, and gender has gone away as a divisive issue in politics. So, it actually worked. By making people so used to women politicians the issue went away, and you could probably get rid of the quotas and still see a 50% split in the next election.
So maybe our genetic predispositions matter far less than we think, and we can change mindsets through affirmative action. But it has to be all-in 50/50 % split, so that it will change people's perception of normal.
[+] [-] root_axis|8 years ago|reply
This is obvious and not the point of contention. The crux of the other side's disagreement is in the assumption that differences in brain chemistry attributable to sex necessarily account for all or the majority of the differences we observe in career distributions. I think the insane reaction to this memo is unfortunate because the author does appear to make an earnest effort to discuss this topic, but the memo's defenders are not doing the argument any favors by arguing against the weakest version of the opposing argument.
[+] [-] alexholehouse|8 years ago|reply
And why we see fields like law being dominated by women, right?
EDIT: I, and I suspect most other scientists wouldn't disagree that there are [edit - had this as aren't previously, woops!] physiological differences between men and women, but as I read the memo, that was not what was being argued. What was being argued was that those differences were the reason for the gender imbalance in tech (i.e. women are predisposition to be less interested/capable in STEM fields), in other words, the effect size associated with biological sex is larger (and indeed must be significantly larger) than any/all combined societal/'nurture' effects.
[+] [-] UK-AL|8 years ago|reply
I have two nieces and 1 nephew, all of which I've tried to encourage into programming. I have tried to get my nieces interested in programming with great difficulty but my nephew has taken to it almost instantly and effortlessly.
I suspect I am framing the activity wrong.
[+] [-] brighteyes|8 years ago|reply
The memo didn't say biology was "larger than any/all combined societal/'nurture' effects". In the memo there is a section with this title:
> Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech
Note "possible". No one knows the exact combination of causes of the gap, it likely has many factors. The memo is saying there may be non-bias factors too, and that Google is blind to those, so it's pointing those out. That's not the same as saying non-bias factors are larger than everything else.
[+] [-] notacoward|8 years ago|reply
* Differences in ability do not support his accusation of silencing. They're unrelated.
* Phrases like "the left tends to deny science" and "extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians" are inflammatory, prejudicial, and discriminatory in their own right, independently of whether gender differences exist.
* Diversity is provably good even in the presence of gender differences. Many studies have shown that the effect of mixed teams outperforming single-gender teams far outweighs any individual differences.
I could go on and on about other ways that Damore comes across as a radically intolerant jerk, a hypocrite, etc. but I'm trying to stay on one point. The "science" part of Damore's memo, which the OP is meant to support, is practically irrelevant. That's not the only part that's offensive, or dangerous, or in violation of his employee agreement. It's not even the only part that's unscientific, since sociology and economics are involved as well as biology and he doesn't even try to engage honestly with those. His belief that women are less fit to be engineers is abhorrent, but so separately are his other beliefs. Even the strongest refutation of that one point doesn't make a dent in the memo's total start-to-finish toxicity.
[+] [-] jamesrcole|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ainiriand|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StrangeOrange|8 years ago|reply
Okay, now let's extend that argument out from the engineering sphere.
Using the same logic, the following attitudes should be accepted: 1. physically disabled people are inherently less suited to being mobile, so we shouldn't put in effort to allow them to be as mobile as non-disabled people 2. Men are inherently less suited for child care, so we shouldn't put in effort to help them be as good at child care as women
I wouldn't be surprised if some of you endorsed the attitudes I've just presented, but that would make you immoral by modern standards, so you could then assume that you're being immoral on the gender diversity issue.
This whole thing comes down to a fundamental lack of empathy. If you're not going to have empathy for women in tech, there's no reason that anyone should have empathy for you in areas that you're not suited to. So, if you accept one, accept the consequences of the other.
[+] [-] apeace|8 years ago|reply
Pairing has always struck me as a great way to get programmers communicating better. Without addressing any other points in the manifesto, I think he's correct that encouraging pairing would be a good way to make development environments more collaborative.
[+] [-] Delmania|8 years ago|reply
>I fail to understand how a memo calling for MORE diversity can get headlined as "anti-diversity memo" on all big media outlets. Do journalists even do independent research anymore or are they just regurgitating whatever reuters send their way without scrutiny?
The author is referring to psychological diversity, in other words, Google should be more receptive to diverse viewpoints. This is both true and not true. Yes, we should listen to others and understand, but that does not mean we should accept and value everyone's viewpoints. To invoke Goodwin's Law, perhaps we should be more sympathetic to the viewpoints of Nazis? How about white supremacists?
There are viewpoints that do harm people within society, and this is one of them. Strip this down, this is the basic "woman's nature" argument that was used for years in the past to keep women barefoot and in the kitchen. The underlying claim that women are bad at tech is ridiculous. As mentioned below, the early programmers and data entry workers were women as it was considered "office work". I'll also throw out names like Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace. Read a site like Godel's Lost Letter, and Lipton always points out women who have made contributions to the field. I even recall an article about a house wife who researched new fractals. Women have been engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math (and medicine) since the beginning. They were male dominated because people held the viewpoint the author does, which is essentially, "It's not a woman' place". Bullshit, plain and simple. This memo does not call for more diversity. It may cite scientific research (yes, men and women are different physically and psychologically), but it calls for the same status quo that initiatives like the ones the author lambasts are trying to overcome. Are they perfect? No. but they are a step in the right direction. We need to understand these difference and adapt to them not use those differences as a way to exclude.
[+] [-] brighteyes|8 years ago|reply
Practically no one is saying that. We should cast out the tiny minority of Nazis.
What people are saying is that the views in the memo are not of a tiny minority. They are accepted by a significant part of society, by reasonable people. They are considered factual or at least debatable by many scientists. And many of the core principles are accepted by conservatives, i.e., a large wing of US politics.
What will happen to society if we aren't willing to listen across the political aisle? And if we aren't willing to listen to reasonable scientific debate?
> This memo does not call for more diversity.
It literally does call for more, including of gender and racial minorities:
> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more
You can disagree with its practical suggestions - I do, I think many of them are harmful - but it's unfair to say it's not calling for more diversity.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|8 years ago|reply
There's a movie on Netflix at the moment, a German movie called "Er Ist Wieder Da" ("look who's back") about Hitler returning in modern-day Germany. It's part movie, part documentary - the actor playing Hitler travels around the country and talks to people about politics and the like, and finds there's a lot of people agreeing with some of the standpoints.
The nazis crossed a huge number of lines and had some batshit people at the helm, but I'm sure you could find some points that a lot of people would agree with even in these days. Same with white supremacists, some of which have toned down their racism and become more politically correct.
[+] [-] jpmattia|8 years ago|reply
Tying your reputation to such a soft foundation is just inviting trouble.
[+] [-] blahblah3|8 years ago|reply
If you know that men and women differ in a distributional sense with respect to some trait, that gives you a prior to work off-of when you meet a new individual. This is rational from bayes theorem, so simply saying "you should treat everyone as an individual" is not nuanced enough.
However, as you acquire more information about a particular individual (such as passing a difficult google interview, or knowing that they've succeeded in a reputable CS curriculum), this should quickly "swamp" the prior, causing it to contribute very little to the final inference.
The problem is the humans are not great at adjusting like this: we're not perfect at applying bayes theorem in our heads. We tend to overstate the influence of various priors when there are stronger signals at hand. Nevertheless, incorporating prior distributional information is NOT irrational, but generally overdone.
Therefore, it seems like the approach of some is to shout down information that would suggest biological distributional differences, to try guarantee that people don't overuse prior information.
[+] [-] Lon7|8 years ago|reply
The author of the 'manifesto' seems to think that no one else reads these studies. I can assure you that everyone who is working on these issues has already read and understood the studies. The people in charge of these programs agree with them. He presented absolutely nothing of value. There is not a single new idea in what he wrote.
All the manifesto showed was that he thinks he you can just apply studies to your coworkers. He took a bunch of women he works with and turned them into statistics, into a problem that he alone can solve. It's incredible ignorant and arrogant.
The science, or understanding of statistics is not the problem, it is his approach to solving it that is the problem.