Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-on-the-google-memo/ <comment><USER5> Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.

I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness.

<comment><USER6> I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong".

I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as inappropriate work communication.

<comment><USER7> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been written from the opposite side that have not been criticized in the same way.

And for the record, I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I thought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats. I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.

<comment><USER8> > Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence > bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit > of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or > whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully > misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).

This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.

<comment><USER7> I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so.

I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man?

Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

<comment><USER9> > We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally > without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.

<comment><USER7> I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll disagree with you.

The workplace _was_ the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in another part of the comment section for this very article.

Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective, introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire' among other things.

What it did _not_ do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him.

Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo, and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally introduced it to, at least at that point in time.

Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial. It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.

<comment><USER10> > Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly > harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not > as interested in it) has created such outrage

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.

<comment><USER11> If this is a "current tech culture" problem, how do you explain the fact that this is a trend shared across most of the engineering professions? Example: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- business/11692996/Wo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- business/11692996/Women-In-Engineering-Day-Gender-gap-in-male-dominated- industry-falls.html)

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.

<comment><USER12> Yet somehow, programming is considered a woman's job throughout vast swathes of India. China is much closer to parity in engineering as well.

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.

<comment> Const-me In all developed countries, only 10-25% of engineers are female. An American society in is very different from that of Australia, Sweden, Greece or Germany.

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.

<comment><USER13> Well doesn't this sort of support Damore's hypothesis ? Some of the smartest girls I know went into marketing, purely because they just loved that field. Somehow to them sitting in an office in front of a computer all day didn't seem that appealing.

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

<comment><USER14> On the contrary, it sort of refutes Damore's hypothesis: the difference is not inherent but merely societal, because we observe that, when encouraged, women can succeed at engineering as much as men.

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.

<comment><USER15> Succeeding at engineering is not the same as having the desire to do engineering. If it takes encouragement to push women into the field, that says the desire is not there.

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.

<comment><USER14> All of that enters the realm of the highly subjective, with some parts I may agree with and other I don't. I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money. Other people I know did. I certainly cannot generalize to large groups of people. I disagree with your observation about "some men" and "women", or rather, I'd say "what happens is that _some_ men are willing (and some, like me, are not) and _some_ women aren't", and furthermore, I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things. I happen to think working long hours is crap, and something that needs to change (and the reason I find startups unattractive).

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.

<comment><USER15> _> I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money._

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.

<comment><USER14> You're mixing highly subjective aspects that I don't find worthwhile to debate here ("the job sucks") and that I disagree with. No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices. Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?

> _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.

<comment><USER15> _> No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices._

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.

<comment><USER14> > _neither gender is interested in the profession_

This is false.

> _but we cannot use our biases_

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A common criticism by each four of the female engineers is how the memo effected them in their job and how they had to prove themselves afterward. This strongly reminds me of about a case a year ago when a kindergarten teacher was tried and charged for rape against several children. After a lot of media attention, many male teachers all over the nation reported to constantly having prove to parents and fellow female teachers that just because they are male and chosen that profession it doesn't mean that they are criminals or are higher risk employees. Not only that, but many school implemented procedures that limited what male teacher were allowed to do, furthering pushing a second class status on them. Many also received threats of violence, and since both the left, the feminist movement, and the right fanned the flame against male teachers, many just gave up and left the profession. If memory is right, one news article ended with "I just wish I could go to work and do my job, but that is no longer possible".

I would very much like to see a discussion on how to solve this kind of problem.

<comment><USER17> The feminist movement as a whole is very much _against_ gendered norms about who should and shouldn't be a kindergarten teacher. Which feminist movements did you see fanning these particular flames?

<comment><USER18> 3rd wave, whose actions betray their true goals: men as second class citizens.

<comment><USER19> Please keep ideological talking points off HN. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.

<comment><USER20> The onus is on you to disprove them, they made no irrational claims. If you have some problem with any of their concepts, say so.

Your attack on whether his comment is 'thoughtful' or not is weak.

<comment><USER21> If you could point out to us here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- wave_feminism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism) where it says that all so-called or self-described third wave feminists see men as second class citizens that would be super helpful in this debate.

<comment><USER19> Please don't take HN threads further down generic ideological rabbit holes, or rather black holes. Nothing good comes of them and the thread never returns.

<comment><USER21> Understood. No problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down.

Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm.

He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm, you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made it public.

There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.

<comment><USER23> Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked.

The document _still_ did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article-

> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? How do I prove > myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional > burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it's also a > pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: "Will the team/manager/VC I > talk with today realize I'm qualified, or will they be making stereotypical > assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my > job?" To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it's > an unequal burden my male coworkers don't have to deal with every day.

That quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused by it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who work at a company don't feel they are welcome there.

<comment><USER24> From your quote:

> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?

Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem.

From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to suspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem.

Totally different interpretations of cause and effect.

<comment><USER25> I've met engineers who have expressed a belief that women are often hired if the recruiter found them attractive, and that those women shouldn't have been hired. While those engineers are able to find employment there will always be places where women don't feel welcome, even with diversity programs in place. It is simply the case that some engineers are grossly sexist and will _always_ think a woman has been hired for some other reason beside technical merit if they have an opportunity to. If Damore can't see that then he hasn't enough experience to be talking about hiring.

<comment><USER26> Google doesn't operate that way, they has strict hiring policies and procedures. Recruiter or anyone else has no way to influence hiring without doing something shady (doing selective interview like what Damore claimed they were doing).

<comment><USER23> Damore literally said they were "lowering the bar". You can't have it both ways here.

<comment><USER27> He said "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate".

He did not say they were lowering the bar, but that by rejecting (proportionally) a greater number of qualified male candidates than qualified female candidates, the bar is effectively lowered.

If what he says is true, that there is a higher false negative rate for men, it's hard to imagine a system where the bar isn't effectively lowered.

The one possibility I saw argued elsewhere is that you could take all qualified men, and randomly reject some of them. At that point, you would expect the bar to be level.

If however you rejected qualified men in a non-random way, which is more plausible, the effect would be to change the bar.

I hadn't ever really thought about this kind of selection effect on the statistics of populations, so would love to hear if this sounds wrong or what the real expected outcome should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. > Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more > resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than > lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to > those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based > other factors beside our skills.

This to me is the most interesting question that hasn't been answered about the memo. There seems to still be two camps, those who believe Google does not lower the bar for women and those who do. They can't both be right and I'd imagine if we could take a look at Google's hiring practices it wouldn't be too hard to tell which is which. Of course, we can't Google keeps its hiring practices, at least the ones relating to diversity very hush hush. This was actually Damore's impetus for writing the memo, he attended a diversity summit at Google where he learned about his employer's hiring practices and also observed that this summit was, unlike other meetings at Google, not recorded for later viewing. Damore's conclusion was that the hiring processes were unethical and likely illegal, although afaik he's yet to say specifically what it was that he observed. Still I don't think it's very reasonable to say that Damore has caused harm with this misrepresentation unless you can show conclusively that it is indeed a misrepresentation, and so far I haven't seen anything conclusive that shows that.

<comment><USER29> He specifically mentions in an interview that minority interviewees get assigned to a second interviewer if one interviewer doesn't like them in the first round. He saw this as a 'second chance' when the committee might just be controlling for interviewer biases. Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion.

<comment><USER28> > Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking > shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion.

Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind.

I'd ask a few questions about this interview practice though.

1) Is this the entirety of Google's diversity practices in hiring? I'd be surprised if it is. So even if this isn't lowering the bar it still doesn't prove conclusively that's not what they're doing. Again I'd like to see a more complete accounting of what exactly it is they do. However, I'm certainly not saying that you need to provide this in order to have a legitimate argument, you don't have access to this information any more than I do.

2) This practice seems to have a somewhat narrow view of what a interviewer bias looks like. In particular it only tries to eliminate bias in the case of a minority being rejected. What would happen if we were to instead attempt to detect interviewers who were prone to bias by randomly giving rejected candidates second interviews and seeing which interviewers wound up frequently disagreeing with their peers? If the assumption that bias only effects minority candidates is true this would have much the same effect.

3) What if it wasn't a second chance but 100 chances? I.e. if you're a minority you get to interview for Google 100 times and if any of those say yes your in. White people only get 1 shot. Unless you think Google's false positive rate is 0, this would have to lower the bar wouldn't it?

<comment><USER29> "Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind."

So let us extend him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't extend the hiring committee? How about we extend the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved, which would result in him never writing this memo and second guessing the hiring process.

The rest of your points seem to be just a whole lot of speculation, which you just told me not to do. The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence. Maybe go talk to the hiring committee about their motives/state of mind first Mr. Damore?

<comment><USER28> We're not extending Damore any benefits by not speculating about his state of mind. We're just avoiding discussing a topic about which we can't hope to learn the truth and which isn't necessary to understand whether or not Google's hiring processes do indeed lower the bar.

My "points" are indeed speculative, that's why they were presented as questions. I don't know the truth and it's impossible for us to talk non- speculatively about Google's hiring process because we simply don't have that information.

The original memo (not article, this distinction matters) did indeed cite a great deal of evidence, you may or may not consider it conclusive, I found it quite compelling. But I think it's important to remember that the memo itself was a request for clarification, posted to an internal message board for skeptics in the hopes that somebody would be able to tell him why he's wrong.

<comment><USER29> It was a lot of scientific studies he cited (since contradicted by meta studies), nothing about Google's processes. Another commenter on this thread seems to suggest that almost all interviewers can get second shots, which (albeit anecdotally) makes his argument weaker (showing restraint here in not calling him an outright liar)

I know with my (again anecdotal) experience with large SV firms, if Google had these kinds of holes in their hiring process they would be standing alone in the valley. Also, "lowering the bar" is not consistent with their absolute global market dominance.

He also claims in the same interview that he had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it[1], so I don't know how much of this was a "request for clarification". He even had action items.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng)

<comment><USER28> I've yet to see a meta study which contradicts those studies. Would be interested to see one. I've seen studies that say in X% of studies about differences between men and women the differences found are negligible. That's not a contradiction though, and it's not really meaningful at all. The % of studies which find negligible differences can be arbitrarily inflated because it's simple to find as many axis along which there are no gender differences as you want. It doesn't matter how many you find, even if it's .000001% of studies that find a difference if those differences happen to be particularly important that still means there's a meaningful difference. Scott Alexander has a more in depth explanation of this here: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/)

If all interviewees have the same access to second interviews then I agree that it does nothing to lower the bar. In general if a policy doesn't concern itself with the identity of the candidate I don't see a way that it could be lowering the bar. However, my understanding, based on previous comments, is that diversity interviewees get a second chance immediately while the others must wait 12 months before they get a second chance. If that's the case then Damore's argument (and mine) stand.

I don't think Google's market dominance can be used as evidence of good hiring practices since I believe in the early days they didn't have such practices and wound up with a very undiverse company. This didn't seem to stop them achieving market dominance, draw from this what you will about how much they need diversity to succeed.

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how you simultaneously believe that he "had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it" and "The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence." It seems to me that not only did Damore make an honest effort to seek out clarification but that you're well aware of this fact.

<comment><USER29> Tonnes of speculation. So I'm just gonna stop refuting all that.

"had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it"

I didn't claim this, he did (see: Youtube link). My point is that he didn't actually look into or ask hiring committees why they were doing what they did. Instead, he made bold recommendations, that (like the OP link shows) made women in tech feel like they didn't belong.

He wasn't open to a discussion as many characterize, in his mind, he'd already had discussions and incorporated feedback (his words)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30>
      Frances: ...if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement.
      I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.

And then

      Frances: ...I'm also disappointed that the men I know,
      including most of my male colleagues, remained silent
      on the topic.

      Frances: ...Many powerful men in Silicon Valley have
      huge bases of social media followers. By remaining
      silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore,
      they are sending a message that philosophical arguments
      and principles take precedence over the lived
      experiences of many smart, talented female engineers
      and technical founders.

So, what? Is it just impossible to stay out of the issue if my silence is sending a message that philosophical principles and whatever matter more than women in technology? What if I just want to work my 9-5, treat all my coworkers well regardless of sex or gender, and let the PC warriors duke it out in the streets away from me? Can't even stay silent without sending a message.

While I agree with much of what is said in this piece, I find this pretty demonstrative of the "damned if i do, damned if I don't" situation I'm in as a male trying to survive in this PC crucifixion culture.

<comment><USER31> This section struck out to me too.

what I realized is that I am older, more world wary and far more cynical about anyone looking out for me than your average young millennial.

I think the dividing line is in that cynicism. I have never felt like anyone looked out for me.

"How do I prove myself to people one way or another?"

I have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very wary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how you prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always risk being cast out.

If young social activists were less strident about how society stacks the deck for all white people- even the ones who have been abused, who had a shitty childhood, who have had bad relationships, who are suffering from depression or chemical abuse or other problems, then I think we'd stop running into this very boring and predictable conflict.

Everyone is suffering on some level. Stop talking about white men like we've never experienced pain.

I do think the memo was foundationally stupid. Compassion is needed on all sides.

<comment><USER32> >"How do I prove myself to people one way or another?"

I don't think this was about generic proving-to-others. I think it's about being prejudged by others at first glance which minorities in tech get in every interaction they have. I think that it's valid to say that's a significant struggle.

I have no expertise in this field of social ethics, so I'm hesitant to critique your comment when I'm as uninformed as anyone else, but I also think that your following comment shows an ignorance of that struggle:

>I have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very wary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how you prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always risk being cast out.

If I'm interpreting this correctly as "This is what I did in response to my impulse to prove myself. This is what women in tech should do about their's as well.", then I think you are not considering the fact that you have the privilege of not needing to prove yourself. When people meet you, they don't assume a baseline level of incompetence. This same strategy that you use wouldn't apply to minorities who always feel like they need to prove themselves because of what they look like.

So I think this need to prove yourself stems from a serious, real issue, and so it's wrong to downplay this issue by equating minorities' perpetual feeling of needing to prove themselves with your feelings, to conclude that the problem exists inside them, and not outside them.

Apologies if I misinterpreted your words, but if not, I'd like to hear your response, because this is something I've been thinking about lately.

<comment><USER33> > I think it's about being prejudged by others at first glance which > minorities in tech get in every interaction they have. I think that it's > valid to say that's a significant struggle.

> When people meet you, they don't assume a baseline level of incompetence.

In a way they are prejudging him though. They consider the baseline for him to be one who assumes they're incompetent. He has to prove otherwise. Or perhaps not quite as severe, he is assumed to have privilege which you yourself stated.

It seems to be a problem with assuming things about an individual from population distributions. Perhaps we've forgotten how to treat others as individuals and be treated by others as an individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> All i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and others managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there are biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being less interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's sexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity hires.

Was i reading the wrong memo? Because everybody, including the 3 interviewees, no matter if they seem calm and collected, keep attributing malice, and talking about how the author said women are less suited to being good engineers, and that women shouldn't be encouraged to get interested in STEM. Where was that stated?

<comment><USER35> One of the women said:

> I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general > populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an > individual level."

She goes on to say that people will likely misapply the ideas and judge her. It seems a lot of detractors think Damore should have known better and he takes responsibility for how his ideas affect people.

Another says:

> I don't really see how it's useful to have a discussion of general group > traits in a work setting. Assuming that it's true that women on average are > more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the > additional barrier of proving that she's not like other women, or that if > she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job > performance?

Again, she's not really disagreeing with Damore in this snippet. She's saying the ideas themselves are counterproductive and shouldn't be discussed.

<comment><USER36> Sure, but it's the hypocrisy of saying, "stereotyping people by group is productive sometimes (when hiring and trying to hit quotas)" but any criticism of it is unproductive, in fact, how dare you even discuss it at the workplace."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So firstly - let me say that this has been one of the most level-headed responses to the memo that I have seen so far. I personally found it very constructive. Bravo to the author and the interviewees.

I did want to discuss one particular line of thought from the interview though:

 _I can see that there are wide swaths of people who would refuse to work with him_

Two of the interviewees gave this justification for why he should have been fired, and I have seen it elsewhere as well. I disagree, though. I have worked with with people in the past with whom I have ideological differences. But it has never stopped me from at least trying to get along and work productively with that person.

We just don't know from the evidence presented thus far what James Damore is like to worth with. Maybe he's a sexist asshole who is incapable of treating women fairly (in which case he does deserve to be fired). Or maybe we can take him at face value when he says he appreciates diversity and prefers to judge people as individuals rather than as a group. We just don't know.

On the other hand, if there are employees at Google who despite having never met James Damore before are telling their managers "I can't work with him based on this thing he wrote or this idea he believes", aren't they also in the wrong here?

<comment><USER38> fully agree here.

If you can't put aside your personal feelings based on someone elses political views to get work done, YOU are the one with the problem. I'm sure plenty of us have worked with people who have lifestyles, beliefs, and demonstrated actions we personally deeply disagree with. Heck, I've worked with people where we legitimately disliked each other. Yet when I come into the office to work, we sit down together and get stuff done.

Now, my personal opinion is: leave your politics at home, don't spend company time on such things. I'm glad you think of work as a family, but it's not (regardless of the HR feel-good marketing).

However, if they are asking for commentary and feedback on diversity initiatives, and you provide it honestly, it's extraordinarily poor form to then fire you. They had the responsibility to respond to him, and address it privately. I think the more troubling problem was as others have commented: the fact that it was leaked from an internal conversation and turned into such a contentious issue for google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So the takeaway is: you should become extremely proficient at writing memos and back them up with vast amounts of research, or be fired. But all of the above applies only if your memo expresses conservative ideas. I don't consider myself a conservative but I find all of this disturbing.

<comment><USER40> Maybe the takeaway is: you shouldn't write "memos" that generate a lot of noise and lost productivity in your work environment and affect your company's external image. If you have political points you want to make, go find a group of like-minded individuals and discuss with them first.

<comment><USER41> What if you think the issues you are bringing up are already a problem for the company, and the company just isn't willing to admit it?

<comment><USER40> In that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to validate your idea. If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at the next TGIF (the internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully and without making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory arguments against your perceived political leanings of the company.

I was there during the whole Nest reorg/culture drama for crying out loud. I've seen people lob _really hairy_ questions at the TGIF panel and I don't recall a single one of them getting fired.

<comment><USER41> > In that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to > validate your idea.

He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason.

> If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at the next TGIF (the > internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully and without > making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory arguments > against your perceived political leanings of the company.

What point would that be?

<comment><USER40> > He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason

That's not an off-line resource. That's a public mailing list reachable by any employee. It's not even remotely what I am suggesting.

> What point would that be?

"I believe our current hiring practices might be affecting certain candidates because A, B and C mechanism stop/hinder/disproportionally-favor X, Y, Z groups" No need for building an argument about biological differences between men and women, no reason to build an antagonistic recount of what _you think_ the motivations are, no need to call your peers and higher ups "Leftist." State the facts, ask the question, move on.

Assuming he really cared about hiring practices (which is purportedly the reason he wrote the memo), that would've gotten everyone's attention and I can guarantee that nobody would've gotten fired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As for the memo itself, I think it's a bit of a Rorschach blot: people are seeing what they want to see in it, largely because the writing is so poor that the author fails completely to get his own points across in a coherent manner.

The conversation about "women in tech" is severely hamstrung by folks conflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two very different problems requiring two very different conversations.

Lastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic to be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially pointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up focusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men, hispanic men, etc.

<comment><USER43> I'd like to think it's everyone seeing what they want to see in it, but that's not really a fair description.

The writing's not ideal, but truly if opponents can read even this and frame it as "women have inferior genes," then this is a discussion that can't be had. There is no way to make the case that sexism and oppression are not the only causes for inequal representations in tech that will not be an "anti- diversity" position that makes some coworkers uncomfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think it's interesting how the Edith stated Damore had said women were worse at their job, while one of the other women explicitly said he didn't, and the other only mentioned interest in programming.

This is similar to the divide I've seen in the media. I have not read the memo in it's entirety, but since the impression I got from reading a few news stories was that Damore had only made his controversial statements in regard to the population, not skill of programmers, I'm curious what causes this disagreement.

I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, considering that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't. (I'm not a biology nerd so feel free to correct me on this.)

<comment><USER45> > I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in > a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, > considering the fact that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, > you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't.

I think she refers that gender is not binary as you can be straight male, straight female, gay male, gay female, bisexual, asexual, etc.

I am not completely sure but I think there can be mutations where you have 2 chromosomes X and 1 Y. So XXY [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome)

<comment><USER46> Sex, sexual orientation, and gender are different things. By gender spectrum she means that most people's behavior is somewhere along a continuum between completely masculine and completely feminine and that virtually nobody is at one extreme or the other.

I think the point she's making is that while men and women have different interests as groups, there are plenty of women who are interested in what are perceived as masculine things (in this case probably computer programming) and vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I think this is one of the better responses I've seen

This line really struck me as being spot on:

>There's a difference between "let's have a discussion" and "let me tell you what's up, all you wrong people."

<comment><USER48> On the other hand, [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law)

Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific progress.

<comment><USER49> I disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process.

Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing in good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that evidence should be discounted.

<comment><USER48> > Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware > of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process.

Indeed, but I didn't read Damore's memo as being intellectually dishonest in this way. He presented (with citations) some views that are held by most psychology researchers. And then he drew a few of his own (possibly flagrant) conclusions and speculations.

This sparked debate, and it is getting us talking. Damore wrote some great points (especially on free speech and intellectual diversity) and some terrible ones. This is the kind of free exchange of ideas that a successful and vibrant tech company should encourage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> >Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that's where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to complement it).

This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community.

<comment><USER51> Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance.

Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.

<comment><USER19> > _That this article hasn 't been flagged and remains on the front page is > because of it's provenance_

I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post.

<comment><USER52> Could you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other opinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in the other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion.

Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free.

<comment><USER19> I'm afraid I'm not following you. I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other threads. The main difference in this one is that the comments are more civil and substantive across the spectrum of opinions. That's a great thing.

Perhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's not so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed users. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to the conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about this tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter. Indeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on! This bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being bothered by an optical illusion.

More about this in the many comments at [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20bias&sort=byDate&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20bias&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

<comment><USER52> > I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other > threads

Funny, I see a dominant opinion in the other (flagged) threads and an another dominant opinion in this one.

1695 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787)

754 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759)

590 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626)

448 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601)

<comment><USER19> Those threads were all extremely active and most if not all spent significant time on HN's front page, so I'm not sure what your point is? More generally: these perceptions are strongly in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you that someone with opposite views to yours sees the opposite bias on HN. This obviously doesn't vary with HN, but it does vary with the perceiver—specifically with the perceiver's beliefs and their intensity. It comes down to sample bias and other cognitive biases. Even the most perfectly even-handedly moderated site (which I'm not saying HN is!) would get all the same perceptions and accusations.

<comment><USER52> Significant time? I don't recall it that way. Had to find them via algolia.

<comment><USER53> They might have been discoverable via the "comments" link (lots of active comments still going on) well after the stories have dropped off the front page.

I have also been checking the Algolia "Last 24h" view to find flagged discussions that I missed, however.

<comment><USER51> I found most of these threads via comments and active.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Why has this topic exploded like it did now especially in the software engineering context? Whatever talent or affinity to abstract and inanimate things we do or don't assume being correlated with gender, isn't software engineering just a lighter version, compared to mathematics and physics?

Did math and physics communities already have their internal crisis/debate on these things, perhaps a decade or two ago? Or have they been able to cope without lighting such a fire?

<comment><USER55> Hmm, anectodally, both math and physics communities have significantly larger percentage of actual women graduating and working. At least here in EU - it's somewhere between 40-60% split depending on generation.

I guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working with women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove how women aren't worthy .

<comment><USER56> Right on the nose. And in fact, the proportion of women in computer science was tracking with other sciences until the mid-eighties, when it started to dive, while women's representation in other sciences continued to climb. One of the more glaringly inconsistent observations with Damore's claims. [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding)

<comment><USER57> Except that CS isn't a science, it's engineering. And it tracked down to the level of other engineering fields.

[http://news.janegoodall.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/perce...](http://news.janegoodall.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/percent-bachelors-degrees-women-usa.png)

So the mystery is not why it went down, it was why it was higher initially.

<comment><USER55> Hmm, Computer Science is most definetly a science (which shares quite a bit with maths as expected). A lot of algorithms and data structures you use under the hood when doing engineering were born as a paper in academic CS sphere.

Of course, most CS graduates don't do science, but actual engineering work. That doesn't make CS any less of a science though, it just means that most people employed in private companies don't do it.

<comment><USER57> My bad, I should have been more precise: _natural_ science, which is part of a "liberal arts" education.

"Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:

Arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)

Mathematics

Natural science (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth science)

Philosophy

Religious studies

Social science (anthropology, economics, geography, political science, psychology, sociology, Linguistics, history)"

Note the absence of engineering disciplines.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education)

Vs. engineering or engineering sciences.

See for example how Stanford groups things (CS is part of the "School of Engineering").

[https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment- statistic...](https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment- statistics/enrollment-statistics-2015-16/school-engineering- enrollment-2015-16)

And then note the difference in enrollment in "chemistry" (the science) and "chemical engineering"

[https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom...](https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcoming/diversity/diversity- data.pdf)

<comment><USER55> Is the difference you're trying to paint perhaps a US only thing? I've never heard of this type of differentiation.

<comment><USER57> The exact delineation of "liberal arts" seems to be a US thing (not sure about "only").

However, in Germany we also have "Naturwissenschaften" and "Ingenieurwissenschaften".

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieurwissenschaften](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieurwissenschaften)

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturwissenschaft](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturwissenschaft)

So it's a common distinction: figuring out how nature works vs building stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Damore is planning to sue under the National Labor Relations Act or California's tough law against restricting political activity. The legal experts seem to think he might have a weak to a decent case. I would think Google would try to settle anyway, in order to prevent discovery and the release of their internal communications about the memo and their internal data about the performance of different groups on job interviews.

Is there anything that would prevent another Google (or Facebook, etc.) employee (with a lower salary or thinking Google is not for him anyway) from going completely by the letter of the law and suing when fired? That employee could make a more limited case that Google's diversity programs discriminate against white or Asian men in hiring, complain about diversity training sessions, say something about agreeing with Trump's policies and with the conservatives (to make it more explicitly about political activity), write about organizing other employees who agree, make sure to file an NLRB complaint before getting fired, bring up some IQ meta-analysis studies to make sure it's scientific, yet controversial enough to get him fired, state that he's happy to work with Googlers of all sexes and races and that he holds their skills in high esteem and hopes everybody else does too (to make a firing based on the employee manual less credible), use email (because that's what's specifically in the law), run it all through a lawyer first, and don't do any post-firing interviews as Damore has done.

Wouldn't that cause huge headaches for Google and other tech companies? If such emails get leaked, the bad PR would force Google's hand to fire him, as happened with Damore. It seems like companies that want to see themselves portrayed as socially progressive might end up between a rock and a hard place.

</comment><comment><USER59> As a longtime female engineer at fintech startups, there was absolutely nothing new in Damore's memo. The only thing that gave these tired arguments any cachet at all was Google's name.

And I really wish Google hadn't fired Damore. Special projects exists?!

For years I have worked with and continue to work with guys who think just like this. In fact, thanks to Twitter, I now know all of my followers who also follow Damore. Thanks for that?

When I interview you and ask you a technical question, you don't meet my eyes and then you answer the guy sitting next to me. When I present my own ideas in a group, you ignore them; fine, I'll pregame males colleages and let them present my ideas instead. If I brainstorm as part of the group, you think I'm asking you to explain basic programming concepts to me. You probably think I'm not that smart. And that's OK. Good news: getting things done requires multiple skills. One of mine is overtaking you from behind.

Nobody ever thinks of promoting me first. Whatever I get, I work twice as hard and twice as long for it as you did. The existence of a female networking group does not represent an unfair advantage: it represents barely any advantage at all, on the basis of the ones I've attended. And anyway, I don't have time for that, I'm trying to figure out what's caused the unexplained performance reversion over the past two days.

Whether you think I am a diversity candidate or not, I am here to code. That is all. Statistically speaking, biology does give me one edge: longer life span. I'll imagine I will still be here doing just that long after everyone else has forgot James Damore exists. ;)

<comment><USER60> Everything you said that's wrong with the interactions you have with male engineers, I'm not sure that James Damore would disagree with any of it, or claim that it doesn't happen, or say that we shouldn't be trying hard to change it.

What James argued is that the efforts Google is making and the way they are doing it are in some ways contributing to and making all of those bad experiences you listed _worse_.

<comment><USER61> James also argued that women are biologically inferior for STEM fields, which is objectively and demonstrably incorrect. With that, I think he'd disagree with absolutely all of it. He clearly has a confirmation bias, and is actively cherry picking articles (from fucking Wikipedia I might add) and misrepresenting their contents to make women seem inferior.

<comment><USER27> I keep hearing people say this but didn't read it in the memo.

Can you point to the bit where he says they are biologically inferior, or the sources he links to that say it?

The best I can come up with is the bit where he says Google lowers the bar by reducing the false-negative rate, meaning that a greater percentage of qualified men are rejected than qualified women.

[Edit] Reading through again to see more about biology claims in the memo, this is the one that sticks out the most:

 _I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership._

This sticks out because it mentions abilities - and is indeed the only place where ability is mentioned at all. The wording doesn't say that women are "biologically inferior for STEM fields", but I can see how it might be read that way. I don't read it that way, but I can understand how others might. The surrounding context is pretty much all about the preferences that people have as well, so "women are biologically inferior" doesn't seem like a point that is trying to be made at all.

<comment><USER62> I think it comes back to how you read this part of the TL;DR. "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."

Google currently has an 80M/20F split. Does that mean that very few women have the traits to work in CS at Google? If so, another way to phrase that might be "the large majority of women do not possess the innate biological traits necessary to work in CS at Google". From which it's not a far leap to "the large majority of women are biologically inferior for CS work at Google." Etc.

Normally, one might soften that by asking what population the distribution is drawn from. Sadly, the memo author makes it explicitly clear that he thinks it's largely due to biology: "Be open about the science of human nature. Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Interesting thoughts - I think the biggest misunderstanding thus far involves generalizations. You can accurately make generalizations about a group of people, without implying that a given individual necessarily falls under that generalization. For example you could say "80 percent of males are into action movies" \- but you should not go up to an individual male and state "you are into action movies" if you care about factual accuracy. Whether or not Damore's generalizations are accurate is up for debate, but lets say for the sake of argument that they are. I do not think its harmful to say "10 percent of women are really into engineering currently" no more than it is harmful to say "50 percent of women are really into engineering currently." In fact, only a subset of the male population is into engineering, so it is preferential even within a sex. If anything, I think it makes it worth celebrating the women who ARE into engineering even more. So (hypothetically) you could say fewer women are interested in engineering, but it does not mean those who are into engineering are somehow less qualified than males.

<comment><USER40> I'll just refer to the women in the article:

> Assuming that it's true that women on average are more likely to have trait > X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving > that she's not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that > the trait has no bearing on her job performance?

<comment><USER63> Statistics are statistics and I do not believe they should be censored on behalf of being unpalatable. That said, its how we interpret statistics that really matters. Like in my examples, a generalization is just that - <USER2> generalization, and thus not necessarily applicable to a given individual. To answer the question, a woman's (or man's) work should speak for itself. If they are a good worker and still facing scrutiny, then I would reexamine if the boss or manager questioning them is competent.

<comment><USER40> Do you agree that stereotypes affect peoples choices of careers?

<comment><USER63> Its definitely possible although I personally have yet to meet someone whose threshold for not taking a job was that a stereotype existed around it. I tend to go with Occam's razor: I think it is far more likely that peoples choices of careers affect stereotypes.

<comment><USER40> Right, but that's not how stereotypes affect career choice. It's not like someone is going to study 5 years for a career, and then at the last minute say "nah, dammit, that makes me look effeminate" or "hmm... I don't know, I'm a woman, I shouldn't be doing that." Like you, I have never heard of anyone doing that (I have heard of someone doing a postdoc in math and then giving up because he thought teaching was going to be boring... go figure.)

There's lots of good literature on how gender stereotyping actually affect people's choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> > For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the > USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women's work. But ability to do > those jobs?

Can anyone with similar experience comment on this? I am just surprised (if what one of the interviewees said is true) because I'd assume the math/engineering/science are highly regarded in the USSR and both genders would pursue that.

Side note: People in my country (from southeast asia) don't have a notion that girls are not as good as boys in math. In fact, when I was in (elementary/middle/high) school, I--along with most students in the class-- always looked up to my female peers who are always the top 3 in the classroom (from among ~80 students). In fact, it's almost always natural to assume that girls would outperform boys in the class (meaning, more girls would become the highest ranked student in the class and/or more girls would be ranked as top ten in the nationwide high school exam--a.k.a. matriculation exam). As a result, engineering classes have plenty of female population (although, of course, the number of women in such classes is always fewer than that of men).

<comment><USER65> In general after WWII women had to take traditional men's roles since entire male generation was gone and from then on it became the new normal. STEM is not physically hard so it can be considered a more suitable field for women, also STEM paid less in USSR.

[http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly- wolansk...](http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly-wolanski/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Please note that this is a comment on a specific remark, and is not meant to make it seem as though that invalidates the rest of the text - I'm mainly interested in the subconscious reason why things are the way they are.

> I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages > they've had

I think the reason many take annoyance with this particular opinion (at least I do), that men had it easy, is rooted in how "nerds" were viewed growing up, and how that has changed over time with public known successes such as Zuckerburg or Musk.

I'm only 24, and even I remember growing up with being interested in programming in no way being an attractive thing to be. If I revealed to people what I did I would be called a "nerd" with a bit of a disproving look. Luckily for me, I was quite good at socializing also, but many definitely didn't have that and suffered social stigma for it. Even the friends I was gaming with didn't quite understand my interest in that area, so I mostly relied on myself with few to no peers to discuss that particular subject with.

This is obsviously anecdotal and I would be interested in hearing how people had it growing up with these interests, from both sides obviously.

Now, that said, we are definitely in another age currently. These days with the success of Silicon Valley, Facebook, heck even The Big Bang Theory, our culture has shifted to a glorification of the field, and as such we have a clash of what the 24+ (or there about a) generation grew up facing, and them now being called privileged and being told they had it oh so easy, basically casting aside all those struggles they had growing up.

I guess my point is, with is a more general point, promoting equality by bringing down another group, is a fundamentally wrong way to go about things. You don't get the bars at the same place by making it worse for one group, you do it by making it better for the other group (see they distinction?).

Anyways, I'm interested to know what people think :)

<comment><USER67> I had pretty much same experience, minus socialization skills. So you are definitely not alone in your experience. And I observed similar from (very) few friends in the same situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> > Edith: I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average > differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain > jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly.

This is, I think, the key. We can all recognize that there are REAL, _average_ differences in _interests_ between men and women, DEFINITELY driven by society/culture, and _maybe_ by biology/genetics... BUT, this has absolutely no correlation with performance. If fewer women are, on average, _interested_ in software engineering, this absolutely does NOT mean that women software engineers are, on average, worse at their jobs.

The error so many "Team-Damore" men make is that they zealously stand behind the argument that "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing women/minorities." And yet there is absolutely no way to possibly back up that claim: can anyone clearly demonstrate over the course of a statistically significant number of hirings that most of the women candidates who were hired were A)chosen from a candidate pool that included at least one equivalently-or-more talented man; and B) that those men who were not picked would have been both better performing as individuals and better employees for the team/company as a whole? No. Nobody has shown this because it is, essentially, impossible to demonstrate. Citing studies of character traits or interests of men and women "on average" does absolutely nothing to support claims A and B. And so all these men end up doing is simply implying: "well, I BELIEVE that all these _real_ women coworkers of mine are worse than the hypothetical male candidate that wasn't hired... _on average._ " Which is clearly an insult to your existing coworkers and toxic to your work environment.

<comment><USER45> > "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing > women/minorities."

That sentence is backed if there is a correlation between genetics and skills.

> this has absolutely no correlation with performance

if gender does not have correlation with performance, why do we split sports into male and female? Why physical strength, endurance is related with biology and the mind is not? when the brain is the most important organ in our bodies and in charge of controlling all the hormones which gives us more or less strength. In what facts do you support that claim?

<comment><USER69> The physical is different from the mental. Are you saying women are less mentally capable? I can't tell but this is basically exactly why women feel legitimizing this line of discussion is unproductive.

<comment><USER45> > The physical is different from the mental.

Why? Can you probe it? Most researchers I read says the opposite.

<comment><USER70> Not sure what you mean here?

Women and men are different: agree.

Physical is different than mental: yes

Example of a sport that takes really strong mental skills and where women compete alongside men: competitive shooting.

<comment><USER45> > Physical is different than mental: yes

If you say that there is no relation between our biological features (like genes or hormones) and our mental capabilities, I have to disagree completely. And I want someone to support that affirmation with facts and research studies. As far as I know there are a lot of mental illness treated with chemicals and hormones and a lot of studies that link malformations in genes with mental capabilities. There are also philosophical studies that link the mind to the body and that claim that there cannot be intelligence without embodiment. So all this things and other papers lead me to think that biological traits are linked to mental skills.

<comment><USER69> At one point you're talking about malformations and in the next you're talking about perfectly healthy people. Academically, we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental capabilities. What other evidence do you need?

I can tell you as a women in tech, there is absolutely nothing about tech that is that difficult to understand or comprehend. Nothing more than the many other professions women excel in and are equally represented.

<comment><USER45> you are having bias with the word malformation. It is not something bad per se, it only means it is not what you find in most people and that is have bad consequences (or what we want to classify as bad).

> we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental > capabilities

This doesn't mean anything. Performance is not only about mental capabilities but also in effort. There are mentally disabled people who can pass college, but it is so hard for them and they have to strive a lot to succeed, and this is why you don't see so many of them in college. So this argument doesn't probe anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> These comments are largely directed at a straw-man, and in many cases actually agree with the memo, when they think they disagree.

"I disagree with...his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary reason that there aren't more female software engineers"

\- straw-man - he argues that biology may in part explain the lack of 50/50 representation. from the TLDR: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not "socially constructed oppression") may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership"

"I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly."

\- you actually agree with the memo. From the memo: "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men...These...differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas"

"It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn't seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups."

\- The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other opinions.

"differences are so significant as to suggest that men or women are better or worse on average at any job that relies on mental work."

\- straw man. men or women being "better" is not the concern of the memo.

"his skepticism of his own views deserves a much more prominent placement in the text than a footnote – had he led with this and made it clear he wasn't sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview), he likely would not have been blasted the same way."

\- the first "background" paragraph literally is this.

"Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills."

\- the author is also concerned with harm to female employees in the form of increased tension resulting from hiring practices that are perceived as lowering the bar. Google obviously would not do this intentionally, but the author felt the practices "effectively" lowered the bar.

<comment><USER36> It's so funny (and sad) to me that you had to create a throwaway to outline these obvious strawmen misrepresentations of what Damore wrote.

Whatever happened to reading comprehension..?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The sad part about all this is that by presenting and alternative narrative to his own in good light with a question as to how the facts presented actually play out, we might have had a good discussion.

For example, even if it's true that on average women do worse in general in technical or engineering fields, that doesn't necessarily mean that the women _in those fields currently_ are worse on average. There are a few possible reasons why they may be _better_ than the average men in those fields.

Firstly, if we accept that women have different levels of aptitude in certain skill sets, there's no reason to assume they have the same variability. It's entirely possible that women on average are worse in certain skills, but that they have more exceptional outliers.

Secondly, even if there is not more variability in the female population for the skills in question, it's entirely possible that cultural and social pressure has resulted in those that choose careers on those skills having higher than average abilities in them. For example, if my family has a legacy of being fairly clumsy and uncoordinated, but my brother is a pro athlete, what's more likely, that he's a crappy athlete, or that perhaps the criticisms that apply well to my family do not apply accurately to him, for whatever reason?

Providing an olive branch can make all the difference in a discussion like this, and the fact that neither explanation put forth here is contradictory with each other or the premise that perhaps a 50/50 gender split isn't necessarily ideal makes this particularly lamentable, since we might have been able to have a good discussion about gender differences while minimizing the impact it has on individual members of that gender. Of both sides (there's plenty of fields where men face an uphill battle too).

</comment><comment><USER73> "He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups."

-> so an employee accuses a company of illegal behavior, the company denies it, and that's it? It proves the company is not doing it? No need for investigating or anything?

Elizabeth Holmes and Travis are probably thinking: damn, I wish people thought like that for me too!

</comment><comment><USER74> First off, _nobody_ in tech, male or female is really "average". Second, _everybody_ must prove they're good at their job by doing it well. But to suggest that there is absolutely no correlation that makes men or women disproportionately want to work in certain fields or have a higher aptitude to certain roles is a bit premature.

The vitriol and disdain in response by some from the original memo, completely discounting some of the reservations on opinion vs fact and presenting them as only a footnote is somewhat disingenuous.

</comment><comment><USER75> "Ask a female engineer". That headline in itself implies that there are differences between males and females, as the memo states. Why would I otherwise listen to the opinion these engineers have over any other?

I'm from Sweden and our universities have fought for years with getting more females to study IT. Same goes for senior highschool. And it's not only to get you to study, it's while you study as well. Benefits just for women. Courses just for women. Meeting people from business, just for women. And so on. The last discussion was about whether women studying IT should pay back their study loans, even though the education itself is already payed for.

I think the questions we should ask ourselves are, is this improving diversity in opinions and thoughts? Is this beneficial for the field? Does this improve the state of the companies within IT?

Otherwise we're just pushing one gender over the other, for no particular reason, except gender. Choosing people for their gender, over their thoughts and performance is sexist and horrible.

</comment><comment><USER76> >I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying "well if he's so wrong, then why not refute him," but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.

Anyone else see the hypocrisy here?

>the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to men in tech that I'm not an "average" woman

That's not the takeaway I got. What I got from it was 'Google's hiring practices are counterproductive and will increase people's questioning of each other's capabilities, based on their gender'.

Talk about changing the narrative and shooting the messenger.

</comment><comment><USER77> I find it interesting how much the memo is misinterpreted even by folks who have read it multiple times and have been pretty engaged in discussions about it. Example:

"He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups."

This is what he actually wrote:

"Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate"

I'll admit this is a surprisingly dense sentence. And the phrase "lowering the bar" is controversial for an obvious reason, so it was a really bad decision by Damore to combine such a phrase with such a dense line of reasoning. It's just a recipe for disaster.

Some things to note:

* The use of "effectively" here is critical and means that the bar is not directly lowered in interview or technical standards. Rather, it's lowered as a (potentially complex) side effect of other more indirect policies.

* That indirect policy is to decrease the false negative rate. This doesn't mean standards are _actually_ lowered for minority candidates; rather, it means extra time and money are invested to make sure that a negative result is actually a negative result. This can cause the standards to be _effectively_ lowered, because it means that extra time and money are not invested in non-minority candidates, who therefore must overcome a higher false negative rate -- and the easiest way to do that is to be so good that none of your interviewers might feel ambiguous about your abilities.

To state that second bullet point differently and in a way that totally avoids politics, if you imagine that the interview is producing a noisy estimate of your technical ability, and the noise is predominantly negative/subtractive, then the expected score of an accepted candidate is higher with the noise than without. But if you offer a second interview to candidates and let a candidate's final estimate be the greater of the two samples, then the negative noise is reduced (though not eliminated), which will lower the expectation (but NOT below the expected value you'd get by eliminating the noise entirely).

With this analysis in place, I think it's more helpful to rephrase it as effectively _raising_ the bar for non-minority candidates rather than _lowering_ it for minority candidates, though ideally I'd prefer to avoid any phrases about bars being lowered or raised in general.

</comment><comment><USER78> Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological differences mapped to job performance?

I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.

<comment><USER79> On pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added):

\- On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...the distribution of _PREFERENCES and ABILITIES_ of men and women differ in part _due to biological causes_ and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

\- Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men

\- These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

\- Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).

\- This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

And later proposes these solutions:

\- We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration.

\- Make tech and leadership less stressful.

So he has 1) cited biological differences between men and women _in their abilities_ (not simply preferences) and 2) claimed that these lead to suitability for different jobs and also indicated the specific jobs would need to be changed in order to be more suitable for women, which strongly implies differing performance levels.

<comment><USER35> For what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or less, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable career choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently nonverbal jobs (programming) less often.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_james_damore_ama/dlknpme/)

"For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer."

<comment><USER79> Yeah, I still think that's transparently BS. His source there is another opinion piece.

That said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices.

As someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and co-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All of this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in one AMA answer, it might by "cultural." I believe that is a far more acceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> > I also agree that there are differences between the behavior of men and > women, on average.

Isn't saying that a fire-able offense at Google? I hope YC is really sure that these are anonymous because if she gets doxxed her career is over.

</comment><comment><USER81> Honest question: Will this thread be quickly flagged by HN moderators or taken off the front page like many others on the topic (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819) for more info)?

Or are there "exceptions"?

<comment><USER19> You seem to be mistaken about what's been happening. Moderators haven't been flagging those articles; users have. That's what '[flagged]' means.

The different outcome in this case is because of community response. There are still a lot of flags, but there are many more upvotes. That, plus the discussion quality (i.e. not a trainwreck) surprised us quite a bit. I emailed Cadran this morning that she should probably expect the post to get flagged the same way as others (by users) and that we wouldn't be able to intervene if that happened. Instead, it went straight to #1. That's fine by me because the discussion has remained relatively civil and substantive.

For completeness I should mention that we did do one intervention: we turned off a software penalty called the 'flamewar detector' that kicks in on discussions that get a great many comments. But that's routine: we always turn off that penalty when the discussion isn't actually a flamewar, and this one qualifies. Other than that, moderators haven't touched the post at all, so yeah I think it's fair to say no exceptions.

<comment><USER81> Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So at the top of the article, just before the interview starts, there's this:

> There's been a lot of anger on both sides, but I haven't seen many > constructive discussions between people who disagree on these issues. I and > all the women who have contributed in this post feel that there's forward > progress to be made by finding common ground and discussing different > viewpoints without yelling. I hope this will be a good forum for that.

Do you feel like this article does this?

To me, it looks like three people (two of whom openly identify as having left- wing political views) mostly agreeing. That's still useful, but falls way short of "constructive discussion between people who disagree on these issues."

</comment><comment><USER82> What troubles me is the resolution. Man who spoke out is fired everything is now fine at google. Google will remove anyone who dare speaks out. Managers will create blacklists now and singled out. Anyone with oppposing views will be pushed down and/or pushed out.

<comment><USER83> What troubles me is how easily this community, who typically values employer discretion in how they run their businesses, turns into labor-protection lefties when someone gets canned for crapping on half the workforce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Everything I actually read about the memo (and I didn't read it besides some points) is: \- Some Points are valid \- Some Points are discussable (that's why this post was created, wasn't it?)

but nearly none addresses them as totally invalid. I mean even in this post of ycombinator the person in question couldn't straight said "No! This is wrong" and back it up with data.

I just don't get the whole gender/race discussions, but if such a memo can exists and things like gender diversity programs do exists, than something is probably really really wrong.

But with one thing I disagree with her, firing him was not the right thing to do, at least not directly. I mean wouldn't it be better to just discuss this, probably in the open, with him, the company and even more and make a great discussion panel? I mean with just firing him, they actually just ignored all points, even valid ones.

</comment><comment><USER40> From the article:

> Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a > debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for > agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.

That, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and probably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his "dialectical skills." That's the very definition of creating a hostile environment, where people feel forced into actions they normally wouldn't engage into just for the gratification of a single person's whims.

<comment><USER85> But Google was and is a debate club - there is extensive information about Google's multiple discussion boards and lively cluture of dialectics. Why do you object/punish a single discussion that you happen to disagree with?

<comment><USER40> There's a slight difference between technical flamewars, pointed debates about expanding the amount of bathrooms available per building and Damore's post. If you can't see the difference, honestly I can't help you.

<comment><USER85> Lol, I can not argue with this :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I haven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a female repellant.

Look at the work/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry. Compare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture, women disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing.

When there's a work emergency and the kids HAVE to be picked up at daycare, who goes? When a kid is sick, who stays home? When a child is born, who takes several months of leave to care for them?

Consider that many women leave the tech industry or stay away from the all- consuming work culture because they have or will eventually want a family life. It doesn't matter what are people's abilities when they see a job as incompatible and contrary to their life goals.

<comment><USER26> But that was part of point in the memo, he was proposing how to change tech culture to make it more appealing for women. Like one of his proposals was to introduce part-time jobs into Google among other things. He wasn't claiming to have all answers but wanted to start official conversation on this topic and figure out what is truly feasible at Google...

<comment><USER26> great rant by Jordan Peterson on this topic that touches on work and work cultures that don't appeal to women: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE- xFXuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-xFXuo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> On a side note, I would like to thank the HN mods for allowing this discussion to take place. Previous attempts at discussion were quickly silenced by flagging, and while it's a little weird that a piece on YCombinator just happens to be the sole exception, I'm glad that an exception was made. These kinds of discussions are difficult but necessary, critical to the process of gaining a greater understanding of those we disagree with. I hope we're able to keep having these discussions going forward.

<comment><USER19> Thanks, but we didn't do anything different in this case and are as surprised as anyone that the post went to #1 and (better still!) the discussion remained as civil as it has. I don't want people to think that the ycombinator.com domain affects moderation on an article like this, since our first rule is to moderate less, not more, when YC is involved [1].

I emailed Cadran to warn her that the post would probably meet the same fate as the others, but I was wrong—the community responded quite differently. That's fine by us as long as the discussion meets the site guidelines, which this one mostly has.

Edit: also, the community should know that it, not moderators, produced this effect. IMO that makes the thread more interesting.

1\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20no...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

<comment><USER87> Thanks for clarifying and correcting my assumptions. I'm guessing the content of the article in addition to the domain led users to view this as a more productive contribution to the debate. Apologies for assuming that it was HN favoritism on the part of the mods... very interesting that this happened organically.

(While I'm replying to you, one super trivial and completely unrelated feature request... if comment forms are being submitted via JS, could you guys add code to prevent duplicate form submission when the enter key is held down too long? Very low priority and I know you're busy enough, but just figured I would pass along the suggestion. I've had to go back and fix my own accidental dupes a few times.)

<comment><USER19> Could you email us about this at firstname.lastname@example.com so it goes into our todo list? sctb and I just had an idea about how we might fix this and it's been an annoying bug for years.

<comment><USER87> Done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> "As a female engineer, you don't get to just love coding, or love problem solving and hacking on hardware – you also have to figure out how to navigate men who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don't consider you an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they assume you don't have as much expertise as your peers."

Not picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sentiment more. In my entire career I've dealt with co-workers who observably considered me less smart. To the point I barely think it was their innate nature but more so a by product of being a programmer. Too much isolation and brain reward circuitry leads to inflated egos.

I understand that the comment I quoted is speaking of sexist discrimination, but if I re-read it removing female and replacing men with people, it would be a pretty apt description of my life as a developer.

I believe that it would be hard to delineate whether it was discrimination or just work place egos if you weren't from a similar background e.g. minority groups

Sidestory: I'm an Indigenous Australian, plenty of times in my life I have seen family and friends make statements, that I'm sure plenty of you have also seen such as "You are racist" or "That's racist" when clearly to a third party the accuser seems way off the mark.

<comment><USER89> Wasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for both men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work in the industry.

<comment><USER88> I didn't read it as such and I wouldn't say it was the point I was attempting to make. (not your fault, I suck at writing sentences)

In short, apologetically generalising, I'm suggesting that humans by nature tend to barely get along ever, and sometimes it is hard to tell what is discrimination and what is just normal work crap.

<comment><USER89> Ah, yes, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> _> By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and technical founders._

In my world view philosophical principles generally take precedence over lived experiences of others. Lived experiences are not universal, cannot be relayed exactly (memories are often colored and retellings may be selective to make a particular point). If we want our ethical systems to apply to everyone, to be inclusive, we need principles that work for everyone, not just correctives for individual cases.

A lot of TFA appears to put emotion, form, "lack of consideration" and presentation over facts. I am abstractly aware that those things have quite an impact on people. But it is quite alien to me, in text form the factual content of argument is more important because text can be easily misinterpreted and it is not a dialogue where the writer can clarify and correct any misunderstandings.

That said, the response is still far more measured than the immediate news and social media response.

 _> Social skills are part of a professional skillset. It is important to learn how to handle difficult subjects in a workplace – we all have to do it. There are consequences for doing it in a way that causes problems for your employer_

He was not the one who leaked it. It was those people who were so offended that they thought the world had to see it instead of engaging in a discussion with him. If the issue is "causing problems for the employer" then aren't those others also guilty?

</comment><comment><USER91> [https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo- what...](https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does- the-research-say-about-gender-differences/)

This is a document that puports to examine the science as much as possible from both sides to try and educate impartially.

</comment><comment><USER92> First, a summary: There are differences between men and women. There are _also_ barriers to entry into tech for women. Let's try to fix those, and _keep_ trying, without necessarily expecting that we'll have 50% of engineers being women when we've finally fixed (all) the barriers.

And one detailed opinion:

On Edith's reply to "What do you disagree with or find objectionable?": She complained about having to wonder whether people she encountered on the job felt that she was qualified. I suspect that quite a few male Google employees actually feel the same fear (call it imposter syndrome). The question to me is, does she feel the same fear as men and wonder if, in her case, it's because she's female? Or does she feel _additional_ fear because of being female? (I don't know, and I'm not going to guess. I merely observe that, if you remove the male/female aspects, what she said sounds a lot like how people describe imposter syndrome.)

</comment><comment><USER93> Are any of these engineers East Asian immigrants or Asian Americans? From my own circles both near and extended, it seems like there is a much more even split within especially East Asian H1Bs and to a less degree Asian Americans? This may be from my own experience of hearing Asian parents push children regardless of gender towards STEM.

It keeps leading me back to the idea that increased volition allows gender differences to propagate.

I've been trying very hard to find data for say H1Bs by race and by gender at Oracle. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER94> The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015)

Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are H1Bs from India, China and other Asian countries, and Romania and other eastern-European countries. If you subtract their numbers then the difference is more severe.

There is something in the US culture that makes American women not want to take up tech. The diversity memo doesn't address the fact that more women take tech jobs when impediments are removed, as evidenced by the larger percentage of women in tech jobs in other countries.

<comment><USER35> I think the discrepancy between American women and immigrant women is interesting. I'm not sure we can conclude from the given evidence that the difference is reduced impediments. It could be that that the increased economic opportunity (or potential immigration benefits) makes up for other things.

<comment><USER93> I agree the increased economic opportunity could very well be the primary factor, but why is this not enough of a factor for white American women? Or are there other factors in raising a child in an economically stable society lead to more "do what you want, my child, regardless of your gender"?

<comment><USER35> > ...why is this not enough of a factor for white American women?

Working as an engineer in America is a bigger jump in economic opportunity for someone in India than for someone in America. Also, it's likely that Indians are better informed about what the pay for top notch engineers is these days. I suspect the average American underestimates what coding pays by quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> I think the problem with tech is that many of us are arrogant pricks (let the down votes start) because of this fact we are facing a lot of politics at the workplace - all with the common source of a desire to dominate. More women might create a more healthy atmosphere at most places, but who cares. However this is unlikely to happen because many women are not attracted by a heavily male dominated work environment.

The argument that women are inherently bad at tech is not based on historical evidence - lots of women in early computing. Believe me it is very tough to debug a stack of punch cards, much tougher than what we have today...

Are HR practices and PC the right way to solve deep problems? I don't think so. Maybe discussions of this sort can move some people, but most people only seek and find confirmation for their own position...

</comment><comment><USER96> Does anyone know if there is anywhere with discussions with women who _aren 't_ engineers? I'm thinking find a dozen random women who were 95th percentile or higher on the SATs 6 years ago and ask them 1) Why they chose their field and 2) Why they didn't go into computer science.

At least at the college I went to, the ratio of women graduating in CS was slightly higher than the ratio of women enrolled in my freshman CS class (proportionally, slightly more men switched majors or dropped out than women).

Places like Google hiring more female engineers is good, and even helps with the pipeline problem, since role-models are one way of encouraging disadvantaged groups to pursue particular careers. However, it would be nice to know if there are interventions we could make directly earlier in the pipeline.

<comment><USER97> I live in the land of prestigious doctors - we all did well on the SAT. CS was not super prominent in my life despite me knowing some code in early high school, but my mom is a doctor, so that was obviously a viable option in my mind. The thought that it is a job that only lasts until you are 45 and I have to make as much money as I humanly can before being forced to retired at middle age is a bit unattractive. Also, the idea of doing stuff on computer all day looking for bugs, vs playing medicine puzzles was less attractive. LOL, medicine is fairly tedious as well now that I am in it, but yes, while I am more interested in programming to do a few practical things, I am not interested in working as a SWE. A lot of the med students have SWE spouses. We do sit around and lament about how we could have done it too with much better pay and some passes for interviewing, about the Google Hawaii powow and how nice the Christmas party as Museum of Natural History is, while we get a Christmad party at the local bar with the drunk emergency technicians. Tech has a lot of glamour now, medicine doesn'.t But in the end, I don't think I would choose differently. Female physicians really don't get any passes... Okay, if you are lady going into Urology or trauma surgery, and a dude going into obgyn, I hear there is a bit more help, otherwise we don't really get any bonus points for being a woman or minority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> I would like to hear more about why so many people feel it would be intolerable for a woman to be assigned to work with this guy. I'm a Jewish man, and I feel that I could deal OK with being assigned to work with a radical anti-Semite or a feminist who professed beliefs about men being evil, or with someone who held me in contempt and thought my technical abilities were subpar.

</comment><comment><USER99> There's a difference between "starting a conversation" and blasting out an e-mail to 50,000 people that doesn't really even grasp the realities of modern software development. There's a chain of command about this kind of stuff for a reason. The author is simply mistaken on the requirements that make a good software developer: yes, it is true that on average, men are probably better at heads-down software development. But that's at most half of the job of software development, and it's honestly the least important part to get right.

On other metrics (such as interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, etc - all critical components of modern engineering) women are better on average. How many Silicon Valley startups fail because their product represents the problems that the team members (who tend to be mostly white men) are facing? How many investors went along with this because they too had the same problem?

Point is, you don't get to cherry-pick statistics that match your perceived criteria for the job and claim to be trying to start an unbiased dialog. I don't think it's intentionally disingenuous -- I think that the author of the original memo has a limited view of the job and the problems associated with it.

That's honestly the biggest problem here: white men very often believe their viewpoint is the only valid one, and don't even consider alternate viewpoints. I'm not saying this as "white men bad!" \-- I'm totally empathetic to the fact that many white men feel they are under attack -- but that misses the point. Everyone who is not a white man has felt that way their entire lives in some degree. Every way you deviate from the "straight white male" archetype (by being black, gay, female, transgender, etc.) is another front you have to play defense on.

I think the right response is something along the lines of "Your viewpoint is valid, but please understand that it is not the only one that is valid." We have to be careful not to invalidate someone's lived experience -- that's exactly the problem we accuse white men of, and showing the same behavior right back isn't going to solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER100> This is one of the first rational discussions I've seen of the memo.

edit: for context, I'm a female engineer

</comment><comment><USER101> If female engineers need to worry that, in the aftermath of the memo, people will wonder their genuine qualifications, they should not aim their blame toward the memo. The only people overtly and explicitly injecting non- qualification factors into hiring are affirmative-action type people. They created the quandary.

</comment><comment><USER85> Who wants to play a game of Arguman with me?

I state that "Positive discrimination of disadvantaged groups in employment and education is immoral"

[http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is- imm...](http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral)

</comment><comment> GuB-42 I've read the memo and I don't see the part where it says that women make worse engineers in general. It says that a lower proportion of women meet Google's expectations for engineering positions.

This is not the same thing at all. First, he explicitly rejects the idea of a gender binary, using an overlapping Gaussian distribution instead. Second, he says that many positions at Google have expectations that favor men (competition, work-over-home, ...) even though these traits don't necessarily make better engineers.

</comment><comment><USER102> >I'm also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about.

Interesting takes on the memo. This part stood out to me.

I'm not really in a situation where I have many coworkers around but, just knowing myself, I can say I likely would be someone that would have stayed silent on the topic unless it was specifically brought up. That's more about my personality than anything, I generally avoid starting conversations because I'm bad at small talk.

I'd like to know what I can do differently. My opinion generally mirrors the thoughts put forward by the female engineers but I feel like maybe I've let someone in my life down by not being more vocal and supportive. Really the only thing I've done is tried to encourage female coworkers in non-development positions to try it out, and offer them help. I've tried to nudge our hiring team to look at a more diverse crowd - though that's hampered by low wages and living very literally in one of the more remote parts of the country (our town has 3.5k people and is considered a large town for our region). I guess I'm saying I want to do more but I don't know what to do without seeming disingenuous.

</comment><comment><USER103> Wow. I really feel like this was a missed opportunity to close the gap. I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a reasonable/polished way.

>> A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with. When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?

So it sounds like we're implying that anybody who presents facts to your coworkers that might enable them to come to stereotypical conclusions has made a hostile work environment? I find it absurd that an environment is hostile because "maybe people are thinking X." I would think hostility would require some form of visible action.

>> I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts. It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn't seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups.

Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to fact. His views are certainly much more in line with the facts that what I've heard from his opponents. For example, I don't see anybody disagreeing that women score higher on "neuroticism" measures (wikipedia agrees).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psyc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psychology)

>> There's a difference between "let's have a discussion" and "let me tell you what's up, all you wrong people."

Great, but that has nothing to do with this. The other side certainly would never extend him (or me) that civility. This is a power struggle and I don't know why we're pretending it's not.

\---

As an aside, this whole debate has made me realize that I was kidding myself if I told myself SJWs were on the side of equality. They are on the side of politically advancing their own in-group-alliance (which doesn't include most minorities, nor the minority most in need - the lower class).

They have no interest in fact because they aren't trying to achieve a clear vision of a better world, rather it's because they are playing politics where facts are just another form of weapon.

The only reason they have so much power in tech (and not say, finance) is because we are altruists/optimists ourselves and tried to see something greater in SJW political games.

<comment><USER104> > I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a > reasonable/polished way.

That's a decent description of Damore's memo.

> I would think hostility would require some form of visible action.

Nope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even though there was almost no visible action.

> Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to > fact.

Yes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't rigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote preconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics, etc).

I apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds like you're saying the women who wrote this article are part of a powerful in- group-alliance?

<comment><USER103> >> Nope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even though there was almost no visible action.

What do you mean? They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently?

>> Yes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't rigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote preconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics, etc).

This is fair. Except from my side, I feel like I'm seeing cherry-picking by the other side. I studied psychology, and in college nobody seemed to dispute innate differences between men and women (I was taught of some in infants).

So since both sides feel the other is cherry-picking, we can either A) fire people for it B) talk it out like scientists.

>> I apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds like you're saying the women who wrote this reply are part of some powerful in-group-alliance?

I'm not suggesting there is an alliance of women. I'm suggesting there is a _politically motivated_ core (SJW is the closest word I know for the group) at google and the larger public. The fact that this group is treating science as politics explains why:

\- They are trying to fire people for ideas (because it's US vs THEM in their heads)

\- They are deliberately lying about what Damore said (because it's politics, so no holds barred).

\- They are not at all expressing a coherent vision of what "equality" would look like if they could make all the rules, but instead fighting for their own minorities (and disregarding Jews, Mexicans, ugly people, fat people, tattooed people, and all the other groups that certainly are slightly discriminated against)

<comment><USER104> > They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently?

Sure, now prove it. Other than the lack of black engineers in his department and some comments made at non-work-related functions, there wasn't anything you could point to and say "a-ha!" It can be insidious.

> nobody seemed to dispute innate differences between men and women

I think everyone agrees there are innate differences. At least, the women who wrote this article do as well.

Now, do those innate differences make women inferior engineers? (I know, Damore never explicitly said this, but he implied it. Maybe it's just poor writing? I wish he'd run his memo past some interested women before posting internally so he'd have a chance to clarify.)

The "core" of which you speak is basically Google's exec staff. It's not a conspiracy, it's just the company.

They fired Damore because, whether it's due to unfair implications or just bad writing, his presence had become hostile to a good percentage of Google's workforce. He's not going to be in a position to manage many female engineers after posting that.

Personally, I wish Google could have condemned the memo and let HR handle it. Their reaction seemed over the top. Ah well, sometimes life isn't fair, even for white male engineers. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> This I think is a problem with the culture and education system of our society, by the time we reach the point of hiring someone the damage is already done.

I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of sense to chose someone on the grounds of what minority or oppressed group they happen to be a part of - <USER3> the best person for the job (this shouldn't simply take into account the skills of the individual, but also how well they can be expected to integrate into the group that they are becoming a part of).

We need to look into the underlying causes of the gender and race imbalances in the pool from which we are hiring.

For women, this means looking at why it is that girls seem to be disuaded from interest in the fields in question. From my perspective my interest in the engineering fields emerged from being exposed to things as simple as transformers (the toys, not the modern explosion porn), while my sisters were playing with Barbies (a line of toys that I still consider vapid and pointless) I was marvelling at the fact that a few joints and pivots can be structured in such a way as to allow transition between vehicular and humanoid forms. Allowing girls to think in mathematical and engineering terms without attaching a social stigma of acting boyish will help in this regard.

From the perspective of racial minorities, there is a multi-generational poverty cycle coupled with a far lower standard of education. It cuts them off at the knees before they even get started.

Fix the education system and the discouraging culture in and of our society and things will balance out - eventually.

But the current way of doing things is a feel good solution that deals with the symptoms - and ignores the underlying disease.

</comment><comment><USER106> I find it annoying how all these people get to freely debate this and voice their opinions, but the person who started it lost his job for doing the same.

</comment><comment><USER107> > particularly his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary > reason that there aren't more female software engineers

I believe it was just _a_ reason. Not necessarily the primary one.

I should probably go back and reread it, but I also remember the biological points were primarily about _interest_ rather than the suitability of those that _are already_ interested.

It seems most of the disagreement on the memo are things he never said.

</comment><comment><USER108> I just can't figure out why it is so difficult to even discuss the fact that men and women are not identical. It is really difficult to research and measure, but it is a really, really strong (and untrue) assumption that men and women are just exactly the same in every possible way.

Now if we accept that fact, even if we are not able to quantify it, also the demographics are going to vary by occupation, just by choice, even in a perfect world without discrimination.

Given how impossible this is to research, how are we to know whether occupational gender differences are good or bad? How do we know what's discrimination and what's just choice, knowing that the two are also related, and choice is also related with ability regardless of the gender.

We should fix discrimination by punishing the actors behaving that way, not by establishing countermeasures that are just discriminatory in the other direction. This is what I understood to be Damore's main argument.

</comment><comment><USER109> People wonder why there was such an outrage. This article is a good starting point showing some of the effects that stereotypes can have on people:

[http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as- a-s...](http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a- stereotypical-male)

Two examples extracted and paraphrased:

* When women and men were both asked to "think like men" (article details how this was done) on a mental rotation test, they did about the same. When asked to think like women, there was a significant difference - around 1/3 drop of average score for women, 10% for men.

* Two groups were asked to take a test, but one of the groups was primed by the statement: "This is a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations due to various personal factors involved in performance." - the test takers were given the impression that their score on the test was associated with their personal academic aptitude. The second group wasn't primed in this way. In the primed group, black people had a drop of performance of 2x (the number of items solved was halved).

Imagine having looked at studies like these. They show how severely people can be affected by stereotypes - orders of magnitude more than any statistically insignificant biological differences. If even the stereotyped are personally affected, imagine how much worse that can be in multiple-people situations (interviews, meetings etc) where the other people are not the target of the stereotype but has been influenced by it in their life...

So now a colleague is seemingly perpetuating stereotypes and those stereotypes are going viral. His argument may be more nuanced than that, but you fear that the stereotypes are all that people will take from it. For the most part that fear seems to be coming true. Whats the normal reaction there?

</comment><comment><USER110> After having this sort of discussion with people, there seems to be a huge number of people, some very intelligent, that don't understand the relationship between sex hormones and behavior

</comment><comment><USER111> Can't we just agree on that generalizing people in general is a pretty bad idea? Better to give equal opportunity, which in my opinion doesn't mean that you give anyone more attention because of physical factors like what sex a person have.

I am principally against using any form of discrimination even if the reason is to fight discrimination. Having for example courses only for women, hiring women only because there is a disparity is bad idea.

I honestly think if we just treated everyone with the same respect that we want to be treated ourselves a lot of these issues would disappear.

Maybe there will still be a lack of a specific sex in some jobs but honestly, who cares? I certainly do not and do not believe in the notion that a company is more successful because of a more mixed environment. I think the competence of each employee and their worldview and view towards another is way more important.

As I've written many times before, please just treat everyone the same.

</comment><comment><USER112> I for one believe James Damore wasn't fired for his views on women, but Google fired him because he was a PR problem and that could affect their business/financial bottom line. Google probably understands the user base and decided they would rather not displease women (bigger group) compared to conservatives.

My analysis adds up to what James Damore had to say as to what happened in a WSJ article. He said his memo didn't bother many people until it was leaked, and the google HR got many complaints from the outside world.

I think the google management fired him not because of his view, nor were they worried that he questioned google's purported wasteful spending on diversity programs (which for Google is drop in the bucket if it is effective...if it is not effective I dont think they care, it makes them look good).

But google fired James because they thought he was bad for business (consumer base).

<comment><USER89> If thst were true, why didn't google negotiate a gag agreement (using a few million $$$, cheap for them) with Damore to make this just go away? The fact that they didn't take the easy way out makes me think that they didn't fire him for business reasons.

<comment><USER112> But that wouldn't appease the public who wanted him fired? If the public( let's say women's group) aren't appeased and they boycott google, it affects google ?

It is possible that google gave an offer to James D to be silent along with the pink slip, which he might have turned down?

<comment><USER89> There is a lot of anti-SJW sentiment these days that I'm sure even Google doesn't really want to tap into...the public is more broadly defined than one side of the story. Also, the longer this story goes on, the left isn't really appeased and the right grows angrier, very much a lose-lose situation for google right now.

The guy might have turned down a gag agreement, maybe they just didn't offer enough money? A non-disparagement ageement would also be on the table just for severence, but Google seems to have opted out of that already (you can't talk about the guy and expect that him not to talk about you).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> The main issue I had with the document is that it read like an 80's USENET posting in alt.politics. I've seen this entire discussion play out over and over again, at multiple companies, with the same talking points, for all 35 years of my career.

My stepson just graduated from the same comp sci program I graduated from in the late 80's and I was startled by how fewer women there were in his graduating class than mine. I've watched my female classmates and colleagues leave the industry. I've watched the number of female candidates for my positions dwindle to the point where I recently hired three developers and there was a dearth of female candidates.

There is definitely a problem and the first step is to get beyond the point where smart, professionals in their late 20's think 80's reruns are adding to the debate.

</comment><comment><USER114>
      I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general populations,
      then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an individual level."
      A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence
      that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with.

I strongly agree with this criticism and thought it was ridiculous that people even attempted to use this defense in the first place, so I'm glad it's being called out. When you are discussing statistical differences between populations as an explanation for certain behaviors, _of course_ it is acknowledged by both sides that there are individuals that are outliers and that averages do not apply to every individual.

</comment><comment><USER115> Fantastic interview, I relate to many of the things the engineers mentioned. I was also disappointed by the heat and rage from both sides, IMO this whole gender thing is _not_ a debate, it's more like a cat fight that everyone gets hurt and become more hardened about their views. It's anti-productive and _exhausting._

I hope that the silver lining here is that more people, particularly those who subconsciously share Damore's views on women, understand better about the real challenges of girls and women in the tech field. Cos it's not enough for a small segment to drive positive change, _everyone_ needs to be onboard too. Let's shift the debate to that level now.

</comment><comment><USER67> If Google would not have such diversity program in the first place, none of that would be happening. Reason why female engineers might have anxiety about what male engineers think about them is exactly result of having such program in place.

</comment><comment><USER116> The government and society's (including workplaces) responsibility towards gender/race equity is to remove any legal/moral/social barriers for anyone (provided they have the interest and qualifications) to become anything. Going beyond that and trying to enforce a 50-50 gender quota/division in everything is itself ideologically motivated and an idiotic attempt at fighting biology. All you have to and should do is let anyone be anything. Whether this leads to a 50-50 division (gender-wise) is something biology and other factors will determine and should not concern us fundamentally.

</comment><comment><USER117> This "ask" has an issue for me already: why would a female engineer know better than a male engineer?

As long as someone feels to have an informed opinion about the subject, he/she should feel free to present his view.

(I am a male (ex) software engineer, and I sure as hell have an opinion about it - to give you the TL;DR: his intention was to stimulate a conversation, he did it in an awkward way, and he's not perfect. And no, Google should have not fired him, but if you have ever worked in a large corporate environment, you might have a good idea why they did anyway).

</comment><comment><USER118> >I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an individual level."

I'd be curious to hear an actual defence of this line of thinking. I mean, it's simply a fact that group differences aren't particularly useful indicators of what an individual is like. Nevertheless, they're very _good_ indicators of what populations are like. Is there any actual criticism of that argument, or is the objection more about how people feel about that argument?

</comment><comment><USER119> I really enjoyed this interview, finally, some voices of reasons and not blind yelling at men for being sexist pigs just from reading some biased media's twisted headlines.

All these times around this memo, how many people actually cared to ask for female engineer's thoughts on this? All I see is women who don't work in engineering positions or men trying to interpret this memo from their perspective. How many actually cared what are the thoughts and impact on the main subject being discussed in the original article?

<comment><USER120> One feature of these "victim identity" wars is that a tiny number of individuals claim to speak for an entire identity group without authorization.

These claims should be ignored as illegitimate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> What bothers me most about this article is how all of us, when we feel threatened, tend to close off our empathy for the other side which prevents us from seeing clearly that they too feel threatened. We both come across as selfish and uncaring to the other and are completely oblivious to the fact that we are doing exactly the same thing ourselves.

Marshall Rosenberg used to say that "all objectionable behavior is a tragic expression of an unmet need". That's worth thinking about because it points the way towards an actual solution to the problem.

The simple "nonviolent communication" method that he developed was designed to help people to break down the barriers of hostility and connect in a fashion that enables both parties to achieve a mutually satisfying resolution and a closer and more fulfilling relationship. I have found it to work very well in my personal relationships.

As a general rule, when the other person feels that you genuinely care about their needs and are truly committed to helping them to meet them, they are very likely to return the favor. At that point the hostility fades and the seeking of zero sum solutions on both sides gives way to both sides working together to brainstorm a positive sum solution that fully meets everyone's needs. This is really quite a beautiful process and I wish more people used it because I truly believe it could make the world a far better place for all of us.

</comment><comment><USER66> First off, sorry if it seems a bit incoherent, on a mobile so hard to keep an overview.

While it has (at least vocally) gotten a lot of backlash, the memo did give me an opportunity to have a deep conversation about both it, and sexism in general, not just in tech and not just towards one gender, with a female friend of mine that I study with.

We came into a lot of what annoys us both about the way the topic is treated in PC culture, and also gave us a bit of a better understanding of what types of things both gender face in society as a whole. Quite enjoyable conversation, but honestly you can do with someone you trust. So at least in that regard the memo "worked" for us.

One thing in the OP that stuck with me was

> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? How do I prove > myself to people one way or another?

Which in my opinion is what happens when you go about "fixing" the gender disparity by such metrics as hiring. I really liked the suggestion to measure retention, how long they stayed and how happy they were, instead of some artificial quota for which you stop thinking after checking that box off. I really think we need to re-evaluate what works, and I hope at least the ongoing discussions bring us a little bit closer to that.

</comment><comment><USER122> I'm baffled as to why these anonymous engineers or any female colleague would be offended by his memo. Some of the responses are quite condescending, calling him a "confused, questionably informed kid". Wow.

His memo is clear and reasonable. His interviews are reasonable and respectful, he approaches the topic calmly and scientifically, the exact opposite to the reactionary anger.

The _only_ part of the memo I can see that could cause a fuss is this:

> "distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part > due to biological causes"

Even if true, it should be mentioned that _ability_ often stems from preference. We are driven to invest time and effort into our preferences, so our abilities in those areas will improve. In a population average, we should be able to graph this difference without failing any gender bias scrutiny.

As for "native ability", all else equal except gender, you will face opposition to the idea that your gender might start you at a disadvantage in given disciplines.

As soon as a child starts growing up and investing time in their preference, their abilities will cluster around those preferences. So it would be very difficult to prove that gender abilities are present before socialisation. Either way, it's a scientific question, and deserves respect rather than over- sensitive knee-jerk political reactions.

</comment><comment><USER123> Thank you for posting this! Since that memo came out, I've asked myself several times - am I not woman enough because I love math and programming. I didn't know I would love either till I did a bit of deliberate slogging on both when I changed careers. Math, I deliberately learnt in high school simply because I no longer wanted to confused. Computing I learnt the slow hard way, again deliberately. But once I got a hang of it, it's been my passion!!!

</comment><comment><USER79> I think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an employer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will and relationships _can end_ over personal differences.

One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their genius findings or deluded beliefs (either way), it's not unreasonable that they might be let go without anyone reading it. (The action of sending around an opinionated piece of information without authority could be grounds for dismissal.)

In the past, there have been incidents like Steve Y's note where a smart person weathered a major faux pas for better or worse, which might make one think that all forms of speech are encouraged at this company. But I think Damore made some unique foibles when publishing this note and assumed that his outlook and motivation would be either respected or endorsed. Again, it is not a necessity for any corporation or organization to do so.

I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. Given that the adversaries that Damore faces in this debate have most liked studied diversity and human resources at the graduate level, peppering survey references into a narrative argument will not be sufficiently persuasive of anything. The correct forum for this discussion is an anthropology thesis or something similar, or a very finely combed, deeply vetted, considerate action to a relevant party or audience.

<comment><USER35> > I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word > documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate.

What is the right forum?

<comment><USER124> For this conversation? A woman. He should have given that document to a female friend, told her it would probably offend her, and ask for her advice on how to improve it. He should have been there and watched her reaction as she read it. the single greatest fault of forums is that they do not give people a chance to read someone else's body language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Very few social and scientific studies offer room for the average individual to make links and draw conclusions outside the context of academic study.

For a random individual to not only draw conclusions these studies were not designed to support, that even their authors don't, outside of context of academic inquiry, and seek to apply it in the real world is an inexcusable transgression.

That some should fail to register this abuse of science and fail to notice the transgression is surprising.

What if someone circulates a memo citing studies saying introverts are not suitable for social collaboration roles, or aggression in males makes them unsuitable for collaboration roles and we should look for more 'suitable roles for males'.

Studies definitively show aggression is predominant in males but no one seeks to connect it to a real world workplace and that too without the credentials or expertise to. Is this science?

Seeking to apply social and genetic studies that are rarely as certain as the experimental sciences 1=1 to draw conclusions in the real world has traditionally been the refuge of supremacists and eugenicists.

That any well adjusted individual would seek to join this group in a workplace memo is an indiscretion too far. Individuals can't simply be reduced to genetics.

</comment><comment><USER126> Why not have a real discussion about the environmental differences that influence interests and expectations. American society has very clear gender roles and expectations. Why are girls by age 6 conditioned to think "math is hard". Why are men encouraged to "crush it" or "kill it" and promoted if they do so at work, and yet if a women took a similar approach she would be criticized for being too pushy or bitchy.

</comment><comment><USER127> The Economist really nails it imo. Pointing to some random stats that support your hypothesis, ignoring others, and speculating the significance of said stats is not science - it's motivated reasoning.

[https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper- said...](https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said- alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal)

<comment><USER128> Also known as "modern journalism".

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> Great to hear from more women.

Here's another from an evolutionary scientist who gives a point-by-point response to Damore, using quotes from his text as a launching point for discussion [1]

She mentions that Damore brings up IQ,

"the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)"

IQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it?

The quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in discussions over racial differences [2].

It begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we replace "IQ" with "race", would that change the meaning he meant to convey?

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the- bio...](https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological- claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in- August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin)

[2] [https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race- bla...](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white- iq-response-critics)

</comment><comment><USER130> The very first answers about what they disagree with starts with

> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences > between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs.

If you look at just about any sport, there is a big difference between men and women. And that's not just for really physically intensive sports such as athletics. Even in chess, only 2 of the top 100 are women.

</comment><comment><USER131> An important part of this discussion is using general population statistics, to describe programmers at Google.

Programmers at Google are NOT general population.

Without seeing that specific data, it may be that female programmers at Google are better than the males. I don't know, and it varies by project and role.

Then when we are talking about specific people, all the population statistics are irrelevant anyway.

</comment><comment><USER132> >When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?

Damore never said he thought this way; this is merely an implication of something he did say.

What he did say was that he believes that - even though there are 4 times as many men as women at Google - the men who are there deserve to be there as much as the women. This implies that, were you to utilize quotas to achieve gender parity, then this same equality would not be true - men would now "deserve" their jobs more than women.

Conversely, if you think that gender parity through quotas would bring about equality of the sexes, then that implies that you think men employed right now are less capable then women. Men around you should then ask themselves the inverse question: how do they know which colleagues think they were hired purely because they are a man?

</comment><comment><USER133> One of the most interesting things I got from this was referencing usage of the term TL;DR. While it's unclear where the Term "TL;DR" originated it certainly gained popularity in SomethingAwful and 4chan, two places that have long been known by the general society as havens for degeneracy. It's an interesting parallel when the term (which has obviously come a long way from where it originated) appears in a professional discussion alongside viewpoints that the original group of people who popularized the term would have considered widely abhorrent.

Not that it really speaks to anything about this particular issue, more to the fact that many people who use meme references are fully unaware that the cesspool of places like SA and 4chan are the originators/popularizers of the jokes that are repeated by one who might turn around and fully condemn those communities in the next sentence without skipping a beat.

</comment><comment><USER134> > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?

That's a question which will keep popping up as long as you have discriminatory practices in the hiring process.

This memo changed nothing in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER135> In support of workplaces in which all employees know and feel the company is doing what it can feasibly to support them, regardless of who they are. I'm a man, I love women, and I'm a feminist.

So, despite my thought that it was utterly moronic for someone at Google to write out his beliefs in such a way that he would certainly get fired, unless he plans to go into politics, I'd like to respond to something one of the female interviewees stated in this interview:

"I also think that society should have room for the discussion of ideas that are not in step with what is considered acceptable at a given time. There is, of course, a difference between an unfounded opinion and the pursuit of scientific truth, but logically, we should not avoid pursuing a scientific truth for fear that the answer will not be aligned with currently accepted dogmas."

While these statements are incredibly close to my own, I call bullshit.

The pursuit of "scientific truth" in such a way to not be aligned with accepted dogmas is equivalent to having unfounded opinions in the sense that "scientific truth" itself is a lie, and has been so since the first "truth" was found to be "false".

Beliefs attributed to scientific work are beliefs, and modern science evolved from philosophers who established "truths" based on speculation.

To add to that, even what's been established is suspect, even if it were true once. Our minds believe things to be true from past experience that may not align with recorded history. People made mistakes when recording history. Therefore, according to "scientific truth" (which itself may be unwise!), we cannot assume everything we believe to be true to be true.

How then could the pursuit of a truth that could easily become a lie later any different than unfounded opinion or accepting dogma?

I'm considering a Paleo Diet now; that's full circle from our beginning.

<comment><USER136> Please ignore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> > For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the > USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women's work.

A few generations ago, programming was primarily a woman's job in the US.

</comment><comment><USER138> 1058 comments all descendents of hedgew's comment. First time I've ever seen something like that on HN.

Edit: FWIW, the best female engineers I've worked with were just as good as the males. But yes, distribution is a thing, and we see fewer female engineers compared to male engineers because of a pipeline problem. Lowering the hiring bar just to converge to an unrealistic and superficial hurts everyone. Maintain the hiring bar and address the pipeline issue by encouraging more women to get into this field.

</comment><comment><USER139> Remarkably few comments on the actual linked article. I found most of the comments in the article calm, reasonable, nuanced and reflective. To me, this shows the benefits of conversation and long form text, which we often seem to forget in this age of short attention spans driven by social media.

We need more discussion like this. I for one would appreciate hearing more about how this discussion was facilitated. Is it a transcript of a face to face conversation, or was it done online, and if so, how?

</comment><comment><USER140> It was basically a bullshit memo from the beginning written to appeal to a certain segment of the population. Google should have used this opportunity to educate the masses on diversity and should have fired him on the basis of hurting Google's brand & reputation and the ability to hire smart people in the future instead of citing code of conduct. Missed opportunity and a rookie mistake on Google's part.

</comment><comment><USER141> > he wasn't sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a > discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview)

Anyone got a link?

<comment><USER142> He stated on Tucker Carlson that he has based his argument on what he referred to as scientific consensus.

I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.

<comment><USER143> > I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it > isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.

Perhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did you feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence:

> He stated on ....

Thanks!

<comment><USER141> > why did you feel the need to emphasize this

Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0] It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference for "people" jobs vs "things" jobs.[1]

[0] [https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is- fucke...](https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucked-the- syllabus/)

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta- Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests)

<comment><USER144> There are plenty of articles that touch on this. [https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo- what...](https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does- the-research-say-about-gender-differences/)

<comment><USER141> What's the most relevant one, in your opinion?

<comment><USER144> The heterodox article is one of them, but they also link to several others they saw as reasonably backed up by the literature cited. The included counter points as well if they were written by people in that field.

<comment><USER141> I meant the most relevant one cited by the Heterodox Academy in the blog post you linked.

<comment><USER144> I've only read one of them [1] in full, so it's hard to say with any depth my opinions of the others. Some of the findings listed in the abstracts have varying mentions of biological involvement. The larger point they were trying to make is that there are differences _now_, and given some of the research that's influenced as far back as at least middle school for the cultural part of it. Where the ratio is for nature/nurture they leave open for a future post (which they claim to be working on).

1) [http://sci-hub.io/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x](http://sci- hub.io/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER145> As a person of color, I feel the need to give my perspective here, since I am part of an underrepresented group in tech, just like women. So I feel like I have some insight on the issue even though my reaction may still not be the same as what a woman would say about this.

When you are trying to make an effective argument, you have to anticipate what the responses would be. The biggest problem with Damore is that apparently he didn't take enough into account about what women felt about the issue, as mentioned in the article. People in the majority are naturally the ones with the louder voice, but it can be misleading if you are speaking on a minority group. You probably won't have the same experiences, and one or two studies is not enough to explain something as complicated as biology, psychology, or sociology. This is especially true if the science is easily refuted. I really wonder why Damore chose to write about the lack of women in tech specifically? It seems to me so that he could better support his proposal to not focus on diversity efforts or to face less backlash for not speaking on race. If this is the case, strengthening confirmation bias is not an effective solution because there may be a lot more than what meets the eye if you're not an expert on the subject.

So from this, the two biggest questions are was he right? and was Google right?

Was he right? Somewhat. I can't say yes or no 100%. He tried to explain his view as best as he could but he supported it terribly. It deserved the backlash. But he made some good points about it being unsafe to express his opinion. If he was smarter, he wouldn't have been fired. This is the bigger problem with the situation. A good engineer, in my opinion should be more flexible in thought, think more about surrounding outcomes, and be better at interacting with people.

Was Google right? Absolutely. The bigger problem is that many people think Google fired him for having a dissenting opinion, which I think is not true and unfortunate because it polarized America more between the left and the right. Damore should've been smarter and we would not have this discussion. I'm almost certain that Google wouldn't be where it is today without diversity of thought. You can have a differing opinion and express it without pissing everyone off. Google would have been dammed if they did fire him, dammed if they didn't fire him, but more dammed if they didn't. It got leaked and the media attention, complete with hostile arguments from both sides for a reason and it harmed Google's image and female employees. We can all mostly agree that Damore had some decent points to be made if he were a better writer and emphasizer. Would you still say that he was fired because Google is a left leaning organization?

You can't say women are not biologically suited for an engineering position at Google, face harsh backlash including termination from work and say that your views weren't respected. Come on. That's what sexism is. What if you said this about Hispanics, or Native Americans?

If you want to say that the diversity efforts at Google are misguided, then make a better argument than saying "we don't need diversity programs at Google". I would say not to strive for 50% women because not all of the engineers are 50% women. Strive for a closer percent of their actual representation. Google can't have 50% of all women engineers because some of them work for different companies. Google shouldn't use immoral or illegal hiring practices to achieve this number. But Google should still have diversity programs so that more women get into tech which would bring the number of women in the workforce in general closer to 50% and it could benefit everyone. Also keep in mind that a minority can possibly have more or less qualified people as a whole proportionally within the group. Hiring more of one minority group does not necessarily lower the bar.

Biases do exist, but it doesn't always mean it's bad. I told you I was a person of color at the beginning of this to make you form a bias against me. I want my voice to be heard in the hundreds of these comments when my probability of being read is lower because there are likely a lower percentage of women and other minorities posting. I don't think that I face tough obstacles, which turns people off of arguments like this, but I want to say that I do, however minor. Often times I act a certain way BECAUSE I don't want to be seen as "the black guy" and I've done this enough of my life that people say that I'm not the same as many other black guys. They don't say it in a negative way, because I still act "somewhat" black, if that makes sense to you.

</comment><comment><USER146> I haven't read the whole piece yet, but I find that the first question I ask myself is: if the interviewees were males, would they have been given pseudonyms?

I don't have an answer to that question. It's all hypothetical. I'm just pondering.

</comment><comment><USER147> Were the questions asked in person and scribed "live" or submitted?

</comment><comment><USER52> Every thread about the Google Memo in the past weeks got flagged (?) promptly out of the homepage but this one stays at the top with just 400 points. I wonder what's the difference.

1695 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787)

754 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759)

590 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626)

448 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601)

And many more.

Then people wonder how Trump got elected.

<comment><USER148> What's the relation with the Trump election, if you please?

<comment><USER52> Sorry I missed your reply.

To speak bluntly, white guys in US (not me!) are being shamed as being misogynists. Now the hardcore left "liberal" groups and media turned its eyes on STEM. See how they treated that poor guy in LHC a few years ago. See how they ousted Brendan Eich from Mozilla.

Sure, the Uber CEO and that other VC cases are real and I support that. But those are used as spearheads to take control. Hundreds of YouTube content producers are being demonetized or their Google accounts frozen, like Jordan Peterson's recently.

Bernie Sanders was attacked by BLM as an old white guy. The leftist media turned on him, even though he was the most honest guy aligned with what they theoretically support. It's all a big joke. So people vote something else, whatever, even Trump. (And I think Trump is a media player and incompetent businessman, never mind President of US).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER149> at current time, 1273 comments and _no_ mention of Jordan B Peterson? I'm disappointed in the community and lack of science based approach here. Leaving facts at a feelings fight, I guess?

</comment><comment><USER150> What makes female engineers different from male engineers again?

</comment><comment><USER151> Take the example of plumber, any girls are expected to be a plumber? Engineer is a bit alike as techical. The different part in google case is more mental but not physical.

</comment><comment><USER152> Well, now this discussion should give the author of the memo enough data, to make a follow up memo with his arguments backed up by deep research if there is research.

Mission accomplished?

</comment><comment><USER153> > that these arguments about innate biological traits are complicated by > trans, non-binary, and intersex folks.

2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong.

> I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general > populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an > individual level."

Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?

> there have been some really fabulous responses, including many laying out a > lot of research that counters what was in the memo

I'm interested in this research. I have not seen it, nor has it been made available. The following book, with 2 female authors who seem genuinely interested and informed in related topics: [https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent- More-Women-Science/dp/15914...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-More-Women- Science/dp/159147485X)

who reached a similar conclusion to James Damore: [http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci- women-i...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-in- science/index.html)

Let's at least present the field studies/research, which can throw existing clinical views into doubt. eg Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences by Cordelia Fine is at least a rigorous critique of possible flaws.

It's a little saddening, to have this dialog represent the views of an average engineer.

<comment><USER154> >2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong.

This is a strawman. She said "complicate" not "invalidate".

>Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?

What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Damore didn't just reach scientific conclusions about differences in genders. He went further and suggested actions based on these population differences.

To continue your analogy, one could say that Damore's argument comes down to "We only want white furred animals in our zoo, and gorillas typically have black fur, therefore we should ignore gorillas and look for Polar Bears instead". Whereas the other side might be "Given that gorillas typically have black fur, and we think Gorillas are a valuable part of a zoo, we should do extra work to locate the rare white-furred gorillas that do exist".

<comment><USER153> > She said "complicate" not "invalidate".

That's true. However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers. Her statement was meant to throw trending into question and I overstated by taking a bad position (phrase-wise).

> What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas?

Provide more shaded areas (canopy or artificial), of course. I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy" (populations vs individuals turned into a warped "industry is a zoo" metaphor?) is supposed to help.

<comment><USER154> > However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers.

Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people and how they interact with the trends. But such an analysis would be more _complicated_ than the binary trends in the original document. That is, such trends are an imperfect model of reality, and to better match reality, one needs a more complex model.

>I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy"

Nor am I, you're the one that felt the need to bring up Gorillas. I felt that was a bad analogy, and that by continuing it, it would reveal why it was bad.

It appears that it worked.

<comment><USER155> > Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis > would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people > and how they interact with the trends.

How about this: the memo was about men and women. The 98%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER156> Shame on you google!

You are failing baddly. I would never think to do any adwords or youtube moneytizing business with you.

You lie and cheat. Thats core of google today.

Google, bye bye

</comment><comment><USER157> >> political correctness makes it hard for people with unpopular opinions to ask questions and discuss their viewpoints...

non_PC != unpopular

<comment><USER158> I'm going to disagree with you there. 'PC' ideas and speech are those that are popular enough to be said in the company of a diverse crowd. This doesn't mean that they have to be bland or inoffensive to absolutely everyone; just popular enough that any dissenters will be a small minority and pressured against speaking up in fear of social punishment.

<comment><USER103> PC and popular are not at all the same. A vocal minority gets to define PC, and that minority happens to be on the left.

If the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say "Talking about baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if it is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment"

<comment><USER158> I will absolutely agree that there's a minority a very vocal people, but they themselves could not maintain a PC atmosphere. If they were truly in the minority they would be easily dismissed as overly sensitive. It's the large body of moderate people, who in general agree with the idea, that provide the muscle for enforcing a PC atmosphere.

<comment><USER103> I think a vocal minority (10%) has bullied the silent majority into a position of "If you're not on our side you're hurting us and should be fired." They did this by controlling the language, by getting to define who's a victim, who's a minority, what's "offensive," what's a "safe-space."

We're seeing the backlash now, because people are finally admitting it's gone too far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER159> Everyone is always upset when real scientific data alludes that they might be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER160> I have nothing valuable to say.

Roughly the same time I've created #hck2fck - an analogy to pwn2own as I was going to SHA2017 hacker camp.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to handle all the controversy related to the project.

Intention - get some free press, media attention, eyeballs, hit to the actual website.

</comment><comment><USER161> just want to say thanks to all involved in this interview. This is exactly the kind of discussion that imho can change minds and move this issue forward. I have so much respect for these women.

</comment><comment><USER162> The memo contained assertions like

"women are more neurotic"

I'm a bit baffled why the author isn't being criticized more for the childish sexism in that sentence. (This is coming from someone who despairs over the politically correct left).

</comment><comment><USER163> based on all the sound and fury, one might think that somehow Google's hands are tied, that it has no control over who it hires.

but the reality is that it has _total_ control over who it hires.

if Google can choose to fire Mr. Damore for expressing his thoughts about diversity, it can sure as hell extend tens of thousands of new job offers _starting today_ to people in underrepresented groups. there's nothing to it. they have the money and the power. so do it already and silence the critics.

it's not that hard.

</comment><comment><USER164> Trump is Goldstein! 1984 is now!

</comment><comment><USER165> I think it's very ironic that males took over the discussion that intended to seek our female opinion.

</comment><comment><USER166> I actually thought the document was reasonably well written, using language that was not confrontational or aggressive, and providing some sources. So, from a superficial view, it looks well-thought, scientific and non-malicious. This is why I presume it gathered a lot of supporters.

The problem is when you actually look at the message and the information given. Some of his arguments are just wrong. And doing what he did was naive.

Biological differences between men and women are completely irrelevant to the very few highly competitive folks in the tech industry and more precisely in Google. Especially considering the huge chunk of the world who is illiterate, we simply cannot have any clue how biology is actually affecting us and how it plays with all the other variables in the game (such as being socialised for specific tasks when growing up, or just finding the workplace hostile). On the contrary, he shows lack of basic knowledge on history of computer science. Since women used to be the majority in the field some decades ago, there is no way evolution / innate difference could have worked its way in this fraction of time. It also makes me question what are his thoughts on people who are disabled and work for Google, for example? This discussion not only is not productive but puts him under a very bad light.

Secondly, he seems not to understand the role of Software Engineering really well. He argues that women are more focused on people and therefore don't feel attracted to high pressure rational fields, but choses to ignore how important people are to the career as a Software Engineer? It seems he is very attached to the idea that programmers are isolated nerds on a basement, which does not reflect at all the actual reality of successful people in the field.

Last but not least, as I said, he was very naive. He writes this 10 page thing about how women are maybe not interested in CS for these many reasons and criticises Google's approach to diversity, with the message that maybe it's not worth it, proposing we use even less empathy. Google has these programs after counselling with experts in the field, which he certainly is not. He says Google is an echo chamber and complains they are not listening. What he doesn't realise, however, is that by circulating that document he is shitting on the head of many of his female co-workers with his wrong arguments, and shitting on the head of whoever are the experts responsible for these diversity programs. And even if he was right, it would still be a bad idea. You don't circulate a document arguing that a certain gender may be in general unfit for the job, and expect people of said gender to be cool with it, even if you claim the people working with you are exceptions. Replace "women" with different groups and how his piece really hit me may be understood better. I don't want to hear "women are bad at math, irrational etc. but you are different, you are cool". Imagine saying to my happily married gay friends that gays are promiscuous but they are ok? He really did not think through how this would sit on people's ears. I felt really disrespected and I don't even work in Google, imagine the women who felt the same but actually had to work with him? It's a massive disruption to the workplace. Google had no alternative but to fire him. A bunch of people would quit if they didn't. I know I would. So Google made the right choice for the company. They put a lot of effort into hiring the best people. Losing one of them is better than losing credibility and losing many.

I'm not saying he's a horrible person and deserves to be fired. I'm saying he is wrong and he made a terrible mistake that offended many people and led things to where they are now at no one's fault but his own. Everything related to this document is really unfortunate, to him and to everyone else involved. It decreased morale of women at his workplace, it got him fired. It also got a bunch of alt-right nazis spreading hate about women using his document as a base, which I'm certain was not his intention.

</comment><comment><USER167> If people were willing to apply such meticulous criticism and high standards to the Women in Tech movement in the first place, there wouldn't be an issue. While the sober opening and acknowledgement is a refreshing start in a sea of shitty takes, I have yet to see anyone bother to show the same kind of psychological concern for the men in tech and the same kind of rigor for scientific standards, when the shoe is on the other foot.

What would it do to your confidence and comfort to know you can't state certain scientific truths without being labelled a sexist and a misogynist? To know that there is a whole network of eager feminist writers ready to label you a troglodyte techbro and scoff at the notion you might have something interesting to say on an industry you've been part of for 10+ years? To know that, if speaking at a conference, every single word out of your mouth will be dissected for possibly implying the wrong thing, even as a first time speaker? To carefully weigh socializing with your coworkers against the chance of being accused of impropriety, with no practical defense accepted?

The people who complain about "an unequal burden my male coworkers don't have to deal with every day" are showing an utterly stunning lack of empathy in the other direction. They are wilfully ignoring the disastrous effect these efforts can have on the people who do not share their views.

Similarly, if people are supposed to actively seek out dissenting views and avoid cherry picking research, why is it feminists are notorious for protesting anyone who dares to disagree? Seminars, men's centers, documentaries, ... really, their track record in silencing and misrepresenting dissent is impressively consistent, the Google Memo included.

The women cited in this interview feel "emotionally drained". "The onus is on me to prove to men in tech that I'm not an "average" woman". Strange, because all I hear from tech feminists is that men need to constantly prove themselves to be "good allies". No amount of previous piety is sufficient to avoid being lynched when you draw their ire. Their track record in eating their own is equally impressively consistent.

"Who might I talk to who could tell me about their experiences working within a system that is biased against them, so I can understand better?"

Start with James Damore, an autist who worked at a company biased against him, sharing his experiences, and getting roasted for it. They complain his memo wasn't written in an inquisitive enough tone, well guess what, that sort of difference in preferred communication style is exactly the kind of thing you should expect in a diverse environment.

On the other hand, the numerous articles in the style of "I'm a woman in tech, let me ladysplain the google memo to you" leave no question about who is actually parading around with the attitude of "let me tell you what's up, all you wrong people."

Contemporary feminism is 90% projection, this article is more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER168> > "I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences > between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs."

Where did the memo say this? This is the most common strawman used to attempt to discredit the memo. The memo author never states that men are better at software engineering, just that these biological differences may help explain why women are underrepresented, choosing to pursue computer science and careers in tech less than men.

> "the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to > men in tech that I'm not an "average" woman"

> "This is literally a discussion of whether half the human race is innately > unsuited for a certain kind of work"

See above

> "I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general > populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an > individual level."

Essentially what you're saying is, "we're not allowed to talk about biological differences that make underrepresented minorities look bad". I disagree. No fact should be barred from mentioning, and it's not the author's responsibility to ensure that you don't misconstrue his facts to advance your own agenda of claiming oppression.

> "He did not address any counter arguments or research that opposes his > views, or the validity of the studies he did cite and their > reproducibility."

Did you address any counter-arguments in your research report? This is some dude's memo in an opt-in internet forum, not a comprehensive/rigorous discipline-defining research report seeking publication in an academic journal.

> "He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the > bar."

I agree that he should have elaborated on this bold claim. Though it's not outrageous to suspect that this could be the case given that affirmative action policies in higher education do lower the bar.

> "Some people at Google reacted by saying "well if he's so wrong, then why > not refute him," but that requires spending a significant amount of time > building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, > if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should > not be forced into that kind of debate at work."

The memo was posted in an opt-in forum, you didn't have to debate it. Silence does not imply that you agree with him.

> "I'm also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male > colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, > either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of > understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about."

Why do you think they remained silent? You said it yourself - anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Damore got fired for stating a well-articulated opinion, why would any of your male colleagues jeopardize their jobs as well by speaking honestly on the matter?

> I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages > they've had – the situations in which they were more likely to be trusted, > deemed competent, promoted, given raises, etc. as men than they would be as > women. This exercise isn't intended to place blame, but to inspire empathy > toward those who feel the weight of their gender each day at work.

I wish more women in tech vilifying Damore would think about the advantages they have received (affirmative action), think about it from the perspective of a male in a field where we get no hand-holding or "women in tech" scholarships and are constantly accused of being sexist oppressors, and stop pretending like discrimination is the only or main reason women are underrepresented in tech. I firmly believe that women chose to pursue tech less than men and that this is the biggest driver of the underrepresentation (posted a little about that here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364)). If it is indeed the case that women are choosing to pursue the study of computer science less than men, then stop placing the burden on us males to increase your participation.

Before you automatically dismiss me and others with views differing to you as a misogynist, consider that most of us in the first world do not consider women as being any less capable than men at software engineering, let alone ANY discipline. Women used to dominate the field, and no reasonable man believes that women aren't fit for the job or shouldn't pursue this field.

> By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are > sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take > precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female > engineers and technical founders

What does this even mean? It's just another way of saying "by not agreeing with me, you're wrong"

> I think he could have written it differently, so that people who chose not > to read the whole 10-pages could have read the tl;dr and not immediately > concluded he was sexist.

So the onus is on the author to ensure that people don't flippantly conclude that he's a sexist?

> This is an emotional topic

That's the problem, it shouldn't be.

> He was not fired for speaking truth to power, he was fired for mishandling a > complex subject in a way that caused harm to his employer (and many of his > colleagues).

He wouldn't have been fired if the memo argued the opposite viewpoint

</comment><comment><USER164> 1984 is now!

</comment><comment><USER45> > I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts.

Funny. So if you backed your opinions with science that is not right? It was hard to keep reading after that statement.

<comment><USER169> "Applied science incorrectly to confirm a bias or advance an opinion incorrectly" and "applied science to form an opinion" are different things. Damore did the former.

<comment><USER103> Except "what is correct" is the whole point of the debate, so nobody knows which side is doing the former until everybody agrees, which they most certainly do not agree yet.

Mind you that to the other side, it looks to us like what you're doing is the former and not the latter (until some common ground is found).

<comment><USER169> No, there is not an equivalent act that "both sides" are engaged in, here.

<comment><USER57> Well, true.

He tried to be factual, balanced, fair.

His detractors mostly grossly misrepresent what he wrote, including claiming the very opposite, and then hurl ad-hominems at their straw man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER170> Let me offer what could be a controversial opinion, but one based on faacts neverteless.

When there is a war to fight, men are drafted far more than women (if any are drafted at all). This is true in pretty much every country. Risky construction jobs are mostly filled by men. The homeless and incarcerated are mostly men.

Obviously, survival and risk to life and working conditions and homelessness are major topics. So why isn't society talking as much about balancing men and women in these areas?

For example, in the USA, men are incarcerated 10x more often than women, despite making up something like 50% of the population. _Why doesn 't anyone claim this is prima facie evidence of systemic sexism?_ When it comes to race, such claims are in fact made, but not when it comes to sex. I believe the reason is that people really do believe that men are more prone to violence and the "population-level differences in biology" (to put it in the Google Guy's terms) are a totally socially acceptable answer. One that even liberals and progresives give.

Or take another example of where sex-based discrimination against men is not just tolerated but shrugged off, while the same would cause outrage if it was based on sex: clubs in the city. Men have to pay a cover and stand in line, ladies are ushered in. Men may come in if they have 2-3 good looking ladies with them. Imagine the same business model with white/black people. It wouldn't last.

So why is this happening? Because we all believe there are differences between men and women that come down to biology (whether it is "really" true or not). Our society contains many places where men are discriminated against, but they don't make a very good cause for an activist (well, there are men's rights activists, but not many).

Now here is what I think about the whole "women in tech" thing: it is too corporation-centric. People's lives consist of more than working in a corporation. A major part of life, for example, is raising children.

If you look at this aspect of life, we see women are favored in every society to be the primary caretakers of children. Most of this is explained by - <USER4> for it - biological differences that supposedly make women better nurturers. States often say it is in the _the best interests of the child_ for the mother to get primary custody of a child in a divorce.

The consequences are plainly laid out in the statistics. Women are much more likely to be the ones to devote their time and energy to raising children. This is basically _another job_ which the men are not expected, by society, to _have to do_. Certainly, many do, but it is fr more _optional_ for a man. These days, women are graduating college at higher rates than men, and _make more than men_ out of the gate. But when women start having children, that's when the gender pay gap appears. This seems to be _the largest factor_ that explains the gender gap

Someone has to raise the children, though. And this is why I say the argument is too corporation-centric: it assumes the goal for women and men is to earn a money in a large, hierarchical corporation. One can phrase it the other way: _women are actually ahead of men in the work-life balance department_ , and we should try to help everyone achieve more of THAT goal.

This is bigger than men and women. How many families today have both parents working, or a single parent, sticking the kids into public school as a _daycare center_? (Read what pg wrote about high school as a prison.) How about putting parents in nursing homes? All for what?

So people can commute many miles (burning tons of fuel) to corporate jobs and sit on their butt doing something someone else wants them to do? Why is that considered the goal, when corporate world is only 150 years old and on its way out when automation hits? Work-life balance is way better. Small teams and self employment - that is what I want for more people, women and men alike!

</comment><comment><USER171> My feelings as a white male...who happens to have 2 kids.

Sometimes my kids will "why?" "why?" me to death. They really don't care about the answer and can never be persuaded. They are just trying to stretch out the moment of truth before they actually have to do the thing they don't want to do.

Everyone: it is the 21st century. In the 20th century, we had that discussion and debate about whether or not half of the human race is biologically able comprehend CS.

At this point, there are some people who refuse to be persuaded. I feel that Google did the correct thing.

Q: "Is it o.k. for me to have these attitudes about a high percentage of (present, past and future) my co-workers?"

A: "No"

Q: "Why?"

A: "Because we are running the company and we said so."

Q: "Why?"

A: "We are done explaining this."

(Damore writes his memo)

A: "We said we are done explaining. Maybe you can get the answer you want at another company."

<comment><USER172> If only I could upvote twice, this is an excellent analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER173> >> For example, students and professors I met in college >> that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was >> stereotypically women's work

Um, no. I grew up in the USSR, too, and engineering never was stereotypically women's work. If anything, the enrollment of women in engineering programs was even more skewed than it is in the US today. We only had 2 women out of a cohort of roughly 40 people, and they barely managed to graduate. Ironically neither of the two works as an engineer, but then neither do most men from that cohort. Truth is, engineering is not actually the most lucrative occupation in today's Russia, so I can't blame women (or men for that matter) for not pursuing it.

Also, most people here probably don't know this, but Russian language is gendered, and the very word "инженер" is masculine, though it can be used unchanged to refer to women engineers. There is no special word form for female engineers.

</comment><comment><USER174> <Quote> with the recognition that gender and sex aren't binary. </Quote>

Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you.

<comment><USER175> The best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain to you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation.

For people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor or use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about simple biology you should have learned in school.

[https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes- genders-...](https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-are- there)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes- are...](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are- there.html?pagewanted=all)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)

[http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html](http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction)

<comment><USER176> > Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation.

There is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological sex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the other sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology.

Which, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines, _everything_ about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology is, ultimately, biology.

<comment><USER177> Seems a tad reductionist; by that same token, all of psychology is also physics.

<comment><USER178> I wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the genetic (biological) basis for brain function/behavior [0]. Once you're at the level of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a level of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as chemistry.

The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology.

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER179> Google having diversity hiring policy was what made "diversity hire" impressions among employees.

Damore talking about it did not cause "diversity hire" impressions.

Google shot the messenger in this case.

</comment><comment><USER180> Are ten-page screeds on _any_ subject welcome and most companies? Google was this guy's only job after academia. I value his opinions on Google and corporate life in the same way that I value the opinions of unmarried people or people without kids on those respective subjects. I wince a smile and nod and think, "check back with me in ten years when you've been around the block a few times". This is not a person to take seriously. He does not even know what he doesn't know

<comment><USER181> _Are ten-page screeds on any subject welcome at most companies?_

Probably not. I blogged just today about my opinion that if this 10 page screed had been about how Google was doing the office furniture all wrong, he likely still would have ended up fired, sooner or later, for being an egomaniac who cannot play nice with his corporate overlords, basically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER182> If saying that female applicants are given preferential treatment is harmful to female employees, then surely the people doing the preferential treatment (HR?) are the ones who are actually guilty, not the messenger? Why is there no complaints against those practices? Are they not real?

He shouldn't be criticized for raising concerns about discriminatory hiring because, right or wrong, he had a legally protected right to do that without suffering retaliation. If people don't like those ideas being mentioned, they should try to get the law changed because this is one of the very few things Californians can't be fired for yet it seems to be the main point of complaints against Damore.

</comment><comment><USER183> Now imagine how "we just randomly throw away some of the resumes from black people but we are not lowering the bar" would fare in court of law or public opinion.

<comment><USER184> Sure, everyone would call that a bad policy. It's taking a minority that's biased against and making those biases worse.

But imagine it was "90% of our hires are white, so we're trying to change that by throwing out some white resumes". You'd get a much more mixed reaction.

<comment><USER185> Hence the fact that so many people are sick of the racism card and voted for Trump. As you point out, the same behaviour would be called bad policy (and possibly illegal) if it's against blacks but not against whites. That seems fundamentally problematic.

<comment><USER184> Sometimes local bias can make things fairer overall. The difference is that something anti-black is _obviously_ making things worse, while something anti- white _might_ be helping or hurting in various ways. You have to be intentionally myopic to think all bias is equally unfair. Especially consider how racist you can make desegregation sound, even though it's giving everyone the same treatment: "They're going to start sending most of the kids of one race to much worse schools!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER186> Anybody who sends out a political bomb like that to a large internal mailing list should expect to get fired.

And the memo was poorly thought out and the dude was not well informed. All this hand-wringing is silly. He deserved to get fired and he did not have any really salient points beyond "Could Google do MORE to encourage diversity?"

</comment><comment><USER187> Isn't a ycombinator blog dedicated solely for women sexist. Isn't "Ask a Female Engineer" sexist? If ycombinator only had "Ask a Male Engineer" wouldn't they be attacked for it?

</comment><comment><USER188> So if you argue against Google's diversity policies, you're fine as long as you write on par with one of the greatest writers of his generation¹.

If you argue _for_ it, you can get away with any angry incoherent rant.

Isn't this what leftists call "privilege"?

¹ Scott Alexander

<comment><USER19> You appear to be using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it, so would you please not?

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER188> I think of it as participating in these kind of discussions without risking my career.

But I hear what you're saying, and I agree that this post was needlessly confrontational. I'll try to be a better HN citizen!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER189> More likely your female teammates are creating a hostile work environment by being unable to handle minor ideological disagreement.

Or even more likely, you have misinterpreted them and are unaware that they were not shaken or seriously disturbed in any way.

Edit: edited to remove the personal attack while still keeping the meaning.

<comment><USER8> I was there. Literally. Why are you trying to say you understand my colleagues, who you do not know, better than I do?

<comment><USER189> Do you see what you are implying about your female colleagues?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER190> Even more harm is done by Affirmative Action for women now being implemented in all companies. Feminism has given up on the aspect of competing and turned to shaming all men. There are several professions where women dominate with > 80%. Where's all this fucking outrage in those?

<comment><USER57> Considering women make up >50% of college graduates, for every profession that has more men there are more profession that have more women (or a greater imbalance).

How about:

People are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices and don't second guess them.

<comment><USER191> That doesn't account for the cultural pressure on girls throughout childhood to be princesses, like pink things and cooking and babies and ponies, while boys are supposed to like computers and engineering and guns.

We're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while the men go out and earn the money.

<comment><USER57> "Gender-Differentiated Parenting Revisited: Meta-Analysis Reveals Very Few Differences in Parental Control of Boys and Girls"

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0159193)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER192> No. The memo says:

"The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC- authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause."

So it's not that "leftists are violent", it's PC that's complacent to violent PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming. A bit different.

Again, I have the impression that parts of this debate could be avoided by accepting some of the caveats and distinctions already made in the memo.

Edit: replaced angry outburst with more civilized one.

<comment><USER193> He explicitly mentions 'cultural marxism', which is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory from the 60s.

<comment><USER192> Don't know where, certainly not in the memo.

<comment><USER193> In his Jordan Peterson interview he talks about it quite extensively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER194> Now extend your attitude to religous belief. All the parallels are there, including believing others are inferior (certainly islam). Should they be done as well?

You are infact imposing a moral belief system. Once upon a time it used to be wrong to not believe in god. Well similarly you are saying the same about gender differences.

<comment><USER19> For heaven's sake let's not take this into religious flamewar as well. (I'm sure you didn't mean to, but we know empirically what sort of effect this has.)

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER194> Ok, but to me it is as plain as day that there is a double standard here and taking the debate on to that kinda territory is the only way to convince the other side about what they are doing... i.e. shutting down people who don't share their belief (you should believe ...). Once upon a time it was you should believe in god. If it is ok to persecute (or at least censor) people who don't believe in various forms of equality then it is ok to do the same to those who don't believe in a god.

Certainly the fact that some people believe in supernatural things (ridiculous, right?) but are allowed to state these beliefs despite the fact that on the face of it they are far more extraordinary than the extremely plausible some people are better than others in someway due to the differences in their genetics...

The answer is of course that the prevailing pc mainstream does not feel threatened by these daft belief systems (beyond fighting creationism in schools).

Anyway, you may be right that it is currently irreconcileable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER195> When they say they feel they are hurt / offended, do they know this is a typical easy thing for women to do in the society, not men?

I don't know, maybe everything is sexist. Maybe we should expect a society where men and women cry equally.

<comment><USER196> Of course we should all have equal opportunity to express our feelings, just as we should have equal opportunities to become software engineers.

That said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time stating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are hurt/offended.

And a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy for women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women can have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be absurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward a free/equal society.

All that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be repression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society is in general not good for anyone.

I think Dar Williams puts it well in her song "When I was a boy":

[http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar- willi...](http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar- williams.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER197> I'm not sure which world people live in where men are not expected to defend their ideas against the great misunderstanding masses who don't accept them on pronouncement, but it sounds lovely. Can I move there?

<comment><USER19> We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait to HN. That's vandalism if not arson, and ideological battle is not what this site is for.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER198> Edith is on point.

</comment><comment><USER199> A related post from SSC on the subject: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/)

TLDR: Personal interests can plausibly explain the _entire_ gender imbalance.

<comment><USER200> That blew my mind too. I wish that article could be pinned to the top of hackernews forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER201> The term "diversity" already implies that there are differences between genders, otherwise we would have to call it "more of the same". Everyone who insists on valuing diversity while also insisting that man are women are equal is contradicting herself.

</comment><comment><USER202> I've been trying not to comment in these threads.

The thing that gets me though is how much people WANT to argue about this shit. So many people on this site want to defend that guy and his ideas like they gain something from it. It's weird.

</comment><comment><USER8> It really doesn't matter if the memo had any truth to it or not. At the end of the day, that really is immaterial to the result. What happened because of the memo is it managed to piss off virtually every woman in the company. You don't piss off 20,000 of your coworkers in a completely avoidable manner and keep your job.

<comment><USER103> Did the memo piss them off, or did a non-existent "Sexist manifesto" created by click-bait sites piss them off?

<comment><USER8> Considering how it pissed them off before any leaks happened, I'm going to have to do with the former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER203> > I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences > between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest > in certain jobs, certainly. And we know – and many of us have experienced – > that interest levels are also heavily influenced by social and cultural > factors.

This is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science.

It's absolutely necessary that we start to break down ideological echo chambers, but I'd argue that Damore's memo and his subsequent actions ('Goolag' etc) haven't done much other than entrench people in the positions they already have.

<comment><USER204> >> Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science

If you are a man I dare you to use that argument to get yourself appointment at gynaecologist's :)

<comment><USER203> Well done for proving I can't get pregnant. What else you got?

Edit: But while we're at it, there are male gynaecologists too, largely because while they're studying, they develop an affinity for gynaecology.

<comment><USER204> That wasn't the point. I think that Americans in particular are too obsessed with their "American dream", their belief that "you can be whoever you want if you work hard enough" that they cannot even accept basic facts from their own biology.

There's a reason why all sports, including non-physical ones, like chess, have separate competition for women - and when there is mixed competition women get places below 100th. Try to explain that with "socio-cultural factors" or other gender pseudo-science.

<comment><USER203> > A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of > women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected, > given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all. > Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this > statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the > Royal Society B.

> In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women > participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self- > selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to > drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial > assumption, the researchers say. That is, it _requires that there is an > innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated > with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support > it._

Luckily, people have studied this, and in the case of chess, it's simple. More men play chess. And did you just dismiss the entire field of sociology?

[https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess- biologi...](https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess- biological.html#jCp)

<comment><USER204> Yes, I dismiss entire field of sociology as pseudo-science. Same as psychology.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>