8M GitHub profiles were leaked from GeekedIn's MongoDB - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles-were-leaked-from-geekedins-mongodb-heres-how-to-see-yours/ <comment><USER2> I'm one of the affected users.

My initial reaction was that I had absolutely no idea that this site even existed. While this is publicly facing data, it might explain some situations that I experience, such as people sending me generic recruitment emails to my old email address (the one leaked here, that hasn't been on my GitHub page for months now) filled with the name of the GitHub repository with the most stars and telling me how they liked my code in that repository (even though the most popular one on my profile is not software-related at all).

Mini ask HN to those whose email address is public on GitHub: How frequently do you get these kinds of recruitment emails?

<comment><USER3> Maybe one a month. Usually "We saw your profile on GitHub which matches <our vague search criteria> and would you be interested in <hackathon/conference/somesuchthing>?".

To hijack your comment for my own follow-up question. I'm in the EU (Netherlands). Many of these mails are clearly mass E-Mails with just my name as a template sent by some US-based company, they'll include an unsubscribe link for future E-Mails, but aren't unsolicited mass-marketing E-Mails like these illegal in the EU, and if so would it be worthwhile reporting them, and who to?

<comment><USER4> Flag as spam with your email provider would be a good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From GeekedIn's announcement [0]:

        It is a site that crawls open-source code hosting sites (e.g. github and bitbucket)
        and creates profiles of open-source projects and open-source developers.
        Those profiles include things like technologies used by a developer on open source
        projects (e.g. Scala/Java, .NET, Clojure, Python, etc), libraries and frameworks
        (e.g. Hibernate, Spring, JQuery, bootstraps, etc.), on many cases locations of
        the developer, and even when a developer used a particular
        technology (for Open Source projects)

[0] "I'm creating www.geekedin.net" [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/im- creating-wwwgeekedinnet-er...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/im-creating- wwwgeekedinnet-ernesto-reinaldo-barreiro)

</comment><comment><USER6> If they're based in Spain, isn't this a clear breach of EU data protection legislation?

Is it even possible for the service to comply with the data protection directive? It's necessary to obtain consent before processing personal data, but that's not the case here.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> Boy, I gotta say I was really nervous when I saw "Have I been pwned" in my inbox. Took a while to convince myself that it's just my public-facing Github profile.

<comment><USER8> Then imagine how hard my heart dropped when I was taking a summer nap and suddenly Google notified me (through my Android phone) that some suspicious login activity was taking place in my main mail account. The panic!

Yes, I reused my Gmail password in $pwnd_service. Bad idea.

Fortunately Google managed to detect the unusual activity and lock them out, but maybe others aren't that lucky. That event led me to finally use a password manager and stop reusing passwords everywhere.

What an afternoon, trying to change password from all services I could remember. Can you remember all services you signed up for with your email? Cause I definitely didn't.

Quite a humbling experience.

<comment><USER9> > _Can you remember all services you signed up for with your email? Cause I > definitely didn 't._

You might also want to check your browser settings to see which domains have saved cookies, saved passwords, or the "never save passwords on this domain" flag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How is this notable? It's just public data scraped from GitHub. I wouldn't care even if they _intentionally_ redistributed this database to everyone.

The more in-depth metrics are also things you can scrape from GitHub. If you aren't comfortable with these metrics being calculated about your public actions, then you probably shouldn't have signed up for a "social coding" site.

<comment><USER11> I agree. Redistribution of public knowledge can hardly be described as a "leak".

I received an email from haveibeenpwned.com about this, but I don't see how this makes sense, given that no information was revealed that users hadn't consented to reveal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't github already make majority of this data public? With the exception of emails... Previously they used gravatar hashes which allowed email brute forcing (since removed). Then they also were not omitting emails from commit messages.

[https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public- data/github](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/github)

<comment><USER13> It's like DMV records being public. You used to have to go there, or phone, and you were only looking for information about a specific person.

But if it's available on the internet, it becomes a different thing entirely. Rather than being track-downable for specific purposes, you become harvestable for mass purposes.

Merely being known is sometimes the first step in being victimized, and these kinds of things make being known easier and more frequent.

<comment><USER14> > You used to have to go there, or phone, and you were only looking for > information about a specific person.

Exactly. If $INTERNET_DATA_HARVESTER had to pay someone to watch whenever it wanted to see what I did on the internet, it would cost them a lot of money, so they would only watch if they had a reasonable suspicion of profit. Even at starvation wages of $2/day, that's $700/yr/person, which would bankrupt the major data harvesters. Even if Facebook only paid each starving person to stumble over to the DMV one day a year, it would cost them $42 billion to monitor their users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Two days ago I received an email from a recruiter at [http://sourced.tech/](http://sourced.tech/) mentioning they had analyzed my open source contributions and they had a position that matched me. It looks like source{d} brags about scraping personal data from sites for recruitment purposes.

The problem is the email they used is not publicly facing in my Github account, but it _is_ the login email that I use for Github. I never got the "Have I Been Pwned" email, but this is very concerning to me, I keep this email very private.

Coincidence?

<comment><USER16> Are you sure none of the commits on any of your repos accidentally have the author email as the private one you login with?

<comment><USER17> I was about to say the same thing. For example if you go to someones GitHub profile and they have a public e-mail listed but you then go their repositories, filter by "source" (repos created by them, not forks) and you go to the oldest one they have of that kind, git clone that and then

         git shortlog -s -e

You might find that they were using their school e-mail back then for example.

Also if you clone all their repositories and everything else they have contributed to you might find an occasional commit in which they accidentally used for example the e-mail they have at work.

<comment><USER18> You can just retrieve the Git patch directly from the commit page (add .patch to the URL), which has all the metadata of the commit, including author info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So it's just public info you can already get from Github?

<comment><USER20> Well, kinda, but based on the examples given, the data also includes assessments and assumptions about you presumably based on the aggregated information that is available.

They appear to be building recruiting profiles of github users based on their public GH profile and commit info.

<comment><USER21> But you just said they are all public data, it just happens someone spent the time to build a profile more "digestible". So in the end, really, this is public data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For anyone who is not aware, Have I been pwned[0] is a great way to keep tabs on data breaches involving your data. You just give them your email and you'll be notified if it shows up in data dumps from any major breach.

[0] [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I just signed up to HIBP because of this.

But I'm still nervous about it, because now I'm known by another party, _and_ they know where I've been compromised and with what email. HIBP is probably good people, but they can be breached too. It's why it's taken me this long to convince myself to try it.

<comment><USER23> All of HIBP's data is breaches that are already floating around the web, I believe.

<comment><USER13> And here they all are in one convenient place.

<comment><USER23> I'm responding to your worry about HIBP being breached–there is no new data to leak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> First breach for my current email. There goes my clean track-record, although I guess this one doesn't count that heavily.

_Edit_: Just checked my leaked info. Either Troy's service or geekedin didn't scrape the data properly, because it shows up my very tiny secondary account I'd made long back for some github specific testing (that required a second account)

</comment><comment><USER25> I've long subscribed to HIBP, so I got the relevant email about this today; however, when I check on the site, I don't get the "raw geekedin data" button in Safari nor in Firefox. What's up?

EDIT: I basically re-subscribed, and once I re-verified the address, I got the button.

</comment><comment><USER26> Grr, i'm both affected bu this and the recent Donate Blood leak, is there anything I should be doing to increase my security to protect against these kinds of leaks?

Or, even protect things like my Bank Accounts, Utility accounts etc. against spear phishing attacks?

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://i.imgur.com/fWT8usT.png](http://i.imgur.com/fWT8usT.png)

I really should have abused the github email bug further to do something more fun with scrapers.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was a little surprised to see mr Hunt publishing the IPs of the Mongo servers. That's not something he usually does.

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://api.github.com/users/1](https://api.github.com/users/1) This isn't hard to do. All they did was iterate the user ids from 1-n. It is the Rails way to assign ids incrementally.

<comment><USER30> > It is the Rails way to assign ids incrementally.

Well... their databases way. It's not 'the rails way'.

<comment><USER28> It's also the Rails way unless things have changed since I last used Rails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can geekedin help us hire developers that have some security awareness? Maybe make a site that list those that work for departments that get breached in the future and there will be some accountability for the first time.

</comment><comment><USER32> my leak says I only have 2 years of experience?!?! puleaaze! how do I correct them?

<comment><USER33> mine says 47 years. I AM NOT THAT OLD ;p

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like GeekIn is straightforward web-scraping by a greedy creep. This is why I just create a new throwaway account whenever I need to deal with Github in a logged-in way. Thank God for Mailinator.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interestingly, I don't have my GH location set, and so their data defaults to ZA, and my location to 28.16256, -23.41612. Weird they couldn't just leave those values blank.

</comment><comment><USER35> You can find some github profiles with old information in the waybackmachine. Not troyhunt (unfortunately as that would have been nice to show off my point!) but I found some others.

</comment><comment><USER36> Demystified the Recruiter spam - "We've analyzed your GitHub contributions". Thanks Troy or else I would have kept wondering about these spams!

</comment><comment><USER37> A friend of mine's github profile returned a 404 for a while today. I'm thinking it wasn't a coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER38> I was wondering why I started getting recruitment emails. I'm glad I changed my email address on github recently.

</comment><comment><USER39> The "data trading scene" referenced by the author. What/where is this? Dark web?

</comment><comment><USER40> Public data LEAKED!!!

</comment><comment><USER41> Yeah I agree. Full of shit. Seems like a gorilla marketing tactic for have I been pawned. I definitely feel as though i have been pawned now.

The data is not hacked and therefore you are legally entitled to expose via your HIPD service. When I mentioned that the IPs were exposed they were taken down in less than a couple of minutes. Yet 18 minutes after you replied saying that you contacted "someone" to take them down. Clever way to get on the front page of hacker news. Right out of the politics of fear playbook :) Have we been pwned?? Yes we have.

Traffic whore.

"One of the key projects I'm involved in today is Have I been pwned? (HIBP), a free service that aggregates data breaches and helps people establish if they've been impacted by malicious activity on the web. As well as being a useful service for the community, HIBP has given me an avenue to ship code that runs at scale on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, one of the best ways we have of standing up services on the web today."</comment>


Amazon Prime Day 2018: the best deals - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17570304/amazon-prime-day-best-deals-tv-echo-kindle-sales-2018 <comment><USER2> Typical Verge sleaziness... they use Link shorteners to hide the fact that they put affiliate tags in all of the urls:

      tag=vergeprimeday2018</comment>


Can you do this? Our cloud servers resize up and down in realtime - <AUTHOR> https://kittenhub.com

<comment><AUTHOR> KittenHub is a new startup in the Elastic Cloud Computing arena that focuses on ease of use, flexibility and personalized customer service. Unlike DigitalOcean or Linode, with KittenHub you can spin up a new server in less than 30 seconds, resize it both up AND DOWN in seconds, live with no downtime and you can also create snapshots without ever stopping your server! Sure they have other features we miss but don't worry we'll get there soon!

We also personally help every single user setting up their server and configuring the software they need. All things that the big players out there cannot afford to do.

If you're curious check us out here, this voucher will give you enough petrol to test your very personal Kitten for a full month:

[https://kittenhub.com/referral/HACKERNEWS](https://kittenhub.com/referral/HACKERNEWS)

We're eager to hear your opinion and advices on how to improve our platform! Thank you.</comment>


Trends to Avoid When Founding a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.fast.ai/2018/01/08/startups/ <comment><USER3> The catchiest (and wrong) assertion is this:

 _" even for highly technical aspects like deep learning, fast.ai has shown that people with 1-year of coding experience can become world-class deep learning practitioners"_

Yes, any Joe can train deep network with dozen lines of Keras. Sure, your startup can use off-the self models and tweak it a bit... That doesn't make you "world-class deep learning practitioner". If you are designing the network for new problem domain, there are thousands of decisions to make - <USER2> from hyperparameters to network architecture to distributions in data. Making these decisions without having developed lots of intuition and good foundations is very hard. I often find usual developers without ML background and experience completely lost in these cases. Debugging a model that doesn't work is super hard. There are no IDEs, no breakpoints, no watches and in fact not even error messages. Its purely statistical debugging and probabilistic fixes.

<comment><USER4> >Startups are (by necessity) filled with generalists; big companies are filled with specialists. People underestimate how effective a generalist can be at things which are done by specialists. People underestimate how deep specialties can run. These are simultaneously true. [0]

For Google etc. it probably makes sense to pay top dollar for lots of ML PhDs (specialists).

A startup looking for opportunities engendered by ML is better off with a smart generalist. E.g. Dawson Whitfield of Logojoy was a designer. [1]

[0] [https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936628610474983424?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936628610474983424?lang=en)

[1] [https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/038-dawson-whitfield- of...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/038-dawson-whitfield-of-logojoy)

<comment><USER5> Yes, because at their scale and revenue, it makes sense to start pumping out your own research. Some PhD theses _do_ eventually become competitive advantages (Paxos comes to mind), and nothing is better than being able to work on your "thesis" with a nice paycheck and without the threat of "publish or perish."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't want to diminish the success that this company is having being run in their own way, but give me a break with these blog posts.

VC is a "trend to avoid"? Avoid "Hypergrowth"? I guess companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest and a hundred others all really messed up.

I mean I could go point by point and give examples that are the opposite of these trends, but that isn't any more meaningful than these suggestions. You can choose to run a company however you want, and you should. If you believe these things are bad, don't do them. Attract employees that agree with you. The market will decide if you are right or not.

But enough with the blog posts about it, especially if they are dismissing critical tools that many companies use very successfully. Every company is different, every product is different, every team is different. Use some common sense on what tools make sense for you, and keep an open mind.

<comment><USER7> Counterpoint: Blog posts like this one are useful, because the VC-funded companies you named are _so_ successful at dominating our thoughts, conversations, and news feeds (HN included) that many founders never see any examples of people following an alternative path.

It can be inspiring to a lot of people to simply _hear about_ the possibility of building a small, revenue-generating business or side project.

I've been running Indie Hackers for the past year and a half, interviewing hundreds of developers about their small businesses[0], and it feels like every day I talk to someone who's never even considered bootstrapping to be an option. Spreading awareness is valuable, especially considering that venture capital is only a viable option for a small minority of companies, and the ways in which it can cause an otherwise healthy business to fail are rarely discussed by VCs themselves.

[0] [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses)

<comment><USER4> +1

>because the VC-funded companies you named are so successful at dominating our thoughts, conversations, and news feeds (HN included)

Right - HN's corporate sponsor is YC Combinator, so it's kind of inevitable that the VC narrative dominates.

The good thing about Indie Hackers being acquired by Stripe in April [0] (congratulations!) is that, even though you now have a corporate sponsor too, in the short term at least nothing really changes.

You wrote that

>Stripe wants to grow the GDP of the internet

so having 1,000,000 Indie Hackers starting companies is completely aligned with Stripe's corporate interests and that at least provides a counterpoint to HN and YC Combinator.

Further out, if Stripe Atlas grows big enough then we could end up with an Amazon Marketplace situation where small companies are forced to take whatever terms "Darth Vader" (#patio11) offers.

But we're a long way from that point yet.

A 3rd way is not to start a business at all. As Vincent Woo said in his recent podcast with you [1]:

>Right, so readers at home, if you can start a business, do that, but also maybe don't. It's not easy, it's a lot of work and there are a lot of things that valuable in life that have nothing to do with money, that's how I'd put that.

[0] [https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/acquired-by- stripe](https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/acquired-by-stripe)

[1] [https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/041-vincent-woo-of- code...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/041-vincent-woo-of-coderpad)

<comment><USER8> The "VC narrative" doesn't dominate HN. Quite the opposite.

Most everyone thinks it does, but that only makes it more untrue.

<comment><USER4> Seeing as you're associated with HN that can hardly be an objective claim.

<comment><USER8> Oh indeed, but seeing as we work on HN every day, we're more steeped in the data than anyone else is, and to us this is a pretty obvious observation. I'm saying 'we' because I'm sure all the moderators agree.

The HN community stopped being based in SV many years ago, if it ever was to begin with. It's heavily international, widely distributed even in the US, and significantly more sympathetic to boostrapper/indiehacker narratives than to VC ones. Which is pretty easy to understand if you think about who the users are and how many of them there are.

In terms of comment quality, the cynical end of anti-VC sentiment is a problem because it's so knee-jerk and predictable. Solid critique is welcome, but alas, there isn't much. As a moderator I don't care what people like or hate but I do care about getting the best insights from all sides, and this is one area where we don't, really. Or rather, we do, but it's drowned out by Dunning-Kruger and reversion to the mean and all the other phenomena that make internet forums suck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a vested interest as a VC, but I disagree that VC funding is a negative signal. That's a very blanket statement to make, and there are lots of toxic VC-funded companies but also lots of amazing ones. (Similarly, there are tons of toxic non-VC companies and tons of amazing ones.)

The way I'd frame it is:

1) If you want to build a company that is venture scale, taking VC funding is a great option to consider. If you don't want to build such a company, VC funding is a very poor option.

2) There are good and bad VCs. The bad ones suck. The good ones will help you and support you even if the outcome is 2x or 0x. Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures articulates this attitude well in several posts:

a) "If you look at the distribution of outcomes in a venture fund, you will see that it is a classic power law curve, with the best investment in each fund towering over the rest, followed by a few other strong investments, followed by a few other decent ones, and then a long tail of investments that don't move the needle for the VC fund.

But that long tail is comprised of entrepreneurs and their teams. People who have given years of their lives to a dream that was ultimately not realized.

And as I have written many times over the years on this blog, I spent the majority of my time on that long tail. This is irrational behavior if you think about fund economics, but I believe it is rational behavior if you think about firm reputation." ([http://avc.com/2015/11/power-law-and-the-long- tail/](http://avc.com/2015/11/power-law-and-the-long-tail/))

b) "There are two interesting things here that I always think about. The first is that even the very best investors in the VC business only get a hit about 1/3 of the time. That means that they have their share of "slog it outs" and "hit the walls" too. I am certainly in that camp. The second is that we end up spending an incredible amount of time and energy (hopefully not money) on the 2/3 of our investments that don't work out. When everything goes well, you really don't need that much from a VC. Of course, I have added value in all of my winners. But its the ones that don't work that I have left my blood, sweat, and tears on. And that's the paradox of being a VC that cares. Which is the only kind of VC you want to work with." ([http://avc.com/2013/03/when-things- dont-work-out/](http://avc.com/2013/03/when-things-dont-work-out/))

<comment><USER10> I'd frame 1) slightly differently, as there are many cases of bootstrapped unicorns.

Time is also a currency, so you make a trade-off between time (extra years of your life spent acquiring funds to scale, and delayed product launch) and control.

Time is also an issue when you have competition, in the sense that your competitors can get there first by raising money.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you. I tried to be deliberate about this by saying VC is a great option to consider for venture scale company -- but it's definitely not the only option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The common mental model of a fledgling software startup is too large by at least one order of magnitude.

For a decent, traction-but-no-rocketship product oriented startup, you need one solid back-end+ops guy, one solid front-end+UX guy, and one programmer for each mobile platform you wish to support. Add a CEO+sales+finances person, to keep the business side of the business compliant.

Yes, you won't get a cool continuous integration autoscaling whatnot doodad. YAGNI also applies to infrastructure, people and organizational hierarchies. Don't build them just because Google and Facebook have them.

Look for a profitable company that's just one size bigger than you are today, and aim for that. They've already proven that it's possible to operate at that size with the whatever they've got. Repeat as you grow.

<comment><USER12> There are startups out there running their whole backend on products like graph.cool and have no need for an ops person.

And they are building their app in react native with one developer (which can then be launched in iOS and Android simultaneously).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yep, all the points are the truth. I've got some of those mistakes in the past especially VC funding, and it's really painful. Staying small is not a big lose or something, actually you can earn 10x more money by staying small than burning billions and keep working crazy hours. For example you can look on what's up for the price of 19 instagrams they had around 30 employees. They were small and output was way bigger than in general VC - funded company.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great points. Strongly agree with #3 in particular ("like a family") because I've made this exact mistake with companies I've led in the past.

To elaborate on what the piece touches on but doesn't specifically say:

> You will need to make hard decisions for the sake of > the business. You > can't actually offer people anything > remotely close to lifelong loyalty or > security, and it's > dishonest to implicitly do so.

To be clear(er): You will have to fire people, and firing someone who thinks of themselves as a family member or who you think of as similar makes the whole thing much more painful. Further, it can make you, as a leader, hesitate when it's an action you really need to take ("but this person is like my brother - we'll make it work!").

At my most recent company, we took the opposite approach -- we all liked each other a lot, we worked well together, and we ate lunch together as a team, but at 6pm everyone went home to their own lives and families. The lines were clear, the understandings were there, and I think it was a much better way to run things.

<comment><USER15> How about taking it one step further and not _hiring_ people onto a team but instead _rewarding_ them:

[https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2016/11/properly-valuing- con...](https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2016/11/properly-valuing- contributions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hmm, this article took a quick turn into a story about how it takes just one year of coding experience + something from fast.ai to become "world-class deep learning practitioners"; make of that what you will.

<comment><USER17> I don't see anything that mentions just a year of coding experience, but as a participant in their free MOOC I can say that it's highly worthwhile. It's unique and complimentary to the more academic material usually found on deep learning.

<comment><USER18> From the article... "And even for highly technical aspects like deep learning, fast.ai has shown that people with 1-year of coding experience can become world-class deep learning practitioners; you don't need to hire Stanford PhDs. "

<comment><USER19> I was in their recent course. No previous AI experience, although I've been coding for 20 years. Using what I learned in the class, I am regularly able to finish in the top 20% on most Kaggle competitions.

Just being able to solve some of those problems allows me to provide employers with major value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree a lot with #3 but disagree _heavily_ with #4.

There are canonical examples of PhD theses that became successful companies, not to mention the dozens of companies who exited (e.g. CV companies to Qualcomm).

<comment><USER21> Yeah, Akamai, Google, to some extent Bose come to mind.

Most PhD theses would NOT become companies, so this is good advice for a PhD student but not for a founder. If a founder finds a PhD thesis that is worth productionizing, then the fact that it was a PhD thesis is irrelevant.

<comment><USER22> The advice is "Don't productionize _your_ PhD" thesis," so I think it is in fact aimed at PhD students in the exact spirit you pointed out, not founders surveying the academic field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pretending to be a family is bad news. Especially if you tell prospective employees that and then remind them that employment is "at will".

<comment><USER24> Right? "We're a family... and if you fuck up, you're outta the family."

<comment><USER23> Not even. Business errors or just a bad economy can get you laid off from the family.

"Times are hard, Jimmy. So Mom will drop you off downtown."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Negative trends 4 and 5 are not, contra the article, AI-specific; AI just happens to be the intellectual problem of the moment.

The team I was on waaaay back in the prehistory of the web era was warned against hiring too many PhDs. We disregarded the advice. (These were smart guys, yo! They had PhDs!) We spent a couple of years tackling interesting problems instead of relevant problems, and just about entirely missed out on the first web bubble as a result.

I love smart academic people. I love those big brains. I'll never hire one ever again. Give me someone who's more interested in working around a problem than in studying it, and we'll get things done. Give me a PhD and we'll have a nice paper about it about 5 years after anyone other than their thesis advisor cares.

</comment><comment><USER26> First of all fast.ai is awesome and most of the points they make align quite well with my personal views which of course doesn't mean they are the right views ;) but...

"""Hiring a bunch of academic researchers will not improve your product and harms your company by diverting so many resources (unless your goal is an aquihire)."""

Disagree. Ceteris paribus a previous academic researcher isn't necessarily a worse hire than a graduate or someone who has worked at other tech companies. I'm really not a fan of this "don't hire people from academia" narrative. A good scientist is well versed in systematic problem solving which doesn't sound like a horrible skillset for someone working at a startup. Sure there's enough people with PhDs that can't write working code but there's also enough people that can. I'm not sure about the US but hiring a PhD isn't necessarily more expensive than hiring someone with job experience in the tech sector either. I get their basic idea but it's news to me that even AI startups are on "only PhDs all the time" hiring frenzies.

</comment><comment><USER27> Without hyperbole, one of the biggest trends to avoid is overgeneralization.

A large part of one's experience at a startup is unique to that context.

Certainly not all. But certainly a lot -- Probably the majority of what counts as advice.

Being able to filter what's generalizable and what's not is the most useful skill an advisor can develop -- ironically, even more than the experience. (And I'm breaking my own hypothesis by giving advice there).

</comment><comment><USER28> > Then I realized that most of the startups were indistinguishable from one > another: nearly everyone was following the same destructive trends which are > bad for employees and bad for products

This is rich coming from the founder of a startup that's indistinguishable from all the other coding bootcamp, MooC startups out there with a dash Deep Learning thrown in to make it extra trendy.

As for the actual advice, I think it's pretty hit or miss.

> 1\. Venture Capital Nothing in her description of VC is wrong here. But the > lesson: "VC is to be avoided" is an oversimplification. VC money is a tool. > It's not always the right tool, and it certainly has its downsides. But it > has its upsides too. In many cases it's the only way to get a business off > the ground.

> 2\. Hypergrowth I don't really know where the author puts the line between > hypergrowth and just growth, as PG has said: starts are growth. They must > always be growing, is there such thing as too much growth? Maybe, if really > bad things are happening in the company because of the growth like people > are burning out and quitting... but really that's only bad because > eventually it will hurt growth. So I think the simple lesson is grow as fast > as possible, don't be short sighted.

> 3\. Trying to be "like a family" This one I agree with. Trying to be like a > family in a professional setting is dishonest, and eventually the truth of > the situation becomes clear. It's better to be honest from the start.

> 4\. Attempting to productionize a PhD thesis We'll have to tell Larry Page > he's wasting his time trying to turn that dumb Page Rank thesis into a > company. There are a lot of companies that fail this way and there are a lot > of PhD theses that shouldn't be commercialized but people try none the less. > As with all things startups, there's a thousand failures for every success > and the only way to tell the difference is to actually found the company.

> 5\. Hiring a bunch of academic researchers The only company I've really > observed doing this is Google and it seems to have worked out for them. I > can easily believe that their are companies out there that higher a bunch of > researchers to do a job they're not really capable of doing. I've also known > academic researchers who were able to have a huge impact in the role they > were hired for even though it wasn't really research. The general statement > of this is that you needed to hire people for roles they want to and can > perform. Researchers might be a particular anti-pattern in this but it's far > from the only one.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is doubling in a year even "hypergrowth"? Doubling revenue every a month or two? Sure. Doubling revenue in a year is a very strong growth rate for an established company, but it doesn't strike me as particularly hypergrowth.

Doubling headcount in a year seems also fairly routine for early-stage companies (assuming funding and cachet is in place).

<comment><USER30> Doubling headcount from 3 -> 6 is quite different than from 450 -> 909.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> #3. This is so truth. People have no idea what they talking about when they say "we are a family". Forget this whole family crap! Hire skilled and talented people. Let them do their job. Give them freedom and don't stand in their way. Employees barely know what a friendship is, let alone a family.

</comment><comment><USER32> > You and your adviser picked your thesis topic because it's an interesting > technical problem with good opportunities to publish, _not_ because it has a > large opportunity for impact in an underserved market with few barriers to > entry.

This is obvious, yet an easy mistake. Behind it is applying the same values to a business as to a PhD - not only in topic selection, but also in execution. It's related to the conundrum that solving a problem that real people have now does not always require a technically great soluton. Even a revolutionary business does not necessarily require a technically great solution.

Academic success requires academic values and skills; business success requires business values and skills.

Of course, if you _want_ to create a technologically revolutionary business, you'll need both.

</comment><comment><USER33> A trend that I would like to see more startups buck is the use of the independent contractor model. While I believe startups like Uber and Lyft could not achieve the scale that they have w.o this model, there are smaller startups & markets where I believe the increase in value to customer service can really differentiate a product.

Studies have shown that customer service, ability to execute & perform, and general quality of service correlate with whether or not the employee is an IC/temp or not. I've wondered if any startups have gone the opposite direction and hired folks FT/PT for roles that otherwise would seem to be filled by ICs.

</comment><comment><USER34> Being pedantic:

I thought the definition of 'startup' is a company aiming for massive growth. If not you are a regular business.

So maybe the message is "You don't have to be a startup"

</comment><comment><USER35> Negative trend 6: adopting a trendy, complex web stack before you absolutely have to when a simple one would get you to market faster

<comment><USER36> What are some examples of a trendy, complex web stack? Or, what are some examples of a non-trendy, non-complex web stack?

<comment><USER37> Adding pub-sub/queue/message broker in your app when a normal when a normal connection to SQL db from your web app is more than sufficient. There are a lot of companies that have kafka in their stack when they actually don't need it. This is one thing i have seen a lot.

On front-end side adding redux when a normal react-app would be just fine.

<comment><USER36> What do you think draws people to these technologies?

<comment><USER38> This website.

<comment><USER36> Lately this website has been a SQL love fest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >Negative trend 3: "Our startup is like a family"

No, just no. I disagree with this. I'm just a lowly employee and I spend 1/3rd of my life with the office.

I want that office to be my family when I'm spending so much of my life there.

</comment><comment><USER40> How does fast.ai make money?

<comment><USER41> +1, i am curious too, can someone answer this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Avoid trends in general, unless they make sense.

Well, that's what an AI told me to do.</comment>


Ask HN: Which was the most used programming language in 2016? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Same as it ever was: [http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe- index/](http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)</comment>


Ask HN: Software/Technical Design Documents - <AUTHOR> I have worked at a couple of different startups and none of them had any formal design review process/protocol in place. Is it true generally for startups?
Which tools do you use mostly to write a design document (Other than Google Docs)?
Design review means:
- Someone writes a requirement doc - Engg then writes a design documemt - Peers then discuss and review this doc - Finally peers approve it and implementation starts - This doc then serves as reference throughout the implementation. <comment><USER2> we used to use discourse, now we are documenting everything in confluence

<comment><AUTHOR> Why did you guys move away from discourse?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best place to find contracting gigs? - <AUTHOR> I know it's usually networking, but lately it dried up for me. Upwork clients seem not willing to pay anything higher than $20/h.<p>What is your go to place for contracting gigs? <comment><USER2> Use your professional network. Are you on LinkedIn? Reach out to former colleagues. Find out what challenges they are facing and casually mention that you do consulting on the side.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am, however, most of my friends are running a start-up or are safe in a corporate job. I tried my best reaching out, but without any luck. I had one potential client talk, who said he will be in touch if he gets funding approved.</comment></comment>


New Utah NSA center requires 1.7M gallons of water daily to operate - <AUTHOR> http://www.ksl.com/?sid=25978926&nid=148

<comment><USER2> Bloody hell, whatever for? I know they say "cooling" but couldn't they use a closed loop system? Do they lose that much water to evaporation?

The comparison to a water bottling plant kinda skips over how people actually drink the water in the end. Turn it around and say "it's like taking the output of a water bottling plant running full tilt, opening each bottle, and pouring it on the ground" and suddenly it sounds like a colossal waste.

In Utah too!</comment>


Jane McGonigle: Saving the World, Reality Hacking thru MMORPG - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal <comment><USER2> Sorry, but most MMORPGs are just like resort casinos. There's a glitzy surface with great art-direction, but it's really not much deeper than a stage set. It's just a pretty background to distract you while you're subverted using variable schedules of reward in a Skinner box. Variable Schedules of Reward are inherently addicting. You can get a rat in a Skinner Box to expend so much effort pulling a lever for a food-pellet reward, that it starves to death because the energy it takes to pull the lever exceeds the amount it gets in food pellets. This is exactly what happens to people who play slots and other games in casinos, and what happens to you when you start "farming" for experience points or gold. Invariably you seek out places where you get the rare but extremely valuable "drop."

I'm sorry, but using this power of addiction to try to solve social ills could result in more evils. The fact thats this isn't addressed directly in this talk concerns me.

In any case, I know how to create an online world that doesn't insult the intelligence of smart people. I know how to create an online world that isn't just a stage-set background for a skinner-box addiction, because it has real depth through emergent complexity.

(In all fairness, the speaker emphasizes the motivational power of social aspects of online gaming. But collaboration is a capability granted by the network, not by MMO games in particular.)</comment>


StandoutJobs Launches. New platform for employers to attract top talent. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.standoutjobs.com/standout-jobs-launches-reception-a-self-serve-web-based-employer-branding-and-recruiting-product-at-demo-conference/

<comment><USER2> Great idea, great product.</comment>


Show HN: VidFall – Pay with time, not your wallet - <AUTHOR> http://www.vidfall.com

<comment><USER2> This is your _third_ submission about this startup in a month, with both of the previous two having significant discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8220036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8220036) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8148120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8148120)</comment>


DDoS dossier, reddit suffers 400k requests/second DDoS - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1cyfrk/ddos_dossier/?bettertitle

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the attacks on Reddit are related to the orchestrated attacks on Bitcoin exchanges like Mt Gox? Might be a long stretch, but I don't think I've heard of such large scale attacks like this more than I have this year (and we're only 4 months in). Could be a training exercise perhaps?</comment>


Drugmakers undermine medical journals and skew medical research - <AUTHOR> http://www.theamericanscholar.org/flacking-for-big-pharma/ <comment><USER3> There's been a great deal of talk about the need for open medical journals — it's s small movement but I hope it really takes off. Not only would you be able to get much more info, but it could be free — which can open that info up to wider and even non-professional audience.

<comment><USER4> This is something I'm actively working on.

There's a lot of entrenched interests blocking this kind of innovation, but several disruptive forces at work (like massive iPad adoption amongst physicians) are enabling interesting approaches.

<comment><USER3> I think if there was grant money or funding it would help things a great deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Remember, this is mainly pushed by those living by the profit in the public markets and not by individual scientists.

I don't believe that this group needs this caveat, but having worked in two research labs, I know that some people do have the belief that it is "liberal scientists" deliberately misleading the public.

<comment><USER6> Accidental misleading is somehow better?

There's a lot of funding from the public trough and a lot of funding from the private trough, to say that one corrupts less is to misunderstand economics.

The private companies have pens, trinkets and buffets, the public companies have the school system, the army, the justice system, FDA, IRS, CIA, FBI, DEA, ATF and the police. If I wanted to mislead and force my will upon doctors I'd certainly take the latter over the former.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The private companies have pens, trinkets and buffets_

They have far more than that, which is the whole point of the article.

<comment><USER7> > They have far more than that, which is the whole point of the article.

Anyone who thinks that money is the only, or even most influential, source of corruption doesn't know much about people.

People will commit the most horrendous atrocities in the name of "doing good", and that's not the only thing that is far more effective than money.

<comment><USER8> This can be compared to the basic distinction between precision and bias. While noisy and variegated individual biases pitted against each other in good-faith debate can have low "precision", the more pernicious problem is bias, which is what emerges where there is a consistent organizing influence pushing people in a particular direction.

Indeed, it's amazing that the same people who tout most strongly the power of the invisible hand immediately believe that there are other things "far more effective" when the hand's unchecked subtle and consistent influence has negative consequences.

Lastly, the stories of horrendous atrocities caused by misguided-do-gooders are the exceptions that prove the rule -- throughout history, truly horrendous has been the cascade of constant repeated atrocities big and small perpetrated worldwide by people acting in their own (perhaps shortsighted) self-interest at others' expense.

<comment><USER7> > Lastly, the stories of horrendous atrocities caused by misguided-do-gooders > are the exceptions that prove the rule

Not at all. Almost every genocide has been initiated by do-gooders.

> the cascade of constant repeated atrocities

Yes, folks tend to go along, but that's true of everything, good and bad.

<comment><USER8> Surely you're joking. This has to be the most odious of the objectivists' canards. Just because "doing good" was used as a pretense or excuse doesn't mean it was the perpetrator's actual motive.

I suppose you also believe that most violent criminals were individuals that had only the best of intentions for their victims. Or that Nazis and Stalinists had little interest in power and influence, which were but side- effects of their selfless altruism. That Pearl Harbor was an act of charity, and that the Gulf Oil Spill was caused by attention to detail and an overabundance of interest in the common good.

<comment><USER7> > Just because "doing good" was used as a pretense or excuse doesn't mean it > was the perpetrator's actual motive.

And you know that they were lying because you read their minds....

> I suppose you also believe that most violent criminals were individuals that > had only the best of intentions for their victims.

Nope. But they don't kill all that many people.

> Or that Nazis and Stalinists had little interest in power and influence,

Surely you don't believe that people who want to do good have no interest in power and influence.

You seem to think that killing lots of people is inconsistent with a desire to do good. You clearly haven't had much experience with fanatics, or even do- gooders. It's easy to convince the latter that the world would be better off if the "right" people were dead.

<comment><USER8> > And you know that they were lying because you read their minds....

No, I infer it from their actions.

> Surely you don't believe that people who want to do good have no interest in > power and influence.

This is a straw man. I'm disputing your original claim that money(/power/influence) was not the "most influential" source of corruption, and that the impulse to "do good" was "far more effective than money".

> It's easy to convince [do-gooders] that the world would be better off if the > "right" people were dead.

I'm calling B.S. Evidence? (or did you actually mean the "former"?)

> You seem to think that killing lots of people is inconsistent with a desire > to do good.

Yes, I do, especially since we're talking about corruption in the U.S., and not about the rise of Stalinism. At base we're dealing with issues of systemic bias, not the actions of fanatics. Show me a consistent source of corrupting bias, one that silently and perniciously organizes the behaviors of millions, but which _isn't_ money.

<comment><USER7> > > And you know that they were lying because you read their minds....

> No, I infer it from their actions.

There's your mistake. You think that bad outcome implies bad intentions. It doesn't.

How do you know that they didn't honestly think that killing a lot of people would result in good?

> > It's easy to convince [do-gooders] that the world would be better off if > the "right" people were dead.

> I'm calling B.S. Evidence?

It's a conversation that I have as often as possible, in hopes that pointing out where they end up will convince them that they really should rethink what they mean by "good".

>> You seem to think that killing lots of people is inconsistent with a desire to do good.

> Yes, I do, especially since we're talking about corruption in the U.S., and > not about the rise of Stalinism.

You seem hung up on Stalinism. While it does have the record in shear numbers, it isn't the winner in percentages. And, there are plenty of other folks who will go the same route.

For example, it's not hard to find environmentalists who are hoping for a population crash. Do you really believe that none of them would push things in that direction?

> Show me a consistent source of corrupting bias, one that silently and > perniciously organizes the behaviors of millions, but which _isn't_ money.

All of the "I know what's best for you" behaviors qualify.

<comment><USER8> Because it bears repeating, at issue is your original claim that money(/power/influence) was not the "most influential" source of corruption, and that the impulse to "do good" was "far more effective than money".

> All of the "I know what's best for you" behaviors qualify.

Since behaviors themselves are a result of bias, I'll interpret this to mean 'All of the "I know what's best for you" _sentiments_ or _beliefs_ '.

Pick one, then, and show how it is all of the following:

a) consistent (i.e. remains relatively stable in how it exerts its influence)

b) corrupting (i.e. causes those involved to violate values/ideals to which they once claimed allegiance)

c) silent (i.e. can exert its influence absent a need for explicit discussion of implementation)

d) pernicious (i.e. causes, in certain conditions, a net "bad" when aggregated across the humans affected)

e) organizing (i.e. coordinates the behavior of multiple individuals)

 _For money, we have:_

a) _(yes)_ by definition, the system has been organized to consistently incentivize (i.e. reward) the accumulation of money

b) _(yes)_ bribery (including, perhaps especially, the tacit "lean to the green" kind [1]). E.g., claiming that the most important thing is jobs and the federal debt, but devoting most of one's actual effort trying to lower taxes for rich people, thereby increasing the deficit and giving money to those least likely to spend it.

c) _(yes)_ money's influence does not require explicit discussion or coordination for it to lead to bad behavior, witness the frequent tacit agreements of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" ([1] also applies here)

d) _(yes)_ e.g. the _retroactive_ extensions of copyright Congress has repeatedly passed (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act>)

e) _(yes)_ this is self-evident as it's the entire purpose of currency

 _In the case of "I know what's best for you":_

a) _(no)_ it's rarely consistent in its influence. Individuals are moody, and groups of individuals seldom maintain the same "best for you" impulse. There are thousands of causes (from wanting to better educate future generations to promoting birth control in order to decrease the population), each with tens or hundreds of methods for accomplishing them, all of which are changing over time.

b) _(mostly no)_ It _could_ be corrupting (as defined above), but is rarely so. Bureaucrats and politicians are criticized far more often of being overly fearful of taking principled risks and instead wanting to keep their comfy jobs[2]. In general, violating sworn-to ideals in order to promote some hidden agenda is a great way to get fired or lose an election[3]. An example of where it could be "corrupting" would be when a politician increases, say, fuel economy standards ostensibly to reduce smog but actually to reduce CO2 emissions (but here [3] again applies).

c) _(no)_ Without explicit discussion and coordination, the variation and competition among individuals in "knowing what's best" tends to neuter its influence. "I know what's best for you" behaviors generally require explicit discussion and coordination (e.g. a "conspiracy") to have any significant effect. This is in large part because of (a). Where it can have some tacit effect may be at the intersection, among all those who have power, of myriad "know-what's-best-for-you" sentiments. When, say, these interests are representative of perhaps 40-55% of the population, this will be a slim intersection indeed. And it's very unlikely to include the commission of atrocities.

d) _(yes)_ It's at least possible that this could happen (if, e.g., "knowing what's best for you" was responsible for Communism's poor outcomes)

e) _(yes)_ Through speeches and, say, "community organizing" "know what's best for you" behaviors can certainly coordinate the behavior of multiple individuals.

So, could you explain how 'All of the "I know what's best for you" sentiments/beliefs qualify.' ? Especially how they satisfy a, b, and c?

[1] [http://fixcongressfirst.org/blog/2010/lessig-on-neo- progress...](http://fixcongressfirst.org/blog/2010/lessig-on-neo- progressives/)

[2] hence "exception that proves the rule"

[3] absent regulation, avaricious private interests, who seek to increase their own wealth, will be a much more lucrative source of campaign funds than private interests that are promoting a cause that is remuneration-free

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is nothing new. The same has been going on in drug trials for years.

The trials are paid for by the company making the drug. With FDA and (sometimes) NIH oversight of course. But the FDA is terribly under funded. And the NIH is already a tool for the pharm industry.

And if a company's drug gets into trouble, a few calls to a few of our elected officials takes care of the little fact right quick.

We only hear about it when people die. Remember Vioxx?

<comment><USER10> The FDA is not underfunded. Its budget has more than doubled from 2006 to 2011:

[http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/11/nation/la-na-fda- bud...](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/11/nation/la-na-fda- budget11-2010feb11)

When a business fails, its budget is cut as customers leave it in droves for other businesses. But when the FDA fails, the idea is to throw more money at it, to increase the budget of a failure.

The problem is that the FDA is a monopoly. When it fails, which happens routinely, people should be able to look to alternate reviewers -- like the European or Japanese regulatory bodies. That doesn't happen right now.

<comment><USER11> >The FDA is not underfunded. Its budget has more than doubled from 2006 to 2011:

How much does it need to do its job? Has the amount of work stayed constant between 2006-2011? Was it properly funded in 2006?

<comment><USER6> It needs zero because the market will provide these services. Or if it doesn't it would be clear that consumers didn't want these services.

<comment><USER12> Why would the market provide these services?

We could start to pay a company to tell us which drugs were safe, but they would only have one customer who would tell everybody else.

<comment><USER13> I'm not convinced it would actually work, but what the OP probably meant is that the pharma companies would pay the certification companies so they could put a "Certified by X" sticker on their packaging. The better X would certify, the more they could ask from the pharma company, so the market would reward proper certification.

<comment><USER12> Erm... that's just the same as it is now. Pharma companies pay scientists to statistically test there products. My first year stats professor described how difficult it is to say to your employer after a year and a lot of cash that their toothpaste did not perform statistically significantly better than the placebo. How many more consultancy contracts are you going to get?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people," Dr Roses said. "I wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don't work in everybody."

\-- Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline 2003

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/glaxo-chief-our- dr...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/glaxo-chief-our-drugs-do-not- work-on-most-patients-575942.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's misleading. Many of the most profitable pharmaceuticals (e.g. SSRIs, as Irving Kirsch devastatingly established - <USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2622912>) are known not to work anywhere near that well, if "work" means significance beyond placebo. There is even powerful evidence against the claim that they work at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Derek Lowe provides an excellent commentary on the article, both what it gets right and what it gets wrong.

[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/07/even_worse_t...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/07/even_worse_than_reality.php)

</comment><comment><USER16> Are there any other non-native speakers who thought of drug lords when reading the headline?</comment>


The Google Memo: Four Scientists Respond - <AUTHOR> http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ <comment><USER2> The activity here correlates very well with the amount of actual citations and rebuttals of the original document.

It's almost like it's just a massive act of collective misrepresentation, one of those "winning the narrative" kind of situations.

<comment><USER3> In other words an extension of the fake news which has been plaguing us for months now. The truth will set you free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In this thread: "I don't agree with what the scientists said so either they're cherry picked, or bad scientists, or right-wing"

Republicans on global warming: "I don't believe the results so it must be that scientists don't know what they're talking about or they're biased."

Can I join/found a pro-science party? Anyone want to join?

<comment><USER5> A pro-science party wouldn't toe even the republican line on many of these issues and therefore "be racist".

It would say different races have ...

 _shudder_

differences

They might even point out that the difference between men and women, as measured in DNA differences, is bigger than the differences between humans and mice. This might result in some actual differences, and likely not just in appearance.

Nobody seems to want to hear these obvious facts, we've just collectively agreed that we're going to ignore this and even change the science to reflect political opinion.

Apparently the message that yes, sexes and races are different, and we've chosen to ignore that is considered a racist attitude itself.

<comment><USER4> haha yeah, apparently acknowledging facts about average differences makes one a racists/bigot/asshole.

my guess is that most people have a hard time distinguishing that statements about a population distribution do not mean an endorsement stereotyping.

<comment><USER6> Google would scout and hire anyone regardless of race or gender if they were talented enough.

<comment><USER7> They would, "Software is an IQ business." \- Bill Gates

The fact that google is well known for seeking out the most intelligence and talented, and the fact that Asians and Jews are highly "over-represented" among googlers if one were to extrapolate a random population sample as being the only SJW approved workforce, the fact that these two groups are so over- represented implies that... Jews and Asians tend towards smarter rather than dumber, which anyone paying attention has kind of noticed.

<comment><USER8> Google isn't looking for the most intelligent and talented people and hiring them. There are lots of smart people who are not engineers and lack the skills Google needs. Google is looking for the the most talented people in the group of people who's interests make them useful to Google. It's an important distinction, and one that is at the heart of Damore's memo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I believe that PG makes a very interesting point in Hackers and Painters saying that one shouldn't discuss about whether something is sexist, racist or offensive but rather just whether it is accurate or not.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that as a rich white dude, he's really not ever going to be on the receiving end of those things and his "just rise above it" stance consequently doesn't carry any weight.

<comment><USER11> Essentially what you're saying is that, because he's a white male, his opinion on the matter isn't taken as seriously. In other words, this is a clear case of sexism/racism.

<comment><USER12> Alternatively: his membership in a privileged class is unlikely to grant him especially accurate insight into the experience of individuals in less privileged classes, and more likely to reinforce his bias to justify his own privileged position.

<comment><USER13> Deleting because apparently you can get brigaded and fired for any slightly dissenting opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While it doesn't invalidate the takes, I'd like to point out that this is not exactly an unbiased selection of scientists. With the possible exception of David P Schmitt - the one with the relatively moderate take, whose research was cited in the original memo - they all appear to have at least mildly right-leaning political beliefs (see below). Also, the site Quilette itself is quite right-wing, as can be easily determined by looking at the homepage.

Lee Jussim: gave a "talk about left-wing bias in social psychology" [http://quillette.com/2015/12/04/rebellious-scientist- surpris...](http://quillette.com/2015/12/04/rebellious-scientist-surprising- truth-about-stereotypes/)

Geoffrey Miller: note wording of recent tweets, including

\- Compare the actual Google memo to how it's being misrepresented by SJWs, and you'll see what's wrong in America.

\- My new article for @QuilletteM: a new legal strategy the neurodivergent can use to fight for free speech on campus.

[https://twitter.com/primalpoly?lang=en](https://twitter.com/primalpoly?lang=en)

and some earlier history that's just kind of bizarre:

[https://closetpuritan.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/diversityisou...](https://closetpuritan.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/diversityisourweakness/)

Debra Soh: wrote a column complaining about censorship at colleges, claiming "emotional grievances are being prioritized over logic and facts", and uncritically praising a "free speech" event hosted by Ben Shapiro (of Breitbart fame) [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/we-need-to- protect-f...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/we-need-to-protect-free- speech-on-campus/article35476933/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/we- need-to-protect-free-speech-on-campus/article35476933/)

<comment><USER15> With all due respect, the manner of your inferences about our political beliefs is deeply flawed. Just as one does not need to be a woman to be concerned about sexism, or African-American to be concerned about racism, or LGBT to be concerned about homophobia, or Muslim to care about Islamophobia, one does not need to be a conservative to be concerned about leftist biases distorting social science.

Psychologists are massively, overwhelmingly, leftwing in their views. I am most certainly NOT conservative. My best guess is that there were ZERO conservatives in this group.

For data on the near complete absence of conservatives in psychology, see Duarte et al, 2015, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

The day that only people on the right care about free speech or unbiased science is the day that we are all really and truly doomed.

Sincerely,

Lee Jussim

<comment><USER14> Hmm. This is a somewhat tricky situation. I did not expect my comment to be read by the people it mentioned. I feel bad if I misrepresented you, but I am not sure I really did. I admit the source I had for you was weaker than the others - but then, if I now investigate further, what I see tends to confirm that your beliefs, at least on the topic of diversity in general, fall into a broad category I'd associate with right-wing thinkers.

First of all, it's not just that you're concerned about left-wing bias; it's something you spend quite a lot of your time on. Looking at your blog on Psychology Today[1], just about every article is complaining about liberal bias or liberal beliefs. You're not afraid to use charged language like "creeping tyranny of the left" or "mirror-image McCarthyism".

This is a bit random, but here's a quote I found especially surprising from one of your articles:

> So whose level of trust in science is more well-justified? My answer: > Conservatives. Deep skepticism and even mistrust in science and its > conclusions are entirely well-justified. If science reveals some "truth," > then it should show up again and again and again and again, so that, at some > point, it becomes (to paraphrase the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay > Gould) perverse to believe otherwise. Until that time, however, it is not at > all perverse to believe otherwise. [2]

When it comes to conservative mistrust of science, I'd say there's an elephant in the room, namely climate change. That is, of course, the biggest issue where belief in science has become politicized. And when it comes to the existence of anthropogenic climate change, it became "perverse to believe otherwise" quite a while ago, yet in the United States conservatives still do; in fact, increasingly so[3]. It seems absurd not to mention that (which the article does not, at any point).

But going back to the question of diversity... There is some risk of circular reasoning here: I claimed your opinion should be taken somewhat more lightly because you were biased; now I'm claiming that you're biased because you have a different opinion from me. However, I think the following is meaningful to the extent that it ties your opinions on the memo to a broader pattern.

One of the entries in your recommended reading list from the 'Four Scientists' article is a WSJ article you co-wrote with Jonathan Haidt[4]. Broadly speaking, the article is an appeal to colleges to not do any of the things liberals want them to do to address social inequality: not just affirmative action, which is pretty much the same issue as in the Google memo, but also such measures as diversity training and microaggression training. While the article cites several different studies at various points, most of the stronger claims are not supported by such citations. In particular:

Regarding diversity interventions, your article states:

> The evaluations that have been done are not encouraging. A major 2007 review > of diversity training in corporations concluded that "on average, programs > designed to reduce bias among managers responsible for hiring and promotion > have not worked." A review of diversity interventions published in 2014 in > the journal Science noted that these programs "often induce ironic negative > effects (such as reactance or backlash) by implying that participants are at > fault for current diversity challenges.

But the 2014 review states that "there is promising evidence that several interventions raise participants' awareness of diversity issues and reduce explicit and implicit biases." It does criticize the use of non-evidence-based diversity interventions, but its overall message seems quite counter to your article's suggestion that diversity training is overall useless or harmful. (The 2007 review is less so, but it does mention that certain types of training can have positive effects.)

Your article goes on to criticize microaggression training, stating that "microaggression training is likely to backfire and increase racial tensions" and "activates an oppressor-victim narrative", and that "the threshold for what counts as an offense falls ever lower". But it cites no studies for these claims, and spends zero words on the potential benefits of such training, i.e. avoiding the harms caused by microaggressions themselves. It is hard not to see bias in a piece that concludes the harms outweigh the benefits without even examining the latter.

The article also defines microaggressions in a rather unfair manner: "The idea covers everything from asking someone where they are from to questioning the merits of affirmative action during a classroom discussion." Of course, "questioning the merits of affirmative action" is not a core example of a microaggression (which is not to say nobody has ever claimed it to be one, but still). "Asking someone where they are from" arguably is, but only because of the tendency for people of certain ethnicities to be inundated with such questions, even if they were in fact born in the United States (I'm assuming a U.S. context); this creates the feeling that they're not perceived as real Americans. While I'd argue it's actually an important type of microaggression, it's much less obviously sympathetic, from a short description, than other commonly cited types, and I suspect it was chosen for that reason.

Actually, I wasn't surprised to read something along those lines. When I first read your Quilette article, where Jonathan Haidt shows up as well (as the author of one of the books you recommend), the name jumped out at me. I'd heard of him as a coauthor of "The Coddling of the American Mind"[5], a well- known article I find quite infuriating for, among other things, purporting to diagnose liberals with (effectively) a psychological condition, pooh-poohing PTSD, and, more relevantly, taking an extremely one-sided view of microaggressions. I don't know if he was also the driving force behind the section of the WSJ article about microaggressions, but you put your name on it in any case.

Meh... I could go on, but I'm not sure I'm making a useful argument to anyone other than myself. After all, it's unlikely that anyone will read this other than perhaps you, Lee Jussim, and I hardly expect to convince you that you're biased! But maybe you can at least see where I'm coming from.

FWIW, I care a lot about free speech, and I'm troubled by the scarcity of people who vigorously defend conservatives' ability to express their views _without_ actually agreeing with those views. I kinda wish I could consider you one of them, but I don't think I can; regardless of what you consider yourself, from my perspective you seem pretty far to the right on social issues.

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble- rouser?page=2](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser?page=2)

[2] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble- rouser/201304/co...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble- rouser/201304/conservatives-distrust-science-are-they-right-do-so)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican- le...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders- climate-change.html?_r=0)

[4] [http://www.businessforum.com/WSJ_Race-on- Campus-05-06-2016.p...](http://www.businessforum.com/WSJ_Race-on- Campus-05-06-2016.pdf)

[5] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the- cod...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of- the-american-mind/399356/)

<comment><USER16> Your criticism of Jussim is rooted in the claim that he is biased; and in so doing, you implicitly claim that you are unbiased. This is necessary, otherwise how would you be qualified to criticize him for being biased?

So then: are you unbiased? Obviously you are not, for you are obviously biased against conservative/right views.

Therefore, how are you qualified to criticize him for being biased? Your criticism rings hollow.

Then, despite the inherent self-contradiction of your reasoning, you exhibit a moment of insight:

> There is some risk of circular reasoning here: I claimed your opinion should > be taken somewhat more lightly because you were biased; now I'm claiming > that you're biased because you have a different opinion from me.

This should have been the end of your comment. The next line should have been, "This is obviously irrational, and therefore my criticism of you is as well. Therefore, I will now stop and reevaluate my position from first principles."

But instead, you doubled-down, following the pattern of those who got the man fired, essentially confirming his argument.

<comment><USER14> > Your criticism of Jussim is rooted in the claim that he is biased; and in so > doing, you implicitly claim that you are unbiased. This is necessary, > otherwise how would you be qualified to criticize him for being biased?

I don't think anyone is truly unbiased, although some people are more biased than others. I did not mean to claim that I was less biased than Jussim.

I was actually trying to make a much simpler point. An article titled "Four Scientists Respond", addressing a topic that is not itself part of academia, suggests at least a possibility that the responses are representative of most scientists' views (more precisely, the views of most scientists with relevant experience). When three of the four responses are largely in agreement with each other, one might imagine that their position is the consensus of scientists, and thus arguably of science itself, with its associated cachet and authority. Indeed, if the scientists had somehow been chosen randomly, it would be quite significant that there was such a level of agreement. But they were not.

Indeed, the question of what it means to be "conservative" is to some extent a distraction. I could have said it much more simply: The three scientists in question (those other than Schmitt) have all written columns in the past criticizing liberal orthodoxy as stifling. Among scientists with relevant experience, even those that write opinion pieces, I'd assume most have not written about that specific subject. Therefore, those three are very likely to be an unrepresentative sample.

Please note that I'm not claiming Quilette did anything wrong. They said four scientists, and they quoted four scientists. Those individual opinions _do_ come with more inherent authority than a random Joe's, due to their authors' having some understanding of the relevant research in connection with their work; it is just that they fall short of actually representing science. Besides, a frequent reader of Quilette would be aware of their bias as an outlet, and wouldn't expect a representative sample in the first place. (I hope it is not controversial that Quilette has a bias; to be clear, this is not inherently bad.) It is not their fault that they were linked to out of context on HN. But by the same token it is appropriate to point out that context.

Anyway, I could have left it at 'criticized, therefore unrepresentative' in my followup comment, but by then I had claimed that Jussim (along with the others) was conservative and been called out on it; while I felt bad about the possibility of having made a false accusation, I also wanted to defend my point, after investigating further and deciding it hadn't been false.

> This should have been the end of your comment. The next line should have > been, "This is obviously irrational, and therefore my criticism of you is as > well. Therefore, I will now stop and reevaluate my position from first > principles."

> But instead, you doubled-down, following the pattern of those who got the > man fired, essentially confirming his argument.

I was attempting to be upfront about the potential weaknesses of my argument, something which I believe helps advance rational discourse. From your tone in these paragraphs, I am not sure you have the same humility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had trouble loading the webpage. Here is a mirror/cached copy.

[https://archive.is/VlNfl](https://archive.is/VlNfl)

</comment><comment><USER18> This article is a pleasure to read. Clear arguments and discussions to the point. A complete opposite of what many, if not most, commentators say.

</comment><comment><USER19> > _I think it's really important to discuss this topic scientifically, keeping > an open mind and using informed skepticism when evaluating claims about > evidence._

> ...

> _There have been (and likely will continue to be) many socio-structural > barriers to women working in technological jobs. These include culturally- > embedded gender stereotypes, biased socialization practices, in some > cultures explicit employment discrimination, and a certain degree of > masculinization of technological workplaces._

Well that didn't last long

<comment><USER20> The top sentence is followed by three full paragraphs you clipped out. Only then do we reach the bottom statement you've quoted, albeit in the source is prefaced with the following:

> Now, treating people as dichotomous sexes is exactly what many affirmative > action policies do. As this is not my area of expertise, I can only offer my > non-expert opinion on this issue, which is this: There have been (and likely > will continue to be) many socio-structural barriers to women working in > technological jobs. ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can find 4 scientists who'll tell you global warming is a hoax. Just find one who can take this manifesto, provide a thoughtful analysis, collect published critiques and discuss and argue them.

This just seems to be a few modestly credentialed academics really just using this as a springboard for their own view points.

<comment><USER22> Even without credentials, has anyone at all shown any part of the manifesto to be false yet?

<comment><USER21> [https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

<comment><USER20> > I'm not going to spend any length of time on (1); if anyone wishes to > provide details as to how nearly every statement about gender in that entire > document is actively incorrect,¹ and flies directly in the face of all > research done in the field for decades, they should go for it. But I am > neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I'll leave that > to someone else.

<comment><USER21> Yes? He's admitting he doesn't have the expertise to address that. Evo-psych is definitely not a generally accepted scientific field, so I don't really take issue with his off hand dismissal.

<comment><USER23> As far as I understood the original manifesto was about the average population characteristics of currently existing men and women, so those studies shouldn't have anything to do with Evo-psych, I mean they would be valid even if evolution didn't exist.

<comment><USER24> There was a passing mention of evolutionary psychology in one of the points where the author was explaining other reasons for the gender disparity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is the very first empirical claim (other than describing the memo) in the scientists' responses:

> In 1960, the most common slurs were insulting labels for demographic groups. > In 2017, the most common slurs involve labelling anyone who you disagree > with on issues such as affirmative action, diversity, gaps, and inequality > as a racist, sexist, homophobe, or bigot.

Citation? I suspect that this is wildly wrong, but unlike this scientist, I'd want to see the data first.

<comment><USER26> From the other side, the slur seems to be "SJW." (Social Justice Warrior)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So its come down to banning dissent, firing people who say what they feel or believe. There is only one issue here and that is people must have the right to express an opinion without being punished so bear in mind this quote "Monsieur l'abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire." And remember that they first burn the books then they burn the people

</comment><comment><USER28> Cache link because it is down for me at the moment:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/quillette.com/201...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/quillette.com/2017/08/07/google- memo-four-scientists-respond/)

</comment><comment><USER29> The site seems to be experiencing the 'hug of death' right now, Internet Archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/http://quillette....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google- memo-four-scientists-respond/)

Prof. Schmitt gets it right here: gender differences don't have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform any job--even physically strenuous jobs, with the right training. Certainly for information work, bringing up gender differences is just going down the wrong rabbit hole. It's like asking a job candidate if they're American when all you need to know is if they're legally authorised to work in the US.

The other scientists unfortunately go down this rabbit hole. Prof. Miller especially consistently asks the wrong questions throughout his piece. First, he establishes biological sex differences but doesn't ask if they have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform a job. Second, he goes off on a tangent about his pet 'paradox' theory about the American public, arguing that gender equality would make diversity moot from a business advantage perspective.

Let's just clarify why we want diversity in the workplace: it's not because minorities will bring different skills and traits to the table; it's because (a) excluding minorities is inhumane, and (b) because minorities will (hopefully) keep the organisation from making dumb mistakes like leaving out the main protagonist of their new film series from a major marketing campaign ( [https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960372/hasbro-star- wars...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960372/hasbro-star-wars- monopoly-toys-wheresrey-insufficient-interest) ), sending Kylie Jenner out with a Pepsi to mend race relations ( [http://time.com/4726500/pepsi-ad- kendall-jenner/](http://time.com/4726500/pepsi-ad-kendall-jenner/) ), and pushing for a Game of Thrones-style show about a modern-day Confederate America which won the war and kept slavery intact ( [https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/no...](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/no- confederate/535512/) ). These are just three things that come _immediately_ to mind, you can imagine how much shit there is out there that hasn't even reached national level yet.

<comment><USER19> > _gender differences don 't have any significant impact on women's capacity > to perform any job--even physically strenuous jobs, with the right training_

That seems just plain wrong considering so many women fail Marine fitness tests:

[http://thehill.com/policy/defense/284252-report-6-out- of-7-f...](http://thehill.com/policy/defense/284252-report-6-out-of-7-female- recruits-fail-new-marines-fitness-test-for-combat)

And FDNY had to relax physical fitness requirements in order to hire more women firefighters:

[https://www.bustle.com/articles/53536-fdny-wants-more- women-...](https://www.bustle.com/articles/53536-fdny-wants-more-women- firefighters-but-is-cutting-strength-requirements-the-way-to-do-it)

Women also have to be separated from men in professional sports, otherwise in many sports it wouldn't even be close (e.g. the aged, #203-ranked male tennis player walloping both Williams sisters in their prime: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karsten_Braasch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karsten_Braasch)).

There's nothing wrong with admitting there are basic biological differences between men and women relating to strength.

<comment><USER29> Sure. That's why I said women are _capable_ of performing those jobs. Some women _pass_ the Marine fitness tests and firefighter physical requirements. Hence, women are capable of performing any physically strenuous job.

But again, this is completely the wrong rabbit hole in the context of this discussion. It has nothing to do with the fact that men and women have equal capacity to do any mental work.

<comment><USER30> Capability to do work does not mean you have the same qualifications to raise your level and become the cream of the crop...ie raises or promotions.

You are the one digging the wrong rabbit hole here.

<comment><USER29> By 'qualifications', what do you mean? Like professional accreditations? If so, all the more reason to help women and minorities by giving them the opportunities to earn those accreditations!

But if you mean 'innate ability to reach a higher level', then are you implying that women innately are incapable of climbing to the same senior engineering positions as men, and no amount of training or education will change that?

Just trying to understand.

<comment><USER30> I am not sure what you call this style of arguments ? You are deviating from my point and intention.

Lets take GPA for example. Do you think 2 people getting a GPA of 3.0 are of the exact same knowledge level ? Is it possible that one has the equivalent score of 3.13 and the other has 2.87 and that they were both normalized to 3 ? Same thing with the jobs. Maybe you see this at your job too. There are going to be people more skilled at what you do and people less skilled at what you do but still pulling the same salary. The salary you earn is an approximate estimate of your skill measure but not an measure of your exact skill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think the obvious point that the authors missed is that Google is not a University nor a scientific journal. It's a workplace and the author of the memo, just called into question the "biological" ability of women to be engineers.

<comment><USER32> Have you read the memo? He does not do that. He talks plenty about averages, and explicitly mentions that averages don't apply to individuals.

Here is some news for you: The AVERAGE woman is not interested in technology as much as the AVERAGE man. If you think reality is sexist, so be it.

Does that mean that every woman is average? No. There are plenty of women interested in technology doing great work.

So why do you expect that there should be as many women working in technology as men? Why is it even a (US) problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good fact-based answers.

But the reaction from the "progressives" is quite telling. Don't they realize that demanding to fire him without refuting his arguments only proves him right?

<comment><USER34> Well he's now been fired.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google- fi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires- employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo)

<comment><USER35> "The company was founded under the principles of freedom of expression, diversity, inclusiveness and science-based thinking,"

Clearly, this is either not entirely correct, or they have "evolved"

<comment><USER36> Actually, fwiw, the company was founded under the principle "do no evil", but they already walked that back before this incident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mirror: [https://archive.is/VlNfl](https://archive.is/VlNfl)

</comment><comment><USER37> Four scientists with no expertise in the field of diversity and, as a result, in no position to argue that the scientific argument made justifies the conclusions drawn (as one of them admits).

A scientific argument is more than "Here's some science, here are some facts and here's the conclusion" \- you have to use the science to explain the observed facts, and doing so takes more than saying "And therefore". There was no attempt to do so whatsoever, and so (from a scientific perspective) this was junk.

<comment><USER38> There has to be a more charitable explanation than your implied "four scientists don't know how to do science properly" thesis.

Is diversity honestly so narrow a field, that a social psychologist, personality psychologists, evolutionary psychology, and a sexual neuroscientist are in _no_ position to say _anything_?

Gender diversity always seems to bring up two issues (1) are men and women different in mental reasoning, and if so where and how significant are these differences and (2) would differences in mental reasoning lead to different outcomes in choice of studies or employment?

Is there a specific scientific field for that?

<comment><USER37> > There has to be a more charitable explanation than your implied "four > scientists don't know how to do science properly" thesis.

Indeed - one of them knows how to.

> Is diversity honestly so narrow a field, that a social psychologist, > personality psychologists, evolutionary psychology, and a sexual > neuroscientist are in no position to say anything?

Unless they've done any research in it, sure. Why should any of them have more insight into diversity than, say, a nuclear physicist?

The issue isn't whether there are gender-related differences that are relevant to the job. It's not even whether those are significant enough to result in a measurable difference in outcome. It's whether those factors are the primary reason for the observed disparity, and neither the document author or the quoted scientists present any evidence whatsoever that that's the case. Failing to do that means that the conclusions drawn (ie, that existing diversity initiatives discriminate against men while providing no benefit to the company) aren't scientific.

<comment><USER4> Those scientists specifically studied gender differences so they can at least confirm the Google author was actually correct in his factual claims.

Where anyone can disagree is how he interprets them, but I am glad to see four experts clarify a little bit about what is true.

<comment><USER37> They can confirm that he was correct in a subset of his factual claims, but not in the further factual claims that he builds on those. Implying that they can is bad science.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps I misread it, but it sounded like all the gender differences he claimed were backed by research. What were the factual claims he got wrong?

<comment><USER29> Also, even if the gender differences were backed by research, what's _not_ backed by research is the assumption that those differences have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform the same work as men. Remember--the scientific method is about making a _falsifiable hypothesis_ and then gathering enough evidence to be able to reject it. In this case the falsifiable hypothesis would have to be that men and women have no significant difference in their ability to perform the same work.

<comment><USER39> Strawman. Nobody and especially not the memo made a claim about capacity. It was all about interest on average, which is absolutely backed by research :

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/)

Abstract : "There is considerable interest in understanding women's underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career- related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure.

 _Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People_."

<comment><USER29> OK, in the paper you linked to presumably they've classified IT/CS jobs as 'thing-oriented' work. Now, let's classify them as 'people-oriented'. Whoops! Suddenly women are _very_ interested.

You see the problem? The study is biased from the outset because it's _designed_ to 'prove' that women aren't interested in IT.

<comment><USER39> > The study is biased from the outset because it's designed to 'prove' that > women aren't interested in IT.

No, the study was designed to investigate a potential link between prenatal androgen exposure and a preference for Things vs People work, which it did find.

> let's classify [IT/CS] as 'people-oriented'. Whoops! Suddenly women are very > interested.

But precisely, observation shows they're not, as a group ! That's the very thing we're here discussing, trying to find out why.

And yeah, let's just arbitrarily switch jobs classifications like that without any grounding in reality, just because that's the only way your hypothesis will not fall apart.

Can you see the extraordinary amount of unlikely premises it takes for your logic to stand, compared to the alternative, simpler explanation ? That is exactly the kind of situation Occam's razor is here for : "among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected."

This is starting to feel like a flat-earth debate, honestly. I'm pretty sure many people here would engage with the available evidence much more candidly, if this were a less politically charged topic (and I'm a liberal. But science before ideology, always.)

<comment><USER29> 'Arbitrarily' switch job classifications? Sorry, what is the reality grounding of classifying IT jobs as 'thing-oriented'? It seems about as scientific as the zodiac. Tell me, if you're a programmer, how much time do you spend communicating with people versus actually coding? How much time reading and writing documentation? Choosing variable and class names to communicate your code's intentions?

Can you see how classifying IT jobs as something women aren't interested in, leads to finding a 'result' that women aren't interested in IT jobs? That's literally a tautology.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My first full stack project – a recommendation engine for web tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.consultfred.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Skip the queue by clicking on the character, Fred, on the homepage :)</comment>


Ning's unified social network - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ning.com/2009/03/the-new-ningcom.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Wouldn't all of the Ning networks be on the order of MySpace or Facebook?</comment>