Ever since the infamous "diversity memo," (which I disagree with,) I've gotten the impression that political discussions at Google turned toxic.
A well run company includes people with diverse political views points. A workplace that's hostile to anyone who leans right or leans left ultimately hurts diversity.
My impression has not been that the memo is when political discussions turned toxic, but merely the first time it very publicly breached the sacred wall of non-disclosure with the outside world. Prior to that, most everyone seemed content to be upset with each other internally.
And they never punished the woman who leaked that internal memo.
I thought that memo was foolish and short-sighted. I don't agree with it.
However, it would have been better solved by a manager first asking him "do you really think it's a good idea to post this at work?" and having him tone it down than trying to publicly shame him and get him fired.
Google picked the wrong side on that. They should have made an example of the leakers.
You're making things up: the leaker was, afaik, never identified. Certainly not publicly. Nothing says they were a woman, except you.
As someone who vehemently disagree a with damore and is glad he was fired, I'd also prefer it if the leaker was fired, but it seems that I'll never know if that happened.
I've seen no evidence of this, and I keep track of such things. An explicit search turns up no evidence of such things. If you have evidence of such things, please share it with me (I'm easy to find @google), but in the absence of such evidence, I'm going to continue to claim that this is wholly unfounded nonsense.
I'm sure there may have been some of that. But supposedly (IIRC) he didn't just post it at work, he very diligently attempted to increase it's exposure through word of mouth, mailing lists, and speaking at internal events.
I think Damore's fatal flaw was naivety. He thought his opinions would lead to a better Google and he thought Google wanted to hear arguments that would lead to an improved Google. He clearly lacked the awareness to realize he was not speaking to a receptive audience to the ideas he had. And he wrote something that lacked the... emotional awareness... to understand where the opposing view came from or how his memo would be received.
You can furthermore see that naivety in how quickly he ended up accepting offers and olive branches from alt-right personalities. It seemed like he wasn't aware who he ended up 'siding' with.
I had a weekly improv class with him and while I don't think that's enough to get a good read on who someone truly is, I think you may be projecting on the naivete bit. In the midst of the chaos he was generating, he had ample opportunity to redact, change, apologize, debate, or even acknowledge other viewpoints, but he chose to broadcast adamantly.
Even as he knew his opinion was generating controversy he didn't take any steps to admit, control, or deal with it, instead he reveled in it. He knew what he was doing.
Do you know if he contacted Breitbart and PV, or if they contacted him? Because if a Breitbart journalist said to him, "We see your opinion, we think it's terrible you're being silenced, we'd love to interview you and give you a chance to say your piece", then it would be very fitting with "naive" for him to say "Sounds good!"
> He does not once, however, use his autism to excuse his actions. He is fiercely resistant to portraying himself as any kind of victim, and says he never informed Google of his autism diagnosis. “I’m not sure you’re expected to,” he says, “or how I would even do that.”
I mentioned it as a point in favor of the "naive" theory. The article also supports it:
> Damore concedes now that he “wasn’t really skilled enough to push back on anything” in some interviews. It’s frustrating, he adds, that he’s now associated with the “alt-right” when he’s “more of a centrist”. He admits he did not look too deeply into Duke’s background when the photos were taken, and asks me not to publish the image of him in a “Goolag” T-shirt with this article. “I can definitely see how it was damaging, but it was a free professional photo shoot and I wasn’t really familiar with politics then,” he says. “I was pretty busy and ignorant.”
> Was his interview with the “alt-right” personality Milo Yiannopoulos an error? “It’s hard to say,” he replies. “I don’t really know what the long-term consequences of any of my actions are.”
He offended a broad class of people. Women shouldn't have to pick and choose who they feel comfortable working with around the office. Or worse, be forced to work with that guy. Once he expressed views like that, his fate was sealed. You don't punish the victims.
I don't know why I'm responding to the most flippant comment here, but I think your argument, however poorly stated, is worth countering.
"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
- James Damore
I don't think the preceding quote is an "opinion they disagree with" as much as it is pseudo-intellectualism covering up outright hate. This is stated as a fact, not cited and not backed up. It asserts that women are not fit to work at Google, and implies that the women he works with are incompetent because of biology. If your coworker asserted that you were biologically inferior at your job, I think you would take drastic measures as well.
I don't think your statements are as self evident as you think they are. You are personally attacking the poster above you, and then just spinning words around to make a point you agree with. We understand you agree with yourself; would you care to help us try and agree with you?
Personally, I agree with your statements. I do not see the issue that you see with wanting all people to be comfortable in their workplace. James Damore outright stated that he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does. I don't grasp how people miss how destructive that is.
>James Damore outright stated that he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does.
Outright? Certainly not. It requires multiple layers of hostile interpretation to reach 'women are genetically inferior' from what Damore wrote. That's an absolutist, determinist, morally-tinged statement which is nothing like anything he said.
If you think otherwise, please give the quote where Damore outright states women are 'genetically inferior' at anything.
Damore was extremely clear about the difference between "all men have X trait more than women" and "statistically, the prevalence of X trait is higher among men than women (but some women still have a lot of X)". He even included visual aids to help explain these concepts, literally on the first page of the memo.
If your mind integrates the studies Damore cited as stating that women are 'genetically inferior', that's something you need to learn to decouple. We don't have to choose between anti-science denialism and fascistic supremacism, so please don't try to force everyone's opinions into one of those two categories.
> You are personally attacking James Damore, and then just spinning words around to make a point you agree with.
Specifically, this following statement is a gross misrepresentation of the argument he was making, which really was only clear with the bell curve diagrams that most news media companies purposefully omitted:
> he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does.
Furthermore, I disagree with the part about either argument being personal. We both attacked the argument, not the person. There was no ad hominem in either my original statement nor your retort.
Shortly before the memo, there were stories and comments in HN about problems inside Google.
I vaguely remember a story about someone in HR getting fired because they didn't pull a white male out of the running for a job. (The details are too fuzzy at this point.)
Most of the memo was citations of studies of sex differences. People can either agree with the studies or disagree with the research used (it's totally cool with me if you do disagree with the research), but the idea that someone should be punished for talking about research at a company that extols "data driven decision making" as one of it's principles baffles me.
The memo made some very poignant points, but then the author expressed some strange opinions that I would never attempt to defend.
(Even worse, there was no reason to put some of these opinions in the memo.)
But what's more scary is Google's official response to the diversity memo. (For context, Google instituted certain hiring policies to increase diversity, which the "diversity memo" questioned.)
If you have the time, I suggest that you go reread the diversity memo and Google's response. Try to read them without taking sides. (It's hard.)
I read the memo before reading the media coverage. I was very surprised at how controversial it was. It's claims were pretty modest: it did not claim that women were any less capable than men at technology, and it repeatedly stated that innate differences likely do not account for all of the disparity between men and women in tech. All it argued was that just because a disparity exists we should not assume that it is evidence of discrimination, and that policies designed to engineer an outcome closer to 50/50 are likely creating discrimination rather than reducing it.
Note that they did not respond to "we should not assume that it is evidence of discrimination, and that policies designed to engineer an outcome closer to 50/50 are likely creating discrimination"
Right they cited "perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes". From which we can infer that Google believes that claiming that absent any discrimination or social pressure women would not work in tech at the same rates as men as "perpetuating gender stereotypes".
There are many reasons why women don't go into IT. And whilst you can look at at it holistically it is ultimately a personal decision.
And so if you take that personal decision and instead make it about some gender stereotype e.g. they aren't physically suited then it discourages women from entering IT.
> And so if you take that personal decision and instead make it about some gender stereotype e.g. they aren't physically suited then it discourages women from entering IT.
The memo did not claim this. The references to innate differences were only in reference to women's choices. At no point did the author claim they women "aren't physically suited" to IT.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
He's saying that women lack the ability to work in engineering and leadership because they are biologically different. His argument isn't limited to preference.
And this is ignoring the fact that his supporting data used the Big5 psych method, which has been debunked as not being scientific in identifying biological differences due to it's lexical nature.
Edit: Damore says that women more having extraversion and empathy, which "leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."
Saying they are having a harder time is saying they lack the ability.
Incorrect, you're overlooking the fact that he's referring to the distribution of ability. Nowhere does he say that women have less ability than men. For instance, for 2/3rds of girls reading is their best subject while for 2/3rds of boys math is their best subject. But, girls actually outscore boys in both reading and math. In fact, I believe he cited a study that referenced this sort of distribution in boys and girls.
The differences in the distribution suggest that girls are more likely to prefer reading (because they're usually better at it than math) while boys are more like to prefer math (because they're usually better at math than reading). He's talking about how the distribution of ability affects preference. It does not say that girls are worse than boys than math - it actually says the opposite, that girls are slightly better at both math and reading.
You claimed his argument was limited to preference, I am showing you that Damore was talking about preference and ability.
Splitting hairs over distribution is a red herring. Nobody here is assuming that Damore is referring to women the individual, but women as a whole.
> Nowhere does he say that women have less ability than men.
Damore does, in several places: [emphasis added]
>Women, on average, have more:
> - Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue.
> - Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
Note that the data he used here is cherry picked from a 90's study that used the Big5 method, which has since been debunked for use in biological differentiation.
> You claimed his argument was limited to preference, I'm merely showing that Damore was talking about preference and ability. Arguing distribution is a red herring. Nobody is assuming that Damore is referring to women the individual, but women as a whole.
If this was your takeaway, then I did not explain it well enough. Every individual has a distribution of ability. Some are better at math, some are better at sports, some are better at reading, etc. 2/3rds of boys are better at math than they are at reading. 2/3rds of girls are better at reading than they are at math. However, girls are actually better than boys at both reading and math - it's just that they score better at an even bigger margin at reading.
Is it inconceivable to think that the fact that girls are better at reading than math 2/3rds of the time makes girls more likely to prefer reading as compared to math (and vice versa for boys)? That's the point that Damore was making: the distribution in ability affects boys' and girls' preferences. It does not say that the average girl has less ability than the average boy.
If you want to split hairs, you could say that making this argument is sexist because it says girls score better than the boys on average in both reading and in math. But I get the sense that this isn't the angle you're making.
> Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue.
> - Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
Both of these points have to do with specific parts of the job (salary negotiation, asking for promotion, dealing with stress). These factors exist in all jobs, not just tech. Furthermore he later offers suggestions to try and mitigate this - he brought these things up because he wanted to offer positive changes.
The point remains: Damore did not write that women "aren't physically suited" (~~your words~~) to tech work.
>The point remains: Damore did not write that women "aren't physically suited" (your words) to tech work.
Where exactly did I say that??
> Both of these points have to do with specific parts of the job (salary negotiation, asking for promotion, dealing with stress) not that women are less suited for tech work.
Yes, yes, Damore is saying that women lack the ability to lead due to their extraversion, empathy, and neuroticism (anxiety) inhibiting them, because those are specific parts of the job that require abilities. Also, you're ignoring now that he said both tech and leadership, and you are now focusing on just "tech work". This is more splitting hairs on semantics to apologize for Damore.
>And he later offers suggestions to try and mitigate this.
Of course he does. He cherry picked data to wrongly fit his hypothesis from the start. Naturally he would conclude with his own ideas on how to mitigate a problem that he misused data to create.
The previous commenter wrote, "And so if you take that personal decision and instead make it about some gender stereotype e.g. they aren't physically suited then it discourages women from entering IT." I had mistaken this as your comment.
But you did make similar statement s: "He's saying that women lack the ability to work in engineering and leadership because they are biologically different." You did claim that damore wrote that women lack ability to work in engineering.
> Yes, yes, Damore is saying that women lack the ability to lead due to their extraversion, empathy, and neuroticism inhibiting them, because those are specific parts of the job that require abilities. This is more splitting hairs on semantics to apologize for Damore.
These are factors that affect all industries. Saying that this is evidence that Damore argued that women are worse at tech than men is not valid. And again, he brought this up in the context of suggesting improvements to try and make tech more welcoming to women.
> Of course he does. He cherry picked data to wrongly fit his hypothesis from the start. Naturally he would conclude with his own ideas on how to mitigate a problem that he misused data to create.
Let me get this straight: somebody does their best to try and investigate why women have a hard time in a certain field, and proposes ways to make this better. And this is a bad thing?
Even more ironic is that Google and other companies actually have used this research to establish practices that are better for women:
> Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf [Google's performance reviews] may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there’s more we can do, especially in our interviews.
So he's saying, "women are more cooperative. We should make policies that help cooperative people thrive." He's not saying that women are worse at tech because they're more cooperative or more neurotic. He's saying that Google should be more welcoming to people with these traits and help them reach their full potential.
Your comments have devolved into into a gish gallop. You claimed that his paper was based solely on preference, nothing else.
- Damore said that underrepresentation of women in tech and leadership is because of their differing preferences and abilities due to biological causation.
- He misrepresents Big5 data to list neuroticism, extraversion, and empathy as biological reasons why women "have a hard time" in leadership. These are not preferences.
- He claims that women have more anxiety, and as such Google should cater to women's anxiety more to help them with tech leadership. That is not "women prefer".
This isn't the memo of someone who says that women just prefer other jobs, this is someone who misused data to try to fit his hypothesis that women's biological differences mean they are not as capable in tech and leadership.
> Your comments have devolved into into a gish gallop. You claimed that his paper was based solely on preference, nothing else.
Wrong. Now you're not just putting words in Damore's mouth, you're putting words in mine as well.
What I wrote was, "The memo did not claim this. The references to innate differences were only in reference to women's choices. At no point did the author claim they women "aren't physically suited" to IT."
He offers a variety of explanation as to why women have different preferences such as attraction to things vs. people, and the distribution (but not aggregate difference) in ability. The point remains, though, his claims were limited to women's preferences. He used differences in the distribution of ability to explain why this difference in preference exist, but his claim is exclusively about women's preferences.
If if you do insist on focusing in on the mere use of the word "ability" absent the context, Damore did not write that women are any worse than men.
> - Damore said that underrepresentation of women in tech and leadership is because of their differing preferences and abilities due to biological causation.
> - He misrepresents Big5 data to list neuroticism, extraversion, and empathy as biological reasons why women "have a hard time" in leadership - i.e. lack some of the ability requisite for the job.
But crucially, he does not say that this make them worse at tech. Quite the opposite, he says that Google should better recognize extroversion expressed as cooperation in performance reviews. This only hampers them insofar as Google is not creating a good environment, and he's asking google to change that environment.
> - He claims that women have more anxiety, and as such Google should cater to women's anxiety more to help them with tech leadership.
Aagain this is not saying that women are worse at tech. Anxiety can be detrimental if the company does not accommodate it, but it is not a barrier to success if tech if the company does. And he is asking Google to be accommodating.
> This isn't the memo of someone who says that women just prefer other jobs, this is someone who misused data to try to fit his hypothesis that women's biological differences mean they are not as capable in tech and leadership.
False. At no point did Damore write that "women's biological differences mean they are not as capable in tech", and it only hampers them in leadership insofar as Google does not appropriately recognize the way women display extroversion (and he subsequently offers suggestions to address this). You're trying to portray calls for Google to make its environment more friendly to women as saying that women are biologically worse at tech. This is absurd. It also makes people adverse to offering any suggestions to improve the experience of women in tech. Have an idea that you think will make things better for women in tech? Well, you better keep it to yourself otherwise you'll be branded a sexist.
The incorrect statements you are making about the memo are characteristic of someone that read the misleading (and at times outright false) media coverage of the memo. People who read the memo without being primed to see it as sexist do not make these errors. Make no mistake. Damore was not fired for the words he actually wrote. Remember his memo was circulated for about a month without causing a storm. It was only after the media's misrepresentation coverage that he was fired.
> Note that the data he used here is cherry picked from a 90's study that used the Big5 method, which has since been debunked for use in biological differentiation.
Can you expand on this please, cite some references or something?
Wikipedia echoes exactly what you claim Damore wrote:
> For example, women consistently report higher Neuroticism, Agreeableness, warmth (an extraversion facet) and openness to feelings, and men often report higher assertiveness (a facet of extraversion) and openness to ideas
This peer-reviewed journal article elaborates on it more:
>In other words, the Big Five was developed based on research that used subjective selection of lexical descriptors, and self- and peer assessment of correspondence between (only these) descriptors and observable behavior. And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using language, no more. There were no considerations of findings in neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, experimental psychology, observations of behavior of people or animals in real situations – none of this was used at the research stage leading to the development of the Big Five. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.
Basically Damore cherry picked a Big5 study to support his hypothesis that it is biological cause, not bias, being the differentiating factor in gender underrepresentation, but the data doesn't scientifically support that.
That doesn't say that they aren't suited, only that it might explain the reason "we don't see equal representation".
There is no mention of "lacking" anything.
Someone can be fantastic at something in particular ways and still be unmotivated to pursue it for various reasons having absolutely nothing to do with particularly a "lack" of ability - and that premise aligns superbly with that sentence and the entire memo.
And thusly argues that we make appropriate changes because of seemingly biological differences - not inadequacies, to make that clear. I posit that that's a good thing.
Maybe you should be editting the wikipedia page on human sex differences? Because currently it strongly gives the impression that those differences are real and substantial
The Big5 study that Damore chose specifically has been debunked as being not scientific for claiming biological differentiation in human psychology, because of it's lexical nature.
This is a few steps above "boys and girls have different sex organs" on wikipedia.
It was not just a lit review. It drew conclusions from the synthesis of the citations and advocated for specific policy changes within Google. That was the part that pissed people off. Lots of people don't believe that the studies support the conclusions that he drew.
This was the reaction at my company (at the time of the memo) as well. The psychology claims were not as big a deal as much as the fact that the author alleged discriminatory hiring policies.
This led an exec to publicly state that our diversity policies "isn't code for favoring women over men" and that "being an equal opportunity employer is a commitment to following anti- discrimination laws and maintaining a workplace where everyone matters, everyone has a sense of belonging, and everyone is held to the same standards."
This was in stark contrast to our diversity hiring policies which include giving larger bonuses for hiring diverse (women and URM), giving diverse candidates two chances at passing the phone screen instead of one, setting "outcome-based goals" for hitting specific % of diverse tech employees, and even setting up a system of reservations for diverse tech workers (though this last one wasn't established until after the memo).
I guess the exec might not be lying if he is speaking from the point of view that anything less than 50/50 is discrimination and that balancing this out with discrimination in the other direction is how to create an equal hiring process.
People observe data points, draw conclusions and then expose them to other people. This is a good thing, this is how we start talking about things, by exposing our conclusions to the outside and refining them based on that. Not liking someone's conclusions doesn't give them the right to silence them.
>Damore cited two studies, three Wikipedia pages, and an article from Quillette, a contrarian online magazine that often covers free speech on campus and alleged links between genetics and IQ.
Quote from the recent WIRED article on Google culture, easily verifiable but I'm too lazy right now. But that's hardly 'most of the memo was citations of studies'.
An intentionally misleading quote. The memo has over 30 references, looks like about half of which are either to a research paper or reporting about some research.
Even the Wikipedia links are either to a general definition, or a well-referenced section that cites research papers, not to baseless claims.
A well run company includes people with diverse political views points. A workplace that's hostile to anyone who leans right or leans left ultimately hurts diversity.