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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

(blog.ycombinator.com)
1080 points cbcowans | 20 comments | 15 Aug 17 19:19 UTC | HN request time: 1.603s | source | bottom
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hedgew ◴[15 Aug 17 19:57 UTC] No.15021772[source]▶
Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.

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

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ryanbrunner ◴[15 Aug 17 20:06 UTC] No.15021858[source]▶
I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong".

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

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nicolashahn ◴[15 Aug 17 20:25 UTC] No.15022073[source]▶
Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been written from the opposite side that have not been criticized in the same way.

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

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Blackthorn ◴[15 Aug 17 20:32 UTC] No.15022166[source]▶
> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).

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

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1. canoebuilder ◴[15 Aug 17 21:03 UTC] No.15022548[source]▶
to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous.

Let's just agree on two things then.

_Every woman at google has every right to be there.

&

_The number of women at google relative to the number of men is not the result of mostly imperceptible, malicious actions by men, but rather due the fact that the personal interests between the sexes varies substantially on average, and this results in skewed sex ratios throughout the entire workforce that match nearly perfectly with what scientific evidence shows us.

Women are more interested in working with people and nurturing professions and men are more interested in working with things and abstract, theoretical, mechanical and spatial professions.

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

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2. Blackthorn ◴[15 Aug 17 21:05 UTC] No.15022571[source]▶
Can agree on number one. Can't agree on number two. Here's why: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
3. l_t ◴[15 Aug 17 21:25 UTC] No.15022767[source]▶
Can't agree on number 2, because it's a false dichotomy. The gender imbalance cannot be simplified to being because of any one specific cause (like a difference in personal interests). There is a whole cluster of causes, including:

1. Malicious actions by men. This undoubtedly happens, let's not pretend otherwise. However, it might not be very common.

2. Non-malicious but annoying behavior from men directed towards women. This could include unwanted flirtation, accidental condescension, inappropriate jokes, etc.

3. A male-oriented culture. Even if the guys don't act in an annoying way, being in a significant minority is usually less appealing than being in a situation where you have a more even gender split.

4. Boys and girls are nurtured in different ways, which can drive them towards having different interests as adults.

5. Biological differences between men and women. Personally, I think this is one of the least important factors, and it's also the only one that we can't change.

Whether or not (5) is an issue, (1-4) can and should be addressed, so that women who are naturally inclined to CS are not nudged away from the industry by their life experiences.

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4. richmarr ◴[15 Aug 17 21:51 UTC] No.15023019[source]▶
0. Unconscious bias.
5. rayiner ◴[15 Aug 17 22:06 UTC] No.15023133[source]▶
> Women are more interested in working with people and nurturing professions and men are more interested in working with things and abstract, theoretical, mechanical and spatial professions.

Don't agree with number 2 at all.

Half of all new attorneys are women. There is nothing "nurturing" about the profession--it's adversarial and conflict-oriented by nature. And you spend most of your time dealing with abstractions, not people. More than half of accountants are women. That profession isn't any more people oriented than programming, and you work entirely with abstractions. 70% of tax preparers are women. 60% of insurance underwriters are women. Etc.

Conversely, professions we think of as "people-oriented and nurturing" are dominated by men in other countries. E.g. teachers in India are 80% men.

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6. awa ◴[15 Aug 17 22:31 UTC] No.15023341[source]▶
E.g. teachers in India are 80% men. Source? My personal anecdote would be close to 50-50% with variance at higher college level and school level.
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7. tzs ◴[15 Aug 17 22:44 UTC] No.15023424[source]▶
Doesn't that vary a lot depending on what kind of law you practice?

At least for some kinds, there is a lot of non-adversarial human interaction. For example, in patent litigation you are usually part of a team and spend a lot of time working closely with the other lawyers on your side, paralegals, outside experts, inventors, and other people involved with the patent on your side.

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8. 2muchcoffeeman ◴[15 Aug 17 22:48 UTC] No.15023444[source]▶
Law could be nurturing. There must be thousands of people that need legal help but can't afford it, or aren't in a position to seek it out even if they need it eg victim of abuse or assault.

In which case the attorney may double as a councillor of sorts.

This dual role is common in lots of jobs though. Maybe defending people is more appealing than maybe mentoring junior devs.

Maybe accounting is due to stability? In western countries you always need an accountant. You could probably make an argument about women not being risk takers.

Your last point is why statistics in developing countries are always brought up. At least one thing is clear, we can change the environment to get more women into STEM.

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9. nodamage ◴[15 Aug 17 23:26 UTC] No.15023680[source]▶
This. Attempting to reduce such a complex issue into a single root cause ("oh women simply aren't interested in this field") is deeply misguided, not to mention intellectually lazy.
10. selimthegrim ◴[16 Aug 17 00:10 UTC] No.15023931{3}[source]▶
Teachers in India are nurturing?
11. rayiner ◴[16 Aug 17 00:12 UTC] No.15023949{3}[source]▶
The 50% number applies to new large firm lawyers, not just "public interest" law. And your examples are unrealistic. Sexual assault victims don't get legal counsel. They might have (minimal) contact with the prosecutor, who is statistically likely to be a man. The accused rapist, meanwhile, might have (again, minimal) contact with a public defender, who is equally likely to be a man or woman. Both of those positions are primarily adversarial. Public defenders don't have time to nurture their clients--they try to get they are facts necessary to argue in court or negotiate a plea.
12. glenstein ◴[16 Aug 17 00:17 UTC] No.15023967[source]▶
This is a great point, and it highlights something about these types of conversations that is so strange to me. So many parts of the gender/workplace conversation are quite sophisticated. But when it comes to explaining why certain industries ended up with gender imbalances, people are content to assume a monocausal theory of career "preference" on the part of women. As if that "preference" isn't shaped by problematic environmental pressures.

This is so wrong and so frequently asserted that I think a better approach to any gender/workplace convo would be to start here, recognizing the falsity of the monocausal career preference hypothesis and work backward from that toward the rest of the conversation.

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13. e9 ◴[16 Aug 17 01:16 UTC] No.15024232[source]▶
1. this happens but I agree not very common

2. totally true and I'll go on the limb to say that part of it probably because of men biological differences which force men to be eager to reproduce at all times

3. yes, but you already addressed malicious and non-malicious annoyances so this has to be "annoyances" where men treat women as other men. If men treating women as other men is a problem then this is proof that we are not the same and need different approach. (I am open to be completely wrong about it, please educate me if you think this is wrong or I misunderstood something)

4. Agree

5. This could be related to #2 and #3

14. rayiner ◴[16 Aug 17 02:25 UTC] No.15024507{3}[source]▶
Litigation is explicitly adversarial, and that includes many kinds of law that might seem "softer" at first blush. When you do housing law, you might spend a little time talking to an evicted old lady, but your real work is suing the landlord. Transactional is less overtly adversarial, but while the business guys are thinking about team synergies the lawyers are focusing on how the parties could try to screw each other if expectations don't pan out.

Lawyers work in teams, but programmers work in teams too. Having done both there is a lot more interactivity in programming teams (weekly status meetings, pair programming, dropping in on a neighbor to discuss APIs). (Legal teams are much smaller and cases are much less interconnected than large codebases).

15. canoebuilder ◴[16 Aug 17 04:51 UTC] No.15025010{3}[source]▶
Go through this list[0], a widely divergent sex ratio for a given job is the rule, rather than the exception.

Which of these divergent sex ratios are caused by "problematic environmental pressures," and which aren't?

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

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16. bayonetz ◴[16 Aug 17 06:35 UTC] No.15025378{4}[source]▶
Super interesting. I'd love to see people in this thread comment on this. It is a little odd how "diversity in tech" is so over represented in the public debate when there are clearly many other jobs that are even more heavily skewed and in both directions, i.e., plenty of jobs with >80% men AND plenty of jobs with >80% women.
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17. yorwba ◴[16 Aug 17 07:48 UTC] No.15025681{5}[source]▶
I don't think "diversity in tech" is actually overrepresented in the public, although the current affair has temporarily made it more prominent. But if you are in tech, you are more likely to hear about debates that involve tech. Diversity in tech, JavaScript fatigue, the Rust Evangelism Strike Force, whatever. Just because it's popular on HN doesn't mean it's popular everywhere.
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18. oh_sigh ◴[16 Aug 17 08:00 UTC] No.15025727[source]▶
Do men and women go equally into all fields which an attorney can practice in? As in, do corporate attorneys have the same gender ratio as family law attorneys? Do environmental attorneys have the same gender ratio as IP attorneys?
19. peoplewindow ◴[16 Aug 17 09:53 UTC] No.15026219{6}[source]▶
I was about to write a reply saying whilst that might be true I'd never heard of big well funded initiatives to get women into firefighting, but then I decided to double check on Google and found this:

http://nypost.com/2015/05/05/fdnys-unfit-the-perils-of-pushi...

If you’re ever trapped in a burning building, just pray the firefighter climbing up to rescue you isn’t Rebecca Wax. Or someone like her, who’s been given an EZ-Pass through firefighting training for the sake of gender equity.

This week Wax, who repeatedly flunked the rigorous physical test required by the New York City Fire Department, will graduate anyway, The Post reported.

All over the nation, fire departments are easing physical standards, in response to litigation to increase the number of women firefighters.

Disturbing.

20. glenstein ◴[16 Aug 17 10:49 UTC] No.15026453{4}[source]▶
I'm having trouble following the logic here. There are different gender ratios in various career fields, therefore (!?) attribute all imbalances in all cases exclusively to womens preferences and ignore any other casual inputs.

It would make more sense to say that different careers are affected by different dynamics that need to be analyzed on their own terms, with the environmental constraints that affect "preferences" being different in each case.