Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

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.

I'd actually say just the opposite - the memo seemed to be written as well and in as conciliatory manner as it could be written and the memo made good (or at least plausible) point and bad points. But the bad points were so bad that it was appropriate and necessary to fire Damore.

Essentially, as analogy, there's no way for a person to say "Black people are inferior and shouldn't be hired", as a message broadcast through their entire workplace, and not have that person be creating a hostile work environment for African Americans. If that person says "I don't mean in general, I mean inferior just for this occupation, I don't mean inferior, just 'differently talented, they've got great rhythm'", it doesn't matter, if that person says "here's a study which says this, we should consider this in an open minded fashion" it doesn't matter. The message is unacceptable. That person is done, that person should be done.

Damore never said that women were worse engineers or that biology makes them worse engineers. There was no implied inferiority.

It is largely the PC crowd who read implied-inferiority into any study of biological differences between male and female.

If you look carefully at some of the comments from female Googlers after the memo was leaked, they talk about fears of being perceived as less capable based on their biology.

See the memo itself isn't only dangerous, it is what it could lead to.

But that isn't at all what the memo said.

I think this has been talked about multiple times over - Damore did not have a line that states that women and/or minorities are bad engineers.

He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities.

I think it's awfully charitable not to infer that he considers the women/minorities at Google (on average) to be inferior engineers.

Still, it's true that he never said that...

>He does, however, clearly state that Google's hiring standards had 'lowered the bar' for women and minorities. I think it's awfully charitable not to infer that he considers the women/minorities at Google (on average) to be inferior engineers.

Yes, but that's simply how statistics work. If you require one group of people to score 90 on some test in order to be hired, and another group to score 80, then among successful applicants the second group will have lower average scores than the first. There's no getting around that.

The argument should be over whether or not Google's hiring practices lower the bar for particular groups of people. If they do, then the above conclusion about the average talent of various groups is inescapable.

Indeed, however Google have said that their hiring practices for minority groups involve looking harder in those groups for candidates, not hiring candidates who don't meet the usual standards.