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.

It's not the quality, it's the intent. He went for an adversarial debate, not a discussion.

The memo reads as him knowingly and intentionally starting a fight. My assumption, from reading the memo, was that he was expressing an opinion he knew to be controversial, knew would upset people, but wanted to make a point of proving he was right anyway in the face of those upset people. It reads a lot like the vaguely provocative way people write about such things on twitter/reddit/here.

In a work environment, that approach can and will get you fired. It should cause you career problems even if you do it for mundane things like type theory, or memory management, or distributed systems. Do it on something controversial and cause a huge problem for the company, and of course they are going to fire you. Especially since in this context adversarial = hostile work environment.

Why is a debate worse than a discussion? We strive for debate on all other topics? If you actually want to challenge assumptions you must debate and evaluate the merits of someone else's argument. A discussion would just be you think x and I think y. A debate puts warrants behind the claims in those beliefs.

Adversarial debate is worse than discussion for reasons that these interviewees said:

>The discussion around this has followed the trajectory of most of the polarizing mass discussion in the last few years; everyone comes out the other side with their opinions more calcified than ever, and more convinced than before of the intractability of the other side.

Damore wasn't walking into this ready to discuss and/or learn, he wanted to blast his opinion internally with no intention of attempting to change it.