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...

Do you understand what's happening here? Whether or not google "lowered the bar" (i.e. had distinct hiring criteria for men or women) is a fact and only a fact. It may be a true fact, or it may be a false fact. But it is not an opinion.

But somehow it gets turned into "This means he thinks women are worse, therefore he's insulting women, therefore it's a hostile workplace, therefore he got fired." That reasoning is a major leap, and it's not Damore's leap.

Taking a fact and turning it into a hostile-workplace-opinion is the real problem.

You are completely incorrect. Whether or not Google did in reality lower the bar to hire more women is a matter of fact. That Damore felt that in order to meet the goal of hiring more women Google had to lower the bar is his _opinion_, and it is a telling opinion about how he thinks about the capabilities of women.

"You had to buy inferior wood to get enough to build this house. I don't think there's enough good wood to build the house, therefore in order to get enough you had to buy inferior wood."

The fact of the quality of the wood is separate from the opinion of the availability of quality wood.

Except no, he did not say google "had to lower the bar." If you read the memo, he says :

"Google has created several discriminatory practices: ... Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" [Mind you _lower the bar_ is a hyperlink, to a gdoc I don't have access to, so he's citing another document as evidence of this practice].

So he is in fact arguing a factual claim, that google has applied inconsistant standards in practice, as I suggested in my prior post.

You say he didn't say that Google had to lower the bar, then you quote where he says explicitly that? "Google does X. X lowers the bar."

>So he is in fact arguing a factual claim, that google has applied inconsistant standards in practice, as I suggested in my prior post.

Yes. Re-read my comment. Whether or not they apply inconsistent hiring practices is a factual claim. The idea that the only way to achieve the goal of hiring more women is to apply inconsistent hiring practices is his opinion.