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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

(blog.ycombinator.com)
1080 points cbcowans | 5 comments | 15 Aug 17 19:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.007s | source
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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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nicolashahn ◴[15 Aug 17 20:51 UTC] No.15022376[source]▶
I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so.

I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man?

Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

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camgunz ◴[15 Aug 17 21:16 UTC] No.15022684[source]▶
> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.

We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.

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nicolashahn ◴[15 Aug 17 22:32 UTC] No.15023345[source]▶
I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll disagree with you.

The workplace was the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in another part of the comment section for this very article.

Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective, introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire' among other things.

What it did not do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him.

Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo, and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally introduced it to, at least at that point in time.

Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial. It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.

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arihant ◴[16 Aug 17 04:09 UTC] No.15024878[source]▶
Women aren't interested in tech because they grow up with social blockers, such as his memo. That's the point everyone seems to miss. Imagine a girl interested in tech when only a handful of her peers understand her interest. Then, she reads such an article and bullshit social studies passed on as evidence and gets socialised that tech really isn't for women.

Until you remove social blockers that prevent women from entering tech, you cannot claim legitimacy of any social survey in regards to that. This letter belongs to a time when a generation of women are equally pushed to enter tech as men. Then we can debate whether it's their lack of interest of not.

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1. mdorazio ◴[16 Aug 17 06:05 UTC] No.15025272{3}[source]▶
Please read this [1] and tell me if you still hold the same opinion. There is absolutely some social impact that lowers the number of women entering tech as a career, and we should work to fix it. However, there's more to it than just that, including studies on young children and statistics showing that other previously male-dominated careers (like doctors and lawyers) don't suffer from the same gender gap as tech. That's the point Damore was trying to make that people don't want to hear - there might be more to the gender gap than just social blockers, and if so, we should be aware of that at the same time we're working to solve the existing issues around bias, harassment, etc. Saying "nope, it's all social blockers and bad workplaces, and any other reasons are sexist falsehoods" is putting on blinders.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

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2. camgunz ◴[16 Aug 17 07:05 UTC] No.15025497[source]▶
I agree with OP, I read that post, and I disagree with it.

Medicine and law are not like engineering. Engineering is particularly gendered; you can look at medicine and see "caregiving", or you can see law and see "people" and "social issues". It's not easy to look at engineering and see any stereotypically female attributes there.

Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially. The social blockers between girls and engineering are particularly acute compared to those between them and law or medicine. You can look at college degree numbers for example. Women now outnumber men when it comes to college enrollment and graduation, but women are far more likely to pursue "soft sciences" like psychology or sociology.

> That's the point Damore was trying to make that people don't want to hear - there might be more to the gender gap than just social blockers, and if so, we should be aware of that at the same time we're working to solve the existing issues around bias, harassment, etc.

In fairness, Damore was advocating for the ending of Google's pro-diversity policies in hiring and minority support for employees. It wasn't just a "truth telling", he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity. I'm not saying he didn't suggest alternatives, but those alternatives had no basis in research and felt pretty thin. Like "[a]llow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive"; honestly what does that even mean?

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3. kybernetikos ◴[16 Aug 17 07:17 UTC] No.15025543[source]▶
> Saying "nope, it's all social blockers and bad workplaces, and any other reasons are sexist falsehoods" is putting on blinders.

Is this a common belief? Nobody I've read has claimed this, just that the known social effects are so large as to legitimise efforts to improve the situation regardless of whether or not there is some minor biological factor at play here too.

That's what I found strange about the memo. It spends lots of time arguing for the existence of biological differences between men and women and then draws the conclusion that diversity programs should be stopped. The existence of biological differences is not surprising to me or probably to the people who came up with the diversity programs and nor is it likely relevant to whether the diversity programs are a good idea or not.

4. slavak ◴[16 Aug 17 09:13 UTC] No.15026033[source]▶
> Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially. The social blockers between girls and engineering are particularly acute compared to those between them and law or medicine. You can look at college degree numbers for example. Women now outnumber men when it comes to college enrollment and graduation, but women are far more likely to pursue "soft sciences" like psychology or sociology.

This point keeps getting brought up, but the actual statistics are quietly ignored.

Women make up over 40% of math and statistics graduates; A majority of accountants and biologists are women; Chemistry majors are evenly split between the genders.

If girls are socially discouraged from pursuing math and hard-sciences, why does this not actually manifest itself across fields requiring math and hard science? Does a math major require less mathematics than an engineering one? Is accounting not mostly about math and numbers any more? Are chemistry and biology no longer considered hard sciences?

I'm not saying the cause is necessarily not societal pressures, but this popular assertion being repeated ad-nausea seems to be, at best, incomplete. Women that have been told their entire lives that math is for boys seem to have no problem pursuing a higher-education in math in droves; Why?

http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor... http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-accounting https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/28/359419934/who-s...

5. mdorazio ◴[18 Aug 17 03:34 UTC] No.15043353[source]▶
We must have taken away different conclusions and data from that post. It goes to great length to refute exactly the point you just made. As slavak also mentioned in his reply to you, engineering is not unique among professions in requiring math and hard science, but it is unique in its gender imbalance. Math and science teachers - people who literally use math and science every day - are 44% female nationally, and over 60% female in Texas, a socially conservative state [1]. Women represent a solid 50% of accountants, and I'm having a hard time fitting "caregiving", "people", or "social issues" to that profession. How about lab technicians, who sit in a lab all day doing science? 53% women [2].

> Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and hard sciences through pre-college education, explicitly, culturally, and socially.

The data simply does not support this statement. Take a look at [3]. Relevant quotes for you: "Girls are equitably represented in rigorous high school math courses.", "Girls outnumber boys in enrollment in AP science", "Girls are evenly represented in biology and outnumber boys in chemistry, but are underrepresented in physics." Even when it says "In AP mathematics (calculus and statistics), however, boys have consistently outnumbered girls by up to 10,000 students." this is only about a 5% difference.

> he wantetd Google to dismantle programs that had a dramatic, positive effect on diversity

What dramatic, positive effect are referring to? Google's self-reported numbers on the impact of its programs are laughable. We're talking single percentage point increases at best in percentage of women and minorities in tech positions and leadership roles [4]. Damore wanted Google to take a long, hard look at its diversity programs and have an open discussion about whether they are actually 1) the right tool for the job, 2) accomplishing what they are trying to do, and 3) making progress without alienating existing and new hires.

> honestly what does that even mean?

I thought it was fairly clear, actually. He pairs statements like that with suggestions to encourage more collaborative workplace practices, like pair programming. The idea is that Google and other tech companies should encourage and reward individuals who cooperate with each other on teams, help train and mentor each other, and actively try not to alienate anyone for arbitrary reasons. The negative alternatives are to have a workplace with a bunch of lone wolf technical workers who don't help each other, or to have a workplace composed of cliquey groups that ostracize individuals who don't fit norms (ex. "brogrammer" culture fit).

You seem to be creating your own narrative here, which I interpret to be, "women are socially discouraged from pursuing careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and that's why we don't see them entering tech." But the equally plausible alternative interpretation is, "women don't want to pursue careers that don't involve at least some stereotypical female qualities, and particularly don't want to pursue engineering, thus expecting there to be gender balance is unrealistic."

[1] tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2147484887

[2] http://www.myplan.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laborator...

[3] https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equit...

[4] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/06/29/google-d...