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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

(blog.ycombinator.com)
1080 points cbcowans | 1 comments | 15 Aug 17 19:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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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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rayiner ◴[15 Aug 17 22:06 UTC] No.15023133{3}[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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1. oh_sigh ◴[16 Aug 17 08:00 UTC] No.15025727{4}[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?