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 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.

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.

> 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.

Why would this mean anyone already working in the field needs to bring any burden to the table in terms of defending themselves? The subject was centered around the probability that some recruiting assumptions may be wrong, and that there may be better approaches to recruiting or improving the situation in general.

Women that work in the field should definitely be respected as much as anyone else. They should be free of sexual harassment, and mistreatment. On the flip side, if only 20% of graduating classes in targeted STEM fields are women, and women represent a disproportionate amount of college students... then maybe the issue is broader than the affect of men on the field at that level.

I think part of it may be natural inclination... another is probably the role of movies and media. The latter likely a much bigger role on the impressions of the work and the likely types to fulfill those roles.

--- Edit:

Big example Daisy/Quake from Agents of Shield... started off as a badass hacker, best of the best... as the show moved on, the role was relegated to brawler, and the impact of intellect or technical ability was largely sidestepped, or made secondary and less.

Media portrayals of technical professionals all around are usually very unbalanced... and that doesn't even begin to go into the other fields that are disproportionately male or female, or the hindrance of men in higher education.

> Why would this mean anyone already working in the field needs to bring any burden to the table in terms of defending themselves? The subject was centered around the probability that some recruiting assumptions may be wrong, and that there may be better approaches to recruiting or improving the situation in general.

Assuming you're asking in good faith: because of the idea that diversity hiring effectively lowered the hiring bar.

Imagine for a second you have imposter syndrome. Now imagine that you've been told (not necessarily by Damore) that you're the (not quoting you here) "diversity hire". Imagine how much worse that imposter syndrome now is.

But it's a fact that many companies and colleges lower standards to increase diversity attendance. I think this is a good thing, but it's not a false thing.

We're talking about Google specifically and they have not lowered standards to increase diversity.

If the numbers are true and the gender distribution in STEM graduates is 80/20, and you are intent on increasing your number of female employees, you have two choices. You either lower the bar on the 20% or you raise the bar on the 80%. In the end, the net effect is the same. The employees from the 20% group had a granted advantage against the 80% group. The better solution is to change the 80/20 distribution of graduates. Personally, I'm unsure of the 'proper' way to accomplish that goal.

Note: I find it interesting/disturbing/sad/telling that I've been sitting here for a long time contemplating if I should even submit this message since I use my real name here. The fact that we, as a society, have come to a point where we are afraid to even have this discussion really makes me sad. I respect every one of my colleagues deeply, male and female alike. The idea that someone could twist my words and paint me as a misogynist is beyond troubling.

I think there's something wrong with this argument. Companies don't recruit randomly from a big sea of 80/20 applicants, they recruit from a chosen set of pools, where the average of every pool they could possibly recruit from is 80/20.

Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of women is greater than 20% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar. The bar is at the same height for men and women, just with a skewed population. You're artificially excluding pools of people who would make good candidates, but since both women and men can bypass your outreach efforts by going straight to you, you're not refusing to hire anyone who is both qualified and motivated enough to apply directly.

I think proponents of the google diversity programs are arguing that they do this. I'm not sure whether they do. I think the real situation might be a hodgepodge of systemic factors and biases in both directions that sum up to something unpredictable, plus a few largely ineffectual diversity programs, and a massive question mark around why there are so few female CS grads in the first place (biology! sexism! gender roles! c64 ad campaigns! inertia!). Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.

>>Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of women is greater than 20% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar.

"Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of white people is greater than 95% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar."

I don't think it would get much sympathy but it's an equivalent with race substituted for sex (both are protected and it's illegal to discriminate based on them).

>>Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.

If you own a pub and want only white waitresses so you only invite white women for interviews you can do that without lowering the bar as well. Still you are discriminating even if you put elaborate system out there which magically result in only (to make the point stronger, substitute with a ratio like 90-10 or 80-20 to make the situation equivalent) applications from white women at the end.

I'm not defending or attacking affirmative action itself, since the topic is so politically charged that arguing about it on the internet with strangers is futile.

My claim is a much narrower one, that you can hire a disproportionate amount of female developers without lowering the bar if you bias your incoming hires. It can be simultaneously true that Google's diversity policies are harmful to quality (because they restrict where Google hires from) while their female developers are as qualified as their male developers (because they came from the same place and meet the same standards).

Yes it might be although it's very unlikely to happen. I wrote about it in another comment but in short: once you start hiring more (proportionally) from a smaller pool then that pool become less qualified on average (because you fished out better candidates). Over time this can only result in you doing more and more to overlook candidates from the bigger pool if want to sustain your policy.

If more companies are doing that then it's impossible to sustain without lowering the bar. If only you are doing that there is no point because then others will hire more men (as there is more qualified men left proportionally as you took bigger % of qualified women).

I am saying that the policy of "we don't lower the bar, we just look more into avenues to hire more women specifically" is somewhere between pointless and dishonest (dishonest as in created to hide the discrimination based on sex).

EDIT: As to affirmative action: I agree it's not the place for debating ethics of it. I am saying that affirmative action = lowering the bar either directly or indirectly and there is no way around that fact (at least industry wise, you can maybe sustain it locally if you are ok with others skewing their ratio in the other direction).