Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth.
Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech.
I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It's not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are terrible at their job stand out. People notice it, but few say it.
Our company recently hired a black woman as a "Software Engineer" who can't write a SQL statement. She has a "taken some tutorials" level of programming skill as far as I have noticed and produces things very, very slow. People notice this, and it makes them angry. I'm sure the other engineers talk about this even more when I'm not in the room. Our boss is proud of how much he is "making the team diverse" yet it's only going to cause problems for the team.
I like to think I was hired based on my skillset, not to improve the numbers. I've worked hard to get here. People likely forget or don't care how "diverse" I am when I am working because I produce. And I fully support bringing in diverse candidates, it's essential to get those viewpoints, so long as they are a qualified candidate to start with.
I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women. Almost all of the women from my social circle are smart, pragmatic, driven and successful yet have zero interest in a technical career. They excel in their given industries but ours they want no part of. I don't believe intelligence is more prevalent in either gender, but I do believe there are some traits that shape who we are.
That's something that's rarely addressed, for fear of being ostracized.
As far as his "conservative white male" discrimination claims, I've seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it's nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry.
I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth.
Many of the media interpretations of what James Damore wrote were very biased, and effectively amounted to hit pieces. His use of terms like "Trait Neuroticism" were direct uses of psychological terms which just sound bad as everyday English. Evolutionary Biology also tends to have a "dismal" feeling to it, like Economics can.
One can't take fields like Evolutionary Biology and Economics as morally prescriptive. In that direction lies madness, clearly. However, to then take a knee-jerk ideological stance towards science and declare that everyone must be equal inside is just the West's version of Lysenkoism.
Most of the pieces about the memo didn't take time to highlight that "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" refer to Big-5 personality traits, not the everyday understanding of the words.
Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between descriptive and normative statements.
Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between statements about distribution of something within a population, and statements about all members of that population.
Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation.
Basically its lexical nature introduces perceptual bias that skews any factor analysis for biological structures - i.e. behavior between genders, for example. The way Damore uses it to support his hypothesis wasn't correct.
>And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using language, no more. There were no considerations of findings in neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, experimental psychology, observations of behavior of people or animals in real situations – none of this was used at the research stage leading to the development of the Big Five. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.
Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation.
Thanks for that. I find that reaction much more informative than the name-calling sent at James Damore.
In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.
Well, one should expect that something based on self-report surveys to be about that disconnected from underlying biology. "...lexical perception reflects some elements of it" -- where {it} == {underlying biology}
As per usual, the reality of what goes on inside us is probably more complicated than our mental model of it.
Sure, which may be fine for the burden of proof for a personal opinion.
Incorrectly using evidence to support your opinion as you broadcast it at work, and not listening, discussing, or considering critical feedback (like this) is a different matter. Especially when it means incorrectly classifying your co-workers and trying to change how your work fights social biases.
Incorrectly using evidence to support your opinion as you broadcast it at work
Sorry, but while your observation is interesting, there is nothing incorrect about citing such evidence.
Especially when it means incorrectly classifying your co-workers and trying to change how your work fights social biases.
Exactly how did James Damore go about classifying specific co-workers? [Citation Needed] Seriously, cite James Damore and show how he "classified" anyone in particular.
Sure - The example in context to this thread is right here in Damore's memo:
> Women, on average, have more:
> - Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas...
> - Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness...
> - Neuroticism...
Damore supports this with a link [1] to a Wikipedia article, which immediately says:
> On the scales measured by the Big Five personality traits women consistently report higher Neuroticism, agreeableness, warmth (an extraversion facet)...
Damore incorrectly uses this information to make the broad statement that "Women have..." instead of "Women self-report...". This is incorrectly classifying your women coworkers as being, among other things, more neurotic than their male counterparts.
You may think, "So what?", but this is being used in an argument about how a company fights social biases, and this is incredibly relevant because lexical self-reporting is open to the same biases that are being fought. Damore, intentionally or not, glosses over this, but more importantly was not receptive to this type of feedback, hence the broadcasting.
This is incorrectly classifying your women coworkers as being, among other things, more neurotic than their male counterparts.
Just because there is correlational evidence for the general population, it doesn't automatically follow that any given explictly selected population (such as Google's employee population) follows the stated correlation. Does he say so explicitly, and can you honestly rule out a speculative reading of his memo? I asked you for James Damore citing any particular coworker as having any particular quality. Still, the best you can do is to nitpick words and impute motives.
Also, what's particularly wrong with sensitive, agreeable, and warm people? I'm quite sensitive, though I'm only agreeable and warm in certain contexts. I could see how all of those traits could be of great benefit to developing many of Google's apps. Your implication that those traits are somehow bad also smacks of bias.
Given all the above, it sure seems like I could purport to read between the lines and say that you have some kind of vested interest in a particular reading of his memo, but my doing so would be falling into the very kind of irrational projection I'm self-referentially citing. So am I wrong in making this kind of projection? If I'm wrong for doing that, then it would seem you're wrong for your projections as well. If you say I'm correct about the projection, well, I'll take that just as well.
Do you have evidence to the contrary? Because it seems the part you are projecting is the nitpicking, because it is nitpicking to question if Damore thought this information was relevant to his 23,000 women coworkers in his memo criticizing the hiring policies at Google. If he didn't think it was relevant to the women at work, then why would he even include it in his argument about the hiring policy of his coworkers?
You asked for a citation from Damore's memo, and I provided it. Anything you personally feel or think about yourself is anecdotal evidence and not really relevant. If anything, how you personally feel about this new information (that you requested) can be analyzed for confirmation bias.
> relevant to his 23,000 women coworkers in his memo criticizing the hiring policies at Google. If he didn't think it was relevant to the women at work
Considering the question is about (lack of) representation, it is very much about the women who are not coworkers.
I think you may have it backwards. I'm not sure if you read his memo, but it was actually Damore who was inviting discussion and listening to feedback. He was not met with anything resembling constructive discussion, but instead was fired and publicly shamed, in most cases based on fabrications of statements that he did not make, and that did not reflect his intent. Even this techcrunch article is full of them unfortunately.
Until the people who dislike what he had to say are willing to have an honest conversation about things he actually did say, progress here is impossible, and further backlash and resentment against minorities is inevitable.
As someone on HN once said, we won't discuss the core of the problem not because what he said is untrue, but because the outcome of discussion may hurt peoples' feelings, and this is not the right thing to do...
I see their point, but there is a way of discussing it in a way that would minimize this risk. On the other hand, if you have some assumptions and consider their negation offensive, it's very difficult to have any form of conversation.
Google's primary business model, is literally to build the worlds best, most gigantic person-classification engine, and classify people with it. To sell shit.
1. Whether or not the Big Five are appropriate for the analysis or not, or whether they're ultimate truth or not, doesn't really matter for the point I and GP were making: Damon's terminology is jargon from differential psychology and easily misunderstood. ("Women score higher on neuroticism on average" does not mean "Women are too neurotic to work as engineers in big companies", or whatever.)
2. I think it takes more than one article (which has been cited once, by the author themselves) to unseat the Big Five.
3. As an aside, note that the article finds significant sex differences (p=0.00) in 10 out of 12 items on its proposed scale, STQ-150, if I'm understanding it correctly.
1. And my point is that even with it's correctly understood, it is still incorrect. I agree that the entire document was overly vague and open to interpreters inserting their own ideas, usually tied to their own political identity.
2. Appealing to number of citations is an appeal to popularity (fallacy) because it avoids criticizing the content. It's also not "unseating" the big five, just demonstrating how the big five is incorrectly used as biological factor analysis. There are other applications is psychoanalysis the big five can be use for.
3. If you read the paper, you'd see that Table 3 is used in conjunction with other data to prove their hypothesis on projection-through-capacity bias.
So your point is that, even though the reporters neglected to explain (or understand) the term neurotic, they were justified because the ultimately correct explanation is that it's meaningless in context?
In that case, the only proper response is to report that the word neurotic is not scientific.
No, my point is that worrying about the semantics of the word neurotic is a pointless exercise because even when correctly understood in the case of the big five, it's still incorrectly used scientifically by Damore.
But it's disingenuous to the point of the memo, to the point that it's _deliberately_ misleading to the general public... Leading to the moral outrage.
How was it deliberately misused for moral outrage? I thought the context here is that people flat out misunderstood it, not deliberately misused it. In either case, whether by Damore or the public, deliberate or not, it was definitely being misused. Splitting hairs by whom is the pointless exercise.
I agree. It seemed to me that Damore's memo was nevertheless fallacious, though nevertheless totally unworthy of the criticism that he received. Unlike in fields we are used to, psychological results have remarkably little prescriptive power given the inherently complex and malleable nature of social structures, and it's still pretty much up in the air how much or little effect nature has on preferences and to what extent a social arrangement is able to affect/has affected/reinterpreted/transformed those preferences without effecting a change in overall happiness/satisfaction.
It also saddens me that a number of Damore's suggestions to make the workplace more "nurture-trait-friendly" got overshadowed by those dubious extrapolations. It seems interesting and fruitful to me to explore the work dynamics and psychology present in more "nurture" fields and see how well they translate to software development and collaboration.
There is a silver lining to all this for me: it shows that whereas women used to have little voice in the public sphere, "American women" as a class now have a sufficiently loud voice that even its less-well-thought-out ideologies have traction and influence in civil society (along with all that entails, including having possibly self-proclaimed representatives and "thought leaders").
There is a silver lining to all this for me: it shows that whereas women used to have little voice in the public sphere, "American women" as a class now have a sufficiently loud voice
There is nothing good about someone who has a "sufficiently loud voice" -- if that loudness comes not from principle and merit, but from emotional toxicity.
The way I see it is that the feminism movement of old basically won - women voices are being heard and treated as equally important in the society. But like many movements, instead of dissolving after successful accomplishment of its mission, it transformed into a form that tries to perpetuate its own survival and status of importance.
This is true. Asians face plenty of prejudicial discrimination as well. I would say that everyone faces some form of it. My mother always says, "Living well is the best revenge."
After awhile, onlookers catch onto the fact one is spending all of their time moving the goalposts.
You’re a hundred percent right. Living well is the best revenge.
Short people, ugly people, fat people, disabled people... The list of discriminated against populations is practically endless and you can’t let it tear you up or drive you crazy if you’re one of them.
"American women" as a class now have a sufficiently loud voice
Why is it important that they have a sufficiently loud voice "as a class?" This seems backwards to me. The whole point of liberation is liberation to be treated as an individual not as a member of a class based on something contextually irrelevant like your biological sex.
I agree that it is backwards, but it's heavily ingrained in US politics that decisions revolve around classes. Politicians make decisions thinking about which class they will benefit, which class (and their representatives) they will receive support from, etc.
Empowering the individual is a noble goal, but that is a separate battle with a different front.
I agree that it is backwards, but it's heavily ingrained in US politics that decisions revolve around classes
I think it's made to seem that way by media coverage and political propaganda(especially from the left) more than it actually is. The problem is that it's easy to analyze something by arbitrary groups but in doing so often if not usually miss things (indeed this was one of Damore's key themes in his original essay).
The rhetoric may be actualizing, but I still think it's more a case of bad analytical generalizations than actual decision-making. Although, it's getting worse, as the whole drama with Jordan Peterson last year over pronouns demonstrated. At the core of his concern seemed to be he growing number of increasingly narrow and increasingly arbitrary suspect class definitions (or whatever they call it in Canada).
The original concept of a suspect class in the US was codified to serve as a legal guidelines for determining whether discrimination had taken place. The idea was to balance the ideal of democratic freedom to enact laws with the political reality that some clearly identified recognized groups (mainly Black Americans) had not been allowed to participate in the democratic process that produced the laws under which they had to conform. Many of those laws were shown to be prima facie discriminatory and evidence suggested plenty more were intended to be discriminatory in practice. And by virtue of minority status, they'd be unable to effectively challenge those discriminatory laws through democratic means. Women classified as a quasi-suspect class by virtue of historical disenfranchisement, despite their not being a minority.
But, it has been at least century since women were granted the right to vote. "Women as a class" have been one of the strongest political factions in the United States for decades. Roe v. Wade was 1973, a decade before any Millenial was even born. Pandering to women is pervasive in US politics on both sides.
The narrative that women had no voice, political will, or influence until Last Thursday is persistent and massive historical revisionism.
Just because a media outlet might have been aggressively attacked his memo, doesn't mean his arguments are valid. He cherry picked various pieces and came to conclusions that weren't causal. At the end of the day, his perception of what is happening at Google is just that, perception.
My guess is that he will be settled with to avoid the annoyance or simply destroyed in court.
> Just because a media outlet might have been aggressively attacked his memo, doesn't mean his arguments are valid.
Many media outlets aggressively attacked his memo, but the argument isn't "his arguments are validated because outlets attacked his memo"; it's that the response to his memo was malicious and slanderous, and this is wrong even if his arguments are bad. Bad arguments should be met with good arguments, not hate and slander.
You claim that there is a pattern of bad diversity hires, but your anecdotes are just as easily explained by confirmation bias: You see an incompetent male engineer, and you write him off as an idiot and forget him. You see an incompetent woman, and she becomes evidence that there is a problem with diversity programs. You remember evidence that supports your narrative.
Obviously my statement is not evidence either. I only wanted to point it out because this is so often overlooked when it comes to these issues. This is an arena where our cognitive biases are especially pernicious, and any discussion needs to address them.
It depends on whether the incompetent male engineers are just as incompetent as the incompetent female engineers. For instance, she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries. Are the incompetent male developers at that same level of incompetence?
Of course taking this into account cannot completely eliminate selection bias, and the sample size either way is probably too small to be all that meaningful. It sounds like the attitude of her manager towards the incompetent developer is actually the most significant point here: this incompetent developer is being retained and in fact praised by her manager for diversity despite the obvious issues. Does the manager treat incompetent male developers the same way? The implication of the post is clearly "no", but again selection bias is possible.
In deep corporate America, there are plenty of people who have virtually no responsibilities beyond a few basic configuration tasks. They are still unable to perform many of these tasks without significant help from coworkers. And we cover for them.
Every incompetent coworker I can think of was a man. I do not think this is confirmation bias, I think it's basic statistics, because most of the engineers those employers hired were men.
I meant for my question to be directed specifically towards the person making the claim about her specific coworkers at a specific company. This company has hiring practices that are not necessarily reflected across all of corporate America, and the claims being made are about those specific hiring practices and the effects that they have.
From what little the OP has said about her company I am willing to take a wild guess that she does indeed work for a large coproration (lip service paid to diversity, incompetent people hired to demonstrate it)- where you can expect this sort of thing to be very common.
I don't know about corporate America in particular, but corporate anything is a big pile of useless dipped in incompetent, where all the work is done by contractors who are also useless and incompetent. Because there is noone in the damn org that knows how to hire a competent techie in the first place.
So for me the OP's experience is more simply explained by working for an organisation that doesn't know how to hire engineers, not anything to do with diversity drives.
In a way that was my point, I just wasn't really good at relaying it. Of course there are many incompetent male engineers but it's more noticeable when they are a "diversity hire".
I don't present my situation as anything more than anecdotal, it's just what I've noticed. And to answer your question no the manager does not treat male developers the same way, they're held to a higher standard. In fact the "middle-aged white male" has to be above average at this particular company to be kept on.
I've worked with plenty of tech and related people who didn't understand basic technologies we expect in a given field.
I tend to reserve judgement until their effort can be judged. If he or she is slow but learning and improving, I'd accept (and probably raise with a manager) that the hiring process is flawed and try to help him/her.
If its just utter idiocy, I'm less forgiving.
I literally had a business analyst come to me - the new guy at the time - on her last day after several years of working in the org and ask me what her email address is.
Or the BA who insisted she didnt need to write a clear and specific spec for a feature, because she could just open up dreamweaver and put some buttons on a page.
Those sorts of people I have zero fucking time for, and will drink merrily when they quit/are fired.
Well, she is learning it now and I wouldn't call her "useless". But her level of experience and knowledge is far below "software engineer" and if she were a guy she couldn't get away with it.
you'd be surprised. i worked with people who would write simple json structures by creating a class in java and then serializing it and printing it to the console to copy and paste. most of them were promoted out to management
Actually, there is a certain wisdom to promoting incompetent people in this manner. At least then you know that they're nowhere near anything they can use to do real lasting damage.
The best C++ programmer (someone who does real magic in the machine) I know has said that they can't think in SQL. Different people have different skills and mindsets.
>> It depends on whether the incompetent male engineers are just as incompetent as the incompetent female engineers. For instance, she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries. Are the incompetent male developers at that same level of incompetence?
Oh yes. Especially if you work in, say, a big financial corporation- the kind of large, monolithic organisation that isn't a technology company, per se, but uses technology (as only a large monolith would). In that kind of place, you can expect the majority of "technical" employees to be largely uninterested in, and therefore fairly clueless about, technology (i.e. they're just in it to jump over to tech management roles down the line). So, software engineers who can't write SQL queries are a thing. A common, inescepable fact of life, indeed.
I would not like to say whether I'm speaking of personal experience with such organisations. It wouldn't be proper.
This can definitely be the case. There are lots of sh--ty white male programmers working in the industry.
I have met plenty of white men who have masters level CS education, have worked for Google and other top name companies, and can't produce a line of useful working code to save their lives.
The reasons why corporations frequently hire people who don't actually produce anything are varied and complex, but it happens, a lot.
If someone is incompetent and also happens to be from a minority group then everyone starts complaining about how they are a "diversity hire" but with incompetent white males they just shrug and go "that's the way it is." In other words, it is so common with white males that no one even notices.
>If someone is incompetent and also happens to be from a minority group then everyone starts complaining about how they are a "diversity hire" but with incompetent white males they just shrug and go "that's the way it is." In other words, it is so common with white males that no one even notices.
You could be right this is definitely a possibility. I did not intend to suggest that all white male programmers are awesome, certainly not the case.
And I'd add that there's evidence (and plenty of anecdote) that the men who most object to diversity are not so good at what they do. Which makes sense; they are the ones who have the most to lose from an increased talent pool. [1]
Personally, I'd be very interested to see Damore's code. We already know that he lied about both a PhD and being a chess master. [2] I would not be shocked at all to find out that he's not good at programming.
"23. Damore was diligent and loyal, and received substantial praise for the quality of his work. Damore received the highest possible rating twice, including in his most recent performance review, and consistently received high performance ratings, placing him in the top few percentile of Google employees. Throughout the course of his employment with Google, Damore received approximately eight performance bonuses, the most recent of which was approximately 20% of his annual salary. Damore also received stock bonuses from the Google amounting to approximately $150,000 per year.
24. Damore was never disciplined or suspended during his entire tenure at Google.
25. Based on Damore’s excellent work, Damore was promoted to Senior Software Engineer in or around January 2017—just eight months before his unlawful termination by Google."
Sounds like he was pretty good, but I wonder about this part:
> Damore received the highest possible rating twice, including in his most recent performance review, and consistently received high performance
How are these ratings done, by the team/manager or externally? IME when it's done by the same team then reviews are more about politics than performance.
Yes, I'm sure Damore claims he was excellent. But claims of excellence do not correlate perfectly with actual excellence. And neither do promotion packets; I'm sure we've all worked with somebody who did better on paper than was justified.
So I'd still like to see his code. And talk with some of his coworkers.
You're just mining for something by now. It is clear that you implication that Damore was a sore loser that covered his lack of performance by blaming diversity has no connection to reality. Damore had performance completely satisfactory by Google's standards, and achieved significant praise from his peers, so whatever would be your evaluation of it, he was not in a loser position, had no reason to be sore for anything and had no reason to blame diversity for anything related to performance or its perception by others. Time to leave this horse, it's dead.
The guy appears to have lied about a PhD and being a chess master. So it's entirely reasonable for me to be skeptical of his claims in a lawsuit that he was an A+++ top performer. And even if those claims are correct, I still would like to look at his code and hear from his coworkers. He wouldn't be the first person to get promoted beyond his actual accomplishments.
Also, sweeping assertions like "had no reason" assume facts not in evidence. We mainly don't know what happened at Google. Or why he didn't complete his PhD. We have only heard his side of the story, and only part of that.
It's OK to be skeptical. But when evidence is presented that it's not the case, and you are doubling down by denying it, it's not being skeptical anymore. It's refusing to accept the facts since they don't fit your preconceptions.
> We mainly don't know what happened at Google.
We don't, beyond public evidence (including one in the lawsuit and outside). But that evidence we do have, and it does not align with your presumption that Damore was poor performer, unless you accept a completely invented premise that all his peers in Google somehow colluded to fake his reviews and performance evaluations, but he was still unhappy and decided to push the diversity angle to achieve... I don't know what, getting fired from a job where everybody, according to you, were going out of the way to make him happy? I don't think this is a workable hypothesis, and certainly not one that bears minimal skeptical scrutiny.
You can't be called "skeptical" if you only mistrust evidence which does not fit your preconception, but accept and even invent one that fits one. That's not skepticism, that's agenda.
I am not presuming he is a poor performer. I am saying that the quality of his performance is open to question, and I would like to evaluate it for myself. It could be good, and I would not be surprised, as most people hired at Google are pretty sharp. It could also be bad and I wouldn't be surprised, for the reasons mentioned.
> all his peers in Google somehow colluded to fake his reviews and performance evaluations.
Oh, do you have copies of those? I would like to see them, too thanks. Otherwise, you don't have much in the way of evidence that those exist. You have a proven liar about performance making claims about performance. He could be correct in this case, or he could be lying again.
> all his peers in Google somehow colluded to fake his reviews
Have you ever been part of a performance review process? Even the best-designed ones are imperfect and political. Sometimes not-very-good people get promoted. Sometimes very good people don't. I have heard a number of stories from Google pals of people energetically trying to manipulate the process.
When it's my job to read performance reviews and promotion packets, I take them with a grain of salt. I look at work output and actually talk with people. Which is all I'm saying I'd like to do here. Maybe Damore really is competent. Maybe he isn't. I'd like to see for myself.
No, he did not lie about this. You are lying about it. His linkedin listed him as having been part of a PhD program and people took it to mean he had a PhD. There is absolutely no evidence he ever intended to mislead anyone about this.
So, please stop spreading lies.
====
PS I know because I actually saw the linkedin profile before he edited it. It did not say he had a PhD. It clearly listed that he was in the program for 2 years, which any person reasonably familiar with PhD programs would immediately suspect meant that he had not finished. And indeed, I followed up by looking up what publications he had, and while his name was on a couple of papers he had clearly not published a dissertation. So, to anyone who wasn't deliberately looking to discredit him for malicious or self-interested reasons, as Business Insider's Natasha Tiku almost certainly was, would not have been fooled for a second by his profile nor would they have believed that Damore intended to fool them.
Note the business insider article you linked uses these weasel words:
James Damore, the fired Google engineer who wrote the now-infamous memo on diversity at the company, has removed mention of PhD studies in biology from his LinkedIn profile.
The removal comes after Wired writer Nitasha Tiku confirmed with Harvard that Damore has not completed his PhD.
He then goes on to call out the "Right-wing argument" appealing to his credibility because he had a PhD.
If you read carefully, you'll see that they frame as if it was this embarassing thing that they'd shamed him into doing, to encourage lazy, non-critical readers to reach the same conclusion that you did, while using the technically correct words to avoid defamation liability. But, careful analysis of the facts shows that I am correct. He did not lie about the PhD, others either lied on his behalf without his knowledge; or were confused by careless/overly-optimistic reading of the LinkedIn profile.
I saw the LinkedIn profile too; I looked him up when the story first broke. I saw it and said, "Damn, a PhD in systems biology, he should know better than this." People who don't finish their PhDs either a) don't list the PhD, just leaving it as a Master's, or b) are explicit that they don't have the PhD. (E.g., "ABD in Systems Biology.)
So at the very best, his resume was misleading because he was incompetent at putting together a resume. That doesn't jibe with the theory that he's so very brilliant. The fact that he quickly edited it when called out confirms even he saw it as misleading; that he didn't comment or apologize suggests it was not a simple mistake.
Ah, and now that I go look for images, it did not list him as being part of a PhD *program". it just said "PhD, Systems Biology" under education:
2. You (I assume innocently) and others (some innocently, some maliciously) misconstrued this as a claim that he has a PhD degree
3. Despite Linkedin information being completely true and whole error being contained in your bad reading alone, you and others called Damore a liar.
4. Damore removed that true information to avoid further confusion
5. You construe it as a proof that Damore was a liar, since if he removed completely truthful information that some people misread and used it against him, he must have intended to mislead from the start, and that's why he specified his PhD student status exactly as it truly was.
6. This also proves Damore was incompetent, since he wrote his Linkedin page in a way that a hostile or inattentive reader was able to misunderstand his page where it suited his preexisting notions, which would never happen if Damore was any good at writing Linkedin pages, as it is known that well-written (or merely competently written) Linkedin page is impossible to misread or misinterpret, no matter how much you try.
7. This is further proven by the image, since Linkedin design and forms do not allow to distinguish incomplete PhD study in progress from a finished one and display merely a length of the study but not the completion status, clearly Damore intended to mislead by using the only options available in the Linkedin interface.
This sounds like extremely tortured logic aimed at arriving at predetermined conclusion that Damore is a bad person. Looks like you're continuing to mine for something that explains why Damore is a bad person (failing at the premise he's a bad programmer above), to avoid addressing what he said on merits - since if he's a bad person, he can't be right on merits, obviously, no bad person has ever said anything true.
Note, you don't have to address it if you don't want to, but if you do, personal attack is not the best way to go, even if a very common one.
My argument is that if in LinkedIn's education section you list a school and a degree -- which he did -- people take that to mean you have the degree. Ergo, he falsely claimed to have a degree he didn't.
Could that be an accident? Might it just be incompetence? Maybe. But given that he also falsely claimed on his resume to be a chess master, I think the simple explanation is that he lied about both.
That he then quickly removed things when called out with neither explanation nor apology fits in with the "lies to make himself look good" narrative. A person who had made an innocent error generally feels bad about the error and says so.
Your thing about LinkedIn form design seems to be pure fiction. I just checked: you can enter any text you like, including no text at all. People without a degree don't have to put a degree in. I spent an entire 3 minutes looking at examples, and people fill in all sorts of things, including "PhD Candidate" and "PhD Student (incomplete)" to make it clear they are not claiming the degree.
This is not a personal attack; this is me pointing out facts of his behavior and reasonable inferences.
A person who had made an innocent error generally feels bad about the error and says so.
That's what he did! That is, that's what he did when someone finally got around to asking him about it in an environment where he trusted that he'd be given time to say his side in an unedited manner, which does not include any of the hit pieces you have linked. I believe it's mentioned in his interview with Jordan Peterson, which is the first public interview he gave.
Again you are blaming him for your own error.
This is not a personal attack; this is me pointing out facts of his behavior and reasonable inferences.
First, it is absolutely a personal attack. You're attacking his character and coding ability, which are not relevant to the topic. Ok, technically, you're passively suggesting it via speculative commentary but it amounts to the same thing.
Second, your inferences aren't reasonable, and they're unreasonable in exactly the manner that one would predict based on consumption of inflammatory and deliberately misleading propaganda aimed primarily at smearing Damore. For example, you inferred that he "didn't say anything or apologize," apparently relying on entirely on hostile bloggers to convey that message to you on his behalf. Remember that until this blew up, he was a private individual. He has no platform of his own and no way to offer any response that your chosen sources did not provide to you. So it is completely and utterly unreasonable to hold him accountable in such a way.
Furthermore, the fixation with LinkedIn is unreasonable. LinkedIn profiles are notoriously unreliable and many are neglected and incomplete, since many members are not actively seeking employment (yet retain membership for the social networking). If you had looked at Damore's whole profile rather than just the image, it was clear that not much effort had been put into it. This is consistent with his story that he had not been actively seeking employment when Google offered him an interview based on his Chess playing.
Which brings us to the chess issue. And yes, it seems that Damore stated on his resume that he's a FIDE Master, a term of art that it seems clear that he misused. Specifically he wrote "FIDE Master in Chess (>99th Percentile)". Other claims about chess-playing on his resume seem to check out as far as I can tell[0][1]. So yes, it's an interesting question why does he say that on his resume. I have not found an explanation, but can certainly think of others not mentioned in that stackexchange link, such as he misunderstood proper use of the term. Obviously a mistake, one that shouldn't be made, but nothing like the dishonesty you're accusing him of, especially when you give him no opportunity to explain himself.
Meanwhile, in this obsession with minor errors in an inexperienced young person's first resume or linkedin profile(errors that are easily cleared-up in a phone interview if you actually care), you are apparently giving a pass to someone who anonymously leaked a co-workers' fair and well-reasoned internal posting to outrage media to encourage hit pieces and start a witch hunt. ... which ultimately resulted in the employer being hit with a ton of negative press and a high-profile lawsuit.
So, no, your inferences are not remotely reasonable or appropriate by my estimation.
I look forward to you pointing out his actual apology to me. I've read a fair bit about Damore and haven't seen it. Your notion that he didn't have a platform is just bizarre. Anybody who works at Google should know that it's not hard to publish things on the Internet. It takes all of 90 seconds to get a Twitter account, and not much longer to set up a blog. He could have also put a note on his LinkedIn profile.
I made no error in parsing his LinkedIn. He may have made an error in writing it, but the common interpretation for what he wrote is that he was claiming a PhD.
I'm glad you finally admit he did the same thing on his resume. Again, there could be an innocent explanation for it, but the reasonable inference is that he said what he meant. If he would like to correct the record on this topic, he's welcome to publish something explaining.
His character and coding ability are both relevant to the topics at hand, his advocacy and subsequent lawsuit lawsuit. The former speaks to his reliability; both speak to motivation. As does, now that you mention it, the fact that the interviews he gave were to right-wing antifeminists.
I also think it's hilarious that when talking about his apparent resume fraud, he's a delicate "inexperienced young person", but when coding and opining on diversity programs he's a brilliant genius who has never done a thing wrong. You're straining at gnats and swallowing camels here.
I just wanted to respond and say how interesting your final claim is, that his fair and reasonable internal posting was leaked to outrage media.
The irony is that in the lawsuit damore filed, he outright names a bunch of people who work at Google and have said various levels of innocent comments. He's leaked out internal information to outrage media in order to punish and start a witch hunt. I've already seen combinations of images containing information about said named employees float around the more witch hunt-y side of the internet.
You need proof to file a lawsuit. A lot of it, especially if you claim must prove a pattern of behavior that is pervasive. If he didn't specify it, you'd say "well, there are no evidence of any specific behavior, only nebulous allegations, and we all know Damore is a liar, so he probably invented all this to justify his poor performance and hate for women". People say it anyway, but now know it's not true, because there is evidence.
Also, there's a bit of difference between "Let's discuss whether diversity is done right in Google" and "I will keep hounding you until one of us fired. Fuck you" (real quote), "We are at a point where the dialogue we need to be having with these people is ‘if you keep talking about this shit, i will hurt you." (again real quote), "We should be willing to give a wink and a nod to other Silicon Valley employers over terminable offenses" (trying to make your opponents unemployable), “You’re being blacklisted by people at companies outside of Google,” and, of course, "How do you let people know you don’t take their ideas seriously? … No-platforming fascists does scale. So does punching one on camera." and "Get in touch with your friendly local antifa" - this one is especially juicy as a lot of people insanely called what Damore did "violence" but then turn around and literally endorse actual physical violence.
You manage to selectively quote the worst offenders in the filing while also ignoring the more benign comments (incl. one that called out Breitbart as being pro-Nazi, which I would hope you would agree that they are trash).
You also ignore the selective censorship of usernames going on, when he could've censored all the names to ignore igniting any potential witch hunts. Can you provide an explanation for this? He could've shown the pattern without putting other people at risk.
> My argument is that if in LinkedIn's education section you list a school and a degree -- which he did -- people take that to mean you have the degree. Ergo, he falsely claimed to have a degree he didn't
People that read that are wrong (at least sometimes), since Linkedin shows degrees-in-progress and completed degrees the same way. Not ideal interface, for sure, but that's what it is. People that do not know that make mistakes. It's their mistake.
> Could that be an accident? Might it just be incompetence? Maybe.
Surely, it may be incompetence - not understanding how Linkedin profile works. But it's not Damore's incompetence.
> That he then quickly removed things when called out with neither explanation nor apology
If people misunderstood what was on his Linkedin page, and undeservedly called him a liar and attacked him for that, and he removed the controversial item despite it being true - I think demanding apology from him for you misunderstanding him and falsely calling him a liar is taking the entitlement thing too far. If somebody owes an apology, it's people who called him a liar despite him publishing completely true information - but of course I do not hold by breath for that.
> fits in with the "lies to make himself look good" narrative.
Surely it fits your narrative. The problem is it is not true.
> A person who had made an innocent error generally feels bad about the error and says so.
Nobody owes you feeling bad for telling the truth and you misunderstanding him. It would be nice if people who did the misunderstanding felt bad and did not blame others for their mistake, but I recognize this is not how the Internet works. If you misunderstood something, it's other guy who should be feeling bad for not working harder to prevent any chance of you making a mistake. The other guy is always responsible, he's clearly either a liar or an idiot for letting you to misunderstand him.
> Your thing about LinkedIn form design seems to be pure fiction. I just checked: you can enter any text you like, including no text at all.
That misunderstanding thing happened to you again. I haven't said you cannot enter free text in Linkedin. I said the form does not have completion status for education. Yes, you can hack around that by adding various text to a degree program name or any other field. If Damore knew in advance there would be a mob of hostile attackers scrutinizing everything he ever did under a microscope to find even a tiniest flaw and blow it up out of proportion, he would probably do it too. But he just wrote true facts about his educational record, without thinking about being extra defensive and using tools given to him by Linkedin. Linkedin provides tools to set beginning and end time for educational record, and program name, but does not have a setting for "incomplete" or "in progress" status.
> This is not a personal attack; this is me pointing out facts of his behavior and reasonable inferences.
You "reasonable inferences" - which, as far as blaming others for your misunderstanding goes are not reasonable at all - are what is the personal attack, since they seek to impugn Damore's character without addressing his actual arguments. That's the definition of personal attack.
No, LinkedIn does not "shows degrees-in-progress and completed degrees the same way". LinkedIn lets you type what you want. And in the examples I've looked at, most people are very clear about how it turned out. If they are in a PhD program, they say so. If they left with a Master's, as Damore did, they either claim the Master's or are explicit that they didn't finish the PhD.
That is exactly what people do on paper resumes, which also let you type what you want. Why? Because falsely claiming (or even giving the impression of claiming) an academic degree is a giant no-no. People get fired for that.
You repeatedly ignore that he also falsely claimed to be a chess master. Is your theory there that it was also just an accident, forced by software? That the word processor somehow made him put "FIDE Master in Chess (>99th Percentile)" and that he as a computer expert just couldn't figure out any other way to use the tool?
I'm not the one fitting a narrative here, pal. I see your DARVO.
I call bullshit. Show me three examples of people "getting fired for giving the impression of claiming they had a PhD on LinkedIn" when there's a plausible case to be made that it was an innocent mistake with at least equal blame on the reader.
I just looked at my LinkedIn profile, which I haven't updated in at least 2 or 3 years, probably more. For reasons I don't know, it lists two entries for my education.
I do have two BA degrees that I earned concurrently. I really have no idea why it shows one entry with both degrees and one entry with a single degree. Did the LinkedIn database change at some point in the last 15 years? Did I really fill out the degree fields redundantly?
Damned if I know. Did I intend for it to be confusing? Certainly not, I'm sure I just filled out the forms with what I thought the program could work with and would make sense. Maybe I used some Wizard-style Q&A format that they don't use anymore. I really have no clue at all. But there it is, ready for someone to screencap and use to embarrass me if they wanted to, mocking my apparent inability to create a properly formatted LinkedIn profile.
I also note that there's nothing filled in for "description" or "activities" or anything like that. When I was young and did not have much of a resume of relevant accomplishments in my work history, I often included, on my paper resume, an honor society membership and an elected treasurer position I'd held for two semesters in a student group. These seem like details I would have added to LinkedIn, had the interface had a section for it(as it does now). But there isn't anything there. Did I remove them? Did I just never bother to add them? Or was the "activities, etc." field added to the schema after I created my profile? Certainly, the javascript-based interactive editor available now, was not the editor I used when I originally created my profile.
What I do know is that I've never directed anyone to my LinkedIn profile. I've never encouraged an employer to review it and the only interactions I've had come from former co-workers and recruiters. At this point I consider it more of a professional obligation than anything else, and log in every so often mostly to check messages and update endorsements.
I also know that I've seen work histories that look really weird, often when people work in multiple positions at the same company for years but that company also changes ownership multiple times. So you have a bizarrely fragmented presentation of a story I know to be fairly simple. Something like "was hired entry-level, switched departments, got promoted, and is now Senior Account Manager for Whatever domain" winds up looking like a career with 5 different positions on 4 different teams in 3 different companies. I consider that to be a decent indication that many people either don't spend a lot of time on their profiles, or else find the interface cumbersome enough that they're unwilling to deal with it long enough to convey a real resume-style work history.
There is no plausible claim that the reader is to blame here. If you show his entry, sans name, to 100 people asking them what degrees he claims, I'd be that at least 90 would say he had a PhD and a BS. Just as people looking at his current LinkedIn profile would understand he now claims an MS.
> No, LinkedIn does not "shows degrees-in-progress and completed degrees the same way".
It does.
> LinkedIn lets you type what you want.
It also does, it doesn't contradict the previous sentence. As I said, Linked in does not have data item for degree being complete or not (I am not sure how familiar you are with data modeling, but situation of having a model for some property and deriving it from ad-hoc texts in unrelated data items are very different). Some people do extra work by using degree name or other fields to work around this, some don't bother. Neither are liars.
> That is exactly what people do on paper resumes, which also let you type what you want.
No, that's a very different case. Paper resume is completely freeform. Linkedin has set of forms, some of which are free text, which you can use - if you want to - to cover for shortcomings in other places, like use degree or program name to express completion status. Some don't bother to because they think it's be clear from context. Sometimes it is not. It happens. It'd be good to recognize that.
> Because falsely claiming (or even giving the impression of claiming) an academic degree is a giant no-no. People get fired for that.
People get fired for all kinds of things, like expressing unpopular opinion, as it turns out. But there's world of difference between claiming the degree on resume (which didn't happen) and somebody misreading ambiguous output of a site.
> You repeatedly ignore that he also falsely claimed to be a chess master.
Why I should address this unrelated claim before we address the one at point? If you admit you were wrong on the Linkedin part - and recognize the fact both claims are personal attacks, since they have little to do with the claims Damore is making or you were making - we can consider the chess thing. Before that it's just a distraction - what about this? what about that? what about that third thing? forget that I didn't prove the first two, what about the fourth thing? Nope, won't work this way. You have to substantiate every one of your claims, not just bring a new one once previous one was questioned.
> I see your DARVO.
You are implying that you're somehow a victim here? Nice one. So far you are the one denying the facts (as in, ones about Damore's performance) and personally attacking him (as in, bringing irrelevant claims about his character to discussion about his factual claims), and of course claiming that somebody here is "offender", without any proof of offense made - unless you consider you misunderstanding Damore's Linkedin profile as "offense" to you and you being "victim"? That'd be rich.
The fact that you have a nice acronym in your pocket doesn't change any of that.
The claims of "falsely claimed a PhD on LinkedIn" and "falsely claimed to be a chess master on his resume" are not "unrelated". They are closely related examples of the same behavior. If he's a liar on his resume (and he is), it is much easier to believe that he's a liar on LinkedIn.
Spare me the condescension on data modeling. LinkedIn barely has a data model; it is a modestly structured version of a resume, with a bunch of free text fields. It is not a "very different case". People will often ask for "a resume or a LinkedIn link" in job applications because they serve the same purpose. LinkedIn will automatically render your LinkedIn profile in resume form. They are in practice the same.
And in either case, if you say "PhD, Systems Biology, Harvard" in the education section, reasonable people will believe you claim to have a PhD. That's how I read it. That's how many people read it. And if you did a user test, I'm sure that's how most people would read it. That anonymous Damore fanboys now claim they'd read it differently is not proof of anything about the wider world.
You can claim that it was a mistake on his part (and others have), or that his documented social ineptitude (as his fellow students talked about) mean that he just didn't understand the social implications of what he wrote. But then you would have to grapple with the other lie on his resume, which is why you are spinning so vigorously away from it.
I am not denying any "facts" about Damore's performance. I agree he worked at Google and didn't get fired for a while. I agree that he claims his performance was great. Those are facts. As I said at the beginning of this thread, I'd like to see that for myself. People who lie on resumes are not trustworthy sources for their job performance.
Yeah that's another point. It's a category error to apply interpersonal social expectations to a "man vs media+internet mob" scenario.
When you mislead an individual in real life and that person suffers actual consequences from that mistake, apology and forgiveness help repair the relationship.
A media hack writing about this has not suffered a real interpersonal offense over the issue, nor have any of the self-righteous audience passing judgment. As these people have not suffered any actual harm they are not owed an apology, nor would an apology given under such circumstances function as it is supposed to. There is no interpersonal relationship to repair in the first place.
He published his resume to the world on LinkedIn. I suppose he could try to track every reader down individually, but that seems like quite a challenge. Which is why published errors usually are followed by published corrections with explanation and/or apology. Even media hacks do it, so presumably Damore could manage.
He did not invite the entire world to look at that LinkedIn profile for any material reason. You're playing fast and loose with the term "published" and holding Damore to absurd standards that you obviously do not even adhere to yourself. If you held yourself to the same standard you held Damore, you would not have published the reckless, incredibly unprofessional, and possibly even defamatory comments about his coding ability. When called out on it you would have apologized and maybe done some soul-searching about why you felt so comfortable engaging in such careless slander of a young engineer you have never met and know almost nothing about.
What comments about his coding ability do you claim are slanderous? I said I wanted to see his code, and would not be shocked that it's not very good. I stand by that. Maybe it's good, maybe it isn't.
Anyhow, publishing something on the web invites anybody to look at it whenever they please. Putting a profile on a site specifically made for people to evaluate your professional standing is very much inviting people to look at it when they want to know who you are. That is literally the purpose of LinkedIn.
S: There are lots of sh--ty white male programmers working in the industry.
wpietri: Personally, I'd be very interested to see Damore's code. We already know that he lied about both a PhD and being a chess master. [2] I would not be shocked at all to find out that he's not good at programming.
You brought up Damore after the parent mentioned "shitty white male programmers". You speculated that you'd expect to discover that he was a bad programmer.
I'd like to see what wpietri's home life looks like. Based on his comments in this thread, I would not be surprised to discover that he's a terrible parent and has a bad relationship with his children.
Would you not find that a completely offensive and uncalled for personal attack? But I didn't lie! It wasn't an attack! It's not technically slander or libel or defamation, and technically is what matters. I just stated what I wanted to see and speculated based on some reasonable inferences. Oh, you don't think my inferences are reasonable? Prove it.
Your analogy is poorly done, I'm sorry to say. Feel free to try again.
But no, I wouldn't think it offensive if it were relevant to the topic at hand. Which it isn't in your imaginary version. And if you're upset about the "shitty white male programmers thing", take it up with the person who wrote it, but it wasn't me. I just said I wanted to see his code so I could see what kind of programmer he is.
Regardless, if that's the best you have, I think we can conclude I said nothing that is either slander or defamation. You accusing me of doing so, ironically, appears to be defamation. I look forward to the effusive apology you apparently believe due in such situations.
> But no, I wouldn't think it offensive if it were relevant to the topic at hand. Which it isn't in your imaginary version
None of your criticism of Damore was relevant. You just jumped on a bandwagon of hate. You picked up a pitchfork and joined a witch hunt. Gaston held up a picture of The Beast and told him he was coming in the night to get your children, and you joined the mindless mob.
I know that I will not be able to convince you now, because your mind is stubbornly closed. Your ego is too sensitive to admit that you have no valid justification for your denigration of Damore. All I hope is that someday, you'll be able to recognize a witch hunt for what it is and resist the urge be swept up in the pathetic, cowardly, petty hate-mongering.
>You claim that there is a pattern of bad diversity hires, but your anecdotes are just as easily explained by confirmation bias: You see an incompetent male engineer, and you write him off as an idiot and forget him. You see an incompetent woman, and she becomes evidence that there is a problem with diversity programs. You remember evidence that supports your narrative.
If you just base it on what you see, yes. But if you're partial to top brass interviews and conversations about getting this or that person to pad diversity, and of talk about overlooking skills since "we need more X", then no (of course that would still be partial knowledge of the overall state of the market).
Googles hiring process has had books written on it. People study for it. When you see someone there that is incompetent you are going to ask why they got through. Diversity hire is one obvious possibility.
Not really. I have a lot of faith in our engineering staff so I wonder how he got hired and how he avoids getting fired. The uncomfortable truth is that if he was an employee that "looked good" I would know the answer to those questions.
As I said before, my response is not data, I know that. But what you just wrote is exactly how confirmation bias works: If he fit your narrative, he would confirm your narrative. That is why these discussions need to be about data, and not "what everyone sees and no one talks about."
Your faith in your engineering staff is beside the point. Bias is human nature. Unless you're actively structuring your processes to exclude or minimise it then you're certainly suffering from it, the only question is how.
It's not specifically gender or racial bias either. We ran a study of 700 candidates for a role, running regular hiring against blind assessment and found that the major difference for that role in that organisation was socio-economic... they'd been excluding great candidates who went to less prestigious universities.
Diversity based on outward appearance is one of the most convoluted and ridiculous movements ever. We cannot spend decades trying to show that appearance is absolutely meaningless to talent, skills, and motivation, and then regress right back to it to show off "diversity".
Also nobody ever seems to ask: diversity of what exactly? What's the target? Life experience? There is no qualitative score for that, nor is any single person's life more or less interesting and influential than anyone else.
The only thing we can objectively and accurately measure is merit, motivation, and results, and we should use those metrics alone for hiring and advancement, in addition to fighting subjective bias (like removing names and photos from resumes) and making sure there's equivalent opportunity for anyone to try. After that, it would be best if just let people do what they want to do and move on.
I think many companies aren’t promoting “diversity” to support an ideology, they do it because it has specific PR and legal outcomes that help their image. Companies with high diversity metrics get praised in the press. Companies with low diversity metrics get negative attention. Diversity metrics are also a solid defense in real courts and the court of public opinion when race/gender/sexual harassment claims come up.
I don’t know to what extent this is true, or even how to measure it, but it would help explain why “diversity” initiatives seems so illogical some times, which has perplexed me too.
That seems to me like an idealogy of its own, but what exactly are diversity metrics measuring then? Appearance and other unchangeable physical traits? How unfortunate since they have nothing to do with interests, abilities, or character.
> Appearance and other unchangeable physical traits? How unfortunate since they have nothing to do with interests, abilities, or character.
As GP pointed out, companies aren't really after that.
When a company does not discriminate on race or gender, it generally stays silent about it, because "not actively discriminating" is just normal hiring on merit. When a company boasts about their diversity program, there's a strategy behind it. Maybe it's because the management believes increasing diversity beyond the industry distribution creates a better working environment (as you indirectly point out, the connection here is speculative). Or maybe they know it's good PR, and also a diverse workplace creates a nice CYA for the company in case of a disgruntled employee filing in a bullshit harassment lawsuit.
> but what exactly are diversity metrics measuring then?
Perhaps a willingness to have a dialogue
Much like how when debating the advocacy for a higher education degree I have heard people defend the effort as evidence to accept direction and a capacity to see something through to the end
I think there is merit in what of my own opinion I recognise in your commenting critically of diversity efforts
gp> Diversity based on outward appearance is one of the most convoluted and ridiculous movements ever.
Namely, that you think people should be met with openness and that contemporary diversity efforts seem to restrict that openness
But I feel that is using individual logic on systems
I think the proponents of diversity efforts would most likely support individual openness as well because they also recognise the systemic structures that currently restrict that openness
Like how a degree implies broad connotation about your ability to be a professional in a field when only representing a fraction of what real experience you will utilise in that profession
These diversity efforts seem to be implying generalised correlation to identify inequalities that are restricting universal openness and modifying their behaviour to remove the identifier
Or perhaps they are showing they are willing to use legal measures if exclusive minds refuse to recognise the data supporting "The only thing we can objectively and accurately measure"
I think you're missing the point of the "diversity movement". The point is that some classes, e.g. women and minorities face discrimination that's baked into the selection process, even when they eventual selectors are not showing a preference. You might try to hire based only on "merit, motivation, and results", but any measure of those things is going to be imperfect. If those measurements are themselves biased, then your selection will be biased, even if you didn't want it to be. The goal of diversity policies is, in part, to break through and counteract those biases.
Jon Stewart gave a post-retirement interview in which he talked about this issue in the comedy world. He initially wrote off criticism of the lack of diversity in the writer's room for The Daily Show, since he always told people that he was interested in hiring more women and minorities. He eventually realized that the channels along which people came to the job was already selecting for white males, and that more diverse hiring required rethinking those channels.
I didn't miss that point, it was clearly stated as fighting subjective bias and making sure there is equal opportunity. Measuring performance is pretty objective, but yes it should also constantly be improved.
That has nothing to do with diversity based on appearance nor will those policies help.
Which policies don't help? There have been a broad array of diversity policies attempted over the years. Do you have any evidence suggesting that they all fail?
Here's [1] an overview of a bunch of programs. It includes data on how they've affected employee composition and discusses why certain things fail or succeed. The first success it cites is voluntary diversity training. The sort Google has. The sort that James Damore attended and then got angry about.
Policies to force diversity based on outward appearance and other unchangeable and meaningless physical traits do not help.
As said before: remove any selection bias, then hire those who can do the work, want to do the work, and have shown to do the work well before. Then measure performance and promote using the same objective processes. That's it.
Perhaps we can boil down the issue as the difference between making hiring as fair as possible, or making hiring ensure a certain outcome. The first option is good since it produces fair results, but the latter is actually what's happening in most places.
They don't help what? You haven't really responded to my point. And how to you plan to "remove any selection bias"? These efforts are there to counteract the selection bias that already exists. You say we should make hiring as fair as possible, but that, right there, is a big part of the goal of diversity policies.
We're miscommunicating. We both agree that hiring practices should be fair and objective as possible... what I'm saying is that is the goal itself, and a racial/ethnic/skintone/appearance-based diverse group may or may not be the outcome, but the outcome will be fair if the process is.
Diversity-based policies currently are only focused on the outcome, but the outcome is not what should be designed for. The outcome should just be what it will naturally be (whether it's "diverse" or not) and we should only control for selection and opportunity. This is what diversity-based policies do not help since you cannot work backwards from the outcome, you must start with making a fair process and just let people do what they want do beyond that.
If it's not about physical traits (which is good) then why does it matter? You realize every company does in fact discriminate for talent? (which is also fine).
We all want smartest, more capable and most reliable people, not a mix of smart and average and dumb just to "represent". Picking the top schools aligns for that, as long as your competitive enough to hire them.
I challenge your characterization of anyone who's not from Stanford or an Ivy as dumb
However, if that's what you want to believe then more power to you. Hire whoever you want. I'm just agreeing with OP that the target of diversity programs is decidedly not to get diversity of life experience -- because there are much better ways to attain that than hiring by skin color or gender.
Diversity, even based on outward appearance, has real-world advantages for companies. Or at least, lack of it can lead to making serious errors that can lead to underserving or even insulting customers.
> As far as his "conservative white male" discrimination claims, I've seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it's nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry.
But why does that make it okay? I absolutely believe that you're right in that there has been worse discrimination over the decades and that maybe old white men can find jobs elsewhere, but that doesn't make discrimination okay. It's not okay when those "old school companies" discriminate against any minorities and it's not okay when some discriminate against old white men.
I don't think OP said that it made it OK. (It doesn't). I think OP was saying that people like her had to fight through worse - not to say it doesn't matter, but to place it in perspective and context.
Say 100% discrimination is the KKK lynching people. Say 50% discrimination is redlining and refusal to hire. Then what are white males facing? Maybe 10%? Yes, it matters. And also yes, it's not in the same league as what other groups have had to face.
> Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry.
More recent studies don't show any bias against women in callback rates. In fact, some show slight bias for women (and if you're willing to look at non peer reviewed sources, more than a slight: https://talent.works/blog/2018/01/08/the-science-of-the-job-...)
“We built our castle 300 miles away from where they live, but if any of them make it here we are 3% more likely to let them in the door. The men live in a village 1000 yards away, but we’re 3% less likely to let one in, so it’s fair.”
Or, to look at it this way: We cut our cake up to 10 pieces. You keep eight of them and I keep two of them. You eat one piece and I eat two pieces. And then I'm the glutton because I ate more pieces than you did and you can't argue with the numbers.
do you have any proof of this claims? and if they were true how and in what you way would this matter if we were to compare one individual to one individual instead of treating people like herds.
I hate the fact that you need to state "you're a mixed race woman in tech.". I'm not blaming you, I'm blaming the outrage culture instilled in big part by a bigoted academic clique.
In any discussion of a social problem there are apologists. There are only so many ways to signal that you’re not a shill. It’s not a great solution, but we don’t have better.
I agree on the data thing. I think when you get down to the bottom of things, lumping people under a label and treating them as a cohesive unit is part of the problem. If that’s true, getting permission from a small cohort of that group is still bad, because you’re assuming if these three people are okay with it then it’s okay.
It’s that incident with Chevy Chase and the n-word that started this line of thought for me. I don’t care if Richard Pryor said it was okay. He is one voice. Don’t act surprised if other people don’t agree. Being surprised means you’ve already decided all black people are the same and a sample size of one means you’re okay to do something.
There are only so many ways to signal that you’re not a shill. It’s not a great solution, but we don’t have better.
Or, people can learn to read and act on the content of an argument rather than immediately trying to discredit someone with appeals to popular bigotry.
If we were discussing the merits of React vs Angular, sure.
But in general, telling someone they've been a jerk all their life leads to certain existential crises that they will do just about anything to avoid.
People don't just get defensive, they get cruel. There's a whole group of tricks that are basically gaslighting the person. They take an aggressively "reasonable" stance and trying to convince the person they're crazy and it's all them.
Because this happens often enough that many of these 'overtures' are obvious, it makes interacting with moderates a waste of time. I've seen person after person get DDOSed by a handful of people throwing walls of text at them but really just tangenting the conversation off into oblivion.
So when someone who is actually in your group takes a moderate position, unless you know them personally, you can't know if they're really a moderate or just a troll. That's not to say you spend effort on people at the extremes, it just means you are hesitant about overly-moderate people the way you are about people asking you for help on a street corner. You've tried it before and it's a scam so often you don't even want to make eye contact.
Stating this fact is the only way this comment could possibly be noticed. I wouldnt be surprised if lieing to this extent is the only way that these anecdotes could ever see the light of day. Though it doesnt change the validity of the points made
I've been accused of lying about it before to get attention. Realistically I only state it as a precaution because lately some of the things I've posted on other venues get an immediate comment calling me a Nazi and I want to avoid all the explanation and just get to discussing the issues.
I would prefer it if all of us could leave gender/race/religion at the door and talk but that's now the how the internet works now.
mordern feminsts professors hold fringe ideas about human nature that are far too extreme to the point that it contradicts current scientific findings while also being caught using what can only be called authoritarian methods. A group that holds strong ideas, refuses to change them and uses authoritarian policies to shutdown debate is, in my opinion, bigoted. One of the most recent examples in memory is the Laurier university Case you check it out here: https://globalnews.ca/video/3867811/extended-excerpts-from-s...
this is the same university that gave away a pay raise based on gender: http://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-pay-rais... That ended up in some female professors that were hired in the same time as some male professors having a higher pay after the raise even though they were paid the same before it.
>> I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women.
Then there must be a biological difference between women from different cultures that's also contributing, because I've only observed this "lack of interest" in Anglosphere women.
From my experience, for instance, Indian women have no such problem and are in fact strongly represented within the IT profession and I've worked alongside several of them. Women in my country of birth (Greece) have no such problem and about two fifths of the Greek programmers I know are women. In the British universities I studied and the British workplaces I worked in the last few years, on the other hand, women are about a tenth of all programmers I've met.
So because it's a bit absurd for Anglo women to be so specifically genetically programmed to stay out of the IT professions, I'm going to assume it's not a genetic, but a cultural thing going on.
Btw, I've discussed this with a female Indian software engineer I was working with and she explained that in India, working in IT is seen as an office job and so more suited to women. Traditional gender roles, innit.
There is plenty of evidence that there are genetic differences in how the brain is build up between men and women [0]. Several studies have also found that as early as 3 year old children will develop differences in their cognition; boys will develop better spatial skills at that age compared to girls, on the other hand the girls will have a better memory recall than the boys. This development can then be traced all the way into adulthood with a variety of skillsets (not only spatial tasks but eye-hand coordination, motor skills, reaction times, recollection, processing speed and verbal skills) [1]
Now this doesn't mean women are incapable or bad at copmuter engineering or anything in IT. Quite the opposite, women are just as capable and can be just as good in IT as men, there is no reason they can't.
If what you say is true and indian culture views IT as an office job and therefore a woman's job, then I don't see how that contradicts the assertion that there are biological cognitive differences, women can do the same job, they are just less inclined to be interested in it. On average.
So while gender roles may play a role (pun intended) in the distribution of gender in the IT job, expecting a 50/50 representation is entirely fictional, there will be a bias towards one or the other based on simple cognitive development tendencies.
I'm Eastern-european, and not fully aware of the US cultural issues. I participated at a company (US) "principal scientists summit", and the issue of women in tech was brought up. As the lady presented the data, and how we're making progress on hiring more women but there's still no equality, I asked the (innocent/legitimate, I thought) question "how are we doing compared to graduation stats". Seemed natural to me to look at that data in order to figure whether we're getting increasingly worse "return on investment" by focusing exclusively on hiring, but it was immediately spun off into me being somewhat sexist for suggesting that "we don't have a women-hiring problem". Which is not what I meant to imply at all! And from there on, there was sensible tension in the air, with some people taking to take my side without making "career-limiting" statements. It's crazy how taboo some subjects are, at least in California...
(it's secondary, but FWIW, I'd debate that the Damore memo contained a lot of truth: yes it contained some truth, but it contained more/deeper falsehoods and wrong conclusions, IMO. So it's a bit unproductive to focus on the "truth" part. OTOH it's horrifically unproductive and wrong to fire someone for expressing a misguided, but not inherently evil/malicious p.o.v.)
> I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women.
I don't think anyone believes in the opposite, that biological difference in gender plays exactly zero part in lack of interest in tech from women. The memo was suggesting this could play a part, but not whether if biological differences are significant or even meaningful.
To the best of my knowledge, we can't disentangle biological from cultural biases across gender. Hunting down biological reasons isn't productive and threatens gender equality initiatives, hence the massive backlash.
Should we question the ideals of gender equality in the workplace? That's probably the discussion the memo wanted to inspire, but it only led to out cries of "sheeple better wake up" and "hell no."
The really sad part is you have to preface your comments with this "Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech." Somehow this gives you legitimacy in the eyes of others, not the power and logic of your argument. It speaks to the left's misguided philosophy of "free speech so long as we approve what you say."
Stupid question, just to get a sense of the context of your testimony: are you working for Google or a similarly prestigious organisation? I can certainly expect “a "Software Engineer" who can't write a SQL statement” in some of the company I worked for a decade ago but I’d be confused to see those at Google. I saw one at Facebook (middle-aged white male) but he left the company after ten days and anyone’s reaction was a really confused: “How did he…?”
No, I don't want to name my company for obvious reasons but it's not Google or Facebook, not in the same league. It's an organization with around 400 engineers in it total, so not a small shop, but not a giant household name either.
Wouldn't it be more expected at google? I didn't think they had a lot of traditional databases, so it's not a relevant skill for them. They've also got a fair few low level guys working in c and the like that I wouldn't expect to know much about sql.
yes, but we use SQL in our job daily, if only for validation, but also we write a lot of scripts for reporting, migration etc. It's pretty crucial for the job and we've turned away several candidates for not being strong enough in SQL/TSQL
>As far as his "conservative white male" discrimination claims, I've seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it's nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry.
Its not that way for white guys to receive hundreds of Nos?
Because the hiring manager personally told me that was why he hired the person and why the white guy and Indian guy was not getting a call. More than once. And one of them even said that this was a direct order from their manager. They were told to improve diversity metrics. When you tell a direct report to do something, you should not be surprised when they do it.
Nothing in 174-198 is supported by evidence in the filing (this isn't unusual at this stage, since that's not generally required in an initial filing, but your claim was of evidence), except 188, which is part of an allegation of adverse politically-motivated job treatment, not hiring based on race/gender.
So, no, there are no examples with evidence of people hired just for minority status in the lawsuit filing.
Yes there is, there's an email embedded in the paragraphs I outlined.
You might think that's not direct evidence, but it's evidence that supports the story in the paragraphs I outlined.
It says explicitly in paragraph 179:
"Upon information and belief, the Google employee was not selected due to the fact that the hiring managers were looking solely for “diverse” individuals, and as a Caucasian male, the Google employee did not help fill their mandatory (and illegal) quotas."
And then "the Google employee’s former director initiated a “Diversity Team Kickoff” with the intent to freeze headcount so that teams could find diversity candidates to help fill the empty roles. Google was specifically looking for women and non-Caucasian individuals to fill these roles."
I think _you_ think that _I_ think this is damning proof and that the case is settled, and I've never claimed that. I just said that there are examples of people being hired because of their diversity status, with supporting evidence.
I'm not saying the evidence is true, or that it's directly related, but it _is_ "supporting evidence".
> Yes there is, there's an email embedded in the paragraphs I outlined
Yes, at 188; I addressed it. It's evidence provided for something, but not the thing you claimed.
> It says explicitly in paragraph 179: "Upon information and belief, the Google employee was not selected due to the fact that the hiring managers were looking solely for “diverse” individuals, and as a Caucasian male, the Google employee did not help fill their mandatory (and illegal) quotas."
Yes, that's an allegation. No evidence supporting this allegation is included (and, further, it used the “on information and belief” language which indicates that the party filing the lawsuit does not have first-hand knowledge that the allegation is true, but expects to have evidence—e.g., attained through discovery—to prove it should the case go to trial.)
This is perfectly normal for a lawsuit complaint, of course, but does not support your claim of examples (or even an example) with evidence in the filing.
I really don't mean to be obnoxious or disagree just for the sake of saving face or whatever - I really just don't understand how you can claim that those passages are not an example of someone being denied a team position because they were explicitly favoring minority-candidates instead.
I understand that it's not proof of it, like I said, and I understand that there's no direct evidence supporting that claim.
What I'm saying is that the email they embed there is supporting evidence of the narrative outlined in those paragraphs.
And I don't understand how you can say "no evidence supporting this allegation is included" then.
At this point, I'm not sure how to phrase myself to get my point across either - english is a second language, so please excuse me.
I'm quite certain that we are in agreement - what we probably disagree with is my distilling this down to the single sentence that I did initially.
But even that is a sentence distilled in good faith on my part, I don't feel that I misrepresented it that badly, and it's the kind of sentence I'd use around the dinner table until someone wanted to dig further into it.
The issue is that if that statement had not been included than OP would have been accused of being privileged and thus disqualified from having an opinion.
> Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech.
Why would it matter that you are "a mixed race woman in tech"? Your comment should be judged only by its content, not by its author's race or gender, right?
Of course, that's how it used to be, but posting this without my profile picture next to it would bring out accusations of being sexist/nazi etc if I didn't clarify.
I’ll violate my usual practice of not commenting explaining the reason for downvotes, to say this:
Preemptive comments of this type, which reflect the posters hostile prejudgement of the likely responses, are IMO, contrary to the letter and spirit of the HN guidelines including the rule of presumption of good faith, frequently (as in this case) involve preemptive violations of the guideline against commenting on downvotes, and contribute to a hostile atmosphere rather than productive debate.
If you are going to post something, with or without a disclaimer about your own background, do so without commenting about how you expect people to react in comments or votes. If there are responses you take issue with, take issue with them when they exist.
That would be true for the content of a comment about whether .NET is dead or not. But then for that type of comment, you might judge it differently if the author is a user of Microsoft dev tools vs if she primarily works with open source tools.
Kudos for such a well balanced piece. At the end of the day, it should be who can get the job done, that is all. And that is how companies will stay robust.
And what, specifically, would those differences be?
The balance of the evidence, is that there are some biological differences in preferences. Both biological and cultural factors are at play. As groups, women and men are about the same in terms of average IQ, however, men tend to have a higher population of the extreme outliers. (Both extremely smart men and extremely stupid men.)
Since the human brain and its interaction with culture is very complicated, more research is needed. But a fair reading of what we have so far would seem to indicate: it's both.
Beware of ideological just-so stories that make you feel good. Also, if it sounds messy and complicated, it sounds like actual biology and psychology.
It looks like there is only indirect evidence, and no direct evidence. In fact, the whole discussion smells far too much of "correlation means causation" to get anything useful out of it.
There are some great weasel words like: "there is good evidence ... play a role ..."
Without a hypothetical mechanism, this is all quite speculative.
>> Is there any evidence that this is biological, as opposed to cultural?
> [Plenty]
> It looks like there is only indirect evidence,
And there go the goalposts, red-shifting into the sunset.
> "correlation means causation" / "there is good evidence ... play a role ..."
Well, remember that Damore's claim was that there is evidence that we cannot categorically rule out biological causes for the skewed representation, in addition to discrimination.
For that claim, even much weaker evidence than what exists would have been sufficient.
Nah. His claim was that there was enough evidence to question policies (secret policies that were in violation of those public core values and probably also the law) that are based on the completely unfounded assumption that discrimination/bias/oppression is the only possible cause for unequal representation.
It's more like Damore's claim was that specific corporate policy were based on the assumption of the opposite. Also, he did not reject Google's core values, unless you take a biased and imputational reading.
> It's more like Damore's claim was that specific corporate policy were based on the assumption of the opposite
No, while that was a supporting claim, the conclusory claims everything in the manifesto are offered to support are that specific policy changes are justified.
> Also, he did not reject Google's core values, unless you take a biased and imputational reading.
As an example, empathy is a core publicly-stated internal value of Google which Damore explicitly called for de-emphasizing. There's nothing “biased and imputational” about reading Damore’s words to mean what they explicitly say.
> everything in the manifesto are offered to support are that specific policy changes are justified.
No. The main reason he gives for policy changes is that the policy isn't working. Numbers haven't budged, despite measures getting ever more extreme and likely illegal. He then suggests that maybe, just maybe, the policy is based on a false assumption. And then delivers some evidence that this could be true. And then presents some ideas of what policies might have a better chance of working.
> empathy is a core publicly-stated internal value of Google which Damore explicitly called for de-emphasizing
Where? I've searched a bunch of places and can't find this, for example:
I also googled "google values" and none of the posts so far have had "empathy" in them, though it could be that I haven't searched enough. Anyway, empathy is not a value. Empathy is an emotional capacity. His criticism of empathy is, as far as I can tell, based on the thesis of Paul Bloom's recent book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. [1][2][3].
"Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make."
"We should not base our corporate policy on the completely unproven and highly unlikely assumption that oppression is the only possible cause of unequal representation"
There, fixed that for you.
Also, the research is not at all speculative, quite the opposite. It is immeasurably more solid than the blind assertion that unequal representation is caused entirely/solely by oppression/discrimination etc., for which there is very little evidence overall, and virtually none that holds up to any sort of scrutiny.
Sorry, I can't parse this. Are you saying that until we have a complete understanding of how the brain and mind work, all psychological research is essentially worthless?
So you agree with James. Glad we could clear that up.
Background: there is little to no evidence for the assertion that discrimination/oppression is the sole cause of the under-representation of women in tech, but that assertion is the basis of the HR policies that Damore criticized. In fact, the evidence that it is even a contributing factor is at best scant/anecdotal.
The evidence that Damore cited is incomparably more solid.
Utilizing MRI and cognitive tests data from the Human Connectome project (N = 900), sex differences in general intelligence (g) and molar brain characteristics were examined. Total brain volume, cortical surface area, and white and gray matter correlated 0.1–0.3 with g for both sexes, whereas cortical thickness and gray/white matter ratio showed less consistent associations with g. Males displayed higher scores on most of the brain characteristics, even after correcting for body size, and also scored approximately one fourth of a standard deviation higher on g. Mediation analyses and the Method of Correlated Vectors both indicated that the sex difference in g is mediated by general brain characteristics. Selecting a subsample of males and females who were matched on g further suggest that larger brains, on average, lead to higher g, whereas similar levels of g do not necessarily imply equal brain sizes."
The study examined female and male brains, found that males on average had a higher general intelligence score and a higher standard deviation. The study also found that male brains had on average higher surface area and size even if you control for body size. The study found that brain size in both genders on average leads to a higher g.
I don't understand how your criticism "indirect correlational evidence" applies to this study, could you maybe elaborate on how you would improve this study?
so you believe that physical difference between sexes in size of the brain, is not due to sex? what would you say this is caused by?
I would like to point out that saying this changes are due to evolution not sex is unvalid because then nothing will be due to sex, not saying that you think that but just getting it out of the way.
Well hell, the Newtonian laws of motion had no hypothetical mechanism for gravity for a rather long time. We're still in the early days of figuring out Homo sapiens. Don't get your knickers in a bunch, yet. It looks like you're uptight about something.
c- people who have a higher level of empathy might be interrested in fields which need a higher level of empathy, or seek to join fields that directly interact with people [ I don't have a source for this one. It seems logical to me, but it is unproven. if you know a study that proves or disproves it. Please link it]
d - higher levels of women interessted in other fields leads to less women interrested in tech
I watch a fair amount of Microsoft technical videos, and just off the top of my head I can think of 3 people who are very likely to be diversity hires.
Although at the same time and despite being pretty far right on the political spectrum, I think there is some truth to the idea that big companies "should" hire visible minorities over and above those that are fully qualified, but it shouldn't be done at the expense of legitimately qualified people, or that it causes significant harm to product quality.
I don't think minorities should be hired to be "visible", that doesn't sit right with me. Hiring minorities and even people from different economic backgrounds, country of origin etc is good for getting different perspectives and different ways of approaching problems.
The hard truth is if you only hire white guys from Stanford you've got a ton of overlap in their background and the way they think. If you only hire black women from Somalia it's the same. You're going to have significant similarities. Making teams more diverse is extremely important and beneficial as long as all are otherwise qualified.
There is nothing but debunked studies to back up your last statement as a generally applicable one. Obviously, it depends on the job.
Designers, sure, it's very eqsy to think of examples where diverse backgrounds improve business outcomes. But let's not pretend that there is any difference in business outcomes if Foxconn's assembly lines snapping iPhone parts together are entirely Chinese hands vs if they were to equally represent all members of the united nations.
Asserting that there is a benefit needs to be seriously qualified, as it can certainly be everything ranging from a benefit, to negligible, to an actual handicap.
> Almost all of the women from my social circle are smart, pragmatic, driven and successful yet have zero interest in a technical career. They excel in their given industries but ours they want no part of. I don't believe intelligence is more prevalent in either gender, but I do believe there are some traits that shape who we are.
That's most definitely a cultural thing, and I believe its what diversity programs try to address.
> As far as his "conservative white male" discrimination claims, I've seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it's nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry.
I get that, but I think your boss was still wrong to think and phrase of it that way. No one should be disqualified simply because of their race or age. Give more points to minorities? Yes definitely. But reducing points because you're of a certain race and age just sounds icky, and is probably illegal.
If the points are fungible (and they absolutely are) then what is the difference between giving extra points to <people not like x> and giving fewer points to <people like x>. How are they not functionally identical?
This isn't quite the same thing, but i've always found it annoying how it's generally okay to say, for example, that Chinese people are good at math but it's not okay to say that any other group is bad at math, even though the former claim is a relative claim that is presumably understood to be comparative to other groups of people, who are (on average) worse at math.
Why is it annoying? If I'm addressing a team of 5 people, I would much rather say that person A is amazing at math than tell 4 others that they suck at math.
Social skills are a thing, even if they're logically equivalent statements.
If it is a cultural thing, then surely the correct response is not to mandate gender balance in corporate hiring practices, but to alter the education and socialization of girls. Whether it is cultural or biological, the results are the same: fewer women have the interest to excel in specific fields. App Camp for Girls might be a better approach than diversity hiring.
> I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women.
The history of women in tech completely contradicts your belief. The lack of representation is a real problem, we can debate how to fix it, but to claim it doesn't exist is baseless and harmful.
The issue is that it doesn't matter. Women might be less interested in tech, as in if you took 100 men and 100 women and measured their interest the men might be higher.
That doesn't mean no women are interested in tech, or that those who are interested are less competent.
I do think the idea of "less interested" is shallow and ignores every other explanation. For example, women are a majority in health care but a minority of doctors. Why?
Not only this, but women still dominate nursing and many other healthcare professions, and women are increasingly preferred for certain specialist roles (e.g., OB-GYNs).
Nursing is one of the best all-around careers in the US when you take all factors into account (barriers to entry, pay, potential advancement, availability of jobs in both urban and rural areas, lack of ageism, long-term stability, etc.). Certain specialist nurses like CRNAs can make $150k+. Nurse practitioners also have a higher median salary than software developers in the US according to the BLS.
Women reached parity in law school graduation about two decades ago, but still lag in practicing law, becoming partners and becoming judges today so it may not be changing all that rapidly just based on that single statistic.
I don't have experience in law, but maybe those stats just need time to change. People that graduated from post-parity need time to reach the level of seniority needed.
> I do think the idea of "less interested" is shallow and ignores every other explanation. For example, women are a majority in health care but a minority of doctors. Why?
It's not that shallow. Using your example, the interesting things become visible when you dig down into different types of work done in the medical profession. Scott Alexander has a very convincing piece on the whole topic:
The issue of interest is tackled in section IV of the post. If you scroll down to the end of the section, there are interesting charts there, showing gender distribution of doctors among medical specialties. The distribution happens to align nicely with the theory of differences in interests, explored in that section.
It does matter. As technology becomes more deeply embedded into our society the assumptions made by the people that designed that technology get amplified and hardened. Have you not heard the story about the soap-dispenser that wouldn't recognize black skin? It's a minor annoyance now, but it won't be when the technology is responsible for more critical stuff.
>For example, women are a majority in health care but a minority of doctors. Why?
Becoming a doctor requires an immense amount of capital and free time. There are structural barriers that prevent women from accessing this capital and free time as easily as men can.
There can be positives of hiring to increase diversity which aren't related strictly to their performance in the role they occupy.
Two such arguments for this kind of policies:
- by giving them jobs which they wouldn't otherwise have the skills to fill you are trying to break the "cycle" (more on that below)
- having different viewpoints in a team can be beneficial beyond the skill set those people should bring according to their role (ex. for developing apps that don't just cater to the hipster young)
Another thing to consider is that the way you measure performance may be biased, resulted from decades of privileged groups having the leadership role in that domain/area and having developed it in certain ways that caters to their skill set.
For the "breaking the cycle" part, I mean that systematic discrimination results in people of certain origins simply not having the opportunity/chance to have developed the skills to be competitive with the privileged classes. And no, you can't just fix this by giving them a "chance to learn", some of the negative impacts on these groups of people are permanent and happen in early life. Obviously trying to handle this problem in the workplace is just a "hack", it's too late already but it does have the benefit that now those people get included in a social environment that they would normally be cut out from, get payed more than they would otherwise and, hopefully, this will trickle down to their children and grandchildren so in a few generations of doing this we don't actually need to be doing it anymore.
I'm not saying that all of this means I'm convinced affirmative action is doing more good than bad, just that I see it has possible benefits.
have the benefit that now those people get included in a social environment that they would normally be cut out from, get payed more than they would otherwise and, hopefully, this will trickle down to their children and grandchildren
Irish immigrants started out from a culture, where the typical peasant was 1/2 to 1/4th as wealthy as the median pre-Civil War American Slave. There was a period of time when ethnic Irish political machines helped to place the party faithful into cozy government jobs. This was beneficial, up to a point. However, there is a point where such subgroup politics becomes so corrupt, the leaders of that group keep their people in deliberate isolation to maintain their power.
The IQs of many ethnic immigrant groups to the US can be shown to have increased after several generations. The Polish and Italian immigrant groups' IQs increased from 85 to over 100 over the 1st half of the 20th century. There seems to have been a reversal of such trends for African American communities starting in the 60's. There are also studies of the African American children of US armed forces personnel in Germany. Their IQs are the same as other children growing up in Germany. My conclusion is that the leadership of the African American community and the influence of the US political Left, by glorifying a toxic subset of their ethnic culture, is holding the group back, in cultural isolation, in such a way as to harm the prospects of their children as strongly as lead in the water of Flint Michigan.
In part because of leadership -- chiefly thought leadership, a part of which came in the form of assimilation. The power of human capital -- culture -- should not be underestimated. If it's just access to resources like improved food and living conditions, then every group would progress at the same rate. If it's just access to resources, then giving people resources would automatically make them richer. However, there are a number of Africans who advocate stopping aid to Africa. Africa is full or resources, and Japan has very few. Why is Japan so much wealthier?
Most of the answer is human capital.
If the cultures of the Polish and Italians were not encouraging their younger generations to better their fortunes through education and business, then the cultures would have lowered the material wealth of the groups and held them back, in much the same way that the early Irish immigrants to the US lowered the quality of life in their slums.
In this, there is much hope. If cultural transmission can raise up the 19th century potato famine Irish to the 1st world mainstream, there is basically nothing it can't accomplish. (However, culture runs deep, below the level of the conscious mind. It can't be transmitted by simple edict.)
Disregarding the Flynn effect, the slow integration of Irish and the Catholics into American society prior to the end of Jim Crow and the fact that the US Black community and US mainstream left were lead by a black President who went to Harvard Law and Columbia, which toxic culture are they supposedly glorifying?
US mainstream left were lead by a black President who went to Harvard Law and Columbia
I voted for Obama. However, in retrospect, he was part of the shift of the American left into an authoritarian version. Those collegiate "progressive" protesters who say, "F your free speech" are part of this unfortunate shift.
which toxic culture are they supposedly glorifying?
There is a genteel African American culture. I've known people from that thread of American culture. It valued learning, rationality, responsibility, and manners. Also, not all Black Americans are too crazy about Obama's legacy.
Code reviews are definitely a scenario we believe can benefit from Live Share, regardless which version control workflow your team is using (e.g. PRs, trunk-based development). In addition to being able to quickly seek help, we want Live Share to enable easily seeking and _providing_ feedback/advice, in a way that makes code reviews something that happen frequently and more naturally bi-directional (e.g. "Hey I have a suggestion about your PR, can I show your something in a quick share session?").
These accusations (not charges) came out in 2014 and don't seem to have gone anywhere. Little mention of it since then, and no evidence presented that I can find.
incredibly smart. There's a bit of a loss after an acquisition for obvious reasons which usually means cutbacks and trimming the fat etc. Looks like Amazon will be doing this but found a way to create a small rush of customers to offset it a bit. Very smart.
I for one will be going in there just to see what has changed. I haven't been in a WF for 2 years (new seasons girl here) mostly because of cost.
As a new seasons girl myself, I worry about what kind of long term impact Amazon might have in this market place. I’ve always considered WF and New Seasons to be direct competitors. I would hate to see New Seasons swallowed up or driven out of business by Amazon
> always identified left but I'm definitely starting to feel confused by the actions of other leftys. I definitely don't identify with the right so overall I'm feeling tribeless as of late.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Lifelong liberal here, and lately I feel the left has abandoned me. Whenever I call something into question I'm told that I'm a nazi, or that I'm "just not angry enough" and some dishes have to be broken for the cause, etc. I no longer feel part of the crowd, but I am certainly far from a right winger, so.. tribeless myself.
The left is turning into a fascist group. Ironically while waving the flag pretending to fight it. In fact, the liberal movement is turning into the type of populace the government has always wanted. No right to an opinion, speech and expression are heavily regulated, and we rely on the government for everything. We tell others exactly how to live their lives and punish them when they don't.
The fringe left, while the moderates remain silent. I've found it interesting that of late there has been a minor attempt to redefine fascism as a right-wing ideology so that fascists of the left can't be accused of fascism.
This is the difference between how it should be, and how it is. When you solve something simply and pragmatically it won't impress the non-technical or semi-technical manager. They also want to see microservices, bells and whistles.
Believe it or not for many managers "I refactored something and fixed the problem in an hour" isn't very desirable. When you go to your next interviewer they won't be impressed either, though they absolutely should be.
They will definitely push their own agenda, because that's the agenda of most of their market.
We democrats tend to stick to tech pretty hard, and we buy things. Billy joe bob will post his pro-trump rants on Facebook all day, but will still go to a walk in store to buy things.
Of course I'm generalizing and oversimplifying it, but the leadership at FB is strongly left leaning, and they know how to cater to their audience, keep them happy and make money from them.
The issue is of course branding everything that might help the right "fake news". Sure, there's a lot of it (from both sides really) but the idea that they have the power to shape people's opinions in a political direction, and are willing to do it is dangerous for all of us.
Or, "if you're a public figure, or plan a public campaign supporting someone who is controversial, don't expect there to be zero criticism of your position because it's somehow sacred".
it's sort of strange that a mainstream candidate with enough support to win the whole election is considered controversial, plenty public figures endorsed hilary and none received the level of backlash that palmer did. max temkin even funded a similarly cringey billboard campaign:
unless we are to enforce a standard of public apoliticism for public figures across the board, uniquely singling out endorsements on one side regardless of wealth doesn't seem like a good way to generate effective discourse
>No? You don't recall the decrying of "Hollywood elites" by right wing media and supporters?
This is generalized, and it's not an active campaign of literal harassment to make it difficult for specific individuals to work. For whatever reason, the Right is much less interested in seeing their political enemies suffer than the Left. Perhaps it's because the Right sees the Left as naive, whereas the Left sees the Right as human garbage.
The literal inventor of JavaScript, totally irreplaceable and undeniably the most qualified person for his role, is forced out from Mozilla over a campaign contribution to another mainstream political cause (which also won). He had silently made that contribution 7 years prior, and it was only discovered due to campaign finance disclosure laws. Major sites like OKCupid ran blackouts against Firefox users to punish them for running a browser associated with Brendan Eich. Unlike Luckey, he was not trying to get involved publicly, and only quietly exercises his rights as a citizen.
Now, the guy who "kickstarted" the multi-billion-dollar modern VR revolution is harassed and chased out of his position for committing a slightly-more-public form of heresy against the Silicon Valley dogma.
The "criticisms" are not comparable across the aisle.
You should fact check your fake news [1] before parroting it, when you try to justify Trump bragging about grabbing women by the pussy without their consent [2] by making a false equivalence. An no, that wasn't just "locker room talk", so don't parrot that line either.
Wowee, I looked at your posting history, and all those racist and sexist remarks you've made certainly shed light on where you're coming from and what you believe, and why you follow the people whose lies you parrot. So don't bother trying to defend Trump sexual assaulting women by parroting pizzagate conspiracy theories, either.
Tech sphere: "After Trump's win, we need to get out of our bubble and learn about what others are thinking in America."
What about engaging public figures in your industry who are Trump supporters?
Tech sphere: "Palmer needs to lose his job."
Why does diversity initiatives never seem to care about diversity of political opinions? Isn't a diversity of perspectives one of the reasons for diversity?
If you haven't heard anyone address that point, you haven't looked very hard. It's an (IMO) important part of the left-wing philosophy to be intolerant of intolerance:
I voted for Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general, but the hypocrisy of Zuckerberg publishing his travels to rural America like he's a politician while Palmer is pushed out of his company is too much.
I'm mostly responding to your "Why does diversity initiatives never seem to care about diversity of political opinions?" question.
I'm saying that it's legitimate for diversity initives to not support all political positions in the name of diversity. Yes, it's a paradox, but it's not something that hasn't been addressed.
And, yes, the Trump ticket was intolerant. You can make the argument solely on the grounds of the anti-muslim rhetoric, not to mention his running mate's public views on gay rights.
A lot of Trump voters probably don't want more Muslims immigrating into the US. Are you saying that can't even be discussed, despite the fact that Muslims don't approve of homosexuality, even in Britain?
Are Americans intolerant for questioning if we should have more of that intolerance?
Should we not let Muslims into this country "solely on the grounds of" their "public views on gay rights"? I mean my god, should a Muslim be allowed to work at Facebook's London office based on their homophobic beliefs?
It's a left-wing value that you can, and should, separate the person and what they believe from their actions.
If anyone were to suggest that we should ban Trump supporters from immigrating to my country, I would be very opposed to that. I would also be opposed to denying those people the ability to hold public office, or receive services, etc., based on their beliefs.
So it's fine to be a Muslim. But if a person wants to use public forums to push Sharia law, which includes the subjugation of women and punishment of gays, I support removing their access to those forums. What goes on in that person's head, or what they discuss in the privacy of their homes/email/etc., is none of my business, no matter how odious I find it. But if those beliefs start impacting the public and are discriminatory, then the hammer comes down.
You see it as hypocrisy to condemn specific actions without also condemning affiliated people. I see those as separate things, so you can have a different policy for each. You can't punish people for something you think they believe should be done, but that they haven't actually done or incited others to do themselves.
Trump and Pence have both taken substantive actions against Muslims and gays, not based on what those populations actually did, but based on what they believe or who they are. If a Muslim campaigned for and legislated in accordance with Sharia law, I would condemn them in exactly the same way (but more strongly).
But I will not condemn every Muslim a priori even though I completely disagree with their beliefs.
