[lordCarbonFiber]

In your "counter" example you highlight my point. Asians, on average, might be shorter, but if you come in with that knowledge and then present the conclusions that asians in professional basketball perform worse than others (exactly what this individual attempted to do with women) would be insane since the asians that do play basketball professional tend to be just as tall as everyone else that does [As an aside, basketball is huge in china and they placed 6th at the last Olympics so it's a nonsensical example anyway]. And it's relevant because it's his fundamental thesis.

As for the field of engineering as a whole, he completely ignores the fact that ratios in other high stress high prestige professions such as medicine and law [0][1] (which have dramatically higher barriers to entry than technology while also having a much stronger historical precedence for being male dominated [we forget that programming was female dominated until the 70s]), while not even, hover at around 2:1[0][1] as opposed the 4 or 5 :1 we see in technology.

He made no verifiable claims that the women in tech were performing at any lower level just attempted to use global stats (questionable ones at best as noted above) to justify painting diversity initiatives as unnecessary.

The sad thing is there are some kernels of not terrible ideas burred at the bottom of all the pseudo science bullshit. I'd love to see more programs opened up to all engineers, because again, just because the average male is more assertive doesn't mean the average male software engineer at google is.

[0]http://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gende...

[1]https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/m...

[ntuch]

> asians in professional basketball perform worse than others

Can you quote the exact portion of his post that made this claim?

If not, then why did you state it??

> he completely ignores the fact that ratios in other high stress high prestige professions such as medicine and law [0][1] (which have dramatically higher barriers to entry than technology while also having a much stronger historical precedence for being male dominated [we forget that programming was female dominated until the 70s]), while not even, hover at around 2:1[0][1] as opposed the 4 or 5 :1 we see in technology.

That sucks that he ignored that. Fortunately, others have addressed it. Here you go:

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

(in particular, section IV). So, there it is, addressed, as you requested. You are still wrong, and the google engineer is still right.

[micahbright]

>and then present the conclusions that asians in professional basketball perform worse than others (exactly what this individual attempted to do with women)

Could you quote exactly the line where he "attempted to do the same with women who work at Google"?

That would be pure gold. I read the memo, but I don't recall that part.

I'm thinking, one of us may have our blinders one. I just want you to do the work since it is your claim, and it's a 10 page memo.

[lordCarbonFiber]

It's implicit in the thesis. It's there in the very first fucking line if you use [0] source.

Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

The fundamental disconnect between people like the OP and companies like google is over the the idea that there is an untapped well of talent locked away in groups under represented in the space. That's the whole reason these diversity programs exist.

You can look no farther than the countless blog posts on how hard interviewing and sourcing candidates that get upvoted here. Candidate acquisition is hard and expensive and it is not helped by exclusionary hiring practices. [1]

As much as we'd love to live in a world where we all spoke lojban and full meaning in language was implicitly clear, we're stuck with English so context and tone matter.

At best you have a tone deaf person writing a tasteless memo full of bad science and incorrect assertions, at worst you have all the toxic thinking that makes a lot tech such awful places to work. Engineering deserves better than bad math and dog whistles. It's really hard to argue "discrimination" when as a white guy in tech every team you're on will be full of people like you, think like you, hire like you and all the existing metrics are designed based around how you were raised. Like, there really is nothing in this world easier, than being a white dude in tech in my experience so it's very difficult to take any thing said there in good faith.

[ntuch]

So the answer to the question: Could you quote exactly the line where he 'attempted to do the same with women who work at Google'?

is, "no, I cannot quote that, because I just made it up."

> It's implicit in the thesis.

You lie.

> It's there in the very first fucking line if you use [0] source.

No, it's not. You have no rebuttal, and you're just making things up. You're wrong, and you're attempting to conceal it with lies.

[micahbright]

> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.

You're saying this implies that the author thinks women working at Google perform worse than men at Google?

I just want to make sure I understand exactly what you mean, and for anyone who is reading what was written above, this might clarify.