[mwytock]

Well, saying things that are clearly wrong and offensive to large numbers of people is typically looked down upon amongst educated people and highly discouraged at the workplace.

For example, think of other stereotypes about other groups (blacks, hispanics, jews) and think about what the response would be if an employee was publishing 10 page manifestos with loosely connected scientific arguments in support of these views.

[LunaSea]

There is nothing that is clearly wrong about the memo in itself and lots of Googlers actually voiced support for it and agreed. So your comment would be equally offensive to them because you call them uneducated and their opinion invalid.

Creating a strawman argument around racial stereotypes is just an added layer of misdirection and tastelessness.

[yorwba]

There is something clearly wrong about the memo: it uses the direction of various effects to make a qualitative argument to explain a quantitative difference in gender distribution. If he had instead used the effect sizes in his reasoning, and predicted the resulting distribution (allowing direct comparison with reality), it would be much easier to objectively determine where he is right and where wrong. I'm fairly convinced that some of the things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees, but some are guaranteed to be smaller than the noise floor. As it stands, his argument is easily dismissed as a collection of mostly irrelevant trivia.

[srslack]

No, there's something wrong with your reading comprehension.

>things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees,

That's not one of the points of the memo. One of (the primary) point is to potentially explain a gap instead of relying solely on the assumption that the sole cause is discrimination, or "bro culture" or whatever trash rags like Model View Culture are calling it.

The memo is not about the ability, nor the preferences, of Google employees, specifically. It's about the ability, and/or preferences, of a potential hiring pool. And, if you actually read it, you'd know that the author used a qualifier: "may." As in: "Women are more likely to have these personality types and these interests, and this may explain the gap." As opposed to "all women have these personality types, abilities, and interests."

If women are coming out of university with a related degree or solid references for a software engineering career, at rates approximate to their original distribution (half of the population), we could say that there's obviously some sort of discrimination going on. But they are not. If they were, I would be prominent among the many who are outraged about the distribution of women in these particular careers. I believe the author of the memo would, as well.

But, again, they are not. And it is unhealthy to blame it solely on sexism, if at all.

I'm not surprised at the outrage, really. You get that when telling faux-progressives, who worship at the alter of tabula rasa social science models, that the mind is not a blank slate.

You see it in the Scandinavian countries, where certain "gendered" career choices are more clear than ever. But if we listened to the outraged mob, you'd think that these countries were some patriarchal backwater. But that's obviously not the case.

Another thing you'd have to ask yourself, if you were being honest, is: why "engineering"? The gap is bordering on nonexistent, if at all, in fields like law or medicine. So why is that this deficit exists in these vaguely related (if only by name) "engineering" careers. That's another thing the author decided to ask, and was shit on for it.

[yorwba]

It is amusing that you accuse me of lacking reading comprehension, but then read things into my comment that I explicitly did not include because I'm tired of listing all the ways I agree with the memo.

>>things he mentions have a large enough effect to measurably affect the gender distribution among Google's employees,

> That's not one of the points of the memo. One of (the primary) point is to potentially explain a gap

So one of the points is to potentially explain a gap, and I think his potential explanation involves mentioning some effects that might be strong enough to explain the gap. I'm not sure why you singled out that point to disagree with me.

I especially limited my statement to Google employees because for Damore's purpose of influencing Google's diversity policy, effects on software engineering in general only matter in so far as they affect Google. I have not excluded the possibility that the majority of the gap is "inherited" through the hiring pool (in fact I think it likely).

However, you should not be so quick to exclude discrimination from the possible effects that have to be taken into account. In fact, Damore himself alleges that discrimination is happening, just in favor of women instead of against them. Had he actually crunched the numbers to estimate the expected gender distribution and compare it to reality, it would have been easy to see whether discrimination is involved and in which direction. But he didn't (maybe the data isn't precise enough to allow it), and now we are left arguing about possibilities and what was said.

Lastly, while I mostly agree with the content of your comment, you would do better to exclude the name-calling. It doesn't help to convince anyone who doesn't already share your views, and it alienates others who would otherwise be willing to engage in a level-headed debate with you.

[mwytock]

You made a blanket statement about discussing offensive things and I wanted to point out there are some limits, especially at the workplace.

In this particular case, I feel that leadership and everyone who disagreed with the memo should have at least stated explicitly (if briefly) what the flaws in the reasoning were, as I tried to do at the beginning of this thread.

Obviously, my explanation was not sufficient to convince you and you are still holding on to the belief that women are biologically ill-suited to be engineers. But at least now I have tried to make it clear to you where I think you are wrong. Thats pretty much all you can accomplish on some issues.