[_xhok]

This started out pretty good (and on the whole was fair and measured), but then at one point included this:

> Then you seem to make a giant leap from group differences between men and women on such measures as interest in people rather than things, or systematising versus empathising, to differences in men’s and women’s ability to code. At least that’s what you seem to be doing; you don’t quite say so.

Well, if he "doesn't quite say so," how do you know that's what he seems to be doing? If you analyze his essay without searching desperately for subtexts, and if you listen to his clarifications in his interviews, it's fairly clear he's talking about interest, not ability. Unfortunately much of the next seven paragraphs then consists of breaking down their presumed argument as if it were the one he made.

It wasn't until this memo that I realized how many people, when presented with a body of text, immediately start performing motive inference, subtext analysis, dogwhistle detection, etc.

[trendia]

It's pretty amazing to watch the news responses to his article, because so many respond to what they wanted to see in his article rather than what he wrote.

What he wrote: "Men and women have different interests."

What everyone pretends he said: "Men and women have different abilities."

[burkaman]

His points about stress tolerance and anxiety are clearly ability-related. He didn't say women are less interested in stressful work, he said they are biologically inclined to be less capable of handling stress.

Which might be true, I have no idea, but it's not true that he only talked about interests.

Edit: When I say "might be true", I mean it academically might be true, but it clearly has no practical application to job performance. If women can perform equally well at a job as stressful as surgery, they obviously will not have a problem helping Google sell more ads in one of the most comfortable offices in the world.

[turtleofdeath]

This was posted the other day: http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...

It's a great read and the sort of lead-out at the end yields some more useful insight:

> Prior art aside, I would like to leave off on a high note. I mentioned earlier that men are doing a lot better on the platform than women, but here’s the startling thing. Once you factor out interview data from both men and women who quit after one or two bad interviews, the disparity goes away entirely. So while the attrition numbers aren’t great, I’m massively encouraged by the fact that at least in these findings, it’s not about systemic bias against women or women being bad at computers or whatever. Rather, it’s about women being bad at dusting themselves off after failing, which, despite everything, is probably a lot easier to fix.

To me this is more useful than "women are less interested in tech on average," or "there's a hiring bias in favor of men over women."

[burkaman]

It's also not just about self confidence and "dusting yourself off", but about being immersed in the field and understanding how the process works. If you're a CS major, and all your friends are CS majors, you've heard everything there is to know about the interview process, you know it's normal to bomb one or two, it takes some practice, maybe you borrow someone's copy of Cracking the Coding Interview to get better, etc.

But if you come from outside that culture, and you don't have many friends in the industry, you might bomb one algorithms and data structures interview and think "wow I guess I'm not cut out for this". The only reason I didn't think that after my first interview was because I knew so many people who had been through it before me.

It might be easier to frame the problem as "how can we reach people outside our circle" rather than "how can we reach more women", even if it amounts to the same thing.

[yellowapple]

I'd argue that stress tolerance affects both ability and interest. If you're averse to stressful environments, then you're going to be less interested in working in such an environment.

Of course, even people who tend to avoid stressful environments are still capable of high performance in such environments. That doesn't make such environments any more attractive.

For reference, the stressfulness of certain tech environments has been cited (or at least I think it has; I'm on my phone on my lunch break, so pardon my lack of URLs) as one of the factors behind the underrepresentation of women in technical fields. Even things like long and unpredictable work hours can (I would guess) have a chilling effect on working moms (and dads, but there's arguably less social/cultural pressure there, at least here in the US) wanting to actually spend time with their families.

[macrael]

That point especially and specifically has made every woman I've talked to about this laugh and laugh.

[irrational]

Apparently he has never met a stay-at-home Mom and he clearly doesn't have kids.

[collyw]

He did reference a paper to back up his point.

[burkaman]

He referenced a paper that noted differences in levels of neuroticism, but he did not defend his point that this affects software engineering performance. Some people will say it's common sense, but I would say it's common sense that this is irrelevant to software engineering (if not every job in the world), so common sense obviously varies a lot and should not be relied on in discussions like this.

[sp332]

Quote from the original memo http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-div...

> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

[turtleofdeath]

Right, and I get that your counterpoint is against the person above you. However, that doesn't change the context of Damore's argument, which is saying that interests may differ due to differences in cognitive ability and that the difference may help to explain the gender gap.

Those differences are well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_cognition

And a lot people are ignoring the context, instead pulling straw men out of the text to fight, rather than arguing the substance of the memo itself, context included.

[dragonwriter]

> And a lot people are ignoring the context, instead pulling straw men out of the text to fight,

If its pulled out of the text, it's (by definition) not a straw man.

[AnimalMuppet]

No, a straw man is something that looks like the other person's position, but isn't, and is easier to defeat in an argument.

Can you pull out of the text something that is not the author's actual position? Of course you can. It happens all the time.

[rtx]

When people have comfortable lives, they create monsters to give them a purpose.

[observation]

I've had the pet theory that we ought to give teenagers and young adults uncomfortable jobs to do so they develop some empathy for other sorts of human beings and learn something.

For instance yesterday I was cleaning a house, the urine had crystallized in two toilet bowls to about an inch thick and I removed it with acid and a knife. The other rooms only admitted visible light to about half their size because thick cobwebs black from tobacco smoke draped everywhere. Everywhere, bottles of vokda and whiskey.

I thought to myself: if a schoolchild worked this one day, they'd potentially learn some things. Like how some people can turn into shut-ins and how that's a bad thing. How smoking and drinking can help a person develop a mental sickness to this extent. Fairly sure they'd never forget it. Also: hey! Practical skills too.

[antisthenes]

Ignoring the larger picture at hand, I was reading articles about bathrooms in busy venues of NYC (theaters, mostly), how woefully inadequate they are in terms of capacity and cleanliness.

The comments on the articles were nothing but an amalgamation of what seemed to be screams of teenage children that there is some great misogynist conspiracy that keeps women lined up outside of bathrooms, several shouting contests about whose behavior is nastier in the bathroom, male or female, etc.

I pondered then, about how many of the commenters have ever worked on a plumbing issue, even in their own house, had to unclog a toilet, or build one from scratch. Or had to clean a public bathroom as part of their job (not that I had)

The reason I'm writing all this is to agree with your point - it's a marvel of civilization that we've achieved the world wide web, and that we can address progressive issues and tackle the causes of inequality and minority disadvantages. But we shouldn't forget how we got here: before the internet there was plumbing, and washing machines, and ovens, and vacuum cleaners, physical things that did more to liberate us (in my view) than most comments on the internet could ever hope to.

There is virtue in getting down to the basics of it, so to speak. Sometimes it's humbling, and perhaps being a bit more humble is the difference between constructive dialogue and a shouting match where every party is hurling insults at strawmen of their own construction.

[observation]

There's little doubt in my mind that the politics of Silicon Valley are nearly entirely a distraction from technology, which, as should be obvious, is the only thing that will matter in 20 years time.

Ironically I think the reason for the politics is that there isn't enough to go around, people get more political, more conscious of class, race and sex when they sense opportunities becoming fewer and the stakes higher.

The most interesting thing out of Silicon Valley in the last five years has been the evolution of Elon Musk's companies - very physical, real world stuff aided and abetted by software. What is he always banging on about? "First Principals".

There exists this enormous pile of problems the working class have and few developers in Silicon Valley are working on anything related to them.

[lvoudour]

>I thought to myself: if a schoolchild worked this one day, they'd potentially learn some things. Like how some people can turn into shut-ins and how that's a bad thing. How smoking and drinking can help a person develop a mental sickness to this extent. Fairly sure they'd never forget it. Also: hey! Practical skills too.

That's something you learn pretty early in "first world" countries where military service is obligatory. Cleaning toilets for 100 people, picking up cigarette butts, obeying orders despite what you think about them and dealing with people from all walks of life is a valuable lesson. Doesn't help with smoking though :(

[observation]

There's something to be said for that. It's always interesting how a natural disaster can bring a community together, often for the first time. Maybe it'd be nice if these sorts of things would be done in a more structured manner.

[prawn]

I was thinking something like this the other day. Home and office cleaners are typically 30-55 yo (in my experience), but work like that would be character-building for teenagers learning domestic skills, persistence, etc. So many wouldn't have the resilience, but it wouldn't be wasted trying to acquire some.

[observation]

In respond to the person who deleted their message: Yes, it would be nice if Silicon Valley was weirder, my sense is that as it strives for professionalism it's ironically losing that quality even as it references diversity.

It must be like how Banks always talk of 'innovation' while they do no such thing.

[irrational]

Brilliantly said.

[humanrebar]

> and on the whole was fair and measured

I think you're giving too much credit. From the article:

> Your memo was a great example of what’s called “motivated reasoning”—seeking out only the information that supports what you already believe.

...when one accuses someone of "motivated reasoning", they beg the question of whether they have "motivated reasoning" problems. That question wasn't addressed.

> It was derogatory to women in our industry and elsewhere.

Not all women even agree on this point. It's not hard to find a female-authored piece that is sympathetic to Damore. If the memo was derogatory, I would think we couldn't find any.

I could keep going.

If Page should write or sponsor a rebuttal, it needs to be much more impartial and even handed than this piece. From start to finish.

[yladiz]

Unless he was advocating something truly reviled in society, like murder or cannibalism, it's not difficult to find ways to be sympathetic towards him and his words. This does not mean it isn't derogatory against a group, even if that group doesn't all agree.

[humanrebar]

How do we objectively decide if something is derogatory then?

[ubernostrum]

The basic issue here is we're presented with this memo and told that he wrote all this stuff in order to... do what, exactly? If not this, then what point was he trying to make, or what position was he trying to argue for? Was he just citing a bunch of things for no particular reason whatsoever? And felt that this "memo about nothing" was of such Seinfeldian importance that the entire company needed to read it?

Or we can ask ourselves: what conditions would have to hold for someone to think all this was relevant and important to write about? And the answer is that if we want to be charitable and assume there's logical coherence to what he was thinking, the conditions that need to hold are something along the lines of "he thinks women are, for hard-coded unalterable biological reasons, less fit than men to work in tech jobs at Google".

[collyw]

I would suggest reading the "suggestions" section at the end:

"My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. ​ I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism)"

[ubernostrum]

My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology.

Except apparently there are a grand total of zero ideas that can be attributed to him, or attributed to being held by him. Which ideas does he think need to be given more tolerance?

Here's a hint: from the "evidence" he cites, it's pretty clear what ideas he thinks are in need of toleration.

[metaphorm]

I think his motivation was much closer to "I feel irritated because I was just forced to attend a feminist indoctrination program and I want to let management know I disagree with this kind of thing". And then he proceeded to make his request obliquely, by attempting to couch it as a scientific debate, when really it was a cultural one.

[ubernostrum]

Ah, yes, the "feminist indoctrination program". No doubt he was sent to a re-education camp where Überstürmfeminists of Femgruppe A forcibly shoved their hateful and virulent ideas down his throat.

I'm sure that's very close to what actually happened, and that this phrase is not hyperbolic or trying to portray "maybe we should treat people equally and not pre-assume things about what roles they should have based on their race/gender" as an extreme radical idea when it should be the default stance.

[Chris2048]

Here are slides from Google: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/9/16122072/google-diversity-...

Viewed charitably "[it is off-topic to be] doubting the validity of scenarios" is fine (so long as it goes either way), but the question I'd ask is:

Is "debating whether bias exists at your organisation" on-topic for a future session, or does that conversation just never happen?

I'd also like to know if "Unconscious Bias training" ever references the "Implicit association test".

[metaphorm]

remember I was speaking in Damore's hypothetical voice. The program is typically called "unconscious bias awareness training" as well as "diversity training". But yes, he was sent to a training program that irritated him.

Please don't criticize my portrayal of someone else's impressions of those programs as if that was my own opinion. You are free to watch Damore himself speak about that in the several taped interviews he has given since being fired.

[JoshTriplett]

> It wasn't until this memo that I realized how many people, when presented with a body of text, immediately start performing motive inference, subtext analysis, dogwhistle detection, etc.

When evaluating a piece of software, do you look for the subtle signs that it's poorly maintained, or that the developer has contempt for decent software engineering practices?

When you see a headline like "P versus NP", do you look at criteria like http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304 to check for signs of credibility?

When you see the latest anti-systemd screed (not thoughtful critique, just random thoughtless reiterated bashing treaded out again and again), do you notice how many of those screeds intentionally misspell it as "SystemD", and display other such warning signs?

People are very good at pattern matching, including social patterns.

[mbunch]

> When you see a headline like "P versus NP", do you look at criteria like http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304 to check for signs of credibility?

It's funny that you reference another person who was pilloried by the social media masses for being a misogynistic monster because he made a post that conformed to certain maligned social patterns (http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2119)

[rsp1984]

Agree. Sounds like just another strawman response.