[dotnetisnotdead]

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.

[stcredzero]

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

As is usually the case, reality is complex, requires a nuanced understanding, and might sound depressing if you give it a pessimistic read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw

[FabHK]

+1.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

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.

[bduerst]

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.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/

[stcredzero]

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.

[bduerst]

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.

[stcredzero]

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.

[lawnchair_larry]

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.

[SmirkingRevenge]

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.

[rendall]

> Except the Big Five has been debunked as being too lexical for biological differentiation.

Has the Big Five model been actually debunked? Or, rather, has it received criticism.

But, yes, your focus on the content of the memo itself is a breath of fresh air in this overall debacle of a discourse.

[FabHK]

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.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/citedby...

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.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/table/p...

[bduerst]

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.

[akvadrako]

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.

[jhanschoo]

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").

[stcredzero]

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.

[TeMPOraL]

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.

[notfromhere]

I would disagree with that. Women still face plenty of discrimination in society

[stcredzero]

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.

[collyw]

You should give an example

[Goladus]

"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.

[jhanschoo]

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.

[Goladus]

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.

[smrtinsert]

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.

[weberc2]

> 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.

[vfulco]

The topic matter was above the IQ of the vast majority of the protesters so we got a mob rule, peasant like response.

[stcredzero]

Did James Damore ever claim that women overall have lower IQs than men overall? [Citation Needed]

[praestigiare]

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.

[nilkn]

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.

[dvanduzer]

Yes.

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.

[nilkn]

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.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

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.

[dotnetisnotdead]

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.

[goialoq]

https://xkcd.com/385/

[stephenr]

> she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries

I'd wager a third of the nodejs "developer community" could be described that way. The key thing is was she hired to write sql queries?

[dotnetisnotdead]

Yes, that is part of her job, but it wasn't covered in the interview process from what I've been told.

[stephenr]

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.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Unfortunately, they tend to be promoted quickly. For being so brilliant, you understand.

And then they're your boss. Or your boss's mate.

[Gusbenz]

Does she even bother looking at the docs or would that also denote how useless she is?

[dotnetisnotdead]

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.

[goialoq]

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.

[mcknz]

Strikes me as a distinction without a difference -- incompetence means you are incapable of performing a task.

One could speak of someone having more skill than another, but if both skillsets have no value, it doesn't really matter.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> 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.

[saas_co_de]

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.

[dotnetisnotdead]

>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.

[wpietri]

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.

[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourna...

[2] https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/18271/is-james-dam...

[gizmo686]

From the complaint:

"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."

[flukus]

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.

[Idontknowmyuser]

so let me get this staright: when Damore is being rated politics have an effect on ratings and promotions

when Damore speaks out against politics affecting hiring and promotion, he is wrong

I'm fascinated how one can reconcile both beliefs

[wpietri]

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.

[smsm42]

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.

[Goladus]

> We already know that he lied about a PhD

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.

[wpietri]

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:

http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/598b0f3776084a30198...

I'm glad to hear you weren't misled by that thanks to your expertise, but there's no denying that is misleading to a general-audience reader.

[smsm42]

So your argument goes like this:

1. Damore truthfully specified he's a PhD student

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.

[coldtea]

>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).

[collyw]

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.

[ng12]

> you write him off as an idiot and forget him

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.

[praestigiare]

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."

[ng12]

My point is more that the anecdotal stuff matters -- by being ham-fisted in your attempts to address diversity you reduce inclusiveness.

[richmarr]

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.

[manigandham]

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.

[pillowkusis]

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.

[manigandham]

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.

[TeMPOraL]

Yes.

> 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.

[justifier]

> 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"

[hypersoar]

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.

https://youtu.be/p1H7KxPlbQw?t=42m32s

[manigandham]

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.

[hypersoar]

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.

[1]https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

[manigandham]

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.

[hypersoar]

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.

[ng12]

> diversity of what exactly is the target? Life experience?

Clearly not when every company recruits from the same 10 schools.

[manigandham]

Surely you can agree that every student is an individual and just because they go to the same college does not mean they all have the same background?

[ng12]

No, but I would argue it makes them less diverse than their physical traits. Especially considering that college is a formative time for most people.

[manigandham]

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.

[ng12]

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.

[atom-morgan]

No, but in-state tuition has to contribute significantly to where you go to college.

[dragonwriter]

Only if you go to a public, state school.

Otherwise, in-state tuition probably can't be a factor.

[noonesays]

> Also nobody ever seems to ask: diversity of what exactly?

https://www.bis.org/review/r160531e.pdf asks literally "Diversity of what exactly?"

[erikpukinskis]

Diversity in any non-job-related axis along which candidates have historically been excluded.

[wan23]

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.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/07/01/google-apolog...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/09/faceapp-spa...

https://www.rt.com/viral/400927-robots-racist-sexist-bank-lo...

http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-huawei-smartphone-bea...

[SyncSystems]

> 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.

[AnimalMuppet]

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.

[tziki]

> 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-...)

[Idontknowmyuser]

another study supports this claim:

"The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview."

"Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door."

source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

[erikpukinskis]

“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.”

[YeGoblynQueenne]

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.

[Idontknowmyuser]

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.

[erikpukinskis]

I didn’t make a claim.

[Idontknowmyuser]

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.

[hinkley]

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.

[Goladus]

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.

[hinkley]

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.

[nautilus12]

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

[dotnetisnotdead]

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.

[orbat]

> bigoted academic clique

Ah, everybody's a bigot but the actual bigots

[Idontknowmyuser]

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...

more about that incident: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/wilfrid-lau...

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.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> 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.

[tscs37]

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.

---

0: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-017-1600-2

1: doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.10.011.

[psyc]

I think a reasonable person can find snippets of what he wrote distasteful. But it’s more like uncomfortable. I agree there is truth in it.

It’s very obvious to me that the negative reaction was greatly amplified by the ever-outraged and ever-posturing social (media) justice contingent.

[virgilp]

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.)

[omikun]

> 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."

[vfulco]

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."

[bertil]

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…?”

[dotnetisnotdead]

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.

[flukus]

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.

[dotnetisnotdead]

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

[0xWilliam]

>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?

[_m8fo]

> I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status.

How do you know that they were hired just because of their minority status?

[lawnchair_larry]

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.

[folknor]

Because there are explicit examples of this with supporting evidence given in the lawsuit.

[dragonwriter]

No, there aren't. There are alleged examples and supposed evidence of lots of things in the lawsuit, but that isn't one of them.

[folknor]

Yes, in paragraphs 174 to 198, but specifically 179 to 181.

[dragonwriter]

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.

[folknor]

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".

[IanDrake]

>Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech.

That maybe one of the saddest statements in the history of modern discourse. It’s not your fault for saying it, it’s that you needed to say it.

We have reached the point where identity matters more than content. This is the exact opposite of the MLK dream as I understood it.

[swiley]

>Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech.

No offence but I think it's kind of harmful to everyone when you make arguments based on your race and gender.

[Veelox]

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.

[dotnetisnotdead]

Exactly, I'm not using it to bolster my statement, rather to prevent being called a Nazi

[seemuch]

> 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?

[dotnetisnotdead]

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.

[dragonwriter]

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.

[wan23]

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.

[snvzz]

>People notice it, but few say it.

Of course. They'd get fired.

[vfulco]

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.

[petraeus]

You know what makes me even angrier, social injustice

[superquest]

After your first two paragraphs, you mostly allude to the truths contained in Damore's document.

Could you elaborate a little more about its "ugliness"?

[s73ver_]

"It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth."

That's just it; it really did not. It contained a lot of things that people who aren't members of those groups he targeted think are plausible.

"I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women. "

And what, specifically, would those differences be?

[stcredzero]

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.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWSoM1_6KM

[andrewprock]

Is there any evidence that this is biological, as opposed to cultural?

[stcredzero]

In short, yes. You should look up the book which is cited in this video, and you should listen to the discussion of the prologue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw

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.

[andrewprock]

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.

[mpweiher]

>> 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.

[Idontknowmyuser]

ok what about this "Sex differences in brain size and general intelligence (g)" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616...)

"Abstract

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."

[stcredzero]

Nothing to get your knickers in a bunch about, is what I'd say about it. (Note, that term can refer to golf pants.)

[Idontknowmyuser]

a - Women have a higher capacity at empathy (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19476221)

b - higher capacity of empathy might be in part to biological: "Testosterone may reduce empathy by reducing brain connectivity" http://www.psypost.org/2016/03/testosterone-may-reduce-empat...

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

[dionian]

EDIT: Deleted this comment as it was downvoted for not agreeing with the hivemind.

[dang]

If you're going to delete your comment, delete it, but what you left here violates the HN guidelines. Please don't do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[mistermann]

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.

[dotnetisnotdead]

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.

[lawnchair_larry]

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.

[pm90]

> 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.

[bmelton]

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?

[55555]

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.

[pm90]

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.

[johnny22]

lots of folks are against that. Positive discrimination is a thing.

[coldtea]

>That's most definitely a cultural thing, and I believe its what diversity programs try to address.

If it's a cultural thing, why is one version (attitude/culture) towards it considered better than the other (and thus one has to be "addressed")?

[Veen]

> That's most definitely a cultural thing

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.

[omegaworks]

> 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.

https://hackernoon.com/a-brief-history-of-women-in-computing...

[lurr]

It doesn't. At all.

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?

[Zanni]

That's shifting rapidly. Women are very close to 50% of medical school graduates as of 2015. [1]

[1] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-gra...

[nilkn]

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.

[ZeroGravitas]

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.

[Idontknowmyuser]

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.

[TeMPOraL]

> 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:

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

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.

[omegaworks]

>The issue is that it doesn't matter.

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.

https://mic.com/articles/124899/the-reason-this-racist-soap-...

>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.

[lurr]

> There are structural barriers that prevent women...

There is also a long history of "men are doctors, women are nurses".

[d1zzy]

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.

[stcredzero]

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.

[Aloha]

>The Polish and Italian immigrant groups' IQs increased from 85 to over 100 over the 1st half of the 20th century.

Yes, because of improved living conditions, and better food compared to the old country - not because of political leadership.

[stcredzero]

not because of political leadership

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.

http://a.co/auz0JmV

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.)

[akhilcacharya]

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?

[stcredzero]

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?

Urban thug culture.

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell...

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6IJV_0p64s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKAaOzeIbwE