[naasking]

I'm not going to address all your points since as I said, these discussions tend to go nowhere, so I'll only reply to some specifics about motivation and appropriateness of the author's review:

> If it was true that Brotopia only contains anecdotes that can easily be dismissed then why do we even need the rest of the article?

Clearly because the viewpoint presented is not going away and is taken quite seriously.

> Since we don't really get to know what the theory of the book is in the article I don't think that is that relevant either.

I'm not sure why you say this. The article is pretty clear what the book's theory is: sexist, explicitly exclusionary practices are why women are avoiding tech.

> How do you correctly measure the amount of attention something should have?

By consistently applying the principles espoused by the book, in this case, gender parity. Inconsistency entails special pleading or an agenda that isn't necessarily honest, which reveals implicit or explicit bias.

> The majority of these points have now been about other things than the contents of the book in question.

That's a fair point, but I'm not sure I'd expect anything else considering the subject is a contested social issue and the book is a call for forceful and radical change.

> Which largely isn't the case in technology i.e. its an overall problem not in specializations. [re: gender dempographics]

That's not actually true. There are plenty more women in project management positions than there are female programmers. Which is tangential to the point that a sexism narrative can't explain such voluntary gender segregation, while alternative theories fair better on this measure.

> To make that a strong argument you would have specifically address the points, and the overall thesis, of the book and then make a counter argument based on that.

If the article is accurate that the book did not present any other possible explanations other than overt and implicit sexism, then the article did just that.

[vhav]

I abandoned my "mhjas" account, but I'll write a final comment.

My main critic of the article is that it doesn't address the arguments the book is making, but instead dismisses them.

If one person says "chocolate ice cream is the best because it has so much flavor" a merited response isn't "chocolate sucks, vanilla is pure flavor". That is just an opinion. A response containing argument would be "the chocolate flavor overpowers the taste of the cream, vanilla is better since it has a more subtle flavor making it more balanced". Now we as readers can decide among those argument, or make our own.

That is what we should get from the article. He should address the specific points made in the book. If sexism is the main point of the book, he should address that. He can't just dismiss those things by saying "toxic work environment" and "sexism" in quotes.

The entire part of the article addressing the book can be summarized as with this sentence:

"The point is simply that the complaints data does not suggest that Silicon Valley is “rife” with sexual discrimination and harassment or worse than California more generally. On the contrary, Silicon Valley seems better than average."

Not only isn't that very interesting, but as others have pointed out actually misguided. He doesn't perform any sort actual analysis of even the numbers presented, nor does he compare them against other sources. He doesn't explore the demographics, the consequences or the meaning of the data. These number could be explained in many other ways including but not limited to that more men in the workforce leads to less complaints, more white-collar jobs leads to less complaints, more unbalanced gender leads to less complaints, tech companies handle more complaints internally or that there isn't actually less complaints when properly analysed.

There just isn't a strong basis for his claims.

Here is a study finding that sexual harassment is a problem in workplaces and professions similar to those in SV. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual-harassment-of-women...

[naasking]

> If one person says "chocolate ice cream is the best because it has so much flavor" a merited response isn't "chocolate sucks, vanilla is pure flavor". That is just an opinion.

A flawed analogy. A more faithful analogy would be someone claiming "chocolate ice cream is the most preferred flavour the world over", and the article's response is akin to "they didn't even ask people if they liked vanilla". That is a proper response to the original claim. Even if he were to add a flawed analysis like, "over half of the 50 people in my neighbourhood preferred vanilla", that doesn't change the fact that the core of his rebuttal is still correct.

You are correct that the article's math isn't definitive, but it doesn't need to be (and he should have left it out IMO). The article claims that the book is simply a narrative backed by anecdotes, and if that's the case, then all the reviewer needs to do to undermine it is present an alternative narrative that's equally or more plausible, which he did. This narrative is justified by actual data and so is already more than the book (allegedly) provides.

> These number could be explained in many other ways including but not limited to that more men in the workforce leads to less complaints, more white-collar jobs leads to less complaints, more unbalanced gender leads to less complaints, tech companies handle more complaints internally or that there isn't actually less complaints when properly analysed.

So it sounds like you have mostly the same qualms with this review as the reviewer has with the book. Except a) the standard for books should be higher than book reviews, and b) if you disliked this analysis, then you won't like the book which the reviewer claims is even sloppier, so he succeeded in conveying that you wouldn't like this book.

> Here is a study finding that sexual harassment is a problem in workplaces and professions similar to those in SV

No one's denying that women experience sexual harassment. They no doubt experience such harassment in every field. The questions surrounding STEM specifically is whether harassment or other such sexist factors meaningfully affects female retention. That is not so clear, and as I mentioned earlier, women have staked their claim in even more competitive and aggressive fields.

We should endeavour to reduce harassment and sexism everywhere as a matter of principle, but the loud saber rattling implying that harassment entails lower engagement, particularly at the levels seen in STEM, is simply unjustified.