[Manuel_D]

"dog whistles" are, more often than not, a thinly veiled way of putting words in other people's mouthes.

Damore's thesis amounted to "maybe women are 20% of software developers not because they're being discriminated against, but because they're exercising their own agency and choosing other fields."

Given that about 20% of CS grads are women, it seems like a pretty reasonable stance.

[danpalmer]

In isolation, it's a very naive, oblivious, and incurious stance.

Taken alongside the rest of the content, it's a rejection of the idea that there is systemic bias, and much of his memo is dedicated to ways in which that bias can be propagated and solidified.

At best, the memo paints Damore as someone who is radically uninformed and parroting old and invalid talking points that others have given to him. At worst it implies that he knows what he's doing and is trying to dismantle processes and culture that are improving women's access to the workplace.

[Manuel_D]

So merely contesting the notion that systemic bias is the main driver of the gender disparity in tech is grounds for instant termination? Well, that's rather troubling given that the empirical evidence on the bias in tech company hiring doesn't support the narrative of anti-female bias: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484

Hn discussion of the paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644

[danpalmer]

Not at all. A good faith discussion in the right forum is fine.

That's not what the memo was. It ignored the evidence we have that there is systemic bias, it relied on tired and debunked tropes, and has explicit goals about preserving and elevating the privilege that perpetuates that systemic bias. That done in front of a large company filled with people personally affected by it is just a terrible idea. I'm open to discussion about this, but from the right people (those affected, with the experience) in the right context. James Damore was neither.

But honestly, if you read the memo and think it sounds reasonable, I'm not going to be able to change your mind. These biases are deeply rooted and take decades of introspection to overcome. I've been on that journey for probably 15 years and I've still got blind spots.

[Manuel_D]

And what evidence of systemic bias would that be?

The experiment I linked above sent monitored the callback rates of applicants sent out to Bay Area tech companies for technical roles, and saw higher callback rates for women. This is the sort of prototypical evidence we use as an example of systemic anti-Black bias where Black applicants are called back less frequently than white applicants.

Is Google, specifically, systemically biased against women? Cross-referencing the diversity reports they publish [1], with employment statistics [2] does not show an underrepresentation of women. Google has also taken controversial steps, such as tying executive performance reviews to the representation of "underrepresented groups" - that term has included women at every company I've worked at, but if that's not the case at Google please correct me. When Google conducted an investigation into whether women were underpaid, they discovered that the disparity leaned the other way [3].

Perhaps maybe some introspection is warranted on your part into the assumptions you have about gender bias at Google and in the tech industry in general.

1. https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/819bcce604bf5ff7...

2. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

3. https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/700288695/google-pay-study-fi...