Why Google’s firing terrifies social conservatives so much
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
As though that's a unique aspect of "the political left". Folks in the GOP, for example, definitely don't have litmus tests that distinguish a "true" conservative from a RINO. His team is clearly better than your team!
Honestly, it's pretty clear this op-ed is every bit the polemic as any other writing on this topic, and it's about as reliable an analysis as a result. It does nothing to move the conversation forward in any constructive way.
Again: As a Rorschach test for your sociopolitical affiliation, the memo is a smashing success. It manages this by, from the very start, couching the discussion in terms of left-right political affiliation, immediately putting the "left" on the defensive and the "right" cheering him on.
After that it's just a lesson in confirmation bias.
Edit:
As a random aside, am I the only one who feels like this thing is packed with MRA dogwhistles? "males are biologically disposable", "when a man complains about a gender issue affecting men, he is labelled as a mysogynist and a whiner", "humans are generally biased towards protecting females", etc.
This guy would've done himself a huge favour by having someone read and critique this thing before sending it out. Even a straightforward rewrite to remove some of these unsupported, content-free statements would've clarified his thesis and cut out some of the obvious flamebait.
They aren't false.
> create a toxic work environment for one third of your coworkers
The people creating a toxic work environment are those who are attempting to blackball capable, veteran engineers in order to bring incapable and subpar people into the workplace simply because they were born a different gender or skin color.
> and 100% grounds for termination.
Firing someone for political beliefs is not grounds for termination, and never has been.
Your (and presumably, the google employee that got fired) response?
"Nah, I am right, so fuck your rules"
It doesn't work that way.
Correct. It's worse: they are irrelevant. It buried the lede of unsubstantiated and toxic conclusions under some marginally related statistics and science. As a whole it wasn't a scientifically sound argument by any metric.
> The people creating a toxic work environment are those[..]
The people determining whether a working environment is toxic for them is the majority of people working in that environment. Whether you feel it shouldn't be considered toxic is a different matter.
> Firing someone for political beliefs is not grounds for termination, and never has been.
Anti-social behaviour, whether based on religion, political beliefs, or plainly being a jerk, is always a good reason for termination in larger companies. It's what keeps a work force together.
P.S. "subpar people"? Maybe you meant to say "Untermenschen"?
How can a conclusion be "toxic"? A conclusion is either consistent or inconsistent with the evidence at hand.
● They’re universal across human cultures -- Some are, such as physiological differences (muscle mass, skeletal structure, etc) and a general gradient assertiveness but that leaves a lot of other traits with a high degree of variance (and ignores the fact that a population of engineers is not randomly selected so isn't appear guasian with respect to averages of the global population)[0][1] ● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone -- citation needed ● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males -- I can't imagine that's a statistically significant sample and still citation needed ● The underlying traits are highly heritable -- citation needed ● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective -- evolutionary psychology is not mature field and has a lot of issues [2]
Just as an aside, extraordinary claims (ie this group that has been historically disadvantaged is really just inferior) requires extraordinary evidence. Im lumping baseless statements in with statements directly contradicted by existing study.
His misunderstanding of the central limit theorem in producing the graph included in the memo compounds things. There's really no reason to believe any given distribution of people, especially given the people working at google are a very specific selection from the total population.
His citations [3] only really loosely correlate with the thesis and certainly don't point to the universality that he depends on.
Really the crux of the issue is the faulty axiom that women (or anyone really) working at google (or anywhere with a selection process)should display traits as if they were randomly selected from the population. Which kills all of his other arguments.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem
[1]:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Costa3/publication...
[2]:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/01623095929...
That's totally irrelevant - so irrelevant that the fact you posted it suggests you don't understand what's being discussed here.
The "manifesto" didn't say anything even remotely in the same universe as, "male employees of Google are different from female employees" (a claim to which you might respond, "that's not true because engineers aren't randomly selected."
The manifesto explained why there are fewer females in the field of engineering.
It's like if I point out that there are fewer Asians playing professional basketball because Asians tend to be shorter. Your statement is like saying that professional basketball players aren't selected randomly, they're selected (in part) for height. Totally irrelevant to a discussion of why there are fewer overall.
I'm on mobile right now. If you like, I'll gladly take apart the rest of your post when I get home. But this bit is a good start. It's really indicative of the kind of person who has criticized the memo.
As for the field of engineering as a whole, he completely ignores the fact that ratios in other high stress high prestige professions such as medicine and law [0][1] (which have dramatically higher barriers to entry than technology while also having a much stronger historical precedence for being male dominated [we forget that programming was female dominated until the 70s]), while not even, hover at around 2:1[0][1] as opposed the 4 or 5 :1 we see in technology.
He made no verifiable claims that the women in tech were performing at any lower level just attempted to use global stats (questionable ones at best as noted above) to justify painting diversity initiatives as unnecessary.
The sad thing is there are some kernels of not terrible ideas burred at the bottom of all the pseudo science bullshit. I'd love to see more programs opened up to all engineers, because again, just because the average male is more assertive doesn't mean the average male software engineer at google is.
[0]http://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gende...
[1]https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/m...
Can you quote the exact portion of his post that made this claim?
If not, then why did you state it??
> he completely ignores the fact that ratios in other high stress high prestige professions such as medicine and law [0][1] (which have dramatically higher barriers to entry than technology while also having a much stronger historical precedence for being male dominated [we forget that programming was female dominated until the 70s]), while not even, hover at around 2:1[0][1] as opposed the 4 or 5 :1 we see in technology.
That sucks that he ignored that. Fortunately, others have addressed it. Here you go:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
(in particular, section IV). So, there it is, addressed, as you requested. You are still wrong, and the google engineer is still right.
Could you quote exactly the line where he "attempted to do the same with women who work at Google"?
That would be pure gold. I read the memo, but I don't recall that part.
I'm thinking, one of us may have our blinders one. I just want you to do the work since it is your claim, and it's a 10 page memo.
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
The fundamental disconnect between people like the OP and companies like google is over the the idea that there is an untapped well of talent locked away in groups under represented in the space. That's the whole reason these diversity programs exist.
You can look no farther than the countless blog posts on how hard interviewing and sourcing candidates that get upvoted here. Candidate acquisition is hard and expensive and it is not helped by exclusionary hiring practices. [1]
As much as we'd love to live in a world where we all spoke lojban and full meaning in language was implicitly clear, we're stuck with English so context and tone matter.
At best you have a tone deaf person writing a tasteless memo full of bad science and incorrect assertions, at worst you have all the toxic thinking that makes a lot tech such awful places to work. Engineering deserves better than bad math and dog whistles. It's really hard to argue "discrimination" when as a white guy in tech every team you're on will be full of people like you, think like you, hire like you and all the existing metrics are designed based around how you were raised. Like, there really is nothing in this world easier, than being a white dude in tech in my experience so it's very difficult to take any thing said there in good faith.
You're saying this implies that the author thinks women working at Google perform worse than men at Google?
I just want to make sure I understand exactly what you mean, and for anyone who is reading what was written above, this might clarify.
is, "no, I cannot quote that, because I just made it up."
> It's implicit in the thesis.
You lie.
> It's there in the very first fucking line if you use [0] source.
No, it's not. You have no rebuttal, and you're just making things up. You're wrong, and you're attempting to conceal it with lies.
Let me stop you right there and black swan you for a moment before the argument deteriorates into an alt-right "Freedom of speech" argument.
-Do you contest there are female (software) engineers, or at least one female software engineer, in the highest echelons that are completely technically on par with their male counterparts?
-Can you prove that these female engineers (or even this single female engineer) has a "man brain" that allows her to be on par with her male counterparts?
If you cannot do that, the rest of any argument is bupkis. Until then, females should be assumed to be equivalent regarding that task.
Any large employer that does not attempt to correct this potential disparity to add to their workforce is stealing from its shareholders--to put it in conservative terms, and consequently, correcting any mistakes with regards to this equality objective is fully legitimate.
The manifesto explained nothing, but postulated that "guys like things and girls are emotional and that's why they make worse engineers, which makes the hiring process unfair" which doesn't follow, at all.
Maybe he just got fired for being terrible at logic and science; not a great trait in an engineer.
Why would I contest that?
After I just said, "there are fewer Asians playing professional basketball because Asians tend to be shorter."
Your question is like asking, "do you disagree with the fact that yao ming is at least as tall as other basketball players"
Seriously man, WTF are you doing? Are you even reading my posts???
> Can you prove that these female engineers (or even this single female engineer) has a "man brain" that allows her to be on par with her male counterparts?
What??
Good, you do not contest that, which, frankly, would have been a silly thing to do.
> After I just said, "there are fewer Asians playing professional basketball because Asians tend to be shorter."
So, "there are fewer women in IT because women tend to be [biological argument]"
Now what here is the [biological argument]?
We've already established that there is at least one woman who is just as capable a programmer or software engineer as any man could be.
That means this woman is exceptional because either:
A) She has a specific biologically determined male trait
or
B) She is not exceptionally different in any biological way but somehow has a unique environment that allows her to be an exceptional programmer.
Occam's razor suggests B here, in the absence of extra-ordinary evidence to suggest A.
Therefore it would be prudent for any employer to offer a benefit for women to shortcut the much complicated and convoluted environmental and social factors that are involved in the B scenario.
Any interlocutor who claims to have found evidence of the [biological component], and as such support A, but does not back this up rigorously, can be assumed to be working against the interests of the employer. Whether this is for ego, political, or religious reasons is irrelevant.
Literally nobody has ever contested it. The google manifesto didn't contest it. You just imagined it. You're arguing against a straw man. You always have been.
> So, "there are fewer women in IT because women tend to be [biological argument]"
> Now what here is the [biological argument]?
If we go back to talking about women, you're just going to start imagining straw man again. You seemed to have a moment of clarity when I mentioned asians and basketball, so stick with that.
There are fewer asians in the NBA because asians tend to be shorter, on average. Even though that's true of the average, Yao Ming is over seven feet tall.
Not me, and not the google guy have ever said anything except the previous two sentences. Yet for some reason, here's what you have made up, entirely on your own, out of whole cloth: "There are fewer asians in the NBA, and those that are in the NBA are all shorter than the men in the NBA" <--- that's your straw man. That's not the argument that's on the table.
And this:
> She has a specific biologically determined male trait
is just another example of you not getting it. "Height" is not a "specific biologically determined <group> trait."
It's possible for a group of people to be taller on average, or shorter on average than another group. But that doesn't mean that "short" is a "biologically determined asian trait."
Here's a picture of the straw man you're arguing against: http://i.imgur.com/QurucPk.png
You must think that's what the google manifesto claimed, otherwise you wouldn't have said "specific biologically determined male trait."
Here's a picture of what everyone else except you is actually talking about: http://i.imgur.com/005ojrV.png
There are more men than women available at certain points on the line, but if you selected only people at some specific point, then men and women would have exactly the same value - just like how, there are fewer asians at the point on the line labeled, "seven feet tall" however, if I selected people at that point, Yao Ming would be seven feet tall.
It's really sad to me that your entire objection was based on a straw man. Some guy lost his job, and a lot of people are angry, and it's all because you imagined something that wasn't there. It's basically a witch hunt. You're seeing witches and demons where none exist. Congratulations, you're the modern equivalent of a superstitious person imagining dangers in the dark.
No, I'm setting up the premise for a logical argument. One you apparently refuse or are unable to follow.
> Not me, and not the google guy have ever said anything except the previous two sentences.
Right. I could work my way through the tedious document again and point out the compendium of ever increasing logical fallacies and plain dumb non-scientific assertions, but, I'm not getting paid for it, and at this point it's no use throwing good science after bad and Google made the right choice already. I don't have to convince anybody.
Suffice to say: the people at Google are generally smart and saw through all the bullshit and rightfully fired the guy in spite of knee jerk protestations from what appears to be mainly conservatives with a bruised ego, lack of understanding of scientific reasoning, and an Internet connection.
> It's basically a witch hunt. You're seeing witches and demons where none exist. Congratulations, you're the modern equivalent of a superstitious person imagining dangers in the dark.
Sorry, but science and reason are not on your side here. Maybe you should calm down instead of assume a partisan position and reason from that. Bad facts make for bad science.
Nope. You're arguing a straw man. You're lying about the contents of the memo.
> I could work my way through the tedious document again and point out the compendium of ever increasing logical fallacies and plain dumb non-scientific assertions
You're lying. You cannot do that. You can only argue against straw man of your own creation.
> the people at Google are generally smart and saw through all the bullshit and rightfully fired the guy in spite of knee jerk protestations from what appears to be mainly conservatives with a bruised ego
Nope. The people at Google are mainly leftists whose egos were bruised by having the truth presented to them. Instead of refute anything in the memo, they made knee jerk protestations (and often violent threats, as leftists tend to be bullies).
> science and reason are not on your side here.
Oh yes they are. The claims made by the memo are absolutely correct. You cannot even begin to address them, which is why you prefer to lie through straw men.
>Human universals
In your criticism, you are responding to an incorrect interpretation of this term.
When evolutionary biologists refer to this term, they are referencing the work of anthropologist Donald Brown, who compiled a list of traits shared among all known human cultures. He said traits on this list "comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exception."
You can read a copy of this list here http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/2890/brownlisthumanuniversal.... Notice how this list supports his claim that "On average, men and women biologically differ".
>They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
A lot of the studies supporting this come from suffers of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH).
Hines, M, Brook, C, & Conway, G. S. (2004). Androgen and psychosexual development: Core gender identity, sexual orientation, and recalled childhood gender role behavior in women and men with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Journal of Sex Research, 41, 75-81.
Hines, M, Fane, B. A, Pasterski, V. L, Mathews, G. A, Conway, G. S, &. Brook, C. (2003). Spatial abilities following prenatal androgen abnormality: Targeting and mental rotations performance in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Psychoneuroendocrinobgy, 28, 1010-1026.
Hines, M , Golombok, S , Rust, J , Johnston, K. J , & Golding, J. (2002). Testosterone during pregnancy and gender role behavior of preschool children: A longitudinal, population study. Child Development, 73, 1678-1687.
Hines, M , & Kaufman, F. R. (1994). Androgens and the development of human sex-typical behavior: Rough-and-tumble play and sex of preferred playmates in children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Child Devebpment, 65, 1042-1053.
>Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
I think he's referring to the case of David Reimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer . I don't believe we've done human castration studies, but we have done studies on mice that support this conclusion
Williams, C. L, Barnett, A. M, & Meek, W. H. (1990). Organizational effects of early gonadal secretions on sexual differentiation in spatial ability. Behavioral Neuroscience, 104, 84-97.
Williams, C. L, & Meek, W. H. (1991). The organizational effects of gonadal steroids on sexually dimorphic spatial ability. Psychoneuroendocrinobgy, 16, 155-176.
>The underlying traits are highly heritable
This one's pretty basic. They're heritable because many Sex differences caused by the existence of the Y-chromosome, which is heritable.
>They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Evolutionary psychology is the result of analyzing ecological theories observed in other animals, and applying them to humans. Ecologists have observed differences between males and females in thousands of non-human species. Why would our own species be exempt? Even today, evolution itself is still considered very controversial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
So far, all his claims look all right to me. They support his claim that "On average, men and women biologically differ". And evolutionary psychologists agree on this one. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
Notice how none of the works you could drum up really point post childhood development or aptitudes.
"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."
There is a huge difference between "because of" and "may in part explain". It comes back to an earlier point others have made, that many of the author's critics grossly misinterpret the author's arguments.
>none of the works [are on] post childhood development or aptitudes
I don't think you looked at the studies. The CAH studies are performed on adults. And on aptitudes, you neglect the the author's other references which do support the claim that "On average, men and women biologically differ". For example, he referenced multiple studies cited here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#...
The existance of sexual physical and mental dimorphisms, is either there as a completely irrelevant distraction or as a deliberate and malicious link to the idea that the current divide is "the natural order". And while the exact quote is indeed "may in part explain", the fact that no other hypothesis (especially ones that actually match the real data such as the 80s branding of computers as toys for boys and the huge leap in experience they got as a result going into secondary education) is even mentioned means what the author implies is "because of".
[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episo...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
*Edit I get the sense you really don't understand why this gets under the skin of so many people. It's not that "there exists differences" it's that there's no supporting evidence tying those differences to the divide. James couldn't provide it, you can't provide it, it's an extraordinary claim backed neither by history in CS nor by gender splits in comparable professions (law, medicine, etc). The counter argument is diversity programs open up a huge pool of untapped talent (you can provide no evidence these hires are in any way subpar) which is fucking great for business because hiring is hard. Feelings of under-preforming Harvard dropouts with a victim complex unrelated.
Claim 1: "we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."
Let's narrow this down to just Google. I believe we both agree on this claim, it comes from Google's diversity reports.
Claim 2: There exist "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women"
This is a contentious point, but I believe this is well supported and cited by studies from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#... and also studies provided in the author's treatise. We do observe differences in distributions of traits between men and women, who are of adult age and could work at Google.
I don't see a reason why employee's at Google are exempt from these studies. I argue [Claim 2] applies to Google employees.
Claim 3: [Claim 2] may in part explain [Claim 1]
I don't see how this could be offensive. Claim 3 is simple induction from Claim 1 and Claim 2. We observe differences in distributions of traits between men and women, so why wouldn't we see these traits show up in the percentage representation of women in tech?
There's a real similarity to the global warming debate, here. There are many factors that affect global mean temperature. For example, over the very long term, the sun will get brighter. But that can only account for an astonishingly tiny fraction of the warming observed on the planet.
Someone who wishes to debate honestly would admit that, while there are many factors that affect global mean temperature, the rise on CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is significant, and has a demonstrable effect on temperature, making it by far the strongest influencer.
Someone who wishes to debate dishonestly will use these other explanations as a method to muddy the debate and try and turn attention toward lesser factors that cannot explain the whole effect.
Now, if you look at this current "debate", yes, there are undoubtedly biological gender differences that can explain some male/female bias in engineering (among many other disciplines).
But no serious psychologist or sociologist would claim that those differences can account for the dramatic real world bias in the industry. It simply doesn't follow.
So to claim those gender differences lie at the root of bias in the industry is a distraction. At best it's a gross misunderstanding of the science. At worst, it's a deliberately dishonest attempt to muddy the waters and confuse the debate.
My bet is it's more the former than the latter... reading the text of the memo, my bet is that this guy has an antiquated and/or simplistic understanding of gender bias and population statistics, and has found himself falling victim to the dangers of confirmation bias. But let's call a spade a spade, here: he doesn't really know what he's talking about (there's a cognitive bias I'm looking for here... where someone who's an expert in one area therefore believes they're an expert in other, unrelated areas... it's not Dunning-Kruger but it's something like it).
The author cites scientific studies sources that explain how "Women, on average, have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas [1]. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things[2], relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing [3] )."
These scientific studies support the idea that when given the choice, women will chose to work in fields more in line with their desires. And a it's 'very common and well-replicated finding that the more progressive and gender-equal a country, the larger gender differences in personality become' [4]. What do we observe of this effect in the real world?
Women make up 90% of nurses, 80% of new veterinarians, 75% of new psychologists, about 75% of new pediatricians, about 74% of forensic scientists, about 72% of medical managers, and 68% of new biologists. [4] Every women working in these fields is one less that could be working in tech.
The author argues that "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." Is this not a partial explanation of the phenomena we are observing?
A common theme I've noticed among critics is they like to throw around terms like "gross misunderstanding of the science" "no serious psychologist" "deliberately dishonest attempt" but don't bother disproving the scientific argument with scientific studies or statistical evidence of their own.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#...
[2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004....
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizin...
[4] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
Partial? Sure.
But while these tendencies have measurable effects at the population level, at an individual level they're statistically very small, multivariate effects. They cannot, on their own, explain away even a significant portion of the gender imbalance in any of the industries you cite. It particularly makes no sense when you consider that gender balance in many industries have changed dramatically over time, something that shouldn't happen if biology was the primary determinant of career path.
I've commented elsewhere on this topic if you'd like to see a slightly more thorough treatment and some related citations... it's a waste of my time to repeat it here and I'd probably not do the full discussion justice in any case.
I looked through your comment history for the past few days and didn't find any links to scientific studies or statistical evidence. Just one link to a blog post.
Earlier you said it's a "gross misunderstanding of the science" "no serious psychologist" "deliberately dishonest attempt" and when I ask you to defend your claims, you don't want to answer. No surprises, it's a common theme I've seen around.
Nice - you just proved that diversity programs are unnecessary with far fewer words than James Damore.
This merely shows why they're not legally mandated. "Necessary", or "desirable" is another matter entirely.
Are you saying it's necessary or desirable to lower the bar for people to fill quotas, however, when someone writes something that you obviously haven't read or understood, it's rightful that they should be terminated for those opinions that you don't even seem to have grasped. I mean, you do realize that "trying to use provable false statements to create a toxic work environment for one third of your coworkers is a PR disaster" is utterly false.
What do you mean by "lower the bar"?