"women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true. It's been measured. It's a shame that we can't start a discussion with the truth
What does that have to do with anything? It does not support (let alone prove) the idea that they are less capable engineers because of this. Where is the science linking this to ability? I might as well state "men, on average, are more violent", or have narrower hips - this is provably true, but it would equally uncorrelated to suitability to the life of a software engineer.
While appearing to be very scientific, the memo offers no science to backup the underlying assumption with that line of thought("The reason there is a gender gap is because women can't deal with the high-stress environments of tech/leadership"). This is a massive leap from neuroticism. If anyone has the science to back that assumption, I'll be happy to read it.
(... And, yeah, I feel kind of pedantic here, but on this particular topic the people who don't think about it in terms of probability distributions are doomed to talk nonsense, and getting this right actually matters. So.)
edit: Rayiner's comment[1] explains the lack of scientific rigor way better than I did
So you agree with what James Damore was saying then.
Do you speak truth to power, or do you speak irrelevance to power?
Here; I took a real statistic, made it a generality and pretended that it applied to engineering.
Just because you cherry pick facts to support an argument does not mean that you are 'speaking the truth' as you wrote.
Moreover suggesting that a portion of your coworkers do not have its place here is crossing a very big line.
With that established, if we go to Wikipedia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism#Age,_sex_and_geogr...
"A 2013 review found that groups associated with higher levels of neuroticism are young adults who are at high risk for mood disorders and women.[22]
For sex, the same review found that "research in large samples has shown that levels of N (neuroticism) are higher in women than men. This is a robust finding that is consistent across cultures. This is especially the case during the reproductive years, but is also visible in children and elderly." It furthermore said that EEG responses showed clear differences between the sexes in individuals with high N levels, but no functional MRI studies have yet been performed to investigate the differences in sex regarding N. However, there is a reason to suspect physiological differences to play a role because of previous studies that showed for example, a correlation between the size of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and N in female teenagers, so "the issue of sex differences in N and the implications for understanding N’s neurobiological basis deserve more detailed and systematic investigation."[22] A 2010 review found personality differences between genders to be between "small and moderate," the largest of those differences being in the traits of agreeableness and neuroticism.[37] Many personality traits were found to have had larger personality differences between men and women in developed countries compared to less developed countries, and differences in three traits—extraversion, neuroticism, and people-versus-thing orientation—showed differences that remained consistent across different levels of economic development, which is also consistent with the "possible influence of biologic factors."[37] Three cross-cultural studies have revealed higher levels of female neuroticism across almost all nations.[37]"
The abstracts of both of the cited studies are visible, though the full articles seem to be behind paywalls.
He kind of did - in fact when he used the word 'Neuroticism' he linked to the exact article you linked to above (the main article, not the sub section on age sex and geographic differences).
Unfortunately Buzzfeed (edit: got this wrong, it was actually Gizmodo) decided to strip all the links (and a few charts) out of the version of the document they published, and so many people didn't realise that was what he was talking about.
This is all PR bullshit. Is this what we've become?? If you can't have a reasonable, adult, calm discussion or debate on a topic then all hope is lost, almost everything else is moot at that point because the entire bedrock of modern society is crumbling. He presented a reasonable argument, and did it the right way (IMO). He wasn't spewing hate speech or name-calling or anything of the sort. He laid out his argument, cited sources from reputable studies in a professional manner, and asked for input/rebuttal. Only because he's asking questions some people may not be comfortable with did this go down the way it did. This is very, very sad, if we continue down this road it is not going to end well. for anybody.
And men, on average, have a lower emotional quotient (EQ) than women and in the case of software engineers it is significantly lower.
So given that software engineering is a social activity i.e. it involves team work with a wide variety of other people. Perhaps then we should look to hire more women since men are biologically unqualified to do the job.
Or you know this line of reasoning is asinine.
But we're actually describing the candidate pool for these positions. Having a high EQ is rarely a motivating factor for going into software engineering at Stanford etc. It's people who come out of those programs and just so happens to have the right mix of EQ, drive, talent, and so on that apply to these jobs, and if the applicants are skewed male, the new hires will be as well.