gdix

> though it may have some unintended consequences that have not been fully understood yet.

I think no one disagrees that it "works" insofar as it stops the bad person from getting their bad ideas out there. Opponents of deplatforming generally argue that the long-term reaction to the deplatforming is worse than the problem the bad person's ideas were causing. Better to counter the bad ideas with good ideas to do long term good.

> if you declare bankruptcy to evict student loans, you are ineligible for retirement account contributions like IRA and 401ks for the 7-10 year window.

That's something that a large percentage of people do anyway. What a strange and poorly-thought-out suggestion.

Or maybe they just think it makes sense? I don't get the insistence of applying a selfish motivation for everything.

> Doesn't your narrative just confirm then that "working with computers" has always been related to social norms?

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. It doesn't matter how well they "performed". What matters is: would they have chosen that profession if they weren't placed there? Could it be that men preferred computer-related careers more than women did? If so, then the fact that many women were placed in those careers initially is completely irrelevant to the question of why there aren't a lot of women in those careers now.

> more or less suited

I would say "more or less preferred" is a more relevant and less acerbic metric to consider.

I think James Damore's main thesis (or one of his main theses) was that men had more of a natural and biologically driven preference to work with things/machines. So if women were placed in these positions, it detracts from the narrative that "something mysterious happened in the 80s that caused women to flee the computer industry".

I'm skeptical of the "early days of CS" narrative. Could it be that there were lots of women working with computers because it was seen as "secretarial" work. In other words, was it just bosses placing their female employees in computer-related roles as companies added those positions? If so, could it be that that "dropoff" in the 80s could be just reflective of the demographics of people who were choosing that profession. i.e. Once "computers" became a career that you could pursue, as opposed to being placed in, it attracted more men than women, possibly because men are more attracted to that type of work.

This post is rocketing down the list. It was number 1 just 10 minutes or so ago, then it went to 6, now it's 36.

Is that normal or is this post being moderated or brigaded?

edit: And now it's gone completely from the list with 74 points...

edit 2: Ok now it's back... wtf mods make up your mind about what we're allowed to see

edit 3: All the comments in this thread are getting brigaded down.

Every single memo/book/essay has quotes that can be taken out of context in order to criticize the whole. That's why the phrase "taken out of context" exists.

Yes, good point.

What's your point?

If we would like to stop using an irrelevant but unchangeable trait (such as gender or race) as a basis for hiring and recruiting, what should we do?

It might. If weightlifting counts for 50% of your total "score" and some hypothetical "worthy" metric (such as coding) counts for 50%, someone scoring a 5/5 on weightlifting but only a 3/5 on coding would have a higher total score than a person who scored 1/5 on weightlifting and 5/5 on coding.

The first guy is not necessarily "unqualified", but he would relative to the other guy. People who were hired for their weightlifting abilities wouldn't have had to reach a higher score on coding in order to get hired. So on average, you would expect them to be less qualified.

That's generally my point.

>To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made.

That's exactly my point.

Replace "brainteaser" with "being an underrepresented minority" and you'll see why it's absurd to suggest his manifesto is tantamount to saying "some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired".

You can if the subject of the stereo-type is a "white dude-bro" or whatever.

>That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified?

It depends on if that bias existed or not. If the bias exists then of course, I would want to have that bias compensated for. The question is still: is there a bias? Many people say the disparity alone is evidence of a bias because a completely unbiased system would result in a 50/50 split which we obviously don't have. The author of the manifesto is saying that a bias doesn't exist because the disparity has another explanation with some scientific support.

You might disagree or think that the science which supports this idea is faulty in some way. But come on, the reaction has been outrageous and scary.

If I say something like "our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back".

The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job.

I'm inherently saying some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired.

Edit: just to be clear, my point is that Google has, to my knowledge, expressed this sentiment and made changes to their interview process to rely less on brainteasers. They did so without controversy. No one said "hey Google is saying some of its employees shouldn't have been hired by changing their hiring process".

So if confidence is a major factor, is it possible that affirmative action affects confidence negatively in the people that it is meant to support?

I read all the slides and I think the commenter raises a good point. If math doesn't matter a lot when it comes to CS, then why bother talking about it.

Show me how many standard deviations apart men and women are when it comes to skills that lead to success in CS.

And they say millenials are entitled...

> We are living in the richest and most technologically advanced civilization ever to have existed.

That's always true at any given moment in time. 100 years ago, someone was living in the most technologically advanced civilization but they still had to budget. We're not in star trek the next generation yet.

Well I meant e.g. "only have 30K of student loan debt instead of $45K". And yeah all that stuff is possible. It's called life and it's not supposed to be easy. Sorry.

And yeah if you can't earn enough then you should move. It's not a big deal. Sorry that money is a thing and that real estate has varying prices in different geographics areas causing you to have to make this decision. So sorry.

Huh? If you want to buy a million dollar condo in SF when you hit 30, the down payment would be 200K. If you and your your spouse save an extra $50 a week then you'll have $66K. That's one-third of the down payment you need using the numbers from the tweet which only represent avocado toast expenditures. Save another $50/wk by not going to bars (1 person can easily spend $50 on alcohol in a night out). Save another $50/wk by not going to starbucks. Save another $50/wk by not going into extreme student loan debt which is totally avoidable. Save another $50/wk by not leasing an Audi A4 because it's always been your dream car therefore you should have one when you're 22. Save another...

The point is, you can save a lot of money by making smart choices instead of blaming baby boomers.

Let me google that for you: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/where-does-7-come-from-when-i...

4-6% inflation adjusted return is not unreasonable or amazing.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-historical-return-of-real-...

"So far this decade, the U.S. stock market is ahead once again. And for the past 40 years, it would have earned you almost 4 times as much as U.S. residential real estate."

Who says the previous generation spent the "correct" amount? Where in the contract that we all signed when we became adults did it say "The cosmos shall ensure that no generation should ever have to spend less than the previous generation on anything"?

What are you talking about? Spending $8 on a beer is a luxury. If you spend an extra $6 on a drink to have a man pour it for you, you can't complain about being poor. I'm sorry.

https://www.thecut.com/2014/06/biggest-food-clich-on-instagr...

One of the tweets linked here is this https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/864192842817839104

He's making it seem like saving $50 a week to end up with $33K is some kind of impractical absurdity. $33K is a long way towards a down payment on a house in most of the country. AND THAT'S JUST HIS AVOCADO TOAST BUDGET! Cut out the $8 beers and $4 lattes from Starbucks, get married and combine your wealth with your new wife and guess what, you can afford a house. In the SF Bay Area? No, probably not. But believe it or not, there is a world outside the 64 square miles of SF.

To all the people who keep saying things like "I don't eat avocado toast but I can't afford to buy a house either. Counter example! QED LOL", you're missing the point. It's not about avocado toast obviously. The point is that millennials spend money on frivolous luxuries and then complain that they can't afford anything. He was using avocado toast as an example. Duh.

You defeat bad arguments with good arguments. By the way this is the ONLY way.

Silencing those you disagree with will only enrage and mobilize those people, and those people vote. Hence, Trump.

I'm pretty sure the ACTUAL reason is that sometimes people say "you guys" instead of "y'all" in work emails and on slack.

That's what I was thinking too. If your mortgage on your 3br in Oakland is $1MM, your payment is $4,728/mo (interest portion is tax deductible but let's ignore that). Let's say your place is $1.5MM, that's another $1500 in property tax (also tax deductible but again, let's ignore). If you're bringing home $15K/mo, then you're still left with ~9K per month. That's a lot of rice and beans.