oddlyaromatic

I'm a pretty basic got user, just wanted to say this was a really useful distinction for me to read.

mbasic.facebook.com lets me get messages and send them.

The parent appears to be using the term FUD with this in mind, to suggest that the doubt is indeed unreasonable.

>"what I've bought at <local supermarket> in the past year".

They get so much more than that. If you use a credit card at the store, the record now knows about this card, and any other credit card you have ever used while using that rewards program. This can all then be connected to other databases that track personal credit card spending in similar ways. A surprisingly detailed profile is quite likely to be out there on all of us, even if we are not always identified by name. If you have last 4 digits of a card plus zip code... You have a whole lot.

My memory is a little vague on the sources for this but I will try to dig up some relevant stories.

>These are resources I can recommend to every programmer regardless of their skill level or tech stack

> Highly opinionated . Not backed by science.

This kind of indicated that to me, at least. Also the format of the title is just inherently daft and a rhetorical device that summarizes the kind of list it is. Like "things to do before you die", or "ten things you won't believe Michael Jordan sat on".

We all have our own version of this list in our heads. This person just published theirs.

Also it says:

>P.S. You don't need to know all of that by heart to be a programmer. But knowing the stuff will help you become better!

Thinking Fast and Slow was really good, I've listened to it a couple of times. As a framework for thinking about working and learning it really clicked with me. I think I've been gently influenced by this book in many ways, including how I set my expectations about other people, and what "system" they might be employing at any moment. This has helped reduce my overall stress levels and increased my patience with myself and others. Even if the science isn't 100% perfect (is it ever?), these are usable models that approximate behavior and can be practical when taken with a grain of salt.

That is good information and a good point of view to have, but it doesn't change your earlier misstatement about NPR, itself, "wondering why", which is the thing I was trying to add context to. (maybe you didn't mean it that way, I'm cranky ;))

I did a BA and an MA in the arts. I don't work in the arts now, 10 years later, but on a daily basis I see how that experience gave me tools and skills I didn't have at the end of high school that help me succeed. Just in terms of professionalism, communication skills, and being exposed to new ideas and challenged about how I see the world. As well as, occasionally, a specific piece of knowledge being useful (eg I'll do musical transcriptions from time to time). I was a disaster coming out of high school, and college was the ideal environment for me to become more independent and less of a jerk. I almost studied commuter science, but ended up picking music and English, which has led me such different and interesting places.

One caveat: I come from a country where you don't have to go into debt to attend college. This frames the experience very differently, I think.

I find most implementations of this jumpy and distracting - just too eager. Often I'm scrolling up to reread the top line of text. Then the bar pops up and blocks my text, it is daft!

They do "wonder why" but then they list the various explanations and tradeoffs that have been made given the nature of the storm and the risks of the evacuation itself. The questioning is a rhetorical and slightly click-baity device, not actual disagreement, as far as I could tell.

I like my job but it is not EVERYTHING I like to do. I work with adults with developmental disabilities, it's really awesome. I also manage employees/families/employers and do various relationship building at work. This can be pretty tiring, I'm not a very outgoing person but I can turn it on for what I need to do at work. After many years of this I'm now much better at it. But I like web development too, so I pick up little freelance gigs or work on civic hacking projects in my community. One day I might switch to development as the main thing, in which I would expect to do some volunteering and such with the people I serve now. I have always found that combining jobs and hobbies can produce great overall results for me, though I don't agree that every given day/week/month needs to be "balanced" in a certain ratio. I do what's in front of me, and if I am restless to do more of something or hang out with certain people, I go do it. No need to get everything from one source.

> That's just redundant and IMO does more harm than good.

We can agree to disagree on that! I do agree about how squishy the boundaries can be and that it limiting speech is not to be done lightly. Speech vs acts is also fuzzy, since speech both is an act & can cause others to act. Besides the emotional/social harm racist speech causes, it fosters physical harm and financial harm. Even in an imperfect, flawed implementation, a restriction on such speech in public might provide more benefit than what it costs. Buuuuut there is speaking hatefully and then there is discussing ideas, and it would be good if courts could tell the difference.

I would add that it is really worth seeing professional storytellers, especially if there is a storytelling festival in your area. These are often people who tell both traditional folk tales and personal stories, and sometimes just crazy invented stuff. It's not comedy but it's often funny, and it's not theatre but it's often dramatic. You can be in a tent with 2000 people and feel like you just had a great conversation with an old friend. There is a ton of wisdom, practice, and stagecraft involved in getting to that level, but at the same time the fundamentals are simple and consistent: Respect the audience, respect the story, and let some of your own personality in.

>You know, someone who should be banned because they're obviously up to no good.

This is not what "hater" means in most speech. You seem to be pretty sensitive about this issue. I guess you've been in some unpleasant arguments recently. The vague idea of hate speech is obviously in need of refinement, and has lots of problems. I'm interested in what you would do about hate speech other than criminalize/punish it. Or perhaps more narrowly define it. I won't bite your head off or call you a hater.

>He is clarifying what he meant, to no apparent effect. It's not hard to find a clip of an interviewer asking whether he thinks women are inferior. He, predictably, says he believes nothing of the sort. And then this gets printed in the Times.

We'll probably just go in circles about this. The content of the memo, as a whole, does not reflect the harmless statement that "not everything is purely cultural" ... To suggest that biology might be even a significant factor in the lopsided representation is a mistake. Not just politically, but I believe factually too. And it is a bad one because it happens to overlap with the general stream of biases and impressions people already have about women in tech. And now they must also deal with people maybe believing their own interpretation of this memo. I think he should have been far more careful and specific in his terms.

Also, he could believe his views are not demeaning to women, and be wrong. It is hard to see our own biases. I feel I have shown much of my own in writing about this but life is short!

When I can, I'll respond in detail. Maybe I'm crazy.

I think that's fair. I guess I could have specified "the kind of diversity programs with which James Damore has a problem". But I take your point. In principle, this is actually close to what actually ends up happening, except with limited resources it becomes a really tricky dynamic.

Let's say Google has 10 reps, and in the old days 8 went to A, 2 to B. If they now send 5 to A and 5 to B... The A group will feel that they lost something, and the B group will feel like they never even HAD 8 reps, so not necessarily feel that things have become fair... It might be fairest to have a period of 2 going to A and 8 going to B for the same length of time that 8 went to A, and THEN balance it to 5 and 5... But if A suddenly goes from 8 to 2... well, those people are going to be writing memos like nobody's business about it. Even at 5 and 5, there will be memos. Even at 7 and 3, possibly. The slightest change to the status quo could provoke a memo.

(and for the record I do appreciate this comment, in case that didn't come across.. I'm responding in a similar spirit... not important but worth thinking through all the same)

I supposed I very slightly lean towards an edit for increased clarity on Taplin's part, but it I don't think the current phrasing is meaningfully wrong, in the way that you do. Damore left the door wide open to that interpretation, and I'm not at all sure it isn't what he thinks.

> He didn't get a world class editor (present performance notwithstanding) or the opportunity to print retractions

I'm sure he is surprised at his memo's international newsmaking, but he is not modifying his stance based on the feedback he has received. In his recent WSJ article [0], Damore wrote "I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment" ... which indicates he still thinks the memo was basically fine and that that's all he was doing. He's focusing on the echo chamber and the most gentle and obvious idea in his memo (that not 100% of gender variance is socially constructed). He assumes the only people who were not in agreement with him and complained were those who believe "that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and all people are inherently the same."

He takes no responsibility for not ever quantifying the biological effect, yet still recommending changes to the processes based only on that the biological component exists at all. This makes no sense to me. Unless maybe he cannot even see the logical gap there because it is filled with his own beliefs and stereotypes about gender.

I assume that article gave him the opportunity to consult a world class editor, and he may print retractions if he chooses.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-was-fired-by-google-15024...

I've made the correction in my comment. I knew it was the opinion section, wasn't aware I was giving the wrong impression. Still not sure, but it's a harmless change.

I did feel the person who responded to me was still correct to have high expectations of linguistic precision for a professional author being published by a national organization.

While I think Damore was quite wrong, I do also cringe when I hear most of the soundbites. There are very good reasons to criticize what he said, but an unfair summary kind ruins the whole idea of discourse about the memo.

Damore's writing prowess is maybe not the issue exactly, other than it is a symptom of the lack of clarity of his ideas. Unclear ideas, unclear writing. It's certainly reasonable to conclude from Damore's memo that what he believes is that "women choose (and succeed at) tech jobs at a lower rate than men because on average they have biological characteristics that mean they tend to be more suitable for other kinds of work" ... preference, biology, culture, expectations, it's all one big interconnected system. He's not at all clear about what, given the biology, he thinks the "natural" rate is... unless he thinks it's already about right? So it's not clear what he means, or even if he knows what he means. Taplin could certainly have been more precise in the NYT, but Damore did nothing to control interpretation of his words (nothing, at least, that succeeded).

To me this is like trying to optimize software in the wrong place. Biology is surely a factor somewhere in the chain, but many other things are causing more problems, and in ways that are easier to fix, so we probably shouldn't spend time on the biology thing just yet, because it won't cause much impact overall.

I'm not sure what you mean by "equality" programs. "Diversity" programs are by nature unfair- they provide explicit preferential treatments to specific groups in order to counteract presumed other factors that make those groups less likely to be present in the first place.

He clearly has beef with the unfair nature of those programs but they are still the best way I know of concretely responding to realities of a complicated world filled with prejudice and bias beyond any one organization's control. There's always room for improvement based on new data though.

What is your understanding of those ideas?

>questioned the company’s gender diversity policies

It did that.

> made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.

It did this too. But I'd argue the NYT opinion piece is too vague here. "made statements about" does really mean anything. I suppose the "suitability for" is a bit wrong. More like "biological inclination towards" technical jobs?

That changes things slightly but I can't see it as a huge misrepresentation.

The underlying idea of the memo is that biology can partly explain women's career choices (true) and that Google should recognize this and factor it into their diversity targets more than they do. That second part is highly debatable. Without controlling for gender bias and many cultural/historical effects, I'm doubtful we can even really begin to detect how much biology influences the choices of any given individual in the real world. How can we blame biology for a woman's choice if the mere fact that she's a woman causes her to be reviewed more harshly by others for the same work? Taken less seriously? Etc etc. These are real effects, and until they are gone, it will be impossible to determine what role biology plays on average participation levels in tech.

(edited to clarify NYT opinion piece, as opposed to NYT article)

That may summarize the goal of the memo, but it does not adequately summarize the content, which has a large focus on biological differences between the sexes being this Big Factor that is not yet "priced in" to diversity programs. In reality he was probably way, way off on the impact of biology, but he confirmation biased his way forward regardless, then peppered the memo with hedges to offset the backlash.

Song Exploder, Coding Blocks, Strangers (really good series of long conversations with Trump voters began not so long ago, but haven't check in on it for a while), Judge John Hodgman, Front End Happy Hour, Bullseye, Jordan Jesse Go!, More Perfect, 99% Invisible, Hidden Brain, Oh No Ross and Carrie. In general lots of NPR stuff and the following networks: Maximum Fun, Earwolf, Radiotopia.

Here's a short review on the use of the singular "they". It is OK. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi...

This is two different things, not helped by the multiple meanings of the word budget. If the organization makes the budget (i.e. a spending plan) without confirming the funds (or knowing them through, say, a long term understanding), and don't get what they seek, of course that's not somebody else "cutting" their budget. That's just a budget you made up not being agreed to.

But this is more about having an expectation of funding at a certain level from whatever source, and knowing that that will be your "budget" (now meaning a spending _limit_), then having that amount come down. You now have a smaller limit.

How else could you plan beyond one year, other than in reference to expected increases/decreases in subsequent years? Those expected increases can't be ignored in "the budget", so they are planned for and probably allocated before that fiscal year ever starts. If you reduce that increase, you absolutely cut the budget.

This is a great idea. Although, if I was staying in the nonprofit social work sector I would probably not even leave this company (I consider it to be a really high quality provider in its area). Unfortunately, like a lot of people, I'm being pulled towards web development. Partly by the large income difference, but more because I find I feel really at home in that world and I am hooked by the work. I'm getting to grow my programming skills at this company by solving little problems and writing useful tools. Similarly at my other job, I'm taking over the website. However, eventually, it would be nice to have only one job, and for it to be full time development. I'd bring my boss if I could!

I feel this way about my boss, I have stayed a long time after it does not make financial sense because she

A) takes my ideas seriously even if she doesn't see the end game. Just says go for it and see what happens.

B) comes up with trainings and stuff that match my role that she can send me on.

C) holds me to a high standard without being a jerk about it.

I will be bummed to leave and stop learning from this person's example. I'm taking a hit financially but I've come a really long way. So I'm being reaaaal slow in the job hunt. I know when I'm in a good work environment, and I might not find that. At the next job.

As a manager myself, I will go out of my way to retain a good employee. Our wages are low (nonprofit) but we can be very flexible to the needs of an employee. Diligent, dedicated people who care about doing a good job are worth their weight in gold.

Generally I think people who are basically compelled to spend time together should use company policies, and their own judgement, to figure out what's professionally acceptable in context and work in reference to that. I don't agree with how home/work lines are often blurred and I see nothing wrong with opinions being shared at work, except the naive expectation that one has the right to say anything at all and, if it's "just an opinion", experience no consequences. It's just basic professionalism. In the real world outside of work, people can express all ranges of opinions (well, most), and others can choose to react, or not. Others can even choose to just not deal with you if they don't like your opinion (again, mostly). At work, you have a complicated long term contractual and financial relationship to the employer and other employees. It's appropriate for people to come into that with some self awareness and caution about what to say, and to whom.