Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Female Engineers, Could You Please Share Your Thoughts On the Google Memo
Reader joshtops writes: The widely circulated memo written by software engineer James Damore has become the talking point across companies in Silicon Valley, and elsewhere. In an interesting take, The Economist on Tuesday argued with the scientific or otherwise assumptions made by Damore. I was wondering what female engineers -- or females in other STEM beats -- think of the memo.
What's the % of female users on Slashdot, seriously?
https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999
This topic comes up with my wife fairly often; even more often since we had two daughters. She is a business / data analysis at a smallish multinational manufacturing company, and while it upsets me when I see this behavior directed at my female software engineer counterparts it is even worse when you hear first hand accounts from someone you care about deeply. From being treated like a secretary to having her comments dismissed, it is all behavior any reasonably educated male should notice even without having it pointed out by female coworkers.
It is often hard to give advice to my wife because I simply don't have to deal with the same obstacles. She cannot really complain about misogynistic behavior without being branded a trouble maker, and she has to walk a very fine line between being assertive or just a bitch.
A quote from Bob Thaves about Ginger Rogers sums up the plight of women in the workforce in general, and women in STEM field especially. "Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards and in high heels."
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
To even ask the question to females only acknowledges that men and women are in fact different, with different views driven by biology. Well done Slashdot.
I am never anything but appalled by the majority of comments on Slashdot any time a topic related to females comes up, so I cannot imagine why any woman would respond to this. I know that I wouldn't want my daughter to ever have to interact with the kind of ignorant male jackasses who seem to constitute the majority of posters on Slashdot.
most of us would want them to build a system with agents that are compassionate. How will that happen if all of it is run by men who live like we are all on an island like the Lord of the Flies?
Which seems like a stronger generalizing statement than anything I saw in the kids manifesto.
I read the memo and found it well written and I think it pointed out how the SWJ and left leaning bias at Google isn't good for anyone including the class of people that the wrong headed policies seek to help. Google is clearly all about respecting everyone's opinion so long as they are the "correct" ones.
But please read the full memo with links before settling on an opinion. I was listening to NPR just two days ago and they resorted to straw man arguments and condemnation without being truthful about what it's contents were. Also keep in mind it was written as an internal reply in response to a specific request by google for controversial thoughts on improving workplace diversity practices.
It's the new perpetual frontpage story!
Yes, female brains are different -- but not in a way that would affect engineering or science reasoning.
Which leads more to: female engineers are just as good as male engineers.
But because of the differences, fewer females want to be engineers or scientists. But it isn't like 100% of men want to be engineers or scientists either.
Bad User. No biscuit!
The existence of special treatment will always cast a shadow over your own abilities and about whether or not you deserve the place you have. It's an adds an extra layer of bullshit that's an unnecessary and counterproductive distraction.
The idea that such measures are required is it's own special sort of bigotry.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I started to read that post from The Economist until I got to this section:
Have you ever noticed how no one takes sentences that start “I’m not a racist, but” at face value? Here’s why, in the words of Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones” (season 7, episode 1). When Sansa Stark tells him: “They respect you, they really do, but,” Snow laughs and comes back with: “What did father used to say? Everything before the word ‘but’ is horseshit.”
Seriously....they argued with the science, but quoted Game of Thrones.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Also leads to the counter-argument:
"If there is no difference between the way women and men think or operate, then it is wrong to claim that diversity would improve a company, or have any effect on business"
If women bring nothing unique to the table, then diversity becomes solely a placating effort.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
"We need to stop letting the political left divide us."
Yes, we need to all become white men like the political right prefers.
The hypothesis Damore argued against is that all gender-differences in workplace representation are due to discrimination. You only need a single counter-example to disprove this hypothesis, and Damore provided several. The Economist article doesn't even try to tackle these (in fact it seems to avoid acknowledging them except implicitly).
Instead, the Economist brings up counter-points to Damore's memo. e.g. That there are statistical differences between men and women which favor women, to counter his point that there are statistical differences which favor men. In other words, it is written as if the hypothesis in dispute was "there is no gender-based discrimination." Which AFAIK nobody is arguing except those using it as a straw man to try to justify draconian anti-discrimination measures.
Basically, the SJW crowd argued "all wood floats." Damore pointed out "hey these types of wood sink." And the Economist in response argues "well these types of wood float." Well that's nice, but it doesn't really support the original argument nor counter Damore's point.
This whole debate boils down to using gender ratio in the workplace as a measure of discrimination. All Damore is arguing is that there are other reasons than discrimination which cuase the ratio not to be 50/50. The SJW crowd doesn't want to give up this disproven hypothesis because it makes it easy to justify their anti-discrimination measures. Anyone who's published any real paper using statistics knows it's never this easy - that is why statisticians have jobs. There are always caveats and other factors you have to try your best to control for.
Well...that IS the most important aspect of running a successful business, isn't it???
[/sarcasm]
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I start scrolling, and all I see are the usual suspects.
Guys, a) shut up, or b) you prove the point of shutting down women.
Oh, and one of my daughters is a better programmer than you.
The affirmative action response is to force them, through quotas, to hire people that they have worked so hard to keep out... rather than just removing these people in the first place. Why?
Because quotas are measurable. On average, if your population is 50% women or 15% black, your company should reflect those proportions as close as possible. Creating quotas is a way to give you a measurable target, especially if your company is large.
[W]hen pressed, liberals can never seem to find these people. They can never point to the people who see a resume from a woman who graduated with a 4.0 from MIT, trash it, and give the job to a high-school dropout just because he's a man.
Nearly every individual hiring decision can be defended. Sexual and racial biases show up in trends, though. What does it mean when your company is overwhelmingly male and white?
Given that the black community in the US has a much higher unemployment rate than the national average, it's safe to say that few companies are as diverse as demographics suggests they should be -- and one possible reason for that is bias in hiring decisions. Similarly, female unemployment is higher than male, and those women that are hired are disproportionately skewed towards junior, lower-paying positions. One out of every two C-Suite positions should be occupied by a woman, but they're not.
No, the other AC was making a joke. All you had to do was say you posted from a tiny mobile device. People understand that. Don't turn things into personal insults. No one stands up for other people when it seems like they might get flamed from the person for doing it.
It doesn't matter if the brains work differently as long as they work comparably well.
If two people can solve the same set of problems using different strategies, they are both competent at those tasks.
Personally, I don't care if men and women end up with 50/50 representation in any particular field. However, I very strongly believe that the environment should not discourage that outcome.
There are cultural problems for women in STEM fields and men in education/child care. Not everywhere, but the complaints are frequent enough that the problems need to be addressed systematically.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. If you don't speak up for yourself, others will decide to speak up for you; and then people will attribute that to you, and you'll have to deal with the fall-out.
If people are making an issue of something you don't think is an issue, and they're doing it on your behalf, the best thing for you to do is step in and drag the conversation back to reality. People will want to pull things far-left, other people will want to pull things far-right, and the correct place--optimal or objective, depending on whether we're debating a solution or examining the state of a problem--is somewhere left-leaning, right-leaning, or nearly dead-center. If the problem they're debating is purportedly your problem, you should probably step in before they take this problem they've invent it and burden you with it.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That argument cuts both ways, anonymous hater.
Stop trying to decide who we will and won't marry. Stop trying to ban our healthcare, contraception, sex education, u-name-it. Stop fucking with school curriculum to push your brand of "religion". Stop putting up monuments like a bunch of racists. Stop trying to make the US military into the only major one worldwide that would dishonorably discharge currently serving patriots because of bigoted bullshit that has nothing to do with their ability to serve. Stop inculcating generations of whites with irrational hate and false narratives.
Funny how you conservatives CLAIM you're all about small government, but you're REALLY all about legislating the living shit out of all the things you hate, and damn but that's a long, long, list.
Your sample is biased in more ways than you may realize. By only "polling" mid-career professionals, you are introducing a survivor bias to the conclusions.
This is just revisionist history in the making.
No one had a problem with these statues and flags until the left started making it an issue in the past year or so.....
Remember, 1984 was supposed to be s story, not a blueprint. Where does the statue taking down stop? Should we just take down, and wipe out most of D.C.s monuments? I mean, Jefferson, Washington, etc...all slave owners. You have to get it through your head, these people were people of their times and you can't really judge them based on today's views as far as social issues go. The wrongs were corrected, but these figures are historic and no reason to remove their markers in history.
If nothing else, these staying in place promotes discussion of where the US has been, where it is now and where it is going....
Hmm...never heard of that one before.
I think pot should be legalized....and there is no reason for the govt to have ANY registries of private property...guns, pot or otherwise.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I am a female scientist. I am a regular reader here but rarely comment partly because there is a higher percentage of eye-rolling sexism here and I'm not usually interested in participating in feminism 101 arguments. Also, while I have a username here, it is gender-neutral, so I'm not using it now.
There is some interesting evidence coming out of this field which the memo referenced, but the memo wasn't perfect. It obviously had a bias in that there were many unsupported statements, and its proposed application of the research was an extrapolation of evidence that was a bit of a stretch. The logical mistakes made in the memo expose its bias. And this bias smells like it comes from the same place as gamergate and ugly undercurrent of sexism that exists in tech culture. And it is this arrogant, gross culture which makes me glad I work in a more female-friendly area of the sciences.
I don't remember if he referenced Lippa's research on gender differences (which support his argument on gender differences in interest types), but when I looked into this when the memo came out, that's who I found as a major publisher of supporting evidence. However, some of Lippa's research is based on online self-reporting, which could suffer from selection bias and implicit societal bias. While this people vs things difference in interest is a promising area of research, Lippa does say methodology needs to improve in gender studies.
Also, in a-ll of this debate on the gender aspects of the memo, it disregards the threat to authority in its "Google management is doing this wrong and this is how they should do it instead." Posted on a company-hosted forum. Given my experience of corporate culture, it is this thumbing the nose at authority that likely was a major factor leading to the firing.
I suppose it was just wishful thinking that anyone reading the site would have the requisite math skills...
Google is shouting from the rooftops that they are seeking gender diversity with 31% women, plus trying to hire even more women.
No, I think they have just recognized what lot of other companies have also recognized, which is that the gender disproportions have more to do with company and workplace culture, educational opportunities and encouragement, role models, social acceptance, and work-life balance than with any inherent biological predispositions.
Now yes, I read the paper. And I agree with some of what was written, I disagree with some of what was written. I've also read analysis by social scientists who studied the paper and they said the science aspects were fundamentally correct. But that's beyond the point.
But that skips over a few points. We aren't talking about people going to school. We aren't talking about people in school. We aren't talking about who will be entering the workforce. Instead we are talking about the numbers and percentages of people who are in the workforce right now today.
In the post I wasn't talking about biology. I was talking about math of right now today.
Let's do the math, because apparently you missed it. And lets use really easier numbers.
Right now today about 20% to 25% of the software engineer workforce is female. The other 75%-80% is male.
Let's say there are 1000 workers in the marketplace. 20% of the workers are female. That means 800 men and 200 women. Some really big companies try to look like they hire an equal number of men and women even though that doesn't reflect the actual number of people out there. They hire a bunch of women, giving them a 31% female workforce. They've 155 women and 345 men, with 500 employees total. That means 455 men remain in the workforce, and only 45 women remain in the workforce. Because that one company scooped up so many women, disproportionate from the marketplace, now everybody else in the marketplace is going to look like they're discriminating. The company who scooped up a higher percentage of women left the entire marketplace skewed, the remaining workforce is only 9% women. Companies can now either hire fairly -- getting only 9% women in their workforce, or they can try to over-hire women and leave other companies with an even worse disproportionate number of men and women in the workforce.
In this case Google and Apple and a few other large employers have scooped up a disproportionate number of the workforce in an attempt to look fair, even though from a statistical analysis it is completely unfair. Not only does their communication hurt the market as a whole (because they are wrongly stating that the starting balance is inherently unfair), but their actions hurt everyone else; nobody else can begin to approach the same percentages because the big companies have skewed the numbers even more.
If Google wants to help in the short term, they can completely ignore gender in hiring. They can hire based on merit. If more women get hired, or more men get hired, then let it be by merit alone. Statistically it will quickly balance out, merit tends to be roughly equal across large groups, so Google and every other company would quickly reach a balance of about 20%-25% women because the entire workforce is 20%-25% women.
In the long term they can start looking at the entrance to the pipe. They can look for ways to address elementary school teachers who tell little kids "That's okay, I didn't understand it either. Math is hard, draw me a picture with these crayons." They can look for teachers of twelve-year-olds who tell their students, "It's okay Jenny, most girls don't like math, go talk with the other girls about clothes." They can look for teachers of sixteen-year-olds who tell their students, "Michelle, you shouldn't be taking AP Calculus, have you considered pep squad instead?" They
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I didn't say we need 50% of technology workers to be women. But I am saying that sexism is not yet a solved issue in education or in the tech industry, and I think it's reducing the number of women in the field. I'm open to the possibility that when sexism is not an issue in education or in technology work, women still pursue the field less often than men do on average.
But we're not there yet. We have women losing interest in the field at school and especially dropping out of careers because of discrimination, harassment, and other similar treatment. And that kind of thing has a ripple effect - fewer mentors for other women interested in the field are available, and there are stories of mistreatment.
So the value of many of Damore's points are undercut by that. He points out that women are more vulnerable to stress. Enduring sex-based harassment and mistreatment while most of your colleagues do not would cause additional stress, so how many women with stress problems are simply more susceptible to stress and how many are in fact reacting the same way a man would to higher stress in their environment? I don't know the answer, but he doesn't even raise the possibility.
Damore points out that women tend to focus more on work and life balance for the sake of family, and it hurts their career prospects. But there again, I took plenty of time off for the birth of my kids and my male colleagues with children did the same, and we rearrange our work schedules for medical appointments, award ceremonies, recitals, chaperoning field trips, etc... and nobody ever used that as an excuse to deny us a raise or give a promotion to someone else. So how many women with a faltering career due to a work and life balance are actually just being punished for being women, while their male colleagues with the same balance climb the ranks?
And again, there are enough stories of harassment and sexual harassment floating around that I'm confident some portion are true. I'm sure some are fabricated and some are exaggerated, but hysterical theatrics aren't restricted to women - I've worked with delusional narcissistic men too. Most likely, a big portion of those accusations hold up - and that means a lot of people are being driven out for reasons wholly unrelated to intelligence, competence, and work ethic.
We're not even a hundred years out from women's suffrage in most of the world. It's too early to call this topic settled.