Google fires employee who questioned diversity/inclusion policies

[Leonhard]

Leonhard, lest you think I am just blowing smoke, here is an article that answers just about every accusation you made in your last post:

The quantity of question marks, and typing mistakes have gone down since your last post. But I'll take your word for it.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/19464/...ay-ben-shapiro

I wanna argue against you, not Shapiro. I could do the same and link to many people discussing this Sparko, you know that.

[Leonhard]

I'm hesitant to say this, but...

I read the memo, and I don't see where he says what you're attributing to him, Leonhard.

That's okay you don't owe me obedience, or to have the same mind as me. I'm stating how I see things, I cite him, if people disagree with me and give reasons we can discuss it... if you don't find it convincing that's up to you. I don't expect everyone to agree with me. On this forum especially, unless we're talking Christianity, most people here are going to disagree with me. This is a very politically conservative and very American forum, and I'm a social-democrat from Denmark. I see things differently than you might.

That being said I wish you'd give me a reason so I could examine it or respond. But thanks anyways.

[Darth Ovious]

While this is true, it hasn't been universally reproduced. The best that I've been able to find is a longitudinal study featuring close to a hundred thousand children, taken at three different ages. This study was good enough to confirm that girls mature intellectually at a different rate than boys, and it also verifies that male intelligence has a higher spread. However the spread is slight. At best it would explain 5% of the difference between men and women at the higher eschelons. Not the order of magnitude difference we see.

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/PAID2011.pdf

I was talking more about findings that were concluded by Richard J Herrnstein with Charles Murray in their work. I didn't say that the difference was large only that men had a greater variation.

You'd be wrong,

Don't tell me that I'm wrong, tell Unesco that they are wrong.

in fact its quite the opposite. Even during my time at college, more and more women were joining chemistry and physics. My own advisor to my master thesis, Liv Hornekær, is a woman. Because the gender gap is in fact still narrowing, and we haven't seen the end to it, it makes the claim that current gender biases merely reflect natural differences to sound like bogus to me.

Biology has a principle called sexual dimorphism. We know from imperial study that men and women are different. The question is in what and to what degree.

If there are actual biological differences, we haven't seen them yet.

Do brain differences count?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3969295/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...f/12639333.pdf

Essentially the second study shows that there is a difference in genders between systemizing and empathizing.

I'll get citations for this tomorrow, but I really need to get to bed now.

No problem

[Teallaura]

None of the evidence he presented was good. He says that testosterone has beneficial effects on coding, but doesn't cite any study that shows that testosterone makes you a good coder. He appeals to history and culture, but uses that as a spring board to discuss inherent biological traits, regardless of the the fact that computer programming, even engineering, as a field is only a few generations old, and cultures change slowly. Its up to him to present a convincing case. He didn't. Its not for me to present that he's wrong.

As for Evolutionary Psychology as a field, there's plenty of articles out there for anyone to read about the problems with that field. The basic problem is that behavior doesn't fossilize, and a lot of speculation within that field wound up as being more 'just so' stories, without actually having concrete evidence. Its not a problem the field has been able to overcome in general.

His big concern is apparently that Google is trying to overcome gender bias and its causing them to hire bad developers (which would be women in this case). His protest about being against stereotypes sound about as convincing to me as hearing an alt-right white supremacist starting out by saying "I'm not a racist, but..."

Leo, I read the letter - it does not make this argument. At all. He's arguing that 1) men and women are different; 2) those differences may affect their preferences visa vie coding 3) Google needs to re-examine its diversity programs.

No where can I find him stating men are better coders - he states only that women may prefer more social/aesthetic positions and that men may prefer coding based on the differences he listed. He explicitly states that it's not necessarily true of individuals.

[Jedidiah]

Yes, but on average men's brains are 8-14% larger. I would think that larger brain size would generally lead to greater intelligence - especially in the same species.

Does not seem to work that way. Men are on the average very slightly more "intelligent" than women, but not 8 to 14% higher.

[Darth Executor]

I fully support Google in firing this person. As for his reasons for his disdains of women's ability to code they're paper thin, not supported by any good evidence and at any (ironically despite his protest) just rationalizations of the stereotypes he has of women.

The female coders I've met in my life were every bit as capable as the guys, there is no good evidence that women are inherently bad at programming computers, or that having testicles or a penis, somehow, makes one better at understanding JavaScript. His attempt to appeal to Evolutionary Psychology is even more laughable as that field is very full of pseudoscience and woo, and is often used just to defend why social phenomenons are that way... as an essential feature of humanity, rather than perhaps just a cultural phenomenon.

Out with his rear.

oDCku2OIub5lDuf7fCdTkg-wide.jpg

btw your argument is that he should be fired because he is (so you claim) wrong?

[Darth Executor]

Leo, I read the letter - it does not make this argument. At all. He's arguing that 1) men and women are different; 2) those differences may affect their preferences visa vie coding 3) Google needs to re-examine its diversity programs.

No where can I find him stating men are better coders - he states only that women may prefer more social/aesthetic positions and that men may prefer coding based on the differences he listed. He explicitly states that it's not necessarily true of individuals.

It's easy to get the impression men are better coders because a lot of tech companies employ feminists who apply as coders but have no interest in coding and end up sabotaging the company with diversity initiatives (IE: google). But I wouldn't consider these women coders at all and they should be summarily expelled from any organization that wants to do actual work. my electronics engineering class is 90% guys but the girls who survived The Culling (as far as I can tell about 70% of my starting class is gone) don't strike me as any less competent coders or less interested in the work than the rest of us.

[MaxVel]

Long interview with James Damore by Stefan Molyneux on YouTube here.

[tabibito]

What people qualified in the relevant fields have to say about the memo?

https://archive.is/z6xxP

[Leonhard]

Does not seem to work that way. Men are on the average very slightly more "intelligent" than women, but not 8 to 14% higher.

The brain isn't solid. It has a sponge-like structure. There are cases of people where a tumor has squeezed the brain up into a much smaller volume, without too much of a detrimental effect on them. For all we know those 8-14% is all water weight.

[Starlight]

What people qualified in the relevant fields have to say about the memo?

https://archive.is/z6xxP

Skimming the Google guy's memo quickly myself a couple of things strike me:
1. The science he cites seems reasonable. This is a person who is at least moderately familiar with current research in the psychology field and at a brief glance seems to be conveying findings at least moderately accurately and is using correct terminology.
2. He's discussing it in a very dispassionate tone and not in an emotional or deliberately inflammatory way.
The experts in Tabibito's link seem to agree with both those observations.

But I also agree with the experts that you've got to be very careful about how you apply those scientific findings.

The science tells us that:
A. There are some real differences at the biological level between men and women (duh).
B. With regard to multiple psychological traits the male and female populations give slightly distinct distributions, but ones which heavily overlap.

Things this does NOT imply include:
C. That all gender stereotypes ever thought of are true.
D. That everyone in history who treated men and women differently was justified in doing so.
E. That society should have separate 'roles' for men and women that it should force or encourage people into.

The thing it might imply is:
F. That in a truly free-from-prejudice and ideal society that lacked all systemic social biases, and in which women were free to choose jobs as they wished, some types of jobs might get chosen more often by women than others. And some fields might have less women than men working in them as a result.

And that point F is what the memo writer is trying to get at with regard to the computer-programming field. It might be true. It might not. It might be useful to survey women who were in the industry and women considering going into the industry as to whether they thought there were social prejudices or institutional barriers against women in the industry, or whether they generally thought it was just a field women were less interested in. It seems to me that until its definitively proven that there's no barriers to entry for women, that Google's affirmative action program to employ more women remains useful. There are obviously also reasons with regard to company culture for wanting a roughly 50/50 mixed gender environment even if that might mean having a few merely very very good computer programmers on the team rather than uniformly excellent ones.

As for whether it's appropriate to fire him, it seems to me that's entirely up to Google and whether such memos are in keeping with typical company practices or whether this was unusual behavior and the extent to which the controversy and media furor raised by this incident has annoyed the managers enough to fire him for it (which it seems it has). If writing such memos was generally common practice within the company then I feel a bit bad for this guy, because it seems that he did try to express his view in a non-inflammatory way and his view isn't inherently unreasonable.

[Sparko]

I retract a statement that he hasn't added citations, they were just as embedded hyperlinks in the pdf, I lifted the text directly from. This is my mistake, and I'll go through his references at some point, and make a comment on them.



Uh... what? Calm down.



As in litterally says that sentence? No he doesn't. That's a fairly weak point, considering that most of his points are all about why he thinks women aren't often found in developer roles, out of back-end server oriented programming and and more in front-end creative stuff. He argues, this is clear - just read the memo, that he considers women to have problems with just those places. And he complains a lot, in fact for the last half of the memo, about Google's diversification program hiring women like that.

Wow Leonhard, you are doing a lot of "reading between the lines" and attributing things to him that he never says or implies. I don't know what is going on here but it is clear that you are reading this with a lot of prejudice and bias.

Yes he does.

He argues that they have tendency to be mentally unfit for certain tasks (anxious, not good at ideas and systematized thinking, preferring people etc...). Only in the beginning of the memo does he give lip service to the idea that some women might actually be good at those things, and that natural difference are only a part of the explanation, but for the rest of the memo he never brings that up again. He only talks about the mental difficulties he sees women having, all the kind of stereotypical thinking he claims he's against at the beginning.



He seems to be talking to a closed group... that's what I said. Another person on this forum has backed this up.

Are you objecting to this sentence: "they're not that great at tinkering with servers, lets just be honest".

That wasn't a citation. You do understand that right? I was characterizing the kind of back-room talk, you guys seem to think is just a-okay (or at least understandable vis-a-vis corporate leaders) in a lot of other circumstances. Part of the machismo of real manhood right? Backslaps, beer swills, crass humor and farts. Just us guys. Not getting what I'm talking about? My point was just, to spell it out, that he seemed to be writing the memo to a circle of buddies already agreeing with him.

In other words you are making up crap and attributing it to him. You have assigned motivations to him, and attitudes that are just not in the paper.

He says that there is a reason why there are not as many women in tech jobs. He spells out what some of those are. He never says women are inferior or should be kept out of tech jobs. He then goes on to give some solutions to attract more women to tech jobs. He is trying to GET MORE WOMEN IN TECH JOBS. Do you get that? He wants to help. He thinks the current system of affirmative action is not working. It doesn't attract women to the jobs, and it hurts others. He says they need to make the jobs more attractive, and a better fit for women. Please re-read the paper with an open mind.

Listen Sparko. I get it. You're angry that someone you see as Conservative, was fired by Liberals, for 'just saying it as it is' I get it. You're angry. But if you're so angry that you can't even tell a humorous paraphrasing, I don't see much of a reason to continue posting. Because I certainly need some humor to write about a guy like that, or to do so on this forum as one of the few liberal Christians left here. Testicals+Penis=Testosterone: Right? He's talking about men being differently geared, and more suitable for certain things in the IT sector where we don't see as many women, right? I.E being a guy makes you better at systematizing, more competitive, more leader, ... you following me, or am I moving too quickly? I'm pretty sure you mocked the idea of a guy with a vagina not that long ago, so that leaves...

I get it Leonhard, you are upset because you are a liberal and you want to agree with the liberals at google and see this guy as a demon. But uf you are so angry that you can't even read this guys paper without mischaracterizing it and what he said, then I don't see much reason to continue discussing this with you.

That there are biological difference between the sexes is undeniable. But I'm not sure God made Adam better at coding .nodejs servers and knowing the intricasies subnet masking. Despite other people here, like seer and Darth Obvious putting out some articles. There is no consensus on this within the world of psychology. There are good reasons to think that the differences can be explained culturally.

He never says women are worse at coding. He is talking about women are IN GENERAL, less INTERESTED in that type of job. Which is true because less women even try to become programmers than men in school. Not because they are discriminated against, but because they are less interested in it. He merely points that out and then goes on to discuss ways to make it more interesting to them.

I never claimed he said they were not qualified. However he argued that women in general, are less able, as a group, because of a long list of reasons, to do these jobs. And by these jobs, he means jobs in Tech in general. That's a pretty broad swath covering all STEM. Basically anything requiring tinkering out hard technical problems. He contrasts it with 'front-end', 'people' and those things.

He never says they are less ABLE.

"..Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas... more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetice..."
"Neuroticism"

Again he is talking about motivation, not ability.

He, further more, clearly questions whether women are suited for developer jobs, or any situation where they're not working in groups, side by side. (Apparently preferable in roles like customer support and design) And as can be seen below even goes so far as to question attempt to get women into coding. We shouldn't deceive people... into what? Thinking women can code? Or that this is an attractive path for them.

". Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)"

I think people like him are the big reason we don't have more women in coding. Good riddance.

Re-read it. He is not talking about ability but motivation and interest in the job. And he goes on to suggest ways to fix the problem.

[Bill the Cat]

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...action-lawsuit

More than 60 current and former Google employees are considering bringing a class-action lawsuit alleging sexism and pay disparities against women, as the technology giant wrestles with a deepening crisis over alleged discrimination.

James Finberg, the civil rights attorney working on the possible legal action on behalf of the female employees, told the Guardian they contend they have earned less than men at Google despite equal qualifications and comparable positions.


Others, he said, have struggled in other ways to advance their careers at Google due to a “culture that is hostile to women”.

[Darth Executor]

^That's what happens when you fill up your company with SJWs.

[EvoUK]

I currently work in a company with distinct pay grades so the issue of a 'gender pay gap' largely doesn't arise.

Saying that, I do find it odd that most times (at least most that I am aware of) when pay grades are released there is a clear difference in what the men & women are paid. And I'm not speaking about a pay gap due to long term leave due to having kids.

If two people do the same desk job with similar experience, I'm not sure why such a gap exists. The only thing I can think of is that a company will pay as little as they can get away with & men 'tend' to be more pushy about raises.