Ask Slashdot: Female Engineers, Could You Please Share Your Thoughts On the Google Memo 694
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.
This will not end well. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This will not end well. (Score:5, Funny)
Shut up sexist. Today I identify as female, and I think the letter was correct.
Re:This will not end well. (Score:5, Funny)
On second thought , let's not go to 4chan. 'Tis a silly place.
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But the whole debate over what James Damore wrote has seen the lunatic fringe come out of the woodwork to insult anyone criticizing what he wrote on any grounds, and attacking women in general.
I'm open to the possibility that some of what he wrote is correct. But I don't expect much of an intelligent debate on the subject here... or on 4chan, or on Twitter or Reddit.
Re:This will not end well. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
As a female engineer... (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up.
I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness. Also benis.
Re: As a female engineer... (Score:3)
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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 hea
Re:As a female engineer... (Score:5, Informative)
No one had a problem with these statues and flags until the left started making it an issue in the past year or so.....
These statues and flags didn't exist until 50 years after the civil war when the "state's rights" narrative and the resurgence of the KKK (thanks, DW Griffith!) arose. So first point, their existence is itself revisionist history.
Secondly, they have indeed been consistently disputed since at least the end of segregation and Jim Crow, which is probanky the first time in history that the African-American community didn't have bigger things to concentrate on. It's only now that all the powerful segregationists are dead that there is enough political will to actually do it.
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One more thing while I think of it...
No one had a problem with these statues and flags until the left started making it an issue in the past year or so.....
Historically, these statues tend to go up by regimes who are basically just marking territory. They come down around the time of the fall of the regime that put them up. This has been happening from at least the days of Pharaoh Hatshepsut.
How many statues of Lenin came down when the Soviet Union fell? What about the one of Saddam Hussein in 2003? Is this revisionist history? Is it damnatio memoriae? Or is it just the people reclaiming public spaces?
Probably all we're see
I'm not female (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not female (Score:5, Funny)
Better not count using breast size otherwise you'll get a lot of male users in your statistics.
Re:I'm not female (Score:5, Funny)
The same as the percentage of Slashdot users who have had sex. With another person.
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A mixed bag. Some females support it, some don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999
Here's the Google diversity training (Score:4, Interesting)
"Google's Bias Busting @ Work | Facilitator Guide"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yNBCAro6b-S1KifD6PnZWrlyBZ_kEFGWPtUkIpvFljk/edit
I had posted this elsewhere. My op (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I had posted this elsewhere. My op (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I'm not even saying I object to the effort but to argue that providing a handicap number to minority groups you want in the company d
Re:I had posted this elsewhere. My op (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, there is abundant evidence across all sectors that simply changing the name on a resume to a female sounding name or to a black sounding name reduces the number of callbacks you receive on that resume.
Most of this is anecdotal evidence, or fake resumes "to test bias", not real resumes and real people.
Here are some real life results. [abc.net.au]
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No numbers in your 'study', not even percentages
That you're too blind to read is not my fault.
Quoting the linked page:
"The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview.
Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door. "
and it's maybe 250 words.
Your ability to estimate is terrible too. Removing the colophon, all headers, key points and captions, the text is 469 words.
And if that's not enough for you, that you're too lazy to follow a link is not my fault either.
It link
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my CS classes in high school and university between 1990 and 1997 were easily 95% men. In later years, maybe 90% men, so my experiences of a pre dot-com utopia for equality in tech is the opposite of hers.
She did not say that there were more women in IT then than there are now (although I understand most statistics to confirm this). She said that the field had less male assholes in it. And from my temporally limited experience since the late 90ies I would tentatively agree. How is your perception? How were those 5 to 10% of women in your classes treated by the male participants?
The money argument is something that I cannot confirm but also would not dismiss entirely. IT has indeed changed significantly
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Just because a woman is a woman, it doesn't mean she has any background in gender studies or any special understanding of gender issues.
It's just her opinion and experiences.
Isn't that basically what James Damore got fired for?
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Long story short: nerds are cool, jocks are jerks?
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I would complete with: "...and jocks on IT are extra jerks because they want big bucks by playing the nerd. Not even nerd status is safe anymore when you want a man that treats women with the respect they deserve".
But I would still not generalize it. There ARE disgusting, deuchebaggy nerds and always have been. That's the problem with sitgmas and stereotypes - they're flawed by definition. Christinagirl1 shows a nice view over time of her overview on tech, but you still can't extrapolate universally. Every
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I am sorry to hear of your experiences.
As a cis white male in his 30s teaching CS at a university, would you have an opinion of what I can do to help the situation?
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Stop referring to yourself as "cis"? It just creates more pointless divisions.
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Do you believe that your inability to organize your writings into paragraphs may have adversely affected your employment prospects?
Re:I had posted this elsewhere. My op (Score:5, Informative)
This is a week old account which has only posted on topics about the Google memo. Most of the posts appear to be badly copy/pasted.
I tried to read it but it's an impenetrable wall of text.
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But, the good guys are still there and they are somewhat left behind as well. They quietly watch the bullies from the Lord of the Flies and go about their business.
I have seen this happen and as a man it can be hard to speak up. You get accused of political correctness, and excluded from anything remotely fun because you are labelled a killjoy. Sometimes it goes the other way, the guy being a dick ends up ostracised, it really depends on the workplace.
Hence why this guy was fired.
I think it was more to do with his unwarranted conclusions. He has been debunked by the authors of the very papers he was citing in the memo. [wired.com]
"Women as a group score higher on neuroticism in Schmittâ(TM)s meta-analys
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Modern formatting was bleeding edge stuff about 1300 years ago. Get with the times. :p
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UnknownSoldier, proper noun, - a slashdotter who finds it necessary to have a directory of names to call people at the foot of his post. The irony of one of them complaining about Ad Hominem labels is apparently lost on him.
Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you read the memo?
Did it say anything about women being inferior to men and that they should stay in the kitchen?
No. What it did say was that it may be biological differences that women ON AVERAGE have different interests than men and that it is unwise to try to get 50% of employees be women.
Do women ON AVERAGE have different interests than men? Yes. Does this mean that all women are inferior to men at "men fields"? NO. This is the same as with physical strength. There are lots and lots of women who are stronger than me and could kick my ass in a fight. But, if I was forced to choose between fighting a randomly selected man or a randomly selected woman, I would choose to fight the woman, because on average, my odds would be better.
But no, men and women are equal in all things, including their interests and if only 5% (made up number) of girls are interested in fighting each other with fists when 30% (made up number) boys do the same it is only because of discrimination in our culture not encouraging girls to settle their differences with a good fistfight. Right?
So, in an effort to not discriminate people based on their gender or race we ... discriminate people based on their gender or race. Girl-only programming classes are celebrated, where if one made a boys-only programming class it would be chaos. White-only dormitories are bad and racist, but black-only dormitories are an awesome symbol of non-racism. Right?
So now we have gender quotas. There is an open position in a company. 10 candidates apply - 9 men and one woman. The woman is average qualified for the position - out of the 9 men there are better and worse ones. But she gets hired anyway, because the company does not have enough women in that department.
Then again, the government of my country is incredibly sexist. Men are forced to serve in the army after school (not all of them, there is a lottery), but women only get to serve if they volunteer. So far I have not seen any feminist protest against this obviously sexist policy though. Actually, I remember feminists speaking out against forcing women to serve in the army. Weird, isn't it?
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Because women at google are in no way different from the average.
There's no selection process at all at google. .
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Did it say anything about women being inferior to men
Yes. To quote directly: "higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance"
There is no qualification. He takes that as a simple statement of fact and proposes solutions based on it.
The author of the source he cites to back it up says that the conclusion is unwarranted: [wired.com]
"Women as a group score higher on neuroticism in Schmitt's meta-analysis, sure, but he doesn't buy that you can predict the population-level effects of that difference. "It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the
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Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you read the memo? Did it say anything about women being inferior to men and that they should stay in the kitchen?
Did you read the post to which you replied? It didn't touch on the points you raise.
The point instead is that lots of women face daily or weekly put-downs due to misogyny. They see and experience it ALL the blasted time in their professional lives. It's a constant source of extra stress and career battles. This is a very plausible reason for there being fewer women in IT, and it's very plausible that it's a more significant reason than the biological reasons that Damore implied.
(And actually it's pretty frustrating to face this kind of challenge daily or weekly, and see first-hand what a *significant* impact it has, and then have an outsider write a memo that purports to examine the reasons for the gender gap but then completely fails to notice this significant factor. That said, I grant that the Damore memo was more focused on ideological echo chamber, and its attempts at explaining the gender gap were only a small part of it.)
Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:5, Interesting)
The point instead is that lots of women face daily or weekly put-downs due to misogyny.
No, they face those because some people are dicks. When I cut my hair short I couldn't claim 'misogyny' when some unfiltered co-worker pointed out my window's peak, "Looks like balding runs in your family" or when a peer grabs an extra doughnut and someone goes 'Really need that extra one?'.
I'm not picketing the grocery store's misandry because some old ladies don't think I could be the one shopping with my son.
"Where's your mother at?". She's at work grandma.
"Baby sitting today?": No. I'm his father. It's parenting.
"Wow, cooking for your wife?" Yeah. Like I normally do. As we split household tasks depending on who is home and who is working.
"How can you let your wife go back to work so soon after birth?" She's the one that picked up shifts because she likes to work.
When individual A and individual B interact and there is a negative outcome, for the most part, the outcome is limited to something internal to A & B. From all of my experiences in the engineering industry and from reading this junk online it usually boils down to one of the individuals is an asshole and the other needs thicker skin.
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Did it say anything about women being inferior to men and that they should stay in the kitchen?
My wife (MD) and I (Engineer) have been discussing the memo off and on since it came out.
And this is the straw(wo)man that they keep building.
Within a paragraph Sheryl Sandberg showed that she didn't even grok the memo:
They prefer working with people (and animals) rather than objects or abstract concepts.
One approach is to blame the culture, which Google and other prominent tech companies may be doing. Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, lays out this view: “Inequality in tech isn
Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you read the memo? Did it say anything about women being inferior to men and that they should stay in the kitchen?
I have read the memo, and you don't have to think a group is inferior in order to stereotype them.
His paper does often say women on average have differences from men. But the important thing is not whether there are differences, but the extent of those differences. When he says "women on average are more prone to anxiety" it is both a very true and very inflammatory statement without context. Women indeed do have higher rates of anxiety, but then again individuals from Euro/Anglo cultures on average have higher levels of anxiety than average women.
The reality is that this study [wiley.com] found about 7 in 100 women suffer from anxiety as compared to 4 in 100 men. Sure it is nearly double, but how useful is it to even discuss this when bringing up gender in the workplace? Especially when in most cases there is medication to remove most symptoms. Where is the research to show to what extent anxiety affects a person's career? The mere fact he brought up higher anxiety rates at all is inflammatory and worthy of derision. It is a way to be discriminatory while maintaining you are only being fair. It is intellectually dishonest.
Any time people complain about SJWs wanting a 50/50 split in any given profession, it is nearly guaranteed everything else they say will be full of crap. Some of what they say may be factual, but only in an attempt to distract from the ignorant core of their argument. No one is fighting for a 50/50 split in STEM fields, since there are real differences between the genders and a real biological reason why childbearing affects women careers more than men. But a 60/40 or 55/45 split is likely attainable in a more discrimination free culture, and none of the minute differences between genders will inhibit that goal.
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Why there is no outrage at the lack of women working in construction? Or that there are too few women working in remote oil rigs? Or that the army does not consist of 50% women?
First off, there are attempts to make other male dominated fields more inclusive to women, and to make female dominated fields such as teaching and nursing more inclusive to men. Google "women in combat roles" or "more male teachers needed" and start reading.
Second, STEM fields are among the highest paid and most sought after jobs in our economy. Look at any top-20 high paid jobs list and you will probably find nothing but CEO, various MD roles, lawyer, and various STEM jobs (and arguably most MD roles coul
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with Asian
Funny you should point that out because the same people who insist that the overrepresentation of men in tech is due to sexism are the same people who will, in the same breath, insist that the overrepresentation of asians in tech is because asians are "just genetically smarter".
Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:4, Insightful)
Facts don't care about your feelings.
Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:4, Informative)
I think you need to check your stats on Medicine. Health and social workers are overwhelmingly more female. I'll use my own country as an example: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/table... [statcan.gc.ca]
Construction is male dominated 7:1
Natural resource harvesting is male dominated 4:1
Manufacturing is male dominated 3:1
Transportation (trucking) and warehousing is male dominated 3:1
Education is female dominated 2:1
Healthcare and social assistance is female dominated 4:1
It's almost like women don't like to hunt or gather, but rather nurture, heal, and educate. Must be something wrong with these numbers though, that can't be right.
Re:Just as ignorant as educated males see it (Score:5, Informative)
Let's talk about medicine. Women make up roughly 47% of medical school graduates.
Yes, lets talk about medicine. Particularly the different specialties in medicine. And if we collect them based on if that specialty deals with the equipment and high risk, or if that specialty deals more with people. If you haven't read this paper [slatestarcodex.com], then you really should. The more egalitarian countries in the world show larger diversity, but places like China and Iran, have 50/50 split in gender for work.
Specialty --- M% --- F%
People Based
Obstetrics/Gynecology --- 15% --- 85%
Pediatrics --- 25% --- 75%
Psychiatry --- 43% --- 57%
Family Medicine --- 42% --- 58%
Thing Based
Internal Medicine --- 54% --- 46%
Radiology --- 72% --- 28%
Anesthesiology --- 63% --- 37%
Emergency Medicine --- 62% --- 38%
Surgery --- 59% --- 41%
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You cannot compare jobs requiring physical strength with jobs requiring logical thinking.
I fucking well can. Women can do heavy dirty work too, and don't be sexist by suggesting otherwise.
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Yeah. It's almost like someone works with machines because they aren't a people person. Imagine that? HELL. If I had the soft skills too I would never bother with putting up with a corporate employer and having them take the lion's share of the value I create.
What's the point really?
It's like guys that are more people oriented not going into IT.
This post proves the Google memo correct (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This post proves the Google memo correct (Score:5, Insightful)
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.(emphasis mine)
While I agree in principle that men and women have different views and there are biological differences, I don't think this post is emphasizing those biological differences. It's asking for the same reason I often ask female coworkers the same thing: they have different experiences than I do. I want to better understand the problem, but I can't do that until I know what it is, and I can't know what it is myself because I can't experience it.
These different experiences can be attributed to different views that can then be ascribed to being based on gender, but that's an indirect relationship. This post is asking women, not because of their biology, but because they're the ones with the experience. That difference is important.
Asking for views on a matter specifically from the group most directly affected does not acknowledge any differences directly. It only admits incomplete knowledge on the part of the person doing the asking, an admission of ignorance.
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The Google memo was good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Google memo was good (Score:4, Interesting)
Hi,
I'm a white male software engineer. I'm having a really hard time trying to separate out my own biases and the biases of others in reaction to the memo with actual factual discourse about the science. In almost all of the reaction commentary, even some of the better discourse, people keep wielding any ammunition they can find to defend their point of view on both sides. I worry that I am inclined to do the same thing.
I've been trying to read as much research as possible in the last couple of days as science feels like the only bastion where I can try to come to a reasoned conclusion about all of this. That path has lead me to some unusual places, like wondering if there is a biological explanation for higher average verbal intelligence in women that allows them to have greater selection in careers (Ref 1) and differences in brain anatomy where men have thinner average cortical thickness than women but higher variability. (Ref 2)
Given that you are a female engineer directly affected by all of this, do you think it's reasonable to explore these kinds of questions? Does it diminish the effects of the real sexism and bias that face women in tech to examine other potential explanations for the gender gap?
Ref 1: http://journals.sagepub.com/do... [sagepub.com]
Ref 2: http://www.sciencemag.org/news... [sciencemag.org]
Re:The Google memo was good (Score:4, Interesting)
It's reasonable to explore them, but it has to be in an informed way. If Damore had actually asked the people who wrote the sources he thought he understood, they would have told him that he was wrong [wired.com].
That's the basic problem here. It's called the incoherence problem. Smart people read these sources, think they understand them, combine them all together than reach an unwarranted conclusion.
So in order to have a good debate about these issues, we need to first accept that we need to ask questions of the experts who write these papers, and not try to infer too much from our own reading or interpretation.
Re:The Google memo was good (Score:5, Informative)
Full disclosure, I posted in the comments section in the article you linked, but my comments are still being held in moderation because they are detected "spam" (this appears to happen any time you provide a lot of links for references with discus). In any event, you can see the thread here:
https://disqus.com/home/discus... [disqus.com]
Regarding expert's opinions, the discussion at Quillete has been good and includes very good comments from David P Schmitt, who is one of the authors that James Damore quoted.
http://quillette.com/2017/08/0... [quillette.com]
There's also been a very good meta-analysis of studies being performed at Sean Stevens heterodox academy:
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2... [heterodoxacademy.org]
And a very good back and forth between Adam Grant and Scott Alexander here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017... [slatestarcodex.com]
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Nazis don't hold you for the police. They just beat you up.
What passes for historical insight these days is simply appalling.
I thought (Score:2)
Form whatever opinion you want (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you get that memo? (Score:4, Insightful)
Surveyed 6 female Engineers (Score:5, Informative)
*Sample - 5 CS and 1 mechanical engineer. 1 is now in finance and 2 are software managers.
Re:Surveyed 6 female Engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are there NO female engineers on Slashdot? (Score:4, Funny)
Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Let Me Google That For You (Score:3, Informative)
Considering how forceful and near-universal condemnation from women and women's groups in and out of tech has been to the memo, it is extremely difficult to believe that this Ask Slashdot was submitted in good faith. Particularly in light of the extreme ease of finding high-profile responses. Here is a (small) sample from a simple google search:
https://www.vox.com/the-big-id... [vox.com]
https://www.vox.com/first-pers... [vox.com]
http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/... [fortune.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
https://patch.com/california/m... [patch.com]
If you really are that out of the loop, that should inform you pretty well. If you're begging the question, then the quantity of vile reactions in these comments have likely confirmed that it was worth it. I hope it is the former.
Re:Let Me Google That For You (Score:4, Informative)
Hi Rydia,
How do you view Dr. Debrah Soh's op-ed? Her's is one of the more well-written supportive article of Damore that I've seen.
https://www.theglobeandmail.co... [theglobeandmail.com]
Dr. Suzanne Sadedin has written a critical response, though more nuanced (and imho powerful) than some of the others that you've listed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/q... [forbes.com]
DEMAND PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION! (Score:2, Funny)
When less than 50% of the responses to this question are female, we should investigate what slashdot can do to make the site more balanced, with an equal number of male and female users.
Because obviously any disparity is due to the inherent sexism of slashdot.
Maybe refuse to add male accounts until we have an equal number of females?
Only a problem in CS/IT (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Only a problem in CS/IT (Score:5, Interesting)
Harvey Mudd (university) did some good work on the question. They increased women in their CS program from 10% to nearly 50% [qz.com]. The made several changes, but the main thing they did was change introductory CS classes from being "filter" classes (trying to get rid of all the people who can't do it), into helping classes that help people get over that first bar.
Let's be honest, the first leap into programming can be tough, and this is true for men as well as women. Having the first class be a "filter" class was a bad idea from the beginning.
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The only question is why the CS and IT, particularly the Silicon Valley start up culture, actively drive women away.
IMO if you're looking at the job market, you're not looking far back enough. I'm a Georgia Tech CS graduate, and all the girls I spoke to while I was at Tech who tried the intro to CS classes seemed to hate it with a passion. Obviously I didn't ask a statistically significant number of girls, but when 10 out of 10 girls said the same thing, it seemed pointless to keep asking (it's not like I was a psych major). When I asked what they hated about it, it was always the programming itself (not the teachers, no
Economist article doesn't argue against Damore (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Actual female engineer responds (Score:4, Informative)
During an internal discussion about the memo, "One of the women put her hand up and said, 'Look, I’m a conservative. I completely disagree with everything he said, but I’m still a conservative. And I don’t feel like I can’t voice that opinion here'... Google really does have an open culture of debate, I think."
"It’s hard because I think he couches so much of his document as if it’s fact, when it’s actually not. There’s so little evidence in there. And it’s all really opinion. And the whole argument is couched as, 'Well this is fact.'"
"there were parts of my Google existence internally that I was like I’m going to have to delete this for the fear that someone is going to take this and post publicly and screw me for speaking out against this."
"I just really want us to think about why we’re not asking the women at Google how they feel about it because that to me is the root of misogyny right there. We’re not even asking them to participate in the debate about an issue that directly affects them."
Re: (Score:3)
Where are the women angineer posts? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
If we're going to talk about it (Score:3)
....can we please be sure we're actually talking about what he wrote, and not what "everyone says he wrote"?
It seems there's a pretty sizable difference.
Gizmodo stripped all links, charts, footnotes, and data from the document before tearing it apart. Other sources (including the Economist & the BBC) blithely go with the 'he stated women aren't capable of doing the work' which is complete bullshit.
Why NOT adapt work envs to women??? (Score:3)
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that men and women do have different interests that may account for gender disparity in tech. (Even if you only look at research cited by Damore, plenty of research has shown that more fundamental gender differences can only account for PART of the disparity, but let’s put that aside for a moment.)
Question 1: Let’s say that, all OTHER things being equal, we’d still have fewer women in tech jobs. This would just be a statistical bias. What women are interested in, on average, is not really relevant to the individual women who decide to go into tech, despite perhaps a majority of other women not wanting to do the same. *How could this have any impact on recruiting women into tech?* What could possibly be wrong with encouraging women to get into these professions (even aggressively)? I’m not talking about biased hiring or career advancement, just going out there and making it not difficult for women who ARE interested in tech to apply for those jobs and demonstrate their competence.
Question 2: Based on Damore’s memo and things he cites, I infer that workspaces have evolved to suit the needs of MEN. (And based on some other recent discussions about ageism at Google, they have evolved to better accommodate YOUNG men.) *But what could possibly be wrong with giving employees the ability to adapt their work environments to better match the needs of WOMEN?* Ideas in the memo touch on things like making the environment more social, and pairing people up to do coding together instead of always giving people isolated cubes or offices. Not only might this benefit women, but I know plenty of very social men (such as myself) who might enjoy doing pair-coding and other kinds of more cooperative approaches to engineering. Ultimately, it may be best to approach workspaces in a way that facilitates *anyone* adapting the space to their needs, and the fact that current work environments are statistically less suited to women is only a vehicle to highlight a more general problem with cookie-cutter workspaces. (At the same time, we should not try to generalize women out of the discussion. Men have dominated for a very very very long time. It’s about time women got the chance to make some demands and mold things to their tastes.)
Question 3: Finally let’s put gender bias back into the discussion. We’re not denying it exists. It’s just that people like Damore are tired of feeling accused of having unconscious biases and being made to feel bad about them. But what Damore’s memo does is cast doubt upon the extent to which bias is a factor in disparity relative to other factors. Ok, so there are lots of factors besides bias. *Nevertheless bias exists, so what could possibly be wrong with working to eliminate the bias?* Even if it were only 25% of the problem, it still sucks!
Re: (Score:2)
These [realdoll.com] guys [jlist.com] have the perfect women for you. (first link NSFW, second link probably NSFW unless in Japan)
Re:Better question: (Score:5, Interesting)
Affirmative action isn't at odds with a merit based system. Actually is a response to a system that in general isn't merit based. For the most part for most Affirmative action complains, it is normally easy to prove the reason why a person didn't get hired was because the person who was, had superior qualifications. Affirmative action normally comes into play when their merits are nearly identical. And this is used to counter act the original existing bias.
However what is more the problem is keeping women in the field after they are hired. With such nasty Slashdot posts lately on these topics, makes me expect the general employees of these companies are making their lives difficult, not management, but the general work of the day.
Re:Better question: (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
On average, if your population is 50% women or 15% black, your company should reflect those proportions as close as possible.
Yes, assuming all humans make the same choices, have the same background, and interests, skills, likes, dislikes, plans for their future, and so on.
In other words, if there's no diversity.
Re:Better question: (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife's a mathematician but isn't on /., she's answered that question to me a few times. She (of course) describes it as a numbers game.
It should be on merit in this case, but in cases where it really is a problem then an "affirmative action" can help fix problems whenever systemic problems actually exist.
In software engineering the field is about 20-25% female. Compared with many fields that is relatively balanced. Pulling up US labor statistics, look at gender distribution in nursing, childcare, education, HR, social services, event planning, civil engineering, construction, librarians, therapists, speech pathologists, hairstylists, secretaries, tailoring and sewing, painting ... all these fields have stronger gender bias than software engineering. People tend to only complain about the industries with high pay and few physical requirements; nobody seems to care that construction workers are near-universally male, nor that early childcare workers are nearly all female.
Google is shouting from the rooftops that they are seeking gender diversity with 31% women, plus trying to hire even more women. Anyone smart enough to read Slashdot should see problems with that; Google is hiring 50% over the general programmer population, plus taking efforts to hire even more than are available. That can be even worse than underhiring; they've got about 7000 more women than stats say they should. Apple similarly has thousands more than they statistically should. By overhiring they are preventing many other companies from reaching parity with the industry's gender distribution, causing even worse stigma because so many other smaller companies have no women in the applicant pool.
Gender is only one concern, but no matter the topic if the numbers are too high or too low, people should ask why that is the case. Gender, race, age, political party, and every other stat could be examined. If the company's demographics don't match the broader environment then there is a concern. It doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem, but it should still be understood if the numbers aren't similar.
Google has two glaringly obvious demographics mismatches. First, women are over-represented; they're flooding the news with "31% female" statistics instead of the 20% that is expected for the field. Second, youth are over-represented with a median age of 29 instead of the industry median age of 43. All the major mismatches should be investigated.
Re:Better question: (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3)
The experience of Harvey Mudd seems to point to exactly that. They have a close to 50:50 gender participation rate in engineering majors, and they have achieved it through changes to their curriculum and teaching environment.
Bullshit. Total utter fucking bullshit. They achieved that parity by intentionally accepting female applicants.
Harvey Mudd accepts 31% of female applications and only 12.5% of male applications.
http://time.com/money/4147738/... [time.com]
We're just tired of this bullshit. (Score:4, Informative)
There are women here at Slashdot who work in technical roles within a variety of industries, and we're tired of all of this bullshit.
When we go to work, we don't want to be subjected to these kinds of arguments.
We're there to work, to make money, and to go home. That's all there is to it.
We don't want to waste our days arguing about genitalia, sexual preference, racism, and transgenderism.
Yes, there are some unproductive people in major corporations and the media who wish to push their left-leaning political agendas on the public at large.
But we want no part of it.
And you know what? It's no different here at Slashdot.
We come here to learn about new technologies, about new scientific and mathematical discoveries, and to discuss computing.
We don't want to waste our days arguing about genitalia, sexual preference, racism, and transgenderism.
We just want this bullshit to end.
We want those on the political left to stop trying to divide society into small groups based on arbitrary traits.
Or at the very least, we want everybody else to ignore the divisions that the political left are trying to create.
We need to work together, regardless of what our genders are, or what our sexual preferences are, or what color our skins are.
We need to stop letting the political left divide us.
We just want to do our jobs, live our lives, and not be subjected to all of this bullshit from the political left, whether it's at work or whether it's at Slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We're just tired of this bullshit. (Score:5, Funny)
Division is only coming from the left?
Well, multiplication is coming from the religious right, so that would make sense.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 in
Re:We're just tired of this bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
...you say, based off the three minutes of evidence between when the story was posted and when you commented.
Re:Brains Different, or Not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Brains Different, or Not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Brains Different, or Not? (Score:5, Interesting)
If sexism wasn't "solved" in law and medicine until the last few decades, why is tech any different?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You probably need to break the categories down further. I bet that men and women tend to choose different specialties within law and medicine. Also we don't know that in even more time that there won't be majority women in those fields.
This has already been done [slatestarcodex.com]. It is shown as a chart in the document and I will type in the relevant percentages for the medical fields for people to see them directly.
Specialty --- M% --- F%
Obsetrics/Gynecology --- 15% --- 85%
Pediatrics --- 25% --- 75%
Psychiatry --- 43% --- 57%
Family Medicine --- 42% --- 58%
Internal Medicine --- 54% --- 46%
Radiology --- 72% --- 28%
Anesthesiology --- 63% --- 37%
Emergency Medicine --- 62% --- 38%
Surgery --- 59% --- 41%
Re: (Score:2)
There has been tons of opinions asserting that the brains of females and males are not different in any respect and that there is no reason a female can't be a brilliant scientist or engineer.
There might not be physical differences but they definitely have different wiring. But yeah that's no reason a female can't be a brilliant scientist, engineer or whatever really.
Re: Brains Different, or Not? (Score:2)
Do an MRI and compare. Just like in the rest of nature, human gender is a biological construct in all aspects of physiology. However it is also noted that it's not a clear black/white division you can strike, just like with the rest of biology, there are variations across not just a 2D but a multidimensional spectrum.
Objective truths about it are never going to be accepted by either sides. There are good engineers and bad engineers across all of the gender spectrum. Hire according.
Re:Brains Different, or Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Female engineers, could you please revisit this topic on Slashdot, yet again, to generate a big spike in ad traffic? In a week, we'll ask male engineers to say what they thought about what the female engineers thought. Because this definitely hasn't been discussed yet, and female engineers certainly wouldn't have participated earlier, not until they were asked to. Really?
They'll be asking for nazi's opinions next time, that'll really get the clickbait going.