Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

News stories of lesser political significance, but still of international interest.

Moderator: PoFo Today's News Mods

Forum rules: Please include a source with news articles. No stupid or joke stories. The usual forum rules also still apply.
#14831521
MB. wrote:The guy claimed it had to do with some diversity training seminar he attended in China

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ed-by-memo


Thanks. Flying halfway around the world to be inundated with ideas I disagree with would have aggravated me too. I also would have chosen some therapeutic writing. I would also have expected some backlash, but not getting fired.
#14831523
That's exactly what he did, shared it to his private discussion group where his friends post. He didn't leak it. One of them did.

So he was dumb enough to leave a paper trail? I suppose this is one of the drawbacks of the modern internet age - even sounding off in the virtual equivalent of a pub with your mates leaves a paper trail. Mind you, as an internet whizzkid himself, he should have been aware of this. I have no sympathy.
#14831537
Igor Antunov wrote:


Between 5:25 and 5:50 Damore says:

'The popular conception is just that, you know, the right doesn't understand science at all and it's anti-science, and it's true that they often deny evolution and climate science but, or climate change, but the left also has its own things that it denies, so biological differences between people, in this case, you know, sex differences.'

Either he nailed it or he must be a misogynist (and racist perhaps).

Will Molyneux's channel stay, by the way? Just asking.
#14831540
Beren wrote:Between 5:25 and 5:50 Damore says:

'The popular conception is just that, you know, the right doesn't understand science at all and it's anti-science, and it's true that they often deny evolution and climate science but, or climate change, but the left also has its own things that it denies, so biological differences between people, in this case, you know, sex differences.'

Either he nailed it or he must be a misogynist (and racist perhaps).

Will Molyneux's channel stay, by the way? Just asking.


If you read his Memo than you would understand that he is making a point. He got fired for no apparent reason honestly.

Stem graduates:
Countries Percentage of researchers who are female
Central Asia 46%
World 30%
South and West Asia 20%
East Asia and the Pacific 20%

Different fields in America:

Arts and humanities 9.4 10.5
Biology 6.5 7.4
Business 18.1 13.8
Education 6.3 14.2
Engineering 15.2 2.6
Physical Sciences 2.7 2.0
Professional 9.8 20.2
Social sciences 6.1 11.7
Technical 3.7 1.4
Computer Sciences 4.3 1.2
Undecided 7.4 8.8
Other 10.5 6.5

All data taken from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields

As you notice, there is almost 1 to 4 or 1 to 5 ratio of Graduates in STEM fields like Engineering, technical, computer sciences etc. (Close to 1 to 4)

So if google wants to have a 50-50% diverse work force than it will have to take only 20% of male candidates and ALL female candidates. This is a system of discrimination which is not based on merit. :|

If you want to have a system purely based on merit than your work force will also look like 80-20 in favour of males purely because there are a LOT less female professionals in the field than male professionals.

Google latest statistics show that:

Google was one of the first big companies to release a report detailing its diversity. Global gender data indicates that Google employees are 70% male and 30% female.


Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/div ... ome-clean/

This is NOT within margin of error. It shows that google, slightly favours woman candidates than male ones because the graduate difference is not 70 to 30 ( 2.3 to 1 ) By using just math you can calculate that they are willing to take a woman around 58%(female candidates taken) to 42%(male candidates taken)
( If we take 1 to 4 as a rough estimate of stem graduates)

Bottom line: Is this okay? Do you take a less qualified female professional than a more qualified male professional? It depends on your point of view i guess. (Note: I provided some statistics and we take an assumption that those stem graduates are all on the same level, in a sense that some of them are better and some of them are worse but this better/worse distribution is the same between the 4 to 1 ratio in candidates.)

So basically being a female candidate at google gives you around 28% more chance to get hired purely based on your gender than any other possible merit.
Last edited by JohnRawls on 09 Aug 2017 15:40, edited 2 times in total.
#14831547
Holy crap, read this: https://archive.fo/Ev88c

"Rebels of Google: 'Constant Abuse, Sneers, Insults And Smears ... Sometimes You Get Punched'" ("I have read internal mailing list e-mail from SJWs absolutely incensed that... ....a Sargon of Akkad video appearing as a video related to one of their favorite SJW vloggers. The SJW was quite literally asking that the related videos function be perverted so that such a thing would stop happening.
#14831582
JohnRawls wrote:So basically being a female candidate at google gives you around 28% more chance to get hired purely based on your gender than any other possible merit.

If Google makes wrong decisions regularly on principle, then they will fail in capitalism sooner or later. Let them do it and we'll see if it works. I'm more interested in what I quoted from Damore. In my opinion the postmodern world is collapsing and the system fights back.
#14831609
JohnRawls wrote:Google latest statistics show that:

Google was one of the first big companies to release a report detailing its diversity. Global gender data indicates that Google employees are 70% male and 30% female.


Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/div ... ome-clean/

This is NOT within margin of error. It shows that google, slightly favours woman candidates than male ones because the graduate difference is not 70 to 30 ( 2.3 to 1 ) By using just math you can calculate that they are willing to take a woman around 58%(female candidates taken) to 42%(male candidates taken)
( If we take 1 to 4 as a rough estimate of stem graduates)

Bottom line: Is this okay? Do you take a less qualified female professional than a more qualified male professional? It depends on your point of view i guess. (Note: I provided some statistics and we take an assumption that those stem graduates are all on the same level, in a sense that some of them are better and some of them are worse but this better/worse distribution is the same between the 4 to 1 ratio in candidates.)

So basically being a female candidate at google gives you around 28% more chance to get hired purely based on your gender than any other possible merit.


I suggest you spend less time on adjusting the font and more on reading your own source. It says 20% women in tech roles.

Also merit is almost never the only criteria. Though I'd say 1:5 is already a good ratio for IT.
#14831637
Rugoz wrote:I suggest you spend less time on adjusting the font and more on reading your own source. It says 20% women in tech roles.

Also merit is almost never the only criteria. Though I'd say 1:5 is already a good ratio for IT.


Uhm, pardon me?

Google

Google was one of the first big companies to release a report detailing its diversity. Global gender data indicates that Google employees are 70% male and 30% female. Google's ethnicity data refers to US employees only, and indicates 61% white, 30% Asian, 4% identifying as two or more races, 3% Hispanic, 2% black, and 1% other. Google also has employee resource groups for employees, including groups for Googlers of specific races, veterans, women in engineering, and LGBT employees.


Apple

Apple's diversity report indicates the same global gender ratio as Google, with 30% female and 70% male employees. When broken down into roles specified as "tech," that ration changes to 80% male and 20% female. Apple's US employees are 55% white, 15% Asian, 11% Hispanic, 7% Black, 2% as two or more races, 1% other, and 9% undeclared. CEO Tim Cook was recently noticed for his participation in San Francisco's annual Gay Pride parade.


We are talking about google though.
#14831681
Potemkin wrote:So he was dumb enough to leave a paper trail? I suppose this is one of the drawbacks of the modern internet age - even sounding off in the virtual equivalent of a pub with your mates leaves a paper trail. Mind you, as an internet whizzkid himself, he should have been aware of this. I have no sympathy.

That's totally missing the point, which is the massive overreaction to one guy's opinion and why we care so much about it. The whole thing has features of religious fanaticism where we make an example of heretics.

One of the main points of feminism used to be that women are just as strong and capable as men and therefore don't need to be protected or shielded from reality, much less from the opinion of some random guy. Additionally, one of the main tenets of liberalism is that we are supposed to be treated as individuals first, and not as members of a group, which happens to one of the points this Google employee is making. Both of these have been turned upside down. Perhaps this is a case of reality coming back to bite us that you mentioned in the other thread? Men just want to protect women and women just want to be protected.

A prime example of this is the other obsession that we have developed: sexual harassment. We already know that sexual harassment, especially on campus, has epidemic proportions. Now we obviously need some data to support this which our left-liberal social scientists dutifully provide. All they have to do is to stretch the definition of sexual harassment beyond recognition, so that a look, an inappropriate joke, or a socially inept guy who doesn't get the message the first time round all become sexual harassment. Throw in some work on raising awareness and the majority of women will experience sexual harassment and obviously need protection from all the male predators out there.

And then there's the fact that one justification for the diversity drive is that women are supposed to make a positive contribution to the workplace by virtue of being female, which clearly implies that women are in fact different.

All this cognitive dissonance can only survive if there are consequences for deviants which is why the guy in the OP had to be sacked. But it also means that the way we select our best and brightest today is seriously deficient. We teach critical and independent thinking today, but it seems that all we are producing is people who believe they are critical and independent thinkers.
#14831692
We teach critical and independent thinking today, but it seems that all we are producing is people who believe they are critical and independent thinkers.

This, it seems to me, is the crux of the problem. And it is a problem which has always existed. After all, the purpose of a classical education was to produce people who were cultured, well-rounded and of superior intellect. All it succeeded in doing, for the most part, was in producing people who thought they were cultured, well-rounded and of superior intellect without actually being so. The British elite private schools churn out stupid, ignorant and narcissistically arrogant bastards like there's no tomorrow, and have always done so. My own great-uncle is a case in point - from the age of 6 or 7, the best private education that money could buy was lavished upon him, yet he left his elite school with no qualifications and an opinionated ego the size of a planet, despite an impenetrable ignorance about pretty much everything. Likewise, the state schools, for the most part, churn out bigoted, intolerant assholes who think they are open-minded, liberal and tolerant. Never underestimate the capacity of the human mind to delude itself. Most people have little or no self-awareness and an infinite capacity for self-delusion. This is how a noble ideal like feminism can be vulgarised and distorted into its own opposite - after all, the same thing happened to Darwinism and to Marxism. Why couldn't it happen to feminism too?
#14831710
Potemkin wrote:This, it seems to me, is the crux of the problem. And it is a problem which has always existed. After all, the purpose of a classical education was to produce people who were cultured, well-rounded and of superior intellect. All it succeeded in doing, for the most part, was in producing people who thought they were cultured, well-rounded and of superior intellect without actually being so. The British elite private schools churn out stupid, ignorant and narcissistically arrogant bastards like there's no tomorrow, and have always done so. My own great-uncle is a case in point - from the age of 6 or 7, the best private education that money could buy was lavished upon him, yet he left his elite school with no qualifications and an opinionated ego the size of a planet, despite an impenetrable ignorance about pretty much everything. Likewise, the state schools, for the most part, churn out bigoted, intolerant assholes who think they are open-minded, liberal and tolerant. Never underestimate the capacity of the human mind to delude itself. Most people have little or no self-awareness and an infinite capacity for self-delusion. This is how a noble ideal like feminism can be vulgarised and distorted into its own opposite - after all, the same thing happened to Darwinism and to Marxism. Why couldn't it happen to feminism too?

Your points are well taken, but I refuse to believe that we cannot do better. Despite what must seem like constant criticism of scientists and science, I actually stand in awe of what logic and the scientific method have already achieved in terms of countering counterproductive aspects of human nature when it comes to finding facts and truth (or at least getting as close to them as possible), and even more so of their potential. And we are still very far away from achieving this potential because we are neglecting some important prerequisites.

The first is that "we don't know" needs to become the most used phrase in our vocabulary rather than jumping to conclusions and making unsupported assertions, which seems to be notoriously difficult for us. You and I made this point in the thread about the appendix. It's probably more important, but at least equally important, to learn what one cannot conclude from data and known facts than what conclusions one can draw. This is just basic logic but it needs to be drilled into us starting very early.

The other point is that we are very vulnerable to social pressures and that resilience to these is a virtue, and related to this that being exposed to contrarian opinions and people is good for us. With this, we seem to be going in the opposite direction whereby we try to change our environments such that we won't need to hear or learn anything that may upset us even temporarily. This, to my knowledge, is a new development at least in recent history.

Alternatively, artificial intelligence will eventually beat us to it, although it will bring about a host of different issues and problems most of which we may not be able to anticipate.
#14831725
Your points are well taken, but I refuse to believe that we cannot do better. Despite what must seem like constant criticism of scientists and science, I actually stand in awe of what logic and the scientific method have already achieved in terms of countering counterproductive aspects of human nature when it comes to finding facts and truth (or at least getting as close to them as possible), and even more so of their potential. And we are still very far away from achieving this potential because we are neglecting some important prerequisites.

Agreed.

The first is that "we don't know" needs to become the most used phrase in our vocabulary rather than jumping to conclusions and making unsupported assertions, which seems to be notoriously difficult for us. You and I made this point in the thread about the appendix. It's probably more important, but at least equally important, to learn what one cannot conclude from data and known facts than what conclusions one can draw. This is just basic logic but it needs to be drilled into us starting very early.

You are asking too much from people. They are what they are, and seem incapable of changing their own nature, which for the most part is self-centred, obtuse and wilfully ignorant. Given our biological nature as primates with turbo-charged brains, this is hardly surprising. Regrettable, but hardly surprising. As Immanuel Kant once noted, "Out of the warped wood of human nature, nothing straight was ever made."

The other point is that we are very vulnerable to social pressures and that resilience to these is a virtue, and related to this that being exposed to contrarian opinions and people is good for us. With this, we seem to be going in the opposite direction whereby we try to change our environments such that we won't need to hear or learn anything that may upset us even temporarily. This, to my knowledge, is a new development at least in recent history.

One of our most common self-delusions is the belief that the human race is progressing and is constantly improving itself. In fact, every advance is simultaneously a regression as our fundamental nature reasserts itself and sabotages our best efforts to transcend ourselves. The human race has never been wealthier, yet millions starve in the midst of plenty. We have never been more knowledgeable, yet people open museums showing Jesus and the prophets riding on the backs of dinosaurs. We have never been more free, yet people lock chains of ignorance and superstition around their necks and wrists. We are rising towards the heavens, yet we are falling back to Earth at the same time. Things can only get better, and things can only get worse.

Alternatively, artificial intelligence will eventually beat us to it, although it will bring about a host of different issues and problems most of which we may not be able to anticipate.

In the long term, it seems to me that the human race is doomed. A paradoxical combination of cleverness and obtuse stupidity will destroy us in the end - our own creations will judge us, and condemn us to oblivion.
#14831726
I know a lot of people believe humans can become wiser. I have serious doubts, which is why I advocate giving everyone their own little area in the hopes of limiting the contagion area of our destructive ignorance. :?:
#14831753
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:That's totally missing the point, which is the massive overreaction to one guy's opinion and why we care so much about it. The whole thing has features of religious fanaticism where we make an example of heretics.


Everyone has missed the point over this. Pichai even said most of the memo was up for debate. It was only the suggestion that members of their cooperation was not up for doing the job that got him fired (seems a weak argument when you read the memo actually).

Where Damore missed the point was that Google are trying to promote diversity and opportunity in their company, which is why these systems are put into place. Instead he was trying to imply that biology made these systems futile. Yet we have women in tech! So why not strive for more? At least promote the agenda.

Where Google missed the point is that they want to be an open and honest company. If they are going to fire someone because they make a criticism and then bogusly fire him without defending/explaining their policies, how can they advocate free speech?

And what is more surprising is 'supposedly intelligent' people have made decisions on emotion and not think logically when doing so.
#14831763
SpecialOlympian wrote:I did read it, though I skimmed the last half. It's definitely sexist, he complains about not being able to talk about how women are naturally worse coders by dint of their gender. He does a breakdown of what men and women are naturally good at.

I don't even contest that men tend to seek status and women tend to value more work life balance. But these aren't hard and fast rules and it's pretty moronic to say Google should use them for decision making since they're interiewing and placing individuals that they screen, not hiring a generic gendered person.


You posted this in TLTE, but I wanted to respond to it here. How much did you skim? This is what he actually says:


On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just
socially constructed


Sounds bad, right? Initially, this looks like a sexist rant, right? He goes on to say this:

I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences
are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything
about an individual given these population level distributions.


He literally says that while there are small, very small differences between men and women, and that this "may" explain why the majority of women prefer other career paths than the STEM disciplines, that it's obviously wrong to assume anything about an individual, and it's pretty obvious he's saying it's wrong to discriminate, which indeed he does:

Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap.... [I will] suggest ways to ... increase women's
representation in tech without resorting to discrimination.
[*]Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
[*]Women on average are more cooperative
[*]Women on average are more prone to anxiety
[*]Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for
status on average


In his point about anxiety, he doesn't say women are hysterical or emotional. There's nothing sexist about this. There is, in fact, a well-known racial anxiety bias during academic testing. There is an actual degree of anxiety-related lowered performance from African-Americans who take academic tests. It is not really shocking to discuss how women may feel more anxiety around men in the workplace than men feel about women in the workplace. He cites an article in a peer-reviewed psychology journal when discussing his point about how women tend to be more people-oriented in the work environment than men.

He then has this to say about male gender role stuff:

The male gender role is currently inflexible
○ Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender
role, but men are still very much tied to the male gender role. If we, as a society,
allow men to be more "feminine," then the gender gap will shrink, although
probably because men will leave tech and leadership for traditionally "feminine"
roles.


At the very end, he does make a comment about how the "Left" dismisses any science done on biology, and mentions IQ specifically. In light of his anti-discriminatory tone and his memo going to lengths to come up with ideas on how to make the workplace work for women, I don't see how it's sexist or racist. He's a right-wing guy, but it appears, in light of the rest of his entire memo (except for the very end), that he's just making a complaint about "the Left." I don't agree with his whole memo, but I think giving it a read makes it clear he's not advocating for discrimination. He literally makes the argument that men are sometimes too uptight about gender roles, that women are valuable in the workplace, and that it's wrong to assume anything about a person based on who they are.
#14831765
I see your point Decky, but the point is he didn't write that memo for the world. It was intended for internal reading. Google has a screening process for hiring its employees and investing resources in them (he complains about gender only classes). Applying generalities like he does, to people he is in the same building with, is moronic and unconstructive. He is commenting on a small, closed pool of people and making broad, Sociology level statements to an insignificant and pre-selected portion of the population.

His definition of discrimination is his belief that Google is going out of its way to hire people outside of the normal representation of race/gender in that industry position. To the point where this is detrimental to their bottom line. His solution to this discrimination is to keep hiring women, but put them in social roles and not coding due to their natural affinity.

Applying this broad description to the small pool of Google employees is not productive. And keep in mind, he is talking about a single Google branch and not the entire organization. He's making sweeping generalizations that apply to people who work in the same building as him, people he passes in the hallway. On the face of it it's not sexist. But if I were a person in that building who wasn't white and male I'd start to think that this guy has a lot of ideas about my abilities and personality based soley on my physical appearance.

Ultimately, his memo is stupid and unhelpful. When he says things along the lines of "Men deal better with machines and code while women are better at being friendlly and making things friendly for end users" he's making a prescriptive statement based on the descriptions of trends. If you look at industries as a whole you may note that engineers tend to be male and psychologists tend to be female and then you explain that with natural differences in the genders. Although I would say that was one of many factors.

But it's back assward to say your company ought to explore these trends and allow the discussion of how the workplace might return to and benefit from those trends because your wildly successful deviation from the norm might be suffering in some imaginary and unquantifiable way.
Last edited by SpecialOlympian on 10 Aug 2017 06:03, edited 1 time in total.
#14831768
I don't see him saying he thinks women should be kept out of coding jobs. He thinks more should be done to try to make those jobs better suited for women, by making it more collaborative and less anxiety-driven, but he says nothing about discriminating against women, or saying women should be prevented from any jobs. It's just him trying to make sense of things. Like I said, I don't agree with the whole thing or anything, but I'm not reading it as discriminatory. I think he should have thought about his wording or made the memo absolutely, completely anonymous if he felt so strongly about Google's policies that he wanted to say something. I saw his comment about the gender-only classes, and not knowing what he actually means (if he wants there to be no classes, or simply no classes that discriminate based on gender/race) makes it ambiguous whether that's sexist or he's just not wording himself very well.

And you know I'm not a right-winger. I think he didn't do a very good job expressing himself properly (it got him fired after all, and it's still questionable whether he's being sexist or not), but he wasn't advocating for discrimination or preventing women from taking jobs they individually qualify for any more than individual men qualify for jobs.

It is implausible that the IDF could not or would[…]

Moving on to the next misuse of language that sho[…]

@JohnRawls What if your assumption is wrong??? […]

There is no reason to have a state at all unless w[…]