He never denigrated any of his co-workers and it is ridiculous to say that only people who agree with you about non-work matters can be work with you. If there are actually people at Google who lack the maturity to work with people who do not share their opinions they are the ones who should be fired.
By firing him the CEO damaged the Google brand among people who agreed with the guy and people who support free expression. Should the CEO also be fired.
He does not need to prove Google discriminates against white men as a class. In California it is illegal to fire someone because of a political opinion. Federal labor laws also prohibit firing employees for communicating with other employees about how to improve the work environment. He has a very good case under both of those laws.
In my case, Intro to Computer Science was mandatory in 8th grade in the early 80s. Just four of us girls continued on through ninth grade, plus I was the only girl in Mechanical Drawing that same year. I loved the work in both classes, but that’s no way to live.
The things he actually said regarding those characteristics are debatable. I don’t know why he’d face more stress at work than the average RN, for example, where women dominate the field; I don’t know that women being more cooperative is a net negative in anything, or even that Google is striving for 50% female representation in the first place. I think the value of this memo is wholly in its context, with some seeing an anti-SJW screed at Leftist Inc. that should be lauded, and others (like me) seeing a disingenuous guy in the tech industry hiding the sexism issue and touting his own beliefs. I doubt we’ll ever get to discussing the actual points noted in the memo, and we (collectively) would never agree on anything if we did.
It’s his opinion, but I don’t see it as a political opinion.
What if his “improvement” goes against fair labor practices? If one espouses firing people who are in protected classes–a certain gender, handicapped, certain religions, etc.–it’s hard to say that it’s a way to improve the workplace since it would be illegal to implement.
None of this seems relevant to the point I was making.
He didn’t advocate firing anyone. (Where did you get this notion from?)
Where’s the denigration? And he took 10 pages with several attempts to qualify statements to make his point. Pointing out differences is not denigration if the differences actually exist is it?
Differences between people exist. The sweeping generalization that they apply to men vs women as groups is the fallacy.
I’m one of four daughters. We are are all very different from each other in these areas. So to argue it’s a globally male vs female issue, does dip a toe into stereotypes and even denigration.
It appears he wasn’t fired for making his opinion public, another division in google did that anonymously. He was officially fired for perpetuating gender stereotypes.
Here’s an interview with him and Jordan Peterson.
Jordan Peterson last week had his account temporarily suspended
I disagree. If I say that men are far more likely to have a chance to play in the NFL due to biological differences I’d be factually correct. If I say women suck at sports, I’d be saying a subjective and denigrating opinion. There’s a clear difference.
That’s an example that’s so specific as to not be useful for this type of conversation. More appropriate is the idea that just a couple generations ago girls were thought to have only the most limited interest in sports and could never really perform at top levels.
The reality is that the range of female and male athletic ability is on a continuum with a broad overlap in the middle. So there are plenty of women who are better athletes than a lot of men. So the stereotype that women are limited in their interest and ability to do sports is wrong. Legislation that required parity in opportunity for girls in sports resulted in an explosion of girls participating and excelling in sports. People who complained about legislation because “girls don’t do sports” were buying into a stereotype and then using that stereotype to justify decisions.
The broader the stereotype (women are more prone to anxiety) the less useful it becomes for dealing with specific women or even groups of women.
Specific yet relevant. The NFL, like Google, hires outliers not averages. You think the distribution of ability at the extreme edges of capability is going to be exactly proportional to any arbitrary set of people? I doubt it. I also doubt that every bit of difference can be explained solely by culture.
Now does society benefit from attempts to dispel the notions that certain groups can’t or shouldn’t participate in certain fields? In my opinion, absolutely.
Physical athleticism and size are rare human characteristics in that they are easily quantified. Most human qualities are not - certainly all the qualities that make for good engineers and scientists are very difficult to quantify and may even be wholly subjective. I see no more reason to believe that gender differences in various mental qualities are any more likely to just so happen to match traditional western cultural ideals of gender roles than differences in race. History has shown the incredible power of culture - to me, without very powerful and clear evidence against it, that seems to me the most likely explanation for statistical differences in various categories that are not related to size or strength.
Eh, no. I took HookerChemical’s point to be that Damore committed the error and sin of ham-fistedly applying population-level observations to a highly select subgroup in the attempt to argue one gender is inherently ill-suited for certain work environments. Which is essentially the same point I made.
I don’t even think Damore’s essay was all that offensive. But in decrying Google’s liberal bias–which he treats as fact, not perception–he ended up revealing his own bias. If he’s a hiring official and interviews a female applicant who gets noticeably nervous, will be inclined to see her as “neurotic like women are” in a way he wouldn’t a nervous male? It’s not an unreasonable question to ponder.
Maybe I missed it but, among the discussion here, I have not seen one argument.
Damore published his screed to an internal board. Someone (presumably someone else?) leaked it.
The bad publicity shit show that followed required both actions. Damore has been canned, but should the leaker meet the same fate?
After all if bringing shame and disgrace on the Google name for generations to come is a firing offence then the leaker should have been reasonably aware of the likely consequences of leaking this to the public and should be fired as well. You don’t get to come back tomorrow. You dont even get a lousy copy of our home game. You’re a complete loser!*
*acknowledgments to Weird Al Yankovic
Normally I’d say that commenting on racial and/or gender differences at work would be grounds for firing. But this was in the context of discussing a company policy, a company policy which is FAILING BTW and failing everywhere. It’s entirely reasonable to have an opinion on why the policy never works and what could be tried instead.
As for “gender differences”, he didn’t imply inferiority in any way, just different choices. And those choices are solid fact. Men and women are more likely to choose certain fields over others:
How these choices are Silicon Valley’s problem I’m not sure. If anyone is to “blame” for this, it’s our universities.
Interesting question. I think a lot would matter about the intent of the leaker and whether that aligns with the intent of the company. In other words, is Google upset about this, now that they’ve dealt with the guy who did it? Do they want to communicate the message that this type of screed will not be tolerated, and thus see outing him as a good thing?
Or do they see it as just putting Google under disrepute? If the former, I could see not punishing or at least keeping them on board. If the latter, then I could see firing him. If they don’t want this stuff leaked, or want to show that this isn’t due to liberal bias to the conservatives who are upset, then, yeah, they should get rid of the leaker too. Or at least make a big deal out of trying to find them.
Of course, it’s also possible the leak was actually by the highest levels in the company, too. Thois may be Google leaking this intentionally, so they can then fire him publicly.
There are so many misconceptions and non-sequiturs in your post that it’s pointless to address them all, so I’m going to start from scratch with regards to the reported percentages.
Google provides only a very rough breakdown of their employment figures. They are (women/men%):
Overall: 31/69
Tech: 20/80
Non-tech: 48/52
Leadership 25/75
To a very crude first approximation, we would expect leadership to follow the overall figure, because techies tend to have tech leaders and non-techies non-tech leaders. This is obviously imperfect, because a non-tech person may well lead a tech group if they are solid leaders that know how to delegate properly (though this happens less often than one would like). And techies can lead a non-tech group if they have the talent.
But as a basic approximation it’s going to be pretty close, and that’s what we see: 31/69 vs. 25/75. Maybe a slight male bias there, but it’s close. And Google was started by techies, so we might expect leadership to at least lean in that direction. And so it does, percentage-wise.
Not all the techies are CS grads. Many are, but programming does not require a degree in it–that’s one of the great things about computers; any motivated person can learn what they need on their own. However, Google and many other companies like to see a degree of some kind. Where I work (not Google, but a similar SV company), we have people with physics, electronic engineer, aeronautical engineer, and other STEM degrees.
However, this does not mean we should expect the demographics of this group to match STEM degrees overall. This is still a self-selected group of people that were interested in programming. Maybe they found they liked programming more than whatever their degree was in. Maybe the jobs weren’t there. Maybe (in one case I know of) there was a moral objection (only jobs were with military contractors making weapons).
Whatever the case, this group is likely to have a demographic composition that more closely matches CS graduates than a generic STEM graduate. So the 18/82 CS graduation figure is probably closer to the true available pool than the less-extreme figures for other STEM degrees.
So overall, I don’t see a problem with their figures. They’re almost exactly what you’d expect if Google indeed had no bias in their hiring practices. Maybe they can work on their leadership numbers a bit, but it’s only a few points off where you would expect. As for the 18 people that you found, that’s just not a statistically significant sample. It has a high probability of being off by tens of percent just by random variation.
I think it would be great if there were more women in the workforce, but I also don’t think it’s proven that the “right” number is 50/50. Maybe 20/80 is the right number. Or hell, maybe it should be 80/20. I don’t know but I don’t think the answer is for companies to put their thumb on the scale. Ensure that young girls have all the same opportunities that boys have and let the cards fall as they may.
…actually I would LOVE for you to address them. If you are going to accuse me of getting things wrong then at least have the decency to either point those out, or withdraw the accusation. It isn’t very nice of you to make a claim like this and then to run away from the claim. So please: don’t leave this hanging.
…a lot of words there.
None of them address my point. I’m specifically talking about the executive team. I’ve provided a link to the executive team. Why are you talking about “techies tend to have tech leaders” when I’ve provided you with the names and the qualifications of the executive team so you don’t have to guess? You haven’t explained why you would “expect leadership to follow the overall figure” when the executive team is not made up of computer science graduates. (Computer science is the specific metric you have used.)
So please: try again.
And what about giving women the same opportunities as men when they enter the workforce? That’s exactly what the google diversity programme is trying to address, it is why the (ex)google memo guy has got it wrong, and why waiting for “the supply side of the equation” to correct itself is not going to “fix Silicon Valley.”
Why are you only concerned with the “supply side” when women are telling you that sexual discrimination is a problem, hostile work environments is a problem, the tendency to hire male candidates over female candidates is a problem, men getting paid more than women for doing the same job is a problem, lesser qualified men getting promoted over better qualified women is a problem: why are you ignoring all of this? Has the possibility ever occurred to you that to fix the “supply side” problem you need to make the workplace a safe, non-toxic place to work first?
Limited time. Can’t address all of it.
The executive team is not going to exactly match the overall leadership. 18 data points vs. ~10,000.
Again: having a CS degree is not the end-all of differentiating techies from non-techies. They come from all sorts of backgrounds. But ones that gravitate to Google are likely to have similar demographics as CS degree holders.
Again, the statistics suggest that Google hires women in line with the available pool of workers. It would be discriminatory to ask for more.
It has, and I think it’s (largely) wrong. First, the workspaces *are *largely safe and non-toxic. There are notable exceptions (Uber, etc.) and those should be worked on, but many places do not have any problems at all. At my workspace, I’ve only heard of one serious issue, and the person responsible was ushered out the door quickly.
That said, there are some inevitable problems with an unbalanced ratio. There are always going to be some men that harass women. Frankly, some people are just assholes. Obviously this behavior should be dealt with, but there is always going to be some period of time when the behavior is happening and before it can be corrected.
If there were 100 guys and 100000 women at a workspace, these men would not show up on the radar; their behavior would be so diluted vs. the targeted women that it’s basically not noticeable.
But if there were 100000 guys and 100 women, you have a hell of a problem. Even if the harassers were a tiny percentage of the total, they still outnumber the women. And so it would be absolutely unbearable for them. 99.9% of the guys could be absolute paragons and it still wouldn’t be good enough.
SV isn’t that bad, but it’s closer to the latter than the former. And that is a problem, because even if SV does better than the national average with regard to this stuff, it could still end up worse for the women.
So there need to be more of them. But again, the supply isn’t there. Maybe Google could attract more by paying women massively more than the guys, but every woman that works at Google is one that’s not working at Apple or Intel or wherever. So nothing has changed overall. In fact, things might even get worse, if you end up with some big companies with really low fractions and the problems that entails.
If the supply is there, then it is at least possible to achieve a more balanced mix. And whatever remaining problems with sexism can be more easily identified.
…then have the decency to withdraw what you said.
You’ve argued there is a supply side problem with computer science degrees. You’ve argued that the gender breakdown of the tech team reflects that supply side problem. You’ve argued the leadership team is a reflection of the tech team. You’ve argued the executive team should be a reflection of the leadership team.
But the executive team isn’t made up of CS degree people at all. Why is such a small group with such a wide range of experiences and work history not more reflective of the general population? Why would the gender breakdown be reflective of computer science degrees, when most of them don’t have computer science degrees?
The studies strongly suggest that there is a tendency for men to get hired over women with similar experience and qualifications. Fixing that would not be discriminatory.
Have you honestly not been paying attention? Why do you think google are under investigation by the US Labour Department? Do you think thats normal? Do you honestly think the problem is only with Uber, and a few other notable exceptions?
I asked you about things that women have been talking about a heck of a lot lately. Why are you choosing not to listen?
https://www.recode.net/2017/7/31/16066860/silicon-valley-harassment-sexism-erica-baker-sarah-kunst-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/2/16081510/500-startups-dave-mcclure-sexual-harassment-impact-demo-day
I could go for hours posting links for you. The sad thing is that nearly all of those links talk about different stories.
Why are you not listening?
This is **your **industry. These are **your **people that are suffering: that are leaving the industry because they’ve had enough. Stop pretending a problem doesn’t exist and take a little bit of responsibility.
What is it do you think your little thought experiment proves?
If a tiny percentage of men are making things unbearable for women: then what the fuck are the 99.9% of the guys who are “absolute paragons” doing to solve the problem? Why are they standing around allowing this “hell of a problem” to make life unbearable for the women they work with to continue?
You think Silicon Valley is doing better than the national average? Really?
Do you really think that “better pay” is the solution to a workspace that is, in your words, “unbearable?” You don’t think fixing the “hell of a problem” would work a hell of a lot better?
“Remaining problems with sexism?”
That was a joke, right?
If I’ve learned anything from similar debates about race and sexual orientation, the intent of the whole biological differences debate is to provide cover for certain people to throw up their hands and say, “It’s okay that we hire 98 men and 2 women; the little ladies are just not wired to like science. Trying to do anything to change those numbers is therefore a waste of time. So who wants to go to the strip club and knock back some beers after work?” (Ironically, in the sexual orientation example, the futility argument is in FAVOR of the group being discussed, which I find kind of odd and funny.)