Google male engineeer saying female engineers shouldn't be engineers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if a Google employee would get fired if it was known that he/she supported a traditional or biblical view of marriage?

Hopefully. No one needs that kind of crazy in the workplace.

[Anonymous]

Here's the link to the full article where behavioral scientists respond to the memo:
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/

[Anonymous]

So if there are no gender differences, that means transsexuals don't really need to exist right? If males and females are the same in how they think, they no one is born with the wrong body, since both men and women think alike right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if there are no gender differences, that means transsexuals don't really need to exist right? If males and females are the same in how they think, they no one is born with the wrong body, since both men and women think alike right?

Wrong thread. Go troll somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the full article where behavioral scientists respond to the memo:
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/

I think a lot of people won't like that response because it doesn't comply with their own biases. Most people aren't rational thinkers, but instead emotional thinkers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem with Google, and the problem with other modern software houses, is that they have decided to put their laser-like attention on things other than quality of product. They focus on diversity, social good, various arcane theories of user-interface design, and other things that have nothing to do with writing effective code. Unsurprisingly, they aren’t very good at doing any of those new tasks — and because they’ve abandoned the things that they used to do well, the foundations are slipping out from underneath them.

Today’s Google home page is a slow-loading mess compared to what it used to be, loaded with buggy features and featuring plenty of bugs. Browser-dependent, hugely bloated, more like the old Excite! homepage than anything a Google user would have enjoyed a decade ago. It’s simply not very good anymore. That should worry the people at Google. Fixing that should be a priority above “social good” or “diverse teams”. They should hire the smartest people and have them write the best code. Period. That’s what Google is supposed to do. Whenever Google does that, it succeeds. Whenever they try to change the world, it’s a ridiculous failure.

I disagree with your assertion, but Google is still 80% male and majority white (only 1% black). If the code is crappy, it's because of white men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the full article where behavioral scientists respond to the memo:
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/

"Quillette" No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the full article where behavioral scientists respond to the memo:
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/

I think a lot of people won't like that response because it doesn't comply with their own biases. Most people aren't rational thinkers, but instead emotional thinkers.

The fact that those respondents are behavioral scientists is irrelevant to their short responses which are primarily based on their opinions or are assertions without backup.

The first response hinges on one man's perception of culture in academia and of the comments to the manifesto. He is neither a cultural anthropologist nor has he backed up his assertions that academia is close-minded or that none of the responses were well thought out. Even on this site, the latter is not true.

The second himself said he's not an expert but also that he doesn't necessarily think any sex differences should matter when it comes to performance as a software developer...refuting the argument.

The third dances around the issue by saying that diversity is only necessary if there are inherent differences (a fact that can be argued since it leaves out the entire nurture or cultural aspects of differences) and that if it's necessary one should still expect differences of outcome. He says nothing about whether one should still tackle systematic bias.

The fourth seems to hinge entirely on her opinion that she didn't find the memo offensive...and calling everyone who disagrees with her unscientific. Hmmm...that might be unscientific.

Honestly, these debates are wearying. Yes, there are likely differences in ability between men and women. But no one has demonstrated that those differences make men better Google engineers than women, in which case literally everything else is irrelevant. There is a *huge* skew in outcomes at Google, and there are many women reporting their actual experiences of being marginalized. But all of that data is supposedly irrelevant, and research that is by definition hugely biased because you can't exactly raise humans in a vacuum to understand their true natures without nurture is definitive?

Get rid of gender bias in work, and I'll talk about inherent differences in ability. Until then, this is all exactly what it seems to be. Whiny victimization by people who feel threatened at losing their entitled status.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The fact that those respondents are behavioral scientists is irrelevant to their short responses which are primarily based on their opinions or are assertions without backup.
...

Get rid of gender bias in work, and I'll talk about inherent differences in ability. Until then, this is all exactly what it seems to be. Whiny victimization by people who feel threatened at losing their entitled status.

I'm not an expert, but the Quillette did include links to what seem like respected academic journals at the bottom of the article. Are those studies not accurate?

As for gender bias, I agree. Does Google have an effort underway to ensure there are sufficient men in positions like marketing, PR, and HR? In most companies I worked in, these departments were dominated by women, and I saw no effort to promote diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The fact that those respondents are behavioral scientists is irrelevant to their short responses which are primarily based on their opinions or are assertions without backup.
...

Get rid of gender bias in work, and I'll talk about inherent differences in ability. Until then, this is all exactly what it seems to be. Whiny victimization by people who feel threatened at losing their entitled status.

I'm not an expert, but the Quillette did include links to what seem like respected academic journals at the bottom of the article. Are those studies not accurate?

As for gender bias, I agree. Does Google have an effort underway to ensure there are sufficient men in positions like marketing, PR, and HR? In most companies I worked in, these departments were dominated by women, and I saw no effort to promote diversity.

My point is not about the science (which as a physicist I am only partially able to critique). My point is that the science is irrelevant...because none of the science can address whether those biological differences have anything to do with how well someone will perform as a Google engineer. It might have been missed, but a former Googler addressed this point quite well, explaining that many of the things the manifesto writer claimed were weakening Google in the name of diversity were actually strengths in how they did their work and developed engineers into the management tracks:
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

I don't work at Google, so I can't speak to their diversity hiring efforts in HR. It seems to me that there could be advantages to promoting more diversity in those divisions, but I have no idea. What I do know is that company's like Google don't do things out of kindness or a sense of what's right. Everything they do is toward increasing their bottom line, and if they can earn some nice PR in the meantime that's just a bonus. There are very good reasons to think that having a product development and engineering that reflects the people buying or using your products will result in products that your buyers and users prefer. That alone is a reason to have a few more than 20% of your engineers be women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if a Google employee would get fired if it was known that he/she supported a traditional or biblical view of marriage?

Hopefully. No one needs that kind of crazy in the workplace.

So no Christians or Muslims, then? Simply for believing in traditional marriage, and not actively discriminating? You're quite the bigot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if a Google employee would get fired if it was known that he/she supported a traditional or biblical view of marriage?

If he published a screed on the Google internal message board stating that women should not work or be hired at google because they should stay home in a traditional marriage, then he could be fired. If he published a screed against gay marriage on a Google message board, then he could also be fired. It's not about what he privately believes, but whether he is creating a hostile work environment for protected classes of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if a Google employee would get fired if it was known that he/she supported a traditional or biblical view of marriage?

Hopefully. No one needs that kind of crazy in the workplace.

So no Christians or Muslims, then? Simply for believing in traditional marriage, and not actively discriminating? You're quite the bigot.

Not believing. Using those beliefs in the workplace to create a hostile work environment. Nobody cares what you do on your own time, but there are rules about what you can do at work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The fact that those respondents are behavioral scientists is irrelevant to their short responses which are primarily based on their opinions or are assertions without backup.
...

Get rid of gender bias in work, and I'll talk about inherent differences in ability. Until then, this is all exactly what it seems to be. Whiny victimization by people who feel threatened at losing their entitled status.

I'm not an expert, but the Quillette did include links to what seem like respected academic journals at the bottom of the article. Are those studies not accurate?

As for gender bias, I agree. Does Google have an effort underway to ensure there are sufficient men in positions like marketing, PR, and HR? In most companies I worked in, these departments were dominated by women, and I saw no effort to promote diversity.

My point is not about the science (which as a physicist I am only partially able to critique). My point is that the science is irrelevant...because none of the science can address whether those biological differences have anything to do with how well someone will perform as a Google engineer. It might have been missed, but a former Googler addressed this point quite well, explaining that many of the things the manifesto writer claimed were weakening Google in the name of diversity were actually strengths in how they did their work and developed engineers into the management tracks:
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

I don't work at Google, so I can't speak to their diversity hiring efforts in HR. It seems to me that there could be advantages to promoting more diversity in those divisions, but I have no idea. What I do know is that company's like Google don't do things out of kindness or a sense of what's right. Everything they do is toward increasing their bottom line, and if they can earn some nice PR in the meantime that's just a bonus. There are very good reasons to think that having a product development and engineering that reflects the people buying or using your products will result in products that your buyers and users prefer. That alone is a reason to have a few more than 20% of your engineers be women.

From what I've seen, studies related to the benefits of diversity in technology don't really point one way or the other. I think there is something to be said when it comes to human factors design for having diverse viewpoints as different groups use technology differently.

[Anonymous]

I think more than a few people, particularly in the media, really read what he wrote, nor does it help that Gizmodo presented his essay without the graphs and citations. Its pretty moderate stuff, far from the typical "Feminism is cancer" rants one might see from a men's right activist.