Google male engineeer saying female engineers shouldn't be engineers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a business perspective, I can't see how it makes any sense to exclude an entire 50% of the workforce from a single job category. Your competitors who figure out how to tap into the talent of women are going to have an advantage.

Top CS/engineering programs are overwhelmingly male. Top companies hiring tech talent would be dumb to not hire the best. I don't think anyone would look at the top 100 engineers who are lets say 90 male and 10 female and not hire the 10 females. What doesn't make sense is why would you hire say 10 more females and only 80 males. Those 10 more qualified/talented males are going to go to a competitor and eat you alive.

This attitude 100% explains why people are so threatened by affirmative action for college admissions. The mistaken belief that where you go to school is the only predictor of success in the real world. As a hiring manager in tech, yes, candidates who attended a top program are likely to be stronger than the general applicant pool. But, no, the best candidates did not all go to the best programs. In fact, the best programmer/engineer I ever had the pleasure to work with started off as a diversity hire of sorts. He was a poor, white, male without college role models, who was hired into a coop program by a big engineering firm and worked through his undergrad and masters, which he received from an average public university (not even the flagship conference). I would hire this guy any day, any time. But without that corporate coop program focused on hiring from non-standard pools of candidates, he would never have gotten the opportunity to shine the way he has.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:who cares what the black % at google tech is? I know black employees in google on the marketing side that make 300k-400k a year.

Why would you want to be a code geek when you can work in a more fun part the company and still make bank?

Google is an ad firm - they have tons of non-tech jobs that are highly remunerative that AA's would be great for.

Woman in tech here. Because some people do not like marketing. I like tech and am actually good out it, despite having a vagina.

you would rather be some drone dev than ruth porat or sheryl sandberg?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a business perspective, I can't see how it makes any sense to exclude an entire 50% of the workforce from a single job category. Your competitors who figure out how to tap into the talent of women are going to have an advantage.

Top CS/engineering programs are overwhelmingly male. Top companies hiring tech talent would be dumb to not hire the best. I don't think anyone would look at the top 100 engineers who are lets say 90 male and 10 female and not hire the 10 females. What doesn't make sense is why would you hire say 10 more females and only 80 males. Those 10 more qualified/talented males are going to go to a competitor and eat you alive.

Top programs are currently overwhelmingly male - but they weren't to begin with. At the beginning of tech/CS, women were very well represented and many of the initial brilliant computer scientists and coders were women.
And then the bro-culture/gaming culture took over, pushing out women and thereby losing a TON of talent and opportunity for the companies.

Diversity isn't about some philosophical need for equality. It's about getting the best ideas and most perspectives into a process. And to keep recruit and retain the best women and minority engineers, a massive culture shift is needed at google and elsewhere.

Agree. Many women drop out of engineering and computer science programs because they are hostile. Women deal with enough hostility in society, why put up with that shit at work? You start to see who your co-workers are then add workplace policies that are harder on women, why would women want this?! The few that persevere are constantly having to prove they are technically competent and also nice with a "cool girl" attitude toward misogyny. In the end, it is soul crushing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I refuse to read the whole thing, because I've heard enough of it and people who make selectively-informed arguments like that don't deserve that much of my time. But I will point out a few things:

1) Arguments like this assume that the only benefit of "diversity" are to the under-represented groups. Companies have an interest in having their workforce reflect the demographics of their users, because those perspectives might make their products more interesting, usable, and valuable to their users. I worked in the engine division of an auto-maker in the '90s, and engineers were openly making the argument that we needed more women because women made the majority of vehicle purchase decisions. This isn't a profound or new idea, but it's interesting how such a basic economic concept seems to elude these supposedly logical and rational male engineers.

2) These arguments typically hinge on cherry-picked data showing differences between women and men, but they don't explicitly draw the line to why that means women (or blacks or hispanics) should be software developers at Google. One common argument I've seen is that women are more interested in outcomes than in technical details. For example, a woman is more interested in the fact that dishwashers clean dishes than in how they work. This may or may not be true, but it's also irrelevant. Being interested in what something can do doesn't mean that you can't build the thing. In fact, the move to user-centered design and customer-oriented agile development methods in SW means that industry is shifting to a more outcome-based methodology. My completely anecdotal observation is that women 'grok' this change more intuitively, and are much better at aligning their work to producing actually useful results whereas men will waste weeks on end developing something they think is cool but is ultimately useless. They also view usability as a waste-of-time, meaning that development teams often end up with tons of half-finished features. These arguments completely miss all the ways in which the qualities that are supposed to define women could be an asset to engineering teams.

3) All of these arguments are basically irrelevant, because as the recent Uber revelations made abundantly clear blatant sexism remains. So who knows if the "right" percentage of women in tech would be 20% or 60% if the playing field were truly level? We know explicitly that it's not level today. The overwhelming experience of women bears this out, and most decent men who spend long enough in their careers (and especially if they are married to technical women) end up coming to this realization. Women are constantly having to prove their worth in technical sectors, and any single slip up will be given a lot more weight than decades of success. Google is no different in this regard. I was at a Google conference earlier this year, where they paid a lot of lip service to diversity. At some point during a break I was chatting with a google engineer, whom I had prefaced my conversation with the fact that I lead a team as part of a large development effort in a mid-sized company. Clearly this never registered with him since it seemed so implausible, so he proceeded to talk to me (and even give me specific advice) in a way that would have only been appropriate for a clueless, fresh-out-of-school person who had no idea what they were doing or the market they were playing in. This infantalizing of technical women is quite common, and something I've at times been able to use to my advantage...but it's generally pretty offensive.

So if you want to know what I think about this, there it is. And BTW, there is nothing brave about posting an anonymous "opinion" and pretending that tired old arguments about "why girls are bad at math" are somehow profound.

As a fellow woman in tech, this really resonated with my - especially your description of the infantalization of technical women.

My DH is also an engineer, and now in a position to do a lot of hiring. He's been absolutely aghast at some of the comments he gets from people after interviews. His coworkers literally saying "she's smart and can do the job, but we're really technical in this group, so I don't think she'd want to"
WTF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:who cares what the black % at google tech is? I know black employees in google on the marketing side that make 300k-400k a year.

Why would you want to be a code geek when you can work in a more fun part the company and still make bank?

Google is an ad firm - they have tons of non-tech jobs that are highly remunerative that AA's would be great for.

Woman in tech here. Because some people do not like marketing. I like tech and am actually good out it, despite having a vagina.

you would rather be some drone dev than ruth porat or sheryl sandberg?

No, I would rather be the Woz or Larry Ellison. What I want hasn't come in female form yet. Sanberg and Porat are financial folks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:who cares what the black % at google tech is? I know black employees in google on the marketing side that make 300k-400k a year.

Why would you want to be a code geek when you can work in a more fun part the company and still make bank?

Google is an ad firm - they have tons of non-tech jobs that are highly remunerative that AA's would be great for.

Woman in tech here. Because some people do not like marketing. I like tech and am actually good out it, despite having a vagina.

you would rather be some drone dev than ruth porat or sheryl sandberg?

No, I would rather be the Woz or Larry Ellison. What I want hasn't come in female form yet. Sanberg and Porat are financial folks.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I refuse to read the whole thing, because I've heard enough of it and people who make selectively-informed arguments like that don't deserve that much of my time. But I will point out a few things:

1) Arguments like this assume that the only benefit of "diversity" are to the under-represented groups. Companies have an interest in having their workforce reflect the demographics of their users, because those perspectives might make their products more interesting, usable, and valuable to their users. I worked in the engine division of an auto-maker in the '90s, and engineers were openly making the argument that we needed more women because women made the majority of vehicle purchase decisions. This isn't a profound or new idea, but it's interesting how such a basic economic concept seems to elude these supposedly logical and rational male engineers.

2) These arguments typically hinge on cherry-picked data showing differences between women and men, but they don't explicitly draw the line to why that means women (or blacks or hispanics) should be software developers at Google. One common argument I've seen is that women are more interested in outcomes than in technical details. For example, a woman is more interested in the fact that dishwashers clean dishes than in how they work. This may or may not be true, but it's also irrelevant. Being interested in what something can do doesn't mean that you can't build the thing. In fact, the move to user-centered design and customer-oriented agile development methods in SW means that industry is shifting to a more outcome-based methodology. My completely anecdotal observation is that women 'grok' this change more intuitively, and are much better at aligning their work to producing actually useful results whereas men will waste weeks on end developing something they think is cool but is ultimately useless. They also view usability as a waste-of-time, meaning that development teams often end up with tons of half-finished features. These arguments completely miss all the ways in which the qualities that are supposed to define women could be an asset to engineering teams.

3) All of these arguments are basically irrelevant, because as the recent Uber revelations made abundantly clear blatant sexism remains. So who knows if the "right" percentage of women in tech would be 20% or 60% if the playing field were truly level? We know explicitly that it's not level today. The overwhelming experience of women bears this out, and most decent men who spend long enough in their careers (and especially if they are married to technical women) end up coming to this realization. Women are constantly having to prove their worth in technical sectors, and any single slip up will be given a lot more weight than decades of success. Google is no different in this regard. I was at a Google conference earlier this year, where they paid a lot of lip service to diversity. At some point during a break I was chatting with a google engineer, whom I had prefaced my conversation with the fact that I lead a team as part of a large development effort in a mid-sized company. Clearly this never registered with him since it seemed so implausible, so he proceeded to talk to me (and even give me specific advice) in a way that would have only been appropriate for a clueless, fresh-out-of-school person who had no idea what they were doing or the market they were playing in. This infantalizing of technical women is quite common, and something I've at times been able to use to my advantage...but it's generally pretty offensive.

So if you want to know what I think about this, there it is. And BTW, there is nothing brave about posting an anonymous "opinion" and pretending that tired old arguments about "why girls are bad at math" are somehow profound.

As a fellow woman in tech, this really resonated with my - especially your description of the infantalization of technical women.

My DH is also an engineer, and now in a position to do a lot of hiring. He's been absolutely aghast at some of the comments he gets from people after interviews. His coworkers literally saying "she's smart and can do the job, but we're really technical in this group, so I don't think she'd want to"
WTF.

Agree with you both. I also wish I knew you in real life!! There are days I feel like I am beating my head against a brick wall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As a fellow woman in tech, this really resonated with my - especially your description of the infantalization of technical women.

My DH is also an engineer, and now in a position to do a lot of hiring. He's been absolutely aghast at some of the comments he gets from people after interviews. His coworkers literally saying "she's smart and can do the job, but we're really technical in this group, so I don't think she'd want to"
WTF.

Agree with you both. I also wish I knew you in real life!! There are days I feel like I am beating my head against a brick wall.

10:26 here. We could set up a tech women community...I'm not sure there are any right now that exist independent of an employer that is trying to build one for the women in their company.

Also, if you've never been, you should try to attend the Grace Hopper Conference. It's amazing to attend a conference of that size that's almost all women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a business perspective, I can't see how it makes any sense to exclude an entire 50% of the workforce from a single job category. Your competitors who figure out how to tap into the talent of women are going to have an advantage.

Top CS/engineering programs are overwhelmingly male. Top companies hiring tech talent would be dumb to not hire the best. I don't think anyone would look at the top 100 engineers who are lets say 90 male and 10 female and not hire the 10 females. What doesn't make sense is why would you hire say 10 more females and only 80 males. Those 10 more qualified/talented males are going to go to a competitor and eat you alive.

You think that at the margins the top 11-20% of women engineers will be outperformed by the bottom 10% of top performing male engineers such that the competition hiring the men will will eat you alive? I think you vastly overvalue the input of people who are rank and file engineers. They're not game changers.

Ugh let me try this. You hire the best engineer period. The race/sex of them is irrelevant. Hiring a less qualified engineer because they are a woman/URM is stupid and is why diversity quotas/targets/initiatives are stupid

Sure. But teh fact is: that doesn't happen. Women get hired less. They get promoted less. And this knuckledragger thinks they shouldn't be there at all.

Women should be hired and promoted less. All the top engineering/CS programs are overwhelmingly male.

Here is what should happen.

1 Diversity hires should be eliminated hiring should be based on resume/talent/interview etc
2. Track women/URM hires using the system in number one and show that they do just as well (I agree that they well)

You do that you show the original manifesto guy he is wrong

3. Have HR do their actual job and get rid of sexual harassment people

4. If conditions are still bad women/URM should start their own companies hire people fairly have positive work environments and crush the compeition

I wonder that the Venn diagram overlap is between men who post things like this and the original Google memo and men who are on Reddit sites like Red Pill and Incels? It's all the exact same whining. "Women have it easy. They get everything handed to them." "I can't get dates because of all these Chads, even though I am in the top 10 percent of nice/smart men." blah blah blah

[Anonymous]

Actually computer sciences are a great way for women to compete with men. Men may outclass us in brawn but clearly not in brains.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a business perspective, I can't see how it makes any sense to exclude an entire 50% of the workforce from a single job category. Your competitors who figure out how to tap into the talent of women are going to have an advantage.

Top CS/engineering programs are overwhelmingly male. Top companies hiring tech talent would be dumb to not hire the best. I don't think anyone would look at the top 100 engineers who are lets say 90 male and 10 female and not hire the 10 females. What doesn't make sense is why would you hire say 10 more females and only 80 males. Those 10 more qualified/talented males are going to go to a competitor and eat you alive.

You think that at the margins the top 11-20% of women engineers will be outperformed by the bottom 10% of top performing male engineers such that the competition hiring the men will will eat you alive? I think you vastly overvalue the input of people who are rank and file engineers. They're not game changers.

Ugh let me try this. You hire the best engineer period. The race/sex of them is irrelevant. Hiring a less qualified engineer because they are a woman/URM is stupid and is why diversity quotas/targets/initiatives are stupid

Sure. But teh fact is: that doesn't happen. Women get hired less. They get promoted less. And this knuckledragger thinks they shouldn't be there at all.

Women should be hired and promoted less. All the top engineering/CS programs are overwhelmingly male.

Here is what should happen.

1 Diversity hires should be eliminated hiring should be based on resume/talent/interview etc
2. Track women/URM hires using the system in number one and show that they do just as well (I agree that they well)

You do that you show the original manifesto guy he is wrong

3. Have HR do their actual job and get rid of sexual harassment people

4. If conditions are still bad women/URM should start their own companies hire people fairly have positive work environments and crush the compeition

I wonder that the Venn diagram overlap is between men who post things like this and the original Google memo and men who are on Reddit sites like Red Pill and Incels? It's all the exact same whining. "Women have it easy. They get everything handed to them." "I can't get dates because of all these Chads, even though I am in the top 10 percent of nice/smart men." blah blah blah

Yall really need to work on your reading comprehension skills

I've never defended the moron who wrote the original screed.

Rest of my post speaks for itself

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a business perspective, I can't see how it makes any sense to exclude an entire 50% of the workforce from a single job category. Your competitors who figure out how to tap into the talent of women are going to have an advantage.

Top CS/engineering programs are overwhelmingly male. Top companies hiring tech talent would be dumb to not hire the best. I don't think anyone would look at the top 100 engineers who are lets say 90 male and 10 female and not hire the 10 females. What doesn't make sense is why would you hire say 10 more females and only 80 males. Those 10 more qualified/talented males are going to go to a competitor and eat you alive.

This attitude 100% explains why people are so threatened by affirmative action for college admissions. The mistaken belief that where you go to school is the only predictor of success in the real world. As a hiring manager in tech, yes, candidates who attended a top program are likely to be stronger than the general applicant pool. But, no, the best candidates did not all go to the best programs. In fact, the best programmer/engineer I ever had the pleasure to work with started off as a diversity hire of sorts. He was a poor, white, male without college role models, who was hired into a coop program by a big engineering firm and worked through his undergrad and masters, which he received from an average public university (not even the flagship conference). I would hire this guy any day, any time. But without that corporate coop program focused on hiring from non-standard pools of candidates, he would never have gotten the opportunity to shine the way he has.

I 100% agree with this

The problem is there are two kinds of affirmative action

1. Finding and seeking out QUALIFIED candidates from unusual/overlooked places

2. Hiring LESS qualified candidates from underrepresented groups

Do you disagree with point 2? If you get rid of 2 I think almost everyone would support Affirmative Action 100%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a business perspective, I can't see how it makes any sense to exclude an entire 50% of the workforce from a single job category. Your competitors who figure out how to tap into the talent of women are going to have an advantage.

Top CS/engineering programs are overwhelmingly male. Top companies hiring tech talent would be dumb to not hire the best. I don't think anyone would look at the top 100 engineers who are lets say 90 male and 10 female and not hire the 10 females. What doesn't make sense is why would you hire say 10 more females and only 80 males. Those 10 more qualified/talented males are going to go to a competitor and eat you alive.

This attitude 100% explains why people are so threatened by affirmative action for college admissions. The mistaken belief that where you go to school is the only predictor of success in the real world. As a hiring manager in tech, yes, candidates who attended a top program are likely to be stronger than the general applicant pool. But, no, the best candidates did not all go to the best programs. In fact, the best programmer/engineer I ever had the pleasure to work with started off as a diversity hire of sorts. He was a poor, white, male without college role models, who was hired into a coop program by a big engineering firm and worked through his undergrad and masters, which he received from an average public university (not even the flagship conference). I would hire this guy any day, any time. But without that corporate coop program focused on hiring from non-standard pools of candidates, he would never have gotten the opportunity to shine the way he has.

I 100% agree with this

The problem is there are two kinds of affirmative action

1. Finding and seeking out QUALIFIED candidates from unusual/overlooked places

2. Hiring LESS qualified candidates from underrepresented groups

Do you disagree with point 2? If you get rid of 2 I think almost everyone would support Affirmative Action 100%

What about the completely incompetent white guy, who totally oversold his technical skills. He is always around at every company. He has more confidence than skills and would also agree with the google manifesto. Less qualified engineers come in every form but the less qualified white guy is always hired. He is ubiquitous.

[Anonymous]

It is interesting to note that in more developing countries women choose to study STEM at much higher rates than in wealthier countries. Those developing countries have much more patriarchial cultures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a business perspective, I can't see how it makes any sense to exclude an entire 50% of the workforce from a single job category. Your competitors who figure out how to tap into the talent of women are going to have an advantage.

Top CS/engineering programs are overwhelmingly male. Top companies hiring tech talent would be dumb to not hire the best. I don't think anyone would look at the top 100 engineers who are lets say 90 male and 10 female and not hire the 10 females. What doesn't make sense is why would you hire say 10 more females and only 80 males. Those 10 more qualified/talented males are going to go to a competitor and eat you alive.

This attitude 100% explains why people are so threatened by affirmative action for college admissions. The mistaken belief that where you go to school is the only predictor of success in the real world. As a hiring manager in tech, yes, candidates who attended a top program are likely to be stronger than the general applicant pool. But, no, the best candidates did not all go to the best programs. In fact, the best programmer/engineer I ever had the pleasure to work with started off as a diversity hire of sorts. He was a poor, white, male without college role models, who was hired into a coop program by a big engineering firm and worked through his undergrad and masters, which he received from an average public university (not even the flagship conference). I would hire this guy any day, any time. But without that corporate coop program focused on hiring from non-standard pools of candidates, he would never have gotten the opportunity to shine the way he has.

I 100% agree with this

The problem is there are two kinds of affirmative action

1. Finding and seeking out QUALIFIED candidates from unusual/overlooked places

2. Hiring LESS qualified candidates from underrepresented groups

Do you disagree with point 2? If you get rid of 2 I think almost everyone would support Affirmative Action 100%

What about the completely incompetent white guy, who totally oversold his technical skills. He is always around at every company. He has more confidence than skills and would also agree with the google manifesto. Less qualified engineers come in every form but the less qualified white guy is always hired. He is ubiquitous.

Don't worry he will get promoted pretty quick haha

Any company worth their salt can sniff these people out and if those people stay good people leave

Don't be afraid to leave bad environments