“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” memo goes viral, usual suspects outraged

JRant wrote: »

I'd agree with you if he did but he didn't so I don't. Belittling, discrediting and hostile are lovely buzz words but without any foundation in this case. His biggest mistake was thinking a "diverse" work environment actually wanted diverse opinions.

As to the rest, well you know, that's just, like your opinion, man.

Indeed, allow this cartoon bear rebut a typical respondent to this current controversy...

Bambi wrote: »

You claim that this is a cornerstone of his memo yet it mentions "pair programming" only once in 10 pages . That's strikes one, two and three against your rebuttal right there for me.

He mentions the preference and difference of woman operating better or more efficiently or more comfortably with other people multiple times, in multiple parts of his memo.

Not really going to bother going through it with you since you clearly have a set take on that document and all you are interested in doing is nitpicking and having little wins or something, so you fire ahead there

It's like the civil rights movement except for nerds with no girlfriends.


www.marchongoogle.com

TheDoc wrote: »

ok since I've been asked a few times even though I mentioned it some pages back.

One of the cornerstones of the guys memo is that a change should be made to how coding and engineering is done, that more "pairing" environments should be made.

Now typically "pair" coding (from what I did) is a more senior or experienced programmer or engineer being "paired" with a beginner or novice. That it provides an environment where the standards and ingrained methods from the expert transfer to the novice, but the novice, has more scope for questioning "why" as they are new and not ingrained in a companies/applications methods or practice.

It's also not to dissimilar to general "buddy" programmes or mentoring that so many companies in so many areas employ.

In the memo, the author suggests more of these programmes be put in place for female engineers or programmers. He suggests this, from his interpretation of a biological difference, whereby woman are more efficent and more at ease working in tandem with another person or people, as opposed to themselves. He outlines that men, are more systemised, and would be more comfortable working alone.

So there is an issue here in that he just ignores the characteristics and personality traits in people, regardless of sex. Whereby a man could easily be more comfortable working as part of a team or group, or a woman could be more comfortable working alone in solitude.

He also, and I'd imagine unintentionally, furthermore in that section, basically outlines woman arn't as good engineers. Again I don' think that is his intention, but that is what he does. He basically says his female peers are not as good as him.

As many have pointed out, even existing and former google employees or tech employees since this came out, he shows a gross misunderstanding of collaboration and engineering. Where he obviously doesn't understand the wider picture, and questions are raised on what this guy actually does (his name seems to be public now, so maybe people have worked out what he actually did?) but from just his memo where it appears he tunnel visions on the isolated coding/problem fixing aspect it is assumed he is either new, or a low level engineer.

Because a basis for any system design, application design or infrastructural design, is collaboration with multiple stakeholders be it customers, departments, inter team communication etc. So that everyone is on the same page and there is one system,application or infrastructure being built, and not multiple versions or iterations by all those involved being silos.

The problem with it (granted there are issues with some of what he portrays as fact) is not so much he is claiming anything outrageous or inflammatory (although he kinda is depending on your viewpoint) but that he is inadvertently degrading peers and colleagues and in his attempt to portray a scientific or factually based document, he is deriding woman in his workplace.

And then separate to it all, regardless of the context or the facts he is trying to portray or the solutions, is that because he created this and sent it out (the fact it become widespread unintentionally, well sorry mate, you work for Google and if you dont know what can happen with e-mail ) he created a situation where he became isolated and alienated, he became a problem employee and created a hostile environment for woman, whereby questions were being asked about their suitability and fitness for the roles they operated in.

Fairplay for engaging and taking the time to lay-out your thinking, I don't think any other poster who labeled the document as unacceptable have done so. And I'm quoting your whole post to give an overall answer as I don't assume either of us want to spend the whole evening getting back at each other one specific details (which no-one else would read anyway).

Now there are two broad areas of contention for me:

1) While it is great to have a clear opinion piece to talk about rather than just it is unacceptable, to me what you wrote confirms what I was saying before on the fact that people can't even agree on what he said.

Specifically, the fact that when you articulate your view on his position paper you are not quoting a single sentence from the original document undermines the value of the whole thing: every comment you make is based on your subjective interpretation of what he meant rather than the raw source (and since it is very clear from this thread that different people seem to understand him differently the only common ground for discussion is the original source).

To keep it short(ish), I'll give one exemple amongst others of where I personally see your interpretation as being incorrect when I go back to the source (on a point which is central to the controversy).

Your are saying that "he just ignores the characteristics and personality traits in people, regardless of sex. Whereby a man could easily be more comfortable working as part of a team or group, or a woman could be more comfortable working alone in solitude" (note that to dispute your point I am quoting your own words and not giving my interpretation of what you meant).

If I look at the document, he does however say: "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."

That statement of his is perfectly in line with your (correct) assertion that the characteristics we are talking about can all be present in any individual regardless of sex and that for exemple a woman could indeed be more comfortable working alone in solitude. I therefore think you are wrong in saying he is ignoring that fact. And if he didn't ignore it, any further criticism based on that wrong interpretation of what he said is invalidated.

2) The other aspect is whether (regardless of one agreeing with him or not) it was appropriate to circulate an opinion piece about the topic.

As I have already mentioned in another post, I am totally in agreement with the view your previously expressed that political opinions of any side should ideally not be at play in a professional environement. However and as discussed before, this is already at play (and sometimes encouraged) at Google, which sends mixed messages to employees. I partly watched the guy's interview and he seems to say that what got him to write the document is that he had to attend workshops organised by the company where discussions about these topics where happening. Here's the contradiction I see: if it's OK to organise group talks about lets say gender based quotas in recruitment processes and for employees to say they think they are effective, is the company not entering double-standard territoy when they then say it is not OK for other employees to say that in there opinion they are not effective? (what's the point in organising a discussion in the first place in only one opinion is allowed? Just communicate the company policy as something which can't be argued and you're done)

You also say that "he is inadvertently degrading peers and colleagues" and "he created a situation where he became isolated and alienated, he became a problem employee and created a hostile environment for woman". My comment would be a suggestion to keep in mind that the reason he wrote the document in the first place is that he (alongside with others) did feel actively alienated by coworkers and the company due to some of his views (he's not saying exactly why but I assume in some of those talks people who are against gender quotas could have been called misogynist or things like that) - but very few within Google's management would have a problem with that. Basically when you start dealing with whether people are right to be offended (a subjective thing) and making choices between groups of people, you are opening a massive can of worms as every decision you make becomes political and Google is learning it the hard way (and they deserve what they're getting IMO as they are a very politicised company). And just to add he is clearly not part of a majority but he did receive support within the company and I don't think he seemed completely isolated, so I think even if they shut that guy up they are not done with the issue.


In any case, I don't assume you will come back and say you now agree with all I said, which is fair enough, but at least I hope our exchange proves the point that things are not as simple as saying what he did was obviously not appropriate.

Bambi wrote: »

Nerds is their word for themselves you pasty white norm, its offensive when you use it:mad:


Hope this ****ing march route is fairly short, that demograph aren't known for their stamina

whats all this hate against "nerds", they are probably on $100K to $150K a year so they are not exactly losers

Wombatman wrote: »

Please read my previous post on this which quotes his memo and puts forward a counterpoint. Essentially while his statements on gender difference may have validity, they are selective and pretty irrelevant when talking about the skill set required for software development, which in itself in a very varied.

Did the people who argue, that people who reject the memo should first read it, actually read it themselves? Forget about pair programming. Does he not say that women are better suited to front end programming (HTML you know, markup, but not really a programming language) because their confused brains can't handle hard core back end programming with real languages. Drop that Learn Python in 21 Days book now sisters!

The guy is clearly a crusader with a nasty misogynistic agenda clocked in sophistry. If he made a complaint to the labor relations then he must have been already formally censured by the company. I wonder what the nature of this former interaction with the company was?

at the end of the day he said everyone should be treated like individuals. there is clearly a bigger "culture war" going on here, every TV feminist gets away with saying there is sexism and women are kept down by the man if there is any disparity in m/f participation in something yet its clear that men and women don't seek out a lot of jobs at the same rate.
In the US male students have always done better than female students on the Maths part of the SAT, also your average IT engineering class will be 3 to 1 or more male to female. At some stage everyone should just say the numbers are what they are , there is nothing to fix, the clever girls obviously prefer Law , medicine, veterinary and what not.
(Ill just email this off to my company and will await the hounds of hell from HR to chuck me out the window)

Bambi wrote: »

"comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both
people and aesthetics."

Is that what you're referencing?

If it is can you explain why you're lying about the guy?

I'm not lying and happy to explain for you.

Lets look at the whole point so as to correctly put it in context.

These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

He is very careful about his wobbly points. First of all he says "men may like coding because". They also "may not" in that case. But he still makes the point linking it to biology when we have no idea if it is true or even relevant.

He then implies that more women work in front end programming because of the way their brains are wired. However we have no idea why relatively more women work in front in programming?

More women work in front end programming. Fact.
Women prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. Fact

The implication in the paragraph is that more women work in front end programming because prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. NOT FACT .
Correlation does not imply causation.

What do you think he is trying to achieve with the full paragraph I quoted? This is not a rhetorical question. Try to answer it like I did yours.

BTW who lied when it was said that no dissenters were quoting and arguing directly against the points in the memo?

Who lied when they said he only makes one reference to suitability for software development (paired programming) and the rest of is about "irrefutable" biological differences?

wes wrote: »

He finally removed the claims of having a PhD from LinkedIn, as per wired:

Wow. In addition to his other problems he's a fraud.

RDM_83 again wrote: »

It's LinkedIn dude it's full of bullsh-t! If Google hired him without checking his qualifications that reflects very badly on them

Hmm? It's not Google's responsibility. It's his LinkedIn, not someone else's. He's the one who lied, falsifying his credentials. Frankly, he should have been fired for that. Most academics would have been if they were caught falsifying a CV, for example.

Academic wrote: »

Wow. In addition to his other problems he's a fraud.

I'm pretty sure he's the first person ever to have falsified his CV

Well, I guess his thesis on the ideological echo chamber at Google has been proven right fairly conclusively.

I've just sat down to read his memo after hearing about it most of the week. Given the reporting, I expected some tirade of hatred and bitterness, and dismissal of colleagues. But its actually a fairly decent piece, evidenced and clearly acknowledging the limits of the data. He specifically and repeatedly rules out applying data on groups against individual's capabilities. He acknowledges his own biases. All he's doing is observing and evidencing that under-representation of groups statistically is not evidence of discrimination against those groups, and that viewing discrimination only through the prism of gender, sexuality and ethnicity leaves people who don't fit the dogma behind. He actually makes some genuinely interesting suggestions for making Google's tech roles more attractive for women without discriminating.

I don't see anything especially controversial about it and I don't see the drooling misogynist painted in the media. His document been hugely misrepresented and I see the Guardian has run an attack piece on him personally. Certainly nothing worth it going on to international news or him being fired. Its a bit too early for snow.

Google have hugely overreacted. I'm actually most surprised by the news coming out of the bullying culture in Google where managers brag about identifying and victimising their colleagues for as little as 'irritating' them. I really cant think how a company can allow such a culture to exist amongst its staff. There is a wider concern as well. Google has access to a huge amount of data on people. It assures people they can be trusted with it, but seeing the arrogant and bullying mindset that seems to be rampant in Google I would question that. If Google encourages an atmosphere where employees are targeted, why would they spare a thought for 'wrongthink' users of their services being targeted by their employees in a similar way?

I think the man himself will be fine. He says he was promoted twice and given a top rating on his most recent feedback, so he should be able to get a job in a more open company easily enough, even without the obvious sympathy his case will draw. Google will probably suffer more - if you're only getting ideas from one place, you're going to suffer.