WAB
Veteran Member
We don't need to speculate on what he was saying. The full text is available online. It's also a response to very specific company policies, that didn't seem to make sense.
https://felleisen.org/matthias/Articles/the-google-memo.pdf
My summary of what he wants (from below):
1) Allow for ideological diversity, ie stop the forced liberal one mindedness. Should be pretty self evidently obvious in a liberal democracy. But needs to be fought for today. As someone promoting liberal values, in those liberal values is promoting freedom of expression.
A pretty uncontroversial stand IMHO. Also is most of his suggestions.
2) Stop intersectionalist policies because these policies are divisive and counter productive. If we want a more equal world, then don't have policies promoting inequality.
I personally agree with this, and is a part of what this thread is about.
3) Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with
violence and isn’t backed by evidence.
Also, obviously true.
A pretty uncontroversial list of suggestions IMHO. Or should be uncontroversial.
I've worked in IT all my adult life. Women aren't less talented than men or any less intelligent than men. That's why there's fewer women than men in the industry. It's because women are less interested in this kind of work. And what types of jobs do women in IT go for? It's project management or various coordination jobs. It's jobs where they get to meet a lot of people. Men gravitate towards IT jobs where they get to sit alone and work. In the IT industry, these are most jobs, also the highest paying jobs. It's simply a question of what jobs women want to have.
I prefer gender mixed teams. But I will never get a 50/50 split because women don't want that.
In IT men are willing to sacrifice their free time for the mission, to a greater extent than women. I know a lot of people working in media. In media, seem to not have this limitation. They're willing to work themselves to death more than men. I suspect it has to do with what kinds of women are attracted to IT and media.
My point is that women seem fully capable of sorting themselves into whatever careers they want on their own. We don't need any heavy handed policies and diversity training. IT is a magnet for socially awkward (and socially incompetent) nerds (men and women). It's a place where the crushing demands of a socially competent world is absent. What matters is ones ability to deliver quality code on time. It's simply a result for what kind of a job it is, rather than any toxic patriarchal boys club culture.
Of course that's a kind of job that will attract men rather than women. There's nothing Google can do about that, and trying to is simply damaging for the company. That's his entire point. We can disagree about the particulars or the theoretical support for his arguments. But ramming ideologically flavoured dubious pet theories down the throat of employees (which Google is doing) I think it's more problematic. Damore isn't saying what Google should be doing. He's only pointing out particular dumb stuff Google should stop doing. It's a pretty limited critique.
James Damore said:My concrete suggestions are to:
● De-moralize diversity.
○ As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of
costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly
punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”
● Stop alienating conservatives.
○ Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political
orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people
view things differently.
○ In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like
they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those
with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
○ Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business
because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required
for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature
company.
● Confront Google’s biases.
○ I’ve mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and
inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
○ I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation and
personality to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.
● Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.
○ These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on
some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.
Political correctness is defined as “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or
insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against,” which makes it clear why it’s a phenomenon of the
Left and a tool of authoritarians.
● Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity
programs.
○ Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as
misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the
homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
○ There’s currently very little transparency into the extent of our diversity programs
which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo
chamber.
○ These programs are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.
○ I realize that some of our programs may be precautions against government
accusations of discrimination, but that can easily backfire since they incentivize
illegal discrimination.
● Focus on psychological safety, not just race/gender diversity.
○ We should focus on psychological safety, which has shown positive effects and
should (hopefully) not lead to unfair discrimination.
○ We need psychological safety and shared values to gain the benefits of diversity.
○ Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our
products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX.
● De-emphasize empathy.
○ I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I
strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do,
relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on
anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and
dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about
the facts.
● Prioritize intention.
○ Our focus on microaggressions and other unintentional transgressions increases
our sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our
tendency to take offence and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian
policies. Speaking up without the fear of being harshly judged is central to
psychological safety, but these practices can remove that safety by judging
unintentional transgressions.
○ Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with
violence and isn’t backed by evidence.
● Be open about the science of human nature.
○ Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to
discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition
which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.
● Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees.
○ We haven’t been able to measure any effect of our Unconscious Bias training
and it has the potential for overcorrecting or backlash, especially if made
mandatory.
○ Some of the suggested methods of the current training (v2.3) are likely useful,
but the political bias of the presentation is clear from the factual inaccuracies and
the examples shown.
○ Spend more time on the many other types of biases besides stereotypes.
Stereotypes are much more accurate and responsive to new information than the
training suggests (I’m not advocating for using stereotypes, I just pointing out the
factual inaccuracy of what’s said in the training).
100% of female IT employees at Google self selected to work in IT. If Mr. Damore cannot cope with them in the workplace that is his problem. My Tech Lead is female, and I have learned quite a bit form her, and she is not the only exceptional female developer with whom I have worked. I will grant that the majority of developers in my organization are male, and they tend to skew young as well. The interesting thing for me is that, of the few remaining COBOL developers we have on staff, the majority are actually female. For those not in IT, COBOL is a very old programming language used on mainframes, so the developers working in that space have been doing so for decades. It is a very small sample size, literally a 3/5 ratio, but it just goes to show that the kind of generalities thrown out by yourself and Mr. Damore regarding women in IT do not always hold up in the real world.
I read the memo and I looked around a tad. Has Damore actually said, or explicitly implied (about females) that he "cannot cope with them in the workplace?" I don't feel like poking around on the net forever.
If he has, well alrighty, shame on him! If he hasn't, then you ought not to imply that he cannot cope with women in the workplace.
