I've read the doc. At first skim, I thought it was going to be a reasonable "stop the echochamber" style doc, that points out issues with over-loving diversity without thinking about the impact of it, and that decries the strong-left culture at Google that can be alienating to right-leaning employees.
But in reality, dude went full /r/TheRedPill and The_Donald on this. I think the best description I heard of the doc was 'right diagnosis, but overall lazy'. The doc called for reinforcement of stereotypes and removal of mandatory bias training. I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so -- psychologists, analysts, people who look at data and key results, both empirically and academically. To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think.
There have been some ridiculous, over the top reactions to the doc, but I think it was mostly a case of someone of privilege not understanding why diversity programs are in place and feeling empowered to shit on people without any because they scratched the surface of problems. Again, /r/TheRedPill style content.
It did spark discussion, and I think the consensus is that while there are some valid points about the left-leaning employee base, the overall doc fails to adequately dig into the matter, and does so in a hostile way while decrying anyone who disagreed with OP.
Having observed the fall of the USSR it's nothing unusual to me.
When people are not comfortable with an oppressive regime they keep their moderate opinions to themselves. Voicing any opinion contrary to the Party line is dangerous no matter how extreme or moderate it is. So all dissenting opinions you are going to hear in public will be coming from extremists (e.g. "Have a Nuremberg-type tribunal for the Party's chiefs, lustrate the rest and their progeny for 7 generations!") because only the people who hold these opinions will be fed up enough to disregard consequences of their dissent. And there won't be many of them, since it's the definition of extremism to be in small minority.
However, for every single dissident there were tens or hundreds of thousands of silent supporters who would openly express their disgust and outrage over such horrific person but, when talking with their buddies in private, repeat and spread these ideas thus radicalizing themselves. Eventually everybody but a minority of "true believers" shifted from "well, life kinda sucks right now but at least there is no war" to "burn it down and salt the earth!". When this happened the whole mighty Communist empire collapsed within a year.
tl;dr When you see steam breaking through the seals you are about to experience the whole boiler's explosion. The steam that gets out first is weak but it's the sign of mounting pressure inside.
Great comment. What you are describing is called a 'preference cascade'.
> In short, average people behave the way they think they ought to, even though that behavior might not reflect their own personal feelings. Given a sufficient "A-HA!" moment when they discover that their personal feelings are shared by a large portion of the population their behavior may change dramatically. An example of this is the British colonists before and after publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. A year before the Declaration of Independence, America was full of patriotic British convinced that things could be worked out with King George, but on July 4, 1776 the colonies were full of Americans determined that they needed independence. Another is the relatively recent "Arab Spring."
As a white male who agrees with the general themes of the manifesto (even though it lacks nuance an depth) I refuse to work in the "valley" precisely because I will be an ideological minority; and therefore likely to be ostracized for my views.
I'd like to read the thing to form an opinion. Unfortunately I have not found any links yet. Could you share, please?
Also, about "but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so": That seems to be questionable. I know from a professional psychologist that diagnosis of unconscious bias and especially bias training are standing on extremely thin ice scientifically. The hypothesis that the whole bias training industry is a mix of financial exploitation of idologically overhyped and misinterpreted weak scientific results and well meaning but misguided do-goodism can be argued for quite confidently at this point.
Did I really get downvoted for stating that people who argues about gender diversity should be aware of one of the strongest psychological differences between the sexes? It doesn't matter if the cause is biological or not, fact is that women are on average significantly more neurotic than men in all modern societies.
Didn't downvote you so I can really only guess, but my guess is that you were downvoted for the argument that you were implying.
After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity?
How would it be any different from the fact that men on average are taller?
> After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity?
Nobody argued against diversity, the document in question only stated that our current diversity efforts aren't really working and that we should consider measurable gender differences such as prevalence of neuroticism if we want to really move the needle.
this study is women ages 65-98. Anyway, did it say how many of those women are on heavy pharmaceutical drugs, the same ones that 30% of all first time heroine addicts used before restrictions were put on the overabundance of medications offered to anyone in pain? Just curious....
Anyways, one study about women age 65-98 does not result in overwhelming evidence.
Furthermore, even if it was, neuroticism and high anxiety could be a result of dealing with thousands of years of being disparaged of independence and socioeconomic venues for freedom. One thing I hope we can all agree on is evolution, and I think to state that women are in general more neurotic and attributing it to their chemistry as individuals and not the way theyve been treated for thousands and thousands of years is possibly a bit of an oversight.
Furthermore, I find it funny the author of the article (the google internal document) uses averages for women to describe his experience working at Google where everyone is generally agreed to be above average, which is why not anyone can roll in and get a job working there.
Undoubtedly, as the gender ratio is still off there, and in many places including, the standards are maintained to some arguable degree, and any woman working at google is probably far above the average woman, but of course the author has no problem applying general averages to the woman of a company who is strictly comprised of top notch and in general outlier performers.
It is honestly an insult to any women regardless of their performance once they get there, who has been offered a job or worked at google to be described by general averages by a male peer and then an argument is made on their biological limitations "with averages in mind of course"
Well, with averages in mind bro, you don't have any averages at google because none of your are average, so you kind of stumped your own point there.
Finally, if men think women are neurotic, this is an average characteristic described by a male gender of which has engaged in mass murder and until less than 100 years ago RAPING and pillaging as common means of procuring land and building societies. To pass off women as simply neurotic without considering how male behavior could have contributed to elongated stress and anxiety levels in women as the majority of their existence in the human species has been one of pure objectification with barely 100 years of voting rights to show for the progression of it, in the most sought after democracy in the world, is neurotic to me. Maybe that makes me neurotic.
This is very similiar to the concept of enslaving a people when it is well known it takes any family of any ethnicity in any country an average of five generations of consistent efforts to get out of poverty, and also encompassing enough cognitive dissonance to blaming an entire ethnicity previously enslaved as being "lazy" for not having achieved the same status as the wealthy elite who enslaved them.
Is there any point where the group of people who are so convinced women are plain and simply neurotic as a form of natural brain chemistry can stop and remember the nature vs. nurture argument? Biology day two, maybe day three?
We are still trying to get basic human rights for women in countries around the world who do billions in business with the U.S. every year. All American politics aside, it is a fact that when Donald Trump was filming a tv show where apparently all women flirt with him whether they mean to or not (they are just women, they don't even know what they are thinking. It's up for me to determine their emotions, not them. That would make them independent human beings who can define their own emotions and behavior and I need control of that) Hillary declared womens rights as human rights and got China to formally acknowledge that in the UN for the first time.
This is not a joke. We live in a world where we are still trying overhaul womens rights, and thats in a relatively globalized country, not to speak of womens rights elsewhere.
To be so confident that a few studies on wikipedia with less than 1000 participants overall provides an undisputable basis for women being more neurotic and agreaeable and furthermore not enabling that characteristic more to sit their job roles as the reason for the gender gap in tech, is nothing short of a blatant inability to see the big picture, and thinking of how global politics plays into a company that has offices in countries all over the world.
I don't even disagree with this guys right to have his own opinion, or his thoughtful attempt at alternative solutions because as a female in tech, and i know many other females in tech who agree, there are some good intentions gone wrong trying to make females feel more comfortable, but none of us have ever said "its actually because were neurotic and we need more people oriented roles for us", i disagree with his noncholant attribution to the "biological differences" in women (on average of course, of which doesnt apply to any google employee, on average) as an indisputable basis for which to base alternative solutions on.
Do you mean this comment: "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."?
It seems the premise (different average levels of neuroticism between males and females) passes the 10-minutes-of-scanning-google-results-test. But I am not sure that higher neuroticism necessarily causes lower tolerance to stress, although a connection is suggested by [1]. That is, if we agree to use the word "neuroticism" as defined by the big-five scale.
The conclusion is carefully worded ("may contribute to"), and not obviously implausible, so it might at least be a valid starting point for a dialogue.
Having said this much, I must add that I find the document to not be very well balanced.
Just for example: Women also tend to score higher on extraversion than men. The same study I cited before [1] links low extraversion to social phobia and (tentatively to) anxiety disorders. Shouldn't that have been on that list as well, then? Also women tend to score higher on agreeableness, so I guess I could claim that'd make them better team players, no?
So my conclusion about the document is that while it seems to me to list some arguably valid concerns, it does not play entirely fair. But that is a weakness primarily of what is omitted by the text, not by what's in it.
I kind of wonder about the 'high-stress.' Why is programming (or whatever you want to call it) high-stress? I mean there doesn't seem like there would be an inherent reason for it to be high-stress just considering the task. And what about women in jobs like nurses and teachers?
Programming is high stress in a lot of situations. Its very mentally challenging work but I completely understand your question, especially in relation to nurses who are dealing with life and death situations on a daily basis or teachers who are privileged with venues of essentially being able to teach parent and influence young minds and pivot their future.
I don't want to do programmers a disservice by making the comparison to wallstreet, but I only make the comparison in that stakes are high maybe not with life or death situations (but it could be, because software applies to many things, including technology equipment in healthcare and military or otherwise where peoples well being depends in some way on it) but in general, there is a lot of work to be done, with hard deadlines, and alot of money to be lost or made depending on the rollout, and quality of the code.
Furthermore when the money is good (the ability for the next "unicorn" to make billions or say google to roll out a feature that engages literally billions of users and make money off of that) the pressure it high. You don't want to mess things up. Furthermore, when the money is good, as in potential to make lots of money or otherwise have a huge impact on a lot of people or both, there is alot of competition. You may if you are not in tech think of programmers as esoteric nerdy elites, but in general, getting a job at google say, is not a walk in the park. Many people apply, few are given offers to put it short. The level of rigor is high, and its generally expected that you will put in the hours you need to to get the job done, because theres probably someone more or equally qualified than you that would love to have your position in the next round of tends of thousands of applicants places like Google gets annually.
You do what you need to do to get the job done, meaning nights or weekends, and you are compensated well, treated well, have access to good healthcare food etc. The goal is to alleviate stress caused by financial strein in other areas of your life, so you can focus on work.
In the same way, there is a lot of freedom. If you excel and get the job done in 8 hours a day good for you, but with that level of rigor its also expected that you are probably motivated to do even more outside your job role, which is why Google has 20% time, where employees work on their own projects or projects with other people, and alot of google most successful rollouts to the public and probably internally as well, are a result of employees taking their own initiative outside of their explicit job roles to build and contribute.
These things are all possible I'm sure with nurses and teachers, but those jobs are highly regulated, and in general those jobs allow you to leave at certain times everyday. Being a nurse, as some of my family members are nurses I know is alot of work in school and on the job, but you are on shift, and you can leave when shift is over. This is not the case for a programmer.
You are given work, expected to get it done in your own way, however much time that takes for you, as long as its done on time and it works and has the expected or above quality, and then contribute even more typically and consistently show initiative beyond your job role.
Many programmers work on live components like the internet. An example is when someone at a big tech company last year or maybe earlier this year, entered a typo in a command line while executing a script/small computer program that brought down servers hosting roughly 1/3 of the internet websites hosted in the Unites States, think of the impact.
The same goes for software running wallstreet and otherwise. If the software were to crash, the consequences are dire whether in terms of money, global telecommunications and the busineses that utilize them or in some cases software directly related to human health etc.
Thanks for the nice reply. I do confess though my comment was a bit rhetorical as I'm a programmer myself.
The list of things you point out consists of mostly external factors. I know where they come from and that they seem essential since those are the conditions that all of us are familiar with, but to a large degree, they are ultimately historical impositions: that is how the job has come to be practiced. (There are of course practical concerns that shape how this came to be; namely, the difficulty of getting all the pertinant information necessary to make any changes on a piece of software or debug it).
So there is definitely a cultural aspect of it, but much of the culture may not be strictly necessary to the product. Consider for example Torvalds' rather blunt manner. I am fond of being blunt and I enjoy being a bit combative and adversarial when it comes to advocating ideas. I've seen this attitude commonly in various academic/industry/scientific. To an extent it's useful. But it can become a sport unto itself and mean-spirited easily, especially in unskilled hands. I suspect a great many people would not like to work in such an environment.
My own suspicion is that technical fields tend to attract a lot of people who have trouble reading/relating to emotions and males who've had little contact with women, a lot of contact with bullies, fragile egos, and a need to fit in. It gets ugly fast.
Also, for some reason "unconscious biases" test are mostly used to "measure racism and sexism" which is not what these types of tests are originally designed for.
Most of the views in his document are actually supported by psychological research.
> I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so
Welp, before the entire document was released I made a long statement below based on what I read, trying to give a reasonable consideration for somebody elses viewpoint, but then I read the document where the reader noncholantly listed the following things as inherent underlying biological differences unique to women, not to be up for debate, as the nondisputable premise for how to address the ideological echo chamber,here were the top most infuriating things I read. I must be infuriated because I'm a women and I'm neurotic, which brings me to #1.
Of course, women are neurotic, so that explains alot of why women in comparable roles just arent doing as well.
"Harder time negociating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. These are just average differences, but this is seen as soley a womens issue"
Well thank you for clearing that up. There is aboslutely nothing that causes these differences in women and it is entirely based on their faulty self perception that is there for a reason which must exist because....well you know the answer, which brings me to my next point...
"Women are more agreeable." The only mental response I had to this statement was "are you sure women are more agreeable, or do you just perceive that they agree with you and have no real comprehension of how much they disagree with you?"
"Men's higher drive for status."
Someone please correct me if there is another response I'm supposed to have other than only being able to utilize blatant sarcasm to try to enter into the mindset of the author of this article, and me trying to be agreeable to it:
Well, thank you for pointing out these fundamental permanent underlying unique biological traits holding women back from progress that Google has taken an unhealthy and self destructive burden on by trying to correct.
If women could just...stop living in denial about how neurotic they are, how they are more agreeable, and overall just, not as motivated to reach high status positions, along with the obvious fact that they are more into social things than code, and that women like people and men like things, then maybe women could start coming to terms with why they are less successful, and we could have more pyschological safety in the work place if more men in the office could be open about these things and not feel scared to propogate them as undisputable truth.
Perhaps some cooperation and pair programming would help, but I'm not necessarily Google should arbitrarily engage in doing that "just" to make it more appealing to women, instead Google should "be more open about the science of human nature". The sooner we can all just acknowledge women are neurotic agreeable socialites that eventually want to work part time and aren't driven by status, the sooner we can close the gender gap here at Google.
Thank you, thank you so much for all the other people just like me at Google who agree with me but are too scared to say it because...well once you say it, it sounds so pathetically incorrect I'm the only one who is so drenched in my own understanding of reality that everyone else is clearly in denial about, who had the courage to say it.
Did you read the sentence right after that where they talk about attributing factors, and do not end any of those sentences with "and thats what gives you your peronality"?
"A plausible explanation for this is that acts by women in individualistic, egalitarian countries are more likely to be attributed to their personality, rather than being attributed to ascribed gender roles within collectivist, traditional countries.[109] "
I wonder if anxiety and neuroticism reports by women are results of historically not being equal or having equal opportunities for venues for independence. I Wonder how living in collectivist traditional countries or working in environments with traditionalist roles about what females roles should be would cause a women anxiety if she didnt really fit those roles.
I wonder if its ever wondered if women are just a certain way or rather is anxiety and "neuroticism" reports are due to the world they live in.
He's trying to reason about why the aggregated trend in the world looks the way it does. He repeatedly points out that this can never be assumed to hold on an individual level.
You are saying women do not experience anxiety more than men? Do men not strive for status more than women? Women are not more people-oriented than men?
The author did not seem to me to be arguing for a biological cause, though I only read the manifesto once and may easily have missed this.
There are genuine sociological reasons for Women, who are on average much shorter and weaker than Men, who have historically raped and murdered in far greater numbers than Women, to have higher agreeableness and higher neuroticism scores on average in any society, much less modern society.
Unfortunately, like most social programs and surveys, these generalities miss the specifics and outliers. But they still statistically generalize.
But in reality, dude went full /r/TheRedPill and The_Donald on this. I think the best description I heard of the doc was 'right diagnosis, but overall lazy'. The doc called for reinforcement of stereotypes and removal of mandatory bias training. I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so -- psychologists, analysts, people who look at data and key results, both empirically and academically. To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think.
There have been some ridiculous, over the top reactions to the doc, but I think it was mostly a case of someone of privilege not understanding why diversity programs are in place and feeling empowered to shit on people without any because they scratched the surface of problems. Again, /r/TheRedPill style content.
It did spark discussion, and I think the consensus is that while there are some valid points about the left-leaning employee base, the overall doc fails to adequately dig into the matter, and does so in a hostile way while decrying anyone who disagreed with OP.
opinions my own.