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Comment by noncoml | Hacker News Reader

The memo was making the point that because men have more affinity to things than women, Google should not try for a 50/50 balance between men and women.

The author here says that she enjoyed her work but left because the predominant male co-workers had affinity to things and couldn't relate with them.

If anything the author makes a case for Google's current strategy of striving for 50/50 men women balance, since that would result in the author being able to relate better with the co-workers.

The solution to author's problem is more targeted diversity.

Did I mis-interpret something?

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The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused instead of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the same goal without what may be seen as affirmative action.

> The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused instead of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the same goal without what may be seen as affirmative action.

While it did mentioned that, it didn't really argue that. After all this is something that happens after you are in the company.

The main argument was that Google should stop conscious efforts to increase representation of women.

Quoting from "Suggestions":

"we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases"

"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."

And quite honestly I don't think anyone has done me any special favours because I have a penis - in fact in my experience possession of a vagina is a fast track to the top, simply because companies are so desperate to even things up.

I've had to work hard for what I've got. How is it fair that someone without the same passion and possibly also without the same ability to deliver should be given opportunities purely to meet this week's fashionable quota?

Suggestions I strongly disagree with.

> "we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases"

Isn't the whole point of biases that we should try to correct for them? Biases are ruining accuracy.

> "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."

I strongly disagree with this suggestion that software engineering is like homelessness, violent death, prison (well, sometimes) or school dropout. Those are things we want everybody out, not extra people in.

"At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me."

The Bloomberg writer says that she left not because she couldn't relate to her coworkers, but because she was "never going to be as good" as those around her, because the work itself was not as interesting to her as it was to them.

Yes, you completely misinterpreted the who argument and twisted it to suit your view point. I think it would have been more dignified if you said you disagreed with the article. Some heights of passive aggressiveness in your comment

Please feel free to correct me.

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