Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment
recode.net
recode.net
Since that initial plan though things have spiraled for them. They have been sued. Damore has been given mainstream press coverage where he has equipped himself reasonably well. They have also likely realized that he followed company policy in regards to using the google approved forums and even formally submitted his memo to google's diversity team. His memo has also incorporated input from other Google employees.
Google very visibly stated that if you have certain opinions we find distasteful and express them you will be fired. Not great for moral for those who share those opinions.
They are realizing that they have done a terrible job on this from a PR, company moral and legal standpoint and are seeking to regroup.
I am not defending Damore's opinion one way or the other but in regards to handling this situation I don't see how Google's executives or many of their staff are feeling positive right now.
It does not look like Google's management reacted fairly, nor rationally.
I believe it is vital to the health of our society, our culture, for us to look carefully at why one of the worlds most powerful companies (which historically had a culture valuing data, evidence, and science) would behave in such an irrational, reactionary manner. The answer is surely multifaceted, but I believe that some parts of that answer overlap with other recent events. (Trump's election, Evergreen University, violent attacks by antifa, etc)
Cancelling the Town Hall is a cop out.
"We want you to feel free to express different opinions..."
Proceeds to fire Damore...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
Invite everyone to freely share ideas. Make lists, then kick out those with the "wrong" ideas.
The are often comparisons between large corporations' command economy and the now failed countries with centralized command economy.
But perhaps there are interesting parallels about how large corporations discover and weed out those with undesirable ideas and how totalitarian regimes do it. It goes into hyperbole territory there, I know, but perhaps there are some common underlying mechanisms...
This is a direct correlation between Google's "damage control" strategy and Marxism.
https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
Damore asserted that his ideas should be heeded by Google (from the very first paragraph: "This needs to change"). And he makes assertions about how Google has been poorly conducting himself:
https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso...
- 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’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.
- Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn.
Why should Google tolerate these claims at face value? And Google truly disagrees with these assertions and their underlying principles, why should it respond with something less than severing ties with an employee who literally demanded, "This needs to change"?
And if Google did respond with something less than termination (nevermind what kind of sanction would be possible), how are other employees not supposed to interpret that other than a concession to some degree, i.e. that Google has doubts, and agrees with Damore that women-in-tech initiatives are a form of discrimination, and is "misguided"? Or that when it comes to complaints about diversity issues, that colleagues or management having "empathy" necessarily opens up the risk of "harbor[ing] irrational and dangerous biases"?
No need for Google to use subterfuge to fire people with conflicting ideas. They say it loud and clear that they expect employees to agree ("follow both its spirit and letter") with the Code of Conduct. And Googlers are all smart enough to see that the Code of Conduct uses language that leaves the interpretation of things more open than narrow: "Google prohibits discrimination, harassment and bullying in any form – verbal, physical, or visual, as discussed more fully in our Policy Against Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation."
From the code of conduct. "XX% of hiring must be of phenotype Y" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are equally qualified, prefer the X candidate" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation of the code of conduct.
Edit. "women-in-tech initiatives" _are not_ a form of discrimination. Phenotype-based hiring and promotion policies _are_.
Edit2. There is no such thing as protected groups under law. There are only protected characteristics. For example, sex. One can't discriminate on the basis of sex, _either_ female or male. Favoring females is de-favoring males, thus discrimination.
Does Google have mandated quotas? For which demographic, because they seem to be either ignoring them (which would mean they aren't mandates) or aiming pretty low when it comes to women and non-asians. Or they coincidentally ended up with roughly the same quotas as all the other large tech companies:
http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/
> "If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are equally qualified, prefer the X candidate" is in direct violation of the code of conduct.
"prefer the X candidate" (if X is a stand-in for a gender/racial/subgroup of protected category) is plain illegal. So I'm assuming that's not an official Google mandate (without further evidence).
But this would be a pointless mandate anyway as there is no such thing as "equally qualified". Has a hiring manager ever had to decide between identical twins who went to the same schools and internships for the same amount of years and received the same grades and job evaluations? Is there a universally agreed upon conversion scale upon which we know how many years at MIT equals a year at Harvard (or vice versa), and how that translates into "qualification points" depending on job title?
> "Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation of the code of conduct.
Uh, well since we're trying to interpret the letter and spirit of the quoted passage in the Code of Conduct, I hope it isn't pedantic to point out that the quoted passage specifically refers to the basis of "employment" and employment is related to, but not recruitment? I mean, has there ever been a recruiting process that was unaffected by factors unrelated to "individual merit and qualifications"? LinkedIn built a unicorn business off of the bias of networks. Before LinkedIn, there was this concept called "references".
If you're suggesting it's wrong for a job search to prioritize diversity, at what level? I'm not a lawyer but let's assume that a policy of "reject all applications from whites and non-females" would be legally prohibited. However, sending a recruiter to do a luncheon at Smith College or Howard University is clearly not illegal. But is it "wrong" or suboptimal if Google sends a recruiter to those colleges even though it's much cheaper to do a recruiting tour at Stanford and Berkeley? Does the extra expenditure for sending a recruiter to colleges that are mostly black/women constitute evidence that Google has racial/gender biases, because it's spending more money to recruit at colleges that have far fewer whites/men than the average college? What about donating to and allowing employees to spend worktime assisting and interacting with programs like Black Girls Code or the Society of Women Engineers, which would presumably increase the chances that members of those organizations end up successfully networking with Google recruiters?
Just as Damore argued in his memo, diversity is not as simple as skin color or gender. So it stands to reason that initiatives with the aim of supporting and increasing diversity or not simple, nor reducible to "Google hires unqualified non-white-males in the pursuit of public relations/appeasing SJWs", which is how Damore seemed to interpret things.
But why should we assume Damore has interpreted Google's initiatives correctly, which would imply that the Google employees who agree or participate in these initiatives are idiots and/or complicit in discrimination? He didn't name any specific people or employees so it's possible that he's had adequate interaction with the initiatives and its facilitators to make a privileged assessment of them. If he has evidence that these programs led to either illegal discrimination of qualified candidates, and/or the hiring of inferior candidates, I'm assuming he'll bring that up with his complaint to the NLRB.
That being said, there is a lot of smoke at Google as well. Google recently hired Danielle Brown from Intel. Her track record:
http://fortune.com/2017/08/07/google-diversity-memo/
Danielle Brown> Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing its demographic data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and inclusion.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/diversity/diversity-...
Intel> We exceeded our target, hitting 45.1% diverse hiring for women and underrepresented minorities in 2016.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/15/intel-may-have-figured-out-t...
> Since it began linking bonuses to diversity hiring, Intel has met or exceeded its goals.
> No need for Google to use subterfuge to fire people with conflicting ideas. They say it loud and clear that they expect employees to agree ("follow both its spirit and letter") with the Code of Conduct.
Sure, just like the Constitution of say North Korea, Communist China, or Soviet Union might have or have had something about subversive ideas or behavior of the "enemies of the people" and the punishment expected to be administered to them. And interstingly just as it is open to interpretation what "bullying" means, it was/is open to interpretation what the "enemy of the people" means.
There was plenty of that from both camps.
Guilt by association is an irrational and awful way to defame someone, and he leaves himself open to it.
Here's [0] a lengthy analysis from an evolutionary biology Ph.D that concludes that Damore built a harmful narrative around weak and cherry-picked scientific studies. Of course it's as "skewed" as anything else in that it contains an opinion, but it also backs up the quote you're objecting to here -- the argument Dr. Sadedin makes is that Damore "claimed" the studies supported his narrative but in fact they didn't.
[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...
(Skip to the conclusions if it's too long.)
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-fires-engineer-over-an...
"And I believe there is good evidence of both sexism (including sex stereotypes) and real psychological sex differences (some of which may be evolved) to be causes of the gender gaps across occupations,"
From the start of the memo: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership"
They are saying the exact same thing? In what way does the scientist disagree in concrete words with things that is actually written in the memo?
Also, to avoid further misunderstandings...
Quote from link in the Wired article to Psychology Today: "Using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality is like surgically operating with an axe" This is not what the memo did, as far as I can tell. See the quote from the memo again. He is suggesting that "biological sex" (the scientist's words) MAY IN PART explain why the split men/women is not EXACTLY THE SAME (sorry for caps).
Do you see how the scientist never actually comments anything concrete in the memo, but only concepts that are related?
Further, more recent research cited here, Brian Nosek (PhD Psychology):
“My takeaways: Some observed effects are easy to attribute to culture and hard to attribute to biology in the simplistic dichotomy. Active discrimination occurs and is dramatic, but effects of culture seem more commonly subtle shaping of preferences and desires. And, its a really hard problem. Still room for bio, culture, and bioXculture interactions in ultimate accounts.”
https://twitter.com/BrianNosek/status/895410735412543492
And finally, perhaps one of the more well qualified individuals, Suzanne Sadedin (PhD Evolutionary Biology, BA Psychology, and BSc Zoology):
“Yes, men and women are biologically different — which doesn’t mean what the author thinks it does. The article perniciously misrepresents the nature and significance of known sex differences to advance what appears to be a covert alt-right agenda.”
https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
TL;DR: The “facts” that many insist on, aren't quite as genuinely legible as the screed attempts to make them out to be. Ms. Sadedin’s commentary on the internal memo seems most critical of the interpretation.
First quote doesn't say anything concrete. Someone thinks it is "easier" to attribute to culture without really linking it to the nature of Google recruiting from a small part of the population. The statement can be true without the memo being wrong. I understand the quote sounds like its critical of the memo, but really what does it say? That its hard to tell and that culture might (or even is) be a bigger factor? That would not be contrary to anything in the memo
The second comment is the "least bad" critique that I have seen. However, to me its quite obviously written with an agenda. Read the comments under her post. Especially the ones from Jeremy Arnold. Note particularly his tone compared to hers and how he even points out her quite obvious agenda. Also notice how the conversation shifts to Julie Taylor and how the climate of discussion changed. My point is that I am not competent enough and dont have enough time to read through and understand all sources, find my own sources to balance her agenda etcetc. Lets hope more honest and competent people, who have the ability to see both sides, jump into the debate.
Clearly the people representing your links are not (according to me). Here is a good example from a pretty well known individual:
http://www.nydailynews.com/amp/opinion/google-wrong-article-...
The tone and way of reasoning is like from another world compared to Sadedin.
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sexual-personalities/20... [2] http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
But nobody said that scientific studies were immutable truths, did they? No, that's not the issue here. The person that you're responding to said that the issue is with the wording used by the reporter, not the findings of the studies.
If the reporter wanted to bring into question the findings of the linked studies then they should have addressed the studies directly like you are attempting to do here. Instead, they used weasel wording to make it seem like the studies might not even exist.
If you believe that scientific studies should be accorded authority upon citation, then why not share their respect for nuance and accuracy? For example, in the section in which Damore describes "Personality differences" as being biological traits, including neuroticism and "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things", he links to this meta study:
Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010....
You've probably read that study so I'll sum it up for the convenience of others. From the abstract:
> Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender-egalitarian societies than in gender-inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences.
The meta analysis finds that 3 studies -- 2 of which are authored by this metastudy's author -- have reported a "very large" difference between men and women in "People-Things orientation". And that 4 studies (1 of which is authored by the meta-author) find a "small" to "moderate" gap in neuroticism.
Skipping down to the concluding section, titled "Where Do We Go from Here?", the main headings are:
- Some methodological suggestions
- More cross-cultural research is needed
- More research should investigate changes in gender differences over time
- The need to move beyond the ‘Big Five’
- The need to test explicit models that include predictions about men’s and women’s mean trait levels and men’s and women’s trait variability
The tl;dr is: it's complicated, and we need more research. Which is exactly what you'd expect a responsible scientist to assert given that there were 3 meta-studies relevant to "people-things orientation) that he could find and only 1 of those wasn't his own. Nowhere does the study's author make the claim that this trait is caused by biology. The strongest claim from the author is him citing his previous study and another study which have both considered the possibility, absent an obvious cultural influence:
> To answer ‘why’ questions, it helps also to consider ‘when’ and ‘where’ questions – e.g., how consistent are gender differences over time and across cultures? Gender differences that vary over historical time and across cultures point to the importance of social–environmental and cultural factors as causes of gender differences (Eagly & Wood, 1999). In contrast, gender differences that are stable over time and across cultures suggest the influence of biologic factors (Lippa, 2005; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974).
So a conclusion that argues that:
- More research is needed
- More explicit behavior models are needed.
- Testing such models "may very well yield ‘messy’ results – e.g., results that show both biologic and social–environmental factors contributing to gender differences, to varying degrees for different traits, and varying kinds of interactions between biologic and social–environmental factors."
-- obligates us to describe Damore's claim -- "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things" and neuroticism are biologically based -- as being "backed up by studies", and leave it at that?
Bullshit.
edit: accidentally wrote "Damon" instead of "Damore" in one reference
https://twitter.com/BrianNosek/status/895410735412543492
And one of his summary tweets:
> “My takeaways: Some observed effects are easy to attribute to culture and hard to attribute to biology in the simplistic dichotomy.”
Obvious bias one way or the other turns me off.
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14985094
Are the ones I've seen.
Edit: All that said, probably a smart move by google. Their is clearly a very strong divide in our culture right now and they probably made a PR mistake by letting themselves get caught in the middle of the issue once already.
Not only a strong divide, but one that's very emotional for a lot of people, where progress and civil discourse are especially challenging.
> Google CEO Sundar Pichai has canceled the company’s much anticipated meeting to talk about gender issues today. The move came after some of its employees expressed concern over online harassment they had begun to receive after their questions and names have been published outside the company on a variety of largely alt-right sites.
The OP cites the letter as claiming that "our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named personally":
> We had hoped to have a frank, open discussion today as we always do to bring us together and move forward. But our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named personally. Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be “outed” publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall.
Dory is Google's Q&A software [0]. It's possible, and likely, that the Googler's who have written in "concerned about their safety" have asked that their questions be withdrawn, which reduces the efficacy of the town hall's Q&A format.
[0] http://searchengineland.com/google-moderator-aka-dory-launch...
So sure, maybe the internal Dory system should have been configured for anonymity. Come to think of it, Google should have just used its own Forms, which allows respondents to authenticate via email address, and for responses to be stored into a private, management-only spreadsheet. I think it's safe to say Google has handled many aspects of its response to Damore in a sub-optimal way.
I thought the "No True Scotsman" fallacy was something more like this:
Alice: "No programmer indents with tabs instead of spaces"
Bob: "But Guido Van Rossum liked using tabs [0]"
Alice: "No real programmer indents with tabs"
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20160513172920/http://legacy.pyth...
A. Damore spoke out about how Googlers shouldn't feel unsafe to express themselves.
B. People at Google are reportedly intimidated about expressing themselves.
C. We would expect Damore to be unhappy that Googlers are feeling unsafe to express themselves.
That's not a logical fallacy. Doesn't mean that idleword's rhetorical argument can't be criticized for being overbearing. Or for being wrong in its premises, e.g. Damore never explicitly said freedom of expression at Google was important, he alleged that Google management's policies stifle ideological viewpoints. That doesn't mean Damore has an opinion about Google employees being intimidated by the public.
>No, not really. What's the universal generalization or group here, of which Damore is a counter-example?
"Sincere people."
There's also tinges of "wishful thinking."
But No True Scotsman fallacies can occur without those pre-requisites and it's a common enough fallacy that it deserves its own term, so that it's easier to identify and denounce its use.
Also, I really want to know if there is a specific phrase/category that describes what idlewords is accused of, for the same reasons of easier identification and denunciation :)
Is it not true that a supporter of freedom of speech would support other people's freedom to disagree with him without being doxxed by his supporters?
It seems to me that it is true, at least if the supporter's conception of freedom of speech includes freedom from harassment after speaking, which Damore certainly appears to be believe to be true.
Having said that, although I think it would be commendable for him to publically rebuke doxxers, it is fallacious to argue that his support for freedom of speech carries with it an obligation to do so.