Google's CEO said: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K.”
He said no such thing. This is a cruel smear. Google, including its CEO and VP of Diversity & Newspeak, acted like thugs.
And no, this has nothing to do with at-will employment. It has to do with hypocrisy. Google claimed they be open and tolerant, and then they proceeded to directly contradict that ethos by firing Demore and viciously lying about him on the way out the door.
Possible non bias causes of the gender gap in tech
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On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways.
Work your rhetorical magic on that.
That doesn't mean that the female colleagues are unsuitable for tech, since they were exactly hired among people who were suitable.
He is also not saying that this explains the complete gender gap, just that there is no point in blindly aiming at 50:50 without considering research on the underlying distribution.
He may have the research wrong, but otherwise the point seems to stand?
EDIT: Of course, this argument only works for a binary 'suitable/not suitable' distinction. If 'tech talent' was said to be normal distributed, with men having a slightly higher expectation, it would follow that the average men above some cut was also better than the average woman above the same cut. So in that way he does attack his colleagues.
To say that 100% of men and women are suitable to work in tech, but that maybe only 20-30% of the women would actually want to would be a more accurate representation of what he wrote.
It's hard to see what's sexist about suggesting women should work wherever they prefer to, rather than being told they should become software engineers.
> He says that if 10% of men and 8% of women are suitable for tech
Why would a higher % of men be more suitable for tech? In the paper he suggests it is partly due to biological differences. Do you agree with that?
>Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
>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.
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>Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits."
I don't know how you can come away from reading his memo and not arrive at the conclusion he thinks men and women are different and those differences make them less suited to the Google workplace. His solution is that diversity efforts need to focus not just on evolving recruiting/training but the way work is structured and you can absolutely argue that's not a super-evil-misogynistic thing to say. But that's very different than pretending he didn't say women, on average, aren't well suited to the current environment.
Here some quotes from the essay that underscore this distinction:
> 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.
> I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story. On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because: ● They’re universal across human cultures ● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone ● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males ● The underlying traits are highly heritable ● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
I agree that he doesn't use the term "biologically suited" anywhere. I would instead say that he suggested: "men and women have biological differences, and those differences partially explain why where are fewer women in tech". Do you agree with that?
"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."
So yeah, it was referenced, specifically, explicitly, and used in direct support of the central argument that the preponderance of men in Google's ranks was biologically determined, meaning a number of Google's D&I initiatives were misguided, at odds with scientific consensus, and should be discontinued.
People want Damore to have written a PhD level thesis for an internally circulated document but most haven't themselves done even a basic Wikipedia level research before bringing out the pitchforks.
1. Google is "more than just a company." It is more like an old style company-town by now.
2. They are the gatekeepers of all information ever. Perhaps we should hold them to different standards, especially when it comes to opinions and ideologies?
This won't get fixed ("its okay to fire someone if they don't align with my opinions") until everyone has had their proverbial nose bloodied.
Disclaimer: Progressive myself.
Gulag indeed!
Just enough dirt, or supposed dirt, to frame a person in a negative enough light that the company considers them persona non grata.
Advertisement: Progressive myself.
If JD had posted his diatribe online on his own personal blog, there'd be a lot of discussion about it but he'd probably still be employed at Google.
The problem is that he posted his diatribe on a company forum. Legally, he forced the company to fire him and refute his words or else be treated as adopting his words as their own. (And yes, that is how workplace harassment laws work in the US. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Congress, not Google.)
So, correct me if I'm wrong: You're saying that any comments, writings, or ideas Google leaves up on their internal message boards is them providing implicit support or endorsement of said writings? Because it seems like if that's the case, obtaining the contents of those forums or message boards would provide ample work for a stable of employment lawyers for years.
Take note Google employees who are currently feeling fearful and "non-compliant" with Google's corporate stance. Maybe its time to sit down with an employment attorney who works on contingency while rolling through online forum posts.
Not so sure:
"In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them."
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22violations+of+this+code+outside...
I keep hearing this line parroted, but that's not how the situation played out, and you either are inadvertently or maliciously being disingenuous.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but there are facts, and those facts aren't congruent with the narrative.
Generally people who support this guy focus on only the bits of fact the memo author relied on: they ignore the context and his application of alleged facts. That's what you did, for example.
You're projecting what isn't there. Again, part of the problem.