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> I can't find any research showing that Black or White men are bad negotiators, so I think that's why Google didn't start a program to help them.

Unless you assume that all Black or White men are good negotiators, then the grandparent's argument holds: you're helping only at best a subset of people who would most benefit from it.

I agree with the grandparent: a program to help people become better negotiators should target people who are bad negotiators to begin with, and nothing else. Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.

> There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.

Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?

> Unless you assume that all Black or White men are good negotiators

The context of all this is "addressing the gender pay gap", which policies like try to do using the salaries of men as the baseline. We already know that women are working as hard and as effectively as men, but that they're getting paid less and we're looking for reasons why.

When you argue to also help men that may be bad negotiators you're missing the point, which is that these policies address the gender pay gap.

> Ruling out entire groups of people solely based on their gender is discriminatory.

Discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing. Policies intended to address gender issues need to be gender conscious. For example, affirmative action policies at universities need to know information about ascribed statuses like race and gender, otherwise they can't be effective. And they have absolutely been effective; public universities are some of the most diverse institutions we have in the US.

The point isn't to be gender-blind. That only entrenches the favored statuses that men already enjoy. The point is to be aware of the challenges women (and LGBTQ people and people of color) face in order to compensate for them.

> > There's also not a pay gap for White men so I don't know what the impetus would be there anyway.

> Do you really believe that all White men are paid equally?

Again this is in the context of the gender pay gap. I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men, but please don't derail a discussion about the gender pay gap with other issues. And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.

Or, more concretely, feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men and start advocating for programs based in research to address the causes. This isn't a zero sum thing.

Since when has this thread been about the gender pay gap? In my experience, threads on HN tend to be about whatever the people commenting in the thread choose to comment on.

Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.

They can be helped by attacking any mechanism of causality (including those that are not mentioned above): preventing bad negotiators from being underpaid (e.g by helping bad negotiators become good negotiators) and preventing women from becoming bad negotiators (e.g. by specifically mentoring them). But the farther removed the factor you are targeting is, the less efficient your efforts become. I think it is shortsighted to limit a program to women when it could just as well be applied to other people (unless something about Google's negotiation training is explicitly gender-specific).

> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.

I'm certainly not advocating that women shouldn't get help with negotiating if they need it, but I am advocating that other people should also receive that help.

> Since when has this thread been about the gender pay gap?

We're discussing Stretch, which is a Google program designed to narrow the gender pay gap by teaching women negotiating skills. You're the one who initially brought it up:

> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators.

> Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.

Sure, OK. This whole thread is (I thought clearly) about gender issues. If you have thoughts about how to address the pay gap between various different groups of White men, feel free to advocate for them. But don't derail a conversation about gender inequality like this; this is not a zero sum issue. We can have programs that address this issue for women and programs that address this issue for other groups too, or programs designed to address this issue for all groups. But this thread is about gender, so let's not stray too far OT.

> Please don't derail a discussion about the gender pay gap with other issues

This discussion, as initiated by the original parent, is about the gender pay gap and other issues. It's somewhat ironic that you'd accuse me of derailing this discussion.

> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

>>> There's also not a pay gap for White men

> I'm sure there are pay gaps between White men

> feel free to start your own thread about pay gaps between White men

I'm sorry, but you lost me here.

> The argument you make here is that it's unfair to treat people differently based on ascribed statuses (race, sexual orientation, gender identification, etc.). But I think exactly the opposite;

I have been thinking about it and I believe that neither correct or wrong. It seems it is about how one defines fairness: Is is fairness of opportunity or fairness of outcome?. I would like to know more about this. Is there any paper, book, analysis that tries to tackle with it? I would love to learn about philosophical approaches, attempts to resolve it based on solid rational reasoning in the context of some moral values. Anyone?

It's very simple. It's morally wrong to enforce fairness of outcome, for a few reasons:

1. Doing so requires taking away from those who have, whether property or opportunity. This is theft and oppression.

2. Doing so requires an unbiased party to make judgments about what shall be taken from whom and to whom it shall be given. Humans are biased, so this cannot be done fairly.

3. Doing so restricts others' freedom.

Those who want to enforce equality of outcome want to rule over others, because they think they are qualified to make such decisions. By calling for it, they have already decided that there is a problem, and that they have the solution, and that everyone else is wrong.

In contrast, those who want equality of opportunity do not want to rule over others. They want power to be decentralized so people can make their own decisions.

It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine who is more trustworthy: he who would decide for you, or he who would have you decide for yourself.

I'm glad that Google's reasons for their diversity efforts are supported better research than one guy found in his free time. That said, [1] says in its abstract "... the overall difference in outcomes between men and women was small ..." which reminds me of the point about distributions and averages made in the memo. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a long tail of men who fall below the average woman for a variety of reasons (e.g. autism?).

> Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up.

I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.

> initiatives that have no basis in science and are mostly just bad ideas like "more pair programming", "more part time work", and "make work less stressful".

There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming (although maybe not in a gender context). I read https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/16/interactions-of-individu... just today. I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.

> liberals often argue for fairness of outcome, conservatives often argue for fairness of approach

I'm not sure where I'd place myself on the liberal-conservative plane, but I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. (Alternatively, sabotage the good negotiators, but I don't support that.) Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.

> I think you can't treat people fairly unless you take into account their ascribed statuses.

If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.

> For example, if we return to entirely gender-blind hiring practices, we'll see the gender gap skyrocket (see 538's article on affirmative action [3]).

The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?

Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, most racial differences in the distribution of applicants are due to economic reasons. In that case, it would be more appropriate to support students from low-income households, rather than sorting them into arbitrary buckets based on ethnicity.

> To ignore or not adjust for these biases is what's unfair here.

I agree that biases shouldn't be ignored, but I don't like it when the countermeasures assume that disadvantages only happen across a few categorizations. There are all kinds of reasons some people have worse outcomes than others, and to only pay attention to them when they coincide with membership in one of your favorite protected groups, is a kind of bias in itself.

> > Furthermore, no one's arguing because studies show women to be less effective negotiators than men that we should give up.

> I'm sure a lot of people would argue that, but since neither I nor you nor Damore seem to argue that, I agree with the connotation.

I only mean that Damore's argument is (roughly, mind you) "studies show the gender gap is likely due to biological differences so we should give up", and if we're comparing Google's pro-diversity hiring initiatives to Stretch, it's important to note that when Google noted the research on women and negotiating, their response wasn't "oh it's biological differences, we should give up". I don't know if Stretch is effective, but at least it's a proactive, supportive response rooted in research.

> There seems to be a lot of science on the benefits of pair programming... I don't know about part time work and making work less stressful, but they don't seem like universally bad ideas either.

I don't think they're universally bad ideas, but Google's gender gap is something like 70-30. There's no research to support the notion that pair programming, part time work and low stress jobs can address a 40 point spread like that, but there is research that pro-diversity hiring and support policies do, so I think it's actively harmful to advocate for replacing the latter with the former.

> I'm definitely arguing for fairness of outcome here. If you observe that some people are worse negotiators than others, then to achieve fairness of outcome, you have to offer them help. ... Helping only women is better than nothing, but it is not optimal, because you are adjusting the wrong variable.

Sure that makes sense, but the goal isn't to get every employee's negotiating skill to a certain level, it's to narrow the gender pay gap. In that context, it makes sense to work only with women.

> If someone is already taking their status into account, sure, you need to take that into account to counteract their biases. But that's a kludge and hard to balance correctly, if you can instead remove the influence of that person altogether, you should do that.

It is really hard to quantify, definitely. But these issues aren't limited to "that person"; we're all, every single one of us, subject to unconscious bias when it comes to race, gender identification, sexual orientation, and other ascribed statuses because of the culture and society we grew up in. Therefore we all need to adjust, and pro-diversity policies and affirmative action policies help us do that.

> The article is about racial bias and not the gender gap, the alternative is not completely race-blind, and it doesn't show any skyrocketing. In fact, the effect is much weaker than I'd have expected. The situation for Hispanics looks more like noise. Maybe there aren't many affirmative action programs for Hispanics even in states that allow them?

Sorry "skyrocketing" was a poor characterization (it was laaaaaaate :) Here's what 538 says about Black enrollment:

"...only two research universities in states with affirmative action bans have at least the same proportion of black students as the state’s college-age population, and one of those, Florida A&M University, is a historically black college or university (HBCU). ...only one school, Florida International University, has at least the same proportion of Hispanic students as the state’s college-age population.

...

Researchers looked at the effect race had on admissions and saw a 23 percentage point drop in the chance of admission for minority students in states with bans, compared with a 1 percentage point drop in other states, relative to nonminority students."

That's rough, no matter how you look at it.

> Personally, I think that affirmative action in college admissions shouldn't be based on race either. As I understand it, most racial differences in the distribution of applicants are due to economic reasons.

538 addresses this too:

"Opponents of affirmative action argue that aiming for diversity in areas other than race, such as socioeconomic class, can ensure sufficiently diverse student bodies. The most common race-neutral policy used as an alternative to affirmative action is a plan that the University of Texas already uses, in which a percentage of graduates from every high school get automatic admission. These policies have been shown to increase racial and ethnic diversity on campus, but research[1] on whether they’re as effective[2] as more explicit race-based affirmative action policies has been mixed[3], and critics say that it doesn’t make sense to use a proxy when so many colleges continue to struggle with racial diversity."

There are similarities between the experience of lower income Americans and Americans of color, but not all Americans of color are lower income, and policies that focus on evening out the income divide overlook the disadvantages people of color face because of their race.

> I agree that biases shouldn't be ignored, but I don't like it when the countermeasures assume that disadvantages only happen across a few categorizations. There are all kinds of reasons some people have worse outcomes than others, and to only pay attention to them when they coincide with membership in one of your favorite protected groups, is a kind of bias in itself.

Agreed, but at the same time, I don't think we need to show up at every discussion about gender issues and remind everyone that men also face challenges. We can advocate for policies that help straight cis White men who may be disadvantaged for other reasons without derailing discussions about race and gender issues.

[1]: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003465304312...

[2]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pam.21800/abstrac...

[3]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2137126