I don't have an opinion on whether he's right or wrong but I don't think he shouldn't be able to make that argument...
Yes, it still leaves open whether the following is true:
> when women do prefer the field, they tend to be amazing engineers
Hence I'd say there is nothing wrong with the statement.
If they think 50% of engineers should be women, I would like to hold them to an even higher standard by requiring that out if that 50% of women,each national origin,ethnicity,political/ideological upbringing and social status (mother,single,divorced,etc...) is also proportionally represented. If this is about making up for historical prejudice then let every women of a wronged group be equally represented. You will soon see the silliness of the pursuit.
It is the cause that needs policing and adjustment (upstream) not the effect.
Damore deliberately chose to cast doubt on whether the women Google hired were as good as the men. Otherwise, it's easier and less controversial to just argue that any form of discrimination is wrong.
Nowadays I think it's a better strategy at Google to not discuss if you don't agree with its policies. It's still a great workplace as long as you can discard politics.
There are large swathes of people who can't just "discard politics" because they are directly affected by the current political status quo.
It's great to have empathy for people in a less fortunate position, and yes we have a lot of problems in our society, but FAANG software engineers are arguably the least oppressed people on the planet.
Or is that a too naive view of what Googlers are supposed to be capable of?
What I learned over time is that it's just better to work 8x5 days, don't do overtime/weekends, because it's not worth it anymore. For 8x5 hours of work Google is amazing.
Heterosexual cisgender white christian male FAANG software engineers may be. Racism and other bigotry doesn't stop affecting you because of economic class or other social position of advantage orthogonal to the basis of the bigotry.
Similarly, police officers are also a relatively privileged group of people, but 90% of mistaken identity shootings of off-duty police by police between 1982 and 2010 were shootings of black or hispanic officers.
That's an interesting statistic. Can I have the source? (This is a genuine question, I'm not trying to cast doubt on what you said.)
You cant have so much more women than the rest of the industry without that being true. There literally is not enough women coming through engineering schools to allow for that without you a) discriminating against men based on sex, and b) lowering the bar for women.
There is no doubt. It is a mathematical given.
So even if we accept that the average female engineer is not as good as the average male, and there are less female engineers than male, and that Google hires more female engineers than other players in the industry (relative to male hires), it is still absolutely possible that the bar is not lower. Maybe they look harder, maybe they pay more to female engineers with a given competence level, maybe there's no difference, etc.
The rate of female attendance in comp sci has been in decline since the 70s. At my university it was quite literally 100 to 1.
You cant have a 50-50 hiring pool without some fuckery there.
And for what its worth i absolutely do not accept that the avergage female engineer is not as good as the average male engineer.
If anything, they are anecdotally better equiped.
> All you need to do is to pick more carefully (invest more resources, etc.).
So what amounts to increase their total comp because theyre female and you have a quota to fill?
Thats sexual discrimination is it not?
I really need to say while im passionately pissed off about the way identity politics has infected this industry i am more than welcome to more females joining the industry and more than hapoy to see the broculture fuck right off.
This needs fleshing out. One goal is to give equal preference to equally deserving candidates, say candidates with individual score x, regardless of their group membership. It's not clear that you can pick based solely on score x and still achieve that goal, no matter how carefully you pick. If you're picking on x and group membership, you're harming one group of people with score x (assuming a fixed headcount, where advantaging one person means disadvantaging another).
My take is that when you optimize for equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity you break something at the opportunity end (its either or, not both.)
Regarding a or b, this is mostly b, lowering the bar. But its also a, sexual discrimination.
If you think its not, please explain how you think it would go down if google was focusing hiring efforts to hire white males because they wanted to match the current male to female ratio seen in engineering schools and currently have too many females in the office.
Because i fail to see how aiming to hire more females than the industry schools can bare simply because there are too many men in the office is anything but sexist.
Imagine how you'd feel. Imagine people would generally claim that someone who looks like you is a bad engineer (say, someone with your hair color). And then imagine that people would expect you to constantly disprove that assumption, just because of your hair color.
You'd be on the edge all the time. You'd never feel at home in the field. And whenever you interact with someone who doesn't have past work experience with you, they'd still assume you're a bad engineer.
You've now rephrased your objection that you would have a problem because you would assume female programmers were less qualified, which is not what you said in your original comment.
- There is a score threshold you must cross to get a job;
- score is normally representative of competence;
- individuals belonging to group X get a score boost.
It follows that it's possible for someone to cross the minimum threshold thanks to the boost given by their belonging to the favoured group, and not because of their competence alone. It's not a matter of "the point of view of the woman" or "my point of view". It's not a point of view. It's a logical consequence that can be inferred by women, men, everyone, equally.
As the moderation bears witness, we live in an age where positive is somehow negative.