To start with i’ll note that you’ve popped up in my timeline off and on for quite some time, and i don’t think i can remember agreeing with you on almost anything you wrote, we seem diametrically opposed on most issues. However, with that background i was pleasantly surprised to be in pretty close to total agreement with you on your initial and subsequent posts to the OP of this thread. With that in mind i’ll focus on the relatively few points of contention.
I hear you. The thing is, he said “made have” and “could,” etc, but he also made suggestions that were based on those same ‘tentative’ statements.
That’s true, but isn’t that just the flow of any decent thought experiment? He was addressing his comments to a large group of people who, in his mind at least, all believed one way about a set of issues and therefore all agreed on a set of solutions to the supposed source of the problems. His intention was to provide a countering narrative first to the source of the problem, which if true would necessarily influence the path to addressing the problem. To my eyes he did what any good employee who brings up an issue about company matters should do, which is highlight the problem one sees, and suggest an alternative solution. Without the alternative solutions part accompanying, it probably just comes off as complaining.
It’s hard to believe he wasn’t saying he is definitely ‘right’ especially in his footnotes — which as Caleb Ramsby rightly pointed out were not citations, but more of his opinion.
Well to begin with, i’d suggest reading the “manifesto” here, which contains the unedited document with accompanying charts and plentiful citations. For some reason those were removed from the Gizmodo released version.
It was interesting and curious how the author framed up what he wrote — in the beginning — listed several ‘political biases’ and admitted — rightly — that neither left or right is 100% correct, but then he wrote everything else in his piece from the perspective of his ‘right leaning bias’ as if he IS 100% correct.
I don’t think that’s an accurate depiction. The author’s claims are not inherently right leaning, and he described himself in the document as a classical liberal. You can certainly read some amount of certainty into his words if you like but, especially given the fact that the document is replete with qualifying words and phrases so as to avoid being flatly declarative, i’m not sure what the point would be. On the surface it may seem odd to begin by acknowledging bias and that neither side is 100% correct then seem to be leaning to one side, but again it must be noted that his intent was to provide a countervailing narrative to the dominant one in that environment which was perceived to be homogeneous.
It is interesting, because he was trying hard not to be biased in the piece, but all his biases showed up and informed every assertion he made anyway. I’m not offended by it because in the first place, I think seeing that he tried and acknowledging that is important; and in the second place, nothing he said was intended to be mean.
Granted, there were a lot of declarative statements, but he also included 35 linked sources throughout the document, so it’s perhaps not accurate to say his biases were informing his assertions when it can be argued that the linked sources informed them. Though this point may merely be one of semantics. To your final point, i couldn’t agree with you more. This kind of evaluation needs to be more common in today’s social media outrage machine.
Its just that the focus around the why or the intent of the gap indicates rationalizing. Humans do that when they feel threatened. He clearly felt threatened by the changes in his environment and I think meeting that kind of fear with anger and frustration only feeds and fuels it.
Two points i would make here. The first is that it’s absolutely important to understand the why before dealing with the how of fixing it. In a general sense, we have to understand the source of a problem in order to accurately address it rather than playing whack-a-mole with its symptoms, but in a more specific sense we have to understand the source of the gender gap in order to determine if it even IS a problem that needs addressing.
Let’s grant for a moment the premise that women are not being systematically discriminated against in tech (as opposed to individual incidents of discrimination because of course they happen), and that there are not more women in tech because women are simply not choosing to be there in higher numbers. If that were the case, then why should anyone care whether there’s a 50% gender representation? The whole goal of feminism was supposed to be that society should stop telling women what they should do with their lives, to give them the freedom to make their own choices. So if one believes that the tech disparity is due to womens’ choices, then society telling women that they need to go into tech is rather patronizing. It’s not supportive of their ability to choose, it’s critical of them making what in their minds is a wrong decision. We could of course argue about whether young girls are being unduly influenced in one direction or another, causing their adult versions to be less interested in tech, but then that wouldn’t really be a problem to be fixed at the employment level through diversity programs.
My second point is to note that you make several declarative statements about this man’s feelings and motivations, while criticizing him for attempting to speak for women. Your intention seems to be genuine in attempting to empathize with him, but the delivery is rather patronizing. Consider if a man were to disregard the content of a woman’s post and say that she’s saying these things because she is feeling a certain way. He would be shredded with cries of mansplaining and gaslighting. In general, attributions of motive, rather than addressing content, are destructive.
People are offended by the author’s piece because he thought he could speak for them and used generalization to argue against providing assistance to people like me who are eager to learn and willing to put in the effort to acquire the knowledge.
The thing is, he didn’t argue against providing assistance to anyone, he merely stated that Google’s programs were discriminatory and proposed an emphasis be placed on individualism.
His rationalization for putting a stop to those programs is his fear that they mean less opportunity for people who look like him, and that since the gap isn’t his fault, less opportunity isn’t fair.
Again you’re ascribing motive to a man you’ve never met. That is a complete assumption, and likely false. Personally i’m not in favor of most diversity programs, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether anyone who looks like me will have more or less opportunity, so why would i assume this man to be any different?
On balance, i agree with much of your posts on the topic, especially that the man should not have been treated the way he was. Google rather un-ironically proved his point about the lack of tolerance for countering opinions in firing him for proposing one. If his work was not affected by his thoughts and words, he should never have been fired for them. Ideas must be met with ideas.
