Comments On The Google Manifesto
CodeFX Weekly #30 — 13th of August 2017
Hi everyone,
wow, that Google guy, ey? Have your social media feeds be on fire, too? Mine has and I even occasionally joined in. Stupid, but hey — you know me. (That’s also why this newsletter is late — spent too much time debatin’.)
I wanted to share my thoughts on the discussion and, to make up for it for the solely technically minded, include a guide on planning your Java 9 update. But both got too long, so the guide becomes a blog post (due on Monday) and this weekly is only about the manifesto.
I send this newsletter out every Friday (well, this time it was Sunday). Yes, as an actual email. Subscribe!
Comments on the Google Manifesto
I’m sure, by now you’ve heard about the Google Manifesto. If you haven’t read it, your opinion on it could depend a lot on who you heard about it from. For some it’s an unhinged sexist rant, for others an innocent collection of scientific work.
Much has already been said about it, often by people with much more knowledge of the science, of Google, or of women in tech than me. Still, I need to blabber, so here we go. I don’t want to turn this into a full-blown, college style text analysis full of citations and footnotes, though, so some parts may be unclear if you haven’t actually read the manifesto.
Right and wrong
James Damore’s underlying assumption is that for biological reasons (mostly prenatal testosterone) men are more into systemizing, women more into empathizing and that this explains the currently observed underrepresentation of women in tech and leadership.
What he got right
Stupid people often hear “men are on average better at X than women” and conclude “man is better at X than woman”. Unfortunately, this is as common as it is stupid. So much so, that I had to include it in my “Arguing with Sexists” guide. Damore stays clear of that and repeatedly stresses that he is talking about overlapping bell curves. That’s great!
What’s in between
I can’t really talk to the science he cites. It looks like evolutionary psychology (from which Damore drew most of his citations) faces strong criticism, but that doesn’t really mean anything. A well-argued scientific rebuttal comes from Suzanne Sadedin and it makes a lot of sense to me.
For both sides of the discussion, check out the debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke on “The Science of Gender & Science” from 2005 (audio and video quality are rubbish, but there’s a transcript). It seems to me that Damore and Pinker make a similar argument (although Damore does it more clumsily), but Spelker counters some of them, particularly the biological foundation for the systemizing/empathizing dichotomy.
My own, loosely held, opinion is that, yes, there are measurable differences between the sexes when it comes to personality traits and specific cognitive abilities. These are not (limited to) the ones Damore lists, though, are likely culturally influenced (maybe strongly so), and do not significantly predict job aptitude for any specific field.
What he got wrong
Damore gives a one-sided report of female strengths. He does not include that studies show women to be better at integrating logic and intuition, at verbal memory, or at mathematical computations (Spelker explains that in her talk) — all things that seem to have some relevance for coding. Damore also doesn’t mention that men and women tend to use different problem-solving strategies, capitalizing on their respective strengths.
What really derails his argument, though, is that he jumps from “men are better at systemizing” to “women like coding less”. As Yonatan Zunger points out very aggressively, beyond entry-level coding, being a software engineer at Google (although I think it’s similar in most companies) has to do a lot with people: pair programming, code reviews, user experience design, managing requirements, coordinating global teams and interests groups — “essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers.”
So if male/female traits play a significant role in job performance, then women should clearly be the better engineers!
Feathers up his butt
In his manifesto as well as in his interview with Bloomberg, Damore presents himself as someone who “value[s] diversity and inclusion, [is] not denying that sexism exists, and [doesn’t] endorse using stereotypes”. He also seems to be very careful with his analysis, ostensibly only trying to present “possible non-bias causes of the gender gap”. Sticking feathers up his butt does not make him a chicken, though.
Sexist and Racist?
Most every racist/sexist/X-ist rant starts with “I’m not an X-ist, but…”, so the assertion not to be one is worthless. Everybody quoting that as an argument why he can’t be a sexist, shows extreme bias towards Damore and his position. I only know him from the manifesto and the interview, so I’m in no position to have a strong opinion on him, but I actually don’t think he’s a sexist or a racist.
I hold against him that he’s normalizing other people’s sexism with questionable research and poorly reasoned arguments, but I would be mildly surprised if his opinion on individual women were strongly influenced by the stereotypes he constructs.
Regarding racism, there’s a funny little detail in there when he mentions “biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)”. This is weird because nobody claims an IQ difference between genders. Differences have been measured between races, though, so is he alluding to them and attributing them to biological differences? Because that would be fucked up. It’s too small a detail, though, to judge anybody on, so I don’t.
Regarding his claim to value diversity, I think he is convinced that his fact-based contribution to the discussion will help. I also think he’s utterly wrong (but not on purpose), because they really don’t.
He said “possible causes”
People coming to Damore’s defense often say that he just wanted to present “possible non-bias causes of the gender gap” and that he made no claim that these would explain large parts of the gap. This once again shows those aggressive social justice warriors are getting all bent out of shape over anyone questioning their oppressive hegemony!
I’ve been very conciliatory so far, so I’ve earned myself a little bluntness: That’s bullshit and if you use that argument you’re either ignorant, stupid, or a liar. Here are some quotes from the manifesto:
I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes
These two differences [feelings/aesthetics vs. ideas, people vs. things] in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas.
These practices [Google’s diversity programs] are based on false assumptions
I’ve mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and inclusion
Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination
He clearly accepts the “possible causes” as facts and then, despite his claims that there can well be other factors, spends half the document on making concrete policy suggestions based on them! There’s nothing wrong with that but the “he just wanted to throw some ideas out there” defense really doesn’t work, then.
To fire or not to fire?
This whole kerfuffle will have various long reaching story lines with eventual consequences, but the most immediate one was Damore’s firing. I’m really happy I didn’t have to make that decision! I can see both sides of the argument.
Not fire!
You might say he’s just an employee who disagrees with the direction the company is going in and believes it’s due to a larger misconception it’s having. He took his time to gather some science on the topic and presented it in a reasonable and careful manner. Why would anybody get fired for that?
I think that opinion is deliberately naive. There’s no consensus on the science he quotes and there are logical errors in his reasoning, giving the impression of him having an ulterior motive. He surely made a lot of people that have to work with him uncomfortable and caused a PR problem for Google.
Fire!
You might say he’s a sexist that creates a hostile work environment for women and minorities by questioning their right to work at Google. Could they feel comfortable working with him? Could leadership be comfortable with letting him give career-defining evaluations of his colleagues? On top of that he harmed the public image of Google, thus hurting the company’s bottom line.
That opinion seems deliberately vicious — I think it sees the worst in his manifesto. I say “seems”, though, because I’m no member of the group he speaks out against and whose support within Google he seeks to diminish. I’m not in their shoes, so what do I know? But PR and bottom line aside (Google will survive), there is reason to believe that his judgment of his female coworkers is tinted:
Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates
I wouldn’t go as far as saying he created a hostile work environment (as many have claimed) but I wouldn’t really trust his evaluations either. So what to do?
What to do?
I don’t know… maybe this:
- publicly demonstrate how his scientific backing is weak and his reasoning faulty
- publicly explain why Google seeks diversity and how it benefits from it
- have a serious talking-to with Damore to determine his motives and explain how he hurt the company
If the latter goes over well, I would have kept him on board. Maybe.
Look, I don’t know. If I were a “diversity hire”, I surely wouldn’t want to work with someone who is obviously convinced my bar for entry was lower. On the other side, how can you claim to be a liberal institution if somebody needs to be fired for presenting science and reason (however faulty you think they are)?
