Memo Released Regarding Google's Diversity Initiatives

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Google's Idealogical Echo Chamber, a deeper look.

Recently, a Google software engineer by the name of James Damore released a 10 page memo against Google's diversity initiatives on their internal network, quickly going viral and being released to the public. The memo, which is the personal opinion of James, contains arguments that the gender gaps experienced by women in tech are not because they face bias and workplace discrimination, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women.

This comes as Google continues to undergo a wage discrimination investigation by the US Department of Labor, recently finding that Google routinely pays women less than men in comparable job roles.

Considering that Google has since fired James for "violating the Code of Conduct" in releasing this document, this should be interesting to dig down in to.

Click here for the full PDF document

The Document

He starts with a preemptive reply to anyone who might say he is just perpetuating the stereotypes he writes against in this document.

Reply to public response and misrepresentation
I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public response seems to have been, I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change.

This seems pretty straight forward, he is clearly aware it might cause problems to say what he does, but believes that if it's not spoken about, it can never be addressed and resolved.

Following the next section where he briefly summarizes the rest of the document in a TL;DR section, he gets to what I think is one of the more important parts to note, considering the reaction Google had to this.

Background
People generally have good intentions, but we all have biases which are invisible to us. Thankfully, open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots and help us grow, which is why I wrote this document 2 . Google has several biases and honest discussion about these biases is being silenced by the dominant ideology. What follows is by no means the complete story, but it’s a perspective that desperately needs to be told at Google.

Discussion is always a healthy thing, and as many here on Steemit might agree, censorship is never to be tolerated. I hope this discussion still comes about, despite the fact that Mr. Damore isn't going to be able to continue it from within Google.

He next discusses Google's specific biases (at least from his perspective at their Mountain View campus).

Google’s Biases
At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media , and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices:

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Neither side is 100% correct and both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society or, in this case, company. A company too far to the right may be slow to react, overly hierarchical, and un-trusting of others. In contrast, a company too far to the left will constantly be changing (deprecating much loved services), over diversify its interests (ignoring or being ashamed of its core business), and overly trust its employees and competitors.

Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct mono-culture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies. For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation.

All of this seems fair enough, and has yet to really warrant the

So, where does it get him in trouble?

Now keep in mind, that these are going to be his opinions except where stated.

He starts down the topic chain that likely made this so controversial in the next sections. I am going to paraphrase and quote specific sections to cut down on length, but the entire document is available at the link at the end of this article.

Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech
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. 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.

A lot of this is backed by science, both medical and social. I don't think this is too strong an opinion to have, and based on some personal observations in the software engineering field, not entirely unexpected.

Up next, he starts to delve into the personality differences in the sexes. Referencing a link to Wikipedia specifically to support his points.

Women, on average, have more :

• 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.
• Extroversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. ...
• 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.

He links to the article at Wikipedia, and I believe that this is still generally backed with statistics and science. However, it does indeed start to go against what Google had been trying to achieve internally, being a form of true equality. Essentially, they are trying to enforce an 'everyone is capable of anything' type of equality. This does seem to go against that, at least.

Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests that "greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits." Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate disposition differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism .

That last line bears repeating, as I believe it speaks to the heart of his sentiment.

We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.

I would say that he doesn't imply sexism with these thoughts of his, just that he recognizes the differences inherent in people and wants to find a resolution.

I personally believe that the stigma of sexism is frequently used to suppress discussion about the differences between the genders. Preventing discussion and a greater understanding of how these differences aren't really an issue that should be separating us, just changing how we approach things.

To summarize much of the rest, he continues to discuss the greater drive for status in men.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail.

He then goes over various ways to, without discrimination, reduce the gender gap in this specific industry. Even more so, he says that this is more for Google specifically, based on their diversity.

He goes on to call out how Google's biases are harming diversity internally, including examples.

James goes on to discuss the reasons why these biases are hard to resolve.

Why we’re blind
We all have biases and use motivated reasoning to dismiss ideas that run counter to our internal values. Just as some on the Right deny science that runs counter to the “God > humans > environment” hierarchy (e.g., evolution and climate change), the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ 8 and sex differences). Thankfully, climate scientists and evolutionary biologists generally aren’t on the right. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social sciences lean left ( about 95% ), which creates enormous confirmation bias , changes what’s being studied, and maintains myths like social construction-ism and the gender wage gap 9 . Google’s left leaning makes us blind to this bias and uncritical of its results, which we’re using to justify highly politicized programs.

In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards protecting females. As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are biologically disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men. We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and a whiner 10 . Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn.

This same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness 11 , which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause. While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftist protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silent, psychologically unsafe environment.

The remainder of the document is some very intelligent and thought out ways to combat these issues, and improve Google's diversity in a truly interesting way.

I of course recommend you give the entire thing a read, to at least fully understand what was said.

Form your own opinions. Discussion is key.

My thoughts?

First, let me state that I am probably more likely to side with the Left, but I am not entirely swinging down that side. I do believe that both genders are equal in many ways. More so, that it has less to do with gender, and more with the individual.

I personally believe that a lot of this could be negated if we just looked at each individual for what they are capable of themselves, regardless of gender. Measure each person's needs, and desires. Provide for them individually and get the most positive result over-all. Close enough only counts in horse-shoes, hand-grenades, and thermonuclear weapons.



Click here for the full PDF document

What are your thoughts?

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