The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it
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If you haven't seen it, here's the text of the Google diversity memo:
The Atlantic has a good op-ed about the Google memo, and particularly how terrible the reporting around it has been:
Now to be clear, the author of that memo is 100% clearly wrong on a few points. (Particularly in suggesting strongly that biological differences are responsible for there being fewer women in technology. Schools in the Middle East and central asia prove him wrong.) And he definitely sucks at communication, but, then again, he works at the company that brought us Google Hangouts, so it's obviously full of people who have no clue how normal human beings think or communicate.
But firing him was probably the wrong response here.
Google's now getting gags like this:
https://twitter.com/Chet_Cannon/status/894953916235792384
Repeated on Twitter, and honestly-- they had it coming.
This is posted in General, don't post Trolleybus bullshit.
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
This is posted in General, don't post Trolleybus bullshit.
We already have a topic on the subject in the garage.
It has already devolved in to discussions on Obamacare.
Good luck.
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@polygeekery said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
We already have a topic on the subject in the garage.
i'm sure....
@polygeekery said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
It has already devolved in to discussions on Obamacare.
oh
@polygeekery said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Good luck.
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Now to be clear, the author of that memo is 100% clearly wrong on a few points. (Particularly in suggesting strongly that biological differences are responsible for there being fewer women in technology. Schools in the Middle East and central asia prove him wrong.) And he definitely sucks at communication, but, then again, he works at the company that brought us Google Hangouts, so it's obviously full of people who have no clue how normal human beings think or communicate.
A couple of interesting (and non-inflamatory) related links:
(Quillette is currently down, so Wayback link)
tl;dr; He's definitely not 100% wrong. Or right.
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@polygeekery said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
This is posted in General, don't post Trolleybus bullshit.
We already have a topic on the subject in the garage.
It has already devolved in to discussions on Obamacare.
Good luck.
FWIW, I think this is a subject that will almost assuredly devolve in to a flame war so I posted my topic in the garage to begin with. But, if anyone wants to flame they can hit up our topic in the garage and keep this one unpolluted.
I am just not too sure what can be discussed on this subject that will not end in flames.
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My understanding is, the guy posted this memo in Google's internal version of the trolleybus garage. But someone took it out and leaked it to the media.
Dick move. It's like breaking the Lounge trust.
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Now to be clear, the author of that memo is 100% clearly wrong on a few points. (Particularly in suggesting strongly that biological differences are responsible for there being fewer women in technology. Schools in the Middle East and central asia prove him wrong.)
My personal, completely unfunded theory is that the fact that we make such a big deal out of it is part of the reason why women stay away from tech jobs. If we'd stop treating this like an abnormal thing by constantly highlighting the gender gap, women might be more inclined to pursue a career in engineering and IT.
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@asdf said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Now to be clear, the author of that memo is 100% clearly wrong on a few points. (Particularly in suggesting strongly that biological differences are responsible for there being fewer women in technology. Schools in the Middle East and central asia prove him wrong.)
My personal, completely unfunded theory is that the fact that we make such a big deal out of it is part of the reason why women stay away from tech jobs. If we'd stop treating this like an abnormal thing by constantly highlighting the gender gap, women might be more inclined to pursue a career in engineering and IT.
Doubtful.
Read the links I provided above. Especially Scott Alexander's.
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@boomzilla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
tl;dr; He's definitely not 100% wrong. Or right.
The thing is, like the Atlantic piece says, he's not opposed to gender equality at Google, he's just of the opinion that Google's existing policies to get there are counter-productive. (And he has some stupid opinions on biology.)
If he had had someone more neutral edit the document before sending it, this would be a big nothing. He might also have been able to make some headway in promoting his ideas. But he didn't and now he's fired.
It's more a lesson on how to communicate effectively than anything.
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@boomzilla
As I said, "completely unfunded theory". ;)More importantly, I think the gender gap discussion hides the actual issue, which is the sexist culture that still exists in some companies and some parts of the tech community, especially on the internet. The gender imbalance might partially be a symptom of that, but it's the wrong thing to focus on.
As usual, people are more focused on the most visible symptoms than on the actual problems.
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Many headlines labeled the document “anti-diversity,” misleading readers about its actual contents.
Reminds me of when Notch made some tweets mocking the concept of "mansplaining".
And some popular online blog titled the story "Minecraft creator has misogynistic meltdown on Twitter!"
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
And he has some stupid opinions on biology.
Such as? The articles at the links I posted say otherwise. The guy does have a PhD in biology, so he's not just some rando ranting.
@asdf said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
As I said, "completely unfunded theory".
Oh, yeah, I know. I'm just trying to fund some better theories for you. :-)
@asdf said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
The gender imbalance might partially be a symptom of that, but it's the wrong thing to focus on.
The Scott Alexander post takes a hard look at gender imbalance. One of the more fascinating things was that women were 45% of undergrad math majors but much smaller minorities in other engineering / computer science majors (like 20% IIRC). But then grad students for math went to similar minorities from near parity. I won't spoil the article for you by telling you his answer for why that was happening.
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@boomzilla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Such as? The articles at the links I posted say otherwise. The guy does have a PhD in biology, so he's not just some rando ranting.
Maybe he's entirely correct about everything he says relating to biology.
That does not make the conclusion "biology is why we have more male STEM graduates" true. In fact, it's demonstrably not true, if you look at data from other cultures.
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
That does not make the conclusion "biology is why we have more male STEM graduates" true. In fact, it's demonstrably not true, if you look at data from other cultures.
Nope. Please go read the articles. It's more complicated than what you're thinking. Here's a tiny taste of what's there:
Galpin investigated the percent of women in computer classes all around the world. Her number of 26% for the US is slightly higher than I usually hear, probably because it’s older (the percent women in computing has actually gone down over time!). The least sexist countries I can think of – Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, etc – all have somewhere around the same number (30%, 20%, and 24%, respectively). The most sexist countries do extremely well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non-Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%. Needless to say, Zimbabwe is not exactly famous for its deep commitment to gender equality.
Also, when you have time, I highly recommend watching this documentary:
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@boomzilla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Nope. Please go read the articles. It's more complicated than what you're thinking. Here's a tiny taste of what's there:
Your tiny taste has numbers, but does not refute anything I said.
Also the "least sexist countries I can think of" is hardly scientific thinking.
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@cartman82 said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
My understanding is, the guy posted this memo anonymously in Google's internal version of the trolleybus garage. But someone took it out and leaked it to the media who promptly doxxed the guy.
Dick move. It's like breaking the Lounge trust.
Yeah, that.
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@asdf said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Now to be clear, the author of that memo is 100% clearly wrong on a few points. (Particularly in suggesting strongly that biological differences are responsible for there being fewer women in technology. Schools in the Middle East and central asia prove him wrong.)
My personal, completely unfunded theory is that the fact that we make such a big deal out of it is part of the reason why women stay away from tech jobs. If we'd stop treating this like an abnormal thing by constantly highlighting the gender gap, women might be more inclined to pursue a career in engineering and IT.
My personal, completely unfounded theory is that part of the reason is women haven't totally embraced the "make lots of money in a salaried position working 50-60+ hours per week" roles that STEM typically offers.
Especially significant, I think, when you consider that you pretty much have to sign up for that track while still in high school, if not earlier (otherwise you just blow off those math classes). Few people graduate high school, think "eh, I never was much for math but I'll give it a shot anyway", go into STEM degrees, and succeed at them.
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The guy wanted to get fired, no trolly intended.
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@anotherusername said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Especially significant, I think, when you consider that you pretty much have to sign up for that track while still in high school, if not earlier (otherwise you just blow off those math classes). Few people graduate high school, think "eh, I never was much for math but I'll give it a shot anyway", go into STEM degrees, and succeed at them.
In school, until high school when I stopped trying so hard, I was always good at math. When the time came to think about university, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do: I want to be an author, but at the same time building software sounded super interesting. I'd played around with Staredit and Worldedit, and looked a little bit at some programming stuff, but had never really typed so much as a Hello World app.
I'm now a programmer with a good job, and in the ~96th percentile on C# knowledge according to Pluralsight.
It happens, and it could happen more than it does.
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@anotherusername said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Few people graduate high school, think "eh, I never was much for math but I'll give it a shot anyway", go into STEM degrees, and succeed at them.
I did, but I'm also the exact kind of usability-oriented guy Google would never in a million years hire.
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I read his paper. He's not that far off. It seems to agree with the posted criticism of Hyde/Grant.
It seems weird to be fired for something like that.
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@dse said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
The guy wanted to get fired, no trolly intended.
Well, if that was his intent, then he might never need to work again.
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@lolwhat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Well, if that was his intent, then he might never need to work again.
Because he'll be blacklisted, or because you think Google will settle instead of meeting his lawsuit?
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@anotherusername I'm rather dubious on the effectiveness of 50+ hours of work in a week, to be frank.
I'm moderately certain it's subject to the same fallacy which lets managers add more people to a project because they've fallen behind.
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@rhywden yeah, I'm not so much arguing for or against that reality... I'm saying that it's a perception that people have when they are deciding whether or not they want to go into a STEM career.
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@lolwhat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Well, if that was his intent, then he might never need to work again.
Because he'll be blacklisted, or because you think Google will settle instead of meeting his lawsuit?
I'd say the latter, plus a book deal.
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@anotherusername I'm not sure that this is the most important factor, though.
After all, (at least at my former university) we have plenty of women studying medicine or law.
And those are way worse regarding the actual work hours later on.
edit: While I was looking around for stuff related to the effectiveness of work hours, I found the link below. Caveat: I'm not willing to propose that this is fully correct.
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@anotherusername said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
I'm saying that it's a perception that people have when they are deciding whether or not they want to go into a STEM career.
I think you ought to read Scott Alexander's article, linked by @boomzilla upthread. That has a reasonably sane hypothesis for what is going on that respects people's ability to freely choose their own careers and which points out that your hypothesis is actually not matched by reality. But hey, there's just lots of data and research backing it all up so it's totally just one guy's opinion. ;)
Also, there's nothing good about the toxicity surrounding this whole furore. That's not sane or healthy at all. There's a lot of people out there who need to stop taking offence at every imagined slight and tribulation and to actually listen to those with differing opinions.
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@asdf said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Now to be clear, the author of that memo is 100% clearly wrong on a few points. (Particularly in suggesting strongly that biological differences are responsible for there being fewer women in technology. Schools in the Middle East and central asia prove him wrong.)
My personal, completely unfunded theory is that the fact that we make such a big deal out of it is part of the reason why women stay away from tech jobs. If we'd stop treating this like an abnormal thing by constantly highlighting the gender gap, women might be more inclined to pursue a career in engineering and IT.
We have eyes. We can see the boy's club, where there's only a few females. Not talking about it doesn't make us not notice it.
@anotherusername said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
My personal, completely unfounded theory is that part of the reason is women haven't totally embraced the "make lots of money in a salaried position working 50-60+ hours per week" roles that STEM typically offers.
Nurses routinely work 10-12 hour days, and there's tons of female nurses. They also have on-call hours, so it's not that dissimilar to IT.
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@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@anotherusername said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Few people graduate high school, think "eh, I never was much for math but I'll give it a shot anyway", go into STEM degrees, and succeed at them.
I did, but I'm also the exact kind of usability-oriented guy Google would never in a million years hire.
As did I, and I'm the best damned systems design guy I know.
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At my university, we had a fairly large female population in compsci 101: ~30-50%. They were down maybe a third by the second semester, and then in the years after were maybe 10% or less of the class. In New Zealand.
101 can be used as general education credits there, so that's probably where most of the female population came from, but there weren't few enough for them to seem like they didn't belong, and half the lecturers were female too.
It just didn't seem to resonate with them. I don't know why, but it certainly seems like an overall negative thing to me - we need more perspectives. But with a disparity like that in a country like NZ, it's hard to hope for better elsewhere.
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@yamikuronue said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
We have eyes. We can see the boy's club, where there's only a few females. Not talking about it doesn't make us not notice it.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be talked about. But I get the feeling that this issue is addressed so often that the situation became even more awkward. But maybe that's just me.
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@magus said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
It happens, and it could happen more than it does.
To add more anecdotal evidence, one of the best technical analysts I've ever worked with graduated with an English major. She eventually left the company because she got an offer from LucasArts. Our response was basically... yeah, we can't even pretend you shouldn't pursue that opportunity.
Our career field definitely is more open than that of e.g. doctors and lawyers where you need to go to their schools and go through their programs in order to "apply". You just really need to have the discipline to learn and know your stuff. And the people who have that discipline usually end up doing quite well for themselves compared to those who stay the "traditional" course.
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@heterodox said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Our career field definitely is more open than that of e.g. doctors and lawyers where you need to go to their schools and go through their programs in order to "apply".
But getting worse every year.
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@the_quiet_one said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@lolwhat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Well, if that was his intent, then he might never need to work again.
Because he'll be blacklisted, or because you think Google will settle instead of meeting his lawsuit?
I'd say the latter, plus a book deal.
Plus meeting with the president.
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@dse said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@the_quiet_one said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@lolwhat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Well, if that was his intent, then he might never need to work again.
Because he'll be blacklisted, or because you think Google will settle instead of meeting his lawsuit?
I'd say the latter, plus a book deal.
Plus meeting with the president.
@dse said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@the_quiet_one said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@lolwhat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Well, if that was his intent, then he might never need to work again.
Because he'll be blacklisted, or because you think Google will settle instead of meeting his lawsuit?
I'd say the latter, plus a book deal.
Plus meeting with the president.
And screw the daughter ?
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@cabrito to rescue the president's daughter of course.
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@boomzilla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@blakeyrat said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
That does not make the conclusion "biology is why we have more male STEM graduates" true. In fact, it's demonstrably not true, if you look at data from other cultures.
Nope. Please go read the articles. It's more complicated than what you're thinking. Here's a tiny taste of what's there:
Galpin investigated the percent of women in computer classes all around the world. Her number of 26% for the US is slightly higher than I usually hear, probably because it’s older (the percent women in computing has actually gone down over time!). The least sexist countries I can think of – Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, etc – all have somewhere around the same number (30%, 20%, and 24%, respectively). The most sexist countries do extremely well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non-Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%. Needless to say, Zimbabwe is not exactly famous for its deep commitment to gender equality.
Also, when you have time, I highly recommend watching this documentary:
I wonder if it is if you live in a Western countries women have the luxury of choosing jobs they enjoy over jobs that require more effort (in whatever way) and in less developed countries, women work harder to improve their position.
I think this corresponds to MGTOW, if they are not working to support a family, they choose lower status jobs based on enjoyment.
I suspect people, both men and women, prefer to work on enjoyable jobs, but both will work at less enjoyable jobs if improving their position is important for their families.
This excludes those of us who actually enjoy our jobs.
If you are trying to improve your station in life, you figure out which directions pay better.
I thought, and my family (far from any feminist stronghold) supported my desire, I wanted to be a doctor from age 4 (in 1976). Only changing my mind in my senior year of college.
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@polygeekery said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
FWIW, I think this is a subject that will almost assuredly devolve in to a flame war so I posted my topic in the garage to begin with. But, if anyone wants to flame they can hit up our topic in the garage and keep this one unpolluted.
that might work if someone can get your topic back on the subject at hand instead of healthcare.
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The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Galpin investigated the percent of women in computer classes all around the world.
The most sexist countries do extremely well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non-Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%. Needless to say, Zimbabwe is not exactly famous for its deep commitment to gender equality.Probably because the women in those countries are desperate to study something that can help them get the fuck out of those shit holes, instead of majoring in Women's Studies.
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@darkmatter said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
something that can help them get the fuck out of those shit holes
Well, I mean, typically defecating is pretty good way to make room, after that maybe some lube? Dunno, never physically tried myself...
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@darkmatter said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Galpin investigated the percent of women in computer classes all around the world.
The most sexist countries do extremely well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non-Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%. Needless to say, Zimbabwe is not exactly famous for its deep commitment to gender equality.Probably because the women in those countries are desperate to study something that can help them get the fuck out of those shit holes, instead of majoring in Women's Studies.
THAT was my point.
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@karla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
THAT was my point
The question is - if they do manage to get out, do they go back to college to get their masters degree in Women's Studies so they can complain about how bad they have it now? ;)
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@tsaukpaetra said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
typically defecating is pretty good way to make room
That's how you get the shit out of a fuck hole, not the fuck out of a shit hole.*
It's all very confusing.*maybe time for a post to the nsfw land
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@darkmatter said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@karla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
THAT was my point
The question is - if they do manage to get out, do they go back to college to get their masters degree in Women's Studies so they can complain about how bad they have it now? ;)
Those are not the women who complain.
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@karla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Those are not the women who complain.
it is weird to me that you respond to my seemingly clearly sarcastic posts so very seriously.
i put a wink icon and everything.
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@darkmatter said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
@karla said in The Google Memo and the terrible reporting of it:
Those are not the women who complain.
it is weird to me that you respond to my seemingly clearly sarcastic posts so very seriously.
i put a wink icon and everything.
This is not the .
Also, I am probably weird.
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@blakeyrat Terrible reporting on Gizmodo's part, too, since they went through and removed all links and images so that it would better fit the "crazy misogynist brogrammer writes an unhinged screed" narrative. Here's the real original:
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@blek Nice. He begins with "I [...] don't endorse stereotypes" and then promptly lists a complete set of the usual stereotypes of women...
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My take on biological differences is not that women are unattracted physiologically to tech jobs because they are specifically tech. It's more about the nature of the work than anything else. Surprise, in different countries the same job can be perceived differently and there are different assumptions and expectations.
I suspect the priorities at play are "a job that allows me to be above shit level", "a job that doesn't effectively prevent me from having a happy family", "a job that doesn't upset my work-life balance every now and then", "a job where the pace is predictable, if not steady", "a job about which it's ok to talk in a polite company". In countries where software development fits this bill more than other things, you are going to see more women in (surprise!) software development.
P. S. It's not like I think that "the majority of women yearn for stability" is bad somehow. To the contrary: there must be sane people in this circus we call life.