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On August 11 2017 07:05 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:03 a_flayer wrote:On August 11 2017 06:57 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 06:45 Falling wrote:On August 11 2017 06:17 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 06:02 a_flayer wrote:
Also, it appears that Google had 31% female employees in 2015. That's more than Intel has even now. This is whole thing of equal gender representation is falling apart really quickly for me.
Wages are another problem, with other root causes, of course. The thing is you keep saying “equal” and 50/50, but I keep pointing out that the goal is more. More women. Not equal women. Just more. More resumes. More interviews. It seems to be a basic misconception with these diversity pushes, that the goal is to have 50/50 men and women. That isn't really the goal. Isn't it? How will we know when we arrived in a non-sexist society? Some undefinable 'more' than we have now? One one hand it seems a more reasonable expectation: 'we don't want 50/50 necessarily, we just want more.' But that makes both the problem and the solution even more mercurial. If the goal isn't 50/50, how do we even know there is a problem? And in which case, why was Damore so out of line with his thinking? Are we not bouncing between impossible and not a problem? If the goal is 50/50, it is an unreasonable metric that does not take into account natural biases. If it isn’t 50/50, then the problem might not be a problem and people are naturally gravitating toward their preferred job. Why does the goal need to be that prescriptive? Why can’t it be that the hiring of a company should try to be more reflective of the population exists around it? Just try. Make the effort to do so and try to explore ways that may be limiting women or minorities entering their company. We do not need to prescribe, we can simply aspire toward diversity in work places. Oh, now you want to explore possibilities. Perhaps possibilities like the suggestions in the memo could be part of that exploration? No? Fire him instead, you say? Because of a lawsuit and other certain circumstances? Or why exactly? Because of political circumstances? Exactly like he said? Sure, if you are comfortable with the idea that companies might decide it is complete horse shit and filled with poorly applied science? Edit: Do you truly believe the memo was the only reason he was let go? That there were not other internal issues that we are not fully aware of. Every professional in this thread has said they would never have sent that memo. Is it possible that maybe this wasn't his first delve into behavior that was not appropriate for the work place?
I don't know, and neither do you.
And it didn't seem like it was 100% off to me, and something at least worth exploring or taken seriously to some extent.
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Could someone fill me in on what you guys are actually arguing by now? It seems a bit like a circlejerk going back and forth.
edit: for quite a while now
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Canada11509 Posts
On August 11 2017 06:57 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 06:45 Falling wrote:On August 11 2017 06:17 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 06:02 a_flayer wrote:
Also, it appears that Google had 31% female employees in 2015. That's more than Intel has even now. This is whole thing of equal gender representation is falling apart really quickly for me.
Wages are another problem, with other root causes, of course. The thing is you keep saying “equal” and 50/50, but I keep pointing out that the goal is more. More women. Not equal women. Just more. More resumes. More interviews. It seems to be a basic misconception with these diversity pushes, that the goal is to have 50/50 men and women. That isn't really the goal. Isn't it? How will we know when we arrived in a non-sexist society? Some undefinable 'more' than we have now? One one hand it seems a more reasonable expectation: 'we don't want 50/50 necessarily, we just want more.' But that makes both the problem and the solution even more mercurial. If the goal isn't 50/50, how do we even know there is a problem? And in which case, why was Damore so out of line with his thinking? Are we not bouncing between impossible and not a problem? If the goal is 50/50, it is an unreasonable metric that does not take into account natural biases. If it isn’t 50/50, then the problem might not be a problem and people are naturally gravitating toward their preferred job. Why does the goal need to be that prescriptive? Why can’t it be that the hiring of a company should try to be more reflective of the population exists around it? Just try. Make the effort to do so and try to explore ways that may be limiting women or minorities entering their company. We do not need to prescribe, we can simply aspire toward diversity in work places.
Because it's not so clear to me that it is been taken as aspirational, but rather the tendency is to make it prescriptive. Corporations like policies and systemization and from the sounds of things, Google moves more into prescriptive than aspirational. One could (with some fairness) argue 'what good is an aspiration if there is no concrete steps' but once you have concrete steps, haven't you moved from aspiration to prescription? In which case, wouldn't you end up with a target and needing to know when and if you have solved the problem. Defining the problem in any case seems awfully important to determing the solution. But aspirational is great, sure.
@ticklish re:
also, reminder that coding was a woman's job once upon a time. but then it got cool.
I've heard this sort of thing a few times, but my knowledge of the early computers is full of gaps. Are people referring to the 60's, like the 'keypunch' girls? In which case, I don't know if women were drummed out for sexist reasons so much as they were replaced by the inevitable automation when you no longer need to code with hundreds of people punching out little holes in cards.
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On August 11 2017 07:10 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:05 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 07:03 a_flayer wrote:On August 11 2017 06:57 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 06:45 Falling wrote:On August 11 2017 06:17 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 06:02 a_flayer wrote:
Also, it appears that Google had 31% female employees in 2015. That's more than Intel has even now. This is whole thing of equal gender representation is falling apart really quickly for me.
Wages are another problem, with other root causes, of course. The thing is you keep saying “equal” and 50/50, but I keep pointing out that the goal is more. More women. Not equal women. Just more. More resumes. More interviews. It seems to be a basic misconception with these diversity pushes, that the goal is to have 50/50 men and women. That isn't really the goal. Isn't it? How will we know when we arrived in a non-sexist society? Some undefinable 'more' than we have now? One one hand it seems a more reasonable expectation: 'we don't want 50/50 necessarily, we just want more.' But that makes both the problem and the solution even more mercurial. If the goal isn't 50/50, how do we even know there is a problem? And in which case, why was Damore so out of line with his thinking? Are we not bouncing between impossible and not a problem? If the goal is 50/50, it is an unreasonable metric that does not take into account natural biases. If it isn’t 50/50, then the problem might not be a problem and people are naturally gravitating toward their preferred job. Why does the goal need to be that prescriptive? Why can’t it be that the hiring of a company should try to be more reflective of the population exists around it? Just try. Make the effort to do so and try to explore ways that may be limiting women or minorities entering their company. We do not need to prescribe, we can simply aspire toward diversity in work places. Oh, now you want to explore possibilities. Perhaps possibilities like the suggestions in the memo could be part of that exploration? No? Fire him instead, you say? Because of a lawsuit and other certain circumstances? Or why exactly? Because of political circumstances? Exactly like he said? Sure, if you are comfortable with the idea that companies might decide it is complete horse shit and filled with poorly applied science? Edit: Do you truly believe the memo was the only reason he was let go? That there were not other internal issues that we are not fully aware of. Every professional in this thread has said they would never have sent that memo. Is it possible that maybe this wasn't his first delve into behavior that was not appropriate for the work place? I don't know, and neither do you.
This isn’t a court of law, we don’t need to follow the rules of evidence. We can speculate. And given my professional experience, I doubt there was a single employee that worked with him that was surprised by the memo or his firing because of it.
On August 11 2017 07:11 m4ini wrote:
Could someone fill me in on what you guys are actually arguing by now? It seems a bit like a circlejerk going back and forth.
edit: for quite a while now
The redemption of google man? I'm not really sure. There seems to be this hyper focus on what "true, fair diversity" looks like" and a vague, implied notion that nothing should happen until we know what "true, fair diversity" looks like.
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I've heard this sort of thing a few times, but my knowledge of the early computers is full of gaps. Are people referring to the 60's, like the 'keypunch' girls? In which case, I don't know if women were drummed out for sexist reasons so much as they were replaced by the inevitable automation when you no longer need to code with hundreds of people punching out little holes in cards.
I assume people refer to this meme here.
https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/margaret_hamilton.jpg?quality=85
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On August 11 2017 07:12 Falling wrote:@ticklish re: Show nested quote + also, reminder that coding was a woman's job once upon a time. but then it got cool. I've heard this sort of thing a few times, but my knowledge of the early computers is full of gaps. Are people referring to the 60's, like the 'keypunch' girls? In which case, I don't know if women were drummed out for sexist reasons so much as they were replaced by the inevitable automation when you no longer need to code with hundreds of people punching out little holes in cards.
It was evidence of sexism in society to have only women do those jobs in the first place. Akin to "women are only good as secretaries/personal assistants".
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On August 11 2017 07:15 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:12 Falling wrote:@ticklish re: also, reminder that coding was a woman's job once upon a time. but then it got cool. I've heard this sort of thing a few times, but my knowledge of the early computers is full of gaps. Are people referring to the 60's, like the 'keypunch' girls? In which case, I don't know if women were drummed out for sexist reasons so much as they were replaced by the inevitable automation when you no longer need to code with hundreds of people punching out little holes in cards. It was evidence of sexism in society to have only women do those jobs in the first place. Akin to "women are only good as secretaries/personal assistants".
Margaret Hamilton begs to differ.
edit: she programmed btw, not punched code
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There is a very measurable drop off in women going into computer science:
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding
At its peak is was 35% of women in the 1980 and was keeping pace with law and medical school. Then it takes a dive. There are lots of theories why, but one is that the home computer was marketed toward boys at a toy. That one is detailed in the article.
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Yeah, there were a string of women at the foundation of coding. I guess it depends on what your definition of "coding became cool" is to suggest when men started becoming the main contributors.
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Canada11509 Posts
On August 11 2017 07:15 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:12 Falling wrote:@ticklish re: also, reminder that coding was a woman's job once upon a time. but then it got cool. I've heard this sort of thing a few times, but my knowledge of the early computers is full of gaps. Are people referring to the 60's, like the 'keypunch' girls? In which case, I don't know if women were drummed out for sexist reasons so much as they were replaced by the inevitable automation when you no longer need to code with hundreds of people punching out little holes in cards. It was evidence of sexism in society to have only women do those jobs in the first place. Akin to "women are only good as secretaries/personal assistants".
That seems to be a different argument altogether and one that contradicts the first.
1) Women were coding in droves, but were chased out due to sexism.
2) It was sexist for those women to be coding in droves. (Which, look, I'll give you this: if people believe or believed: "women are only good as secretaries/personal assistants" that's clearly sexism.)
I don't know. Someone correct me, if it doesn't refer to the keypunch girls by and large. But if so, it seems to me that keypunching and what coding became... isn't even the same job and so is hard to compare.
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On August 11 2017 07:21 a_flayer wrote:
Yeah, there were a string of women at the foundation of coding. I guess it depends on what your definition of "coding became cool" is to suggest when men started becoming the main contributors.
I'm inclined to go at least partially with Plansix' explanation, or rather the one he linked.
Home computers generally were marketed to boys (as well as gaming consoles and other things that lead to "tech" in a broad sense).
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On August 11 2017 07:12 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:10 a_flayer wrote:On August 11 2017 07:05 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 07:03 a_flayer wrote:On August 11 2017 06:57 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 06:45 Falling wrote:On August 11 2017 06:17 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 06:02 a_flayer wrote:
Also, it appears that Google had 31% female employees in 2015. That's more than Intel has even now. This is whole thing of equal gender representation is falling apart really quickly for me.
Wages are another problem, with other root causes, of course. The thing is you keep saying “equal” and 50/50, but I keep pointing out that the goal is more. More women. Not equal women. Just more. More resumes. More interviews. It seems to be a basic misconception with these diversity pushes, that the goal is to have 50/50 men and women. That isn't really the goal. Isn't it? How will we know when we arrived in a non-sexist society? Some undefinable 'more' than we have now? One one hand it seems a more reasonable expectation: 'we don't want 50/50 necessarily, we just want more.' But that makes both the problem and the solution even more mercurial. If the goal isn't 50/50, how do we even know there is a problem? And in which case, why was Damore so out of line with his thinking? Are we not bouncing between impossible and not a problem? If the goal is 50/50, it is an unreasonable metric that does not take into account natural biases. If it isn’t 50/50, then the problem might not be a problem and people are naturally gravitating toward their preferred job. Why does the goal need to be that prescriptive? Why can’t it be that the hiring of a company should try to be more reflective of the population exists around it? Just try. Make the effort to do so and try to explore ways that may be limiting women or minorities entering their company. We do not need to prescribe, we can simply aspire toward diversity in work places. Oh, now you want to explore possibilities. Perhaps possibilities like the suggestions in the memo could be part of that exploration? No? Fire him instead, you say? Because of a lawsuit and other certain circumstances? Or why exactly? Because of political circumstances? Exactly like he said? Sure, if you are comfortable with the idea that companies might decide it is complete horse shit and filled with poorly applied science? Edit: Do you truly believe the memo was the only reason he was let go? That there were not other internal issues that we are not fully aware of. Every professional in this thread has said they would never have sent that memo. Is it possible that maybe this wasn't his first delve into behavior that was not appropriate for the work place? I don't know, and neither do you. This isn’t a court of law, we don’t need to follow the rules of evidence. We can speculate. And given my professional experience, I doubt there was a single employee that worked with him that was surprised by the memo or his firing because of it. Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:11 m4ini wrote:
Could someone fill me in on what you guys are actually arguing by now? It seems a bit like a circlejerk going back and forth.
edit: for quite a while now The redemption of google man? I'm not really sure. There seems to be this hyper focus on what "true, fair diversity" looks like" and a vague, implied notion that nothing should happen until we know what "true, fair diversity" looks like.
The problem I have, which cropped up against just now, is that you seem to be dismissing some of underlying issues that were brought up by the memo when talking about it in the context of the memo (calling it "pseudoscience"), but recognize there are some underlying issues when talking about it in the lack of 50/50 representation at Intel.
It doesn't seem to matter to you that the memo was backed with some credible sources - you simply dismiss them as false regardless of the qualifications of the people who did in the investigation into them, and yet cannot bring up any better reasons for this disparity. Only the same abstract claim that the memo attempts to explain with science.
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On August 11 2017 07:23 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:21 a_flayer wrote:
Yeah, there were a string of women at the foundation of coding. I guess it depends on what your definition of "coding became cool" is to suggest when men started becoming the main contributors. I'm inclined to go at least partially with Plansix' explanation, or rather the one he linked. Home computers generally were marketed to boys (as well as gaming consoles and other things that lead to "tech" in a broad sense).
I grew up on the 1980, all things digital were marketed to boys in that era. Those shitty hand held football games that were just lights, there was no version marketed to girls.
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On August 11 2017 07:26 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:23 m4ini wrote:On August 11 2017 07:21 a_flayer wrote:
Yeah, there were a string of women at the foundation of coding. I guess it depends on what your definition of "coding became cool" is to suggest when men started becoming the main contributors. I'm inclined to go at least partially with Plansix' explanation, or rather the one he linked. Home computers generally were marketed to boys (as well as gaming consoles and other things that lead to "tech" in a broad sense). I grew up on the 1980, all things digital were marketed to boys in that era. Those shitty hand held football games that were just lights, there was no version marketed to for girls.
It's not just that. Things like C64, Amiga 500/600/1200 etc (1mb memory extension!!!1) were aimed at boys through games mostly, and that's where i took my interest as well. edit: there were games aimed at girls, but guess which ones. Barbies and shit like that.
"Hacking" around in Workbench kinda was the start for me. My sister on the other hand had zero interest in my computers/consoles.
I'd argue it's a similar cause as to why men are considerably more inclined to work on cars (garages etc). At my age, there was no boy who didn't have a poster of a Countach, F40 or something on the wall. I can't say that i've ever seen a girl around age 10 being excited by a screaming V10. I know i was, spent spare time with dad wrenching (not on a V10 tho -.-) because i took an interest in cars so early (which lasted to this day).
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And yet, my two year old niece, despite also given fake cars and fake tools to play with, picks the dolls and the fake kitchen every time according to my sister. And her dad cooks as much as her mother does, so its hardly that she just copies mommy. It's not entirely marketing that causes this split in genders, although I'm certainly one to blame marketing for a lot of things myself. From brainwashing people that they should be wearing make-up to the point where some women hardly dare to leave the house without it, to the idiocy around jewelry and other things.
There's more to it than just marketing (which is something I have a very deep hatred for due to many reasons).
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On August 11 2017 07:38 a_flayer wrote:
And yet, my two year old niece, despite also given fake cars and fake tools to play with, picks the dolls and the fake kitchen every time according to my sister. And her dad cooks as much as her mother does. It's not entirely marketing that causes this split in genders, although I'm certainly one to blame marketing for a lot of things myself. From brainwashing people that they should be wearing make-up to the point where some women hardly dare to leave the house without it, to the idiocy around jewelry and other things.
I wasn't implying that marketing is the sole cause, but it (personal view), with absolute certainty, has had an impact.
Sidenote, i enjoy cooking too, but that's a bad example considering most "big" chefs are male, too.
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People have no idea how much stuff is gendered or how it manifests in society.
Easiest one to look at is blue for boys and pink for girls, that's entirely socially constructed and pretty recently. Most of the guys here probably think their preference for blue over pink is something they determined internally without social influence when the reality is that it isn't.
Liking pink over blue doesn't break you from this either, that's not what it's about. Regardless, even if you do prefer pink over blue, you probably have more blue stuff than pink.
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On August 11 2017 07:30 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2017 07:26 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2017 07:23 m4ini wrote:On August 11 2017 07:21 a_flayer wrote:
Yeah, there were a string of women at the foundation of coding. I guess it depends on what your definition of "coding became cool" is to suggest when men started becoming the main contributors. I'm inclined to go at least partially with Plansix' explanation, or rather the one he linked. Home computers generally were marketed to boys (as well as gaming consoles and other things that lead to "tech" in a broad sense). I grew up on the 1980, all things digital were marketed to boys in that era. Those shitty hand held football games that were just lights, there was no version marketed to for girls. It's not just that. Things like C64, Amiga 500/600/1200 etc (1mb memory extension!!!1) were aimed at boys through games mostly, and that's where i took my interest as well. "Hacking" around in Workbench kinda was the start for me. My sister on the other hand had zero interest in my computers/consoles. I'd argue it's a similar cause as to why men are considerably more inclined to work on cars (garages etc). At my age, there was no boy who didn't have a poster of a Countach, F40 or something on the wall. I can't say that i've ever seen a girl around age 10 being excited by a screaming V10. I know i was, spent spare time with dad wrenching because i took an interest in cars so early.
My family business used to do packaging for Parker Brothers back in the day. We put their card games in boxes and it was pretty dope. We still have friends who work for toy companies, though we don’t do any of their packaging. Back in 2014 or so, when people were complaining about being unable to find a Black Widow figure for their girls(there were none). And then it happened again around the new Star Wars. So I asked our family friend why that was and what the hell was going on. Because it seemed like leaving money on the table.
He told me that toy marking is one of the most entrenched and boring industries. And because of that, they are still deeply sexist. The concept of not having a boys and girls toy section is impossible for them, they cannot understand it. And the stores that sell the toys can’t fathom not having a big pink toy section for girls and one filled with angry action figures for boys. So when DC wanted to make girl’s super hero action figures(and the action figure is just dolls for boys) , they didn’t make it pink. And stores didn’t know where to put them, because they weren’t pink and boys don’t buy girl action figures.
It is so stupid. We want to combat gender sterotypes and think we are making progress. But then you go to the toy section in Target and know we are still so fucked.
Edit: Also some parts of the toy industry are filled with cynical people trying to sell garbage to children. Not every place is Lego.
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On August 11 2017 07:40 GreenHorizons wrote:
People have no idea how much stuff is gendered or how it manifests in society.
Easiest one to look at is blue for boys and pink for girls, that's entirely socially constructed and pretty recently. Most of the guys here probably think their preference for blue over pink is something they determined internally without social influence when the reality is that it isn't.
Liking pink over blue doesn't break you from this either, that's not what it's about. Regardless, even if you do prefer pink over blue, you probably have more blue stuff than pink.
About one hundred years ago, all boy babies were dressed in pink and girls were dressed in blue.
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United States43971 Posts
On August 11 2017 07:38 a_flayer wrote:
And yet, my two year old niece, despite also given fake cars and fake tools to play with, picks the dolls and the fake kitchen every time according to my sister. And her dad cooks as much as her mother does, so its hardly that she just copies mommy. It's not entirely marketing that causes this split in genders, although I'm certainly one to blame marketing for a lot of things myself. From brainwashing people that they should be wearing make-up to the point where some women hardly dare to leave the house without it, to the idiocy around jewelry and other things.
You think male infants have an innate genetic preference for toy cars that female infants lack?
That's quite a claim, especially given that cars are quite recent.
How might such a trait have evolved? What kind of evolutionary pressures do you suppose made a love of toy cars advantageous for male infants?
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EPT
