I'm going to invoke Occam's razor against the Googlers' perception and theory on women engineers inferiority. Let's simplify diversity and just look at height. Let's assume men that are short and men that are tall are biologically equivalent, meaning biological trait that might surface are evenly distributed. Now let's inject 100 men with varying height into the general population, and... Uh oh there's a skew in leadership position and income. Taller men have better positions and have higher income. People who are taller all have tall coworkers. They work for a boss that's a little bit taller than them. Some of them start thinking, "you know this is probably just natural, men who are shorter are just biologically unsuited to be a leader. They aren't aggresive enough and they just don't have as much drive, it's probably just written in their DNA." Of course they would think that, they haven't interacted with powerful short men in the workplace, and even if they did they would look down on them, literally look down on them. To the tall workers powerful short men aren't powerful they're short. Short men no matter how much they perform or how brilliant they are always seem to be sidelined for promotion. Some of them make it pretty far but they're performing 50x compared to their taller peers, and theyre always sidelined when it comes to executive promotions. Other executives think: "this guy is brilliant but what would people think about us... We better promote the other less brilliant tall guy. We could retain investor confidence." Frustrated some short men break out of the corporate hierarchy and try to start a company. They can't get any funding, and no one wants to join their company. People think its a company run by a short guy, this guy is brilliant but he's not going to do well in the long term, because they know that in meetings this short guy isn't going to have any authority, he's short. So potential investors and engineers end up joining start ups that have tall founders. This network effects over a million times. Now let's add another dimension to diversity. Now there's height and gender. Let's say both genders have equivalent capabilities to code and to lead. There's also no perception bias between women vs men. Everyones perception of the two genders are equivalent. The only catch here is that women's mean height is one standard deviation below men's. At this point in our simulated society, there's a perception that tall people are better at programming, since the top leaders and top coders are all tall. Uh oh this is big trouble for women whose height is on average one standard deviation below men's. The company, Zoogle starts hiring the best of the best, meaning tallest coders. They capture majority of tall men one and two standard deviation above the average. They get massive traction since tall people get everything they want in society, so it's really easy for them to crush their competition. Now they're growing like crazy. They have no choice but to hire mediocre people now, meaning men that are average height and the tallest of women. Since there's no bias against women only short people. The tallest women starts getting hired here. In really small numbers. Since we're finally getting to women 1-2 standard deviation above the mean. Theyre also getting hired with massive amount of men since we're at the mean for men. Now women are 5-10% of the company. It's really bad for women and average heighted men in the company. They get the most menial job they never get promoted, but no one can leave since this is the best place to work in the world. The bottom of the best place is still pretty good but it still hurts them. One of the taller engineers notice something. Since this is a data driven company, he points out that the best women are some of the worst engineers in the company. Since they're the shortest in the company but are some of the tallest women in society. He made a claim earlier that short people are just biologically inferior when it comes to coding and leadership. He thinks he's really smart, and publishes his thoughts with wikipedia links that support his claim. He also adds since women are in general shorter they're inferior as well, the whole gender is inferior. Other tall people from industry agrees with him. "Thank God someone is brave enough to say it out loud. I was thinking the same thing here at Pacebook." Average heighted men who are also at the bottom thinks thank God were not the ones being criticized today, and joins in: "yeah women are so inferior to us men." Being short and being a women is a bad thing to be associated with in this society now. Some girls look at this discrimination and the hard coursework and decides to pursue something else. Incoming freshman girls notice that there's only guys in her cs class, and decides to pursue something else. Now girls that finds the coursework is easy and don't mind the discrimination decide to stick through with it. Ten to twenty years down the line they kind of think to themselves why am I still doing this? Why suffer so much I might as well just have kids, marry a tall guy, and become a teacher or nurse where there are other women I could work with. I least I don't have to put up with this BS. Since Zoogle is a data driven company they notice this phenomenon. That same tall engineer publishes a part 2 of his earlier report, stating that women are better with people because they go work as a teacher or a nurse, and they stay there for many years. Again citing a wikipedia page that backs his claims. That must mean that they're illsuited as engineers. "Ah ha! Exactly like I thought," he feels really smart. He gets fired the next day because Zoogle wants to seem inclusive. Other tall men in the industry are angry because they always got what they wanted in society. Now they start yelling and arguing. The thing is Zoogle has to sell their product to women. They happen to be 50% of the population. They're going to risk angering the few tall men to keep 50% of the population happy. The damage is done though. Not so much to Zoogle, but to the industry. There are going to be girls who stop going to classes, and there are going to be women who quit and realize all of this isn't worth it. All because a tall engineer wanted to show how smart and insightful he was. This whole downward spiral started because one guy looked down on another and thought this guy looks weak. I must be better. I must be superior.
Your assumption that height is uncorrelated with other biological traits is demonstrably false. And if startups founded by short men performed identically to those founded by tall men, except that they had a harder time finding funding so they are cheaper to invest in, then investors will be falling all over themselves to invest in short-men startups, because they give better ROIs. The Occam's Razor explanation is that employers will hire people who do the job better, VCs will fund companies that yield better returns, etc. It takes extraordinary evidence to support an alternate claim.
6/10 writing 0/10 virtue signaling piece of shit
I'm taller than many managers / bosses I had.
unconscious bias and oppression of shorter people in general is a known thing. I see your point and I agree, but the manifesto is not calling out inferior abilities, but focusing on average distributions and unbalanced quotas. women can be just as good as men, but the distribution is probably on average going to be less in the talent pool due to say.small.part.in biology.
Why do women outnumber engineer industry in countries like Iran and Tunisia, why did coding/engineering start out by a women in the western world? Grace hopper, Edith Clarke, Ada Lovelace… is small party in biology mean women are less interested or that men are prone to sexism/superiority complex that exclude other ppl to fit their own ego complex
PEOPLE OF COLOR PEOPLE OF COLOR
This is so badly written I feel asleep
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Not once in the memo did he say women were inferior to men.
“To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK,” Pichai wrote.
@beerland, I think the mistake is extrapolating it to all. The women in tech are the ones suited to it and should be there. On average means if you took all men against all women, a larger percent of men would be in tech (among other fields). And the reverse is true for other fields like nursing. This doesn't mean men or women are incapable of doing the other's job, just for some reason things shake out that way. I want to know the reason and how we can make it more appealing to all. Problem is if you don't agree with the current methods then you're a racist/sexist instead of honestly asking what the best things we can do are. Blind faith in an ideology has never led to good things.