Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
Wow. I really feel like this was a missed opportunity to close the gap. I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a reasonable&#x2F;polished way.<p>&gt;&gt; A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with. When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?<p>So it sounds like we&#x27;re implying that anybody who presents facts to your coworkers that might enable them to come to stereotypical conclusions has made a hostile work environment? I find it absurd that an environment is hostile because &quot;maybe people are thinking X.&quot; I would think hostility would require some form of visible action.<p>&gt;&gt;  I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts. It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn’t seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups.<p>Isn&#x27;t the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to fact. His views are certainly much more in line with the facts that what I&#x27;ve heard from his opponents. For example, I don&#x27;t see anybody disagreeing that women score higher on &quot;neuroticism&quot; measures (wikipedia agrees).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sex_differences_in_humans#Psychology" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sex_differences_in_humans#Psyc...</a><p>&gt;&gt;  There’s a difference between “let’s have a discussion” and “let me tell you what’s up, all you wrong people.”<p>Great, but that has nothing to do with this. The other side certainly would never extend him (or me) that civility. This is a power struggle and I don&#x27;t know why we&#x27;re pretending it&#x27;s not.<p>---<p>As an aside, this whole debate has made me realize that I was kidding myself if I told myself SJWs were on the side of equality. They are on the side of politically advancing their own in-group-alliance (which doesn&#x27;t include most minorities, nor the minority most in need - the lower class).<p>They have no interest in fact because they aren&#x27;t trying to achieve a clear vision of a better world, rather it&#x27;s because they are playing politics where facts are just another form of weapon.<p>The only reason they have so much power in tech (and not say, finance) is because we are altruists&#x2F;optimists ourselves and tried to see something greater in SJW political games.