Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
As a person of color, I feel the need to give my perspective here, since I am part of an underrepresented group in tech, just like women. So I feel like I have some insight on the issue even though my reaction may still not be the same as what a woman would say about this.<p>When you are trying to make an effective argument, you have to anticipate what the responses would be. The biggest problem with Damore is that apparently he didn&#x27;t take enough into account about what women felt about the issue, as mentioned in the article. People in the majority are naturally the ones with the louder voice, but it can be misleading if you are speaking on a minority group. You probably won&#x27;t have the same experiences, and one or two studies is not enough to explain something as complicated as biology, psychology, or sociology. This is especially true if the science is easily refuted. I really wonder why Damore chose to write about the lack of women in tech specifically? It seems to me so that he could better support his proposal to not focus on diversity efforts or to face less backlash for not speaking on race. If this is the case, strengthening confirmation bias is not an effective solution because there may be a lot more than what meets the eye if you&#x27;re not an expert on the subject.<p>So from this, the two biggest questions are was he right? and was Google right?<p>Was he right? Somewhat. I can&#x27;t say yes or no 100%. He tried to explain his view as best as he could but he supported it terribly. It deserved the backlash. But he made some good points about it being unsafe to express his opinion. If he was smarter, he wouldn&#x27;t have been fired. This is the bigger problem with the situation. A good engineer, in my opinion should be more flexible in thought, think more about surrounding outcomes, and be better at interacting with people.<p>Was Google right? Absolutely. The bigger problem is that many people think Google fired him for having a dissenting opinion, which I think is not true and unfortunate because it polarized America more between the left and the right. Damore should&#x27;ve been smarter and we would not have this discussion. I&#x27;m almost certain that Google wouldn&#x27;t be where it is today without diversity of thought. You can have a differing opinion and express it without pissing everyone off. Google would have been dammed if they did fire him, dammed if they didn&#x27;t fire him, but more dammed if they didn&#x27;t. It got leaked and the media attention, complete with hostile arguments from both sides for a reason and it harmed Google&#x27;s image and female employees. We can all mostly agree that Damore had some decent points to be made if he were a better writer and emphasizer. Would you still say that he was fired because Google is a left leaning organization?<p>You can&#x27;t say women are not biologically suited for an engineering position at Google, face harsh backlash including termination from work and say that your views weren&#x27;t respected. Come on. That&#x27;s what sexism is. What if you said this about Hispanics, or Native Americans?<p>If you want to say that the diversity efforts at Google are misguided, then make a better argument than saying &quot;we don&#x27;t need diversity programs at Google&quot;. I would say not to strive for 50% women because not all of the engineers are 50% women. Strive for a closer percent of their actual representation. Google can&#x27;t have 50% of all women engineers because some of them work for different companies. Google shouldn&#x27;t use immoral or illegal hiring practices to achieve this number. But Google should still have diversity programs so that more women get into tech which would bring the number of women in the workforce in general closer to 50% and it could benefit everyone. Also keep in mind that a minority can possibly have more or less qualified people as a whole proportionally within the group. Hiring more of one minority group does not necessarily lower the bar.<p>Biases do exist, but it doesn&#x27;t always mean it&#x27;s bad. I told you I was a person of color at the beginning of this to make you form a bias against me. I want my voice to be heard in the hundreds of these comments when my probability of being read is lower because there are likely a lower percentage of women and other minorities posting. I don&#x27;t think that I face tough obstacles, which turns people off of arguments like this, but I want to say that I do, however minor. Often times I act a certain way BECAUSE I don&#x27;t want to be seen as &quot;the black guy&quot; and I&#x27;ve done this enough of my life that people say that I&#x27;m not the same as many other black guys. They don&#x27;t say it in a negative way, because I still act &quot;somewhat&quot; black, if that makes sense to you.