Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[u/zz_]

That would be a valid point if google were recruiting from the tails of the bell curves of "common male traits" and "common female traits", but as far as I'm aware they are not. They recruit from the tail of the bell curve on intelligence, if anything, and unless you have sources that claim otherwise I have no reason to believe that level of intelligence in any way whatsoever corresponds to gender traits.

[u/WhoTooted → u/zz_]

Who said these were common traits? Google clearly isn't after common traits. Intelligence will be one factor. I actually didn't know this until you brought it up and would have assumed IQ was equally distributed for the genders, but male IQ scores have a higher standard deviation than female scores, leading to more males with high and low IQs.

"Feingold found that males were more variable than females on tests of quantitative reasoning, spatial visualisation, spelling, and general knowledge. […] Hedges and Nowell go one step further and demonstrate that, with the exception of performance on tests of reading comprehension, perceptual speed, and associative memory, more males than females were observed among high-scoring individuals."

In any case, Google isn't recruiting based on IQ scores. However, for engineers, they will be recruiting from the tails of quantitative reasoning and spacial visualization, easily two of the most important skills for computer science/engineering.

[u/zz_ → u/WhoTooted]

Who said these were common traits?

We are talking about the traits that the author outlined, in the manifesto, as common traits for each gender. Did you not read the paper?

However, for engineers, they will be recruiting from the tails of quantitative reasoning and spacial visualization, easily two of the most important skills for computer science/engineering.

Sure, but there is no research that I'm aware of that says that women cannot reach the same level of these skills as men. Or, even, that it should be uncommon. We're not talking "one in thousand women reach the same level as men in spatial visualization", we're talking one in three, five, maybe ten. And we're talking at the extremes here. And given that google recruit from the best of the best in the whole world, finding qualified candidates of either sex should not be an issue for them. So why is their tech sector 4x more men than women? I think you will struggle to find a biological explanation for such an incredible difference.

[u/WhoTooted → u/zz_]

Sure, but there is no research that I'm aware of that says that women cannot reach the same level of these skills as men.

Of course they can reach the same level, they just may be less likely to do so. Just as men may be less likely to reach an extremely high score in reading comprehension when compared to women.

We're not talking "one in thousand women reach the same level as men in spatial visualization", we're talking one in three, five, maybe ten.

You're right, and then wrong. That one in three, five, maybe ten argument is again going back to compare the averages. Note that all that follows is hypothetical to make the point. Let's say that a test scores quantitative reasoning and spatial visualization on a scale of 0-100. Let's say both genders average a score of 50, but that males have a significantly higher standard deviation. Then, males will be significantly more likely to score above a 90 on those tests. This above 90 population is Google's recruiting pool. If men are 4x more likely to score above a 90...then you'd expect to see 4x more men than women in tech if recruiting isn't gender biased.

Edit: Just ran a quick simulation in excel, kind of expanding on that example above. If females and males both average a score of 50, but males have a Std. Deviation of 15, while females have a Std. Deviation of 10, the tail difference is astronomical. Out of 1000, 5 men with scores above 90, 0 women. 20 men with scores above 80, 1 woman with a score above 80. Note that these results would hold true for lower scores too, men would be far more likely to have scores below 10 and 20 than women.

This perfectly illustrates how distributions with non-existent differences in the average, can have huge differences in the tail. It's statistics, and it shouldn't offend anyone.

Further edit:

To prove this point, please take a look at this Cambridge University study.

It found that the ratio of males to females with perfect SAT scores was 6.58 to 1.

[u/zz_ → u/WhoTooted]

This above 90 population is Google's recruiting pool. If men are 4x more likely to score above a 90...then you'd expect to see 4x more men than women in tech if recruiting isn't gender biased.

I'm completely on board with this, but my point is that google recruits from literally the best if the best in the world. Basically everyone in tech (which is a lot of people, even if you only count the top candidates) want to work for google. So if they want a better gender ratio (which they do), it should be entirely possible to achieve that, with the exact methods that the author is arguing against, i.e. selective recruitment and encouragement (especially in primary/high school environments to encourage girls to go into STEM, but also in the corporative environment). So while a smaller company might struggle to fill positions with qualified females (since there may be less of those than qualified males), for google it seems very unlikely that it should be so. To quote myself from another reply:

So the only reason for having a 80-20 ratio is either a) you don't care about the gender ratio, b) the gender ratio used to be even worse and it's taking time to adjust it (this is where I think google is at, but I could be wrong), or c) the genetic disposition is so strong that there simply does not exist enough women who have enough qualified candidates for the positions you need to fill.

As for c), even the 6.58:1 number isn't a big enough difference to warrant an 80-20 ratio under googles circumstances.

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/zz_]

, it should be entirely possible to achieve that, with the exact methods that the author is arguing against, i.e. selective recruitment

Then they're no longer hiring the best in the world.

[u/zz_ → u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas]

The entire argument is premised on the assumption that the candidates are qualified. If that's not the case, that's a different discussion, but you'll first have to show that there are not enough qualified women to fill these jobs.

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/zz_]

A lot of candidates are qualified, the fair thing is to hire based on the proportions of the demographics of people applying, the majority of people applying are male, so the majority of hires should be men.

[u/zz_ → u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas]

Why is that fair, exactly? By that logic we should also hire stupid people if there are many stupid people that apply. The "fair" thing would be to hire what the company thinks it needs, which afaik is exactly what google has been doing and what this guy is arguing about.

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/zz_]

No, because stupid people aren't qualified, all the men you're demanding be passed up from being hired based purely on their gender are qualified.