This started out pretty good (and on the whole was fair and measured), but then at one point included this:

> Then you seem to make a giant leap from group differences between men and women on such measures as interest in people rather than things, or systematising versus empathising, to differences in men’s and women’s ability to code. At least that’s what you seem to be doing; you don’t quite say so.

Well, if he "doesn't quite say so," how do you know that's what he seems to be doing? If you analyze his essay without searching desperately for subtexts, and if you listen to his clarifications in his interviews, it's fairly clear he's talking about interest, not ability. Unfortunately much of the next seven paragraphs then consists of breaking down their presumed argument as if it were the one he made.

It wasn't until this memo that I realized how many people, when presented with a body of text, immediately start performing motive inference, subtext analysis, dogwhistle detection, etc.

> I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your part would have made it unnecessary

This line seems really over the top. If you're the leader of your company - it's your JOB to write to the team, correct them where they're wrong and steer the conversation in a productive manner.

Not really a fan of this overall post (50% of Googler's still don't think he should have been fired). If you think he should have been fired - that's fine - but I think if you watch his interviews, he was earnestly looking for a discussion. Feel free to write a letter or explain in real terms why he was wrong if you feel like that - but all these pieces about "why we shouldn't even have to have the discussion" - are sort of missing the point he brought up - which was that he didn't feel they could even have a discussion on this topic.

"You" - 82 counts

"I" - 30 counts (cap letter)

"we" - 44 counts

"pdf" - 0 counts

"http" - 0 counts

"www" - 0 counts

".edu" or ".gov" - 0 counts

I was very excited to read a rebuttal of the memo from the Economist. I've read arguments from both sides extensively and wanted to see The E's take. The original memo was almost naive in its argument; it's not hard to pick its argument chain apart.

Then I got to the mid section of the letter and the whole letter just fall apart.

Shame on the Economist for publishing such an ill-argued letter.

The author listed 6 logical flaws in the original memo (even though the the author said he found 1 + 6 more flaws). The listed flaws overlap too much, and 3 of them can be directly rebutted using lines from the memo.

"First, you ignore many other gender differences, basing your argument only on a few that you think support your conclusion. Second, you’re ignoring everything else that could explain the gender gap. Third, the gender differences you cite differ between countries and over time. Fourth, they don’t even support your argument, because you don’t seem to understand what makes a great software engineer. Fifth, you clearly don’t understand our company, and so fail to understand what we are trying to do when we hire. And sixth, even if you are right that more men than women are well-suited to the job of software engineer at google, you are wrong that taking steps to recruit more women is inherently unfair to men."

The rest of the flaws I agree with (depending on the reading of the text), but there's no citation for anything. So even though the conclusion might be correct, the arguments are weak.

BTW- "Fifth, you clearly don’t understand our company, and so fail to understand what we are trying to do when we hire."

Such a great line. So "inter-dimensional" that I can't put this as mere ironic.

The best way to approach people who agree with Damore and will shut down at the mention of anything like "sexism" or "discrimination" is to just explain that software engineering is really not a particularly stressful job. Many of Damore's arguments, if they were true, would apply to nearly any job in the world.

Specifically, you can compare software engineering to something like surgery. It is not controversial to claim that surgery is more stressful, more detail oriented, requires more dedication, etc. than software engineering. Yet the gender ratio of surgeons is about 60-40 male to female, far more equal than software. How can this be, if Damore's arguments have any merit? Affirmative action can't explain this, because if you're a bad surgeon, you'll be sued for malpractice and fired. If you're a bad software engineer, it's much easier to kind of muddle through and do well enough to not get fired.

>Your memo was a triumph of motivated reasoning

The irony is palpable. "Larry" cites a bunch of well reasoned essays that support his view, but there were plenty of the same supporting James'.

>Teamwork, in particular, is important

At this point I feel they didn't even read James' essay. He points this out, and as a potential solution suggests pair programming should be emphasized.

I don't agree with everything James put forth in his "manifesto," but I don't think he should be demonized for putting forth a well reasoned argument. I think he brings up a great point in this "diversity equals morality" culture stifles real discussion and real solutions. He attempted to put forth a few solutions, which is more than I can say for this article.

Is anyone else disgusted by these "X should have responded like this" articles?

They are so cringy. It's like asking a kid what he would do if he was president... but actually taking it seriously.

The problem with critics is that they have no skin in the game. If they're wrong, they just shrug their shoulders.

You're a paid (if that) journalist writing for profit. Figure out some other angle for peddling your gossip.

Is there a difference between this and fanfiction other than most fanfiction authors being willing to at least put a pseudonym on their work?

It seems kind of wrong to avoid staking a position by phrasing your arguments in the mouth of someone else, using words that person didn't use.

> Why did we fire you?

> You’ve driven the point home with your “Goolag” T-shirt and new twitter handle, @Fired4Truth.

> You're wrong.

> I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your part would have made it unnecessary

> Your chain of reasoning had so many missing links that it hardly mattered what you based your argument on.

> We try to hire people who are willing to follow where the facts lead, whatever their preconceptions. In your case we clearly got it wrong.

This is how political bloggers write. It's not how executives write.

Bloggers fan the flames for readership. Executives face legal and PR risks.

Statistics are even more insidious. We know empirically on average women are smarter than men, but also men are, from a particular perspective, genetically defective, which causes a wider variation in a non-insignificant set of traits.

You can still get a heavy tailing effect when on average population 1 is worse than population 2. This comes at the expense of the other fat tail:. Men are more likely to be mentally defective, commit suicide, die on the job, choose to go to war, choose to join gangs, etc.

Something funny just happened. I clicked the link and the economist told me "you've reached your article limit".

For a moment I thought that was the rebuttal.

John Gruber perceptively pointed out that Page/Brin/Schmidt have been taking the backseat for this ordeal, putting Pichai solely responsible. I assume this is intentional to ensure Pichai's opinion on the matter is clearly that of Google.

However, aside from Damore himself, the only Googlers I've seen make comments are:

* Sundar Pichai

* Danielle Brown, VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance

* Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO

To be very honest, it would be helpful if white male Googlers spoke out for diversity. I know this is a sensitive and heated topic right now, but especially after seeing the (unrelated, but very fresh, and the video is really worth 1000 words):

https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news-tonight-full-episode-c...

it would be really nice to see actual individuals standing up for the beliefs their company purports to have.

I thought this e-mail was sent in a happy world where Damore was not fired, but no, paragraph 3:

> Why did we fire you?

This is a much higher bar than just pointing out how the points in the memo were wrong. Damore's memo was not a peer reviewed paper, and even those have mistakes which are tolerated.

> Your memo was a great example of what’s called “motivated reasoning”—seeking out only the information that supports what you already believe. It was derogatory to women in our industry and elsewhere. Despite your stated support for diversity and fairness, it demonstrated profound prejudice. Your chain of reasoning had so many missing links that it hardly mattered what you based your argument on. We try to hire people who are willing to follow where the facts lead, whatever their preconceptions. In your case we clearly got it wrong.

This is unsatifactory. Are you fired from Google if you display biases all humans have? How can we notice and overcome them if we can't have discussion without getting fired?

The Economist should have said the firing was wrong, and changed the premise to no fireing, or 80% of the e-mail should be about the justification of the firing.

PSA: Never write an email this long to be sent to "all-employees@company.com", "Larry" should know better!

This is a much better response but it could use more citations and quite a bit less sanctimony.

The big issue to me is how Google has already let ideology creep into what should be impartial.

The first one I noticed is when they removed guns from online shopping search results.

More recently there has been talk of doctoring search results to remove controversial content:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/youtube-censor-controversial-c...

Google is a private company, so they don't have to respect anyone's freedom of speech legally. But we do need to consider the implications of this when they are one of the largest conduits of information out there and they are using that position to ideologically alter what we can and can't see on their platforms. They never would have been able to get away with this kind of censorship earlier when there was more competition in this space and now that they're the 800lb gorilla it is just another case of 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'.

If Google refuses to be a platform that allows the free exchange of ideas then we need an apolitical platform who will.

I stopped when I got to

Here’s why, in the words of Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones”

Can't we make an argument without having to resort to popular culture? Does the author think we're that stupid than we're not going to understand his point? Or is he projecting?

the unbelievable irony of a a fake letter dressing down someone for "motivated reasoning" by explicitly using motivated reasoning.

Is this your homework Larry?