Nothing about the Google memo?

Actually he's saying in the very next sentence that he suspects we won't be able to do that to any great extent, if we is Google, but that that is what we would need to do. But my point is that he thinks this is what would be needed on the basis of general statistics, which he not only misreads, but which would not describe the very specific part of the population potentially working at Google anyway, much less each individual.

 

That's his point: broaden that very specific slice of the general population, which has a gender imbalance. Making pair programming more of a thing (where possible, and it might not be possible everywhere so they should take care not to misrepresent where it's done in their recruiting marketing) and they can broaden that specific slice of the population potentially working at Google, and statistically there will be a higher percentage of women included in the larger slice than in the current one.

 

So again, he is using statistics that are supposed to (in his strange reading) show some general distribution among all humankind to socially engineer a group that is in fact subject to a vast amount of quite different and much more specific shaping forces.

 

I don't see that at all, and in any case has nothing to say about the female engineers already at Google whose fit in the Google environment you say he's questioned. Increasing pair programming is for the women not interested in Google right now but who might be if the environment were different. Not the ones who are there now. They've already demonstrated they can handle Google's environment.

 

Really? You pointed out that the real version did cite research. Don't you see that that research -- sometimes in the source, sometimes just in his use -- tries to make general anthropological points, rather than discuss the very specific group at issue, much less individuals? He goes from 'all humans in all cultures and ages', next stop: 'a prospective Google engineer'.

You have apparently adopted his argument. I think that's a bad idea, but at least it has a better home with you. You have already begun to repair it. What you just added simply isn't in the paper.

 

Potential Google engineer, not prospective. He is talking about how to make tech (as shorthand for software engineering) appeal to women who are not in tech. Immediately above the one thing you quoted: "Below I'll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women that I outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women's representation in tech without resorting to discrimination." How do you read that as being in any way related to women at Google now?

I have not, I just want people to argue based on what's actually there. And there is nothing in the memo to contradict that idea!

 

There is an extremely strong implicature against it. For your point to stand, the first half of the paper would have to be unrelated to its ultimate argument. This is not logically impossible, but then you are left with an unsubstantiated argument in the second half with misleading summaries of various unrelated research in the first. If instead you assume that the general description of alleged differences between men and women in the first half of the paper was supposed to provide a foundation for the second half, then the paper argues from general anthropological claims towards specific policy recommendations, which is (a) unconvincing and (b) argues from comparability among all women. Consequences from presumed 'human nature' that allegedly apply to a Medieveal Persian seemstress as much as to a current college-educated American not yet but possibly one day working at Google should clearly also apply to a current college-educated American already working at Google.