Google Dude's Rant

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He also thinks women are more neurotic than men, and have lower stress tolerances, due to their biology, which I disagree with.

That was the thing that I noticed. I was willing to read it with an open mind and when I got to that line It was like being slapped in the face.

He did recommend some ways of including women, but then to call them more prone to being neurotic, that's a low blow and very prejudiced. That certainly is not how to empathise with other people and understand who they are on an individual basis.

He's the sort who feels like when men talk up they get shut down as 'whiners', but to then call women neurotic isn't much better.

Can people not just get along without labelling each other? Good grief.

Speaking as a male, I definitely have a hard time with stress. At the end of the day, it's the individual that should be looked at.

I think the expectation that men are supposed to "suck it up", suppress their emotions, and force themselves when it comes to getting a job or getting promoted is hazardous to many mens' health.

I have not read the letter and do not care much about it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/

Here is the flaw with the conclusion in this study and the cited studies:

It would be impossible to determine a purely biological origin for higher rates of neuroticism in females based on the methods the authors used, even if females possess higher levels of neuroticism than males, across cultures, and across ages, because doing so neglects the possibility that higher levels of neuroticism in females is a secondary response to environmental factors that arise due to primary biologically based human behavioral and thought characteristics.

For example, throughout human societies and throughout known human history, human females have, more often than not, played a subordinate role to males, and there is a tendency for females to be regarded as inferior. This ultimately arises due to strength differences between males and females (in Spotted Hyenas, where females are stronger than males, the males play the subordinate role).

I propose, and I base this partially on experience, that higher levels of neuroticism in females is not entirely a "female" characteristic of biological origin, but a sex neutral human response to having to navigate the world from a low status position. I suspect that similar levels of neuroticism will be found in low status males who are treated in a similar fashion as females.

For example, females, being the weaker sex, are less able to defend themselves against attackers and are more likely to be preyed on by sexual predators in day to day life, and this causes many females to worry about their safety.

When males find themselves in similar situation, such as when smaller, weaker men find themselves incarcerated, often develop the same worries and a significant amount of anxiety concerning their vulnerable situation.

Females are often subjected to having their intellect minimized, and their ideas and perspectives ignored and devalued (there is a theory as to why this is which I might share later). This occasionally happens to men as well, and both men and women actually respond in the same way. They speak louder, talk more, and become more insistent. But when women do it it's called overreacting, being emotional, or nagging, and when men do it, it's called being assertive or making a passionate argument. The reason for this is probably because the woman is transgressing gender ideals that she be submissive and the man is adhering to gender ideals that he be assertive. But the result is, the woman gets painted as neurotic and continues to be disregarded and this can lead to anger and depression, as well as anxiety because when people are disregarded, their value is disregarded, and it's important for humans to be seen as valuable by other humans. I believe a man who finds himself in the same situation will experience the same emotions as the female. In fact, I know they do because I've seen it happen. They are no less immune to the effects of such poor treatment, get just as upset, possibly even more so, but encounter it less.

In general, throughout human societies, women have had less control over their lives, their bodies, their safety, their access to resources, their destinies. They have been more often subject to regular domestic violence with the potential to cause permanent injury or death. They are more often to find themselves with double the workload of men, having to fulfill roles as caregiver and wage earner, and I'm not just talking about single parents in the west. In many places, particularly in pastoral African communities that were recently hunter gatherers, the men sit around all day while the women both care for the children and do the labor intensive work (fetching water from miles away, gathering firewood, starting the fires, plowing fields, and building houses) that the men should be doing, in addition to harvesting crops, feeding the animals, and doing all the food processing and preparation while simultaneously trying to look after the children and the elderly, and these women will be beaten for things like burning dinner or defying their husbands.

I think if a man were in the same situation he would also report higher levels of neuroticism.

I suspect women who live in all female environments such as female only villages (there are some in South America and Africa), and convents, where they are removed from these burdens, would likely have lower levels of neuroticism.

Though personally I would be miserable because I prefer co-ed environments.

This is not an attempt to claim that women have it worse than men, by the way. I'm merely illustrating possible environmental causes to higher levels of neuroticism in women and postulating that men would have similar levels under similar circumstances.

Last edited by Chronos on 09 Aug 2017, 11:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree. People are individuals first and men should not always have to suppress their emotions. There were no prohibitions against men crying in my family. My father cried more than my mother and I always thought he was a strong person for that because in our society it takes a brave man to cry.

So to summarise the author is overestimating biological factors in gender related differences and underestimating situational factors

I haven't read the article yet but I also have a hard time with stress and too much anxiety makes me go crazy and it turns me into a b***h. But I have anxiety. Nothing to do with my gender.

Quote from the study.



We should be helping those who are not average to find their place in life. For a non average woman she needs the encouragement in school that she would make a good coder. I don't recall that ever being mentioned as an option for me. If I'd learned earlier I think I would have been more successful.

I was pushed more towards art and literature. A large part of me knew that wasn't what I really wanted to do. Was it because I'm female that those were the areas I was pushed towards? Is that why no one suggested programming? I don't know. It was the 90s... But if we can present a larger variety of options to boys and girls now and in the future I'm all for that.

Part of the original thesis of the author of the Google memo was that Google overstates environmental factors and understates or completely omits biological factors, and is thus biased, however I do believe the author's inability to empathize with the situation of women biases him in the opposite direction and his inability to take the factors of the female experience into account, and then speak blindly on the subject, is what has enraged so many women whose experiences are counter to his perceptions.

It's interesting that while he touches on the topic of low ranking males and implies that they occupy the same space as women as far as being disadvantage goes, it did not occur to him give a similar analysis.

It's possible he did not do so because he may have written the memo with citations already in mind, and thus his points are more reflective of citations than his own in depth thought on the matter. That would actually be very stereotypical of the lack of multidimensional analysis that serves as a pitfall to many engineers, and is, in itself, evidence for the need of diversity in STEM environments which Google was likely aiming for.

I think i will term this phenomena "Cyclic Irony", though I believe most people would call it a cluster****

I've been following this drama on twitter, i missed that he got fired. If he did send his "manifesto" to other people with his opinions, then he has effectively created a hostile working place, google had to fire him or they could face a crapload of lawsuits from their employees.

I have worked in the IT industry+defence for a large amount of time in my life and unfortunately seen very few women in it. The ones that i have met and that seemed qualified were women who probably could be registering on this forum (one even has a son with AS), the ones that WAS NOT qualified showed clear traits of narcissism, played political games, used classic psycho methods like gaslighting and denying any responsibility. Most of the latter could be found at the Swedish military HQ.

Then there is the middle ground who don't show any traits of both, they are just mediocre. Like most men who don't show any of the above traits are - mediocre.

They may not call themselves victims, but they sure as hell behave that way often enough.

"Dog-eat-dog" philosophies never make any sense, logical or otherwise.

So he got fired for telling the truth.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - wrong with what he wrote, and much of it is patently obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, which apparently those idiots at Google don't have.

Maybe this is a silly question, but does Google control Bing? I've been using Bing instead because it isn't Google, but they didn't buy it up or anything did they? I hope not, because I don't want to go back to using Yandex.