It didn't matter if he was wrong or right, his mistake was entertaining the notion that people would entertain an earnest (if misguided) discussion when in fact that whole topic was taboo.
The topic is not "taboo". In an organization where compensation is based on non-anonymous peer review, you cannot have a person going around with their thesis that women are objectively inferior engineers. That person has to be fired (directly into the sun, when practical).
Damore was very clear that he did not believe women are objectively inferior engineers. What should we take away from the fact that so many repeat something he did not say and did not mean, and what should we do with people who misrepresent someone's easily accessible views? In fact, he thought it was so important that people understood that he was not saying this that near the beginning of his memo, he posted an image of two overlapping normal distributions that makes his point (wrong or right) very clear.
I think the fact that people have to resort to misunderstanding and misleading about what people like him say is very telling about the "religious" status of these beliefs. You see the same type of apologetics when Christians try to attack atheism.
NB: This post is not an endorsement of anything Damore said.
> their thesis that women are objectively inferior engineers
This is not even remotely what the memo said. The thesis of the memo is that not every gender disparity is due to bias or discrimination, and that directives to achieve equitable outcomes run a real risk of causing discrimination.
If someone said that men make up 90% of murder convictions not because the courts and police are biased against men, but because men commit 90% of murders, is that sexist against men?
> you cannot have a person going around with their thesis that women are objectively inferior engineers
Did you read his memo[1]? That's not really what he's saying. He's ham-handedly trying to look for reasons that explain the gender gap in engineering. His thesis is that fewer women want to do that kind of work than men, not that those who do take the job are worse at it.
> That person has to be fired (directly into the sun, when practical).
His "memo" is a self-serving retcon of real events, which conveniently (for him) elides most of the insane things he said internally on mailing lists, Google+ posts, and in person.
Questioning the status quo is very different from drawing conclusions the way he did. It should never be taboo to question whether DEI practices are fulfilling their goals or harming other metrics.
He posited that women might be less inclined towards programming due to inherent traits, such as being more people-oriented, suggesting that biological and psychological differences between men and women might explain the underrepresentation of women in tech.
So, maybe, not less intelligent, but, maybe, a poorer fit for a software engineer position than a person less "people oriented" and, therefore, that a lot of the women working as software engineers at Google were hired over more fitting men, because they were women.
Damore said that women tend to choose to work with people rather than things. He said that, therefore, a way to increase women in the workforce is to enhance the peopleness of it, by incorporating more pair programming and collaboration.
He did not say that women were a poor fit for software engineering, nor that they were hired over more fitting men. Those words are from a bogeyman of your own imagination.
> So, maybe, not less intelligent, but, maybe, a poorer fit for a software engineer position than a person less "people oriented" and, therefore, that a lot of the women working as software engineers at Google were hired over more fitting men, because they were women.
Closer, but still wrong. His point is that women are less likely to enter the field of software or engineering. Not that the subset of women who do enter those fields are less capable than men.
Imagine someone demands that we address the inequitable murder convictions with outcome based goals on the gender distribution of murder convictions. If I say that I believe that the disparity in murder convictions stems from the fact that men commit more murder, not bias in police or courts, does that make me a misandrist?
If women make up ~18% of software developers, why would we expect a non discriminatory hiring process to hire more than 18% women in software development roles?
Arguing about the meaning of what Damore wrote, and what he thought/intended, is a huge waste of time. Just about everybody who read it comes to a different interpretation of what he meant to imply. Then folks argue endlessly (on forums like this, memegen, elsewhere) about their different interpretations.
A better writer with more experience could have written a doc that was basically "some aspects of the training in our DEI classes is not scientifically supported, but is being used as a cudgel to change people's behavior" with a few examples.
I've read the document (before it was widely published- it was posted internally at the time) several times and I don't think I said anything at all that wasn't technically correct.
>Arguing about the meaning of what Damore wrote, and what he thought/intended, is a huge waste of time. Just about everybody who read it comes to a different interpretation of what he meant to imply.
Studying the literal fundamental nature of reality doesn't seem like a waste of time to me.
He was fired because he placed himself in a position where at least half the company would refuse to work with him.