Spaghetti, waffles, and their relevance to tech work

Recently, I read a book review about the differences between men and women. Don't ask me how that came to my attention, it's hardly the kind of stuff that I take an active interest in. In summary, the article claims that men's brains are like waffles and women's like spaghetti.

Spaghetti and waffles!

In essence, men tend to compartmentalize. Men tend to be focused. Each activity takes place in a space of its own - much like the squares on a waffle. There is little no no overlap. When a man is working, he's working. When a man is watching football, he's watching football.

Women, on the other hand, tend not to compartmentalize. Everything is interconnected. Everything affects everything else. This, of course, would be a neat explanation for why my wife somehow manages to talk about me spending too much money on insurance policies when I'm trying to talk about the correct way to brew chrysanthemum tea.

Or at least, it would be, if I bought this theory.

How this would play in tech

Is this accurate? Well, who knows for sure?

The more important question would be - what if it was? You see, in tech, there's a popular theory (which is way more popular than I feel it should be) that men are better suited to tech because they're more focused and logical, whereas women are more intuitive and emotional. And some women I know have even bought into this theory, claiming rubbish like "I'm a woman. I'm supposed to be emotional."

Look, I acknowledge that the following is merely an assumption on my part. Maybe not everyone gets out as much as they should. But most of us would know men who are sensitive and emotional, and women who are cold, clinical and rational. They may not be the majority of men and women, but they do exist. And they are no less men and women for that. At least, not in my eyes.

So let's say that this theory is true, and that men are generally more focused and prone to compartmentalization. Would that make them better programmers? Maybe. After all, a large part of programming is writing objects and methods, and what are the best methods? The ones that accomplish a single goal, no more. The ones that are largely separate from other methods. Loosely coupled. But would that mean men are better suited to tech? Only if you think software development is nothing but programming. And, if you have any substantial amount of experience in that area at all, you would recognize how laughable an idea that is.

More than writing code.

Tech also needs architects and system analysts. People who see the bigger picture, and can accurately point out how one area of the system potentially affects another. And who better for that, than the stereotypical woman? So if men are better coders and women are better system architects, wouldn't it stand to reason that both men and women are just as suited to tech, but perhaps in different roles?

Food for thought! Literally!

Again, the above supposes that I agree with the assertion that men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti.

I don't. I think human beings come with a staggering array of personality types, and it's these personality types that we need to look out for when determining suitability for a tech job.I think tech would be better served if we were to classify people based on their problem-solving approaches, rather than by their gender.

Quit waffling around!
T___T

Fake news? No, fake nudes!

Deepfake technology has been up and coming for the past few years. From facial synthesis to cloned voices to video manipulation, the possibilities for abuse are terrifying. For instance, there may come a day when audio and video evidence can no longer be submitted in court because fake media is indistinguishable from the real thing.

Terrifying, undoubtedly. But also fascinating.

From a technical point of view, this application of technology is interesting. It's art and science in one heady package. The myriad of possibilities for actual practical use ranging from the mundane (test profile photos for Social Media simulations) to the awesome (fully computer-generated action movies where actors aren't at risk of getting injured).

But sometimes people go too far. And a couple weeks ago, the development team behind the now-defunct app DeepNude found out the hard way.

DeepNude is an app that creates simulated nudity. It purports to digitally remove the clothing from any picture of a woman, and display her naked. When this app was released, the outrage went viral, and while I'm not a big fan of online outrage in general, it's hard to say this was wholly undeserved. Women, in particular, were horrified at the implications regarding enabling perverted fantasies and revenge porn.

The tech, in layman's terms

Of course, DeepNude doesn't exactly digitally remove clothes to reveal the actual person's naked body beneath. Unless they had actual footage of that person's naked body (certain celebrities in the adult entertainment industry, for example), that would be impossible. That person might have tattoos, birthmarks, or sporting a third nipple. There's no way to tell.

What this app actually does is refer to its database of body parts and replace the clothed body in the photo with a computer-generated nude one. Kind of like what people have been doing to celebrity photos (painstakingly using Photoshop or something), but now automated via software.

Apology and shutdown

The creators of DeepNude issued an apology, after shutting down their operation when it crashed due to overwhelming traffic.

Here is the brief history, and the end of DeepNude. We created this project for users' entertainment a few months ago. We thought we were selling a few sales a month in a very controlled manner. Honestly, the app is not that great, it only works with particular photos. We never thought it would become viral and we would not be able to control the traffic. We greatly underestimated the request.

Despite the safety measures adopted (watermarks) if 500,000 people use it,  the probability that people will misuse it is too high. We don't want to make mney this way. Surely some copies of DeepNude will be shared on the web, but we dn't want to be the ones who sell it. Downloading the software from other sources or sharing it by any other means would be aganst the terms of our website. From now on, DeepNude will not release other versions and does not grant anyone its use. Not even the licenses to activate the Premium version.

People who have not yet upgraded will receive a refund.
The world is not yet ready for DeepNude.

If you ask me, this seems too little, too late.

This app is deeply sexist not because of misogyny. Not because it shows women nude. But because it doesn't do the same for men. If you feed the app a man's image, it's going to show a naked woman's body with a man's head.

This is only a simulated
example using my sick
Photoshop skillz!

So if this app only allows users to "strip" women (and deny the ladies a similar pleasure), what's this for other than cheap male thrills? The creators didn't think it would be abused? They don't want to make money this way? That's cute.

The world is not yet ready for DeepNude? Bitch, please. As mentioned earlier, people have been doing this for years. The app simply made it easier. The world's been more than ready for something like DeepNude for a while now. Guess it was really a matter of time.

An interesting question

I've seen people question why the "perverted geeks" like the creators would think this was a good idea in the first place. It seemed like a genuine question, so I thought I'd answer that.

You see, that's the thing about us developers. We don't think. Not much about the non-technical stuff, anyway.

Case in point - when I first heard about the app, you know what my first thought was? Not how horrifying and misogynistic it is, but how something like that is supposed to work.

Even after processing the entire spectacle, moral outrage is the last thing on my mind. (Not being a woman, any moral outrage I expressed would come off as disingenuous, at best) My predominant position is that Deepfake technology has tremendous potential, and the creators of DeepNude using it as wank material strikes me as a huge waste.

Generally, when a developer is presented with a problem, our first instinct is to solve it, not to moralize it. We spend more time thinking about whether or not it can be done, rather than whether or not it should be done. That's why we need business people to tell us what's actually useful and commercially viable (and in good taste). Because, on this evidence, left to our own devices, us geeks would just waste our time churning out technically brilliant but utterly useless junk.

We automate stuff. And in this case, the choice of stuff to automate was unfortunate.

And that's the naked truth!
T___T

The Road To Discovering That I'm Not A Sexist Pig

It's the Year of the Pig, and thus talking about sexist pigs today seems awfully apt.

We've heard of the brogrammer culture in the USA. The sexual propositions of those in power towards female coders. The chauvinistic remarks of guys who think some girls are "too pretty to code". The list goes on. Tech is rife with sexism in Silicon Valley, and as far removed as I am from that hotbed of tech innovation, there are few things that repulse me more in tech.

I've always thought of tech work as a meritocracy. Those who are good enough need to work, and those who aren't, need to work... on themselves. When I say "good enough", I don't mean purely in terms of technical knowledge, but also in ethics, communication skills and everything a professional should have, not just a tech professional. And that is why hiring practice based on gender, whether they discriminate against males (the Affirmative Action bullshit) or females (the more traditional kind of gender discrimination), or negative stereotypes of tech workers based on gender, annoy me. None of this has any place in tech. Tech is not a male thing or a female thing. Tech is about how much value you can bring to the table regardless of race, gender or whatever.

In fact, I'm so disturbed at the thought of being sexist, that at one time, I experienced a little BSOD of my own when I suspected that some negative thoughts I had about a female co-worker, were rooted in sexism. (I've written a little about her before in The Development Process - Are you Engine Grease or a Spanner? and Five Comparisons Between Contract and Permanent Roles.)

My thoughts about this co-worker

I felt that she was opinionated and bossy. There didn't seem to be any issue within the department that she didn't want to weigh in on. She didn't play well with the team and tried way too hard to prove she was better than us. As far as I was concerned, she didn't need to prove jackshit - if management had asked, I would have given my honest assessment that she was. That didn't mean I thought she was good. I was of the opinion that I sucked, and she happened to suck significantly less.

But you see, in this day and age, a man calling a woman "bossy" reflects badly on the man. The general narrative is, men who describe women as "bossy" are insecure and unable to cope with the challenge that strong and assertive women bring to their fragile egos. I agreed with that assessment, and still do. Therefore, I tried very hard not to even think of her as "bossy". God damn it, I was a tech and I should hold myself to higher standards of behavior. If someone was better than me, that was the end of the story and the gender of that person should not matter at all.

I am woman, hear me roar.

Once she got promoted, however, it soon became apparent that I wasn't the only one who thought she was a pain in the ass. She pretty much rubbed the other people in other departments the wrong way when she tried to impose regulations on workflow. Not that the idea was wrong, but some tact and delicacy is generally required when dealing with other human beings, especially human beings who don't answer to you.

Still, I thought, maybe these other guys who had a problem with her were sexist pigs. Not my problem either way, I was out of the company in a month, and good riddance!

Four years later....

I ended up working as a contractor in a large tech firm, posted as onsite vendor to a Government Statutory Board. Among my colleagues was this insufferable dude from India. (He has a cameo in one of my previous posts, My Year in Training and Assessment.) He kept acting like he was in charge, self-promoted constantly, threw little temper tantrums and his code fucking stank. All this was probably a lot of posturing to cover up some pretty heavy insecurity. I mean, if you feel the need to toot your own horn that frequently, you're probably paranoid that no one will notice you exist.

Blow that trumpet, bro.

Boy, did I detest working with this clown. But I wasn't here to make friends. I was here to work and by God I was going to work. Like a pro, I hid my feelings well, knuckled down and did my job.

Besides, I had the nagging feeling that this wasn't the first time I had encountered someone like that.

My epiphany

These two colleagues were starting to feel very similar. Both disagreeable and authoritative, both prone to fits of drama, both determined to assert themselves and prove how good they were. Except one was female and the other male. One Chinese, the other, Indian.

And it struck me that, if I could have the same negative feelings towards a man who exhibited the same traits as the woman, then I was quite definitely not a sexist. I had considered my former female colleague an overcompensating self-promoter with self-esteem issues not because I was sexist, but because that was precisely what she was. My feelings of revulsion were consistent when the data was applied on someone of another gender. Of course, there's the possibility that I am both a sexist and a racist... but at this moment I'm quite confident that I'm not. At least, not to the point that it would affect my judgement this significantly.

And if I had to choose between these two? I'd choose the former. Her code was actually decent. And no matter how much disdain I had for her politicking, she had least had a legit reason - there was promotion up for grabs, and all. The Indian dude had no such excuse because we were both contractors. No amount of politicking would have improved his position. He was not only obnoxious, but a fucking time-waster.

The stunning conclusion

Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade. Being conscious of sexism and implicit bias is nice and all that, but if someone is objectionable, their gender is irrelevant. That's the lesson I learned from all this - to stop letting "wokeness" cloud my judgement.

Male you live in interesting times,
T___T

Women Can Code, Get Used To It (Part 2/2)

Sometimes guys in tech don't handle the presence of women well. They appear to take it as a challenge to their dominance or some crap like that. Their reactions seem to pretty much stem from resentment. "She's hot, sexy and she can code, perhaps even better than me. It's not fair!" Again, developers are people. People come in all shapes and sizes. Thus, developers come in all shapes and sizes. Leave your Prototype Bias behind.

Yes, that could be
a programmer. So what?

Also, who said life was fair in the first place? A female developer can have big boobs, look way hotter than you, get laid more often than you and code better than you. Suck it up, buttercup!

But it's true! Women just aren't as good as men at tech...

Buddy, let me stop you right there. There are plenty of perfectly good hills to die on, so you might want to give this one a pass.

I'm not part of any kind of feminist movement, or some wannabe white knight. I am a software developer, and while I may not be a master of my craft, I understand the history of my own industry enough to say this: women can code; it's an objective fact.

Did you know that the first ever computer algorithm was written by a woman? I shit you not; there's even a programming language named after her.

When's the last time you used an ATM? 95% of these worldwide are still powered by COBOL. Guess who was largely responsible for COBOL's development roughly six decades ago? That's right - a woman. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, to be exact.

And before the above-mentioned woman asserted her belief that code should be written in something close to English (like all the fancy programming languages you and I use today), people were still dealing with machine language and assembly. Guess what the vast majority of them were? Yep - friggin' women.

So yeah, let's have no more rubbish about how women can't code, OK?

Programming is about logic. And women are creatures of emotion, not logic...

Seriously, arguments like these are not helpful. So are people claiming that women are more detail-oriented and intuitive, and more suited than men for task x and job y. If you're going around saying things like that, you may think you're complimenting women, but in reality you're part of the problem.

Even if it's true that women are more x and men are more y, nobody with any ounce of professional pride wants to compete in terms of gender. If we start hiring based on gender (women for QA and men for programming or whatnot), a great deal of talent will remain untapped. And in a world where the demand for tech talent far outstrips the supply, this is not a good thing.

But there are more men than women in Silicon Valley!

Yes, that's true. Men outnumber women by a ratio of maybe five to one. But understand this - capability has nothing to do with it. Programming isn't some rocket science reserved for the intellectually endowed, though as with all disciplines that require logic and thinking, a high I.Q can't hurt.

Programming?! Ew, no.

No, software development is as much about temperament as it is about anything else. Not everyone wants to code for a living. It takes a certain kind of personality to want to do this professionally. And, for some reason or other, women seem to want the life of a software developer less than men.

Not just men

Sadly enough, that bias is not restricted to men. Women, too, subscribe to the stereotype that other women generally aren't as technically gifted as men. Take this conversation I had with a friend a couple years back.

Her: ...so my colleague developed a whole suite of applications using Excel macros. She learned it all by herself, did her research on the Internet and everything.

Me: Mmm. OK.

Her: She's a girl.

She listed the accomplishments of the colleague above, and when I did not appear impressed enough, tried to compound it with an added accolade - "she's a girl". Now, that's pretty insulting. I understand that my friend didn't mean to be derogatory, and she was genuine in her admiration. However, compliments like these do more harm than good.

Achievements are praiseworthy on their own. Achievements don't magically become extra deserving of praise simply because they were done by "a girl". That is like saying women, by default, are inferior to men, and therefore if they achieve anything, their achievement deserves more admiration. That's sexist and counter-productive. Not to mention condescending!

Conclusion

That's why we shouldn't glorify women in tech. Glorification of the idea that women can code, is giving credence to the Prototype Bias that women can't. I get it, people who do this have (probably) good intentions and are trying to help. But no, they're really not helping.

Because there is nothing to glorify. Women can code. They've been able to code even before I was born, and somehow people seem to have forgotten that when they get all excited over it like it's some new and special phenomenon.

It's not supposed to be special. It's supposed to be normal. It shouldn't be a big deal because it isn't. All of us - men and women - need to stop thinking of tech as a male or female profession. It's a profession, period.

Time to man up, developers!
T___T

Women Can Code, Get Used To It (Part 1/2)

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A Walkout Against Tech Discrimination

It never rains, but pours.

And for Google, it's been a veritable monsoon. From the Damore debacle to getting successfully sued by Oracle, Google has been facing an increasing avalanche of problems. The Silicon Valley giant found itself the subject of a massive walkout staged by its own employees all over the world last week, in response to revelations of sexual misconduct from male staff and how Google handled (or mishandled, depending on who you ask) these cases.

One particular case stands out. Andy Rubin, known as "Father of Android", was asked to leave a few years ago when the company discovered that he had sexually assaulted a colleague. The severance package was 90 million.

Now, if Google had been under legal obligation to pay that amount, this wouldn't have been an issue. But then-CEO Larry Page appeared to have covered up the entire incident for fear of negative press, and paid Rubin to keep him quiet. And in these times, the SJW culture in Google, fostered quite handily by current CEO Sundar Pichai, simply wouldn't stand for it.

Thus, the walkout.

It started in Google's offices in Asia, such as Singapore. And then those in the US and Canada joined in. Several more countries are on the list, but hell if I'm going to name them all. Employees left their desks in droves at 11 AM, gathering outside or in lobbies to protest against the actions taken to protect these sexual predators, with a specific list of demands.

Cute flyer, eh?

The Demands

An end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination. Sure, I can get behind that. Harassment and discrimination (especially the former) is too big to be buried. Deal with it openly and fairly. Involve the law, if need be.

A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity, for example making sure there are women of color at all levels of the organization, and accountability for not meeting this commitment. Oh, really? That kind of bullshit is ruinous. Ending pay and opportunity inequity is a fine and noble goal; artificially putting people in place based on gender and race is discriminatory... and an insult to women of color who actually earned their spot.

A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report. Well and good. Easy to do, I'd imagine. Provided nobody tries to, ahem, hush things up.

A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously. HR would have to seriously pull its socks up, and be afforded more autonomy overall. Not easy by any means, but doable.

Elevate the Chief Diversity Officer to answer directly to the CEO and make recommendations directly to the board of directors. In addition, appoint an employee representative to the board. Oh, fuck off. A "Chief Diversity Officer" sounds like a stupid idea in the first place. Why the obsession over diversity? Google does not need less men or more women; they need more employees who don't disrespect their colleagues, period. And they need management who will enforce the rules effectively with neither fear nor favor.

How did it get to this?

First off, let me just say that the prevalence of males over females in the tech scene is more a Silicon Valley problem rather than a specifically Google one. But hey, we all gotta start somewhere.

Next, a company of Google's size notoriously difficult to police, and it ought to be. Sure, they can have policies in place. Fat lot of good it did with Uber, if you recall. As long as higher management disregards these rules at any point in time for whatever justification, it's all moot. Larry Page' actions have come back to bite Google in the ass, and I can't say I'm sorry about that. Sure, my disdain for the SJW culture in Google is well-documented, but my antipathy towards those who abuse their authority to coerce colleagues into sexual favors is far greater.

Google did not get themselves into this position overnight. It was built up over generations of hiring the wrong kind of people, and lax enforcement of mutual respect in the workplace. No amount of hysterical SJWs clamoring for justice is going to change that unless higher management changes their approach, prioritizing employees over the company's pristine (well, now not so pristine) image and PR. I've said it before - Google is a profit-driven corporation trying desperately to appear socially conscientious while struggling with issues such as alleged pay disparity between males and females, gender discrimination and now sexual misbehavior. My opinion is that they tried too damn hard to maintain that image, even at the cost of their ethics, and it backfired. Spectacularly.

What now?

Sundar Pichai is coming off as placatory in his statements, and it's hard not to feel a little sorry for the guy. Sure, he didn't make things better, but let's be fair - he inherited the situation in 2015. He didn't ask for any of this, and whatever changes he might have wanted to make would have to pass the Board of Directors, whose main concerns are profits and the aforementioned PR. That SJW culture he seems to have tacitly encouraged during his tenure is now rising up to put an end to the charade.

This is just coming from some nobody software dev from the tiny island of Singapore, but I say - practice what your motto preaches. Do The Right Thing - over and over - and the rest will slowly but surely follow. For now, of course, ol' Sundar can only hope to survive the fallout from this. There are no quick fixes.

That's all from me. Over and (walk)out!
T___T

Revenge of the Damore

Damore is back! And he's packing a mean wallop.

By "Damore", I mean, of course, James Damore, the software engineer formerly from Google, who, back last year, released a manifesto titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber". When this internal memo was leaked to the public, the predictable outcry from the "woke" and liberal crowd resulted in him being fired.

As mentioned in my last blogpost regarding this incident, my sympathies aren't with Damore. While I did not consider him guilty of what that rabid crowd accused him of, the sheer naivete in his writing and circulating of that (not even particularly insightful or well-written) manifesto deserved a harsh lesson. That lesson being; primarily, no matter how much your employers insist that they value honest and genuine feedback, no they really fucking don't. And, for quick and easy damage control, you can expect yourself to be handily thrown under the bus.

That was last August, and five months later, Damore is back with a proposed class-action lawsuit  against Google for discriminating against employees who hold politically Conservative views. Among his claims are that white men are being punished for, well, being white men.

"Google employees who expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Google's employment policies and its business, such as 'diversity' hiring policies, 'bias sensitivity,' or 'social justice' were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights."

There are also allegations of wrongful termination with regard to James Damore.

Hold on... "wrongful termination"?

As much as I think Google made themselves look utterly foolish with the reasons they gave for Damore's firing, "wrongful termination" is pushing it a little. Damore deserved to be canned, no doubt. As an employee, you are not guaranteed a right to absolute free speech on company time, and anyone who thinks otherwise is severely delusional.

Of course, it would have been even fairer if the miscreants who leaked his internal manifesto to the public (and thus forced Google's hand) were similarly dealt with, but one can't have everything.

Does James Damore stand any chance of winning?

I doubt that. But maybe this lawsuit isn't meant to be won.

Look at the evidence presented so far. Screenshots of discussions and whatnot. Many of them showcasing the shit people say when they think their vitriol isn't going to be made public. The sheer vindictiveness on display intertwined with their moral outrage. Vows to make life miserable for those with Conservative views. There's an entire cesspit of posturing, bullying militance in there, and it makes for depressing reading.

Just an example of the shit
Googlers post.

All of that is a huge embarrassment to Google. And if this particular humiliation was what James Damore was going for, then to hell with the lawsuit. Win or lose, the damage is done.

Google is under investigation for underpaying female staff. Now they're on trial for discriminating against white men. Which is it? It unlikely to be both - it's got to be one or the other. And it probably will be one or the other.

Well played, James. Well played.

Is Google really that much of a nightmare to work in? If those screenshots are anything to go by, it would appear so. I have no doubt that the Googlers are talented... but Christ on a stick, what a bunch of children they are. 

The Moral of the story

Damore-al of the story, geddit? (Hur hur)

Damore originally got into trouble because the manifesto got leaked to the public by Googlers. Now he's leaking screenshots of internal discussions by the legal process. Not saying I approve, but I guess the Googlers have it coming. Two can play at that game, right? And, let's face it, ammunition against Damore is limited. But he's got shit on all the people participating in those discussions. Whether or not the Googlers are sensible enough to realize that they come off as a bunch of utterly unprofessional, foot-stamping snowflakes, is besides the point. They, collectively, are a far bigger target than one James Damore.

Besides, it's not like James Damore has anything to lose at this point. Not after getting fired so publicly by Google.

Someone at Google said they "look forward to defending against Mr. Damore's lawsuit in court". Holy shit, so do I. This should be interesting.

Stay tuned for more news. Damore da merrier!
T___T

James and the Giant Echo Chamber

A nod to the Roald Dah classic in the title! My year is complete.

Silicon Valley, indeed the tech industry worldwide, has been rippling recently about a certain ten-page manifesto, titled Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, submitted internally by former Google software engineer James Damore. Former, you say? Well, apparently Damore was fired for breaching the Code of Conduct. At least, that was the reason provided, though let's face it, Google, like most other tech companies in Silicon Valley, due to "at-will employment", doesn't need a reason. Your breath stinks? You're out. My pet goldfish hates you. Pack your bags. You put pineapple on your pizza? Get away from me, you monster.

Unforgivable?

Jokes aside, let's see what the fuss is about. It's been claimed that Damore "advanced incorrect assumptions about gender" and accused his female colleagues of being "biologically unsuited to do their jobs". If you want to read the manifesto, this was what Gizmodo published - the document, minus the references and the graphs. You'd be better off viewing it here. The links and charts don't add all that much to the document, but credit where it's due, they do present a certain amount of effort on Damore's part... more than I'd have been arsed to put up anyway.

After reading choice excerpts from The Atlantic and Vox, I had a gander at the manifesto, fully expecting to be filled with righteous disgust. What I felt instead was bafflement. Look, there's quite a fair bit I didn't agree with, but frankly I think the condemnation and outrage was overkill. Oh sure, I am filled with disgust, but towards those publications rather than Damore. This is exactly what I meant when I discussed fake news back in January. Nowadays journalists seem more intent on milking our outrage for extra clicks than actually reporting the facts, and it fucking stinks. They insisted on calling it an "anti-diversity screed" which is bound to raise the hackles of even people who don't identify with crazy feminists or nutty Liberals. There is something very rotten about journalism these days, but that's not what we're discussing here today, so I'll shut up about it for now.

Instead, do look at the manifesto. Not the shit-stirring versions peddled by the likes of Recode and Gizmodo, with claims of "sexism" and "anti-diversity". The original, unaltered version that James Damore sent out. Stop letting these slimeballs tell you what to think; we're techs, not sheep. Read the damn thing, and then draw your own conclusions.

I tried really hard, but couldn't find anything about it that screamed, or even whispered anti-diversity. Damore's not going to win any literary awards anytime soon, and his arguments weren't all that convincing, but he came across as painfully earnest, and sincere.

Although, it has to be said, there were parts I found questionable. What did make sense to me, was this.

Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women's representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.

To use a cooking analogy, if there's too much salt in your soup, adding sugar will offset the taste, but it will not reduce the salt content in your soup. The end result is that you have both salt and sugar in your soup. And that you have a very unhealthy diet.

And yes. This.

As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the "victims".

A company can, and should, impose ethics on its employees. That's part and parcel of professionalism. But ethics should never be confused with morals.

And finally, this. This, oh so very much.

I'm also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I'm advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

Damore's manifesto was not "anti-diversity". He was all for diversity; he merely disagreed with Google's implementation. And here, I'm inclined to agree. Engaging in discriminatory practices just to undo the results generations of similarly discriminatory practices is silly. True, lasting diversity should take place organically. Remove the obstacles for women in the tech industry, stop thinking of people as "male" or "female", and let evolution take care of the rest. Trying to force it just seems artificial. And insane.

Roots run deep

Look at the sexism and chauvinism in tech. Did any of it happen overnight? Did some group of douchey bro-grammers just wake up one morning and decide, OK, we're going to start oppressing women in tech from this day forth? Or was it a result of generations of chauvinism culminating in the mess we see today? This is so hard to uproot precisely because that tree wasn't planted yesterday. It grew from a seed and its roots have sunk in way deep. It has lasted generations, and therefore undoing it will require the same long, slow process. Change is inevitable. It cannot be hurried, it cannot be slowed. Change will proceed, like it or not, at its own pace.

As for what raised my eyebrows, take a look at this...

Women, on average, have more

• Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
  • These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
• Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness.
  • This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there's overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women's issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.
• Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
  • This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs

Women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading? Leading? I'm not sure what kind of women Damore has been exposed to, to make such a claim. Neuroticism? Lower stress tolerance? Seriously?

That said, I'm no biologist or psychologist, thus if the actual scientific experts say so, I'm not prepared to argue. One such expert, Debra Soh, did back up Damore's statements here. However, I've also found another source that refutes them.

You know what? All this is goobledy-gook to me and I'm content to let the real scientists duke it out over this. Because whether Damore is right or wrong in his assertions isn't really the issue.

People are screaming that his manifesto reeks of sexism, but that's not quite ringing true for me. They claim that he said women are biologically unsuited for tech jobs. Now, that is a load of hogwash and anyone perpetuating such a fallacy - men and women - should be ashamed of themselves. Remember Ada Lovelace? She (yes, she) was credited for producing the first algorithm. How about America's own Grace Hopper? That goes beyond science. That's history. And bear in mind that these remarkable women accomplished what they did, back in the 1960s and earlier, way before virtue-signalling your way to "woke" Nirvana on the behalf of downtrodden women everywhere, became fashionable!

Any tech worth his salt knows who these women are. Why would Damore, who presumably was good enough to be hired by Google, ignore their contributions by claiming that women are biologically unsuited for technical jobs? That's not up for debate. Women can code as well as men - it's been historically proven.

Look at what Damore wrote, rather than what others claimed he wrote. I've underlined the relevant words.

These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social
or artistic areas.

More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Prefer. Like. Want. All words suggesting intent and desire, rather than capability. Damore was saying that biological differences between men and women make women less inclined towards tech jobs, not unsuited for them. There's a huge frickin' difference. He's not saying that women can't do those jobs or are bad at them - he's saying that they wouldn't want to.

All Damore is saying is that preferences might account for the gender gap in tech. Has anyone ever considered that people simply prefer what they prefer? If women (or men, for that matter) don't want tech jobs, why is that such a bad thing? What, I should assume everyone should love working in tech just because I do? What rubbish is this?

The manifesto was boring, yes. Pedantic, certainly. Sexist? Offensive? Debatable. I'm not a woman and I'm not working in Silicon Valley, and I'm definitely not some hyper-sensitive Liberal itching for any excuse to be offended, so, y'know, I could be biased.

I've always been a big fan of Google's purported inclusiveness. I liked the fact that if you were good enough to work there, they wouldn't turn you away for trivialities like sexual orientation, visible tattoos, or skin color. But if they went the other way and started hiring people of various sexual orientations with tattoos and piercings regardless of their actual ability just to appear inclusive, that would be a lot less cool. In fact, it would be pretty lame.

Which leads me to my next point...

Google's political idealogy

Damore thinks that Google leans too far to the Left. Some have claimed the opposite - that Google is as Right-leaning and Capitalist as any other corporation.

I disagree with all of them. I think Google has no political ideology to speak of. Its primary concern is staying afloat, and profitable, as a company. And this whole diversity schtick is merely a smoke-screen. Google doesn't care about diversity. Or the Left. Or the Right, for that matter. But it wants - needs - to look like it does.

Why? Because it's fashionable to do so. And, as a tech company, it makes more commercial sense to appeal to the Left than the Right. Assuming that representations of Left and Right in the USA are roughly equal, the younger tech-savvy crowd are mostly from the Left. Sure, you could find young people who identify as Conservatives, but how many old computer-literate Liberals are there? No, most of the aging population are dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives who are still trying to figure out how many pages a Facebook has. And the Lifetime Value of a senior citizen customer, let's face it,  just isn't that great.

And also because (ahem!) Google is currently facing gender pay discrimination charges, since April of this year.

All that seems to point to Google needing to appear as though it values diversity. Pronto.

That would explain why they're trying to force diversity across rather than let it happen organically. Because the latter could take decades. And Google needs it to happen now. Yesterday. Instant gratification. Just like their search engine.

That would also explain why they fired James Damore, rather than simply reprimand him and/or have that open honest discussion. Because they weren't interested in a discussion, open, honest or otherwise. The direction had already been set. Get on board, or get lost. Damore's manifesto was begging for the latter.

Did James Damore deserve to be fired?

CEO Sundar Pichai released a memo that explains the decision to sack Damore, saying that "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct".

Rather ironically, he also notes that "The author had a right to express their views on those topics - we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions."  In light of everything that happened, this one had me in stitches.

Sure, dude. Suuuure.

Damn, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Who else wants some of Pichai's "encouragement" to express your views? Any takers? Maybe this is just a ploy to weed out more of those dissenting voices. Very sneaky, bro. I approve!

"The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender." Sundar Pichai goes on to say, and at this point the urge to facepalm is overwhelming. You're firing somebody for hurting peoples' feelings? What the hell, Pichai? Now that's just patronizing. We're developers. We've all had to work with people we wouldn't give the time of day outside of the office. It's called professionalism - look it up!

On the basis of his opinion alone, Damore did not deserve to be fired. The kid had balls. Time will tell if he has brains to go with them. It was a difficult topic to write about without offending anyone, especially people who are traditionally eager to take offense. To his credit, Damore remained calm and took a neutral tone throughout his manifesto. The same cannot be said about some of his colleagues. A certain Jaana Dogan Tweeted "If HR does nothing in this case, I will consider leaving this company for real for the first time in five years." The Tweet was eventually removed, but its existence, however brief, unfortunately seemed to validate the less credible parts of Damore's manifesto regarding the fragile emotional state of women. In fact, it was reported here that female colleagues in Google had taken the day off because they were too upset at the contents of the manifesto to work. Is the irony lost on anyone?

That said, Google is facing some legal challenges as noted above, and the timing of this manifesto is bad publicity. If Google wishes to fire an employee for bringing the company into disrepute, I certainly don't have an argument against that. However, Damore only wrote the manifesto. He circulated it internally. Who were the miscreants who leaked it? We'll probably never know, but those are the real culprits. They leaked the email, and left Google with very few viable choices as to how to handle the situation.

On the other hand, James Damore did make a grave mistake.

Damore probably joined Google thinking that it was an open and liberated workplace, where only the strength of your skills matter. This incident has taught him the error of his ways.

Google is a company like any other, and it does what it must to survive. Google does not need to have an open and honest discussion about diversity because they don't actually care about diversity. They only care about appearing to care about diversity. Firing Damore was quick, efficient (again, just like their search engine) and threw Google's target demographic a bone. In effect, Damore effectively painted a target on himself as a convenient scapegoat for the insecurities of the Left.

He began his manifesto with

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don't endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.

He was polite, respectful in tone, and practically bent over backwards trying not to say anything explicitly triggering. But did he somehow imagine that appealing to a middle ground and attempting to sound neutral would not get twisted into an outright attack on women? God, that's painfully naive. This is a sensitive issue and there can be no middle ground, no naunced position. The PC culture permeating tech is full of land mines such as the one Damore just tripped.

Watch your step.

For failing to recognize that, for his lapse in judgement, yes, Damore needs to have his ass fired. 

Effect on Google

It's tempting to say Google dropped the ball on this one, but that would only be true if I thought Google actually valued diversity and freedom of speech.

See, if Google really cared about openness, freedom of expression and diversity, they would have taken the opportunity to address this internally, and engage Damore in a civil discussion. Canning Damore only made him a martyr in the Right's ongoing war against the Left. And, let's be real here, Damore's opinion wasn't formed in a vacuum, all by his lonesome. Google can say that Damore's opinion does not reflect the culture at Google, but can they honestly say that the vast majority of their remaining employees, men and women, fully disagree with Damore? Sure, they got rid of the noisy contrarian, but he was only a symptom of a larger problem. The resentment is still brimming at Google, and no amount of forcing Affirmative Action through is going to change that. So, if Google was truly all about that openness and progressiveness, they dropped the ball big time.

But I'm firmly of the opinion that Google isn't about any of those things. This is not a criticism in any way - remember what I said about moralizing anything? Well, I ain't about to start. Google is a business, and expecting it to conform to some high-minded ideals that have nothing to do with their core business, is muddleheaded. Google is about staying profitable, period. And all that jazz about inclusiveness is a means to an end, not the end in itself. A PR gag, nothing more.

No, Google didn't drop the ball. They weren't even playing ball. Hell, they weren't even on the friggin' pitch. From that business point of view, they did the only thing they could have done. Fire the dude, appease the ravening mob - instant PR damage control.

Still, this firing probably made a lot of people uneasy, even those who disagreed with Damore's manifesto. Aren't the people who join Google usually the kind who don't enjoy censorship very much? It's Damore now, and you could probably make yourself feel better by telling yourself that the little shit had it coming. When's it your turn, next?

What's in store for Damore

James Damore has garnered a fair bit of support from the Right (what a surprise) once the powder keg exploded. He's gotten employment offers and even an official fundraiser at
WeSearchr, declaring "Now they're attacking a man for honestly, wisely, and politely expressing his opinions to his colleagues. And they've gotten him fired." (Honestly, yes. Politely, sure. Wisely? Er...)

Damore just went from being Google's PR sacrificial lamb to the cat's paw of the Rightists. This guy just can't catch a break, can he?

Whose side are you on, anyway?

You mean Left, or Right? Please. Crap like this and this just make me glad I don't work in Silicon Valley. Or the USA, for that matter. The whole lot of you are certifiably fucking insane. Batshit. All you're doing for me right now is providing a nice noisy spectacle for me to point and laugh at.

But it sure is pretty sad to see technology get perverted by political agenda. Can we just, y'know, get back to making cool stuff?

Very un-PC regards,
T___T

A very unsexy sexism scandal for Uber

In the past two weeks, Uber has been in the news for the wrong reasons.

Susan Fowler, former site reliability engineer at Uber, now working for payment gateway company Stripe, released a blogpost which detailed an unpleasant account of the sexist treatment she received while working for Uber. You can read her story for yourself - it's a pretty absorbing tale. I'm just going to paraphrase some of the injustices she allegedly suffered.

- Fowler was sexually propositioned by her superior on her first day at work.

- Upon reporting the offence to HR, HR decided that the offender would not be penalized because he was a high performer and it was his first offense.

- Fowler was offered an option to transfer. However, if she opted to remain, she would risk a retaliatory bad performance review from her superior, and this review would be considered legit because she had refused the option to transfer. (Are you rolling your eyes at this crap? I am.)

- Subsequent complaints about the offender from other colleagues were similarly covered up with the "first offense" excuse.

- There's also some weird shit about leather jackets...

- Her Manager threatened to fire her because she reported his Manager to HR.

- Her performance reviews were altered negatively, blocking her chances for a raise, bonus and transfer.

Do I believe Fowler? I'm inclined to. It seems to be consistent with the overall "frat-bro" culture I've been hearing about at Silicon Valley. But just because I believe her doesn't automatically make her allegations true - and until this is confirmed by the other party, they remain allegations.

In all fairness, we don't have Uber's side of the story. And it's pretty hard to get at the moment considering CEO Travis Kalanick declared that he was going to conduct an internal investigation concerning Fowler's allegations, and said investigation is still ongoing. Coming from a guy who once described his company as "Boober", this strikes me as rather ironic.

But if - if Fowler's allegations are true, this is nothing short of disgusting.

Now, I've never been under the illusion that Human Resource was on the employee's side. I've long accepted that HR is on the side of management in most cases, and the sooner one comes to terms with this reality, the better. Even so, there ought to be limits. Covering up outright wrongdoing crosses that line twice. It's not so much that the offender in question was a hotshot who delivered consistently and that Fowler was just one of many engineers. This would have been as great a travesty if Fowler had been a janitor.

What are the consequences of this bad press?

As long as Uber continues to deliver quality services, I'm not about to support the #DeleteUber. campaign. Not that I think users shouldn't delete the Uber app - I think users should do whatever they damn well please. My objection to Uber's employment practices are not moral in nature. I don't care if Uber hires perverts with weird deviant fetishes in their spare time, wife abusers or utter assholes. As long as these people are good at what they do, all's well and dandy.

And no, I certainly don't give a flying fuck that Uber didn't participate in the taxi strike by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance in protest over the so-called Muslim ban by the Trump administration, which was the entire catalyst for the #DeleteUber campaign. Not everything is about Donald Trump, dammit!

No, my objections are from an ethical and professional standpoint. It is unethical to discriminate in terms of anything but ability. It is unprofessional to subject your co-workers to sexual harassment, which by any objective standard is a huge no-no. Nobody works in a vacuum. Nobody is that good. And when somebody unwilling or unable to play nicely with others, gets put in a position of power, everyone suffers. The company eventually suffers. No matter how good you are, it's only half the picture. The other half of the picture is all about how well you work with others.

By that measure, Uber has failed. Not as a service provider, but as a company. And I won't be shedding any tears if they do go down due to talent leaving, because based on this account, it's nothing less than they deserve.

However, users don't care about all that. And neither are they required to. Uber's user base does not look likely to significantly decrease. They may suffer a dip in profits, but this won't be a deal-breaker for their continued sustainability.

The real fallout is likely to be in employment. If Uber doesn't review the way it treats its employees pronto, they may find real difficulty in retaining current talent, and hiring future talent. No self-respecting engineer wants to be rated on anything but ability. In fact, the average engineer probably will not thrive in a toxic environment where playing office politics is required to get ahead.

I don't generally take cabs, so deleting Uber from my mobile is a moot point. But assuming I was an Uber user, this would not cause me to delete the app. I would, however, not want to work in Uber at all.

Having just a fraction of Fowler's ability and experience, I doubt Uber would be interested in hiring me (though I might make a pretty good janitor) but even if they were, I think it's safe to say I won't be touching that cesspool with a ten-foot pole. There are few things I detest more than a tech company that doesn't even attempt to treat its employees fairly. I've worked for enough of these companies to feel a severe antipathy towards such practices.

Damage Control

Richard Levick, founder and CEO of Levick, suggested that Uber could repair the situation by hiring more female engineers.

Are you fucking
serious?!

Firstly, hiring based on gender rather than ability is just more sexism. Not what Uber needs right now.

Secondly, hiring females just to appease the public is insulting to both the hired personnel and the people being appeased.

Thirdly, until Uber's macho-shit culture is improved and Human Resource practices put under severe scrutiny, they have no business hiring any female.

Yep, something smells fowl at Uber, all right.
T___T