My experience with travel is similar to @MomofJandL. I only travelled a handful of times for work but every single time multiple people asked about the kids.
Quite often, it was people who actually know my husband, as we used to work for the same agency. I really wanted to ask how they had gotten the impression that he was too incompetent to keep the kids alive without me for a few days.
Maybe STEM people would benefit highly from taking some STS (science technology & society) courses. Maybe make some Bruno Latour required reading. We’ve been debating the cultural and political aspects to so-called neutral, apolitical science for quite some time now 
To add a couple of things about travel: When I say that my colleagues were sometimes gone for 15 weeks a year, I mean that if you added up all of the days that they were away from home, it amounted to 15 weeks, not that they were gone for few days, fifteen weeks a year. A lot of scientific conferences are weeklong.
I realize that some people have jobs that require that level of travel. Also, when people in the military are deployed, their families face much, much longer periods of absences.
But it is quite a challenge if both spouses have a career like that. I read a write-up a while back about a couple who were both scientists, and solved the problem of overlapping conferences that required travel by having live-in grandparents. (Not the solution for everyone.)
Also, I wanted to add: Just a guess about the gender of the majority of people asking a woman what she did about the children when she was traveling: female. I have never been asked this. I work in a male-dominated field. I think that when my colleague think about travel, they just don’t think about the children–it’s not on their radar.
This may be somewhat analogous to the fact that, not having grown up with a dog, when I am going to travel, the need for kennel reservations almost always occurs to be belatedly. Actually, our dog is on a list of “dogs who reserve late” at the local kennel (which is wonderful).
My spouse just recently realized that we were out of shampoo and bought a bottle! Yay! This happened before our 40th wedding anniversary! Once.
Just stating a study is biased without elaborating on how the study is flawed comes very close to the ad hominem fallacy. If bias unduly influenced a study, you should be able to state what was wrong with the methodology.
Talking about U.S.S.R, people from there should feel right at home at the progressive American companies. The level of indoctrination is pretty much the same.
I don’t agree with the assumption anyone can code, although maybe Mr. Zunger is making a semantic difference between knowing how to write code and knowing what code to write. Anyone can learn the syntax, but there’s more to good programming than that. Almost all commercial software has bugs and security holes, which is part of why they push frequent updates. To a large extent, writing secure, bug free code remains an unsolved problem in CS. There’s some software development, which anyone might be able to do, but those tend to be the very easy problems(ex. basic smartphone app).
Coding (and computer programming) was pioneered by women, and up through the 1960’s, largely viewed as “woment work”.
See: http://womensenews.org/2012/03/women-were-first-computer-programmers/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/
There’s also a study reported here that suggests that women write better code then men-- see:
https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2016/02/18/study-shows-women-are-better-coders-but-only-when-gender-is-hidden
This article from The Atlantic provides a good overview of what drove the shifting perception of computer programming as “women’s work” toward the present day stereotype:
The big failing of the Damore’s memo is that it is premised on stereotypes that only came into existence after computer progamming shifted from being a female-dominated to a male-dominated profession. One could expect the stereotypes to shift as the demographics shifted.
I think you should be fired from CC because you’re implying that men are inferior at writing software (regardless of any studies you use to back up the claim).
Perhaps the comments was made in jest, but no she should not be fired from CC. This is an appropriate venue to have such a conversation and her comments address the topic of this very thread. We all are on equal footing with an opportunity to share our ideas here on CC and don’t have to consider all the factors that Google does with regard to this memo. I supported Charles Murray’s right to speak of similar issues on a college campus.
These types of debates really are not suitable for the workplace. If my boss introduces this thought about women at a meeting, how comfortable am I going to be in debating him? Sure I would certainly politely disagree, but am I going to give it all I’ve got and tell him exactly what I think of his sweeping generalizations about women and of him? If I value my job, no I am not. So his idea has a better chance of taking root in that workplace to the detriment of myself and other women.
And Google has to worry about it’s global consumer base. Damore’s memo is now splashed across the press and could alienate half the world’s population --some of whom may choose other service providers. And what about the 31% of Google’s workforce that are women? Should part of their job be to listen to Damore’s opinion that they are employed at Google not because they earned the job but because of some political agenda? How many women are going to want to work with or for this guy? That presents a problem for Google.
So the environment that these conversations take place have very different considerations.
In other words, the issue here is it was made public, and not that the engineer wrote a controversial opinion. Shouldn’t Google’s business team have known better and make sure the internal debate remain internal rather than squashing an opinion? They had known about the memo for a month before it became public. If someone should be fired over this, it should be someone on business side. Aren’t they covering up their management flop? Is that how they solve their problems?
The last few days, while waiting for some more evolutionary pyschologists to perhaps give their opinion in the popular press, I tried reading the research. With almost no science background, I’m not sure if any of my take-away is correct. But with a little luck, maybe someone who understands will enlighten me. Thanks in advance.
It seems to me, there is a group of scientists in this field that doesn’t believe in the work of David P Schmitt. I believe one of them is Terri Conley.
One criticism made of this field, and lab research in general I believe, is sometimes experiments can’t be replicated. This is an issue I’ve heard scientist friends discuss. If experiments can’t be replicated, we can’t know the results are true, though maybe they are. How the experiment is run matters a whole lot.
One thing Damore discusses in the memo is prenatal androgen exposure, which he says impacts male brains, based on research he has read.
Here is an abstract with a different conclusion about prenatal androgen exposure. If I understand correctly, although autistic children are studied, the results can be accepted for the whole population of children. If there are gendered brain differences, they should show up most significantly in autistic children.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27460188
I dont’ know enough to evaluate any of the research I’ve been doing, and don’t understand a whole lot of what I’ve been reading, since I just do not have enough background. I have studied some history, and it does seem to me psychology is a field, that itself, is always evolving. Some previously accepted ideas no longer are accepted.
adding: my social circle includes a lot of scholars. Many of them would never ever give an interview to the press. So I don’t really know what we can read into the fact more scientists aren’t joining this public debate.
Heh, alh, join the public debate on this topic, or volunteer to be drawn and quartered? Got to think about that choice . . . on the other hand, the first choice may imply the second choice as well. 
In that vein, this is a fascinating article: “Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real. Which means science is broken.”
"But for most observers, at least the mainstream ones, the paper posed a very difficult dilemma. It was both methodologically sound and logically insane. Daryl Bem had seemed to prove that time can flow in two directions—that ESP is real. If you bought into those results, you’d be admitting that much of what you understood about the universe was wrong. If you rejected them, you’d be admitting something almost as momentous: that the standard methods of psychology cannot be trusted, and that much of what gets published in the field—and thus, much of what we think we understand about the mind—could be total bunk.
If one had to choose a single moment that set off the “replication crisis” in psychology—an event that nudged the discipline into its present and anarchic state, where even textbook findings have been cast in doubt—this might be it: the publication, in early 2011, of Daryl Bem’s experiments on second sight."
@calmom is fired! How will you live without the zero dollars?? LOL!
Public board vs workplace board. Corporate politics and correctness is still strong at Google, even if they let you wear hoodies and sit on the floor to work!
Thank you @anomander for that very interesting and well-written article. As with most media, the title overreaches the information in the article. It does not suggest that the scientific method (or science) in general is broken, but that the application of the scientific method in the social sciences is broken. I have degrees in both engineering in political science, and for similar peers this is not really news. It is very evident that the standard for experimental design acceptable error are much different in the “hard” sciences than in the social sciences. The recent polling debacles for the US and Brexit elections are further examples that these fields combine small sample sizes and a far-reaching sets of potentially biasing variables that can’t possibly be controlled to produce results that always have to be taken as something less than “proof”. Combine that with the popular “correlation does not imply causation” warning that is almost virtually ignored by any biased research or reporter, and you have whole fields of research that can barely be trusted.
Back to the google memo, honestly the best point that the author makes is that tendencies of population distributions should always be understood to be just that – averages of diverse populations that make no meaningful predictions about any one member of that population. If it is indeed true that women as a population italics are less likely to choose a career in software engineering, that would be a result of a mix of 100s of possible variables – biological, developmental, and sociological all included – that would be practically impossible to meaningfully isolate in any study because the of every test-subject’s life has neither been controlled nor observed.
I think the best way to support the argument of work to promote women in STEM fields is not to try to disprove any biological link to performance or preference – rather it is to point to the idea (proven or unproven) that it is reasonable to conclude that there is some influence from socialization that can be likely be somewhat offset by a positive focus on development and recruiting of women in STEM fields. If the goal is a perfect 50% representation of women, then you have to answer all of the biology vs sociology questions at some point. But if the goal is just improvement from somewhere well below 50% (I thinks someone earlier in this thread cited a % in the 20s for women software engineers at Google?), then there is room to set the biological questions aside and focus only on initiatives that address the portion that will certainly be due to sociological bias.
That all being said, I am going to join the camp that says Google should NOT have fired this guy based on this memo alone. He bent over backward in his internal memo to try to open up discussion, not to mandate any conclusions. Whether or not you think there is any sound science to back up his claims, there is certainly enough lack of solid proof on either side to place this in the realm of ideas that should be open to debate. The experience certainly supports (though doesn’t prove!) his initial hypothesis that Google is an ideological echo chamber that does not allow for expression or discussion of alternate points of view.
And no, they didn’t have to fire the guy just for PR reasons. If they had put out a release that said:
“The points of view in the recently released memo do not represent Google or the majority of our employees. However, Google does embrace a global and diverse workforce, and value the spirit of independence, respect, and thoughtfulness that allows our employees to openly discuss a variety of issues and to educate and enrich one another. All of our employees and customers are better off for having ideas – even wrong or unpopular ones – brought out into the open and enlightened by perspective and debate rather than festering in corners of darkness and insularity. By being allowed to openly state his views in a safe environment, Google also allowed others to respond and inform this individual as to many aspects of the conversation that he may have missed or misunderstood.”
Google would have won in every way. They missed that chance.
"Google has, perhaps unintentionally, created an authoritarian atmosphere that has stifled discussion of these issues by stigmatizing anyone who disagrees as a bigot and instituted authoritarian policies of reverse discrimination; "
This was from one of the 4 ‘scientists’ commenting on this case and if so, I wonder how much of a scientist they are, they are making a statement of fact out of something that is opinion, when you say google created an authoritarian atmosphere and don’t back it up with some sort of proof, other than the rant of an employee, it isn’t science.
Are there differences between men and woman? Yes. Are some biological? I am pretty certain the answer there is yes, both studies (for example, where trained professionals in the social science field tried raising kids as gender neutral as possible, and some things came out of that that indicated strongly it isn’t just gender bias (and like anything else, I say indicated strongly, because some kids didn’t fit the pattern), and studies of cultures, including ones untouched by the outside world, and certain things seem to be tied to biology, and I don’t dispute that, that is my feeling as well. Where culture comes in and biology goes away is debatable but arguing that the difference between women and men is all cultural is as wrong as arguing it is all biology, or that culture and biology are all very powerful things.
It is funny he mentions prenatal hormones, research on mammals has shown that the identity of the brain, of certain roles, is based in a series of prenatal hormone washes, and that if they are interrupted or blocked, you end up with very different behavior. Studies of the human brain have shown differences in brain wiring between men and women, so he is not wrong (there is an irony to this, this guy obviously is on the right end of the political spectrum, and I wonder if he shares the bias against transgender people that seems a big deal on the right; ironic because one of the more interesting theories about transgender people is their brain wiring is different because something happened with the pre natal hormone sequences, which would mean that being transgender is not a ‘choice’ as seems common to be thought on the right). I also will tell you that personally I think hormones play more than a bit with how men and women operate, some positive , some negative for either, but that is not a negative or knock, to me it is a reality that varies with each person, and the key to success is using what you have that is positive while tempering what can be negative, but that is true no matter the cause.
Funny part is, if Google is this Kumbaya leftist place, how come it is so successful? How come with all their diversity, and hiring and promoting people he thinks shouldn’t be, they are successful? Maybe, just maybe, this guy’s problem is that he thinks Google should be all like him, white uber techno nerds who can turn out a ton of code on some problem, and maybe Google has realized that model does’t work? Google within the last 10 years or so dropped a lot of the hire the 4.0 GPA in tech wunderkind who passes all our clever puzzles, and starting looking at more well rounded people…and the proof I think is in the pudding. I also think his whining about ‘conservative voices’ being ‘suppressed’ is hogwash, what does he mean, that Google should get rid of protections for non whites, women and gays, and allow employees to discriminate because they are a born again Christian and think gays are evil? Funny part about the workplace, things like religion, politics and the like are generally off limits, while people obviously have their own personal beliefs, in the workplace they don’t mean anything, and shouldn’t, they are irrelevant. If he means political thought in terms of “well, it is proven fact that only those with CS degrees with a 4.0 who are men can get the job done”., that is politics, not reality.
Personally I think this is a whine from someone who sees other people get promoted and doesn’t realize that his issues are likely caused by the fact that he seems very blind and narrow focused on what makes for success and so forth, he sees it through what he is. I think Google was right to fire him and even though I suspect the EEOC will take up his case, given the bent of the current administration, I think courts will rule against him, even conservative ones. Workplaces are not democracies, and the protections on speaking your mind in the workplace generally cover things like safety issues or harassment, and if an employee writes something, whether they intend to publish it or not, that hurts the company or goes against its policies, they have every right to fire them. Speaking as someone who knows employment law pretty well, the reason they rule against him is this would set a precedent that any employee could say what he/she wants about a company and not be fired, even if it hurts the company, and I doubt any court would want to go that far, to set a precedent that the labor law basically gives carte blanche to employees to speak their mind on anything, it would be chaos. If he had a beef with google he could have taken this through HR, he could have pitched it to managers, what he did was cause dissent in the workplace (speaking to my friend who works there, he said the people who supported this guy were mostly white guys and a few women, all very conservative, he said most employees he talked to were pissed off at this guy for being such a jerk). Basically most employees felt this was an attempt to couch the old argument, that if white men dominate something, it must be because they are ‘better’, it is ironic the writer talks about the problems of the right/left extremism yet cannot see the extremist view he is espousing.
You all are making this too complicated.
Google fired this guy so that the firing and the memo explaining it could be Exhibit A in the various employment discrimination and sexual harassment cases against Google.
It’s company CYA pure and simple.
@tating:
Not cya in that sense, all the diversity training in the world and so forth would not defend a company in a sexual harassment suit, all the policies in the world mean nothing if the company doesn’t defend them. The reason Google fired the guy was pretty simple, what he wrote created dissension in the company (I have several friends who work at Google, they said the only people backing this guy are fellow alt right types to this guy, as my friend put it 'the techno priesthood types" who think they are the tip of the Ayn Rand universe, his words, not mine) and also having someone who could write something like this working for you won’t exactly bring them new or the kind of business they want, to be blunt, this guy is a PR nightmare other than to the alt right world of things where men, specifically white men, are this new underclass or something.
I just want to point out that this discussion here is probably the most level-headed and enlightening from both sides that I’ve seen so far on this topic. Thank you fellow parents!
An employer’s ‘reasonable care’ to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace is an affirmative defense to holding the employer liable for the actions of its employees.
Hence, the memo and the firing could be used by Google to say ‘we were doing all we could to prevent this sort of thing at our company’. That’s why all this diversity training takes place in the first place. It’s for the inevitable lawsuits. Diversity training seminars are more evidence to bolster the the affirmative defense against liability by the employer.