PHOTO: The question of why there are fewer women in software engineering than men is discussed by former Google engineer James Damore, who had been fired after writing an essay suggesting biological reasons, in an interview of him by a respected San Francisco Silicon Valley Bloomberg TV reporter: Emily Chang interview of former Google Engineer James Damore "Bloomberg Technology," as watched on Bloomberg TV Corvallis Comcast cable channel 743 2-3PM Aug. 10, 2017 -- online as, "Fired Engineer James Damore: I Feel Google Betrayed Me," (8:40) youtube.com posted Aug. 9, 2017
Sex discrimination against the employment of females in historically male dominated fields, such as engineering, has been an issue for decades that both universities and companies have tried to eliminate. Despite all of the successes, over the last fifty years, in increasing the number of women in engineering, there are still a significantly fewer number of females than males graduating with a degree in engineering or working in engineering. The above story of how this issue has surfaced at Google, prompted me to write the following letter to the editor of the professional newspaper in my college town of Oregon State University, which has a large shool of engineering:
The respected San Francisco Silicon Valley Bloomberg TV reporter Emily Chang recently interviewed a former Google engineer, James Damore, who was fired after writing an essay suggesting there are fewer female engineers due to biological reasons.
Damore insists he is not spreading alt-right propaganda and he intelligently raises the valid, but controversial, question asking how much does nature vs. nurture lead to the fact today that fewer women than men work in science, technology, engineering or math.
Damore believes that even though nature causes most men and women to be born with obvious physical differences, most people can do any occupation, including ones traditionally dominated by one sex, given the necessary nurture.
In reaction, the female Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that changing the underrepresentation of females is limited by the fact that only 16 percent of software engineering graduates are female at the universities where Facebook recruits new hires, which is a lower percentage than it was a decade ago.
Even if genetic reasons are discovered in the future for the lower percentage of females in S.T.E.M., it should be used only to improve educational and recruitment processes, instead of as an excuse to discriminate.
(Quoted from Thomas Kraemer, "It's no excuse for discrimination," Gazette-Times, Aug. 17, 2017, p. A6 and posted as "Letter: Improve processes, don't discriminate" gazettetimes.com posted Aug. 14, 2017 updated Aug. 15-17, 2017 also see Link to previous Thomas Kraemer GT Letters)
The real reason behind this firing of an employee by Coogle will probably never be made public due to employment privacy laws that make it risky for companies to disclose too much detail. In my decades of management experience at Silicon Valley technology companies I have seen many cases where the real reason is not what the employee publically claims the firing was due to, but the real reason for a firing was due to the employee being unable to work productively with other people. However, the "group think" and political correctness that the fired Google engineer complains about is also real in my experience, and I have seen this lead to so-called "affirmative action" hiring programs that fail to pick the best candidate for the job. In my opinion, affirmative action, defined as intentionally discriminating in hiring to make up for past discrimination, can be useful, but it should be done only with a court order asking a compnay to do it after the company has been found guilty of illegally discriminating in the past. This doesn't mean that companies should do nothing. For example, instead of discriminating intentionally to hire more women, the compnaies I worked for would proactively recruit new hires at universities with a larger population of minority students, such as Howard University, or with active programs encouraging women to major in engineering. I found that this often resulted in finding some really good engineering talent that was being overlooked by other companies who would hire students only from the universities where they had recruited at in the past.
For more background see, "Emily Chang (journalist)" wikipedia.org accessed Aug. 11, 2017, who hosts the cable TV program "'Bloomberg Technology,'" wikipedia.org accessed Aug. 11, 2017, and "Sheryl Sandberg" wikipedia.org accessed Aug. 11, 2017, who is chief operating officer (COO) of Facebook. In 1987, Sandberg enrolled at Harvard College. She graduated in 1991 summa cum laude Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree in economics.
VIDEO: Emily Chang, "Fired Engineer James Damore: I Feel Google Betrayed Me," (8:40) youtube.com posted Aug. 9, 2017. Former Google Engineer James Damore has caused an uproar in Silicon Valley. This after he authored an internal 10-page memo asserting there are biological causes behind gender inequality in the tech industry. Damore, says he is "exploring all possible legal remedies," and that problems with the company's culture prompted him to write the memo. Bloomberg's Emily Chang caught up with Damore for broadcast exclusive. She started by asking about his reaction to Google letting him go.
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