Over the last several days a Google doc has gone viral titled “Google’s Ideologic Echo Chamber”. In it the author, James Damore, makes the case that Google’s left leaning bias and handling of diversity is counter productive. In a TL;DR section in the document he statesting: ” Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business”.

Mainly, his argument centers on how conservative ideas are not allowed at Google saying: “Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.”

I could see how this would be a problem at Google. I would imagine that working in very liberal San Francisco might be a bit one sided. And I would agree that Google should fight the binary political tribalism that we’ve allowed to grip this entire country over the last decade.
But where Damore looses me is in the example of conservative ideas that he uses: sexism.

Damore argues that sexism is justified because women and men differ biologically: “On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways.” What Damore doesn’t understand in some ways gender is poorly understood and in other our understanding is much more flexible than he portrays. And it is very difficult to tease out what traits are culturally caused and what traits are biological. Nonetheless, in his doc, Damore connects so called scientifically supported differences in traits to women being worse at certain things in the workplace: “This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.” He does this by making an inferential leap from biological differences straight to sexism with no evidence to support the connection. Sure this is wrong because it is wrong. Even if women are worse at certain things (which I do not think they are) wouldn’t a just society strive to bring them up and not relegate them to “jobs that fit their traits” as Damore suggests?

We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).

Are we so hell bent that we would demean our fellow citizens telling them” sorry you’re too people oriented for this job”? And even if biology did support Damore’s claims, is it still not sexist to treat genders differently?

But to move beyond all of that, there are two really good reasons why Damores argument is absolute horseshit:

  1. Damore makes a mental leap inferring that biological trait differences lead to women having a harder time “negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading”, a connection not supported by the literature; and
  2. the evidence Damore uses to support his claims is inconclusive.

Mental Leap

So let’s say for a moment that Damore is correct, that we know that women have certain traits that differ from men and these traits are not a result of culture but of biology. How do we know if those traits are better or worse for leadership? Damore claims that women, on average, have more “openness”, “extroversion”, and “neuroticism”. He then makes the leap that these characteristics make women more anxious, worse at handling high stress jobs, and worse at gaining status and leadership within their workplaces.

At least for leadership, this connection, is not supported by research. In one meta-analysis, reserchers found:

*Overall, our results linking personality with ratings of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors were weak. Judge, Bono, et al. (2002) noted that the Big Five explain 28% of the variability among ratings of leadership emergence and 15% of the variability among ratings of leadership effectiveness. In our study, the Big Five explained 12% of the variability in charisma and only 5% and 6% of the variability in ratings of intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, respectively. In another meta-analysis on the dispositional basis of leadership perceptions, Lord et al. (1986) found that masculinity was the strongest personality predictor of leadership perceptions, explaining 11% of the variability among leaders (the other traits they examined had R2 s ranging from .02 to .05).

This doesn’t make a good argument that personality traits are well connected with leadership. So Damore’s assumption that women are worse at leadership due to their traits is shaky at best. But he claims it nonetheless, so that “conservative” ideas that need to be talked about are herd? But it doesn’t even matter that there is no connection between traits and success in the workplace because the science that suggests that traits are biological is also extremely week.

Evidence Linking Gender to Traits

To make an argument that traits lead to certain outcomes, it would be best if you first were rock solid in your determination that the group you were assigning traits to, actually had the traits. Damore, in his doc, doesn’t do so. One study he cited states:

Research on gender differences in personality and interests typically relies on data from standardized tests. Because such tests use self-report scales, their scores may be influenced by social stereotypes, social desirability response sets, and self-construal processes (See Feingold, 1994; Guimond, 2008).

Another source concedes:

There are many forms of bias in personality measurement and some of these biases are very difficult to quantify (Cheung & Rensvold, 2000; Grimm & Church, 1999). For example, it can be difficult to determine whether self-reports reflect role requirements, intrinsic differences in personality traits, or some interactive combination of both.

and that:

In more traditional and less developed cultures a man is, indeed, more like a woman, at least in terms of self-reported personality traits.

Combine these cited caveats with the fact that psychological sciences are in the midst of a replication crisis and you begin to paint of picture of psychological science that is less than conclusive.

So, we have a large step of from biological traits to outcomes and a lack of science behind the actual traits.

The Real Point

Despite Damore making a crap scientific argument, this is still all bullshit. Damore is saying that by telling women that they have traits that make them worse in some areas, particularly areas highly respected in our society (salary, being heard and leadership) will somehow actually help them. But in reality a company who condones this sort of sexist rhetoric, will not attract more women. If I were a woman and someone I worked for told me that because of my biology I’m going to be less successful at this company than a man, I would tell them to “GO F@%K themselves”.

The fact that Damore is requesting that google re-think its “left” echochamber of empowering women in the workplace and instead strive to put women in their biological place, is absurd. And I think Google did the right thing by firing him and rejecting his ideas in their workplace.