SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
From The Verge:
Google didn't violate labor laws by firing engineer James Damore for a memo criticizing the company's diversity program, according to a recently disclosed letter from the US National Labor Relations Board. The lightly redacted statement is written by Jayme Sophir, associate general counsel of the NLRB's division of advice; it dates to January, but was released yesterday, according to Law.com. Sophir concludes that while some parts of Damore's memo were legally protected by workplace regulations, "the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected."
Damore filed an NLRB complaint in August of 2017, after being fired for internally circulating a memo opposing Google's diversity efforts. Sophir recommends dismissing the case; Bloomberg reports that Damore withdrew it in January, and that his lawyer says he's focusing on a separate lawsuit alleging discrimination against conservative white men at Google. NLRB records state that its case was closed on January 19th.
There are White House Staff positions open, I hear.
Previously: Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo on Gender Differences
Google Cancels "Town Hall" Due to Leaks
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 20 2018, @06:16PM (2 children)
And yet most of my female CS classmates reported stuff like this, and as mentioned universally switched from CS to math, physics, or finance. That's not something that just happens, and it shows that these were women who have the aptitude for technical work. Your daughters' choices suggest she doesn't have that interest, which is fine, but doesn't explain why women who did have enough interest to start taking CS courses decided to stop taking CS courses. It also sounds like you're in a different country than I am.
No, I'm talking about the Bletchley Park bombes which deciphered German codes, which was a 75% female staff. And I was a little off on the dates when things shifted: The majority of programmers of the early American computers, such as ENIAC and the Mark I, were women as well.
You're right that women also dominated the by-hand arithmetic that was relied on heavily by, for instance, NASA.
Yes, there were. Not many, but they existed. And of course a lot of what was going on in the early days of computing was more focused on hardware engineering rather than software, because of course the challenges were mostly about building computers than programming them to do things, and the programs were relatively simple due to the limitations of the equipment.
In the 1940's, women were most of the programmers, some of the engineers, and overall critical to the operation of computers. By the 1960's, all those professions were now dominated by men. That demands explanation, and a very reasonable explanation is that the well-documented sexism of the time affected computer-related professions just like they did most other professions.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TGV on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:44PM (1 child)
> universally switched from CS to math, physics, or finance.
Happens to a lot of the boys too. Except switching to physics is weird, since physics is a lot harder than CS.
> Yes, there were. Not many, but they existed.
No, there were no IT jobs. There were research jobs. There was no "information technology" in 1945. The ENIAC wasn't ready until 1946. In 1945, companies didn't have computers, only automated counters, which they didn't program.
> That demands explanation, and a very reasonable explanation is that the well-documented sexism of the time affected computer-related professions just like they did most other professions.
Absolute bollocks. Equally likely is that society in general didn't want it, or that they went on to get children, or that the returned men were simply better at programming stored program computers. And I mean equally likely in the sense of: reasoning you make up as you go without any proof, just to hammer on an idiotic argument. Much more likely is that it's a matter of numbers: in 1945, computers only existed as experiments, in 1960 all large companies and banks in the Western world had computers running. With all study grants for GIs returned from the front, men simply outnumbered women.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:36PM
The point that you're carefully ignoring is that the motivation for the switch wasn't because they weren't smart, or weren't good at math or science or engineering, it was to get away from the people in general and men in particular they were having to deal with in the CS department. Since dealing with those people added substantial difficulty to their CS work, they found physics the easier subject.
To give you an idea of the kind of stuff I'm talking about: CS lab monitors had to remove substantial amounts of pornography from the shared machines and male students were asking female students to show their tits while they were trying to work on their homework. And nobody involved was being punished.
As for my last point, are you denying that there was sexism in the US prior to 1960? Because it sure sounds like you are.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.