John Gruber of Daring Fireball on James Damore
August 24, 2017John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame isn’t one to step away from controversy. Whether you agree or not with his thoughts on Apple, tech, and design, he’s still considered a thought leader.
Yesterday he posted his thoughts on James Damore.
I found his original document extraordinarily tedious to read because it contained about two pages worth of ideas spread across 10 pages of a sort of academic-ese-like writing. He used that abstract, detached, wordy point-of-view to make his thesis come across as non-confrontational. I’m not against women in tech, I’m just pro facts, and here are some facts.
I think that’s the best thing I’ve read about the James Damore’s piece. I also found it hard to read. It wasn’t hard to read because it hurt emotionally, though I can understand why plenty of people could feel that way. It was hard to read because it contained few actual points and a lot of stretching those points. By somehow spreading the ideas out, the sharpness of the ideas was tempered so then there was more controversy since it was harder to pin down what was being said. People could claim he did or didn’t say one thing or another because it was little content spread out.
When he went and distilled his thoughts into digestible tweets, the sharpness came back. And then it’s clear just what he thinks about women as developers or in tech. He actually does think it’s an imaginary notion that more women could be successful in tech.
It should be pretty hard to split hairs on the details of what he meant now.
