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Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

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Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#11

Post by watwut »

alanfranzoni wrote: post #4

I'd really like to see this document as a whole before judging. By the way, I think that being really open means listening to opinions without "rage quitting" for holding an unpopular opinion, or calling him a "racist" or "white male supremacy supporter", which is a way to turn down an argument whatever its merit is. Is the document's author a jerk? Let's explain that to him, and maybe shame him on a data-driven basi…

If the "unpopular opinion" is euphemism for "dude assumes I am less competent without even knowing me" then being "really open" is indistinguishable from being one massive doormat.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#13

Post by alanfranzoni »

lwansbrough wrote: post #8
alanfranzoni wrote: post #4

I'd really like to see this document as a whole before judging. By the way, I think that being really open means listening to opinions without "rage quitting" for holding an unpopular opinion, or calling him a "racist" or "white male supremacy supporter", which is a way to turn down an argument whatever its merit is. Is the document's author a jerk? Let's explain that to him, and maybe shame him on a data-driven basi…

At the same time, if the data supported his claims, I wonder what Googlers would have to say. If Google wants the best, what is it willing to risk? Personally I think for most companies you're better off with a diverse crowd regardless, lest you end up with a bunch of out of touch yuppie guys trying to "change the world" by building an IOT coffee machine. That is to say, all types of diversity be it race, socioeconom…

That may be an issue.

Of course, it depends on what you mean by "best". If "best" means "like me", you're at risk of creating a monoculture.

Personally, I think that we should stop looking for "the best" at all times and enormously rewarding them, because this is creating a lot of disparity, and maybe "the best" sometimes carry with them some large drawback (possibly "the best" engineer spends 10 hour working, and 6 more hours a day studying in order to improve; but, then, his social life and his human skills may be... lacking). If we pick all the best in this sense, we may end up with a lot of similar, great people with a lot of drawbacks.

What if we ask "is this candidate good" or "is this candidate really good"? We should try to identify a bar, then pick people (maybe randomly, maybe with a diversity target) that go beyond that bar without looking at finding "the best".

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#14

Post by fennecfoxen »

Google is substantially located in the Bay Area. Of course they hate ideological diversity, in practice if not in principle. It is an attitude common in their workforce.

This is a tendentious statement, so I will relate my own experience. Once upon a time I was working in California, at a tiny startup, and was reading some election results from "back home" in North Carolina, which had just passed Amendment One by about a 3:2 margin. Observing the results thoughtfully, my coworker casually remarked "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people."

I just quietly sat back and thought "why, how nice of you, sir, to refer to some unknown fraction of my family and the friends I had growing up in such a lovely manner."

At one point my girlfriend (now an ex-girlfriend) attended a party that he was hosting. She had just left Missouri out of disgust for its Missouri-ness, and was very much in love with San Francisco and its people – yet left the party modestly offended – not for saying anyone in particular was bad this time, but just with all the best of intentions saying it was inevitable that they'd all come around to the modern views on things like gay marriage (and, in the process, utterly trivializing their religion, values, and world-views).

I do not seek to cast him as a bad person for this remark. This is a man who, if anything, is one of the nicest people I know, easily far above the average, and a quitessential San Franciscan (well above and beyond your typical tech hipster). But he is immersed in a culture which specifically and explicitly denies human dignity of people who are not alike and do not think alike.

This is very sad. You would think if there is one lesson we could take from the history of the US, religious tolerance in the colonies, slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, our wars with Native Americans, the likes of the Japanese Internment, women's suffrage, everything ... if there's one resounding strain here, it's that you don't un-people people.

(but it's okay to un-people these people, because they're bad people!)

In conclusion:

I sympathize with this guy who wrote this manifesto. It is also unfortunate that, from what I hear and understand of the matter, this guy is factually in error, probably sexist, and almost certainly undermining his cause.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#15

Post by xendo »

I like how some of the commenters try to force HR to take an action by threatening to leave. That's hell of a way to promote diversity, and freedom to express yourself. Diversity is a double edge sword: you need to be able to accept other people opinions if you expect them to accept you. P.S. I obviously haven't read the document, and all the comments really reference only short statement without any context, so it's really hard to comment on it.

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#17

Post by alanfranzoni »

watwut wrote: post #11
alanfranzoni wrote: post #4

I'd really like to see this document as a whole before judging. By the way, I think that being really open means listening to opinions without "rage quitting" for holding an unpopular opinion, or calling him a "racist" or "white male supremacy supporter", which is a way to turn down an argument whatever its merit is. Is the document's author a jerk? Let's explain that to him, and maybe shame him on a data-driven basi…

If the "unpopular opinion" is euphemism for "dude assumes I am less competent without even knowing me" then being "really open" is indistinguishable from being one massive doormat.

We can't know that if we don't read the full document.

I think you're jumping to conclusions without assessing facts first; that's exactly the issue I'm talking about. As soon as somebody says something about "politically correct" practices, he must fear retaliation.

Maybe he/she is saying that such diversity practices don't work as intended, and that diversity should be achieved in a different way. Maybe he/she is saying that such diversity practices led to hiring women or other minorities, but that the mindset is not growing different enough. Have you ever considered such possibilities?

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#18

Post by ubernostrum »

noncoml wrote: post #5

> replacing Google's diversity initiatives with policies that encourage "ideological diversity" I somehow think that if one aims for "ideological diversity" then "gender/race/minority diversity" will come for free. But the question is how to you target "ideological diversity" when hiring.

"Ideological diversity" usually boils down to "fill the place up with people who think like me, the person calling for ideological diversity".

Re: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

#19

Post by koonsolo »

Why does US have these diversity problems? Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men?

I can tell you, in Belgium, in my experience and what I hear, this is not an issue whatsoever. Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men.

Do you really care so much whether the person you work with is male, female, black, white, comes from a different background, etc? I just want to work with people that I like and who can handle the job.

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