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The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

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Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#171

Post by taysic »

chroma wrote: post #138

I notice a lot of misrepresentation of views on both sides, almost to the point of strawmanning. I think a charitable interpretation of the author's best points can be summarized as follows: - Racism & sexism still exist, even at Google. This is bad. (On the bright side, the problem seems to be getting better over time.) - It's good (and good for business) to eliminate discrimination based on gender, race, sexual pre…

As a female engineer I don't resonate with the proposed changes for woman working with other people etc. I'm a very independent worker and that's partly why I've thrived in this field. In short, I don't think companies should make any adjustments based on gender. Just ignore it - that part I agree with - let people self select what and where they want to work themselves. And I also don't agree with quotas though I see how they might have served a purpose at one time.

If other woman are anything like me, the bullet list comparing two different points of view are cringe. People are so hard to define. And woman in particular I think generally don't feel like their potential is known yet because their presence in the workplace is so young relatively. So the last thing anyone wants is to be categorized by old stereotypes.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#172

Post by golf1052 »

spaceseaman wrote: post #21
ubernostrum wrote: post #2

Ah, yes, the true believer in meritocracy, who assumes that the present-day distribution of careers and job titles is a perfect reflection of inherent skills, talents and interests hard-wired in by biology. Because there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone's ever tried to rig large-scale societal systems to discriminate on the basis of factors like race or sex, and even if there ever had been such a thing, it is co…

I think your tone is a little smug but completely agree. To be frank I empathize with the writer of the article a bit. He worked very hard to achieve his position, and with that hard work comes a belief that the system he achieved in was inherently fair. It's difficult to call the situations we benefit from unfair - it's important for our self-worth that we value our accomplishments. But the key is that the author's…

I do agree with your initial comment but I would rather suggest that the author tries to look at the disadvantages that others have while reaching the same point that the author has. Yes, the author has done a lot to get to the position they're in but others in the face of racism or sexism have to work a hell of a lot more.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#173

Post by home_boi »

rayiner wrote: post #125
factsaresacred wrote: post #5

I fail to understand the outrage but attribute that to the fact that few bothered to read the document before allowing themselves to be outraged by it - such is the shallow, feeling-fueled, hysteria-laden media cycle of today. The doc presents a point-of-view, grounded in reality. Furthermore it's not "anti-diversity", but rather anti-discrimination - specifically 'positive 'discrimination which it discredits while p…

The argument basically proceeds as follows: 1) Gender differences exist 2) ??? 3) Differences in representation are explainable by gender differences The problem with the "???" step is that it's unrigorous handwaving. "Women prefer working with people." Okay, so that's why the majority of accountants are women? That's why STEM fields that don't involve people at all (math, biology) actually have quite a lot of women,…

The competition isn't much better. There are hundreds of these massive leaps of logic used to justify the use of race and gender in hiring. Basically every reason for why the demographics of tech is the way it is this oversight.

At the core of diversity hiring (which corporations have spent billions of dollars on), the benefits of racial and gender diversity in a workforce have never been proven.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#174

Post by JSONwebtoken »

rayiner wrote: post #125
factsaresacred wrote: post #5

I fail to understand the outrage but attribute that to the fact that few bothered to read the document before allowing themselves to be outraged by it - such is the shallow, feeling-fueled, hysteria-laden media cycle of today. The doc presents a point-of-view, grounded in reality. Furthermore it's not "anti-diversity", but rather anti-discrimination - specifically 'positive 'discrimination which it discredits while p…

The argument basically proceeds as follows: 1) Gender differences exist 2) ??? 3) Differences in representation are explainable by gender differences The problem with the "???" step is that it's unrigorous handwaving. "Women prefer working with people." Okay, so that's why the majority of accountants are women? That's why STEM fields that don't involve people at all (math, biology) actually have quite a lot of women,…

Assuming 1) is a true premise and 2) ??? is some black box function, it's hard to reason in any way that 3) is not true to some extent. When you change the input, you would expect the output to change unless you can somehow argue that ??? is f(x) = C. You can say step 2) is egregious handwaving, but as long as you cannot prove f(x) is a constant, 3) is true.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#175

Post by brown9-2 »

remarkEon wrote: post #157
taysic wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman, the way I feel is whatever the differences are - are hard to prove and isolate outside of our society. Whatever they are makes no difference to me. Every person has a right to pursue their own happiness with their choosing. But delineating or using these differences to justify behavior does not feel appropriate in a work place. If a company could not find many female engineers to hire (I am one) then ok.…

Except they aren't difficult to prove, and this is what really really bothers me. We've got hundreds of thousands of years of innate, biologically formed behaviors that we have because they were evolutionarily advantageous. I'm not saying we should use these differences to discriminate, what I'm saying is that it's pretty easy to observe that they inform behavior and career preference.

What you keep referring to as "biologically formed behaviors" others see as "formed by society".

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#176

Post by throwanem »

bhouston wrote: post #166
throwanem wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean it's a falsehood cynically advanced by a power elite to maintain a social order which would otherwise be uprooted, and those responsible torn toe from nail, by the vast majority upon whom it inflicts grave injustice toward some greater goal whose tangible benefits somehow never make it as far as them?

You'll have to explain the missing logical steps as I do not see how you got to this conclusion.

There are no logical steps to miss. None are required. The concept of the "noble lie" originates in Plato's inexplicably popular power fantasy The Republic. Its purpose there is as I describe it here; I differ only in choosing terms rather less congratulatory than the old fraud used himself.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#177

Post by humanrebar »

cbeach wrote: post #75

"Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently." As an experiment, I'd like to see if HN upvotes or downvotes this statement from the memo. I'm willing to put my karma score on the line to find out what HNers believe (this will help me decide if HN is a community worth investing…

You might be getting downvoted by people who don't like this kind of experiment. Or your use of scare quotes or something. I'm not sure you can draw a lot of conclusions from the score on your post.

But, yes, most of the HN community lives in a bubble. If we're honest, we all do, but people who take pride on their education and intelligence are especially challenged when finding that kind of humility.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#178

Post by door »

throwanem wrote: post #142
door wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

read "myths of gender" or "delusions of gender" on this subject, which thoroughly debunk this essentialist nonsense about "biological" gender difference. anyone in any sociology or anthropology department will tell you how incredibly obviously false the biological essentialist position of gender is. it's literally only white men in tech or right-wing white male biologists writing outside their field of expertise who…

Sociology and anthropology being, of course, fields particularly noted for their peerless objectivity and rigor...

uh yeah i'd rather trust people who study society for a living for their opinions on social theory than some computer science major who has never taken a soft science class in his life

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#179

Post by AlexandrB »

DuskStar wrote: post #114
aeriklawson wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jumping from a few studies about infants and monkeys to "...you can assume that there are at least some biological differences in behavior between the sexes - and thus differing workplace representation is not necessarily 100% derived from social pressures." is far, far from enough evidence and extremely hand-wavy to make a scientific argument here.

There isn't really a leap. All I'm saying is that we have evidence for some gender differences that are rooted in biology, and thus we cannot assume that other differences have no biological component. Which is what asserting that 100% of a gender gap is caused by social pressures does.

It's very convenient to hand-wave away the problem as "biological differences". Until we have some direct link between biology and preference for software development I think the wiser course of action is to try to get more women interested in the field. I mean why not? That's not to mention that open discrimination against women in numerous fields is a thing that happened within the lifetimes of people that are still alive today. It seems foolish to think that's all been fixed already.

Re: The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

#180

Post by rifung »

swframe2 wrote: post #104

I was talking to coworker who recently transferred from China to the US. He told me that China is will dominate the US because diversity is the greatest US weakness. Kind of shocking because our company is about 1/3 White, Indian and Chinese. But he doesn't see that as diversity. I think that is the answer that he can't see. Once groups accept each other as equals diversity becomes a non-issue. It does take work and…

> I was talking to coworker who recently transferred from China to the US. He told me that China is will dominate the US because diversity is the greatest US weakness.

Has said coworker seen the research which suggests diversity increases company performance? http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...

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