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

* This is a longer post, which should be fine, but there is little organization to the different thoughts in it; this makes it harder to digest. Maybe do a bit of signposting or provide headings for your subsections.

* Since it's longer, your post would probably be better served as a top-level comment. Or a full-on blogged response submitted to HN as an article.

* Since it's longer, it's probably getting less attention; a few detractors are enough if everyone else is disinterested.

* You ask more questions than can probably be answered coherently in the HN format. It's possible that some are rhetorical, but it's not clear which.

* Some of your thoughts are strong, some are fine, some aren't all that strong at all. It's not worth breaking them all down. But, for example, you ask what inherent psychological differences exist. It's fairly easy (compared to debugging a core dump) to search around a little bit and get a cursory understanding of that position. Some people might consider that enough to downvote and move on. Given the length of your post, you might just leave that sort of thing out in the future.

* You seem to reject that gender issues don't include a right/left schism. I think that's an interesting position, but the burden would be on you to support it.

My reply is already longer than it should be, but I hope some of that is helpful. If not, it was meant well at least.

Sexual harassment, discrimination, racism and personal attacks absolutely do not belong in the workplace.

The usual advice is to keep politics out of the workplace, but "progressive" ideals are often the default with nobody batting an eyelid. You run the risk of being marked as a non culture fit if you ever voice opposition to or question "progressive" talking points or assertions. I'm not even talking about actionable slights against other staff here, just a difference of opinion which people seem to interpret as a personal attack.

An example would be somebodies thoughts on affirmative action or other methodologies to try and create a more "diverse" environment. Regardless of your intentions, I still see it as a kind of discrimination. I dread to think how uncomfortable I would be knowing that I was a diversity hire, and some arbitrary box I fit in was the reason for my hiring rather than my skills and experience. Its why I have kept it quiet at work that I'm gay, I don't want people walking on eggshells around me, thinking I'm going to flip out at some perceived slight.

I personally also see the diversity-friendly hiring practises as a bit of a bodge, if you believe that under-representation of certain groups is not the correct, natural equilibrium of how things should be, wouldn't it make more sense to try and fix it at the root cause, during peoples social development and education? I understand the value of role models but it seems like there are probably more direct factors at play.

As a child I can't think of anything that would make you more of a social paraih than an interest that is considered "nerdy", from my experience boys get it a bit easier with such interests and attract a bit less derision. Girls seem to be even less understanding when it comes to that kind of interest, especially from other girls. I can very easily see how that kind of social feedback would make you think twice about pursuing certain interests. I didn't really have that many friends growing up, and largely didn't give a shit about what other people thought of me, so I pursued whatever I found interesting and useful.

Sorry if this comment is a bit scatterbrained, its a bit difficult for me to collect my thoughts on the subject, there is a lot to talk about and I feel the need to try and justify my views before I get pecked apart for being a bigot.

>nobody loses their job for wrongthink

By definition, to use the term to describe a behavior at all implies that someone (specifically who depends on the wording, of course) considers that behavior termination-worthy.

[Edit: I'm having trouble putting this into words. Let me try again.

The point of using this term is to remind your listener of the novel and imply that the situation being discussed is similar, i.e., that there exists an near-omnipotent authority that is willing and capable to punish you for actions that any reasonable person would consider innocuous.

In 1984, it would be Ingsoc punishing people for thinking party-proscribed thoughts. In the current context, it might be BigCo punishing people for expressing their thoughts about hiring practices.

One could go on all day about there being a difference between thinking a thought and emailing your company, whether that difference is quantitative or qualitative, and whether the comparison to the novel is valid. But then one would be missing the point, which is simply that whoever used the term considers the comparison valid.]