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Mods, you can have all of my points if you'll unflag this story. It is extremely well written by someone who could well have been in the OP's chain of command and who knows the company culture.
Edit: thanks mods, the article has been unflagged.
The easiest way to see the article is just fighting a strawman of the original manifesto is to notice the article never directly quotes the manifesto.
To quote the original manifesto would be to normalize hatred.
If some set of ideas is so repugnant that quoting it, even in a rebuttal, "normalizes hatred", then why try to rebut it at all? Shouldn't it be enough to simply use social norms to shame the author into submission without addressing his arguments? Nobody feels the need to write rebuttals against NAMBLA, because we as a society live within a consensus that pedophilia is wrong.
The usual response is that ideas like the ones expressed in the "manifesto" are still widespread enough that they need to be addressed. But if a set of beliefs is that widespread, then by definition, there isn't a consensus and social norm against them. As a result, you need to address these ideas straight-up, even if you personally find them repugnant.
To dismiss them as "hatred", unworthy of being quoted even in rebuttal, just means that you've giving up on convincing anyone else to your point of view. And at some level, that's fine. I personally choose to isolate myself from people who don't believe in things like vaccines or climate change because I don't have the patience to deal with them.
But if you want to actually change people's minds, you have to deal with the fact that some people hold opinions that you personally find repugnant, and you have to address those opinions in an intellectually honest way. That's the table stakes for writing any kind of rebuttal, and once you've bought into that, there's no reason not to go all the way. In their famous debates, Lincoln thoughtfully listened and responded to Douglas's points, he didn't just rant and rave about giving Douglas a podium to speak from "normalized hatred".
What an incredibly intellectually lazy way of attempting to deconstruct that manifesto this is! > 1.I’m not going to spend any length of time on (1); if anyone wishes to provide details as to how nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect "This is wrong, I don't have to tell you why" is a pitiful statement in and of itself, and perhaps more importantly, is not an argument. The a…
i am curious, if this person is ok with questioning their belief in "traits" that are defined on the level of sex. after all they are the one who says that "some ideas are too sacred to be discussed" and when i bring this up, i often find that the "differences" between the sexes are exactly one of these ideas.
the reactions to this talk are a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqR4cw9Amlg
> What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas. The author seems to assume this is obviously false, and neatly avoids the fact that in many companies, industries, and academic settings, t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understood the original manifesto's main argument to be against intentional, institutional discrimination (e.g. affirmative action) -- with many supporting points. I don't know what's shameful about that (unless you're referring to something else). He did seem to value gender equality in the sense that men and women should be valued and respected equally (unless I'm reading into it).
Except for the fact that it implies that men are in higher, more well paid positions because of inherent biological traits. If you truly believe people are equal and deserving of equal treatment then you must see a society where white men are the most powerful, most privileged class, as a failure of society. The author cannot claim to believe in equality and then go on to justify inequality with biological traits.
It's possible to have this and end up with different outcomes because of differing abilities or priorities.
Also, Whites are _underrepresented_ in tech relative to their percentage of the population.
edit: The parent edited their comment to remove the "white" qualifier from "men".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Insults don't add anything helpful to the discussion, and only contribute to further polarization across political divides.
You label it a "political divide" when it's one group of people who consider other humans biologically inferior, and therefore less deserving, than others. If your beliefs are about restricting the rights of others when you have those rights yourself, you are not on one side of a "political divide." Labelling it as such is a euphemism for prejudice.
That is an extreme mischaracterization of the views of those who believe in differences between the sexes. Nowhere does the manifesto author say that women are inferior or less deserving of their equality in terms of their right to pursue whatever career option they find interesting.
The belief in question here is that there are differences, that they are measurable, that they have been measured - and you can find the data, with remarkable consistency over a hundred years of psychometrics research. This doesn't mean that anyone should be treated badly, nor does it mean that it would be reasonable to have discriminatory hiring practices.
What it means is that you mind find more men interested in, and excelling at, particular fields compared with women, who have complementary interests and excellence in other fields. And then there are fields that both seem to do well at. When you discover your field is not in the latter camp, you can either socially engineer it into being artificially equal, and reap whatever consequences you get from that, or you can accept things as they present themselves.
> If your beliefs are about restricting the rights of others when you have those rights yourself
Where does the manifesto author restrict anyone's rights? Why do you need to put words in his mouth in order to have an argument?
Perhaps more interestingly, the author does not appear to understand engineering. This guy gets it. It's a deep temptation to abstract engineering away from humanism, but the idea that code can solve problems is an immature understanding of software. People have the problems; people provide the solutions. Code is a tool & intermediary, and hardly essential to the act of problem-solving.
Then Google itself doesn't "get it", given how their interview process values technical qualities above all else.
Before joining armchair HR quarterbacking, it might help you to consider that Google is one of the most successful IT companies and the post you read is by a successful and well-respected ex-Googler. If you can think up something in 30 seconds, they've thought about that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't see anything in the "manifesto" that seemed insulting to women... care to elaborate?
saying that women are biologically worse engineers would be the primary candidate
I thought his only intent was to argue against institutionalized discrimination.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't see anything in the "manifesto" that seemed insulting to women... care to elaborate?
saying that women are biologically worse engineers would be the primary candidate