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About This Googler's Manifesto

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Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#341

Post by dang »

cropsieboss wrote: post #221
Goladus wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, it has 178 upvotes at the time of posting.

Because postmodernist and neomarxist ideas are appealing to idealists dreaming of utopia. It's quite weird that an article with 0 citations, 0 proper rebuttals of arguments in the original manifesto gets so much attention. It is pure leftist circlejerk. For example, show me a single study demonstrating proper effectiveness of unconscious bias training. HR departments in FB and Google have those. Studies of the effect…

Would you please not use HN for ideological battle? It is not what the site is for, and we ban accounts that primarily do it.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#342

Post by Goladus »

smb06 wrote: post #297
edison85 wrote: post #278

Having read the full manifesto, I find myself agreeing with the author's thought process for a bunch of his points and clearly disagreeing with others. He presented them well, not offensive at all, and if I had a discussion with him I'm sure he seems open to change certain beliefs if presented with ample evidence. I would generally love talking to this guy. Instead everyone shames him, tells him his mostly very valid…

You are saying what the guy posted wasn't offensive and also that everyone is finding it offensive. That makes no sense unless everyone is stupid.

You are saying what the guy posted wasn't offensive and also that everyone is finding it offensive.

Heh, interesting point, though I chalk it up to a bit of carelessness. When you say:

That makes no sense unless everyone is stupid.

Actually it has nothing to do with intelligence or stupidity and everything to do with what ought to be considered a baseline "thickness of skin," in the context of a discussion of corporate policies and priorities. Parent is saying that a reasonably normal and well-balanced person should be able to read the manifesto without being offended. Certainly, anyone who thinks they are in a position to provide advice to a company with a half a trillion dollar market cap should have a thick enough skin to read that without getting offended.

Also, it's worth considering the distinct possibility that the people acting offended and outraged by the manifesto aren't being genuine. Or else they haven't read it and have simply been told to be offended. That's how this works. A bunch of writers for big-name media properties get people outraged by running a story claiming that a Googler wrote an "Anti-Diversity Screed," which sounds awful of course. The problem is that such a claim is simply not true.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#343

Post by dang »

am1988 wrote: post #317
cropsieboss wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because postmodernist and neomarxist ideas are appealing to idealists dreaming of utopia. It's quite weird that an article with 0 citations, 0 proper rebuttals of arguments in the original manifesto gets so much attention. It is pure leftist circlejerk. For example, show me a single study demonstrating proper effectiveness of unconscious bias training. HR departments in FB and Google have those. Studies of the effect…

HTe original was pure conservative (oh I'm sorry, "classical liberal") circle jerk about how poor (er... upper middle class) white males are being discriminated against and are such victims nowadays. Pepper in some dog-whistle sexism and little digs at the left and you have a nice manifesto.

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. Would you please not create accounts to do that with? It's not what the site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#344

Post by dang »

Udik wrote: post #295
Udik wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is a belief that women are inherently less capable than men at software engineering Should we therefore assume that women are equally capable as men at running the 100 meters, or at playing football? Don't get me wrong, I'm a male and probably half the women my age run faster than me or play football better than I do. But you know that this doesn't generalise: on average , men are faster runners and better foo…

At the end of the day, not a single answer. Good.

Would you please not post this sort of meta dross? That includes adding references to downvotes in your comments. For a substantive comment, all of this stuff needs to be edited out.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#345

Post by dang »

dogecoinbase wrote: post #25
TimTheTinker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insults don't add anything helpful to the discussion, and only contribute to further polarization across political divides.

There's literally no insult in my comment. But, I appreciate your desire to reduce polarization by legitimizing bigotry! Keep on keepin' on.

A swipe like "your bullshit" counts as incivility on HN. Such flamebait is what we're trying to avoid.

Ideological battle is against the mandate of this site, and ideological venom is a regulated pollutant here, so would you please stop injecting it into your posts? We all know what online call-out and shaming culture has led to, and on HN the goal is not to go up in such flames. These rules apply regardless of which ideology you're battling for and how correct your underlying points are. In fact, being right makes it worse.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#346

Post by dang »

jackfraser wrote: post #40
dogecoinbase wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad-hominems aside... That's clearly not an ad hominem -- it's not even close to the definition! And, the rest of what you said is even more incorrect. Fortunately, no one is obligated to spend their time to refute your bullshit.

> no one is obligated to spend their time to refute your bullshit. I agree wholeheartedly! However, others would like to. I'll be over there talking to them; please find your way to the nearest safe-space where kitten and puppy images await you.

Comments like this are a bannable offense on HN, so please don't post like this again.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#347

Post by sizzle »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #302
smb06 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying what the guy posted wasn't offensive and also that everyone is finding it offensive. That makes no sense unless everyone is stupid.

Maybe everyone is stupid. Not really -- some are malicious, for example, this medium post starts with a bald-faced lie.

Thank you for pointing this out, really changed his credibility in my eyes.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#348

Post by philwelch »

nl wrote: post #187
nopatternhere wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The manifesto claims empathy for colleagues and customers is not required, but clearly it is. Can you help me understand how you reached that conclusion? Here is the relevant section of the original: > De-emphasise empathy. > I've heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy — feeli…

Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts. This is wrong. Emotions - feeling - are part of what makes teams work together well and make products work with people. The reply linked on this post says it well: Engineering is not the art of building devices; it’s the art of fixing problems. Devices are a means, not an end. Fixing problems means first of all understanding them — and since the whol…

> Emotions - feeling - are part of what makes teams work together well

I have never seen any group of people work together better because of emotions. Many times have I seen emotions tear groups of people apart.

I would also point out that emphasizing "empathy" as a vital skill, in and of itself, creates a hostile and discriminatory work environment. Many highly productive and valuable engineers are on the spectrum and it doesn't seem to inhibit their ability to do their jobs.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#349

Post by philwelch »

untog wrote: post #225
tibiapejagala wrote: post #144

I might partially or totally disagree with the original manifest, but this reply is repulsive. I would never want to have a "senior" like this. So much emphasis on how senior he is, how junior you have to write something so wrong. How OP's career is over. The 3rd point reads like navy seals copypasta but with HR instead. If you don't see any other way to deal with OP's views than described in this belittling rant, th…

> This is a non-statement. Replace 'engineering' with science, medicine, finance, customer service, politics, retail, programming etc., and it will sound as correct. That's the entire point. That you don't get that is telling. Engineering is not some magic meritocratic endeavour where we all succeed by writing the very best code we can. It's messy, and it involves working with people just as much as it does a text ed…

> Engineering is not some magic meritocratic endeavour where we all succeed by writing the very best code we can. It's messy, and it involves working with people just as much as it does a text editor.

Life involves working with people. Empathy is a life skill. Logical reasoning is also a life skill, but some jobs require more of it than others.

> Hence this whole assertion of women being ill suited for the job is complete nonsense according to the logic presented in the manifesto itself.

Well, good thing that's not what the manifesto was asserting, then.

Re: About This Googler's Manifesto

#350

Post by philwelch »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #269
Overtonwindow wrote: post #262

I'm deeply troubled by the response to this "manifesto". Pitchforks are out for this guy, and when they find him, it won't be pretty. I think that's wrong. He has expressed his opinion, and people are free to confront, and denounce him all they want. But this guy might lose his job. His career. All for voicing his opinion. I don't think it matters that he did this internally. Had he stood up at a discussion in Palo A…

But this guy might lose his job. His career. All for voicing his opinion. This has always been true and I can't understand how you would imagine it was ever otherwise.

I'm not sure if you're being defensive or cynical here. It's true that people have always lost their jobs and careers (sometimes lives!) for voicing unpopular opinions.

What's interesting is how people's moral judgment of that correlates with their sympathy for the particularly unpopular opinion in question. Lots of people lost their jobs and careers for voicing opinions that were sympathetic to Communism, and we call that "McCarthyism" and "a witch hunt". This guy loses his job and many of us would cheer for it.

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