On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

This is what's so insane to me about how willing people are to throw away the foundations of civilized society for short-term political victories. Especially for those who claim to be fighting for the marginalized, it should be obvious to anyone who's not a complete idiot that the marginalized are those who suffer in the long run when dissenting speech is punished.

Not to get nakedly political, but for someone who became old enough to start being aware of politics in the early 2000s, it was pretty easy to look at the GWB and Obama administrations and fall into the narrative of "oh, our side are clearly the good guys" as a kid and early in college (as I think most kids do). The last few years have made it clear to me that this amoral, either-with-me-or-my-enemy approach to politics is pretty independent of where you lie on the political spectrum. Every part of the spectrum has its shitty people and unfortunately we're in a cycle where those people are the ones dominating the discourse everywhere you look.

There's a reason wars of religion and ideology are always the bloodiest. If it's 1600s Europe and you're a soldier in a war of conquest, it's a lot easier to see the enemy soldiers and civilians as just trying to get by in the world buffeted by the same forces you are. On the other hand, if their entire existence and belief system are an affront to God, it was a hell of a lot easier for the worst and most bloodthirsty parts of the human psyche to kick in. The social technologies we've developed to handle pluralism nonviolently have been incredibly successful by the standards of most of human history. I guess all it takes is enough stupid, myopic, and/or amoral people to sacrifice the stability they engender for short-term political gain.

I see the same thing playing out (in much less dramatic fashion) among many of my nominally compassionate, kind-hearted friends. The other side isn't considered misguided, or to have a different understanding of the world (or heaven forbid, possibly more correct than you): they're just evil. Every dirty rhetorical trick to twist their words is fair game, and attempts from decent people to even point out that the other side is being misrepresented is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

It happened just this weekend: my friend mocked one of the points the essay author made, and when I pointed out that he was misrepresenting (or misunderstanding) it, his response was something like "I don't think men are the ones who need help in the world at this point in time". There's no such thing as truth or honesty to most people, just "how can I spin this to support what I already know the answer _should_ be"

Change is hard for everyone with any systemic bias in the game. Outrage is a byproduct of that systemic bias and comes from a primal level need to eliminate a percieved threat. It's quite natural of a reaction. But it only proves the authors point overall.

Nevertheless, someone can have a seemingly innocent and accurate observation such as: there appear to be less women in tech overall and we seem to be forcing policies which appear to reduce the overall quality of our performance. Some of this may be subjective, "quality" for instance.

His conclusions and assumptions may or may not be accurate and may not make a difference in moving the needle forward. Some might be accurate on some standard deviation level. But he doesn't deserve to be fired or harmed for putting out his opinion.

It is natural to want to be outraged by something that is interpreted as a threat and there is significant historical context for doing so. Hostility towards women working at all as one example. Or perhaps for instance, the "bro"/"frat" culture of silicon valley being pretty rampant. A side effect of hiring people straight out of college perhaps?

The only way to be constructive in this is to continue to challenge the status quo. Violent outrage does nothing but prove the point that we are incapable of getting past any systemic bias to make our case heard.

I appreciate the effort to try and question the effectiveness of a policy and question the bias of a percieved political echo chamber. If there is historical precendent (and I claim there is) that refutes the underlying argument, then state those clearly.

One such example is that women have repeatedly mentioned exiting the field because of how they are typically treated by their peers. It is a bit ironic that the author mentions tribalism as a problem at Google because exclusivity of women, bros promoting bros, and the overall bias is quite obvious in the industry. Another commenter mentioned this here, but the obvious historical context for programming and computer science being a natural fit for women in the early days. Social tribalism and the echo chamber indeed has everything to do with the problem, but not in the way I think many are implying. To wit, I actually think that also approaching diversity of thought would be beneficial to Google - perhaps even help eliminate the same homogenous bro culture; just as much as it might help reduce progressive bias or any other systemic bias that plagues the community from hiring diverse talent.

And hundreds of female dominated careers that no one seems to find problematic. In France, judges or doctors are predominantly female. These are high skills/high responsibility jobs. I don't see anyone claiming this is a discrimination.

Most people don't want to work with jerks, and in a libertarian ideal would be free to choose whether to do so.

Most companies choose to get rid of jerks for a ton of sensible reasons. In a libertarian ideal they'd be free to choose who to hire/fire.

Large groups calling for someone to lose their job is totally in line with libertarian ideals. Nobody is calling for government regulation, this is just the (employment) market at work.