On managing outrage in Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#221

Post by wutbrodo » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #163

wutbrodo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

> 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. I avoid a lot of liberal "popular" sites because of this BS. It's not right. It's become a moral situation for many people. in fairness, some of the social politics are literal life and death for certain subcommunities,…

Eh, I pretty strongly disagree. My complaint is against people who claim the mantle of being obviously, factually correct while being so incredibly dismissive of attempts to figure out what's true vs what's convenient. Judging facts on how they contribute to your ideology is a way of approaching the world that's precisely ass-backwards.

This is entirely independent of how morally-weighted the question is: in fact, the more morally-weighted an issue is, the more you should want to make sure that you're being conscientious in your approach to it, and the more disgusting I find this lack of interest in the concept of honesty vs "do what you need to in order to win". The worst part is that, if you're wrong, what you're "winning" isn't a good thing at all!

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#222

Post by lawnchair_larry » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #108

turc1656 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about exclusion, it's about preference. We seem to be trying to force a result, in the name of equality, when there may not in fact be any inequality. I'm not saying there isn't sexism in Silicon Valley. I'm saying that trying to steer women into certain fields of study they may not, on average, be as interested in it as men seems really dumb. If companies were really, truly interested in fairness and equali…

> If companies were really, truly interested in fairness and equality, then their HR policies for hiring would say one and only one thing - that the best candidate is the one that gets the job. It's strange though that you will find many engineers who say that HR policies for hiring do a poor job of finding the right engineers for the job (whiteboarding tests, easily gamed, "culture fit" etc), but who don't seem as e…

Whiteboarding tests are not HR policies anywhere. HR has next to nothing to do with who gets hired other than when they intervene. They're typically the last step of the process.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#223

Post by lawnchair_larry » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

s73ver wrote: post #31

Quarrelsome wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it okay to campaign towards the goal of firing someone for expressing an opinion they feel outraged about?

Let's be frank, here. This is not someone merely "expressing an opinion." This is someone rallying against diversity, using pseudoscience to back up claims that women and minorities are inferior, and thus shouldn't have been hired. On top of that, they ranted about how Google had not done enough to make conservatives feel they have a safe space, when the only thing Google has done on the subject is to make others fee…

Did you miss the part where he was promoting diversity and proposing strategies to improve it? Weirdest rally "against" diversity I've ever heard of.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#224

Post by PyComfy » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #130

EddieRingle wrote: post #43

One of my first exposures to this "manifesto" was on Twitter with someone starting a thread with "Google has a Nazi problem." The majority of the other responses I read either attacked the author, dismissed the entire text in whole, and/or refused to actually argue the paper's points because they saw them as so ridiculous or "obviously" wrong. I read the paper. I don't see at all how it relates to fascism, Trumpism,…

Since most of these threads are pretty content free, and you asked for it, here's a rebuttal, by a woman who's good at math. https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/slideshow/embed_code/key/3... Of course men and women are different on average, but are they different enough to justify the massive disparity in tech? No.

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians. Edsger W.Dijkstra, EWD498

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#225

Post by mnm1 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

rcoveson wrote: post #162

mnm1 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the opinions of the general public will influence that decision. To some extent, they should as they have always done. This is part of living in a society and sharing things electronically. One needs to be aware of this before sharing opinions, especially when they are specifically related to one's employment. This isn't a case of making a joke on Twitter and getting fired for it. His opinions also have…

Yeah, but here it is again: "rant." You're using your voice, which we have agreed will, in however small a way, influence an important decision, not to disagree with the content of the email, but to (IMO) misrepresent the tone of the author. Again, I would request an example from the text that supports the "rant" or "toxic" descriptors.

I called it a rant because it's long and unsubstantiated. You want an example why Google and others might think it's toxic? How about this whole list of points stereotyping women?

"Women, on average, have more:

Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).

These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness.

This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.

Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#226

Post by gdix » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:26 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #139

EddieRingle wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! However after looking through the slide deck, it seems that the author tries to argue that because mathematic ability isn't so important in CS, biological differences can't explain the disparity between the men and women in CS. That's a quite a leap, I think. If CS doesn't involve a lot of math, what does it involve that might be impacted by biological or psychological causes? (P.S. I went to a STEM high scho…

No, that's not the argument, perhaps read all the slides, in particular slides 20/21. It's true that cs doesn't involve a lot of math, but that's really just a side point and a little in joke for mathematicians. The argument is the disparity is so small that it could not account for the massive disparity we see in tech. Re your question on biological or psychological causes, why limit your consideration to those area…

I read all the slides and I think the commenter raises a good point. If math doesn't matter a lot when it comes to CS, then why bother talking about it.

Show me how many standard deviations apart men and women are when it comes to skills that lead to success in CS.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#227

Post by greenshackle2 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:26 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #105

TallGuyShort wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's using a biological justification to openly discuss different ways to foster diversity. This is one of his points: the most common argument against him is just that you think he's a sexist, not because you don't think his ideas will actually foster any kind of diversity. And I don't understand that. The reaction here is the opposite of tolerance and diversity. edit: I'm going to give a personal example: I str…

But we're back to discussing the reaction again. Which is a neat way of avoiding the content of the article itself. I have no particular need to apply the label of "sexist" to this guy. I have no opinion, nor enough information, to say whether he should be fired or not. I do think he's profoundly wrong though, and think his arguments about biological differences bear at least a passing resemblance to some wholly disc…

I think your comment bears at least a passing resemblance to a pile of crocodile excrement, so I've decided to ignore it.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#228

Post by mcguire » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

Danihan wrote: post #82

blablabla123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Tech requires intelligence. Google in particular in famous for checking analytical intelligence in their interview. I know that's not 100% correct but I call this "pure number crunching intelligence". People there know how to solve this and that, can approximate problems and solutions. This gender thing might be formulated as an analytical problem but it suffers high complexity. It's better to be understood empi…

>I have an illustrative example: in Germany in those regions that have the least foreigners, there are the most Neo Nazis and people are more likely to vote for right wing parties. As a counter-example: In the US, people living in the South are generally the most racist, despite Southern states having the most ethnic diversity. https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5b7d145c14255746125e39...

Is racism really worse in the American south? Probably. Maybe. Certainly, it's more of an obvious, concrete social fixture. But still,...

https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map

(I'm from Amarillo, TX and I'm kind of a misanthrope. "General hate" might be something I could get behind.)

https://newrepublic.com/article/112586/voting-rights-act-cas...

https://thoughtcatalog.com/kovie-biakolo/2015/06/dialogue-is...

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/14/the_north_isnt_better_than_t...

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#229

Post by gdix » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:29 PM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #200

arnioxux wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than looking at the math ability distribution as a proxy, why not look at coding competition ability? They are pretty objective since an autograder doesn't know your gender and they are predictive of whether you can pass a tech interview since it's the same format. In that case, even at the IOI level (high school, so 14-18 year old kids) women are already severely underrepresented: https://www.quora.com/How-ha…

I see that you said "compete". Testosterone has effects on competition, so there could still be bias there. Competitions are overrepresented by people who think they can win. We are taught that confidence and overconfidence skews male.

So if confidence is a major factor, is it possible that affirmative action affects confidence negatively in the people that it is meant to support?

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#230

Post by mnm1 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

jblow wrote: post #165

mnm1 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then the government should step in and provide protections against his firing? Should they tell Google, no you can't fire this guy even though you don't like him and he's bringing down the morale of your whole workforce? Should that apply to someone who might actually be a neo-Nazi or become one during an employment term? Should Google be forced to hire / unable to fire people tattooed with swastikas or ones that…

No, I didn't say anything of the kind. I am saying that this kind of mob shaming-and-silencing mentality is deplorable. And if you choose to engage in that, then you will alienate a lot of people, including many of the best people. I am not saying anything about government, and as I said in my previous posting, I find it weird that people keep jumping to this. We're talking about ethics, not law.

At least we agree that some acts of expression are deplorable, just not which ones.