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Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#301

Post by omot »

I'm going to invoke Occam's razor here. Let's simplify diversity and just look at height. Let's assume men that are short and men that are tall are biologically equivalent, meaning biological trait that might surface are evenly distributed. Now let's inject 100 men with varying height into the general population, and... Uh oh there's a skew in leadership position and income. Taller men have better positions and have higher income.

People who are taller all have tall coworkers. They work for a boss that's a little bit taller than them. Some of them start thinking that you know this is probably just natural, men who are shorter are just biologically unsuited to be a leader. They aren't aggresive enough and they just don't have as much drive, it's probably just written in their DNA.

The short men no matter how much they perform or how brilliant they are always seem to be sidelined for promotion. Some of them make it pretty far but they're performing 50x compared to their peers, and theyre always sidelined when it comes to executive promotions. Other executives think: "this guy is brilliant but what would people think about us... We better promote the other less brilliant tall guy. We could retain investor confidence." Some of them break out and try to start a company. They can't get any funding, and no one wants to join their company. People think its a company run by a short guy, this guy is brilliant but he's not going to do well in the long term, so they end up joining start ups that have tall guys.

This network effects over a million times.

Now let's take people's perception, and assume people perceive men and women exactly the same. The catch here is that women are one standard deviation shorter than men. Just from height you'll see a discrepancy between men and women representation in leadership positions. Let's end height discrimination first. I believe this is a simpler explanation of the discrepancies in representation.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#302

Post by imron »

jjirsa wrote: post #224
wildmusings wrote: post #35

The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of thei…

It's not about virtue signaling, he was almost certain to be terminated just because it was a ridiculously stupid thing to say - you can't tell your teammates that they were hired because their employer lowered the bar and expect people not to be upset about it (and that's 100% what he did, he also made up pseudo-scientific bullshit to try to justify it, but he flat out insulted countless people within his company).…

What is the more sexist statement:

a) Men and women should be hired based on merit, and ability to perform required tasks.

b) Men and women are unable to compete based on merit and women need special consideration in order that equivalent number of men and women are hired.

The author of the manifesto was arguing for (a) and against (b).

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#303

Post by postnihilism »

wildmusings wrote: post #35

The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of thei…

Putting a disclaimer at the beginning of a long misogynistic rant that we should "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group," doesn't nullify the rest of the document.

If you say "People aren't going to like what I say" and then say something offensive about 50% of the population, well then sure, consider the author's point proven...

This person created a toxic work environment in which women and people of color will not feel comfortable working with him, being interviewed by him, have him as their tech lead or have him on their promotion committee.

Why the hysterical cries of virtue signaling and suppression? What is authoritarian dogma that this author dared to question?

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#304

Post by AnOscelot »

chrissnell wrote: post #149
wildmusings wrote: post #35

The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of thei…

It's quite ironic: in their push for equality and inclusion, these liberals have created an environment where one faces exclusion and persecution for simply having political beliefs that align with a large portion of their fellow U.S. citizens. This is a very real thing. I never felt uncomfortable with my own political alignment before 2015 but I wouldn't dare put a GOP candidate sticker on my laptop now. It's not th…

The modern GOP has embraced some very misogynistic politicans and policies. And they pushed Trump into the White House. If you don't want to be labeled a misogynist, don't support a misogynistic party.

It's really that easy. Or have the courage of your convictions and try not to freak out when you live in a place where the majority do not share your views. I say this as a very lefty person in a very red state. I don't hide my views even though I know my neighbors and coworkers may be disapproving.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#305

Post by [deleted] »

mehwoot wrote: post #243

Reading the letter, what surprised me was how political it was, framing everything as a "left vs right" cultural fight. I think if it was up to me I'd probably fire anybody on either side of that debate who started circulating shit like this. As soon as you're on that level, nothing good is going to come of it and you're just going to make a lot of people angry, which is very bad for the business in a lot of differen…

[deleted]

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#306

Post by RealityNow »

LouisSayers wrote: post #226

Where is Google's rebuttal of this memo? All anyone is saying is "it's wrong" etc, but where is an ACTUAL breakdown of what was incorrect about what he wrote? I feel like most "rebuttal's" are like listening to Donald Trump. "He's wrong and we're right. We're definitely right.". If you do have a link, please share!

Diversity and gender issues are one of those sacred issues that for whatever reason are not allowed to be challenged

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#307

Post by renaudg »

brown9-2 wrote: post #171
bronz wrote: post #119

the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. he never says that women should leave google -- he only says that trying to reach a perfectly equal distribution is misguided. perhaps those who are red in t…

Try replacing "men and women" with "different skin color" and see if the idea that different groups could have different innate desires still makes sense.

Different skin color, unlike gender, has nothing to do with the level of testosterone one is exposed to in the womb :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

Abstract : "There is considerable interest in understanding women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure.

Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."

(emphasis mine)

This is completely in line with the memo. I am so disappointed by Google.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#308

Post by peacetreefrog »

It's crazy to see such overtly anti free speech arguments in the discussion around this memo, even on Hacker News.

"Well actually, the first amendment only protects against government intruding on free speech, it doesn't apply to the rest of us!"

Free speech used to be the thing everyone agreed on. It's like a fundamental tenant of Western, liberal democracy has gone out of vogue.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#310

Post by wildmusings »

afpx wrote: post #179
wildmusings wrote: post #35

The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of thei…

I know this is a sensitive topic, but Google's reaction is really just business. Women represent a huge and quickly growing sector of the economy. Public corporations would never take a big risk of their bottom line to support an individual's rights (ignoring whether those claims of rights are even valid or not). And, it's kind of silly to blame 'liberals' - because it transcends politics. Businesses are about making…

Absolutely. Google's reaction may have been rational. The situation in the US is that a few groups have been empowered to use their outrage to get whatever they want. Google is a business about making money, which may be hindered by not bending to the demands of those outraged group.
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