What did he want to happen?
What did he think would happen?
Bonus: Why didn't he just post this to Reddit?
Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#332And... no one is surprised.
You can be "right" all you want, but then there is politics. It's been going on since at least the days of Socrates.
Every big org does plenty of silly stuff from perspective of rank and file. Sometimes it truly is silly, sometimes there are reasons that aren't obvious at that level.
I suppose Google made the rational decision. We'll have to see if it produces a martyr which is often the longer term outcome of these kind of situations. Doesn't seem like being a rallying point in the cultural war is a situation Google would want to be in at the moment, but who knows.
Thinking it may have been wiser to state publicly that every one is entitled to their opinion, but the official policy of the company was XYZ not open for debate. And then quietly send legal with a bag of cash and a stack of "zip your lip" forms and after the hoopla dies down a bit, an uneventful departure to "pursue other opportunities".
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#333The best explanation of why he was going to be fired and why that was the right thing to do (that I read) came from Yonatan Zunger, who had recently left a Human Resources position at Google; especially his third point, in the following post on Medium: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man... In many way, it was not an unfamiliar sort of rant for the internet, and I was struck by the author's e…
The 3rd point in that post was enlightening. Appreciate you linking us to the post.
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#334Good. I get that HN is not into this, but this employee stated, bluntly, that they don't believe many of their colleagues should be there because of their sex. Every peer review, every no-hire, every interaction , is and should be suspect. Happy where I am now, but future interviews will include me asking what management would do about this, and termination is the only correct answer. This is textbook hostile environ…
He certainly did not say that in his essay. I agreed with a few points of his (ex: acknowledging that even men who choose to should be included in stress/anxiety management programs instead of having them be gender specific. Make things a two way street.). Although, he did go full /r/theRedPill in certain parts which he probably shouldn't have.
and this is why they had to fire him. he can make 9 good points but 1 bad one and the only outcome is termination. i think google did the right thing. if this memo was 1/3 as long and only talked about censorship and diversity strategy, and left out the gender pseudoscience, he would probably still have his job. it was totally unnecessary to try and rationalize with uncited generalizations
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#335Fun fact: the author of the memo earned a PhD in Biology from Harvard. Google can fire him and get away with it, but it's going to be tough, very tough, for him to be falsely characterized as someone who is misinformed or unscientific. And the court of public opinion may well be more important in this controversy than any court of law.
Highly educated people in the sciences can in fact be quite vulnerable to just this type of hubris, ie thinking that having expertise in one area means expertise in the whole field. Nobel prize winning scientists have damaged their reputations by opining on matters they know little about (James Watson on genetics, and many others ) Some infamous examples: http://www.cracked.com/article_18638_4-nobel-prize-winners-w..…
> Nobel prize winning scientists have damaged their reputations by opining on matters they know little about (James Watson on genetics, and many others )
You mean to say that James Watson, the Nobel prize winning geneticist knows little about genetics?
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#336The 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).…
This is the strangest rationalization for the firing of a whistleblower I think I've ever heard... Given that Google's hiring practices caused the offense, why should we shoot the messenger?
> Such a manifesto is not just fundamentally wrong, it's toxic
Isn't this how every Inquisition is justified?
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#337I read the memo and didn't find it particularly persuasive; but this dismissal does further its core point. It's a bit tone deaf of Google to fire an employee concerned about groupthink.
This is not a workable argument against firing someone. If it were, all you'd have to do is say, "We have too much group-think here," followed by any egregiously awful statement, and you'd be insulated from consequences. That's just not how these things work. I think any good argument against firing him has to hinge on the truth of what he said besides the group-think claims. Regrettably for him, I don't think there'…
The truth of what he said has nothing to do with why he was fired. He was fired for not being politically correct and offending people, not because his arguments were right or wrong. People are usually most outraged by statements which are true or close to true but which they do not want to believe.
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#338We value diversity of thought. As long as it's been pre-approved by the Thought Police in HR. sorry Google, you can't have it both ways. To those thinking about leaving, trust me, you'll never look back.
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#339They decided he was a witch, and he was burned at the stake. That's it in a nutshell.
They won't much enjoy a world where these new rules they've created might apply to them.
Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
#340Fun fact: the author of the memo earned a PhD in Biology from Harvard. Google can fire him and get away with it, but it's going to be tough, very tough, for him to be falsely characterized as someone who is misinformed or unscientific. And the court of public opinion may well be more important in this controversy than any court of law.
Well to judge him on his merits and not his credentials, the memo was neither rigorously argued or all that persuasive. It is ironic that defenders who claim to want a meritocracy are also defending the author because of where he went to school .
Don't bother. These are the same people that are mad at alleged quotas being the only reason why they can't go to elite schools (and then saying school doesn't matter afterward).