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Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#641

Post by zouhair »

tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

The big problem I had with his "memo" is that, for a text that is about a hot and controversial topic, it lacks (more like doesn't contain any) references to backup his points. A lot of factoids and nothing to back them up.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#642

Post by zouhair »

jorgemf wrote: post #235
tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

> If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of that program means those women wouldn't have gotten those jobs. This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified men. Because you have to hire wom…

>If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program.

Only someone who is not a woman or not from a minority could say this. People tend to dismiss other peoples problem or minimize them, even when those people are telling they are hurting.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#643

Post by JSONwebtoken »

zouhair wrote: post #641
tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

The big problem I had with his "memo" is that, for a text that is about a hot and controversial topic, it lacks (more like doesn't contain any) references to backup his points. A lot of factoids and nothing to back them up.

He's a Harvard trained Systems Biologist (3 years into a PHD based on LinkedIn). If his educational qualifications aren't enough for an unofficial rant, all of the graphs and hyperlinks he used as external references were edited out by journalists before it was mass distributed.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#644

Post by cropsieboss »

postnihilism wrote: post #275

This feels like the blue and black (white and gold) dress. It boggles my mind that people don't see the fundamental and toxic misogyny in this 'manifesto'. Please have a woman you care about in your life, preferably one in tech, read this and then ask their opinion of the piece. The "treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group" sentiment of the author is fine except that we have hundreds of…

> If one of the things you have to deal with as a woman in tech is seeing 10 page pseudo-intellectual manifestos about your inherent inferiority at performing in technical and leadership roles published at one of the premier tech companies in the world, and then see that piece supported on the most popular tech social sites then it's no wonder we have the gender gap we see today.

Could you provide citations in the manifesto that were oppressive to women?

Manifesto was pretty neutral and pretty clear that this was not at all a text about the abilities of women and how they are inferior. It was about motivations women have given their biological traits.

Google, Facebook run unconscious bias training which has no support in scientific research. At best it does not work at all.

It really was not misogyny.

The manifesto is inspired by Jordan B Peterson, and that guy is not a misogynist or a racist or whatever. He's a psychologist that complains about HR departments of the world that are filled with other psychologists and sociologists. He thinks they have to start looking at science and get to the root of the issue. Unfortunately, they use methods that have no support in science and misuse their position to push their ideology.

One good example is Iran. Where women are oppressed. Yet they choose STEM more often than not. How come our free/tolerant culture allows women to move away from STEM fields, and their oppressive culture pushes women towards STEM fields? Maybe motivations of free and oppressed women are different and free women just don't want to work in STEM? Abilities of men and women are identical (or at least the bell curves overlap significantly). Motivations depend on biology and culture. Motivations are what is differing and no unconscious bias training will fix that.

For example, I know plenty IT women that don't want to work in offices that don't have dress code. They all went working in banks. How is anyone going to fix that bias if women just like dressing well (on average) and being in a dressed up fancy environment.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#645

Post by yAnonymous »

Way to prove that he was right.

The problem with diversity programs is that you only need them if you don't treat people equal to begin with. And then, thanks to the diversity program, you still don't treat them as equals, but give an advantage to the group you consider to be weaker.

In the end, it's not about treating people as equals, as it should be, but about political correctness and conformity.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#646

Post by JSONwebtoken »

zouhair wrote: post #642
jorgemf wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of that program means those women wouldn't have gotten those jobs. This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified men. Because you have to hire wom…

>If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program. Only someone who is not a woman or not from a minority could say this. People tend to dismiss other peoples problem or minimize them, even when those people are telling they are hurting.

> Only someone who is not a woman or not from a minority could say this. People tend to dismiss other peoples problem or minimize them, even when those people are telling they are hurting.

Only someone who is a woman or from a minority with liberal views could say this. How can you speak for 70% of people? How are you hurting from being treated equally to the 30%?

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#647

Post by hasenj »

Given all the commotion about this memo I expected it to be some kind of a rant (similar to something I would write in 10 minutes), but it's actually a very well thought out and well articulated piece.

Being fired for writing such a memo is very disappointing. If I were an engineer at Google I would probably be looking for somewhere else to go.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#648

Post by sjeohp »

themacguffinman wrote: post #597
sp527 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar As an Asian male who once upon a time had to apply to colleges, I'd like to see some evidence for that assertion. To be clear, I (and hopefully many other people commenting here) have no problem with outreach, anti-harrassment, and other such workplace training initiatives. It's unfortunate that we can't all achieve a baseline level of civility that abstracts away a…

> as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed The whole reason diversity practices exist is because "some classes of people" are already being harmed. Without "diversity practices", we already have practices that emphasize and discriminate sex and race, except they happen to be the status quo. Attacking diversity for ha…

Class =/= race|gender. Could be argued that race|gender equality distracts from class divisions that are far more ingrained.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#649

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jorgemf wrote: post #235
tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

> If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of that program means those women wouldn't have gotten those jobs. This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified men. Because you have to hire wom…

I think any company should hire diversely in terms of qualifications too, regardless of gender; there's far too many job postings out there where they ask for 5+ years of experience. Even entry-level with X years of experience.

I'm glad at least that some IT employers care less about education and look more at potential and whatnot.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#650

Post by jkoll »

zouhair wrote: post #641
tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

The big problem I had with his "memo" is that, for a text that is about a hot and controversial topic, it lacks (more like doesn't contain any) references to backup his points. A lot of factoids and nothing to back them up.

Unedited version of the memo: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
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