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Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

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Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#101

Post by pimmen »

slavak wrote: post #98
pimmen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the note basically says; starting a debate does not excuse you from suggesting that some of your co-workers are there because of a "lowered bar", your evidence being psuedo-scientific bullshit about the tech-skill distribution among minorities and women.

He referred to a "lowered bar" in the form of a reduced false-negative rate for "diversity candidates"; at no point in the document did he imply his female engineer colleagues are less qualified. He also had a reference to apparently support this assertion, but since the hyperlink leads to an internal Google group we can't really know its contents unless a Googler informs us. From the original memo: > However, to ach…

Let's assume this guy knows statistics; by lowering the rate of false-negatives, you raise the rate of false-positives. This means that he's heavily implying Google has employed undeperforming engineers with these practices.

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#102

Post by tedmiston »

mejin wrote: post #91
pimmen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the note basically says; starting a debate does not excuse you from suggesting that some of your co-workers are there because of a "lowered bar", your evidence being psuedo-scientific bullshit about the tech-skill distribution among minorities and women.

What can Google or any other company do to hire more from one group (example, women) other then by making it easier (lowering the bar) for those groups to be hired?

Help get the underrepresented group involved in tech opportunities and activities early on in life that they wouldn't have otherwise.

Create STEM schools and give kids computers in elementary school. Use more fun robotics in the classroom. Teach programming literacy. Let kids make games.

Of course the caveat to these approaches is that it takes ~13-17 years from kindergarten until high school graduation / college graduation to when the candidate can then use the skills by starting a tech job. That said, I think upstream educational opportunities like these are the best long-term solution to diversifying the tech population.

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#103

Post by puranjay »

ryandvm wrote: post #74
koolba wrote: post #5

Quoting Sundar Pichai (Google CEO), emphasis mine: > At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint) . They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings,…

The moral of the story is something most adults figure out by their mid 20s: if you like your job, keep your mouth shut about your political/religious beliefs. And despite what any employer will tell you about their workplace being an open forum, they are full of shit. What they mean is, it's an open forum to agree with management.

Which is how it should be.

The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#104

Post by MichaelGG »

puranjay wrote: post #103
ryandvm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moral of the story is something most adults figure out by their mid 20s: if you like your job, keep your mouth shut about your political/religious beliefs. And despite what any employer will tell you about their workplace being an open forum, they are full of shit. What they mean is, it's an open forum to agree with management.

Which is how it should be. The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.

By that logic, we should let companies have explicit policies against certain races cause the market will sort it out... I don't think I've ever heard that "the market" will deal with unfair internal HR policies.

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#106

Post by mattnewton »

koolba wrote: post #5

Quoting Sundar Pichai (Google CEO), emphasis mine: > At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint) . They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings,…

Part of me suspects he could have stayed had his manifesto not gotten picked up on the front page of CNN. There was only one clear way for the Google brand to distance itself then. The message is clearly think what you want, but if your words end up next to the Google logo on national news...

Edit: thinking about that, he couldn't have gone far in the company though without some serious apologies or something, because I can't see a manager assigning him to work in or lead a team with women on it, and that's 1/3rd the company. Maybe it's also a practical decision to fire him and be done with it even if it didn't leak.

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#107

Post by TeMPOraL »

puranjay wrote: post #103
ryandvm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moral of the story is something most adults figure out by their mid 20s: if you like your job, keep your mouth shut about your political/religious beliefs. And despite what any employer will tell you about their workplace being an open forum, they are full of shit. What they mean is, it's an open forum to agree with management.

Which is how it should be. The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.

People being up in arms about this issue is exactly 'the market punishing or rewarding Google accordingly'.

That said, don't expect the market to give you a solution that's fair to people - the only one you'll get is the one of maximum profitability under implicit rules of the current culture. Those are very much not the same things.

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#108

Post by TeMPOraL »

MichaelGG wrote: post #104
puranjay wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is how it should be. The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.

By that logic, we should let companies have explicit policies against certain races cause the market will sort it out... I don't think I've ever heard that "the market" will deal with unfair internal HR policies.

Of course the market will sort it out. Just not in the way you (or anyone) would consider "sorted out". The mistake here is assuming that the market promotes fairness and humanist values.

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#109

Post by protomyth »

Frankly, the CEO has more problems than this memo. Breitbart has been a garbage fire for a while, but if the screen shots and messages in the article[1] aren't fake then Google is going to have some problems. This is really not the thing you want going on when you already have a government labor investigation underway. I wish anyone impacted luck.

1) http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/revealed-inside-goo...

Re: Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

#110

Post by asdfologist »

pimmen wrote: post #101
slavak wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He referred to a "lowered bar" in the form of a reduced false-negative rate for "diversity candidates"; at no point in the document did he imply his female engineer colleagues are less qualified. He also had a reference to apparently support this assertion, but since the hyperlink leads to an internal Google group we can't really know its contents unless a Googler informs us. From the original memo: > However, to ach…

Let's assume this guy knows statistics; by lowering the rate of false-negatives, you raise the rate of false-positives. This means that he's heavily implying Google has employed undeperforming engineers with these practices.

Honest question: without seeing the reference he used to back his assertion, how did you conclude that his belief about this is wrong? Or did you actually manage to read it?
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