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Thought Police

blog.cleancoder.com

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31–38 of 38 posts

Re: Thought Police

#31

Post by dictum »

nancye wrote: post #23
rednerrus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't working with people you disagree with part of corporate life? Do you think there are no conservative people at your company who have to deal with the incessant anti-conservative tech culture? I assume that occasionally they want to punch us in our faces. They show up for work and get their jobs done. The problem with enforcing these policies when we agree with them is we have to enforce them when we don't agree…

Equal employment laws and anti-discrimination statutes are real things, and they spell out which groups are protected classes - those based on race, sex, religion, disability, etc. Your workplace is not your living room, and not all ideas and behaviors are equally acceptable. I don't believe conservatives should be discriminated against, but when "conservative" becomes a euphemism for pro-white/anti-semitic/misogynis…

The reaction to this memo shows how the definition of misogyny can be spread very thin.

Re: Thought Police

#32

Post by slindz »

avs733 wrote: post #28
xiaoma wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using phrases like "sniveling white dudes", you're part of the problem.

naming behavior what it is is the problem?

Maybe, on average, women don't prefer tech as often? - Grab the pitchforks!

Snivelling white dudes. - Let's call a spade a spade...

Re: Thought Police

#33

Post by richmarr »

devnull791101 wrote: post #24
richmarr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...incessant anti-conservative tech culture Not sure I'd silo this as a tech culture thing. Education has been shown to negatively correlate with conservatism so it'd be reasonable to expect to see low numbers of conservatives in any field with higher educational barriers. http://www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-g...

except in UK, where the poor and uneducated are stereotypically labour/democrat supporters, wealthy educated types are tory/conservative.

Not sure what data you're looking at but Yougov says the exact opposite.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/25/demographics-dividing-b...

Re: Thought Police

#34

Post by rbanffy »

rkeene2 wrote: post #29
rbanffy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone should expect the VP of diversity to be able to successfully prevent any sufficiently intelligent and determined engineer from making a mess. It's an inherently unfair game. It doesn't matter how many crisis did she prevent, she didn't prevent one and that should not be enough to fire her. Having said that, I assume this was not the first time he expressed his opinions about diversity hiring. The…

One possible way Google could have turned this into a win-win scenario would have been to have the VP of diversity co-opt the memos's authors and put them in charge of some diversity initiatives so that they could experience the nuances of the problems with their viewpoint and perhaps the come to a revised (and usable solution), or if his berries were more closely correct the VP could experience that.

They should have done it before the memo went viral in such way as not to look like an endorsement of his (wrong) position.

Re: Thought Police

#35

Post by avs733 »

slindz wrote: post #32
avs733 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

naming behavior what it is is the problem?

Maybe, on average, women don't prefer tech as often? - Grab the pitchforks! Snivelling white dudes. - Let's call a spade a spade...

you mean a group of people socialized away from something from the day they are born are socialized away from it?

Re: Thought Police

#36

Post by junkculture »

avs733 wrote: post #28
xiaoma wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using phrases like "sniveling white dudes", you're part of the problem.

naming behavior what it is is the problem?

Why "sniveling white dudes" and not "sniveling dudes?"

What does his skin color have to do with anything?

Re: Thought Police

#38

Post by slindz »

avs733 wrote: post #35
slindz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, on average, women don't prefer tech as often? - Grab the pitchforks! Snivelling white dudes. - Let's call a spade a spade...

you mean a group of people socialized away from something from the day they are born are socialized away from it?

The memo's main point was that it would make sense to focus on diversity efforts closer to the day people are born instead of desperately filling quotas.

He was interested in exploring effective long term diversity instead of the kind a company could point to in a lawsuit as quickly as possible.

But it's much easier to label someone as snivelling and call it a day (also eluded to in the memo - in the title).

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