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Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

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Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#201

Post by manicdee »

Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

That's a gross oversimplification of the issue.

Would the same outcome have happened if this guy had posted his manifesto on a blog outside the office, rather than distributing it to colleagues at work?

Would the same outcome have happened if the various arguments in the manifesto had been individual articles on a personal blog over a period of time?

Would the same outcome have happened if the manifesto hadn't been explicitly critical about diversity hiring at Google, and rather had been generally critical about EEO law at the state and federal level?

There are so many ways this situation could have been different, but the lesson you choose to take from it is "don't express your opinion in public"? That's what really explains Trump.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#202

Post by ckastner »

KirinDave wrote: post #142
Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

It's mysterious to me how literally every action a feminist takes is somehow directly responsibile for all problems that befall them, with every action that might possibly hurt a man being somehow a catastrophe in the making. Not 3 weeks ago we had a thread here where a woman spoke up about harassment and people said it was exactly the wrong thing. Mad someone for touching your bum? Speak up. You spoke up? Now you're…

> It's mysterious to me how literally every action a feminist takes is somehow directly responsibile for all problems that befall them, with every action that might possibly hurt a man being somehow a catastrophe in the making.

As I read it, the grandparent's sole argument was one of unintended consequences, specifically that censorship only intensifies certain problems instead of alleviating them.

I don't see how this can be interpreted as to hold feminists responsible for something -- I don't even see the relationship to feminists at all. Could you please expand on that?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#203

Post by flukus »

michaelchisari wrote: post #168
rufus_2 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trust in Trump has plummeted, even amongst his core. The vote is very quickly slipping out of the grasp of the Right This is certainly the message being broadcast into every home on the planet for the last 6 moths. In reality it seems a bit optimistic when we consider the Democrats are coming from a decade-long losing streak ( http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jan/25/... ), a monumentally embarra…

Right now, we have two indicators: The way the swings on the special elections are going, which are all violently swinging away from the Republicans, even if Republicans end up winning, it's barely by single digits in double digit districts. And the polling, which in aggregate, across all demographics, has been continually moving more and more negative each passing month. Even polls like Rasmussen, which have a tradi…

> Take Ossoff's challenge in Georgia. He lost by 4 points in a district that went for Trump by 19 points. Moreover, the Republicans were required to spend $25 million in order to defend a seat that they had most likely budgeted around $0 for. That's what's called a weathervane. Or a canary in a coal mine.

Isn't that normal? In Australia these sorts of elections usually swing heavily against the government of the day but are very poor predictions of what will happen at a general election. Is this not the norm in America?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#204

Post by manicdee »

memedtodeath wrote: post #180
jancsika wrote: post #121

> And let us be clear that, yes, such policies mean every once in a while you will not hire the most skilled person for a job. Therefore, a value judgement must be made here, not a logical deduction from data. Is diversity important enough for you to temporarily tolerate an increased risk of not hiring the most qualified person? That’s the trade-off nobody seems willing to spell out. Perhaps because it's not a necess…

When the Australian public service experimented with blinding demographic data on resumes, fewer women and minorities were hired: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria... A blind recruiting process only increases diversity if there exists significant bias against diverse candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if Silicon Valley has a bias in favor of diverse candidates, like Australia's public serv…

Note that men and women typically present themselves differently on CVs and in selection criteria, with men typically giving themselves credit for work done in teams while women typically talk about the teams they were part of.

This would easily explain why blind resumes resulted in a larger proportion of men being selected.

edit: to contrast with the orchestra scenario, a resume is not a skill test, while an audition for an orchestra is a skill test for exactly the type of skill that the candidate is being chosen for.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#205

Post by michaelchisari »

flukus wrote: post #203
michaelchisari wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, we have two indicators: The way the swings on the special elections are going, which are all violently swinging away from the Republicans, even if Republicans end up winning, it's barely by single digits in double digit districts. And the polling, which in aggregate, across all demographics, has been continually moving more and more negative each passing month. Even polls like Rasmussen, which have a tradi…

> Take Ossoff's challenge in Georgia. He lost by 4 points in a district that went for Trump by 19 points. Moreover, the Republicans were required to spend $25 million in order to defend a seat that they had most likely budgeted around $0 for. That's what's called a weathervane. Or a canary in a coal mine. Isn't that normal? In Australia these sorts of elections usually swing heavily against the government of the day…

For mid-term elections, yes, they usually swing against the party in power. The extent to which they swing varies wildly, though, so all we know is that there likes will be a traditional anti-establishment swing, but the magnitude of it is unknown.

However, a special election within the months after a Presidential election should follow the same results, since there hasn't been the time to build the resentment necessary for a significant change in voting patterns. That, however, has not been the case with the Trump presidency.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#206

Post by toyg »

_b8r0 wrote: post #183
Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

I made the grave mistake of trying to express that point on Twitter. Twitter seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time, but it's a dumpster fire right now full of raging people who don't understand what you've just said. I was in SV last year for a couple of months during the election, and everyone I met were all paid up members of the church of political correctness up front, but when you spo…

> Twitter seems to be a poor vehicle for nuanced debate at the best of time

Understatement of the century. How on earth can you expect to have "nuanced debate" with only 140 characters?

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#207

Post by arianvanp »

bobstaples wrote: post #85

looking at the men:women (8:2) ratio in software science at my university in NL, I can perfectly understand where the inbalance in ratio in the workforce comes from. Maybe we should focus on that first? Trying to get a different ratio at the workforce in all companies will effectively mean you will have less qualified women. Assuming a CS university degree is an important qualification.

8:2? That's super decent for Dutch standard. In Utrecht we are at 11%! It's totally insane. In the track I am following there are literally no women. Not a single one.

http://universitairemasters.nl/aantal-studenten/natuur/

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#208

Post by cm2187 »

michaelchisari wrote: post #127
Const-me wrote: post #113

IMO the best comment from there: Giulio Prisco said... The results of this incident are easy to predict. Now everyone at Google (and everyone in large tech companies, and everyone in academy) knows that they can be fired for expressing opinions that dissent from the party line. Of course they'll shut up for fear of losing their job and the means to support their family. But they won't change their position. If anythi…

We'll see how the trend moves going forward, but even after capturing (by rhetoric if not act) the white house, the alt-right continues to be a radical fringe, and suffers from serious internal contradictions that make any serious movement building doomed. The movement has attracted the attention of a lot of white nationalists, anti-semites and hardline fascists (amren, natall, kss), while also attracting a new wave…

I am not sure I get your objection. It's like saying that Clinton couldn't win the election because she had far-left/communist sympathisers. I am sure she did. And I am also sure these were a marginal portion of her electoral base. I don't see how these extremists would stand in the way of a broader movement.

I am not bullish on Trump long term, but not because some extremists also support him, but because of his own randomness and inability to get things done in Washington.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#209

Post by hnnsj »

mathw wrote: post #171
axlprose wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even if the number of women just stays the same. Is the effort to level the playing field then deemed a 'failure' if the results don't change in the way they're expected to? That's the important question here, especially since there have now been preliminary experiments in tech interviews suggesting such an outcome is not implausible: http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...

If you've removed possible bias from your hiring process, then you have to accept an imbalance is either a result of uneven retention inclusive-or something operating earlier in the process of training your candidates. The point is to remove as many obstacles as possible. We want the best to get the jobs, but if the are barriers based on gender or race or religion that's potentially denying us a brilliant woman, or b…

I wonder, though, how companies' hiring processes alone are supposed to fix the societal biases. Isn't it a false choice when given only the two explanations: A) We fix biases in the workplace/hiring process and get a 50/50 distribution in the workplace or B) There must be biological differences.

I'm personally rather convinced of a third alternative: There is some bias and even outright discrimination in some workplaces, but gender norms in society as a whole create such a big difference in the distribution of applicants/talent pool that it becomes impossible to correct as late in life as the hiring process. I think the gender norms are very deeply rooted and entwined through most aspects of life and that if we truly want to fix the problem, as opposed to get good PR and pay lip service, we need to change gender roles drastically. And that starts pretty much from pregnancy and goes way beyond recruiting.

Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?

#210

Post by Const-me »

michaelchisari wrote: post #187
panda88888 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it's allegedly Google internal poll, you probably won't find more information on it beyond screenshot. After what happened to Damore and calls for his supporters to be fired as well, most people are probably clamming up now.

I can't say that inspires confidence that the poll is even legitimate. Do we at least have proof that it actually was an internal Google poll and not someone's 15 minutes in photoshop?

No, we don’t have that proof.

However, the design matches the defaults of google forms, exact colors and their sequence, too: http://imgur.com/WPC0ogZ

Also the header says "gd-jpeg v1.0", it’s a cross platform open source C library with bindings for all modern programming languages including Go and Python: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD_Graphics_Library

Even if that’s a fake, it’s a good one.

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