But however imperfect his attempt, he was fired, in short, for thinking on his own.
Why is this surprising? People get fired in America all the time for thinking on their own. It's also called "disagreeing with the boss".
Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
331–340 of 872 posts
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#332IMO 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 find it disturbing that somebody would even consider switching to the alt-right over this. Do people not have deeply-held beliefs anymore? Personally, that is a line that I would never , under any circumstance, cross, even if I was the one who got fired and blacklisted. It is a non-negotiable position.
You are right to find it disturbing. It is disturbing. Once it becomes dangerous to express your ideas, then people with contrary ideas will either be crushed or rebellious.
There is a stupendously thin line between a sane person and an insane one. It is possible to break minds, and the vitriol that can be poured out from the depths of the internet is quite sufficient to break the typical human being. Some people start off closer to the edge than others.
I'm glad I do not know the true extent of the outrage that this subject has unleashed, but I'll wager it includes credible death threats considering the size of the audience that it has reached.
If you pour hate over something long enough, it will bear fruit.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#333> To begin with, even I know most of Google’s work is people-centric. It’s either serving people directly, or analyzing people-data, or imagining the people-future. If you want to spend your life with things and ideas rather than people, then go into engineering or physics, but not into software-development.
That's silly. Every job involves people, at some level, otherwise you wouldn't get paid. By this logic, a lighthouse keeping is a people-centric job, because you maintain a light that other people will look at.
> That coding actually requires “female” skills was spelled out clearly by Yonatan Zunger, a former Google employee. But since I care more about physics than software-development, let me leave this aside.
I believe this is the one that points out that managers deal with people, not software (so why not just get MBAs?). I'd counter that liking people doesn't mean you're good with them, there's even research that introverts make better CEOs.
Similarly, being predisposed to like programming (or any other task) doesn't mean you're naturally good at it (though putting in the hours will help a lot).
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#334[deleted]
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#335I'm trying to understand his motivations, maybe it is just naivety, but that he wanted to talk about something that was bothering him, and didn't understand why he couldn't (or shouldn't) talk about it publicly seems fairly typical of a condition like aspergers, is it possible he simply has something like that? Either way the witch hunt needs to cease immediately.
after watching his hour long interview with jordan peterson, it's almost certain. he was painfully awkward. if not aspergers, he must have zero social iq.
That's where I got that impression too. I'm not sure how that changes things, but it does seem to make his firing especially harsh.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If a coworker of mine started publicly saying that I'm not genetically qualified for the work I do Why are you changing the meaning of what he wrote? He didn't say that at all. He was very clear that he was talking about the group not any individuals. If you choose to misunderstand what someone said, when they did a good job of explaining it clearly, then I think you shouldn't spread that misunderstanding around in…
> He was very clear that he was talking about the group not any individuals. Since when does that excuse anything? If he'd written "Jews are, in general, hateful monsters. Not the Jews who work here, they're great, but most of the rest" does that statement become acceptable? More importantly , Mr Damore does not know all the women at Google personally. He cannot. So when he says "In general, women are less suited to/…
I say: black people are more suited to be NBA players. This is obvious looking at black players % in the league in comparison to the total population as well as the fact that black people are poorer on average and get less opportunities (or even chances for proper nutrition, let alone training).
Should white NBA players be offended by that statement? The answer is obvious: they shouldn't as that only means they were the ones on the tail of the genetic distribution and made it anyway or maybe even they overcome disadvantages to get there.
Now I say: women are in general less likely to be interested in tech and less likely to become good programmers because they are, on average, less competitive and less likely to devote themselves to solitude practice which is often necessary to become a very good coder.
Should women, who already made it to Google be offended? Of course they shouldn't for the same reasons as above. We can however do something with this information: we can try changing tech world to be more welcoming to women. This way we can avoid sexist hiring practices (gender quotas are clear discrimination) while still achieving more diverse environment.
Those are the points of the manifesto. Being offended by that is the problem of those taking offence as it doesn't speak well about their ability to reason about distributions of traits in a population.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. This is an example of people taking exactly the wrong lesson from this situation. The guy wasn't fired for having a 'dissenting opinion'. He was fired because he basically said women are underrepresented in IT because they are biologically unsu…
> He was fired because he basically said women are underrepresented in IT because they are biologically unsuited for it. I don't understand why people keep repeating that statement. He said that biological differences explain the different ratios of men and women, NOT that women are not suited for tech jobs. He explicitely did not say (nor mean) that a woman can't be a good software engineer. Just that on average, mo…
I think it has to do with low knowledge of statistics.
The funny thing is that all the following sentences can be true at the same time:
1. Across the whole population, fewer women than men have the biological/psychological traits needed to become software engineers.
2. Female engineers are underrepresented in Silicon Valley and face many different forms of discrimination.
3. Female engineers at Google are on average better than their male colleagues.
I'm not suggesting any of these sentences are necessarily true, just that they can be. This is not intuitive, unless you know a bit of statistics.
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Mad at someone for touching your bum? Speak up. Where is this being said? People will not take your position seriously if you're not using context, because you're misrepresenting what is happening. This is something thats done in other places, but as far as I know, has nothing to do with the memo, and nothing to do with the parent post you're responding to. Therefore, you're using a strawman.
I'm referring to a Hacker News thread not even 3 weeks old. In that specific paragraph I'm commenting on Hacker News, not the memo.
A random HN thread from possibly several weeks ago to which you don't provide a link.
Are you surprised that some (most?) people couldn't make a connection?
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#339I like the discussion. I think the point about software being significantly "people centric" is a bit off base and betrays the authors lack of experience in the field. Working with people is certainly part of the job and in some roles maybe a large portion of the work. Being a good communicator is an important part of being a good developer, but it doesn't make you a good developer. Being a talented and experienced p…
That's a nice theory, but I fail to see any evidence of it. I see lots of people cap out at senior engineer, cause that's how far you can get without having strong technical skills. Staff engineers, tech leads, and managers all get there because they're good communicators, and tbh, in those roles, their engineering skills are secondary.
Surely you meant strong people skills?
Re: Outraged about the Google diversity memo?
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Mad at someone for saying you're genetically predisposed to be less capable of individual action? He never said that. Could you cite the portion where he literally says women are less capable?
He says women will benefit from making coding more social. Pair programming. Remember?
So now sociability is a negative trait? I for one would be delighted to find an efficient way to make coding more social. Many a reason why software design is so hard is exactly because most programmers are autistic nerds that tend to produce opinionated, hard to maintain code. Pair programming with someone that tends to think more in breadth than in depth sounds like one way of improving that situation.