Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

Post by fjsolwmv » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #372

yorwba wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that there are differences in certain abilities (most famously mental rotation) that are known to be affected by sex (male and female babies already perform differently). Now mental rotation isn't exactly relevant to software engineering, but there are other biological traits such as autism spectrum disorders that are anecdotally beneficial for software development. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a correl…

I'm not sure we share the same definition of "technically correct", when the evidence doesn't support Damore's claim that biological causes are why there are less women in software engineering and leadership. It's true that there are observable differences in spatial reasoning and reaction time across the sexes, but as you say, those are hardly requisites for being a good programmer.

Post by eridius » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

titanix2 wrote: post #650

eridius wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a hostile workplace is not “meaningful conversation”. The memo constituted pretty blatant harassment of all his female colleagues. You don’t have the right to say whatever you want. People absolutely should be fired for harassing and discriminating against their colleagues (which is effectively what the memo was). It’s toxic and incredibly hurtful and cannot be tolerated.

An hostile workplace is one firing an employee for the mere act of sharing an opinion. As the memo was not directly addressed to any female and did not insult them it is clearly not harassment. Questioning the hiring policy is not like attacking people directly. This is sad to see how much everything got conflated in an angry prêt-à-penser ideology that justify every of its excesses against the non believers.

Post by Caveman_Coder » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

Clanan wrote: post #734

throwestawayer wrote: post #513

Real question: having seen that many good engineers are hesitant to work at a company with very limited diversity, we have endeavored to increase diversity by hiring qualified junior engineers from less represented groups. Is this acceptable? These are completely qualified folks, for the job of junior engineer. We purposely, from the category of all qualified junior applicants, hired those that also were from less re…

In your company, how much better merit-wise must a white/asian/male applicant be to get hired? Fifty percent better? My gut-feeling is that these well-intentioned policies don't weed out the upper echelons of the "over-represented" groups anyway - they'll just use position/elite network to get in the door. Instead, the policy weeds out the "working class" applicants who must rely on merit, but who have the wrong skin…

Post by Clanan » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #735

Clanan wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your company, how much better merit-wise must a white/asian/male applicant be to get hired? Fifty percent better? My gut-feeling is that these well-intentioned policies don't weed out the upper echelons of the "over-represented" groups anyway - they'll just use position/elite network to get in the door. Instead, the policy weeds out the "working class" applicants who must rely on merit, but who have the wrong skin…

+1 I have first hand experience with this. As a normal working-class white guy with poor parents and no connections (I worked my way through school), I had a hard time even landing an interview at first. As a social experiment, I changed my name/sex from Joe/male to Joanna/female, kept everything else on my resume the same, and reapplied to all the jobs that didn't want me previously. Every single company that reject…

Post by Chris2048 » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

AHZHKPA wrote: post #671

The way we are talking to each other here is just toxic. Most of it isn’t even a conversation at all and I see very few attempts at understanding or empathy. It all just stinks of tribalism. Every time the memo is brought up I see this same shit, and feel someone needs to call it out. I don’t care what side you are on; how we are going about this conversation is clearly not working. I wish I had a solution for this.…