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Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

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Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#821

Post by conanbatt »

mirimir wrote: post #383
tptacek wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was terminated at Google's discretion under at-will employment, the same standard that might allow you to be fired for coming to work with blue hair. He sought relief under an exception to at-will, the NLRA, which protects concerted action to improve working conditions. The NLRB determined that because the substance of his action involved requests that Google might reasonably determine would be problematic under E…

> He was terminated at Google's discretion under at-will employment, the same standard that might allow you to be fired for coming to work with blue hair. Exactly. Google had the right to fire him. Which is why he should have published his memo anonymously. Unless, like Snowden, he felt that authentication was important, and was willing to face the consequences.

I think there is something pernicious about Google saying "tell me your opinion", "This is my opinion", "You are fired". In moral or practical sense, that can be a breach of contract.

As far as I know, this memo was published within a space where controversial topics are debated, and was made public by someone else. The person that leaked the memo did actual measurable damage to Google's reputation and PR efforts: were efforts expended to find and fire that person?

Lets not kid ourselves: damore was fired because of public outrage, not because of google policies, or the law, or "because no team would take him".

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#822

Post by stevenh »

pokemongoaway wrote: post #818
tptacek wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This amorphous right commenters on this thread seem to think Damore had not to be fired, he didn't have. That's what employment at will means. You don't even know whether I think his termination was reasonable. All you know is that I believe --- and so does the NLRB in this instance --- he did not enjoy special protections against unreasonable termination. What I find especially funny about this is that Damore is a c…

I'm not conceding to be on your "amorphous right," but the amorphous left seems to put words in everyone's mouth. I haven't seen anyone in this thread say that they are certain that Google broke the law in this case - since they are a private organization. What I have seen a lot of is people reframing and mischaracterizing the memo as "anti-diversity," "sexual harassment," "pseudoscience," etc. I don't need to know i…

He was referring to Damore's supposed right not to be fired as "amorphous".

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#823

Post by Dylan16807 »

refulgentis wrote: post #397
said wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I urge you read the memo yourself. He said Google lowers the false negative rate for women.

From a statistics point of view, this statement is dispositive: "...decrease the false negative rate, not increase the false positive rate." The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship. You cannot decrease one without increasing the other. It is, for example, one of the difficulties in making good medical diagnostic tests. P.S. snarky commentary such as 'read the me…

> The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship.

If you're adjusting a dial, yes. But hiring is complex, and having more time to evaluate candidates means you can do a better job. Spending more effort is a simple way to improve false negatives and false positives. It's entirely plausible that a company might have extra time budgeted for double-checking resumes from certain groups.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#824

Post by tome »

wolf550e wrote: post #770
tome wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But put that aside and just try to engage with the simultaneously naive and arrogant assumption that the people Google hires --- people, we assume, like Damore --- must somehow represent the top of that curve. Because what they do is just so demanding. This is fallacious reasoning. The claim that the IQ of men has higher variance implies (given a Gaussian distribution) that there is some IQ threshold beyond which t…

When the Damore memo came out, people have calculated that to explain the only 20% women working for google, the average IQ of google engineers needs to be 160. That is laughable.

Interesting. Do you have a link to that calculation? Maybe tptacek was impliticly referencing that calculation. I took what he said at face value but maybe real world numbers make my claim moot.

By way of calculation, apparently 30k software engineers work for Google[1] so there are probably around 15k in the USA. There are 600k software engineers in the USA[2]. I estimate that Google employs about 10% of the engineers that could pass an interview with them if they tried, so the Google-level cohort in the USA is about 150k or 25% of all engineers.

The top 25% of engineers is 0.7 standard deviations above the mean of a normal distribution. Assuming equal means, female engineers would have to have a variance in "software engineering quotient"[3] 45% that of the male engineer variance.

So it seems that if men and women have the same mean propensity to be good software engineers (not just IQ, or even IQ at all, but general propensity) but the variance of the female propensity is 45% of that of the male, then that would entirely explain a 20%/80% ratio at Google.

(Caveat: I've calculated the SWEQ level based on male engineers only but since there is such a small proportion of female engineers I don't think this skews the calculation very much.)

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-does-Googl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...

[3] IQ per se is probably not the relevant factor. I don't know if a single number representing "SWE quotient" is even plausible ...

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#825

Post by pvg »

stcredzero wrote: post #795
tptacek wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This amorphous right commenters on this thread seem to think Damore had not to be fired, he didn't have. That's what employment at will means. You don't even know whether I think his termination was reasonable. All you know is that I believe --- and so does the NLRB in this instance --- he did not enjoy special protections against unreasonable termination. What I find especially funny about this is that Damore is a c…

But employment at will isn't just a conservative value --- it's a signpost conservative value, one of the basic principles on which we organize our market economy. What went on with James Damore has nothing to do with the "good workings" of the employment marketplace. Rather, it's the abuse of at-will employment by groups to push political agendas through coercion. Damore is in this instance a conservative the same w…

Rather, it's the abuse of at-will employment by groups to push political agendas through coercion. [...] a sign that there's some form of at least mild oppression.

Never mind funny movie nihilism, a few more iterations in this thread and you'll type yourself into espousing what are starting to sound like some of the core tenets of Marxism. And they say internet forum discussions never changed anyone's position!

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#826

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

stcredzero wrote: post #802
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's citing "legitimate scientific sources" but he doesn't understand them, so his citations are meaningless. Where am I claiming that "the whole field isn't valid"? I said there's a reproducibility crisis and that the reliance on p-values has been criticised in various fields. I made no claim that his interpretations are "wrong". I said that his interpretations are most likely wrong because he's not a psychologist a…

He's citing "legitimate scientific sources" but he doesn't understand them, so his citations are meaningless. You seemingly refuse to substantiate this. I made no claim that his interpretations are "wrong". I said that his interpretations are most likely wrong because he's not a psychologist What would you say if a prominent and widely cited academic and clinical Psychologist corroborated his interpretations? https:/…

stcredzero, I enjoy vigorous debate (I'm an academic) and in the past I've benefited tremendously from engaging opposing viewpoints. That's nothing like what I got from our conversation, which is instead becoming more and more embarassing for both of us, the more it grows. My apologies but it is evident to me there can be no productive debate between us and therefore I will now stop replying to you.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#827

Post by bjourne »

mseebach wrote: post #689
bjourne wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the laws are different. But in this case it doesn't matter much because the example is extreme. Even if the employer could show that the manifesto caused a toxic work environment (hard), and that that was also Demore's intent (even harder), the employer would also need to show that they had tried to resolve the situation with other means. For example, by asking Demore not to publish similar manifestos in the…

That's the point. Under some of the more liberal legislations in eg. Denmark, you can fire people for "cooperation difficulties". The bar is higher than at-will, but it's not very difficult to meet. The employer just have to show that it has tried and failed to remedy the "difficulties" first (so you can't just fire people the next day). It's unclear that the statements found to constitute sexual discrimination could…

The employer must be able to document that the termination is due to cooperation difficulties. Google didn't provide any such documentation. Hence terminating Damore for the manifesto would have been illegal in Denmark. That's the point -- Damore's dismissal was so obviously unfair that it wouldn't have been allowed in any Western European country.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#828

Post by mseebach »

bjourne wrote: post #827
mseebach wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point. Under some of the more liberal legislations in eg. Denmark, you can fire people for "cooperation difficulties". The bar is higher than at-will, but it's not very difficult to meet. The employer just have to show that it has tried and failed to remedy the "difficulties" first (so you can't just fire people the next day). It's unclear that the statements found to constitute sexual discrimination could…

The employer must be able to document that the termination is due to cooperation difficulties. Google didn't provide any such documentation. Hence terminating Damore for the manifesto would have been illegal in Denmark. That's the point -- Damore's dismissal was so obviously unfair that it wouldn't have been allowed in any Western European country.

That's just a detail. Google didn't hire or fire Damore in Denmark, so obviously they didn't bother to follow Danish law. My point is that Google could most likely fairly easily have argued that the memo caused insurmountable cooperation difficulties and terminated him on that basis.

The exact steps, the time taken and the phrasing of the arguments would have been different, but the substance (he got fired for the memo) would have been the same.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#829

Post by fareesh »

bencalam wrote: post #753
fareesh wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has very little to do with feelings though. In my specific case I am not affected by these politics and policies whatsoever as I am thousands of miles away from the United States, and I am self employed. To constantly read about cases where biology determines whether or not people are eligible for a particular opportunity, i.e. imposing inequality of opportunity in order to arrive at equality of outcome, is violat…

In isolation, yes, you are very right. But history is anything but that, and there is always a context and reason for why things are the way they are. I am from India, and I know bias when I see it. Classism and racism is systemic in India and whether you want to believe me or not, a person from a religion or upper caste will prefer a person from the same group. I am not going to claim that this exact same thing happ…

Minorities don't need to be given a "hand up". People with demonstrable disadvantages can make a good case for the need to be given a "hand up".

The criteria for being institutionally favoured must not be rooted in biology, because it generalizes against people who do not have the requisite biological trait. This is the very same evil you are seeking to correct. You cannot use the same evil against a different group to "equalise" the wrongs committed before.

Two 15 year olds, one the son of a brahmin shopkeeper, the other, the son of a lower caste politician each score 89% in their class 10 examination. The politician's son has lived in the lap of luxury, elite coaching classes, servants, chauffer driven car, quiet studying environment. The shopkeeper's daughter shares a room with two siblings, spends 3 days a week doing a shift at the store, studies alone in an area with frequent power cuts.

By your system of favoring minorities, the politician's son is favoured over her, because he comes from a background of historical oppression. These cases are deemed "rare enough" to be considered acceptable sacrifices for the great cause of social justice.

Why must a biological standard be applied? Is this the best we can do ?

What are you going to tell the shopkeeper's daughter? Ok, we are sorry but after enough generations we will reverse this and your grandchildren will have justice?

You also cannot legislate away social ills and negative perceptions of one community by another. You certainly won't improve such divisions by favoring one community over another at an institutional level.

The shopkeeper's daughter tells her kids that she could have been an engineer at one of the city's best colleges, but she was not the correct caste for her grades to be deemed sufficient. Do you think this helps these divisions?

In a hypothetical engineering classroom, 25% of the class is at a different academic level to the rest of the class. How does this impact the relationships between students? How does this impact the way teachers teach these classes? Are these going to fix the divisions between castes?

These are poor solutions. These solutions must not go uncriticized. No solution should go uncriticized. We should always want to do better. Criticism of a solution does not imply a lack of empathy for the problem or those disaffected by it. Criticism of a solution to discrimination does not imply a favorable attitude to discrimination. These are cheap, ad hominem and intellectually dishonest ways of silencing people who do so, rather than engaging them, as was done with Mr. Damore.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#830

Post by bjourne »

mseebach wrote: post #828
bjourne wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employer must be able to document that the termination is due to cooperation difficulties. Google didn't provide any such documentation. Hence terminating Damore for the manifesto would have been illegal in Denmark. That's the point -- Damore's dismissal was so obviously unfair that it wouldn't have been allowed in any Western European country.

That's just a detail. Google didn't hire or fire Damore in Denmark, so obviously they didn't bother to follow Danish law. My point is that Google could most likely fairly easily have argued that the memo caused insurmountable cooperation difficulties and terminated him on that basis. The exact steps, the time taken and the phrasing of the arguments would have been different, but the substance (he got fired for the me…

You are wrong. Read the link here: https://gettingthedealthrough.com/area/18/jurisdiction/52/la...

"Similarly, ‘conduct of the employee’ means that dismissals based on sickness absence, underperformance, etc, will usually be considered reasonably justified. In most cases, however, it will be a requirement that one or more written warnings have been given before the dismissal to allow the employee to remedy the situation and thus avoid dismissal."

Google didn't issue one or more written warnings. The dismissal would therefore have been judged unjustified.

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