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YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

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Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#271

Post by rendall »

"The latter suit was filed by plaintiff James Damore, an engineer who was fired from the company last year for distributing a memo that suggested men were better suited to certain tech jobs than women. "

Excuse me. Hold on. Aaaaararrrrrarrrrgh!!!11!!! Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

It is frustrating to read the same misapprehension over and over and over.

Once again: James Damore's memo suggested no such thing.

He said that men and women tend to have different interests; and that engineering jobs at Google, as they are implemented, tend to favor engineers whose personality attributes are those that are typically held by men. He then went on to explain how Google might change the jobs so that it would be more appealing to those whose personality traits typically align with women. There is nothing about how men are more suited.

Something is seriously wrong with society when journalists at WSJ (et. al., et. al., et. al.) do not have enough reading comprehension skills to read, and understand, Damore's memo.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#272

Post by notacoward »

ignoramceisblis wrote: post #23

Did anyone not see this coming? The goal posts of equal _outcome_ continue to move, from university enrollment, to employment enrollment. And there are some people who want to see it go further. (What societal engineering scheme does this resemble?) With no apparent regard for what it costs. Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? Or do you think t…

  > try to understand one another
  > ...
  > arrogance, assumptions, and short-sighted thinking
What happened to trying to understand one another? Or should others only try to understand you, without you trying to understand them? The premise behind affirmative action is that it is needed in the present to correct for other forms of systemic bias that we haven't been able to eliminate yet. Practically all of the people who believe this, whether they do so rightly or wrongly, have color blindness as an eventual goal, just that pretending we're already there will never get us there. If you disagree with the premise, engage with it. Accusing others of arrogance etc. because you haven't tried to understand their POV - it's so well explained so many places that if you had tried you would have succeeded - isn't constructive.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#273

Post by DanBC »

rendall wrote: post #271

"The latter suit was filed by plaintiff James Damore, an engineer who was fired from the company last year for distributing a memo that suggested men were better suited to certain tech jobs than women. " Excuse me. Hold on. Aaaaararrrrrarrrrgh!!!11!!! Sorry. Had to get that out of my system. It is frustrating to read the same misapprehension over and over and over. Once again: James Damore's memo suggested no such th…

When multiple degree educated people who use language as a tool of their job continue to misunderstand what damore said maybe the problem is with his piss-poor communication, and not their understanding.

When very many people who read his document come to the same conclusion maybe, just maybe, that's what he actually said.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#274

Post by 1337biz »

danieltillett wrote: post #260
candiodari wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on those assumptions, which I'll iterate below first, let's get the numbers: 1) hiring based on IQ, cutoff at 2 standard deviations above the global mean (mu = 100, sigma = 15, by design), 2 sigma above that makes 130. You get hired if you're the candidate with the highest IQ, if you satisfy the minimum of an IQ of 130 2) 8/20 hispanic, 8/20 white, 1.16/20 black, 2.6/20 asians (and let's just pretned that sums…

You are going to have trouble fitting all of this into a tweet.

It has math and numbers. Nobody interested in that on Twitter anyway.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#275

Post by notacoward »

adamnemecek wrote: post #74
majos wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! Except when left to our own devices to "look beyond the superficial traits of a person", we usually end up hiring people who remind us ourselves. There is a place for consciously paying attention to race, ethnicity, and gender in that case. (Admittedly, the alleged situation in the headline is too far.)

> Except when left to our own devices to "look beyond the superficial traits of a person", we usually end up hiring people who remind us ourselves. Speak for yourself. Also, like similarity goes beyond skin color. I have more in common with a programmer of any race than with a non-programmer of my own race. That being said furries are weird.

> I have more in common with a programmer of any race than with a non-programmer of my own race.

Is that unusual freedom from unconscious bias reflected in the history of what engineers you have chosen to interview, made offers to, or subsequently promoted? Everyone thinks they're free from bias, until the empirical results show that the majority of them mathematically must be wrong.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#276

Post by zimpenfish »

candiodari wrote: post #252
danso wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP was arguing a point that is agreed-upon by many who argue against affirmative action — that the minorities ostensibly helped are harmed in the bigger picture. Yet you rip on the GP for not thinking enough about the whites and Asians who are also the victims of affirmative action? You could be a bit reflexively polarized about this issue.

Perhaps he's against discrimination, and that then automatically leads to the "reflexively polarized" opinion. How about we judge people on their merits ?

> How about we judge people on their merits ?

That's fine if everyone starts from the same base and has the same opportunities which, currently, they most assuredly do not. Let's knock this privileged bullshit on the head until then.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#277

Post by edanm »

danieltillett wrote: post #259
edanm wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we certainly should concentrate on removing hurdles, of course. But patching problems is not necessarily a bad idea, especially from the point of view of the employers themselves. Legality aside, there is a moral/practical argument for some discrimination based on "race" as a patch, which benefits the employer, so it's what we should expect employers to do. It's also something to keep in mind when thinking peop…

This approach only works if someone higher up in the education food chain hasn’t already correct for any earlier poor schooling by using some form of “affirmative action” in grading. The best way of overcoming handicaps based on poor schooling or other social/environmental handicaps is to fix the schooling (hard and long term) or just use g. Of course if you use g you run straight into Spearman’s Hypothesis [0]. 0. h…

Of course. My assumption can be stated as: the employer, for whatever reason, sees that empirically the correlation between e.g. GPA and work performance is different for different populations, and therefore corrects it. If the "correction" is done beforehand, then the employer won't see this phenomenon.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#278

Post by YouAreGreat »

wycs wrote: post #68
neerkumar wrote: post #8

Anyone who has worked for a large tech company in SF in the last 3/4 years knows that this has happened everywhere. In fairness, Google was one of the very last ones among large tech companies to play the quota game. But the problem is that that's a game that once the first company starts playing it, everyone else is forced to play it too. Company X publishes a report with amazing diversity numbers and brands itself…

Then company X gets rightfully trounced by a Chinese firm 5 years from now which does not share our ridiculous racial taboos. Some crimes are self policing.

Natural monopolist Google enjoys a "competitive moat" and collects monopoly rent. The combination allows for a lot of unpunished "inefficiency".

And scare quotes around "inefficiency" because I'm not convinced putting pressure on their productive white/asian male majority employees is actually inefficient for Google.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#279

Post by reitanqild »

Mithaldu wrote: post #265
Caveman_Coder wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Discrimination is bad. 2. Minorities have faced discrimination the most. 3. Let's discriminate against Whites/Asians to correct #2, even though we accept the truth of #1. I don't get this thought process at all..."lets fight discrimination with more discrimination!"

It's not simply more discrimination though. It rebalances the existing discrimination.

Punishing the grandchildren for the wrongdoings of the grandparents.

I though we left that behind a 100 years or more ago?

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#280

Post by manigandham »

edanm wrote: post #250
danieltillett wrote: post #19

The thing I hate about actions like this is what it does to talented people who fit some diversity quota checklist, both in the perception they have of themselves and those of other people. If you are a talented melanin-rich woman you are going to face both heightened impostor syndrome and dismissal by others that you only got the job because of some quota. Not good for anyone. There are no easy solutions, but it wou…

Well, we certainly should concentrate on removing hurdles, of course. But patching problems is not necessarily a bad idea, especially from the point of view of the employers themselves. Legality aside, there is a moral/practical argument for some discrimination based on "race" as a patch, which benefits the employer, so it's what we should expect employers to do. It's also something to keep in mind when thinking peop…

The only thing you can really measure is motivation, merit and output. How much "harder/smarter" someone worked to achieve something seems incredibly vague, and in your instance it seems like you're just guessing? How does this get you "the best" in any objective way?
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