Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 464 posts

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#71

Post by gedy »

wand3r wrote: post #30

> In a statement, Google said that it would “vigorously defend this lawsuit,” adding that it has a “clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity. At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people, improve our culture, and build better products.” This sounds contradictory.

It sounds like they are splitting hairs to say that they aren't discriminating in hiring, but in the candidate pool they gather.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#72

Post by humanrebar »

jsmeaton wrote: post #3
2aa07e2 wrote: post #2

> In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request. Good for him. Google is now exc…

It sounds like it was one manager. Is that all you need to blacklist an entire company?

How a company deals with a bad manager is very important. Assuming you believe the accusations (1), the fact that Google wasn't immediately firing people and settling with the plaintiff is worse than the original complaint.

(1) A big if. I haven't seen any hard evidence yet.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#73

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

gwbas1c wrote: post #55

I suspect that lawsuits like this will show that trying to artificially influence diversity through hiring practices is an incorrect approach. When I'm in a hiring position, it's not like we sit around a table and say, "we'd prefer the white male." We just don't have enough women and minorities in the hiring pool to begin with. The problem is that there aren't enough women and minorities entering our field. We just c…

I agree with you in general, but I'm curious how many would be "enough"?

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#74

Post by gedy »

spunker540 wrote: post #64
wand3r wrote: post #30

> In a statement, Google said that it would “vigorously defend this lawsuit,” adding that it has a “clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity. At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people, improve our culture, and build better products.” This sounds contradictory.

It’s not. The idea is that when evaluating/interviewing an applicant it’s strictly merit based. But when reaching out to potential candidates on LinkedIn, choosing how to represent the company on campuses and at conferences the company can choose to act in ways to bring in more underrepresented applicants. So without changing their hiring standards, they can hopefully still increase the diversity of the pool of appli…

It's still discrimination though

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#75

Post by SteveCoast »

rvshchwl wrote: post #57
2aa07e2 wrote: post #2

> In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request. Good for him. Google is now exc…

Google is the first big company that I actually rejected after receiving an offer from them. I had a really bad experience, and just felt like the company was looking for things I am much more qualified from. I was interviewed by engineers who were all just recent college grads, no managers, tech leads, or anyone I felt were probably more qualified to interview me. The environment felt toxic. Most people I talked to…

Maybe you failed the test that you were supposed to remove the plates :-O

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#76

Post by bitL »

rvshchwl wrote: post #57
2aa07e2 wrote: post #2

> In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request. Good for him. Google is now exc…

Google is the first big company that I actually rejected after receiving an offer from them. I had a really bad experience, and just felt like the company was looking for things I am much more qualified from. I was interviewed by engineers who were all just recent college grads, no managers, tech leads, or anyone I felt were probably more qualified to interview me. The environment felt toxic. Most people I talked to…

Actually your experience is not unique; you could see on Googlers in Mountain View or Zurich that many of them are one step from a burn-out, they are also often crammed next to each other in larger noisy rooms; most of them seemed pretty stressed out, not joyful, starting from receptionists. Such a huge contrast in attitude comparing to Microsoft (content/happy) or Facebook (high-energy).

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#77

Post by humanrebar »

gwbas1c wrote: post #55

I suspect that lawsuits like this will show that trying to artificially influence diversity through hiring practices is an incorrect approach. When I'm in a hiring position, it's not like we sit around a table and say, "we'd prefer the white male." We just don't have enough women and minorities in the hiring pool to begin with. The problem is that there aren't enough women and minorities entering our field. We just c…

> Getting women and minorities to choose tech as a career isn't something that I honestly don't know how to solve.

A lot of the histrionics lately seem to indicate a general lack of humility. We can't be condemning people for not getting with the program if we don't even know if the program will work.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#78

Post by organsnyder »

nugi wrote: post #70
boomboomsubban wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't too big to fail, it's "a bad egg doesn't ruin the bunch." Whether that's the case here is arguable, but no one is saying they aren't responsible for their actions.

Is 'allowing for variance' up to and including racism and sexisism in hiring? Because it seems like you are giving them a pass, because there are many hiring managers.

I'm not saying that bad behavior should be dismissed. But I am saying that the larger the organization, the more potential there is for there to be a bad actor that doesn't match the overall organization's culture.

If the recruiter's accusation is indeed true, then we should ask questions about whether it is endemic to the entire organization. Though given the company's size—especially its growth through acquisitions (such as YouTube)—it's likely that the behavior is constrained to a single manager or department.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#79

Post by dep_b »

You can't fix in hiring what's already broken before people even get to college. I'm pretty sure Google's hiring disproportionally much women, black people, gay people already if you would compare it to what's graduating from the compsci careers in the US.

Google is making other companies probably even more exclusively white/asian male because they tend to hire more of the women that do qualify for programming jobs.

There are only two things you really can do: - Fix the school system. But the people that really call the shots in the US would call that communist because you would have to raise taxes - Train people from minority or disadvantaged backgrounds yourself

If they really would care about diversity they could have Google schools in prisons to educate the more motivated and promising inmates in the skills Google requires.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#80

Post by ofirg »

acdha wrote: post #65
ofirg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not what the memo said. did you not read it or is this what you think the writer meant even if he did not actually write that but you have some kind of mind reading abilities?

Accusing people of not reading the memo doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation. If you share Damore’s views, just say so rather than trying to distract.

You do no get to decide what contributes and what does not beyond your +-1. you do not have the moral high ground when you are repeating lies. It is clear to me that anyone that has read the memo, and is not laying will not describe it the way DanHulton did. Seems to me that what ever conversation you want to have it should not be based on falsehoods.
Post reply on HN