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

241–250 of 464 posts

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

#241

Post by rvo »

Clanan wrote: post #213
colmvp wrote: post #126

I have to say, as an Asian male I found this comment by dirtyid in the article to be succinct and all too true: > "Pour one out for Asian males. Get screwed by affirmative action in education, media representation and now employment but can't get screwed on dating apps." Asian men constantly get grouped as a single entity when it comes to tech and aren't considered an added element of diverseness within the industry…

As a white Irish guy from New Mexico, this attitude irks me as well. No, I'm not the same as every other white guy out there. (I have far more interesting "gringo" stories than a white guy from Connecticut.) No one should be judged or labeled by their skin color or ethnicity.

"Hire people not due to the content of their character, but by the gender they identify with and the melanin in their skin" #civilrights2018

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

#242

Post by sitkack »

HelloNurse wrote: post #227
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting thing there is that it's only L3's, which (it seems) are juniors / new people; you could argue that that too is discriminatory and it enables the "white male" stereotype to remain in leading positions while the "grunt work" is done by underrepresented groups.

Apart from the difference between not hiring aspirants and driving away old employees, the metrics of diversity are probably based on pure head count, not on having quotas on important roles (which would also be unlikely to be satisfiable).

Whenever there is a panel discussion, it is always a bunch of dudes.

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

#243

Post by kraig911 »

xxcode wrote: post #85

I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers talk in the same vein. Please consider not…

Reading this hurt. Life's to short. Quit. There are plenty of places that pay just as good or give you much more than just raw cash. If you've a family to feed (like me) I totally can get why you'd want to say. I know it's easy for me to say quit and find something else too. But please take it from a dumb guy who pities others that he feels are making the same mistake as he did. Quit. The world is too beautiful and miraculous to lose days to feelings like that.

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

#244

Post by humanrebar »

kelukelugames wrote: post #151
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A supreme court justice was asked the same question. I don't agree with it completely but think it's an interesting opinion. >Rosen: Why is it good for men—as you said recently, there should be nine women on the Supreme Court … >Ginsburg: No, I didn’t say there should be. The question was when will there be enough, so there’ll be enough when there are nine. >For most of our history, except the times the court was les…

The logic there is just terrible. Maybe her point was that even if eight women were sitting, we'd still be considering women candidates for the open seat? If so, it didn't come across in the text.

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

#245

Post by romanpoet »

soreasan wrote: post #197
colmvp wrote: post #126

I have to say, as an Asian male I found this comment by dirtyid in the article to be succinct and all too true: > "Pour one out for Asian males. Get screwed by affirmative action in education, media representation and now employment but can't get screwed on dating apps." Asian men constantly get grouped as a single entity when it comes to tech and aren't considered an added element of diverseness within the industry…

As an Asian male this article also frustrates me. Google has always been a company I've wanted to work for but if this article is true and Google discriminates against Whites and Asians in their hiring process then they're not the dream company I previously believed they were.

I'm here to report to you that unfortunately they are not that company. I hear they used to be everything the nerds dreamed, but as the company grew, the original culture was unable to defend itself.

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

#246

Post by cik »

I find the whole thing offense. I'm 'white'(ish coloured), I'm also half-african, half-asian, due to geography, and I'm sick of the identity politics. At the end of the day, I can be ~28th generation African, 28th generation Asian, 100% white, and not meet a 'quota'.

Years ago, working with a US company going after 'Section 503' funding for something, I was the randomly pulled auditee. The auditor freaked out at the notion that I can be half-african, half-asian and white, and I refused to 'update my answer' on the government survey. Seriously.

What happened to the idea that in Tech we'd have a legitimate meritocracy. It really doesn't matter what someone's skin tone, language, gender expression, or sexual preference(s) are. We do work, we do work individually and collectively, and we put our best into it. Anything else is simply disingenuous.

/rant over.

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

#247

Post by ocdtrekkie »

jmull wrote: post #58
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…

I'd just caution you not to buy in too much to the narrative presented by one side of a law suit. You'll pretty much never see a more one-sided presentation of a situation. It may bear out or it may not.

Bear in mind though, the lawsuit is a one-sided presentation held up against millions of dollars of PR investment in publishing an image about how great it is to work there.

Yeah, reality probably falls somewhere in the middle, but the default narrative is already slanted incredibly far the other direction.

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

#248

Post by [deleted] »

humanrebar wrote: post #77
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.

[deleted]

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

#249

Post by jameskegel »

hodgesrm wrote: post #212
JPKab wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that people still view Google as a cool place to work. It seems to me that ship sailed years ago. They are a giant corporation reliant on one monopoly product to fund everything else. Employees usually are stuck with some tiny part of a component in a system. The office perks are nice, but are you really going to do interesting work there anymore?

Google has produced some amazing software and continues to do so. I work with Kubernetes and Angular 2, both of which originated there. The quality of design, implementation, and documentation is a model for accomplishment in computer science. As an engineer it's hard not to envy the folks that got to work on those projects. So...I think it really depends where you work. That's true of all big companies as far as I c…

Kubernetes is the product I’d mention, if I were making this comparison.

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

#250

Post by millzlane »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #218
hodgesrm wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but attitudes like what you just described contribute to a toxic work culture--people sticking around just because of the money but hating every minute of it. It implies that people there are not just unhappy but will do/say things they don't believe in just to keep the paychecks rolling in. Working at big companies like Google is not for everyone. Unless you have material reason…

Management is responsible for the environment that is created in a company. Please don't blame employees that are complaining about stressful working environments - their plate is already full.

There is no victim. This isn't chattel slavery. OP can say no to shitty culture and find another job. Take some of that good money save up a 6 month emergency fund and GTFO. There is no reason you should be going into work everday with a curdled stomach.
Post reply on HN