Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by throwaway1584 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

southphillyman wrote: post #342

throwaway1584 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost anyone working in tech has seen race and gender discrimination in favor of women and minorities at this point. I have personally experienced it. If we were to apply affirmative action then class would be a better differentiator than race or gender. As it stands now an upper-middle-class Ivy League educated person of the right identities will receive affirmative action over a man that worked his way up from a p…

Well every one except for me apparently. I've literally never worked with a (non-white) hispanic or black engineer before, so I have no personal anecdotes there. Female engineers are rare but I have worked with some and they mostly have been good (only 1 exception ime). The irony in all this hoopla is that literally every engineer who has been so bad that I wondered how the heck they made it past the interview stage…

> The irony in all this hoopla is that literally every engineer who has been so bad that I wondered how the heck they made it past the interview stage has been......drumroll ... white or asian male.

I work with a lot of engineers of all backgrounds, and no group has been without bad apples.

> But this argument that there are floods of under qualified minorities and women engineers getting jobs is hilarious.

You are misrepresenting the argument. The argument is that there is explicit discrimination in the hiring and promotion process which comes at the cost of equal opportunity.

In addition to this the people that experience this or feel this is unfair say they have experienced illegal retaliation when bringing this up. I personally experienced such retaliation.

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

#362

Post by 0x00000000 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

munnisthebest wrote: post #201

throwaway for obvious reasons. I work at Square, and there was an interesting presentation in front of the company about diversity efforts. Someone asked our head of diversity (who has since left) what "diverse" means, to which she responded pretty casually "non Asian and non White". As an Asian male I guess I feel privileged to be lumped in with the White males? I came here with my parents at age 10 with not much, a…

When I was applying to universities I came to realize all they actually care about is how you will look in a slide or pamphlet about diversity. They don't care about your story or experience or upbringing. Diversity as they use it only means physical appearance

A side note I also had a real existential crisis as a half white half asian male. What do you put down in order to be fucked over the least? Asian? White? Both if they let you or would that make you twice as screwed? Why should I have to make that decision at all?

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

#363

Post by to3m » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

throwaway1584 wrote: post #350

to3m wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, thanks - I just got bingo! I don't know if you're aware but articles can move off the front page because people (like me) flag them (as I did). If enough people flag it, off it goes. Sometimes the article sticks around, and obviously mine was a minority voice. Sometimes it disappears, probably because, I expect, most people are like me: we've seen this stuff discussed before, and the discussions are, on aver…

So what you are saying is that you are the kind of person that would have send people to the Gulag for having a different viewpoint. Good job. I am sure this feels pleasant as long as your viewpoint is in power. Tyrannies rarely stay that way though, so good luck.

My understanding is that the flag button merely makes it more likely the discussion will vanish off the front page, and there is no punishment for the participants.

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

#364

Post by bitL » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

memo_ree wrote: post #293

throwawaybipbop wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(throwaway account for obvious reasons) I left Google a few years ago, and I did love working there, but unfortunately my experience was similar. I was on one of the non-software engineering ladders. The group I was part of grew very rapidly the first few years I was there. We were poaching the absolute best people from the best companies to come work on our team. It seemed like there was a new former principal engin…

Google has an internal system which allows engineers to transfer to other teams. If what you described happened to me, I would secure a transfer and then report the situation to higher ups.

IIRC that works only if you never got a bad performance rating, then nobody would touch you internally and your chance to transfer within Google is lower than to move to another company to a better level.

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

#365

Post by hsod » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

throwaway1584 wrote: post #301

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one has been flagged out also. It’s beginning to look like HN really doesn’t like this story, since it’s the third time in the last 24 hours they’ve blown it off the front page.

Personally I wanted to discuss the article yesterday, but it was moved off the front-page too fast despite high interest. It is very common on HN for articles that does not agree with or points out problems in the prevailing viewpoint to be blown off the front page. I think this is emblematic of how tyrannical some of the people subscribing to the prevailing Silicon Valley viewpoint are.

You think the prevailing viewpoint around here is pro-diversity efforts? I must be reading a different HN.

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

#366

Post by throwaway1584 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

to3m wrote: post #363

throwaway1584 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are saying is that you are the kind of person that would have send people to the Gulag for having a different viewpoint. Good job. I am sure this feels pleasant as long as your viewpoint is in power. Tyrannies rarely stay that way though, so good luck.

My understanding is that the flag button merely makes it more likely the discussion will vanish off the front page, and there is no punishment for the participants.

Even if that is correct it does not make it a just way of fighting for your cause. Voting for articles on the front-page of HN is equivalent to a vote in a democracy. If you removed the opposing party candidate from the ballot you might reach your short-term goal, but at the cost of a functioning democracy.

In this case the article was marked as a dupe, but this specific article was not posted twice and previous articles on the subject was quickly voted off the frontpage by people like you despite high interest. This didn't happen to articles critical of Damore, so this seems to be exclusively a social justice tactic.

Edit: explained better why talking about voting is relevant as an analogy

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

#367

Post by to3m » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

throwaway1584 wrote: post #366

to3m wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the flag button merely makes it more likely the discussion will vanish off the front page, and there is no punishment for the participants.

Even if that is correct it does not make it a just way of fighting for your cause. Voting for articles on the front-page of HN is equivalent to a vote in a democracy. If you removed the opposing party candidate from the ballot you might reach your short-term goal, but at the cost of a functioning democracy. In this case the article was marked as a dupe, but this specific article was not posted twice and previous arti…

I expect the moderators, or whoever it is that looks after this stuff, decided that since it was discussing the same case as the other articles then it counted as one in principle.

Sometimes multiple articles relating to a particular issue are posted. When these links don't attract much discussion, this isn't much of a problem. But when they do, it's probably best to try to centralize the discussion, lest the entire front page get filled up multiple copies of the same stuff.

This has happened before in the past and it's a bit dull if it's something in which you have zero interest.

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

#368

Post by forgottenpass » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

hncensorship wrote: post #344

13years wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issues that can't be discussed can't be solved, they only grow larger. I once would have thought that this would have been somewhat obvious.

I used to think HN was one of the better forums, but after recently trying to post a rebuttal to this [0] with multiple experiences from my workplace, and seeing my response vanish moments later, alongside the speed to which these threads have been flagged out of visibility (whilst anecdotal stories concerning women still rank very highly despite having far less age and far higher votes), I've lost faith both in the…

I vouched that one (and this) for ya, buddy.

I don't think either were particularly strong positions or poorly spoken.

It probably doesn't help that the automated rulesets here aren't kind to downvoted first posts by new users.

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

#369

Post by err4nt » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

yomly wrote: post #202

Something I have been mulling over lately is, how "progressiveness" encodes bias in and of itself. Let's reason out a (very naive and overly simplistic) thought experiment: You are BigCo and want to promote diversity. Part of your cultural strategy is nurture a culture that is "progressive". Therefore you implement a litmus test behavioural question that implicitly tests the candidate's attitudes to sexism as part of…

Any time a principle is applied to a culture at a specific point in time, when you look back from an even better place the original improvement can look barbaric.

An example: killing animals to eat them. In the ancient world I heard that it was common to tie up an animal and cut off one limb at a time, keeping the animal alive as long as possible to keep the rest of the meat 'fresh'. When you got hungry, you would go hack off another limb, etc.

This means that the kosher laws that involved swiftly killing an animal before eating any part of it actually reduced the animals suffering quite a bit. But from our modern perspective where we have access to even more efficient slaughterhouses, by our standards the kosher laws seem unnecessarily gory and greusome.

In this case, the principle has remained the same over time: try to reduce the animal's suffering and bring it a swift death…but when you compare how that progressive principle gets applied into different cultures at different times, you can have wildly different perspectives on how ethical the different practices are.

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

#370

Post by jnbiche » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #265

soreasan wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Go to FaceBook, they still retained hacker spirit, at least for time being. You can meet a lot of previously frustrated Googlers there.

I like Facebook as an engineering organization, and was tempted when I was heavily recruited there. Problem is, many feel Facebook the social media company is making the world a worse place in many different ways, and their leadership had their head in the sand. Otherwise, I'd love to work there.