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Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

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Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#31

Post by xiphias2 »

lostmsu wrote: post #30
xiphias2 wrote: post #5

I had to take that program in Switzerland, designed in the USA, which was telling me how I can date my coworkers even outside the company. It may be OK in the US, but what it was asking from me was unconstitutional in Switzerland. Of course I didn't say anyting, as I liked the job. A coworker of mine just clicked through the training without reading any of it. Also diversity became the main topic (without being on th…

What exactly was unconstitutional?

Art. 13 Right to privacy

Every person has the right to privacy in their private and family life and in their home, and in relation to their mail and telecommunications.

Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#32

Post by xiphias2 »

trianglem wrote: post #13
xiphias2 wrote: post #5

I had to take that program in Switzerland, designed in the USA, which was telling me how I can date my coworkers even outside the company. It may be OK in the US, but what it was asking from me was unconstitutional in Switzerland. Of course I didn't say anyting, as I liked the job. A coworker of mine just clicked through the training without reading any of it. Also diversity became the main topic (without being on th…

Why would talking about diversity in a cross team meeting cause you to dislike attending them?

Think about a meeting of hundreds of people between 10 offices in the world who I will never in my life talk to/meet. They are boring for me anyways as a software engineer, as they don't discuss the engineering details, just everything on the product level. They don't help me in my job, but I would be there as a respect to other teams. But if the first 30 minutes is taken by the diversity without it being written in the official meeting agenda, that means a lack of respect from the company leadership.

Actually Larry Page himself said years ago (before the diversity trainings) that if we think that a meeting is wasting our time from being productive, we're allowed to go away from it.

For me the interesting meetings were about setting up production pipelines, fixing training-serving skew in the models (it's a huge problem for online training, when the training data is changing all the time), understanding the production setup of the deep learning pipeline, understanding the tradeoff, and planning capacity of the TPUs. But people in these meetings didn't talk about these for me hard problems.

Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#33

Post by jbob2000 »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #2

Good. I've never seen a non-emotional argument for diversity and inclusovity programs. A company has no need to represent society as a whole, or worse, a duty to equalize societies inequalities. Any attempt to do so inherently harms as many people as it helps, it just moved the harm to groups unprotected by emotional arguments

Here’s the non emotional reason: diversity kills the organization of labour. It’s much harder to organize a union when you look around a lunch room and subconsciously feel disconnected from your coworkers and maybe don’t even speak their language.

Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#34

Post by thu2111 »

bobbytherobot wrote: post #9
GenerocUsername wrote: post #2

Good. I've never seen a non-emotional argument for diversity and inclusovity programs. A company has no need to represent society as a whole, or worse, a duty to equalize societies inequalities. Any attempt to do so inherently harms as many people as it helps, it just moved the harm to groups unprotected by emotional arguments

There are studies that found that companies earn more when their boards and management are 50/50 men and women. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-08/more-women-means-more... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/02/why-companies-with-female-ma...

But do we trust these studies? We shouldn't! I've read some of them before and they usually make basic errors of logic or statistics. For instance sometimes they take the gender makeup of boards across the world, and then look at how much (absolute) money the companies make. They end up including countries like Saudi Arabia in that, and in the inverse, countries with laws that force women onto boards. So they end up concluding "companies with women on the boards make more money" but all they're really measuring is "companies in richer countries make more money than poorer countries".

It's a sexist conclusion anyway. These studies are basically arguing women are better decision makers than men. Would people so passively accept studies concluding that companies do better when women are kept out of certain roles? I bet not.

Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#35

Post by thu2111 »

belltaco wrote: post #28
RivasPT wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you apply the same though for the NBA?

Maybe read the comment again? >but those attributes have no correlation with job performance

Being able to code is highly correlated with being male (or inversely, being male is correlated with being able to code). I think you mean causation rather than correlation? The correlated nature of these two attributes is a matter of statistical fact, it doesn't imply that women are worse than men at it.

Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#36

Post by thu2111 »

happytoexplain wrote: post #19
benjohnson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended one program and I found it amusing that it assumed that I had a deep-seated biases simple because my skin had a particular hue while apparently other people with different hues didn't have biases.

This sounds like a pretty dramatic exaggeration. I absolutely believe you felt that way, which is worth a lot. But I think the vast majority of diversity programs do not state "you (yes you, individually, benjohnson) have deep-seated biases, and it is because of your skin tone. Also, nobody with skin tones other than yours have biases."

Seems like at Google they did though.

"Sojourn, a comprehensive racial justice program created for employees to learn about implicit bias"

I doubt this course dwelled on implicit bias of black people against whites/asians.

"Two other diversity training programs at Google, DEI for Managers, a primer to build skills around navigating issues of race on their teams, and Allyship 101, a program to learn about different types of oppressed groups and ways of supporting them"

I doubt these courses spent time on the oppression of white/asian men.

"... a speaker event hosted by Google on the topic of how white people can better navigate conversations about racism and privilege in the workplace"

"There was a meme going around that said white fragility shuts down discussions of white fragility"

"Three current employees said they felt the newer programs introduced from outside vendors lack the framework that previous training programs had to help orient white people to conversations about racial justice"

Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#37

Post by david38 »

ausbah wrote: post #14

the funniest thing is how some people view simply discussing biases and such as a form of oppression or discrimination in and of itself

It’s rarely just a discussion. It’s almost always a holier than though preaching session.

Re: Allegations: Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

#38

Post by david38 »

bobbytherobot wrote: post #9
GenerocUsername wrote: post #2

Good. I've never seen a non-emotional argument for diversity and inclusovity programs. A company has no need to represent society as a whole, or worse, a duty to equalize societies inequalities. Any attempt to do so inherently harms as many people as it helps, it just moved the harm to groups unprotected by emotional arguments

There are studies that found that companies earn more when their boards and management are 50/50 men and women. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-08/more-women-means-more... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/02/why-companies-with-female-ma...

There are studies for everything.

I love when people want to force something for “their own benefit”. I’m so glad you’re so concerned about my profits.

“Companies” covers a lot of territory. Market sizes, markets, local laws, etc.

The implication is that there is some innate quality in women that men lack and cannot acquire. Funny, the feminist movement spent decades fighting that myth.

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