Live data from Hacker News

Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

bloomberg.com

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#251
post #119

the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. he never says that women should leave google -- he only says that trying to reach a perfectly equal distribution is misguided. perhaps those who are red in t…

I'm not sure if you read his document, where he talks about Google having lowered the standards for its employees.

But I'll leave that to the side - there's no reason to think that many of the differences he describes aren't socially constructed. Maybe the way we raise women in America/the West turns them off to pursuing tech careers.

Until we can resolve this, it's ridiculous to use psychology studies to ascertain biology - and even afterwards, our goal should be ensuring access to well-paying careers, not remaining shackled to our biology.

As an example, we have trained runners to break previously 'impossible' race times through training, technology and science - we realize that what we thought was impossible was simply not compatible with the system we previously had in place.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#252
post #224

The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of thei…

It's not about virtue signaling, he was almost certain to be terminated just because it was a ridiculously stupid thing to say - you can't tell your teammates that they were hired because their employer lowered the bar and expect people not to be upset about it (and that's 100% what he did, he also made up pseudo-scientific bullshit to try to justify it, but he flat out insulted countless people within his company).…

I'm sorry, he did not tell his teammates they were hired because Google lowered the bar. Again, he's talking about on average differences and noting that the goal (50/50 representation) might not only be misguided but actively harmful. Why is this so controversial? He's talking about a process not individuals on his team or anywhere else at Google.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#253

So, stating true, scientifically verified facts that challenge Google's official political ideology is now a fireable offence. This is insane. The speed at which this ideology has taken over SV is breathtaking, and a massive disincentive for anyone not already so inclined to work there.

Oh no, no, not at all. These are not scientifically verifiable facts. Actually, I take that back. His broad claims can be scientifically demonstrated as false. I encourage you to pause and read this: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man... If that doesn't explain things, then I don't know what will. I hope it provides better context - whether we agree or not.

The link doesn't explain a thing about the science; in fact, the author states in the very first paragraph that he won't even bother. What exactly do you think you posted?

The manifesto's claims are very much in the scientific mainstream. Evidence has only piled on since the Pinker-Spelke debate. You have very little to hang your hat on in this argument.

[1] https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.htm...

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#254

As a white man, I have concerns that my ethnic / gender group is being persecuted. How should I raise these issues for discussion, in a professional environment?

Well, I can tell you were NOT to have that discussion: publicly at work.

That said, as a white man myself, I would argue very strongly that I am not being "persecuted".

Synonyms for this word include: oppress, abuse, victimize, ill-treat, mistreat, maltreat, tyrannize, torment, torture; martyr.

I've never felt any of the above.

As a white english-speaking immigrant I've never been accosted about my status. I've never been given shit for being an illegal immigrant. I've never been given crap for "stealing American jobs" (and for the record, I am now a US citizen, no arrests, tax-paying, picket fence).

But I see it very often to legal non-white immigrants.

So you think YOU or your race/gender has been persecuted? You (like me) have no idea what that truly means.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#255

We should be able to apply security technologies to online discourse. Theoretically it should be possible to separate real identity from virtual identity: maybe I publish a bunch of stuff in such a way that no one can ever figure out who I am but anyone can verify that a series of different comments/articles/etc. were all made by the same person. Then you could decide to follow people who publish things that interest…

[deleted]

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#256
post #156

Does anyone know first hand if any employees agreed with the sentiment in this memo? Shouldn't they be let go as well?

Holding an opinion isn't a firing offense. The firing offense is violating the agreements he signed as an employee (the most obvious poor decision here being the choice to post his manifesto on corporate services using corporate equipment).

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#257

The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of thei…

You reposted your comment, so I'll repost my reply: What are these well known and scientifically established differences in the distribution of traits between men and women? The research linked in the the document are based on The Big Five Personality Traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits These traits are measured with self-report surveys. I.e. personality quizzes. Not to malign the field…

Big Five is standard in psychology. It should not be confused with personality quizzes on the internet. Big Five scores are reproducible (two tests at different time give similar score) and predictive (correlate with outcomes of interest). Its place in psychological metrics is second only to IQ.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#258

From the code of conduct of google [1]: > Equal Opportunity Employment > Employment here is based solely upon individual merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. How are you going to achieve 50/50 diversity in the company if the pool of candidates is far from that distribution? (unless you go and don't hire the best ones to balance the distribution) [1] https://abc.xyz/investor/other/goog…

You're automatically assuming the pool's distribution matches Google's, which it does not. There are other companies with more representative gender and race distributions. Even if their hiring pool of candidates didn't have a fully diverse distribution, that doesn't automatically make it okay to have a company that ranks poorly on diversity. It suggests that you should examine how your pool is filled with candidates…

The pool of candidates are men and women who want to work in tech. I have no metrics of this pool but I think that most probably is something like 75/25 (if someone can provide better metrics I appreciate it). So the bigger the company the most probably it get closer to this ratio. What companies want to achieve with gender diversity is 50/50 because in the world the proportion is 50/50. But this is not the case for the pool of candidates. So moving far from 75/25 it only make you not hiring the best candidates (because the best candidates pool should be something similar to 75/25 if we assume a normal distribution for both genders).

I don't think it is bad you have a company with a ratio 75/25 but I would think why are less women than men interested in tech. Is it based on biology? is it a cultural issue? We can discuss that, but for me it is clear that a positive discrimination to have a 50/50 ratio it only harms the company in the long term and it an impossible goal to achieve now a days.

> Even if their hiring pool of candidates didn't have a fully diverse distribution, that doesn't automatically make it okay to have a company that ranks poorly on diversity

So, how do you achieve this diversity?

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#259

As a white man, I have concerns that my ethnic / gender group is being persecuted. How should I raise these issues for discussion, in a professional environment?

Well, I can tell you were NOT to have that discussion: publicly at work. That said, as a white man myself, I would argue very strongly that I am not being "persecuted". Synonyms for this word include: oppress, abuse, victimize, ill-treat, mistreat, maltreat, tyrannize, torment, torture; martyr. I've never felt any of the above. As a white english-speaking immigrant I've never been accosted about my status. I've never…

What if my grievance is with the people / culture at work?

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#260

The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of thei…

If you know that some idiot wrote this manifesto as a manager, could you assign a woman to work with him? Not in good conscience. An open culture is desirable because it lets the company get going with what its shareholders want it doing.
Post reply on HN