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

Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 507 posts

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#301

Post by taysic »

where_do_i_live wrote: post #284
taysic wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of his main points in the memo is at the top:"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. " What am I missing? This is the topic he explores the most in his memo and I don't see anything analyzing social effects. While his paper is nuanced, he basically only focuses on the biological argument and seeks to ch…

I'm not sure what your counter argument is exactly. He argued to change their diversity goals and implementation, with an intention to do a better job of getting a _more_ not less diverse company, including more woman and minorities. He did not argue to end all diversity goals outright, again that appears to be a mischaracterization.

I suppose you can say his argument was implied then in my eyes since he spent the first large part of the memo reviewing the biology of women and then stopped short there.

No time was spent exploring inherent biases in history or how they may affecting things today. This is why those policies were put into place so why not make it the meat of the discussion.

Though the implication may be that his approach will create a setup in which there will be more diversity that is highly debatable... again the reason why these policies are there in the first place. I don't feel the argument was so strong.

Does he have other examples in history when a minority group allowed the free market to dictate things after a long period of bias and things quickly adjusted overnight?

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#303

Post by serf »

ghaff wrote: post #226
WalterSear wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't circulate one. He sent it to a mailing list which purported to be a safe place for open, honest sharing of opinions regarding diversity and hiring.

Anyone who is willing to bet their job on a controversial posting about company policy to a broad company mailing list staying internal either doesn't mind being fired or is an idiot.

>Anyone who is willing to bet their job on a controversial posting

That's part of the problem.

Lots of people associate Google with research and discourse akin to a college campus without realizing that, unlike a college campus, they and their free discourse are not protected in any meaningful way.

"Let's be open and transparent and have an open and transparent culture... but don't say things that might hurt our shareholders."

Google is beginning to remind me a bit too much of the 'Bright & Shinys" from the movie 'Bubble Boy'[0]. Happy go lucky do-gooder cult that holds that image until you cross them. Things get darker after that point. That initial positive image is all that matters.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIYRfNjHSzA

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#304

Post by mwytock »

LunaSea wrote: post #294
mwytock wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what the contradiction is here? Also, I wasn't making any claim about my own feelings, the massive response shows that the memo was highly offensive to many people.

Something being offensive doesn't mean it's wrong or that it shouldn't be debated.

Well, saying things that are clearly wrong and offensive to large numbers of people is typically looked down upon amongst educated people and highly discouraged at the workplace.

For example, think of other stereotypes about other groups (blacks, hispanics, jews) and think about what the response would be if an employee was publishing 10 page manifestos with loosely connected scientific arguments in support of these views.

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#305

Post by dahart »

endorphone wrote: post #142
agentultra wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By firing him they made him a hero to enormous groups, To a small, vocal group. > By doing it in an anti-science, anti-evidence way There were good reasons for doing it that had nothing to do with science or evidence. There are women working at Google who do not need to be reminded of the genetic and biologic differences they have from their cishet male counterparts. If Damon had issues with the policies at Google…

There are women working at Google who do not need to be reminded of the genetic and biologic differences they have from their cishet male counterparts. I'm a white male. I know that the average Asian has a higher IQ than the average white man. This means positively nothing when comparing me with a given Asian, however. That is the root of this discussion that so many so profoundly miss. The average Google male is not…

> He was not saying that women who work at Google are at a biological disadvantage, in any way, and that is a perverse misreading. He was saying that on the whole there's a biological reason when you roll the dice enough that more males are suitable for that work.

I don't understand what you said there, can you elaborate? What is the difference between males being more biologically suitable and females being at a disadvantage? From my perspective, you just contradicted yourself, can you help me understand why it's not a contradiction?

What the memo proposed is that it's "possible" there are fewer women in tech right now because of the biological differences. He may not have claimed it as fact, but he implied it. The problem I have with the implication is that it's obvious that evolutionary forces are not the primary causes of the current distribution, because the distribution of women in tech has changed drastically in the last 50 years faster than evolution's say in the matter. It's not possible that the current distribution is primarily caused by biological differences, and it's exceedingly likely that it is caused by social issues. But he suggested it is possible, and followed that by suggesting we should stop treating it like a social issue because it's possible.

And all of this so far is ignoring that the memo unironically takes the opposite stance on the minority group of conservatives.

So what is the root part that I'm missing?

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#306

Post by humanrebar »

clavalle wrote: post #279
GreaterFool wrote: post #117

This is the first fair and balanced article on this topic I've seen. > In his memo, Damore cites a series of studies, making the case, for example, that men tend to be more interested in things and women more interested in people. (Interest is not the same as ability.) I've been trying to hammer this point to all my colleagues (in private of course, I wouldn't dare to post it on public channel due to high probability…

First, the author of this article is David Brooks -- a well known, very conservative, commentator. So, it might be fair and balanced in a Fox News sense of the phrase but not fair and balanced as most people would understand the phrase. And for the general population skew in interests/preferences to make any difference whatsoever to the makeup of Google's technical and leadership staff the argument would have to be t…

So "conservative" is the same as "unfair and/or unbalanced"? The New York Times (not exactly conservative) has considered him worth printing for quite some time now.

Isn't this attitude more or less what Damore was concerned about in his memo?

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#307

Post by GreaterFool »

clavalle wrote: post #279
GreaterFool wrote: post #117

This is the first fair and balanced article on this topic I've seen. > In his memo, Damore cites a series of studies, making the case, for example, that men tend to be more interested in things and women more interested in people. (Interest is not the same as ability.) I've been trying to hammer this point to all my colleagues (in private of course, I wouldn't dare to post it on public channel due to high probability…

First, the author of this article is David Brooks -- a well known, very conservative, commentator. So, it might be fair and balanced in a Fox News sense of the phrase but not fair and balanced as most people would understand the phrase. And for the general population skew in interests/preferences to make any difference whatsoever to the makeup of Google's technical and leadership staff the argument would have to be t…

The author of the memo didn't argue that the male-female ratio is where it should be. It is almost certainly skewed due to gender biases. However, eliminating gender biases from recruitment is not necessarily the same as forced diversity (forced due to ideology that dictates that anything different than 50-50 is immoral).

If Google were to announce that they will hire 50% women wouldn't that be illegal under Title VII? That would amount to affirmative action which is only allowed in certain limited situations (race can be taken into consideration for university admissions).

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#308

Post by humanrebar »

KirinDave wrote: post #164

And once again, the characterization of "allowing the debate" means one thing for James (why, he "cited studies") and another for everyone else (they are an angry mob). The most telling bias in this piece is that characterization. Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" f…

> Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" fixes, etc) he would not have cast quite so much doubt over his intent.

I haven't heard this point before and I'd like to understand it. What's the problem here?

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#309

Post by tdb7893 »

endorphone wrote: post #20
Shank wrote: post #8

Honestly, I think he made the right move just from a PR perspective. His firing makes sense: the CEO and HR are both acting to protect the company. The author of the manifesto caused Google a PR disaster and created a huge state of internal conflict, valid or not. The shareholders are probably really happy that their CEO removed a person who managed to get Google so much bad press in so little time. This is the reali…

The firing has been a PR disaster, and amplified and exaggerated the effect of this issue (not to mention that it drew attention to other factors, like Google's institutional ageism). And while I don't want to diagnose over the internet, it seems like it's attacking someone on the spectrum for traits of being on the spectrum. By firing him they made him a hero to enormous groups, and doubled down on this discussion.…

The firing has only been a pr disaster in small groups. Even for me personally even though I think that he probably shouldn't have been fired I'm not super mad at Google because having him there was a liability to the company. I think it's mainly more libertarian circles that are mad but those people already generally don't like Google

Re: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O

#310

Post by devnonymous »

charrondev wrote: post #276
daenz wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That man's argument was not science. It wasn't. There was absolutely no scientific evidence behind his argument. He misrepresented studied, and he cherry picked what he wanted. I want to follow up on this, can you give an example? From what little I know, it's essentially settled science that men and women have statistically different interests, and those interests exist across all cultures (implying a biological ca…

You won’t get one. I’ve yet to see anyone serious even attempting to debunk that claim, and I doubt it will happen here.

I'm not sure why more people aren't pointing this out but I couldn't take his arguments seriously when he weaseled in racial diversity after the evidenc about gender differences were presented. It is pretty clear from that alone that the intent was not to have a scientific discourse, it was to dress up bias as science.
Post reply on HN