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

#351

Post by throwaway1957 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #324

throwaway1957 wrote: post #223

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I was once asked to do recruiting at a university. They told me to only collect the resumes of Females, Blacks, and Hispanics. And that they would not consider any other genders/races for the positions. This was for the BOLD program: https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html . Talking around with my co-workers, we found Google has multiple programs like this. Another is a…

How do you know if a candidate is LGBTQ? Do you just ask them?

They will email the LGBTQ organization at the university. And the only place they'll be is that club. For BOLD most people were only emailing the Hispanic / Black frats & organizations.

I know that Google even has a dedicated team who does interview prep & mock interviews (with real questions btw) for `diversity` candidates. This training is not available to whites / asian males. Obviously if you've interviewed 10x before hand and seen all the real interview questions, you're going to do better.

Basically they are doing everything they can to make sure diversity candidates are applying and have the absolute best chance of getting in.

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

#352

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #331

throwaway1584 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I searched "google", this story didn't even show up in the first page of "popular". I had to sort by date to even find it.

https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/google/google?...

First story, at least in my feed. It has made most of the news sites, since the story keeps getting flagged off the front page, expect more submissions of the same topic because people aren't aware of existing discussions.

Marking a submission as a dupe of a previous post that was flagged away is just wrong.

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

#353

Post by throwaway1584 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

sol_remmy wrote: post #340

throwaway1584 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I expect actions like this from people holding the prevailing viewpoints in Silicon Valley whenever someone with a different viewpoint dare speak.

Do you know of an uncensored forum that is better for discussing these issues? Is Slashdot better?

If you believe in reason I suggest reading the Quilette [1] and if you have an academic background you can join the Heterodox Academy [2].

[1] http://quillette.com

[2] https://heterodoxacademy.org

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

#354

Post by akvadrako » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #244

kelukelugames wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way court transcripts read it often doesn't come across as very natural.

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

#355

Post by viridian » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #106

viridian wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of reasons people are so quick to claim other people didn't read the memo verbatim. The first being that the first major publication to run with it, and the biggest one here on HN, was the verge's article where citations and graphs were stripped away from it. The other is that is it often given such uncharitable descriptions that people who have read it simply can't believe the hate levied at it co…

There are many people who’ve read it and reached the same conclusion about his claims. Simply accusing people of not having read it – or the other standard talking point of claiming that the citations somehow completely change the meaning – is a dishonest way to avoid engaging with those criticisms. If they’re wrong, it should be easy to demonstrate that or find a statement by Damore that he didn’t intend his words t…

Sure thing. He says as such during his interview with Joe Rogan. If your claim is that he intends to present the idea that women are inferior in this field, that interview contradicts it.

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

#356

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

arsey wrote: post #266

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…

You're conflating issues, and that's fine because you're frustrated. But we are over-represented in tech, and not anywhere else. There are obvious systems-level hiring problems that this company has and they're trying to fix that. It's so strange and selfish to hear "they should not try and fix this".

Well, that's not quite what he's saying. Remember, nobody is even claiming that underrepresented groups are actually applying and getting turned away - the statistics just suggest that they never even show up in the first place. Yet the suggested fixes are always like the ones in the linked article: turn away the people who _do_ show up until some underrepresented people come in to take their place.

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

#357

Post by JustAnotherPat » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #339

JustAnotherPat wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you deny that implicit bias exists? Implicit bias has shown to affect areas as dry as medicine to scientific research, yet racial bias is somehow made up?

My objection, at least, is that I think for both of jerf's eras, the intended end state is still a race-blind society. And it seems perverse to map out a course to that goal that explicitly requires us to be conscious of race.

So you think it is possible to condition people to look at another person and have them never consciously or unconsciously understand them to be white, black, asian, or any other race?

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

#358

Post by Asooka » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

KAdot wrote: post #297

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…

> Asian men constantly get grouped as a single entity As an immigrant who came to the US from a poor Eastern European country just a few years ago I feel the same about being labeled as "white". It blows my mind that for many people a guy of British descent who was born in the US and a woman from Russia who speaks very poor English are both just "white".

Well, it's obviously because as a white slavic person you have never been under oppressive slavery like a wealthy black immigrant from Africa! /s

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

#359

Post by mlevental » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

sol_remmy wrote: post #311

mlevental wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/10/white...

> White high school dropouts are wealthier than Hispanic college graduates. What I'm seeing is "people who have lived in America for a long time (European heritage) are on average wealthier than people who arrived fairly recently from third world countries (Hispanic heritage). Why is that surprising? Why is that a problem?

the article says absolutely nothing about immigration or third world countries. whether the paper controls for generational wealth i don't know.

>Why is that surprising?

...it's not to me since i understand we live in a structurally racist society

>Why is that a problem?

...the op asks about "privilege" not whether it's problematic. inherited wealth is most certainly privilege. i was only addressing that. there are many good reasons why privilege of this sort is problematic that i will not rehearse here (many smart people believe estate tax should be 100%; here is the guardian on it https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/24/utopia...).

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

#360

Post by jerf » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

JustAnotherPat wrote: post #326

jerf wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a time dependency in some of this. What "diversity" is, even from a purely left-wing perspective, has changed a lot within my lifetime. I was born in 1978, and when I was growing up, the left-wing diversity perspective focused on "race blindness", MLK's dream about his children being measured by the quality of their character and not the color of their skin, and that sort of thing. Now... well... I know a lot…

There's a very easy answer to your question. It's the understanding that bias/implicit bias exists and needs to be overcome. The MLK quote is such a red herring. It's a nice statement, but what one guy said 50 years ago doesn't define a culture or society.

"The MLK quote is such a red herring. It's a nice statement, but what one guy said 50 years ago doesn't define a culture or society."

You misunderstand my point entirely. I am not "advocating" for that position today. Nor am I not advocating for it. I am staying neutral on the "ought" in this series of posts.

I am saying that when I was 10, that was the "left-wing" position. Many people still think it is, because they don't keep up with all this stuff. As you are rather handily demonstrating, it is not today. (I was a bit concerned when I mentioned it that people would just be contrary and deny the patently obvious fact that it is no longer an acceptable left-wing position, but now I don't have to worry about that.)

I will also say that the prickliness you've been programmed to fire back with, as evidenced by the rest of your thread, is a non-trivial part of the problem. You've been left unable to understand what anyone is actually saying, instead of what you think they are saying, as evidenced by your reaction to what I wrote. You may prove me wrong by replying to this without bulldoggedly arguing about whether implicit bias exists. Should you succeed I promise to acknowledge that.