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Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#401

Post by kevingadd »

_justinfunk wrote: post #394

A hiring process is by nature a discriminatory event. Right? You have a pile of resumes and you discriminate between the candidates during the selection process. This happens on a number of different criteria. The criteria that we should not discriminate on are sex and race. Anyone that doesn't agree with this is out of the mainstream. The issue is that if you cannot discriminate on sex and race, and 90% (made up num…

You can address an unbalanced hiring pool of qualified candidates (i.e. your 90%) by expanding the hiring pool (through various methods) until its balance comes closer to the balance of the overall population. Doing this doesn't require discriminating against anyone. See https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon-v... for example, there are other tech companies with race balance much closer to national averages. It's certainly possible to pull more women and people of color into your hiring pool, and you don't ever need to turn down a single person based on their white skin color to do it. The universities you hire from and your degree requirements for applicants can both have a significant impact on things and it's easy to adjust those.

The downside is that some qualified candidates (white man and woman of color alike) will potentially miss out on jobs once the candidate pool is grown, because you've pulled a bunch of extremely talented people into the pool who set the bar higher. That could certainly make people feel discriminated against if they don't have enough insight into the process.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#402

Post by m-j-fox »

wildmusings wrote: post #35

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…

That didn't even seem like the main point. The main point was that people are psychologically oppressed: you can't even talk about the possibility of different gender behavior being rooted in biology without fear of retribution.

He was right about one thing.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#403

Post by gred »

jannettee wrote: post #272

Dude gets fired for violating company policy, people have been fired for much less. Why is everyone getting their panties in a knot? Why isn't this post being flagged like all the other ones about the manifesto itself?

Probably rhetorical, but I can take a stab at an answer! This story is interesting to me, personally, because I'm now just a little bit less naive about how things work around here. The Brendan Eich fiasco startled me a bit, but didn't really register long-term. However, I'm now starting to realize that my worldview, my political beliefs, and my faith will likely be important factors (read: challenges!) in the evolution of my career over the course of the next 20 or 30 years -- something that I had never seriously considered previously, since I'm just a software developer. Interesting times!

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#404

Post by almost_usual »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #308

It's crazy to see such overtly anti free speech arguments in the discussion around this memo, even on Hacker News. "Well actually, the first amendment only protects against government intruding on free speech, it doesn't apply to the rest of us!" Free speech used to be the thing everyone agreed on. It's like a fundamental tenant of Western, liberal democracy has gone out of vogue.

If you are talented enough Google will scout and hire you regardless of race or gender. Anything less is someone complaining about life not being fair.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#405

Post by shusson »

RealityNow wrote: post #290

It's incredibly ironic that a company that apparently cares about diversity enough to have a "Vice President for Diversity" fired an employee for presenting an opposing viewpoint - to their diversity policy of all things. Further evidence that Google and the other large institutions don't actually give a rat's ass about "diversity". Diversity has absolutely nothing to do with diversity of thought, and is only concern…

> We have a culture of anti-intellectualism and dogmatism around certain topics that for whatever reason are considered sacred and not allowed to be challenged (ie. political correctness), and its disgraceful.

From a personal perspective I get where you are coming from, but from a professional perspective it makes no sense. There are ways to present opposing viewpoints in a workplace without offending half of the people who work there.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#406

Post by dgudkov »

escape_goat wrote: post #203

The best explanation of why he was going to be fired and why that was the right thing to do (that I read) came from Yonatan Zunger, who had recently left a Human Resources position at Google; especially his third point, in the following post on Medium: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man... In many way, it was not an unfamiliar sort of rant for the internet, and I was struck by the author's e…

Zunger believes that asking publicly "are people get hired because of their gender" is toxic and harmful, while asking "are people get paid more because of their gender" is not. This kind of thinking is skewed and biased.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#407

Post by booleandilemma »

No matter how you feel about what the engineer said, today is a dark day for freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

And before you reply saying that people don't have a constitutional right to freedom of speech at work, consider that the engineer wouldn't have been fired if he had written a memo extolling Google's diversity practices.

He wasn't fired because because he was speaking his mind, he was fired because he said something that some people didn't agree with.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#408

Post by akras14 »

trentnix wrote: post #339

They decided he was a witch, and he was burned at the stake. That's it in a nutshell. They won't much enjoy a world where these new rules they've created might apply to them.

While I don't agree with a lot of premises of the manifesto, I can't shake off a feeling that I just witnessed something very close to a real witch hunt.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#409

Post by jorgemf »

nyxtom wrote: post #387
jorgemf wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of that program means those women wouldn't have gotten those jobs. This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified men. Because you have to hire wom…

This is actually one of the points made here: https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid... "Still getting asked if I can handle being in a mostly male work environment in interviews in 2009 - I’ve been an engineer for 9 years, obviously I can. I know when I’m asked that question, I HAVE NO CHANCE AT THE JOB. It is nice they brought me in for equal opportunity survey points but don’t waste my time i…

Stupid people are everywhere. I want to think that there is a big amount of people that is not like that.

As a male I was told something similar in an interview at Google: if I would mind to work in a company where most people are men? And as the girl you cite I found the question stupid. I have worked in tech I already know how is this.

Instead of diversity program to hire women we should create tolerance programs for everybody.

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