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

#441

Post by dang » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 9:22 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #269

to3m wrote: post #9

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16497551

This one has been flagged out also. It’s beginning to look like HN really doesn’t like this story, since it’s the third time in the last 24 hours they’ve blown it off the front page.

We actually turned the flags off on that story at one point to allow the thread to stay on the front page. Eventually the flamewar detector demoted it; we sometimes turn that off, too, and am not sure why we didn't do it there. Still, once a story has 300+ points and 300+ comments, reposts that contain no significant new information are obviously duplicates. If we didn't moderate them that way, the front page would be mostly dupes. If you think HN gets mad about politics, imagine how mad they'd get about that.

The HN community is divided on divisive topics. It would be surprising if it weren't; any large-enough population sample is going to reflect divisions in the society at large. (Societies, actually; HN is mostly international, and the people posting here are coming from wildly different assumption sets.) People tend to underestimate how many opposing views there are and how many people in the world sincerely hold them.

Unfortunately, each side seems to think the community is dominated by their enemies and that the moderators are secretly suppressing theirs, as you can see in the subthread below. One side is sure that we're politically correct thought police; the other side that we're misogyny- and white supremacy-enablers. The irony is how united they both are in that sort of logic. None of it is related to what we actually think or do.

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

#442

Post by throwaway1584 » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

13years wrote: post #334

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.

Issues that can't be discussed can't be solved, they only grow larger. I once would have thought that this would have been somewhat obvious.

My comments on other threads and possibly even this won’t show up due to me being flagged for voicing the opinions in this thread. I think this is another example of the dangerous behavior of the ones holding the prevailing viewpoints in the valley.

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

#443

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #441

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one has been flagged out also. It’s beginning to look like HN really doesn’t like this story, since it’s the third time in the last 24 hours they’ve blown it off the front page.

We actually turned the flags off on that story at one point to allow the thread to stay on the front page. Eventually the flamewar detector demoted it; we sometimes turn that off, too, and am not sure why we didn't do it there. Still, once a story has 300+ points and 300+ comments, reposts that contain no significant new information are obviously duplicates. If we didn't moderate them that way, the front page would b…

Sorry, it just felt like the story was being buried when I could see no good reason to. I personally didn’t want to get involved in the conversation (which is like walking on eggshells for me), but was interested in reading the comments.

Raising a dupe flag of an article that has been demoted for any reason doesn’t make sense to me. That means each story has only one chance, no matter the source, rather than seeing it through. If someone comes in, doesn’t see the article on the front page when they think it shouldn’t be there, they will naturally resubmit because they can’t see the conversation occurring.

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

#444

Post by dang » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #443

dang wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually turned the flags off on that story at one point to allow the thread to stay on the front page. Eventually the flamewar detector demoted it; we sometimes turn that off, too, and am not sure why we didn't do it there. Still, once a story has 300+ points and 300+ comments, reposts that contain no significant new information are obviously duplicates. If we didn't moderate them that way, the front page would b…

Sorry, it just felt like the story was being buried when I could see no good reason to. I personally didn’t want to get involved in the conversation (which is like walking on eggshells for me), but was interested in reading the comments. Raising a dupe flag of an article that has been demoted for any reason doesn’t make sense to me. That means each story has only one chance, no matter the source, rather than seeing i…

That's the way a popular site with 30 slots on its front page has to work. For any hot story, there are a zillion me-too follow-up articles like the arstechnica one above. Since the story is hot, they'll all get upvoted. If we don't mark them as dupes, they take over. I guarantee you the community doesn't want that. In fact, almost everything we do is determined by the community pressure that happens if we don't do it.

This does mean that a hot story will get a big discussion yet many readers never see the thread. But that's true of every thread; it follows from the structure of the site. The way around this is to use HN search to find the discussion, or links like https://news.ycombinator.com/active and https://news.ycombinator.com/lists. Edit: or just look at the second page!

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

#445

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #444

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, it just felt like the story was being buried when I could see no good reason to. I personally didn’t want to get involved in the conversation (which is like walking on eggshells for me), but was interested in reading the comments. Raising a dupe flag of an article that has been demoted for any reason doesn’t make sense to me. That means each story has only one chance, no matter the source, rather than seeing i…

That's the way a popular site with 30 slots on its front page has to work. For any hot story, there are a zillion me-too follow-up articles like the arstechnica one above. Since the story is hot, they'll all get upvoted. If we don't mark them as dupes, they take over. I guarantee you the community doesn't want that. In fact, almost everything we do is determined by the community pressure that happens if we don't do i…

I understand what you are saying, but in this case the story isn’t represented at all on the front page. If the story was allowed to have its run, then, sure, see that discussion, but if it was flagged off or demoted for some reason, I don’t see how the dupe flag is serving s purpose.

I did learn about /active, which might be better than the front page for my purposes. I probably wouldn’t have said something if I was looking there instead.

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

#446

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #371

to3m wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect the moderators, or whoever it is that looks after this stuff, decided that since it was discussing the same case as the other articles then it counted as one in principle. Sometimes multiple articles relating to a particular issue are posted. When these links don't attract much discussion, this isn't much of a problem. But when they do, it's probably best to try to centralize the discussion, lest the entire…

Those articles were all flagged off the front page, not many people got the chance to see them in the first place. Whoever claimed this was a dupe was just being dishonest and possibly malicious.

[deleted]

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

#447

Post by to3m » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 11:04 PM UTC

throwaway1584 wrote: post #421

to3m wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is now officially beyond parody.

Why? Social justice actions that should be firable offenses that have been brought to light are; - blacklists of workers that have the wrong viewpoint - explicit race and gender discrimination - using power to enforce that no one can express an opposing viewpoint All actions that hurt those that are affected in material way.

Just for posterity, since even after 1 day I'm 50% LOLing at this and 50% still mildly annoyed: because you accused me in another subthread of being equivalent to those that would send their political enemies to the Gulag, when the sum total of what I do is click the Flag button on an HN article. Perhaps sometimes (e.g., now) I might also make a post criticising people with whom I disagree.

The consequences of my doing this are so mild, I just don't accept that this is worthy of serious condemnation. If you want to think the worse of me for doing it, be my guest - but nobody's going to get packed off to the Gulag, nobody's going to get sacked, nobody's going to get sent to Coventry. In fact, even once flagged, the discussion is still there. It's just not on the front page any more. Even once flagged, there are numerous other venues where this discussion could continue! And indeed, part of the reason I click Flag is to encourage this discussion to take place in those other venues rather than here.

Meanwhile, you advocate real-life consequences with material repercussions for those whose ideology you oppose.

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

#448

Post by xxcode » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

memo_ree wrote: post #293

throwawaybipbop wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(throwaway account for obvious reasons) I left Google a few years ago, and I did love working there, but unfortunately my experience was similar. I was on one of the non-software engineering ladders. The group I was part of grew very rapidly the first few years I was there. We were poaching the absolute best people from the best companies to come work on our team. It seemed like there was a new former principal engin…

Google has an internal system which allows engineers to transfer to other teams. If what you described happened to me, I would secure a transfer and then report the situation to higher ups.

If you transfer, you don’t get promoted

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

#449

Post by xxcode » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

thorwawayforg wrote: post #170

xxcode wrote: post #85

I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers talk in the same vein. Please consider not…

Can you tell me more about this? I have interviewed at google 2 times now. The first interview I bombed -- and I knew it. It was my first interview in near 10 years. The second interview I thought I aced. There was not a single answer I could not answer expect one about obscure hardware that nobody uses any more -- which I think was a test on how I handle not knowing something -- I ended up learning something neat. T…

Why don’t you work for google for a bit and experience it first hand. You can probably go back to your present job later if you want. As senior engineer at google, it is definitely 75%+ politics and project management and 25% technical competence. Depends on a group but perhaps if you are on a mission driven group like Brain etc, it can be better. I don’t know.

I would recommend joining a smaller group at google, and also one which has engineers who haven’t all been around at google for 5+ years.

Overall, it can be fun at times but relatively unfulfilling. Google pays above market though. I think if it paid market, almost 50% of tech staff would leave.

Product managers at google are also very political and if they are not, they get pushed out etc. I had one PM who always passionately argued about the user etc, and was eventually pushed out because he was not internally ‘aligned’. The product he was arguing against got cancelled this Friday after 2 years of work

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

#450

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #235

eclipxe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the exact opposite. I love going to work everyday at Google. I get the way you describe at previous companies. Not at Google.

How long have you been working at Google and what's your position (if you don't mind the question)? Both factors may make a significant difference in the judgment of "working at Google" (I don't imply anything, either negative or positive).

[deleted]