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Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#511

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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…

While I have a lot of problems with the memo, I was pissed to see CNN's subtitle on this topic: "Boss condemns manifesto sent by a male engineer that claims women aren't suited for work in tech." To say that the manifesto claimed "women aren't suited for work in tech" is more than a gross mischaracterization, it's outright false.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#512

Post by wolfgangK »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #52
zorpner wrote: post #25

Good. I get that HN is not into this, but this employee stated, bluntly, that they don't believe many of their colleagues should be there because of their sex. Every peer review, every no-hire, every interaction , is and should be suspect. Happy where I am now, but future interviews will include me asking what management would do about this, and termination is the only correct answer. This is textbook hostile environ…

Doesn't a policy of preferentially hiring certain groups necessarily imply that employees who are part of those groups are less capable? Like, helping folks pass the bar implies that they aren't above it - otherwise, why would they need help?

There is no way around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#513

Post by abtinf »

TimPC wrote: post #500

Closing the thread to new accounts seems kind of sad, controversial topics like this lend themselves to throwaway accounts from active members of the community. Maybe the solution is some feature for anonymization from active accounts only, but it feels like we ought to find something better than forcing people to comment under an account that's generally linkable to a name.

Given the facts of this incident, the only reasonable explanation of banning throwaways on this discussion is to suppress those who are sympathetic to the fired point of view. Using your real name in this discussion, even with substantive comment (like the offending 3,300 word post), is a career limiting move.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#514

Post by manfredo »

I think I do a good job of clarifying this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953580

I'll just copy paste the relevant portion here, to save most people a click:

Say a company does one phone-interview, and if passed, moves on to on-sites. But for diverse candidates they do two phone interviews and if either passes they move on to on-sites.

* Unqualified candidates always fail, since neither phone interviews or on-sites have a false-positive rate.

* Qualified non-diverse candidates have a 50% chance of getting the job.

* Qualified diverse candidates have a 75% of getting the job.

At no point do any unqualified candidates receive offers. But at the same time, qualified non-diverse candidates are still rejected at twice the rate as diverse candidates.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#515

Post by nxmehta »

sethev wrote: post #201
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…

His argument seems to boil down to "men and women are different, maybe that's why there are fewer women in tech". That's not an argument, it's speculation that there's an argument. The bulk of the manifesto is a repetition of tropes about men vs women.

Exactly. It's indisputable that there are biological differences between men and women. How those differences are relevant to the disparities in the gender ratio in tech is pure speculation on the author's part. To quote the doc:

"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)"

That is accompanied with citations. OK, sure, let's take that at face value.

Next, he says:

"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics"

No citations, no nothing, just: X may lead to Y because it feels like it's true to me! And there are people actually taking the arguments presenting in this document seriously? Can we please take a step back and try to read critically what is presented in this doc? Because these arguments are just embarrassingly weak.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#517

Post by wildmusings »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #511
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…

While I have a lot of problems with the memo, I was pissed to see CNN's subtitle on this topic: "Boss condemns manifesto sent by a male engineer that claims women aren't suited for work in tech." To say that the manifesto claimed "women aren't suited for work in tech" is more than a gross mischaracterization, it's outright false.

It was even worse. I'm pretty sure the headline yesterday was that he called women "biologically unfit for tech".

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#518

Post by mr_spothawk »

abtinf wrote: post #503
nsxwolf wrote: post #3

Um, yeah... I'm just gonna go ahead and not have an opinion on this one.

"Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us." I'm also not going to comment on this thread. But our silence will come back to damn us.

It's interesting to step into the fray and almost immediately find that my HN points are evaporating over fairly benign comments.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#519

Post by stevenwoo »

dguaraglia wrote: post #453
ksk wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holding an opposing view doesn't mean that they lack moral integrity.

Holding a view that inherently biases them against a whole gender does make them a work liability. How can you trust this person to be fair when - god forbid - they manage people and have to decide who performed better in their mixed-gender group? If anything, by firing him Google might be saving money in future gender-based discrimination lawsuits. On that alone, the "laissez faire capitalists" should stop moaning a…

I kind of assumed they had to fire him based on the fact that there is a current federal gender discrimination lawsuit against Google in which Google claims to not discriminate on gender and Google claims to not be able to produce the data to back up this assertion because it would cost too much to produce.
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