The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo

How about every article or video about cryptocurrency, PRISM, AI, 'Data Science' and a litany of other topics in tech? I have seen almost no 'tech' journalism of any merit, so I'm not surprised to see sloppy coverage of another complex issue. But that shouldn't stop meaningful HN comment threads :)

The fact is, the memo does not simply put forth a question for debate, it treats a massive legacy of misogyny in our culture as a feature, not a bug. He really genuinely sees no problem with a world that pushes people into gender roles. In fact, he thinks we should optimize for it. It's a selfish tantrum thrown by someone feeling a lack of affirmation - disguised as vague argument that he really understands people, tech, and companies much better than his bosses.

If you helps for you to remove anything about identity in here: it's as if someone posted a cruel, snide rant in defense of GOTO statements, attacking OO programmers. Not only is he wrong, he made an extended case for the wrong argument and did it in a way that inflict maximum company damage.

So yeah it would be a big ol' red flag.

I'm torn by the two sides. On one hand I see the rational and level headed language in the memo versus the reactionary bait-click headlines. On the other hand I sense a mens' rights argument at the core of the memo that isn't very organized. The memo argued against discrimination against men in the hiring process, then suggested creating roles that won't fit the stereotypical male. That's discrimination at the role creation process! If google followed that advice, the author would still have something to be against.

The central point of the memo, from what I read, was that any gender discrimination to hire more women in the workplace necessarily discriminates against the men that would have otherwise gotten the job. Sure he made some good ideas for how to hire more women. But no matter how reasonable the language he used to couch his message, the essence was still against diversity because it will hurt the job opportunities of men.

Another underlying assumption here is that the technical merits of a candidate is the overriding quality to be considered for hiring. And since the pool of qualified applicants are male dominated, then any bias in hiring women will hurt the obviously qualified men. If technical abilities follow a normal distribution (and why not?), then more highly qualified men will be discriminated.

However, technical ability is not the only overriding quality and Google is trying to take the diversity of the team into account during the hiring process. Thus, Google is taking a grander view of not just considering the individual merit of the applicant, but applicant's impact to the team composition as well. This is equivalent to someone in Overwatch who has high stats in a game that won't change his character/behavior even though he does not help the team. Say the player has high elimination stats because they are fighting away from the main fight where his team is at a disadvantage (say holding down the point).

This is a textbook case of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. People who agree with the memo focuses on the parts. They think "hire more great parts = better team." But team composition is actually more important. People who labels the memo as anti-diversity are in favor of team comp, whether they know it or not.

But personally, the most important point of diversity for me is the end of sausage fest at work. Group conversations with one dominant gender day in day out kind of suck. This applies to either gender.