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The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

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Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#601

Post by peoplewindow »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #380
peoplewindow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy's post was science, according to scientists - 5 of them have now spoken up saying that. Maybe there'll be more. With respect to "why not try to solve it", it's a reasonable question. The guy answers that too - he is all for trying to solve it. He even makes suggestions about new ways to do it, like encouraging pair programming. But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger…

You're right that a number of scientists have come out to say his post was science. I'm saying that they are not the conclusive authority on the posters' intent. He is of course entitled to feel and think whatever he wants, but maybe a little old-fashioned advice would help here: measure twice, cut once. He clearly didn't think through the effects of posting a stern essay to a company-wide board on a subject that is…

If you insist on judging arguments by appeals to authority, which I agree is much faster than wading through all the research papers themselves, then there are no higher authorities on gender science than actual biologists who study the topic full time. Almost by definition, they are the most qualified. By all means be skeptical but you must have reasons. Otherwise you are no better than people who reject evolution because they really don't want to believe it's true.

With respect to his essay skills and tact - they are just fine. He makes it abundantly clear he doesn't want to offend people and is not describing individuals, but only the statistical preferences of large populations. You are shooting the messenger in another desperate attempt to ignore the message. Could a few words have been tweaked here or there? Sure. Should he have written it? Yes - he alleges that Google is engaged in illegal behaviour. Google, like all large firms, teaches their employees that it's their responsibility to flag illegal and problematic behaviour and writing such a well researched memo in order to do so is more than most companies could expect.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#602

Post by peoplewindow »

danso wrote: post #513
peoplewindow wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, did you read it? He lists the following: "* Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5] * A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates * Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate * Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scru…

Yes I did read it. You can check my comment history where I've even linked to that exact section you cite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953398 I asked for empirical evidence that these initiatives had led to bad results at Google. If the biological research so directly contradicts Google's aims with these diversity initiatives, then we should be able to measure the negative impact, no? That Google has had t…

If there was any evidence as to the utility of these things, then the argument might look rather different. But the memo - as you already know - states that Google management presents no empirical evidence in support of its policies, so it's reasonable to assume the firm doesn't have any evidence in either direction.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#603

Post by mcv »

jamesrcole wrote: post #344
mcv wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. I didn't see anyone try to suppress those views. Quite the contrary, they were widely shared. And then criticised. He wasn't silenced in any way. His message reached way more people than he probably ever imagined.

Did you see hate, insults, name calling, claims that people shouldn't be allowed to discuss such topics, or should be punished for doing so? What about comments about how wrong it was to do something to incite a culture war (as if that was the memo author's intention. And presumably such commenters don't consider opinions they agree with to be 'inciting a culture war')? I didn't say anything about literally preventin…

It's hard to avoid hate and insults these days. It seems to have been normalised by the recent political shift to the far right.

However, the main criticism I've seen directed towards the author of the manifesto, is that he contributes to creating a toxic work environment where women feel less welcome, which makes it hard to keep him employed in a company that wants women to feel welcome in engineering. Also that he doesn't understand the need for diversity in modern companies, that he doesn't understand the need for empathy and interpersonal skills in engineering, and that he's wrong about many of his assertions about gender differences (many gender differences are the result of cultural bias, for example).

> I didn't say anything about literally preventing someone from expressing their views.

You said:

> many people's first instinct, when faced with views they strongly disagree with, is to try and suppress those views and the person speaking them

The views weren't suppressed, they were spread, and then criticised. No doubt there are people who want to silence people they disagree with; that is nothing new unfortunately.

Whether his firing was justified or not depends primarily on whether this manifesto indeed contributed to a toxic work environment where women feel less welcome. Many people think it did. And if it did, then it's kinda hard to Google to keep him employed.

That's really the core issue here: is his manifesto intolerant of women in engineering, and does it contribute to intolerance of women in engineering? There's a vital difference between merely expressing an unpopular opinion, and expressing intolerance towards your coworkers. He's not merely supporting an unpopular sports club or liking unpopular music, he is talking about his coworkers. And that changes everything.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#604

Post by Jabanga2 »

dang wrote: post #595
Jabanga wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no reason to expect that their subset of the population should conform to a general population skew. Absurd. Differences in the general population will translate into differences in the number of men that pursue CS and related fields, which will affect the gender composition of the applicant pool that Google recruits from. >Can you point to my dogmatic position? The dogma is in you ignoring and denying basi…

Ok, since we asked you to stop doing this ideological boilerplate thing and you've repeatedly ignored us, we've banned this latest account. Would you please not create accounts to abuse Hacker News with?

I'm making this account just to respond to the ban:

I didn't actually know I was responding to a moderator until after I made the comment, at which point I thought it better to leave the comment up for consistency sake.

I also didn't think I repeatedly ignored the moderator, as I tried to avoid repeating myself after receiving the warning, which I thought was enough to meet the moderator's standards.

I think it's inappropriate to limit discussion on issues that unavoidably deal with ideology on a central tech hub like this.

When a Google employee is fired for speech running afoul company diversity policy there is a need for discussion relating to ideology. This is not off-topic and is not bleeding into inappropriate stories. Maybe there is an unwritten rule to: "not argue too vehemently about a non-tech-related issue", yet somehow I doubt that rule would be imposed if the issue related to politically incorrect discrimination, and an individual posted a number of comments strongly arguing against the discrimination (and the ideology justifying it).

At the very least you should make your policy on this more transparent, as there are no clear guidelines on what kind of comments are acceptable, and it seems to be largely at whim of moderators and their personal take. Like I said, I was under the impression that I was heeding the warning, and suddenly I find I am banned. Perhaps if the rules and objectionable behavior were more clearly defined, fewer people would get banned. At the moment, it seems REALLY subjective.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#605

Post by vsl »

omikun wrote: post #287
peoplewindow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy's post was science, according to scientists - 5 of them have now spoken up saying that. Maybe there'll be more. With respect to "why not try to solve it", it's a reasonable question. The guy answers that too - he is all for trying to solve it. He even makes suggestions about new ways to do it, like encouraging pair programming. But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger…

> But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger problems. They might also be illegal. That seems like a good reason to pause for a moment and re-evaluate if the current strategy is a good one. In fact, he goes farther. He says this "Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business." Where is the science to back that up?

Discrimination is by definition unfair; therefore divisive. I thought everyone agrees on that.

It's very hypocritical to scream how discrimination against women or POC is bad and needs to be routed out, only to turn around and start discriminating yourself.

Discriminating against anyone (yes, even people you disagree with or don't like) is unfair.

Treating people differently based on their gender is sexist.

Smearing, bullying and firing somebody for disagreeing with you is bigoted.

The hypocrisy on display in this whole brouhaha is astounding.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#606

Post by ArenaSource »

So, this is science too:

Inmate Gender - Male: 93.3% Female: 6.7% [1]

"In view of these overwhelming results measures must be taken to remove men from jobs where their predisposition to crime may have negative repercussions on society."

[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gende...

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#607

Post by Chris2048 »

danso wrote: post #586
Chris2048 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What basic research skills does he lack?

I pointed out an example earlier in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14974543

Ok. You throw around terms like "ignorant", "massive error" etc; but I don't think your own assertions are not founded.

What "basic facts and history" are you alluding to, and how do you think they are relevant?

Why do you feel justified saying the author is "ruled by his emotions"? You made blank assertions without explicitly backing them up ("Only someone ignorant..", "only someone ruled by his emotions..")

You say his premises are not "coherent in their arrangement" but can you give an demonstrate this? Just saying "clearly he's ignorant" etc isn't enough to convince me you are right about the quoted snippet, let alone the whole memo.

As was stated in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14974650 you are nit-picking a memo intended to invite discussion, but name calling ("ignorant") without providing at least a similar level of citation, or explanation, yourself is not constructive.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#608

Post by Chris2048 »

pcnix wrote: post #593
Chris2048 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was fired for breaching the company's civil code of conduct. We've yet to hear details of what this really mean, and if this CoC is applied fairly. It sounds like the violation i a) based on a particular interpretation of the memo, or b) based on the subjective offense of other employees. This sounds like the "cultural fit" loophole of the left. > That's different than being fired for an idea Is it? Have all the…

> There are plenty liberal/left essays floating about the google intranets, this is not you average employer. Yeah, but do they call a third of their coworkers incompetent? It's not the fact that it's an opinion piece, it's that it's a very tactless way of approaching the situation. I'm not defending the leaker here, but once it did get leaked, there really was little the company could do to keep him a productive mem…

> do they call a third of their coworkers incompetent

the memo doesn't either - If you disagree please quote the part that does.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#609

Post by zimpenfish »

peoplewindow wrote: post #90
52-6F-62 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally never called it out for sexism. I called it out for regressive-thinking as a solution based on plain fact. I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought. If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tu…

The guy's post was science, according to scientists - 5 of them have now spoken up saying that. Maybe there'll be more. With respect to "why not try to solve it", it's a reasonable question. The guy answers that too - he is all for trying to solve it. He even makes suggestions about new ways to do it, like encouraging pair programming. But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger…

> 5 of them have now spoken up saying that.

Who's the 5th? We've got the 4 from the Quillette article and ...?

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