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Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#611

Post by dang »

mvdwoord wrote: post #61
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…

So you're going to ask management what they are going to do about someone who is stating well accepted scientific facts [1]? I hope we never become colleagues. [1] http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

> I hope we never become colleagues.

This crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed here. Please don't do that again.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#612

Post by icelancer »

thex10 wrote: post #366

As a minority woman in tech I'm not bothered much by his document, but that's only because I don't work with this guy or folks like him. His manifesto doesn't pain me, but that's only because I have a secure job coding all my favorite things with people who don't spew this kind of unsubstantiated crap to my colleagues, giving them spurious reasons to doubt my abilities and inherent qualities. My sympathies are with t…

>that's only because I don't work with this guy or folks like him

How do you know this for sure? They may not want to speak out.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#613

Post by arkh »

emmab wrote: post #282
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 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 women. Because you have to hire women as the diversity program says. Are you saying there are no situations in which applying a systematic adjustment as a function of gender to interview scores could result in a predictable net-fitness-increase in the…

Here is the problem in tech.

Your have around 20% females. If any company has 30%, this means a lot of other companies will have to fight to get women there.

So they have to pay a lot more for the qualified ones or accept to get token women for the sake of PR.

The problem starts before the workplace: in homes and at school. Start educating minorities and women on the job opportunities in tech. Make them discover the joy of tinkering. It's not for everyone but as someone from a lower socio-economic world I experienced how you can not know what is available to you. That's a huge failing of the school system and especially guidance counselor who usually don't know shit about nothing.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#614

Post by dang »

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #589

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahaha Oh, were you serious? Yeah there is a lot you really can't say publicly around here but is that so different than anywhere else? Overall the Bay is awesome and in general I am a flaming liberal but there are times when the right wing bogeyman of authoritarian PC orth…

> hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha etc.

Would you please not post like this? It ruins HN threads in more ways than one.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14955239 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#615

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

What I get from all this debacle is that Google is still failing to be the genious hivemind it wants to be.

It has its fair share of employees with huge blind spots about their own, well, privilege, while its HR people are just as prone to spasmodic, unreasonable reactions as those of any other company.

That old, discarded motto should rather have been "don't be stupid".

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#616

Post by cm2187 »

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #589

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahaha Oh, were you serious? Yeah there is a lot you really can't say publicly around here but is that so different than anywhere else? Overall the Bay is awesome and in general I am a flaming liberal but there are times when the right wing bogeyman of authoritarian PC orth…

I don't think this is specific to the Silicon Valley. In banking you have a similar pressure applied on the employees, with mandatory trainings that feel more like some form of political re-education, and I am sure that guy would have been fired in a London or New York bank too.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#617

Post by hackpert »

This seems like a really bad move to me, unless of course, there were other issues with the said employee's work. Instead of removing all proponents of a different (and most probably incorrect but let's leave that aside) ideology, they could have started workshops, lecture series, heck even one on one conversations to make him and others see why their views are damaging to the Google culture and society in general, and maybe they would see why they're wrong. That is what the Google I know would do. Alas, it seems the Google I know is no more.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#618

Post by tanilama »

peak_body_yo wrote: post #578
drawkbox wrote: post #248

It was a bit of a Jerry Maguire moment even if you agree with some of it. At work you should be professional and not only work to make yourself and the company/product better, but the people around you better. It is mostly not healthy to get political or ideological at work unless you want to divide people. A company and employees really shouldn't get political if at all possible, to prevent a divided customer base.…

> A company and employees really shouldn't get political if at all possible, to prevent a divided customer base. The company and its employees have very publicly political. This is the trend for most of the big tech companies. I wish they were much less political and the companies chose more moderate viewpoints.

This is actually a good point though.

The companies, should stay as much as to the political center, and it is wise to do so. Google, unfortunately, built its early image as a company with moral, where it nows turns into a burden rather than a legacy.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#620

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

dguaraglia wrote: post #496
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…

> "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group." "But beware of this particular subgroup, because they are biologically inclined to not be as interested or good in the subject." > Everyone is just rushing to virtue signal, to demonstrate their own purity of thought No, people are pissed that it's 2017 and people are still trying to make an argument for the superiority of testosterone as a p…

> Can't we just give everyone a chance, instead of trying to pigeonhole them right away?

The enginner did not say women can't be engineers, merely implied that the gender imbalance in the field may not be entirely the result of society. There are very real, very definite emotional and psychological differences between men and women overall[1]. Why is it so weird to think that those differences might lead to different career paths?

>Please don't pay attention to the actual religious agenda being pushed by the party currently in power. You know, the one that is actually running an inquisition against LGBTQ people? The one that wants to tell women what to do with their bodies? No dogma there, surely.

Just that the other side is crazy too doesn't mean we shouldn't point out the possible weaknesses of the left. Extreme political polarization on both sides combined with a decline in peoples' willingness to consider the opinions of those who oppose them is part of what is causing all this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology

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