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Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#651

Post by Aunche »

mikeash wrote: post #125
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…

That's one way to read it. Another way would be, "Stop trying to promote diversity, it alienates the racists and sexists who work here." I don't think this is an unfair reading. One of the bullet points in the conclusion is literally that the company's diversity programs are problematic because they alienate non-progressives.

He's not saying that the diversity programs are alienating conservatives. He's saying that if Google really wants to care about diversity, they should be more open to political diversity.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#652

Post by [deleted] »

nxmehta wrote: post #533
bronz wrote: post #119

the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. he never says that women should leave google -- he only says that trying to reach a perfectly equal distribution is misguided. perhaps those who are red in t…

> the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. I'm not sure you read the memo? The author never provided evidence for this claim - it's pure speculation. The only points he's able to support with scienc…

[deleted]

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#653

Post by hjrnunes »

zouhair wrote: post #641
tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

The big problem I had with his "memo" is that, for a text that is about a hot and controversial topic, it lacks (more like doesn't contain any) references to backup his points. A lot of factoids and nothing to back them up.

First, the links were redacted - at least from the version published around here.

Secondly, you really believe that even if had all the references in the world that it would make a difference?

This topic is way past "references". People believe what they want to believe. In the end, reality wins.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#655

Post by bayonetz »

tunesmith wrote: post #418
bronz wrote: post #119

the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. he never says that women should leave google -- he only says that trying to reach a perfectly equal distribution is misguided. perhaps those who are red in t…

This is another maddening component - who actually argues that men and women are the same? Everyone courageously disagrees with this, but I seriously cannot find anyone actually advancing that viewpoint. It's this weird blind spot. I tried asking a few times in another thread, and the only replies I got were from people trying to debunk it. Of course men and women are different, duh. The problem isn't that premise. T…

It's not that people belive there is literally no difference. It's that people say the differences that do exist are irrelevant and/or aren't useful for making choices such as who might be better at what. If that's true, that these differences arent't predictive or actionable, then for practical purposes, there is "no difference". That's the crux of the argument -- are differences actionable? My hypothesis is that there are actionable differences in BOTH DIRECTIONS. Unfortunately a lot of assholes blew our ability to get to the bottom of which is which because they instead pretended to get to the bottom of things but really just rigged outcomes in favor of men. Now it's super hard to shed that baggage and actually try to make positive use of any actionable differences that may exist.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#656

Post by vyhd »

lazyjones wrote: post #502
tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

> because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. Is this really an honest assessment? I haven't yet seen a single reply to the manifesto that addresses its points and counters the supposedly "lousy arguments" in a neutral tone and objective manner. Please point me to one if you have...

How about you write one, then? If you want an assessment that meets your definition of a neutral tone and objective manner, who better to provide it?

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#657

Post by amiga-workbench »

akras14 wrote: post #408
trentnix wrote: post #339

They decided he was a witch, and he was burned at the stake. That's it in a nutshell. They won't much enjoy a world where these new rules they've created might apply to them.

While I don't agree with a lot of premises of the manifesto, I can't shake off a feeling that I just witnessed something very close to a real witch hunt.

That much is obvious just by looking at the response from certain media outlets willfully mischaracterising what was written.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#658

Post by ThomPete »

tunesmith wrote: post #123

People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it. It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity p…

Gender based diversity programs are hurting more than they are helping because they are confusing the role of gender diversity with the role of talent diversity.

These programs are most likely not responsible for qualified women getting jobs and even if they are they are also responsible for qualified men not getting the jobs so nothing is really gained.

The idea of qualification is something that is misunderstood far into academia as it assumes some sort of quantitative measurement is possible.

The reality is that short of what you have paper on (she's a bachelor he's a bachelor) qualifications really isn't about skills but about personality and I would challenge anyone to find even close to a way of measuring how a person fits into a company short of asking the people who work there whether they think person X fits or not.

Furthermore the idea that diversity is better for companies really need to die. Diversity is good in many cases but you can easily have one company filled with women and one company filled with men and having the group of women being of very diverse backgrounds and the group of men being of very diverse backgrounds. You still have diversity. Hell you can even have a group of women being of exactly the same background and a group of men being of exactly the same background and do really really well.

The idea the women brings something to the table simply by being women or that men does simply by being men is what is so wrong with this whole conversation. The individual brings something to the table but the individual needs to fit into a culture not being force fed into it.

Having hired and interviewed a great deal of people in my life in the tech industry I think it's fair to say that most companies will look for ANY talent they can get to. Talent is extremely hard to find and being a woman or being a man is not enough.

More women will hopefully start companies and I hope some of them will hire only women if they feel it's better for their culture. But until they start doing that to the same extent that men does and until they start to the same extent having interest in technology early on, gender based anything will always be hurting more than it will help because just having gender diversity isn't going to make your company better off there simply aren't anything proving that.

And just to be clear. I have worked with women and men far better than me. When it comes to the best there really isn't any difference. I have worked for plenty of female bosses and they are as good as the men I have worked with.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#659

Post by jbmorgado »

Of course this all issue could be easily solved by doing blind tests.

Just do recruitment based on tests and interviews where you hide if they are male, female, straight, queer, black, white, muslim, christian, atheist, and then choose the best candidate in the end without knowing only that part of their personal information.

They are Google, they obviously have the techincal means to make that possible.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#660

Post by cm2187 »

mehwoot wrote: post #243

Reading the letter, what surprised me was how political it was, framing everything as a "left vs right" cultural fight. I think if it was up to me I'd probably fire anybody on either side of that debate who started circulating shit like this. As soon as you're on that level, nothing good is going to come of it and you're just going to make a lot of people angry, which is very bad for the business in a lot of differen…

I sort of agree. I am personally in favour of a sterile workplace. No political talk, no baby talk, leave all that stuff at home or for your friends and focus on the task at hand. But that's not what he got sacked for. From what I understand the guy claims he was sacked for "perpetuating gender stereotype". If that's the case, he wasn't sacked for discussing politics, he was sacked for expressing the wrong political opinion.
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