Live data from Hacker News

Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

bloomberg.com

801–810 of 1001 posts

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#801
I am white cis male. I am damned in this topic by definition. But still.

I am pretty sure it is all about money, not engineering. Women are not inferior on average, but they are different. This is fact. There are jobs which are much harder for male to handle compared to female, and I am not talking about child care or something, but mostly stressful jobs requiting multitasking. Males are bad at multitasking on average (not to be confused with time management and doing many things, but sequentially).

I know a guy, a chess trainer who trains girls. He always tries to schedule matches based on trainee period cycle to let his girls do their best. That is intellectual sport, chess, fair play. This is damn biology, one cannot deny it by corporate policy.

So the fact is, like it on not, there are jobs which male handle better on average, there are jobs which women handle better on average, just because brain of both sexes is equally effective, but not equal. And this is great. I am more than happy to ask my female colleague for something she is better at (and I am not talking about delegating boring staff, I have male juniors for this), because diversity is good.

Root of the problem, as I see it, is that jobs male are better on average are also much better paid on average. It is not fair, but is another fact one cannot deny. Nobody ever discussed males being underpaid. Nobody ever discussed why we have too many women at some jobs (like cashier or janitor in my country) and how we should help men get equal and have a chance to get that jobs too. Because honestly, that jobs are too hard for male to handle and not paid well enough to fight for them. I saw a few man cashier working side-by-side with women colleagues. It was pure struggle, they were so over-stressed trying to serve 3-4 customers in parallel, I really pity them. But being software engineer with 6-digit salary is quite different story. Everybody wants it because everybody wants to be cool and rich.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#804
post #743

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…

I love how you throw around the term "qualified" as though it were set in stone. Like one person is obviously more qualified than the other, as though these people are 100m sprinters whose performance is measured within a fraction of a hundredth of a second. We're treating highly educated specialists tasked with delivering highly complex, variable and nuanced output like 19th century factory workers. How many hundred…

It is a subjetive measure but still a measure. For example, the position requires knowing Python, a person with 5 years of experience in Python will probably know more than a person with 1. Yes, you can be wrong but hiring the 5 year person is the common sense, you will do less mistakes this way. Hiring the women because it is a women it is a positive discrimination. Not hiring the women with experience is discrimination, but does this really happen? Can you prove it?

(Ok yes, people see a woman to hire and say +1 point because you a woman and will us pay less taxes because of the diversity balance. This shit happens too)

You talk like you have written those books, enlighten me.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#805

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…

You imply bias in the the hiring process is what is causing the gender imbalance in tech. Indicators such university enrollment in CS programs show that this is unlikely to be the case. If the author is wrong, that there definitely isn't some inherit genetic behavioral bias influencing job choice, than the bias is happening before students finish highschool. I'm a proponent for an "early bias" theory because of far l…

Does "early bias" theory include the leaky pipe line model? Ie: University students that fail a exam will switch program at a higher rate if their gender is a minority. In polls, they are also more likely to question their decision in career choice and have more self doubt about their ability to finish the program. The data that I have seen on this is that it is gender neutral, ie that the doubt caused by being a local minority is similar for both men and women.

To make up numbers, if a student has 3 times a high risk of switching a program after a failed exam, the chance that they will graduates will be significant lower. Having a gender segregated education fixes this, but as soon the graduate enters the work market the same phenomenon happen after a failed interview unless they only seek work which is also gender segregated.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#806
post #801

I am white cis male. I am damned in this topic by definition. But still. I am pretty sure it is all about money, not engineering. Women are not inferior on average, but they are different. This is fact. There are jobs which are much harder for male to handle compared to female, and I am not talking about child care or something, but mostly stressful jobs requiting multitasking. Males are bad at multitasking on averag…

> I know a guy, a chess trainer who trains girls. He always tries to schedule matches based on trainee period cycle to let his girls do their best.

this seems really crazy to me. the person playing chess is an individual. whether it's the best time for them to play or not should be up to them. Whether it's before their period or before lunch: a million things affect us, and we all have agency in deciding what we want to do, and when.

for the trainer to do this on another person's "behalf" is really distasteful and fails to be empathetic.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#807

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…

You imply bias in the the hiring process is what is causing the gender imbalance in tech. Indicators such university enrollment in CS programs show that this is unlikely to be the case. If the author is wrong, that there definitely isn't some inherit genetic behavioral bias influencing job choice, than the bias is happening before students finish highschool. I'm a proponent for an "early bias" theory because of far l…

> You imply bias in the the hiring process is what is causing the gender imbalance in tech. Indicators such university enrollment in CS programs show that this is unlikely to be the case.

You are assuming that women are choosing their college degrees in a vacuum. They don't. They ask: can I see myself doing this job? Is this a worthwhile investment? And when they cannot see themselves working in tech, because they see no-one like themselves in IT, they choose other fields.

> Unfortunately, our supply of women is governed by a mostly government run school system that doesn't exist in a world of supply and demand and likes to shift the blame for their ineptitude.

What specific mistakes can you point to? What particular solutions are within reach of the government? Because right now this just looks like shifting responsibility onto the state.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#808
post #573

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…

As a woman with a disability who got hired by a diversity program, I don't give a fuck. I just need a job. Working at McDonald's sucks balls. If I really couldn't do the job, they could have fired me at the end of my probation period. I'm quite happy to earn my position after I've got it.

At the risk of somewhat generalizing, a disability puts a person at disadvantage. Just being a women isn't a disadvantage.

Regarding your employer being able to potentially firing you, the point isn't that they can fire you but that hiring you based on a diversity program for women could have excluded a more qualified man (not saying that you could not be the most qualified candidate). Firing you later doesn't fix the missed opportunity for that man or the employer.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#809

It's incredibly ironic that a company that apparently cares about diversity enough to have a "Vice President for Diversity" fired an employee for presenting an opposing viewpoint - to their diversity policy of all things. Further evidence that Google and the other large institutions don't actually give a rat's ass about "diversity". Diversity has absolutely nothing to do with diversity of thought, and is only concern…

Only inside the tech bubble that includes HN do we still consider this hateful alt-right bigotry to be a valid "opinion" we should continue to tolerate. Nobody is silencing the bigot that wrote that manifesto. Google is simply pointing him to the door. Lucky for him, SV still has hundreds of misogynistic tech bro companies he can join.

Phrases like "alt-right bigotry" and "misogynistic" are becoming the red flags of an intolerant leftist ideology.

By using them here it seems like you are attempting to marginalize and stigmatize those who consider the manifesto to make some decent points.

Do you have any actual arguments against the manifesto, or do you think that formulating a reasoned response would help legitimize a point of view that you find abhorrent?

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#810

I believe that equal opportunity among all persons is manifest. But I think the manner in which we encourage/enforce/promote it, especially in the workplace, demands debate. We must be able to disagree with the methods without any question of our belief of its purpose. The most disgusted I've ever felt at a workplace was when my boss, prior to me interviewing someone, said, "and she gets an extra point because she's…

My job is not to balance an arbitrary math equation that x% of engineers are supposed to be women.

It's also true that your job is not to balance an arbitrary math equation that x% of engineers are supposed to be men either. Consequently, unless you can demonstrate that you're unbiased with regard to gender, it's entirely reasonable to introduce an external pressure to make sure any bias (conscious or otherwise) is mitigated. Ideally that would be blind interviews but that's very difficult to achieve, so diversity programmes are used instead.

Post reply on HN