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Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

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Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#811

Post by [deleted] »

verylittlemeat wrote: post #806
DoreenMichele wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my expectations align with HN guidelines and with a fair amount of observable behavior here. Granted, some folks can't be arsed. (shrug)

I guess you and I are reading a different hacker news then. I can hardly go one thread here that doesn't devolve into petty power jabs for internet points. I don't know how you can read the comments in this Damore thread and not agree that's the case. Of course, that's against the HN guidelines, but it's not exactly hard to follow the letter of the guidelines while breaking the spirit of them.

[deleted]

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#812

Post by Natsu »

refulgentis wrote: post #714
dmoy wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reasonably mathy too, but stats was pretty different and I only took a couple semesters of it. It wasn't until I was forced to interact with it in a job setting that the inverse relationship between type I & II errors became really apparent to me. Any time I would crank up settings to reduce type I error, keeping all other things the same, type II error would invariably creep up... and v. versa Then when lookin…

Alas, this is the 1st time I posted it. There was a heavy bias to down voting all of my comments for the first 4-6 hours, which evened out to the opposite over time. I usually see this pattern in gender-related threads

FWIW, I upvoted your comment for being mathematically correct, even though I was a bit confused as you meant to reply to someone else.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#813

Post by tptacek »

stcredzero wrote: post #798
ncallaway wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not, because there's no 1A issue as the first amendment does not grant you any protections from your employer. Now, as I said before, if you want to have a discussion about whether Twitter and Google and other modern media companies should have some 1A responsibilities in their role as gatekeepers to online speech, that's a discussion that's entirely separate† from Twitter and Google's responsibilities to the…

It does not, because there's no 1A issue as the first amendment does not grant you any protections from your employer. I was clearly referring to the greater issue with regards to Google's general power in our culture and what the attitude within Google which was revealed in this event might mean. Not only did you state that you did not want to have that discussion, but then you just tried to shove words in my mouth…

Then aren't you confusing your argument (and your readers) by referring to the First Amendment, which has literally no bearing on this situation?

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#814

Post by tptacek »

leereeves wrote: post #263
tptacek wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're still not getting it. You don't have the legal right to discuss things at work without termination . Blanket federal employment law says that there is a powerful presumption in favor of the employer when terminating employees. They can fire you for what you say. They can fire you for dying your hair the wrong hair color. They don't need a good reason. You need a good reason if you're going to contest a…

The NLRB referred to some things employees do have a legal right to discuss without termination: > expressing a dissenting view on matters affecting working conditions or offering critical feedback of its policies and programs, which were likely protected Damore's memo was critical feedback about Google's diversity policy. The inclusion of certain controversial scientific findings is perfectly reasonable in this cont…

The Advice Memo was signed and attributed to a 30-year veteran of the NLRB, and the content of the memo was signed off on by the NLRB's GC, who is a Trump appointee. They disagree with you.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#815

Post by dang »

verylittlemeat wrote: post #806
DoreenMichele wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my expectations align with HN guidelines and with a fair amount of observable behavior here. Granted, some folks can't be arsed. (shrug)

I guess you and I are reading a different hacker news then. I can hardly go one thread here that doesn't devolve into petty power jabs for internet points. I don't know how you can read the comments in this Damore thread and not agree that's the case. Of course, that's against the HN guidelines, but it's not exactly hard to follow the letter of the guidelines while breaking the spirit of them.

If you notice people doing that you should flag the comments. How to do this is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#816

Post by millstone »

stcredzero wrote: post #795
tptacek wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This amorphous right commenters on this thread seem to think Damore had not to be fired, he didn't have. That's what employment at will means. You don't even know whether I think his termination was reasonable. All you know is that I believe --- and so does the NLRB in this instance --- he did not enjoy special protections against unreasonable termination. What I find especially funny about this is that Damore is a c…

But employment at will isn't just a conservative value --- it's a signpost conservative value, one of the basic principles on which we organize our market economy. What went on with James Damore has nothing to do with the "good workings" of the employment marketplace. Rather, it's the abuse of at-will employment by groups to push political agendas through coercion. Damore is in this instance a conservative the same w…

Damore was fired only after the memo went public. Afterwards, there was no way that Damore could do his job as a Google software engineer. No team would take him: the optics would be terrible.

If you can't do your job, you don't get to keep it.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#817

Post by stillkicking »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #779
stillkicking wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no sharp drop-off in the 80s. What happened is that interest from men soared while the proportion of women choosing to study it remained relatively constant in comparison, only dropping by a little in terms of the actual percentage of the female student body choosing it over other subjects. Looking only at the ratio is completely misleading. There was only a short exception around the PC boom and the dotcom…

You are deeply misinformed. At PhD level, Bio and Agro are gender balanced. CS is 95% male. Math and Engineering are about 70% male. Women weren't becoming less represented in CS over time, because they were never welcomed in graduate programs in the first place http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/05/08/gender-gap-in-...

No I'm not, I'm literally describing the NCES own numbers. Here:

https://imgur.com/a/MQUx0

The point of discussion is whether there has been a drastic reduction in female participation in CS since the early 80s. This is a point that is commonly brought up, based on the graph of the gender _ratio_ of degrees conferred (which is dominated by bachelor's degrees).

As this ratio has dropped only because the absolute male numbers have increased, it is unfair to attribute that to a reduction in female participation.

I never said anything about equal gender balance, in fact, I strongly believe anyone who aims for a 50/50 gender ratio in STEM has embarked on a quest for a holy grail that can never be found, for the same reason social workers and nursing will never be 50/50 gender balanced. The only way to get close is to actively discriminate against the people most interested in it, and this is both stupid and immoral.

By the way, during those crucial 80s and 90s, computer tech was strongly associated with geeks and nerds, and the popular image was that of socially inept rejects. But now all that has been retconned as women being discriminated against, because the hard work of those nerds has turned it into a lucrative and prestiguous discipline. The idea that women weren't welcomed is preposterous, those men and the communities they built have always been infatuated with any woman who considered them worthy of respect, and a minority of women have always been part of it too.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#818

Post by pokemongoaway »

tptacek wrote: post #746
pokemongoaway wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it bizarre that you basically concede the ground that it is similar to a thought crime and feel no need to defend your stance that his memo should be classified as "anti-diversity." Or is saying "you can call it a thought crime if you want" authorizing his use of this language, from a position of moral authority?

This amorphous right commenters on this thread seem to think Damore had not to be fired, he didn't have. That's what employment at will means. You don't even know whether I think his termination was reasonable. All you know is that I believe --- and so does the NLRB in this instance --- he did not enjoy special protections against unreasonable termination. What I find especially funny about this is that Damore is a c…

I'm not conceding to be on your "amorphous right," but the amorphous left seems to put words in everyone's mouth. I haven't seen anyone in this thread say that they are certain that Google broke the law in this case - since they are a private organization. What I have seen a lot of is people reframing and mischaracterizing the memo as "anti-diversity," "sexual harassment," "pseudoscience," etc. I don't need to know if you think his termination was reasonable because I'm not arguing that you were. However, you were arguing that he was cloaking hate speech as science - as you stated, "...were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding his effort to cloak his comments with “scientific” references..." This part is very worthy of debate!

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#819

Post by on_and_off »

rendall wrote: post #801
on_and_off wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes : https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351 you can also find the full damore memo online.

Thanks. I checked Damore's Twitter account, and he has not yet made a statement on this, perhaps wisely following his lawyer's advice. from the NLRB Memo: "[Damore's] statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding [his] effort to cloak comments with “sci…

I was also surprised that this was the part of memo quoted by the NLRB.

There are others that made me frown way more.

The neuroticism quote is not beyond reproach though.

The big five model has been heavily critiqued, it is not exactly an ironclad scientific caution for Damore's argument.

Re: Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

#820

Post by GnwbZHiU »

tptacek wrote: post #2

The first thing everyone needs to know about this is what the case was about, because it implicates one of the most powerful and least known rights tech company employees have. According to Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, employees can't generally be disciplined for exercising the rights provided under Section 7 of the NLRA. These rights are commonly understood to be about unionizing (ie, you can't be fired for trying r…

"Damore was terminated by Google for authoring his anti-diversity memo"

Wrong. Damore was pro diversity.

What he said was Google didn't achieve the wanted diversity, because the methodology is wrong.

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