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Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#881

Post by blub »

wonnage wrote: post #602
unscrupulous_sw wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to chime in, I also unknowingly got myself labeled sexist when the topic came up during a random lunch with "friends" (company provided lunch so it had random people from HR and recruiting). Somehow or another the topic of whether going for 50/50 will "lower the bar". So I started thinking about the problem mathematically like any engineer would, with statistical distributions and estimates of the existing pipel…

You can't use statistics without a model. The problem is that you have a shitty model and it's annoying when you keep parroting it like you're so logical. Your model as inferred from this comment is that there's some way to quantify the current applicants, and that applicants below a certain value are always rejected. The remaining applicants are "above the bar" and could be hired. The current "above the bar" group i…

You don't need statistical models to figure out that if you're desperate to hire certain people and there's very few of them in your hiring pipeline, you'll turn a blind eye towards certain interview mistakes where you would normally disqualify candidates.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#883

Post by blub »

slg wrote: post #601
legostormtroopr wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive. Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can't be discussed without complete agreement. Take for example, "Women in Tech", personally I don't see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be 'solved'. For the better part of 15 years, there has been a massive movement to encourage w…

>personally I don't see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be 'solved' I say the below not as an attempt to criticize you for this viewpoint, but as a way to try to explain why this viewpoint is often interpreted as sexist. The question is why do you believe this? The possible explanations for why women are underrepresented in tech basically comes down to either nature or nurture.…

"Either there is something in the way we as a society and industry educate, hire, manage, and promote women".

I would add raise and socialize as kids to the list, but to me that's clearly part of it.

The entire evolution of a person from baby to adult is moulded by society, which makes it pretty ridiculous when the enlightened techies want to solve the lack of women in tech by only "fixing" hiring and promoting. And management, if we're feeling generous.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#884

Post by NietTim »

daliusd wrote: post #882

They have changed it already: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/c69d6dc2...

I like it, just wish they'd drop the "against protected groups" from point three. Encouraging violence or discrimination against some other groups are okay? (no) Odd.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#885

Post by glogla »

manfredo wrote: post #524
jetpks wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women were barely allowed into workplaces in general within the last 50 years and are still fighting biases that have existed for millennia. Fixing the lack of women in tech is a multi-century process, not something that's just knocked out in as little as 15 years. We'd be lucky to start seeing the needle move in such a short amount of time.

Interestingly, the rates of women in tech were higher 50 years ago than they are today. Reduction in inequality between men and women has an inverse relationship with rates of women in engineering. The countries with large inequality between men and women like Indonesia and India have some of the highest rates of women on tech. Egalitarian countries like those in Scandinavia have the lowest rates. The idea that low r…

> Reduction in inequality between men and women has an inverse relationship with rates of women in engineering. The countries with large inequality between men and women like Indonesia and India have some of the highest rates of women on tech. Egalitarian countries like those in Scandinavia have the lowest rates. The idea that low rates of women in tech is a product of inequality and discrimination is hard to justify in practice.

That sounds like a cherry-picked example. For example, Eastern Block (USSR and similar countries) had a lot more gender-equality than the Western Block (like US) and has way more women in STEM.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#887

Post by rjf72 »

philwelch wrote: post #546
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. The only way not to do that would be for FB timelines and Twitter feeds to be strictly sequential feeds which at some point in the past they may have been but they are not now. Once you start basing your…

I don't think it's been convincingly argued that ranking or recommendation algorithms necessarily represent any sort of editorial bias. The purpose of these algorithms is to rank content based either on a prediction of what the individual user would want to see based on their existing history or on which content is more broadly engaging in general. In other words, if YouTube decides I really like to watch Ben Shapiro…

There's a very simple solution here that avoids any and all bias and hidden agendas: simply make everything transparent.

- Users get to create their own profile. For instance in your profile you get to selected whether you would like to see content geared towards men/women/any. And this would follow for a whole slew of other topics, similar to the opaque profile companies are creating on users today without their consent or input.

- All recommended videos have all their profile tags openly shown. And the reason for recommendation is also completely open.

The cool thing about it is that this also works really well with the current neural network based recommendation systems since they output a weighting of things. Simply transform those weightings into a nice output and the user can see exactly what's going on and exactly how they're being viewed. As a nice aside this would also remove a big chunk of the incentive for increasingly aggressive spying as companies try to get ever more extensive profiles on each and every person that uses their products.

One downside here is that users might not be consciously aware of their own preferences. This could again be resolved transparently. "Hey PhilWelch, we've noticed you like videos about underwater basketweaving. Would you like for this interest to be ticked in your profile? [Yes, No, No + Never ask again]

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#888

Post by daliusd »

NietTim wrote: post #884
daliusd wrote: post #882

They have changed it already: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/c69d6dc2...

I like it, just wish they'd drop the "against protected groups" from point three. Encouraging violence or discrimination against some other groups are okay? (no) Odd.

Good point, I wonder how they define "protected group". If that's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group then it is slippery slope in some situations. E.g. when you decide to work with Chinese companies should you take into considerations how China (as country) is behaving with Muslims in their country.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#889

Post by chr1 »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #334
neonate wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

The problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. The only way not to do that would be for FB timelines and Twitter feeds to be strictly sequential feeds which at some point in the past they may have been but they are not now. Once you start basing your…

They could make the algorithm customizable and let the user to control it. That would be much better than the current blackbox where you get uninteresting stories promoted because of misclicking once, and have no way to tell the algorithm about its mistakes.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#890

Post by mlang23 »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #873
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. The only way not to do that would be for FB timelines and Twitter feeds to be strictly sequential feeds which at some point in the past they may have been but they are not now. Once you start basing your…

> The problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. Not to mention a completely different topic - ads for scams. When I create a new ad on FB, they keep it in review for at least a couple of hours. But every day I see dozens of ads that are obviously di…

Not on a daily basis, but I see ads for scams on youtube as well.

Different topic, but the strangest thing I witnessed on youtube was ads for audible during a stolen audible book... So the owner of the content payed the thief (indirectly, but still) for placing an ad during performance of the stolen content. And youtube couldn't care less, as long as money moves...

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