911–920 of 1001 posts
In support of workplaces in which all employees know and feel the company is doing what it can feasibly to support them, regardless of who they are. I'm a man, I love women, and I'm a feminist. So, despite my thought that it was utterly moronic for someone at Google to write out his beliefs in such a way that he would certainly get fired, unless he plans to go into politics, I'd like to respond to something one of th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on w…
I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so. I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, b…
The memo is being discussed so much because it is controversial, which does not require originality, nor is it necessarily insightful. It shows the perspective of someone in an exclusive position which I believe adds (considerably) to the reasons it's being discussed, but to make the conclusion that it's being talked about because it adds to the discussion is incorrect.
> He claimed that Google’s diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills. This to me is the most…
> those who believe Google does not lower the bar for women and those who do. That part aside - why does it matter? If you want to recruit for diversity and there is a smaller selection of one group, you are very likely to have to recruit the weaker candidate from the smaller group. But why is that a problem? The whole argument behind striving for diversity is that "A diverse team is stronger than a non-diverse one".…
Well, from the linked article, one of the women stated that "When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?"
Thus, if a company engages in affirmative action-like hiring practices, whether or not the bar is actually lowered, inevitably some employees will feel that some exceptions are being made to fill a quota. As a result, all personnel who fit those sought-after demographics might be considered suspect, and unfairly labeled by some minds. I would absolutely not want my company to start recruiting weak candidates who resemble my general physiological description; I wouldn't even want them to announce they are considering it.
That said, you are right, there are merits to diversity. And I would rather err on the side of too much diversity than not enough. However, this is a complex problem which merits open discussion, otherwise we are bound to settle for suboptimal solutions, or worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so. I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, b…
> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least. We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this.
I feel it we owe to society that we should try to improve it at every opportunity and allowing ourselves to adapt to a bad system instead of trying to break it is doing society a disservice. In other words: I feel it is our duty to try and provoke changes to what we perceive as bad instead of exclusively trying to adapt to the conditions presented.
In this case, he felt the system in the workplace is wrong then he should try to stress it into breaking so it can finally get fixed.
Another example: lets say that because of a bad bureaucratic process a certain action causes long queues on some service. I feel that it's everyone's responsibility to do that very action in order for the service to stop working entirely, which would force a change to it by whoever is in charge. I see it as "voting with your actions".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> those who believe Google does not lower the bar for women and those who do. That part aside - why does it matter? If you want to recruit for diversity and there is a smaller selection of one group, you are very likely to have to recruit the weaker candidate from the smaller group. But why is that a problem? The whole argument behind striving for diversity is that "A diverse team is stronger than a non-diverse one".…
> If you want to recruit for diversity and there is a smaller selection of one group, you are very likely to have to recruit the weaker candidate from the smaller group. But why is that a problem? Well, from the linked article, one of the women stated that "When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female…
I think this is impossible to avoid, but I also think it's an issue coming from the same flawed thinking, which is that people can be individually measured for their strengths. That's only true to a certain extent. Once people are qualified "enough" - the strength of the team is what's important. And if you want diversity you subscribe (whether it's correct or not!) to the notion that a diverse team is a stronger team than a non-diverse team. That also means that a diverse team of slightly weaker individuals is a stronger team than a non-diverse team of slightly stronger individuals.
The bottom line is: the company doesn't want the strongest individual, and the strongest individual donesn't automatically have a "right" to the available position. The strongest candidate is the one that would give the biggest improvement to the team, not (necessarily) the one that scores highest on tests, has the best experience or education, or that would be the best contribution to any set of other teams. Only the team in question matters.
For a (poor-ish) analogy: a college soccer team could select the 11 individually strongest players, and still not be the strongest team. If the 11 strongest players in the school were all defenders it's likely that the team would be terrible. Among the defenders recruited would be players that are individually "weaker" than some of the rejected attackers. The rejected attackers would complain that the defenders were recruited to fill a quota of defenders in the team. And they'd be right.
Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even…
The memo suffered from a lack of 2nd order thinking. If Google really is using its diversity programs to "lower the bar", that's what should have been proven and addressed, whether men and women have innate differences in talent for certain occupations is irrelevant. It's Google's perogative/obligation to find and retain the best talent. I suspect that's what the purpose of their diversity programs are for. If they'r…
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I don't think it's false and nasty. I was thinking the same thing ... quite objectively. There were at least two discussions that I thought were very reasonable, and they got flagged into oblivion very quickly. So I don't know why the YC link gets to be the exception. It feels wrong. Maybe it is due to the users, but if that is so, it feels wrong enough to give me a pretty big loss of faith in the dynamics of the com…
It occurs to me, maybe this is another instance of the left engaging in silencing tactics and maybe that is a weakness in the flagging algorithm. I can't vote "don't flag this". So if there are approximately two sides to a discussion, and one side wants to flag it to silence the discussion, then the discussion is going to get flagged no matter what. So the side that wants to silence just selectively silences the opin…
The silencing happens because there is a huge left/right discrepancy on this site and because silencing your opposition became acceptable, due to victimhood culture.
One thing I would be very curios to know is the age distribution of people advocating silencing and no platforming.
I suspect that younger people support this due to the helicopter parent style they were more likely to have grew with, where the parent suppresses anything discomforting for the child instead of letting the child deal with it on it's own. So when that child grows it's normal for him to demand 'the state' or 'the corporation' to do the same thing, because only his comfort and views matter.
I'm from Sweden and our universities have fought for years with getting more females to study IT. Same goes for senior highschool. And it's not only to get you to study, it's while you study as well. Benefits just for women. Courses just for women. Meeting people from business, just for women. And so on. The last discussion was about whether women studying IT should pay back their study loans, even though the education itself is already payed for.
I think the questions we should ask ourselves are, is this improving diversity in opinions and thoughts? Is this beneficial for the field? Does this improve the state of the companies within IT?
Otherwise we're just pushing one gender over the other, for no particular reason, except gender. Choosing people for their gender, over their thoughts and performance is sexist and horrible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on w…
I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so. I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, b…