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Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#921

Post by jazzyk »

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…

>The workplace is no place for politics like this

Sadly, with the onsluaght of statism in the US, that's no longer the case.

Eric Schmidt (and a whole team from Google) played a crucial role in Team Hillary’s election tech.

https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-...

Given this context, the firing of the guy only confirms his point about Google not tolerating dissenting opinions.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#923

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

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…

> It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity programs at Google. Given that, it's easy to understand why people would be upset. 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.

Wouldn't the same be true about any non-optimal hiring practices and procedures though?

Google is pretty famous for constantly evaluating and tuning their hiring processes, because presumably - they sometimes fail to hire qualified people, and sometimes hire unqualified people. They want to tune their process so they are as close to 0 as humanly possible for each of those cases.

Maybe the guy is a sexist and racist asshole, I don't know him - but if I give him the benefit of the doubt and read him charitably, I take it to mean he's saying gender-based diversity programs might produce worse ratios of qualified/unqualified hires, and unqualified/qualified passes than some of his other proposals. In other words, tune the hiring process, as it relates specifically to diversity hires, to improve the ratio of qualified/unqualified workers.

I have no idea if that idea is crazy or sensible, but it doesn't strike me as being obviously one way or the other. I'm sure with all the attention this is getting somebody, somewhere, who may be experts in these things could offer their take on it.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#925

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#927

Post by Simon_says »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #923
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…

> It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity programs at Google. Given that, it's easy to understand why people would be upset. 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. Wouldn't the same be…

The elephant in the room is that it's mathematically impossible to optimize for quality of hires and diversity simultaneously. You have to pick one or the other or some compromise between the two. Start with some selection of people chosen optimally for job performance; any deviation from that for any reason will necessary give sub-opitimal performance.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#928

Post by peacetreefrog »

ghort wrote: post #776
peacetreefrog wrote: post #308

It's crazy to see such overtly anti free speech arguments in the discussion around this memo, even on Hacker News. "Well actually, the first amendment only protects against government intruding on free speech, it doesn't apply to the rest of us!" Free speech used to be the thing everyone agreed on. It's like a fundamental tenant of Western, liberal democracy has gone out of vogue.

Not sure what you are saying. It is the first amendment that grants the right to fire people you don't agree with. So presumably not everyone agrees on what free speech is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...

I'm saying, free speech (an open exchange of ideas, tolerating views that are sincerely and respectfully made, or at least trying to charitably interpret those views, especially if you think they're wrong) should be something groups of people and organizations aspire to.

The fact many supporters of this guy's firing are treating these principles as technicalities is troubling. The first amendment is a starting point, not a loophole.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#929

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

BeetleB wrote: post #884
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. >it strongly suggests that attempting to make the engineering team 50% female will result in a lower hiring bar for women. I cannot speak for Google and I haven't been following their recruitment efforts. However, I will say I'm a li…

Then perhaps this is a teaching moment for Google's PR team. As an outsider, and based on what I've heard and read on blog posts and hiring pages about affirmative action, a common method of meeting their goals is diversity quotas. Given the fact that men and women have a 50/50 balance, and given that many programs reach as close to perfect equality as they can, it seems obvious to me at least that they would be trying for a 50/50 distrobution between the sexes.

If this isn't actually the case, then their PR should make it known, because the implications of the current system do make it seem like minorities may be given precedence at the expense of white or asian men.

Re: Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

#930

Post by RealityNow »

shusson wrote: post #405
RealityNow wrote: post #290

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…

> We have a culture of anti-intellectualism and dogmatism around certain topics that for whatever reason are considered sacred and not allowed to be challenged (ie. political correctness), and its disgraceful. From a personal perspective I get where you are coming from, but from a professional perspective it makes no sense. There are ways to present opposing viewpoints in a workplace without offending half of the peo…

I disagree. It's impossible to critique certain issues such as those pertaining to gender without offending people. But if someone is going to get offended because someone presented an alternative viewpoint to what they believe, than that's their problem.

Imagine if we weren't allowed to debate, say, programming languages or SQL vs. NoSQL because one side needs to be coddled and can't take the heat. That's essentially what we're doing with "diversity" policies and gender dynamics.

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