My 2 cents. I did write an essay but this is the TLDR. Google has made a giant political mistake. Everybody saw this coming. Straight into the fire, Google must have known that even as they did it. If Google's real aim was non-talent-bias, we already know the solution: blind hiring. Let's use a little metacognition here. People on HN are highly likely to be in the Bubble (same way as average academic must be left of…
Good luck with your political oriented filtering, you should add that into the job description, and save people more time.
To be fair, I saw the other day, a job posting doing this exact thing for liberal people. It literally said we are looking for liberal like minded folks to help build X.
So this is happening and I find that very fighting.
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…
I expected any discussion of the memo to be quickly shut down, its supporters classed as filthy misogynists. It was surprising to see over 1,000 comments and upvotes. I'm glad that it's becoming OK to discuss these topics again.
A few hours later, it's been completely removed from the main HN page (even a few pages in), despite 1600+ votes.
It's a shame that the administrators of this site feel the need to shut down discussion on important issues like this.
The story is clearly important and less than 24 hours old, and already it's been forcibly removed from the front page in favor of a bunch of 15-vote ephemeral Javascript trivia posts.
Reposting a comment I posted in another thread with more details. Fun anecdote: My girlfriend's mom has a double PhD in both computer science and accounting. Her dad is also an electric engineer. She is also really good in math. She passed advanced math classes in a few months of studying. Did her algebra and got into a top school for engineering. After months of me persuading switches to SWE. Few semester after desp…
I'm curious as to what her thoughts are on the author's opinion. Have you talked about this with her? (might be a dangerous conversation)
the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women could have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. he never says that women should leave google -- he only says that trying to reach a perfectly equal distribution is misguided. perhaps those who are red in t…
This is another maddening component - who actually argues that men and women are the same? Everyone courageously disagrees with this, but I seriously cannot find anyone actually advancing that viewpoint. It's this weird blind spot. I tried asking a few times in another thread, and the only replies I got were from people trying to debunk it. Of course men and women are different, duh. The problem isn't that premise. T…
no, all of these diversity programs make the assumption that women want to do and can do everything a man wants to do and can do, and they strive to make workplaces half female and half male based on that assumption alone. if want to find people who align with the "men are the same as women" thing, just go to a public area and suggest that women dont like tech as much as men -- they will show themselves rapidly. just say that women arent as X as men and they will show themselves, as i have experienced many, many times, both directly and as a witness. i have tons of liberal friends who full on reject the notion that men are usually stronger than women, just based on muscle and bone mass and density. bill nye recently made rounds on the internet with his video trying to explain that chromosomes dont determine gender, and it went beyond what you identify as -- he claimed that sometimes both chromosomes types are found in the same person. he was suggesting that gender is a construct because thats the popular mantra. if you think that gender and gender differences are handled well in mainstream culture today then you havent looked hard enough.
If anything this #googlememo has proven, then that even if someone asks for an open debate and dares to ask the wrong questions, then he or she gets shut down to silence, shamed, defaced and hated. This is a dangerous development of our world right now. People who want to ask questions, think for themselves and challenge ideas, willing to admit mistakes and be open to thaught better in an open conversation will not s…
Oh please. Are far right and right organizations bastions of free speech ? How many churches and religious organizations are writing memos on gay rights or abortion rights ? Zero.
Free Speech is not identity politics. Free speech covers a gay person's right to speech & the right for abortion supporters to speak their mind.
Free speech also covers the speech of people on the political right (& left). Free speech is a fundamental American value.
Identity Politics are not about rights but about granting privilege to the "victim" groups & in it's extreme form, to justify oppressing the rights of people who don't buy into the dogma. Not the same thing. Free speech is about freedom. The Identity Politics that we see today is about Autocracy.
So much of the discussion is about what he said has any truth. I think this is beside the question. He Wrote and distributed materials criticizing his employer's core HR mission while alienating coworkers. If you're a person targeted in his manifesto, I'd suspect you'd no longer want to work alongside him. That's reason enough to fire him on the spot. He's creating a hostile work environment via coworkers and media.…
Seems more like the working environment is already hostile to people with similar ideas, rather than this person creating anything.
Which I think was also his point. Thus the name of the document.
Will Google also fire employees who 1) publicly support him in internal discussion, or 2) privately support him? Based on the reasoning of Google's excutives, I don't see why they would not do 1 or 2.
Where is Google's rebuttal of this memo? All anyone is saying is "it's wrong" etc, but where is an ACTUAL breakdown of what was incorrect about what he wrote? I feel like most "rebuttal's" are like listening to Donald Trump. "He's wrong and we're right. We're definitely right.". If you do have a link, please share!
This is a really good one, in my view: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man... . I agree - the discussion around this topic is very frustrating (more frustrating to me than the actual content of the manifesto by far), and everyone's trying to make it so black and white. I think the current top comment has it right; it makes good points (there are statistical differences in traits across gender…
I saw this medium post before writing my comment above. As the other reply alludes to, I believe that article is actually an incredibly poor rebuttal (I wouldn't even call it that) e.g. "not only was nearly everything you said in that document wrong" - this is not an argument, but merely an opinion.
Reposting a comment I posted in another thread with more details. Fun anecdote: My girlfriend's mom has a double PhD in both computer science and accounting. Her dad is also an electric engineer. She is also really good in math. She passed advanced math classes in a few months of studying. Did her algebra and got into a top school for engineering. After months of me persuading switches to SWE. Few semester after desp…
I'm curious as to what her thoughts are on the author's opinion. Have you talked about this with her? (might be a dangerous conversation)
To be honest I've been both terrified and incredibly curious myself to seek her thoughts on this subject.
In part because the reply might not match what I have in mind.
I know we all want women to thrive in software and there is absolutely no reason for a skilled person like her to simply drop out, especially not after the serious effort that was put in.
Part of me is sadden by the thought that we may not have the next female equivalent of Linus Torvalds, because we somehow failed to make CS a welcoming field for minorities.
Will Google also fire employees who 1) publicly support him in internal discussion, or 2) privately support him? Based on the reasoning of Google's excutives, I don't see why they would not do 1 or 2.
1. No. 2. No.
Why not? Aren't those people also creating hostile environment for minorities?