> At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.
Good luck with that. You can't take a guy out back and shoot him for speaking his mind, and subsequently expect others do so.
I'm certain Google management knows this as well. They know exactly what they're doing and they're fine with it.
The moral of the story is something most adults figure out by their mid 20s: if you like your job, keep your mouth shut about your political/religious beliefs.
And despite what any employer will tell you about their workplace being an open forum, they are full of shit. What they mean is, it's an open forum to agree with management.
> At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint).
Minority viewpoints in tech become silenced and their author(s) ostracized by the biases of a mob mentality. It doesn't even matter what you write because most people won't even read the original source, instead floating by on derivative tweets and extremely biased summaries (in whatever direction agrees with their existing views).
Irrespective of the original memo, and this is something I've felt more strongly in the past couple years, it's just not safe to share dissenting viewpoints in tech anymore.
We used to be the industry where anything could be discussed critically and the most objectively correct answer could win (logic! science!). Nowadays it's so political and heated, I've found it best to just stay out of the discussion and not share dissenting views anymore. I think the real problem we need to fix is being able to have rational critical discussion around topics we disagree with.
I agree. This kind of righteousness has no place in modern corporates. I will add even CEOs/management is not safe from getting fired. The difference could possibly be huge severance in case of such incidence.
The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.
> However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.
He made his continued employment both a social and legal liability. This is a fireable offense even if he was "right".
Also consider this. As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. In short, Google feels these programs are scientifically valid. The author claims they aren't, but casually dismisses Google's position without really addressing it. Instead we get an evo-psych Chewbacca defense, phrased in a way that's sure to offend a large number of people. Even if he did that in good faith, it's a colossal mistake at best.
Would be helpful to know WHICH Code of Conduct he is supposed to have violated.
From glancing over the memo I perceive that: women/man are different and men prefer working in engineering. No need to artificially increase percentage of women engineers with incentives. I did not notice any inferior/superior claims.
Being fired for this polite memo? And being characterized as a kind of toxic outcast? - I'm sorry, what have our society and companies become?
Googlers seem to be allowed to do his/her utmost only within a narrow cage of accepted/mainstream borders.
What about the google employees who publicly called for the author to be fired (e.g. on twitter/social media)? Shouldn't these actions also be considered in violation of their Code of Conduct - those actions seem to fit the description of "harassment" and "intimidation".
> as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance
That would be interesting research to review publicly. But it also reframes the picture, changing it from "some groups are discriminated against and therefore we need diversity focus" to "we need to start discriminating in order to increase diversity, because this leads to better-performing teams".
You may be right, but later in the note Pichai himself writes:
> ...we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct
As if admitting that currently there are no avenues for open discussion on highly controversial topics such as this one or at least none that do not clash with the Code of Conduct.
> In particular, as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance.
Are these numbers available to public somewhere?
I'm asking because I would dearly want to find comprehensive data. When I've done some of my own research, I have run into sets of studies, which all agree on one thing: more diverse groups get better results. The snag is that these studies disagree - wildly - with the magnitude of the effect. Some claim maybe 2% improvement. Some others claim up to ~30%. Yet others somewhere inbetween.
The figures also fluctuate quite a bit over time. Study from 2008/2009 shows numbers that are almost entirely unrelated to a study from 2014/2015. Some studies claim that gender diversity alone bears very little benefit[ß], and other studies from the same time come out with results that sort of imply you will need cultural diversity for notable results.
But by far the worst piece of news is that the measured and/or recorded numbers appear to be geographically distinct. Results from US studies are different from those in UK, which in turn differ from mainland Europe studies. That only raises more questions. Such as...
- are the numbers consistently different across regions?
- ... across continents?
- ... across cultures?
- what is the measured effect between "just" gender diverse and culturally diverse groups?
- do age groups matter?
... and so on. I genuinely would like to know. (For the record, and you can check this from my earlier posts as well: I am firmly in the camp who believe that diversity is beneficial.)
N.B. The most recent study I know of is the McKinsey report from 2015.[0]
---
ß: I can dig out the research articles if there's interest. I have some of them sort of easily accessible.
Even if what the author stated was wrong, it's absurd to suggest that misrepresenting a few studies about gender differences is equivalent to harassment. Humans aren't so fragile that they can't ignore the politically incorrect opinions of a coworker.
> one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance
Consider this, if diversity hiring yields better individual and group performance then this implies that different races and genders perform better at certain skills, and that taken in aggregate, this leads to measurable performance increases overall at the individual and group level.
After all, if there was no difference across gender or race, then it would make no difference whether you had 100% white male or 100% asian female, or any other combination of different demographics.
Part of me suspects he could have stayed had his manifesto not gotten picked up on the front page of CNN. There was only one clear way for the Google brand to distance itself then. The message is clearly think what you want, but if your words end up next to the Google logo on national news...
Edit: thinking about that, he couldn't have gone far in the company though without some serious apologies or something, because I can't see a manager assigning him to work in or lead a team with women on it, and that's 1/3rd the company. Maybe it's also a practical decision to fire him and be done with it even if it didn't leak.
I believe you have misconstrued the message Sundar was giving.
The difference between having the freedom to speak one's mind, and breaching a code of conduct that you sign when you agree to work for Google is clear cut in his note.
You cannot pose as a parangon of free speech when your company just fired a dissenting voice.
For all intents and purposes the content of the memo was balanced, polite, and restricted to the Google audience. The adult reaction should have been to punish the leaker (which I believe should be an actual breach of the code of conduct) and organize internal debates to allow multiple viewpoints to confront.
Rallying with the hysterical mass and shutting down the minority voice is certainly not about supporting debates and free speech. It's about throwing red meat to the wolves so the company can quietly solve its all too real gender pay gap issues without making too much PR waves.
In the other thread I asked one of the responders if they could even as a joke wear a Trump hat at Google MTV. and how they might feel/b treated vs wearing a Pussy or Hillary hat.[1]
They compared a Trump hat at Google is the equivalent of walking in to (a presumably hardcore) biker bar in Iowa. That's a pretty damning response, even if they meant the opposite.
It's all fake altruistic bullshit marketing/PR/corporate speak. It's just modern advertising and branding.
And they try to one-up each other so you just get bombarded with this happy-language about all of these beautiful non-monetary things that they somehow seem to care so much about.
These poses are just "corporate white lies". They are not meant to be tested.
It's similar to companies saying things "we are like a family".
And that is the adult version of "your dog has gone to the farm for a while".
It's crap fed to you to distract you from the brutal reality so your resources can be extracted more smoothly for longer.
It's funny to see how these 'hip-young-cool' tech companies have 'grown up' and implemented nearly the exact same internal cultures and processes as every other company. I had hoped they were going to really change things, and not just in a less racist/sexist/etc way, but in finding a new way to do HR and all that jazz. Like, they have enough fine grained data that Orwell rolling in his grave could power London, but they still slipped back into the same old paradigm as Exon and MS and Standard Oil (minus the racism/sexism/etc, for the most part). It's interesting to see it happen in ~ a decade only.
You can express your minority views as long as those views don't violate company policy. That's reasonable. You certainly wouldn't expect to keep your job if you published a memo saying you should be able to call black employees "nigger" because _cite some pseudo science here_. That's a minority view, isn't it? The expectation that every minority view can or should be safely expressed is both naive and unreasonable.
I agree with you, but _cite some pseudo science here_ might actually be a solid citation (eg. Wikipedia or any other reputable study). What then?
On another note, I watched the 100m men's final this Saturday and noticed white men are worse at running than black men. Would that be racist towards whites if the stats were confirming my opinion?
I would imagine that they know exactly what they are doing and feel very conflicted about it, but they're weighing their options in the prevailing political climate and choose the least bad one. It's still very very bad though.
It's worse than that. Ex-Googler Zunger is being celebrated for refuting Damore's argument by advancing gender stereotypes suggesting women naturally possess skills essential to the engineering process.
> All of these traits which the manifesto described as “female” are the core traits which make someone successful at engineering
Note that he says they are "described as", not that they are actually gender specific. The quotes also make it clear that he is referencing Damore's argument and pointing out an interest issue with it. He is not claiming that position as his own.
"It’s true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people’s emotional needs and so on — this is something that makes them better engineers, not worse ones."
Doesn't sound like a claim that women naturally possess these skills to me.
I am a black dude from an upper middle class family that went to private school his whole life and I am very, very familiar with how it's possible to have great ethnic diversity but a severe lack of diversity in other areas (and how negatively that can affect things). Because of this I've often wondered how a company or any group of people can include perspectives that many other people find to be morally reprehensible.
Let's say someone at my company holds the opinion that black people are generally too stupid to do tech jobs and they write a memo to the company explaining that opinion. They cite sources that show how blacks underperform academically compared to other ethnic groups and go about it in a really professional way. Should the company just say "well this guy made some good points maybe we should reconsider our diversity programs." Should they tell all the black employees at the company that they should be more open minded to that opinion? As a black guy at that company I would be really unhappy about that and I'd probably quit. I genuinely don't understand how that's supposed to work and would love to hear some suggestions.
Did the author really say that women are too stupid? No. He used his words rather carefully. What might have angered some people is his statement that women are more interested in people/relations while men are more interested in things. regardless of whether it's true, and if it is, whether the reasons are inherent or cultural - how is that bad?
I can totally understand the author on this as I spent several years training both men and women. They do enjoy solving technical problems, but with time find them boring if left to solve them alone. But let them work in pairs or in groups, give some interaction, and the spark of interest is back. Most guys just didn't care or preferred to do it on their own. I was happy with the performance of both sexes, and to say one is better than the other is really sexist. But to state that they're different? I'm sorry, but we're born this way, there's nothing wrong with it!
I'm sorry but your response doesn't really answer my question at all. What I want to hear are some suggestions about how to include people who hold inflammatory opinions in a group that generally doesn't share those opinions.
> regardless of whether it's true, and if it is, whether the reasons are inherent or cultural - how is that bad?
Because it is bad to lie? The memo says women have a harder time leading. That conclusion is not supported by any of his sources. He is judging their aptitude there, so I think dopamean's example is reasonable.
The important thing is whether it's company opinion or worker opinion. I used to work in part time blue collar-ish jobs to put myself thru school. Lots of the people there were older blacks and whites who had very little schooling beyond secondary school --you may or may not be able to imagine their opinions on people not their race, women, fat people, non hetero, etc.
It's not pretty to have those views, it's not pretty listening to people's uninformed opinions, but so long as it's not the company and those people are not directly affecting your promotion or success failure, I don't see an easy way out of that issue.
If those companies were to fire people for non conforming opinions, they'd be left with skeleton crews, if any. Blue collar and near blue collar jobs give you a different perspective on life.
In some ways I think Democrats have alienated some of their die hard constituents because of their failure to recognize that blue collar workers don't have the same mindset urban hipsters and political advocates have.
It seems that your whole comment doesn't work if you don't mischaracterize the whole situation. Please quote the original racism and/or misogyny. And yes, someone should legally be able to cite, for example, that Asians typically have higher IQs than others - don't you think? Besides, if you quit a huge company like Google because one of your colleagues holds an opinion, then how are you so different from a white who wouldn't go to school anymore after the first black joined? This example is closer to reality than yours, I think!
> Besides, if you quit a huge company like Google because one of your colleagues holds an opinion...
OP didn't say he would quit because one of his colleagues held a (in his example) racist opinion, but would do so if the company just turned around and said that black employees should just be "more open-minded" to those opinions.
You can separately debate whether the original memo was as bad as OP's racist example, but in the context of OP's example I think he'd be perfectly in his rights to leave if the company was supporting such an opinion.
> someone should legally be able to cite, for example, that Asians typically have higher IQs than others - don't you think?
I think a more direct parallel here would be if you cited such research, and then drew the conclusion that IQ translates directly into better performance in a specific role such as leadership.
The memo author made claims that aren't supported by the research he cites. It isn't a mischaracterization to say he questioned the aptitude of women in certain roles without having the science to back it up. That's a problem -- not a legal one, but a "how to work well with others" one.
I didn't make an argument at all. I actually somewhat support the guy who got fired (only in that I don't think he should have been fired). All I want to know is how organizations can include people with views that other members of the organization find to be abhorrent.
> Besides, if you quit a huge company like Google because one of your colleagues holds an opinion, then how are you so different from a white who wouldn't go to school anymore after the first black joined?
This is an oversimplification of what I said and also doesn't make sense even on it's own. A black person's mere presence at a school does not negatively affect the other students at the school. A person more senior than me who holds the belief that for some made up biological reason I am less capable than someone else can actually negatively affect my career.
So let's say someone wanted to put forward diversity policies at a workplace to create a more equal number of black and white workers. Perhaps the reason citied is that discrimination has led to disproportionate representation of the races.
My question is should people be allowed to present counter argumenents to the alleged discrimination and need for diversity. Should people be able to present data such as different levels of education attainment among races as explanation for lack of diversity? Would that be among the perspectives that are morally reprehensible?
If so, then isn't this whole diversity and equality thing not really an idea so much as some sort of new state religion that must not be questioned and is not subject to factual discussion or analysis.
I thought Yonatan Zunger's essay Tolerance is not a moral precept [1] -- linked off his response to the "manifesto" -- did a good job of addressing this scenario.
Great article. I think a better metaphor than "peace treaty" describing tolerance would be "sect", however. And not in a pejorative sense, but used to recognize that there will be various self-organized groups with different definitions of tolerance and that membership in a group requires close adherence to a particular definition. And various sects may overlap to varying degrees.
For example, a tolerant devout Christian and a tolerant devout Muslim may find themselves defining tolerance differently enough to find themselves in different tolerance "sects".
Peace treaty is an interesting metaphor but falls short on many levels. Primarily because peace treaties are more focused on geographic separation (whether country-level or block-level) and agreeing on borders (keeping people apart), not about rules of behavior within a single community. Tolerance is the latter more than the former and is the preferred alternative to separation where possible. Using examples from the article the white "separatists" want a peace treaty -- well defined border for them to live free of the "threat" of racial diversity. Tolerant people want to find a way to build a community together, but understand the other side's goals are incompatible with this.
That's almost a word-for-word restatement of Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" essay in A Critique of Pure Tolerance, which is essentially stating that Tolerance is only a great good so long as it means tolerance for Marxist ideas and that no leftwingers should ever be tolerant towards rightwing views.
> Should the company just say "well this guy made some good points maybe we should reconsider our diversity programs."
Only if they had been so close-minded to not consider that possibility before and are now convinced when this new evidence is presented after doing their due diligence to verify it (good luck with that). Seems more likely the truth of the guy's points are irrelevant and the programs the company provides to minorities exist for a bottom line that takes into account the company's reputation (which, in this case, he seems naively unaware of as a relevant component to decision-making).
> Should they tell all the black employees at the company that they should be more open minded to that opinion?
Open minded in what way? Open minded as in "engage with it", well, probably. There are explanations for studies that show differences between races (and women) that aren't biological. It's worth it to look at the studies and ask yourself what you think the most plausible explanation is based the available data if you haven't already.
> As a black guy at that company I would be really unhappy about that and I'd probably quit. I genuinely don't understand how that's supposed to work and would love to hear some suggestions.
As a woman in tech who has also lived extensively overseas in cultures where women are considered inferior (at worst) and "separate but equal" in terms of domain at best, I find the best way to engage with these kinds of thoughts/opinions is directly.
Sure, there is indeed a marked difference when you look at men and women. Fact. I don't want to be someone who turns my head from facts. However, who knows what amount of that difference is nature vs nurture. Nature leaves us little room for improvement, nurture leaves a lot; why would we choose, because it would indeed be a choice, to assume the gaps are intrinsic to the sexes and limit our ability to close what are unfair gaps when it comes to prestige and pay? Further, if they ARE nature, then the few women who do have that interest + talent are entering into a profession that wasn't really designed for them and it makes sense they'd benefit from more support. Why would we deny them that? What, exactly, is the problem with the diversity programs even given the assumption a group as a whole tends to on aggregate not be as well suited?
Anyway. As someone who holds a fair amount of opinions that aren't PC, if I want to not be fired for them then I need to give other people the same right to offend with opinions as long as their actions are appropriate.
Because such a large percentage of people have had to deal with bias, there are laws against it and Codes of Conduct etc. So they had to fire him to prevent lawsuits. In less public disputes people may be able to get away with it, but that doesn't mean it's legal. Sexism, racism, ageism, etc. are not legal in most workplace contexts but still unfortunately very popular.
What would be a better comparison is someone in the NFL saying racial diversity is stupid, black people tend to be better at sports. Stop trying to bring in Japanese and Chinese men to meet a quota.
The QB is gonna get sacked (and possibly injured) because you are using metrics that don't apply to the job to judge fitness for the job.
> I genuinely don't understand how that's supposed to work and would love to hear some suggestions.
The solution is entrepreneurship, that's all. Be your own boss as soon as possible during your career so you can manage your business the way you see fit. If you want to hire more black people then hire more black people. If you want to hire more women then do so as well.
That's also true with the person that got fired. If he thinks Google's policies are detrimental to productivity, then he has to put his money where his mouth is and go start a business where he can implement his own hiring policies. The guy should have quit then publish his paper, because he can't expect some kind of political neutrality in a clearly progressive-leaning business.
> If he thinks Google's policies are detrimental to productivity, then he has to put his money where his mouth is and go start a business where he can implement his own hiring policies.
That only works if you are good at entrepreneurship and management in general. Most developers aren't (me included), so I think changing jobs to a more compatible company is the better option.
At least that's what I tell myself - punishing bad management decisions by quitting jobs/projects seems to be the most effective way of changing how software development is run.
> The guy should have quit then publish his paper
I think for those who agree with him, his getting fired only proved his point. If he did it the other way around, nobody would have even read the paper.
Is your argument if you take a statement and alter it fundamentally to make it about race and the new altered statement is offensive then the original statement was offensive?
Please allow me to honestly engage with you and break this down.
You're a black man at Google.
There is a study that says that ON AVERAGE across a large population of people, black men are relatively uneducated and relatively underperform on a particular aptitude test.
It is a known fact that although the larger population has 50% black people, only 10% of Google employees are black.
Now, let's assume that the common intention is to ensure equal OPPORTUNITY for all men. Please assume good faith for the purposes of this demonstration.
One fine day, you wake up to see an article posted by a white man that makes the following claims
- on average white men perform better at the standardized test (link to study)
- the standardized test tests similar skills that are needed for programming, and is similar to the Google interview
- therefore fewer black men get through the interview
- further, it is unfair to just give black people extra marks to pass. it leads to bad performance at work and diminishes the achievement of a black man who got in on pure effort
Now, a black man who cares would
- ask, wait a minute, why are blank men underperforming on the tests? Perhaps we skills fix our schools and colleges!
- point out flaws in the article (study is bad because... / AA is good because... / Other assumption is wrong because...)
These are engaging with the article in good faith.
A person interested in equal opportunity would not do the following
- burn the white man. Arrrggghhh!
- oh no that guy shared a study that shows that the black community is behind and points out what could be the problem. Let's shoot the messenger.
- falsely assign ecological bias to the article: white man said that all black men are bad programmers (not true, he was talking about populations)
These engage with the article in a manner that damages your goal of equal opportunity for black people.
Look for the opportunity to find systemic biases and problems and correct them. Assume good faith.
Don't be blind to something that makes you feel bad (and it shouldn't!) And therefore seek to burn it down without a thought.
I think you've made some incorrect assumptions about who I am and what I think about these issues. Maybe I'm wrong but I'll leave a few points so we're on the same page:
I have been involved in the hiring process at more than one tech company and it was apparent that there were far, far fewer women in the pipeline than men. Even if we hired every single person who applied the balance would still lean very heavily toward men. Again, this is just in my personal experience.
I don't believe it is the job tech companies to do extra work to hire more of any underrepresented group in the industry until the problem in the pipeline is addressed.
I think the argument that there is something biological about women that makes them less interested in tech comes from what amounts to pseudoscience at best and that argument shouldn't be validated because it gets in the way of solving the problem with the pipeline.
I have never (and would never) advocated for any group of people to be given "extra marks to pass" in a situation where their ability to do a job is important.
I don't think the author of that memo at Google should have been fired. Though I do understand how from a corporate standpoint they felt that they had to.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with the "person interested in equal opportunity would not do..." I didn't do those things. I'm not blind to anything and I think all I did in my comment was ask a pretty simple question that you didn't even attempt to answer.
I mean, maybe yeah. But companies aren't there to hold writing workshops and poetry slams. They are there to make dollars. Or at least that is what their shareholders think. That stuff is for your knitting circle or brewing bash, maybe for a Univ. class even, but not for work at a private company. Legally a company can fire/hire in CA on a whim. Morally? I don't know, but I think that you should know not to talk about super inflammatory stuff in company wide emails/group-chats/etc by about 8th grade.
Moral of the story: stupid angry lynch mobs win when they are loud enough to be the majority. It doesn't matter how uninformed the majority viewpoint is.. majority > minority.
There is no debate, only angry people seeing what they want to see. Get angry first, ask questions later (or never) - just people being people.
Googles response is simply to appease both sides as best they can, recognizing that one is the majority. The firing is enough blood to appease the stupid & intolerant, this post is to appease the rest.
> Moral of the story: stupid angry lynch mobs win when they are loud enough to be the majority. It doesn't matter how uninformed the majority viewpoint is.. majority > minority.
The operative phrase being, "loud enough". I.e. loud enough minority looks like majority.
Keep politics/religion out of work. Its one thing to rant on reddit at end of day, its another to broadcast it to co workers. What did he expect would happen? His little write up would change everyones mind? Both left/right are extremists these days and will never change. All you will do is alienate and anger a bunch of co workers for a few pats on back from "your" side. While the smart people will put heads down and get actual work done at work and talk politics at end of day at a bar with friends/family like the rest of the country.
I'd mostly agree with you, but this was not an "in general" opinion that he posted to some "off topic" list. It was a direct opinion about the policies of his company. There is no better place to disagree with your companies internal hiring policies, than on an internal mailing list.
In fact, this might be legally protected speech. I don't know how applicable they are but there are a few old pro-union laws on the books that prevent people from being fired because they were talking about improving the workplace or because they discussed discrimination they reasonably felt was happening (it doesn't matter if it actually happened).
There was a political rally in Google Campuses in Feb 2017. So, may be you vanilla comments are generally applicable, Google has sort of exempted itself.
Now some people in Google are creating black-lists of colleagues.
But the memo wasn't a political document, it was a document about google's diversity policies that was geared towards starting a discussion and changing those polices:
A copy that conveniently leaves out all the links and citations, as well as several graphs and charts.
And while they do note that "two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted", one of those charts is quite important given that it's right before he starts going on about how men and women differ on average, but that
"Populations have significant overlap. Reducing people to their group identity and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap (this is bad and I don't endorse that)"
Anyway, here's the full thing, links and charts included:
False equivalency. The left at least advocates for inclusion, and asking your workplace not to discriminate is not "just as bad as" saying women shouldn't be able to be engineers.
They advocate for inclusion but oftentimes want their kind of inclusion. For example they may want women to go out and vote, so long as they vote for their candidate. How dare they "vote against their self interest". Like when Hispanics get ostracized for voting republican as if they owe it to Democrats to vote for them.
I agree with this. But given how political google is ( remember google's arab spring movement, it's lgbt stance, etc ), maybe google should also be political/religious neutral. Every July, google changes it's frontpage to state their pro-lgbt political stance.
> its another to broadcast it to co workers.
He didn't broadcast it to his coworkers. It was an internal discussion.
> Both left/right are extremists these days and will never change.
Except that leftists extremism is rather normalized in media/corporations.
At google and in the media, you can say there are too many men or too many whites in technology. What would be deemed hateful if only the "genders/races" were switched in the statement is considered "progressive" by the media/corporations.
> All you will do is alienate and anger a bunch of co workers for a few pats on back from "your" side.
Google's stance on lgbt, diversity, etc also alienates people.
The problem I have here is that only one side gets to speak while the other side is censored and attack.
I'm pro-lgbt and pro-diversity. But I also don't want censorship, intimidation and oppression.
This sounds like that weird right-wing notion of "censorship", that has become popular recently. Let me elaborate a little…
When I hear "censorship" I am thinking of government agents sitting in newspaper editorial rooms striking out all statements in an article that does not align with the government's point of view. It means actively suppressing certain kinds of information from being distributed.
What is happening here, looks more like this: a Google employee publishes an email. Lots of people in the company find the content objectionable. Subsequently they decide that they do not want to work with somebody having these opinions. I do not see, how that is even close to censorship. It is not like he has a right to keep that particular job. He can still go out on the street and shout his opinion at the crowd.
Censorship, intimidation & oppression are very strong words to describe a situation, where somebody lost their job, because they wrote an objectionable essay on a company mailing list.
There is a difference between a right to express your opinion, which I support, and a right not to face any resistance or social consequences for voicing that same opinion. The latter of which is made up by the political right trying to relabel it as "free speech".
You can't cry censorship every time you are criticized for something you said. And let's be honest here: white men with regressive points of view are still not particularly threatened of not being heard. After all, they are well represented in pretty much every single powerful institution like parliaments, courts and executive boards. They'll manage to get their opinion heard, I'm afraid.
The memo itself was incoherent. Many of its statements made sense for debate, and the author himself pointed out that you can't tell much about any individual from the general data, which I think has not been focused on enough. He seemed to think he was doing everybody a service and that his views were not detrimental to anybody. But the actual choices in how to express the generalities showed really bad judgement and overall apparently ran afoul of the code of conduct. People are definitely putting words in his mouth, but at the same time: An incoherent companywide memo is not the best way to start a debate on a sensitive topic. You might not instantly fire this person if he had chosen a way to express his ideas that didn't burn bridges with half the people who work there, if not more. This was not just "debate", it was maybe 80% debate and 20% attack on the credibility of all women in traditionally male professions. If he did not mean it come across that way, which I believe might be the case, then I feel sorry for him. And maybe he should have the opportunity to edit the memo to better reflect the debate he intended. But that's on him. He chose how to do this and what words to use.
That's funny. Compared to the response I've seen against it, it seems extremely coherent, tactfully presented and scientifically sourced.
It's an internal memo for crying out loud. Compared to anything I've seen in any company I've worked with, this sets the bar for extreme professionalism.
Have you read the memo? It's coherent. People just don't like what it says. Please read this article which includes responses to the memo from four scientists who study the subject matter: http://archive.is/z6xxP
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right. [...] This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. (Lee Jussim, professor of social psychology at Rutgers University)
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’) (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico)
If you have read the memo and found it incoherent, then please explain what part of it is incoherent. Here are some of the points made in its summary:
> [S]ilencing [people who disagree] has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Do you find those points incoherent? I find them to be clear. ("incoherent: expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear.")
As the note basically says; starting a debate does not excuse you from suggesting that some of your co-workers are there because of a "lowered bar", your evidence being psuedo-scientific bullshit about the tech-skill distribution among minorities and women.
He referred to a "lowered bar" in the form of a reduced false-negative rate for "diversity candidates"; at no point in the document did he imply his female engineer colleagues are less qualified. He also had a reference to apparently support this assertion, but since the hyperlink leads to an internal Google group we can't really know its contents unless a Googler informs us.
From the original memo:
> However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
> ...
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right.
An evolutionary psychology professor said:
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’)
What can Google or any other company do to hire more from one group (example, women) other then by making it easier (lowering the bar) for those groups to be hired?
By firing the employee, Google is sending a strong signal that they will not tolerate a diversity of opinions.
That does not bode well for them, for a restrictive intellectual environment is anathema to the kind of intelligent people they want to hire to keep the company competitive.
Actually I think you have it backwards. By not firing him, they would have done too little to distance the Google brand from the manifesto (and worse, people's third and fourth hand readings of the manifesto). That would cost them more potential and current engineers short term and certainly devalue the consumer brand more than sending a message that company wide memos like that aren't tolerated. They can't just take this sitting down.
a restrictive intellectual environment is anathema to the kind of intelligent people they want to hire to keep the company competitive
So what? This action might be damaging to Google's bottom line (I doubt it) but that's actually less important that running a company in the way the overwhelming majority of employees want it to be run.
To use an ad absurdum argument - if it could be demonstrated that people who are openly racist write better code I still wouldn't believe Google should hire them.
Frankly, the CEO has more problems than this memo. Breitbart has been a garbage fire for a while, but if the screen shots and messages in the article[1] aren't fake then Google is going to have some problems. This is really not the thing you want going on when you already have a government labor investigation underway. I wish anyone impacted luck.
I did share my thoughts (CEO has other problems, good luck to people impacted), and HN doesn't allow posting images so I posted a link to the article. Inc. Magazine https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/google-manifesto-blacklists.h... looks like they are verifying them although they did not print any.
Readit News
> At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.
Good luck with that. You can't take a guy out back and shoot him for speaking his mind, and subsequently expect others do so.
I'm certain Google management knows this as well. They know exactly what they're doing and they're fine with it.
And despite what any employer will tell you about their workplace being an open forum, they are full of shit. What they mean is, it's an open forum to agree with management.
Minority viewpoints in tech become silenced and their author(s) ostracized by the biases of a mob mentality. It doesn't even matter what you write because most people won't even read the original source, instead floating by on derivative tweets and extremely biased summaries (in whatever direction agrees with their existing views).
Irrespective of the original memo, and this is something I've felt more strongly in the past couple years, it's just not safe to share dissenting viewpoints in tech anymore.
We used to be the industry where anything could be discussed critically and the most objectively correct answer could win (logic! science!). Nowadays it's so political and heated, I've found it best to just stay out of the discussion and not share dissenting views anymore. I think the real problem we need to fix is being able to have rational critical discussion around topics we disagree with.
The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.
> However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.
He made his continued employment both a social and legal liability. This is a fireable offense even if he was "right".
Also consider this. As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. In short, Google feels these programs are scientifically valid. The author claims they aren't, but casually dismisses Google's position without really addressing it. Instead we get an evo-psych Chewbacca defense, phrased in a way that's sure to offend a large number of people. Even if he did that in good faith, it's a colossal mistake at best.
From glancing over the memo I perceive that: women/man are different and men prefer working in engineering. No need to artificially increase percentage of women engineers with incentives. I did not notice any inferior/superior claims.
Being fired for this polite memo? And being characterized as a kind of toxic outcast? - I'm sorry, what have our society and companies become?
Googlers seem to be allowed to do his/her utmost only within a narrow cage of accepted/mainstream borders.
That would be interesting research to review publicly. But it also reframes the picture, changing it from "some groups are discriminated against and therefore we need diversity focus" to "we need to start discriminating in order to increase diversity, because this leads to better-performing teams".
> ...we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct
As if admitting that currently there are no avenues for open discussion on highly controversial topics such as this one or at least none that do not clash with the Code of Conduct.
Are these numbers available to public somewhere?
I'm asking because I would dearly want to find comprehensive data. When I've done some of my own research, I have run into sets of studies, which all agree on one thing: more diverse groups get better results. The snag is that these studies disagree - wildly - with the magnitude of the effect. Some claim maybe 2% improvement. Some others claim up to ~30%. Yet others somewhere inbetween.
The figures also fluctuate quite a bit over time. Study from 2008/2009 shows numbers that are almost entirely unrelated to a study from 2014/2015. Some studies claim that gender diversity alone bears very little benefit[ß], and other studies from the same time come out with results that sort of imply you will need cultural diversity for notable results.
But by far the worst piece of news is that the measured and/or recorded numbers appear to be geographically distinct. Results from US studies are different from those in UK, which in turn differ from mainland Europe studies. That only raises more questions. Such as...
- are the numbers consistently different across regions?
- ... across continents?
- ... across cultures?
- what is the measured effect between "just" gender diverse and culturally diverse groups?
- do age groups matter?
... and so on. I genuinely would like to know. (For the record, and you can check this from my earlier posts as well: I am firmly in the camp who believe that diversity is beneficial.)
N.B. The most recent study I know of is the McKinsey report from 2015.[0]
---
ß: I can dig out the research articles if there's interest. I have some of them sort of easily accessible.
0: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...
Consider this, if diversity hiring yields better individual and group performance then this implies that different races and genders perform better at certain skills, and that taken in aggregate, this leads to measurable performance increases overall at the individual and group level.
After all, if there was no difference across gender or race, then it would make no difference whether you had 100% white male or 100% asian female, or any other combination of different demographics.
I'm sure you have sources that disprove his sources. How about you post them.
Edit: thinking about that, he couldn't have gone far in the company though without some serious apologies or something, because I can't see a manager assigning him to work in or lead a team with women on it, and that's 1/3rd the company. Maybe it's also a practical decision to fire him and be done with it even if it didn't leak.
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The difference between having the freedom to speak one's mind, and breaching a code of conduct that you sign when you agree to work for Google is clear cut in his note.
For all intents and purposes the content of the memo was balanced, polite, and restricted to the Google audience. The adult reaction should have been to punish the leaker (which I believe should be an actual breach of the code of conduct) and organize internal debates to allow multiple viewpoints to confront.
Rallying with the hysterical mass and shutting down the minority voice is certainly not about supporting debates and free speech. It's about throwing red meat to the wolves so the company can quietly solve its all too real gender pay gap issues without making too much PR waves.
He used internal messaging services. Someone leaked the document. That "someone" is sitting in his/her office today getting no punishment whatsoever.
Which part did he break exactly? Bias? Seems like something that can be construed to mean basically any ideology or opinion, conservative or liberal.
Oh wait, maybe I don't agree with you...
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However, that does not give licence to Google to place unreasonable limits on employees constitutional rights.
To do so would give privately entered contracts the power to overturn the constitution which society has enacted.
The debate here is over whether his comments were reasonable in this context.
They compared a Trump hat at Google is the equivalent of walking in to (a presumably hardcore) biker bar in Iowa. That's a pretty damning response, even if they meant the opposite.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14957708
It's all fake altruistic bullshit marketing/PR/corporate speak. It's just modern advertising and branding.
And they try to one-up each other so you just get bombarded with this happy-language about all of these beautiful non-monetary things that they somehow seem to care so much about.
These poses are just "corporate white lies". They are not meant to be tested.
It's similar to companies saying things "we are like a family".
And that is the adult version of "your dog has gone to the farm for a while".
It's crap fed to you to distract you from the brutal reality so your resources can be extracted more smoothly for longer.
Hear it, but don't believe it.
On another note, I watched the 100m men's final this Saturday and noticed white men are worse at running than black men. Would that be racist towards whites if the stats were confirming my opinion?
But at least own up to what you are.
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> All of these traits which the manifesto described as “female” are the core traits which make someone successful at engineering
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
How is it ok to push a gender stereotype that is pro-female but not ok if the stereotype is pro-male?
Doesn't sound like a claim that women naturally possess these skills to me.
Let's say someone at my company holds the opinion that black people are generally too stupid to do tech jobs and they write a memo to the company explaining that opinion. They cite sources that show how blacks underperform academically compared to other ethnic groups and go about it in a really professional way. Should the company just say "well this guy made some good points maybe we should reconsider our diversity programs." Should they tell all the black employees at the company that they should be more open minded to that opinion? As a black guy at that company I would be really unhappy about that and I'd probably quit. I genuinely don't understand how that's supposed to work and would love to hear some suggestions.
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Because it is bad to lie? The memo says women have a harder time leading. That conclusion is not supported by any of his sources. He is judging their aptitude there, so I think dopamean's example is reasonable.
It's not pretty to have those views, it's not pretty listening to people's uninformed opinions, but so long as it's not the company and those people are not directly affecting your promotion or success failure, I don't see an easy way out of that issue.
If those companies were to fire people for non conforming opinions, they'd be left with skeleton crews, if any. Blue collar and near blue collar jobs give you a different perspective on life.
In some ways I think Democrats have alienated some of their die hard constituents because of their failure to recognize that blue collar workers don't have the same mindset urban hipsters and political advocates have.
OP didn't say he would quit because one of his colleagues held a (in his example) racist opinion, but would do so if the company just turned around and said that black employees should just be "more open-minded" to those opinions.
You can separately debate whether the original memo was as bad as OP's racist example, but in the context of OP's example I think he'd be perfectly in his rights to leave if the company was supporting such an opinion.
I think a more direct parallel here would be if you cited such research, and then drew the conclusion that IQ translates directly into better performance in a specific role such as leadership.
The memo author made claims that aren't supported by the research he cites. It isn't a mischaracterization to say he questioned the aptitude of women in certain roles without having the science to back it up. That's a problem -- not a legal one, but a "how to work well with others" one.
> Besides, if you quit a huge company like Google because one of your colleagues holds an opinion, then how are you so different from a white who wouldn't go to school anymore after the first black joined?
This is an oversimplification of what I said and also doesn't make sense even on it's own. A black person's mere presence at a school does not negatively affect the other students at the school. A person more senior than me who holds the belief that for some made up biological reason I am less capable than someone else can actually negatively affect my career.
My question is should people be allowed to present counter argumenents to the alleged discrimination and need for diversity. Should people be able to present data such as different levels of education attainment among races as explanation for lack of diversity? Would that be among the perspectives that are morally reprehensible?
If so, then isn't this whole diversity and equality thing not really an idea so much as some sort of new state religion that must not be questioned and is not subject to factual discussion or analysis.
[1] https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
For example, a tolerant devout Christian and a tolerant devout Muslim may find themselves defining tolerance differently enough to find themselves in different tolerance "sects".
Peace treaty is an interesting metaphor but falls short on many levels. Primarily because peace treaties are more focused on geographic separation (whether country-level or block-level) and agreeing on borders (keeping people apart), not about rules of behavior within a single community. Tolerance is the latter more than the former and is the preferred alternative to separation where possible. Using examples from the article the white "separatists" want a peace treaty -- well defined border for them to live free of the "threat" of racial diversity. Tolerant people want to find a way to build a community together, but understand the other side's goals are incompatible with this.
Only if they had been so close-minded to not consider that possibility before and are now convinced when this new evidence is presented after doing their due diligence to verify it (good luck with that). Seems more likely the truth of the guy's points are irrelevant and the programs the company provides to minorities exist for a bottom line that takes into account the company's reputation (which, in this case, he seems naively unaware of as a relevant component to decision-making).
> Should they tell all the black employees at the company that they should be more open minded to that opinion?
Open minded in what way? Open minded as in "engage with it", well, probably. There are explanations for studies that show differences between races (and women) that aren't biological. It's worth it to look at the studies and ask yourself what you think the most plausible explanation is based the available data if you haven't already.
> As a black guy at that company I would be really unhappy about that and I'd probably quit. I genuinely don't understand how that's supposed to work and would love to hear some suggestions.
As a woman in tech who has also lived extensively overseas in cultures where women are considered inferior (at worst) and "separate but equal" in terms of domain at best, I find the best way to engage with these kinds of thoughts/opinions is directly.
Sure, there is indeed a marked difference when you look at men and women. Fact. I don't want to be someone who turns my head from facts. However, who knows what amount of that difference is nature vs nurture. Nature leaves us little room for improvement, nurture leaves a lot; why would we choose, because it would indeed be a choice, to assume the gaps are intrinsic to the sexes and limit our ability to close what are unfair gaps when it comes to prestige and pay? Further, if they ARE nature, then the few women who do have that interest + talent are entering into a profession that wasn't really designed for them and it makes sense they'd benefit from more support. Why would we deny them that? What, exactly, is the problem with the diversity programs even given the assumption a group as a whole tends to on aggregate not be as well suited?
Anyway. As someone who holds a fair amount of opinions that aren't PC, if I want to not be fired for them then I need to give other people the same right to offend with opinions as long as their actions are appropriate.
The QB is gonna get sacked (and possibly injured) because you are using metrics that don't apply to the job to judge fitness for the job.
I hope we go back to the days where an individuals merits had more to say in a recruitment process than their skin color.
The solution is entrepreneurship, that's all. Be your own boss as soon as possible during your career so you can manage your business the way you see fit. If you want to hire more black people then hire more black people. If you want to hire more women then do so as well.
That's also true with the person that got fired. If he thinks Google's policies are detrimental to productivity, then he has to put his money where his mouth is and go start a business where he can implement his own hiring policies. The guy should have quit then publish his paper, because he can't expect some kind of political neutrality in a clearly progressive-leaning business.
That only works if you are good at entrepreneurship and management in general. Most developers aren't (me included), so I think changing jobs to a more compatible company is the better option.
At least that's what I tell myself - punishing bad management decisions by quitting jobs/projects seems to be the most effective way of changing how software development is run.
> The guy should have quit then publish his paper
I think for those who agree with him, his getting fired only proved his point. If he did it the other way around, nobody would have even read the paper.
You're a black man at Google.
There is a study that says that ON AVERAGE across a large population of people, black men are relatively uneducated and relatively underperform on a particular aptitude test.
It is a known fact that although the larger population has 50% black people, only 10% of Google employees are black.
Now, let's assume that the common intention is to ensure equal OPPORTUNITY for all men. Please assume good faith for the purposes of this demonstration.
One fine day, you wake up to see an article posted by a white man that makes the following claims
- on average white men perform better at the standardized test (link to study)
- the standardized test tests similar skills that are needed for programming, and is similar to the Google interview
- therefore fewer black men get through the interview
- further, it is unfair to just give black people extra marks to pass. it leads to bad performance at work and diminishes the achievement of a black man who got in on pure effort
Now, a black man who cares would
- ask, wait a minute, why are blank men underperforming on the tests? Perhaps we skills fix our schools and colleges!
- point out flaws in the article (study is bad because... / AA is good because... / Other assumption is wrong because...)
These are engaging with the article in good faith.
A person interested in equal opportunity would not do the following
- burn the white man. Arrrggghhh!
- oh no that guy shared a study that shows that the black community is behind and points out what could be the problem. Let's shoot the messenger.
- falsely assign ecological bias to the article: white man said that all black men are bad programmers (not true, he was talking about populations)
These engage with the article in a manner that damages your goal of equal opportunity for black people.
Look for the opportunity to find systemic biases and problems and correct them. Assume good faith.
Don't be blind to something that makes you feel bad (and it shouldn't!) And therefore seek to burn it down without a thought.
I have been involved in the hiring process at more than one tech company and it was apparent that there were far, far fewer women in the pipeline than men. Even if we hired every single person who applied the balance would still lean very heavily toward men. Again, this is just in my personal experience.
I don't believe it is the job tech companies to do extra work to hire more of any underrepresented group in the industry until the problem in the pipeline is addressed.
I think the argument that there is something biological about women that makes them less interested in tech comes from what amounts to pseudoscience at best and that argument shouldn't be validated because it gets in the way of solving the problem with the pipeline.
I have never (and would never) advocated for any group of people to be given "extra marks to pass" in a situation where their ability to do a job is important.
I don't think the author of that memo at Google should have been fired. Though I do understand how from a corporate standpoint they felt that they had to.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with the "person interested in equal opportunity would not do..." I didn't do those things. I'm not blind to anything and I think all I did in my comment was ask a pretty simple question that you didn't even attempt to answer.
There is no debate, only angry people seeing what they want to see. Get angry first, ask questions later (or never) - just people being people.
Googles response is simply to appease both sides as best they can, recognizing that one is the majority. The firing is enough blood to appease the stupid & intolerant, this post is to appease the rest.
The operative phrase being, "loud enough". I.e. loud enough minority looks like majority.
Now some people in Google are creating black-lists of colleagues.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/revealed-inside-goo...
And it's sort of ... makes sense. You should be allowed to augment your mind with fucking spreadsheets/lists.
It's different if a government/company does it.
Here is a copy of the memo
https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...
A copy that conveniently leaves out all the links and citations, as well as several graphs and charts.
And while they do note that "two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted", one of those charts is quite important given that it's right before he starts going on about how men and women differ on average, but that
"Populations have significant overlap. Reducing people to their group identity and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap (this is bad and I don't endorse that)"
Anyway, here's the full thing, links and charts included:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
"Eric Schmidt [and a sizeable team of Googlers]* played a crucial role in Team Hillary’s election tech".
https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-...
*from other sources
The former is exactly what the author of the memo did, and they got fired for it.
It was an internal memo and was leaked. The leaker is somehow not fired.
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I agree with this. But given how political google is ( remember google's arab spring movement, it's lgbt stance, etc ), maybe google should also be political/religious neutral. Every July, google changes it's frontpage to state their pro-lgbt political stance.
> its another to broadcast it to co workers.
He didn't broadcast it to his coworkers. It was an internal discussion.
> Both left/right are extremists these days and will never change.
Except that leftists extremism is rather normalized in media/corporations.
At google and in the media, you can say there are too many men or too many whites in technology. What would be deemed hateful if only the "genders/races" were switched in the statement is considered "progressive" by the media/corporations.
> All you will do is alienate and anger a bunch of co workers for a few pats on back from "your" side.
Google's stance on lgbt, diversity, etc also alienates people.
The problem I have here is that only one side gets to speak while the other side is censored and attack.
I'm pro-lgbt and pro-diversity. But I also don't want censorship, intimidation and oppression.
When I hear "censorship" I am thinking of government agents sitting in newspaper editorial rooms striking out all statements in an article that does not align with the government's point of view. It means actively suppressing certain kinds of information from being distributed.
What is happening here, looks more like this: a Google employee publishes an email. Lots of people in the company find the content objectionable. Subsequently they decide that they do not want to work with somebody having these opinions. I do not see, how that is even close to censorship. It is not like he has a right to keep that particular job. He can still go out on the street and shout his opinion at the crowd.
Censorship, intimidation & oppression are very strong words to describe a situation, where somebody lost their job, because they wrote an objectionable essay on a company mailing list.
There is a difference between a right to express your opinion, which I support, and a right not to face any resistance or social consequences for voicing that same opinion. The latter of which is made up by the political right trying to relabel it as "free speech".
You can't cry censorship every time you are criticized for something you said. And let's be honest here: white men with regressive points of view are still not particularly threatened of not being heard. After all, they are well represented in pretty much every single powerful institution like parliaments, courts and executive boards. They'll manage to get their opinion heard, I'm afraid.
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Dead Comment
- We can debate anything
- However, some views are too harmful to be debated
- Whoever is most vocally outraged decides the boundary between open to debate/too harmful
That's funny. Compared to the response I've seen against it, it seems extremely coherent, tactfully presented and scientifically sourced.
It's an internal memo for crying out loud. Compared to anything I've seen in any company I've worked with, this sets the bar for extreme professionalism.
What is the best way?
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right. [...] This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. (Lee Jussim, professor of social psychology at Rutgers University)
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’) (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico)
If you have read the memo and found it incoherent, then please explain what part of it is incoherent. Here are some of the points made in its summary:
> [S]ilencing [people who disagree] has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Do you find those points incoherent? I find them to be clear. ("incoherent: expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear.")
- you can say absolutely anything you want, as long as it's not something we say is harmful of course
So much back and forth
...So we've fired the person starting the debate? Am I missing something here?
From the original memo:
> However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
> ...
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
A professor of social psychology at Rutgers said:
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right.
An evolutionary psychology professor said:
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’)
http://archive.is/z6xxP
*Citation needed.
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That does not bode well for them, for a restrictive intellectual environment is anathema to the kind of intelligent people they want to hire to keep the company competitive.
So what? This action might be damaging to Google's bottom line (I doubt it) but that's actually less important that running a company in the way the overwhelming majority of employees want it to be run.
To use an ad absurdum argument - if it could be demonstrated that people who are openly racist write better code I still wouldn't believe Google should hire them.
It may not be the case for smaller companies that love to copy what they do.
How much money they have, and how long it'd be possible to survive on that, is not relevant to the point I was making.
1) http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/revealed-inside-goo...
It's garbage news for people who don't care about journalistic integrity. Nothing there can be taken seriously.
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You could share your thoughts on this rather than making a clickbait comment.