I wonder why the push to diversity hasn't affected other sectors of the economy that have equally huge gaps in 'diversity'?
- Airline pilots are 90% white men
- Airline stewards tend to be predominantly female. Maybe Jetblue should publish a diversity report on its cabin crews?
- Nursing seems to attract mostly attract individuals with XX Chromosomes. Why isn't Stanford Hospital pushing for executive compensation to be tied to diversity among its nursing staff?
- Traders at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are predominantly male -- unlikely to change in the next 10 years no matter what programs are launched or how much money is spent
Google spent $265m on diversity, Intel pledged $300m in 2015, Yale pledged $50m to diversify its faculty - Columbia, not to be outdone is spending $100m.
All these programs and many more like them going back to the 80's have been spectacular failures... it seems this media fueled social justice movement only makes money for diversity consultants and the new field of "DE&I Program Leaders" which have emerged out of nowhere...
I suspect it's because techies are better at Internet publicity than non-techies, so tech industry gets the most Internet-driven pressure, and Internet is taking about the world.
Please read the article you linked. You'll learn a lot.
It talks a lot about how entrenched racism and sexism has resisted traditional diversity efforts, and recommends more-successful approaches for the future.
Example:
> Five years after a company implements a college recruitment program targeting female employees, the share of white women, black women, Hispanic women, and Asian-American women in its management rises by about 10%, on average. A program focused on minority recruitment increases the proportion of black male managers by 8% and black female managers by 9%.
Nobody bothers to define what "diversity" even is. Skin color and gender? Is that it? After civil wars and decades of social unrest to prove that your appearance has nothing to do with your skills, talents, motivations, and competence; are we really back to saying we need a certain quota of each group?
Make the process fair and the outcome will be fair, whatever it looks like. Unfortunately that doesn't have the same marketing power as "diversity" today.
Diversity needs to be a visible attribute (the more visible the better), and as far away as possible from "white", "straight" and "men". (I'm sarcastic in case this needs to be said).
In an ideal world, diversity would be about diversity of thought more than visible diversity. But that doesn't seem to matter at all nowadays. To the contrary, if you don't agree with the dominant thoughts of the day you will be fired for "Cultural unfitness".
> In an ideal world, diversity would be about diversity of thought more than visible diversity. ...
I agree, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, the world in which we live and in which Google operates discriminates based on visible attributes. There's no real genetic basis to the idea of 'black'; consider that a child of a black and white parent considered 'black' because of a visible property, their skin color. Consider that people from a wide range of geographical locations and backgrounds are all lumped together as 'black' with nothing else in common but a visible attribute (and it's a poorly defined attribute, covering a wide range of hues).
If we want a meritocracy and opportunity for all, and if we want to maximize talent in our workplaces, we need to counteract the discrimination that's actually happening and not act as if we are in another world.
> After civil wars and decades of social unrest to prove that your appearance has nothing to do with your skills, talents, motivations, and competence
Many haven't people have not gotten that memo, and especially today racial, religious, national, and other discrimination are widespread and on the rise.
Are they? Or is that just that tiny percentage of the population making the out-sized noise that they always have, aided by the volatility of (social) media? The vast majority of people are perfectly reasonable and definitely not the raging bigots that the media seems to portray as infesting every city and company.
Either way, the only way to stop discrimination is to remove it completely, not to offset one kind for another.
These boards have a duty to understand the company holistically.
Agreed. This is a good argument for limiting participation on multiple boards. 'One director, one board' would encourage more board focus on the companies they direct, and also open up more board seats generally for greater diversity in corporate governance.
My cynical view is that executive stock is usually set at whatever level is necessary to signal to stockholders that the executive's own self-interest will place the interests of shareholders above the interests of employees, customers, or society in general.
Inflated executive pay is a problem. Tieing executive pay to diversity goals is two problems.
Diversity is great, but I get the feeling that most corporate diversity initiatives willfully or inadvertently combat heterdox perspectives. And the irony isn't lost on me that the principal stated benefit of race and gender diversity is that it proxies for viewpoint diversity. But this is just my opinion--I'm happy to entertain any data that confirms or refutes this sentiment.
I don't feel the diversity should be sought for its own sake. The best applicant should be hired every single time - although I do feel that it is okay to consider diversity as a tie-breaker when choosing between equally qualified candidates.
On the opposite side: people not hiring the best candidate, in order to prevent diversity, should be fired. Just hire the best person.
> I don't feel the diversity should be sought for its own sake. The best applicant should be hired every single time - although I do feel that it is okay to consider diversity as a tie-breaker when choosing between equally qualified candidates.
That would be ideal, but that's not how hiring works. If it was, we'd have a far more diverse workforce.
On the first day of hiring 101, they teach you that people tend to hire others who are like themselves; it's just instinct. I've had recruiters bring me candidates who all were the same race and gender as I am, and within about 5 years of my age. I didn't even realize it until I thought about that principle.
But even more than that, people hire others that they know, and the people we know are dictated by the established social structure. Thus the structure is self-reinforcing, unless you actively do something to stop it, you perpetuate it. Upper middle-class white guys generally don't know many black or Latino people; they know other guys like themselves from growing up, from college, etc., so that's who they do business with.
Steve Ballmer got his job because he knew Bill Gates at Harvard; what was the chance that Gates' classmate was going to be black or Latino, or that his buddy would be a woman? Dropbox initially got an intro to YC because Drew Houston had been big brother in an MIT fraternity to another YC founder.[0] How diverse is that fraternity? There's zero chance of the big brother being female; is the chance much higher of being black or Latino? Drew did a great job, but how many Drews are out there that never got the chance? Given that white guys are ~33% of the U.S. population but the overwhelming number of founders, CEOs, etc., I'd guess most 'Drews' never get an opportunity. (Worldwide the number is far greater, of course.)
Is a female candidate of the age and life situation that she’s likely to become pregnant soon less suitable? After all, she might be about to take extended maternity leave! Better not risk it.
Is the candidate with a strong foreign accent less suitable? Maybe the project managers will struggle to communicate as effectively. Not worth the bother.
Is the candidate who lacks a degree worse? They seemed good in the interviews, but maybe there are holes in their knowledge. Why bother?
That gay guy was a bit flamboyant. The sales bros might not be into it. Pass.
That view rapidly invites monoculture. It’s easier to hire people who are similar to yourself. In reality, diversity is in itself a desirable attribute for a team to have. Teams with a variety of backgrounds have different experience that contributes to solving problems in different ways. They will know things that you don’t, and your products will be better for that contribution.
The best person is defined as the one that has the best capability to contribute. None of the items you mentioned affects this factor (aside from the first, but making a decision based on that is illegal).
It is really hard to measure why people are or aren't hired. Why do I have product managers that can't write a complete sentence or even use a consistent vocabulary? Were they the best choices? I don't think so, but there is a lot of factors that go into e decision.
""Those concerns came to the fore after another engineer, James Damore, wrote a 3,000-word memo assailing the firm’s affirmative action policies and suggesting women are biologically less-qualified than men for tech jobs.""
he didnt suggest that at all, badly written articles like this are why this problem even happens
Any time there is a "right at all costs" ideology, I assure you, mistakes like these will grow to seem utterly insignificant at an astonishing pace. Now the demand to tie financial compensation directly to the ideology. Selective hiring to ideology AND gender. That IS bad.
Elsewhere on the internet you find that using outright violence against individuals is acceptable in service of this ideology (or you know, just search "antifa" on youtube, to see that whatever these people are, they have zero interest in bringing us a more peaceful planet). I assure you, this will get worse, far worse, before it gets better.
And the irony is, that the base instinct that causes racism is the same as the instinct that drives these efforts. People wanting to feel better about themselves, without, of course, actually doing anything for it. "Action", by attacking others, nothing else.
The ideologies always start with a core of people that are actually admirable. But at some point they decide to grow their movement, and feel the need to include every brutish idiot moron they can to achieve their aims. From that point forward, however, their aims are nothing more than entertaining brutish morons. Worse than that, this forces their opponents to do the same, or face getting beaten up or worse.
The issue is that if you try to objectively voice your opinion on this saying that medias are misrepresenting the Memo in order to fit a narrative, you are automatically seen as anti-progress anti-women-in-tech.
This is not just limited to this case. Try to bring a rational, pro-gun opinion to a debate? You're a monster who wants to shoot kids. Try to bring a rational, anti-gun opinion to an opposite debate? You're a gun grabber.
Opposing view on homosexuality? Abortion? Religion? Get out of here, you don't fit the status quo.
I've found that the most 'tolerant' people are in fact quite the opposite, and the echo chamber that is the current state of affairs isn't helping.
Nobody wants to hear the opposing viewpoint, they all just want their views confirmed, and to be seen doing "the right thing" by a specific group of people.
It's an easy mistake to make, he says in the memo that differences in both preference and abilities (emphasis mine) are partially due to biological causes.
“I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership”
Maybe it’s a little more nuanced than “suggesting women are biologically less-qualified than men for tech jobs." But it’s not a gross oversimplification.
yea men and women are biologically different and have different interests so they choose to do different things
why must everyone confuse abilities with interests? women can do the job but they choose not to. they also choose not to be mechanics or construction workers but nobody whines about that do they?
"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."
"On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ... Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things ... Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average"
He is clearly using softer language to make his point, but he spends multiple paragraphs explaining why biological reasons are behind the lack of women in tech.... which boils down to "men are biologically better suited for tech work."
It isn't a bad characterization to say that is saying women are biologically less qualified than men for tech jobs.
I would summarize those two quotes as saying something more like "women may be biologically less inclined to want a job in tech and therefore expecting a 50% representation of women is unrealistic".
My reading of the memo, way back when it broke, was that his argument was more about differences in interest/inclination rather than ability.
Averages say nothing about individuals. Do you avoid hiring black people due to higher criminal background rates in the US?
If the pressure in the US is on average higher for males to focus on career, then that will influence overall percentages in top competitive careers. It doesn't at all imply that the women in the top are unqualified, it just explaining why they make up a smaller percentage.
Talking about averages is not "softer language". It's not related to making generalizations at all.
None of the things you quoted mean that women are less qualified. What was meant is that women are generally not as interested in this type of work as men are, hence the disparity in numbers. Two very different things.
No, he claimed that men are more likely to choose to enter technical fields, due to a combination of both biological and societal reasons.
This is not a pedantic distinction. Your summary states that Damore uses biology to say that women are worse at performing in tech roles, whereas the memo was focused on women entering or not entering the field as a whole (though to be fair many news outlets promulgated the same incorrect summary).
Furthermore it also seems to erroneously imply that Damore claimed that biology is the exclusive reason for low rates of women in tech, which is not the case.
That is quite a jump you're making. Interest != qualification and looking for work-life balance != lack of qualification.
I think that it is a bad characterization to make that leap of logic. Just considering the statements that you've chosen, I see nothing that says anything about whether either sex is more qualified, only statements about the sex distribution in tech.
Is there something that more directly relates to qualifications inside of his essay? I have not read it.
He also said "Populations have significant overlap." and "Reducing people to their group identity and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap (this is bad and I don't endorse that)"
This text was in a diagram caption that (along with the embedded hyperlinks) was stripped out of the version that most people saw.
There's obviously zero biological differences between men and women, the differences are all sociological. For that reason I demand gender equality in the NFL at middle linebacker and in the olympic 100 meter dash. The only explanation for the fact that no female has ever made the olympic finals in the 100 meter dash is discrimination.
> the original, condemnatory use of the term in 1958 by Michael Young in his work "The Rise of the Meritocracy", who was satirizing the ostensibly merit-based Tripartite System of education practiced in the United Kingdom at the time.
> It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.
#1 is just the origins that dont have bearing on the modern use and #2 is a fiction book so what are you saying? you would rather have hiring based on what you look like? no thanks
One of the most important principles at the executive level is seniority, not meritocracy. McKinsey research (among others) has repeatedly shown that higher diversity correlates with higher performance.
This is not surprising. If roles up the corporate ladder are filled based on status and networks, talented people from disadvantaged or novel backgrounds lose out. In this case increasing diversity disrupts old networks and has a corrective function.
So you're saying that meritocracy is good but neglected, and diversity often has more meritocracy as a consequence...
Why not focus directly on meritocracy in the first place?
In particular, the conversation in IT, which is probably among the most meritocratic fields (no certifications required, most learning material available for free online), is focused on employees, not executives, so I'd say it possible that focusing on diversity has no, or even negative, effect on meritocracy.
Are you sure about that? Perhaps it's a tool to help overcome implicit bias against women and people of color -- bias that makes the current system less meritocratic, insofar as hiring managers may mistakenly (and perhaps even unintentionally) think such candidates are less qualified than they actually are.
One thing that is interesting/potentially missed in this article is that Liz Fong-Jones has actually publicly stated her intent to leave Google as of last week. She stated that she was looking for offers just after the emails about the drone program leaked out to the press last Thursday, shortly before Google announced their intention to withdraw from the program. She stated there was some line to her leaving, but didn't detail what that was. It could've been over the drone program, due to the timing, but it could've just as well been related to her activism in diversity.
I'm not sure if this comment has a particular point, to be honest, just felt like a missing piece that the only Google employee they quoted is already a soon-to-be-former employee.
it's amusing to me that projects related to national defense are considered evil to these people but google's core business of mining and selling user data for advertisements isn't.
This is interesting to me as well. I’m not sure where these people draw their ideological lines.
Letting sugar sell to kids and overweight people is ok, when sugar kills people.[0] Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1]
It’s usually possible to dislike multiple things and support or protest multiple causes. But if you are quitting or trying to change corporate governance, those are exclusive decisions. So it’s hard to tell the reasoning behind these people’s morals.
This seems like a false equivalence to me. While ad tech may be morally bad, by many people's standards (including mine) helping the US government kill people by remote control is far worse.
According to US military doctrine adopted under GW Bush and continued under Obama and Trump, the entire world--including allied countries with extradition treates!--is a battlefield[0]. The US has literally given itself license to attack and kill anyone we consider a threat anywhere on planet Earth without due process. That is reason enough to not contribute to a project making drone killing easier.
Readit News
- Airline pilots are 90% white men
- Airline stewards tend to be predominantly female. Maybe Jetblue should publish a diversity report on its cabin crews?
- Nursing seems to attract mostly attract individuals with XX Chromosomes. Why isn't Stanford Hospital pushing for executive compensation to be tied to diversity among its nursing staff?
- Traders at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are predominantly male -- unlikely to change in the next 10 years no matter what programs are launched or how much money is spent
etc. etc. etc.
Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard, despite decades of failed experiments: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail ...
Google spent $265m on diversity, Intel pledged $300m in 2015, Yale pledged $50m to diversify its faculty - Columbia, not to be outdone is spending $100m.
All these programs and many more like them going back to the 80's have been spectacular failures... it seems this media fueled social justice movement only makes money for diversity consultants and the new field of "DE&I Program Leaders" which have emerged out of nowhere...
https://skift.com/2018/04/20/airlines-need-to-work-harder-to...
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/transportation/218401-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/mar/06/ineq...
> Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard, despite decades of failed experiments: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail ...
Please read the article you linked. You'll learn a lot. It talks a lot about how entrenched racism and sexism has resisted traditional diversity efforts, and recommends more-successful approaches for the future.
Example:
> Five years after a company implements a college recruitment program targeting female employees, the share of white women, black women, Hispanic women, and Asian-American women in its management rises by about 10%, on average. A program focused on minority recruitment increases the proportion of black male managers by 8% and black female managers by 9%.
This madness needs to stop.
In an ideal world, diversity would be about diversity of thought more than visible diversity. But that doesn't seem to matter at all nowadays. To the contrary, if you don't agree with the dominant thoughts of the day you will be fired for "Cultural unfitness".
I agree, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, the world in which we live and in which Google operates discriminates based on visible attributes. There's no real genetic basis to the idea of 'black'; consider that a child of a black and white parent considered 'black' because of a visible property, their skin color. Consider that people from a wide range of geographical locations and backgrounds are all lumped together as 'black' with nothing else in common but a visible attribute (and it's a poorly defined attribute, covering a wide range of hues).
If we want a meritocracy and opportunity for all, and if we want to maximize talent in our workplaces, we need to counteract the discrimination that's actually happening and not act as if we are in another world.
Many haven't people have not gotten that memo, and especially today racial, religious, national, and other discrimination are widespread and on the rise.
Either way, the only way to stop discrimination is to remove it completely, not to offset one kind for another.
Dead Comment
The massive rise in executive pay over the past 30 years amounts pretty much to a giant consumer-funded welfare program for corporate management.
Maybe it could be tied to user satisfaction? If it was, maybe they wouldn't have scrapped Google Reader.
Companies should be run by boards with experience. These boards have a duty to understand the company holistically.
Unfortunately diversity police and compensation consulting committees seem to be the future of executive pay -- what a sad state of affairs.
Agreed. This is a good argument for limiting participation on multiple boards. 'One director, one board' would encourage more board focus on the companies they direct, and also open up more board seats generally for greater diversity in corporate governance.
Diversity is great, but I get the feeling that most corporate diversity initiatives willfully or inadvertently combat heterdox perspectives. And the irony isn't lost on me that the principal stated benefit of race and gender diversity is that it proxies for viewpoint diversity. But this is just my opinion--I'm happy to entertain any data that confirms or refutes this sentiment.
On the opposite side: people not hiring the best candidate, in order to prevent diversity, should be fired. Just hire the best person.
That would be ideal, but that's not how hiring works. If it was, we'd have a far more diverse workforce.
On the first day of hiring 101, they teach you that people tend to hire others who are like themselves; it's just instinct. I've had recruiters bring me candidates who all were the same race and gender as I am, and within about 5 years of my age. I didn't even realize it until I thought about that principle.
But even more than that, people hire others that they know, and the people we know are dictated by the established social structure. Thus the structure is self-reinforcing, unless you actively do something to stop it, you perpetuate it. Upper middle-class white guys generally don't know many black or Latino people; they know other guys like themselves from growing up, from college, etc., so that's who they do business with.
Steve Ballmer got his job because he knew Bill Gates at Harvard; what was the chance that Gates' classmate was going to be black or Latino, or that his buddy would be a woman? Dropbox initially got an intro to YC because Drew Houston had been big brother in an MIT fraternity to another YC founder.[0] How diverse is that fraternity? There's zero chance of the big brother being female; is the chance much higher of being black or Latino? Drew did a great job, but how many Drews are out there that never got the chance? Given that white guys are ~33% of the U.S. population but the overwhelming number of founders, CEOs, etc., I'd guess most 'Drews' never get an opportunity. (Worldwide the number is far greater, of course.)
[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/congratsdropbox/
Is a female candidate of the age and life situation that she’s likely to become pregnant soon less suitable? After all, she might be about to take extended maternity leave! Better not risk it.
Is the candidate with a strong foreign accent less suitable? Maybe the project managers will struggle to communicate as effectively. Not worth the bother.
Is the candidate who lacks a degree worse? They seemed good in the interviews, but maybe there are holes in their knowledge. Why bother?
That gay guy was a bit flamboyant. The sales bros might not be into it. Pass.
That view rapidly invites monoculture. It’s easier to hire people who are similar to yourself. In reality, diversity is in itself a desirable attribute for a team to have. Teams with a variety of backgrounds have different experience that contributes to solving problems in different ways. They will know things that you don’t, and your products will be better for that contribution.
he didnt suggest that at all, badly written articles like this are why this problem even happens
When you have a narrative to push, you keep telling lies. Not surprising to see this repeated over and over again. Instead, they could just link to Damore's memo: https://www.quotev.com/story/9922506/James-Damores-Diversity...
Elsewhere on the internet you find that using outright violence against individuals is acceptable in service of this ideology (or you know, just search "antifa" on youtube, to see that whatever these people are, they have zero interest in bringing us a more peaceful planet). I assure you, this will get worse, far worse, before it gets better.
And the irony is, that the base instinct that causes racism is the same as the instinct that drives these efforts. People wanting to feel better about themselves, without, of course, actually doing anything for it. "Action", by attacking others, nothing else.
The ideologies always start with a core of people that are actually admirable. But at some point they decide to grow their movement, and feel the need to include every brutish idiot moron they can to achieve their aims. From that point forward, however, their aims are nothing more than entertaining brutish morons. Worse than that, this forces their opponents to do the same, or face getting beaten up or worse.
The issue is that if you try to objectively voice your opinion on this saying that medias are misrepresenting the Memo in order to fit a narrative, you are automatically seen as anti-progress anti-women-in-tech.
Opposing view on homosexuality? Abortion? Religion? Get out of here, you don't fit the status quo.
I've found that the most 'tolerant' people are in fact quite the opposite, and the echo chamber that is the current state of affairs isn't helping.
Nobody wants to hear the opposing viewpoint, they all just want their views confirmed, and to be seen doing "the right thing" by a specific group of people.
Maybe it’s a little more nuanced than “suggesting women are biologically less-qualified than men for tech jobs." But it’s not a gross oversimplification.
why must everyone confuse abilities with interests? women can do the job but they choose not to. they also choose not to be mechanics or construction workers but nobody whines about that do they?
"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."
"On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ... Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things ... Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average"
He is clearly using softer language to make his point, but he spends multiple paragraphs explaining why biological reasons are behind the lack of women in tech.... which boils down to "men are biologically better suited for tech work."
It isn't a bad characterization to say that is saying women are biologically less qualified than men for tech jobs.
My reading of the memo, way back when it broke, was that his argument was more about differences in interest/inclination rather than ability.
If the pressure in the US is on average higher for males to focus on career, then that will influence overall percentages in top competitive careers. It doesn't at all imply that the women in the top are unqualified, it just explaining why they make up a smaller percentage.
Talking about averages is not "softer language". It's not related to making generalizations at all.
This is not a pedantic distinction. Your summary states that Damore uses biology to say that women are worse at performing in tech roles, whereas the memo was focused on women entering or not entering the field as a whole (though to be fair many news outlets promulgated the same incorrect summary).
Furthermore it also seems to erroneously imply that Damore claimed that biology is the exclusive reason for low rates of women in tech, which is not the case.
Are you qualified to paint a house? Are you interested in painting a house? Are those the same exact sentences?
I think that it is a bad characterization to make that leap of logic. Just considering the statements that you've chosen, I see nothing that says anything about whether either sex is more qualified, only statements about the sex distribution in tech.
Is there something that more directly relates to qualifications inside of his essay? I have not read it.
This text was in a diagram caption that (along with the embedded hyperlinks) was stripped out of the version that most people saw.
At no point the memo is stating that women are less capable than men.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Early_definitions
> the original, condemnatory use of the term in 1958 by Michael Young in his work "The Rise of the Meritocracy", who was satirizing the ostensibly merit-based Tripartite System of education practiced in the United Kingdom at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
> It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.
This is not surprising. If roles up the corporate ladder are filled based on status and networks, talented people from disadvantaged or novel backgrounds lose out. In this case increasing diversity disrupts old networks and has a corrective function.
Why not focus directly on meritocracy in the first place?
In particular, the conversation in IT, which is probably among the most meritocratic fields (no certifications required, most learning material available for free online), is focused on employees, not executives, so I'd say it possible that focusing on diversity has no, or even negative, effect on meritocracy.
I'm not sure if this comment has a particular point, to be honest, just felt like a missing piece that the only Google employee they quoted is already a soon-to-be-former employee.
Letting sugar sell to kids and overweight people is ok, when sugar kills people.[0] Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1]
It’s usually possible to dislike multiple things and support or protest multiple causes. But if you are quitting or trying to change corporate governance, those are exclusive decisions. So it’s hard to tell the reasoning behind these people’s morals.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493081/ [1] https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-othe...
According to US military doctrine adopted under GW Bush and continued under Obama and Trump, the entire world--including allied countries with extradition treates!--is a battlefield[0]. The US has literally given itself license to attack and kill anyone we consider a threat anywhere on planet Earth without due process. That is reason enough to not contribute to a project making drone killing easier.
0. https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Wars-Battlefield-Jeremy-Scahill...