Given that the document has (rightfully) alienated women inside and outside his organization, it becomes impossible for this person to be an effective member of the team:

- The next time a woman interviews for his team, and he votes against hiring, how does the hiring committee interpret that vote?

- The next time he's peer reviewed by a woman, how does that review get interpreted?

- The next time he peer reviews a woman, how does that review get interpreted?

- The next time a female candidate interviews with the author and is denied, how likely is it that the candidate will believe they had a fair interview, or is the organization perpetually exposed to increased legal risk forever?

Such a manifesto is not just fundamentally wrong, it's toxic and shows a profound lack of awareness for any professional.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...

Please take care not to deceptively quote the author in question. This is the full sentence:

> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate.

The author deliberately crafted this statement to make it clear that he is referring to qualified, non-diverse, candidates being rejected at greater rates than qualified and diverse candidates - not that unqualified diverse candidates are accepted at a higher rate.

Even in its most generous reading (yours), this sentence makes zero sense.

I'm going to guess it is the later: Lawsuit from him would cause discovery. Unlike other government lawsuit, he would actually be able to say who at Google has access to the needed paperwork/email/etc to demonstrate that he is correct in his assertion. The government would love to piggy back on him. So I'm guessing Google is cutting a very large check now.

I don't know about the discovery argument. If he was an HR insider and acting as a whistleblower to disclose an illegal practice, sure. But a regular employee can't voice opinions about something that's common knowledge and force the company to disclose a bunch of confidential information.

What are they going to do when someone else steps up and makes the same assertions with more tact? Fire him too? What about the person after them? They gave extraordinary leverage not to the person that they fired, but to the people that have not been fired yet.

It's uncharacteristically nontechnical of Google to think that of the anywhere between 30-50% of the US population that leans conservatively, there is only one of them working for Google in Mountain View and that any dissenting thoughts within the company will end with him, and that the liberal employees threatening to quit will be happy and sated just to see these few drops of blood.

It doesn't matter the size of the check Google cuts this guy, nor the next 100 individuals if they choose to also speak out. Google made a mountain out if a molehill, and they just left a very a long way for the snowball they just threw to gather some mass while rolling down.

While I think that many outlets are misrepresenting and selectively quoting the piece to make it seem more offensive than it is, the reality is that the author used a lot of loaded language and created many opportunities for misinterpretation.

If this were at my company and the article didn't blow up online I'd probably have a talk with the author to point out all the ways that this piece could easily be misinterpreted and construed as offensive and that the same ideas can be conveyed in ways that are a lot less likely to blow up in your face. If this were at my company the article did go viral like it did in real life, I'd probably let this employee go. While I would say this is placing the interests of the company over the psychological safety of my employees, the pragmatic reality is that PR and potentially internal dissent caused by retaining the employee does not outweigh the moral win of retaining an employee who wrote a tone-deaf article that went viral and was widely perceived as offensive - even if the underlying ideas aren't ourageous.

His presence inside google both legitimises his behaviour and acts a rallying point. They might not be able to prevent like minded people from seeking each other out, but they can prevent them from doing it openly. They might not be able to prevent others from acting in a similar manner, but they will do all they can to avoid emboldening them.

They are willing to deal with the external flack and legal ramifications of a contentious firing, if it helps them avoid an insurrection.

I imagine this ex-employee will get a generous severance or expect good lawyers knocking soon.

Now whether he is able to successfully sue google and make big bucks is difficult to predict at this point. But it's certain that his career is finished for the foreseeable future.

It is a profoundly stupid thing to do for anyone who likes their job as an engineer. Maybe this guy doesn't and wants to start a new career in blogging or some similar shit. In that case, this may be a great new start for him.

If Pao could sue KPC&B, I think he stands a chance, unrelated as they are, it suggests suits can go forward on slim allegations and here he has evidence clear as day they fired him for having a difference in opinion on their hiring practices. He personally didn't discriminate nor personally conduct himself untowards anyone. He offered some (unconvincing evidence about how women don't have the same aptitude as men --but you are likely to find evidence Google does have internal hiring goals and allows a culture which virtue signals against the majority culture) and they didn't like it.

Thing is, if this had been a woman or minority citing some dubious data about how more women and minorities should be hired (which I agree with but on other principles), we would not even blink at it, if it even would have surfaced)

You don't have free speech rights at work, or more to the point you can say whatever you want and the company can do just about whatever it wants in response to this speech. To go full Godwin here, if this employee had, instead of talking about how women and minorities "lowered the bar", wrote and distributed interally a manifesto about how Google had too many Jewish employees and how these employees were mostly hired because of post-Holocaust western guilt and maybe we need to reexamine whether this whole Holocaust thing really happened I can assure you that he would have been shown the door within the hour. No one is locking him up for his speech act, but Google would have had no problem in firing him for that same speech act.

Others have pointed out in great detail all of the unpleasant future consequences for any potential interaction that leads to conflict between this employee and his peers. This situation was created entirely by the employee who posted the manifesto. He can sue Google, but he will lose.

People in general can sue anyone if there's any possibility they might win. The only way her lawsuit would be thrown out if she had never worked for them, or something like that. Otherwise, the way to find out if her claims have merit is the lawsuit.

Which she lost, and was forced to pay $276k to KPC&B. So not exactly a good omen.

Here they fired him not for perf (defensible) but for difference in opinion (maybe defensible but icky) not anything bad he did. I think he stands a better chance than Pao's retaliatory suit.

He wrote the manifesto and distributed it within the workplace. That's absolutely an action he took at work, that's a thing he did.

See also the Shoe Rebellion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022280

You don't have freedom of speech at work. Apparently in the US that's not a freedom of speech issue until the Government says you can't say certain things at work.

Pao's issue was shown to be a non-issue, yet "it brought the issue to light" ok...

I wonder why the author didn't mention the resolution of the lawsuit? I wonder why she mentioned it all? Oh right, peddling falsehoods, both explicitly and implicitly.

Government lawsuit against Google right now means that he has the leverage. The odds are the same people who are tasked with the programs to promote whatever the author carefully worded in his post are the people who received/sent emails/edited internal presentations that mentioned something that a good lawyer would be able to twist into a Google's managers admitting that Google does in fact systematically pays women less than men to do the same job. Google has a lot more to lose from that lawsuit than from the author of the memo.

[Edit: typos/clarity]

I would think, with all they have on their plate right now, they can't be bothered about some idiot who couldn't keep his mouth shut in public and just do the job he was hired for.

Government's problem in this case is the same kind of problem that government had in the US v. IBM: IBM buried government in the paperwork and government did not know where to look at to dig itself out.

Here comes the author who seems to have a very good idea of the remediation programs that Google has. The odds are extremely high the people in charge of the remediation programs/diversity programs/etc are the ones who are familiar with the issues that Google has: it is fairly logical. The author probably knows who these people are. He probably talked to them. Probably those people told him whatever he used as the basis for his manifesto. If he drags those people out into the spotlight, the government would suddenly have a beacon for their case.

That's why I, personally, think Google made a gigantic mistake firing the guy.

Whether he was right or wrong, he has hurt the company. I think he is wrong to be sure. But it doesn't matter.

It is also interesting because, a loss in a major legal case may throw up interesting possibilities in the stock market. Of course, one needs to be much more legally aware, than I am, to take full advantage of these possibilities.

However, Damore did file a NLRB claim before he was fired. So he seems prepped to sue, or perhaps to negotiate a private settlement.

Without a lawsuit: DOL gets two million "records" (emails/docs/memos) related to hiring/performance evaluation/etc. It needs to sift through those two million records trying to find the ones that support its case.

With this lawsuit: author knows who in the organization deals with this exact issue. Those people probably had emails from their managers/sent emails to others that can be made to support governments position in DOL lawsuit. Now instead of sifting through the two million records that they got, DOL focuses on 20,000 records authored by those likely to have the kind of information.

That's why such dismissals are dangerous to the company engaged in a costly/high-stakes litigation with the government.

Of course the punishment for violating this is a fine of no more than $5k, per http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....

That said, it _may_ open the door for a civil lawsuit per http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....

Whether any of that applies in this situation is entirely unclear to me, because it hinges on the definitions of "engaging or participating in politics" and so forth. You'd probably need to talk to a competent labor lawyer in California for anything resembling clarity here.

I think this comes down to is affirmative action policy a workplace condition. Discussion about workplace conditions is separate from discrimination law entirely so 'protected class' becomes a red herring here. I'm not sure this is the best article but I tried to find something from a left leaning source I find reasonably fair given that this seems to be an anti-right topic.

California law has very strong protections for employees. And it seems that firing him for the memo may actually be illegal.

The crux of the argument is that Google may have "punished an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions", which is illegal.

Also, "California law prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action."

Furthermore, "It is unlawful for an employer to discipline an employee for challenging conduct that the employee reasonably believed to be discriminatory, even when a court later determines the conduct was not actually prohibited by the discrimination laws".

Read here for more:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fi...

It could easily be defeated as it presumes the author would not be able to demonstrate that he could be a member ( does not have to be ) of a protected class. Remember, should that be the case authors goal is not to score a touch down, it is to get a new set of downs i.e. move forward with a lawsuit.

Judges are very reluctant to toss something out that early if there's even an ounce of a possibility there could be a merit in a case.

Um, that's one possibility I suppose. But I am reminded of this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfv32dmVFw

[I work for Google, but have no insider information about this.]

For what it's worth, I do think that taking steps to decrease the false negative rate for diverse candidates is an okay system and I explain my company's process of doing this in another comment in this page. That said, pointing out that this system is increasing the false-negative rate for non-diverse candidates is 1) factually correct, and 2) not at all the same thing as calling my underrepresented co-workers unqualified. If somebody claimed that our interview process increased the false positive rate for underrepresented groups I would object to such a statement - but that is not what is said in this document.

It looks like the author is talking about setting a threshold, as in the context of creating a test. Please have a look at [1].

In this setting, it is not possible to decrease the false-negative rate without increasing the false-positive rate.

I think the author is phrasing things this way simply as a matter of rhetoric, but his argument clearly suggests that less qualified 'diversity' candidates are being hired.

1. http://www.prolekare.cz/dbpic/jp_5403_f_21-x1000_1600

For your last sentence, I did not write, and did not mean to imply anything about the number of false-positive (FP) 'diversity' candidates vs FP non-'diversity' candidates. It's true that the author hints at this comparison.

I meant to convey that, per the author's statement about 'lowering the bar', Google's practices increase the FP rate in 'diversity' candidates as compared to what would have happened without the practices.

From this perspective, the author is stating that the 'diversity' hires have a higher FP rate than might have occurred otherwise. I think this conclusion - I think it's a fair one, though we may disagree - is what people find somewhat problematic.

On a broader note, the way you're injecting a completely different message into the author's text is exactly the kind of behavior that makes these discussions toxic. I realize that might sound accusatory, but if people can't make a statement without people stuffing contradictory or unrelated words into their mouths there's no possibility of civil discussion.

This isn't a pharmaceutical trial but there's no reason why we can't follow along with the author's analogy of 'false negatives'.

Here are his words from 'The Harm of Google's Biases':

    I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and 
    I think we should strive for more. 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

EDIT:

Didn't see your statistical comment. Unfortunately, I can't think of a case where 'adjusting a bar' to decrease the false-negative rate does not neceessarily increase the false-positive rate.

The fact that the author uses the phrase 'lowering the bar' suggests that he is also thinking of this statistical requirement.

Here's one:

* Phone screens have a 50% false negative rate, and a 0% false positive rate.

* On-site interviews have a 0% false negative rate, and a 0% false positive rate.

Non-diverse candidates do one phone screen, and if passed, do an onsite. Diverse candidates do two phone screens, and if either passes, they go on to the onsite. For all candidates, if the onsite is passed, the candidate gets an offer.

* Unqualified candidates, regardless of diversity, never get an offer.

* Qualified, non-diverse candidates get an offer 50% of the time (the other 50% are erroneously eliminated at the phone interview stage).

* Qualified, diverse candidates get an offer 75% of the time (25% eliminated at the phone interview stage due to false negatives).

It seems to me that the author is advocating either doing two phone interviews for all candidates, or one phone interview for all candidates. Neither change would alter false positive rates, since false positive rates are 0% at all times.

If you're inclined to point out that all tests have a false positive rate >0%, substitute 0% for 0.00000001% and note that I stated the change in false positive rates could be trivially small to the point of omission in the comment above.

His statement about 'lowering the bar' with respect to decreasing false negatives directly implies a relationship between candidate quality and the false negative rate.

I can't comment on your hiring analogy, as you have more experience in this area than I do. My responses were only to highlight the subtle negative character of the author's statement.

Does your recruitment process have a 0% false positive rate? If not, giving more opportunities will yield more false positives unless it's proven that the extra opportunities have a 0% false positive rate.

This has been shown across society, including applications for housing, police stops, punishments in school, etc. I don't know why employment would be the one exception.

https://pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/beta-goi...

We found that the public servants engaged in positive (not negative) discrimination towards female and minority candidates

...

Overall, the results indicate the need for caution when moving towards ’blind’ recruitment processes in the Australian Public Service, as de-identification may frustrate efforts aimed at promoting diversity.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

Imagine it this way: You're a fisher. The Law says that you can only catch fish which are >= 12" long. If you're caught with < 12" fish, bad things happen, but otherwise you want to maximize the amount of fish you catch.

You have two ways of measuring length: a crude wooden stick with some fat lines on it which mark approximately 12" - this is quick but only approximate. You also have a high precision caliper which can tell you the length down to .001", but it takes 2x as long to make the measurement.

You're interested in catching lots of fish, so if any fish you catch are a little close to that line, you just throw them back with one measurement.

90% of the fish you catch are red, but about 10% of the times you catch a green fish, which are really sparkly and fun, so you change your standard: if the green fish on first measurement is really close to 12"(not close enough to keep), instead of throwing it back like a red fish, you bust out the caliper and measure it more precisely, and throw out anything < 12".

So, at the end of the day, assuming red and green fish are distributed equally across lengths in the ocean, what would the distribution of kept fish look like? Would the mean and median length of your green fish be higher or lower than the mean and median of your red fish?

It looks like the author is talking about setting a threshold, as in the context of creating a test. Please have a look at [1].

In this setting, it is not possible to decrease the false-negative rate without increasing the false-positive rate.

I think the author is phrasing things this way simply as a matter of rhetoric, not to express the point you are suggesting.

1. http://www.prolekare.cz/dbpic/jp_5403_f_21-x1000_1600

Hiring the best and diverse workplaces are both virtues, but sometimes competing virtues. The problem with this entire discussion is that too many people are overly certain that one virtue is more important than the other.

His argument is that the under-representation of women in tech can be explained by biological differences that make them inferior candidates for technical and leadership positions rather than hundreds of years of disenfranchisement and misogyny that still echoes in work culture today.

But you are right, "The point is to treat people with respect by building an environment where they can be their best (whatever individual skillset they have), instead of insulting them", which is antithetical to what the author did by writing the pseudo scientific trash and then widely distributing it to his colleagues.

[disclaimer: I work at Google, my views are my own and not those of my employer]

I didn't see that in the "manifesto" at all. The assertions that "biological differences exist" and that they contribute to the under-representation of women in tech don't at all imply the conclusion that the under-representation is due to biologically-caused inferiority.

There's good evidence, summarized in this blog post, that on the average across society, equally gifted and capable girls tend to choose non-STEM careers more than their male counterparts simply because of differences in preference, combined with the fact that a wider array of career options is open to them due to their higher verbal skills (this was featured on HN a couple of weeks ago): https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

Furthermore, it seems that unlike men, women who are capable in math also tend to be capable in both math and verbal skills (whereas on the average, men have less capability in verbal skills), thus giving women more career options. Unlike men (on the average, again), women that do choose STEM careers tend to excel at all levels, including management.

> pseudo scientific trash

See the above article. It references highly cited studies that seem to clearly indicate innate differences in preference (in even 2-day-old infants and primates).

  > Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach.
  > Nobody is being insulted by this. 

[0] https://communequation.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/im-not-a-wom...

  > I don’t want your ‘exclusively for women’ support groups
  > I want inclusivity, not exclusivity.
  > You’re victimising me when you do that. You’re indicating that it’s most
  > likely I need special, extra support. Just because I’m female.

  > By creating special awards for women I think you’re belittling the impact
  > and effort a group of humans are having in their field – just because of
  > their gender. 

We can't just ignore people's lived experiences when they don't suit our positions.

The ensuing comments thread on HN also had many similar stories.

So saying that, what part of the memo was pseudo scientific drivel?

1. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

Utterly ahistorical nonsense.

At various times (in the United States) men have been able to opt out of war by: hiring a replacement to take their place; being a conscientious objector and taking a non-combat role; being born at the right time to not be drafted, and choosing not to volunteer; enlisting in a branch of the service unlikely to see combat; pleading a hardship; finding a doctor to claim you are medically unfit; just walking away (desertion, as long as it was not during combat, has historically be inconsistently punished).

I get the feeling that this document is what Scott Adams talks about when he writes that two people can sit in the same movie theater, look at the same screen, and watch two different movies play out.

This is completely false! He absolutely does not say that, he says women to not prefer to compete for those jobs. He might still be wrong but you are grossly misrepresenting his statement in an attempt to demonize his lack of PC orthodoxy.

At colleges, lowering the bar is in fact how they have often been implemented. This article has some decent numbers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-un...

Lowering the bar is also the easiest way for a mid-level manager to achieve a target percentage. It's probably also the first method that may come to mind for many people.

Also, if you spend 3x the resources to find 3x the number of candidates (is it linear? I dunno), conduct normal interview processes, and then randomly throw out 2/3 of the male candidates that passed, while keeping all the women that passed, that is one way to triple the number of women you hire while having the same bar for men and women. However, the step where you throw out a random 2/3 of the male candidates might strike someone as highly irrational. Why not throw out the bottom 2/3 of male candidates? But then you end up with male candidates that passed a higher bar. You're not lowering your standards for women, but you're raising your standards for men, and then employees might notice and form the impression that the average male employee is better than the average female employee, which would be unfortunate. But it would probably be difficult to convince the people involved that avoiding the "unfortunate" outcome is worth throwing away 2/3 of the very best male candidates.

It might be possible to spend 3x the resources in such a way that all the new candidates you find are women. That would be a way to avoid the above problems. How would this be accomplished? Perhaps you send a recruiter to a university, and have them only talk to the female students. Hmm, that might be a little weird. How about a female-only university? That would be great. Likewise any female-only programming meetup groups. And of course any qualified female engineers that anyone knows—they'll never be wanting for a job.

How well will a company perform that spends significant resources recruiting from female-only groups, compared to one that recruits from groups that simply take the best candidates? How significant a fraction of company resources are normally spent on recruiting? And I did see a study indicating that demographic diversity (measured as age and sex) improved morale. I guess we'll see.

What would really help is if universities published the CS accomplishments of all their female students, but not of their male students. I wonder if they'd be willing to do it.

In any case, my original point was, even if a company does in fact implement its diversity program with one of the methods that does not systematically lead to higher-quality male hires than female hires, I think it is natural for someone to assume until proven otherwise that it is implemented by shifting the bar.

No process is ever random. All processes have side effects, that make some kind of memory/feed back loop.

If there are two groups of uniform set of people A and B. And you if make it harder for A to succeed. Set of people in A will have to work way harder, than set B over very long periods of time to win consistently. You will end up making A far more stronger than B. While your intention was to make B at least as good as A over time, you have now achieved the very exact opposite of what you set out of achieve.

This is common in sports, and even competitive exams. Candidates are trained to take on difficult problems than the baseline so that they can get better than the baseline.

At this point the bar for winning is largely to subject to interpretation. Did you raise the bar for A, or did you decrease the bar for B? It depends on what you consider the baseline.

If women are really worth more to the company, for diversity purposes - if not literal diversity of people, at least diversity of opinion and experiences - it would make perfect sense to just actively headhunt women from other companies and simply pay them more than the other people.

Companies never want to actually pay employees more money though.

It does not mean you get to decide anything for others, but it is a basic sign of respect to listen to what people say, and it is an even more basic sign of respect to not attempt to defame them.

This guy clearly isn't perfect. He was naive about what the effect of releasing his memo would be. However he was respectful and seemed to be trying to temper his perspective. He doesn't deserve the raw hatred and condemnation he is receiving. I think we should be compassionate and try our best to tolerate our differences.

They should have included him on the diversity and inclusion leadership team. Sad that Google went the route they did.

To put this in a different context, take the gender discrepancy in murderers. Across nearly all countries, men commit roughly 75-85% of murders. This nearly uniform across agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial countries, rich and poor countries, liberal and conservative countries. I would consider it totally fine to say that men innately have a greater tendency to commit murder than women (and for what it's worth I'm a man myself). Is it okay to say that because I have a Y chromosome I should be treated as a murderer? Or that I should face a different standard of evidence if I'm on trial for murder? Of course not. But stating that I, as a man, am statistically more likely to commit murder than the average woman is not the same as saying I should be presumed to be a murderer and it is not the same as saying that I should face a different standard of evidence. But the point remains, it is okay to conclude that the discrepancy in murder rates is because of innate tendencies rather than discrimination by police, juries, etc.

Agree that it's a basic sign of respect to listen to what people say. I am tired of guys not listening to me saying I'm a boring, normal woman who likes math/tech/computers, not a freak or a biological anomaly, some evolutionary mistake.

And he is not saying that you are a "freak" or "biological anomaly", he is talking about aggregated, statistical differences.

He provides no evidence to back the conclusions he draws from that data though. It reminds me of some articles or posts you might see briefly gain traction on the internet where the author starts from a point backed by one or two reputable sources and proceeds to use those references to back an argument that lies well outside the bounds of the original data.

As one of the authors of a paper cited in the memo puts it:

> In the case of personality traits, evidence that men and women may have different average levels of certain traits is rather strong. [...] But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large [1]

[1] http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

I guess the larger point I was trying to make is that when people feel singled out because of statistical differences b it leads them to take things personally, which leads to perpetuating disproportionate reactions and a non-existing platform for actual discussion.

Vets are 80% female. Is the industry closed to men that might want to be a vet? Do we need more outreach programs for men to be vets?

Or maybe is it that men are less likely to want to medically treat animals than women, and the gender discrepancy is one of preference? And yes, men who do become vets are statistical outliers, but certainly not "freaks". It's likely the same for tech and women - you are a statistical outlier, and from your perspective things are the norm, but the majority of women are not interested in the same things that you are interested in professionally. (The majority of men aren't either, but there's a larger minority of men sharing your professional interests than a minority of women).

And as for "not getting somewhere original" - the author's point about the difference between comparing averages vs the overlap of bell curves around the averages is a great point and not one I'd seen highlighted that way before. Perhaps you have, but it was novel to me.

> This stuff has been hashed, rehashed, refried, deep fried... and he got all the biology research wrong. It just seems that he did no research, instead thinking about his feelings a lot and claiming he got somewhere original without engaging the existing scholarship at all.

Please provide examples. Your statement is incorrect. Looks like you didn't bother to listen correctly to what he said.

Need it be either/or? Can't we listen to all the stakeholders in this attempt to change the culture for the better?

EDIT: Quoted relevant section of parent for context.

Affirmative action is legal in the United States.

I work at a large SV tech company and was recently privy to an affirmative action policy that was almost certainly illegal. The wording of the policy was quickly changed after a couple folks spoke up so as to make it conform with the law. If the policy had made it to a news outlet, I guarantee you it would have been on the front page of the NYT the next day.

In short, quotas are illegal. With some exceptions, hiring based on race is illegal. However, taking race into account among many factors is legal. The on-the-ground reality of these policies is exceedingly grey.

The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job.

I'm inherently saying some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired.

Edit: just to be clear, my point is that Google has, to my knowledge, expressed this sentiment and made changes to their interview process to rely less on brainteasers. They did so without controversy. No one said "hey Google is saying some of its employees shouldn't have been hired by changing their hiring process".

The first guy is not necessarily "unqualified", but he would relative to the other guy. People who were hired for their weightlifting abilities wouldn't have had to reach a higher score on coding in order to get hired. So on average, you would expect them to be less qualified.

From your quote:

> Our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back.

I would not infer that you meant: The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job.

The most likely case is that someone saying the above quote would be a co-worker of mine. Someone I'm cooperating with in a common endeavor. I would assume they are trying to help us achieve our goals more readily. I would have heard something like: We're turning down highly qualified candidates for software engineering roles because of their failure to answer non-software-engineering questions. Is there any evidence that these non-software-engineering questions contribute meaningfully to our assessment of candidates? If not, we should drop the questions. Turning down qualified candidates makes it harder for to hire the great people that coming through our pipeline.

To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made.

That's exactly my point.

Replace "brainteaser" with "being an underrepresented minority" and you'll see why it's absurd to suggest his manifesto is tantamount to saying "some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired".

If we would like to stop using an irrelevant but unchangeable trait (such as gender or race) as a basis for hiring and recruiting, what should we do?

And then what happens to freedom of speech? To me this sounds like a totalerian regime.

I'm actually okay with Google seeking women across the country (when they could find a local candidate), but we should not pretend that they don't have internal targets their recruiters need to meet.

A startup I once worked for sent out a memo asking that HR be involved before rejecting a "borderline" female candidate. As a generally apolitical junior employee this seemed really concerning -- we had pretty strict hiring standards and from that point on I wondered if each new female employee would have made it if they were born male.

I can't say if Google's practices are discriminatory (I don't really know what they are) but it's a very important thing to have open, honest discussion about. At the time, I kept my mouth shut because I was pretty low on the totem pole. If I were an employee at Google I would now know to do the same.

Bias is real. The exact same resume is, on average, considered more qualified if there's a typically male name at the top versus a female name. Did you ever wonder how many of your male colleagues unfairly benefitted from that sort of thing?

From http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas... :

After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data.

No, I didn't consider it about anyone until they gave me a reason to. Prior to that email I had no reason to think that anyone working there was anything other than the best of the best. Well-intentioned policies can have resounding negative effects.

To your second point -- I'm not saying bias isn't real. I'm saying certain methods of counteracting bias have a strong potential for collateral damage.

At least one recent study found the exact opposite: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

> The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door.

I've experienced this as an engineer, where I've been in environments where I was totally over my head. In retrospect I'm grateful for the rejections as much as the postitions I've landed, because they've pushed me to learn and advance my skill set.

To be fair to you, I don't think you actually think that. But it's almost like the author of the diversity memo touched a third rail by suggesting that perhaps "lowered standards" could be an outcome from such diversity efforts. Is that a fair consideration to raise or is that beyond the pale now?

However, if the number of hires is kept constant, and a given process is claimed to be flawed, then you are implicitly stating that one or more offers should have gone to what was a non-hire instead of what was a hire.

[my opinion, not my employer's.]

If someone claims their employer discriminates against black candidates, you must equally infer they think some of their white coworkers have been let in because of weakened standards, and out they go...

I mean, I'll admit there is a small core of logic there, but I think it's pushed absurdly far. Wouldn't it make more sense if hiring standards could be discussed without firing anyone who wants to change them?

Why MUST we have 50% of male and female in any industry? Have you noticed how almost every media outlet ignores female dominated industries (such as veterinary science) [0], where over 85% of vets in the western world are female? The strongest argument in this thread appears to be that there must be equal numbers for equality, but it's only EVER applied to male dominated industries (Google it if you doubt me). However, not only is this argument unjustified, it's continually selectively applied by most mainstream media outlets, again and again. There is no challenge or balance to any of these arguments from the mainstream media.

I am disappointed that Google sacked this engineer. To understand this mindset, you really need to watch this video on Yale. People being shut down from talking because they're male or white [1] or because angry mobs don't like what they have to say. People in this thread talk about sexism and yet they struggle to provide any evidence (while I can point at truck loads of evidence of misandry, eg. domestic violence, veterinary science, etc). This Yale video talks about this exact problem i'm describing. We have a society where you are no longer allowed to express selective views (even with evidence). Google have confirmed this with their dismissal of this engineer. What we've become concerns me deeply.

To all of the people who have stood up for free speech (and you're in the clear minority in this thread), I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you want to be able to sort out the media that's worth listening to, watch reporting on this topic closely over the next few days. Look for extreme prejudice and emotive language from the media. To quote an excellent quote from the Yale video, "these are moves of power, not reason" (3 minutes in, [1]).

So where are the rational arguments? What about the percentage of female university graduates with relevant skills? What about Dr Simon Baran Cohen's findings on very young children and trends to their thinking patterns? Where are the facts? Why are most people side-stepping facts?

Now please re-read this entire thread and ask yourself about freedom of speech. Ask yourself about democracy. Ask yourself about how many people have presented facts. There is something seriously wrong. You should be deeply concerned about the lack of debate, the lack of evidence, the number of emotive arguments and the message Google has sent to anyone who doesn't toe the politically correct line.

[0] http://career-advice.careerone.com.au/career-development/pro... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4MBzp5YwM

But a counter-point to the focus on male-dominated industries: I suspect it has a heck of a lot to do with the average salary of male-dominated industries compared to the salaries of female dominated industries. If vets were paid like anesthesiologists and vice versa (and across all industries), I think you'd see a lot more articles about equality in female-saturated careers.

Of course, personally I'd rather see a reduced pay gap between gender dominated industries instead of women being forced into jobs they aren't as interested in simply to earn as much as men who gravitate towards those fields. But I've no idea how you actually follow through on that, and "girl-code camps" are a heck of a lot easier to run and self-serving for the runners than "restructure the supply/demand labor market for 20-40% of all industries)".

I think that your argument needs further refinement.

1. The fact you have to dig to find a rare prestigious, yet women-dominated field (veterinary science) demonstrates the lack of equivalence between software engineering or any other men-dominated field. Most high-paying fields are dominated by men in most states. The essence of this controversy is not that there are men being kept out of veterinary science and nursing. It's that women are actively and passively discouraged from entering, staying, and succeeding in the field.

2. I don't think any of the credible stakeholders expects a 50%/50% women to men ratio in software engineering. I think this is a misrepresentation of your opponents.

3. Linking this to freedom of speech and democracy is going to generate "but freedom of speech is just from the government, not from consequences" responses.

4. Claiming this is a trend in Fortune 500 companies is likely to yield from your opponents a considerable amount of examples of liberal workers being terminated from Conservative-style companies for political actions taken on-the-job. Even excluding union agitation, there are many examples from the past ten years.

But in general, he's right that we're in a scary age with the aggressive and dogmatic ideology that favors political correctness over intelligent debate and will defend that ideology with mob rule (even leading to professors being told by police that it's not safe for them to be present on campus).

I'm not looking forward to seeing the political result of this movement becoming a tea party to the left, which I fear is inevitable in the next few years.

4. So what? discrimination at conservative companies doesn't justify discrimination at liberal ones.

I disagree with your premise; termination for political activity on-the-job is easily justifiable. I doubt you want to hear non-stop tirades from a PETA activist coworker.

I think your criticism of #2 is facile; which policies in particular are vague? Every corporate anti-discrimination policy I've ever encountered was essentially "don't discriminate against people in a way that will get us in trouble with the Feds."

> Part of my work this year has resulted in 42% of the LargeCo engineering staff in WestCoastCity are women.

Bingo. Feelings have replaced facts as a measure of righteousness. And, sadly, there are entire industries plugging feelings of injustice by "white cis-males" or some other group of people who are oppressors by dint of simply being a majority.

It's such a mess. And if you give a sht about the Western tradition of reasoning*, it's a cultural shame. Entire national narratives are being powered by lies and mistruths.

The least we could do is talk about it.

But look at what happens when you question this insanity? You're fired and ostracized.

Genuinely sad.

> The Harm of Google’s biases:

...

> - A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates

...

> - Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate.

Do you really not see the concerns this engineer has introduced for Google over his ability to objectively judge his peers who are women or members of an underrepresented group or at least how such coworkers might now have these concerns if they find themselves working with him? Do you not see how the long-term detriment and risk to Google could be (substantially) greater than the value the engineer brings to the company? Even if you remove the high-mindedness and virtues that tech companies like to project in their PR, do you not see how this is the only rational business choice for a Fortune 50 company?

You are in the position where you want to constantly hire a lot of qualified candidates. If you have discovered a way to decrease false negative rate, why would you not apply that across the board? It's like you have learned how to fix hiring but then carry it out only with some arbitrary cohorts.

Sounds irrational to me.

The implications of that worldview are totally toxic.

And therefore it is false?

The author has a popular science level understanding of gender differences. Based on that he concludes women are unsuited to be engineers compared to men.

Well, then make that argument.

If you wanted to pick out any argument out of those 10 pages to disassemble, you could have chosen any one of his arguments that haven't been corroborated by hundreds of years of scientific consensus.

Ok, but how do you propose the paper to be rewritten taking those into consideration.

Or do you suggest that Google force every employee go through a medical exam to determine their sex and make sure no one chooses to identify as a different gender to pass through the hiring process easier...

Sorry, I don't quite see what you're getting at there basically, it can interpreted in a few ways.

Such a claim would, after all, be an insult to many of his coworkers, who might feel as if he believes they're only at Google because society lowered the bar for them.

Personally I'd like it if people could make both arguments in a reasonable fashion and not jump immediately to outrage and calls for termination.

Should a son of a several-year unemployed coal miner be discriminated against because of his gender and race, just because other people with that same gender and race have done better than average?

The entire summary was "consider the individual not the statistic."

If you are concerned about socio-economic advantages, look at tax returns not skin color - the whole point of some prior civil rights movements was that skin color is a terrible proxy for evaluating the person underneath.

Honestly the graph examples of the overlapping bell curves vs the plotted averages in his document was such an excellent point, and yet the extremely salient points that should be discussed are being railroaded over by misrepresented hyperbole - your straw man theoretical imcluded. There's a great deal of nuance he paid attention to, and I really wish his detractors had the same consideration for nuance in their counter-points.

Edit: I didn't realize on first read that you were creating a hyperbole to highlight the bias in the calls for his firing. Leaving the comment as is though, as in general there needs to be a lot more nuance considered, particularly by his detractors. Apologies for misreading your comment's intention.

Dodging the question by saying you don't find the principle "interesting" when applied on the other end of the argument is effectively admitting that you know the principle is flawed.

To be clearer, white privilege exists. Male privilege exists. That is a power dynamic over women and minorities, enjoyed by men and non-minorities.

To deny those privileges exist increases the privilege. To deny that existing bias exists helps to increase the bias.

To admit those privileges exist decreases the privilege. To admit that existing biases exist helps to decrease the bias.

So, writing a manifesto (that admits white privilege) does not put white people into greater danger beneath those who enjoy the power dynamic over them (no one).

But, writing a manifesto (that denies sexism) does put women into greater danger beneath those who enjoy the power dynamic over them (men).

Is that clearer?

This doesn't necessarily follow, because insofar as male privilege exists, so does female privilege (such as no draft, "women and children first", the "women are wonderful " effect and the fact that women represent the majority of the voting base), so it's really hard to say one sex is more privileged than the other, rather than just privileged differently.

> where male privilege exceeds female privilege.

I'm not sure I can categorically agree with this. While male privilege exists over women, I find it ludicrous to suggest that white women are less privileged overall than black men, despite black men benefiting from male privilege. I think many of the misunderstandings that occur when discussing privilege come about due to using only a few easily categorized traits in defining privileges, rather than a broader set that also include things like socio-economic conditions, health, upbringing, and a variety of personality or physical traits.

I don't think it's that hard. There are unfair privileges to either gender, but the male ones are vastly larger.

This kind of claim (regardless of which direction you're making the claim in) ony makes sense if you reduce "privilege" into a single dimension. Which I don't think you can.

It should absolutely be ok, if it's true. Which it unequivocally is.

> (and that's 100% what he did, he also made up pseudo-scientific bullshit to try to justify it, but he flat out insulted countless people within his company).

What about his post was pseudo-scientific? He cited studies, and to my knowledge, the actual facts of what he said are fairly uncontroversial.

> - The next time a woman interviews for his team, and he votes against hiring, how does the hiring committee interpret that vote?

Did you read the document? He explicitly embraces diversity. He even says he's in favor of programs to help promote diversity.

"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)"

That is accompanied with citations. OK, sure, let's take that at face value. No dispute here.

Next, he says:

"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics"

No studies, no evidence, no nothing for this claim. X may lead to Y, because... the author feels in his gut that it may be true? This is not science. This is an unsupported assertion. The rest of the doc is littered with these claims, which I could happily go point by point through.

He may have gotten the science about biological differences between men and women correctly, but the conclusions that he drew using that science is totally unsubstantiated. And frankly, it is extremely deceptive to defend him by saying that "he cited studies" without examining how he linked those studies to his own pure speculation.

EDIT: And as has come out, the author of this memo has a PhD in Biology. Here are comments from four PhD scientists in Sociology on the issue, if you'd like some credentials to go with it:

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

"But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm."

That pretty succinctly summarizes my view.

No, he doesn't; he lied about it on his linkedin page: http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-removes-phd-stud...

What are the costs/benefits of having this "debate" at work over a hypothesis that cannot be proven, as you state?

Look again at what the author was doing. He was using scientifically demonstrated biological and psychological differences between men and women (women have "higher agreeableness") to hypothesize about how that affects their work choices and, notably, their performance ("This leads to women generally having a harder time ... speaking up, and leading.").

What this is doing is connecting a gender stereotype (which, sure, is scientifically supported in aggregate - that's true for a lot of stereotypes!) to work practices and outcomes. The authors claimed benefits of presuming that this connection is true are basically a) this will make conservatives feel more accepted at work, and b) diversity is "bad for business" (which is just provably wrong by an enormous amount of evidence that the author ignores). I think a) is absolutely a worthy benefit, but there are lots of other ways to do this without linking gender stereotypes to work performance!

Now let's look at the harms of having this "debate", particularly at work, which are numerous and measurable. While there are no studies demonstrating the link between biology and STEM job performance, there are many studies demonstrating the impact of widespread gender bias in STEM fields (classic recent reference: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract) and how it affects hiring and advancement. The memo's author correctly acknowledges these types of biases. So the harm is perpetuating gender biases in the workplace that affects people's careers. Not to mention the harms of opening up Google to gender discrimination lawsuits (ala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_Waterhouse_v._Hopkins), the productivity cost of employees who don't want to work with people with publicly broadcasted unproven gender biases that could affect their decision making ("hostile work environment"), etc. And not to mention losing the many economic benefits that a company reaps with a diverse, inclusive workplace.

So no, I don't think it's worth having this "debate", especially at work, where the benefits are negligible at best, and the harms are clear. If you want to have this debate, go write a medium article or something. Don't send this around your workplace. It's not that hard, really. People call this thought policing, or groupthink or whatever, but it's just harmful and a waste of time at work.

If bias exists it is culturally and biologically motivated and that can only be fixed by changing the culture significantly.

Women in free cultures do not like STEM. That is a fact. In countries where gender roles are being silenced (that's a good thing) women dislike STEM even more!

I went to a STEM focused high-school that had equal numbers of women and men (3000 students). Not the same percentage went for STEM fields after graduation. Women were also more successful during high-school. Every year the questionnaire confirms that women just aren't interested in STEM and go to fields that deal with people much more (medicine and similar social fields - rehabilitation, working with children with disabilities, social work etc.))

Interesting assertion without a citation! Unfortunately, you are wrong. A good meta analysis reference: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~banaji/research/publicati.... I can provide more if you like. I encourage you to review the literature.

> Women in free cultures do not like STEM. That is a fact.

Another interesting assertion! I'll let you do the homework finding citations about how you're wrong here.

> I went to a STEM focused high-school ... blah blah blah

Nice anecdote! Is there anything else about high school that you'd like to generalize to the entire population of the world?

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frederick_Oswald/public...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-An...

I can provide more if you like.

Show me a study that measures gender bias, does an educational intervention and succeeds in improving that measure significantly. None exist. At best they do not work.

> I'll let you do the homework finding citations about how you're wrong here.

Cool, good thing I did my homework. I'm quite aware that percentage of women in STEM is increasing every year. Check out research for countries that have successfully removed gender roles.

> Nice anecdote! Is there anything else about high school that you'd like to generalize to the entire population of the world?

Good thing that there's research confirming the same thing. Although I was not generalizing. The 3000 students and the results of questionnaire every year are pretty consistent. I'm sure someone will do a study on the data, will link to it surely when it happens. Although, I'm sure it will not matter given that you value meta-analysis but only those that confirm your bias.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I read your comment! What about my comment are you replying to? Did you perhaps reply to the wrong comment?

Attitudes like yours have polarized me to the extent that now I just say, "I'm super racist, here's what I think:" just to see people's confused reactions.

Employees are free to say whatever they want on a personal blog on their own time.

"Before being fired, Mr. Damore said, he had submitted a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board claiming that Google’s upper management was 'misrepresenting and shaming me in order to silence my complaints.' He added that it was 'illegal to retaliate' against an N.L.R.B. charge."

Maybe this is why he was fired? It sounds like he was becoming pro-actively hostile toward Google. And there may be more than we outsiders know going on.

a) Men and women should be hired based on merit, and ability to perform required tasks.

b) Men and women are unable to compete based on merit and women need special consideration in order that equivalent number of men and women are hired.

The author of the manifesto was arguing for (a) and against (b).

Also, who decides on "merit" and "ability?" Most real-world problems are not math equations with clear answers. In that case, a homogeneous group is going to decide that merit is based on their group's definition. A diverse group will create a broader definition that accounts for a wider array of ideas and approaches.

I've seen these arguments rehashed over and over by the very same people who overly critcized the manifesto.

Yet I have never seen any argument or document written as well as the manifesto supporting these arguments.

Diversity in tech has essentially become people who look different but think the same way.

You can fix it by changing it to

b) Men and women aren't allowed to compete based on merit and women need special consideration in order that equivalent number of men and women are hired.

edit: HN comments eat double asterisks???

The strawman is much better than the actual argument.

A lot of clumping happens in fields. Tell me why women are better at symplectic geometry than symplectic topology (or not). Tell me why women are better combinatorists than number theorists -- I want to hear something about counting the tubers they gathered. Tell me why women are so much more suited to advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology than interventional cardiology (https://www.aamc.org/data/448482/b3table.html). I kinda love all the post hoc analysis that goes into explaining these differences, especially when you have to explain then why Portuguese and Italian women are great in algebraic geometry but French women aren't (except for the notable exceptions like Claire Voisin).

Most people aren't pioneers; most people follow the pioneers into situations in which they feel mildly more comfortable than the alternative. Sexism plays a huge role, while not being the only factor. Is it really surprising that if you put up a "girls r dum" sign on a clubhouse many will find somewhere else to go?

Women electing into different fields is pretty much tautological here. The question is why, and whether it's for reasons we want to support and/or perpetuate. The whole point of the memo at issue is that he figures it's built into women biologically because computers aren't cuddly and that it is thus justifiable and right to perpetuate or support the current set of social roles. I don't know that the guy should have been fired, but it's clear he's not going to be a great team player or supervisor for women.

This article [0] presents a good argument about how and why men and women self-select in to different fields.

0: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

It means that applying is no longer first-come, first-serve.

Of course it isn't because then it would expose the hypocrisy of what they advocate. It's white-knighting at its finest.

> Men and women aren't allowed to compete based on merit and women need special consideration in order that equivalent number of men and women are hired.

I agree there is sexism in tech, both overt and casual that discourages women from entering tech and/or causes them to leave. The question is, does increasing diversity actually fix this problem?

The author of the memo specifically addresses this, and states that the focus should be on providing psychological safety for people of all groups, rather than forced diversity that may not end up addressing the problem.

Even the SATs struggles/d with making sure their tears didn't implicit strengthen the scores of any one group of students.

Engineering has large degrees of opinion mixed into any non-rudimentary implementation.

The result, even just the code itself, is also not judged on a binary yes/no scale, which again leaves a lot of room for opinions and bias to muddy the water.

I've done hundreds of engineering interviews. Conducting objective interviews is very hard. Anybody thinking they are objective either has never done interviews or is fooling themselves.

If a programming exercise is subjective, from what perspective is it subjective in bias of? Likely the author's, who's bias will be derived somewhat from their race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, background, peer group, etc.

Code is correct if it works. But plenty of "working" solutions will be rejected as being "incorrect" based on current trends, internalized philosophy, preferred approach, etc. etc.

As someone who hires engineers, it is difficult if not impossible to separate personal bias and preference from an evaluation.

But there's a billion ways to write that code. Which ones will the evaluator prefer and/or reject? That's where subjective opinion comes in.

You are judged and reviewed on a myriad different factors other than this. Are you a "team player?" Do you mentor others well? Do people like you? Were you picked to do complex projects this review cycle? Are you too loud? Too timid? Do you ask insightful questions? Is your coding style "normal"? Do you dress professionally? Can you be asked to interface with clients?

Every little thing that can be used will be used to form a composite picture of you as a person. It's wrong to expect a foreigner like me to be judged on whether I know baseball stats but I'm sure someone somewhere has made an inside reference about baseball around me and written me off when didn't even acknowledge it.

That's what diversity programs and affirmative action programs try to short circuit.

Humans, contrary to what they may tell themselves, are not effective, impartial judges of "merit". Diversity initiatives correct for this deficiency.

c) Human beings are poor judges of merit due to cognitive bias, poor intuition for statistics, prejudices based on emotional reactions to irrelevant past experiences, and perverse incentives. It is therefore justifiable to apply a post correction.

I'm a bit surprised that techies don't see this as obvious. How often do inferior products win due to superior marketing that plays on these biases?

I am also surprised programmers have such confidence in absolute meritocracy in code shops given that every coder knows how hard it can be to evaluate the performance of coders on a team. Let's say one coder closes tons of tickets but does shoddy work while another works more slowly and creates things of beauty. The former often looks better but the latter might be the real MVP. I've seen coders who add little code but are indispensable on a team due to things like deep domain knowledge, great judgement, spooky horse whisperer debugging skills, etc.

Yet suddenly some are convinced of the infallibility of our ideas of merit as soon as someone tosses a culture war grenade in the room.

I don't even want to bring up the softness of some of the areas of science cited by that manifesto or the reproducibility crisis they've had but... Oops I just did.

Personally I am on the fence about diversity measures such as the ones I've heard exist at Google for practical reasons. I am not convinced they work very well and as an engineer I prefer things that work. My sentiment is on their side though, and I have become deeply repelled by the opposing movement (now generally called the alt-right) ever since it unmasked itself. Head over to alt-right subs on Reddit or worse Voat if you want to see what they really stand for. So if I were forced to pick a side I would begrudgingly pick the diversity nazis over the actual Nazis.

But if your premise is that (essentially) people are wrong, how do you know that the post-correction will be appied "correctly" (i.e. not make things even more wrong)?

It only hurts because it is plausible and causes self-doubt.

But Google can prove this conclusively just by plotting the distribution of performance reviews between "diversity hires" and the regular pool of employees. You either show that there are negligible differences (the diversity program works) or the guy is right (the average bar did get lowered).

Google will never publish this data because they are cowards.

You take a lot of really smart people and get them to work together, and most of them are going to feel like they're not as smart as their peers.

Anything that creates self-doubt is going to really fuck up their retention.

Anyone who writes a manifesto to do just that should expect they'll be promptly walked out of the building.

Can you elaborate on that one? I'm really curious, as my naive assumption would be that impostor syndrome should improve retention (something like "I'm not as good as my current employer and coworkers think I am, so I better not change jobs because this is the best I could get").

That makes it pretty easy to take a new gig and make that nagging imposter voice in your head quiet down.

"I work at the world's most powerful tech company, get paid embarrassing sums of money to do it, and get good reviews from my manager. But I don't feel super smart, so I quit."

When you come in as a newbie, and you see all these people seemingly directing themselves effortlessly, and creating cool shit day in and day out, it can be seriously soul crushing. You're still on your tricycle trying to figure out how to do anything at Google, and aside from your laptop, virtually everything is a technology that is Google specific and shares almost nothing with anything you've touched before.

Between those two things, a lot of people feel like they'll never make it. They hold on for their 1 year anniversary if they can and then shop their new Google experience around to find a good exit.

> Such a manifesto is not just fundamentally wrong, it's toxic

Isn't this how every Inquisition is justified?

A private company firing someone over their views is a long, long way from an Inquisition. Your right to say and believe things is not a right for continued employment. The same libertarian argument that you seem to be making has been made the other way many times -- that companies should never be compelled to retain an employee for any reason.

Is this the first firing that was perhaps an overly sensitive reaction concerned with appeasing a very touchy ideological base? Because I can think of a number of other people railroaded out of a job because of online "outrage."

We aren't all that far from an Inquisition (not prongs and tongs type Inquisition, but a "your job depends on agreement" type Inquisition). The most significant thing missing from the equation is that the most vocal social justice voices lack political influence and power. If you see this movement organize politically and get candidates in office, any student of history should recognize that things will get worse for open expression of ideas before things get better.

Should a female doctor avoid mentioning this article to a male colleague to avoid getting fired?

The employee in this case deserved a reprimand, not termination.

It's ironic that the two countries who not so long ago were horrific totalitarian regimes now are more free (at least in this aspect) than USA - "the land of the free".

This argument only work is every woman can only see themselves as part of the group and are incapable of seeing themselves as individuals.

I would be willing to bet that there are women (and other diversity hires) at Google that know they are capable of doing their jobs and deserving of being hired. Some of those people might object to being lumped in with the whole and not being seen as individuals.

It seems pretty extraordinary and I'd like to see more before I believe it.

If an organization does, at any time, use hiring priorities besides work ability, and thus hires people whose work ability was not as good as it could be - from henceforth on, nobody can ever criticize those hiring policies, because that would imply criticizing the people hired under those policies.

>Given that the document has (rightfully) alienated women inside and outside his organization, it becomes impossible for this person to be an effective member of the team

Funny, lots of people I've worked with have alienated me, and others, and various groups of people (different teams, specialties, ages, men, conservatives, etc). We somehow still manage to keep functioning in the same building. You, with bigotry of low expectations, seem to think women don't have the maturity for that.

That's how far this has gone. I am saddened that more moderate voices have not spoken up like this brave ex-Googler but given the climate and the consequences, I understand it.

Whether the transgender/nonbinary people I know have the right to exist or not is not subject to debate. If you say no, you are sanctioning violence against them. Whether women have the right to participate fully in the economy without facing harassment or discrimination just because they are women is not subject to debate. If you say no, you are sanctioning violence against them.

These are basic human rights and the party you have chosen to support thinks that they are subject to debate. You have chosen to support virulent bigots and misogynists…but don’t want to be called one yourself? Methinks you protest a little too much.

The issue is that the left equates denying preferential treatment as 'denying people civil rights'. That makes it close to impossible for liberal-minded and conservative-minded folks to debate many topics.

> Whether the transgender/nonbinary people I know have the right to exist or not is not subject to debate.

Right to exist? Is someone saying they should all be rounded up and persecuted?

> Whether women have the right to participate fully in the economy without facing harassment or discrimination just because they are women is not subject to debate.

Another instance of the first point. Who's saying they shouldn't? Again, the other side wants the same thing--they simply disagree with means to achieve it. But you happen think those means are 'sanctioning violence' against them.

And...'sanctioning violence' against women? What does that even mean? Who is doing this?

The left always tends to fall back on this argument of 'basic human rights' as if the sky is falling because the right wants to take them all away & punish anyone who isn't a straight white male.

It's just a ludicrous mindset that, again, makes it almost impossible to have a rational debate. The nonsensical language in your comment makes that clear.

Keep in mind that authoritarianism isn't "people I disagree with that have power", it's when democratic elections stop mattering.

But to your point, authoritarianism is thrown around too often. Better terms for the identity-politicking left include "repressive" or "censorious".

A lot of opinions around trans people are centered around it being a mental delusion that shouldn't be accommodated. That leaves them unable to transition and live in society without mental harm. If that isn't persecution, not sure what is!

Your information is out of date. Being transgender itself is no longer considered a mental disorder. Gender dysphoria, discomfort and dysfunction caused by society and by being in the wrong body is the diagnosable condition. Once transgender people have been treated, there isn't any more dysphoria and there is no disorder.

But those people aren't Fortune 500 material so not pertinent to the discussion. Those people are on the extreme side of the right. It wouldn't be fair if I started to draw conclusions about the left from what you hear people say on /r/latestagecapitalism either.

Trump tries to get rid of unnecessary regulations

"Guys, I think Trump might actually have a point here..."

"OH MY GOD YOU MUST BE A CLIMATE DENIER!"

Suggesting that hires be made based on merit and function rather than the "diversity quota" published by some federal bureaucrat trying to justify their department's existence is so far away from threatening anyone's "right to exist" that they're not even in the same universe.

People holding such distant frames of reference cannot have a reasonable conversation. And that's exactly the point.

Please, remind me how "being able to have visitation rights to the person you love" or "being able to vote while black" are "special privileges"?

> Right to exist? Is someone saying they should all be rounded up and persecuted?

Yes, let me introduce you to the Republican Party:

- http://www.washingtonblade.com/2017/04/05/va-gop-gubernatori...

- http://www.hrc.org/blog/republican-national-convention-2016-...

- https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-27/republica...

> And...'sanctioning violence' against women? What does that even mean? Who is doing this?

Let me guess: you'd feel pretty upset if all the people in HN today that you are persona non-grata and that they'll make sure not a single person they know hires you. Would you say that removing your ability to make a living doing what you love is violence? Violence doesn't need to mean "punching in the face."

> punish anyone who isn't a straight white male.

And yet, straight white males are the only ones whose rights are never in question. When was the last time you heard of an anti-white male legislation passing in the Deep South? And yet here they are, full internet forums complaining about their waning rights in the hands of females/blacks/LGBT/immigrants. Makes you wonder, huh?

I support bigots and misogynists speaking their opinions because its a right enumerated by the US constitution. I don't mind being called a bigot or misogynists myself if that's what is required to defend inalienable rights.

You have no right not to be outraged or offended by someone's opinion. And it is disgusting to see someone's livelihood jeopardized because of political correctness. The backlash started in November, and this is only going to dump gasoline on the raging dumpster fire.

I support bigots and misogynists speaking their opinions too.

I do not support tech companies that hire smart people continuing to employ people that argue for substantial changes in policy based on nonexistent science and personal feelings. It is not "political correctness" that gets someone fired for failing to test a change before deploying it in production and breaking the site; it is a lack of critical thinking skills. The memo displayed a lack of critical thinking skills.

If you try to claim that individuals in a free society should be averse to taking someone's opinions and words into account when deciding whether to associate with that person, you are essentially saying that opinions and words don't matter. That's a far greater threat to free speech than government censorship is. An oppressive government can be overthrown, subversive publications can be made, end-to-end encryption can get ideas across, etc. But a society that believes that opinions are of no consequence has lost all hope. It is not the government-enforced dystopia of 1984 but the self-imposed dystopia of Fahrenheit 451.

But his memo had extensive sourcing, including many scientific studies. Are you saying that those studies are nonsense?

> It is not "political correctness" that gets someone fired for failing to test a change before deploying it in production and breaking the site; it is a lack of critical thinking skills.

This is opposite the blameless culture laid out as best practices by the leaders in tech, so I don't know why you would assert it as a good reason to fire someone.

I too, like you, think words matter and think we should be able to take people's beliefs into account when choosing to associate with them. I'd like to note that our opinion is pretty controversial - it's actually illegal to do this for several wide ranges of people's beliefs, when it comes to employment! So perhaps there is a middle ground between "words don't matter" and "we must support all opinions", and in watering down the argument to these two simplistic extremes we're ignoring the complex reality evident before us.

"Extensive" seems like a stretch. Here are the scientific (i.e., non-Wikipedia, non-media) citations:

- women are more interested in people than things (DOI 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x)

- women score on average .4 sigma higher on "neuroticism" than men (DOI 10.1037/0022-3514.94.1.168)

- the average woman is more interested in work-life balance than the average man (DOI 0.1080/03069880600769118)

- moralizing issues is sometimes bad (DOI 10.1111/1467-9280.00139)

- the concept of "microaggressions" lacks scientific backing (DOI 10.1177/1745691616659391)

Of those, only the last one is directly relevant to his policy proposals. (And it seems to be one researcher's position paper, anyway, but I'm happy to grant for the moment that it holds the weight of scientific consensus.)

The rest are all interesting scientific facts but the connection to his policy proposals is incredibly unclear. I said it's based on personal feelings because the idea that software engineering involves caring about things more than people, that neuroticism (in the psychological sense) makes one less suited for software engineering, and that advancement in tech requires giving up work-life balance. As many others have argued (e.g., https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man... ), these are opinions of an extremely junior engineer who has confused "software engineering" with "writing lines of code".

If we're going to take the logic in this article seriously, we should much more readily take seriously 'aphyr's (absurdist) suggestion that men perform better on technical tasks in societies where they're not allowed to own property: https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/894211417561341952 That one has a solid scientific citation and direct relevance to the policy proposal it's making!

> This is opposite the blameless culture laid out as best practices by the leaders in tech

The blameless postmortem relies on the fact that you trust everyone to be making the best decisions they can under the circumstances and you trust them all to be well-informed and qualified, and that sometimes mistakes happen anyway and the identity of the person who makes it is basically chance. Take GitLab's recent incident: if a company's practices don't involve testing backups, and someone is responding to an urgent production problem and deletes the wrong directory, it's not a sign that the person who got paged is particularly incompetent. There is incompetence, but it's a property of the entire team: backups should exist and be tested, runbooks should be clearer, production hosts should be more visible, etc.

But as a consequence, in order for the blameless postmortem to work, you have to actually trust your engineers to be competent. A person who writes a manifesto like this is also the sort of person who's going to read a half-complete answer on StackOverflow that offers a simplistic but enticing explanation, and conclude that it is 100% relevant to their problem despite evidence to the contrary, questioning relevant internal docs along the way. Someone who does that isn't someone you want responding to production incidents. You don't want to blame them - because you don't want to risk them causing problems in the first place.

Such a person is a mishire. The fact that certain people are rejected in the interview process (including false negatives!) does not violate the blameless culture. Once you conclude that someone was a false positive hire, you should promptly let them go with a generous severance.

You might just have a terrible organization or managers with no or poor experience. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But that doesn't imply that an organization or manager's job is to teach everyone everything. There exist non-junior roles, and very often there are people who are mishires for a senior role but great hires for a junior one, or mishires for a certain company but great hires for another one, etc. Sometimes what you're looking for is a senior engineer, and saying "This person isn't senior, they're not right for this role" isn't a failing of management or of the organization.

Damore was a senior engineer (L5) at Google, which is definitely not a junior role (it's the first level where they don't expect you to be getting promoted within 1-2 years, IIRC).

(Let's also be clear, everything I've said about dealing with mishires promptly also applies to mishires in management or mis-promotions into management. There are a lot of people in management who have no business there, and should get either a promotion to a highly-ranked IC role or a generous severance so they can find one elsewhere, before they do more harm to their team.)

If you think that's okay because of the views this engineer holds, you're a terrible human being.

For example, libel, slander, and harassment may all take the form of "speech" but are unquestionably firing offenses. Those are also criminal offenses because the balance of harms swings away from the person who's free speech rights might be violated, toward the person who's own rights are being violated due to the exercise of free speech itself.

As that old adage goes: My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.

More likely than the lawyers saying the firing was legal, is that Google decided the cost of an illegal firing was less than the cost of keeping him onboard.

I guess you don't work in the United States? Because it's certainly fine for him to be fired for this.

Freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction

Not just from government censorship, but from SOCIETY censorship as well

Governments, at least Western Government, are a reflection of society in general often delayed by a generation or so. As such if society deems fit to Censor something often that translates into the government censoring the same thing just a few year later.

We must be always mindful of threats to free speech not just from government but from society at large.

It is incumbent upon everyone to respect everyone else's freedom of expression, individually

The US Constitution is a document that outlines what powers the people of the US have granted to the Federal government, it has no bearing on what I am talking about

It sounds like a facile reading of Mills, without ever going to the back half where he talks about valid reasons for a society to put pressure on an individual, but I've been more on the Federalist papers this year for obvious reasons.

But the idea is bigger than the constitution. I think it is best expressed in The Friends of Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

This is a deep idea. I think it is virtuous.

Silence no ideas.

freedom of speech is a far more general moral principle and social norm. we ought not conflate the two and there is much more utility in discussing the more general case of freedom of speech and not the narrower more legalistic case of the 1st amendment.

What. Of course there is a right to be offended and outraged by someone's opinion. It's the same right that allows someone to share a dumb opinion in the first place.

I'm personally outraged by people who think it's okay to write emails and chat messages with improper punctuation and spelling mistakes. Mixed case sentences, emojis, and made up capitalized abbreviations make my blood boil. But none of that is grounds for me getting those people terminated.

If I don't want to deal them I can go work somewhere else. That's the right I have. Not the right to silence them.

It's the same if they decide to express their political opinions or sports affiliations.

For another example: It would be the same as saying Blacks are inferior to 2. political opinions.

That is NOT OK. It is not a question of being outraged, it is a question of a hostile workplace.

No I'm not. I'm saying that there is a distinction between being offended/outraged and being harassed. Just because someone is offended by something doesn't mean it's harassment. My examples were explicitly meant to be silly to demonstrate the point.

What?

Harassment is different and can be objectively defined in the scope of the business and/or role.

But outrage/offense is subjective. You can change your views from one day to the next, or flip perspectives over lunch. You don't get to come back from lunch with a new view, and have a 'right not to be offended'.

You come across as very entitled.

This comes down to your views on a single question: do you have to be tolerant of opinions or actions that harm others? Right now, I think most progressives say no, conservatives obviously say yes. That is the actual gray area this comes down to.

This is an exaggeration, but it illustrates the argument of the left: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/223/669/6bc...

It should also be noted that the US constitution is being used very out of context here. The US constitution guarantees you the right to say what you want. It does not protect you from the repercussions of your speech, which is what is harming the livelihoods you cite. Whether that is moral is a valid debate, but misusing the constitution here is a broken crutch for the argument. The right has made common use of misusing the constitution, most recently in their abandonment of "states rights" during the current administration.

It is illogical to conclude that we give people certain rights if we were simply to abandon them to their persecutors when they choose to exercise their rights. What was theoretically protected becomes merely a facade and an illusion that people have rights when in fact they are at the mercy of those who would attempt to subvert their rights

The practical effect of legislation is at the core of even the most introductory and basic courses of any law degree whether it is from an Ivy League University or the most rundown backwater campus

The general statement that you don't benefit from a certain degree of protection when exercising a constitutional right without any sort of mention of what a reasonable limit on those rights would be completely ignores the fact that constitutions were drafted PRECISELY to protect individuals who wished to exercise those rights

The same protections that you demand exist for people expressing their right has to fall on both sides of a debate.

You can't draw a neat box around one person's thought and say "protect this from others".

The "chilling speech" effect is one of many reasons why anti-SLAPP statutes exist, a way to explicitly protect freedom of speech from specious attacks.

We certainly couldn't expect people to have no reaction to speech, in fact, no reaction to speech would mean the speech is worthless! But there are cases where we can decide that a certain retaliation to speech is explicitly prohibited, and this is uncontroversial enough to find many examples of laws and statutes doing just that.

Anti-SLAPP is about protecting people from the financial drain of a lawsuit by a third-party looking to intimidate. It does nothing to force anyone involved to continue to employ, or do business with, any individual.

The problem in this case, from an employer's perspective, is that they have one employee who is creating a toxic atmosphere not from a protected position, but from a hostile one.

And while you might believe that people who read his memo as "toxic" are over-reacting to it (and there is an argument there, though one I wouldn't agree with), they must be free to "overreact" and speak their mind.

It does get very, very tricky, since while unpopular racist/sexist opinions may necessarily create problematic dynamics in the work place, that could easily also be true of opinions those who decry this memo would think should be protected. If I work at a company with a steeped culture of faith, and I walk around talking about how Christian's are stupid, to what extent should the employer be forced to continue to employ me?

I tend to believe that, to the extent we have freedom of speech, we chose when and how to exercise that in public. Our choices have consequences, and it is on us to accept those.

I'm a small business owner. If tomorrow, I write a "memo" which says something as moronic as "Women don't make good clients", and I HAVE women as clients, I can't expect them to continue to want to do business with me. I can't demand any type of legal protection which would force them to continue to do business with me.

It is just as true that, at least with my company, I can see many types of clients who would not appreciate the libertine culture of my agency. I've had more than one potential client, who found out we used to take our employees to a regional Burning Man event, show extreme discomfort at it, and it likely cost me the account.

I've had job applicants turn down working here because they were more conservative (and one I remember who thought we were too conservative for them).

That's just the nature of the thing. People are free to say what they want, to associate with who they want, and must accept the social consequences for doing so.

The debate and argument of ideas is non-negotiable if we desire a free society.

EDIT: I choose to be tolerant of ideas that may be abhorrent or cause harm, because the alternative is much worse.

EDIT: Wtf is wrong with people on HN today? I merely stated the law, it isn't even my opinion. It demonstrably passed Google's legal team, so it's unlikely that I'm wrong.

As may the government through statute. This is simply a matter of the constitution not going far enough, and additional law needed to prevent employment termination from expression not deemed "in fashion".

I don't have to hear obscenities on my private property.

There's also freedom of association. It seems weird to me that one would be against authoritarianism when it comes to freedom of speech but be blindly for authoritarianism when it comes to association. I won't and can't judge whether the firing of that googler was justified but shareholders of google should have the right to fire whoever they bloody want.

Would you hold the same argument if I decided to acquire 51% of Google stock and fire all female employees? Or just the ones that decided to exercise their free speech? What shareholders wants comes second to government regulations to protect workers, for good reason.

Firing someone is a harmful action. Progressives obviously support this.

As for your cartoon - Categorizing anyone who disagrees with your values as a cartoon villain of pure evil, deserving of no rights and no response but violence, is the foundation of evil. The cartoon glorifies harmful action - and it's a great representation of the far left now.

Progressives absolutely tolerate opinions and actions that harm others - they hold the opinions and commit the actions with great energy.

An opinion does not cause physical harm.

This is the error with political correctness- as precisely defined-- it is the idea that you must be politically correct, otherwise you're causing a moral wrong.

I don't think this can be justified rigorously. But it is taken as an article of faith, almost, among its adherents.

From my perspective, it is used as a tool to control, by moving the overton window to exclude areas of thought that are different, and to rationalize actual actions that cause damage. (Firing someone isn't an atrocity, but it is harm.)

So, ironically you're advocating doing the harm you're using as justification to defend your ideology.

Are you prepared to suppress and jail based on speech and words? Because that's what you're advocating for, and that's what authoritarian/totalitarian governments do.

Not everywhere. You don't have to allow the free discussion of ideas by anyone in your home.

Freedom of speech is not a right to voice such speech wherever and whenever you want, or to be free of the consequences of such. Nobody has to give you the space or time to voice your speech.

I had said: "Nobody has to give you the space or time to voice your speech", by which I was talking that private people and organizations do not have to give you the space and time for you to voice your speech.

His/her reply was that governments kill people so you should be free of the consequences of your speech.

The implication of this argument (being free of the consequences) means, for example, that your family can't not invite you over for Christmas because you're racist. Or that your friends can't stop hanging out with you, or that someone can't stop employing you.

Those are all consequences of your speech, and you're not protected from them (with a few exceptions).

What do you think?

I'm ok with that, but I'd rephrase as "there is no absolute freedom of speech", or even better, "there is no absolute freedom" in our society, and I'm ok with that.

> Our society will take a long time before we can truly accept freedom of speech and all its consequences.

Do you mean

(1) (freedom of speech) and (freedom of the consequences of speech)

or

(2) accept (freedom of speech) and (consequences of speech)?

> What we have always seen in our society is if you think differently than the main stream thought you should be aware that will be consequences.

IMHO, there is no mainstream, only the immediate surroundings. Saying "women are less capable of doing CS jobs" next to that engineer who got fired will probably help you make a friend. Saying that in front of a woman will probably help you make an enemy.

Both are consequences of speech. You make, and lose, friends based on your speech. Why would someone find the positive consequences of your speech acceptable, but not the negative ones?

In life, there are always consequences. IMHO, the key part of being an adult is recognizing that your acts will have consequences, and being willing to face those consequences, positive or negative.

I think our opinions are much alike at this point.

> Do you mean

I mean 1. I think one day we should accept freedom of speech and freedom of the consequences. That will prevent bad/good ideas to gain further power and bad/good ideas to appear as an option. Offcourse which one is bad/good will depend on the judgment of the person who listens.

> IMHO, there is no mainstream, only the immediate surroundings. Saying "women are less capable of doing CS jobs" next to that engineer who got fired will probably help you make a friend. Saying that in front of a woman will probably help you make an enemy.

Mainstream = conventional, normal. So we could say we have both, the mainstream and your surrounds (probably your surrounding has more power than the mainstream, don't know)

> Both are consequences of speech. You make, and lose, friends based on your speech. Why would someone find the positive consequences of your speech acceptable, but not the negative ones?

Agree, both are. Usually, I often disagree with my best friends, sometimes our opinions are very, very different, and as far he doesn't act against my rights (settled by laws and our society), I'll accept and tolerate our divergence.If the opinion is too different, probably there will be no willingness to talk with each other. Saying "women are less capable of doing CS jobs" will make problems, I personally strongly disagree with that phrase, however, I wouldn't fire him because of that, is his opinion, and I respect that as far he doesn't break the law. (He would have a hard time trying to convince me of that, I would say that a warm discussion would happen)

> In life, there are always consequences. IMHO, the key part of being an adult is recognizing that your acts will have consequences, and be willing to face those consequences, positive or negative.

I also agree with that. I hope one day our society would be mature enough to separate opinions from consequences.

Oh, I found something to pick on:

> I'll accept and tolerate our divergence

Would you continue to be friends in the same way with someone who came out and said "I just joined the KKK!"?

A company can, for example, fire you for not liking the color red.

This is false. Under the United Declaration of Human Rights:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." an extension of John Mill's:

"Freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction.

Societal sanction and interference include the loss of one's job, threats against the speaker, etc.

See: "The first step in assessing whether a particular measure or situation breaches the right to freedom of expression is to assess the threshold question of whether or not someone’s right to freedom of expression has been interfered with or restricted. ... The scope of what constitutes an interference with freedom of expression is very wide. The European Convention on Human Rights, for example, refers to any “formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties” imposed on the exercise of the right. In many cases, it is fairly obvious that there has been an interference, for example where someone has been sanctioned for making a statement or prevented from establishing a media outlet. International courts take a wide view of this. For example, the UN Human Rights Committee held that removing a teacher from the classroom for racist statements made outside of the classroom, while keeping him employed on the same conditions, was an interference with his right to freedom of expression..."[0]

[0]http://www.law-democracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/10.0...

And no, being fired is not a societal sanction, just as someone asking you to leave their house isn't. A private company, just like a private house, is not "society".

Private homes are not sovereign lands and neither are companies.

[0]https://www.article19.org/pages/en/limitations.html

>The nature of the public body is irrelevant. It could be legislative, executive or judicial, or a publicly owned enterprise

The source you provide, which is just an opinion, talks only about governments.

Citing your own source:

"The right to freedom of expression cannot be limited at the whim of a public official"

>"The source you provide, which is just an opinion, talks only about governments."

This is incorrect. Article 19 is a prominent humans right organization, specifically focusing on Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is also the second source agreeing that you cannot fire someone for what they say.

Here, I'll add a third: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/SDecisionsVol7en... pg 54, Ross vs Canada. This is straight from the UN.

So again, your entire argument does not apply at all to Google, or any other non-government entity.

It's illegal to retaliate/discriminate (being fired is covered under this definition) on the basis of an employee's political activity.[0]

[0]http://codes.findlaw.com/ca/labor-code/lab-sect-1101.html

You could even argue that nothing in the essay was political activity, then, again, your point is moot.

Fairly, under the United Declaration of Human Rights, or if it were a just world, no.

"You could even argue that nothing in the essay was political activity, then, again, your point is moot."

I don't think so. Any topic that has a clear dichotomy between two political parties is in-itself a political issue. Again, the umbrella for political activity is a wide one.

You said "Freedom of speech is not a right to voice such speech wherever and whenever you want, or to be free of the consequences of such."

I rebutted with authority sources saying the opposite and your following rebuttals were all opinion.

I'm not going to point blame, but this is a two-way street and requires effort from both parties.

So, again, you have provided no argument regarding Google's case.

The first party was the Centre for Law and Democracy (based in Canada). The second party was Article 19 (registered in UK) -- however I was informed I misread the print on this one. The third party was the Office of the United Nations (based in USA/NY and SWI). The fourth party was the California Labor Code.

You have offered, in this entire comment chain:

1). Your opinion on how freedom of expression should be restricted (unsourced)

2). Your opinion on what constitutes a societal sanction (unsourced)

3). Your opinion on what constitutes fair grounds for dismissal (unsourced)

So I will rebut, once again, with sources countering your claims.

You: "They [Google] can [discriminate on what you say], except in some cases (protected speech). And being regulated by the government doesn't make you the government."

Employees are protected under "anti-discrimination laws such as Title VII, RCW 40.60 (the Washington Laws Against Discrimination or “WLAD”) and various local laws. "[0]

Local laws include California's Labor Code - LAB § 1101: "No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy:

(a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office.

(b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees."[1]

Google would also be in violation of "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964"[2] for retaliation against objections of its discriminatory practices against men (section n, paragraph 1). Which Google, under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, did: "Sex discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of that person's sex...

The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment."[3]

I ask of you to show me the courtesy of not wasting my time if you don't wish to take this seriously.

[0]http://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/freedom-of-speech-i...

[1]http://codes.findlaw.com/ca/labor-code/lab-sect-1101.html

[2]https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm

[3]https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm

The argument came down to you saying that almost anything is a political activity, and that Google being regulated by the government makes it equivalent to a government entity. No matter how many sources are provided, only one can actually matter: the judge who will decide that.

That's the problem with legal interpretation, until a judge clears it, all discussion is just speculation.

Look at your own points:

> Google is under government regulation. They cannot discriminate against others for their opinions of what they say.

Yes they can.

> Being fired is a societal sanction, a.k.a a limitation on freedom of expression

No, it isn't, your source only talks about a public entity.

> Societal sanction and interference include the loss of one's job

Again, no, it isn't.

And you keep mixing the law of different countries with opinions from the UN. Pick one. You wanna talk about ethics, let's talk about ethics. You wanna talk about laws, let's talk about laws. But stop switching from one to the other whenever your argument has no ground.

It doesn't matter if there was a legal case in Canada, it is completely irrelevant to the case being discussed here. Or even the UN. None of that matters to this context.

So if you really want to cite sources, a decision by a federal judge, the SCOTUS or the NLBR showing that an action by a company that is exactly like Google's falls into illegality will do. Anything else makes no difference here, either requiring your own interpretation, or being foreign to the laws of this country.

> Google is under government regulation. They cannot discriminate against others for their opinions of what they say.

This was a simplified point and I have to apologize for being vague. Google, in certain circumstances covered under the law, cannot discriminate against someone for what they express or what they would otherwise express.

This is shown in under the EEOC links as "illegal to retaliate against employees that speak out against discrimination in the work place." Coincidentally, this is what Damore is suing Google for. Whether he wins or not, I agree, is a fruitless debate in semantics. However, this doesn't change that it is possible he has a case.

> Again, no, it isn't. And you keep mixing the law of different countries with opinions from the UN. Pick one. You wanna talk about laws, let's talk about laws. But stop switching from one to the other whenever your argument has no ground. It doesn't matter if there was a legal case in Canada, it is completely irrelevant to the case being discussed here. Or even the UN. None of that matters to this context.*

This is incorrect and I have to accuse you of not reading the sources I provided you. The legal case in Canada was set as precedent for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international law document, by the UN, which the U.S is a part of and an adopter of said document.

> So if you really want to cite sources, a decision by a federal judge, the SCOTUS or the NLBR showing that an action by a company that is exactly like Google's falls into illegality will do. Anything else makes no difference here, either requiring your own interpretation, or being foreign to the laws of this country.

Exactly is impossible and exactly is not how precedent is set. There are certain actions a company can take, no matter its size or circumstance, that illegal due to precedent. Here is an NLBR ruling against codes of conduct, which Google has violated: http://www.quarles.com/publications/employers-take-note-nlrb...

Is there a lawsuit already? I can't find any news about it.

> I agree, is a fruitless debate in semantics

That's my point about this discussion, it became about interpretation of laws. We can continue to argue forever here, but ultimately it will be up to the courts, if he pursues legal action, to decide the correct interpretation.

> The legal case in Canada was set as precedent for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international law document, by the UN, which the U.S is a part of and an adopter of said document.

"International law" is a vague term that carries little weight. It has no "law" power unless any country actually formally agrees and implements internal laws with the same effect.

So, again, it carries no weight here.

> There are certain actions a company can take, no matter its size or circumstance, that illegal due to precedent.

That could illegal due to precedent.

> Here is an NLBR ruling against codes of conduct, which Google has violated

Again, you make the claim that Google has violated, with nothing but your opinion to back it.

And from your own source:

A policy that is written in the context of unprotected comments toward coworkers (e.g., unlawfully harassing comments), rather than protected criticism of the employer, will be deemed lawful.

That's what Google claims that the author violated, and apparently was fired for.

Remember, California is an at-will employment state. You can fire someone for ANY reason except a few clearly defined reasons. The burden of proof is on you to show that Google has fired for one of those reasons, not on Google (or me) to show that the firing WASN'T for those reasons.

Google doesn't have to justify a firing at all.

And a correction on my part, Damore is filing a labor complaint.

People suffer for other reasons too though, like societal inaction and economics. Do you hold yourself to the same standard, with your lifestyle choices affecting others as they do, in the same regard that you're holding others for their political ideas? Have you adopted dozens of children from third world countries instead of creating more mouths to feed? Do you ride a horse to work to reduce your climate impact? Have you optimized your entire life for the supremely calculated reduction of suffering? How would such a calculation even be verified correct? Where does that line get drawn in your world? Is it simply on people with philosophies that are convenient for you to criticize to make yourself the superior humanitarian?

Your view that an opinion can be equated with violence is unethical, but I'm convinced a stronger historical reading would make you blush. It's a terrible and thin rationization. It's so easy to do, here are examples from right and left, with varying degrees of extremeness, quite like yours.

Not your or my opinions, but historical (if abstracted) examples:

- Your opinion that the military in this country should be replaced with an elected government is counter-revolutionary, and your poisonous ideas should be ceased before the imperialist hordes ruin our independence.

- Your opinion that our military intervention was wrong in such and such country is unpatriotic, and therefore illegal.

- Your opinion that God doesn't exist deeply offends religious people and therefore you should not say it, and people like you should be prevented from these deeply offensive opinions.

- Your opinion that drugs should be legalized is illegal because children can view it as a condoning and get hurt.

- Your opinion that this first world war is wrong is sedition, and will lead to prison time. It's harmful to this country and the war.

I hope I illustrated my point. The last was the Sedition Act, the others are more than just one incident.

I've been Left all my life and I'm deeply, deeply ashamed and nervous about the new generation's disregard of free speech and opinions that contrast their own. It's due to a lack of historical knowledge. I am convinced.

It's not just a feature of social media comments. This line of thinking is heavily promoted by once-respectable newspapers like the Washington Post in their opinion sections. I raised my eyebrows the first time I ever heard Trump refer to WaPo as "fake news" but two years of daily reading later, I tend to agree with him.

It's fine to argue about where the line should be drawn, but pretending the line doesn't exist is just as dangerous.

Working with a specific class of students (based on gender/race) is highly discriminatory, IMO. I think it is unfair to the people not included in the group you want to encourage, specially when it is children we're talking about. Why not have STEM grooming programs for any student who wants to join? Why exclude some? I live in India. We have a history of casteism. Measures like this were instituted 70 years ago to help the downtrodden. Now it prevents people like me from getting a place in the country's most prestigious colleges while other less-deserving people are admitted because of their lower caste. I was born in the 90s. I did not even once witness an incident of casteism in my life. Except the one perpetrated against me. Your suggestion seems to me like a similar measure. It isn't much different from a quota system.

I do agree that there are ways to implement this incorrectly, and my support is contingent on the following:

* Working with minorities in a field does not mean refusing to work with the majority. To ground this in the world of tech, reaching out to girls and underrepresented minorities does not mean turning away Asian & white boys.

* Steering them towards STEM should leave the agency in their hands. Even in the absence of all social and cultural pressure, it's a stretch to assume that we'll have gender parity in all fields. I'm confident in saying that software development(I specifically point out software development since some STEM fields have parity or even a slight majority representation of women) would have a greater representation than it does now, but I don't think it's 50%. If diversity initiatives end up pressuring people into fields they don't want to be in, then that's a failure in and of itself.

So how do you propose to move forward?

If you leave to them, they're going to do nothing, and leave it as is, because objectively, by the metric, it's working, and increasing the relevant ratios.

So you're basically advocating to someone that a) does not agree with you, and b) can demonstrate that their KPIs are excellent, to change their behaviour.

Why would they?

The only meaningful way to move forward to come up with a different solution, if you feel this one isn't working, because if since it seems to be working, just complaining won't change anything.

You don't get change by just complaining and making sad faces; change happens by meaningful engagement with the problem; if you're not prepared to do that, face the facts; there won't be any change.

(...and meaningful engagement obviously does not include distributing internal manifestos)

> (...and meaningful engagement obviously does not include distributing internal manifestos)

I agree that change happens with meaningful engagement. The first step to meaningful engagement on complex issues is usually a discussion. Setting aside that it's incorrect to refer to the memo as a "manifesto", it is very much not obvious to me that this doesn't count as meaningful engagement.

While I disagree personally with much of what was written in the memo, I find the response equally disheartening if not more-so. The backlash clearly displays that so many of those claiming to want meaningful engagement are interested in no such thing.

Unfortunately you can't call posting a document full of your opinions and conclusions meaningful engagement.

That's just meaningful self indulgence.

To be fair, perhaps he thought it was, and was trying to do the right thing, and did it wrong? I'm prepared to go as far as giving him the benefit of the doubt on that front.

...but it was wrong. For all the reasons that have been posted extensively on this topic; but, specifically: engaging meaningfully with a topic means discussion; and although we're having a discussion now, that's because this forum allows it, which is not something that that internal memo allowed.

Basically, tldr: Posting documents != meaningful engagement. Meaningful engagement means actually talking to people, organizing people into groups and delivering your message to the right people. All of that project managery stuff that people don't want to do.

I get it. ...but you gotta do it. That's life. You don't just get to sit in a cave and pontificate and call it engagement.

Feel free to comment (they aren’t disabled, the doc may just be overloaded). For longer form discussions see ​ g/pc-harmful-discuss

Apparently he posted the document in a way that did allow internal discussion.

Should the ACA - or health insurance in general - simply be abolished due to defects that you dislike, without a replacement? If the VP of inclusion isn't doing a good job up to your standards, should they just be fired? When Mr. Damore advocated for the removal of all these programs without providing concrete suggestions on how to replace them with better programs, he committed a similar error. (This is aside from the reasoning he used to try to justify it, which is another set of issues)

Can you justify this with data?

So evidently Google can demonstrate modest improvement. And it sure seems like the Guy Who Got Fired felt like he was seeing the undeserving and huddled masses approaching his ivory tower.

But I'm not sure exactly what you'd like. On the one hand, "Someone needs to do something" and on the other "this blatantly favors one class of people." But I'm not entirely sure that last part is true. Google has quietly improved a lot of feminist hot-button issues that benefit men disproportionately in the last 3 years as well.

For example, Google increased its paternity leave policy. I know because one of the folks I met while interviewing there was ecstatic about it. They've also taken a lot of steps to improve life for families. I know because while interviewing I toured the day care facilities. Hell, Google quietly helps employee kids get into nearby schools and funds (and even runs) after school activities. You don't even need a woman involved to trigger them, Google offers its -ternity leave to adopters as well.

These things disproportionately benefit men by the simple fact that there are many more men in the workforce at Google, so any family related benefits or policies (and these are important, real issues that deserve to be solved) are really a massive win for men who want offspring.

So this whole angle about biases towards "specific groups" is really just a terrible prism. While I'm not saying this is your angle, it's all too often used as a way to shut down any sort of concessions for minorities with unique challenges.

And the business value is really, really clear: a larger workforce means more supply and less demand. From a large business's perspective, the 5 year operating costs of these programs is tiny compared to the savings a 5% reduction in minimum hiring costs would be.

But you can google search for articles from previous years (google controls the comparisons so you can't free query the data).

It looks like there's been a steady up trend for gender diversity (starting from 2014), even if women to men in tech positions are 2:8.

Although, the racial diversity is abysmal.

And once you normalize that kind of environment as "balanced", an attempts to correct it are going to appear to be a new bias. With few exceptions, this is something like a Mystery Spot illusion where you're normalized to such a skewed perception that even balanced and fair ideas can appear to be unfair.

Come on. It's self evident that it's working.

Whether that results in effective outcomes for the business is a different matter; but if your KPI is just 'ratio of XXX in employees' there's no question its doing what it's literally designed to do.

There can certainly be a blurry line in some places that makes it difficult to identify whether a given program has an (unintentional or otherwise) discriminatory effect but a lot of the stuff he objected to is very clearly positive assistance for people who need it, and not anything that harms men in his position.

No, this is the topic that is being debated in this chain and "It's self evident that it's working" is not sufficient to refute the point.

Edit: Positive discrimination in hiring policies doesn't do much to make tech more diverse, it can only shift the diversity within individual companies. Once someone is already a software engineer, they're almost certainly going to be hired somewhere if they're any good. Giving them preferential treatment does next to nothing for all of the members of their demographic group who aren't software engineers.

A bigot is precisely, "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance."

- A simplified tax code along with tax cuts with the goal of growing the market.

- Fairer trade agreements that put American workers first.

- Ease the process of home ownership.

- Investment in transportation and electric infrastructure.

- Investment in, and promoting education in STEM.

- Fostering growth in start-ups and small business.

- Right to gun ownership.

- Right to free speech.

- Right to privacy.

- Right to life.

- Congressional term limits.

I don't agree with a lot of it but it seems they're far from monsters. They're pretty up front about what they believe and why.

- Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law

The implication here being that letting gay people get married is going to erode our foundation as a free society and obliterate all of our values as a culture. There are plenty of other callouts in that document to homophobic non-sense.

http://www.hrc.org/blog/republican-national-convention-2016-...

Furthermore, the bigotry and discrimination in the GOP platform is well supported by the actual conduct of republican lawmakers in the house and senate.

An individual's right to hold their own opinions on these matters - regardless of how much I might agree with them - is one matter, but it's intellectually dishonest to pretend nothing objectionable is a part of the modern GOP platform. I say this as someone who voted GOP in the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Mexico

Supporting a GOP candidate isn't necessarily making you a bigot. Not all candidates are bigots. I personally am a libertarian, and I get made fun of so often it's pretty insane.

Repeatedly, I've been yelled at (yes yelled at) by liberals claiming I "helped elect the next Hitler". This has happened more than once. At work, at social events, etc. and it's insane that just not supporting what I feel is also bigotry (liberal ideals) that I'm treated that way[1].

[1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry

Not exactly, but it is saying that bigotry is not a deal-breaker for your support and that's a distinction with a marginal difference. See also http://time.com/4405018/gop-platform-lgbt-issues/

There was perhaps a glimmer of hope, thinking "Ok, now the left will rethink its position, will turn the DNC upside down and a new and vibrant left will appear in the American politics, possibly running with many of the idea that Sanders ran" and then nothing much happened.

The main political message so far is being "anti - whatever the president is or does". They botched a nice PR initiative about Russia, it was going so well, until they went to far and now they have nothing left. At last someone there raised the alarm and so they limply came up with the new slogan "Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future" "https://www.vox.com/2017/7/23/16016676/chuck-schumer-democra... but I think it is too little, too late. It's doing to be an uphill battle. I just expected more, not sure why.. Instead I got a stream of nonsense about Russia, a bunch of anti Trump rallies, how many scoops of ice creams he had and so on.

OT of course!

Yes it is. You mean it's not a moral precept that you value.

> I do not falsely equate attempts to deny people fair civil rights (as the modern GOP does routinely, in terms of race, gender, gender identity, and so many other ways) as “opinion” so much as institutionalized violence.

Welcome to the logic of the left wing extremist: speech that he or she disagrees with isn't actually speech, it's violence. After all his politics are self-evidently synonymous with justice, therefore any criticism is synonymous with hatred and bigotry. There will never be any criticism of his politics, no matter how measured, no matter how tame, that he will not consider hate speech.

And this position is exactly what causes sane people to say "Left is embracing insanity. I do not like those I affiliate with embracing insanity. I guess I'm just going to avoid participating"

There also exist people who think forbidding abortion is a violation of the human rights of the mothers.

There exist people who think that taxing them and using the money to pay for things they find abhorrent (e.g. war) is a violation of their fundamental rights.

There exist people who think that compulsory education is a violation of children's rights.

Should all these people say the following: "These are basic human rights and the party you have chosen to support thinks that they are subject to debate", "If you say no, you are sanctioning violence against them", "attempts to deny people fair civil rights ... [are] institutionalized violence"? And then feel justified in, say, campaigning to get anyone who disagrees with them fired?

I do agree, by the way, that advocating laws that violate people's rights is not much morally different from doing the violation oneself. As an anarcho-capitalist, I conclude that probably >99% of political discourse consists of people advocating laws that violate people's rights. I sigh, shrug, and try to make a difference in the places where I can.

Imagine if pro-life people said that "No your pro-choice belief isn't an opinion, it's institutionalized murder and it triggers me as a parent, and makes me feel unsafe, and so if you express that opinion you are violating my safe space and may need to be fired for your deliberately offensive remarks."

Citation?

Tolerance is only tolerance if it's voluntary.

Otherwise it is coercion at best, tyranny at worst.

If you have to impose it, it's not tolerance anymore.

You very clearly do not.

They should have taken the mature approach and dealt with it more precisely --even if that would have upset a number of people who simply want to see revenge or feel wronged by an opinion.

After the last election, though, I'm done with making predictions :)

He goes on about how things turned out in Malaysia (from more or less unified country to one divided along racial lines due to overblown identity politics). He concludes that one way to combat that is to remove the first-past-the-goalpost-wins political system in the US. Although in his example LKY combats it via authoritarianism. I don't think we want to go down that route.

Even if you want to separate out a modern social justice movement, it certainly dates back decades.

It's fun to consider it in terms of the foundation of the United States and documents like the Declaration of Independence. The wealthy landholders that declared themselves to be free articulated things so clearly that a bunch of other people decided that they wanted in on that shit.

http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/black-lives-matter-gro...

http://www.sjti.org/

http://www.socialjusticetoolbox.com/

^ from just the first page of a google search.

I doubt it.

(one of them compares a modern movement to the civil rights movement...)

IMO the meaning of the term has changed. The "social" in the contemporary definition of "social justice" stands for social media. When I see "social justice", I think of people having their careers and personal lives put on trial, and the court is the internet itself.

Vote with our feet, and our skills, and go elsewhere. They want to enforce their religion then they can do it without us.

There have to be plenty of people sick of watching what they say, walking on eggshells, and pretending to hold political views opposite of their true beliefs just to avoid the wrath of the regressive left.

This is only going to get worse, and I don't see why we all have to sit back and take it any more.

I personally am Left, Libertarian Left.

I disagree with many of the assertions in the memo, however I do not believe he should have been fired.

Most of the drum beating from SJW's and Diversity Police are from an Authoritarian World view, where tolerance of views they disagree with is not allowed, can not be openly discussed, and should be suppressed by any means necessary

We need to expand the conversation beyond Left / Right, to include what is means to be Authoritarian, or Libertarian

But, and this is important: you don't have any power.

People that are tolerant and acceptable are not the vocal minority. And those in power either agree with the SJW vocal minority, or they are afraid to oppose them.

So what I said above still stands unless their is some concerted effort to change these types of policies and expectations that result in what happened in this scenario.

Now, most people wont write a company wide memo outlining their "controversial" views because they have too strong of a self-preservation instinct.

What I'm pointing out is... are people going to get sick of holding back, keeping their thoughts to themselves, lying so as to avoid judgement. I bet there's a massive amount of readers just on this site that completely disagree with the outcome in this instance.

But they are irrelevant. Because nobody will do anything about it, and the next person to speak up will get fired also. So... nice tolerant open-minded liberals have no power in the face of motivated passionate regressive SJW liberals.

I do not see where that solves the discourse problem, all you end up with is a bunch of Authoritiarna Right companies in a Right Echo Chamber and a bunch of Authoritarian Left companies in a left Echo Chamber

The solution is to get back to promoting true free expression and the idea that "I disagree with what you have to say, but respect you for saying it"

Free Speech is under massive assault, but not from government but from societal sanction which is just as bad and just as dangerous

Societal sanction has a habit of becoming Government Censorship in short order

That won't happen. Because if company leadership, or basically just a group of employees within some company argued for "tolerance" of thought... for example with this Google employee, those individuals would be tarred and feathered just the same.

Does it look like SJW tech industry employees want to discuss and debate ideas?.....

https://twitter.com/polNewsForever/status/894741252977119232

Censorship by any other name is still censorship, and they're not rights if you selectively protect them for "your" causes.

Openness, or simply indifference to personal or political beliefs I thought was the DEFAULT position of most people.

It is sadly not that way anymore... this and many many other examples have shown us all.

Just search twitter for hundreds of tech-industry employees railing against this guy for trying to present a statistical argument against conventional wisdom. They are no doubt celebrating at this moment that he was fired.

Anyone on the fence just needs to ask themselves... what would happen if these same people knew what was in your head? If they heard you speak about your own views? Would they have mercy? Of course not. Who's next?

You can ghettoize yourselves all you want but it will do you no favors.

If you truly believe in what you say you do you would live your life despite the travails, not wail and bemoan them.

Really it's just intellectualism versus a discomfort examining and considering ideas. Even though I have my personal politics, I don't expect many or most to share them and I don't seek to install them over others.

But I do agitate my viewpoint in ways I attempt to be persuasive with. Often I fail, but it's not about 'winning' as some would have it but integrating and synthesizing.

Person over party.

I also didn't make any value judgments. I didn't say that my views were "much better," I just said that I don't identify with leftist political views.

So Google Corporate HR has gone socialist, then? Or perhaps they've adopted anarcho-syndicalism?

I eagerly await the next Google Doodle featuring Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist uprising.

Can you elaborate on the persecution and exclusion you personally experienced from being an American conservative?

From my admittedly distant viewpoint (I'm not from your country), the GOP has changed substantially in recent years. It used to be a responsible political party that respected democracy. Then it seemed to start believing the ends justify the means - redrawing voting districts, filibustering, etc. And at the same time accepting support from seriously racist and misogynist groups.

For example, the Obama birth certificate thing was simply a racist joke when it started. The GOP rank and file should have refused any association with those who suggested it, but because it served their purposes they embraced both the meme and the people promulgating it. The result of that (and more - Clinton trafficking children in a pizza parlour? I'm surprised they didn't add aliens just for good measure...) is that the GOP is now seen as a party that entertains such nutters.

I sympathise that your political system provides just two big boats, so you are forced to row with people you aren't comfortable with. In New Zealand we have proportional representation which lets the more... colourful... people have their own boats, which is very healthy because they quickly realise how few people want to join them, and that their views are unpopular.

Both parties have.

Both have gotten more extreme and more polarized.

From Antifa to the "Alt-Right"

Saying that only the GOP has changed is only looking at one side.

>is that the GOP is now seen as a party that entertains such nutters.

That is largely due to media coverage which only highlights the nutters from the GOP, never the Left, and never any Sensible Members. For example you spoke of Obama and how the GOp embraced the "racial joke" birther non-sense, did you ever see this video on your news of John McCain?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrnRU3ocIH4

Granted this is from the 2008 election and maybe that is outside your scope of "recent years"

There are just as many crazy people in the Democratic Party as the Republican Party. and I say that as a supporter of the King of Crazy parties, Libertarian party, where we had a guy strip on the stage of the National Convention last year....

American Politics... when it stops being crazy I will be worried

There's something missing in your perspective which is that redrawing voting districts, filibustering, etc are political strategies that have been used by every party in the USA since the late 1700s. Gerrymandering was named after one of the signers of the constitution. The Democratic Party had a solid control of congress for several decades in the 1900s due to gerrymandering (voting districts redrawing). The filibuster was used by democrats as well and as the senate passed back and forth between GOP and Democratic control, each side used it more than the last time.

Now, a lot of noise has been made in recent years in the media about these tactics because the GOP happened to be in a position in 2000 and 2010 to gerrymander the districts themselves, but it's nothing new.

I guess regarding the birth certificate thing, credulity for conspiracies is nothing new among the GOP party base. In the 1990s they were convinced that Bill Clinton had dozens of people murdered to cover up his crimes ("Clinton body count").

It's really that easy. Or have the courage of your convictions and try not to freak out when you live in a place where the majority do not share your views. I say this as a very lefty person in a very red state. I don't hide my views even though I know my neighbors and coworkers may be disapproving.

http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-...

Liberals are more likely to defriend someone over politics. Extrapolate that as you will.

You seem to be arguing that we need to create a safe space for conservatives to espouse debunked bio-truth garbage that women or blacks are less suited to being engineers or are somehow inferior. Or that conservatives should have "safe fact-free zone" where they can spout nonsense without having anyone call them on it.

I'm not sure why so many people are willing to take this Google engineer's statements at face value. Actually I think I know why: because it confirms pre-existing beliefs. But even an hour on Google will provide ample evidence that his premises are simply not true. I'm not taking about J. Random Engineer's ramblings on some blog but actual research undertaken by actual sociologists performing experiments and crunching reams and reams of data.

Let me repeat that for everyone: His entire argument is based in a long-debunked flawed premise. It isn't true and no amount of philosophizing about it will make it true. Your feelings don't make it true. The facts are clear. Counter-examples about: look at CS enrollment rates in India for example. The modern western world, especially the United States, socializes women out of computer science and software engineering. It has nothing to do with biological aptitude.

Everyone I know of is desperately trying to find qualified candidates to hire. The idea that more-qualified white men are being excluded to fill a "diversity" quota is laughable. Diversity is about expanding the candidate pipeline and providing some support to those people once hired. Maybe if the industry goes through a huge crunch and programmers are being laid-off left and right then there would be an argument there?

The other thing I'll say is you have to be extremely dense not to either a) understand that you're making extraordinary claims or b) touching a potentially controversial topic that could result in massive bad PR if nothing else. Under those circumstances a competent engineer should take some time to gather evidence and make proper citations to peer-reviewed research. It would also be greatly beneficial to present multiple sides to the argument and make fewer sweeping claims. If you're going to say something that could easily be interpreted as "my coworkers are less-qualified diversity hires" then approach the topic with some humility, especially if you don't have a PhD in sociology.

This would be the equivalent of penning a memo claiming people who believe in God are suffering delusions and they are lowering the bar because they go to church on Sunday or for special events when they could be working. Mention that they're obviously gullible and represent a security risk to other employees. Go ahead - write that memo and route it around a large employer. See if you're still employed a week later (hint: you won't be).

What flawed premise? That men and women are different? For all your insistence that "bio-truths" are wrong, I've never met anyone who actually bothered to cite any studies that contradict them.

>Counter-examples about: look at CS enrollment rates in India for example

That actually supports the author's argument. Given India's notorious treatment of women, it would seem counter-intuitive that they're less sexist. An alternative explanation is that people in poorer countries are more desperate, so they'll take a lucrative job at the expense of their preferences. In wealthier countries, women can afford to pursue their passions.

> Under those circumstances a competent engineer should take some time to gather evidence and make proper citations to peer-reviewed research

The author did make citations (hyperlinks) to most, though not all, of his controversial statements. However, Gizmodo removed them for formatting purposes and possibly to discredit the memo.

Trump inspires a special "rules no longer apply" insanity in far-leftists. They enjoy feeling like the normal rules of conduct don't apply, so they lean into it.

My personal experience with "far-leftists" as you would call them have been large peaceful protests.

This sort of "reframing" doesn't really work as well as you think it does.

I do. Well, brave or stupid.

And I'm far from a GOP voter.

Which human rights specifically do you believe he was attempting to debate?

EDIT: Actually, probably both brave and stupid.

The claims in this document are FAR from "widely-believed" or "scientifically established". By count, most of his claims are just asserted. But even most of the claims with a link are highly debatable.

This is NOT a particularly good advocacy document on the core scientific questions surrounding inequality. It may have some points in the cultural commentary bits, but stop presenting this as good work (on diversity). It's shoddy and amateur.

Most of the links in the original document were removed, either by Gizmodo or the leaker.

But even most of the claims with a link are highly debatable.

Although apparently you are in fact not allowed to debate them...

I can't comment on how Google arrived at the decision or what their line is. Personally, I think these things should be debatable.

But the author didn't do a lot to help himself dull the predictable outcry. He hedged with some comments about his intentions, but a lot of the claims are pretty anachronistic. Given how controversial some of the claims (especially the biologically essentialist ones) were bound to be, I think he could've used a different tone and some better faith representation of the other side.

He didn't yell fire in a crowded movie theater. As the Supreme Court decided applies to the government, so should private industry use as their guideposts.

Google just took a public step forward in becoming an arbiter of morals. Which is frightening given how much of the de facto internet they control.

This is the largest point for me and what distinguishes them from "Know and repeat the company value statement." If they take an organizational position in promoting certain values past a certain degree, then they absolutely have a social responsibility to make space for those who would discuss counter-values.

At will employment has historically been a smokescreen for companies to fire people for all sorts of abusive / illegal / poorly intentioned reasons. The fact that they can fire people for saying anything doesn't mean they should.

Is this really the path we want to go down?

Also, Google has already shown it wants to be an arbiter of morals. For example, perhaps its lost in this topic, but on my conspiracy forums what people are upset about is Google apparently has been expanding censorship efforts and have hired certain groups to assist in deeming content innapropriate... Such "neutral" groups as the fucking ADL! So if you have a YouTube video calling Israels occupation of Palestine "apartheid" that's worthy of censorship. Don't even get me started about the Google execs shady relationship with the deep state and certain powerful politicians. Google turned evil a long time ago, and they are only getting worse.

So it does, thank you. Yes, I agree that several of his claims could have used links to supporting evidence, in particular the bullet points under "These differences aren't just socially constructed". Not that the outcome would be any different.

But it's too late now. I don't know if there's any way he could have expressed his views without being crucified. But he definitely should have done a better job of reviewing it with the mindset of an ideological opponent determined to interpret everything in the worst possible light. (As another example, phrases like "PC authoritarians" and the bit about coal miner deaths are applause lights to the right, but aren't relevant to the core arguments and just serve to alienate the actual audience).

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

They seem not to agree with you.

In fact, all four of them conclude explicitly in favor of diversity initiatives.

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

* Child labor

* The facially legitimate grievances of Al Qaeda

* Universal suffrage

* The illegality of marital rape

Does it just happen that this particular issue, the one pertaining to nerds working for six-figure salaries at software firms, is the last straw?

Unfairly is precisely the point on which your question turns. If you have interesting points to raise in favor of Al Qaeda, you should absolutely be allowed to raise them, and you should not be fired for so doing. I don't think your arguments will have much merit, but if they're cogent, i'm happy to hear them.

The whole point of his manifesto, and the reason why your post misses it, is that he wasn't fired because of the truth or falsehood of what he said. His arguments weren't evaluated on their merits, and presumed to be the wanderings of a mind ill-suited to the tasks at Google's hands. Nobody even bothered to directly address the question of whether he was right, because they were too invested in how it made them feel. That is the problem.

We should be open-minded about everything. Including child labor, ending universal suffrage, and the virtues of Al Qaeda. We should be able to reject bad ideas on their merits, each and every time, because we understand what and why we believe. We should embrace disagreement, because it makes concrete our own worldview. The fact that the VP of Diversity of at Google simply dismissed the arguments of a widely circulated (and therefore, likely, widely agreed with) memo speaks volumes. And it may be that he's wrong. It may be that his arguments are completely empty of substance, maybe the studies he cites are pseudoscience. But if a decent number of Googler's agree with him, as appears to be the case, then his arguments should be addressed directly, on even ground, on their merits - not shamed into silence. If he's wrong, it should be easy to demonstrate it.

* The suitability of African people for chattel slavery

* The historical reality of the Holocaust

* The criminality of child sexual exploitation

Obviously, having spent more than 15 minutes on the Internet, I'm aware that there is some doofus connected to a keyboard somewhere who is prepared to open a lively and spirited dialog about all three of those issues. But, like a lot of other reasonable people, I'm not open to that dialog, and attempting to engage me in it will have consequences: I will never work with or in any way associate with a Holocaust denier or a child pornography advocate.

This can bother you as much as you choose to let it bother you, but the degree to which it bothers you won't have much impact on my thinking.

People love linking to Paul Graham's "What You Can't Say" essay in this context. I've never had a conversation of any sort with Paul Graham that led me to believe that he was a crazy Cheetoh-stained Holocaust denier, or an advocate for the rights of the Cheetoh-stained or Holocaust-history-averse. I think "What You Can't Say" is by far his worst essay. And I'm hopeful that tire-fire threads like these do a better job of illustrating why than anything I could write to explain my point further.

Being open-minded doesn't mean I'll sit still while someone endlessly or facetiously justifies an objectionable notion. If I've heard it before, or it's insincere, I'll dismiss it outright, as I imagine you would.

But on principle, I'll listen to an earnest attempt to demonstrate the merit of anything, even something I'd otherwise categorically reject. You might not influence my position in the slightest, but being open-minded doesn't mean easily persuaded, either. It just means being willing to incorporate new information or ideas in your decision-making process.

Why do you feel it's his worst essay? People generally regard it as one of his best. Jessica said it's her favorite, for example.

It's difficult to infer from this thread why it's his worst. Rather than guess, I thought I'd ask.

I'm pretty sure this isn't what Graham meant to write, but the only thing I ever see people take away from that essay is "the worst ideas are unfairly maligned". Judge the essay for its actual impact on the marketplace ideas. What's the good that's come of it?

One of my favorite parts of “What You Can’t Say”:

> Darwin himself was careful to tiptoe around the implications of his theory. He wanted to spend his time thinking about biology, not arguing with people who accused him of being an atheist.

That's quite a bit different from calling it her favorite. Anyway, I was only curious.

One of the reasons why even gruesome speech is considered protected is so that people with such opinion can speak out and let everyone know who they are. If someone speaks in favorable terms about sexually abusing children, you will think twice about sending your children to that person's home. However, if such speech is prohibited, you will never know this person's intention and that would put the children living near that person at risk

You personally do not have to debate them, but their speech should still be protected

Sunlight is the best disinfectant

Are you in favor of censoring such speech?

I ask because the only way to get rid of the "consequences" you deride is to introduce large-scale censorship designed to privilege the person who speaks first. Which then turns any debate into nothing more than a race to be first to say something, after which one can censor one's critics under the guise of preventing boycotts, etc.

I am generally in favor of "refusing to associate" since that implies personal choice.

"Holding people accountable" is semantically meaningless since it can be applied to both appropriate and wildly inappropriate actions.

There are also different kinds of boycotts - like, there's a difference between boycotting a book, and boycotting the publishing company of a book. These are more on a spectrum and should be debated on a case-by-case basis. But these days, many social-media-driven boycotts are on the chilling-free-speech side, which is why I spoke generally about them above, even though there are exceptions.

There's a difference between speech, and seeking to punish someone for their speech. Failure to recognize that spirals us to an ever-more authoritarian atmosphere until you find yourself the one being punished.

The comment I initially replied to categorized "speech that demolishes the speech it is responding to". That's still speech. Trying to declare it off-limits, legally or socially, is still an attack on speech.

Similarly, your "punish someone for their speech" is... well, you're condemning people who responded to speech with more speech. Because you didn't like the speech they responded with. There is no way to be a free-speech absolutist and be against boycotts, blacklists, and all the other "authoritarian" stuff you're complaining about, because those things are just as much speech as what they're responding to.

It's illustrative to look at this form of definition when thinking about a boycott, which is an effort to discourage free speech.

"An effort to discourage free speech" is free speech.

"An effort to discourage tolerance" is tolerance. ("You must tolerate my intolerance!")

"An effort to discourage liberty" is liberty.

"An effort to discourage diversity" is diversity. (This is literally the form of argument that the manifesto author engaged in.)

I do not start from a position of absolutism on speech, or tolerance, or a good many other things, and so I happily get to think through the nuances and have a much better chance of avoiding self-contradiction.

This is where Google dude's free-speech defenders get in trouble; many of them want to be, or want to be seen as, free-speech absolutists (if for no other reason than to say they don't agree with Google dude but feel obligated to defend his right to say what he wants). But they also want to condemn people who spoke out against him, called for him to face consequences, called for boycotts and refusals to associate, etc., and cannot do so without being self-contradictory since they themselves need to engage in "speech to discourage free speech" in order to do that.

The examples you cite are obviously extreme, and so you obviously put me in a bit of an unfair position in having to defend them, so I will start out by unequivocally stating that I do not hold this belief, nor do I advocate it or believe it in any way.

With that out of the way, saying you would never countenance holocaust denial is in many ways equivalent to the Catholic church saying it would never countenance a heliocentric universe. The science up to that point was on their side. The 'known' facts and their religious scholarship were on their side. But they were wrong. Similarly, you know the holocaust happened because you've read it happened. You weren't there. You likely don't know anyone who was there, or if you do, their memories are quite old, and modern science knows quite a bit about how fickle memory can be. It is possible the the holocaust did not happen. Unlikely in the extreme, but possible.

Now, am I going to waste my time listening to a holocaust deniers argument? No, probably not. I put an extremely low prior on the holocaust being ahistorical. So low that it's unworthy of even the most passing consideration. However, that prior is not zero, and it should never be zero. If I started hearing enough people that I respect saying, "hey, you should really listen to this holocaust denier's argument, it's kind of interesting", I might start to pay attention.

My point in defending a non-zero prior for all beliefs is simply to illustrate that you have some prior belief about what this Google engineer has said. You either have or have not read what he actually wrote. I think it likely you haven't. Because what he actually says is fairly reasonable. Certainly not in the 'holocaust denial' realm of truth-probability.

If you have the time and inclination to post here about it, then you have the time and inclination to reject his arguments directly, rather than simply dismissing them out of hand. What is the point of that sort of dismissal? It convinces no one. It changes no opinions. It adds nothing to the universe. This guy made a rational, intelligent argument in support of his case. He cited studies, he explicitly embraced the ideals of diversity, but simply disagreed with a few of the methods. If you disagree, that's fine. But have the courage to do so substantively. Maybe you'll change some people's minds, and actually further the cause you seem to be arguing for.

That's the same as saying freedom is being allowed to do what we should do and not allowed to do what we shouldn't.

You're not anymore open-minded than anyone else.

When the Reply page opened, I discovered at least one person had voted your comment down... rather ironic, that.

You read all of this, and promptly summarize: "women are, in the the large, excepting some outliers, biologically disfavored to become programmers."

What's happening here?

In addition, he showed an incredible lack of judgement in publishing the document. Anybody could tell you that a lot of people would be hurt by this document, regardless of its scientific merit. As such, it makes sense to approach this sort of thing very carefully, as it is possible to be a total asshole and ruin team cohesion while still being "right". Regardless of the validity of these arguments, it should be immediately clear that the document would produce no substantive change from a policy perspective and cause other employees, rightly or wrongly, to feel attacked.

Not really, he suggests replacing them with other diversity programs that he claims (whether correctly or incorrectly) would work better.

In addition, he showed an incredible lack of judgement in publishing the document.

Yes. He forgot his place and and committed heresy against the party line. That's always a dumb thing to attach your real name to.

Regardless of the validity of these arguments, it should be immediately clear that the document would produce no substantive change from a policy perspective and cause other employees, rightly or wrongly, to feel attacked.

That's an interesting argument, that people's feelings should have precedence over seeking truth.

it makes sense to approach this sort of thing very carefully, as it is possible to be a total asshole and ruin team cohesion while still being "right"

It reads like he did try to be careful to the best of his ability; it's just that in such a hostile environment, not even professionals have sufficient ability.

This is a ridiculous statement. Scientific merit should be the only consideration when you are saying something you believe is important. If you're engaged in small-talk, go ahead and throw scientific accuracy out the window, but not in anything substantial.

Your (and presumably, the google employee that got fired) response?

"Nah, I am right, so fuck your rules"

It doesn't work that way.

Does the length of such a list invalidate the items in the list? I don't see your point.

> in fact, it's kind of hard to think of something you can't six-degrees-of-science your way to defending.

Just because something is not directly implied by something else, doesn't mean there is no correlation. If you are working on a mathematical proof, would you give up if you cannot reach the end in 6 (or any arbitrary small number) of steps? Would you declare the assertion wrong? If yes, you're just a bad scientist.

More likely value to shareholders, in his setting.

That's the problem right there.

I will strongly defend people's right to hold differing opinions, even extremely controversial ones.

But this guy did not take the right approach. He wrote a freaking 'manifesto' and published it fairly publicly.

Diversity initiatives are a very touchy subject, and if you are going to approach them, you need to do it as carefully and tactfully as possible.

What he did was neither careful, nor tactful, and whether he is 'right' or not is completely besides the point.

Clearly there are plenty of things we all (to a first approximation) agree that you cannot in earnest say at your workplace.

I still think your summary is not what people are fighting as the threshold issue, but, I agree with your last sentence.

There are other ways to combat illogical ideas.

As an atheist I would not fire people for being believers (even if it were lawful to fire on that basis) --just because "I know better". If one of them tried proselytizing, by law I can't do anything about it, but even if I could, there would be better ways to combat irrational appeals and sowing of fear.

That said, what if the engineer has "only" presented the ideas as a private person at a "men's club"? If that's not okay, then this infringes upon people's speech outside of work as a citizen --that's chilling. There are Walmarts out there.

I believe in making tech an attractive career path for women --as a society we underutilize them and don't extract the value we could --as the soviets did from their women. But at the same time, I am sensitive to kerbing speech.

Instead, he had the poor judgement to publish in a workplace forum an argument that the women at Google tended to be there due to reduced standards for hiring women, because biologically women tended to be less suitable for the kind of work they were being hired to do.

Timothy Lister had a term for this kind of thing in _Peopleware_: he called it "teamicidal". If you do something teamicidal at your dev job, you should expect repercussions. You are paid to contribute to a team, not to fuck it up in an effort to remake it in your image.

(I think Google took the easy way out here, by the way, and that there were more productive ways they could have responded to this, rather than let it fester for days until they were cornered into a dramatic response. But: I don't work at Google, and my epistemological certainty about this is somewhat low.)

That said, I don't agree with sacking someone because they said something unproven and because it can make people feel bad. I know some Googlers, men and women, and they tell me stories about people getting fired over small indiscretions (a bar, for example) and about people getting called in an office for saying off-handedly "lady" or girl. While not getting the same reprimand for saying guy or boy.

On the other hand belittling "middle America" is kind of a pastime with many a Googler. (When you point out that South Florida is heavily Hispanic and that those Hispanics vote republican, they find it hard to believe, for example.)

His facts aren't even controversial to anyone who knows the science at this point. Google has basically shown themselves as anti-science and evil.

More philosophically, there are compelling reasons to favor "equality of opportunity" and "freedom of choice" over any "equality of outcome" that can only be achieved through coercion and discrimination. At the very least, if someone doesn't want to do something of their own accord, it is hardly doing them a favor to coerce them into changing. And from where comes our moral standing to judge the preferences of other people anyway?

Do you mean black people or women? Or is this an attack on educated people regardless of their gender or racial orientation or identification?

The Mismeasure of Man is a 1981 book by Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The Big-Five model which underpins most of the relevant research in psychology) dates to the mid-1990s. If you want to attack it for being unscientific, you will have to learn about it. Good luck.

If some women, on average, want to do things differently than men, on average, that will result in some apparent gap in the averages -- not because of advantage, disadvantage or bias, but because you're looking at a difference in average preference.

As an example, I could present a graph showing that most Italians are Catholic and argue that it shows a genetic predisposition. But, such an argument would clearly be absurd.

Farm work is explicitly excluded from child labor laws for this purpose.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/ohio/articles/2017-0...

And in up to 7 other states: http://www.thedailybeast.com/marital-rape-is-semi-legal-in-8...

1. The rights of African Americans

2. The belief that women should be allowed the vote

3. The belief that homosexuality isn't a mental illness

4. Any expression of support for democratic socialism

And we could go on and on. Does anyone doubt, for example, that people weren't once fired for supporting socialist ideologies? Or for being gay?

Your response could have been posted without modification of intent in response to the firing of a gay person in 1952.

The existence of other off-limits topics tells us precisely nothing about this particular topic. Neither does the mere fact that a topic is currently off limits tell us anything about its Goodness or Rightness.

This post is manifestly obfuscatory.

The problem is that Google already does do this, for the most part. So what does it mean to say that Google ought to treat people as individuals, if that is already the current state of affairs? The argument, as coded in the document, was that Google ought to cease making any efforts to correct disparities in representation.

As a moral or rational argument, this falls flat on its face. Suppose that there was science to show that cognitive differences between men and women or different races is 100% inborn (there isn't, not even close). Even then, there's still the problem of whether the magnitude of those differences justifies the magnitude of differences in representation. There is not nearly enough data to make a case here, and by presenting the case as made, the author of the doc was doing more than just observing the state of the science. He was making an unsubstantiated claim that his coworkers, or at a minimum the sex and/or races they belong to, are inherently deficient at performing the work.

AFAIK the IQ difference between genders is negligible, but the spread of the IQ is much greater in the male group. This also means that there are more men who are above 130 IQ then women which is kind of necessary to be a programmer. This does not mean that a female can't be a genius! If you want to disprove this you can do two things: 1., Prove that the average female IQ is way higher than mens. 2., Prove that there are as much women who are intellectually retarded ( sorry, English is not my first language, I don't know a better word ) than woman.

Wait, what? What exactly do you think the IQ of the average programmer is?

Therefore it is not unreasonable to deduce that people who work as programmers in prestige companies are, on the average, from the very right-hand tail ends of the normal distribution curve, and the differences of men and women (on the average, again) are significant enough to cause an over-representation of men among this group.

The same thing that causes an over-representation of men among homeless alcoholics at the left-hand-side end of the normal distribution.

[0] https://qz.com/334926/your-college-major-is-a-pretty-good-in...

What are these well known and scientifically established differences in the distribution of traits between men and women?

The research linked in the the document are based on The Big Five Personality Traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

These traits are measured with self-report surveys. I.e. personality quizzes. Not to malign the field of psychology, but this isn't the gold standard of science, IMHO.

Having read Mr. Damore's document, I can find very little in it of substance. It deals with politics and gender in only the very broadest of terms. It does not delve deeply into the scientific issues at hand, instead sprinkling his platitudes with wikipedia links to give them weight.

That being said, I completely agree that the US's nasty brand of liberalism is in a sad state. Our response to this manifesto should have been a cold critique of its many flaws, not the blind hysteria we've apparently opted for instead.

Let's say I want to measure ability in chess. I give everyone a self report survey: how good are you at chess, 1 to 10? Group A averages a 6, Group B averages a 5. Reproduced across time and regions. Is group a better at chess? We have no idea. All we know is that they report a high average than group b.

Switch to big five: "I feel comfortable around people." Rate the accuracy. Even if group a rates more accurate than group b, what do we really known from this? Comfortable is a relative term. Do group a and b have different perceptions or different experiences?

It's same for Big Five. Self-reported neuroticism correlates with, say, diagnosis of depression. It's not just perception because it correlates with outcomes of interest.

But that's not your example. If your example was self reported depression correlates with clinically diagnosed depression, we now know that people can self-perceive depression the same as clinicians diagnose it.

Your example is self-reported neuroticism corresponds with depression. So what? How are we any closer to knowing if we measured neuroticism? Is there a pre-existing link between neuroticism and depression? How did they measure neuroticism to establish that link?

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...

The "lowering the bar" argument assumes there are not enough women or people of color in the population at large who are qualified for any given job. Google's approach probably assumes there are, and puts a burden on the hiring manager and recruiter to find and consider those candidates.

I don't work at Google and am wholly unfamiliar with their internal hiring practices. But in order to prove the author's specific "lowering the bar" claim, we'd need to see data not just on hiring numbers, but on success of the hired cohorts over time. (I'm willing to guess that Google does not try to hire unqualified candidates, period.)

"Lowering the bar" is a dangerous claim that offends the dignity and qualifications of every diverse employee at the company or ever hired by the company. A claim that bold would demand extraordinary evidence, which the author does not convincingly supply, and which I am taking a wild guess does not exist.

No, the argument is that there are not enough women or people of color in the population at large who are qualified for any given job _in the quantities desired by Google and every other tech company_.

They are trying to create a workforce with roughly proportional amounts of women, men, blacks, etc. when men are awarded ~80% of CS degrees and blacks are awarded, what, 2% or so? You can't move the needle in employee demographics when that's the pool you're working with unless you fudge your system a bit. Hell, given how universities already do this[1], why wouldn't Google?

[1]: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race...

> Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

If this isn't the case and Google does actually hire people based on their skill and not skin color or gender, then Google needs to emphasize that, or else the majority of people will look upon women and such as "diversity hires" and build a disdain for them, thus hurting the cause.

Of course, because of cultural and historical prejudices and biases, the pool of candidates that even apply to google is biased towards white males. Everything possible should be done to attract applications or seek out potential candidates from minority populations. But without suggesting any biological differences, it is still likely that because of cultural and historical prejudice, the distribution of talent among candidates will be skewed toward white males. Again, not because of any biological difference, but because they are more likely to have been encouraged or gone to rich universities or had parents who were engineers.

If we have a pool of 100 people and we want to hire the best five, then the bar is set by ranking the people by talent and qualification. If we want to hire everyone who is qualified, then wherever we set the bar, it is still likely that the population above the bar is skewed. So if we want to achieve a rebalancing or quota of employees from a certain sub-population, then it certainly does involve lowering the bar. We can argue over whether that is a good thing to want, or a fair thing, but I don't think you can logically argue that the bar isn't being lowered if you want to achieve a quota for a certain subpopulation. If you are suggesting that the population above the bar is not skewed, then you are suggesting that the terrible cultural stereotypes, biases and prejudices against women and minorities in technical fields has had no effect on their ability to achieve talent and qualification above the level of the bar, which I find implausible.

https://www.google.com/diversity/

"Google doesn't think it has lowered the bar" is implied, not apparent.

Let's not Purity Test people for showing some humbleness in their beliefs. We could probably use more of that these days.

There's an underlying assumption in these discussions that implementing a meritocracy is easy and examining every candidate without regard to their race and sex is the default state of affairs. In this view, any changes you make to the process is necessarily de-optimizing for merit.

But what is "merit"? This isn't a field where you can quantify it. If you were hiring people to lift heavy objects or something, you could test them all and hire the ones with the best numbers and be confident you got the best people for the job. There's no way to implement something like that for the jobs Google has.

So we approximate. We look at degrees and open source projects and do in-person interviews. We pretend that this results in a purely objective evaluation of the candidate's ability to do the job, free of any bias... not because there's any reason to think that's true, but because we really want it to be.

Techies often bemoan whiteboard interviews for being unfair: the skill being tested isn't really the skill you'd use on the job, and it discriminates against people who get nervous when put on the spot, or whatever. It's not outrageous to think that maybe some parts of the interview process, without ever intending to, discriminate against women and minorities in a similar way.

It seems more than a little quixotic if fixing every known flaw in the hiring process isn't enough - that the process must get a certain hiring outcome in order to be "fair".

It is very difficult to tell the difference between biased hiring and actual skew in the population. But when it's a trait that has no obvious connection to the job, it seems best to assume the process is biased, unless really good evidence exists to demonstrate a connection.

For example, let's say your interview process produces hires whose heights are substantially above average. If you're hiring for a basketball team then this would make perfect sense. If you're hiring Java programmers, it's highly likely that your interview process is screwed up. It's possible that the population of good Java programmers is unusually tall because of some biological factor, but this idea needs some major justification before you use it to make decisions.

Obviously, the first thing to do is to examine your interview process and eliminate any source of height bias you can find. But what if you do that and you're still hiring an abnormally large number of tall people? You could take this as sufficient evidence that tall people are better at this, but that's putting an awful lot of confidence in your interview program. It's more likely that you just haven't found all the sources of tall bias. If that's the case, then pushing for more short hires will improve the overall quality of your hires because you won't be artificially excluding good short ones.

But "we're somehow secretly and unknowingly discriminating in our hiring process" doesn't need such justification before using it to make decisions?

For example: does any part of your interview involve a subjective evaluation? If so, do any of the evaluators know the candidates' names? If so, congratulations, your process is probably biased! http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/15/...

That's literally all it takes: some human judgment and some way to guess at the applicant's race. The discrimination can happen subconsciously. You and I would probably fall victim to it despite our best intentions.

Since the manifesto we're discussing is mostly about gender, it's worth mentioning that the same thing happens there: http://m.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract

Nobody knows how to screen job applicants for pure merit without bias. If it's a choice between "our process is imperfect just like everybody else's" and "we stumbled upon the perfect unbiased screening process and all bias in the output is due to inherent variation in the population," bet on the first one every time. It's about a million times more likely.

He uses the phrase "effectively lower the bar" to mean something very different from what almost all of us think of as lowering the bar. The full quote is that one of Google's "discriminatory practices" is "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate."

That is, the bar isn't lowered, they're just trying to fail to hire qualified candidates (from certain groups) less than they currently do.

Unless we have a reason to believe that false negatives are strongly correlated with the axis on which "the bar" is placed (and I don't think we do; false negatives are generally going to come from asking an out-of-left-field question, or the interviewee having a bad day, or something, which are pretty random), this doesn't lower the bar, "effectively" or otherwise.

I don't know that I'd agree with the second part; one thing you can reasonably conclude is correlated with false negatives is diversity (there are studies that people form hire/no-hire opinions within seconds of meeting a candidate, and studies that people have immediate biases when meeting people based on race/gender; there's also the simple fact that's put to good use in small companies that hiring people like yourselves, although mostly in ideological bias etc., is a good means for team cohesion). I assume Google has done more research on this than I have. Handing out "more tickets" may just be a way to cancel out the fact that so-called diversity candidates are getting worse tickets.

However, even if they were simply giving out more tickets to diversity candidates, the average level of qualification of these candidates doesn't change. You just have more of them. Maybe that's a problem because you're discriminating in their favor, but it certainly does not "effectively lower the bar" or impugn the qualifications of this over-represented group. They're all qualified. They're all on the right side of the "bar". There's no alleged increase in the false positive rate.

The fact that he chose to interpret this as "effectively lower[ing] the bar" is not just insulting to his colleagues and unprofessional, but also a sign that he doesn't understand math enough to pass a well-tuned Google interview and got one of the rare false-positive lottery tickets.

I don't think that works. If the process is optimised for accuracy, then decreasing the false negative rate should increase the the false positive rate, right? Intuitively that's how it would work for most classification tasks. If you can decrease the false negative rate without increasing the false positive rate then you're improving accuracy. The bar must be correlated with the false negative rate.

How large this effect is depends on just how noisy the first test is and on how widely above the bar people's abilities range.

https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...

This is where I read up on it, and the letter was written very reasonably, IMO. That article also includes a response from google's brand new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance.

[EDIT] - original (as pointed out by the commenter below) is here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...

Read that instead

The original document is here (credit to lisper) https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

(By the way, I think it is reasonable for some individual rights to be protected within the walls of a corporation, but as far as I understand it, many US citizen's rights, like free speech, do not cross over into private domains. I wish it was different.)

Oh you must be joking. He'll never, ever work in the valley again.

If he spends the next couple months on a non-stop apology tour and participate in however many struggle sessions the various women's groups deem necessary, perhaps one day he'll be left alone and Twitter campaigns won't be started up every time he finds stable employment.

Maybe.

Michael Vick got picked up by an NFL team after dog fighting. It will be similar to that only this guy won't be a celeb.

I don't remember why, but I recently read some old blog posts about Joe the plumber (2008 election), so I've been thinking about how the public has a very short memory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/business/oculus-palmer-lu...

Believe or not, he is going to be a figure, the anti-PC figure that certain group always wish to see, and shall be welcomed by them as a hero. Maybe not big companies, but his future might not be that difficult after all.

The market for developers is very very good, right now. Especially ex-googlers.

Maybe the big 5 tech companies won't hire him, because of the PR disaster that it would be, but any number of startups and small companies would be willing to do so.

Many companies wouldn't even bother to Google his name (personally, I've never seen anyone do that. I just get handed a resume). And even if they did, others would just keep it on the hush hush. Many small startups would be ecstatic to get a Google engineer for cheap.

Other engineers that have been on the receiving end of major scandals, have had no real long term consequences. EX: the donglegate guy was quickly employed elsewhere after he got fired.

Judging by many of the comments in this thread, there seems to be a lot of tech people HERE who are defending him, and would be willing to hire him if they were a hiring manager.

Previously, "the truth" was right leaning; it is now left leaning. Unfortunately, many people find (and have always found) that all it takes to dismiss an opposing moral position is to point out that their opponent's position is untruthful, and the discussion (or lack thereof) ends there.

A sibling poster has linked us to PG's essay on "What you can't say", which states my concerns more eloquently and thoroughly.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)"

That is accompanied with citations. OK, sure, let's take that at face value.

Next, he says:

"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics"

No citations, no nothing, just: X may lead to Y because it feels like it's true to me! And there are people actually taking the arguments presenting in this document seriously? Can we please take a step back and try to read critically what is presented in this doc? Because these arguments are just embarrassingly weak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#...

A meta-analysis of scientific studies concluded that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people. When interests were classified by RIASEC type Holland Codes (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional), Men showed stronger Realistic and Investigative interests, and women showed stronger Artistic, Social, and Conventional interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering, science, and mathematics interests.[77]

The wikipedia article in turn cites:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140

Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests.

Not exactly the same point he made above but you can at least see how he is coming up with "women prefer jobs in social or artistic areas", "men prefer [coding]". I wish for his sake that he hadn't gotten into the differences between front end / back end code because it does sound particularly speculative and presumptuous - but if you can take a step back and take a broader look at his arguments there does seem to be some scientific evidence in support of his main thesis that "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".

Note: I just wanted to point out that I am appreciative that you are attacking his memo on the merits of his arguments. I apologize if that comes across as a patronizing thing to say, but for me the big scandal here has really been the way that dissenters have warped, twisted, and outright dismissed his memo as wrong without even attempting to counter any of his points. To me it feels like the liberal left (of which I self identify, btw) are dismissing his argument not because it is wrong, but because it contradicts their beliefs or because they are afraid of where a serious exploration of the subject might lead us. I don't personally have any issues with affirmative action (although I can understand how it might upset some people) - but I do care greatly about protecting the free and open exchange of ideas. And the calls for the this guy to be fired feel like a disturbing form of censorship to me.

This is always the case. Even companies who are sane need to respond to the foaming-at-the-mouth lunacy of Twitter and related cesspools. As disgusting as the Brendan Eich thing was, I never really blamed Mozilla. I'm just not sure how tech in particular ended up so strongly under the influence of a relatively small amount of loud, shitty people.

His points were that some diversity policies were misguided and may even cause harm but are impossible to correct because they are taboo.

His memo was well-argumented and he was open to contradiction, which on several points could have been brought.

It was not aggressive, not dismissive, not sexist. I personally view his firing as totally excessive and downright anti-intellectual.

Critics, we are not yet in a post-sexist society. We have to improve many things for women and minorities, we have many efforts to make to reach true equality. Shutting down debate on your tactics will not help.

From the article:

> Google’s new vice president for diversity, integrity and governance

A brand of religion with its own sheriff no less.

Who seriously believe you have freedom of speech and thought in such a monocultural place?

Freedom of speech, as in the legal right protected by the First Amendment in the United States, is indeed only against the government.

But free discourse, as an ideal and virtue for the citizens of a republic, is a much broader concept. The citizens of a democratic republic should be open to hearing new ideas and engaging in reasoned debate with each other.

We can have a discussion about the merits of public companies engaging in diversity programs without starting from that premise though.

If you think he said that, you didn't read the article.

I don't think this is an unfair reading. One of the bullet points in the conclusion is literally that the company's diversity programs are problematic because they alienate non-progressives.

But actually doing so is a fantasy. Building bias-free selection processes is really, really hard. I don't think anyone actually knows how. (At least not useful ones. You can trivially eliminate bias by never hiring anyone, for example.)

It looks to me like this is the fundamental agreement between the two sides here. Both sides want to hire the people who will be best at the job, full stop. People who think James Damore is correct believe that the typical hiring process, or at least some achievable tech hiring process, already achieves this, and any modification is necessarily selecting worse candidates. People on the other side, such as myself, believe that the hiring process selects for far more than just merit, and diversity programs are an attempt to fix that.

So, yes, let's pick the best of the best. How?

Diversity through quotas or hiring preferences to X, Y, Z classes of people are bound to make people angry.

Diversity though increased access to education, recruitment efforts, and accommodation of different strengths and weaknesses, personalities, work styles, management styles, etc. would make people much happier.

Oh that alienates you? So you want to murder people and steal stuff? We are going to fire/blacklist you now as a thief.

"Politicization" is quite vague and the author doesn't explain exactly how these programs are "politicized" or what that means. I suspect it comes down to their mere existence.

"But beware of this particular subgroup, because they are biologically inclined to not be as interested or good in the subject."

> Everyone is just rushing to virtue signal, to demonstrate their own purity of thought

No, people are pissed that it's 2017 and people are still trying to make an argument for the superiority of testosterone as a predictor for success in a particular field. Can't we just give everyone a chance, instead of trying to pigeonhole them right away?

> A particular brand of liberalism has reached the point of being a religion, and the establishment is running an inquisition against any who dare to question its points of dogma.

Please don't pay attention to the actual religious agenda being pushed by the party currently in power. You know, the one that is actually running an inquisition against LGBTQ people? The one that wants to tell women what to do with their bodies? No dogma there, surely.

> This is the closing of the American mind.

The closing of the American mind started happening when a political party decided to take over religion and anti-intellectualism as their platform. That's why we've gotten to the point where being called an "expert" is paramount to an insult in certain contexts.