As an Asian male who once upon a time had to apply to colleges, I'd like to see some evidence for that assertion.
To be clear, I (and hopefully many other people commenting here) have no problem with outreach, anti-harrassment, and other such workplace training initiatives. It's unfortunate that we can't all achieve a baseline level of civility that abstracts away a person's biological character.
But I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place. This tends disturbingly towards institutionalized stereotyping (e.g. "all Asians are nerdy and softspoken, so we're going to lump them into the same cohort and exert an implicit negative bias against them"). It's also particularly vacuous in that our notion of 'diversity' is thereby premised chiefly on superficial appearances - 'you look different, therefore you must be the kind of different we need'.
One would think the more equitable philosophy would be to strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create.
I find it highly reductionist to conflate people challenging biased hiring practices with people challenging diversity more generally. There are likely some in the tech world who are genuinely bigoted and misogynist. I would hope, however, that a larger share are simply perplexed that hiring practices in engineering would be predicated on anything other than an assessment of raw merit.
My final point is this: as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed. Sometimes that's more obvious to the Asian male who grew up in a tough part of NYC under difficult circumstances than it is to the affluent Black female who grew up in a world willing to bias opportunities unfairly in her favor (when some other less fortunate Black female really needed the leg up).
The economic and social structure of the United States is the result of historical processes that were driven by racism and sexism; disparities in wealth and power between these groups continue to exist today due to that legacy.
To take one example, "If average black family wealth continues to grow at the same pace it has over the past three decades, it would take black families 228 years to amass the same amount of wealth white families have today." [0]
While it is a great sentiment that everyone should be treated purely as individuals and it is something to strive for, it completely ignores the economic reality of our country and is an ahistorical approach to public policy or the construction of a hiring pipeline.
We can argue about to what role public companies can or should play to reduce these historical inequities. I think that outreach and education at all levels to increase the number of candidates from underrepresented groups in the tech hiring pipeline is a great step and that reducing these inequities, beyond being ethical, will create a stronger workforce. Others might disagree and have good reasons to disagree. That is a conversation worth having, but it needs to happen in the historical context in which we find ourselves.
Writing a manifesto that claims that the disparity in tech is the result of biological differences that lead women to be inferior at performing in tech and leadership capacities is not the way to start this conversation. In fact this is the exact kind of sentiment that you call out by saying, "I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place."
* Google is a profit-motivated entity. They have to act in the interest of their shareholders. Correcting for historical imbalances - to the extent that it negatively perverts hiring standards - doesn't factor into the calculus of a responsible corporation.
* Jews were systematically exterminated in a historical event that was even more recent than slavery. Countless more were left destitute. Why are they any less deserving of positive bias?
* There are millions of White people across the Midwest who are dirt poor because manufacturing is no longer a meaningful economic sector in this country. What about them?
And more generally, believing that there's a contemporary responsibility to correct for historical imbalances leads you down a fantastically absurd rabbit hole. We should instead be addressing the present socioeconomic condition (which will indirectly benefit many of the historically disenfranchised). And that is the job of government. Not corporations.
* This isn't a competition. It seems that the Jewish people have collectively been more resilient to persecution and therefore need no assistance, but so what? Good for them, but it doesn't diminish the fact that other minority groups still wear old wounds that hurt them today. Are you seriously suggesting that we shouldn't help disadvantaged black Americans simply because disadvantaged Jewish Americans didn't need it?
* Millions of white people across the Midwest are in bad shape, you're right about that. I support programs and practices that will help them out. I also support programs and practices that support other disadvantaged race and gender groups. So I don't know what to make of the question "what about them?". I'd have to hand the question back to you: what about them?
* The government is definitely necessary to address much of this, but it's ridiculous to ignore the role of corporations as the backbone of our capitalist society. The private sector is responsible for the majority of economic activity and employment in many countries; they exist at the heart of the problem. Not to mention that some corporate diversity initiatives are actually attempts to comply with government policy. The wider context to this memo is Google's gender pay gap lawsuit filed by the US Department of Labor.
Perhaps he's suggesting that black, white, Jewish, etc aren't the characteristics that we should be using to classify people as needing help. You'd probably have a lot less pushback if you created a biased hiring process that gave favoritism to people who had attended lower-income high schools or people who are the first generation in their families to earn a college degree. That hiring process would, overwhelmingly, benefit minorities since, as many are pointing out, they've been historically disadvantaged and systemic roadblocks like poor schools contribute to the difficulties we have with social mobility. It's when you start using skin color or ethnic background as a discriminant that it starts to get uncomfortable for many people. I honestly find it kind of bizarre to say that I have more in common with my Russian coworkers, who grew up under communism and are also classified as white, than I do with the minorities who came to my birthday parties growing up.
Having grown up poor and now being fairly comfortable, it's easy for me to see many of the disadvantages poor people face. I attended a public middle school that was less than 10% white. Despite being part of a single-parent family just barely above the poverty line, I had a mother with a PhD who took an interest in my education. Many of my classmates had parents that simply didn't care. And I was lucky enough to test into a prep school and avoid the public high school. At that school, I saw the other side. Most of my classmates, both white and the few non-white, were rich and most had after-school tutors from the local university that would help them complete their homework. My mother worked long hours and I was largely on my own to tackle the very difficult workload (4-5 hours of homework each night). Of the few that I've stayed in touch with, I've seen former white classmates from middle school struggle. And I've seen the few minority classmates from my high school breeze through their schooling and find whatever jobs they've wanted. Their skin color didn't seem to be much of an impediment when they had successful parents standing behind them.
So my opinion is going to be biased by my experience, but I don't see skin color being the biggest factor when compared to socio-economic situation and parental education level. It's not really controversial to say there's a huge correlation between race/ethnicity and being disadvantaged in those two areas, but for some reason it's controversial to say that we should use areas like those instead of race/ethnicity for these kinds of diversity programs.
> In response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, they sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Thus, they experimentally manipulated perception of race via the name on the resume. Half of the applicants were assigned African-American names that are "remarkably common" in the black population, the other half white sounding names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker.
> The results indicate large racial differences in callback rates to a phone line with a voice mailbox attached and a message recorded by someone of the appropriate race and gender. Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback.
http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
This isn't just a poverty or education problem. This study suggests that even a well-educated, affluent black American would face discrimination simply because of his/her ethnic name.
It amounts to collective guilt, which is generally considered to be a violation of human rights.
Several states in the Midwest (Indiana, for example) are actually undergoing a manufacturing boom. Google may have just shot itself in the foot here by making it clear that Midwestern political views are not welcome. I would wager that a sizable chunk of Google's technical workforce hail from the Midwest.
Is this sarcasm or are you serious? Please don't normalize this memo as if it's rational American political thought.
Fwiw I grew up in and went to school in Indiana and it makes this google memo no less awful -.-
Based on my personal experience during my education I think his assumptions are quite accurate. Men are more inclined towards tech and science while women are more inclined towards education and social studies. But this is generalization. You also have women who excel in math and men who excel in education. Its just that there are less of them.
Imo James was very careful with his words and stated multiple times that generalizing is harmful. He even included graphical representations of that: https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502146696203-S...
Fact of the matter is: there's a small portion of women represented in computer science than the average. Anyone whom tries to "guess" why, either based upon fact or unproven postulate, is blackballed and/or fired.
As per "diversity hire" or many other mealy-mouth ways of saying it, comes back to political correctness and affirmative action.
Affirmative action means, for a decision right now, to use attributes you cannot change (sex, skin color, race, age, height) as an equal or primary stat in deciding policy - whether to give you money, whether to hire you, whether to rent to you. It also is an (sex/rac/age)-ism. That's because of X events in the past, and collective guilt or something tries to overcompensate.
The insulting part of this, is that if you, well, aren't a white male, then you might have been hired because of unchangeable attributes, and not because of your skill. Doubly so if you work in a position that entails "diversity" in its title. In those cases, the job was created for your attributes, and not intelligence.
The other half, is that you're not allowed to talk about it. Full stop. End of story. Do not mention the elephant. There is no elephant. Anyone who mentions the unmentionable is summarily disposed.
Tl;Dr. We need a hiring test equivalent to a Turing test. No race, no sex, no body-type, no nothing other than "Can you type the language we're using, and can you answer questions pertaining to the job at hand?"
Genuine question: are all of your co-workers who are best to work with, those that provide most value to yourself and the company, those with the greatest technical proficiency for the job in hand?
I'd suggest that for most jobs the ability to work well with other people in a team to approach the problem is as, if not more important, than the technical proficiencies of the individuals involved. The inter-personal stuff is really, really important.
The darker picture behind that. So we should choose for interpersonal communication and "getting along", no? Then I should hire fellow white males, since they share my culture. And I'll also choose from a similar age group, since I know we'll connect quick due to shared culture. And we can make wiseass cracks about women, share "conquests", make nasty jokes. (Hmm, just described Uber.)
Or I can hire from people whom are good at what they do, get down to work and finish a job, and go home where you make the culture you want there, and not a forced "culture" at work. I don't go to work for culture, or friends, or any social reason. I go to work because I get paid to do a job and I do it.
If working with/for someone is uncomfortable, I bite my tongue, grin and bear it. If it's past social norms and ventures into illegality, either talk with HR about harassing workplace (provide proof), or find somewhere else to work.
My view is that is many parts of the fields I am in is that we are only beginning to see the benefits of women entering engineering and similar fields in significant numbers over a decade or more ago. There simply are not enough woman who came up through that process twenty plus years ago to have the experience many companies assign to a role; this artificial inflation of requirements also pushes out a lot of men as well.
So diversity for the sake of diversity is wrong. not acknowledging we have a shortage of qualified candidates is wrong as well but try to remember this is because it took so long for society to accept women in these roles that it may not have been a dream of many until the last decade or two.
anecdotal, I remember my own sister expressing an interest in science only after Sally Ride (hence the 80s). Seeing a woman in space was a big deal. Before the age of the internet young women only had TV for examples to aspire to and TV still had/has an influence of young people.
"Come work for us - where Senior SREs will publicly question whether or not you are capable of doing your job, based on your gender!" does not sound like a great recruiting pitch. Never mind that it is also an incredibly shitty thing to do.
"We put a policy in place that dictates that hiring should be on the basis of something other than capability"
"Oh my god why are employees questioning whether hires were made based on capability or something else?"
Seems pretty reasonable. It is far from the first time this point has been made: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/5...
"Senior SREs will privately doubt you are capable of doing your job, based on your gender/racial hiring preference" sounds so much better?
Isn't it more that "they choose to act [...]" because it makes life easier rather than "they have to act [...]"?
e.g. there's no legal or ethical strictures upon them to act in their shareholders interest, only financial.
Will Google know that they've "succeeded" at diversity when 50-odd percent of programmers are women, and the bulk of their workforce are Asian and Indian, since they make up the majority of people on the earth? Is Google's goal to have the best programmers they can find, but which fit within the global demographics, because they conclude that there is absolutely no correlation between gender, race, culture, or creed in the aptitude for, or desire to pursue, any given human endeavor?
Or, perhaps, to use your example, is the goal to actually increase the preference for non-white, non-males in order to "catch up" other genders and ethnicities until their population groups exhibit the same level of wealth?
There are a lot of tangents to all of this, but I'm trying to stick to the main point here: at what point will we know that American corporations have achieved "enough" diversity, and that outreach programs and hiring preferences are no longer necessary? What's the idealized situation look like? (Honest question.) What's the measure of success?
Also, are companies in other parts of the world trying to achieve the same thing? Are companies, say, in India and China, hiring white and black people like crazy because they also recognize the extreme and urgent need to diversify their workforces? The answer to that question might help clarify the first.
The whole reason diversity practices exist is because "some classes of people" are already being harmed. Without "diversity practices", we already have practices that emphasize and discriminate sex and race, except they happen to be the status quo.
Attacking diversity for harming "some classes of people" misses the point, because any change to the status quo is necessarily going to harm certain classes and benefit other classes.
But 'intertwined' means correlation, not causation. Being a woman is correlated with not doing software dev. in a tech company. It does not mean that tech discriminate against women, because correlation ≠ causation.
But you're also ignoring evidence that suggests tech actually does discriminate against women. Just to scratch the surface, we've just seen some high profile cases like the scandal at Uber and Google's court case on its wage gap.
Reverse discrimination is the easy way, but it is actually counterproductive in term of reducing biases. As case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law imo, of optimizing the easy metric of enrollment ratio instead of the hard goal of fairness.
Citation needed and it needs to be relevant in a liberal tech company environment.
Wrong. Everybody has an equal opportunity. Equal results are not guaranteed, nor should be guaranteed.
Citation needed.
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid...
This is specifically about why women leave engineering, with a number of incidental measures about the egalitarian qualifications across gender (for the studied population).
Of course, next up is arguing about the epistemology of what "everyone" means, which is how you would have started if you weren't trolling. -1
It's pretty well established [0] that the circumstances of ones birth - race, wealth and, yes, gender are a key determining factor in your expected life outcomes. Equal opportunities are emphatically not available to all.
[0] - http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_as...
Second, any policy intervention to correct "discrimination" is itself discrimination. The alternative is freedom & liberty (which benefits everybody). There are countermeasures to correct the "bad actors" & reward the "good actors". Many people who will choose to not give a certain company business if the company is perceived to be against one's values.
> This is specifically about why women leave engineering, with a number of incidental measures about the egalitarian qualifications across gender (for the studied population).
My responses to the "Key Findings" on the report:
> Nearly half said they left because of working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary.
I don't have a study handy, but this is not a situation unique to women. Too much travel, lack of advancement and low salaries are a symptom of corporate culture & the inverted leadership pyramid. Being on the bottom is not as good as being on the top & there's less room at the top. Having quotas does not help the people at the bottom nor does it necessarily create better cultural dynamics.
> One-in-three women left because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture.
I didn't like the workplace climates of several of my jobs. Didn't like all of my bosses or all of the cultures as well. If there is harassment toward women in a workplace, it's probably indicative of deeper issues where others are not being respected as well (in ways related to the characteristics of that person). The solution is not to put certain politically ordained "victim" characteristics on a pedestal; in fact it's an anti-solution because it discourages organizations/people to explore root causes.
> One-in-four left to spend time with family.
Understandable as this has been a more traditional pattern for women. Having a child means focusing more on family & less on the profession.
> Those who left were not different from current engineers in their interests, confidence in their abilities, or the positive outcomes they expected from performing engineering related tasks.
The map is not the territory. Models are an imperfect distillation of reality; especially models aggregating the complexity of many different lives.
While I agree that there are different outcomes in gender, culture, race, etc. The point is everybody (as in all people) has the legal ability to succeed in a profession. If you want certain people to succeed more, address the tools that they have & work to give them better tools so they can succeed. The wrong thing to do is to encourage a victim mentality & a autocratic culture that enforces a certain predetermined outcome; that is the opposite of freedom & liberty.
> It's pretty well established [0] that the circumstances of ones birth - race, wealth and, yes, gender are a key determining factor in your expected life outcomes. Equal opportunities are emphatically not available to all.
The source you provided assumes unwarranted prejudice as a reason. There are other determining factors related to the circumstances such as ability, temperament, education, culture, intelligence.
Let me clarify. Everybody has equal opportunity but not everybody is equally fit to take advantage of the opportunity. The best way to improve everybody's situation is to make the participants more fit for the job.
I guess the one challenge I would put to this is that I find it difficult to believe that East Asians or Indians have been on the receiving end of any less discrimination than, say, Hispanics in the US, but yet they are now vastly over-represented in tech compared to their population statistics at large. They are so over-represented that they are now clearly discriminated against in areas such as college admissions at top tier universities, where being Asian essentially raises the requisite SAT bar by about 50 points.
You may think there needs to be a manifesto on a "White Male Persecution Complex Culture in Tech", but I'd be interested in why you didn't also write an "Asian Male Persecution Complex Culture in Tech."
Finally, I'll add that there is plenty of evidence it's not a "persecution complex". How do you square Github's reaction to their proposed Electron conference, where all the proposals were accepted in a completely blind process, but they decided they'd rather cancel the conference when it turned out all the proposals accepted were from men? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868
Given the much, much larger pool to pick from, it's natural that they would be over-represented in tech too.
On average in the United States (I say average because someone here is bound to call me an Asian supremacist when I am just taking statistics), Asians make up the highest percentage of college applicants [1], Asians have the highest average SAT scores [2], Asians are the most likely to enter and graduate college [3], and Asians make up the highest income bracket in the US [4].
Given these trends, we should, in fact, see a larger number of Asians in tech and it should not be surprising. Google's bureaucracy should not hire less Asians because "there are more."
I would not mind if Google were 100% Black females. Just as long as it's a merit based system.
[1] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions... [2] https://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/webAdmission%20Preferen... [3] https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Signature12... [4] https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/... [4] summary on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
Note, 2/3rds of CEOs in Silicon Valley are not Asian, he was probably overreacting based on looking just at Google, Microsoft and Facebook, and they're probably under-represented at the management levels overall.
I have no comments on the current Washington administration's personal views - if their goal is to get rid of AA and remove diversity regulations from industry then it's a goal that's fine with me.
Could you provide citations in the manifesto that were oppressive to women?
Manifesto was pretty neutral and pretty clear that this was not at all a text about the abilities of women and how they are inferior. It was about motivations women have given their biological traits.
Google, Facebook run unconscious bias training which has no support in scientific research. At best it does not work at all.
It really was not misogyny.
The manifesto is inspired by Jordan B Peterson, and that guy is not a misogynist or a racist or whatever. He's a psychologist that complains about HR departments of the world that are filled with other psychologists and sociologists. He thinks they have to start looking at science and get to the root of the issue. Unfortunately, they use methods that have no support in science and misuse their position to push their ideology.
One good example is Iran. Where women are oppressed. Yet they choose STEM more often than not. How come our free/tolerant culture allows women to move away from STEM fields, and their oppressive culture pushes women towards STEM fields? Maybe motivations of free and oppressed women are different and free women just don't want to work in STEM? Abilities of men and women are identical (or at least the bell curves overlap significantly). Motivations depend on biology and culture. Motivations are what is differing and no unconscious bias training will fix that.
For example, I know plenty IT women that don't want to work in offices that don't have dress code. They all went working in banks. How is anyone going to fix that bias if women just like dressing well (on average) and being in a dressed up fancy environment.
James just tried to point out that reasons for gender gab in tech might not be only sexism as current left leaning agenda dictates.
I understood memo more like complaining that employees with opinions that differ from "current left leaning agenda" are afraid to express them. And google proved him right by firing him.
This political correctness has brought us very close to Orwellian double think. Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote:
> “We strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it.”
And used this as basis to fire guy who expressed his concerns.
His appeal to replace diversity of gender and race with diversity of thought is completely valid and reasonable.
This incident seems like evidence that attempting a statistics based discussion about gender programs is dangerous - if you are wrong in your interpretation & work at Google you will be fired rather than have your mistakes explained.
EDIT for clarity: not that the memo mentioned Simpson's Paradox at all, but that paradox illuminates serious risk around interpreting clear-seeming evidence. I think that those style of risks where were the original author wanted to push discussion.
SJWs (feminists, PC culture, LGBT, pro-Muslim, BLM, antifa...) when faced with more or less factual data that questions one of their sacred cows (women are equal to men, there are more than two genders, minorities need to be privileged, white privilege, institutional racism and patriarchy still exists...), they overreact with outrage with character assassination and shaming of meagerness. Some call this virtue signalling.
Example of this is how trump supporters are often labeled as nazis, racists, sexists...
While this works well in "echo chambers", it doesnt work as well in court. And I suspect that this guy had law suit for being fired and defamation.
This blog mentions that he already complained to NLRB:
> Damore plans to sue Google; he had previously complained to NLRB and wants to argue that his dismissal was a revenge which would be illegal. See a Damore's defiant answer to Reuters.
http://motls.blogspot.si/2017/08/james-damore-deserves-1-mil...
And regarding gender - let's consider the example of salary negotiation. Now, if you research, you'll see that statistically women are less likely to negotiate as high a salary as men. It would make sense, given that research, to create a women-only program for teaching salary negotiation skills, right?
Except what if the bell curve around those averages was wide? Well then there's a number of men that suck at negotiation, and a number of women for whom those classes would be a waste of time. So the likely better program would be one where negotiation ability was evaluated at the start, and only candidates that needed training received it. Statistically, this program would have more women than men in it, but an exclusive program would not have been ideal.
Maybe I missed the part where he called women inferior?? The gist of his document as I saw it was that only looking at deltas between averages is a myopic approach (makes sense), and that programs need to consider that there's often a wide spread between those averages (also makes sense).
There's a huge difference between creating a safe work environment so you don't alienate otherwise interested talent, versus artificially stacking the deck to create diversity for diversity's sake. The latter approach, particularly when poorly evaluating the data (as the author points out) can cause significant damage to an organization.
Case and point - how is it that a Googler discussing "White Male Persecution Complex" and "majority privilege" is contributing to the discussion of workplace diversity dynamics, but a (now ex-) Googler internally writing about dogmatic diversity and the need for nuance should be fired?
Are any of your co-workers white? Male? How is it that your assumption that they've had a silver spoon in their mouths their whole life not insensitive and inflamitory? Are your comments here not alienating?
Either no one should be able to write on the subject and any discussion a fireable offence, or perhaps rational, respectful, and data-driven discussion should be encouraged (and so far today I've only seen one Googler having written such on workplace diversity).
No. It would make sense to implement other means of deciding fair compensation rather than through employer-employee negotiation. Because it is not fair that compensation should be based on negotiation skills.
The thing I think we have to accept is that the world is unfair. Evidence seem to be that the world is, on average, more unfair to women and minorities.
It is more fair. Employees are at a disadvantage relative to employers when they can't negotiate.
Negotiation skills are at least something anyone can learn, but nobody can learn to be of a different race or gender.
I have many white male coworkers (as you'd expect given the demographic statistics for tech) and I have nothing but the utmost respect for their ability. I don't harbor any assumption that, "that they've had a silver spoon in their mouths their whole life."
I don't think that believing that there are groups that have been more economically and socially marginalized than white males is alienating. I also don't think that it implies that I believe my white male coworkers have been given a free pass to the positions they are in today. Everyone I work with has had to pass the same bar.
As I've stated, all of the statements I've made here are my own, made on my own time, on a public site and do not represent the views of my employer. I leave my politics at home.
White/black/male/female/etc is a really bad proxy for a person's history and character. Something along the lines of "don't judge me by the color of my skin but by the content of my character" rings a bell.
If you are concerned about socio-economic advantages, look at tax returns, not skin color. I know a number of white males that had extremely rough histories and disadvantages, living homeless for a few years or growing up in a cult in Utah and being abused by the leaders of the cult. I have black friends from school who were growing up in one of the richest neighborhoods in the US and attending one of the best schools in the area, going on to Stanford.
Don't dance around the disadvantages you want to correct by using race/gender as a proxy. Measure the disadvantages directly. Broken home? Poverty? Juvinile criminal record? Non-contiguous educational history? All of these are directly measurable/verifiable.
If you want to give the less advantaged individuals more of a chance to fulfill their potential I'm all for it. But measure more accurately than skin color or gender, where the spread and distribution around the averages is far too wide to be valuable, and will exclude a large group of people that have suffered disadvantages and let in a significant number of people who haven't really suffered the disadvantages their group has suffered on average.
Regardless, I find such disclaimers cumbersome and unnecessary. I'd rather interact as adults who understand how to critically dissect each other's essays than instantly assume bigotry or privilege and infer the most insidious implications: "he is basically saying all women suck at their jobs amirite". It just feels so.. unsophisticated. (To be clear I'm not directing that at you I'm just lamenting the situation in general--oops there _I_ go.)
Do you really think the author would say anything different than you've said if you engaged directly?
Several commenters have chalked the author up to basically being a privileged incumbent waking up to the existential crisis of watching one's privilege being slowly taken from them and trying to figure out a way to stem the tide. Do you see it as something similar and therefore it doesn't really make sense to engage or lend it any legitimacy?
It seems a lot behind the opposition to this guy is based on people's assumptions about his motivations. OP or anyone else willing to weigh in would be appreciated.
I did see a lot of partisanship and accusation of misogyny that I cant find in memo at all.
To me this looks like some smart guy saying that google doesnt tolerate views that are not perfectly aligned with left leaning echo chambers, and getting fired for exactly that. Looks like SJWs at google, like thy often do, forced HR to fire him.
I have read that he was chess champion, so I would call this forcing your opponent to check mate himself. I think he planned this since I am seeing this:
> Damore plans to sue Google; he had previously complained to NLRB and wants to argue that his dismissal was a revenge which would be illegal.
If anything, by firing him Google might be saving money in future gender-based discrimination lawsuits. On that alone, the "laissez faire capitalists" should stop moaning about this.
That is your own fabrication. Please stick to what was actually said. They simply showed a lack of faith in their companies hiring practices (making sure diversity candidates were not accidentally turned away) being in line with their stated goals (hiring on merit). On principle, its no worse than employees complaining a bunch of new employees "got in easy" through an aqui-hire. If additional evidence was to be unearthed that this person is actually a raging bigot, then sure, bring out the pitchforks.
>If anything, by firing him Google might be saving money in future gender-based discrimination lawsuits. On that alone, the "laissez faire capitalists" should stop moaning about this.
Indeed, if we're operating on feelings and perception alone, then firing this individual probably makes a lot of sense from a PR standpoint.
And by reading memo instead of its misinterpretations on feminist blogs it seems like he just pointed out that Google created environment where people who dont agree with current left leaning political correct agenda cant express their opinions safely anymore. And he got fired for exactly this: expressing opinions that are not aligned with SJW dogma.
His language was very careful, his claims were sourced. He mentioned multiple times that this controversial points are not his personal opinions but rational explanations, and he was very careful to point out that he doesnt generalize based on this data. I havent find single sentence that could be used on court as proof of misogyny. He is guilty only of opening talking points SJWs and feminists dont want to talk about and use tactic of character assassination to dismiss messenger instead of debating his message.
HR was forced to fire him by outrage that many of their vocal left leaning echo chamber activist caused. I am not convinced this was beneficial for google. He will probably won the case for compensation. And from PR perspective? Sure, regressive left, SJWs, hardcore hillary supporters... they will like this move. But conservative publications use this as perfect point to smear Google, accuse them of spreading left propaganda, accuse them of firing conservatives... I am not sure which camp is bigger and which brings more money.
No, he got fired for making himself impossible to work with. If he disagreed with Google's and his fellow Googler's values, he could've left and go somewhere where he felt welcome. Trying to go out with a bang is just a douchebag move.
> His language was very careful, his claims were sourced
Where are the sources to his claims, pray tell? People keep repeating this as fact, but this is not a paper, and there's no list of references at the end of it.
> He is guilty only of opening talking points SJWs and feminists dont want to talk about and use tactic of character assassination to dismiss messenger instead of debating his message.
Calling people "SJWs" and "feminists" and ascribing some conspiracy to them proves the point that this was a dogwhistling exercise. You, my friend, are barking madly right now.
> I am not convinced this was beneficial for google.
I can guarantee he'll get his ass handed to him in court if he tries to sue Google for discrimination. Any corporation that size has ways to resolve these matters slowly and completely under the radar. To me his sudden dismissal is a strong signal that their legal department gave them the go ahead. They wouldn't do that if they didn't feel they have a solid case.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
The fact that a lot of people became hysterical instead of providing a simple calm response kind of proves his point - That a debate is not possible without people either slandering the author, or purposely assuming malicious intent when there was none. Are google employees so thin-skinned that someone simply questioning a company policy is cause for getting fired?
> If he disagreed with Google's and his fellow Googler's values, he could've left and go somewhere where he felt welcome.
What are you talking about? To the latter part, why should that be the only option? Who are we to tell someone what to do? What if he likes working at Google, and is merely annoyed at one small aspect and wanted to discuss it internally, or improve the situation?
Right. Seems like he valued his point more than his job. Well done, him!
> What if he likes working at Google, and is merely annoyed at one small aspect
Really? Calling the whole organization driven by "leftist ideals" is "a small aspect"? Give me a break. I can guarantee you wouldn't be able to tell me that with a straight face in person, but somehow expect me to take it at face value because you put it in writing.
I will be interested to see if anyone follows his example.
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/steve-bannon-wants-faceb...
And I have to say that I agree with him. This platforms became global communication channel. This is not just private company website anymore. So decision to delete peoples accounts and posts cant be given in hands of some biased moderators with personal agenda.
What is going on now on twitter and facebook, is comparable to phone company disabling your line because you have been talking naughty things over the phone.
I'm sorry, but trying to bring up physical make up as an explanation of why women may or may not be interested in a subject that was denied to them until very recently is ill-informed at best. It'd be like concluding that "gay people aren't interested in getting married, based on the last 200 years of history until 2015."
> Indeed, if we're operating on feelings and perception alone, then firing this individual probably makes a lot of sense from a PR standpoint.
It's not PR, it's HR and legal. Nobody is trying to hang him in a public plaza, but there's a pretty solid argument about him being a future liability.
No TV ad is from 15 years ago was denying anyone anything. They were playing to certain stereotypes, yes, but thats completely different from denying someone a job in tech.
It's kind of unbelievable that people who are willing to take a single study that says pre-natal testosterone determines all future behavior at the same time are happy to dismiss hundreds of other studies showing the impact of gender stereotypes.
Is there any way to discuss generalized differences that won't be perceived as absolute and insulting?
The memo clearly did not make any claims about all women, and the topic at hand (gender representation in roles) is a general one. If there are general differences between men and women, we could expect general differences in their representation in various roles. That doesn't mean any individual woman is inferior, or even different relative to men.
It's really confusing why so many media stories and comments race to phrase this as claiming women are worse at their job, or can't code as well. Did they read it?
Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it in an internal memo, I don't want to hear anyone's opinions in a memo unless it's about the product.
Honestly, in a workplace, if I didn't ask for your opinion on something and we're no talking about it in person, I don't care.
I never got that impression from the memo.
In this sense, it would have been a much better outcome for him to have ended up debating his views in front of a studio audience rather than packing his belongings into a box, because then we'd know exactly what he thinks, and google would have either a solid reason to fire him or a way of mitigating the PR damage.
Why don't you write one? Would that get you fired?
What if all you are achieving is rearranging the dirt (ignore the negative connotations to dirt)?
Skilled URM engineers who meet the Google hiring bar will find a place to work regardless of outreach efforts. The URM outreach efforts will just shift the talented URMs from other companies to its company.
I'm not so convinced that'd be true! If there are no concerted outreach efforts what's stopping the majority of companies from hiring their mediocre non-URM friends of friends instead?
To inverse the quotes:
Men, on average, are more closed towards feelings and aesthetics. Men are not social or artistic.
Men are more disagreeable, leading to men being more combative, getting into fights, and being argumentative.
Men are emotional cold and don't have positive emotions.
You can't have a "women are in comparison to men ..." without getting "men are thus in comparison to women". How is those statements promoting men over women?
Do you think women are so weak and inferior that any male who writes words you perceive to be against them should be fired, silenced, or not debated? I think grown-up men and women can handle the truth and don't need some "safe space" to insulate them from information.
Just the opposite as far as I can tell. Every great evil in history came from grouping people and punishing based on collective guilt (whether the guilt was real or imagined). This includes the crimes of the left and the right.
How is it even logically possible to disenfranchise a group of people by ignoring their group characteristics?
That is how it is possible to logically disenfranchise a group of individuals by ignoring their group characteristics. The disenfranchisement already happened.
Diversity programs are not about punishment it is about recognizing the historical context in which we are acting.
In this case, the action is to shift economic opportunity from one group to another based on visually-identifiable group characteristics. This is justified by the the idea you stated, which is that the group being disfavored is collectively guilty.
Of course, we ignore how many people in that targeted group have no present or past connection to the sins that are being "recognized" by denying them a way forward in life. I'm sure a white male Ukrainian refugee passed over at Google for "diversity" would not be impressed.
If you're in favor of a policy, you should be able to clearly state what that policy actually is, not hide it behind a linguistic smokescreen which minimizes and obscures what's really happening. Own it - the goals, the methods, the unintended consequences, and the victims. Every social policy has them, so own them.
All of those examples are the opposite of
>"treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group"
Do you have any women in tech in your life? Did any of them actually read it?
Disclaimer: I did not read the entire piece. From what I've seen over the past 24 hours, the vast majority of people with an opinion on it did not read all (or any) of it either.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
The "treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group" sentiment of the author is fine except that we have hundreds of years of doing just this in order to oppress and disenfranchise groups of people. Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach and working against institutionalized racism and sexism which has created the distribution of wealth and education and work culture that we have today. Given the massive disparity we see in tech it's ridiculous that this individual felt the need to lambast the relatively minimal amount of work being done to foster a more diverse and inclusive culture across the industry.
If one of the things you have to deal with as a woman in tech is seeing 10 page pseudo-intellectual manifestos about your inherent inferiority at performing in technical and leadership roles published at one of the premier tech companies in the world, and then see that piece supported on the most popular tech social sites then it's no wonder we have the gender gap we see today.
When somebody's views are being attacked for being misogynistic and alienating to their female colleagues, it is not suppression of free speech and diverse political opinion it is common decency. Nobody is infringing on your free speech but they will respond. All of these cries of 'authoritarian left-wing thought-police' makes me think We need a manifesto on White Male Persecution Complex Culture in Tech.
[disclaimer: I work at Google, my words are my own and not my employers]