ioctrl

You've seen an employee send out an email to colleagues instructing people of color to stop their efforts to improve the company, claiming the internal review process was an act of racist discrimination and dehumanization, and essentially calling their work a lost cause?

You've seen this followed up by threats to resign from the company if the anonymous reviewers' identities aren't revealed? And all this following prior threats of litigation against the company within the past year?

And you saw this from men or non-persons of color who were not fired? Obviously not, but if you do have examples that are sufficiently comparable in your mind, feel free to describe them and make a case. As it is, you're again falling back on unfalsifiable claims.

And I'm still curious to know why you'd expect a company not to fire someone in this scenario?

FAANG employees tend to consistently be among the most vocal and outspoken critics of FAANG. Also see the 1,200+ employees who signed a petition unconditionally supporting Gebru while turning a blind eye to her problematic behavior.

There's significant overlap between FAANG employees (and SV tech employees in general) and Woke Twitter.

As a white man, when my work is rejected, I assume it's because my work needs improvement. This is an advantage of being a white man. When things don't go my way, I don't need to wonder if it's a macro-aggression, an act of systemic discrimination, or suppression of a marginalized voice. I don't envy my colleagues who navigate these waters.

Furthermore, even if my manager or employer makes it an explicit priority to promote more women or PoC, I don't question whether my own gender or skin color will ultimately work against me at promotion time. I grew up in a time and environment where I didn't need to question that, so I tend not think about it. Even if I did think about it, it's a culturally inappropriate question to ask, so my only option is to keep my head down and work harder.

That's another beauty of modern discrimination: it's unfalsifiable.

From everything made public, her behavior constitutes a fireable offense at any company I've ever worked at, regardless of skin color. And there is precedent for non-PoCs being fired for posting unprofessional messages to internal message boards. So why would you consider her actions permissible?

What are the arguments about racism that were suppressed? The paper that didn't pass internal review was about the external costs of training large models (correction: the paper also discussed language models not adhering to anti-racist language standards).

This was a tool designed to notify employees of security alerts, not a chat app. These are not the same. It feels like people are being purposefully dense at this point.

About 14% of the US population (1 in 7 people) were born in another country. Compare this to 0.07% of the Chinese population.

San Francisco is 34% foreign born, compared to 0.7% in Shanghai.

China is not really in the conversation when it comes to foreign talent yet. But that could change over time.

Bioengineering in academia. Moved to software engineering for an extra $100,000/year. In hindsight, my overall my standard of living has gone down despite the extra money due the housing crunch in the Bay Area.

My father turned 80 recently and he still works five days a week. That wouldn’t be ideal for everyone, but he enjoys his job and he’s remained sharp and capable.

That milestone really highlighted for me Silicon Valley’s weird relationship with age. It’s absurd to imagine 80 year old engineers working here. We’ll vote for a 78 year old to run the country, but won’t trust them to write code. Heck, it’s a bit shocking to see someone over 50 in my office. As someone who got into software engineering late in life, that’s worrying, and I suppose it’s time to start preparing for my third act.

I’m sure the man was doing everything in his power to suppress his natural male urge to leap across the table and attack. Because that’s exactly how men are. You’re incredibly brave.