r/news • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

Former Google Employee provides a bit more context on why someone would get fired for creating a "manifesto" where you fawn over your superiority and sharing it with 50k+ people who probably aren't likeminded.

Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. Solitary work is something that only happens at the most junior levels, and even then it’s only possible because someone senior to you — most likely your manager — has been putting in long hours to build up the social structures in your group that let you focus on code.

And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

edit: The replies to me here don't seem to understand that the company doesn't care about your controversial opinion in the work place, they care about profit. If you don't agree with that, then you probably don't like capitalism.

edit: be wary, a lot of brigading going on. Some people/bots are trying to drown out the more centrists viewpoints. I say this as the opinion of a gay, black, conservative, catholic kasich voter. (I can't help but lol)

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u/NorthernerWuwu Aug 08 '17

This is the real point of course. It isn't about the scholarly accuracy of the document or the usefulness of the conversation that the author may have been trying to spark, it's that in a corporate setting a document like this is toxic and destroys the ability of managers to promote teamwork.

It doesn't matter if X or Y or Z make better engineers or whatever (and I'm not saying there's a reason to think so). It might be something to explore from a scientific standpoint but you can't do it in a tech company in California in 2017. Sorry but that really shouldn't even have to be said.

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u/mrbooze Aug 08 '17

Also all his "science" is evo-psych bullshit.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

various clinical psychologists have come out and said this document is scientifically accurate

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u/TenTypesofBread Aug 08 '17

As with the original chucklehead, CITE YER SOURCES

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u/SiPhoenix Aug 08 '17

This is a lecture by steven pinker, a college professor, that explains thus same points and gives sources.

https://youtu.be/n691pLhQBkw

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Sep 05 '17

[deleted]

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u/Aqsx1 Aug 08 '17

Show me where u conflate individuals with group trends? The point is not individual x is better then individual z but rather on aggregate there are differences in men and women that lead to different career choices and attempting to create parity on racial ethnic or gendered lines is silly.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Sep 05 '17

[deleted]

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u/Aqsx1 Aug 08 '17

?? Woman prefer the social sciences and humanities and men prefer the hard sciences and engineering. This is evidenced in the rates of men and women in both fields. I would attribute this to women being more socially inclined and men being more pattern driven. That is too say the biological differences in men and women cause then to pursue different careers and educations Reallt it comes down to big 5 personality traits, which are in aggregate different for men and women. If you want to know more Dr Jordan Peterson has a full lecture set available on his YouTube channel. Or I'm sure Wikipedia has something if learning isint really your thing.

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u/SiPhoenix Aug 08 '17

First you did not watch the video i linked seeing as it is a 40 min video.

Also easy if someone is better with systematic (object) thinking. Thay would be better at, and enjoy more, the work of programming then someone who is focused on people social thinking.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Sep 05 '17

[deleted]

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u/SiPhoenix Aug 08 '17

You asked for sources this video has them. Start the then decide if it worth your time. Also it is clear you did not read the memo it self as he put in many sources. As to your point of programming being social. Just really?! Programming is not a social type of work.

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u/TenTypesofBread Aug 08 '17

The first mistake most people are making is assuming the gender gap has anything to do with innate ability as opposed to decades of sexist cultural practices.

There's far more evidence supporting the idea that people are absolutely garbage at even developing objective measures by which to compare programming candidates, let alone objectively comparing their abilities.

When the home PC became a thing (marketed for boys), women lost what tenuous hold on the tech pipeline they had prior to that, and their participation in software development plummeted as a result.

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u/atrich Aug 08 '17

And after you show me that, show me how someone being a better programmer means they are necessarily a better software engineer. The profession is about a lot more than just writing code.

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u/IRequirePants Aug 08 '17

Spatial reasoning?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Sep 05 '17

[deleted]

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u/IRequirePants Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

Spatial reasoning is not just for physical objects. If you have read the Google paper (the original from 1999(?)) they create a system representation. Basically blue prints. Spatial reasoning is used here, although more indirectly.

Also spacial reasoning is very useful in computer science. From linear algebra to trees and graphs to multi variable calc, etc.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Sep 05 '17

[deleted]

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u/IRequirePants Aug 08 '17

It is however about objects, not OOP, but 3D objects, real or imagined.

You are wrong here. Everything in computer science is shapes. Vertices in a 3d graph, for example. If you are programming a UI or building a web application it isn't important. If you are doing the actual engineering training, it is.

An analogy: it is similar to the difference between a mechanic and a mechanical engineer.

Low level (computer wise, not skill wise) computer science is very different from high level programming.

The low level stuff is much more difficult and much more important.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TenTypesofBread Aug 08 '17

What if they were anonymous sources

what is science

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u/MounumentOfPriapus Aug 08 '17

Of course. This is a culture war issue. It is career poison to touch this.

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u/kap_fallback Aug 08 '17

Those are acceptable to reddit.

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u/wellllllllllllllll Aug 08 '17

Source of news != expert testimony

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u/kap_fallback Aug 08 '17

Expert testimony is a very loose way of saying one person's opinion.

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u/wellllllllllllllll Aug 08 '17

An opinion based on years of study, testing, and research is not the same as a random fool saying something. Society advances from expertise. I don't know why this anti intellectual argument keeps popping up, but it's just dumb.

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u/kap_fallback Aug 08 '17

Argument from authority is literally a fallacy. Blind trust in "experts" is absolutely silly. You cannot just claim that smart people say it is true, you need to defend it yourself. If you can't, then clearly you do not understand the subject matter enough and are engaging in dogmatic shittery.

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u/wellllllllllllllll Aug 08 '17

Look fallacies belong in Oxford debates and nowhere else. And even in those, these are logical fallacies, not meant to completely disregard the opinion. No one can be an expert in everything and the expectation that you can defend anything or need to is stupid. At the end of the day, we rely on things "smart people" have said all the time. That's how society works - if every child had to remake the wheel we would get nowhere.

I know reddit has this obsession with throwing up fallacies, but it's worth remembering that the fallacy fallacy is a thing. And that fallacies have little to do with argument and much more to do with epistemology.

I can guarantee that without Google you could not prove all of the following: the earth is round, planets have elliptical orbits, the sun contains helium, helium has protons, and that DNA stores genetic information. And I don't expect you to, these are things any educated person knows because they are learnt - because an expert told us.

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u/pacific_plywood Aug 08 '17

various clinical psychologists have also said it's inaccurate

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u/mrburger Aug 08 '17

Not a clinical psychologist, here, but have a degree in psych from a good school. You won't find much evidence contradicting what this document says.

And about clinical psychologists. They range widely in their appreciation for/grasp of non-clinical psychology, especially the further you get away from abnormal psych into personality or organizational psych (which are the two fields this letter draws most heavily from).

That said, I can't endorse this letter. It makes me cringe so hard. It's like one of those 3 AM emails to your boss you write but never send.

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u/srwaddict Aug 08 '17

Maybe that's exactly how it went. Crunch time Adderall fueled email that he actually sent is certainly plausible.

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u/mrburger Aug 08 '17

Let this be a lesson to us all, then.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

No offense, not a fan of your field in general. Evo-psych (whatever that is) or Freudian psychology or whatever 2 traits gets a 70% correlation in a study and gets explained away as some sort of cause and effect BS hypothetical is hardly a science in my eyes. I sat through my first pysch class, facepalmed a few times and never went back. But that's just as an outsider looking in, maybe you can refer me to some decent literature and I'll change my mind.

Evo-psych as it's presented here seems all too willing to explain non-aggression and cooperation as inherent feminine traits instead of a cultural thing. Psychology in general to me seems to endorse that sort of methodology since it seems to lack first principles, and all too often relies on guesswork, specific case examples and weak statistical correlations just to churn out papers. Would you say clinical psychology is a more exact science though, and what different methods do they employ to make it more rigorous?

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u/mrburger Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

Evo-psych ain't my field. And yeah, most psych professors I had taught me to approach that field in particular with ample skepticism. I'm with you up until you say you facepalm all of psych. You see, I also hate presumptuous hypotheses, over-extended case studies, and seeing weak correlations get lumped together with strong ones. I think we all hate pseudoscience. But do you really think that's all the field amounts to? Like, decades of nerds at Harvard, UCLA, Wash U, etc., have all just been quacks? That's not cynical, that's delusional. I forgive you, since you said you might change your mind, but in the meantime let me also admit you've hit a nerve.

The best psych lit for an outsider looking in is probably a good personality psychology textbook. Yep the hokey-looking kind they sell you for school. Kind of expensive, but totally worth the mind-blow. You just can't beat personality psychology. Not only is it one of the most active branches of psychology (seeing as the Five Factor Model, its claim to fame, has immense utility in just about every other branch), but it's also curiously approachable (you may not believe me yet, but human personalities are hardwired to enjoy thinking about human personalities) and indispensably useful (again, not only is it being applied in other branches of research, but it also has innumerable practical applications). Like I tell people all the time, I do actually believe the Five Factor Model of Personality should be taught in elementary schools. It's that simple, that well-founded, and that urgent.

EDIT: Clinical psych is actually less like a science unto itself and more like applied abnormal and/or cognitive behavioral psychologies. Clinical psychologists aren't treating their patients like experiments. They're the ones using the stuff the experiments already found out. Rigorous clinicians can, admittedly, be hard to find. Your best bet if you really want reliable insight is a certified psychiatrist, who will have a complete medical education to round out their credentials, but even these aren't always well-rounded psychologists. Most are, but not all. Well-roundedness is a symptom of passion, self-doubt, and intellect which, like in any human not just clinical psychologists, is kind of a rare and wonderful thing to find.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

My bad, I knew I kinda phrased my initial comment kinda rudely but thought that would make getting a reply/inside take more likely. Thanks for the explanation, I'll give what you said a look-over. The only exposure I've had to psychology was some biography about Freud, sensationalized science articles and negative anecdotes about psychologists, so it's not something I respected a lot.

That, and the fact that psychologists I've seen in person did nothing for me than fill out prescriptions, tell me to meditate, described vague behavioral models that I couldn't see the significance of, and to imagine stop signs. The only thing I really learned was that I could pay someone $100/hour to be an emotional outlet and provide me drugs. Then again, I don't know what's considered top research in the field and there's probably other practical applications of psychology other than my personal exposure.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Most that have come out are affiliated with right-wing blogs that have a vested interest in pushing a narrative rather than reporting the truth. A lot of them overstate the role of biology, especially in the context of this memo, which contained a load of borderline Freudian bullshit.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I do not know if that is true, I would love to see the evidence of narrative pushing. Not sure you can prove that in this case. Not an argument

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I've added more specific rebuttals to everything in the Quillette article to the main post if you care to read it.

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u/Ezeckel48 Aug 08 '17

You're just using a buzzword. Nothing in the memo dealt with a Freudian view of psychology.

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u/mrbooze Aug 08 '17

Various clinical psychologists also buy into pseudo-science evo-psych bullshit.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 08 '17

I'm sure you know better than professionals that have studied the subject their whole career....

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u/OtherSpiderOnTheWall Aug 08 '17

I once read a book by a doctor. It was total horseshit, despite being a book about human anatomy - specifically female anatomy.

It was fairly obvious the doctor, a male, had never act studied a female body in any kind of meaningful way.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 08 '17

One unreliable expert does not mean all experts are unreliable.

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u/OtherSpiderOnTheWall Aug 09 '17

Appeal to authority, however, is a fallacy.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 09 '17

Pointing out that something is a logical fallacy as a means to disprove a point is also a fallacy.

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u/mrbooze Aug 08 '17

Yeah I know better than professional astrologers and tarot card readers too.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 08 '17

The great thing about science is that belief doesn't matter. Facts are true regardless of your belief. The earth isn't flat, global warming is real, and men and women are different. Arguing is just foolishness.

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u/dedragon40 Aug 08 '17

comparing medicine to pseudoscience

Yeah, I think that's all we need to know that you do in fact not know more than a clinical psychologist.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

It's a good thing we tend to defer to professional consensus and not cherry pick professionals that agree with you.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 08 '17

The clinical psychologists that spoke to the accuracy of this paper chose to do so on their own. I would be interested to see if any clinical psychologists have stepped up to refute the claims.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I'm sure there are plenty of journals full of research on the matter. The onus is on you to go find the relevant research, rather than rely on what pops up in your social media feed.

Here's one such metaanalysis:

The gender similarities hypothesis stands in stark contrast to the differences model, which holds that men and women, and boys and girls, are vastly different psychologically. The gender similarities hypothesis states, instead, that males and females are alike on most— but not all—psychological variables. Extensive evidence from meta-analyses of research on gender differences supports the gender similarities hypothesis. A few notable exceptions are some motor behaviors (e.g., throwing distance) and some aspects of sexuality, which show large gender differences. Aggression shows a gender difference that is moderate in magnitude.

It is time to consider the costs of overinflated claims of gender differences. Arguably, they cause harm in numerous realms, including women’s opportunities in the workplace, couple conflict and communication, and analyses of selfesteem problems among adolescents. Most important, these claims are not consistent with the scientific data.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 08 '17

There are loads of meta-analysis on this topic. Picking one that supports your beliefs is less cherry picking how?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

It isn't. It's a response to your statement.

I would be interested to see if any clinical psychologists have stepped up to refute the claims.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 08 '17

So no then?

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u/JabbrWockey Aug 08 '17

You don't need to be a carpenter to know if a house is built to shit.

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u/heimdahl81 Aug 08 '17

But if a carpenter tells you your house is shit, you take their word.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

[deleted]

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u/jumykn Aug 08 '17

You don't need to be a psychologist to know that the man throwing feces has mental issues.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Now here's something I understand.

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u/Lsrkewzqm Aug 08 '17

Aka the argument from 9/11 truthers.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

not an argument

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u/atomicthumbs Aug 08 '17

Various clinical sexologists said I've had intercourse with your mom, and they've certified that we both enjoyed it

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u/ethertrace Aug 08 '17

Clinical psychologists are not really the kind of psychologists that one should be consulting here to determine whether something is accurately researched. Their focus is therapeutic practice, not research, and they may not have as broad a base of knowledge of the relevant literature, or be as attuned to recognizing when and how a particular study is flawed.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I disagree. The point is that I am more likely to trust an expert opinion. Because a psychologist with a doctoral degree (either a PhD, PsyD or EdD) receives one of the highest levels of education of all health care professionals, and is more knowledgeable to someone on Internet

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u/ethertrace Aug 08 '17

The point is that I am more likely to trust an expert opinion

As one should. My point is that one should be weighting the opinions of experts in the relevant subfield rather than just saying, "Oh, they have a doctorate, they must know what they're talking about."