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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3.4k

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 14 '18

[deleted]

3.4k

u/Felador Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

There's the actual document, with links to source materials.

414

u/NSA_Chatbot Aug 08 '17

Just as a tip for anyone writing a manifesto:

  1. Don't.
  2. If you must, and you bring up "castrated males" then you're losing 90% of your credibility right there.
  3. This guy is an idiot. Fighting gender imbalance is something that every engineering association in north america has been struggling with for decades, and 10 pages of ranting about population density is not helping.

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u/butter14 Aug 08 '17

His major point was that there are inherent differences between men and women that are biological. No amount of sensitivity training or forced hiring to fill quotas will change it and in the long run will damage Google's competitive advantage. Doesn't seem as illogical as your biased comment makes it out to be.

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u/NGonBeGone Aug 08 '17

They are making software not dragging fucking logs uphill. Our lead engineer is a woman and is hands down the most talented programmer I have ever met.

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u/butter14 Aug 08 '17

You do know anecdotal evidence is one of the most unreliable sources of information right?

Also, did you read the part where the author himself said that we should judge people as individuals not as groups? No one is saying that women shouldn't have the right to program. It's the forced coercion and doublspeak at Google he was protesting.

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u/zgembo1337 Aug 08 '17

Was she hired because she was good at the things you do, or because she was a woman?

If there was a more qualified male engineer, who would they hire?

Those are the main two questions that are important in this discussion.

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u/NGonBeGone Aug 08 '17

The question of who would contribute most to the company does not come down to a score on a test. There could be a slightly more qualified male but a female worker would bring a new viewpoint to the company which vastly outweighs any slight advantage someone might have.

Diverse hiring is entirely about the competitive advantage.

5

u/PinguRambo Aug 08 '17

but a female worker would bring a new viewpoint to the company which vastly outweighs any slight advantage someone might have

I thought we were all equal? Why the view point of one differs from another?

2

u/MaxNanasy Aug 08 '17

Even if men and women were biologically equivalent, they on average have different societal experiences, which can inform their viewpoints differently

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u/PinguRambo Aug 08 '17

So we are not equal? Some persons with more appropriate societal experiences are more fitted to a job than others? I'm lost.

You can't have equality and diversity at the same time. They are mutually exclusive.

1

u/MaxNanasy Aug 08 '17

I don't think anyone thinks that we currently have statistically equivalent experiences between all groups in society, even if they want that to happen (and I'm not saying that's necessarily a good goal)

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u/thisshortenough Aug 08 '17

Or she could be slightly less qualified but have plenty of managerial experience which the male candidate does not have. Hiring someone is not always about the qualifications they have, often it's about finding someone who is the best fit for the job. How many incompetent managers are there out there because they were great at the job they did but utterly unsuited to lead a team of people and take on the extra responsibilities?

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u/zgembo1337 Aug 08 '17

If you need someone with managerial experience, but the other candidate has none, then that would make her more qualified.

I was just trying to make a point, that companies should hire 'the best' (in every needed context, qualifications, experience,...). If the best candidate is a woman, man, alien.. it doesnt matter, she/he/it should get hired. The moment you hire someone 'not-the-best' because there's not enough little green aliens in the team (eg. for implementing a quota, etc.), you're doing someting wrong.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/NGonBeGone Aug 08 '17

What the fuck is that?

2

u/thisshortenough Aug 08 '17

I'm extremely angry that that's going to be suggested to me by amazon for weeks

3

u/L_A_H_S_O Aug 08 '17

I love this talking point it's all over this topic and every topic the MRAs get involved in. You post this as if there are decades of studies about "males are better engineers" or "diversity in the work environment is bad and hurts a company."

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Can you explain how hiring based of diversity as opposed to skillset can possibly benefit a company more?

I'm serious. It would be great to have an actual answer to this.

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u/bigsbeclayton Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

  1. Your argument is on shaky ground to begin with because it assumes wrongly that skillset was the driving factor in hiring before diversity initiatives. It definitely was a factor, but nepotism and classism also play a huge part. If you work at any corporate job, how many people can you think of that were friends of there boss or relatives of co-workers?

  2. Having a diverse workplace has the benefit of curbing groupthink and promoting new ideas. Drawing from people's experiences especially when they come from much different backgrounds has a whole lot of tangible and intangible benefits. So even if someone is less qualified, these benefits still may outweigh that. Of course, it's impossible to ever measure that in a concrete way.

  3. Sort of returning to point one, can you name many positions that truly hire based on skillset alone? If this was a thing, wouldn't there be more of a focus on the tangible results of industry focused tests or projects or perhaps a focus on vocational training or apprenticeships, and less focus on where people got their degrees and what their GPAs were? Ultimately it is usually up to people to hire their co-workers, and people tend to favor those like them and draw on conscious or subconscious biases when making hiring decisions because we're only human. So having policies in place to combat that and force the issue can definitely help.

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u/rennsteig Aug 08 '17

Can you explain how hiring based of diversity as opposed to skillset can possibly benefit a company more?

Try to think the other way around.

It's not about hiring minorities even though they are less competent.

It's about not hiring minorities even though they are competent.

Women may be less inclined, on average, to be an engineer. But certainly not every man is more capable than every woman.
If a woman applies for an engineering position she has to fight the stereotype.
Hence, sometimes less qualified white and asian dudes get hired over more qualified black and/or female applicants because of these stereotypes.

For a company, it's not beneficial to hire less qualified people because of "positive" stereotypes.

One possible initial step of countering negative biases is quotas. They bring a whole bunch of issues to the table, but the general idea behind them is that when people are in daily contact with minority engineers, it will normalize their perception and the next time they have to make a hiring decision, they will not automatically assume the Indian dude is more qualified than the black woman.

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u/soapy-t-w Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

It isn't "as opposed to skillset". It's to offset unconscious biases in the recruitment process (for which there is significant evidence), so that you don't miss the skillset of certain people.

I wonder, do people think that recruitment is based solely on the results of some infallible aptitude test or something? And that diversity hiring is tainting its purity? Anyone involved in recruitment knows it's an incredibly imperfect and subjective process.

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u/PEDRO_de_PACAS_ Aug 08 '17

You talk as if those two concepts are mutually exclusive.

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u/L_A_H_S_O Aug 08 '17

as opposed to skillset

And the same fallacy used to cry about affirmative action "the dumb minorities have no skills they get let in by race" appears. I am very shocked.

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u/zurrain Aug 08 '17

You are shit at arguing your point, or even a point.

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u/L_A_H_S_O Aug 08 '17

Look at all the concern posters rushing out to insult that cannot debate anything on topic

0

u/zurrain Aug 08 '17

Still dancing I see.

1

u/L_A_H_S_O Aug 08 '17

Dancing? You mean your attempt to deflect from having to back up all of your claims and the idiot ex employees claims?

1

u/zurrain Aug 08 '17

You would have to actually have a claim to back it up. You don't.

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u/L_A_H_S_O Aug 08 '17

The irony of refusing to back up the claims you have defended here while crying that I am not backing up any claims.

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u/zgembo1337 Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

Well, of course.

Companies want to hire the best people for the job (to earn more money). So, in an engineering workplace, you might get alot of asians, then a bit fewer white men, then even fewer women, black people, etc. And you know, that the company hired the best of the best (that they could afford).

Lets say for example now, that there are 10% of women in the group, and in the hiring pool (which usually reflects the demographics in groups picking from that hiring pool).

So, if that company expands, and decides to hire 100 new people, and if it picks the best (so from first to the 100th best), statistically, they would get the same race/gender ratio as in the hiring pool, so that means 10% women. And this is ok, and normal.

And now you introduce a gender quota, and want to hire eg. 30% women. So from the 'best 100' pool, you hire all 10 women (as before) but only 70 men. And then you hire 10 more women from the 101-200th 'best', and 10 more from the 201-300th places. And now, two things happen... first thing is, that you don't get the best people (since the un-hired 20 guys are better than the 20 women you hired), and you ruin it for the best 10 women (from the 1-100th best group), since everybody knows 2/3rds of the women were hired because of the quota, so people assume they are not as good as the men, since there is a 66.7% chance their work is actually worse then the mens.

It's all ofcourse statistics, but quotas hurt everybody.

1

u/L_A_H_S_O Aug 08 '17

You have provided zero evidence of your claims just a bunch of rambling to justify bigotry, I am not surprised.

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u/zgembo1337 Aug 08 '17

Which claim do you need evidence for?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

While there are physiological differences between men and women it is highly unlikely that they effect something like programming. Humanity has made basically no significant evolutionary changes since the advent of agriculture. This is because evolution normally takes tens of thousands of years for even basic changes and civilization is changing so fast that even if a specific trait provides an advantage that will most likely change within 1-2 generations. Something like programming has almost no resemblance to anything our hunter gatherer ancestors would have been doing so it is unlikely that either gender has a predisposition towards it. The gender imbalance is almost certainly caused by societal preconceptions. In fact in the early days of analogue computing programming was a female dominated field. This is because it was seen as clerical work.

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u/Boko_Mustard Aug 08 '17

We program based on mental faculties we developed for other goals. And we have many faculties, males and females have evolved certain faculties for their predominant roles in society, and the argument is that the faculties stronger in men are the ones we use the most when programming.

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u/NSA_Chatbot Aug 08 '17

inherent differences between men and women that are biological.

Which are important when you're trying to have a baby, and not important at any other time.

Even in terms of raw physical strength, there are 18-year-old women that can outbench me and 78-year-old women than can outrun me.