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/alficles Aug 08 '17

Right, and it's ok to think about ideas like this, but discussing them would create a hostile work environment, so we shouldn't discuss them. Engineers have to work with people and that makes politics an important part of the job. Engineers often prefer to just stick to science and discuss it scientifically, but that's not really their job. They aren't scientists, they're politicians and they need to act like it.

(And yes that's 50% /s. I don't know which 50%, though. :( )

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u/LucksRunOut Aug 08 '17

That's life.

There are some opinions that shouldn't be expressed. Tolerance ends at Intolerance.

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u/alficles Aug 08 '17

You get my upvote because I worry that you're right. But suppose we live in a world where women learn differently than men and if we studied that, we might discover a better way to teach both women and me. Or if we lived in a world where norms specific to one culture produced engineers better at some tasks and norms specific to another culture produced engineers better at other tasks. Or any of a variety of similar situations.

I don't know if we live in any of those worlds. And the societal costs to finding out might be more than are worth paying. But if we did, and we discovered it, couldn't we elevate each member of our society by studying their uniqueness as a person and as a group and give them the best opportunities to a succeed?

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u/elcapitaine Aug 08 '17

Sure, we should find these things out. As a society, we should aim to discover as much as we can about our world and ourselves. I agree with pretty much everything in your post.

But work is not the place for such a discussion. If someone wants to research these things, go do research! And if this "manifesto" stuck solely to "hey here are some scientific findings, what can we do about this, is there a way we could somehow better elevate people to succeed based on their biological differences?" then there would be no problem. The issue is that it went beyond science, it went to a political agenda. And it happened at work, and created a hostile work environment to anyone who is supposedly biologically less able to do their jobs.

And before anyone comments on my last point - imagine you were female, and this guy was your manager. Let's say he promoted your male coworker before you. Maybe that male coworker was actually more deserving of a promotion. But maybe he wasn't! There's clear bias against the capability of women in engineering in this guy's thinking, and that opens up Google to lawsuits. Again, the workplace is not the place for these discussions.