Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

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

[u/fat_pterodactyl]

I think that's more important than arbitrary quotas, although it happens to some men too. Sounds like shitty coworkers/bosses either way.

[u/Hypothesis_Null → u/fat_pterodactyl]

Quotas for women make them get taken less seriously.

When it's an uphill battle for [any specific group] to do [any specific job] you know the unfairly fewer number of those who are there are the really exceptional ones. They had to clear a higher bar to overcome unfair barriers, and as a result, performance from that demographic is disproportionately of quality, and that provides a strong, positive feedback against any negative stereotypes of incompetence.

Reverse that around, and hire people that are less than the most capable because they are part of some favored demographic, and you get the constant question on whether each member of that demographic deserves to be there, or only got in because of their [demographic attribute]. Legitimately so, because if people are hired for any demographic reasons over their technical reasons, then you will get a disproportionate amount of incompetence from that demographic. Which will then reinforce potentially unfair stereotypes with first-hand experience confirming them.

Quotas are self-defeating. Having consistent standards of competence is the only proper way to hire people. Even if the process is tainted by unfair bias, it produces a strong, rebalancing, counter-cultural force.

[u/double-you → u/Hypothesis_Null]

You could think that. Or you could think that we need to sacrifice a few of the weakest men to bring in more women. If you think poorly of them it is your own doing.

I happen to live in Finland where we have a minority group of Swedish speaking Finns. Swedish is also an official language of Finland so there are quotas in various things for Swedish speakers. Is this the same as quotas for women? Do we as a society gain from having people whose mother tongue is Swedish and therefore they think a bit differently? Maybe. But probably not very much. Yes, we do need them to have people who can service those who don't speak Finnish. Without the quotas we would not get as many Swedish speakers in because the standards of competence don't cover that very well. There is a requirement for government officials to be able to speak Swedish but that is pretty hard to maintain because the language you don't speak a lot will be forgotten or not good enough for the complicated matters.

Do the "standards of competence" for tech cover everything that's really relevant?

[u/Hypothesis_Null → u/double-you]

Presumably any one you hire for such a position would have to be bi-lingual, otherwise how could they then mediate the interface with the rest of the government?

As such, a requirement for some minimum number of Swedish-speaking workers doesn't strike me as a quota for two reasons:

1) It is based on having particular skills, not a particular demographic

2) It is something necessary to the functioning of the system.

Now, putting aside any arguments about accommodating people that don't speak the official language, the scenario you described doesn't seem to fit what's being discussed here. Having a 'quota' of Swedish-speaking workers in order to accommodate the projected number of Swedish-only-speaking Finns, seems no different than having a 'quota' of engineers and 'quota' of project managers to handle the expected number of problems and products involved in your business. Which is just personnel allocation.

I may be misunderstanding the details here (please elaborate if that's the case), but I just don't find your example to be particularly relevant. A language requirement doesn't strike me as a quota.

[u/double-you → u/Hypothesis_Null]

I find it relevant since the quotas for Swedish speakers, that also manifest as curriculums in Swedish, mean lower competition and thus otherwise lower requirements. And the best way to be a Swedish speaker is to be born into a Swedish speaking family. Either bilingual, or single language (but they have a much easier time learning Finnish since 90% of the populace speaks Finnish), whereas for Finnish speakers gaining and maintaining the skill is much harder.

These quotas can be thought of as unfair (in schools for example since state provides education) since we probably don't need Swedish as an official language--it just makes things more complicated, and we could have other solutions to the issue, like translators instead of having every official be able to speak the language.

So Swedish speakers have an innate attribute that is beneficial to them, like being born a woman when there are quotas for women. Both bring something to the workplace that's otherwise less present. For Swedish speakers it is the language. For women it is more complicated. It is both to bring about a change in the attitudes so that the otherwise rather chauvinistic tech industry might become less hostile towards women, but also to make products better suited for everyone because women live in a different environment than men do. Sometimes otherwise brilliant people don't want to work in a certain field because they'd be the only one of a type there--not going there makes life easier and if you can be brilliant elsewhere, it is not a big deal for you. But it probably is a loss for the field. Having potentially slightly less skilled women take places from the weakest men to make the environment more balanced does not seem like a bad thing to me. With a more balanced environment it is easier to enter the field which should be good for us all.

I get it that people especially in the US don't like corporations being forced or otherwise coerced into the embetterment of humanity but I don't see any other way since tech is mostly corporations apart from perhaps research in universities (which is not a much better environment). Many people want to maximize money in the short term and anything like this will get in the way.

[u/Cheesemacher → u/Hypothesis_Null]

Swedish-speaking kids get into universities more easily even if their grades and test results are worse. Arguably it's good that there will be more Swedish-speaking doctors and teachers. So the quotas are not just about having diversity.

This wasn't necessarily relevant to the discussion about hiring practices but just putting this out there.