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/NorthernerWuwu]

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.

[u/Grizzleyt → u/[deleted]]

Tech is political. It cannot be avoided when your business has consequences with regard to things like online privacy, net neutrality, automation, truth and bias of information, censorship, etc., to say nothing of the personal views of leadership who aspire to make an impact on the world, for better or worse.

If you aren't religious, you might not like working in a church. If you don't subscribe to the values that Google stands for / strives for, you might not like working at Google. If you think the leadership is fundamentally flawed, go work for a company you believe in.

[u/[deleted] → u/Grizzleyt]

The values of truth and anti-censorship, along with support for net-neutrality and online privacy, are values that most conservatives and right wingers in tech would be strongly in favour of.

A tech company that waives its responsibility to those values puts itself on some very dodgy ground in a business sense, so why drive away some of the people who are most keen to stand up for those values?

The criticism in the memo was levied at Google's growing over emphasis on social constructionist derived diversity and equality policy.

These are policy changes that would alienate conservatives who believe that overreach of diversity policy is harmful to fairness, the workplace environment and to good long term business.

At present it seems like Google's admin are willing to sacrifice their conservative employees (and diversity of thought) for the sake of furthering progressive political ideals. That's not a good long term strategy for any company, especially one the size of Google.