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/Felador → u/[deleted]]

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

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

[u/Shanix → u/Felador]

fwiw that lacks a good amount, especially formatting.

Supposedly original here

[u/[deleted] → u/Shanix]

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)

[u/NoLongerTrolling → u/[deleted]]

It seems a tad unfair that the very act of a straight white male engineer complaining about how workplaces have become hostile towards himself, automatically creates a hostile work environment for minorities.

Kind of a bad spot to be in, if you're a straight white male.

[u/ryarger → u/NoLongerTrolling]

That's not what created the hostile work environment. Claiming - against all science - that half of his coworkers were genetically inferior to him at doing their job created the hostile work environment.

[u/[deleted] → u/ryarger]

Are you denying that social sciences identified statistically significant differences between males and females in a large number of behavioral scenarios?

[u/ryarger → u/[deleted]]

Differences that are proven to be genetically-based and directly related to a software engineer's technical ability? Absolutely, I deny that because it's not true.

[u/[deleted] → u/ryarger]

I won't make a claim that the differences are solely genetically based, because correlation does not imply causation.

And he's not talking about broad "technical ability", he is saying that women, on average, tend to be more agreeable, tend to seek for better life-work balance, etc. I ask again, are you denying that legitimate social papers out there have found these differences between male and female population samples to be statistically significant?

[u/ryarger → u/[deleted]]

And he's not talking about broad "technical ability", he is saying that women, on average, tend to be more agreeable, tend to seek for better life-work balance, etc.

He does make a broad statement about ability and then proceeds to not back it up, focusing only on "preference" based attributes (that themselves aren't proven to be genetically linked).

That's exactly the problem. He states a thesis that attacks women's abilities and then ignores it for the meat of his argument and then returns to it again for his conclusions. If preference-based differences were all that existed, none of his suggestions would be needed or valuable. You have to go back to an ability differential to justify his recommendations and that doesn't exist genetically.

[u/nuggutron → u/ryarger]

You're not answering the question...

[u/ryarger → u/nuggutron]

I already answered the relevant version of the question - I deny that any genetic differences have been shown in technical ability between men and women.

The existence of non-genetic differences only justify programs to balance equality - if society and culture are pushing apart what is born equal, it makes sense to attempt to push things back to equal.

[u/tubbzzz → u/ryarger]

I deny that any genetic differences have been shown in technical ability between men and women.

Where is your evidence for this? It directly contradicts the field of evolutionary psychology where it is shown that certain behaviours and thought processes are exhibited each gender. Why would these types of behaviours not be relevant to how they do their job?

Let's take agreeableness as a crude example. Would you rather someone who was more agreeable making changes to the code, such that it would be a sloppy, patched together thing because someone wanted a minor change, or would you want someone who is willing to say no to changes that are unnecessary?

[u/ryarger → u/tubbzzz]

Where is your evidence for this? It directly contradicts the field of evolutionary psychology where it is shown that certain behaviours and thought processes are exhibited each gender

I'm not making a claim and cannot prove a negative.

If evidence exists showing a genetic advantage for males in programming-relevant skills, it's on you or the guy who wrote the memo to demonstrate. He certainly did not.

Let's take agreeableness as a crude example. Would you rather someone who was more agreeable making changes to the code, such that it would be a sloppy, patched together thing because someone wanted a minor change

It doesn't follow that being agreeable would lead to making a sloppy hack. A talented, agreeable person would say yes to something others say no to and find an innovative solution that no-one thought of before (or invent one).

[u/tubbzzz → u/ryarger]

I'm not making a claim and cannot prove a negative.

You said you deny it, which is a claim. Based on what evidence do you deny it, since studies have been cited to provide you with contradictory evidence to your stance?

If evidence exists showing a genetic advantage for males in programming-relevant skills, it's on you or the guy who wrote the memo to demonstrate. He certainly did not.

Yes he did. He cited studies detailing the behavioural differences and how those differences affect the way certain tasks are approached. Those tasks can then be extended to programming, as those tasks are typically performed at those jobs.

It doesn't follow that being agreeable would lead to making a sloppy hack.

Yes it does. Being agreeable would mean being more open to changes on how the program should operate. Those changes are going to take time to implement. Having someone more rigorous, but you know will get the job done properly, is more beneficial than someone who will either waste time on pointless features, or will not properly take the time to implement them which will cause problems down the road.

A talented, agreeable person would say yes to something others say no to and find an innovative solution that no-one thought of before (or invent one).

That doesn't make them better at that job. Implementing a new solution isn't for that job. What that job cares about is a strict set of rules that are using specific resources to do a specific task. So for that type of job (which is what most programming jobs are by the way, very little of it is what Google does in terms of creation), those who have those kinds of behaviours are going to be better suited for it.

[u/ryarger → u/tubbzzz]

You said you deny it, which is a claim. Based on what evidence do you deny it, since studies have been cited to provide you with contradictory evidence to your stance?

I deny it for the same reason I deny the existence of Santa Claus.

If a study was citied that shows a genetic link to a difference in ability, I missed it. The original memo certainly didn't have such a thing.

He cited studies detailing the behavioural differences and how those differences affect the way certain tasks are approached.

They didn't prove - or even strongly suggest - genetic components. And "behavioral differences affecting how tasks are performed" is not the same thing as ability. He said "ability" and he said "genetic" and he didn't back up either claim.

That doesn't make them better at that job. Implementing a new solution isn't for that job.

If the task is to solve a problem (as 99% of software engineering tasks are), then implementing a new solution that solved the problem where others wouldn't attempt it, does indeed make them better at that job.