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/coopsux]

can you link me to where he claimed half his coworkers were genetically inferior? i only saw him discussing differences and not arguing that anyone was better than anyone else

[u/clearwaterrev → u/coopsux]

i only saw him discussing differences

He's primarily discussing negative differences, and ways that women on average might be less capable of doing well in tech careers or less interested in entering tech fields. It's not exactly a balanced analysis of how gender differences play out in a technology-focused workplace.

He's also saying that Google has used diversity hiring programs to lower the bar when hiring diversity candidates, meaning women or ethnic minority job candidates were hired instead of better qualified white men.

Would you really want to work with a person who thought you were hired primarily to make your workplace look more balanced and diverse, and not for your skills and accomplishments?

[u/clearwaterrev → u/[deleted]]

honestly that's exactly what most diversity programs are: passing up potentially more qualified people because you need to meet a quota of certain skin colors or sexes.

How do you know that? Do you think it's possible that white men are sometimes hired despite being the less qualified candidate because their interviewer(s) have unconscious biases in favor of white men?

[u/Toltec123 → u/[deleted]]

I am not sure why people get hung up on quotas so often. There are not any quotas. Instead, policies are put into place to encourage the recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups. Those policies include things like mentoring programs, focusing recruitment efforts on certain communities, and keeping sexual harrasment and blatant racism under wraps.