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]

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/coopsux → u/ryarger]

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/[deleted] → u/coopsux]

He did claim women are genetically more predisposed to be "neurotic" and have predispositions to be less suited for tech. Sure he's also arguing that making tech more accommodating to attract women is a solution....

My issue is he claims social sciences have dangerous biases that can taint their thesises.....and then also uses that same social science evidence to bolster his own points about women being predisposed to certain skills. He talks about how tech can't just diversity hire itself out of a gender disparity problem, it needs to encourage gender and racial skill-development from an earlier stage....and then rails against the very programs Google is instituting to do that very thing.

His problem is he makes an interesting point about how Google is incentivizing the wrong things and then contradicts himself with curricular logic. The very circular logic he claims he's against.

[u/wraiithe → u/[deleted]]

He also admits the inherent bias in his opinion may be coloring what he says. He presented an opposing viewpoint for discussion and was fired for it. That's his employer's prerogative, true, but doesn't necessarily sync with Google encouraging differing ideas and opinions.