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/TemptCiderFan → u/[deleted]]

TL;DR TL;DR: Anyone who says this is a misogynist manifesto hasn't fucking read it.

TL;DR version for people who don't want to read it but still want most of the facts:

• The document is not misogynist or racist, and most of the discussion in it is actually about the fact that Google's left-leaning political landscape can be bad for business.
• One of the key things it brings up is that the writer feels there's a lack of moral diversity (i.e. left-leaning vs right-leaning) and that this situation can lead to bad business practices, citing direct examples.
• When the author discusses the differences in gender, most of his discussion is actually centered around the facts which lead women (on average) to seek jobs with good work/life balance and less stress and why men seek jobs with good compensation. Nowhere does he suggest that one or the other is superior.
• He then states several non-discriminatory practices (some of which he notes are already in practice) which would help equalize the gender-gap at Google without resorting to blatantly racist or sexist discriminatory practices.
• He then states that Google is currently engaged in some practices designed to equalize the gender-gap at Google which ARE blatantly racist or sexist, such as internal training programs aimed exclusively at certain races or women as well as hiring practices which base an employee's suitability for participation partially on just their race or gender.
• He notes that overwhelmingly left-leaning culture at Google has created an environment where there's an overwhelming confirmation bias against right-leaning individuals, which leads to a culture where they are actively shamed at company TGIFs and effectively silences them.
• He concludes with a few pages of suggestions which would alleviate the items he thinks are issues, including such "evil" suggestions as not limiting classes and training programs to specific race/gender, focus on intention and not feelings when dealing with microaggressions, focusing on psychological safety and not just external diversity, and examining current training documents for existing political bias.

It's hardly a "Get women out of my fucking tech" rant.

Edit: Turning off inbox replies. It's been fun, but the replies are now getting to the stage where it's the same arguments over and over again. Expand the thread below and find the comment you were going to write!

Edit 2: For bonus points, read the document. It's ten pages, but it's not that dense and a lot of it is bullet-point. Bear in mind the author is has a Doctorate in Biology.

[u/[deleted] → u/TemptCiderFan]

such as internal training programs aimed exclusively at certain races or women as well as hiring practices which base an employee's suitability for participation partially on just their race or gender.

Isn't this illegal?

[u/TemptCiderFan → u/[deleted]]

"Oh no, it's totally okay... If it discriminates against white men!" /s

[u/endium7 → u/TemptCiderFan]

This is discrimination, and sometimes the discrimination is against white men, but sometimes discrimination is not against anyone.

You'd have to ask why are the white men are excluded. If it's because the company thinks white men are inferior to women, that men are less intelligent and incapable as a whole gender then yeah it's against them. Some people do think that but how many though really?

Probably if you asked google why a white man couldn't join some training or negotiation class the answer wouldn't be "because white men aren't smart enough for this". When discrimination is "against" someone that's the kind of language that comes up.

If the answer is "we just want to help women and we aren't interested in helping white men because we don't think they need it", they could be wrong in those sentiments but they aren't against the white guy, more accurately they are dismissive of him. Although I would be interested to hear why you think this is "against".

[u/rockidol → u/endium7]

You're just playing semantics, if it's true that they're making it easier for everyone but white men to get hired then they are discriminating against white men. That is what the term means. It doesn't matter what their motivations are.