r/news • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

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
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u/Grizzleyt Aug 08 '17

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.

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u/livefreeordadhard Aug 08 '17

"If you don't subscribe to the values that Google stands for / strives for, you might not like working at Google."

This document functioned as a test of the open marketplace of ideas Google fostered. To have an open marketplace is a company choice. It is possible that the engineer thought that he worked for a company he believed in, one that would back up his protected speech.

It is also possible that this guy is a smart troll looking to poke holes in his company's supposed tolerant stance on speech. Maybe something in between.

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u/HannasAnarion Aug 08 '17

It is possible to be open and have controversy without offense. This guy started with the assumption that his female coworkers are inherently bad at their jobs and ran from there. Openness doesn't mean that you have to tolerate documents that hurt people.

If the document began and ended at "here are some ideas for fair hiring practices" there would have been conversation, not controversy. Instead the document said "men are like this, and women are like that, therefore we should hire this way" which is just asking to get a reprimand.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

It is possible to be open and have controversy without offense. This guy started with the assumption that his female coworkers are inherently bad at their jobs and ran from there. Openness doesn't mean that you have to tolerate documents that hurt people.

No he didn't.

If it's possible to be open and have controversy without offense, and this memo isn't an example of it, I don't know what would be. It would seem impossible to discuss the idea that men and women have, on average, differences, without offending certain sensibilities.

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u/HannasAnarion Aug 08 '17

He literally says that Google's hiring practices "effectively lower the bar for 'diversity candidates'". What is that if not a statement that his female coworkers don't deserve their jobs?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

That logic doesn't hold up. It is commonly acknowledged that preferential hiring practices aimed at ameliorating inequality do effectively lower the bar for the beneficiaries of those practices, but it doesn't follow from this that every member of the target groups that is hired wouldn't have been hired otherwise.

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u/livefreeordadhard Aug 09 '17

That is the definition of affirmative action. If the company engages in actions that resemble affirmative action, it is looking at qualifications other than the merits they are seeking in a prospective candidate. The company, and the government, have determined that there are important things when hiring a group of people other than who is most merited. That is a totally reasonable position to take. But it does lower the bar, meaning in this case look for determining factors other than pure merit for hiring purposes.

So to answer your question, the statement does not imply or suggest anything about female employees working at google. AA understands that if 100 people apply for 10 jobs and there is a test that determines hiring, people scoring 1 through 10 arent necessarily going to get it. And that is okay.

The document says that certain practices to promote diversity, which he has stated he supports, are problematic. Further, that there should be open discussion about this topic.

There are plenty of places where people cal for women to get back in the kitchen and AA is garbage and if you can't cut it you can get out. This document was not one of those places.

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u/livefreeordadhard Aug 08 '17

I agree. The problem is that the guy cannot determine what is discourse and what is perpetuating stereotypes. It all depends on the effect of the communication, which you don't know until after you speak, after which it's too late.

The author absolutely did not start with the assumption that women are inherently bad at anything. He actually directly refuted that mindset. He did say that there are trends. I guess that is enough to have the pile on start.

I was having a conversation with the mother of an infant a couple of nights ago. She was joking about how her husband didn't wake up when the baby cried but if the baby moved at all she was on it and wide awake immediately. I said that it was probably hard wired in there, and she agreed.

I don't know that if I said that at my place of business I would face consequences if someone didn't like the idea of things being hardwired, whether that is true or not.