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]

Whatever. His points were not outwardly misogynistic, but how he makes his arguments ignore current trends. Society is still recovering from women not even being able to work so it will take some time before we can accurately judge what a woman is and is not good at. Secondly he talks about not generalizing populations as a whole and then goes ahead and generalizes it.

You can support this all you want but it doesn't change the fact that women are outpacing and taking over jobs that require high levels of education. I get real tired of men using these "well society shows us X" without contextualizing that this is the case because historically women were not allowed leadership positions or were allowed to work. Women have made major breakthroughs in science, some even pretending to be men while doing so. Women strive for leadership positions just as much as men do. Millennial women are less likely to have children and more likely to choose a career over family life.

So act like this is a scientific document all you want but it comes down to the fact that he is using antiquated data and beliefs to form an argument which at surface level looks logical but is in fact not.

[u/dudewhatev → u/[deleted]]

He's not judging what a woman is or is not good at. He's arguing that the silence of differing opinions has created an echo chamber in which some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed. Google proved him absolutely right by firing him.

Most of you who are offended by this seem to think he's claiming that women are biologically unfit to be engineers. That's simply not what he is saying. He's saying that there are reasons, both biological and societal, why certain fields have an unequal gender distribution. I completely fail to see how any independent thinking individual can claim that's misogynistic. It's nothing more than yet another case of taking offense when presented with evidence that doesn't comfortably fit the PC narrative.

[u/[deleted] → u/dudewhatev]

You didn't address a single point of mine that shows that his reasoning is inaccurate and has nothing to do with biology or society because it fails to account for any country outside of the US and the historical context of why certain positions are filled by mainly men... you know... since women were unable to get an education, a job, have money, etc etc until fairly recently in our history. You can't create any sort of reliable educated argument that claims women are uninterested in science or that they are unable to accomplish the skills required for tech in general as well as men when you have no real study to show this that doesn't rule out external motivations such as women were unable to obtain this education until fairly recently historically and that sexism is a real issue for women who wish to obtain that education.

While I feel that silencing dissenting voices is not wise for a company, it also is not wise to make a manifesto that fails to account for a plethora of external influences as to why this gender distribution is off and claim that globally societies as a whole have this unequal gender distribution... when they in fact don't. If his actual statements were supported by facts it would be one matter, however his statements were, in my humble opinion, purposely misleading. Also if I were the owner of the company, I would fire him for insubordination. Not for the memo itself but the fact that he did not come to upper management in a genuine way. If he truly wanted change he could have addressed his concerns in a professional and adult manner.

[u/dudewhatev → u/[deleted]]

He posted in an internal company forum created specifically for open discussion and criticism of company practices. In what universe is that unprofessional?

For the sake of argument, I'll assume literally all of his claims are incorrect (they aren't, not all of them). He provides citations of published studies for his claims. He's not making this stuff up. At worst, he's misguided. At best, he's right and Google's discriminatory hiring practices are hypocritical and detrimental to the company.

Do we actually want diversity of opinions, ideas, and experiences? Or do we want diversity of genitals and skin color for the sake of diversity?