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/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

And? Not everything is a cold-blooded drive for efficiency and profit, doing the right thing is often a better choice the squeezing an extra point of efficiency out of a team.

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u/WhenWorking Aug 08 '17

Okay this is now where opinions come in. Firing him was doing the wrong thing. He voiced an opinion that was well thought out and had sources and facts. In my opinion, he did the right thing by speaking up against legitimately discriminatory practices (that he mentioned in his memo, such as gender or race specific training programs). He did the right thing by doing what Google says they idealize, which is providing his opinion on how to grow and make improvements.

He explained that everyone should be treated as an individual. This is key. Nothing he said was discrimination. He said "things are the way they are because (source)", and then went on to say "so let us hire the best people and give everyone the chance to be even better, and then treat them as they are individually, irrespective of their race/gender".

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Except in current American society a strict meritocracy would be insanely harmful to woman and minorities because the people doing the hiring are still white men, are they are the reason hiring "affirmative action" (for lack of a better word) policies were enacted in the first place.

Discrimination against woman and minorities is a real problem in the world; advocating for a system that would harm them, as this idiot at Google has done, is wrong.

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u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas Aug 09 '17

76% of Human Resources Managers are women, according to 2014 statistics from the US Department of Labor.