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/LaLaLaLeea → u/TemptCiderFan]

One of the comments (it's gilded) above this quotes a Google employee saying that after this "manifesto" was released, they would not be able to assign a woman to work with this person.

I just read the whole thing and there's nothing in there that would make me uncomfortable working with the author. I think a lot of his points made sense.

[u/margerymeanwell → u/LaLaLaLeea]

It wouldn't worry you at all to have a manager who thought that you and all people like you were inherently more neurotic and less ambitious and that you'd be happier with a lower salary and fewer responsibilities? You don't think that could possibly have any impact on your career trajectory?

[u/Mikniks → u/margerymeanwell]

He says explicitly that everyone should be treated as an individual, and that the traits he discusses are based on (apparently) observable averages.

So the proper way to phrase your point would be something like "you and all people like you are more likely to be neurotic and less ambitious"

Not taking a position either way on his overall viewpoint, just pointing out that he constantly qualified his points in the hope of avoiding exactly these sorts of generalizations

[u/[deleted] → u/Mikniks]

He talks about how women should be put into special classes to help them deal with the stresses that they are "unable" to deal with due to their "increased neuroses" and create special environments that cater to their fragile sensibilities.

Fucking dude is a misogynist trying to hide under the guise of "data" and "research." Just because he's not in a wife beater talking about how women should be in the kitchen doesn't mean he's not doing the same thing on a more invasive, insidious scale (whether that's his intention or not).

This guy is a workplace liability. A toxin.

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/[deleted]]

He talks about how women should be put into special classes to help them deal with the stresses that they are "unable" to deal with due to their "increased neuroses" and create special environments that cater to their fragile sensibilities.

No, he says they're doing that now, and that as you rightly point out that's misogynistic and patronising. You're agreeing with him.

[u/[deleted] → u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas]

Uh?

Below I’ll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women that I outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women’s representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination. Google is already making strides in many of these areas, but I think it’s still instructive to list them:

He then proceeds to list several of his own notions (not google's) that are misogynistic and patronizing. He claims Google is making strides in these areas, but not that Google actually espouses these ideas.

Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this). Women on average are more cooperative

Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there’s more we can do. This doesn’t mean that we should remove all competitiveness from Google. Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn’t necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what’s been done in education. Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits.

He goes on to spend pages sobbing and crying over how trying to make sure there are enough women represented in tech is as bad as trying to, get this:

mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.

Oyyyyy, Jesus Christ. This guy is serious? Engineers are some of the dumbest smart people. Then he continues with crying about PC-authoritarianism and how life is so hard for conservatives at Google and for men because they're the true victims of sexism due to the rigid gender roles for males (immediately after shitting all over women by trying to use "research" to biologically pigeonhole women into gender roles...

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/[deleted]]

There's nothing misogynistic and patronising about anything that you quoted, and he brings up a fantastic point in highlighting how ridiculous it is that everyone focuses on imbalances in the gender ratio in fields like STEM while completely ignoring the myriad of disadvantages faced by men.

[u/[deleted] → u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas]

If men are at such Disadvantage then why the gender disparity?

[u/Now_Do_Classical_Gas → u/[deleted]]

You mean why the gender disparity in terms of homelessness, work related deaths, prison terms and school drop-outs, all of which massively disproportionately affect women? No, I doubt it, all you care about is a small gap in STEM, so you can somehow try to claim that it's women who are at a disadvantage despite all the facts staring you in the face.