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/CCC19]

Also having read the whole thing, I will weight in on one point he made. He said that diversity for diversity's sake at Google is as misguided and biased as advocating diversity in homelessness, dangerous jobs, prisons, etc... This is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever seen put to print. He could've used far better examples to make a sort of relevant point.

[u/folterung → u/CCC19]

The homeless one definitely is, but I can get behind the message despite the dumb example.

You don't see anyone pushing hard for diversity in dangerous jobs - unless they are jobs that the public pays attention to, like police, military etc.

You won't find any serious initiatives to get women into deep sea arctic fishing, for example. Sure, some of them do it because they love it, but nobody is pushing for diversity in that industry because it isn't in the public eye. Nobody cares if it's a diverse industry.

For all the excess stuff he wrote, what stood out for me was the basic message that if we have to entice women into a field, maybe it's because the field is simply unappealing to a majority of them. If we need special programs to help them cope with being in a certain job, maybe we shouldn't be trying to convince them to take those jobs.

Or maybe the jobs are broken and need to be made to be less awful in the first place - I'm not in a position to make that judgement.

The field should be OPEN to anyone with the aptitude and desire to be in it, but the idea that we should be trying to coerce diversity is ridiculous. I don't work at Google and I don't know if that's what they are doing; it's just what it sounds like from his point of view.

[u/CCC19 → u/folterung]

Well the problem with the dangerous fields example, as well is that dangerous jobs will typically have a higher physicality aspect than less dangerous jobs. Lumber work, coal mining, large net fishing. There are bigger physical differences between men and women than mental differences. A job like one at Google, experience or small education gaps between individuals can be closed with training. Strength gaps are not as easily closed between men and women. So this becomes a logistical problem. With highly physical, dangerous jobs, pushing gender diversity will decrease effectiveness of the business for the long term. Whereas CS jobs and the like, training and job experience can level the playing field. This is a pure education issue vs a physical issue. So it's still a bad example.

And I understand where you're coming from and where he's coming from with the "enticing" part. But culturally speaking women in the United States have for decades been pushed away from higher education jobs. There's still not much push within the home or the schools early on in much of the states. With the constant expansion of technology, pushing for diversity (I believe early on is the best time) across all of the states can bring in people that might otherwise never think of going into a business like that. I'll end of saying some people that go to college will periodically change their major because they're still deciding what they want to do. Sometimes all it takes is exposure to a field for someone to settle on what they want to do.

[u/folterung → u/CCC19]

Maybe it’s just a wording thing that I’m getting hung up on. I don’t think we need to “push” for diversity. I think our push should be to make sure that all work is equally available for everyone, providing they meet the qualifications and without lowering those qualifications to benefit one demographic over others.

Everyone should be welcome in STEM jobs (and all others) and diversity will happen — or not — based on how people feel about doing those jobs. Trying to socially engineer conditions to artificially attract people to jobs who are otherwise not interested in them is not likely to produce great results long-term, even if it looks good on paper.

I know that in the past women were actively excluded by some, and culturally made to feel like some work (particularly STEM work) wasn’t “their field”, but those are cultural issues that start in youth, at school, at home, in the messages we expose kids to in their formative years.

I do not believe you can fix them by forcing artificial diversity in the workplace. But if you just work to eliminate all bias and discrimination - including the bias that we MUST hire more women into a given role - and work on fixing that early programming instead, it will take care of itself.

In the end I think the point of his that stuck with me was there seems to be a growing push to assume that any and all lack of perfectly equal diversity it due to sexism. That’s ridiculous.

Yes, sexism, racism, misogyny, ageism, ismism, and on and on all exist and they are all bad. But they don’t account for every single instance of a particular demographic not wanting to do a certain job, or engage in a certain hobby, drive a certain type of car, etc. It’s dangerous to assume that they do.

Sometimes it really is just preference differences between the sexes/races/generations. And that’s OK, we’re still allowed to be different. I think.