I think this is a very good step in positive direction that the CEO is addressing the issue in public. Independent of whether I agree or disagree with the decision, I commend the blog.
As the note basically says; starting a debate does not excuse you from suggesting that some of your co-workers are there because of a "lowered bar", your evidence being psuedo-scientific bullshit about the tech-skill distribution among minorities and women.
The fact that these engineers passed the same hiring process, consisting of problem solving, that other employees also were subjected to, and that these workers deliver enough value to pass the fitness evaluations?
If you're suggesting they were subjected to different practices, contrary to what HR at Google is stating, then you better cough up evidence. Do the women and minorities at Google perform worse than White males?
I'm not saying that women or minorities are somewhat inferior (neither does the memo btw, if you've read it carefully), but there are fundamental differences among these groups, like it or not. Ignoring these differences only makes things worse, and no bar lowering, mandated positions of certain group etc. will help. Problems must be solved at the root causes, not fighting their consequences.
"..if minds differ across sexes and races enough to justify diversity as an instrumental business goal, then they must differ enough in some specific skills, interests, and motivations that hiring and promotion will sometimes produce unequal outcomes in some company roles. In other words, if demographic diversity yields any competitive advantages due to psychological differences between groups, then demographic equality of outcome cannot be achieved in all jobs and all levels within a company."
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right.
An evolutionary psychology professor said:
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’)
> But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm.
> Again, though, most of these sex differences are moderate in size and in my view are unlikely to be all that relevant to the Google workplace (accounting for, perhaps, a few percentage points of the variability between men’s and women’s performances). Sex differences in occupational interests, personal values, and certain cognitive abilities are a bit larger in size (see here), but most psychological sex differences are only small to moderate in size, and rather than grouping men and women into dichotomous groups, I think sex and sex differences are best thought of scientifically as multidimensional dials, anyway
> Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at.
> Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism or stratifying opportunities based on sex.
That the empirical claims are accurate doesn't mean that they are relevant to the (memo) author's motive for writing it, whatever that is.
What can Google or any other company do to hire more from one group (example, women) other then by making it easier (lowering the bar) for those groups to be hired?
Other work Google has done to attract engineers from underrepresented groups is reaching out to women and minorities with tech skills and make them interested in working there. Since they still need to pass the same hiring practices, and the same continuous fitness evaluation, we have evidence that these engineers from underrepresented groups do measure up to the task.
Help get the underrepresented group involved in tech opportunities and activities early on in life that they wouldn't have otherwise.
Create STEM schools and give kids computers in elementary school. Use more fun robotics in the classroom. Teach programming literacy. Let kids make games.
Of course the caveat to these approaches is that it takes ~13-17 years from kindergarten until high school graduation / college graduation to when the candidate can then use the skills by starting a tech job. That said, I think upstream educational opportunities like these are the best long-term solution to diversifying the tech population.
He referred to a "lowered bar" in the form of a reduced false-negative rate for "diversity candidates"; at no point in the document did he imply his female engineer colleagues are less qualified. He also had a reference to apparently support this assertion, but since the hyperlink leads to an internal Google group we can't really know its contents unless a Googler informs us.
From the original memo:
> However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
> ...
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
Let's assume this guy knows statistics; by lowering the rate of false-negatives, you raise the rate of false-positives. This means that he's heavily implying Google has employed undeperforming engineers with these practices.
Honest question: without seeing the reference he used to back his assertion, how did you conclude that his belief about this is wrong? Or did you actually manage to read it?
This. I wish there official response from Google would have just opened up to their stance and stood ground. Instead of flimsily trying to appease everyone. It would have been more respectable.
> This means that he's heavily implying Google has employed undeperforming engineers with these practices.
No he hasn't. Rather, he's implying that 'non-diverse' hires have a higher bar to to pass, and that by enforcing diversity quotas you tend to end up hiring exceptionally qualified people from the 'non-diverse' group, which can have the opposite of your desired effect, and perpetuate stereotypes about the performances of people from different groups.
For example, let's say you have 100 people interviewing for 10 positions. Of that, due to current representation of women in tech let's say the candidates comprise 20 women and 80 men.
Let's also assume that 25% of those interviewing meet the technical standards a.k.a 'the bar' required by Google (that makes for 5 women and 20 men).
Google however is only hiring 10 positions, and in order to meet diversity requirements will hire 5 women and 5 men (50/50 split).
Each one of the people hired is qualified to work at Google and meets the bar (none of them are underperforming).
Without any diversity requirements a candidate would need to be in the top 10% of other candidates to get a position however now, for the women, they only need to be in the top 25% of other woman candidates to get the position, whereas the men need to be in the top 6.25% of male candidates.
The bar has been effectively lowered for the women candidates and raised for the male candidates, despite all of them being worthy and capable of working at Google.
If you are always hiring equal numbers of people from both groups, but from one group you are always hiring the top 6.25% of candidates, and the other group you are hiring from the top 25% of candidates, then over time you'll start to find that on average, one group has a larger percentage of high performers than the other.
Not true. You can lower the rate of false negatives without raising the rate of false positives using multiple measurements instead of just one, which as I understand it is what Google does for candidates from underrepresented groups.
> At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.
Good luck with that. You can't take a guy out back and shoot him for speaking his mind, and subsequently expect others do so.
I'm certain Google management knows this as well. They know exactly what they're doing and they're fine with it.
I believe you have misconstrued the message Sundar was giving.
The difference between having the freedom to speak one's mind, and breaching a code of conduct that you sign when you agree to work for Google is clear cut in his note.
A strong message about breaking the code of conduct, yes.
The message here seems abundantly clear and I have trouble understanding how it can miscontrued to be anything other than reacting to a clear violation. I can't even think of how to restate what is so clearly laid out in the note.
I wouldn't rule out the potential that there is uneven enforcement of such violations, and that would make this action look questionable. But I don't know enough about Google's internal operations to get to that conclusion.
When calling it a "code of conduct" does it refer to concrete actions, or just expressing opinions? Other than speech, what was the violation here? Restricting free speech by threat of firing is the solution everyone is applauding? Apparently Google is declaring an attitude in opposition to what they did: "many points raised in the memo ... are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics...". But got fired as a result.
Speech is action and just as capable of breaking any rule or code as physical action. Free speech is also not really relevant here as it has to do with the government's inability to restrict speech.
I think it is certainly a very fine line to walk and people (including Google employees) will definitely see it in a lot of different ways. But, reading this as an outsider, the note appears to me to address the situation very directly and conveys a real sense of urgency (more so than I have ever seen from any of my employers, at least).
> Free speech is also not really relevant here as it has to do with the government's inability to restrict speech.
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Expressing opinions that make employees feel less adequate due to their gender is a violation of the CoC. I applaud restricting that kind of speech, as do most companies. At some companies the motivation might be strictly legal, but regardless of the motivation you're going to get fired if you open the company up to future gender discrimination lawsuits.
"many points raised in the memo ... are important topics."
So what? Other points were a violation of the CoC. Goodbye, good luck, see you around the campus!
So I'd expect every employee posting "The Future is Female" or "#YesAllMen" or something on Memegen/Eng-Misc to be fired as well...but that is not going to happen.
At every company in the world. You aren't seriously expecting a company code of conduct to be applied fairly in some sort of scientifically measurable way? The code of conduct is there to protect against the worst types of behavior, and plenty of bad behavior will slip under the radar. So what? It's not meant to create some sort of utopian workplace. It's meant to create a better workplace for those who have historically been discriminated against. So far, it looks like it has come in handy at least once in a very public way.
Not sure whether a management decision to remove the author is helping or hurting the goal to create an environment that isn't intimidating. ..because - compared to what was written in the memo - this is a very intimidating thing to do.
This is a tough one. I think it effectively does both (help and hurt), including all the positive and negative fall out of each decision.
Intimidating is a strong word for this, I think. I would call it intimidating if the original memo was a challenge to the code of conduct, as opposed to a violation of it.
Either way, I agree that other employees could see this as intimidation and that makes the whole situation much more complex. I suppose that ultimately I would not stand 100% in defense of the course of action, but I am also not grabbing my pitchfork over it.
It should be. If violating the CoC has no consequences then there should be no CoC in the first place.
The CoC makes it clear that some actions and some types of speech are entirely unwelcome at the company.
The memo also makes it clear that if you have a minority viewpoint that does not violate the CoC, then you should be encouraged to express those viewpoints. It even gave specific examples of the parts of the original memo that do not violate the CoC.
I do not know their full code of conduct. However, the part referenced by Pichai did not help to decrease uncertainty at all.
This is problematic since the toxic effect of uncertainty and ideological supression at the work place is not mitigated by it being produced through arbitrary executives or an executives arbitrary interpretation of some given code of conduct.
edit: If the purpose of the code of conduct is to create this uncertainty, than that alone should be reason enough for the code to be improved.
edit2: And of course, this specific code of conduct did not generate the legitimicy it should have created, which is why we are talking about this incidence.
'...our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”'
What's confusing or unclear about that? It's crystal clear to me that Google prioritizes a workplace free of harassment over your individual ideology. If your ideology makes other employees feel harassed or intimidated, you'll have to leave your ideology at home.
And if you're not clever enough to understand that a statement in a widespread memo like "women, on average, have more neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)" could cause one gender to feel intimidated or harassed, then perhaps you're not clever enough to work at Google.
It could not be much more unclear and I can assure you that this has nothing to do with some googlerian "cleverness".
Science is not an ideology or opinion; in a diverse environment, reasonable positions are disputed by arguments, not power play.
Exercising an executive bias to intimidate the employees into subscribing to a specific ideology is nothing this code of conduct were able to prevent. The coc could not perform worse measured by it's own goal.
It's no service to any code of conduct intention if a code of conduct is treated as some chilling orthodoxy that is used to prevent a communities open dialogue and self awareness.
> reasonable positions are disputed by arguments, not power play.
"Women, on average, have more neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)." isn't a reasonable position at Google, or any other big company. If for no other reason, to protect the company from being sued for gender discrimination.
Neither are any of the following statements reasonable:
"Blacks on average are... [insert some negative]".
"Jews on average are... [insert some negative]".
If an employee can't figure that out, you should fire them with zero hesitation. Open dialogue at a place of employment has many limits, and it will never be the top priority. If you say something that offends enough other employees, you're going to get fired, and that's not going to change no matter who you work for.
Banning free speech is unconstitutional. Any "Code of Conduct" or other self proclaiming binding clauses on your contract that try to go against your constitutional rights should be void.
Banning free speech is absolutely not unconstitutional. I think the Wikipedia article[0] sums it up best (emphasis mine): In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is strongly protected from government restrictions by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, many state constitutions, and state and federal laws.
When a murderer is sentenced for murder... there are 2 levels of understanding the sentencing. One is that he broke the "code of conduct"/law, the deeper is why we consider that to be unlawful (societal harm).
Saying he clearly broke the code of conduct just shifts the question to how useful the code of conduct is.. its not some fucking holy unbreakable scripture from the sky, its man made, just as the firing is.
> there are 2 levels of understanding the sentencing. One is that he broke the "code of conduct"/law, the deeper is why we consider that to be unlawful (societal harm).
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I'll even stick with your example in asking - is murdering someone a good way to start debating the "why" of the law against murder?
There are certainly examples where breaking the law proves to be a powerful and effective way to start the conversation. But how often does this hold true when breaking the law causes real harm to others? I doubt the answer is "never", but I can't come up with any argument for how this applies to the current situation.
The employee in question tried to start a conversation by posting a memo on email to other people - so starting a conversation the way they are usually started. It was abruptly ended.
Anyways my main point was the breach of code of conduct is just the technical reason he was fired. If you read the line item he was fired for, its clear its vague enough to be used many many different ways. I don't think its productive to focus on whether he broke some rule somewhere when the whole situation that led to the firing is known to us.
>So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.
Every instance of censorship is justified by saying the offender broke a code of conduct. The Sedition Act, ban of Huck Finn in school libraries, and even preventing sex education are justified this way. Equating a well meaning discussion to harassment is a dangerous precedent to set. Anything can be construed as breaking Google's code of conduct. If I compliment a coworker's new haircut, and they interpret it as an inappropriate sexual advance, should I be fired for making the coworker uncomfortable?
I haven't read the code of conduct, and I'm disappointed the person was fired, but I presume there's a clause about saying bigoted things. And people consider parts of what he said bigoted.
Its intetesting how in the last couple years bigot has been redefined from "someone who is not tolerant of the opinions of others" to "anyone who disagrees with leftist moral thought"
You cannot pose as a parangon of free speech when your company just fired a dissenting voice.
For all intents and purposes the content of the memo was balanced, polite, and restricted to the Google audience. The adult reaction should have been to punish the leaker (which I believe should be an actual breach of the code of conduct) and organize internal debates to allow multiple viewpoints to confront.
Rallying with the hysterical mass and shutting down the minority voice is certainly not about supporting debates and free speech. It's about throwing red meat to the wolves so the company can quietly solve its all too real gender pay gap issues without making too much PR waves.
I agree. Having read the original memo, if anything in there actually violates Google's Code of Conduct, then they need to have a serious discussion about the CoC itself (and how they interpret it).
Uhh Pichai repeats exactly what the memo claimed: that women are
>being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
Go ahead and claim women are more neurotic and have a lower stress tolerance. Don’t expect everyone to pat you on the back and claim you’re just expressing a minority viewpoint... because you clearly aren’t. James Damore didn’t bother to do any research on the topic - I guess he just assumed his feelings were correct? And he assumed he wouldn’t suffer any consequences for claiming 1/3 of his coworkers were meek easily spooked neurotics?
We can't expect to have any reasonable discussion on the topic if the standard of criticism is not reading the piece one is criticizing, and then stating obvious falsehoods (like "didn’t bother to do any research") as facts - probably hoping other readers also won't bother checking.
EDIT:
Also:
> Go ahead and claim women are more neurotic and have a lower stress tolerance. Don’t expect everyone to pat you on the back and claim you’re just expressing a minority viewpoint...
Those are actual falsifiable statements. They can be either true or false. The whole idea of considering them as "viewpoints" is ridiculous and it's precisely what's the problem with the whole environment surrounding the discussion.
> Those are actual falsifiable statements. They can be either true or false. The whole idea of considering them as "viewpoints" is ridiculous and it's precisely what's the problem with the whole environment surrounding the discussion.
Stop it - you are being extraordinarily deceptive with statements like this. Did you actually read this memo? And I mean read it critically? Are these quotes falsifiable statements?
"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics."
Didn't see a citation for that. Care to cite the evidence? Can we prove that this assertion is true or false?
"This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
Would love to read your citation for anxiety leading to lower number of women in high stress jobs.
"Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average
Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them."
Again, I'd love to see some evidence showing that the desire for work life balance is the reason that men disproportionately in leadership positions in tech.
Stop pretending that just because the author has sources that his conclusions are supported. His argument was poor. Anyone with reasonable reading comprehension could see that, politics be damned.
Neuroticism is an actual measurable thing and the research seems to indicate that women typically measure about half a standard deviation above men on it.
I honestly didn't know this before but it seems like when he's making these claims he's using objective research that finds these things across cultures.
I would be surprised if a highly-intelligent biologist with some background in genetics wrote such a document on a whim rather than on evidence and information acquired over the course of his academic work. I'm not saying it's impossible - just that I'd be surprised.
I think he went too far when he suggested women are inherently less capable in the computer sciences than men.
Saying diversity training sucks, or that Google should re-evaluate how they encourage diversity, or that men are getting a raw deal, would have been tolerable.
Probably, because longer-lived and interest in football are not inherent biologically. A male baby is not born interested in football, it is socialized. Men work more dangerous jobs and are socialized into more unhealthy behaviors, diets, etc that can result in lower lifespan than women.
Testosterone has a direct, measurable effect on competitiveness and aggressiveness. Why wouldn't you think this would affect the overall sports preference between the sexes? In an environment where men have significantly higher testosterone than women, wouldn't there naturally be more men than women in an aggressive sport like football? Would you expect a 50% gender parity in such an environment?
Culture plays an effect, but we really need to realize that biology probably pays a role too, and potentially affects gender parities in many careers.
This is a just-so story. Given the same scientific information in 1950, we might have predicted a continued aversion to science in women (unless you also believe the women of 1950 to be biologically different to today's modern superwomen). But the exact opposite thing happened, in almost every field --- except CS, which has lost women over the past decade.
It's worse than that. Ex-Googler Zunger is being celebrated for refuting Damore's argument by advancing gender stereotypes suggesting women naturally possess skills essential to the engineering process.
> All of these traits which the manifesto described as “female” are the core traits which make someone successful at engineering
Note that he says they are "described as", not that they are actually gender specific. The quotes also make it clear that he is referencing Damore's argument and pointing out an interest issue with it. He is not claiming that position as his own.
How is that "mincing words"? He spends several paragraphs arguing those differences are not supported by science (right or wrong), then proceeds to allow them as a base assumption to point out the argument still falls apart, even if you allow the faulty premise.
He explicitly says near the start of his article that he disagrees with the views on gender differences that the memo espouces, and that he's not getting into then because others are more qualified to do so.
Good thing the original memo author has a PhD in biology then.
That post is a cowardly and smarmy non answer, and it contradicts itself in several ways. Aside from the one already mentioned, it claims making people feel bad at their job is inappropriate (even though the memo did no such thing) and then goes on to actually mock the author by claiming he sounds like he's bad at his job.
Rules for thee but not for me. Utterly pathetic how people think this is in any way a rebuttal.
> Good thing the original memo author has a PhD in biology then.
Your appeal to authority is pretty transparent... While the original memo author's work with various strains of yeast is indeed interesting, I'm not sure how it's relevant to the topic at hand...
An argument should stand on its own merits, not on a piece of paper on the author's wall.
His PhD is in "Systems Biology", isn't it? Which is more about computational approaches to understanding biological systems than, at the risk of simplifying horribly, "messy" biology.
> making people feel bad at their job is inappropriate (even though the memo did no such thing)
Say you've got red hair and someone sent a memo around saying that they'd heard that everyone with red hair was more of a fuzzy people person than a real coder. Would you agree that people with red hair may well feel targeted?
"It’s true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people’s emotional needs and so on — this is something that makes them better engineers, not worse ones."
Doesn't sound like a claim that women naturally possess these skills to me.
We all know that men and women are different but under no circumstances can you club a large section of population and say they are inferior in some respect ... hitler did it with the Jews, whites did it to the blacks , Japanese did it to the Chinese and history is rife with extreme examples of the Dangers of generalization of a large section of population. Our job as human civilization is to evolve positively and to survive by dispersion of empathy - not by corroding it every day and making a certain section feel weak and vulnerable. No matter what your point of view is there is no doubt the author of the article had touched a raw nerve deliberately which he could have easily avoided. Therefor Google is right to fire him and the majority is absolutely within their rights to condemn him.
I do not believe that the author of the memo ever wrote anything like that. I'm not sure that you should equate all research scientists who published on gender/sex differences with nazis.
Did you really compare this to racial _genocides_?
Maybe men are slightly better at something and maybe women are slightly better at other things - why is this an issue? Clearly the difference is not remotelly big enough to be impactful since we see men and women work in every profession.
Average worker skill is pretty low so this "genetic advantage" would only really matter at top 0.1% of professionals.
e.g. women are worse at some sports like Tennis, but to most people it will never matter since only few people play at that level where genetics can give you an edge.
Indeed, but people will go as far as dismissing valid proofs and statistics just to boost their own ego and not feel inferior in any way.
That's like me not acknowledging that a black athlete has a genetic advantage over me that would make a difference if we were competing at the 0.1% top level.
I think Google's action is not a right or wrong approach, it's a measure of maintaining order and keeping everybody 'happy'.
Read the original memo. The author doesn't say - or imply -
that any section of population is inferior to some other. The author only argued that the diversity policies at Google are irrational, create bad atmosphere (resulting in basically the reverse of the stated goals) and hurt their business.
The moral of the story is something most adults figure out by their mid 20s: if you like your job, keep your mouth shut about your political/religious beliefs.
And despite what any employer will tell you about their workplace being an open forum, they are full of shit. What they mean is, it's an open forum to agree with management.
> At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint).
Minority viewpoints in tech become silenced and their author(s) ostracized by the biases of a mob mentality. It doesn't even matter what you write because most people won't even read the original source, instead floating by on derivative tweets and extremely biased summaries (in whatever direction agrees with their existing views).
Irrespective of the original memo, and this is something I've felt more strongly in the past couple years, it's just not safe to share dissenting viewpoints in tech anymore.
We used to be the industry where anything could be discussed critically and the most objectively correct answer could win (logic! science!). Nowadays it's so political and heated, I've found it best to just stay out of the discussion and not share dissenting views anymore. I think the real problem we need to fix is being able to have rational critical discussion around topics we disagree with.
> Irrespective of the original memo, and this is something I've felt more strongly in the past couple years, it's just not safe to share dissenting viewpoints in tech anymore.
It is not safe to share your viewpoints anywhere where it is not considered germane: and the workplace is high on that list. A firm will fire someone who becomes annoyingly political or who makes a public ass out of themselves on social media. I work for a medium sized tech firm in the American South and we had one engineer that was very open and sometimes combative about her progressive viewpoints and people stopped wanting to talk to her, even those who agreed with her. She didn't last a quarter.
Expecting firms to give their employees a forum to speak openly about anything not work related is a recent phenomenon across the board, and many still hold onto the view that if you want to engage in political discussions then do so outside of the workplace.
part of the problem is that the organisations themselves have become extremely political. Google is known to be a very left-leaning company and I can imagine that working inside such a political organisation, especially one that talks a big talk about being logic and reason-driven, would cause one to want to express their views.
> organisations themselves have become extremely political
This is not true if only for the fact that organizations have always engaged in politics. In one of the worst cases, the United Fruit Company lobbied the US President to overthrow the elected government of Guatemala. In one of the most benign cases, Subaru sponsored gay pride events and publicly supported LGBT groups in the 1990s.
Besides that, everything else you've said is useless hyperbole. Get your history together before you go spouting nonsense.
organisations have always been political, but the current political environment inside tech is at what I would consider to be an extremely high point. Politics right now are extremely divisive (I think much more so than say 10 years ago) and many tech companies have openly picked a side. Yes I am familiar with the UFC, and have read about their involvement in various Caribbean nations and the whole "banana republic" concept.
> Besides that, everything else you've said is useless hyperbole. Get your history together before you go spouting nonsense.
Why be so hostile? If you want to be a dick to strangers on the internet then piss off back to reddit.
Feel free to point out which of these two statements is useless hyperbole:
> Google is known to be a very left-leaning company
> [Google] talks a big talk about being logic and reason-driven
> Expecting firms to give their employees a forum to speak openly about anything not work related is a recent phenomenon across the board, and many still hold onto the view that if you want to engage in political discussions then do so outside of the workplace.
But Google does this (Memegen and eng-misc), the problem is that you're only able to speak about certain things and entertain certain opinions...so naturally, conservatives will feel muzzled and want to not go against the dominant culture/power structures
This was only ever true in online discussion forums, Usenet, etc.
I agree that there is a lot of mob mentality going on, it’s just difficult to get upset about this case because the original author was spouting debunked “biotruth” arguments. Twitter replies are mostly full of men who didn’t read the original memo or who are willfully pretending it didn’t claim women are less biologically suited to being engineers.
I like Pichai’s memo and I think it sets the right tone: the offending employee could have raised these same arguments without falling back to debunked stereotypes. He could have done an hour of Googling on the topic and educated himself. Instead he trusted his own feelings in an area he had no experience or knowledge in.
This seems to be a trait relatively common among really smart people: doctors who think they’re good at politics, mechanical engineers who think they’ve discovered a theory that overturns all of physics, or in this case a software engineer that thinks he knows better than thousands of scientists doing experiments and crunching the actual data.
As far as I can tell we can have rational critical discussions in tech - we just can’t get away with spouting nonsense. If that nonsense reinforces old sexist or racist stereotypes then we can expect a backlash.
> the original author was spouting debunked “biotruth” arguments
C.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956592, where an actual scientist is quoted to say "The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right."
I think the best way to summarize the memo is that he quotes a bunch of science, which is true.
He also makes a bunch of unfounded claims that aren't really related to the science. And people argue that because he said a bunch of sciency things that scientists agree are correct, that everything he said was true.
>> It doesn't even matter what you write because most people won't even read the original source
I have to wonder if the artificial urgency that social media has created doesn't have something to do with this. Everyone these days wants to be the first to respond, which results in a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. You end up with a giant, unstoppable snowball of knee jerk reactions to other knee jerk reactions rolling down a bottomless hill.
Unfortunately, not everything has an objectively correct answer (aesthetics! ethics!) and so what you are saying kind of reinforces the point that diversity of viewpoints is vital to group problem solving. A group with the same blindspots will all make the same mistakes.
It doesn't have to even be a politically charged opinion btw. Holding opinions like "let's not refactor this module right now" when everyone else thinks it's a great idea can quickly get you marginalized.
The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.
By that logic, we should let companies have explicit policies against certain races cause the market will sort it out... I don't think I've ever heard that "the market" will deal with unfair internal HR policies.
Of course the market will sort it out. Just not in the way you (or anyone) would consider "sorted out". The mistake here is assuming that the market promotes fairness and humanist values.
There's enough "top workers" available in pretty much any kind of social/racial/gender-based group you could delineate, that even companies with explicit discrimination policies can find the talent they need.
The market won't give you the solution you seek; the issue does not impact profitability enough.
> Your own link talks about how the drink was boycotted across campuses.
Didn't change much.
> Doesn't justify anything of course but Coca-Cola wasn't the only company doing it
That's my point, though. Plenty of companies have engaged in abhorrent acts, with little meaningful consequences to them. The market is not good at solving these types of problems.
One doesn't get a fat paycheck just because they are intrinsically awesome. One gets a fat paycheck because turnover costs, especially opportunity costs, are higher.
People being up in arms about this issue is exactly 'the market punishing or rewarding Google accordingly'.
That said, don't expect the market to give you a solution that's fair to people - the only one you'll get is the one of maximum profitability under implicit rules of the current culture. Those are very much not the same things.
To be fair, 'the market' is much less strictly economic now – the phrase or even the idea itself, not the network of economic activity (which remains as 'economic' as ever).
Ultimately, the fate of businesses is mostly decided by the economical part of "the market". Looking at how the companies live and die, both in tech industry and outside, I don't believe this issue is significant enough to affect a big organization in a meaningful way.
People get easily outraged - which can and does end up with individuals getting hurt - but they also quickly forget and move to next issue. See also the arguments why boycotts generally don't work.
I agree. This kind of righteousness has no place in modern corporates. I will add even CEOs/management is not safe from getting fired. The difference could possibly be huge severance in case of such incidence.
Part of me suspects he could have stayed had his manifesto not gotten picked up on the front page of CNN. There was only one clear way for the Google brand to distance itself then. The message is clearly think what you want, but if your words end up next to the Google logo on national news...
Edit: thinking about that, he couldn't have gone far in the company though without some serious apologies or something, because I can't see a manager assigning him to work in or lead a team with women on it, and that's 1/3rd the company. Maybe it's also a practical decision to fire him and be done with it even if it didn't leak.
> However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.
He made his continued employment both a social and legal liability. This is a fireable offense even if he was "right".
Also consider this. As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. In short, Google feels these programs are scientifically valid. The author claims they aren't, but casually dismisses Google's position without really addressing it. Instead we get an evo-psych Chewbacca defense, phrased in a way that's sure to offend a large number of people. Even if he did that in good faith, it's a colossal mistake at best.
He's most likely referencing his next two lines down, "As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. Google has a line which they feel is backed by research..." so he can't post that data publicly as it is Google's private research.
It doesn't mean it doesn't exist though, just that we won't get access to it.
> "... that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance."
This is a well-known, well-researched fact of organizational psychology. Are you guys really this stupid? Think about it from a problem-solving perspective, in terms of the solutions individuals and groups will come up with.
Sexism, racism, and discrimination in general doesn't benefit anyone but the wealthiest few, and only if they're really, really stupid.
then you're arguing for diversity of opinion or viewpoint, rather than gender or skin colour? Because that's the opposite of the approach google is taking here.
I'm arguing for diversity of gender, skin color, cultural or sub-cultural background and identity. Diversity of viewpoint should already be a given.
In order to promote tolerance you have to shut down and remove the people who support intolerance. Firing this guy is clearly in line with that mission and improving productivity.
We learn this in grade school, are you all foreigners or something? Or has American education really been gutted...
well for one thing I'm British. I agree that it's fair game for companies to seek to remove people who are actively hostile to other employees but from what I've read about this memo (admittedly I haven't read the original itself) it seems like he wasn't saying "quick, fire all the female engineers!" but more like "Google's diversity initiative to get equal representation amongst male/female engineers is nonsensical because women are on average less likely to become engineers due to natural temperament differences in men/women". Maybe I haven't bought into the ideological argument but nothing there seems particularly contentious, nor does it seem like he's saying women shouldn't or can't be engineers.
> It doesn't mean it doesn't exist though, just that we won't get access to it.
It may as well be an argument from authority - because that is what it is. One cannot hide behind "but the data show" and then refuse to show the data. That is not how science works and we shouldn't accept it for a second from anyone.
> as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance
That would be interesting research to review publicly. But it also reframes the picture, changing it from "some groups are discriminated against and therefore we need diversity focus" to "we need to start discriminating in order to increase diversity, because this leads to better-performing teams".
You may be right, but later in the note Pichai himself writes:
> ...we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct
As if admitting that currently there are no avenues for open discussion on highly controversial topics such as this one or at least none that do not clash with the Code of Conduct.
You can say "the diversity program is harmful and should be stopped" without advancing gender stereotypes (which is what the guy did in his memo). All you need to do is back up that "it's harmful" with evidence.
I had to look through four or so articles to find an edited and incomplete copy of the controversial text. Fortunately there are complete copies of it as it was originally posted linked elsewhere in the thread. It's possible that they haven't read it (in its unedited form including the references as intended by its author) because reporters have, for some reason, made it hard to find.
I did read it, where did he outline the failures of the existing diversity program that wasn't also a lie? For instance, a lowered standard for interviews isn't a thing.
If I have read their argument correctly the author proposes that the interview "bar" was lower only relatively speaking. Allow me to elaborate: in a somewhat clumsily stated thesis they point out the disproportionate care granted to the favoured class is evidenced by an allegedly reduced false negative rate. If that's true then, in a way, Google haven't reduced the technical "bar" per se except by making the test more reflective of their actual expectations for hires. This is, I believe, the heart of the author's argument in this case: these improvements in the interview process apply only to favoured groups. If true, these exclusive improvements yield a test which, though just as technically thorough, is paradoxically still easier to pass given a favoured candidate. If my understanding is correct, there really has to be a better way to phrase the author's argument such that it can't be misinterpreted in the most common way it appears to be being taken now.
I'm not sure I would describe the sources as 'from here to the moon' On reading many of the sources, it was apparent that they did not provide particularly solid evidence to back up the points he was making. It was also obvious that there was a huge amount of cherry picking going on.
I thought some of his arguments were very weak and, even where he had decent points, he did not make his case in a compelling way. However, I don't think he should have been disciplined and certainly not fired. Those who disagree should refute his arguments.
Sorry, but unless you are some leading researcher in a related field, your "thoughts" doesn't count for much and you should provide cited counter claims to be taken seriously. Without this, it's all just an emotional reaction and doesn't contribute anything of value to a meaningful discussion.
One doesn't need to be an expert in a particular field to identify a weak argument.
For example, the author of the memo presents some citations to back up the idea that there are biological differences between men and women that might explain why more men than women choose to work in tech. I don't find that idea controversial.
However, none of the citations provide any evidence that the degree of biological difference between the male and female population is sufficient to explain the relative gender balance we see in tech.
I don't need to be an expert to notice the lack of evidence for that part of the argument and conclude that the argument is poorly made.
It is possible that such evidence does exist and I would be interested to see it but that would not change that fact that this memo, with its cited evidence, failed to make that case.
Would be helpful to know WHICH Code of Conduct he is supposed to have violated.
From glancing over the memo I perceive that: women/man are different and men prefer working in engineering. No need to artificially increase percentage of women engineers with incentives. I did not notice any inferior/superior claims.
Being fired for this polite memo? And being characterized as a kind of toxic outcast? - I'm sorry, what have our society and companies become?
Googlers seem to be allowed to do his/her utmost only within a narrow cage of accepted/mainstream borders.
The first, from my perspective, is that it crossed a line that you really have to tread with care when it started talking about "biological IQ". Anyone familiar with the sordid history of eugenics knows that you tread that line really carefully, both because of the sordid history of policy on that sort of thing, the extreme difficulty of separating biological vs. environmental constructs for IQ, and the difficulty of creating a single "IQ test" that measures every single aspect of human intelligence. The quote about "IQ and sex differences" (being something the left ignored) was only supported by a link to conservative think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (which said some things about bias in science grants, but didn't really have anything to say about IQ and sex differences).
This is the point where, to me, the memo went downhill. I am not sure it is the intention (possibly the emphasis was intended to be more the politic), but it is very easy to infer inferior / superior claims at this point, because the whole "IQ and sex differences" thing sort of came out of nowhere.
The other reason it went downhill fast, and unnecessarily so, was because the paper brought in "liberal" vs "conservative" American political dynamics elements. BIG mistake. Any discussion along this line needs to be as apolitical as possible, lest it descend rapidly into toxic left-wing vs. right-wing tribalism territory (as, well, happened). Instead of attempting to skirt around politics, loaded phrases were used, particularly at the end of the memo, like "PC authoritarian", and sourced links typically were op-ed, often with strong bias.
I agree that a lot of the memo is more some of the tribal / "role" paradigms and elements that have been discussed in many sources over time, and there's actually some interesting food for thought in it. I'm not terribly comfortable that what I see as poor communication skills led to the firing. I would not characterize this memo as "polite" though, for the above reasons.
I would argue that IQ tests don't measure every single aspect of human intelligence, it's interested in one specific construct, if it exists -- g, which stands for a general capability. IQ is a test made for humans, but the concept of g is far more general than humans, and applies to machines as well.
When Google's AlphaGo beat some famous champions, people were wondering whether Google's program was merely a Go-specific program, or a more general program that learned to play Go.
I would also argue that if you went out and created another test for IQ, it would likely have high iter-rater reliability with IQ, but maybe have rough edges and have less empirical attention than mainstream tests like Ravens Matrices. That has been the history of people trying to make a name for themselves by making another intelligence construct, only to find it has insufficient distinction from IQ.
I'd also suggest that another factor is that the author assumed that his reader base would have basic statistical knowledge, which I'd suggest would not be true even among software engineers. Just erase any reference to distributions or averages and you'll see what most people see. This just adds to your points.
> is that it crossed a line that you really have to tread with care when it started talking about "biological IQ".
He mentioned this only briefly (a bracketed clause 5 words long) as an example of science that the left ignores, because there does appear to be a difference in IQ between biological sexes [0], with current research suggesting the averages are similar, however there is a higher variation among males, leading to a higher proportion of men at the very high and very low ends of the spectrum.
His comments on this were in no way used to infer one group was superior or more intelligent than the other. He was just pointing out that the left will ignore or deny science when it conflicts with ideology.
Please, remind me of a time in the past in which people could actually say whatever they wanted without repercussions.
Oh right, there's no actual time in the history of humanity, with the exception of a select few people whose odious opinions everyone had to tolerate or else.
> Please, remind me of a time in the past in which people could actually say whatever they wanted without repercussions.
Strawman.
No, there has probably never been such a time, at least for sufficiently creative uses of 'whatever'.
But that doesn't mean everything is fine, and it doesn't mean freedom of expression and public discourse haven't visibly degraded since, for example, ten or twenty years ago.
"Polite" does not mean decorating every single sentence you write with a pile of qualifiers.
It was a badly structured and badly argued document, and I disagree with most of its factual claims and its policy recommendations. But it in no way was impolite or in violation of Google's code of conduct, unless you think that having that viewpoint inherently makes you in violation and deserving of excommunication.
The reality is impolite is in the eye of the beholder (or culture). And in the Bay Area, that would be considered an impolite way of communicating considering the topic.
> Would be helpful to know WHICH Code of Conduct he is supposed to have violated.
The one Pichai cited,
>> It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects "each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."
> I did not notice any inferior/superior claims.
He said women have a harder time leading. That's a pretty big claim. None of his sources back it up, so it's just his opinion. At best, that makes him a legal risk for Google if he were involved in any hiring or promotional processes.
He said, in the context of Big-5 personality traits [0], that women on average skew higher for 'agreeableness' (a scientifically sound finding that has been replicated in cross-cultural studies), and that high agreeableness leads to having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
He's not saying women have a harder time at these things, he's saying people with a high agreeableness personality trait have a hard time at these things.
His very next sentence states that while women have higher agreeableness at population-level averages, it would be wrong to just look at averages between genders because there is significant overlap in these traits across genders. However because it is seen by senior management as a problem for women, men with high agreeableness are excluded from training programs designed to help people with things such as negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
So, he's not saying that women have a harder time leading, he's saying population-level averages in certain personality traits result in women initially being less well equipped to handle certain situations (not that they lack aptitude or ability for it), and that senior management have recognised this and implemented training programs specifically to correct for it, but because these training programs are only for women, they are excluding a large portion of men with the same traits, who are then denied access to similar corrective training.
> He's not saying women have a harder time at these things, he's saying people with a high agreeableness personality trait have a hard time at these things.
Yes he does, he says it word for word. He says women, on average, have more of those traits. Then he draws the conclusion that because of these personality differences, that women have a harder time leading. That's not supported by any research he cites.
> So, he's not saying that women have a harder time leading
Yes, he does say that here: "This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."
> he's saying population-level averages in certain personality traits result in women initially being less well equipped to handle certain situations
He specifically cites "leading". And, that claim is not backed by any research.
> senior management have recognised this and implemented training programs specifically to correct for it
> In particular, as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance.
Are these numbers available to public somewhere?
I'm asking because I would dearly want to find comprehensive data. When I've done some of my own research, I have run into sets of studies, which all agree on one thing: more diverse groups get better results. The snag is that these studies disagree - wildly - with the magnitude of the effect. Some claim maybe 2% improvement. Some others claim up to ~30%. Yet others somewhere inbetween.
The figures also fluctuate quite a bit over time. Study from 2008/2009 shows numbers that are almost entirely unrelated to a study from 2014/2015. Some studies claim that gender diversity alone bears very little benefit[ß], and other studies from the same time come out with results that sort of imply you will need cultural diversity for notable results.
But by far the worst piece of news is that the measured and/or recorded numbers appear to be geographically distinct. Results from US studies are different from those in UK, which in turn differ from mainland Europe studies. That only raises more questions. Such as...
- are the numbers consistently different across regions?
- ... across continents?
- ... across cultures?
- what is the measured effect between "just" gender diverse and culturally diverse groups?
- do age groups matter?
... and so on. I genuinely would like to know. (For the record, and you can check this from my earlier posts as well: I am firmly in the camp who believe that diversity is beneficial.)
N.B. The most recent study I know of is the McKinsey report from 2015.[0]
---
ß: I can dig out the research articles if there's interest. I have some of them sort of easily accessible.
Are you aware of a study that is focused on (software) engineers? The McKinsey study looks at companies' top management for its diversity metrics, but I don't really trust studies across professions. Most anecdotes I've read about the benefits of diversity boil down to "if only we'd had a <minority> on the team, we would have noticed <problem affecting minority>".
But as a developer, my requirements are set by project managers (50% women in my experience), the design and marketing is done by a diverse team, testing is done by other people (or end-users, sigh); so developers are "only" concerned with the actual implementation. Consequently, I don't find it intuitive that more diversity (of gender/ethnicity) would help my team.
Do developers in other companies or countries (Germany here) have wider responsibilities, and thus, diversity is more important? Can engineers at Facebook or Google write user-facing features on a whim? (The terrible mic drop Gmail gimmick comes to mind...) Could that explain the difference in how much teams benefit from diversity?
> Are you aware of a study that is focused on (software) engineers?
Sadly no :( - I'm fully aware that the studies in this field mostly focus on financial outcomes, and because they are commissioned by consulting/recruiting agencies, they are of course targeting the management group. That's one of the reasons I would love to see the numbers from Google's internal research.
As for this:
> Most anecdotes I've read about the benefits of diversity boil down to "if only we'd had a <minority> on the team [...]
I am not sure whether I should be offended or merely aghast. From the tone you used, it feels like you have witnessed something more akin box-ticking than strategy, cargo-culting over rationality. I know my reasons are different but I suspect they could be equally selfish.
1. In my experience, women who stay in tech tend to be pretty damn good. Even if we ignored all other factors, it would be rational from purely talent-acquisition point of view to target female engineers in hiring. In addition, women often have greater capacity for empathy and thus can become a force multiplier in practically any team.
2. Constructive arguments from different viewpoints can only make us stronger. Things I am blind to can be spotted by someone else. Things my usual peer group is blind to can be spotted by persons from different peer group(s). But most importantly - things that are obvious to people who share my background can be pointed out and questioned by people whose backgrounds are different.
The thing I, as an engineer, worry about is myopia.
> as a developer, my requirements are set by project managers (50% women in my experience)
That is an interesting observation. Do you think that is due to self-selection or external factors? Also: if PM roles can have a 50/50 gender split, does that mean that women are more likely to seek promotions that lead to PM type positions?
> Do developers in other companies or countries (Germany here) have wider responsibilities, and thus, diversity is more important?
I think it depends less on the country and more on the company [or national?] culture. In engineering driven organisations, definitely. In a rigid hierarchy with nothing-but-top-down approach, probably less so. But then again, in the light of what I know, the latter category should benefit from diversity in their upper management. Where else would the alternate viewpoints come from?
And finally, I'm going to pick this one up separately:
> Consequently, I don't find it intuitive that more diversity (of gender/ethnicity) would help my team.
I'm sorry for you. But also, I am glad that you brought this up. You have just highlighted that MY experience and view of diversity can be irrational or plain odd to someone from a different cultural environment. For that - thank you.
> From the tone you used, it feels like you have witnessed something more akin box-ticking than strategy, cargo-culting over rationality.
I guess my summary sounded a little harsh. Here's a typical example[1]:
>> When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups. When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it, for example, 5% to 10% of videos were uploaded upside down as a result. This factor may be especially relevant for leaders of consumer tech companies.
I have heard of/read similar anecdotes about various groups of people that certainly have different perspectives, but it always seems extremely anecdotal to me.
This study sounds more promising in my opinion[2]:
>> When a black person presented a dissenting perspective to a group of whites, the perspective was perceived as more novel and led to broader thinking and consideration of alternatives than when a white person introduced that same dissenting perspective. The lesson: when we hear dissent from someone who is different from us, it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks like us.
> Also: if PM roles can have a 50/50 gender split, does that mean that women are more likely to seek promotions that lead to PM type positions?
...but now I realise that we must work for very different companies/clients. I don't see project management as a promotion from engineering - in my experience, it's a completely separate career path, just like design. Also, since I am a freelancer, my clients' offices are often full of other freelancers, and promotions aren't really a thing.
What about the google employees who publicly called for the author to be fired (e.g. on twitter/social media)? Shouldn't these actions also be considered in violation of their Code of Conduct - those actions seem to fit the description of "harassment" and "intimidation".
All three behaviors fall under the broad umbrella of harassment and intimidation. Clearly the first is a fireable behavior, and the last is not a fireable behavior.
The middle one certainly stands somewhere between. I suppose it's possible that if the author was exonerated, the middle group may be deemed as having participated in a firing offense?
Even if what the author stated was wrong, it's absurd to suggest that misrepresenting a few studies about gender differences is equivalent to harassment. Humans aren't so fragile that they can't ignore the politically incorrect opinions of a coworker.
> one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance
Consider this, if diversity hiring yields better individual and group performance then this implies that different races and genders perform better at certain skills, and that taken in aggregate, this leads to measurable performance increases overall at the individual and group level.
After all, if there was no difference across gender or race, then it would make no difference whether you had 100% white male or 100% asian female, or any other combination of different demographics.
In the other thread I asked one of the responders if they could even as a joke wear a Trump hat at Google MTV. and how they might feel/b treated vs wearing a Pussy or Hillary hat.[1]
They compared a Trump hat at Google is the equivalent of walking in to (a presumably hardcore) biker bar in Iowa. That's a pretty damning response, even if they meant the opposite.
You can express your minority views as long as those views don't violate company policy. That's reasonable. You certainly wouldn't expect to keep your job if you published a memo saying you should be able to call black employees "nigger" because _cite some pseudo science here_. That's a minority view, isn't it? The expectation that every minority view can or should be safely expressed is both naive and unreasonable.
I agree with you, but _cite some pseudo science here_ might actually be a solid citation (eg. Wikipedia or any other reputable study). What then?
On another note, I watched the 100m men's final this Saturday and noticed white men are worse at running than black men. Would that be racist towards whites if the stats were confirming my opinion?
> _cite some pseudo science here_ might actually be a solid citation.
The Google code of conduct is pretty clear. It is a primary duty of every employee to actively create an environment where others don't feel harassed or intimidated. If your science fact harasses or intimidates others, then science loses in that case and the code of conduct, and a harmonious workplace, wins. Google has a set of values, and priorities, and those might not be your priorities but you have the choice of working elsewhere if you feel those values don't line up with your own.
Science and facts aren't the end all. I know plenty of folks who are super smart, know a tons of facts, and are miserable people to work with. I would never hire them, or join a company where they work.
I would imagine that they know exactly what they are doing and feel very conflicted about it, but they're weighing their options in the prevailing political climate and choose the least bad one. It's still very very bad though.
It's funny to see how these 'hip-young-cool' tech companies have 'grown up' and implemented nearly the exact same internal cultures and processes as every other company. I had hoped they were going to really change things, and not just in a less racist/sexist/etc way, but in finding a new way to do HR and all that jazz. Like, they have enough fine grained data that Orwell rolling in his grave could power London, but they still slipped back into the same old paradigm as Exon and MS and Standard Oil (minus the racism/sexism/etc, for the most part). It's interesting to see it happen in ~ a decade only.
It's all fake altruistic bullshit marketing/PR/corporate speak. It's just modern advertising and branding.
And they try to one-up each other so you just get bombarded with this happy-language about all of these beautiful non-monetary things that they somehow seem to care so much about.
These poses are just "corporate white lies". They are not meant to be tested.
It's similar to companies saying things "we are like a family".
And that is the adult version of "your dog has gone to the farm for a while".
It's crap fed to you to distract you from the brutal reality so your resources can be extracted more smoothly for longer.
"The author had a right to express their views on those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions."
Maybe he missed the memo that the author has been fired? How is that encouraging for people with unpopular opinions?
The memo itself was incoherent. Many of its statements made sense for debate, and the author himself pointed out that you can't tell much about any individual from the general data, which I think has not been focused on enough. He seemed to think he was doing everybody a service and that his views were not detrimental to anybody. But the actual choices in how to express the generalities showed really bad judgement and overall apparently ran afoul of the code of conduct. People are definitely putting words in his mouth, but at the same time: An incoherent companywide memo is not the best way to start a debate on a sensitive topic. You might not instantly fire this person if he had chosen a way to express his ideas that didn't burn bridges with half the people who work there, if not more. This was not just "debate", it was maybe 80% debate and 20% attack on the credibility of all women in traditionally male professions. If he did not mean it come across that way, which I believe might be the case, then I feel sorry for him. And maybe he should have the opportunity to edit the memo to better reflect the debate he intended. But that's on him. He chose how to do this and what words to use.
Perhaps get a little feedback from somebody likely to be affected by it, or HR, before blasting it to the whole company? That's a better way. Separating out the legitimate issues from the speculation about potential reasons (which to me is where most of the nonsense lies) would have been a better way. And unless the internal memo system is the only way to communicate within Google, he probably had other options to pilot this piece without burning bridges. Like to his supervisor say "hey, I want to send out this memo, do you think I'll catch some flak or is it fine?" I'm not, by the way, actually saying I know the best way. Just that, to me, there seem to be many obvious better ways.
We were talking about a starting point. I'm saying maybe the edges could be knocked off in some kind of orderly way so that the company-wide message he ultimate sent might not have blown up in his face so badly. He clearly thought he was doing fine, but now he's getting all his feedback all at once and has lost his job. So just maybe a little pre-consultation about how to approach this topic (without accidentally implying things that lead to headlines and firings) would have benefited the actual goal of moving debate forward.
Have you read the memo? It's coherent. People just don't like what it says. Please read this article which includes responses to the memo from four scientists who study the subject matter: http://archive.is/z6xxP
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right. [...] This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. (Lee Jussim, professor of social psychology at Rutgers University)
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’) (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico)
If you have read the memo and found it incoherent, then please explain what part of it is incoherent. Here are some of the points made in its summary:
> [S]ilencing [people who disagree] has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Do you find those points incoherent? I find them to be clear. ("incoherent: expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear.")
Thanks for the link to the article... it'll take me a little bit of time to get into the detail. But, the second scientist in the article says the following:
>But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe.
I would argue that even if he didn't mean to, "using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality" is the message he gave to many people. I do believe his argument is more complex than that, but it's not sufficiently accounting for this impression.
I'll continue reading. In the meantime, asking if I read the memo and showing me the definition of "incoherent" ... can we please have a respectful discussion? I'm happy to explain why I find the memo, as a whole, incoherent, with examples.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
And the next sentence:
> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
- This is bad communicating. It's incredibly vague about what % of the difference he thinks is biological, and what % is social/structural/historical, the things he completely fails to address. This "I'm just saying!" vagueness leaves the door open to an extremely wide range of interpretations. There's no argument there. It's all fudgy-hedgy. It's not coherent.
> I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
- This is where he wants to be. The high bar he sets for himself. The point that evidence should not be discounted because it doesn't fit the wished-for results is important. Results are results. His writing does not live up to what he establishes in this paragraph. He says "I hope it's clear" and he does qualify a lot of his statements with "I'm not saying xyz about ALL individuals" ... he's trying.
These are two points that give me the sense of an overall incoherent argument:
> Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
- This is manifestly ridiculous. Accepting the truth, that some differences between people are biological, does not mean that historical and cultural factors don't matter and can't be adjusted for, or that it is misguided to explicitly direct resources towards increasing diversity. That's a whole other debate, about how to do it, and who it's fair to. It IS arbitrary, and artificial, to mandate certain proportions of jobs be given to certain "diversity" groups. It's an imperfect solution to a stupid problem. I wish we didn't have the problem in the first place, but we do, and a big clumsy solution is better than no solution. But a lot of the value of diversity is not, as Geoffrey Miller posits in the article you linked, derived from those inherent (seemingly rather small?) biological differences between those people. It is in the much larger difference in how they have experienced life and the world since birth as a member of whatever group(s). He claims he things Google should "try to correct for existing biases" but not discriminate "just to increase the representation of women" ... well this is incoherent, because the second one is kind of the only mechanism to achieve the first one, isn't it? Can we correct for bias and cultural/historical/institutional effects without intentionally tipping the scale a little bit in the direction of the people affected by those issues?
That IS another, connected, thorny problem. I get that discrimination and suffering cuts both ways.
> Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX.
- It's UX all the way down. The whole company affects the UX. But in any case, the value knowledge of "outsiders" is not just about teaching Google how to SEL...
That's funny. Compared to the response I've seen against it, it seems extremely coherent, tactfully presented and scientifically sourced.
It's an internal memo for crying out loud. Compared to anything I've seen in any company I've worked with, this sets the bar for extreme professionalism.
I have a more detailed comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14957553 but basically since he gives no sense of how much he thinks the biological stuff actually matters, he has made the range of possible interpretations very wide. This carelessness (or intentional vagueness?) is anything but tactful. Tactful is controlling your message to not be so easily misunderstood.
The science is not really in doubt, surely, but the magnitude of the effects in the full context of our lives and history and cultural norms is complicated. And figuring out how to use experimental data to improve policy is hard.
The backlash is not surprising because, though he tried, he failed to be clear about what he means.
(In case someone missed the reference: this is a comparison to Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign. People were spurred to speak their minds freely, but, after a few years, punished for dissenting.)
Moral of the story: stupid angry lynch mobs win when they are loud enough to be the majority. It doesn't matter how uninformed the majority viewpoint is.. majority > minority.
There is no debate, only angry people seeing what they want to see. Get angry first, ask questions later (or never) - just people being people.
Googles response is simply to appease both sides as best they can, recognizing that one is the majority. The firing is enough blood to appease the stupid & intolerant, this post is to appease the rest.
> Moral of the story: stupid angry lynch mobs win when they are loud enough to be the majority. It doesn't matter how uninformed the majority viewpoint is.. majority > minority.
The operative phrase being, "loud enough". I.e. loud enough minority looks like majority.
As you might have noticed the debate did not involve Google employees exclusively. It is of them that he is CEO, though. It would be quite megalomaniac to title it "To all ye of this planet, listen to me!"
By firing the employee, Google is sending a strong signal that they will not tolerate a diversity of opinions.
That does not bode well for them, for a restrictive intellectual environment is anathema to the kind of intelligent people they want to hire to keep the company competitive.
a restrictive intellectual environment is anathema to the kind of intelligent people they want to hire to keep the company competitive
So what? This action might be damaging to Google's bottom line (I doubt it) but that's actually less important that running a company in the way the overwhelming majority of employees want it to be run.
To use an ad absurdum argument - if it could be demonstrated that people who are openly racist write better code I still wouldn't believe Google should hire them.
Actually I think you have it backwards. By not firing him, they would have done too little to distance the Google brand from the manifesto (and worse, people's third and fourth hand readings of the manifesto). That would cost them more potential and current engineers short term and certainly devalue the consumer brand more than sending a message that company wide memos like that aren't tolerated. They can't just take this sitting down.
Wow, I'm surprised to see the comments here being hateful towards this statement. I don't think it's contradictory at all. The stance he takes is that any subject is up for debate, so long as you don't step out of line with respect to the code of conduct. The guy who was fired was way out of line, far beyond any reasonable limits to topics of discussion. Even as a particularly opinionated person myself, who would be likely to start a lot of shit at Google - even about diversity, I consider these limitations just.
Not saying Google has to uphold everyone's 1A rights. Not saying dude who wrote the essay is correct either. But it's a lie to say Google's culture supports free speech when the cost of that speech is compliance with the tyranny of a Code of Conduct.
>But it's a lie to say Google's culture supports free speech when the cost of that speech is compliance with the tyranny of a Code of Conduct.
I think people often expect 'free speech' in situations where I wouldn't. Like a collaborative working environment where you are all professionals trying to get work done. There is a subset of speech (so no longer 'free') that is appropriate for working professionally with a group, especially a group from widely diverse backgrounds. The exact boundaries change over time and between environments, but the idea of employers setting a baseline set of elections expectations inherently limits speech. Google supports speech within limits, and a person who gets that could probably have navigated the politics of talking about the legitimate issues in the memo without crossing that line. Working together in companies is weird. Codes of Conduct attempt to standardize expectations so that work can get done. Work is a special place.
Your argument seems to be that in an work environment opinions should be kept to one's self.
Would that apply only to Republicans or to Democrats as well?
It is an utopia to pretend that the workplace should be opinion-free. Especially since the workplace on purpose tries to blur the lines between personal and professional lives: dorms on campus, cafeteria, malls and dry-cleaning amenities on campus.
If that's the direction business are going towards to then it is normal to accept that the employee comes with opinions attached.
Generally I think people who are basically compelled to spend time together should use company policies, and their own judgement, to figure out what's professionally acceptable in context and work in reference to that. I don't agree with how home/work lines are often blurred and I see nothing wrong with opinions being shared at work, except the naive expectation that one has the right to say anything at all and, if it's "just an opinion", experience no consequences. It's just basic professionalism. In the real world outside of work, people can express all ranges of opinions (well, most), and others can choose to react, or not. Others can even choose to just not deal with you if they don't like your opinion (again, mostly). At work, you have a complicated long term contractual and financial relationship to the employer and other employees. It's appropriate for people to come into that with some self awareness and caution about what to say, and to whom.
> Not saying Google has to uphold everyone's 1A rights.
What rights? The guarantee that the government will not interfere with your free speech? This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment.
> It's a lie to say Google's culture supports free speech when the cost of that speech is compliance with the tyranny of a Code of Conduct.
The memo made it clear that diversity of opinion is welcome right up to the point where it violates the CoC, but not beyond that point - if you violate the CoC - you can and will get fired. It even listed which parts of the memo would have been ok.
I've never heard of a company that places some sort of altruist dedication to free speech as a higher priority than their internal code of conduct. Google's position on this is industry standard, protects Google from lawsuits, and protects Google employees from harassment. How is that bad?
> The guy who was fired was way out of line, far beyond any reasonable limits to topics of discussion.
What did the author say that was "out of line"? Can you please cite a section of the essay and explain?
Note: Please see this response to the memo from four scientists who study the field of psychology: http://archive.is/z6xxP
The reason given by Google for the author's termination was "advancing harmful gender stereotypes". I didn't see any evidence in the memo of "advancing harmful gender stereotypes". Where are the stereotypes? Where's the evidence that they're harmful? Is the author really advancing them? The author appears to be referencing scientific research into the topics that he mentioned. Scientific research into sex differences is not "harmful stereotypes".
The way in which the Google CEO's reply is worded gives me the impression that they don't even understand that the author's claims are scientific ones. For example:
> Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
These terms -- agreeableness, neurotic -- are personality traits in the field of psychology. There is a significant amount of research into how men and women differ in these traits. See Wikipedia for sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism#Sex_differences
> This paper investigates gender differences in personality traits, both at the level of the Big Five and at the sublevel of two aspects within each Big Five domain. Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men.
The author's mention of terms like "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" are statements of personality trait trends established by scientific research, not personal views or stereotypes. The message from Google's CEO seems to interpret them as personal insults, thereby missing the point of the essay.
The original memo raises points like: women tend to have higher neuroticism on average (low stress tolerance) than men. If some tech jobs have high stress, then is it possible fewer women than men seek those jobs? That seems like a reasonable question to explore, to me, and a question that's grounded in existing scientific research, not the promulgation of a stereotype.
A lot of what he said was on-point and I agree with it. However, it also puts forth a lot of inappropriate generalizations, and in many places presents absurdisms as valid points. I think his "manifesto" would have been a lot more compelling and less divisive if he had presented it much differently.
He boils down the sides do absurd minimal values that understandably cause offense. He calls the people the "left" support as "weak" and says the left worldview prefers an "unstable" approach.
2.
He jumps directly into generalizations about men and women. THe subject has hardly been breached at this point and he's already stirring discomfort among any readers for whom his generalizations do not hold.
3.
He says that women have a harder time negotiating for salary et al as part of their inherent nature.
4.
He directly states that women are neurotic and indirectly states that women cannot handle high-stress work. These terms were called "scientific" by the parent comment, but so is "retarded", and calling someone a retard is pretty fucking rude.
I empathise with the idea that men are being marginalized in order to accomodate for others. Supressing the views of conservatives is equally troubling and worth addressing. Many of his other points hold as well. But he goes too far and throws a rotten egg into the whole document.
"Support of the weak" and "neurotic" are being used in their technical sense though, as rough axes upon which people can lie. It's not normative, it's descriptive.
I don't really know if your #3 is true or not (this isn't the hill I die on), but I don't think it's heresy to suggest it might be. Is that really so impossible as to be an absurdism?
Obviously some of the things he's saying are generalization, but that's hardly a coherent criticism in this context - everything we're talking about on this topic is, by its very nature, generalization. We're saying fewer women than men take jobs in the computer science sector _in general_. If you're trying to look at broad trends it's okay to talk about averages. Real scientists don't need to preface every single statistic with a huge preamble reminding the reader that individual samples are not the same thing as the distribution they are drawn from.
The silly thing is I actually agree that this was a useless move to try and 'educate' the whole company. But saying he was being unscientific is garbage. He's being perfectly coherent and scientific, it was just a fairly rude thing to blast out to a company as large as Google.
The use of these "technical" terms may be appropriate if it were presented in a different context. There are several examples of this document definitely being inappropriate (ones you did not refute), which exacerbates what could otherwise be benine use of technical terminology. To the reader who's already seen several remarks out of line, remarks like "nerotic" seem that much worse.
A perfectly choerent and scientific paper would include references for the points it tries to make. Many people have tried to retroactively justify his "points" with links to Wikipedia articles, but it should be proactively justified in the document with links to scholarly articles. Not doing so makes it difficult to believe that he's writing about anything other than his own cognative biases. "Real" scientists also go through peer review, when their peers might say "this makes you come across like a bit of a dick" before it's published for broader review. "Real scientists" have lots more discipline than this guy, and if he had taken a "real" scientist's approach he would have probably been a lot better off.
I realize this is a touchy topic, but people keep echoing a similar sentiment about inappropriate generalizations.
However, I read the original document the (now ex-) Googler wrote and from what I can see he presented his claims in a reasonable and carefully worded manner. Many people seem to be misquoting him or taking it out of context.
Could you please provide example(s) of these inappropriate generalizations? I am curious if I am misreading the original text, or if you are perceiving it from a perspective that I cannot see (in which case, it would be nice to understand where you're coming from).
It makes points that children can be upset about, adults need to learn to have discussions. Even on topics that they think are sensitive.
If they can't do that, maybe they shouldn't even have a "grown-up" job.
And to throw my 2cents in here too, I'm a biological scientist and agree with the overall theme of what the guy wrote (though there are a handful of smaller points within the manifesto that I take issue with).
You clearly have an axe to grind, since you've posted the same links and research at three times in this comment chain. Every single time you leave out this quote, also from the first article:
>But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe.
We all know that men and women are different but under no circumstances can you club a large section of population and say they are inferior in some respect ... hitler did it with the Jews, whites did it to the blacks , Japanese did it to the Chinese and history is rife with extreme examples of the Dangers of generalization of a large section of population. Our job as human civilization is to evolve positively and to survive by dispersion of empathy - not by corroding it every day and making a certain section feel weak and vulnerable. No matter what your point of view is there is no doubt the author of the article had touched a raw nerve deliberately which he could have easily avoided. Therefor Google is right to fire him and the majority is absolutely within their rights to condemn him.
A little off-topic but if you care about your employees, please make all salary and compensation information for any employee available to all employees (preferably make it public). Someone has to start doing the right thing.
This thread seems to be a perfect demonstration of the problems when it comes to diversity in tech. People just don't seem to get it. I see the same thing in threads around big SV names sexually harassing women (and in those cases it blows my mind even more that people don't get that it's a problem).
It seems like a lot of people are basing their opinions on logic (fine) but in a perfect world where everyone has equal opportunity, we live in a meritocracy, and people are judged solely on performance. Unfortunately none of those things are true and we need to manipulate things manually to ensure people are given equal opportunity.
My favorite explanation of this effect goes like this: You have students in a classroom, sitting in 5 rows of 5 students. The teacher gives each student a crumpled ball of paper. Each ball is identical. The teacher then places a bin at the very front of the class and says "Okay, you each get one throw from your seat. If you hit the bin, you get an A"
Equal opportunity. Everyone is throwing the same ball into the same bin, and everyone gets a chance to throw their ball of paper, hit the bin, and get an A.
But some students are 5ft away and others are 30ft away. Suddenly not so fair.
> But some students are 5ft away and others are 30ft away. Suddenly not so fair.
Employers don't know who came from privileged backgrounds and who didn't. Legally, they shouldn't even be asking about it.
The concern isn't about whether employers should help people out. The concern is that the current rubric is too inexact. And that questioning the rubric is considered hateful.
HN Threads on articles unrelated to technology matters tend towards the dumpster-fire end of the spectrum. The aforementioned classification is orthogonal to the (insert leftist news site here)/(insert rightist news site here) axis.
We all know that men and women are different but under no circumstances can you club a large section of population and say they are inferior in some respect ... hitler did it with the Jews, whites did it to the blacks , Japanese did it to the Chinese and history is rife with extreme examples of the Dangers of generalization of a large section of population. Our job as human civilization is to evolve positively and to survive by dispersion of empathy - not by corroding it every day and making a certain section feel weak and vulnerable. No matter what your point of view is there is no doubt the author of the article had touched a raw nerve deliberately which he could have easily avoided. Therefor Google is right to fire him and the majority is absolutely within their rights to condemn him.
Know this, I'm cancelling my holiday just to show you and more importantly my manager exactly how serious this is. Just to reiterate, you've all made me cancel my holiday, you bad, me good.
SV has had major problems sheltering people in leadership who have used their positions to sexually exploit their female subordinates. Yet a mid level engineer publicly questions some of the company's diversity policies and gets fired. Many of publicly stated reasons about women leaving tech is predatory behavior by people in leadership. How about initiatives about getting rid of individuals like that.
How could someone express the views the author felt without getting fired, while still promoting discussion?
Is it possible, just possible, that Google's policies are counterproductive? If so, how would Google find out? By what process could someone change them?
If such processes exist, why would someone the company valued enough to hire risk his job to send this memo?
Is it possible that Google's environment does not accept some minority viewpoints despite your beliefs and attempts?
This precisely. It's a pity they'll never be specific in addressing exactly how these points could have been raised without sanction. As admitted, the (former) employee clearly felt the discussion was worth starting - why won't they provide concrete examples of how they would be preferred the issues be raised in this case? (It's a rhetorical question; of course, we know why they won't and can't do that.)
At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint)
Define "safely" and maybe you can express your viewpoint. The good news is that Google ain't gonna shoot you after a 15 minute trial (including appeals) but you'll get fired and blackballed. (Google could at least give this guy FU money with a wink and a nod.)
No company will hire you after rocking the boat....things have already been decided by those who scream loudest. WTF are you to question them now?
Idea: overheated discussion detector could probably run more efficiently the next few weeks by replacing the implementation with 'cat thread.xml | grep Google | grep -v technology'
A lot of comments already misunderstanding the excellent response by Sundar Pichai in the article.
You obviously can't say anything you like at work.
Google is offering diversity of opinion but there are things you can say that are just stupid and will get you fired.
If you replace women in his essay with African American there would have been about 1 second between it being posted and it being taken down, with an escort out of the building and rightly so.
I loved this talk from Sheryl Sandberg that touches on a lot of these issues, particularly the "joke" near the end, 39 minutes:
Frankly, the CEO has more problems than this memo. Breitbart has been a garbage fire for a while, but if the screen shots and messages in the article[1] aren't fake then Google is going to have some problems. This is really not the thing you want going on when you already have a government labor investigation underway. I wish anyone impacted luck.
I did share my thoughts (CEO has other problems, good luck to people impacted), and HN doesn't allow posting images so I posted a link to the article. Inc. Magazine https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/google-manifesto-blacklists.h... looks like they are verifying them although they did not print any.
Full, unedited document. Gizmodo did a hatchet job ar taking charts and links out.
People should read it and then apply reason to it.
Difficult when we get into cult-like mob mentality.
422 comments
[ 7.7 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] thread...So we've fired the person starting the debate? Am I missing something here?
*Citation needed.
If you're suggesting they were subjected to different practices, contrary to what HR at Google is stating, then you better cough up evidence. Do the women and minorities at Google perform worse than White males?
This part in particular is worth considering:
"..if minds differ across sexes and races enough to justify diversity as an instrumental business goal, then they must differ enough in some specific skills, interests, and motivations that hiring and promotion will sometimes produce unequal outcomes in some company roles. In other words, if demographic diversity yields any competitive advantages due to psychological differences between groups, then demographic equality of outcome cannot be achieved in all jobs and all levels within a company."
A professor of social psychology at Rutgers said:
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right.
An evolutionary psychology professor said:
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’)
http://archive.is/z6xxP
> But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm.
> Again, though, most of these sex differences are moderate in size and in my view are unlikely to be all that relevant to the Google workplace (accounting for, perhaps, a few percentage points of the variability between men’s and women’s performances). Sex differences in occupational interests, personal values, and certain cognitive abilities are a bit larger in size (see here), but most psychological sex differences are only small to moderate in size, and rather than grouping men and women into dichotomous groups, I think sex and sex differences are best thought of scientifically as multidimensional dials, anyway
> Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at.
> Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism or stratifying opportunities based on sex.
That the empirical claims are accurate doesn't mean that they are relevant to the (memo) author's motive for writing it, whatever that is.
Create STEM schools and give kids computers in elementary school. Use more fun robotics in the classroom. Teach programming literacy. Let kids make games.
Of course the caveat to these approaches is that it takes ~13-17 years from kindergarten until high school graduation / college graduation to when the candidate can then use the skills by starting a tech job. That said, I think upstream educational opportunities like these are the best long-term solution to diversifying the tech population.
1. Making the workplace less hostile to that group. The code of conduct and this firing both seem to addressing this point.
2. Making sure salaries are equal for equal work. Google might have some problems in this area.
3. Investing in the hiring pipeline (education) to make sure bias isn't occurring earlier in the pipeline.
Those are just a few ideas. Someone really committed to that goal could surely find more ideas.
Then in a decade you'll have a much wider pool of talent to select from and can just take the best while appeasing diversity advocates.
The same could be done for racial minorities.
From the original memo:
> However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
> ...
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
No he hasn't. Rather, he's implying that 'non-diverse' hires have a higher bar to to pass, and that by enforcing diversity quotas you tend to end up hiring exceptionally qualified people from the 'non-diverse' group, which can have the opposite of your desired effect, and perpetuate stereotypes about the performances of people from different groups.
For example, let's say you have 100 people interviewing for 10 positions. Of that, due to current representation of women in tech let's say the candidates comprise 20 women and 80 men.
Let's also assume that 25% of those interviewing meet the technical standards a.k.a 'the bar' required by Google (that makes for 5 women and 20 men).
Google however is only hiring 10 positions, and in order to meet diversity requirements will hire 5 women and 5 men (50/50 split).
Each one of the people hired is qualified to work at Google and meets the bar (none of them are underperforming).
Without any diversity requirements a candidate would need to be in the top 10% of other candidates to get a position however now, for the women, they only need to be in the top 25% of other woman candidates to get the position, whereas the men need to be in the top 6.25% of male candidates.
The bar has been effectively lowered for the women candidates and raised for the male candidates, despite all of them being worthy and capable of working at Google.
If you are always hiring equal numbers of people from both groups, but from one group you are always hiring the top 6.25% of candidates, and the other group you are hiring from the top 25% of candidates, then over time you'll start to find that on average, one group has a larger percentage of high performers than the other.
> At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.
Good luck with that. You can't take a guy out back and shoot him for speaking his mind, and subsequently expect others do so.
I'm certain Google management knows this as well. They know exactly what they're doing and they're fine with it.
The difference between having the freedom to speak one's mind, and breaching a code of conduct that you sign when you agree to work for Google is clear cut in his note.
The message here seems abundantly clear and I have trouble understanding how it can miscontrued to be anything other than reacting to a clear violation. I can't even think of how to restate what is so clearly laid out in the note.
I wouldn't rule out the potential that there is uneven enforcement of such violations, and that would make this action look questionable. But I don't know enough about Google's internal operations to get to that conclusion.
I think it is certainly a very fine line to walk and people (including Google employees) will definitely see it in a lot of different ways. But, reading this as an outsider, the note appears to me to address the situation very directly and conveys a real sense of urgency (more so than I have ever seen from any of my employers, at least).
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
"many points raised in the memo ... are important topics."
So what? Other points were a violation of the CoC. Goodbye, good luck, see you around the campus!
At every company in the world. You aren't seriously expecting a company code of conduct to be applied fairly in some sort of scientifically measurable way? The code of conduct is there to protect against the worst types of behavior, and plenty of bad behavior will slip under the radar. So what? It's not meant to create some sort of utopian workplace. It's meant to create a better workplace for those who have historically been discriminated against. So far, it looks like it has come in handy at least once in a very public way.
Intimidating is a strong word for this, I think. I would call it intimidating if the original memo was a challenge to the code of conduct, as opposed to a violation of it.
Either way, I agree that other employees could see this as intimidation and that makes the whole situation much more complex. I suppose that ultimately I would not stand 100% in defense of the course of action, but I am also not grabbing my pitchfork over it.
It should be. If violating the CoC has no consequences then there should be no CoC in the first place.
The CoC makes it clear that some actions and some types of speech are entirely unwelcome at the company.
The memo also makes it clear that if you have a minority viewpoint that does not violate the CoC, then you should be encouraged to express those viewpoints. It even gave specific examples of the parts of the original memo that do not violate the CoC.
This is problematic since the toxic effect of uncertainty and ideological supression at the work place is not mitigated by it being produced through arbitrary executives or an executives arbitrary interpretation of some given code of conduct.
edit: If the purpose of the code of conduct is to create this uncertainty, than that alone should be reason enough for the code to be improved.
edit2: And of course, this specific code of conduct did not generate the legitimicy it should have created, which is why we are talking about this incidence.
What's confusing or unclear about that? It's crystal clear to me that Google prioritizes a workplace free of harassment over your individual ideology. If your ideology makes other employees feel harassed or intimidated, you'll have to leave your ideology at home.
And if you're not clever enough to understand that a statement in a widespread memo like "women, on average, have more neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)" could cause one gender to feel intimidated or harassed, then perhaps you're not clever enough to work at Google.
Science is not an ideology or opinion; in a diverse environment, reasonable positions are disputed by arguments, not power play.
Exercising an executive bias to intimidate the employees into subscribing to a specific ideology is nothing this code of conduct were able to prevent. The coc could not perform worse measured by it's own goal.
It's no service to any code of conduct intention if a code of conduct is treated as some chilling orthodoxy that is used to prevent a communities open dialogue and self awareness.
"Women, on average, have more neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)." isn't a reasonable position at Google, or any other big company. If for no other reason, to protect the company from being sued for gender discrimination.
Neither are any of the following statements reasonable:
"Blacks on average are... [insert some negative]".
"Jews on average are... [insert some negative]".
If an employee can't figure that out, you should fire them with zero hesitation. Open dialogue at a place of employment has many limits, and it will never be the top priority. If you say something that offends enough other employees, you're going to get fired, and that's not going to change no matter who you work for.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
When a murderer is sentenced for murder... there are 2 levels of understanding the sentencing. One is that he broke the "code of conduct"/law, the deeper is why we consider that to be unlawful (societal harm).
Saying he clearly broke the code of conduct just shifts the question to how useful the code of conduct is.. its not some fucking holy unbreakable scripture from the sky, its man made, just as the firing is.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I'll even stick with your example in asking - is murdering someone a good way to start debating the "why" of the law against murder?
There are certainly examples where breaking the law proves to be a powerful and effective way to start the conversation. But how often does this hold true when breaking the law causes real harm to others? I doubt the answer is "never", but I can't come up with any argument for how this applies to the current situation.
Anyways my main point was the breach of code of conduct is just the technical reason he was fired. If you read the line item he was fired for, its clear its vague enough to be used many many different ways. I don't think its productive to focus on whether he broke some rule somewhere when the whole situation that led to the firing is known to us.
If it's so clear, then could you specify exactly which parts of the memo were "fair to debate" (as Pichai says) and which part were "clear violation?"
He used internal messaging services. Someone leaked the document. That "someone" is sitting in his/her office today getting no punishment whatsoever.
Is it enough for some people to consider it that?
Consider gay marriage. Each side thinks the other is being bigoted towards some group. Do we just take people's words for it?
This only leads to people getting increasingly sensitive over increasingly minor things and it's a vicious circle.
So how do we break it? How do we re-establish open discourse?
For all intents and purposes the content of the memo was balanced, polite, and restricted to the Google audience. The adult reaction should have been to punish the leaker (which I believe should be an actual breach of the code of conduct) and organize internal debates to allow multiple viewpoints to confront.
Rallying with the hysterical mass and shutting down the minority voice is certainly not about supporting debates and free speech. It's about throwing red meat to the wolves so the company can quietly solve its all too real gender pay gap issues without making too much PR waves.
>being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
Go ahead and claim women are more neurotic and have a lower stress tolerance. Don’t expect everyone to pat you on the back and claim you’re just expressing a minority viewpoint... because you clearly aren’t. James Damore didn’t bother to do any research on the topic - I guess he just assumed his feelings were correct? And he assumed he wouldn’t suffer any consequences for claiming 1/3 of his coworkers were meek easily spooked neurotics?
Go and actually read the original memo at https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso.... Which, for this particular point, links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizin... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism (see in particular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism#Sex_differences). From which you can access about a metric fuck ton of actual research.
We can't expect to have any reasonable discussion on the topic if the standard of criticism is not reading the piece one is criticizing, and then stating obvious falsehoods (like "didn’t bother to do any research") as facts - probably hoping other readers also won't bother checking.
EDIT:
Also:
> Go ahead and claim women are more neurotic and have a lower stress tolerance. Don’t expect everyone to pat you on the back and claim you’re just expressing a minority viewpoint...
Those are actual falsifiable statements. They can be either true or false. The whole idea of considering them as "viewpoints" is ridiculous and it's precisely what's the problem with the whole environment surrounding the discussion.
Stop it - you are being extraordinarily deceptive with statements like this. Did you actually read this memo? And I mean read it critically? Are these quotes falsifiable statements?
"These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics."
Didn't see a citation for that. Care to cite the evidence? Can we prove that this assertion is true or false?
"This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
Would love to read your citation for anxiety leading to lower number of women in high stress jobs.
"Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them."
Again, I'd love to see some evidence showing that the desire for work life balance is the reason that men disproportionately in leadership positions in tech.
Stop pretending that just because the author has sources that his conclusions are supported. His argument was poor. Anyone with reasonable reading comprehension could see that, politics be damned.
Neuroticism is an actual measurable thing and the research seems to indicate that women typically measure about half a standard deviation above men on it.
I honestly didn't know this before but it seems like when he's making these claims he's using objective research that finds these things across cultures.
>> being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
> Go ahead and claim women are more neurotic and have a lower stress tolerance.
Pichai seems to think that "neurotic" is an insult. Turns out it's just part of an established model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
There is no such thing, there's been a plethora of research about this that disprove this false claim
Oh wait, maybe I don't agree with you...
Which part did he break exactly? Bias? Seems like something that can be construed to mean basically any ideology or opinion, conservative or liberal.
Saying diversity training sucks, or that Google should re-evaluate how they encourage diversity, or that men are getting a raw deal, would have been tolerable.
What about that they are inherently less interested in football?
Culture plays an effect, but we really need to realize that biology probably pays a role too, and potentially affects gender parities in many careers.
However, that does not give licence to Google to place unreasonable limits on employees constitutional rights.
To do so would give privately entered contracts the power to overturn the constitution which society has enacted.
The debate here is over whether his comments were reasonable in this context.
> All of these traits which the manifesto described as “female” are the core traits which make someone successful at engineering
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
How is it ok to push a gender stereotype that is pro-female but not ok if the stereotype is pro-male?
That post is a cowardly and smarmy non answer, and it contradicts itself in several ways. Aside from the one already mentioned, it claims making people feel bad at their job is inappropriate (even though the memo did no such thing) and then goes on to actually mock the author by claiming he sounds like he's bad at his job.
Rules for thee but not for me. Utterly pathetic how people think this is in any way a rebuttal.
Your appeal to authority is pretty transparent... While the original memo author's work with various strains of yeast is indeed interesting, I'm not sure how it's relevant to the topic at hand...
An argument should stand on its own merits, not on a piece of paper on the author's wall.
> making people feel bad at their job is inappropriate (even though the memo did no such thing)
Say you've got red hair and someone sent a memo around saying that they'd heard that everyone with red hair was more of a fuzzy people person than a real coder. Would you agree that people with red hair may well feel targeted?
Doesn't sound like a claim that women naturally possess these skills to me.
I do not believe that the author of the memo ever wrote anything like that. I'm not sure that you should equate all research scientists who published on gender/sex differences with nazis.
Maybe men are slightly better at something and maybe women are slightly better at other things - why is this an issue? Clearly the difference is not remotelly big enough to be impactful since we see men and women work in every profession. Average worker skill is pretty low so this "genetic advantage" would only really matter at top 0.1% of professionals.
e.g. women are worse at some sports like Tennis, but to most people it will never matter since only few people play at that level where genetics can give you an edge.
That's like me not acknowledging that a black athlete has a genetic advantage over me that would make a difference if we were competing at the 0.1% top level.
I think Google's action is not a right or wrong approach, it's a measure of maintaining order and keeping everybody 'happy'.
Well, that escalated quickly[0].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
And despite what any employer will tell you about their workplace being an open forum, they are full of shit. What they mean is, it's an open forum to agree with management.
Minority viewpoints in tech become silenced and their author(s) ostracized by the biases of a mob mentality. It doesn't even matter what you write because most people won't even read the original source, instead floating by on derivative tweets and extremely biased summaries (in whatever direction agrees with their existing views).
Irrespective of the original memo, and this is something I've felt more strongly in the past couple years, it's just not safe to share dissenting viewpoints in tech anymore.
We used to be the industry where anything could be discussed critically and the most objectively correct answer could win (logic! science!). Nowadays it's so political and heated, I've found it best to just stay out of the discussion and not share dissenting views anymore. I think the real problem we need to fix is being able to have rational critical discussion around topics we disagree with.
It is not safe to share your viewpoints anywhere where it is not considered germane: and the workplace is high on that list. A firm will fire someone who becomes annoyingly political or who makes a public ass out of themselves on social media. I work for a medium sized tech firm in the American South and we had one engineer that was very open and sometimes combative about her progressive viewpoints and people stopped wanting to talk to her, even those who agreed with her. She didn't last a quarter.
Expecting firms to give their employees a forum to speak openly about anything not work related is a recent phenomenon across the board, and many still hold onto the view that if you want to engage in political discussions then do so outside of the workplace.
This is not true if only for the fact that organizations have always engaged in politics. In one of the worst cases, the United Fruit Company lobbied the US President to overthrow the elected government of Guatemala. In one of the most benign cases, Subaru sponsored gay pride events and publicly supported LGBT groups in the 1990s.
Besides that, everything else you've said is useless hyperbole. Get your history together before you go spouting nonsense.
> Besides that, everything else you've said is useless hyperbole. Get your history together before you go spouting nonsense.
Why be so hostile? If you want to be a dick to strangers on the internet then piss off back to reddit.
Feel free to point out which of these two statements is useless hyperbole:
> Google is known to be a very left-leaning company
> [Google] talks a big talk about being logic and reason-driven
Everything else I said was conjecture.
But Google does this (Memegen and eng-misc), the problem is that you're only able to speak about certain things and entertain certain opinions...so naturally, conservatives will feel muzzled and want to not go against the dominant culture/power structures
I agree that there is a lot of mob mentality going on, it’s just difficult to get upset about this case because the original author was spouting debunked “biotruth” arguments. Twitter replies are mostly full of men who didn’t read the original memo or who are willfully pretending it didn’t claim women are less biologically suited to being engineers.
I like Pichai’s memo and I think it sets the right tone: the offending employee could have raised these same arguments without falling back to debunked stereotypes. He could have done an hour of Googling on the topic and educated himself. Instead he trusted his own feelings in an area he had no experience or knowledge in.
This seems to be a trait relatively common among really smart people: doctors who think they’re good at politics, mechanical engineers who think they’ve discovered a theory that overturns all of physics, or in this case a software engineer that thinks he knows better than thousands of scientists doing experiments and crunching the actual data.
As far as I can tell we can have rational critical discussions in tech - we just can’t get away with spouting nonsense. If that nonsense reinforces old sexist or racist stereotypes then we can expect a backlash.
C.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956592, where an actual scientist is quoted to say "The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right."
See also http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... for plenty of good references on the topic.
But generally, I mean, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I don't expect to see peace over this topic any time soon.
He also makes a bunch of unfounded claims that aren't really related to the science. And people argue that because he said a bunch of sciency things that scientists agree are correct, that everything he said was true.
I have to wonder if the artificial urgency that social media has created doesn't have something to do with this. Everyone these days wants to be the first to respond, which results in a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. You end up with a giant, unstoppable snowball of knee jerk reactions to other knee jerk reactions rolling down a bottomless hill.
"All hail diversity! But if don't think like we do, GTFO."
The owners of any business are free to create whatever business environment they want to create. The market is supposed to punish or reward them accordingly.
The job market, too, is a market.
The market won't give you the solution you seek; the issue does not impact profitability enough.
Plus, most other companies will refuse to supply goods and services to it lest they feel the backlash of catering to racists.
Not exactly a feasible venture.
See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Coca-Cola#Investm...
Actual experience has proven beyond doubt that boycotts don't work, and even if a company has blood on its hand, their deeds are quickly forgotten.
But you can't bring up the Apartheid and not dig through a huge history of companies, countries and people explicity or implicitly supporting it.
Doesn't justify anything of course but Coca-Cola wasn't the only company doing it
Didn't change much.
> Doesn't justify anything of course but Coca-Cola wasn't the only company doing it
That's my point, though. Plenty of companies have engaged in abhorrent acts, with little meaningful consequences to them. The market is not good at solving these types of problems.
Really cause that's a boilerplate libertarian argument.
That said, don't expect the market to give you a solution that's fair to people - the only one you'll get is the one of maximum profitability under implicit rules of the current culture. Those are very much not the same things.
People get easily outraged - which can and does end up with individuals getting hurt - but they also quickly forget and move to next issue. See also the arguments why boycotts generally don't work.
Google is being sued by the Department of Labor for violating a gender discrimination regulation: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa...
These companies behavior has nothing to do with the free market. It is a response to government regulation.
Edit: thinking about that, he couldn't have gone far in the company though without some serious apologies or something, because I can't see a manager assigning him to work in or lead a team with women on it, and that's 1/3rd the company. Maybe it's also a practical decision to fire him and be done with it even if it didn't leak.
> However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.
He made his continued employment both a social and legal liability. This is a fireable offense even if he was "right".
Also consider this. As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. In short, Google feels these programs are scientifically valid. The author claims they aren't, but casually dismisses Google's position without really addressing it. Instead we get an evo-psych Chewbacca defense, phrased in a way that's sure to offend a large number of people. Even if he did that in good faith, it's a colossal mistake at best.
I'm sure you have sources that disprove his sources. How about you post them.
It doesn't mean it doesn't exist though, just that we won't get access to it.
This is a well-known, well-researched fact of organizational psychology. Are you guys really this stupid? Think about it from a problem-solving perspective, in terms of the solutions individuals and groups will come up with.
Sexism, racism, and discrimination in general doesn't benefit anyone but the wealthiest few, and only if they're really, really stupid.
In order to promote tolerance you have to shut down and remove the people who support intolerance. Firing this guy is clearly in line with that mission and improving productivity.
We learn this in grade school, are you all foreigners or something? Or has American education really been gutted...
It may as well be an argument from authority - because that is what it is. One cannot hide behind "but the data show" and then refuse to show the data. That is not how science works and we shouldn't accept it for a second from anyone.
That would be interesting research to review publicly. But it also reframes the picture, changing it from "some groups are discriminated against and therefore we need diversity focus" to "we need to start discriminating in order to increase diversity, because this leads to better-performing teams".
> ...we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct
As if admitting that currently there are no avenues for open discussion on highly controversial topics such as this one or at least none that do not clash with the Code of Conduct.
It's pretty damn simple.
Have you actually read the memo you are criticizing?
It's also not a thing that the author of the memo stated. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14958594
I thought some of his arguments were very weak and, even where he had decent points, he did not make his case in a compelling way. However, I don't think he should have been disciplined and certainly not fired. Those who disagree should refute his arguments.
Sorry, but unless you are some leading researcher in a related field, your "thoughts" doesn't count for much and you should provide cited counter claims to be taken seriously. Without this, it's all just an emotional reaction and doesn't contribute anything of value to a meaningful discussion.
For example, the author of the memo presents some citations to back up the idea that there are biological differences between men and women that might explain why more men than women choose to work in tech. I don't find that idea controversial.
However, none of the citations provide any evidence that the degree of biological difference between the male and female population is sufficient to explain the relative gender balance we see in tech.
I don't need to be an expert to notice the lack of evidence for that part of the argument and conclude that the argument is poorly made.
It is possible that such evidence does exist and I would be interested to see it but that would not change that fact that this memo, with its cited evidence, failed to make that case.
From glancing over the memo I perceive that: women/man are different and men prefer working in engineering. No need to artificially increase percentage of women engineers with incentives. I did not notice any inferior/superior claims.
Being fired for this polite memo? And being characterized as a kind of toxic outcast? - I'm sorry, what have our society and companies become?
Googlers seem to be allowed to do his/her utmost only within a narrow cage of accepted/mainstream borders.
The first, from my perspective, is that it crossed a line that you really have to tread with care when it started talking about "biological IQ". Anyone familiar with the sordid history of eugenics knows that you tread that line really carefully, both because of the sordid history of policy on that sort of thing, the extreme difficulty of separating biological vs. environmental constructs for IQ, and the difficulty of creating a single "IQ test" that measures every single aspect of human intelligence. The quote about "IQ and sex differences" (being something the left ignored) was only supported by a link to conservative think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (which said some things about bias in science grants, but didn't really have anything to say about IQ and sex differences).
This is the point where, to me, the memo went downhill. I am not sure it is the intention (possibly the emphasis was intended to be more the politic), but it is very easy to infer inferior / superior claims at this point, because the whole "IQ and sex differences" thing sort of came out of nowhere.
The other reason it went downhill fast, and unnecessarily so, was because the paper brought in "liberal" vs "conservative" American political dynamics elements. BIG mistake. Any discussion along this line needs to be as apolitical as possible, lest it descend rapidly into toxic left-wing vs. right-wing tribalism territory (as, well, happened). Instead of attempting to skirt around politics, loaded phrases were used, particularly at the end of the memo, like "PC authoritarian", and sourced links typically were op-ed, often with strong bias.
I agree that a lot of the memo is more some of the tribal / "role" paradigms and elements that have been discussed in many sources over time, and there's actually some interesting food for thought in it. I'm not terribly comfortable that what I see as poor communication skills led to the firing. I would not characterize this memo as "polite" though, for the above reasons.
When Google's AlphaGo beat some famous champions, people were wondering whether Google's program was merely a Go-specific program, or a more general program that learned to play Go.
I would also argue that if you went out and created another test for IQ, it would likely have high iter-rater reliability with IQ, but maybe have rough edges and have less empirical attention than mainstream tests like Ravens Matrices. That has been the history of people trying to make a name for themselves by making another intelligence construct, only to find it has insufficient distinction from IQ.
He mentioned this only briefly (a bracketed clause 5 words long) as an example of science that the left ignores, because there does appear to be a difference in IQ between biological sexes [0], with current research suggesting the averages are similar, however there is a higher variation among males, leading to a higher proportion of men at the very high and very low ends of the spectrum.
His comments on this were in no way used to infer one group was superior or more intelligent than the other. He was just pointing out that the left will ignore or deny science when it conflicts with ideology.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc...
Afraid of angry, vocal and hysterical internet lynch mobs on social media.
Whoever is most easily offended and cries loudest gets to decide.
Being actually right, or god forbid principled, is clearly a thing of the past.
Please, remind me of a time in the past in which people could actually say whatever they wanted without repercussions.
Oh right, there's no actual time in the history of humanity, with the exception of a select few people whose odious opinions everyone had to tolerate or else.
Strawman.
No, there has probably never been such a time, at least for sufficiently creative uses of 'whatever'.
But that doesn't mean everything is fine, and it doesn't mean freedom of expression and public discourse haven't visibly degraded since, for example, ten or twenty years ago.
But "polite memo" is not how anyone I know would describe this.
Conclusions, particularly conclusions on sensitive subjects, baldly stated without a bunch of qualifiers don't tend to be considered polite.
Sucks, but there it is.
It was a badly structured and badly argued document, and I disagree with most of its factual claims and its policy recommendations. But it in no way was impolite or in violation of Google's code of conduct, unless you think that having that viewpoint inherently makes you in violation and deserving of excommunication.
The reality is impolite is in the eye of the beholder (or culture). And in the Bay Area, that would be considered an impolite way of communicating considering the topic.
I'm not applying a value judgement here.
The one Pichai cited,
>> It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects "each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."
> I did not notice any inferior/superior claims.
He said women have a harder time leading. That's a pretty big claim. None of his sources back it up, so it's just his opinion. At best, that makes him a legal risk for Google if he were involved in any hiring or promotional processes.
He said, in the context of Big-5 personality traits [0], that women on average skew higher for 'agreeableness' (a scientifically sound finding that has been replicated in cross-cultural studies), and that high agreeableness leads to having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
He's not saying women have a harder time at these things, he's saying people with a high agreeableness personality trait have a hard time at these things.
His very next sentence states that while women have higher agreeableness at population-level averages, it would be wrong to just look at averages between genders because there is significant overlap in these traits across genders. However because it is seen by senior management as a problem for women, men with high agreeableness are excluded from training programs designed to help people with things such as negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
So, he's not saying that women have a harder time leading, he's saying population-level averages in certain personality traits result in women initially being less well equipped to handle certain situations (not that they lack aptitude or ability for it), and that senior management have recognised this and implemented training programs specifically to correct for it, but because these training programs are only for women, they are excluding a large portion of men with the same traits, who are then denied access to similar corrective training.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
Yes he does, he says it word for word. He says women, on average, have more of those traits. Then he draws the conclusion that because of these personality differences, that women have a harder time leading. That's not supported by any research he cites.
> So, he's not saying that women have a harder time leading
Yes, he does say that here: "This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."
> he's saying population-level averages in certain personality traits result in women initially being less well equipped to handle certain situations
He specifically cites "leading". And, that claim is not backed by any research.
> senior management have recognised this and implemented training programs specifically to correct for it
That is not in the memo.
Are these numbers available to public somewhere?
I'm asking because I would dearly want to find comprehensive data. When I've done some of my own research, I have run into sets of studies, which all agree on one thing: more diverse groups get better results. The snag is that these studies disagree - wildly - with the magnitude of the effect. Some claim maybe 2% improvement. Some others claim up to ~30%. Yet others somewhere inbetween.
The figures also fluctuate quite a bit over time. Study from 2008/2009 shows numbers that are almost entirely unrelated to a study from 2014/2015. Some studies claim that gender diversity alone bears very little benefit[ß], and other studies from the same time come out with results that sort of imply you will need cultural diversity for notable results.
But by far the worst piece of news is that the measured and/or recorded numbers appear to be geographically distinct. Results from US studies are different from those in UK, which in turn differ from mainland Europe studies. That only raises more questions. Such as...
- are the numbers consistently different across regions?
- ... across continents?
- ... across cultures?
- what is the measured effect between "just" gender diverse and culturally diverse groups?
- do age groups matter?
... and so on. I genuinely would like to know. (For the record, and you can check this from my earlier posts as well: I am firmly in the camp who believe that diversity is beneficial.)
N.B. The most recent study I know of is the McKinsey report from 2015.[0]
---
ß: I can dig out the research articles if there's interest. I have some of them sort of easily accessible.
0: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...
But as a developer, my requirements are set by project managers (50% women in my experience), the design and marketing is done by a diverse team, testing is done by other people (or end-users, sigh); so developers are "only" concerned with the actual implementation. Consequently, I don't find it intuitive that more diversity (of gender/ethnicity) would help my team.
Do developers in other companies or countries (Germany here) have wider responsibilities, and thus, diversity is more important? Can engineers at Facebook or Google write user-facing features on a whim? (The terrible mic drop Gmail gimmick comes to mind...) Could that explain the difference in how much teams benefit from diversity?
Sadly no :( - I'm fully aware that the studies in this field mostly focus on financial outcomes, and because they are commissioned by consulting/recruiting agencies, they are of course targeting the management group. That's one of the reasons I would love to see the numbers from Google's internal research.
As for this:
> Most anecdotes I've read about the benefits of diversity boil down to "if only we'd had a <minority> on the team [...]
I am not sure whether I should be offended or merely aghast. From the tone you used, it feels like you have witnessed something more akin box-ticking than strategy, cargo-culting over rationality. I know my reasons are different but I suspect they could be equally selfish.
1. In my experience, women who stay in tech tend to be pretty damn good. Even if we ignored all other factors, it would be rational from purely talent-acquisition point of view to target female engineers in hiring. In addition, women often have greater capacity for empathy and thus can become a force multiplier in practically any team.
2. Constructive arguments from different viewpoints can only make us stronger. Things I am blind to can be spotted by someone else. Things my usual peer group is blind to can be spotted by persons from different peer group(s). But most importantly - things that are obvious to people who share my background can be pointed out and questioned by people whose backgrounds are different.
The thing I, as an engineer, worry about is myopia.
> as a developer, my requirements are set by project managers (50% women in my experience)
That is an interesting observation. Do you think that is due to self-selection or external factors? Also: if PM roles can have a 50/50 gender split, does that mean that women are more likely to seek promotions that lead to PM type positions?
> Do developers in other companies or countries (Germany here) have wider responsibilities, and thus, diversity is more important?
I think it depends less on the country and more on the company [or national?] culture. In engineering driven organisations, definitely. In a rigid hierarchy with nothing-but-top-down approach, probably less so. But then again, in the light of what I know, the latter category should benefit from diversity in their upper management. Where else would the alternate viewpoints come from?
And finally, I'm going to pick this one up separately:
> Consequently, I don't find it intuitive that more diversity (of gender/ethnicity) would help my team.
I'm sorry for you. But also, I am glad that you brought this up. You have just highlighted that MY experience and view of diversity can be irrational or plain odd to someone from a different cultural environment. For that - thank you.
I guess my summary sounded a little harsh. Here's a typical example[1]:
>> When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups. When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it, for example, 5% to 10% of videos were uploaded upside down as a result. This factor may be especially relevant for leaders of consumer tech companies.
I have heard of/read similar anecdotes about various groups of people that certainly have different perspectives, but it always seems extremely anecdotal to me.
This study sounds more promising in my opinion[2]:
>> When a black person presented a dissenting perspective to a group of whites, the perspective was perceived as more novel and led to broader thinking and consideration of alternatives than when a white person introduced that same dissenting perspective. The lesson: when we hear dissent from someone who is different from us, it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks like us.
> That is an interesting observation.
I've tried to verify that my experience wasn't a complete outlier; it seems that PMs really have a more balanced gender ratio than engineers: https://www.knowledgetrain.co.uk/resources/careers/women-in-...
> Also: if PM roles can have a 50/50 gender split, does that mean that women are more likely to seek promotions that lead to PM type positions?
...but now I realise that we must work for very different companies/clients. I don't see project management as a promotion from engineering - in my experience, it's a completely separate career path, just like design. Also, since I am a freelancer, my clients' offices are often full of other freelancers, and promotions aren't really a thing.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2015/07/21/why... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-mak...
* harassment and intimidation
* calling for harasser to be fired
* firing harasser
All three behaviors fall under the broad umbrella of harassment and intimidation. Clearly the first is a fireable behavior, and the last is not a fireable behavior.
The middle one certainly stands somewhere between. I suppose it's possible that if the author was exonerated, the middle group may be deemed as having participated in a firing offense?
Consider this, if diversity hiring yields better individual and group performance then this implies that different races and genders perform better at certain skills, and that taken in aggregate, this leads to measurable performance increases overall at the individual and group level.
After all, if there was no difference across gender or race, then it would make no difference whether you had 100% white male or 100% asian female, or any other combination of different demographics.
They compared a Trump hat at Google is the equivalent of walking in to (a presumably hardcore) biker bar in Iowa. That's a pretty damning response, even if they meant the opposite.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14957708
On another note, I watched the 100m men's final this Saturday and noticed white men are worse at running than black men. Would that be racist towards whites if the stats were confirming my opinion?
The Google code of conduct is pretty clear. It is a primary duty of every employee to actively create an environment where others don't feel harassed or intimidated. If your science fact harasses or intimidates others, then science loses in that case and the code of conduct, and a harmonious workplace, wins. Google has a set of values, and priorities, and those might not be your priorities but you have the choice of working elsewhere if you feel those values don't line up with your own.
Science and facts aren't the end all. I know plenty of folks who are super smart, know a tons of facts, and are miserable people to work with. I would never hire them, or join a company where they work.
But at least own up to what you are.
It's all fake altruistic bullshit marketing/PR/corporate speak. It's just modern advertising and branding.
And they try to one-up each other so you just get bombarded with this happy-language about all of these beautiful non-monetary things that they somehow seem to care so much about.
These poses are just "corporate white lies". They are not meant to be tested.
It's similar to companies saying things "we are like a family".
And that is the adult version of "your dog has gone to the farm for a while".
It's crap fed to you to distract you from the brutal reality so your resources can be extracted more smoothly for longer.
Hear it, but don't believe it.
Maybe he missed the memo that the author has been fired? How is that encouraging for people with unpopular opinions?
See: https://www.recode.net/2016/6/2/11845456/nest-google-witchhu...
(The outcome of the above story: the employee was rehired!)
- We can debate anything
- However, some views are too harmful to be debated
- Whoever is most vocally outraged decides the boundary between open to debate/too harmful
- you can say absolutely anything you want, as long as it's not something we say is harmful of course
So much back and forth
What is the best way?
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right. [...] This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. (Lee Jussim, professor of social psychology at Rutgers University)
> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’) (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico)
If you have read the memo and found it incoherent, then please explain what part of it is incoherent. Here are some of the points made in its summary:
> [S]ilencing [people who disagree] has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Do you find those points incoherent? I find them to be clear. ("incoherent: expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear.")
>But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe.
I would argue that even if he didn't mean to, "using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality" is the message he gave to many people. I do believe his argument is more complex than that, but it's not sufficiently accounting for this impression.
I'll continue reading. In the meantime, asking if I read the memo and showing me the definition of "incoherent" ... can we please have a respectful discussion? I'm happy to explain why I find the memo, as a whole, incoherent, with examples.
(Edit: changed "first" to "second" scientist)
And the next sentence:
> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
- This is bad communicating. It's incredibly vague about what % of the difference he thinks is biological, and what % is social/structural/historical, the things he completely fails to address. This "I'm just saying!" vagueness leaves the door open to an extremely wide range of interpretations. There's no argument there. It's all fudgy-hedgy. It's not coherent.
> I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
- This is where he wants to be. The high bar he sets for himself. The point that evidence should not be discounted because it doesn't fit the wished-for results is important. Results are results. His writing does not live up to what he establishes in this paragraph. He says "I hope it's clear" and he does qualify a lot of his statements with "I'm not saying xyz about ALL individuals" ... he's trying.
These are two points that give me the sense of an overall incoherent argument:
> Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
- This is manifestly ridiculous. Accepting the truth, that some differences between people are biological, does not mean that historical and cultural factors don't matter and can't be adjusted for, or that it is misguided to explicitly direct resources towards increasing diversity. That's a whole other debate, about how to do it, and who it's fair to. It IS arbitrary, and artificial, to mandate certain proportions of jobs be given to certain "diversity" groups. It's an imperfect solution to a stupid problem. I wish we didn't have the problem in the first place, but we do, and a big clumsy solution is better than no solution. But a lot of the value of diversity is not, as Geoffrey Miller posits in the article you linked, derived from those inherent (seemingly rather small?) biological differences between those people. It is in the much larger difference in how they have experienced life and the world since birth as a member of whatever group(s). He claims he things Google should "try to correct for existing biases" but not discriminate "just to increase the representation of women" ... well this is incoherent, because the second one is kind of the only mechanism to achieve the first one, isn't it? Can we correct for bias and cultural/historical/institutional effects without intentionally tipping the scale a little bit in the direction of the people affected by those issues?
That IS another, connected, thorny problem. I get that discrimination and suffering cuts both ways.
> Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX.
- It's UX all the way down. The whole company affects the UX. But in any case, the value knowledge of "outsiders" is not just about teaching Google how to SEL...
That's funny. Compared to the response I've seen against it, it seems extremely coherent, tactfully presented and scientifically sourced.
It's an internal memo for crying out loud. Compared to anything I've seen in any company I've worked with, this sets the bar for extreme professionalism.
The science is not really in doubt, surely, but the magnitude of the effects in the full context of our lives and history and cultural norms is complicated. And figuring out how to use experimental data to improve policy is hard.
The backlash is not surprising because, though he tried, he failed to be clear about what he means.
There is no debate, only angry people seeing what they want to see. Get angry first, ask questions later (or never) - just people being people.
Googles response is simply to appease both sides as best they can, recognizing that one is the majority. The firing is enough blood to appease the stupid & intolerant, this post is to appease the rest.
The operative phrase being, "loud enough". I.e. loud enough minority looks like majority.
Seems legit.
That does not bode well for them, for a restrictive intellectual environment is anathema to the kind of intelligent people they want to hire to keep the company competitive.
So what? This action might be damaging to Google's bottom line (I doubt it) but that's actually less important that running a company in the way the overwhelming majority of employees want it to be run.
To use an ad absurdum argument - if it could be demonstrated that people who are openly racist write better code I still wouldn't believe Google should hire them.
It may not be the case for smaller companies that love to copy what they do.
How much money they have, and how long it'd be possible to survive on that, is not relevant to the point I was making.
I think people often expect 'free speech' in situations where I wouldn't. Like a collaborative working environment where you are all professionals trying to get work done. There is a subset of speech (so no longer 'free') that is appropriate for working professionally with a group, especially a group from widely diverse backgrounds. The exact boundaries change over time and between environments, but the idea of employers setting a baseline set of elections expectations inherently limits speech. Google supports speech within limits, and a person who gets that could probably have navigated the politics of talking about the legitimate issues in the memo without crossing that line. Working together in companies is weird. Codes of Conduct attempt to standardize expectations so that work can get done. Work is a special place.
It is an utopia to pretend that the workplace should be opinion-free. Especially since the workplace on purpose tries to blur the lines between personal and professional lives: dorms on campus, cafeteria, malls and dry-cleaning amenities on campus.
If that's the direction business are going towards to then it is normal to accept that the employee comes with opinions attached.
What rights? The guarantee that the government will not interfere with your free speech? This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment.
> It's a lie to say Google's culture supports free speech when the cost of that speech is compliance with the tyranny of a Code of Conduct.
The memo made it clear that diversity of opinion is welcome right up to the point where it violates the CoC, but not beyond that point - if you violate the CoC - you can and will get fired. It even listed which parts of the memo would have been ok.
I've never heard of a company that places some sort of altruist dedication to free speech as a higher priority than their internal code of conduct. Google's position on this is industry standard, protects Google from lawsuits, and protects Google employees from harassment. How is that bad?
What did the author say that was "out of line"? Can you please cite a section of the essay and explain?
Note: Please see this response to the memo from four scientists who study the field of psychology: http://archive.is/z6xxP
The reason given by Google for the author's termination was "advancing harmful gender stereotypes". I didn't see any evidence in the memo of "advancing harmful gender stereotypes". Where are the stereotypes? Where's the evidence that they're harmful? Is the author really advancing them? The author appears to be referencing scientific research into the topics that he mentioned. Scientific research into sex differences is not "harmful stereotypes".
The way in which the Google CEO's reply is worded gives me the impression that they don't even understand that the author's claims are scientific ones. For example:
> Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
These terms -- agreeableness, neurotic -- are personality traits in the field of psychology. There is a significant amount of research into how men and women differ in these traits. See Wikipedia for sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism#Sex_differences
> This paper investigates gender differences in personality traits, both at the level of the Big Five and at the sublevel of two aspects within each Big Five domain. Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
The author's mention of terms like "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" are statements of personality trait trends established by scientific research, not personal views or stereotypes. The message from Google's CEO seems to interpret them as personal insults, thereby missing the point of the essay.
The original memo raises points like: women tend to have higher neuroticism on average (low stress tolerance) than men. If some tech jobs have high stress, then is it possible fewer women than men seek those jobs? That seems like a reasonable question to explore, to me, and a question that's grounded in existing scientific research, not the promulgation of a stereotype.
The author also cited other research such as "Women, careers, and work-life preferences": https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2011/SPP457/um/23632422/Hakim...
Jesus Christ.
He boils down the sides do absurd minimal values that understandably cause offense. He calls the people the "left" support as "weak" and says the left worldview prefers an "unstable" approach.
2.
He jumps directly into generalizations about men and women. THe subject has hardly been breached at this point and he's already stirring discomfort among any readers for whom his generalizations do not hold.
3.
He says that women have a harder time negotiating for salary et al as part of their inherent nature.
4.
He directly states that women are neurotic and indirectly states that women cannot handle high-stress work. These terms were called "scientific" by the parent comment, but so is "retarded", and calling someone a retard is pretty fucking rude.
I empathise with the idea that men are being marginalized in order to accomodate for others. Supressing the views of conservatives is equally troubling and worth addressing. Many of his other points hold as well. But he goes too far and throws a rotten egg into the whole document.
I don't really know if your #3 is true or not (this isn't the hill I die on), but I don't think it's heresy to suggest it might be. Is that really so impossible as to be an absurdism?
Obviously some of the things he's saying are generalization, but that's hardly a coherent criticism in this context - everything we're talking about on this topic is, by its very nature, generalization. We're saying fewer women than men take jobs in the computer science sector _in general_. If you're trying to look at broad trends it's okay to talk about averages. Real scientists don't need to preface every single statistic with a huge preamble reminding the reader that individual samples are not the same thing as the distribution they are drawn from.
The silly thing is I actually agree that this was a useless move to try and 'educate' the whole company. But saying he was being unscientific is garbage. He's being perfectly coherent and scientific, it was just a fairly rude thing to blast out to a company as large as Google.
A perfectly choerent and scientific paper would include references for the points it tries to make. Many people have tried to retroactively justify his "points" with links to Wikipedia articles, but it should be proactively justified in the document with links to scholarly articles. Not doing so makes it difficult to believe that he's writing about anything other than his own cognative biases. "Real" scientists also go through peer review, when their peers might say "this makes you come across like a bit of a dick" before it's published for broader review. "Real scientists" have lots more discipline than this guy, and if he had taken a "real" scientist's approach he would have probably been a lot better off.
However, I read the original document the (now ex-) Googler wrote and from what I can see he presented his claims in a reasonable and carefully worded manner. Many people seem to be misquoting him or taking it out of context.
Could you please provide example(s) of these inappropriate generalizations? I am curious if I am misreading the original text, or if you are perceiving it from a perspective that I cannot see (in which case, it would be nice to understand where you're coming from).
If they can't do that, maybe they shouldn't even have a "grown-up" job.
And to throw my 2cents in here too, I'm a biological scientist and agree with the overall theme of what the guy wrote (though there are a handful of smaller points within the manifesto that I take issue with).
>But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe.
It seems like a lot of people are basing their opinions on logic (fine) but in a perfect world where everyone has equal opportunity, we live in a meritocracy, and people are judged solely on performance. Unfortunately none of those things are true and we need to manipulate things manually to ensure people are given equal opportunity.
Equal opportunity. Everyone is throwing the same ball into the same bin, and everyone gets a chance to throw their ball of paper, hit the bin, and get an A.
But some students are 5ft away and others are 30ft away. Suddenly not so fair.
This comic also explains it well: http://imgur.com/gallery/h82vC
Employers don't know who came from privileged backgrounds and who didn't. Legally, they shouldn't even be asking about it.
The concern isn't about whether employers should help people out. The concern is that the current rubric is too inexact. And that questioning the rubric is considered hateful.
Is this text actually written by him or is it by some HR/communications person? It seems very coded and indirect.
How could someone express the views the author felt without getting fired, while still promoting discussion?
Is it possible, just possible, that Google's policies are counterproductive? If so, how would Google find out? By what process could someone change them?
If such processes exist, why would someone the company valued enough to hire risk his job to send this memo?
Is it possible that Google's environment does not accept some minority viewpoints despite your beliefs and attempts?
Define "safely" and maybe you can express your viewpoint. The good news is that Google ain't gonna shoot you after a 15 minute trial (including appeals) but you'll get fired and blackballed. (Google could at least give this guy FU money with a wink and a nod.)
No company will hire you after rocking the boat....things have already been decided by those who scream loudest. WTF are you to question them now?
You obviously can't say anything you like at work.
Google is offering diversity of opinion but there are things you can say that are just stupid and will get you fired.
If you replace women in his essay with African American there would have been about 1 second between it being posted and it being taken down, with an escort out of the building and rightly so.
I loved this talk from Sheryl Sandberg that touches on a lot of these issues, particularly the "joke" near the end, 39 minutes:
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/sheryl-sandberg-develo...
1) http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/revealed-inside-goo...
Actually I didn’t, but they provide with more sources to supplant their narrative than any other “legitimate news source” that I have encountered.
You could share your thoughts on this rather than making a clickbait comment.
It's garbage news for people who don't care about journalistic integrity. Nothing there can be taken seriously.
It's garbage news for people who don't care about journalistic integrity. Nothing there can be taken seriously.
James Damore document: [https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso...]