Agreed.
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OK first off thanks for mergingng elsetopic replies here, and i’m glad someone posted the actual document.
Now since the haterade brigade has decided to pointlagh at me over showing even partial agreement with the content of the memo and abject disgust at google very publicly trying to humiliate somebody and fre over what is at absolute worst something that should be quietly forwarded to HR to deal with and discussion had. I am going to go over where i agree and disagree to remove any ambiguity on why people here should or shouldn’t be in an absolute snit whenever my avatar pops up.
The Bulletpoints:
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FIrst one I agree with. That is a statement I agree with.
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Also agree. Shaming Opposing viewpoints and those that voice those into silence allows an echo chamber to exist which creates even more incentive for people who do not ‘go with the flow’ to keep silent. Regardless of what is said the fact that environment exists is deeply troubling. ‘But the people I like are in control!’ Yea but what if they suddenly aren’t? How will you enjoy having your freedom to speak suddenly snatched away and pressured on a personal social level to keep your mouth shut?
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See above paragraph for how I feel ass the two bullet points reinforce each other.
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On the one hand I agree with the idea we must examine the differences in gender psychology and predispositions. That to me does not inherently mean ‘girls suck fuck women being in the workplace.’ It means that while you will have an uneven distribution it is better to look at natural predispositions in general and candidate specific strengths/weaknesses rather than enforce quotas. Granted in the world we live in the rational I just used is often used to prop up bunk sentiment that excuses blatantly racist, sexist, and anti-group name policy. So I’m not sure how to square the circle there, but the concept at its base is not inherently wrong to have.
Background/Biases:
So far sounding good. The memo author admits everyone has biases; I have bias, you have bias, GOOGLE has bias. I find this a fair assertion. The fact this point seems to show concern that those biases disallow discussion and breed an environment where a minority is actively being belittled and made fun of also aligns with my view things that should be actively combatted.
I agree with this man’s ‘Left’ v ‘Right’ bias examples. Looking between myself and family this lines up with personal experience. I also like that this person annotated the memo to make clear ‘this is where I see these things as I am working Here so cannot speak of other location’ and ‘I am biased as well.’ Also kudos for having in document links so he doesn’t have to clutter the memo up with on the spot explanations.
Further Reading on this subheading still has me supporting what this man seem to be aiming at as ‘any cultural majority where a minority is actively made light of disincentivizes discussion since if the minority speaks up they are silenced by social pressure.’ This lines up with my own (albeit extremely limited) experience. not just here but in the MUSH communitie(s) and in my home life.
'Looking for Gender Gap Causes.'
OK here is where I’m pretty sure people who had been nodding in mild agreement are suddenly ‘well here we go with the anti feminist bullshit. The douchebag has shown his real colors.’ Let’s read further shall we?
First sentence, bullet points, and the ensuing paragraph go into biological differences, that not all differences are social constructs, and that they should be examined. . Then a quantifier that populations have heavy overlap and paring down to JUST group identity is bad. I agree with this.
Personality Differences
To put this ahead of everything else while i have opinions I cannot state to the accuracy on this man’s breakdown of personality differences, but going off of my (again VERY LIMITED) personal experience this is complete bullshit… Men and women each desire to find a place in the social structure, its the how of it that is different. Same with ‘women are more neurotic.’ Again, Bullshit. This part of the document is where the author’s biases show and where he’s started losing me.
'Non Discriminatory ways to fix this.'
I am not in the software field so I don’t know if any of these work, but given this man’s biases the fact he’s trying to find solutions rather than throwing a hissy fit and conclude ‘scientifically speaking women suck at programming’ is good and should be commended. The problem is ‘what of these conclusions is cultural and what is actual?’ that’s where i think this guy falls apart pretty hard. That said I am glad the man does provide annotation and links to at least attempt to back what he’s saying. I still disagree, but I’ve read worse.
More bulletpoints:
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Whatever Bro. Google has put a lot of money to see where those programs will do the most good. Frankly education is lopsided towards men (typically white men) in having a better socioeconomic background. As much as i hate people screeching ‘white privilege white privilege’ like a pack of demented arpies, it exists. Those programs exist to try making up for the gap that exists. Let it go.
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The rest of the bullet points are all about ‘minority groups get the bar lowered.’ and ‘groups MUST be diversified.’ OK speaking as someone that has benefited from ‘bar lowering’ in the form of being given more time during standardized testing and other things i probably am not aware of? If they’re at google they are qualified to do the job. Google would not change the standard to the point they cannot perform. I can understand how pee looking at paul getting more time on the clock would feel unfair wen paul seems to be a little bit slow in doing the work, but paul is being allowed to do the work. Shouting it’s not fair isn’t going to help. Also encouraging an environment where it’s not a bunch of copy pasted drones sitting in a room is going to naturally lead to more ideas and generally better ones. Sure there will always be that fear that Paul will get shouted down by kate, jose, and raul, but that does not mean we should not encourage a diverse environment in a field such as programming. Were this a factory job where you have to deal with line uptime and widgets per minute having a slow guy hold up everything is bad, but in programming that’s not nearly such a concern.
'Why We are Blind’
I have a feeling this is a very Conservatively minded person. i do not find this segment agreeable in how it speaks, but the thing is we all have biases and should constantly have them looked at and challenged (even mine, even when I’m the guy that’s a screaming loony about everything In fact ESPECIALLY because i’m a screaming loony.)
More will be said after I finish the memo. However the ‘money is only being used to water one side of the lawn’ line… frankly doesn’t take into account the side not getting watered is a freaking jungle of overgrown everything and the ‘other side’ is a parched desert, and ‘taxpayer money’ here is a bare trickle with people at the tap trying to turn even that little bit off. I say that as someone who has seen routinely and over time disabilities and ‘disadvantaged’ help programs first on budget chopping blocks and last to get re-funded in years where the budget grows.
The suggestions field
Programming is all about problem solving. While I am glad this person is articulating his views I find his conclusion at the end to be wrong in that ‘minority groups getting the lion’s share of the attention.’ However even though I disagree with the man’s ideas I agree that conservatives seem to be free game at ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ minded places such as Google to be punching bags, and i feel that is an entirely wrong tact to take as that does not convince the person on the other side that you’re right so much as convince them you want to feel superior to them by any means necessary and take delight in being cruel. I am not saying that is actively being done, but where I see people going on about ‘tone policing’ used to silence liberal views, I see that more loudly used to shut up people that don’t buy into whatever the local echo chamber is spewing.
Google’s Response
Discussion is what we should have. What happened was Google’s CEO making a public blog post on the matter, workers calling in sick because of ‘a hostile work enviroment’ in from the standpoint of me as an outsider looking very much like this person who posted an internal memo was being strung up to be publicly flogged and humiliated after an instant termination. Congratulations google, you proved the man right in having concerns that google will stomp down on anyone they don’t like. This is an issue that should have been handed over to HR and the man sat down and talked to then either quietly moved to different department, or let go.
What happened I feel was wholly inappropriate and the fact that all over the web I’m seeing people gleefully burning this guy in effigy frankly disturbed me. You aren’t acting like people that want to be inclusive and welcoming. You are acting like people sneering down at someone that you’re in the position to kick while they’re down while going at how right you are and how privileged you are to do so. In short Google has shown me that they and most everyone else are acting like the bullies they claim to hate.
Also I have been wondering how this dude feels about his trans co-workers. Hypothetically, if he discovered that the brilliant guy he’d been working on something with was a trans man, would he suddenly feel that “biology” made the guy less brilliant? Or that trans women he works with are “really men” so they’re better?
I know a trans woman who used to work at Google, and I know other tech companies, like Mr. Bells’ have quite a few trans employees. In a company the size of Google I’m sure there’s a lot.
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Yes, that is the goal. Who are the judges? How do you evaluate whether their judgments are biased or not?
You can look at inputs (population structure, grades at various educational levels, choices of major and elective classes, individual expressions of interest, individual opinions expressed about the suitability of certain groups for certain types of work, ratios of applicants in hiring pools). You can look at outputs (degrees granted, awards made, people actually hired, people actually promoted, pay for people in equivalent jobs at equivalent experience levels). Some of those fall into both categories depending on the particular question.
All of us here are smart enough to understand that a single hiring or promotion decision in isolation is not good evidence of bias unless you have other evidence for why the decision was made. So what is? For that you need a causal model. If it turned out 80% of Google applicants were men, and men and women are equally capable, then an unbiased Google would end up with 80% male employees. I have no idea if any of that is the case, I make no claims on it. I state only that it is a possible scenario.
So what’s the causal model? How do you know if you are successfully judging individuals on their merits? More importantly, how do you know someone else is doing so? If you can’t do that, you can’t justly punish (legally or socially) those doing wrong or reward those doing right, because you can’t judge their actions on their own merits. How can you propose a change in policy that you think would help make the world more just, without solving the problem of determining whether it is doing what you want, or even capable of doing what you want?
Same problem in another context: Crime dropped dramatically as a result of banning leaded gas. Crime did not drop dramatically as a result of broken windows policing. Not knowing the underlying causes of societal problems makes it nearly impossible to build a better world because you can’t predict what interventions are actually needed, worth trying, or worse than useless.
Women have been literally murdered for trying to be engineers. Forgive me if I’m less than devastated that this guy has to take one of the other job offers he’s gotten since.
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TLDR except for the very last line.
They fired a potential liability; it has nothing to do with “being” or “hating bullies.”
Don’t attribute human motivations/rationale to corporate interest; contrary to what the SC says, corporations are not people.
Google was already under fire for claims that the company ‘lacks diversity’ and then this genius decided that others needed to hear his two cents, right now… when it was the worst possible time for him to stick his neck out.
To quote all our Libertarian/free market bros; the company doesn’t “owe” the guy a job. He endangered their bottom line, so they terminated the potential threat.
Them’s the breaks; “it’s not personal, it’s just business.”
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In all of these fields, women were facing strong opposition against their participation, from the start. Just like in law, biology, physics and pretty much every discipline requiring a diploma, except perhaps teaching. Women have certainly not been expected to work as psychologists for centuries. Rather, they were deemed completely mentally deficient for the discipline by the cabal of its founders.
Yet in all these fields, women gradually conquered against the patriarchal establishment, currently constitute a slight majority of tertiary education students and clearly dominate several prestigious professions. However not in computer-related fields. The strong assumption, based e.g. on the numbers of high-school students choosing elective prep courses, is that girls/women are naturally (biologically) more interested in some subjects and boys/men in other and they express this in their career choices. Culture exacerbates and modifies this, but there is some underlying fairly stable basis.
And since this prevalence aligns pretty well with the statistical person-object axis of preference for each gender, women in countries with relatively higher gender freedom exhibit higher rates of field specificity than women in strongly patriarchal societies and women with androgenized physiology (due to various developmental/hormonal imbalance issues) have interests and preferences closer to those of men, this seems like a pretty strong hypothesis.
I’m not saying sexism doesn’t exist or that everything is perfect and just the way it should be. I am also certain that some form of a bro culture does indeed exist in the tech sector, as it is a traditional bastion of old-boy’s clubs and networks. But since the number of university students is roughly on par, gender-wise, if some field takes in an above-average share of female talent, some other field will have to do with a lower number of talented women, just by virtue of mathematical necessity.
For me it isn’t that they fired the guy. It’s the fact they fired him then made this huge gargantuine deal out offiring him, that they made this huge production out of it acting like he said ‘women are scum of the earth and are unfit here.’ You’d think he came to your home and punched you in the face given how blase you’re behaving about this public farce that is the shame train being put on. THAT is what i mean by them bullying. THey are not only firing him they are doing everything possible to make him UNHIREABLE IN THE INDUSTRY.
At Google’s campus?
Women are still being raped in africa because of the myth that if you fuck a virgin you will be cured of aids. Women suffer horrifying genital mutilation for sick reasons disguised as religious sacrament. The fuck does that have to do with how google shitcanned this guy then did everything possible to publicly blackball him from working in software? That is why I’m angry. That this guy acted like a bit of a dipshit? FIne. HR gets involved end of story. That should have been how it went. Guy posts memo. Person sees memo and takes it to HR. HR then decides if guy is going to be a liability enough tobe fired or if he should just have a mark on his record.
Not… THIS.
And frankly everyone going on google’s side at how they are right for this public blackballing and shaming should look real fucking hard in the mirror. How would you feel if this were you in that guy’s position? WHat if that was your opinion that got trotted out as shameful and excuse to publicly shitcan you in front of the whole world. This reaction that you all have had is proof he’s right that we as progressives NEED to look at ourselves, because to be blunt, none of us are any better than the conservative fuckwits that keep society chained down.
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And like I said, he’s had multiple job offers. There are enough people that agree with him in the software industry that this will make him MORE appealing to hire. That’s why it’s a hostile work environment. Ask some women in tech sometime.
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Disturbing. We should make sure that is not allowed to happen again. However my point stands. Send memo to HR. HR settles it rather than publicly parading this guy around and go Look how WRONG and Neanderthal and EVIL this man is! Le’ts make a demon out of him. Bring the digital flames my trolls. Bring the scathing comments at how he’s a mennist cultural flake standing in the way of progress. COME! COME ALL OF YOU LET’S MAKE SURE HE NEVER IS ALLOWED TO WORK AGAIN IN A FIELD HE SPENT A GOOD CHUNK OF HIS LIFE AND MONEY PREPARING FOR.
So are you admitting that your original post did not actually cite this memo?
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It’s weird that you keep ignoring that this guy has job offers. His life is not “ruined”. Julian Assange offered him a job like 5 minutes after he got fired.
I’m going to retract my suggestion that you talk to some women in tech, though. They don’t need more of this.
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So what? How does that affect differences in ability, which is what the manifester claimed?
Sorry, but I think you’re the one who’s ignoring facts.
And how long did it take? What kind of opposition did they face? Why do we have to force this battle to be fought again and again, when we now know that it is blatantly wrong?
The harassment in tech and science fields has gotten more and more publicity. Perhaps women are just saying to hell with it? Might explain why in computer science the numbers have peaked and are now going down.
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My sentiment stands. I was simply clarifying I agree that self examination to make sure we don’t fall into our own biases is a healthy thing because as events unfolded, Google kinda proved this man right in that he was NOT free to speak up or discuss. Had it been a matter of ‘hr gets sent memo hr decides guy should be given his two wee notice’ it then is on that guy if he ends up posting a jackass ‘FUCK THIS PLACE AND EVERYONE IN IT’ rant. Instead See one of my prior posts. Google acted like complete shitstains.
That he got a job offer from wikileaks does not obliviate what google’s apprent attempt was.
This could not be more false, historically women have been the pioneers of many fields (including software engineering) and then had their credit erased either at the time or by altering history.
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I’m not sure how to take you saying “I lied but I’m still right.”
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Dude. Women were the original programmers. It was a low-status “secretarial” job. See chart upthread that shows how the participation of women in computer science TANKS during the mid-80’s when it became a more lucrative and high-status career.
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Is that in fact what they did? Or did the media take the story and run with it?
Citation needed, please.
Also, I cannot help it:
Gargantuan. Offing. Firing.
If that’s actually the case, then why have I been hearing about multiple job offers being floated his way?
And I’m sure if I looked I’d find that some kind, like-minded soul has started a kickstarter or a gofundme in his name, to get him through this difficult time… which he created for himself.
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Stop it.
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You didn’t “clarify your position,” you directly and falsely attributed something to the memo that was not there and got called on it only to change the goal posts after the fact. If you cannot accept it, that’s your deal - you still lied.
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