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Google Engineer's Leaked 'Gender Diversity' Essay Draws Massive Response (medium.com)
An anonymous reader writes: An engineer at Google's Mountain View headquarters circulated a 3,400-word essay internally that argued a "moral bias" exists at Google that's "shaming dissenters" and silencing their voices against "encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies." It attributes the gender gap in technology to biology-based differences in abilities (such as "speaking up" and "leading") and different personality traits (including "neuroticism"). Its suggested remedies include "Stop alienating conservatives" (calling it "non-inclusive" and "bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness"), and it also suggests as a solution to "de-emphasize empathy" (which "causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases").
As the essay leaked over the weekend, former Google engineer Yonatan Zunger identified its anonymous author as "not someone senior," saying the author didn't seem to understand gender -- or engineering -- or what's going to happen next. "Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I'm very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to... 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... You need to learn the difference between 'I think we should adopt Go as our primary language' and 'I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person's satisfaction.'"
The leaked internal essay is now being discussed in literally dozens of news outlets. Click through for some official responses, including leaked reactions from Google's VP of Engineering, from Google's new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance -- and from Slashdot's readers.
Google's new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance -- who started just a few weeks ago -- responded internally that the document "advanced incorrect assumptions about gender," saying it's not a viewpoint Google endorses or encourages, and adding that "Changing a culture is hard, and it's often uncomfortable."
Zunger seemed to agree in part, writing sympathetically that "One very important true statement which this manifesto makes is that male gender roles remain highly inflexible, and that this is a bug, not a feature. In fact, I suspect that this is the core bug which prompted everything else within this manifesto to be written."
Google VP of Engineering Ari Balogh also responded internally that "we want to continue fostering an environment where it's safe to engage in challenging conversations in a thoughtful way. But, in the process of doing that, we cannot allow stereotyping and harmful assumptions to play any part. One of the aspects of the post that troubled me deeply was the bias inherent in suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful."
Long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein believes that leaking the internal memo to the outside world was a major breach of trust that will do more damage. But he also links to an earlier essay which argues "The men of computer science and the computer industry are misogynous jerks. Not all of them of course. Likely not even the majority. But enough to thoroughly poison the well."
As the essay leaked over the weekend, former Google engineer Yonatan Zunger identified its anonymous author as "not someone senior," saying the author didn't seem to understand gender -- or engineering -- or what's going to happen next. "Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I'm very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to... 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... You need to learn the difference between 'I think we should adopt Go as our primary language' and 'I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person's satisfaction.'"
The leaked internal essay is now being discussed in literally dozens of news outlets. Click through for some official responses, including leaked reactions from Google's VP of Engineering, from Google's new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance -- and from Slashdot's readers.
Google's new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance -- who started just a few weeks ago -- responded internally that the document "advanced incorrect assumptions about gender," saying it's not a viewpoint Google endorses or encourages, and adding that "Changing a culture is hard, and it's often uncomfortable."
Zunger seemed to agree in part, writing sympathetically that "One very important true statement which this manifesto makes is that male gender roles remain highly inflexible, and that this is a bug, not a feature. In fact, I suspect that this is the core bug which prompted everything else within this manifesto to be written."
Google VP of Engineering Ari Balogh also responded internally that "we want to continue fostering an environment where it's safe to engage in challenging conversations in a thoughtful way. But, in the process of doing that, we cannot allow stereotyping and harmful assumptions to play any part. One of the aspects of the post that troubled me deeply was the bias inherent in suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful."
Long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein believes that leaking the internal memo to the outside world was a major breach of trust that will do more damage. But he also links to an earlier essay which argues "The men of computer science and the computer industry are misogynous jerks. Not all of them of course. Likely not even the majority. But enough to thoroughly poison the well."
Talk about a useless position.
It's going to be a bumpy ride
Includes what is purported to be an internal survey at Google:
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2017...
...when people attempt to link legitimate engineering or technical points-of-view with misogyny, *-phobia, microagressions, or God-knows-what other kinds of SJW evils, it's hard to then claim that alternative views can't bring up what progressive social folks are doing and how it might affect things back.
e.g., " Anti-Systemd People ":
(Also, like many others, I'm curious why Gizmodo (of all outlets) presents the essay while removing all hyperlinks and charts, as if somehow that is doing a service to its readers by removing context from what is obviously going to involve strong reactions. Nice going, guys.)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Stupid leftists defeat straw man, claim victory.
This is the problem in all engineering circles, and unfortunately, much like how nerds are depicted in movies as being socially awkward but smart, and jocks being socially popular but dumb meatheads, it will only be propagated as such until we stop letting sociopaths into management.
The sociopath is the one who pits their staff against each other for their own amusement, the sociopath is the nerd or jock who pushes competition instead of cooperation when they are in a place of power. Once we stop and realize that the nerd and the jock are in fact the same sociopath, and start pushing them to stop being a bully/troll, to stop "be a man"/pissing/dick measuring/sexual prowness contests, then things will stop being so craptacular. Google et al have a lack of diversity because the white man is afraid of a woman being in position of power over them, or a brown person being in a position of power over them.
Hence the core bug is that men are inflexible, and white men doubly so. Anything that makes them think that "their" (entitled) job is being taken by a diversity directive is used to excuse their lack of promotion instead maybe their lack of social skill.
Those that are criticizing the essay seem to be missing the points it makes. Primary among them is that males and females have different interests and therefore tend to pursue different careers which could account for a lot of the so-called gender gaps in the tech sector. And the author is right, there are relationships between personality traits and political leanings. Jordan Peterson has written a lot about this and his YouTube videos are well worth watching. He makes the case that the notion of equity or equality of outcome in all sectors is a dangerous one. It doesn't mean females can't be good engineers, rather than few females might be going into engineering cause they have different interests and hiring so you always have 50% male and 50% female may not lead to the best outcomes.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
That's news to me and I'd like to see some proof of that.
You can make diversity your top priority, or you can make profitability your top priority, or you can make technical excellence your top priority. But you can only have one top priority.
He has a point. Men do engineering better than women, on average. SJWs will overtakeGoogle and lead to the destruction of Google. It always happens.
"The men of computer science and the computer industry are misogynous jerks. Not all of them of course. Likely not even the majority. But enough to thoroughly poison the well."
Does the fact that I haven't stumbled upon a single one in my 15+ year long career mean:
a) That we embedded guys are not part of the 'computer industry' proper
b) This is not a problem of the 'computer industry' as much as of the USA
c) I am the misogynous jerk myself
d) I'm just lucky
As recent elections have proven, preserving your culture and country with conservitive Christian Values IS ALSO a valid viewpoint. The challenge for liberals is to also include those people who Do Not share their diversity viewpoint. If diversity demands uniformity of belief, its efforts are self defeating.
Seems like a lot of chicks have their panties in a wad over this memo and rightfully so. Talk about alternative facts.
Rebuttal? I see what you did there.
Looks like individual googlers have separately decided to draft company mission statements.
One point where the author is spot on is the overwhelming efforts to silence any other viewpoints. Loom no further than the response to this memo. On twitter, a prominent tech entrepreneur said he thinks the real problem isn't the memo's content but that the author thought it was okay to share it at a place like Google. Isn't that exactly the point the author makes?
I also found interesting his point about how we feel differently about seeking 50-50 gender representation in manual labor occupations and work related deaths.
These topics are worthy of discussion. The "we must get girls to code" push always seemed worthy of skepticism. But there is no real debate in this area, and raising questions gets you labeled unfairly and possibly fired.
One thing is for sure: this guy's career is over. He will be doxxed by some news org who apparently does remember how to do investigative journalism when it comes to random civilians expressing a politically incorrect opinion. And the pitchforks will come out from the SJWs and no company -- certainly google -- wants to get mixed up in that PR nightmare. Game over, bro. Hope it was worth it.
Ever moved into a new apartment or house and after a while wondered "why the fuck did they engineer this this way, this is stupid?" If so, then you just answered your question.
Of all the complaints on SJWs this is the most mildly worded one I have ever seen, and yet they are screaming bloody murder as if he is calling for the next holocaust.
Men and women choose different things.
Men become engineers, women become nurses.
Unless you can point to a specific woman, or a specific black person who was not hired due to racism or whatever, you have no foot to stand on.
It's bullshit.
Waaaah, I'm sorry you can't get a job in engineering because of all the immigrants and women, lol! What a childish rationalization you conservitard victims live under. I truly pity you "real victims" - it's sad!
Good luck in Trump's coal mines lol. World's tiniest violin.
> suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful."
Yeah, pointing out the facts, that most women make different decisions from men, is somehow harmful.
Tell women to stop going into women studies or nursing.
BoNERs!!!
Google VP of Engineering Ari Balogh "One of the aspects of the post that troubled me deeply was the bias inherent in suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful."
Feminist idiot Lauren Weinstein : "The men of computer science and the computer industry are misogynous jerks. "
Deal with the sexist feminists, realise that when people use factual arguments to prove them wrong, they are not being sexist.
Men and women are different and enjoy doing different things. FACT.
shaming dissenters" and silencing their voices against "encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies." .. "bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness
So which way is it?
It attributes the gender gap in technology to biology-based differences in abilities (such as "speaking up" and "leading") .. it also suggests as a solution to "de-emphasize empathy" (which "causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases").
Lets not talking about biases and logic here. Arguments from the 19th century have no validity in the world where a family needs a two medium to high level incomes to afford a rental in their home city, let alone raising children there, or that over 50% of the consumers might have different ideas of the product than the designer has.
The feel-good factor associated with ranting is probably high and the writer satisfied for this change of expressing his(?) (sexual) frustrations in public.
He should never have included the bit about IQ. That was pointless and discussions of IQ in any context are never productive, only hot with flame and fury.
It still would have been railed against but there would have been less traction to do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Bullshit. Empathy doesn't fucking enter into it. You know what's good for cooperation and collaboration? Effective leadership. You know what Valve doesn't have and why we'll never see Half Life 3? Effective leadership.
their new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance
identified its anonymous author as "not someone senior,"
Documents that are written and released have a paper trail that managers can can take to HR Immediately after they are 'released'. The fact that this has 'circulated' organically are suspect.
I smell a false flag.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
This is the sort of thing that lands in history books as an example of the backwardness of previous generations.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
You are confusing empathy for the end-user with empathy for your co-workers. End users pay your bills. It's your job to give them a product that they were happy to have purchased. Your co-workers can range from gods among mortals all the way down to unless lumps of coal who couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. It's hard to feel empathy for either gods or lumps. Diversity tends to encourage the latter, because it emphasizes identity over performance.
Engineers generally don't work that low level. If you were able to move into the apartment/house at all the engineer has done their job as it hasn't fallen over. Interior designers and just plain builders do the work you'd generally go WTF about, and in particularly serious cases ignore the engineering good sense (like deliberately not implemented build code to save a buck or such). Now if the house falls over, or burns down then you can bitch at the engineer.
I have been a mechanical engineering manager for a long time. I have worked with many people and supervised many more. Engineering is not about your "feelings". Engineering is rational and objective reality not some psychological mumbo jumbo. It is based on real science distilled into practical solutions for your customers. I assure you they care less about your feelings and far more on your solution to their engineering problems.
If you are hiring based on physical characteristics and not ability, you are going to fuck up every job your people work on, and lose customers. The reality is nobody cares about your feelings. They want the work done right for the money they paid.
It's no wonder Google is turning into a shit hole.
The VP released a memo to media publically doxxing him.Proves one of his points attempt to silence dissent or different opinions.
Let's assume that there is genuine prejudice in US hiring. This means that there is a group of potential employees that - because of prejudice - are receiving lower offers than their skills and talent would warrant. If you are a company like Alphabet (Google) and you identify such a systematic prejudice, you should introduce an explicit effort to recruit people from the discriminated group. You can poach them from other companies, where they are undervalued and underpaid. You have data that give you a good reason to expect that on average, such hires will contribute more to your company than they cost.
Now I don't pretend to know which group or groups fit this category, though I would be shocked if there weren't any. Maybe the undervalued group consists of older engineers. Maybe it US blacks. Maybe it's people with humanities Ph.D's. Maybe it's immigrants with low-prestige foreign accents. Maybe it's women with leadership experience, or repentant former blackhats, or chess masters, or transsexuals. I'm sure there are people in Google who have enough data to answer the question.
Assuming that Google identifies discriminated groups, they may not want to trumpet their findings, and simply hire these people quietly. After all, if rumor gets out that Google is out to poach South Asian female mathematicians, these will become more expensive to hire.
Unless Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. are too stupid to read the data they have, they have already folded information about discrimination into their hiring practices. Insofar as they are these companies are demographically different from the rest of the country, we would be reasonable in assuming that discriminated groups are already overrepresented in their ranks. And if for some political/social justice reason they don't treat HR issues with this kind of sobriety,, then their competitors should. Hiring discriminated groups and making them feel comfortable at your company will maximize the merit of your workforce. You'll be paying less for better workers. If you identified a prejudice in hiring and you have data to back it up, transfer to HR and build your company around these people, the way the Detroit Red Wings once built their team around former Soviet hockey stars.
This is your argument?
That's the penalty of all these lies we have pushed down our throats so hard. Just one man speaking truth to power can't do it nonymously without losing everything. That's the force we are up against.
You are freaking precious!
Mostly I'm just laughing at my naivete for buying into "Don't be evil" for so long. It's been clear for years that the google's REAL motto is "All your attention are belong to us", but I just didn't get it until much later.
About that mission statement? That was just a delusion of grandeur. All of the world's knowledge is obviously overwhelming, plus the metric of "useful" was never clear. However, by attacking and simplifying the problem along the dimension of access and following the money, we can see (with our 20:20 hindsight) how it devolved to making the advertisers' paid info accessible for the suckers. Not saying that everyone's a sucker (though I think we all are, just more or less), but there are certainly enough suckers to make the google rich.
What we're REALLY seeing in this discussion is an internal struggle within the google about whether or not anything else matters. Is making more money the answer to life, the universe, and everything? The heck with 42 when there's always 43 and bigger numbers for the profit. I think a problem with no solution is meaningless, which means the problem of bigger profits is a FAKE problem. No solution because there is no biggest number.
Oh yeah. Back to the Subject: question, though now I'd prefer to reword it as "If profit is gawd, is it the google's fault?" Simplification of the problem yields an easy "No" insofar as the google is just playing by the rules of the game as defined by the most easily bribed politicians.
However, insofar as the google has become a leading briber of politicians, the answer is switching to "Yes". Overwhelming evidence that cheaters DO prosper in today's America, and you can't cheat harder than making the refs change the rules YOUR way. If Sinatra was still alive the google would hire him to sing to Congress? "Do it OUR way!"
Oh year, the original article's topic was diversity, wasn't it? That's a secondary objective, and we're living in a 1-D universe, remember. Profit is gawd, and the soulless corporate monster known as the google could not care less about actual human beings except for identifying the most profitable human cogs for its machines.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Engineering and science related disciplines do require collaboration and empathy, but Google is a company that uses engineering to make products peddling technology wares to a certain group of customers, engineers are not "leading" or advancing their fields, they are tools making products to make a company advance, if Google was an engineering group, their "products" would revolve around fixing serious problems not creating new ways of distraction or whatever.
Companies or commercial businesses do require to be biased, authoritarian, sexists, anti-whatever and despise its own employees and customers at some extent because the center of the company is always the owner(s), the owner is the center of the company, the company leaders need to be the most apathic but biased to their own "kind" because they have to be objective but at the same time have the same bias as the company owner(s)... I think that is called the spirit of the company which is what the owner(s) would like to do.
This forum is blessed with a simply *massive* brains trust, with technical skills and experience contributed regardless of age, ethnicity or gender. Unless a contributor selects a user name which explicitly identifies them by age, gender or background, the way that Slashdot operates actually promotes equality. In other words, as Slashdot shows, equality is possible, it just needs to be implemented thoughtfully...
Having read the email/document that forms the subject of this article, one of the things I observe is that the document itself discusses both conscious and subconscious bias as it can be applied in a workplace [and for this post I'll group together *all* forms of bias, not merely gender bias].
So let's think about this for a moment. Most of us probably work for organisations which claim [publicly at least] to be a meritocracy. But how objective are the performance review procedures? [ Or recruitment, for that matter? ] Here are a few points to consider:-
If your recruitment process gives hiring managers application forms with the age and/or name of the candidate included, then your organisation has an open door for selection bias.
If your appraisal process includes a ranking process that is susceptible to tactical voting ["I'll give your promotion candidate the nod if you do the same for me", then your organisation has an issue with performance review bias.
If your organisation allows a single manager - *any* single manager - to make recruitment, promotion and/or disciplinary decisions in isolation, then your organisation is at risk of allowing "individual bias" to harm your employees.
Creating a truly neutral, inclusive and meritocratic workplace is *HARD*. It requires leadership, sponsorship [from the top], honesty, integrity and commitment. But it also requires something that large, modern organisations have gradually sacrificed. As individuals are pushed ever harder, as we move into more and more of a "performance culture", acts of mutual support and inclusiveness are not merely not helpful for the giver, but they are detrimental - they help someone else to succeed to the giver's loss.
These two things, then, are not mutually exclusive, but they are rarely found in the same organisation in full and effective health.
I'm concerned at the way that the author of the original piece chose to express their views. I do not believe that the author did themselves or their suggestions any favours. I also worry that some of the issues a rooted far more deeply, insidiously and tenaciously than we might yet be willing to accept.
we will punish you the hardest possible way and ostracize you till it hurts real bad.
In the corp I work for nobody speaks up anymore when justice warriors do their rants. There is no point and the only thing that can happen is being called to HR to receive your warning (second and they can fire you immediately with compensation).
Thank heaven we have the Google VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance to challenge the old-fashioned idea that engineering is about stuff like mathematics, metallurgy, tolerances, formulas, algorithms, etc. That sort of thinking is so old-school!
Keep your "math" there, old-man Hitler. Progressives know that real engineering is all about empathy!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Same bias here at slashdot - it's why I post anonymous from now on. It's not that I'm a coward; it's just not worth the time dealing with the leftwing retribution via the rating system simply because I disagree with leftwing orthodoxy.
It gives me a shiver of pure joy whenever I read the Slashdot comments on a story like this. It pleases me to no end to think of the elephants' graveyard that is the alt-bro resistance as they find out that they will no longer enjoy privilege over others.
And I admit to a little grudging respect as I hear their death rattle as they pass into the tarpits of history. Never give up, MRAs. Never.Give.Up.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender."
He has "incorrect assumptions" about gender. Looks like he'll get the usual: Public humiliation, tech articles calling him a horrible person, death threats, a ruined reputation all ending with a tearful on-air apology. The cycle continues.
So some dude is butthurt that women, and other marginalized groups, are getting a fair shot? A fair shot that he has gotten his whole life? By default? CRY ME A FUCKING RIVER.
making poor technical or unethical decisions just to "win", and a winner-takes-all attitude where being anything less than the champion, the alpha-male, is failure and shameful.
That doesn't sound anything like masculinity, which is about inherent strength and self-reliance and has nothing to do with notions of victory or dominance.
What it does sound an AWFUL lot like is projection, as you have outlined the very basis of thought for the modern left. No person of differing ideology can every win against the group-mind, and nothing can ever be shared from the Great Bounty Of the State, it is only for those that belong to the club.
The only thing being rejected is a straw-man, so that you can worship the new straw-man propped up by a different farmer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To circulate, agree with, or repeat crimethink is volunteering to unperson
DoublePlus Love,
Danielle Brown
Commissar of GoodThink
ThinkPol, Google Corp
Prosecuting hate-speech in Canada is similar to defamation lawsuits in the US, the main difference is that only the rich can afford a defamation lawsuit. If you believe only the rich should be protected from propaganda attacks, then just move to the US.
She is (was) a feminist who woke up. This documentary is so powerful that feminists try to put theaters out of business who showed it. It's on Netflix and you can find excerpts on YouTube.
Zunger pretty much is the definition of "wealthy white male snowflake".
Empathy doesn't fucking enter into it. You know what's good for cooperation and collaboration? Effective leadership.
Understanding where your people are coming from and etc (ya know, empathy) is what makes it possible to lead effectively.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm expecting that the author will be hounded out of his job by the end of next week, and Google will have a major witch hunt against anyone who fails to denounce him angrily enough.
Then, he'll sue for wrongful termination, google will settle for a mid six-figure sum and get a gag order.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's obvious that the google forgot about "Don't be evil" years ago. I thought the new slogan was "All your attention are belong to us", but I have a new proposal:
"There is no gawd but profit, and the google is his prophet! Apple is a FALSE prophet!"
(You might prefer to swap the companies or add others, though I hope you'll keep the google in one of the top two slots. For example, I was thinking the last part could be "Apple's profits are FAKE and Apple is a FALSE prophet!")
P.S. This is really a feeble bid for a funny mod, though I'm not sure what the joke is. Maybe the entire topic area is just unfunny? Or maybe it's just today's humor-impoverished Slashdot?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I believe in free speech, so I'm certainly not going to be moving to Canada anytime soon, thanks.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I misread the memo, my comments about him being outed by VP were wrong. It was low ranked manager. Please mod down my incorrect comments about the vp. Though come to think of it, her memo isn't very smart.
That was an interesting essay. Based on some of the reported reactions, I was expecting an alt-right anti-women screed. But the essay was IMO thoughtful and fairly well-considered. I don't necessarily agree with parts of it or even most of it, but I do think the motivations of the author were not harmful.
As opposed to you know, actually listening to those people who have been marginalized and discriminated against.
By all means continue to celebrate this "hero" for speaking up, whilst those who have been speaking up for years, decades even, and trying to get even a fair opportunity are continued to be ignored.
Instead of listening to this clown, perhaps go and pay attention to the many lady techs that have actual experience with this discrimination.
But that won't happen. Yet, the poor white man who suddenly feels as though when others get opportunities, he is somehow "losing" something (spoiler alert: He isn't).
This is what it feels like when groups that have been shat on throughout history get their turn. Deal with it. And please don't kill us - that'd be much appreciated.
Have you read Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google ? It addresses many of the issues you raise, and perhaps should be foundational reading for any discussion of diversity within the context of the google. Published in 2015, but I'm pretty sure it's still highly relevant and helped me understand what is really happening within the google from the higher perspective of Power, Inc.
Usual gross oversimplification here, but we started with competition between tribes and cults that evolved to a struggle between church and state (or religions and nations, if you prefer). Not clear if the church has lost yet in America, but in the rest of the world the struggle has progressed to one between corporations and nations, where the largest corporations may now be more powerful than the largest states, and they are certainly more influential and powerful than most nations, which tend to be rather small. Yes, corporations' gross sales look much smaller than GDP numbers in some ways, but corporations are more "rational" and focused and don't have such overhead as philosophic principles like "fostering diversity".
Today's modern mega-corporations are soulless monsters, inclined towards EVIL while seeking immortality and infinite profits. Human beings are meaningless cogs, and the only corporate goal is to find the cheapest cogs that can do the necessary work. The only gawd is profit.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
My thoughts on this are pretty simple: Yonatan Zunger hasn't been a real engineer for a long time and doesn't remember what it's like.
Information Technology is filled with a large number of miserable people. It's management structure is filled with a bunch of sycophants and sociopaths that use the fact that people are miserable against them. I've seen both men and women crying coming out of meetings. I've watched both sexes explode, and I consider this another explosion. Maybe the person that wrote this finally had enough and was in a position to say "Fuck you." when they had had enough. Maybe it was one too many "Diversity in the workplace" meetings taking up valuable crunch time to get a product out the door. Maybe it was seeing someone that was, at best, ok at their job getting promoted or getting a bigger raise then they did. I don't know and I doubt seriously anyone will ever know.
What I will say is this: Google needs to get to the bottom of why this person feels this way and not just march them out the door.
I can guarantee you more people feel, if not exactly like this person does, pretty damned close to it. And Google needs to see what they can do about it, to see if there is an issue within the company that fosters this idea or is this person just someone that needs help.
But I doubt seriously anyone will get anything out of this but fired and probably someone else will get promoted to appease the masses.
That article was simply beautiful, its shame its and author are going to burn.
If my opinion matters at all i think now is the right time to speak up. Its either now or never.
Like fixing Googgle News ?
As long as ultra-liberals make views like in this essay taboo to express, then these ideas will simply be driven under ground, and people who hold those views will just feel unfairly suppressed. I think it’s a problem that people who hold these views feel the need to express them anonymously, because they know that the reaction will just be one of unmitigated vitriol. Seriously, if that Google employee openly expressed those views, they would just be fired.
Now that this anonymous essay is out, this is an opportunity to critique it carefully. For instance, there are indeed lots of people who think that men and women and people of difference “races” have such significantly different intelligences that it’s okay to utilize stereotypes as part of hiring decisions and such. Well, now we can take this opportunity to revisit the scientific evidence. Surely there ARE differences, but what differences are genetic, and what are the result of culture and socialization? And for any of these differences, what impact do they have (statistically) on engineering talent? And how much does “talent” matter when combined with hard-earned skills?
We do not want to turn gender and racial equality into dogma. First, we should be completely honest and open about scientific research on this matter. Let’s say it became taboo to talk about skin color. Then if you really liked the skin tone of some person of African descent, then you might risk backlash from just complementing someone. Or more neutrally, if you’re trying to make someone look really good in their clothing, then we need the ability to be matter-of-fact about it; the color of your skin, hair, and eyes and the shape of your body do have a real impact on what clothing styles are best for you. Or biologically, it’s important to recognize the relationship between melanin content and sun exposure.
But establishing that diferences do exist an it’s okay to talk about them, what impact do those differences have on things like job effectiveness? Let’s say we unfroze a population of early humans from 500K years ago. They were not quite as intellectually advanced as us, but they had language and other characteristics that we would recognize as human. How should the be treated? Should they be enslaved? Or just relegated to the menial jobs? What if one wanted to study engineering—should we stop them? Why? And what harm would it cause you if one of them went to college, got a degree, and got hired? White men vary in engieering talent VASTLY and are not hired on the basis of simply being white men, so why should a woman, a black man, or a Neanderthal be excluded simply on the basis of one of these labels? And why the hell would you care to try to force people to be judged on those bases?
Although I haven’t met any neanderthals, I have met people with mental disabilities who were capable enough at math and engineering skills that they could hold down an engineering job and be *productive*, without “special treatment.” And of course, I have known lots of downright brilliant people who were female and/or with skin color darker than a norwegian. Are they less common than brilliant white men? If so, that’s interesting for the anthropologists, but not something that HR people should worry themselves with. BESIDES, even if there were some genetic bias that made them “10% less likely to be at skill level Z,” or something like that, the artificial prejudices from our society’s past have a FAR greater impact. We have a long way to go to get those people up to parity with their true underlying abilities. And the longer we take to do that, the longer we keep shooting ourselves in the foot for not benefitting from their ability to contribute.
I believe a lot of the criticism that women and minorities face often comes from confirmation bias. People make mistakes in their jobs or are sloppy. For some reason, when white men make mistakes, t
It looks like the argument against those advocating in favor of the original paper's author are reducing the issue to one of diversity vs. autism. Like, gee, if you don't have diversity then all you get are autistic, dysfunctional people. Like no basic standards of conduct exist in workplaces outside of the diversity shit. Give me a break.
I've been in tech in some way for almost twenty years now, from programming and IT heavy classes in high school through today. The way I see it, we bred this attitude, and should all have a little compassion for this writer.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, I never heard anyone suggest the all male or nearly all male CS and IT classes I was in were full of sexist men keeping the women out. Just the opposite, I constantly heard they were full of loser boys, women weren't there because they had better ways to spend their time. These guys were nerds, and were on the fringes where they belonged. (The notion that "nerd" and "geek" were positive words was just barely beginning to become a thing.)
Fast forward 15-20 years, and that time they thought they were outcasts? They're now being told that no, quite the opposite, they were being privileged jerks. That whole time they thought they were being ostracized, they were actually gender bullies who now must take responsibility for all the women they've been keeping out of the field. The shift should be enough to make anyone's head spin, but It was a slow burn with no clear demarcation. It's easy to miss. It's not surprising some people who've been in this system feel unhappy, betrayed, angry, or a number of other things.
Twenty years may seem like a long time, but what other profession has changed so fast? "Changing a culture is hard, and it's often uncomfortable." Indeed.
I'm not saying this guy is right. I'm not even saying he's wrong. I'm saying we shouldn't be surprised quite a few of him exist. I'm surprised there aren't a lot more.
That's pretty vague.
Should have stated "inherent physical strength". And just because self-reliance can apply to both genders, does not dismiss it as being a part of masculinity.
But I would argue self-reliance is not inherently a female trait as women are more prone to seek others for companionship and assistance, more likely to work on things as a group... if you run across true loners they are almost always men. Men are also more likely to keep silent about something that bothers them (for good and ill).
I think masculinity is more about sprouting vast thickets of hair from all over.
Except that statement equally applies to "people of both genders", its just the cultural norm for women to get rid of more of it. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Has anyone ever posted Helen Reddy https://youtu.be/Gpu_PV3BTfI to /.
[For the Western kids and the confused Easterners taking a free ride on the backs of our families' WW-II sacrifices, take note: As a result of the West's deep roots in Christianity, by the mid-1970s, it was still considered SHAMEFUL in Western society for a man to allow his wife to help support their family. This changed largely because in the aftermath of WW-II, Jews succeeded in stepping-up their takeover of Western media to shape (rather than potentially be victimized again by) public opinion and they used that platform to promote a generally much more liberal view than Christians. About a quarter century later, the generations that came up under that media influence elected leaders like Edith Green, Birch Bayh, Alice Paul or more recently Diane Fienstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, etc. and some of their laws/policies passed early in that process targeted the public schools so that girls would feel and be equal to boys, so much so that when they graduated (in the mid-late 1980s) they were demanding to fight in the military. There was a lot of societal disruption along the way to where we are now, where women are expected to enter the workforce by those making lending decisions and retirement policy, but it is mostly resolved now. Now they are just fighting over the women choosing to work in one industry vs. another, or over very powerful people, such as the con artist that was in control of Uber, violating regs that were written, tested, tuned and retested many decades ago.]
Google likes to put this at the end of their job ads "Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.".
Can anybody fill me in on how it's possible to have equal opportunity and affirmative action at the same time?
I mean, affirmative action is literally bias
You're not convincing anybody, comrade. Better go underground asap. Putin will hear of your failure.
The best revenge ....
is living well.
Also noticing that hate is slowly eating away the pope's soul.
Bless your heart, have a blessed day!
Except that statement equally applies to "people of both genders", its just the cultural norm for women to get rid of more of it.
Nope. Men are on the whole hairier. I suspect from your whiny tone that you have little chest hair and so are not very masculine. I strongly suspect that I have much more hair than you.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
As I was reading, this specific line stuck out:
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).
A lot of people don't want to be treated as just another random individual. They want to be special and they will take any perceived advantage at their disposal. We've all seen people of all races and genders do this stuff too.
There are plenty of us non-neckbeards around to fire you, delete your barely-functional scripts, and put things back the way they were before you "improved" them.
Also, groom your beard. Looking like a homeless person is unprofessional.
“In summary, your honour!” said Yonatan, “Point 1: My client didn't hire the boat on the day it was damaged!”
“Point 2: The boat was already damaged when my client picked it up.”
He paused for a second, to really hammer the point home.
“But most importantly, Point 3: the boat was fine, it was undamaged, at the time my client returned it, so my client is innocent!”
==================
Actually, I just made that up, that's not what Yonatan said at all.
==================
“Oh internets”, said Yonatan, “Point 1: There are no differences between men and women in the workplace.”
“Point 2: The differences between men and women in the workplace actually favour women.”
Working up to the big finale, Yonatan exclaims:
“Your foolish observation (that women and men are different in the workplace, and anyone who says differently will be fired) while complete rubbish, has revealed a difference between men and women in the workplace:
The women refuse to work with you.
The men want to hit you.
“As we can no longer provide a safe work environment for you, you're going to be fired, and definitely not because of the other thing.”
==================
Actually, I just made all of that up, Yonatan said something completely different.
It's sad to read many of the comments on this thread. It is clear that many do not want to step up and put those words against their account name.
I have a really good feeling that james damore will not be fired.
I'd love to see the sjw faces when they realize that.
Really? You want to see leadership without empathy? Look at the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. Or even the worse off parts of the US. Would you call that "effective leadership"?
Leadership without empathy leads to massive waste of material and human resources, limitless pollution, environmental destruction and bottomless misery except for an extremely select few. It has been tried before, there's nothing "effective" about it.
Typical case of eye splinter and log blindness...
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Passive-aggressive-progressive rent seeking diversity apparatchiks in high paying make work jobs create problems, worsen existing ones, offer solutions, news at 11.
One of the aspects of the post that troubled me deeply was the bias inherent in suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful
Statistical trends between men and women are science. Stick to your search engine snapper-head.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Employers, and even professional associations, do a good job at committing repeated microaggressions against their white male cis-gender heterosexual employees/members. The perpetual drumbeat of their message is: "We would feel more comfortable if you were not here, so that your job could be taken by someone of a different ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. We are embarrassed by your success, which by the way we do not believe you achieved by fair means."
Most men know this is bullshit, and just get on with the job. Some men feel a personal affront, but keep their heads down and don't complain. Occasionally someone cracks, and this is what has happened here. The person who cracks is most likely not the clearest-thinking or most eloquent person to explain the problem; but the problem most certainly exists.
It is a bizarre feature of early 21st-century life that successful organizations feel obliged to keep the majority of their productive staff in a state of permanent low-level humiliation.
The response to his memo may be broadly described using a widely studied psychological concept of Repressive Tolerance: http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm
In short, repressive tolerance describes a situation where a minority (or a group of minorities) begins to rule the majority of the society because the minority is seen as innovating and progressive as opposed to a backwards majority.
The world gives Google neurotic liberalism.
"Yonatan Zunger identified its anonymous author as "not someone senior," saying the author didn't seem to understand gender -- or engineering -- or what's going to happen next. "Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers."
Ummm, no. Engineering is all about problem solving. You can't do this in a vacuum so yes, people skills and cooperation is important but the crux of engineering is problem solving. It's not hard to understand why Western civilization is falling apart after reading Yonatan's interpretation of engineering.
Oh and his response to a diatribe about men being better at engineering was to point out the reasons women are better at it. Well done Yonatan, you really took gender discrimination out of the discussion.
Unbelievable. Soon it will be a crime to point out that females have vaginas and males have penises.
Then YOU help the situation by fixing it.
In one corner, we have the traditional right and the alt-right --including the idiots who voted for Trump. We have science and whatever is left since the 1990's of the religious right and some Libertarians and defecting working-class Democrats. We believe that women and men are genetically, anatomically, and psychologically innately different. We are aware of oddballs who don't get that, but whatever, to each his own, live and let live. It should be a free country and you should not be required to believe, or forced to express, facts which make you feel uncomfortable. Like evolution and the moon landing. And you should be free to endorse whatever nonsense you want, from Creationism to Keynes. We might feel Caitlyn Jenner is creepy, or sympathize with his psychiatric disorder or just disagree that it is possible to be a woman trapped in a man's body. But we do not bear him any ill-will, we are not out to shut him up or cause him harm.
In the other corner, we have the sanctimonious leftist ideologues, among them the leadership of Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, universities, colleges and federal bureaucracies. They are convinced that gender is a social construct and that any statement of perceived difference between genders (it's not reality, it's just your perception) is necessarily either the outcome of socialization or an expression of sexism. It is impossible that men and women have different genes and that genes influence behavior. Anyone who mentions the possibility must be ridiculed, ostracized and fired, be made to pay a price, be made to suffer for their heresy. Their downfall must serve as an example to others who would dare question official belief.
So it's not just one bunch of people's opinion against another's. It is asymmetric warfare. The leftists are a small minority with all the power. They control the largest, most profitable corporations in the country, they run the education system, they control the mainstream media. And they are completely intolerant of differing opinions; they use public shaming to destroy the reputations of those who dare question. They destroy careers by firing and blacklisting. They use the force of law to arrest, fine and harass dissenters.
The opponents of the left are those who resent compulsory ideological indoctrination. Primarily backlash against leftist fascism, not left-right differences in social and political beliefs, shifts American voters against the Democrat party. Social and political differences count for little: The alt-right is not powerfully attracted to the ideology of its own leaders. How could they be? Trump either has no ideology, or one that changes daily. He is a thoughtless blowhard. His supporters apologize for him daily. His sole genuine quality is not being Hillary Clinton. Nor is what the left endorses destructive to their opponents; I am not pained by Kristen Beck wearing a dress or a woman writing a computer program.
The fundamental driver of the American political insurgency is revulsion to authoritarianism of the left; It is not what you leftists believe that pisses us off so much that we go the polls and vote. What pisses us off is the fascist elites imposing their ideology on the rest of us using the power of government, the education system and corporations. Followed by your allies in the media pronouncing that we "hate government," "oppose education" and "deny science" because we are incensed by corruption of those institutions and endeavors to serve your own ideological and political ends.
Leftist ideology is unpopular yet dominant because leftists have co-opted the resources of institutions chartered to serve the public good so to impose their ideology on a majority which disagrees. Leftism thus depends on public corruption for sustenance.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
"Stop alienating conservatives" (calling it "non-inclusive" and "bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness"
So it's just a political ploy, what a load of BS
I find it interesting all the comments acting as if the posting of any opinion deemed "wrong" is a sin in and of itself. I also find it funny to see all the answers about what an idiot this person is and how just posting this makes him a toxic person. Sure, you may disagree with a number of things he said but he made a lot of points in his essay. You should read the whole thing. Are there no points that contain truth available in the essay?
Personally, I was more on the socialization side of the equation until I had kids. I then notice that my sons played, dressed, and thought differently. I found my daughters also played, dressed, and thought in completely different ways from their brothers. At that point, socialization went out the window. In reality, men and women go into fields they find interesting. I can't tell you how much time I've spent trying to get my daughters interested in any aspect of the IT field. All four of my daughters have refused thus far to even consider it. I then talk to their friends and find the same attitudes. You want to know what the main issue is? They all say that they hate the idea of not interacting with more people. When I explain that it's actually highly collaborative and interactive, they then ask how much time a coder spends at a desk creating program code? Once I admitted that they need to spend at least the majority of their day doing that part of the job then it was game over.
I'm not suggesting that no woman should code. I'm suggesting that we take into account the interests of men and women in what fields they choose. After a lot of thought I would suggest the correct attitude is the following:
1. We want equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. No one should be dissuaded from pursuing a good career in any field.
2. Women can enter and excel in fields dominated by men. They should be given that chance.
3. Men can enter and excel in fields dominated by women.
4. Very few fields will have close to a 50/50 split in gender mix. Striving for even close to that mix in our field is probably not possible. Men and women can still choose the fields they want and self-selection is a real effect we should accept.
5. Men and women do have differences that will cause them to choose careers in different areas. We should understand that without changing the equality of opportunity philosophy
6. We should not introduce a culture that tells any man or woman they are not wanted. It does go both ways as women can attest and as any man who has been to any major conference in the last 18 months can attest.
7. In general, we all should chill a little bit about micro-aggressions or other such things. It does no one any favors and makes for a less collaborative culture not necessarily a more collaborative culture.
I'm sure people will pick this apart but ultimately, if we accept people as they are with the experience and strengths they have without demeaning others, we can get along even if we still end up with less than a 50 /50 gender split.
HR has converted him into carbonite, and he is now serving as a table in the women's break room.
He sounds just like one of the racist conservative personalities (troll) I encounter in a certain political forum. Either it's the same person or they use the same sources.
I wonder if "alienating conservatives" is a problem for Google. How often do their executives wake up and think, "Gee, we don't hire enough conservatives."
Table-ized A.I.
Typical.
Instead of actually listening to the people affected by companies and societies various discriminatory practices - and they've been speaking out for years / decades now! - like women, poc, lgbtq+, intellectually and physically disabled people, etc, yep lets get mass media coverage when some guy speaks out about how his whole universe is collapsing now that someone other than people like him (aka Normal People) are getting opportunities.
The problem isn't Googles policies - it's people like this guy who think they are being "oppressed" or "disadvantaged" when they have ALL the advantages by default.
Every family is different, but I had 2 brothers and 1 sister. My brothers and I often cooperated by making make-believe miniature villages out of blocks, Legos, and Tinkertoys where together we fought off a common enemy, be it Russians or space aliens or killer robots.
My sister on the other hand liked to stir things up and pit one of us against the other: conniving politics. She's much nicer as an adult, but I'd hate to be on her bad side. I've also encountered some conniving females at work. Women can and often do have a competitive streak, but it tends to be less overt than male competition: you may not even know it's happening.
Table-ized A.I.
Architecture is a kind of engineering, and arguably more akin to what software engineers do than the kind of engineering you are talking about. But of course what I just described happens there too: badly designed plumbing, stupid placement of electrical outlets, HVAC that meets the specification but has hot spots or cold spots in places where you want to be. There really aren't a lot of jobs delivering something that's of value to an end user where empathy for the end-user doesn't make it more likely that what you produce won't suck.
little girl play is cooperative and egalitarian
aahahahahahahaha! Comedy gold.
I have twins (boy and girl) and an older girl. I can assure you that while little girl play can be cooperative and egalitarian, it is often not. The girls are far more likely to compete & fight with each other than their brother is with them.
But hey, your anecdotal evidence trumps mine right? Because it conforms to your world view.
The same crew that claims traditional religion is horseshit has created their own called secular humanism. And it will brook no dissent.
The asshole SJWs today differ only in their detailed views from the bible-thumping televangelists of the 70s and 80s. The utter intolerance and willingness to use political force to get their way is identical.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I suspect from your whiny tone that you have little chest hair and so are not very masculine.
I have altogether too much actually, yes men have more hair but women have more than you realize living in modern times.
From your need to be arrogant, I can discern I am in fact the more masculine between us, and could quite easily best you in a match of fisticuffs
I strongly suspect that I have much more hair than you.
I'm not at the Robin Williams level... but close. Take that as you will, which will naturally be with disdain.
I'll let you have the last word, as the truly strong are comfortable with the babbling of lesser men and do not feel the need to go on correcting them once properly rebuked.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously - "It's true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people's emotional needs and so on " - how the fuck is THAT acceptable but saying men are better engineers is unacceptable?
C***s be c***s.
Throw him in jail???
We need common sense restoration. Enough Kafkaesque absurdities.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I really don't care if there's an ideological echo chamber at Google. I'd guess he's probably right, but if it pisses him off so badly, he doesn't have to work there either.
However, we can't be hypocrites.
If we are ok with Google stomping its ideology into its employees, then we should be equally ok with other ideologues pushing their private causes onto their employees, or inviting them to leave if they don't like it, such as Chik Fil A.
If it's ok for Google, it should be ok for Hobby Lobby, no?
-Styopa
...what an asshole.
It's wrong today to classify someone according to their physical gender. It's how they identify that really matters. Being transsexual rarely involves drugs, it just requires stating that you identify as the gender that is opposite your physical reality.
So, Alphabet just needs to come out in full support of this movement and encourage all of their transgender females (those physically male) to publicly announce, then change their designations in the corporate HR database.
I am sure that nearly half of the "men" at Alphabet would be much happier, and the gender inequality would be solved without hiring or firing a single soul!
You look fat and ugly. Looking like a fat homely jew is disgusting.
Don't these stories usually come out on Friday?
Because it's prefixed with it.Slashdot instead of news.Slashdot I can't read this one on the work PC (weird filter) will have to dazzle you all with my opinions from home later.
"Near" means more than zero. And one proof is all it takes.
Do you realize that ?
From my engineering background I could give 2 shits who I work with as long as your ideas and work is sound I don't care. I do care about the fake diversity bullshit that is propagating through business that just leads to an opposite form of discrimination, just now against white males.
Let's get focused back on solving hard problems, not creating another layer of bureaucracy, if I wanted that I would go work for the government again.
Do you think our competitors in China and India and Europe give a crap about diversity at their companies, no they are trying to invent while the US is getting stuck in diversity classes.
Here's a funny thing: Medicine, Law, and Engineering were also fields that were over 90% male - women had to "break in". And don't imagine they didn't have to push past a lot of sexism and belittling and interrupting.
There was one woman in my 50-man engineering class of 1980; I saw the first woman hired as P.Eng. in my workplace in 1993. By the time I left, five of my last six bosses had been women (2003-2017), and in two cases, THEIR bosses had been women; I'd say they're now a third of the shop. I think this generation has to put up with much less prejudice and belittling (from their women boss, for sure).
Medicine and Law have been half women for a while now.
Then there's IT. Happens I also got a CompSci degree, 1985. A third of my class were women and it was widely assumed it would hit 50% by 1990 or so. And it WAS doing pretty well in the 1990s, then the female participation rate plummeted after the dot-bomb and has never really recovered.
The driving force here, I think, is not poisonous culture, but money. Medicine and Law were rapidly integrated because they are the best-paid jobs in society, and women kept pushing, hard; they had cause. Engineering is mostly better-paid than IT, at least the actual coding jobs.
It's the same as that thing about women not going in to drywall; obviously the best-paid, relative to work pain, jobs will be the most attractive. Coding has become way less attractive lately. Oh, and it's not a licensed profession, like medicine, law, engineering...that may have something to do with both its attractiveness and stability, too.
This guy should have known better then to speak his mind, even *if* he is correct about everything, and still has all those sources. Sure we all have freedom of speech (in the USA) but speaking the truth is still a bad idea if the mob disagrees. When Baghdad was a center for science and learning, it was the stupid mob that started executing people for speaking truth.
I never heard the term snowflake until Trump started tapping his orange colored vagina, so it's clearly conservatives who are snowflakes. You sicko conservatives can't control your own emotional state and blood lust.
Inevitably this kind of articles generates a shit-ton of comments from all the crybabies!! Quite funny if a bit tedious due to the sheer mass of idiocy displayed! tl;dr: "Boo hoo hoo! I'm a white male and I complain about social injustice! it's so hard being paid more than others, never second guessed and always thought of as stronger and smarter than others by my buddies! I feel there are too much women and minorities in tech already because I'm so insecure! Women are made for babies and care! why should they want something else ?!? We grudgingly agreed that they have a soul, and now they want more?!? I'm with the original author of the memo because it reinforces my idiotic bias, and I think he's a poor thing that may suffer in his job for being a complete idiot in his job! How injust! And I want a pony.
Non sequitur.
I guess we can't see our own blinding biases.
They're right in front of us!
I have altogether too much actually
Soundslike not only are you not very manly, but you'd anti man too.
I'm not at the Robin Williams level... but close. Take that as you will, which will naturally be with disdain.
Indeed! Disdain at your unmanly lack of hair. I bet you're palms are bald too.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
every time i hear a company starting to talk about diversity and whatnot, i just know the company is on the way down. just look around and you'll see. intel has been big about diversity lately and look at their product line and performance.
when a company starts to divert it's attention to non-core stuff, it's product/services will very, very gradually starts to suffer. it's when performance becomes second fiddle to other "more important" stuff, putting the cart before the horse.
while making extensive logical errors & identifying with tech despite explaining at length why he does not understand it, outside of his immediate experience.
News at 11.
As a conservative I believe in free speech, so I don't care if you say merry Christmas or happy holidays.
I'm not a butthurt leftist trying to control the speech of others.
Free speech includes things you don't like, deal with it KID.
The general public does not need a new $1200 iPhone every year, and I doubt Apple will provide the public with what they need.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm male privilige.
If you say something without my consent you are a verbal rapist.
And I'm sorry you lefto-fascist troglodytes don't know how to read or think, because if you did, you'd know better than you do.
I think you mean it's a lack of creativity to find a better derrogatory term. If both sides called the other tories, it wouod just make no sense
Yeah. I can see this would go over REAL big with the authoritarian touchy-feelies at Google...
And I'm shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, that they simply dismissed it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
For those on Slashdot who are quite young, I will explain what is going on, and I have been researching all this for years. I'm an eco warrior, but when it comes to matters of the family and bedroom, I'm conservative - being it's better for society and the happiness of people LONG term. I also believe that brainwashing young people and manipulating them to suite one's own somewhat questionable motives to be unacceptable. That out of the way... As I type this, the first fracking site is going live in the UK in Cumbria. What, you don't know about it? Ah, read on... Here in the UK anyway, the sun is increasingly 'intense' Notice that when you are outside, even if the air temp is not that hot, the rays are burning and if you are driving, you have to put sun tan lotion on any bare arms. I have been driving for over 30 years and NEVER known the sun so intense. The oceans are warming. Coral reefs are bleaching. Food prices are rising. (Apples that were £1 for 6 a few months ago, are now £1.50 to £2, that's a massive increase!) Advances in battery, solar panel and other sustainable energy technology is advancing very very quickly, thanks to work being done in Germany etc. A massive threat to the carbon fuel industry, that is run by old school types with little imagination, vision or compassion. (Opposite of Elon Musk, Tim Cook et al) So, the powers that be want to keep the youth, who would normally be protesting at fracking and/or climate change or other matters distracted. There is a term for this strategy that was devised by Frankfurt School, so I understand. You get the masses gossiping and arguing about nothing - a bit like Bread & Circuses concept of dumbed down TV and sports - and those in power such as oil execs and such continue to wreck the planet to line their pockets for as long as possible whilst the masses lay powerless. If the VW scandal and behaviour of big tobacco isn't enough to convince you, then it's a lost cause and we're going to end up with a bizarre, dirty, hot, dystopian world full of confused dysfunctional people, a bit like a scene out of Total Recall or similar. I don't know why all this gender and 'diversity' nonsense has been mainly occurring in the tech world, but tech blogs such as The Verge (that I have been banned from under a different login) and others seem to obsess about it non stop, putting off a lot of readers. Thing is, there quite simply isn't a problem! The issues of gender, race and other are being inserted into the narrative to distract people. And that sir/madam/other (!) is part of this Frankfurt School ideology is all about, and they have fallen for it hook line and sinker! (Am a techie, so if anyone with more insight into all this would like to enlighten / critique me, feel free.) Either way, we are doomed if this madness continues!
Pi 25 39 ForeverPi.com
Eventually, people who have been openly and lawfully discriminated against for their entire lives get kinda sick of being slandered as bigots by the semi-official media and silverspoon corporate nomenklaturists .
Your bias is on display
this is stupid, get back to work
Too bad for all the lack of stamina,
And fuck SJWs.
Exactly.
We have Trump because they heard what they wanted from him, but we were saying that was where they were headed two decades ago.
You didn't listen.
You have been fucked up the anal cunt hole you cunt. Homosexual cunt holed cunt in the cunt. boi cunt. poof
The rest of us don't know that. In fact, seems you're indirectly denying, which makes one wonder...
My parents didn't teach me to ignore ignorance, sexism, and racisms just because a Progressive uses it.
I must have missed that life lesson.
Umm, because it is true. I know for a fact that you are a pedophile. You should be hanging from a lamppost.
Actually, he is saying exactly what they guy who called you a DS said. He is saying in its current form it is not working and therefore should not be mandatory.
Or it just might increase the number of murder+suicides.
How about we look at it the other way.
Perhaps more people with suicidal tendencies are identifying as trans and not the other way around.
How old is the average CEO?
How many years did it take them to reach that position.
Now, how many women have put in that much effort, and had as much success?
Oprah comes to mind, but it did not happen overnight. I know Millennials can't deal without instant gratification, so maybe running a company isn't for you
A clumsy essay gets totally hysterical reactions
Let's have some more short, fat white guys in the NBA to have a more diverse culture there too.
Took more votes from who? If that's the way you want to play, please write Ross Perot a thank you note. Jesus, you people.
Fortunately, I don't see any implementation path.
FTFY.
Snowflake, slang :
2016, an overly sensitive person, incapable of dealing with opinions that differ from their own.
2008, a person who thinks they are unique, but is in fact just like everyone else (possibly from Fight Club, 1996).
1970, a derogatory term for Caucasians or African Americans who were perceived as acting 'white'.
1860, a person who was opposed to the abolition of slavery.
The first engineer that comes to me with his feelings about a project and how we should empathize with his viewpoint will get summarily fired. Engineering is about what you can calculate, prove and do or not do. The rest just gets in the way of true engineers.
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Indra Nooyi, Irene Rosenfeld, Patricia Woertz and Beth Mooney, of the top of my head.
You forgot
Snowflake, slang (1995): an underachieving or misbehaving student with highly engaged parents, as in "Mrs Smith demands that her special snowflake deserves full credit for '2+2=5' because he was using a non-Euclidean basis."
No, I learned I can get in their pants more by complimenting their looks rather than flattering their inability to do algebra.
I thought it was a very well-reasoned document that at least should be discussed, but there's an obvious problem at Google management having the typical radical socialist approach of silencing anything that doesn't march lock-step with their clueless PeeCee views.
Look at the response from "Danielle, Googleâ(TM)s brand new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance. "
"Iâ(TM)m not going to link to it" (the emai itselfl) "here as itâ(TM)s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages"
then right after, she goes on to say
"..fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions...."
Typical socialist two-faced double-standard of giving the idea of alternative ideas lip-service, but then actually stifling any that dare to come along, with absolutely no sense of any irony.
...isn't to say that men and women are different. On average, they are different.
Sexism is when you say that all men are the same and all women are the same, judging the individual man or woman after what you think the average man or woman is. Saying "A woman can't do this or that because statistically women are worse at that" -- this is sexism.
The same is true for racism.
Because other people might believe it, like the pedo witchhunts on Tumblr because someone supported the wrong Steven Universe ship.
You think you have the right social status to avoid the accusation, and maybe against an anon on Slashdot you do, but you're a bloody idiot if you think false accusations in the right hands cannot destroy someone's reputation.
Those numbers are also largely overinflated. People like a place to put the blame, an infant that has recently died to SIDS after receiving a vaccination will be reported as caused by vaccination. Also consider that most that die or have adverse reactions to vaccination would have had the same reaction to the actual live virus.
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Aren't good with people, just ask Tom Smykowski. He had people skills.
Take it away, Ernie!
No. The people whining that immigrants are taking their jobs, the people whose parents are crying because their little 25 year old genius wasn't accepted into Harvard, the people throwing tantrums because there are people that want to worship giant mythical beings in other ways. You know the ones that cry education only focuses on science, science only uses science when it says the climate is changing and who still think that somehow magically being born a certain skin color makes one a super being.
You Nazis are nothing but whining hypocrites.
I got a better name than snowflakes for you all. You all are just idiots.
Enjoy your Monday
"Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your *colleagues and your customers*" What a boatload of inane platitudes from this willing idiot.
I hope they walk they guy before he kills half of the office. Yet another entitled psycho who pissed that other people get a a chance too.
You have attacked our taboo, and we will not miss your heresy. (at least not this century martyrdom)
Anyone calling the modern right nazis because they hold a different opinion is incredibly ignorant of the actual nazis and the crimes committed by them.
Not agreeing with the regressive left!= the industrialised genocide of people considered subhumans.
Every day, in every way, they slip further and further into the Silicon Valley "I got mine, you get nothing" attitude.
I expect riots in the streets next year.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Almost like they think it'll just solve all their problems but it won't.
We need to stop this gender bias crap where it starts: birth. We need to make sure that 50% of all births come from female mothers and 50% come from male mothers.
No, those numbers (per the CDC) are greatly *under*inflated by as much as 10 to 1 (again, per the CDC on their vears page).
The area needs a lot of formal study.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Indeed. Christ was largely apolitical, and the few political things he said have multiple interpretations. Conservatives often accuse the left of trying to legislate practices which should be voluntary, such as helping the poor. But Christ (as written in the Bible) does not seem to condone nor condemn the practice of institutionalizing alleged Christian practices: he simply ignores that issue and focuses on individual relations. (He would probably have been jailed much earlier if he had.)
Ironically, the right wants to pass laws that forbid or hamper certain "bedroom" activities such as homosexuality. Thus, they play both sides of the "legislate morality" angle. In the end its a matter of personal interpretation, not written scripture. Thus, to say "our side better fits the Bible" is dubious from either side. However, the right appears to claim that far more often than the left by my observation.
Table-ized A.I.
Seems to me that if there are fewer conservatives in the humanities or in the tech sector, it must be because of some biological constraint. There are differences between liberals and conservatives, according to (among others) Dr. Gail Salz. As much as I would love to see more conservatives in tech, it might just be that they are incapable of the kind of focused, nuanced thinking required in that sector. According to Jonathan Haidt, conservatives are more obedient to hierarchy, obsessed with purity, and adherent to prior modes of action and thought, to truly be innovative.
See how easy that was?
"Changing a culture is hard, and it's often uncomfortable." Have you given any thought to the possibility that people may not want their culture changed? What gives you the right to shove your brand of morality down everyone else's throats? You're pushing people to the breaking point, eventually they will push back. This will not end well.
If you look the signs are there...
http://www.abc2news.com/newsy/11-california-counties-might-have-more-registered-voters-than-eligible
You do realize how childish you sound right?
And *your* argumentation hardly qualifies as anything besides ... just another [wait for it] ... opinion.
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
Google's Commandments 1. Thou shalt not question the benefits of diversity 2. Thou shalt not express any conservative, right-wing, Republican, (or god-forbid Trumpian) views. 3. Thou shalt not criticize Google's management, especially the VP of Diversity. All guilty will be sent to re-education camps. Big Brother is watching. All guilty suspects will be punished.
Scott Alexander, a center-left blogger, also argues against misguided attempts at gender balancing:
Gender Imbalances Are Mostly Not Due to Offensive Attitudes
I worked at Google for 3.5 years as a software engineer, and I am not at all surprised that a Googler would write this pap. During my time there it was clear that there were some employees who were completely blind to the reasons there were so many white men in computer science. It's ironic that the mandatory unconscious bias training could have led to this: privileged white male conservatives convincing themselves that they suffer from comparable levels of discrimination.
(insert witty/esoteric/dumb quote here)
Thank god your opinion on the Constitution is just that, your opinion and a rather anti democratic viewpoint at that. Here's my opinion you and all other democraps should stop messing with the Constitution as it was written by men way more intelligent and free thinking than most among us today. We won't let you corrupt it's true meaning!! If you don't love this country, LEAVE!!! No one will stop you lol
The problem with politicians is that they never lose. If they fail to win an election then they almost always find a way to blame it on someone else. Either hordes of people bused up from Mexico to vote, or the campaign advisor made a mistake, or a third party entered the race without getting permission, or the voters were misled by confusing ballots, or whatever other thing they can point a finger at.
"The men of computer science and the computer industry are misogynous jerks. Not all of them of course. Likely not even the majority. But enough to thoroughly poison the well."
This is the very sort of stereotyping that is (apparently) bad when aimed at women, but simply common sense when aimed at men.
1) Women & Men are inherently equally endowed with all the important skills, traits, abilities, and preferences that contribute to successful careers in Engineering, hard or soft. Therefore, all selections for employment (hiring/firing), promotion, compensation, etc. should be, indeed MUST be gender-blind. Selections shall be made on technical merit alone, without regard to gender (or other innate native identifying characteristics, e.g.: height, weight, hair color, blood type, skin pigmentation, etc.) Affirmative action that favors any group based on non-technical qualities for the purpose of meeting "diversity" goals is wrong and discriminatory.
2) Women have been historically disfavored, and the prevalent social and cultural context has programmed them to avoid STEM career paths in favor of historically more "traditional" choices.
Conventional academic environments reinforce gender stereotypes, and raise barriers to entry for women disproportionately higher than for men. In order to compensate for historical imbalances that have distorted free market forces, extra incentives, encouragement and support for women is only fair, and should be universally available. Equal opportunity employment is only possible if the candidates for employment have had equal preparation for the demands they will be expected to satisfy. As has been famously stated, "separate is inherently unequal".
3) Women have a unique role, superior to men, due to their reproductive capacity to conceive, nurture, and give birth to future generations. Only women carry the burden of pregnancy, and their safety, health, and well-being is more important than that of men who, after the instant of impregnation passes, are free to wander off and live unencumbered lives. This does, and must, confer on them a special protected status in society. The primary function of men is, and should be, the protection of women and the provenance of food, clothing, shelter, and whatever other necessities are required to allow women to perform their primary mission: propagation of the species. Some women self-select technical career paths, either instead of or in addition to taking on the substantial and demanding responsibilities of child-rearing, with all that entails.
In recognition of those stalwart individuals who choose to make greater positive contributions to society than would normally be expected, extra compensation is appropriate and should be required. Two jobs, two paychecks is a fair standard.
4) Status quo: this is a tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing...a gigantic, and apparently successful, troll of the G-Plex and all its inhabitants, PC or not.
5) The infamous "else" case: "D: None Of The Above"
ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice...
(T)he (O)ld (M)an
This isn't just about women or gender issues either, it is the same kind of attitude the underlies all situations where there is an unwillingness to address problems with prejudice and unjust discrimination.
I agree. However, I think this unwillingness to address the problems is even more evident when attempting to "solve" the problems. Typically identifying and addressing the problem goes like this.
Perform a simple bean-counting experiment to get the numbers in social groups A and B in a career. If the ratio of A to B is lower than it is in the general population take this as evidence of unjust bias against A. Then, to fix this unjust bias introduce programs which deliberately discriminate against group B in favour of group A while, at the same time, telling those in group B to be very careful not to discriminate against those in group A.
At no point in the above process is anything done to identify the cause of the bias which is the first step to determining whether there even is a problem let alone how you might fix it. Even worse the "solution" is likely to cause more bias against group A by some in group B who see programs deliberately biased against them and act, as they perceive it, to rebalance the books. This is clearly not how you identify and correct prejudice. However, it is a cheap and easy way to make it look like you care and are doing something about it.
So attributing "the gender gap in technology to biology-based differences in abilities" is "allow stereotyping and harmful assumptions", but it's somehow OK to write that "male gender roles remain highly inflexible, and that this is a bug, not a feature"? The way that whole thing is playing si a good example of applying a ridiculous amount of social pressure to ignore actual data or belittle minority opinions.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
Google cares about tapping foreign workers and the 60% of the population that have female genetals to flood the labor pool and weaken the bargaining position of their technical staff. The same reason they pretend there is a talent shortage in technology.
That means that any study conducted by the government which shows any vaccine in a bad light will never be published.
Source: http://www.vaccinecourse.org/s...
That is just awesome. Going to use that elsewhere. I'm for rational attitudes on vaccination and rabid anti-vaxxers drive me crazy.
BUT so do rabid irrational pro-vaxers.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Personally I have nothing against the idea of vaccines, but the problem is the ones we have are dangerous. They also are not held to the same standards for safety and efficacy testing that other drugs are. But the most terrifying aspect of them is that the companies who manufacture them have absolutely zero liability for harm caused by them. No other industry in the world has that kind of protection short of a completely state run business.
Well, for DPT, the D and T are pretty safe. The P has issues.
D has almost no adverse reactions and without it, we were losing 14,000 children a year with a much lower child population.
P has issues as common as 1:350,000.
If you just do the math and are willing to sacrifice a few so many may live, then vaccination makes sense. For each vaccination I've investigated, we had a known number of deaths over 10,000 per year. Vaccination stopped that. That's a clear benefit.
But at a cost of 100 dead children per year and another 1000 or so hospitalized or with severe reactions that had permanent effects (Ignoring autism which I think the data is really muddy).
I think we should have a larger budget for developing tests to determine which children not to vaccinate with particular vaccinations. I think there will often be a detectable genetic component. Just like for blood pressure medicine- there are some drugs you don't give to people with certain genetics. And I think we need a *much* better system for collecting adverse reactions.
"Willful ignorance" is not a good system. A voluntary and (per doctors) "onerous" system is not a good system.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If you just do the math and are willing to sacrifice a few so many may live, then vaccination makes sense. For each vaccination I've investigated, we had a known number of deaths over 10,000 per year. Vaccination stopped that. That's a clear benefit.
That's exactly the same argument used against seat belts:
"So what if they save tens of thousands of lives each year.
My cousin's brother-in-law says he might have been trapped in a burning car if had been wearing a seat belt".
And it was the same argument used for motorcycle helmets.
Which ended up going the other way.
But addressing your point, there are few real stories where people were trapped in a car by a seatbelt. When validated, the stories turn out to be fictional.
Ann Landers in 1994 and Dear Abby in 1991 both quoted a policeman whoâ(TM)d seen his share of accidents: âoeIâ(TM)ve never unbuckled a dead man.â
That's the difference. Vaccination problems *are* much more common than people trapped by a seatbelt burning to death in a car incidents.
Much more likely is, "thrown from the car and killed", "Crushed against the dash and killed" stories. Also, vaccination problems affect children- so everyone else at their school probably hears about the vaccination problem. Trapped by a seatbelt would probably be adults. And only a few people would hear about it.
And you don't have adverse reactions just for putting on a seatbelt. Children *do* have adverse reactions, bad ones, just from getting their first vaccination shot.
Encephalopathy: (Disease, damage, or malfunction of the brain) is a recognized side effect of Pertussis vaccinations that by the odds happens multiple times every year in the U.S. alone.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
At least according to some experts... (but I know *everyone* here on /. is an expert)
http://quillette.com/2017/08/0...
The VP's statement is a caricature of self-contradiction. He wants challenging discussion, just so long as it doesn't challenge any of his PC assumptions. Step over the (undefined) line, and you're fired; no warning or nothing. With management like that, who needs enemies?
NHA
Interesting thoughts, usefully debatable, and maybe worth writing down IF it's incidental to your job - or discussing with your wife (if you dare). But otherwise a huge fail in engagement with today's Office Politics, anywhere. 'Internal Memo'? Just WHY?
those occupations. The thing about science and tech is that being good at it (and I mean _really_ good. As in somebody who will advance the field) is more or less being a freak of nature. Being good at watching kids is just being really, really patient. We're not afraid of losing out on a few good kindergarten teachers. They might do good work but they're not going to advance the species the way Einstein did. We _are_ afraid of missing out on the next Einstein because a bunch of the other kids teased her for being good at math.
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because the pay is crap. My dentist is a man and digs around my mouth twice a year (three times if I have a cavity). Men have other, better paying options.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
He shoots himself in the foot by some of the things he says which is basic claptrap. But the truth is there is a societal expectation on men that does not exist for women and there are biological differences. Most importantly everyone is an individual, but the left and progressives generally are sexist and racist against white males. In the case of women and men, yes there is discrimination and it is awful but also some of the disparity is caused by societal expectations and biological proclivities related to sex. It isn't a matter of capability but rather one of societal expectation and preferences of gender. I'm and engineer, my wife went to school for CS she doesn't do that as a career, why? It has nothing to do with capability, she's brilliant, it has everything to do with she finds staring at code 8-10 hours a day to not be interesting and rewarding she'd rather be interacting with people. Also for this white male engineers perspective the most racist and sexist people I've seen in my career were people of Asian ancestry. Also in my experience the idea of changing standards to promote diversity is also claptrap. I'm a hiring manager some of my most esteemed hires were women and African Americans, I hired them because they were good and they received promotion and raises over white men and that is all fair and good.
There will always be inherent bias, it is rooted in biology, people trust their own more than outsiders(people who look like them, people of similar ethnic background). But putting people in boxes and focusing on this helps no one, victim mentality and trying to even equalize society doesn't work, and is divisive. People should be taken as individuals and judged on their merit, a person's background comes into play but it's not so clean. I like to pose this question who faces more prejudice in NYC or SF a good looking tall educated black man(well spoken) or a short white bald uneducated fat guy from West Virginia, I will tell you right now the short,ugly, white guy will get treated like sh*t. Working in software I saw more racism and bias against white developers(men and women) from Indian and Asian managers than against anyone else, black and hispanic developers were treated even worse but there were far fewer. There are no one size fits all scenarios a black manager will likely inherently have a bias for his black reports. Trying to implement rules to enforce fairness usually does anything but and I think that structural societal differences are to blame and that is a purview outside the walls of a public company.
As a "liberal equalist" I will have to say that there are certain differences in our genetic and epigentic makeup.
You can bitch about it all you want, but unless you can show me actual scientific proof that we are not genetically different (under independently controlled scientific process) the theory stands under previous "proven" scientific experiments.
I am truely sorry about the truth but yes we do have to give a hand to those that have been part of the genetic diversification but at the same time we have to conceed to the truth that we are truely different and have niches.
There are outliers, but no one excells and is suitable for every thing.