Slashdot Mirror
Google's Other Ugly Secret: Some Managers Keep Blacklists (inc.com)
Last week a controversial internal memo written by a concerned Google employee was going viral within the company. The memo, titled "PC Considered Harmful" and since dubbed "the Google manifesto" on social media, argued two points: First, that Google has become an ideological echo chamber where anyone with centrist or right-of-center views fears to speak their mind. Second, that part of the tech industry's gender gap can be attributed to biological differences between men and women. The person who wrote the memo has since been fired, but the internal tussle has revealed one more thing. The Inc reports: The contentious internal discussion revived a concern dating back to 2015: An unknown number of Google managers maintain blacklists of fellow employees, evidently refusing to work with those people. The blacklists are based on personal experiences of others' behavior, including views expressed on politics, social justice issues, and Google's diversity efforts. Inc. reviewed screenshots documenting several managers attesting to this practice, both in the past and currently, explicitly using the term "blacklist." The screenshots were shared by a Google employee who requested anonymity due to having signed an NDA. In additional screenshots, one Google employee declared his intent to quit if Damore were not fired, and another said that he would refuse to work with Damore in any capacity. A Google spokesperson told Inc. that the practice of keeping blacklists is not condoned by upper management, and that Google employees who discriminate against members of protected classes will be terminated. It's not clear whether that principle applies in Damore's case. Although political affiliation is a protected class according to California labor law, the views expressed in the manifesto and echoed by others who oppose political correctness do not seem to merit legal protection.
Is there anything wrong with this? I also have a personal list of people I don't want to work with.
it's not as if anyone at Google tries to enforce the list on other companies.
and that Google employees who discriminate against members of protected classes will be terminated.
So firing that guy may or may not have gone overboard a bit. But what do you expect? After all, they just got under fire for not protecting protected classes from discrimination.
Are they supposed to create a work environment more friendly to women or not?
bickerdyke
Over my 20+ year career as an IT Support contractor, I've kept a blacklist of recruiters that I refused to deal with. Tek Systems, Robert Half and Microsoft tops my blacklist.
Tek Systems always call you in for an interview, are more interested in who you interviewed with previously than your qualifications, and never offer a job after repeated interviews.
The San Jose office for Robert Half have recruiters who always get a better job for themselves than trying to help you get a job. I went through six recruiters in three month because of the turnover.
Microsoft requires that the hiring manager considers five applicants even though he plans to hire his drinking buddy. During a six week period in 2005, I had five Microsoft recruiters leading me by the nose for jobs that went to drinking buddies.
So protected speech doesn't merit legal protection in California?
REALLY?
Again, illiberal, authoritarian shit like this, coming out of what's supposed to be the most liberal place on the planet should surprise nobody.
"Think differently, just like me, OR ELSE!"
So, instead of a tolerant, level-headed push to better and broaden society, we have a bunch of bitchy, socially maladjusted children pushing darwinian progressivism, group-think, intolerance and and the kind of antisocial interaction you see in nasty little grade school students.
And California isn't just "okay" with this, it wants the entire fucking state to be this goddamn crazy.
Then they wonder why people are praying for an earthquake or secession to take these fucknuts off our hands...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Most places that I've worked has had pretty strict prohibitions on discussing politics or religion in the workplace, no matter what flavor of those things is involved. For good and obvious reasons, I think -- such discussions can only lead to grief and strife among people who would otherwise be able to work productively together. I'm a bit surprised that Google allows it.
Also, I'm not clear on what is meant by "blacklist". Typically, that means a list of people who are ineligible for (whatever) that is distributed within an organization and everyone is expected to adhere to.
But the article makes it sound like something rather different: individuals deciding that they can't work with other individuals. This is pretty normal. I know that in most places that I've worked, there have been people that I would go to great lengths to avoid interacting with, and in a managerial role, there have been people who I would not accept on my team because of personality issues.
Is that a "blacklist"? I don't think so. I think it's more about wanting to have teams that can function well together. Being able to get along well in a team is as important as technical skill.
Otherwise known as, "Dog Whistles", which are imaginary constructs conjured up by the left when they have no evidence to back up their claims of some kind of cultural transgression such as racism, sexism, any ind of phobia, etc.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You are offensive to a decent society. You're post was nothing but whining vitriol, with not even one counter argument to anything the paper contained. Yet, you equate the author with a criminal because his view of the world differs from yours. You're post is worthless and we are all dumber for having read it.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
There's not a whole lot that the Y chromosome carries, and there are predictions that it will atrophy into carrying no information in 4.6 million years at the current rate of decay: https://www.quantamagazine.org...
While the X chromosome carries 1,000 or so genes, the Y chromosome currently carries 200 genes and declining: http://gizmodo.com/the-y-chrom...
Most of what people think the "male" chromosome carries is based on unscientific knowledge. Your chest hair, beard, and other male traits, do not come from the Y chromosome, but are instead expressions of the X chromosome under high levels of testosterone. That's why people without the Y chromosome can have sex-change operations and get a beard, chest hair, etc. by taking testosterone supplements. Testosterone also increases aggression and risk-taking, even for individuals without the Y chromosome.
And last night I was reading about Forrest Mims and Ed Roberts and the the Home Brew computer club. It kinda sounded like all this microcomputer nonsense got its start in the world of ham radio electronics enthusiasts. So why not look there for answers since there is a hundred years of global statistical data?
Basically nobody that criticizes him has actually read what he wrote.
Not true. I've read every sorry, whining word of it.
He mentions nothing about actual outcomes - whether women are delivering value for their salary - and simply assumes that getting through the employment process is an accurate proxy for their relative value to the corporation. It only matters if women are predisposed to be more co-operative or sympathetic and if this is a genetic rather than a social trait if this leads them to perform less (or indeed more) effectively in the work they are employed to do - and about this he is silent.
What he does assert is that women have biological traits that make them less likely to get through employment interviews and then decries positive discrmination that biases the employment process in their favour. Now it seems to me that if, once employed, a particular segment of society performs just as well as another but that the employment process favours a different segment of society then you would want to fix your employment process because it was clearly failing to identify the full gamut of potential hires, not simply claim that one segment of society was genetically programmed to fail the employment process and there wasn't anything to be done about it.
So, if he'd produced any evidence that his female colleagues perform less well, he might have a point. Although, maybe not even then, as some research shows that men will underestimate the achievements of female colleages and overestimate the achievements of male colleagues, so it would rather depend on who collected the evidence and how. But he didn't. And the most likely reason he didn't was that he has a prejudice masquerading as a political view and wasn't really interested in the only evidence that's relevant.
I'm so old I remember when tech companies used to hire individuals based on their ability to do the work..
No. You simply remember the times you were hired and your self-belief makes you assume that you were the most qualified applicant. It's not true now and never has been.
Wow, thanks for this. The guy makes a reasoned, careful argument. He's very adamant that he does not endorse applying stereotypes to individuals, and he accepts that we all have biases.
I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but it seems to me there is a culture problem at Google if he was really fired for authoring such a mild document. I have to assume that this document didn't come out of a vacuum and that there is more to this story.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.