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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.
... Google employees who discriminate against members of protected classes will be terminated.
I am curious: does that include discrimination against those protected classes in the job interview process? Like, say, for example, ageism? I am just saying.
You see, it is easy to visually identify some protected classes and subtly discriminate against them (he is overqualified, or she is not a good fit for the team) in ways that are not obviously discriminatory. But nobody in their right mind talks politics or social justice as part of the interview process. So you hire some people who end being a diversity problem. Don't kid yourself, to Google and similar companies the views expressed which challenge the accepted thinking are not welcomed as part of a healthy and vigorous debate. They are seen as a disease that must be cut out.
We are very tolerant and accepting here. You had better be tolerant and accepting in the same way or we will sack you.
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.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that your employer is obligated to give you a podium. In general, so that everyone can get along I'd rather not know that my co-worker is a bigot or a Trump supporter, etc.
Had this fellow made his posting outside of his employment, things would have been different. But he chose to do it at work, and because of the way Google's merit system works (your co-workers grade you), he marked himself as someone who would not fairly grade women co-workers. This so demoralized a lot of his women co-workers that many stayed home from work on Monday. And the CEO called off a family vacation in order to come back and deal with the fallout.
Bruce Perens.
Google has become an ideological echo chamber where anyone with centrist or right-of-center views fears to speak their mind.
How ironic, because the right has itself become an ideological echo chamber. I used to be a Republican, back before moderates were "RINO's". The GOP of that era knew that climate change was real, and debated carbon tax vs cap-and-trade as a solution. The modern GOP either thinks that climate change isn't real, or that it's caused by gay marriage.
Gender equality is a complex issue, and is full of people talking past each other, so I expect little progress to be made anytime soon. Women should feel completely free to join male-dominated fields like programming and science, just as men should feel free to join female-dominated fields like nursing and teaching.
Yes, there is often enough male misogynists, weirdos, and "those guys" in IT that it would make women uncomfortable, and that needs to be nipped in the bud, both for the sake of women and for the sake of business. There are women like that too. People who are jerks in one way are often jerks in other ways too, and those malignant personalities often have deleterious effects on their co-workers irrespective of gender.
But I don't see people fretting about why women aren't working construction jobs, or hauling garbage. That's because even the men working those jobs largely don't *want* to do them. IT isn't hauling the garbage, but it involves long hours, an often stressful work environment, and a relentless grind. Maybe those characteristics aren't as attractive to women as to men. Having worked in IT for 15+ years, it's not attractive to me as a man either. Or maybe women simply have better options.
Maybe 20% women in programming *is* the natural equilibrium. I don't *think* so, but it's possible. Men and women are different, and desire different things. Men desire income (to attract a wife and support a family), while women often prefer jobs that allow them more free time (again to support their family). If you're a woman who desires income, or a man who wants more free time, that's completely fine (I'd definitely prefer more free time over a pay raise), but it's not the average response.
TL;DR: People are all different. Be kind to one another. Don't be a dick.
He was fired for pointing out a hostile work environment and discrimination..
Did you read what he wrote? He didn't denigrate anyone. He just pointed out that people aren't homogeneous in their aptitudes and interests.
no, he was fired for intentionally creating a hostile working environment.
Talk about hyperbole, Mr. alt-left. This isn't even remotely accurate. A hostile work environment is defined by EEOC as:
1) enduring the offensive conduct becomes a condition of continued employment, or
2) the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive
What he said is anything but that. In fact, you could even argue that Google was intimidating and hostile against this guy's (and other people like him) opinion on this matter.
You come into a business then denigrate a sizable chunk of its workforce, then why should you expect anything else than getting fired?
Again, the hyperbole is real here. He didn't denigrate anybody. His argument amounted to "men and women are actually objectively different in terms of desires and mannerisms", something that is well supported by science.
Basically nobody that criticizes him has actually read what he wrote. You can tell immediately by invalid the claims they are making.
Some actual experts that did read his text come to the conclusion that he is pretty much accurately describing reality:
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If it were just cultural, you would expect to see wide variances and even opposite roles emphasized across cultures.
Please enlighten us as to which culture emphasizes men being caretakers, and women being the builders/makers.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Hmm....I'm not sure what I see here that is so offensive....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
Nothing there is offensive. Thats why what the left claims that he meant to say is what is being used in the discussion by the left.
"His name was James Damore."
Google CEO said yesterday:
To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive..
So all Google employees either have identical biology or it's impossible for biological factors to influence work performance at Google.
And if you disagree you'll be excommunicated and shunned.
Except he did not denigrate anyone. At no point did he argue for a discriminatory hiring policy or suggest there were not good engineers among any group.
What he did suggest was that diversity hires don't help the situation over all. There are valid statistical reasons fewer female engineers exist. You can take aptitude tests and compare the distribution of men vs women and its plain that if you grab any random man off the street you have better odds he will posses the aptitude for higher math for example than any random woman will.
That is not at all to say this will hold true among the population of say job applicants for an engineering position. That will give you a huge selection bias. It might even eliminate the difference in distribution between men and women form the most part.
What does not make sense however is to say welp we don't have enough people who are X so we will exclude people that are Y and lower our requirements until we can fill enough positions with X. That won't get you the best people. Is his argument.
Frankly its a correct one, unless you take it as an article of faith that these other groups are just 'oppressed' in some way and these diversity hires will blossom once they are given a chance. This is a purely unscientific claim. This entire thing exists in the realm of politics.
Google is a private company. If they want to fire people because they don't support managements politics that is their right, but I think we should call this exactly what it is.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What happened, I thought we were all end-of-life curmudgeons, not 15 year olds just entering the workforce.
Every single person ever keeps a "blacklist" of people they will not work with. There are many reasons one could find themselves on said list, many real, many petty. Maybe a person...
- were a client that didn't pay up for work done
- were a subcontractor that didn't do the work
- were constantly going on about their child/dog/cat
- drank too much during office hours
- smelled
- their food smelled
- kept going on about something political, no matter the spectrum
- you just don't like their face
- they stole your lunch money
- have an annoyING valley-girl/boy vocAL afflectiON
If you're freelancing, you just don't deal with them. If you're in a team/corporate environment, you avoid them. Welcome to life. Can't wait till you discover that you get free television channels by using an antenna (in most parts of the US). Get off my lawn and all that.
This is what gets me. There is nothing inherently wrong stating that there are biological differences in a sexually dimorphic species. What matters is what you do with that knowledge. I do not think women are inferior because they are different! Without their differences we wouldn't have modern humans to begin with.
It's pretty sad the number of people at google cannot fathom a world where any difference == inferior.
There is something sad about a PHD in biology getting fired for stating a biological opinion supported by other PHDs in biology
But that's the ideal situation for a political inquisition. Facts and expertise don't matter, only obedience. And now that should be 100% clear to everyone.
However "offensive" the man's beliefs may be, he voiced them in an extremely organized, non-confrontational tone that is very open to discussion. Something you have failed to do.
The real reason for my comment, however, is to ask how you can believe he is anti-diversity. Like another response to your comment, I request quotations for you to back up your point. I am surprised you find him anti-diversity because literally almost the entire document is about how to make Google friendlier to more diverse opinions, and as far as sex goes, has a whole section entitled "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap".
You didn't read the actual "manifesto" , did you?
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf
The dude has a PHD relevant to the topic he was discussing, and was well sourced. I'll grant that
he may have rambled a bit in some areas, but the intent, which is easily gauged by what is written,
was to ensure PC culture does not create a toxic environment for ANYONE, and that increasing
workplace diversity can be achieved in other ways.
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?
Some societies have more women studying CS than men, e.g. Iran. The women there moved into that relatively new field before it became male dominated, and view it as liberating. Of course the down side is that some men are not put off studying CS because it is seen as a woman's job.
Other examples include Iceland and New Zealand, where girls now slightly out-perform boys in maths at school. If it was not a social thing, if it was biological, then it's hard to explain how two different cultures with two different languages on opposite sides of the world and with little migration between them could be that way.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You cannot discuss with religious fanatics. They want to preach their ideology, not discuss it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://motherboard.vice.com/e... Here's the full, original manifesto with all the embedded hyperlinks the original author included. Why did Gizmodo post a version stripped of this information?
Just because your data is right, doesn't mean your conclusion is good or moral.
Translation: Your data is right, but your supported conclusions makes me uncomfortable. So I'm going to say it's evil and immoral, and hope that's enough to overcome your facts.
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.
Fact: Women in general have a lower lifting ability and physical strength then men in general.
Conclusion 1: Firefighters should reduce their requirements to allow women to fight fires.
Conclusion 2: Anyone who claims people who complete the reduced testing but could not complete the normal firefighter testing are somehow "less qualified" than the people who completed the normal tests are misogynist bigots.
Conclusion 3: Anyone who writes an essay pointing out that reducing requirements for women is sexist on its face because it displays low expectations for the capability of women, is a double misogynist bigot and a neonazi ultrafascist to boot.
Everyone's mistake is assuming anyone involved in hiring decisions wanted equality. Everyone involved just wants more women in tech fields, equal or not.