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Google Cancels Town Hall To Discuss Diversity In Its Ranks (nbcnews.com)
NBC News originally reported: Google employees will gather for a town hall meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss the tensions ignited by a memo circulated inside the company that claimed to explain why more women are not engineers. Town hall meetings are nothing new at Google, but this one will likely be different after the so-called "Google Manifesto" went viral over the weekend, adding fresh fuel to the debate around gender bias in Silicon Valley. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in an email earlier this week that he would cut his family vacation short in order to facilitate the forum. "The past few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree -- while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct," he wrote. "I'd encourage each of you to make an effort over the coming days to reach out to those who might have different perspectives from your own. I will be doing the same." The town hall comes amid a report from The Guardian that as many as 60 women are considering filing a class action lawsuit against Google, alleging sexism and wage disparity.
UPDATE: NBC News now reports the event has been cancelled, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai saying "Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be 'outed' publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall... we need to step back and create a better set of conditions for us to have the discussion." Instead of the company-wide format, Google will now hold several smaller forums "to gather and engage with Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely," Pichai wrote.
UPDATE: NBC News now reports the event has been cancelled, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai saying "Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be 'outed' publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall... we need to step back and create a better set of conditions for us to have the discussion." Instead of the company-wide format, Google will now hold several smaller forums "to gather and engage with Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely," Pichai wrote.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
You want to measure diversity at google? Count the political bumper stickers on the cars that park there. You'll have no problem finding Hillary and Sanders stickers, but Trump stickers are rarer than hen's teeth.
They built this absolutely toxic environment for conservatives under the cover of "diversity". Why should anyone believe they are going to do anything except continue to make conservatives feel like pariahs?
The purpose of this town hall is to help Google PR and to show they are acting responsibly to address any allegations of a hostile work environment.
we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree
Without letting the people who disagree with me talk.
Watching the google execs dance and do dog tricks at the command of this completely intolerant ideology that poses as this loving progressive way of thinking has been really amusing. They are all trying so hard and falling all over themselves to offend the least amount of people as possible. It kinda proves one of the points of that former employee's memo.
What is the point of making sure everybody looks different, when you require them all to be the same person?
Fun Fact, I'm at one of the world's best universities, filled with highly educated professional women who are in STEM. Advanced Math, Statistics, Genetics, Biochem, Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, AI, you name it.
Half of our students. Half of our faculty. We create more practical science in a day than you see in most countries. And tons of patents.
This reminds me of when the Canadian Army was resistant to women in combat. We did studies. We found that women made better fighter pilots than men did (who do you think fly those A-10 Warthogs?), I've trained and served with highly decorated women of all ranks. Our main resistance was the senior NCOs, with similar attitudes to the ones I hear coming from Google engineers. They were wrong then - back in the 1980s. They're wrong now, here at Google, in the 2100s.
It's 2017. Not 1957.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
RUSH: They can’t be open about what they think. They have to follow the Google groupthink or they’re going to be canned. They’re not allowed to dissent. And yet these are people claiming to be the greatest defenders of First Amendment free speech.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
I'm sure people will feel free to speak out now that someone was fired after speaking out.
Given that the original manifesto was originally published to a supposedly anonymous internal forum, I think being "outed" publicly is a valid concern for someone who dares to have a different perspective.
Google has decided your data wasn't "diverse" enough. There were too many 1's and not enough 0's, so every file has had 0's interspersed into it for the sake of equality.
From what I have read this guy sounded more like a moderate and provided long term solutions to the problem, but pointed out short term it isn't really helping things.
Pushing education and activities to get women interested, while at the same time helping employees organize so that more feminine or sociable guys work with more sociable women, while taking note that some people will not be assertive about desiring raises, and thus putting more burden on managers to offer raises/promotions to their employees as they reach skill/veterancy related milestores at their jobs.
Places like google are no more 'right' for Conservatives than say a Church based organization, the police, or the military is for atheist Liberals. If either individual wants to join the 'other side's' organizations, they go into it understanding it will not be a welcoming environment for their views. Sort of like some touristy American going to a Muslim country, China, or North Korea, and wondering why they don't respect his/her freedoms there.
To Get Fired!
"I'd encourage each of you to make an effort over the coming days to reach out to those who might have different perspectives from your own"
Translation: If you know of a work colleague who doesn't already march lock-step with Google's peecee agenda, then now's the time to warn them to get with the program.
If it's a mandatory meeting, I'd attend and unless I had another confirmed and accepted job offer elsewhere, I'd keep out of any "discussion" with regards to this topic.
Whenever you're asked for "open and honest" discussion, it's like when someone asks if you're stopped beating your children, a no-win scenario.
All this seems to be a complete distraction from what a job is supposed to be. Somewhere you go to work and make money.
If I was a conservative employee at Google, after the last week, I'd keep my mouth shut and look for another job as quickly as possible.
They've shown EXACTLY what they REALLY think about someone asking an honest question.
And no pronouncements or showmanship or promises of safety are going to convince anyone otherwise.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I find it interesting that there is so much fear here. People are both afraid of what can be said as well as saying anything that might be offensive. We need to bring back the flame wars and asbestos suits. It hardens you.
Back when I went to CDI in the mid-70's, in a class of 28, there was ONE woman and zero blacks. Was it because CDI was racist/sexist? Hell, no! At the time, DG, DEC, etc., with whom I interviewed, all made me an offer and each also said "If only you were a black woman, you'd be perfect!" At that time, these companies were trying - on their own - to hire more women and minorities. Sadly, due 100% IMO to cultural factors, the pool was shallow as hell. Fast forward and more women and blacks are participating more today, but nowhere near where they need to be to make up for the decades lost. It'll all shake it out in time, but women and blacks need to get onto the damned field!
The average end user doesn't have a clue how to set up their own e-mail server, let alone a search engine or an image storage site. In terms of competing services, Amazon and Microsoft are just as Liberal minded as Google is.
I just haven't seen the conservative version of GMail or Google Maps yet. I'd imagine that it's coming soon, though.
Two words you need to learn: statistical dispersion.
For the sake of argument let's take "manliness" and "womanliness" as givens, and not some kind of social construct. Not all men are equally manly; some are very manly and some are sissies. Likewise for women -- not all women are equally "womanly".
So you have two population bell-curves, and the curves overlap. That is to say some women are more manly than some men. Everybody knows this, and yet somehow they talk as if all men were identically masculine and all women were identically feminine.
What does this has to do with engineering? Not much. Different types of engineering have different requirements. Women as a population tend to have slightly better verbal reasoning skills and men as a population tend to have slightly better spatial reasoning. So you'd expect women to do better, say, as software engineers; and men to do better as mechanical engineers.
However the small population differences in ability are dwarfed by individual variability. There are men with extremely formidable verbal reasoning skills, and women with astonishing spatial reasoning skills. Case in point: when I was at MIT I knew a woman who got her PhD in EE and was the first person to figure out how to fold a stellated icosahedron in origami. I don't care if you are a man, even a manly man, it's a safe bet that her right brain could kick your right brain's ass.
And that's OK. It doesn't make you less of a man; it means you have to judge people as individuals.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Google stock has been bouncing on the $900/share price point since May. I wish someone would bring down my company like that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And I've been in IT and tech for 25+ years and I've worked with women who were outstanding and "rockstars" and it would be my pleasure to work with (or for, or manage) any of them again. They were smart and their skills matched or even exceeded the top performing males. So, sorry to say Mr. Anonymous, but your anecdotal world is small.
Wait, you think a corporate workplace is for you to "discuss the issues we want to discuss"? Where exactly did you get this idea, snowflake?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I was hoping to see a libertarian burned at the Stake, or being drawn and quartered.
Those Googal Commissars take no prisoners!
That's not what he said. You are lying. You didn't read the fucking paper.
Such an interesting point.
As many who read past the headlines would later observe, its author, who was later fired, began, “I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.”
and
“Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principled reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with Google’s diversity being a component of that.” Someone who believes diversity is one component of many for “optimizing” a company is not anti-diversity, even if he places a lesser value on achieving gender parity in staff, vis-a-vis other goods, than those who argue that Google should make whatever tradeoffs are necessary to achieve equal gender representation."
This is radical, racist, sexist, bigoted, and privileged.
Seriously, do you see the names he called people in this memo?
Do you see he is not willing to find common ground and look for a solution?
This is truly a fire-able offense. Check the DO NOT REHIRE, box on this guy.
Google needs to get over themselves, sheesh.
Someone should go in there and ask the Question
Googler: "Sundar, Have you stopped abusing your children"
Sundar: "I have never abused my children"
Googler: Thats not the Question i asked. Have you Stopped?
Sundar: I never started
Googler: So you are saying you havn't Stopped?
Sundar: Speechless
Googler : And thats how your Diversity training is run. They assume that the White Male is biased. Well this particular White Male is not biased and feels no need to atone for the sins of others.
Sundar: Has a moment of absolute clarity, resigns from Alphabet and moves to Tibet to study Buddhism. (I wish)
**Life is too short to be serious**
So is the:
Water torture
The bamboo under the fingernails
Long monotonous speeches
The forced donation of organs
Hostile working environments
The killing of political undesirables
Repression of Democracy
Supporting the Great Firewall Am I talking about Googal in China, or Googal in the US, with their own Workfarce?
You decide
only problem with that, is that's the exact opposite of what he said
Did I really just read that Google employees are worried about the backlash they might get from their publicly stated thoughts, opinions, etc. being freely available all over the web? Cry me a river.
When you fire someone for voicing an opinion, and then turn around and say that people should feel safe speaking out, don't be surprised when nobody believes you.
He didn't say that women were biologically unsuitable. That's the crux of the issue. People are demonizing him for things he didn't say in his memo.
He said that many women don't want the job, and that biological reasons may be part of the cause. It's a completely different claim; and one that doesn't justify this ridiculous reaction of stupid.
You can, of course, include yourself in the "ridiculous stupid reactionary" group, in this case.
Diversity is always sold as being about getting different points of view and a broader spectrum of backgrounds... but they for you if you actually have a different point of view lol.
Libertarians believe in economic theories that have historically been shown to result in disasters like the 1930 crisis. Conservatives are people that literally believe that there are absolute rules given to us by a divine man in the sky and his child which was born out of a virgin.
Now don't get me wrong, SJWs are just as worse, but it's a lie to pretend that anti-science is a left-only thing. In general it seems like in most political movements today, science has become an enemy.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
What he said - "Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be 'outed' publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall... we need to step back and create a better set of conditions for us to have the discussion."
What he meant - "Libertarian & Teabagger Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be 'outed' publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall... we need to step back and make sure we have a firing squad ready. We are going to hit them harder than we hit Yahoo!"
Ah yes, another way the abusive keep the abuse a standard thing is accuse anyone trying to stop it as perpetuating it. You'd explain it, but nobody but you can understand your logic. That's proof it's not logic.
Learn to love Alaska
Spare me 'rockstars', competent and responsible is tough to find.
Competent and responsible females have been some of the worst job hoppers I've ever worked with. They know they can get away with murder and still get a fat raise, then leverage that for another with the next job hop.
I've never had an female pass the 'tell me about your first real programmable computer?' interview question. It's supposed to be an opportunity to explain where your love for computers comes from. Works, even if the honest answer is 'games', doesn't work if you hate computers, but love the checks. I know one I know would pass it, but I never interviewed her.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Almost 300 people join class-action lawsuit for age discrimination at Google. They already settled their first age discrimination lawsuit when Larry Paged fired Brian Reid 9 days before IPO costing Reid 45+ million dollars in stock options. They admitted age discrimination and plants to change it. Yet Google still has an average age of 29.
Then there is the leaked news some googlers and google managers use black lists to block conservatives from joining some teams and promotions.
I wonder if it's because some older engineers might be conservatives.
I _READ_ the memo, and nowhere did it claim to explain why more women are not engineers. It did suggest that a number of possible reasons, including inherent gender differences, had not been ruled out by any scholarly study. Not quite the same thing.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
He stated no such thing. His premise was that each individual should be judged on their skills and abilities, not their gender or ethnicity and he was stating that on the average women were less interested and/or less suited for some jobs than others. He was very clear about the statistical nature of his evaluation. In fact he showed a graph of what a stereotype looks like (two vertical lines - i.e., no overlap) and what he thought reality was (overlapping bell like curves -- although had he realized the scrutiny this casual memo would get, he probably would have made the tails of both curves on both ends reach to the same point).
Why do we even have female sports leagues distinct from male sports leagues if there is no difference between men and women? Why are there any gender specific activities? Why does the The United States Chess Federation have specific rankings for female players as opposed to just lumping everyone into the same ranking ONLY and not even noting gender in the entries? Why are the same people, esp. women, objecting to this memo not calling for the elimination of female sports leagues and separate rankings of women in pursuits like chess?
Why are there, in spite of outreach and diversity efforts reaching back to the day that people graduating from university now with BSc degrees were born, still so few women who choose computer science as a major (as opposed to biological sciences where the balance is much more equal)?
As he pointed out, over 90% of the workplace deaths are suffered by males. Why don't I hear "woman equality" activists calling to fix this problem and either force more women in to dangerous professions like logging or roofing (which seems preferable to achieving equality just by executing random women in office workplaces until an equal number of men and women die in the workplace).
Google will now hold several smaller forums "to gather and engage with Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely,"
has left the station as soon as they fired the last person who tried to do what they claim they need to do in low-key, respectful and detached academic manner. This has been a failure of leadership. Given their inability to expand the cloud business (their technology has gotten better, but its adaptation has not) and their failure to grow the Android platform, one has to wonder how will they fuck up next? Fail to produce accurate search results? How about this for a rubicon: fire the CEO for failure.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I worked with plenty of female rockstars. The computer club in high school was half male, half female. Then, as progressing through the years, the women had to spend more time with CYA and such. But the ability to do the job never seemed to correlate with gender.
The experienced rock stars are generally men because the women have been excluded from the industry by that time.
Learn to love Alaska
Has all the appeal and sincerity of a North Korean democratic election.
The share price has nothing to do with the financial health of a company. In fact, the higher it goes, the worst it gets for the company as it becomes more expensive to buy shares back.
Case in point: Tesla. The stock price is at an all-time high but they're counting their pennies and are launching a junk bond series to finance their business.
lucm, indeed.
your anecdotal world is small.
That's the whole fucking point of this diversity thing: there's not a lot of women in IT, which means that your world is as anecdotal as the AC's.
lucm, indeed.
The firings will continue until morale improves.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Wait, you think a corporate workplace is for you to "discuss the issues we want to discuss"?
Well, the author of the memo got that idea from the meetings he was dragged into to discuss the need for diversity. He was presented with statements and then he researched and produced a document showing that those statements didn't hold up. For doing such research and sharing it privately with people who call themselves "skeptics" at Google (presumably because they enjoy poking holes and correcting less-than-fully-rigorous conceptions), he was publicly exposed and summarily fired without cause (well, he was given a cause which was factually accurate, so without due cause).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
And so your point is that we should not have programs that discriminate FOR 1 group based on statistics since its about INDIVIDUALS. In which case I totally agree.
Now, if you are really trying to claim that the huge statistical disparity in many professions (nursing, teaching, software engineering, sciences....though only 'some sciences') is due to 'cultural factors' because there is in your opinion a 'small population difference dwarfed by individual ability' than I'll call bullshit since you clearly didn't understand how to use 'statistics'.
Of COURSE there are individuals within any group that don't match the 'average' expectations of the measured observable of that group that's why you treat humans as individuals. But if you look at a subset of society as a group, e.g. 'software engineers' and you find a statistically significant difference in genders in that population trying to claim it is 'cultural' rather than 'biological' is on you to provide significant proof especially if you are trying to set up clearly discriminatory programs to 'correct' this.
There is NO doubt that 'men on average are stronger than women', I have NO doubt that there are many women stronger than me, that doesn't mean that in a random large pool of people pulled equally from the genders that you wouldn't find a VERY large difference in 'male strength' vs 'female strength'. If this wasn't true then what's the point of having different 'gendered events' in the Olympics for instance? Why have "Men's swimming events" and "Female Swimming Events", why not just 'swimming events' and whomever is the best athletes go to the Olympics...if this were indeed the case would it be at ALL surprising if you found the population of athletes in most events at the Olympics '90% men vs 10% women'? Would you then claim this is because of 'discrimination'?
So obviously no man should feel 'less of a man' because an individual woman (or many individual women) is stronger or smarter than them. I don't feel less of a man because I'm not as smart as Einstein, Schrodinger etc. any more than I feel less of a man because I'm not as strong as Schwarzenegger. If your self-worth depends on you being better than EVERYONE else at everything than you have serious psychological problems.
The moment they do those forums they're fucked. It will not turn into right vs left, it will turn into enraged liberals screaming at management for not protecting them against the evil right wingers. Just you watch, it will be like those college lynch mobs.
lucm, indeed.
So Google is a cesspool of intolerant groupthink that does not tolerate dissent. Big deal. Many companies are like that.
However, Google 'controls' big chunk of the Internet. If this start spilling out, they quite likely could poison a lot. This particular boil is too close to jugular to be safe.
It actually does. The share price reflects the market's perception of the financial health of a company.
Good. A company's not supposed to buy shares back. It's just a 21st century strategy for inflating a bubble.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The share price reflects the market's perception of the financial health of a company
I hope you're not self-managing your 401(k)
lucm, indeed.
Of course I do. My AAPL shares put my kid through university. I retired on my 50th birthday to open up a martial arts school and we just bought a house in San Luis Obispo, California.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But crazy values. Only the Pope can please all the people all the time. But only sometimes... What a bunch of wankers.
Don't buy it. They may say "you are safe" at the "smaller meetings", but it will still be a witch hunt. At the end of the day, they are still looking to behead you, not to hear you. Talk is cheap.
Get it in writing that they aren't going to fire you for speaking an opinion. When they, surprisingly have a layoff in the next 3 months, get together with the other folks who have it in writing and make a class-action lawsuit.
They are not interested in what you think or believe. They are interested in what they believe. They will retaliate, and you will lose either a job or a career.
When Google starts to fire managers that blacklist employees and backs their policies that espouse diversity with action they will start to regain credibility.
This.
Since I can't mod you up I'll quote you for visibility.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
My AAPL shares put my kid through university.
Since you're 50+, this must have happened 15+ years ago, at which time the AAPL stock had been on a long stagnant line in the $2 range for decades; this stock has been hot only over the last 5-6 years.
So either you're full of shit, or you bought your stock at a negative price, or you sent your kids to community college and "putting them through university" cost you $300 per semester.
lucm, indeed.
Of course it was over 15 years ago. I bought the AAPL shares in the 90s when I got tenure. Sold them in the late 2000s.
If you can't do the math, let me know and I'll get my daughter to help you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And I've worked for 25 years as a software/firmware engineer and have worked with many stellar female engineers. I've worked with a few mediocre ones, but I've worked with far more and far worse male engineers than female engineers, and the female engineers don't get stuck up on ego trips like some of their male counterparts.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
That jibes with my experience as well. I have been working in the embedded area for 18 years and device drivers before then. Most of the female engineers I work with are quite competent and are generally very good without all the drama and ego of some of the male engineers. The percentage of poor female engineers I've worked with is lower than the percentage of poor male engineers.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
The share volatility has been +-1% for a long time. We're talking about a range that is over $900/share.
Also, the stock market as a whole has shown almost exactly the same volatility.
You are welcome on my lawn.
women have had freedom of choice to select any professional, educational opportunity etc. that they have wanted for 40 years (give or take)
No, they haven't been free to choose. That's the point. When you assume there is no discrimination, then the conclusion is there is no discrimination. When you assume nothing, there's an obvious gender gap. It could be discrimination, or something else.
Only when you are a sexist bigot and assume no sexism is it obviously not sexism. I don't make that assumption, so I don't come to the same conclusion as you.
are you stumping around for women in those professions to change their behavior? To make those professions more 'inviting' to men? If not why not?
Yes. There's sexism on both sides. And, ironically, the sexism in nursing is from men. I have man-nurse friends. They are made fun of by other men. It's societal pressure, not just professional pressure, to keep men out of nursing. But you've lived in a little bubble all your life, with your eyes closed, you don't know how the real world works.
Learn to love Alaska
Do you write a 10-page memo to your company for every meeting they had that you think was a waste of time?
I don't. But Google does. Unless these are meetings regarding diversity.
Did the company ask him to do that?
Not in those words. But by having an internal discussion group called "skeptics" they seemed to welcome opinions unrelated to job functions which could provoke discussions as to what kinds of concepts stand up to scrutiny and what kind do not.
Not doing your job.
He did do his job. He received performance review which put him in the few percentages of the highest-performing employees in the company. And, as the existence of the "skeptics" group indicated, Google seemed to welcome extra-curricular activities.
The cause he was given is all the cause Google needs.
Unless the cause is demonstrably untrue and the company can be shown to have known that it's untrue. The fact that Google understands the difference between statistical-predisposition type arguments and single-cause-and-effect type arguments is directly related to their business. And they are the leader in their business. So they knew that the claim, that they made about the memo, did not hold water.
Otherwise, James Damore (pictured below) is going to need to find a job (and good luck finding one that doesn't mind him writing 10-page manifestos instead of doing his job).
He's already had very high profile job offers, but even short of those, a new "public intellectual" business model seem to be emerging which sustains a number of people who simply talk for a living without having an umbrella of a large distribution organization as their employer. "Famous for being famous" is also a business model which seems to sustain a number of people much better than a salaried-employee at even the most successful software company.
California is an "at will" employment state.
With the exception of protected classes. And it's been widely reported that California law considers political affiliation to be a protected class.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It's easy to know the right answer 99% of the time. Our whole speech system is based on this -- that when I say a word, people know what it means, and when they say a word, I know what it means. The problem is there's one specific area of knowledge that very few people ever know: what it's like to be the opposite sex.
No one's really wrong here. I just think that that's how you get lots of men who feel like they should know the right answer trying to explain what they think women are all going through. They share their ideas about why they think women are probably having trouble getting in the door at computer programming jobs -- based on their own personal experiences as men seeking those same jobs. And since it's so rare -- to suddenly discover one small domain of knowledge which they can never, ever fully experience -- I think people end up taking shortcuts.
The best quote I heard on this phenomenon was Wired's interview with someone who was actually good friends with James Damore when he was still a college student -- and who had a surprisingly balanced response when he read about all the angry attacks on Damore.
This classmate says he did not view Damore as “some sort of raving sexist or bigot.” But, this classmate adds, “When you’re really smart you’re prone to thinking that you can solve these big issues if you just think real hard on them, and if you don’t have the social skills to navigate a dicey issue, it can go wildly awry."
You mean he's going to become a Trump spokesperson? I hope he doesn't replace Kellyanne Conway, because she's hot (although women as Trump spokespersons don't do as well as the men because they haven't been exposed to sufficient testosterone in utero and thus have index-to-ring-finger ratios).
I don't mean to make light of your argument, because you seem like a decent sort. I've just noticed that the alt-right and MRAs are rushing to Mr Damore's defense but seem to have less interest in employments rights laws when it comes to anyone who is not a white male. And that reminds me:
What "political affiliation" do you believe James Damore to hold? To whom is he affiliated? What about his 10-page manifesto is indicative of political affiliation?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Business opportunity - pre-built home servers with remote login and storage. Buy it, get it, plug into your network at home, download a sync app your devices and you're done. Turnkey your own "AWS/cloud server" at home with the ease of setting up a SONOS speaker.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You have a company full of wealthy, straight, privileged white males screaming at the top of their lungs how wealthy, straight, privileged white males have too much power, and then exercising that power in order to hurt, blacklist, and oppress people they disagree with, and to make patronizing statements about women and minorities.
If you dare to express an opinion different than the current definition of "politically correct" you are out and blacklisted.
The smartest move Google had to take is to ignore the "manifesto" from the beginning and point out that this is a single opinion from an employee and that it doesn't represent the company blah. blah. But since Google's executives are mostly idiots nowadays, they took a stand and they're now in the eye of the feminist-storm. As the situation is now, they will loose whichever way the choose to follow. Nicely done...
Puritans, without the purity.
So you'd expect women to do better, say, as software engineers; and men to do better as mechanical engineers.
4 out of 5 people on the autism spectrum are male. 1 out of 5 is female.
I would expect that people on the autism spectrum are more likely to be engineers, not because they're better engineers, but because they didn't develop their skills for other professions.
At least, that's just one more hypothesis, I'm sure you and I could come up with more equally plausible ones. That is why we need to more science on these issues.
What "political affiliation" do you believe James Damore to hold?
Arguing for equality of opportunity over equality of outcomes is a very clear political stand in today's political climate.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
What "political affiliation" do you believe James Damore to hold?
Regardless of his personal beliefs, he argued for inclusion of equality-of-opportunity-over-equality-of-outcomes opinions to be part of the conversation. It doesn't matter that everyone tries to brand him as an exclusionist. His words don't. And he got fired because Google was too scared to take an intellectually honest stand. Well, as legally-protected (in California) and policy-allowed (through allowing of extra-curricular activities) speech, he was entitled to saying what he said. And he distributed it privately. He didn't force this paper on anyone. He shared it with a few people. He didn't leak it to the press (as far as we know). So he didn't embarrass the company or cause its legal troubles. Think about it for a few seconds before you foam at the mouth. He wrote a paper. That's all. It was a well-research, albeit unpopular, opinion. It didn't interfere with his doing his job. Even if Google didn't solicit extra curricular opinions, it would still be awful to fire him for writing a paper that people didn't like. The fact no one seems to be able to make an argument against him without making up some lie is also very telling. If what he did was that awful, then there should be easy arguments against it which do not involve lies.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Just a quick tip - the opinion that diversity should be opposed is not diversity. It is the exact opposite of freedom.
That's all fine, but it's not what I'm asking.
You said,
And I'm asking you what that has to do with James Damore. Was he fired for political affiliation?
You are welcome on my lawn.
So, what is his political affiliation? Do you know? And was he fired for political affiliation? You don't seem able to come out and say it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So, what is his political affiliation? Do you know? And was he fired for political affiliation?
That's not how it works. Political affiliation is not established solely through party membership. Espousing a point of view which is prominently a part of a certain political movement's platform is enough to create a perception of political affiliation. And firing someone for perceived political affiliation, while pretending not to understand that what he wrote was fact-based, is bona fide discrimination based on political orientation (even if he doesn't have one but only came off as having one).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Was he fired for political affiliation?
It would appear that way. Because the reason given for his firing was not true and anyone who would read the memo he wrote would know that. Presumably the CEO read the memo if he felt the need to end his family vacation to deal with this... Certainly if he didn't read it, given that it was only 10 pages, it would not have been for any reason other than some hope for legal fiction of being able to claim plausible deniability.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I didn't say anything about party membership.
So, to which "political movement" is James Damore affiliated? Why are you incapable of saying it?
You understand the words "affiliation" and "orientation" are not the same, right? I'm curious about why you're not able to state James Damore's political affiliation or his political orientation.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, popular slashdot topics include
- gender issues (every Friday)
- science (even biology)
- Google
- technology companies
- current tech news
- evil corporate behaviour
- shit happening in silicon valley
Something that ticks all those boxes was never going to get by with just a quick AC comment on another story
He literally holds the bloody head of Dr Damore in his hands, and tells to the crowd:
- Now, if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say, now's the ... time!
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This Damore fellow seems naive. You don't have free speech at work. Anyone who has been around the block a few times should know that.
I hold some controversial views about politics and society. I don't talk about them at work. I keep conversation with my colleagues limited to the work we are doing and maybe the weather and what I did over the weekend. Even then, they get a sanitized version of my weekend. Management is going to do what they're going to do, and likely don't give a fuck what I think. Sure, I'll make suggestions in the proper setting if I think something can be done better. But as a Systems Admin I'm not going to weigh in, uninvited, on the company's hiring policies; especially about something as contentious and politically charged as women's aptitude for engineering.
I'm not sure this guy should have been fired. But the fact is he stuck his head up and it got lopped off. Companies have cultures. Not everyone if a fit for every culture, and the culture is likely not going to change just for you. Don't like it? Don't work for Google. I have refused job offers because the people at the company seemed like dicks. Damore should just move on. He won't have free speech ant his next job either.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
This is anecdotal and my perspective.
I've worked with people considered rockstars, both male and females, but to be honest. They weren't and were in my opinion really mediocre.
People seem to hyper specialize in work like c# programming webservices, database administration (but no idea how to do clustering etc), angular with nodejs etc. They're all presented as the pinnacle of experts in their fields and I have to constantly fix their mess.
As far as my general experience with women goes in the industry. I found most of them were frequently out of the door the moment the official working hours ended. The colleagues that some of them used to get upset about getting higher pay were people that worked extra hours consistently, every day, through the weekend etc.
What I found generally is the people I work best with are those that have a passion for not only the work we do, but the type of work. I have never worked with a female doing IT work (like development, testing, administration). I have though worked with them in marketing, business requirements gathering, bid work etc.
I find females do not seem to stick around in the IT type of work very long and seem to move on to other career paths (like project management, business analytics etc) that are not really IT focused work. Meanwhile, I Find most males are just happy to stay and continue doing the same work.
Anecdotally, I kind of feel that the bias of less female workers in IT isn't really related to sexism (I mean, we work in the same offices as all other departments in many jobs, intermingling our people and still these differences exist just within IT-related work). The pay gaps to me seem more caused by personal life choices people are making and the fact we keep seeing people compare "experience" and "education" rather than hours worked or work throughput I think is telling where the fault in analysis lies.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
should say:
I have never worked with a female passionate in doing IT work ..
I have in fact worked with many females doing IT work.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I wish I could work with competent people, these days everyone is so hyper specialized and can't apply critical thinking outside of their little box or even willing to be a bit more of a generalist, requiring hand holding every step of the way.
I'm so fed up of every time I manage to teach people some of these skills, they just fuck off to the States.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
So Jews complaining about the gas chamber should not have, because they didn't have a solution. Russians complaining about Gulags didn't have a solution either. I guess they deserved what they got for complaining.
Finding as solution to a problem _REQUIRES_ that the problem gets accepted as valid!
And before you claim my example is extreme, I admit it is. At the same time, I have a son growing up who feels overwhelmed by a society which does not give a shit about him or his accomplishments because he's male.
Oh yeah, like me he's tough and can cope. But why is it that we have to cope with discrimination when that is the problem allegedly being addressed? Oh yeah, you don't get the cultural Marxism at all.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Libertarian
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
My point is that your biological sex doesn't automatically qualify or disqualify you for any intellectual job.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You understand the words "affiliation" and "orientation" are not the same, right?
You do understand that the words "green" and "cyan" are not the same thing?
In order for the firing to be based on perceived political affiliation, it's enough to show that he had a perceived political orientation. In other words, if he was fired for thinking like a Libertarian, it's not necessary to show that he was fired because he was thought of as being a card-carrying Libertarian.
But, in his case, it's slightly worse. Because the paper only advocates listening to Libertarian voices in order to create an environment more amicable for women.
If he believes that empathy is a handicap and he argues that women have a biological tendency to fall victim to this handicap and need tools to compensate for it and argues that forcing everyone to have a handicap is not a solution, then firing him for saying such a thing, instead of engaging his argument, is tantamount to suppressing a voice which attempts to argue for solutions for a perceived handicap. Since gender is a protected class, this could be a firing of an advocate of women's rights (because he is advocating, even if wrongly, for a solution to a gender-rooted problem). The fact that his solution involves advocacy for the engaging in conversation of Libertarian voices (as a method rather than as a goal) becomes a secondary form of discrimination here.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Don't you feel a little bit silly for typing that?
Do you understand that believing empathy is a handicap is known as sociopathy? Do you think you're a sociopath? Because I don't believe you are a sociopath. At worst, you're someone who is still dealing with scars from some earlier emotional injury, maybe not being able to get girls to go out with you or a mother who forced you to take diarrhea medicine. I understand it hurts, but staying in this perpetual state of adolescence is not an answer. I'm not trying to be flip or glib. You and James Damore were hurt somewhere along the line and now you believe women working in tech are to blame. Let it go. I'm being genuine with you here.
Women working in tech are not going to hurt you in any way.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Men tend to have better spatial reasoning for spatial tasks selected by men.
Men tend to suck at adjusting a pattern (sewing- 3 dimensional and a hell of a lot more complicated than blocks or gears).
Men tend to suck at picking the correct size container for leftovers (too small- throw away food. too big- air in the container makes the food go bad faster).
Women who sew (a lot more women sew than you might think) excel at spatial reasoning for adjusting patterns.
Women who put away food (more often than men) excel at spatial reasoning for picking the correct size container.
If women designed the spatial reasoning tests, we would be talking about how men tend to suck at spatial reasoning.
And that's just one example where males in a field have defined things to benefit males.
The military is another. Just recognizing that most females need less food than males the same size would lower their backpack weights by almost 10% (6 pounds). Instead females are required to carry grossly more food than they need and as a result a heavier pack. Likewise uniforms were designed for males. If males had to wear uniforms designed for females, they'd have problems in those uniforms. If you want to talk about down in the dirt using bayonets to kill each other- sure- I might be called sexist by the more extreme left but I'll agree that men have an advantage in that kind of combat. But the females who won medals for combat in Iraq were appreciated by the male soldiers whose lives they saved. And those women were not built like Arnold Swartzenegger. They had bravery and cool heads under fire (and in more than one case dragged males with gear on to safety).
That's the thing about sexism- when you are too close- you can't see it. You assume "that's just the best way of doing things" when really its the 'best way of doing things for males".
Same thing for programming. It *was* a female field. Then males came to dominate it as it went thru a period that frankly favored loners with no social life who loved machines (and autism spectrum is 75% male/ 25% female). Then it went thru a period where creepy behavior by huge majority of males actively drove the females who entered right back out of the field.
Now, it's in a period that doesn't favor aggressive loners with no social life who love machines. It may even favor females more than most males. But with male high school teachers and guidance counselors being caught actively steering bright females away from STEM and then creepy/hostile STEM classroom environments followed by creepy/hostile STEM work environments, we have a long way to go to get back to neutral.
In any case, the writer of the google feedback was an idiot. A much shorter letter privately delivered would have been productive. That screed publicly distributed which brought a bad light on to Google (already struggling with gender discrimination issues) was all but begging for a firing.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They're fine with their zampolit when it's doing the attack.
They're cowardly when they're being publicly called out on it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
How do you know? From my experience, liberals tend to wear their political preferences on their sleeves much more often as a way of virtue signaling. Conservatives tend to keep a lid on it for the most part, because work is not the place for that.
Until the liberal leaves the room. Then we tend to laugh at them a lot.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
There are companies actually building "private cloud" servers now. Antsle comes to mind, but I'm sure there are many others. Still too technicial at this point for an end user.
The question is about what you did with it, not what generation of CPU was in it. HR is useless, avoid working for companies where HR has any power. That basically means, stay with small companies.
Looking at someone, more or less, reveals their age. Creases in forehead when stressed x 10. Back of hands if you suspect 'work'. Though all I've ever seen among computer geeks was hair transplants. The worst was the guy who had the hair transplant, then couldn't keep up with his further balding. Island of transplanted hair in a lagoon of bald.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The logical default position is to assume nothing is happening,
That's never the default position. The only reason to look at the data is because someone, somewhere, suspects that something is happening, so you look for something.
"It's morning, and it's bright outside. I assume the sun is not up because "nothing happening" is the logical default position."
Also the "something" has already been proven to have happened. The only question is about the cause. Again, your dismissive assumptions are the opposite of reality and the opposite of useful.
Learn to love Alaska
Do you understand that believing empathy is a handicap is known as sociopathy?
No, inability to experience empathy is a sociopath. Inability to suppress empathy makes it impossible to function in situations in which, as the phrase goes, "cooler intellect prevails."
You and James Damore were hurt somewhere along the line and now you believe women working in tech are to blame.
No, that's absurd. His memo was encouraging a change in personal training. It was not encouraging a purge. If you want to read any kind of frustration into his motifs, it seems to come from attending too many meetings in which man-bashing views were uttered with impunity. You may think that's no big deal, but for someone who thinks that being chastised on this account is uncalled for, it may come off as undeserved reprimand.
Anecdotally, since you seem to be on a high horse to slay some imaginary immoral dragon, my math PhD thesis advisor was a woman and all of my best math teachers were women. So, personally, I actually find the experience of all the people having difficulties with women in STEM to be quite at odds with my own experience. But I wouldn't dismiss the complaints of men who feel like they are repeatedly accused of sexism and other boarish behaviors which they themselves never even contemplated. Most people just nod along in these seminars and take these accusations as the cost of doing business. He took it to heart and try to disprove the accusation while trying to provide alternative strategies for achieving the stated goals. And he got steamrolled. I maintain that this is a problem with our legal regime more than anything else.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
What it means is that women don't get into higher-paid job titles as much as men.
Pathetic attempt at misdirection.
I replied to the statement "the woman engineer who's paid less", which was clearly about people with the same job title getting paid less if they have a vagina. Since you can't win on that topic because it's established that same job title = same pay, you're trying to change the context.
It's funny because you're not just defending the feminists, you're arguing like them. Why don't you let women fight their own battle?
lucm, indeed.
Yeah, it needs to be really plug-and-play. You plug it in, turn it on. It asks for a domain name - you can keep trying until one is available and it will "purchase" for you (advanced setting lets you enter your own DNS entries). Then you go to the next page, enter the e-mail addresses you want. Download apps to your cell phones/tablets, TSRs to your laptops allf ro syncing data and you're done. One-click configuration of Outlook and other mail clients, and host your own web mail client as well if you want...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Just as it is impossible to have a frank discussion on race, it's now impossible to have a frank discussion on gender.
Congratulation liberals, you've managed to suppress speech while claiming to be the poster child for it. The level of self delusion for half of them is incredible -'I'm making a difference!'. The level of smirking from the rest, as they accomplish exactly what they aimed for, is disturbing.
Make no mistake - it's always been about suppressing free speech. They hide what they do by calling it 'hate speech' or claiming that they won't 'normalize' it by discussing it. All code for 'suppress any speech that we don't agree with'. Just look at college campuses - shouting down, unplugging mikes or just flat out prevent the discussion for anything they don't like has become the norm. They are incapable of having a rational discussion on anything they don't agree with.
These are our future 'leaders'.
Seriously, if you can't understand just how big a threat this is to the country...it's the breaking of our very foundation.
lol. what a statement.
To paraphrase, "There was NEVER a majority of women programming-- except when there was during ENIAC."
Designing and building aren't programming.
Yes- why did we go from ENIAC to the 80s?
It could be it favored autistic types who loved machines more than people.
It could be that men could work the long hours required because back then they had full time wives who supported them at home.
It could be working alone in buildings on nights and weekends.
But it did change to be almost exclusively male by the late 80s.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
What a ridiculous straw man argument!
PlaynBass