<story><title>Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sp527</author><text>There are a lot of holes in the arguments you&amp;#x27;re laying out, but I&amp;#x27;ll comment on just a few:&lt;p&gt;* Google is a profit-motivated entity. They have to act in the interest of their shareholders. Correcting for historical imbalances - to the extent that it negatively perverts hiring standards - doesn&amp;#x27;t factor into the calculus of a responsible corporation.&lt;p&gt;* Jews were systematically exterminated in a historical event that was even more recent than slavery. Countless more were left destitute. Why are they any less deserving of positive bias?&lt;p&gt;* There are millions of White people across the Midwest who are dirt poor because manufacturing is no longer a meaningful economic sector in this country. What about them?&lt;p&gt;And more generally, believing that there&amp;#x27;s a contemporary responsibility to correct for historical imbalances leads you down a fantastically absurd rabbit hole. We should instead be addressing the present socioeconomic condition (which will indirectly benefit many of the historically disenfranchised). And that is the job of government. Not corporations.</text></item><item><author>postnihilism</author><text>I appreciate where you are coming from. And I agree we should, &amp;quot;strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create.&amp;quot; And I honestly believe that diversity and outreach programs are part of that process.&lt;p&gt;The economic and social structure of the United States is the result of historical processes that were driven by racism and sexism; disparities in wealth and power between these groups continue to exist today due to that legacy.&lt;p&gt;To take one example, &amp;quot;If average black family wealth continues to grow at the same pace it has over the past three decades, it would take black families 228 years to amass the same amount of wealth white families have today.&amp;quot; [0]&lt;p&gt;While it is a great sentiment that everyone should be treated purely as individuals and it is something to strive for, it  completely ignores the economic reality of our country and is an ahistorical approach to public policy or the construction of a hiring pipeline.&lt;p&gt;We can argue about to what role public companies can or should play to reduce these historical inequities. I think that outreach and education at all levels to increase the number of candidates from underrepresented groups in the tech hiring pipeline is a great step and that reducing these inequities, beyond being ethical, will create a stronger workforce. Others might disagree and have good reasons to disagree. That is a conversation worth having, but it needs to happen in the historical context in which we find ourselves.&lt;p&gt;Writing a manifesto that claims that the disparity in tech is the result of biological differences that lead women to be inferior at performing in tech and leadership capacities is not the way to start this conversation. In fact this is the exact kind of sentiment that you call out by saying, &amp;quot;I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ips-dc.org&amp;#x2F;report-ever-growing-gap&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ips-dc.org&amp;#x2F;report-ever-growing-gap&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>sp527</author><text>&amp;gt; Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar&lt;p&gt;As an Asian male who once upon a time had to apply to colleges, I&amp;#x27;d like to see some evidence for that assertion.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I (and hopefully many other people commenting here) have no problem with outreach, anti-harrassment, and other such workplace training initiatives. It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that we can&amp;#x27;t all achieve a baseline level of civility that abstracts away a person&amp;#x27;s biological character.&lt;p&gt;But I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place. This tends disturbingly towards institutionalized stereotyping (e.g. &amp;quot;all Asians are nerdy and softspoken, so we&amp;#x27;re going to lump them into the same cohort and exert an implicit negative bias against them&amp;quot;). It&amp;#x27;s also particularly vacuous in that our notion of &amp;#x27;diversity&amp;#x27; is thereby premised chiefly on superficial appearances - &amp;#x27;you look different, therefore you must be the kind of different we need&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;One would think the more equitable philosophy would be to strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create.&lt;p&gt;I find it highly reductionist to conflate people challenging biased hiring practices with people challenging diversity more generally. There are likely some in the tech world who are genuinely bigoted and misogynist. I would hope, however, that a larger share are simply perplexed that hiring practices in engineering would be predicated on anything other than an assessment of raw merit.&lt;p&gt;My final point is this: as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed. Sometimes that&amp;#x27;s more obvious to the Asian male who grew up in a tough part of NYC under difficult circumstances than it is to the affluent Black female who grew up in a world willing to bias opportunities unfairly in her favor (when some other less fortunate Black female really needed the leg up).</text></item><item><author>postnihilism</author><text>This feels like the blue and black (white and gold) dress. It boggles my mind that people don&amp;#x27;t see the fundamental and toxic misogyny in this &amp;#x27;manifesto&amp;#x27;. Please have a woman you care about in your life, preferably one in tech, read this and then ask their opinion of the piece.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group&amp;quot; sentiment of the author is fine except that we have hundreds of years of doing just this in order to oppress and disenfranchise groups of people. Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach and working against institutionalized racism and sexism which has created the distribution of wealth and education and work culture that we have today. Given the massive disparity we see in tech it&amp;#x27;s ridiculous that this individual felt the need to lambast the relatively minimal amount of work being done to foster a more diverse and inclusive culture across the industry.&lt;p&gt;If one of the things you have to deal with as a woman in tech is seeing 10 page pseudo-intellectual manifestos about your inherent inferiority at performing in technical and leadership roles published at one of the premier tech companies in the world, and then see that piece supported on the most popular tech social sites then it&amp;#x27;s no wonder we have the gender gap we see today.&lt;p&gt;When somebody&amp;#x27;s views are being attacked for being misogynistic and alienating to their female colleagues, it is not suppression of free speech and diverse political opinion it is common decency. Nobody is infringing on your free speech but they will respond. All of these cries of &amp;#x27;authoritarian left-wing thought-police&amp;#x27; makes me think We need a manifesto on White Male Persecution Complex Culture in Tech.&lt;p&gt;[disclaimer: I work at Google, my words are my own and not my employers]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>themacguffinman</author><text>* Google clearly doesn&amp;#x27;t believe or intend for its diversity programs to negatively pervert its hiring standards. And while correcting historical imbalance isn&amp;#x27;t inherently profitable, building a more diverse workforce is potentially profitable in the long term as it provides broader perspective and empathy, a valuable thing for a company with a diverse user-base. The positive PR doesn&amp;#x27;t hurt either.&lt;p&gt;* This isn&amp;#x27;t a competition. It seems that the Jewish people have collectively been more resilient to persecution and therefore need no assistance, but so what? Good for them, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t diminish the fact that other minority groups still wear old wounds that hurt them today. Are you seriously suggesting that we shouldn&amp;#x27;t help disadvantaged black Americans simply because disadvantaged Jewish Americans didn&amp;#x27;t need it?&lt;p&gt;* Millions of white people across the Midwest are in bad shape, you&amp;#x27;re right about that. I support programs and practices that will help them out. I also support programs and practices that support other disadvantaged race and gender groups. So I don&amp;#x27;t know what to make of the question &amp;quot;what about them?&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;d have to hand the question back to you: what about them?&lt;p&gt;* The government is definitely necessary to address much of this, but it&amp;#x27;s ridiculous to ignore the role of corporations as the backbone of our capitalist society. The private sector is responsible for the majority of economic activity and employment in many countries; they exist at the heart of the problem. Not to mention that some corporate diversity initiatives are actually attempts to comply with government policy. The wider context to this memo is Google&amp;#x27;s gender pay gap lawsuit filed by the US Department of Labor.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sp527</author><text>There are a lot of holes in the arguments you&amp;#x27;re laying out, but I&amp;#x27;ll comment on just a few:&lt;p&gt;* Google is a profit-motivated entity. They have to act in the interest of their shareholders. Correcting for historical imbalances - to the extent that it negatively perverts hiring standards - doesn&amp;#x27;t factor into the calculus of a responsible corporation.&lt;p&gt;* Jews were systematically exterminated in a historical event that was even more recent than slavery. Countless more were left destitute. Why are they any less deserving of positive bias?&lt;p&gt;* There are millions of White people across the Midwest who are dirt poor because manufacturing is no longer a meaningful economic sector in this country. What about them?&lt;p&gt;And more generally, believing that there&amp;#x27;s a contemporary responsibility to correct for historical imbalances leads you down a fantastically absurd rabbit hole. We should instead be addressing the present socioeconomic condition (which will indirectly benefit many of the historically disenfranchised). And that is the job of government. Not corporations.</text></item><item><author>postnihilism</author><text>I appreciate where you are coming from. And I agree we should, &amp;quot;strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create.&amp;quot; And I honestly believe that diversity and outreach programs are part of that process.&lt;p&gt;The economic and social structure of the United States is the result of historical processes that were driven by racism and sexism; disparities in wealth and power between these groups continue to exist today due to that legacy.&lt;p&gt;To take one example, &amp;quot;If average black family wealth continues to grow at the same pace it has over the past three decades, it would take black families 228 years to amass the same amount of wealth white families have today.&amp;quot; [0]&lt;p&gt;While it is a great sentiment that everyone should be treated purely as individuals and it is something to strive for, it  completely ignores the economic reality of our country and is an ahistorical approach to public policy or the construction of a hiring pipeline.&lt;p&gt;We can argue about to what role public companies can or should play to reduce these historical inequities. I think that outreach and education at all levels to increase the number of candidates from underrepresented groups in the tech hiring pipeline is a great step and that reducing these inequities, beyond being ethical, will create a stronger workforce. Others might disagree and have good reasons to disagree. That is a conversation worth having, but it needs to happen in the historical context in which we find ourselves.&lt;p&gt;Writing a manifesto that claims that the disparity in tech is the result of biological differences that lead women to be inferior at performing in tech and leadership capacities is not the way to start this conversation. In fact this is the exact kind of sentiment that you call out by saying, &amp;quot;I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ips-dc.org&amp;#x2F;report-ever-growing-gap&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ips-dc.org&amp;#x2F;report-ever-growing-gap&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>sp527</author><text>&amp;gt; Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar&lt;p&gt;As an Asian male who once upon a time had to apply to colleges, I&amp;#x27;d like to see some evidence for that assertion.&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I (and hopefully many other people commenting here) have no problem with outreach, anti-harrassment, and other such workplace training initiatives. It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that we can&amp;#x27;t all achieve a baseline level of civility that abstracts away a person&amp;#x27;s biological character.&lt;p&gt;But I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place. This tends disturbingly towards institutionalized stereotyping (e.g. &amp;quot;all Asians are nerdy and softspoken, so we&amp;#x27;re going to lump them into the same cohort and exert an implicit negative bias against them&amp;quot;). It&amp;#x27;s also particularly vacuous in that our notion of &amp;#x27;diversity&amp;#x27; is thereby premised chiefly on superficial appearances - &amp;#x27;you look different, therefore you must be the kind of different we need&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;One would think the more equitable philosophy would be to strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create.&lt;p&gt;I find it highly reductionist to conflate people challenging biased hiring practices with people challenging diversity more generally. There are likely some in the tech world who are genuinely bigoted and misogynist. I would hope, however, that a larger share are simply perplexed that hiring practices in engineering would be predicated on anything other than an assessment of raw merit.&lt;p&gt;My final point is this: as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed. Sometimes that&amp;#x27;s more obvious to the Asian male who grew up in a tough part of NYC under difficult circumstances than it is to the affluent Black female who grew up in a world willing to bias opportunities unfairly in her favor (when some other less fortunate Black female really needed the leg up).</text></item><item><author>postnihilism</author><text>This feels like the blue and black (white and gold) dress. It boggles my mind that people don&amp;#x27;t see the fundamental and toxic misogyny in this &amp;#x27;manifesto&amp;#x27;. Please have a woman you care about in your life, preferably one in tech, read this and then ask their opinion of the piece.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group&amp;quot; sentiment of the author is fine except that we have hundreds of years of doing just this in order to oppress and disenfranchise groups of people. Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach and working against institutionalized racism and sexism which has created the distribution of wealth and education and work culture that we have today. Given the massive disparity we see in tech it&amp;#x27;s ridiculous that this individual felt the need to lambast the relatively minimal amount of work being done to foster a more diverse and inclusive culture across the industry.&lt;p&gt;If one of the things you have to deal with as a woman in tech is seeing 10 page pseudo-intellectual manifestos about your inherent inferiority at performing in technical and leadership roles published at one of the premier tech companies in the world, and then see that piece supported on the most popular tech social sites then it&amp;#x27;s no wonder we have the gender gap we see today.&lt;p&gt;When somebody&amp;#x27;s views are being attacked for being misogynistic and alienating to their female colleagues, it is not suppression of free speech and diverse political opinion it is common decency. Nobody is infringing on your free speech but they will respond. All of these cries of &amp;#x27;authoritarian left-wing thought-police&amp;#x27; makes me think We need a manifesto on White Male Persecution Complex Culture in Tech.&lt;p&gt;[disclaimer: I work at Google, my words are my own and not my employers]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>solidsnack9000</author><text>&amp;gt; And more generally, believing that there&amp;#x27;s a contemporary responsibility to correct for historical imbalances leads you down a fantastically absurd rabbit hole.&lt;p&gt;It amounts to collective guilt, which is generally considered to be a violation of human rights.</text></comment>