<story><title>James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/james-damore-just-filed-a-class-action-lawsuit-against-google-saying-it-discriminates-against-white-male-conservatives/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manigandham</author><text>Diversity based on outward appearance is one of the most convoluted and ridiculous movements ever. We cannot spend decades trying to show that appearance is absolutely meaningless to talent, skills, and motivation, and then regress right back to it to show off &amp;quot;diversity&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Also nobody ever seems to ask: diversity of &lt;i&gt;what&lt;/i&gt; exactly? What&amp;#x27;s the target? Life experience? There is no qualitative score for that, nor is any single person&amp;#x27;s life more or less interesting and influential than anyone else.&lt;p&gt;The only thing we can objectively and accurately measure is merit, motivation, and results, and we should use those metrics alone for hiring and advancement, in addition to fighting subjective bias (like removing names and photos from resumes) and making sure there&amp;#x27;s equivalent &lt;i&gt;opportunity&lt;/i&gt; for anyone to try. After that, it would be best if just let people do what they want to do and move on.</text></item><item><author>dotnetisnotdead</author><text>Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth.&lt;p&gt;Before you downvote&amp;#x2F;call me a Nazi, I&amp;#x27;m a mixed race woman in tech.&lt;p&gt;I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It&amp;#x27;s not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are terrible at their job stand out. People notice it, but few say it.&lt;p&gt;Our company recently hired a black woman as a &amp;quot;Software Engineer&amp;quot; who can&amp;#x27;t write a SQL statement. She has a &amp;quot;taken some tutorials&amp;quot; level of programming skill as far as I have noticed and produces things very, very slow. People notice this, and it makes them angry. I&amp;#x27;m sure the other engineers talk about this even more when I&amp;#x27;m not in the room. Our boss is proud of how much he is &amp;quot;making the team diverse&amp;quot; yet it&amp;#x27;s only going to cause problems for the team.&lt;p&gt;I like to think I was hired based on my skillset, not to improve the numbers. I&amp;#x27;ve worked hard to get here. People likely forget or don&amp;#x27;t care how &amp;quot;diverse&amp;quot; I am when I am working because I produce. And I fully support bringing in diverse candidates, it&amp;#x27;s essential to get those viewpoints, so long as they are a qualified candidate to start with.&lt;p&gt;I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women. Almost all of the women from my social circle are smart, pragmatic, driven and successful yet have zero interest in a technical career. They excel in their given industries but ours they want no part of. I don&amp;#x27;t believe intelligence is more prevalent in either gender, but I do believe there are some traits that shape who we are.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s something that&amp;#x27;s rarely addressed, for fear of being ostracized.&lt;p&gt;As far as his &amp;quot;conservative white male&amp;quot; discrimination claims, I&amp;#x27;ve seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it&amp;#x27;s nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don&amp;#x27;t feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an &amp;quot;old school&amp;quot; company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It&amp;#x27;s not that way for white guys, sorry.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pillowkusis</author><text>I think many companies aren’t promoting “diversity” to support an ideology, they do it because it has specific PR and legal outcomes that help their image. Companies with high diversity metrics get praised in the press. Companies with low diversity metrics get negative attention. Diversity metrics are also a solid defense in real courts and the court of public opinion when race&amp;#x2F;gender&amp;#x2F;sexual harassment claims come up.&lt;p&gt;I don’t know to what extent this is true, or even how to measure it, but it would help explain why “diversity” initiatives seems so illogical some times, which has perplexed me too.</text></comment>
<story><title>James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/james-damore-just-filed-a-class-action-lawsuit-against-google-saying-it-discriminates-against-white-male-conservatives/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manigandham</author><text>Diversity based on outward appearance is one of the most convoluted and ridiculous movements ever. We cannot spend decades trying to show that appearance is absolutely meaningless to talent, skills, and motivation, and then regress right back to it to show off &amp;quot;diversity&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Also nobody ever seems to ask: diversity of &lt;i&gt;what&lt;/i&gt; exactly? What&amp;#x27;s the target? Life experience? There is no qualitative score for that, nor is any single person&amp;#x27;s life more or less interesting and influential than anyone else.&lt;p&gt;The only thing we can objectively and accurately measure is merit, motivation, and results, and we should use those metrics alone for hiring and advancement, in addition to fighting subjective bias (like removing names and photos from resumes) and making sure there&amp;#x27;s equivalent &lt;i&gt;opportunity&lt;/i&gt; for anyone to try. After that, it would be best if just let people do what they want to do and move on.</text></item><item><author>dotnetisnotdead</author><text>Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth.&lt;p&gt;Before you downvote&amp;#x2F;call me a Nazi, I&amp;#x27;m a mixed race woman in tech.&lt;p&gt;I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It&amp;#x27;s not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are terrible at their job stand out. People notice it, but few say it.&lt;p&gt;Our company recently hired a black woman as a &amp;quot;Software Engineer&amp;quot; who can&amp;#x27;t write a SQL statement. She has a &amp;quot;taken some tutorials&amp;quot; level of programming skill as far as I have noticed and produces things very, very slow. People notice this, and it makes them angry. I&amp;#x27;m sure the other engineers talk about this even more when I&amp;#x27;m not in the room. Our boss is proud of how much he is &amp;quot;making the team diverse&amp;quot; yet it&amp;#x27;s only going to cause problems for the team.&lt;p&gt;I like to think I was hired based on my skillset, not to improve the numbers. I&amp;#x27;ve worked hard to get here. People likely forget or don&amp;#x27;t care how &amp;quot;diverse&amp;quot; I am when I am working because I produce. And I fully support bringing in diverse candidates, it&amp;#x27;s essential to get those viewpoints, so long as they are a qualified candidate to start with.&lt;p&gt;I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women. Almost all of the women from my social circle are smart, pragmatic, driven and successful yet have zero interest in a technical career. They excel in their given industries but ours they want no part of. I don&amp;#x27;t believe intelligence is more prevalent in either gender, but I do believe there are some traits that shape who we are.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s something that&amp;#x27;s rarely addressed, for fear of being ostracized.&lt;p&gt;As far as his &amp;quot;conservative white male&amp;quot; discrimination claims, I&amp;#x27;ve seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it&amp;#x27;s nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don&amp;#x27;t feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an &amp;quot;old school&amp;quot; company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It&amp;#x27;s not that way for white guys, sorry.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hypersoar</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re missing the point of the &amp;quot;diversity movement&amp;quot;. The point is that some classes, e.g. women and minorities face discrimination that&amp;#x27;s baked into the selection process, even when they eventual selectors are not showing a preference. You might try to hire based only on &amp;quot;merit, motivation, and results&amp;quot;, but any measure of those things is going to be imperfect. If those measurements are themselves biased, then your selection will be biased, even if you didn&amp;#x27;t want it to be. The goal of diversity policies is, in part, to break through and counteract those biases.&lt;p&gt;Jon Stewart gave a post-retirement interview in which he talked about this issue in the comedy world. He initially wrote off criticism of the lack of diversity in the writer&amp;#x27;s room for The Daily Show, since he always told people that he was interested in hiring more women and minorities. He eventually realized that the channels along which people came to the job was already selecting for white males, and that more diverse hiring required rethinking those channels.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;p1H7KxPlbQw?t=42m32s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;p1H7KxPlbQw?t=42m32s&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>