I hope that he also sues media outlets for slander. To sum things up :
- fairness & lack of prejudice wrt minorities/women : goal
- minorities/women % in the workforce : metric
- diversity hiring : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox .
- without diversity hiring, differences in women vs men applicants pools, which can be explained by differences in *distributions* of interests, have no impact on distribution of skills in the workforce
- women are talented enough so that they just need to be *attracted* (e.g. better work/life balance) rather than pity-hired
This is my takeaway from the "screed". How could it be framed as «anti-diversity», much less «alt-right» ?
How could saying that «women are, on average more people-oriented and men are more thing-oriented» be framed as «women are inferior, biologically incapable of coding» ?
I hope that people get punished for such a dishonest character assassination !
The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows: You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
I just finished reading it. I agree with some of the points, particularly: "Don't alienate conservatives." I consider myself left leaning. But if we are going to talk about tolerance and acceptance, then you have to attempt to do that across the board.
The entire manifesto seems like a first draft. I don't think presenting gender differences as biologically based was even necessary to support his main points. Even if on average genders exhibit different preferences, I'm still on the fence as to why.
And I can't tell which part was so offensive that people had to take time off and this guy needed to be fired.
I can't help but agree with almost everything he said about general traits in men. They seek esteem over most everything else, and are competitive by nature. And that explains at least part of the reason they're drawn to leadership positions in companies.
Of course I'm not going to get fired for saying that publicly.
Is it not possible that men are more competitive and seek leadership positions because most leadership positions are already held by men? Looking upwards and seeing people like yourself would be encouraging — it says "You can do this!" Modern society has built an image of men becoming successful, and so in a self-fulfilling prophecy the society's leadership positions are dominated by men who were told they would end up there.
I don't think there is a natural (i.e. biological) imperative that drives men and women significantly differently in this regard. It seems to me to be primarily caused by societal expectations which are enforced starting from a young age.
The issue with the essay is that it's connecting two points that do not necessarily connect.
First, you have biological differences between men and women. These are reasonably well characterized, and the sorts of psychological differences that might impact the workplace are small but present. It's still very difficult to get into specifics, however, as definitions/measuring is difficult (lots of room for error here) but the thesis of 'this may be relevant, and we should be able to discuss this' is supported.
Then you have the various stereotypes about men and women that we observe in the current population. There's a lot of nuance here and, again, a lot of room to confirm your own biases, but on the whole there are certainly differences. The question is mostly nature vs. nurture and how much of this is cultural historical artifact.
The problem comes from trying to explain the latter with the former. This is difficult to do in a scientific way; the essay mentions castration and some cultural practices that can suggest some aspects of this relationship, but it's a far cry from being generally explanatory. It's all terribly specific and contextual and the state of the art is so far away from explaining bias/discrimination in hiring/employment that it's arguably not worth mentioning.
The equality/diversity contradiction is a good enough point to make, but it doesn't accomplish much. The real thesis is that Google's hiring practices are discriminatory, but there's not a clear scientific answer to that at all. Aiming for rough equality seems like a conservative approach; the distributions for these metrics suggest something like single-digit-percent differences between populations of men and women (i.e. lots of overlap due to variance). A 'worst-case' for discrimination against men seems very likely far less severe than the current state of discrimination against women where 9:1 ratios are not unheard of. And this is certainly a wonderful opportunity for debate and may not be correct, it currently is not proven to be incorrect by any stretch, and thus it cannot be claimed that the hiring practices are discriminatory.
If men are more naturally drawn to leadership positions, but not actually better leaders, diversity efforts make a lot of sense. In such a scenario you would want to actively encourage women to seek status and lead.
So by agreeing, you are basically saying you believe in the idea of biological differences playing a role in the gender imbalance at Google? Or to put it another way, you believe women don't strive for the same things as men due to genetic makeup?
"We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology that can irreparably harm Google."
Seems to me that publishing a "manifesto" in a company saying the senior leadership are bozos is a reasonable grounds for firing.
Seriously! I have strong opinions about the role of women in our industry and society, as does pretty much everyone.
But ignore the gender/culture argument and replace diversity with "Foo". The stated goal of the organization is to increase Foo, from top to bottom, from HR to engineering. What do you think will happen if you publish a letter saying Foo is overrated? What will happen if you make getting Foo harder for them? What will happen if you semi-publicly argue against increasing Foo?
And since they appear to have used the willful misrepresentation of what he wrote as the reason, at least publicly, it might even be illegal in the good-ole no-worker-protections-for-U-S-A.
>And since they appear to have used the willful misrepresentation of what he wrote as the reason.
Wouldn't this help Google's case. Employers are allowed to fire at will employees for any reason, or no reason, except for specific reasons specified in law.
As far as I am aware, there is no law against fire an employee for being publicly accused of engaging in political speech (or whatever other behaviour Google wants to cite). The laws are only speak to fireing in retaliation for actual conduct.
Of course, this might be one of those cases where the courts take a more holistic look and determine that the laws also protects employees accused of the behaviours, regardless of if they engaged in them. Also, while the memo was misrepresented, the misrepresentation is not so egregious as to make this a slamdunk arguement in this case, even if it were an accepted legal theory in general.
I am almost certain that they gave this guy a termination agreement in which he agreed not to sue Google, and in return would be given a massive golden parachute. Google felt they needed him gone for business reasons. But of course they had no legitimate reason to fire him and he could sue if they did. If that's not the case, expect a lawsuit from him shortly.
If he is, as the following article says, "considering legal options," then he wasn't given an exit package. Or I suppose he could have been offered one but turned it down.
I think so too. Either he got a nice severance package --ala Steve Jobs' "you're fired" firing random engineers and HR picking up the pieces and cutting nice checks to the no reason fires, or he's got a decent chance at a nice verdict from a wrongful termination suit due to the free speech implications, even if this is a private company. You still can't willy nilly fire someone and not expect a suit, specially in such a high profile case.
I'd be surprised if there was a lawsuit. It's really easy to argue that this memo is disruptive to the workplace and Google had grounds to fire him. You can have 5 reasons that are illegal to fire someone and 1 reason that is legal and you can just justify it with that one reason.
Why? I don't think it's likely that the engineer's essay of nonsense was part of the company's next world beating invention, which means publishing it isn't part of any NDAs.
I don't really understand how firing him is controversial.
He wrote a pathetic, juvenile manifesto that served only to reinforce and perpetuate gender stereotypes. To me, that absolutely falls under the umbrella of "creating a hostile work environment". He'd be a major liability if they _didn't_ fire him.
Companies are under no obligation to allow their employees to distribute their own ill-conceived manifestos that slam the company for its policies and promote a sexist view of the world. That's insane.
How was the memo pathetic or juvenile? He sourced all of his claims and himself has a Ph.D in Biology. What gender stereotypes did he perpetuate? In fact he specifically called against stereotypes.
It sounds like you didn't read the memo at all and only bought in coverage by fake news sites like Gizmodo.
[+] [-] wolfgangK|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlss|8 years ago|reply
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
- Michael Crichton
[+] [-] 2muchcoffeeman|8 years ago|reply
The entire manifesto seems like a first draft. I don't think presenting gender differences as biologically based was even necessary to support his main points. Even if on average genders exhibit different preferences, I'm still on the fence as to why.
And I can't tell which part was so offensive that people had to take time off and this guy needed to be fired.
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|8 years ago|reply
Of course I'm not going to get fired for saying that publicly.
[+] [-] DonaldPShimoda|8 years ago|reply
I don't think there is a natural (i.e. biological) imperative that drives men and women significantly differently in this regard. It seems to me to be primarily caused by societal expectations which are enforced starting from a young age.
[+] [-] Obi_Juan_Kenobi|8 years ago|reply
First, you have biological differences between men and women. These are reasonably well characterized, and the sorts of psychological differences that might impact the workplace are small but present. It's still very difficult to get into specifics, however, as definitions/measuring is difficult (lots of room for error here) but the thesis of 'this may be relevant, and we should be able to discuss this' is supported.
Then you have the various stereotypes about men and women that we observe in the current population. There's a lot of nuance here and, again, a lot of room to confirm your own biases, but on the whole there are certainly differences. The question is mostly nature vs. nurture and how much of this is cultural historical artifact.
The problem comes from trying to explain the latter with the former. This is difficult to do in a scientific way; the essay mentions castration and some cultural practices that can suggest some aspects of this relationship, but it's a far cry from being generally explanatory. It's all terribly specific and contextual and the state of the art is so far away from explaining bias/discrimination in hiring/employment that it's arguably not worth mentioning.
The equality/diversity contradiction is a good enough point to make, but it doesn't accomplish much. The real thesis is that Google's hiring practices are discriminatory, but there's not a clear scientific answer to that at all. Aiming for rough equality seems like a conservative approach; the distributions for these metrics suggest something like single-digit-percent differences between populations of men and women (i.e. lots of overlap due to variance). A 'worst-case' for discrimination against men seems very likely far less severe than the current state of discrimination against women where 9:1 ratios are not unheard of. And this is certainly a wonderful opportunity for debate and may not be correct, it currently is not proven to be incorrect by any stretch, and thus it cannot be claimed that the hiring practices are discriminatory.
[+] [-] drewrv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HoppedUpMenace|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|8 years ago|reply
Seems to me that publishing a "manifesto" in a company saying the senior leadership are bozos is a reasonable grounds for firing.
[+] [-] drewrv|8 years ago|reply
But ignore the gender/culture argument and replace diversity with "Foo". The stated goal of the organization is to increase Foo, from top to bottom, from HR to engineering. What do you think will happen if you publish a letter saying Foo is overrated? What will happen if you make getting Foo harder for them? What will happen if you semi-publicly argue against increasing Foo?
[+] [-] mpweiher|8 years ago|reply
And since they appear to have used the willful misrepresentation of what he wrote as the reason, at least publicly, it might even be illegal in the good-ole no-worker-protections-for-U-S-A.
[+] [-] gizmo686|8 years ago|reply
Wouldn't this help Google's case. Employers are allowed to fire at will employees for any reason, or no reason, except for specific reasons specified in law.
As far as I am aware, there is no law against fire an employee for being publicly accused of engaging in political speech (or whatever other behaviour Google wants to cite). The laws are only speak to fireing in retaliation for actual conduct.
Of course, this might be one of those cases where the courts take a more holistic look and determine that the laws also protects employees accused of the behaviours, regardless of if they engaged in them. Also, while the memo was misrepresented, the misrepresentation is not so egregious as to make this a slamdunk arguement in this case, even if it were an accepted legal theory in general.
[+] [-] pkilgore|8 years ago|reply
I'd try to evaluate the strength of his legal argument, but he does not cite...anything.
My guess: He's trolling for clients.
[+] [-] rocky1138|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erentz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johan_larson|8 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-em...
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justforFranz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yladiz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therebedragons|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mywittyname|8 years ago|reply
Perhaps generating training data for AI-based toilet scrubbing robots.
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|8 years ago|reply
In the end they washed their hands of him.
[+] [-] tiredwired|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikdaheratik|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] matt_s|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandare|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Caveman_Coder|8 years ago|reply
1. Go to Memegen
2. Find a meme made by a liberal (check around the time Trump was elected) that is denigrating or demeaning towards conservatives
3. Leak the photos and ask Google to fire them for their "harassing" views
4. If they don't, they are selectively enforcing their own "rules"
5. Point out their hypocrisy
[+] [-] grizzles|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexwebb2|8 years ago|reply
He wrote a pathetic, juvenile manifesto that served only to reinforce and perpetuate gender stereotypes. To me, that absolutely falls under the umbrella of "creating a hostile work environment". He'd be a major liability if they _didn't_ fire him.
Companies are under no obligation to allow their employees to distribute their own ill-conceived manifestos that slam the company for its policies and promote a sexist view of the world. That's insane.
[+] [-] Cookingboy|8 years ago|reply
It sounds like you didn't read the memo at all and only bought in coverage by fake news sites like Gizmodo.
Yes, the term Fake News actually applies here.