Google fires diversity critic

[Aurrora]

"Biologically unsuitable for certain technical roles"?
Do breast get in the way when you type on keyboards or something?

This one does not sound like the smartest person in the world, I am pretty sure they will do just fine without him.

*sigh* This isn't what was said, at all. The author quite clearly states in the Background section and even includes a diagram for the literacy challenged (which is seems Google must employ a surprising amount of given how many people are misrepresenting what was said) that there are significant overlaps in the traits of the male and female populations that make for good tech workers, and that he is talking about trends across the entire population.

"Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."

All he's saying is that across the female population less women are inclined towards tech and so you wind up with less women in tech jobs.

In the same way that across the male population less men are inclined towards nursing or teaching elementary school and so you have fewer male nurses or elementary school teachers. This doesn't say that women can't be good tech employees just as I'm not saying that men can't be good nurses or elementary school teachers.

He posits that this may be due to biological differences and as such throwing money into initiatives to try to increase the amount of women in tech may be better suited elsewhere in ways that don't target a specific , those who are already inclined towards STEM are in STEM. He even touches slightly on the possible cultural contributions to the gap in the section "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap". He however sees it more as the male gender role forcing men into the tech environment, viewing Feminism as having freed women from the shackles of a female gender role.

I disagree with him here slightly, as it seems to me that in high school a male nerd was a far more sociably acceptable thing than a female one. I'm not female however so I can't say for certain(surely we have some women nerds on this board that could weigh in on this?)

I was with you right up until...."women are biologically unsuitable for certain technical roles."

My bet. THAT is what got him fired, not the conservative talk. Replace "woman" with "blacks," "latinos," or "muslims."

Yeah, he deserved it. Guy was an idiot for actually including that in a memo and sending it to everyone.

Again, not what was said. That's a dishonest tech blogger putting words in his mouth to generate the outrage bucks. There's a link to the memo in the first post, it's quick read, take the first step towards thinking for yourself instead of parroting what the media wants you to think and click that link.

[Teleros]

Right wing bloggers were outraged saying the author is entitled to view his opinions regardless of how controversial they are.

There's also the teensy issue that the author happened to be correct .

Diversity is not diversity when everyone has to sing from the same song sheet and individual thought is forbidden.

Oh no, that *is* diversity. Diversity means people from every kind of race/sex/gender/etc singing from the same hymn sheet.

= + =

Google looks like a great place to work...

https://kek.gg/i/7_dnDw.png

Second quote is worth a read:

All of Google is kept afloat by one thing only. Adwords. They have no other significant source of income after a decade or more of trying to diversify. Every other business is borderline trivial when compared to AdWords. All the moonshots have failed. All the R&D has failed. It's. All. AdWords.

The money-making core of Google is a tiny speck of its workforce, a tiny core of people who make AdWords work. The fear is not that 2/3 are SJWs, it's that one or two or three of the key engineers, who are working on the next version of Search and Adwords, who are actively fighting and hardening against existential threats to the product, might walk, or even just do a slightly less great job.

Google is actually a very fragile company. They are ripe for disruption from a new player, or alternatively, to be drained from a few deep pocketed rivals. The entire bubble of online advertising stems from a belief that is often irrational that online advertising is effective at certain definitions of cost effectiveness.

= + =

In other news, W M Briggs explains the theory of diversity. It's an amusing read.

[Shiny212]

Arguing ANY point is prompting discussion. The problem you have with his views is not that you disagree (which you also do), but that you deem him morally inferior. That is the first step towards authoritarian censorship.

I like how you refer to it as an opinion piece while not even bothering to look into the sources.

Instead of arguing against his points and linked research you just say it's tasteless. Guess what, I don't give a single fuck about your feelings, the point stands, stop calling names and try to produce a single arguments instead of morally attacking opposing views, that mentality is the fucking reason Trump won.

Don't make me laugh, his manifesto was very much just that, a manifesto, which is always opinion, certainly not written as a research article. It was a sad misogynist office-worker that thinly veiled his deservedly unpopular and yes, immoral opinion behind petty semantics and wordplay, but I see you fell for it. If he wanted to convey that women gravitate less towards tech positions for reasons cultural and societal, join the club. The club that claims they are biologically disadvantaged however, is very small, and you might want to look at the company you'd keep.

Arguing that women cant be as effective leaders or tech-employees because of their biology is ridiculous on the face of it, it doesn't require discussion, discovery or debate. It's as inane as claiming some skincolors are better suited for manual labour, gee who said that again?

[Raqubor]

I know this is already a long thread, but judging from the replies many didn't even read the document the discussion is about.
Please read it and don't just take keywords from the thread.

[Kolvarg]

much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.

So, in essence: His general opinion/criticism is fine, but actual facts (that women and men on average have different preferences and different strenghts and weakenesses) are not ok because they hurt people's feelings?

Something doesn't become inherently bad, evil or wrong just because it confirms or perpetuates a stereotype.
It's not an opinion, it's statistical data that shows that on average women and men are indeed different. The opinion part is on how that fact influences the "gender gap", and by itself is not any "harmful gender stereotype" -> it's just a theory on why something that happens, does happen.

Saying there is a gender gap because of gender differences and not because men/society is holding women down is not "advancing harmful gender stereotypes".


Either way, they're a private company it's their right to do whatever they see fit. Ultimately it just seems wrong and very authoritarian (for a company that praises creativity, diversity, etc) to fire someone over "advancing a stereotype" once.

Google employees being "hurting" and feeling "judged based on their gender" because of the memo just proves the memo right. They are being driven by emotion and not by logic, and are unable to overcome their feelings even though that means their co-worker being fired.

I would expect an engineer (no matter the gender) to be able to not take a "stereotype" (or rather, a generalization or statistical fact) personally. Women being more X on average does not imply every women is X, or more X. It's just an average.

[Illana]

I know this is already a long thread, but judging from the replies many didn't even read the document the discussion is about.
Please read it and don't just take keywords from the thread.

If only I could upvote this. But people love controversy and dont have much patience so we will continually have posts that relate to how the guy is a male supremacist who believes women are unsuitable biologically for anything apart from making sandwiches

[Kolvarg]

Arguing that women cant be as effective leaders or tech-employees because of their biology is ridiculous on the face of it, it doesn't require discussion, discovery or debate. It's as inane as claiming some skincolors are better suited for manual labour, gee who said that again?

That just proves you didn't even try to take it seriously, or possibly even not read the actual document.

He never claims "women cant be as effective leaders or tech-employees because of their biology".

He claims this (it's in the TL;DR, ffs):
"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business."

[Tomservo]

That just proves you didn't even try to take it seriously, or possibly even not read the actual document.

He never claims "women cant be as effective leaders or tech-employees because of their biology".

He claims this (it's in the TL;DR, ffs):
"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business."

Someone dared to say that discrimination under the guise of diversity is bad? That's a paddlin'.

[h4rr0d]

"Biologically unsuitable for certain technical roles"?
Do breast get in the way when you type on keyboards or something?

This one does not sound like the smartest person in the world, I am pretty sure they will do just fine without him.

No, but menstrual cycle (more specifically hormones tied to different phases of it, but in some cases even physical illness) does get in the way of critical, unimpaired thinking.

[Zoibert the Bear]

Don't make me laugh, his manifesto was very much just that, a manifesto, which is always opinion, certainly not written as a research article. It was a sad misogynist office-worker that thinly veiled his deservedly unpopular and yes, immoral opinion behind petty semantics and wordplay, but I see you fell for it. If he wanted to convey that women gravitate less towards tech positions for reasons cultural and societal, join the club. The club that claims they are biologically disadvantaged however, is very small, and you might want to look at the company you'd keep.

Arguing that women cant be as effective leaders or tech-employees because of their biology is ridiculous on the face of it, it doesn't require discussion, discovery or debate. It's as inane as claiming some skincolors are better suited for manual labour, gee who said that again?

Fact is, an opinion backed by research is not something you can dismiss on a factual basis. You are operating on purely emotional reasons, which are by definition irrational. Basing your whole point of view on morality renders the whole point of the argument null.

You deem his opinion immoral? Guess what? I don't care about your feelings, nor do I have to. You choosing to care about other peoples feelings is absolutely irrelevant to politics. I care about the facts that increase productivity and the fact that this person is being bashed simply because his opinion is unpopular in certain rings.

For a matter of fact he never mentioned the point everyone seems to be taking for granted, that women are biologically less suited for tech. Do yourself a favor and read the actual content without jumping to conclusions at every sentence that you deem morally wrong but factually correct.

I said fact so many times. Just realized.

- - - Updated - - -

"Biologically unsuitable for certain technical roles"?
Do breast get in the way when you type on keyboards or something?

This one does not sound like the smartest person in the world, I am pretty sure they will do just fine without him.

The guys was able to create a coherent piece of text, you weren't even able to read it, and went straight for the completely biased and agenda pushing version the media fed you.

Wondering who the not-smartest-person in the world here is.

P.S.: Totally ad-hominem'd here.

[BreakerOfWills]

So, in essence: His general opinion/criticism is fine, but actual facts (that women and men on average have different preferences and different strenghts and weakenesses) are not ok because they hurt people's feelings?

Something doesn't become inherently bad, evil or wrong just because it confirms or perpetuates a stereotype.
It's not an opinion, it's statistical data that shows that on average women and men are indeed different. The opinion part is on how that fact influences the "gender gap", and by itself is not any "harmful gender stereotype" -> it's just a theory on why something that happens, does happen.

Saying there is a gender gap because of gender differences and not because men/society is holding women down is not "advancing harmful gender stereotypes".


Either way, they're a private company it's their right to do whatever they see fit. Ultimately it just seems wrong and very authoritarian (for a company that praises creativity, diversity, etc) to fire someone over "advancing a stereotype" once.

Google employees being "hurting" and feeling "judged based on their gender" because of the memo just proves the memo right. They are being driven by emotion and not by logic, and are unable to overcome their feelings even though that means their co-worker being fired.

I would expect an engineer (no matter the gender) to be able to not take a "stereotype" (or rather, a generalization or statistical fact) personally. Women being more X on average does not imply every women is X, or more X. It's just an average.

SO we shouldnt make decisions because of people "hurting" and "feeling" he feels like conservative viewpoints aren't accepted, and it hurt him so much he wrote this memo to argue that a gender gap that is artificially created is somehow natural because of gender differences.

And yet we know that a male engineer or female engineer are statistical deviations from average male and average female

He argues that the gender gap in tech(computing going from male hardware and female software engineers to nearly all males in every facet) isn't a natural phenomenon.

We know that the gap isn't some natural gravitation but was crafted through negative advertisements/market manipulation to drive women out as programming became more lucrative, it isn't some natural inclination of the industry but plain old greed and prestige seeking.

I mean one could make a solid argument that conservatives are unimaginative and rigid in their thinking and more likely to place inherent value on "this is how we've always done it why change now" and thus are entirely unsuited for work in an ever evolving creative industry.

[Templar 331]

If you want to see how fucked up this situation really is.....

A CNN article about this.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/06/tech...ure0858AMStory

And a Fox News article about this.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/...er-debate.html


Fox News is the one who accurately published the story. How fucked up is that?

[Teleros]

No, but menstrual cycle (more specifically hormones tied to different phases of it, but in some cases even physical illness) does get in the way of critical, unimpaired thinking.

It's more than that. Men and women, on average, are psychologically better suited for different things. Men tend to be more systemising, and women tend to be more empathising:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbo...temising.shtml

Men are typically systemisers. That is they're better at investigating how a system works. They like to get deeply involved in activities such as car repair, computing or building up an extensive music collection.

On average women are empathisers. They are better at accurately guessing other people's emotions and responding appropriately. They would be more likely to comfort you in a time of crisis.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...omen-empathize

In general, females are stronger empathizers and males are stronger systemizers. A growing body of evidence suggests that males spontaneously systemize to a greater degree than females do, while females spontaneously empathize to a greater degree than males.

Other studies have also suggested that mathematics, physics, and engineering—all of which require a high degree of systemization—are more commonly male occupations, while women are better at decoding nonverbal communications, picking up subtle nuances from tone of voice or facial expression, or judging a person’s character. Obviously, this does not mean that all men are systemizers and all women are empathizers!

= + =

Such scientifically-supported views are CrimeThink today of course, which is why this racist sexist bigoted homophobe must be fired from Google and never permitted to hold a job ever again .

[Deleted]

No, but menstrual cycle (more specifically hormones tied to different phases of it, but in some cases even physical illness) does get in the way of critical, unimpaired thinking.

Just like men thinking with their dicks all the time. See what I did there?

[Illana]

SO we shouldnt make decisions because of people "hurting" and "feeling" he feels like conservative viewpoints aren't accepted, and it hurt him so much he wrote this memo to argue that a gender gap that is artificially created is somehow natural because of gender differences.

And yet we know that a male engineer or female engineer are statistical deviations from average male and average female

He argues that the gender gap in tech(computing going from male hardware and female software engineers to nearly all males in every facet) isn't a natural phenomenon.

We know that the gap isn't some natural gravitation but was crafted through negative advertisements/market manipulation to drive women out as programming became more lucrative, it isn't some natural inclination of the industry but plain old greed and prestige seeking.

I mean one could make a solid argument that conservatives are unimaginative and rigid in their thinking and more likely to place inherent value on "this is how we've always done it why change now" and thus are entirely unsuited for work in an ever evolving creative industry.

I don't think it was anything to do with feelings, rather the productivity and financial viability of the company he is working in.

Also wtf we "know" that it's some conspiracy that women were driven out from programming jobs? Evidence please.

Just like men thinking with their dicks all the time. See what I did there?

lol, what

[chooi]

Did anyone actually try to debate his manifesto? You know, calmly with reason and facts to back up your side. Because that's what the guy actually did. Whether you like his opinion or not. I'm so sick of this anti-intellectual, anti-scientific discussion 'culture' from either side that doesn't get down to the core issues. It is destroying our society.

[Deleted]

It's more than that. Men and women, on average, are psychologically better suited for different things. Men tend to be more systemising, and women tend to be more empathising:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbo...temising.shtml

Men are typically systemisers. That is they're better at investigating how a system works. They like to get deeply involved in activities such as car repair, computing or building up an extensive music collection.

On average women are empathisers. They are better at accurately guessing other people's emotions and responding appropriately. They would be more likely to comfort you in a time of crisis.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...omen-empathize

In general, females are stronger empathizers and males are stronger systemizers. A growing body of evidence suggests that males spontaneously systemize to a greater degree than females do, while females spontaneously empathize to a greater degree than males.

Other studies have also suggested that mathematics, physics, and engineering—all of which require a high degree of systemization—are more commonly male occupations, while women are better at decoding nonverbal communications, picking up subtle nuances from tone of voice or facial expression, or judging a person’s character. Obviously, this does not mean that all men are systemizers and all women are empathizers!

= + =

Such scientifically-supported views are CrimeThink today of course, which is why this racist sexist bigoted homophobe must be fired from Google and never permitted to hold a job ever again .

I am female and I was among the best students in math and science classes. I have high intelligence score in logical reasoning, in problem solving, and in spacial cognition, which are usually called men's domains. I work in a job where I constantly have to analyse numbers. I am a classical nerd, though I have ovaries. Stop this bullshit.

[Illana]

Did anyone actually try to debate his manifesto? You know, calmly with reason and facts to back up your side. Because that's what the guy actually did. Whether you like his opinion or not. I'm so sick of this anti-intellectual, anti-scientific discussion 'culture' from either side that doesn't get down to the core issues. It is destroying our society.

fire first, think later.

[Shiny212]

Fact is, an opinion backed by research is not something you can dismiss on a factual basis. You are operating on purely emotional reasons, which are by definition irrational. Basing your whole point of view on morality renders the whole point of the argument null.

You deem his opinion immoral? Guess what? I don't care about your feelings, nor do I have to. You choosing to care about other peoples feelings is absolutely irrelevant to politics. I care about the facts that increase productivity and the fact that this person is being bashed simply because his opinion is unpopular in certain rings.

For a matter of fact he never mentioned the point everyone seems to be taking for granted, that women are biologically less suited for tech. Do yourself a favor and read the actual content without jumping to conclusions at every sentence that you deem morally wrong but factually correct.

I can very much dismiss assertions made without evidence, for example the fact that men are in more dangerous labor jobs and more men die in workrelated deaths does not provide a convincing reason for why men are in more leadership positions, one among many misguided ways to bend statistics in the manifesto.

You don't have to care what is considered immoral by anyone of course, hell you can go to klan rallies and wave torches at Obama, but you will be subject to public opinion, and thankfully it's very low for the aforementioned.

I seriously suggest you re-examine the article and play "find false equivalencies", since it's littered with them, then see if you feel as clever afterwards about declaring your undying loyalty to his cause, because you're angry or whatever about political correctness and feminism gone mad.

[Illana]

I am female and I was among the best students in math and science classes. I have high intelligence score in logical reasoning, in problem solving, and in spacial cognition, which are usually called men's domains. I work in a job where I constantly have to analyse numbers. I am a classical nerd, though I have ovaries. Stop this bullshit.

#notall 10char