Google fires diversity critic

[spanishninja]

WE have no idea do we. But "we do not know the answer" doesnt mean "might as well not ask the question"

and exploring gender differences in career preference was one of the things Damore was INTERESTED IN DOING!

[tehealadin]

WE have no idea do we. But "we do not know the answer" doesnt mean "might as well not ask the question"

Except when people ask "how much does nature play a role?", then it is shut down automatically, and motivations that don't exist are often projected onto the person asking the question, and their views are utterly misrepresented.

[ro9ue]

Here he is. Look at this devious villain:

[BreakerOfWills]

Except when people ask "how much does nature play a role?", then it is shut down automatically, and motivations that don't exist are often projected onto the person asking the question, and their views are utterly misrepresented.

Well if people stopped arguing that "forcing diversity" was something terrible people wouldnt assume they were anti diversity.

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It isn't a gotcha style argument to shut down diversity hiring, but a question as to what is bringing that diversity.

Again, if you believe are 0 biological differences then gender means nothing. You don't know what all experiences / perspectives someone has learned, so why does gender matter? Hire people who come from different backgrounds, cultures, upbringing, etc. As you're freely admitting in the bolded part. gender shouldn't matter.

Personally I believe there are biological differences, nothing major, but things that bring diversity. I just don't see how you can logically argue that there are no differences, but then you need to hire both. It's one way or the other.

I've never argued that, so I dont know why you keep putting up this weird strawman.

[Deleted]

Isnt there a job available for him at Breitbart or at Infowars?

They surely need technicians, and he fits very well to their bias.

[Skillslam]

So all the women at Google came down with a case of I can't Even Right Now and took the day off work because of this

Fucking gold

[BreakerOfWills]

and exploring gender differences in career preference was one of the things Damore was INTERESTED IN DOING!

Yeah? He also said their current diversity policy was "forced"

Studying career preferences is a pretty simplistic idea without a study of the social and environmental factors that lead to those choices. Plus he coupled that with a lamentation that conservative viewpoints were being "silenced" with zero evidence of that, and a whole screed of biological arguments with only tentative links to the arguments he was making.

The best you could say for him is that he made a statement without nearly enough research and data.

[Krastyn]

I've never argued that, so I dont know why you keep putting up this weird strawman.

You called out my statement as a "gotcha" argument. It only is if you don't believe in facts and logic. Most of this entire thread, and google's response are all about strawmen. A discussion was brought up about diversity and how to achieve it, and it was shut down for illogical reasons.

[grexly75]

All I can say is that what Google has done will eventually come back and bite them, and show them for the bunch of hypocrites that they are.. Not to forget that the ex employee is now looking into starting legal action against Google..

[Vyuvarax]

You called out my statement as a "gotcha" argument. It only is if you don't believe in facts and logic. Most of this entire thread, and google's response are all about strawmen. A discussion was brought up about diversity and how to achieve it, and it was shut down for illogical reasons.

By discussion are you referring to the memo?

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All I can say is that what Google has done will eventually come back and bite them, and show them for the bunch of hypocrites that they are.. Not to forget that the ex employee is now looking into starting legal action against Google..

Claiming your female peers are less capable at their work than their male counterparts doesn't win you lawsuits, sorry. That's gender discrimination within the workplace.

[spanishninja]

Yeah? He also said their current diversity policy was "forced"

Studying career preferences is a pretty simplistic idea without a study of the social and environmental factors that lead to those choices. Plus he coupled that with a lamentation that conservative viewpoints were being "silenced" with zero evidence of that, and a whole screed of biological arguments with only tentative links to the arguments he was making.

The best you could say for him is that he made a statement without nearly enough research and data.

You can only disprove his claim that diversity is "forced" by coming up with evidence to show that the shift in demographics in the tech sector in past decades has had any notable impact on the breadth of ideas, in a causative manner. Otherwise it's diversity just for the sake of saying you have a mixed group of people working at your company, which seems pretty forced to me.

A couple of related questions:

1) Google is now 35% Asian, and 27% Asian in leadership positions, both obviously higher than back when the company was originally founded. In terms of diversity of ideas, has the influx of Asian employees into the company helped?

2) If your answer to the first question is "yes", why do you think people still believe Google is all white men in 2017? And if you answered "no", why do you think further adjusting diversity metrics would make a difference?

I have additional follow up questions for you based on your answers

[BreakerOfWills]

You called out my statement as a "gotcha" argument. It only is if you don't believe in facts and logic. Most of this entire thread, and google's response are all about strawmen. A discussion was brought up about diversity and how to achieve it, and it was shut down for illogical reasons.

It wasn't about diversity and how to achieve it, it was a limited argument that failed to present enough data to support the argument that the current method of increasing diversity isn't working - some would argue that it definitely is.

The crux of his arugment that it isnt working seems to be "conservative viewpoints are being silenced and maybe women aren't into this stuff anyway" until we know which viewpoints are being silenced beyond just blanket "conservative" that's not a worthwhile argument. Which conservative viewpoints, fiscal? not applicable, environmental? social? which conservative social viewpoints? not enough data

and "women aren't into this stuff anyway" is a dead end argument since there isn't enough data to know beyond "there aren't that many women in this thing" which is fine, you're probably right. But that's not an argument as to why "find the women that are into this thing and hire them" is a bad practice besides returning to the baseless argument above.

He just doesnt have enough info to make his arguments, and without that info you can only assume he has an agenda, otherwise he'd have some examples to point to.

[spanishninja]

By discussion are you referring to the memo?

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Claiming your female peers are less capable at their work than their male counterparts doesn't win you lawsuits, sorry. That's gender discrimination within the workplace.

Show me the text where Damore actually claimed female peers at Google are less capable at their work.

^In case you try to just tell me to go read the thing, the purpose for my statement above is to demonstrate that it isn't there.

[Krastyn]

By discussion are you referring to the memo.

That is correct.

[spanishninja]

It wasn't about diversity and how to achieve it, it was a limited argument that failed to present enough data to support the argument that the current method of increasing diversity isn't working - some would argue that it definitely is.

The crux of his arugment that it isnt working seems to be "conservative viewpoints are being silenced and maybe women aren't into this stuff anyway" until we know which viewpoints are being silenced beyond just blanket "conservative" that's not a worthwhile argument. Which conservative viewpoints, fiscal? not applicable, environmental? social? which conservative social viewpoints? not enough data

and "women aren't into this stuff anyway" is a dead end argument since there isn't enough data to know beyond "there aren't that many women in this thing" which is fine, you're probably right. But that's not an argument as to why "find the women that are into this thing and hire them" is a bad practice besides returning to the baseless argument above.

He just doesnt have enough info to make his arguments, and without that info you can only assume he has an agenda, otherwise he'd have some examples to point to.

He's not trying to say "don't find women who are into this thing". He's saying "don't be surprised if you can't find enough of them currently".

[BreakerOfWills]

You can only disprove his claim that diversity is "forced" by coming up with evidence to show that the shift in demographics in the tech sector in past decades has had any notable impact on the breadth of ideas, in a causative manner. Otherwise it's diversity just for the sake of saying you have a mixed group of people working at your company, which seems pretty forced to me.

A couple of related questions:

1) Google is now 35% Asian, and 27% Asian in leadership positions, both obviously higher than back when the company was originally founded. In terms of diversity of ideas, has the influx of Asian employees into the company helped?

2) If your answer to the first question is "yes", why do you think people still believe Google is all white men in 2017? And if you answered "no", why do you think further adjusting diversity metrics would make a difference?

Not all white men, majority white men, whats the other 73% of leadership? Does that percentage grow or shrink when we move from middle to upper management? Do you have some information as to whether google is more or less effective than they used to be? I dont, you dont, because aside from just not having data we dont know what metrics they're using anyway, I would hope he might but he hasn't presented any - to defend his positions he'd need a compelling case that this has made things worse and he doesnt have one beyond some conjecture and "conservatives feel silenced"

[grexly75]

Claiming your female peers are less capable at their work than their male counterparts doesn't win you lawsuits, sorry. That's gender discrimination within the workplace.

Maybe so the thing is that this how ever you slice it Google is in a bad position, because what has happened is only gathering steam with more and more people talking about it..

The thing you have to also think about is that the memo was an internal one should of stayed within Googles walls..

You have to wonder who leaked it and why because if this is so then you can guess that someone might of had a beef with him and wanted him gone..

[BreakerOfWills]

He's not trying to say "don't find women who are into this thing". He's saying "don't be surprised if you can't find enough of them currently".

I dunno how many people work at google, but I'd need that and the number of women in programming for that argument to be worthwhile. Besides he's also arguing "your methods of finding and creating them are discriminatory" but if there aren't enough and you want more what are you supposed to do besides make it happen? There's an abundance of A and B, not enough C, we need to find more C and if we cant find them, train them. His argument is that finding training more C is discriminatory against A and B, but since the numbers arent equal how can it be. It'd only be if there was a similar number of applicants, and we already know there isnt so beyond A and B feel bad what's the argument?

[Krastyn]

It wasn't about diversity and how to achieve it, it was a limited argument that failed to present enough data to support the argument that the current method of increasing diversity isn't working - some would argue that it definitely is.

The crux of his arugment that it isnt working seems to be "conservative viewpoints are being silenced and maybe women aren't into this stuff anyway" until we know which viewpoints are being silenced beyond just blanket "conservative" that's not a worthwhile argument. Which conservative viewpoints, fiscal? not applicable, environmental? social? which conservative social viewpoints? not enough data

and "women aren't into this stuff anyway" is a dead end argument since there isn't enough data to know beyond "there aren't that many women in this thing" which is fine, you're probably right. But that's not an argument as to why "find the women that are into this thing and hire them" is a bad practice besides returning to the baseless argument above.

He just doesnt have enough info to make his arguments, and without that info you can only assume he has an agenda, otherwise he'd have some examples to point to.

He's not doing a fully researched out scientific study on the topic. He's not a scientist. He did list out papers that support his arguments. If you google, there is at least one response from the author of one of the papers who agrees with the general principle of his memo, just not sold on the impact of the differences (the author says 5-10% of the gender gap could be from biological).

"Women aren't into this stuff anyway" isn't a dead end argument. You're essentially handwaving away a possible cause. Maybe Google should set up their own study. It could turn out to have 0 impact, or 100% of the impact. Because we don't know is a horrible excuse to dismiss something.

[BreakerOfWills]

He's not doing a fully researched out scientific study on the topic. He's not a scientist. He did list out papers that support his arguments. If you google, there is at least one response from the author of one of the papers who agrees with the general principle of his memo, just not sold on the impact of the differences (the author says 5-10% of the gender gap could be from biological).

"Women aren't into this stuff anyway" isn't a dead end argument. You're essentially handwaving away a possible cause. Maybe Google should set up their own study. It could turn out to have 0 impact, or 100% of the impact. Because we don't know is a horrible excuse to dismiss something.

It's a dead end argument without a greater scope of research, in and of itself it doesnt answer the question, nor does it address non biological factors. If all he had said was "we need to study this" then fine. But he also went into how "forcing isn't helping the problem" and since he has no arguments to support THAT then yeah I can dismiss him out of hand.