google employee's internal diversity memo goes viral

[dowie]

this was published in full yesterday but seems to have been picked up in mainstream media today - basically a (presumably white male) google employee has written a lengthly post about 'diversity' in google, some of what he's said is very off message as far as left wing feminist/identity politics types. He's presently anonymous to outsiders but given the media attention he's getting he seems to be the ****lord of the moment for the world's SJWs and I wonder if they'll be able to keep his name private for much longer.

While I think some of his conclusions are a bit risky (and potentially hint at alt-right type views) he also seems to have some quite legitimate and useful suggestions and his arguments aren't aren't all unwarranted.

He's argued for part time work (something that helps women/parents), he's argued that they should work to make senior positions less time consuming/stressful (again to encourage women), he's argued that programs focused on increasing diversity need to be critically evaluated and he's also argued against illegal discrimination (which is something that can be fostered as part of a drive for diversity).

The post isn't anti diversity per say but anti current approaches, though it doesn't seem to be framed that way in the media. The full text of the post is published by Gizmodo though apparently some hyperlinks and graphics may be missing so I'm not sure whether some of the rather controversial claims are unsubstantiated or whether the original internal post actually had links to back up his assertions:

https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320

now the reaction has been a massive **** storm it seems, some female googlers are publicly calling for him to be sacked on social media, some diversity VP has basically shot it down publicly and this post on medium from a former senior googler seems slightly chilling:

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.

[...]

But I want to make it very clear: if you were in my reporting chain, all of part (3) would have been replaced with a short “this is not acceptable” and maybe that last paragraph above. You would have heard part (3) in a much smaller meeting, including you, me, your manager, your HRBP, and someone from legal. And it would have ended with you being escorted from the building by security and told that your personal items will be mailed to you. And the fact that you think this was “all in the name of open discussion,” and don’t realize any of these deeper consequences, makes this worse, not better.

Ironically his main argument was that google was a bit of an echo chamber... google provides these venue for employees to encourage open discussion and we then see that reaction publicly from a former senior googler! Supposedly the internal reaction is mostly against the guy too and rather than dealing with his arguments it mostly consists of virtue signalling albeit with a few posts saying he's been very brave for airing these views...

 

[dowie]

this is the official google internal reply:

Googlers,

I'm Danielle, Google's brand new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance. I started just a couple of weeks ago, and I had hoped to take another week or so to get the lay of the land before introducing myself to you all. But given the heated debate we've seen over the past few days, I feel compelled to say a few words.

Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I'm not going to link to it here as it's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we'll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh said in his internal G+ post, "Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. 'Nuff said. "

Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing its demographic data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and inclusion. Strong stands elicit strong reactions. Changing a culture is hard, and it's often uncomfortable. But I firmly believe Google is doing the right thing, and that's why I took this job.

Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

I've been in the industry for a long time, and I can tell you that I've never worked at a company that has so many platforms for employees to express themselves—TGIF, Memegen, internal G+, thousands of discussion groups. I know this conversation doesn't end with my email today. I look forward to continuing to hear your thoughts as I settle in and meet with Googlers across the company.

Thanks,

Danielle

https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en...ployees-must-feel-safe-sharing-their-opinions

 

[dowie]

So where is the post the guy wrote OP? It's about disingenuous to not include it.

Because everyone seems to saying that it said females shouldn't be engineers...

try reading the OP a bit more carefully, in particular this bit "The full text of the post is published by Gizmodo" and then the relevant link to Gizmodo

 

[dowie]

@FoxEye not wanting to divert too far off topic but there are indeed some absolute clangers of quotes there!

"you’re going to have to hold your nose and read a lot of white male poets"

"who also happen to be (alas) both white and male"

if only people tried flipping some of their statements around they'd quickly see how their efforts to appear anti-racist are actually full on racist

Imagine someone saying "if you want to be well versed in contemporary poetry then you'll have to hold your nose and read some black female poets"

 

[dowie]

at a glance, the document either holds or folds on the basis of its biological claims, which need looking at before the author's stereotypes of gender specific skill domains and conservative values. For a campus of bright people, I'm surprised they did not start there.

they probably didn't start there because to actually look at stuff from a biological/psychological perspective rather than a social science/gender studies one would open a rather massive can of worms even if he is incorrect about some of his assertions/conclusions - as mentioned in the OP I understand the original post actually had some links, graphics etc.. he's not just pulled all this stuff out of his arse even if you disagree with his conclusions however you're not seriously going to get someone in a senior management position to agree that say, studies show women are on average more likely to be neurotic * etc.. it is massively off message as far as the current status quo re: diversity is concerned and it is much easier for them to simply dismiss the whole thing, say he's wrong without going into details which is what that diversity VP essentially did.


(*example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11519935 this backs up his assertion)

 

[dowie]

His argument isn't sane. He states, without evidence, that women are genetically unsuitable for computer work. Apparently women don't handle stress as well as men either.

He doesn't state they're unsuitable and women are on average more prone to stress. Again you've missed that there are links etc.. missing - you don't actually know he's made unsubstantiated claims as you just have a copy of the text without hyperlinks.

 

[dowie]

Why would men be genetically predisposed to enjoying coding more anyway? It didn't exist until recently so can't possibly be a genetic difference.

Why would men be genetically predisposed to F1 racing, it didn't exist until recently...

 

[dowie]

Google employees have access to the manifesto with hyperlinks. Listen to what they're saying. I'd post some of the stuff that's come up in my Facebook feed from friends who work at Google if Google weren't so hot on confidentiality.

that makes no sense, if it is posted publicly on social media it is already outside google and you reposting it here make little difference

there have been plenty of comments on social media/twitter etc.. from google employees - what most of them are saying seems to ignore a lot of the content of the guy's memo and is just virtue signalling or rage from SJWs wanting him to be sacked

 

[dowie]

How is it? How are you affected exactly?

well anyone applying for a job at a firm such as google (or indeed any other organisation implementing such policies) is potentially affected either positively or negatively depending on some arbitrary factors such as their gender and race

 

[dowie]

the problem with these arguments is we don't truly know if it's a genetic, or societal predisposition, and we can't know unless we had a proper study of raising children without giving them any gender stereotypes from a young age right through to adulthood.

after all, tradition is young girls get barbie dolls and young boys get rc cars, so is that the cause of the bias? or if it were reversed would we still find the boy becoming obsessed with cars at a young age?

that isn't really true, we can state some things.. like you can state that the fastest male sprinters will be faster than the fastest female sprinters for example

f1 is probably a mixture of both but given the physical nature of it and the risk taking aspect a genetic angle seems rather likely - the point was really related to the other posters flawed argument re: something being recent negating that some group could be genetically disposed towards it

perhaps another example would have been better like say basketball

 

[dowie]

Potentially but I suspect in the majority of cases, not at all.

Why not? If they have this policy then there is an effect on everyone... not just all the people who lose out on a job due to diversity hires but everyone who then has to work with the sub-par hire going forwards or deal with them if this then creeps into promotions too

 

[dowie]

Same with you, give me statistical evidence, just how many of these "bad eggs" have crept through the system? Is it to the level that industry is riddled with inept individuals and thousands of skilled and worthy workers are sat on the sidelines? Is it pandemic?

I can't give you statistical evidence I don't have and it isn't really relevant to the argument - I'd object to this whether it affects one hire or 100,000 hires, it is the principle that I'm taking issue with.

(though given what has been posted it seems rather clear we're talking about more than one hire here)

 

[dowie]

The policy is about encouraging people who don't fit the tech stereotype to apply rather than mandating quotas or hiring sub-standard workers.

Google runs coding courses for women and people from poorer backgrounds (diversity isn't just about encouraging women). How could that possibly be a bad thing?

giving a benefit to one group because of their gender or race is generally a bad thing, why should one group of employees benefit from some internal course above others simply because of some inherent trait they have?

 

[dowie]

The courses aren't internal. They're open to the general public. Google also donates hardware to poorer schools too. As I said, this about encouraging a more diverse range of people to apply.

Nothing in the memo was criticising donating hardware to poorer schools, you're just conflating the discussion now by bringing in irrelevant things. The memo didn't blindly attack every possible effort to diversity the workforce so it would be a bit of a straw man argument to try and paint it that way, in fact the author tried suggesting ways to improve diversity. One of the objections was however related to internal training courses that excluded others based on some trait.

 

[dowie]

Sorry, I thought that you were still discussing the prospect of Google hiring sub-substandard workers.

I am, among other things (given the contents of the memo), I'm not sure what donating computers to poor schools has to do with this?

 

[dowie]

For all the positions that are incorrectly filled by inept female candidates because of positive discrimination, I bet there are many more male candidates that are incorerectly favoured in interviews and given job roles that they were in fact unsuitable for. Simply put, I don't think you're in any danger of the PC brigade scuppering your chances in life. I think the pendulum still firmly sways in the favour of the white male. We can't really deny that fact.

What are you basing that assumption on?

 

[dowie]

See above. Are you really honestly scared?

Bless ya. Is this like the impending Islamic takeover of the west too? Cute

You're not really making any sense, what does fear have to do with this? Have you got anything coherent to offer? At the moment you're just projecting perhaps instead try offering an argument.

 

[dowie]

He starts when an incorrect assertion and builds from there. The early days of software development saw a 50:50 mix of men and women. Clearly it isn't evolutionary traits that are holding women back. If women could succeed in the days of FORTRAN and COBOL, why can't they succeed in the days of JavaScript and Go?

Have women evolved since the 60s to make them less suited to technology? Or has the industry evolved to be less friendly towards women?

Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

As I said, he claims that the "average" women can't handle stress as well as the "average" man. No evidence, just stated as fact. Not that Google is even trying to hire the average man or woman anyway.

again as already pointed out there are hyperlinks removed from the article so we don't know for sure which claims are supported or unsupported with evidence, regardless I posted a paper earlier in the thread supporting that claim

as for programming in the 60s - it has changed a bit over the decades since the time of punchcards, mainframes and COBOL etc.. I'm not sure that there is much evidence that google is systematically biased against women but rather that their applicant pool is likely skewed massively towards men to begin with, the lack of women in tech perhaps could do with being addressed earlier.

Though supposing there were issues with biased hiring/discrimination - surely the better approach would be to work out where those are and try to eliminate them, by going for some token/diversity hires to fudge the numbers a bit you're just treating the symptoms not the cause, in fact you're potentially letting the underlying issues remain but just concealing them.

I suspect though the biggest causal factor here is simply the make up of the applicant pool.

 

[dowie]

The counter-argument is fairly obvious tho.

The more people see female judges, lawyers, programmers, etc... the greater the expectation of young women/girls that they can enter those professions too.

A tech scene where 80% are male might very well put school age girls off studying to enter a tech career.

/devil's advocate

I don't really see that as a counter argument (both can be true), nor do I see an issue per say in encouraging women to join tech firms. The author of them memo put forward some suggestions to try and help women in their careers - encouragement of part time work, less pressure in senior roles to encourage women to go for promotion etc...

 

[dowie]

There's nothing wrong with white men, and I doubt she said there was. There is something wrong with a group of nothing but white men.

but that isn't what is being quoted - specifically she's apparently said it is the "worst outcome"