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Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

179 points by mcenedella 9y ago

sauronlord 9y ago
I'm confused. There is no quotes, excerpts of said document. The only hint we have is that; - women choose to work with people, men with things Or something like that. However that is a psycho sociological FACT and studies show this to be true. The diversity programs are ridiculous. How come there are no diversity programs in the military, coal mines, and other jobs demanding hard labour and shitty working conditions? Apparently we want a 50% male - female split in the cushy office programming jobs, but not coal mines where 99.8% of employees are men. Why are employees wasting time at work gossiping about some other employee's power point slides/PDF? Don't they have work to do? We're not talking about crimes against humanity here, just a person's politically incorrect writings that seem slightly offensive. Thank God I don't work with the losers at Mother Google
jsiepkes 9y ago
A lot of people outraged but apparently no one was outraged enough to leak the document. Can't be that hard to leak the text in it anonymously.
- anon12345690 9y ago
  Even worse, all the outraged folk say you shouldnt bother trying to find it - guess its not worth forming our own opinions https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893324341630218241 https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893324341630218241
alanfranzoni 9y ago
I'd really like to see this document as a whole before judging. By the way, I think that being really open means listening to opinions without "rage quitting" for holding an unpopular opinion, or calling him a "racist" or "white male supremacy supporter", which is a way to turn down an argument whatever its merit is. Is the document's author a jerk? Let's explain that to him, and maybe shame him on a data-driven basis. Has the author some valid point, but went too far with speculations? Maybe he/she doesn't deserve all this uproar.
- lwansbrough 9y ago
  At the same time, if the data supported his claims, I wonder what Googlers would have to say. If Google wants the best, what is it willing to risk? Personally I think for most companies you're better off with a diverse crowd regardless, lest you end up with a bunch of out of touch yuppie guys trying to "change the world" by building an IOT coffee machine. That is to say, all types of diversity be it race, socioeconomic status, gender, etc. will inevitably contribute to your company's collective wisdom, which is probably generally has a larger impact than ensuring everyone you hire has all the sorting algorithms memorized.
  - alanfranzoni 9y ago
    That may be an issue. Of course, it depends on what you mean by "best". If "best" means "like me", you're at risk of creating a monoculture. Personally, I think that we should stop looking for "the best" at all times and enormously rewarding them, because this is creating a lot of disparity, and maybe "the best" sometimes carry with them some large drawback (possibly "the best" engineer spends 10 hour working, and 6 more hours a day studying in order to improve; but, then, his social life and his human skills may be... lacking). If we pick all the best in this sense, we may end up with a lot of similar, great people with a lot of drawbacks. What if we ask "is this candidate good" or "is this candidate really good"? We should try to identify a bar, then pick people (maybe randomly, maybe with a diversity target) that go beyond that bar without looking at finding "the best".
    - vostok 9y ago
      Or you could hire the best for a given role in a given context. Sometimes you need the whiz kid who can rewrite Torch from scratch in a weekend. It's OK if they eat the gunk between their toes. Sometimes you need the gregarious former athlete. It's OK if they got an A- in real analysis.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      Do you have any data that suggests that monoculture is bad? My anecdotal evidence suggests that monocultures are the most efficient and effective teams. An important note here is that culture != skin color. Being from the same culture expedites a lot of communication and results in easier/greater team cohesiveness. A study recently came out about diversity in communities (not workplaces). Diversity and civic engagement are inversely related. The more diverse a neighborhood fewer people vote, fewer people volunteer, they give less to charity, etc. I can't imagine there aren't similar impacts in the workplace. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
noncoml 9y ago
> replacing Google's diversity initiatives with policies that encourage "ideological diversity" I somehow think that if one aims for "ideological diversity" then "gender/race/minority diversity" will come for free. But the question is how to you target "ideological diversity" when hiring.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  "Ideological diversity" usually boils down to "fill the place up with people who think like me, the person calling for ideological diversity".
  - chronid 9y ago
    Judging by the reaction "diversity" also seem to boil down "fill the place up with people who think like me, the person calling for diversity". Also, extrapolating anything from a text we cannot see rapidly brings us in strawman arguments territory.
PoarNeemn 9y ago
It's not a secret that companies like Google hire women / minorities over better qualified men. Politically correct nonsense like this is how you end up with buggy code and security risks.
contergan 9y ago
> "I feel like there's a lot of pushback from white dudes who genuinely feel like diversity is lowering the bar," Well, it is, if they'd hire based on ability it'd mainly be a bunch of Asian and White males working there. Asians, especially Asian males, don't rank high enough on the average leftist's imaginary oppression scale to count as "diversity" - "diversity" being mostly code for "not White", "not male" and sometimes also "not Asian or Jewish".
thriftwy 9y ago
She's quoting five Twitter authors, only one of whom appears male. Still no confirmations about the sexism of the manifesto, but the article rolls out their own.
- crschmidt 9y ago
  The manifesto is sexist. The article is not.
holydude 9y ago
Sigh. Again an artificially created problem. I dunno maybe we all should work from home and interact with other entities using just handles.
- jgtrosh 9y ago
  Is it legal to employ anonymous people (or entities I guess) in any country? I guess both parties can pay taxes separately and I assume it has happened for some security research, insider info, special consulting, but I don't know if that's actually legal. (It seems to me to go against the common way for governments to regulate workforce.)
  - Klockan 9y ago
    HR is usually not involved in your actual job and they are the only ones at the company who need to know who you are.
snvzz 9y ago
Where's this manifesto? The story link is to some opinionated article that seems to hate it.
- chillydawg 9y ago
  Apparently everyone at google is too scared of getting fired for leaking it. Either that or they're all in bed.
fennecfoxen 9y ago
Google is substantially located in the Bay Area. Of course they hate ideological diversity, in practice if not in principle. It is an attitude common in their workforce. This is a tendentious statement, so I will relate my own experience. Once upon a time I was working in California, at a tiny startup, and was reading some election results from "back home" in North Carolina, which had just passed Amendment One by about a 3:2 margin. Observing the results thoughtfully, my coworker casually remarked "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people." I just quietly sat back and thought "why, how nice of you, sir, to refer to some unknown fraction of my family and the friends I had growing up in such a lovely manner." At one point my girlfriend (now an ex-girlfriend) attended a party that he was hosting. She had just left Missouri out of disgust for its Missouri-ness, and was very much in love with San Francisco and its people – yet left the party modestly offended – not for saying anyone in particular was bad this time, but just with all the best of intentions saying it was inevitable that they'd all come around to the modern views on things like gay marriage (and, in the process, utterly trivializing their religion, values, and world-views). I do not seek to cast him as a bad person for this remark. This is a man who, if anything, is one of the nicest people I know, easily far above the average, and a quitessential San Franciscan (well above and beyond your typical tech hipster). But he is immersed in a culture which specifically and explicitly denies human dignity of people who are not alike and do not think alike. This is very sad. You would think if there is one lesson we could take from the history of the US, religious tolerance in the colonies, slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, our wars with Native Americans, the likes of the Japanese Internment, women's suffrage, everything ... if there's one resounding strain here, it's that you don't un-people people. (but it's okay to un-people these people, because they're bad people!) In conclusion: I sympathize with this guy who wrote this manifesto. It is also unfortunate that, from what I hear and understand of the matter, this guy is factually in error, probably sexist, and almost certainly undermining his cause.
- DougBTX 9y ago
  > "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people." The worst thing here is the suggestion that there was 100% turnout, instead it was closer to 30%, so only about 20% voted for it. The amendment was found unconstitutional a short time afterwards anyway, finding that marriage is a fundamental right for everyone.
xendo 9y ago
I like how some of the commenters try to force HR to take an action by threatening to leave. That's hell of a way to promote diversity, and freedom to express yourself. Diversity is a double edge sword: you need to be able to accept other people opinions if you expect them to accept you. P.S. I obviously haven't read the document, and all the comments really reference only short statement without any context, so it's really hard to comment on it.
- majkinetor 9y ago
  Indeed. Honestly, I would let them leave. That atitude makes them IMO unfit for teamwork, if one such incident makes them abandon their jobs and blackmail entire department.
  - laughinghan 9y ago
    You and GP don't cite any commenter in particular, but none of the tweets mentioned in the article strike me as trying to force HR or blackmail anyone to do anything. They seem to me like they're saying they don't want to work somewhere their teammates think they're biologically inferior, but they're hoping that HR will ensure that people who think so don't stay on the team.
    - stagbeetle 9y ago
      Here you go: https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893287112732291072 https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893287112732291072 It was quoted in the main story.
      - laughinghan 9y ago
        That is exactly the tweet I had in mind. Does it not seem reasonable to you for someone not to want to work on a team where their coworkers think they're less biologically suited to the work, and to hope that HR agrees that they shouldn't be expected to work with such coworkers?
romanpoet 9y ago
Knowing nothing about the manifesto, the article's frequent use of weasel words makes me want to support to author of the manifesto.
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  Could you provide some examples of these weasel words?
koonsolo 9y ago
Why does US have these diversity problems? Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men? I can tell you, in Belgium, in my experience and what I hear, this is not an issue whatsoever. Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men. Do you really care so much whether the person you work with is male, female, black, white, comes from a different background, etc? I just want to work with people that I like and who can handle the job.
- ribfeast 9y ago
  Eh-- work in tech in Norway and our female engineers definitely feel outnumbered and sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there. That's in egalitarian Scandinavia.
  - makarb 9y ago
    The fact that women prefer to be around women just highlights the simple fact that men and women are fundamentally different and that egalitarianism is a pipe dream.
    - knorker 9y ago
      Is that a "fact"? http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-study/ http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-stud...
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    > sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there I do this, regularly, in the UK. I really, really don't want to be the sole target of the one bigot in the room who none of the other men think is a problem (or at least not enough to speak to) - I'm meeting people to enjoy myself, and navigating the social complexities involved in accommodating people who attack me based on gender (plus other visible things I can't do much about) is not fun. Having another woman present tends to result in such behaviour being dialed down a tonne, or at least the ability to step out with her for a few minutes.
DataWorker 9y ago
Hearsay, click bait and unproductive agitation all rolled into one. Vice used to have some redeeming qualities. I'm done with it as a news source.
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mindfulhack 9y ago
The 'biological differences between the sexes' is scientific data that needs to be mindfully assessed - Google of all companies ought to embrace this data and act on it accordingly. Statistically, I'd say there absolutely are majority differences between the sexes, so the sophisticated action is what do we do with this knowledge. It depends what the company wants to achieve. Some smarter R&D/focus group/more intelligent way of integrating diverse populations into the company's DNA, not just blunt diversity employee policies in some PR-friendly reactionary manner.
makarb 9y ago
The diversity of opinions of the article and the embedded tweets was to be expected. Is it so hard to write unbiased articles? ...
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Jugurtha 9y ago
Obligatory bit from Greg Wilson's "What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True". https://vimeo.com/9270320#t=1525s https://vimeo.com/9270320#t=1525s And the book recommendation: "Why Aren't More Women in Science?: Top Researchers Debate the Evidence". (researchers from either side of the arguments debate each other in the same book.)
this_is_an_acc 9y ago
This manifesto may or may not have a valid point, without seeing the contents we will likely never truly know. Apologies for the lengthy post to follow. Let me start by saying that diversity is always important. Without diversity you tend to end up with an echo chamber that produces things that are only worthwhile for the subset of people represented within the group. However, it is important to think about the cost that diversity targets can have on both the under-represented and over-represented groups within a company. Diversity targets for hiring or promotion will mean the over-represented group(s) will tend to view those who are hired or promoted with disdain. Meanwhile the under-represented group(s) may well doubt their position within the company, worrying that they are in their position only due to belonging to the flavour of the month diversity target. The other part is that members of the under-represented group who were previously employed on their own merits are likely to hold a similar position to that of the majority group(s), for similar reasons. Now it's time for an anecdote... My girlfriend works as an engineer in an oil and gas company. Her company is fully on board with the current gender diversity push, and has created several new positions at a fairly high level specifically to meet their diversity targets. These are high level positions with no one reporting to them in the current structure (which was defined by the massive restructure following the fall in oil prices). Her issues with the positions and their seniority boils down to education and time in the industry. If they were being filled by candidates based on skill, a large proportion of them would be male (and probably white). This would be because the vast majority of the people with the relevant experience are white males. By pushing the female agenda, she fears that not only will these roles be filled by poor candidates, it will also promote the stereotype that women are unsuitable for the job. There is room for diversity targets, but they must be mindful of the talent pool available for the specific job. Whilst it hurts at this point, the most reasonable course is to promote equality in education. If your company is hiring on skill, then the equality issues will resolve in time, without making anyone resentful of the first year grad who got promoted to team leader because the company needed to meet a quota. To derail myself slightly following the above wall of text. Would the current white, male disgruntlement be as bad had there not been the GFC etc, and the subsequent (and continuing layoffs/stagnation of wages?
chmike 9y ago
Ignoring or repressing that there are differences in women and men doesn't seam wise. However, there are a few important things to keep in mind about it. The difference is multivariate and some people may have some properties of the other gender. As a consequence, infering the capabilities of a person just from the gender written on the ID card is plain stupid. Another thing I want to say about this is that IT is a vast domain requiring various competences. Each gender has some properties that make it more fit for some of these competences. So in practice there is room for everybody. The conclusion is to get the right person for the job. The gender shouldn't be considered because the reality is not black and white. Base on this reasoning, complains about imbalance of gender quota or salaries are not acceptable. The salary is/should be attached to the job and performance, not the gender. In France we have a similar issue with the porportion of black football players in the national team. People who complain about that don't understand that they just picked the best players. This gender debate is the same problem.
- gspetr 9y ago
  > In France we have a similar issue with the porportion of black football players in the national team. People who complain about that don't understand that they just picked the best players. This gender debate is the same problem. I'd argue that it's not the same problem. I'm not French, but I doubt that there are calls to make the Football team more representative of the population by forcefully limiting the number of black people in football teams starting at the junior level. Which is what we effectively are seeing in the US - Harvard class of 2021 will be <50% white, while the country obviously isn't.
  - chmike 9y ago
    Sorry, but you have to reconsider you doubt. Check this https://fdebranche.com/2016/03/29/racisme-ordinaire-un-soir-de-match-de-lequipe-de-francetrop-de-noirs-grand-remplacement/ https://fdebranche.com/2016/03/29/racisme-ordinaire-un-soir-... This is now recurrent in France. It is the same problem because the argument invoked is that the proportion of people of color should match the one of the french population. So the women proportion in context X or Y should match the one of the population. That argument would be valid if people were chosen randomly, but that's obviously not the case. So this argument is really bogus and falling for it is the real problem.
panic 9y ago
The concept of "ideological diversity" is definitely a clever tactic for changing the subject away from gender and racial diversity. But that's all it is -- or are you really clamoring to hire people who think the world is flat, who believe monarchy is the only acceptable form of government, or who indent using precisely 17 spaces?
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throwaway123441 9y ago
Everything anyone will say publicly with their name about this, is lies. He did not shit on leftist values. That can't even be a misunderstanding, that was just a lie (plain and simple). He simply pointed out that society uses a mix of leftist and rightist values, and neither side is 100% right. Google has people openly say that "if you are republican then you should be fired" (and much much worse). Nobody will criticize these lies, because this is a witch hunt, and one where this guy must be publicly shamed and destroyed, and anyone who speaks up against it must also be destroyed. I hope many Googlers take notes and screenshots, because this is a clear discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen. I know some Google employees who are adding to their lists of future discrimination lawsuits. Harassment for political opinions. This is what happens if you express an opinion against the dogma that is "There is ZERO difference between genders, it's ALL societal, NOTHING innate". The guy started with a whole section about how you cannot use averages to judge individuals (he even had graphs showing exactly how you cannot), but that a 50/50 equal men/women engineering pool is not a realistic goal nor helpful because there are innate differences between men and women. He then sprinkled it with some cherry-picked and possibly incorrect research, but is the basic premise wrong? No.
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- throwaway123442 9y ago
  > He then sprinkled it with some cherry-picked and possibly incorrect research, but is the basic premise wrong? No. If I say "There are clear differences between the performance of black and white people on various cognitive tasks." That's a true statement. If I follow it up with "and that's due to the biological inferiority of the black race", I'm probably a racist, even though my basic premise is not wrong. The arguments one uses to support a conclusion are as important as the premises one started with.
gspetr 9y ago
> "If HR does nothing in this case, I will consider leaving this company for real for the first time in five years," she wrote in a threaded tweet. Maybe I'm missing something but since when did HR become the Thought Police? Do people actually believe that if you intimidate someone into silence they will stop having these thoughts? Last I checked the psychological research in this area suggested that people rebelled against it and doubled down, even if in private. And the threat itself - suppose she does leave the company and then what? A person that's ready to throw both a tantrum on social media and your company's reputation under the bus the moment she hears a colleague voice an unpopular opinion does not sound like a smash hit with hiring managers, more like a risk and a liability.
- throwaway123441 9y ago
  Welcome to Silicon Valley, where if you don't believe without evidence all the same things the others do, then you should be fired. Republican? Fire them. Point out that turns out there are more men in tech than women, maybe for innate reasons? Burn them! This is mainstream Silicon Valley opinion, and there will have to be lost discrimination law suits before it realizes just how discriminating and fascist this behavior is.
- cannonedhamster 9y ago
  Since forever? The job of HR is the protect the company. If a single employee is causing a problem that impacts work through the majority of the company they will find a way to remove the problem. There's a reason politics is generally discouraged at work. We're generally all guilty of it, but it leads to problems in unit cohesion. The military tends to handle this well with the whole "you'll think what the branch wants you to think" mentality because you literally cannot have infighting on the line. It also tends to make you a lot more tolerant of people when you're depending on them to watch your back.
- laughinghan 9y ago
  I'm not sure why you're interpreting that tweet as a threat to try to force HR to intimidate someone into stop having thoughts. Maybe she's saying she doesn't want to work somewhere her teammates think she's biologically inferior, but she's hoping that HR will ensure that person doesn't stay on the team?
chippy 9y ago
How can a journalist ever consider themselves to have self esteem in their work if they never read the primary documents that are central to the story? She writes: "Motherboard has not viewed the full document, but a screenshot we reviewed."... That's all! The article then follows is a kind of social media reaction recap. Possibly reactions by some people who also have not read the actual primary source, perhaps? (How can we tell?) Shoddy journalism if that is the case. I mean the whole thing sure sounds like it's pretty bad, but sounds like is literally hearsay and not good journalism. Edits - perhaps the author of the article has reasons for not publishing the screenshot they are basing their reporting on? Could it be copyright / permission from the document author, or the screenshot maker?
- koonsolo 9y ago
  Maybe if the journalist read the whole document, and made an honest story about it, we wouldn't be discussing it right now. Journalism is entertainment, don't expect something more. If you want to be informed, do your own investigation, or read a book written by someone who knows the stuff.
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throwaway2812 9y ago
I've read the doc. At first skim, I thought it was going to be a reasonable "stop the echochamber" style doc, that points out issues with over-loving diversity without thinking about the impact of it, and that decries the strong-left culture at Google that can be alienating to right-leaning employees. But in reality, dude went full /r/TheRedPill and The_Donald on this. I think the best description I heard of the doc was 'right diagnosis, but overall lazy'. The doc called for reinforcement of stereotypes and removal of mandatory bias training. I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so -- psychologists, analysts, people who look at data and key results, both empirically and academically. To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think. There have been some ridiculous, over the top reactions to the doc, but I think it was mostly a case of someone of privilege not understanding why diversity programs are in place and feeling empowered to shit on people without any because they scratched the surface of problems. Again, /r/TheRedPill style content. It did spark discussion, and I think the consensus is that while there are some valid points about the left-leaning employee base, the overall doc fails to adequately dig into the matter, and does so in a hostile way while decrying anyone who disagreed with OP. opinions my own.
- _0ffh 9y ago
  I'd like to read the thing to form an opinion. Unfortunately I have not found any links yet. Could you share, please? Also, about "but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so": That seems to be questionable. I know from a professional psychologist that diagnosis of unconscious bias and especially bias training are standing on extremely thin ice scientifically. The hypothesis that the whole bias training industry is a mix of financial exploitation of idologically overhyped and misinterpreted weak scientific results and well meaning but misguided do-goodism can be argued for quite confidently at this point.
  - usmeteora 9y ago
    https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320 https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di... I'd like to know your opinion about the neuroticism comment.
davidivadavid 9y ago
Is it just a coincidence that the subject was mentioned in a recent SSC article? http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...
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jamesdmiller 9y ago
This document will eventually be released if for no other reason then discovery in a lawsuit alleging Google has a hostile work environment.
manigandham 9y ago
Where is the actual manifesto? How can there be any judgement without the primary source?
factsaresacred 9y ago
Here it is for those who wish to read it (which should be everyone who voiced an opinion on it): http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320 http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-div... Edit: two paragraphs in and it's making lots of well reasoned points. Why the outrage? And why the outrage before the majority of people actually read the thing? Serves to prove the authors point.
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- plexicle 9y ago
  The first few paragraphs were the only reasonable parts of the entire document. It quickly goes off the rails. >Edit: two paragraphs in and it's making lots of well reasoned points. Why the outrage? And why the outrage before the majority of people actually read the thing? Ironic... did you actually read the thing? Past the first "two paragraphs," anyway?
  - throwaway080517 9y ago
    The personality trait section appears to at least be consistent with current findings[1]. I see a lot of comments on the article berating the "De-emphasize empathy" section as well, but it's starting to become clear empathy has a lot of bugs in it. Paul Bloom advocates for compassion instead of empathy[2]. There's definitely assumptions in the article e.g. Men (may) prefer coding due to the average innate preference of things vs people (and then vice versa for women)and the belief programs exclusive to minorities due more harm than good, but outside of those this seems like a fairly well researched document that, for better or worse, has a dissenting opinion from the group. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826203/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826203/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compassion/dp/0062339338 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...
glorkk 9y ago
> Motherboard has not viewed the full document, but a screenshot we reviewed shows it's titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber." How can you write an article about a document you have never read? It is a disgrace this Vice/Motherboard article is the first result on Google. This is not a news article, but a biased blog with a blatant political agenda.

179 points by mcenedella 9y ago

I'm confused. There is no quotes, excerpts of said document. The only hint we have is that; - women choose to work with people, men with things Or something like that. However that is a psycho sociological FACT and studies show this to be true. The diversity programs are ridiculous. How come there are no diversity programs in the military, coal mines, and other jobs demanding hard labour and shitty working conditions? Apparently we want a 50% male - female split in the cushy office programming jobs, but not coal mines where 99.8% of employees are men. Why are employees wasting time at work gossiping about some other employee's power point slides/PDF? Don't they have work to do? We're not talking about crimes against humanity here, just a person's politically incorrect writings that seem slightly offensive. Thank God I don't work with the losers at Mother Google

jsiepkes 9y ago

A lot of people outraged but apparently no one was outraged enough to leak the document. Can't be that hard to leak the text in it anonymously.

anon12345690 9y ago
Even worse, all the outraged folk say you shouldnt bother trying to find it - guess its not worth forming our own opinions https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893324341630218241 https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893324341630218241

alanfranzoni 9y ago

I'd really like to see this document as a whole before judging. By the way, I think that being really open means listening to opinions without "rage quitting" for holding an unpopular opinion, or calling him a "racist" or "white male supremacy supporter", which is a way to turn down an argument whatever its merit is. Is the document's author a jerk? Let's explain that to him, and maybe shame him on a data-driven basis. Has the author some valid point, but went too far with speculations? Maybe he/she doesn't deserve all this uproar.

lwansbrough 9y ago
At the same time, if the data supported his claims, I wonder what Googlers would have to say. If Google wants the best, what is it willing to risk? Personally I think for most companies you're better off with a diverse crowd regardless, lest you end up with a bunch of out of touch yuppie guys trying to "change the world" by building an IOT coffee machine. That is to say, all types of diversity be it race, socioeconomic status, gender, etc. will inevitably contribute to your company's collective wisdom, which is probably generally has a larger impact than ensuring everyone you hire has all the sorting algorithms memorized.
- alanfranzoni 9y ago
  That may be an issue. Of course, it depends on what you mean by "best". If "best" means "like me", you're at risk of creating a monoculture. Personally, I think that we should stop looking for "the best" at all times and enormously rewarding them, because this is creating a lot of disparity, and maybe "the best" sometimes carry with them some large drawback (possibly "the best" engineer spends 10 hour working, and 6 more hours a day studying in order to improve; but, then, his social life and his human skills may be... lacking). If we pick all the best in this sense, we may end up with a lot of similar, great people with a lot of drawbacks. What if we ask "is this candidate good" or "is this candidate really good"? We should try to identify a bar, then pick people (maybe randomly, maybe with a diversity target) that go beyond that bar without looking at finding "the best".
  - vostok 9y ago
    Or you could hire the best for a given role in a given context. Sometimes you need the whiz kid who can rewrite Torch from scratch in a weekend. It's OK if they eat the gunk between their toes. Sometimes you need the gregarious former athlete. It's OK if they got an A- in real analysis.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    Do you have any data that suggests that monoculture is bad? My anecdotal evidence suggests that monocultures are the most efficient and effective teams. An important note here is that culture != skin color. Being from the same culture expedites a lot of communication and results in easier/greater team cohesiveness. A study recently came out about diversity in communities (not workplaces). Diversity and civic engagement are inversely related. The more diverse a neighborhood fewer people vote, fewer people volunteer, they give less to charity, etc. I can't imagine there aren't similar impacts in the workplace. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...

noncoml 9y ago

> replacing Google's diversity initiatives with policies that encourage "ideological diversity" I somehow think that if one aims for "ideological diversity" then "gender/race/minority diversity" will come for free. But the question is how to you target "ideological diversity" when hiring.

ubernostrum 9y ago
"Ideological diversity" usually boils down to "fill the place up with people who think like me, the person calling for ideological diversity".
- chronid 9y ago
  Judging by the reaction "diversity" also seem to boil down "fill the place up with people who think like me, the person calling for diversity". Also, extrapolating anything from a text we cannot see rapidly brings us in strawman arguments territory.

PoarNeemn 9y ago

It's not a secret that companies like Google hire women / minorities over better qualified men. Politically correct nonsense like this is how you end up with buggy code and security risks.

contergan 9y ago

> "I feel like there's a lot of pushback from white dudes who genuinely feel like diversity is lowering the bar," Well, it is, if they'd hire based on ability it'd mainly be a bunch of Asian and White males working there. Asians, especially Asian males, don't rank high enough on the average leftist's imaginary oppression scale to count as "diversity" - "diversity" being mostly code for "not White", "not male" and sometimes also "not Asian or Jewish".

thriftwy 9y ago

She's quoting five Twitter authors, only one of whom appears male. Still no confirmations about the sexism of the manifesto, but the article rolls out their own.

crschmidt 9y ago
The manifesto is sexist. The article is not.

holydude 9y ago

Sigh. Again an artificially created problem. I dunno maybe we all should work from home and interact with other entities using just handles.

jgtrosh 9y ago
Is it legal to employ anonymous people (or entities I guess) in any country? I guess both parties can pay taxes separately and I assume it has happened for some security research, insider info, special consulting, but I don't know if that's actually legal. (It seems to me to go against the common way for governments to regulate workforce.)
- Klockan 9y ago
  HR is usually not involved in your actual job and they are the only ones at the company who need to know who you are.

snvzz 9y ago

Where's this manifesto? The story link is to some opinionated article that seems to hate it.

chillydawg 9y ago
Apparently everyone at google is too scared of getting fired for leaking it. Either that or they're all in bed.

fennecfoxen 9y ago

Google is substantially located in the Bay Area. Of course they hate ideological diversity, in practice if not in principle. It is an attitude common in their workforce. This is a tendentious statement, so I will relate my own experience. Once upon a time I was working in California, at a tiny startup, and was reading some election results from "back home" in North Carolina, which had just passed Amendment One by about a 3:2 margin. Observing the results thoughtfully, my coworker casually remarked "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people." I just quietly sat back and thought "why, how nice of you, sir, to refer to some unknown fraction of my family and the friends I had growing up in such a lovely manner." At one point my girlfriend (now an ex-girlfriend) attended a party that he was hosting. She had just left Missouri out of disgust for its Missouri-ness, and was very much in love with San Francisco and its people – yet left the party modestly offended – not for saying anyone in particular was bad this time, but just with all the best of intentions saying it was inevitable that they'd all come around to the modern views on things like gay marriage (and, in the process, utterly trivializing their religion, values, and world-views). I do not seek to cast him as a bad person for this remark. This is a man who, if anything, is one of the nicest people I know, easily far above the average, and a quitessential San Franciscan (well above and beyond your typical tech hipster). But he is immersed in a culture which specifically and explicitly denies human dignity of people who are not alike and do not think alike. This is very sad. You would think if there is one lesson we could take from the history of the US, religious tolerance in the colonies, slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, our wars with Native Americans, the likes of the Japanese Internment, women's suffrage, everything ... if there's one resounding strain here, it's that you don't un-people people. (but it's okay to un-people these people, because they're bad people!) In conclusion: I sympathize with this guy who wrote this manifesto. It is also unfortunate that, from what I hear and understand of the matter, this guy is factually in error, probably sexist, and almost certainly undermining his cause.

DougBTX 9y ago
> "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people." The worst thing here is the suggestion that there was 100% turnout, instead it was closer to 30%, so only about 20% voted for it. The amendment was found unconstitutional a short time afterwards anyway, finding that marriage is a fundamental right for everyone.

xendo 9y ago

I like how some of the commenters try to force HR to take an action by threatening to leave. That's hell of a way to promote diversity, and freedom to express yourself. Diversity is a double edge sword: you need to be able to accept other people opinions if you expect them to accept you. P.S. I obviously haven't read the document, and all the comments really reference only short statement without any context, so it's really hard to comment on it.

majkinetor 9y ago
Indeed. Honestly, I would let them leave. That atitude makes them IMO unfit for teamwork, if one such incident makes them abandon their jobs and blackmail entire department.
- laughinghan 9y ago
  You and GP don't cite any commenter in particular, but none of the tweets mentioned in the article strike me as trying to force HR or blackmail anyone to do anything. They seem to me like they're saying they don't want to work somewhere their teammates think they're biologically inferior, but they're hoping that HR will ensure that people who think so don't stay on the team.
  - stagbeetle 9y ago
    Here you go: https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893287112732291072 https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/893287112732291072 It was quoted in the main story.
    - laughinghan 9y ago
      That is exactly the tweet I had in mind. Does it not seem reasonable to you for someone not to want to work on a team where their coworkers think they're less biologically suited to the work, and to hope that HR agrees that they shouldn't be expected to work with such coworkers?

romanpoet 9y ago

Knowing nothing about the manifesto, the article's frequent use of weasel words makes me want to support to author of the manifesto.

drdeadringer 9y ago
Could you provide some examples of these weasel words?

koonsolo 9y ago

Why does US have these diversity problems? Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men? I can tell you, in Belgium, in my experience and what I hear, this is not an issue whatsoever. Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men. Do you really care so much whether the person you work with is male, female, black, white, comes from a different background, etc? I just want to work with people that I like and who can handle the job.

ribfeast 9y ago
Eh-- work in tech in Norway and our female engineers definitely feel outnumbered and sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there. That's in egalitarian Scandinavia.
- makarb 9y ago
  The fact that women prefer to be around women just highlights the simple fact that men and women are fundamentally different and that egalitarianism is a pipe dream.
  - knorker 9y ago
    Is that a "fact"? http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-study/ http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-stud...
- vertex-four 9y ago
  > sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there I do this, regularly, in the UK. I really, really don't want to be the sole target of the one bigot in the room who none of the other men think is a problem (or at least not enough to speak to) - I'm meeting people to enjoy myself, and navigating the social complexities involved in accommodating people who attack me based on gender (plus other visible things I can't do much about) is not fun. Having another woman present tends to result in such behaviour being dialed down a tonne, or at least the ability to step out with her for a few minutes.

DataWorker 9y ago

Hearsay, click bait and unproductive agitation all rolled into one. Vice used to have some redeeming qualities. I'm done with it as a news source.

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mindfulhack 9y ago

The 'biological differences between the sexes' is scientific data that needs to be mindfully assessed - Google of all companies ought to embrace this data and act on it accordingly. Statistically, I'd say there absolutely are majority differences between the sexes, so the sophisticated action is what do we do with this knowledge. It depends what the company wants to achieve. Some smarter R&D/focus group/more intelligent way of integrating diverse populations into the company's DNA, not just blunt diversity employee policies in some PR-friendly reactionary manner.

makarb 9y ago

The diversity of opinions of the article and the embedded tweets was to be expected. Is it so hard to write unbiased articles? ...

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Jugurtha 9y ago

Obligatory bit from Greg Wilson's "What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True". https://vimeo.com/9270320#t=1525s https://vimeo.com/9270320#t=1525s And the book recommendation: "Why Aren't More Women in Science?: Top Researchers Debate the Evidence". (researchers from either side of the arguments debate each other in the same book.)

this_is_an_acc 9y ago

This manifesto may or may not have a valid point, without seeing the contents we will likely never truly know. Apologies for the lengthy post to follow. Let me start by saying that diversity is always important. Without diversity you tend to end up with an echo chamber that produces things that are only worthwhile for the subset of people represented within the group. However, it is important to think about the cost that diversity targets can have on both the under-represented and over-represented groups within a company. Diversity targets for hiring or promotion will mean the over-represented group(s) will tend to view those who are hired or promoted with disdain. Meanwhile the under-represented group(s) may well doubt their position within the company, worrying that they are in their position only due to belonging to the flavour of the month diversity target. The other part is that members of the under-represented group who were previously employed on their own merits are likely to hold a similar position to that of the majority group(s), for similar reasons. Now it's time for an anecdote... My girlfriend works as an engineer in an oil and gas company. Her company is fully on board with the current gender diversity push, and has created several new positions at a fairly high level specifically to meet their diversity targets. These are high level positions with no one reporting to them in the current structure (which was defined by the massive restructure following the fall in oil prices). Her issues with the positions and their seniority boils down to education and time in the industry. If they were being filled by candidates based on skill, a large proportion of them would be male (and probably white). This would be because the vast majority of the people with the relevant experience are white males. By pushing the female agenda, she fears that not only will these roles be filled by poor candidates, it will also promote the stereotype that women are unsuitable for the job. There is room for diversity targets, but they must be mindful of the talent pool available for the specific job. Whilst it hurts at this point, the most reasonable course is to promote equality in education. If your company is hiring on skill, then the equality issues will resolve in time, without making anyone resentful of the first year grad who got promoted to team leader because the company needed to meet a quota. To derail myself slightly following the above wall of text. Would the current white, male disgruntlement be as bad had there not been the GFC etc, and the subsequent (and continuing layoffs/stagnation of wages?

chmike 9y ago

Ignoring or repressing that there are differences in women and men doesn't seam wise. However, there are a few important things to keep in mind about it. The difference is multivariate and some people may have some properties of the other gender. As a consequence, infering the capabilities of a person just from the gender written on the ID card is plain stupid. Another thing I want to say about this is that IT is a vast domain requiring various competences. Each gender has some properties that make it more fit for some of these competences. So in practice there is room for everybody. The conclusion is to get the right person for the job. The gender shouldn't be considered because the reality is not black and white. Base on this reasoning, complains about imbalance of gender quota or salaries are not acceptable. The salary is/should be attached to the job and performance, not the gender. In France we have a similar issue with the porportion of black football players in the national team. People who complain about that don't understand that they just picked the best players. This gender debate is the same problem.

gspetr 9y ago
> In France we have a similar issue with the porportion of black football players in the national team. People who complain about that don't understand that they just picked the best players. This gender debate is the same problem. I'd argue that it's not the same problem. I'm not French, but I doubt that there are calls to make the Football team more representative of the population by forcefully limiting the number of black people in football teams starting at the junior level. Which is what we effectively are seeing in the US - Harvard class of 2021 will be <50% white, while the country obviously isn't.
- chmike 9y ago
  Sorry, but you have to reconsider you doubt. Check this https://fdebranche.com/2016/03/29/racisme-ordinaire-un-soir-de-match-de-lequipe-de-francetrop-de-noirs-grand-remplacement/ https://fdebranche.com/2016/03/29/racisme-ordinaire-un-soir-... This is now recurrent in France. It is the same problem because the argument invoked is that the proportion of people of color should match the one of the french population. So the women proportion in context X or Y should match the one of the population. That argument would be valid if people were chosen randomly, but that's obviously not the case. So this argument is really bogus and falling for it is the real problem.

panic 9y ago

The concept of "ideological diversity" is definitely a clever tactic for changing the subject away from gender and racial diversity. But that's all it is -- or are you really clamoring to hire people who think the world is flat, who believe monarchy is the only acceptable form of government, or who indent using precisely 17 spaces?

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throwaway123441 9y ago

Everything anyone will say publicly with their name about this, is lies. He did not shit on leftist values. That can't even be a misunderstanding, that was just a lie (plain and simple). He simply pointed out that society uses a mix of leftist and rightist values, and neither side is 100% right. Google has people openly say that "if you are republican then you should be fired" (and much much worse). Nobody will criticize these lies, because this is a witch hunt, and one where this guy must be publicly shamed and destroyed, and anyone who speaks up against it must also be destroyed. I hope many Googlers take notes and screenshots, because this is a clear discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen. I know some Google employees who are adding to their lists of future discrimination lawsuits. Harassment for political opinions. This is what happens if you express an opinion against the dogma that is "There is ZERO difference between genders, it's ALL societal, NOTHING innate". The guy started with a whole section about how you cannot use averages to judge individuals (he even had graphs showing exactly how you cannot), but that a 50/50 equal men/women engineering pool is not a realistic goal nor helpful because there are innate differences between men and women. He then sprinkled it with some cherry-picked and possibly incorrect research, but is the basic premise wrong? No.

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throwaway123442 9y ago
> He then sprinkled it with some cherry-picked and possibly incorrect research, but is the basic premise wrong? No. If I say "There are clear differences between the performance of black and white people on various cognitive tasks." That's a true statement. If I follow it up with "and that's due to the biological inferiority of the black race", I'm probably a racist, even though my basic premise is not wrong. The arguments one uses to support a conclusion are as important as the premises one started with.

gspetr 9y ago

> "If HR does nothing in this case, I will consider leaving this company for real for the first time in five years," she wrote in a threaded tweet. Maybe I'm missing something but since when did HR become the Thought Police? Do people actually believe that if you intimidate someone into silence they will stop having these thoughts? Last I checked the psychological research in this area suggested that people rebelled against it and doubled down, even if in private. And the threat itself - suppose she does leave the company and then what? A person that's ready to throw both a tantrum on social media and your company's reputation under the bus the moment she hears a colleague voice an unpopular opinion does not sound like a smash hit with hiring managers, more like a risk and a liability.

throwaway123441 9y ago
Welcome to Silicon Valley, where if you don't believe without evidence all the same things the others do, then you should be fired. Republican? Fire them. Point out that turns out there are more men in tech than women, maybe for innate reasons? Burn them! This is mainstream Silicon Valley opinion, and there will have to be lost discrimination law suits before it realizes just how discriminating and fascist this behavior is.
cannonedhamster 9y ago
Since forever? The job of HR is the protect the company. If a single employee is causing a problem that impacts work through the majority of the company they will find a way to remove the problem. There's a reason politics is generally discouraged at work. We're generally all guilty of it, but it leads to problems in unit cohesion. The military tends to handle this well with the whole "you'll think what the branch wants you to think" mentality because you literally cannot have infighting on the line. It also tends to make you a lot more tolerant of people when you're depending on them to watch your back.
laughinghan 9y ago
I'm not sure why you're interpreting that tweet as a threat to try to force HR to intimidate someone into stop having thoughts. Maybe she's saying she doesn't want to work somewhere her teammates think she's biologically inferior, but she's hoping that HR will ensure that person doesn't stay on the team?

chippy 9y ago

How can a journalist ever consider themselves to have self esteem in their work if they never read the primary documents that are central to the story? She writes: "Motherboard has not viewed the full document, but a screenshot we reviewed."... That's all! The article then follows is a kind of social media reaction recap. Possibly reactions by some people who also have not read the actual primary source, perhaps? (How can we tell?) Shoddy journalism if that is the case. I mean the whole thing sure sounds like it's pretty bad, but sounds like is literally hearsay and not good journalism. Edits - perhaps the author of the article has reasons for not publishing the screenshot they are basing their reporting on? Could it be copyright / permission from the document author, or the screenshot maker?

koonsolo 9y ago
Maybe if the journalist read the whole document, and made an honest story about it, we wouldn't be discussing it right now. Journalism is entertainment, don't expect something more. If you want to be informed, do your own investigation, or read a book written by someone who knows the stuff.
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throwaway2812 9y ago

I've read the doc. At first skim, I thought it was going to be a reasonable "stop the echochamber" style doc, that points out issues with over-loving diversity without thinking about the impact of it, and that decries the strong-left culture at Google that can be alienating to right-leaning employees. But in reality, dude went full /r/TheRedPill and The_Donald on this. I think the best description I heard of the doc was 'right diagnosis, but overall lazy'. The doc called for reinforcement of stereotypes and removal of mandatory bias training. I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so -- psychologists, analysts, people who look at data and key results, both empirically and academically. To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think. There have been some ridiculous, over the top reactions to the doc, but I think it was mostly a case of someone of privilege not understanding why diversity programs are in place and feeling empowered to shit on people without any because they scratched the surface of problems. Again, /r/TheRedPill style content. It did spark discussion, and I think the consensus is that while there are some valid points about the left-leaning employee base, the overall doc fails to adequately dig into the matter, and does so in a hostile way while decrying anyone who disagreed with OP. opinions my own.

_0ffh 9y ago
I'd like to read the thing to form an opinion. Unfortunately I have not found any links yet. Could you share, please? Also, about "but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so": That seems to be questionable. I know from a professional psychologist that diagnosis of unconscious bias and especially bias training are standing on extremely thin ice scientifically. The hypothesis that the whole bias training industry is a mix of financial exploitation of idologically overhyped and misinterpreted weak scientific results and well meaning but misguided do-goodism can be argued for quite confidently at this point.
- usmeteora 9y ago
  https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320 https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di... I'd like to know your opinion about the neuroticism comment.

davidivadavid 9y ago

Is it just a coincidence that the subject was mentioned in a recent SSC article? http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...

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jamesdmiller 9y ago

This document will eventually be released if for no other reason then discovery in a lawsuit alleging Google has a hostile work environment.

manigandham 9y ago

Where is the actual manifesto? How can there be any judgement without the primary source?

factsaresacred 9y ago

Here it is for those who wish to read it (which should be everyone who voiced an opinion on it): http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320 http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-div... Edit: two paragraphs in and it's making lots of well reasoned points. Why the outrage? And why the outrage before the majority of people actually read the thing? Serves to prove the authors point.

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plexicle 9y ago
The first few paragraphs were the only reasonable parts of the entire document. It quickly goes off the rails. >Edit: two paragraphs in and it's making lots of well reasoned points. Why the outrage? And why the outrage before the majority of people actually read the thing? Ironic... did you actually read the thing? Past the first "two paragraphs," anyway?
- throwaway080517 9y ago
  The personality trait section appears to at least be consistent with current findings[1]. I see a lot of comments on the article berating the "De-emphasize empathy" section as well, but it's starting to become clear empathy has a lot of bugs in it. Paul Bloom advocates for compassion instead of empathy[2]. There's definitely assumptions in the article e.g. Men (may) prefer coding due to the average innate preference of things vs people (and then vice versa for women)and the belief programs exclusive to minorities due more harm than good, but outside of those this seems like a fairly well researched document that, for better or worse, has a dissenting opinion from the group. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826203/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826203/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compassion/dp/0062339338 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...

glorkk 9y ago

> Motherboard has not viewed the full document, but a screenshot we reviewed shows it's titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber." How can you write an article about a document you have never read? It is a disgrace this Vice/Motherboard article is the first result on Google. This is not a news article, but a biased blog with a blatant political agenda.