21 ms·

About This Googler's Manifesto

• interpol_p 9y ago
  It's just embarrassing at this point that an engineer at a well known company like Google even thinks like this. (The original author, not Yonatan.) Reading the original manifesto felt like something my 17-year-old self would write. Too clever and completely oblivious at the same time.
  • Barrin92 9y ago
    yep. Some other article looked into some comments made by googlers discussing this 'manifesto' and the supporter comments could have come straight from 4chan. Glad that a senior engineer speaks out about this. No company needs to tolerate troglodytes. I work in finance and when something even fractionally as frivolous as this would have been published you would find yourself out of employment five minutes later. I consider the unprofessional startup culture that some companies like Google explicitly fostered to be at least partially responsible.
  • TimTheTinker 9y ago
    I understood the original manifesto's main argument to be against intentional, institutional discrimination (e.g. affirmative action) -- with many supporting points. I don't know what's shameful about that (unless you're referring to something else). He did seem to value gender equality in the sense that men and women should be valued and respected equally (unless I'm reading into it).
    • interpol_p 9y ago
      Except for the fact that it implies that men are in higher, more well paid positions because of inherent biological traits. If you truly believe people are equal and deserving of equal treatment then you must see a society where white men are the most powerful, most privileged class, as a failure of society. The author cannot claim to believe in equality and then go on to justify inequality with biological traits.
      • H4CK3RM4N 9y ago
        But if the biological innate differences exist, why must they be disregarded?
      • searealist 9y ago
        The manifesto author is arguing for equality of opportunity. It's possible to have this and end up with different outcomes because of differing abilities or priorities. Also, Whites are _underrepresented_ in tech relative to their percentage of the population. edit: The parent edited their comment to remove the "white" qualifier from "men".
        • interpol_p 9y ago
          And women are much more severely underrepresented in tech. So why argue against fixing that? It will simply make the tech industry better.
          • smsm42 9y ago
            I don't think the original author argued against fixing it, I think he advocated different approach to fixing it, based on different understanding of what "it" is.
            • interpol_p 9y ago
              By eliminating programs intended to help increase diversity, by "de-emphasising empathy" and by making Google more of a safe space for people with viewpoints similar to his own. Got it!
              • smsm42 9y ago
                > By eliminating programs intended to help increase diversity The key words here are "intended to". There's a difference between doing something and intending to do something. Unfortunately, intending to do something is sometimes not enough to actually do something - you also have to do it in the right way, otherwise you might intend to do one thing and instead do another thing. > de-emphasising empathy Not the best sound-bite, which of course means it will get quoted a lot. Happens to techies, not all of them are good writers, yet less of them can write a text that would be robust under hostile interpretation. The point, however, was to use data instead of feel-good anecdotes. > making Google more of a safe space for people with viewpoints similar to his own What's wrong with making Google more safe for people working there?
  • hindsightbias 9y ago
    I have this thing about reading footnotes first: "I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason." I miss the days when libertarians weren't ashamed to admit so. But back then, they could debate the difference between von Mises and Hayek. Today... not so much. Ideology isn't Book Deep, it's Google Search Deep.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • CalChris 9y ago
      There are no libertarian issues involved in this kerfuffle. This is a corporation, a free association of people, and an individual. If Google wants to shitcan the OP, von Mises is silent on the subject. The big bad state of CA is silent on the subject as well. And I don't think any classical liberals would find a kindred spirit in him regardless of how he labels himself. Also, he does say Stop alienating conservatives. So let's get that charade over with and just call him a conservative and dispense with any libertarian nonsense.
      • smsm42 9y ago
        Your presumption is that only a conservative can be against alienating conservatives, and a true libertarian would be OK with whatever is done to conservatives - after all, he's not one, so who cares about those people?
        • CalChris 9y ago
          You're kind've chasing your tail there. I wasn't aware that libertarians would be against alienating conservatives but then totally ok with alienating women because Hayek.
          • smsm42 9y ago
            > I wasn't aware that libertarians would be against alienating conservatives Because it's only not OK to alienate people who we agree with, but the idea of having civil discussion with people we disagree with... who needs that? Just call them names, chase them out and be done with it! Do you think this is the libertarian way? Where did you meet libertarians like these? > then totally ok with alienating women because Hayek. Err what? Who you are arguing with here? Nobody said it's "ok with alienating women" and Hayek has nothing to do with it. Could you please leave that strawman alone, he needs a well-deserved rest.
  • LyndsySimon 9y ago
    > It's just embarrassing at this point that an engineer at a well known company like Google even thinks like this. (The original author, not Yonatan.) Is this not exactly the sort of reaction that the author is speaking against when he refers to "viewpoint diversity"?
    • interpol_p 9y ago
      I'm sure the women who work with him love that his "viewpoint diversity" considers them to be more neurotic, less able to deal with stress, and less suited to the high demands of a senior Google engineering role than himself!
      • ukj 9y ago
        Not than himself. Than men. You understand how Gaussian distributions work, yes?
        • interpol_p 9y ago
          You and I are not reading the same manifesto. This guy clearly thinks less of the women he works with. There is no way he sees his female co-workers as equal while publishing rubbish like this. And I doubt women engineers at Google would read that and feel very pleased about it. Yeah I understand Gaussian distributions. I also understand the emotional tone of the original manifesto and the discriminatory thinking behind it disguised in its academic, reasonable, and rational voice.
          • MichaelGG 9y ago
            I think Asians are generally shorter than me. But if a 6'2 Asian is standing next to me, I don't think that particular person is shorter than me. It's perfectly reasonable for him to say the 50/50 ratio might not be ideal, and maybe biology plays a role, while still believing his colleagues are competent.
            • 9y ago
  • Aunche 9y ago
    I'll admit that there are several problems with the Googler's manifesto. However, it's more embarrassing that the Medium writer chooses to attack a strawman instead of addressing the entire point of the manifesto in the first place.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • Goladus 9y ago
    No, Yonatan Zunger is the one who should be embarassed. He lies in his very first paragraph, setting up a straw man which is consistently relied upon throughout the piece. The original manifesto is thoughtful, articulate, thorough, and sincere. It provides a basis for dialog, discussion, and disagreement. Zunger's article is mostly a pile of fallacious rhetoric that by chance raises a few interesting ideas that could be twisted into a legitimate counter-argument to a couple of the manifesto's points if you tried really hard.
• jackfraser 9y ago
  What an incredibly intellectually lazy way of attempting to deconstruct that manifesto this is! > 1.I’m not going to spend any length of time on (1); if anyone wishes to provide details as to how nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect "This is wrong, I don't have to tell you why" is a pitiful statement in and of itself, and perhaps more importantly, is not an argument. The author merely positions himself against the document with this, with no justification other than to reference fields that have shown themselves to have bias against reliable statistics relating to the subject matter in question. > Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. Yes and no. Specialties exist for a reason, and fields like "ux designer", "customer success coach", etc. exist because there's a clear need for people with those skillsets. If engineers were adept at that - and yes, of course some are, but most don't seem to be - then those professions wouldn't have broken out into their own domains of knowledge as quickly and at as large of a scale as they have. That aside, this entire line of thought isn't much of an argument, because: > If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. I don't think the manifesto author ever said that men were incapable of empathy, or that they should never use it. He does suggest that being able to separate oneself from emotion is useful in a technical argument; I'll concur that ego can get in the way of making the right choice (e.g. Not Invented Here syndrome). There's a clear difference between your own emotional state, and your ability to empathize with another's. In an ideal state, we are calm and collected with our own emotions and avoid letting them make decisions for us, while considering the emotions of others. Neurotypical people of all genders are entirely capable of doing this; the approach may differ, but if the author is at all suggesting that we need women in order to be able to have empathy in an engineering context, he's essentially saying men are incapable of the same, which is palpably incorrect. > It’s true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people’s emotional needs and so on — this is something that makes them better engineers, not worse ones. An unfounded assumption. Women are not merely socialized to be better at this; they've evolved to be better at it. This is true across every civilization in history; the gender role is an outcome of the evolved behaviour, which has teleological value in terms of its benefit to interpersonal relationships and successful propagation of family lines. Suggesting that it's merely a "socialized" thing is part of a chain of argument that leads down the path of believing that all humans are blank slates oppressed into particular behaviours, which runs contrary to all the research. Stephen Pinker is a great resource if one wants to find out more about this. > What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas. Ad-hominems aside, the argument here is that people with different political ideas should simply stay quiet. The original manifesto author made it clear that he's on-side with the growing number of people in the Western world that are becoming increasingly tired of being told that they aren't allowed to present their opinions. The original essay was not mean, hurtful, hateful, or scathing; it may have been wrong, in one's view, but to call it harmful implies the exact kind of emotion-based reasoning that we need to be able to avoid when dealing with sensitive or ego-bound topics. > I am no longer even at the company and I’ve had to spend half of the past day talking to people and cleaning up the mess you’ve made. This isn't your job, and nobody made you do that; if anything, you've been part of the Streisand Effect, whereing more and more people talking about something in order to "clean up the mess" simply spreads the mess wider. > Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? Do you think that the manifesto author is going to act like a Mad Men caricature and harass women or refuse to work with them? What evidence has made you think so? Is having a strict personal adherence to a corporate-approved philosophy a requirement at this workplace? How is that justifiable? > good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, How is physical violence even remotely a reasonable thing to suggest in response to an essay? I have got to assume that Zunger was actually _angry_ at the time of typing this, because the emotion - bordering on hatred - is evident in this last segment. > But our company is committed to maintaining a good environment for all of its people, and if one person is determined to thwart that, the solution is pretty clear.² "All of its people" is a set that is known to contain a non-zero number of people that agree with this manifesto author. If the way that you maintain a good environment for your chosen group of people is to simply remove everyone that doesn't perfectly fit the mold, it may be dishonest to use language that makes you sound magnanimous or ecumenical when the true goal really is division and a lack of diversity. All in all, a poor response, not much better than the official one from the company, that does nothing to address the legitimate concerns raised and rather seeks to sweep the problems back under the rug for the comfort of all involved. It might work this time, and the next time, but eventually if there's going to be any settled truth to this matter, we'll have to have open discussions about it instead of simply shutting it down.
• zorpner 9y ago
  Perhaps more interestingly, the author does not appear to understand engineering. This guy gets it. It's a deep temptation to abstract engineering away from humanism, but the idea that code can solve problems is an immature understanding of software. People have the problems; people provide the solutions. Code is a tool & intermediary, and hardly essential to the act of problem-solving.
  • searealist 9y ago
    Then Google itself doesn't "get it", given how their interview process values technical qualities above all else.
    • yongjik 9y ago
      Google's interview process is to guarantee basic technical competency. However you cannot reliably gauge social competency in a 4-hour interview: that's why Google will later look at the evaluation by your coworkers to determine your promotion. Before joining armchair HR quarterbacking, it might help you to consider that Google is one of the most successful IT companies and the post you read is by a successful and well-respected ex-Googler. If you can think up something in 30 seconds, they've thought about that.
      • searealist 9y ago
        This is the opposite of what Google looks for in an engineer. They look for basic social competency but technical excellence. I think you got the wrong impression from my post. I am not criticizing Google's HR department here. I am simply pointing out that it is in opposition to the medium article's assertions.
        • diegs 9y ago
          What Yonatan and the parent are saying is that what Google "looks for in an engineer" applies to what is possible to screen for during hiring, which is only the very start of your career at Google. In your actual career at Google pure technical ability it is very little of what Google "looks for"; that's necessary but not sufficient at all. Very few engineers are promoted for pure technical prowess; more often it's a combination of technical ability and EQ, or even just EQ. Mostly it's a function of impact, which requires getting shit done, which requires working well with others. The top engineers at Google (Jeff Dean, Sanjay, Yonatan, etc.) are known for being phenomenal mentors, managers, and leaders--not just phenomenal engineers. It's easy to be cynical and focus on instances where this is not true, but in my experience I agree with the parent that on the whole Google is quite good at managing its engineering org. In a XX,XXX person engineering org you're going to have some anomalies. And those are the ones that make these sorts of manifestos that are picked up by the media. Remember that Michael O. Church also worked at Google for a while and had a similarly controversial impact during his time there (look it up if you're unfamiliar). Source: I'm a xoogler.
• carsongross 9y ago
  As with the original post, I look forward to the thoughtful, tightly reasoned and unemotional discussion that this post will generate.
  • akras14 9y ago
    Haha
• lol2143651 9y ago
  The easiest way to see the article is just fighting a strawman of the original manifesto is to notice the article never directly quotes the manifesto.
  • maehwasu 9y ago
    To quote the original manifesto would be to normalize hatred.
    • alexmat 9y ago
      If I quote Hitler in a debate about world war 2, am I normalizing the Holocaust?
      • ngoldbaum 9y ago
        Yes
        • alexmat 9y ago
          So everything is black and white now and we've lost all room for nuance and grey areas? Seems like that kind of environment would stifle the exploration of difficult subject matter.
      • TimTheTinker 9y ago
        Buzzzzzz. Godwin's law.
        • alexmat 9y ago
          I hope you're joking. If not, I am reminded of the scene from Idiocracy and being on the receiving end of: "You talk like a fag and your shits all retarded."
          • TimTheTinker 9y ago
            Intended in fun only. Hope I didn't give offense :-)
• maehwasu 9y ago
  > What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas. The author seems to assume this is obviously false, and neatly avoids the fact that in many companies, industries, and academic settings, there are indeed a large fraction of people who are not good enough to do their jobs, and are only kept in those jobs because of political ideas.
  • hiptobecubic 9y ago
    The document was written by a Googler about Google and is being commented on by a Xoogler that literally just left the company. It's not a general statement about human incompetence. It's about Google specifically.
  • lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
    >citation needed
• lol2143651 9y ago
  Not an argument
  • Barrin92 9y ago
    there is no need for one. Google is a company, not a marketplace for people's prejudices. They have every right to shut discourse like this down, and they should because it is insulting to every women working at Google. The good thing about being a company instead of a townhall is that you don't need to accomodate adolescent men feeling insecure about their female coworkers.
    • TimTheTinker 9y ago
      I didn't see anything in the "manifesto" that seemed insulting to women... care to elaborate?
      • Barrin92 9y ago
        saying that women are biologically worse engineers would be the primary candidate
        • TimTheTinker 9y ago
          I didn't see that at all. What I understood him to be saying was that on average (across society), there are various biological differences. I don't see any insult there, intended or not. I thought his only intent was to argue against institutionalized discrimination.
          • thehardsphere 9y ago
            It was. Apparently, lots of people either haven't read the "manifesto", or have but have read into it something not explicitly stated by the author. I think some critics have claimed that the things explicitly stated by the author implictly mean something bad, but they haven't actually made the effort of showing that conclusion is supported by anything the author wrote.
• to_bpr 9y ago
  Is there any other professional industry as politically divided and toxic as tech has become? Is there any other industry in which private companies shove their "values" down the throats of their employees in the manner we experience in tech?
  • lol2143651 9y ago
    Is there any other industry as thoroughly intertwined with the Bay Area? I think the political problems are tied to the far left geography.
  • DenisM 9y ago
    Academia. Not an industry, but still a field of professional activity.
    • Gatsky 9y ago
      This is absolutely true.
    • atom-morgan 9y ago
      And Susan Fowler said academia is more sexist than tech. Which one is more liberal? https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/880949030900989953?refsrc=email&s=11 https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/880949030900989953...)
  • bboreham 9y ago
    When I worked at a large bank we had mandatory classes in the company values, and adherence to the values was explicitly measured in annual appraisals.
  • thinkingemote 9y ago
    It's just American and silicon valley tech. Not world-wide.
  • DrBazza 9y ago
    Arguably politics is a profession. Just look at recent elections in the US and the UK to see how nasty it can get.
• searealist 9y ago
  > You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it. This sets the tone for the entire article: An emotionally driven rant that refutes nothing and argues against a strawman.
  • Goladus 9y ago
    And yet, it has 178 upvotes at the time of posting.
    • cropsieboss 9y ago
      Because postmodernist and neomarxist ideas are appealing to idealists dreaming of utopia. It's quite weird that an article with 0 citations, 0 proper rebuttals of arguments in the original manifesto gets so much attention. It is pure leftist circlejerk. For example, show me a single study demonstrating proper effectiveness of unconscious bias training. HR departments in FB and Google have those. Studies of the effectiveness do not exist or show no effectiveness. HR in many companies is comprised of leftist sociology, psychology majors who disregard results in their own fields which do not align with their equity for all philosophy.
      • am1988 9y ago
        HTe original was pure conservative (oh I'm sorry, "classical liberal") circle jerk about how poor (er... upper middle class) white males are being discriminated against and are such victims nowadays. Pepper in some dog-whistle sexism and little digs at the left and you have a nice manifesto.
        • Goladus 9y ago
          Apparently anyone to the right of utter insanity is now a conservative. Most of the responses to the manifesto so far do nothing but absolutely confirm the validity of the central thesis. Unable to defend their sick ideology on its own merits in spirited debate, the radical progressives engage in lying, shaming, manipulation, intimidation, coercion, cyber-mobbing, grandstanding-- anything to shut the discussion down without actually addressing or debunking any of the points made. It is vile and reprehensible. The original piece is the opposite of a circle-jerk. It is a call to dialog. It is a call to openness (a LIBERAL value!). It is a rigorous challenge that anyone with the merest shred of intellectual integrity will recognize as legitimate and sincere. Progressives have the opportunity to respond honorably and engage with sincere and honest arguments, trusting that when truth prevails their side will be victorious on the merits of their ideas. Although it might be too late. The lying sacks of shit in the left wing echo chamber (The Guardian, etc.) have already decided brand this an "anti-diversity screed" and promote a deceitful, defamatory narrative of a google employee who just handle diversity. It is an absolute disgrace.
• seibelj 9y ago
  I won't say anything positive or negative about either the original post or the rebuttal because publicly touching any of this is career suicide. But I will comment that as assertive the original author was about things, citing various facts and studies, was not the rebuttal similar in repeatedly saying the original author was wrong and citing his own studies? Can anyone in social science really say anything is fact? Social science is about the weakest "science" there is in terms of absolute proof and sureities
  • orangecat 9y ago
    The rebuttal cited no studies. It asserts that the manifesto's claims about gender "flies directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades", and as far as I can tell this is utterly false.
    • nopatternhere 9y ago
      What's great is the next sentence: "But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else." So, you know it is false, completely, and that we should ignore it because it is false, but you are unqualified to provide any examples? Sigh.
  • ggggtez 9y ago
    Read the authors other posts on the same medium blog for his rebuttal of your arguments. I'd rather not paraphrase.
• CalChris 9y ago
  [flagged] Mods, you can have all of my points if you'll unflag this story. It is extremely well written by someone who could well have been in the OP's chain of command and who knows the company culture. Edit: thanks mods, the article has been unflagged.
  • Eric_WVGG 9y ago
    Same. This reflects very poorly on YC/HN.
• evangelista 9y ago
  I do not like this article or the author's approach to argumentation. The author attempts to argue like this: "I am so right I do not have to argue why I am right and even if I did, you would be too dumb to understand it. waves hands around vaguely there is lots of science proving everything I think is true. I am too lazy to cite any of it or even indicate what arguments you made specifically are wrong, online people back me up on this please. Therefore: SEXIST! YOU ARE A SEXIST PIG AND HAVE HURT PEOPLE'S FEELINGS AND I WOULD HAVE YOU FIRED!" </end article> This approach to arguing is exactly why I left the Democratic Party last year and won't be coming back until it changes. The behavior of the online mobs supporting Liberal causes (especially in high tech) turned me off so thoroughly I can never return. Stereotyping everything you disagree with as racist, sexist or the general category of "nazi" no longer impresses me. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO START ACTUALLY BACKING UP YOUR ASSERTIONS, THE BULLYING APPROACH HAS STOPPED WORKING. Anyways, so lets spend a minute talking about the piles of imaginary science the author believes to exist for a moment. Are you sitting down? Zero. There is zero science, anywhere, stating that 50% of women MUST be engineers. There is none. The idea that 50% of engineers MUST be women is a WANT. It is a GOAL. It is a DESIRE. At no point in history has 50% of engineering EVER been done by women, WHY must we all agree that this is a rational objective? Where the tech industry gets it wrong is that it has decided to RAM this opinion down everyone's throats and force them to adhere to ever more stringent speech and behavioral codes and attempt to make everything in tech so bland, so PC, so placid, so devoid of argumentation or competition that perhaps we can vaguely tempt a woman or two into joining a bunch of sweaty engineers in a basement and chug Red Bull all night to push shitty code to a failing server on AWS. Surely more training in micro-agressions is the problem keeping women away and not the disgusting pit stains. Right? After ten years of diversity summits, women who code, peer pressure, online mobs ranting...the net effect has been a completely imperceptible change in the number of women working at Facebook and Google. This approach and all the feel good antics and cheerleading surrounding it has failed. Who needs imaginary science to show us that women don't really want to be engineers when we have reality? Yet we are all supposed to buy completely into the notion that at some point in the future, if all sexism and other barriers are removed, that 50% of engineers WILL be women. Why must that be true? What I think the goal SHOULD be is that 100% of women should have mentorship, access to education, representation, engineering peers and early tutelage. Of the women who have talent at engineering, they should all be able to find placements in engineering if they do the work necessary. And why is it always engineering? Why not coal mining? Why not nuclear engineering? Pig farming? Deep sea fishing? Plumbing? Carpentry? Why the incessant, unrelenting insistance from all corners that 50% of engineers MUST be women and no other profession? Every time I ask this question, I am informed that: "We have banned people from asking why 50% of nurses are not men." Why have you banned people from asking this question? Have you banned them from asking this question because you are right? Or have you banned people from asking this question because the answer makes you uncomfortable and does not support your worldview?
• TheCoreh 9y ago
  I'd seriously like to know if the author meant this literally: > a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face If that's indeed the case, isn't that on itself a huge problem we should deal with? If someone is risking being a victim of physical violence on the workplace over disagreements on political positions we should be seriously concerned.
  • notjack 9y ago
    This is not a disagreement on political positions, this is a belief that women are inherently less capable than men at software engineering. It's a direct attack on the legitimacy and humanity of his coworkers. A disagreement over political positions would be if the author wrote a manifesto about the efficacy of sin taxes or nuclear treaties, not that his teammate Sandra is biologically inferior at her job and undeserving of it.
    • MichaelGG 9y ago
      It's no different than a guy in the NBA wondering out loud if the bias towards men might have a biological component, so that even if the systemic barriers are removed, we might expect far different than 50/50 female/male in the NBA. But no one thinks that - it's obviously silly because physical attributes are so obvious. So we'll use Wikipedia as a perfect summary of all the research on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc... "significantly higher variance in male scores, resulting in more than twice as many men as women scoring in the top 2%." But certainly that study and all the others are just wrong, or they're measuring the wrong thing and it's not applicable to software. I dunno, perhaps the ratio should be 45/55 once the systemic bias is removed. Or maybe it's 55/45 - maybe the systemic bias is beyond terrible and males are worse at software and we've got it all backwards. Doesn't seem like there's anything supporting 50/50 other than some weird notion that everyone's not physically equal at all, but somehow our brains are.
      • nopatternhere 9y ago
        I hate the high end examples, because people want to argue them. The case is also true the other way - there are more men at the bottom of the IQ scale. Can someone come up with a reason why an IQ test would make men appear more often in the bottom of IQ distributions?
• Scaevolus 9y ago
  "(2) Perhaps more interestingly, the author does not appear to understand engineering." The manifesto's author has a degree in Biology, not Computer Science. He probably learned enough programming on his own time to pass a technical interview, but never learned the "softer" parts of a CS degree that address working effectively as a team. Programmers without degrees miss bits of the standard curriculum, often rigorous algorithmic analysis, but deciding that empathy is irrelevant to such a communal enterprise is a unique deduction!
  • ukj 9y ago
    Not unique. Lacking nuance (a.k.a biased?). I have reached similar deduction based on my suspicion that I suffer from EDD. I don't think I understand what empathy is. Perhaps as a concept, but I have a hard time putting it in practice (according to others). On the other hand, I poses exceptional analytical rigor (bullshit detector?) that (combined with my lack of empathy) manifests as what people often call "somebody who speaks his mind". I lack tact. Another hypothesis is that I am just a selfish jerk. An asshole. Or an introvert. I don't really know - I have many hypothesis. Bayesian analysis proves difficult. Either way - this predisposition me, no - forces me to function in the world despite my deficiencies. And so I'd like to think that I am succeeding at being useful, even without empathy, but it is blatantly obvious that I gravitate towards problems where I don't have to deal with humans too often. All in all, though - I think this opinion is somewhat consistent with the observation that "man systemize, women empathize"? That insight alone is sufficient for me to know (and accept) that any team I am on, needs the counter-balance of an empath to mitigate the risk of my shortcommings.
• kyrre 9y ago
  > (1) Despite speaking very authoritatively, the author does not appear to understand gender. > I’m not going to spend any length of time on (1) ... I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else. heh
  • cropsieboss 9y ago
    Yeah, and somehow he knows it goes against nearly all research. That manifesto is obviously inspired by recent rise in popularity of Jordan B Peterson. That guy is a very good psychologist.
    • jgrowl 9y ago
      I was thinking the same thing. There a lot of points he brought up that Peterson brings up, especially about neuroticism and conscientiousness. Maybe a little of Sam Harris thrown in there too. I saw people in the comments on gizmodo freaking out about the point about avoiding empathy. It's a nuanced point that is completely lost on them that compassion can be a better trait than empathy.
      • Aron 9y ago
        Yeah that was my impression as well. He's been travelling the same Jordan Peterson/Sam Harris circuit I have. I could probably list the reasons but just his use of Big Five personality traits makes it highly likely. I think to some extent this Googler may survive his effort to Larry Summer himself simply because his arguments are so familiar at this point. If he had actually said true things that hadn't already been circulating as a standard counter-narrative, he'd probably have fewer supporters and die on his cross.
    • ue_ 9y ago
      He may be a good psychologist, but he frequently speaks on political issues in which he appears to be consistently misinformed, especially his conception on postmodernism, Marxism and the nature of proof[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/405200126236311554?lang=en https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/40520012623631155...
• dlwdlw 9y ago
  There's a bit if immaturity in the manifesto despite it being very rational and well-reason. In my mind, it's the immaturity of a rich kid who is very intelligent, having had the best teachers, and also well meaning and trying to do good. To understand what affirmative action actually tries to do it must be understood that there are 2 primary types of moats. One is a "Test Moat" that tests required abilities. A firefighter being able to carry 100 pounds is an example. The other is a "Privilege Moat". This is primarily based around gating access to resources to a privileged few to create abundance. This gating is socially created and maintained. These moats have a lot of overlap. Asking a candidate if they know what a 'function' is is a simple type of test moat. Asking a web developer to create a red-black tree on the fly is a privilege moat. (Google is in a bit of a strange spot as there is a widespread belief that web developer who DOES know how to create a red-black tree on the fly is better than one who doesn't. Most companies do not have the attraction or excess capacity to actually care about this, they take what they can get. (or stupidly mimic the Google process) They don't have the bandwidth to care about privilege moats.) The moat being sacred is the capstone for the delusion that allows selfishness to be hidden and prevents growth of moral guilt. Privilege moats not only gate access but also must assuage guilt. Test moats naturally grow into privilege moats over time. Especially as the tested skill becomes commoditized. The existing base naturally feels threatened. Affirmative action is about de-sacredizing privilege moats. It is primarily destructive in nature. There's no nice way to shit over something. It's primary purpose is to destroy specific types of culture. Even today, the culture of "White man's Burden" is still being destroyed and is generally considered a good thing that it is. In Google's case, de-sacredization may primarily be about recognizing that certain skills are nice to have but not NECESSARY. It lowers the bar because new candidates will no longer be able to keep up with passionate Haskell discussion during lunchtime on break from adjusting CSS. Going a step further, it is de-sacredization of the idea that your work must be your life. That you must live and breath code to be a "real" coder. This idea CANNOT co-exist with the idea that coding needs to become a core competency. I don't live and breath reading and writing but I still read and write. This touches on the author's valid point that certain positions have more stress and that the development of male gender roles to be more feminine has lagged behind. (I have a pet theory that this is driven by lack of economic incentive and is due to Americas obsession over money. Cultures that value psychological and familial happiness/health may be further along in developing the flexibility of male gender roles) However, this valid point is mixed up with the real privilege moats that should be adjusted. The author is overall well meaning and representative of valid thoughts and ideas and deserves none of the flak he has taken. He simply had more courage. Bring up these ideas and absorbing them to create a counter-idea is what can inspire real change. Many self-described liberals are very hypocritical in this respect, creating privilege moats based on capacity for self censorship. What I've mostly described here are bars that are lowered because they are needlessly high. However another motivation for lowering bars are their second order effects. It creates role models and opens up a potential life path in the eyes of children. It makes a domain seem friendlier and more enforced (less unsaid social requirements). It can also be somewhat apologetic in extreme cases. The affirmative action movements for African Americans in the U.S. and the lower castes in India come to mind. Without affirmative action, the initial momentum and privilege for certain subgroups would continuously compound and maintain tiers of ability/people. All tiers would theoretically grow together, but the relative distance would grow. Capitalism does this too via the initial capital allocation. Growing relative distance creates a sense of unfairness and unless there is infinite abundance, market auction dynamics will cause the upper tiers to have almost everything. Very poor people can have instant connection to their friends via facebook but still be fighting a headwind when trying to pull themselves out of poverty. (There is expectation that the government maintains a decent privilege moat so that its citizens can live abundant lives, enforced with guns if necessary. The only governments that can't do this are those where moats of ineffective because the issue is already within the moat. China/India have their hands full.) Notice how affirmative action for things like education (candles lighting candles) is much more accepted than affirmative action for capital (zero sum). The tech-gender-gap story is somewhere in the middle. Does tech create enough abundance that it can effectively be infinite for all people int he bay area? Is it artificial scarcity due to greedy execs? Will lowering the cultural bar for Google cause it to become uncool and cause the cool smart people to leave? who knows...
• tibiapejagala 9y ago
  I might partially or totally disagree with the original manifest, but this reply is repulsive. I would never want to have a "senior" like this. So much emphasis on how senior he is, how junior you have to write something so wrong. How OP's career is over. The 3rd point reads like navy seals copypasta but with HR instead. If you don't see any other way to deal with OP's views than described in this belittling rant, than you are no more senior than he is. And a minor nitpick about this rant's top highlight: >Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. This is a non-statement. Replace 'engineering' with science, medicine, finance, customer service, politics, retail, programming etc., and it will sound as correct.
  • ggggtez 9y ago
    On that last sentence, that's the whole point. The manifesto claims empathy for colleagues and customers is not required, but clearly it is.
    • nopatternhere 9y ago
      > The manifesto claims empathy for colleagues and customers is not required, but clearly it is. Can you help me understand how you reached that conclusion? Here is the relevant section of the original: > De-emphasise empathy. > I've heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.
      • nl 9y ago
        Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts. This is wrong. Emotions - feeling - are part of what makes teams work together well and make products work with people. The reply linked on this post says it well: Engineering is not the art of building devices; it’s the art of fixing problems. Devices are a means, not an end. Fixing problems means first of all understanding them — and since the whole purpose of the things we do is to fix problems in the outside world, problems involving people, that means that understanding people, and the ways in which they will interact with your system, is fundamental to every step of building a system. (This is so key that we have a bunch of entire job ladders — PM’s and UX’ers and so on — who have done nothing but specialize in those problems. But the presence of specialists doesn’t mean engineers are off the hook; far from it. Engineering leaders absolutely need to understand product deeply; it’s a core job requirement.) Note the part I quoted above. I didn't quote this part: relying on affective empathy — feeling another's pain — causes us to focus on anecdotes, favour individuals similar to us, and harbour other irrational and dangerous biases is completely wrong. I struggle to think of a more wrong way of explaining empathy - I think it is fair to say that the author's idea of what empathy feels like is completely different to what the rest of the world thinks. For the fact biased amongst us (which I am) I'd note that there is no citation given.
• deleted 9y ago
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• Uhhrrr 9y ago
  This essay is just bad. In section 1 the author presupposes that the facts presented in the original post are false (but then fluffs on presenting any evidence for this). Maybe he's right! If someone else writes that piece, it would be a valuable contribution. In section 2 he writes about the social aspect of engineering, which certainly exists, but pretends that being engaged and interested in the technical side of things doesn't matter at all. Ignoring technical details while creating your planet-scale system is like trying to fly a C-130 in a vacuum. Section 3 is straight bullying.
  • Inconel 9y ago
    Section 3 is most troubling to me as well, even if I can mostly agree with some of his other points. I particularly enjoyed the notion of the manifesto's author being punched in the face while at work, and this being a reason Mr Zunger couldn't have other people working with him, rather than perhaps requiring those people not punch others in the face. In a different scenario this kind of attitude towards workplace violence might be labelled victim blaming. As an aside, I always wonder whether people like Mr Zunger, who are seemingly so nonchalant in their casual dismissal of the use of violence against those they disagree with, have every had this kind of violence visited upon themselves. In an effort to be charitable, I'm going to assume it comes from a position of privilege and ignorance, rather than malice.
    • nl 9y ago
      You realize that the "punch in the face" line is a philosophical point about how angry the author made people, right? If someone did actually punch the author in the face they would (and should) be fired and charged with assault.
      • Inconel 9y ago
        Hmm, I'm not a native English speaker, although I do consider myself fluent at this point, and I'm not terribly bright, so I fully admit I could be misinterpreting things, but the quote didn't seem particularly philosophical to me, it read quite literal. I suppose I might categorize it as hyperbole, although even in that case, I typically don't like the use of such hyperbole when it comes to violence. It has a habit of detracting from otherwise sensible points.
• Grue3 9y ago
  A good example of what senior managers at Google think of people who actually write their code. The manifesto writer is an idiot, but this Yonatan Zunger guy doesn't paint himself in a good light here either.
• lsh123 9y ago
  "It’s true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people’s emotional needs and so on — this is something that makes them better engineers, not worse ones." Looks like the author of this blog post agrees with the author of the manifesto on his main point.
  • roguecoder 9y ago
    "Socialized" is the key word here: these skills are taught, and thus are learnable. There is no excuse for men not learning these skills once they discover they lack them.
• Keeeeeeeks 9y ago
  Tl;Dr red pillers can dream; if they work hard enough, they too can embarrass themselves while employed at top tech companies
• deleted 9y ago
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• tvaughan 9y ago
  And this is what happens when all we care about is if a person can balance a b-tree from memory in a job interview.
• pacala 9y ago
  > And as for its impact on you: 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. Textbook thoughtcrime punishment. The heretic must be isolated and extirpated, with physical violence for good measure. Don't you dare interact with him, or else you'll be ostracized as well.
  • irl_zebra 9y ago
    I believe he's talking about punishing the overt act of publishing this large manifesto and the negative consequences that flow from it. Not the thinking or discussing his views.
    • muninn_ 9y ago
      Shouldn't even be talking about it. It's simply not an option. Violence is not acceptable. Period. Discussing it as a repercussion for a possibly misguided manifesto is not an option. It's disgusting.
      • mcphage 9y ago
        Meh, some people respond to insults with violence. It's not great, but the idea that attacking people verbally is somehow "better" than attacking them physically is wrong.
        • scarmig 9y ago
          Are you seriously stating that insulting/offending people is equal in moral gravity to punching them? I read the manifesto and thought it was stupid in most of its claims. But it's not hard to feel like thoughtcrime has become a real thing nowadays.
• Overtonwindow 9y ago
  I'm deeply troubled by the response to this "manifesto". Pitchforks are out for this guy, and when they find him, it won't be pretty. I think that's wrong. He has expressed his opinion, and people are free to confront, and denounce him all they want. But this guy might lose his job. His career. All for voicing his opinion. I don't think it matters that he did this internally. Had he stood up at a discussion in Palo Alto and said these words, the pitchforks would still be out. Our country has reached a dangerous fork in its evolution where the freedom to speak can literally ruin your life. There was a time when people were, and still are, shot for speaking their minds. Is this the natural evolution we are heading towards?
  • Lagged2Death 9y ago
    But this guy might lose his job. His career. All for voicing his opinion. This has always been true and I can't understand how you would imagine it was ever otherwise.
    • unityByFreedom 9y ago
      Right. Firing at-will is legal. Firing on the basis of a protected class, such as race or gender, is grounds for a lawsuit.
    • philwelch 9y ago
      I'm not sure if you're being defensive or cynical here. It's true that people have always lost their jobs and careers (sometimes lives!) for voicing unpopular opinions. What's interesting is how people's moral judgment of that correlates with their sympathy for the particularly unpopular opinion in question. Lots of people lost their jobs and careers for voicing opinions that were sympathetic to Communism, and we call that "McCarthyism" and "a witch hunt". This guy loses his job and many of us would cheer for it.
      • Lagged2Death 9y ago
        I don't know that much about McCarthyism but I think it's safe to guess that you know less. It was considered a witch hunt because nobody cared about facts or evidence, the spectacle was the point. Victims we're persecuted because they were juicy, suceptible targets, not because of anything they did or didn't do. The situation we're discussing here is pretty different.
• gnl 9y ago
  The amount of emotionally charged black and white thinking that permeates this debate is mind-boggling, as is the ability of the outraged side to create a straw man out of thin air through cherry-picking and blatant misinterpretation. Truly one of the most impressive displays of mental gymnastics I have seen and I'm not sure which is more terrifying - the idea that this is done unconsciously or consciously. From the original manifesto: > [...] I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. [...] > [...] Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. [...] > [...] If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. [...] > [...] Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story. [...] > [...] Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions. [...] > [...] I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. [...] > [...] I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism). [...] Gizmodo's summary: > In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and is titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the author argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women. From Zunger's post: > You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it. How any person of average intelligence possessing a modest grasp of the English language can draw these conclusions is beyond me. Granted there is an argument to be made for the manifesto's author not doing the best possible job of expressing himself in such a way as to increase the likelihood of sparking a civil debate on what is clearly a very sensitive issue. I am also not the biggest fan of his preoccupation with the one-dimensional and in my opinion overly simplistic left/right political spectrum. I will not argue for or against the specific conclusions he draws in regard to the role of genetics in the different distribution of traits among men and women, as I have neither the time nor the interest to look into the research (nor the opportunity, really, as a number of links have been apparently omitted from the publication, which, one might assume, lead to sources the author was basing his arguments on). What I do find fascinating however, and the reason I'm writing this, is that I see someone basically going "guys, have we actually stopped to consider that maybe that could be one of the reasons why we're observing this and if not why not - here's what I think" while doing everything humanly possible to emphasize that they are in no way denying that there is a problem and in no way suggesting that that is the only reason. And instead of getting "yes we did and here's what we concluded and why" or "no we didn't, let's talk about it", they're viciously shamed and attacked for entertaining the very thought. A comment here referred to this as thoughtcrime punishment and I couldn't agree more. This is plain and simply dogma at work, and the way I see it, it has no place among intelligent people engaged in science and/or engineering. And yet here we are. We have no problem accepting that differing trait distribution between different genetic groups can be a significant factor in a disproportionate representation of some groups in certain fields - soldiers in combat roles, construction workers, athletes, etc. And yet when it comes to the brain, suggesting a similar difference is suddenly taboo. Even before doing any research, the idea that the brain is somehow exempt from all of this seems highly questionable and would merit the most rigorous examination to confirm or reject. Here's a thought though - it doesn't matter to this debate. We could talk about if/why men are on average better/worse than women in whatever and throw around studies until we are blue in the face, but in the end when someone wants to do a job, the only thing that should matter is - can that person deliver. We need to be focused on making sure that this is indeed the only thing that matters and let natural tendencies and capabilities produce whatever representation of genetic groups they produce and if it's similar to the general population that's fine and if it's not, that's fine too. Let me emphasize again, that we're already doing this in many fields. Everyone is not born equal. We know that's true, we know enough about genetics to recognize that differing distribution of traits among genetic groups are a thing and yet we're so terrified of being seen as racist or sexist, that we'll keep a few precious blindspots no matter what and defend them to the death whenever someone dares suggest that we might want to shine a light on them. Another thought - there are children growing up right now that don't understand race. I guess some might even be lucky enough that they don't understand gender. They see different people with different skin, hair, features, body shapes, genitals, skills, manners, likes and dislikes. They'd do perfectly fine going through life with the simple understanding that 'yes, people are different', but then we get to them and explain how, you see, this group of people is oppressing that group of people, these people are like this and those are like that, and instead of seeing individuals we teach them to see the emotionally charged baggage-ladden labels that we insist on slapping on everyone - black people and white people, men and women, gay and straight, African American, Hispanic American, Chinese American, Native American and so on. Significant, lasting cultural change doesn't happen overnight, it takes decades and it takes children looking at the world with fresh eyes and adults capable of recognising their biases and making sure to die without passing them on in order to make place for someone better. Of course, discrimination is a problem that needs some solution now rather than in decades. It's likely too late for the adults among us to erase our biases. We can recognize we have them, we can minimize them and we can put measures in place to make sure they can't do too much damage - blind paper reviews/auditions/tests as well as bias awareness training strike me as solutions that can only do good. Among other things, we're most definitely missing out on brilliant female engineers in CS due to sexism and an often toxic environment, which is clearly a lose-lose situation for everyone. I think it's worth considering that we might just be missing out on brilliant male engineers as well, due to affirmative action, which is also sexism. Forcefully engineering and moulding society into whatever shape someone decided it's supposed to have through positive discrimination isn't change. It's the appearance of change, while fueling social conflict, hurting economical, technological and scientific progress and drawing the lines that divide us, thus reinforcing the very foundation of racism, sexism, religious intolerance and any of the countless other stupid reasons we come up with to fight each other - seeing people as members of a group rather than individuals. I'd like to suggest we take a step back and reevaluate whether we're more interested in pragmatic solutions that genuinely lead to a stronger, happier and more harmonious society or in playing make-believe and indulging in some justice fantasy with a very questionable basis in reality.
• ahmedahamid 9y ago
  Quite honestly, the most concerning thing to me about this whole manifesto is the outright dismissive reaction it is getting from everyone. I know that some people agree with the author and I want to see his point of view studied, analyzed and critiqued in the most objective and thorough manner possible. For instance, do we have evidence on gender biases among different engineering roles? If the answer is yes, is this bias due to organic inclinations attributable to inherent gender differences? Is any part of such inclinations - if any - historically/socially constructed? If it is something that has historical roots, is imposing diversity rules and regulations a temporary/transient measure necessary to counter an existing imbalance until unfair advantage is extenuated? Or is it something we need to maintain indefinitely? Without rigorous examination of the claims in this manifesto, we are running the risk of having a growing base of believers of an under-scrutinized opinion, individuals who do not speak their minds solely due to social pressure.
• cameldrv 9y ago
  The irony is that one of the touted business case reasons for diversity is that it gives a diversity of perspectives and ideas, which can be useful to solving a problem. I agree with this analysis. If we listen to Yontan though, any team that has a member with a different perspective will be punched in the face. That's a very clear argument for homogenous teams, at least as long as you don't want a workplace with constant fistfights.
  • unityByFreedom 9y ago
    > The irony is that one of the touted business case reasons for diversity is that it gives a diversity of perspectives and ideas, which can be useful to solving a problem. I agree with this analysis. If we listen to Yontan though, any team that has a member with a different perspective will be punched in the face. That's a very clear argument for homogenous teams, at least as long as you don't want a workplace with constant fistfights Excluding people who have prejudices towards men and women does not mean you have "homogenous teams". It may mean you have fewer conservatives. Also, some folks' ideas are so extreme that they exclude others' rights. We've seen this throughout history with conservatives. Working rights, voting rights, and marriage rights. The woman who denied gay marriage licenses did it on the basis that her right to express her religion was being infringed upon. Who's being exclusive there? The woman, or the gay men who wanted to get married?
• edison85 9y ago
  Having read the full manifesto, I find myself agreeing with the author's thought process for a bunch of his points and clearly disagreeing with others. He presented them well, not offensive at all, and if I had a discussion with him I'm sure he seems open to change certain beliefs if presented with ample evidence. I would generally love talking to this guy. Instead everyone shames him, tells him his mostly very valid thought process is sexist and his career is done. This guy woukd never discuss this with anyone and things will go on as they do today or worse he'll ostracize the left completely and will go in his own bubble and no positive change. This is what happened with Trump, an acquaintance posted on Facebook how the gender wage gap was almost nonexistent at the same job, industry and role but how we should instead work towards empowering women to better deal with promotions and re entering work force after pregnancy and unanimously got destroyed by maybe a hundred fb friends. He removed most of them and started jut posting pro trump stuff and I don't blame him
  • am1988 9y ago
    I'm reading it now and it comes off as another (very well off) conservative complaining about how they are oppressed and discriminated against. It's no different than the narratives peddled about white genocide or christian oppression. > I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason I am so very shocked by that.
  • unityByFreedom 9y ago
    > Instead everyone shames him, tells him his mostly very valid thought process is sexist and his career is done What? This guy has gotten an unbelievable amount of attention and debate on the topic he wanted to discuss, both in support and against it. Trump got the same attention, and constantly complained he didn't get enough. Enough with this lie that certain [far right] conservatives don't get enough press. They get plenty of it by making outlandish statements that they know will get them lots of attention, both good and bad.
    • fatso83 9y ago
      You fail to see the difference between attention and actual debate. Very few of the opposing views actually try to dissect his statements, but choose to rant away. Yonatan's piece being a prime example of an ad hominem that attacks views he never once wrote in favour of. It's also quite dishonest of you to liken a reasonably well written, source referenced piece with the rants from the clown in the oval office. The manifest was to start a debate, not chants of MAGA. Instead of general statements about outlandish remarks, attack what he actually said.
• Udik 9y ago
  So basically Yonatan Zunger is saying that the fact the women are underrepresented among Google engineers depends entirely from the misogynistic attitude of the company, and that its interviewers are maschilist assholes. So, he says, it took him "half of the past day" to try to fix the mess caused by a guy that dared to suggest that maybe the company and its employees are not such misogynistic assholes after all. Excellent job!
• throwaway72695 9y ago
  I posted this in another thread where the entire thread got flagged. This response on medium is scary and demonstrates what I’m concerned about. At this point the left has gotten to a point where witch hunts, blacklisting, exclusion, and suggesting that people could acceptably be subject to violence, for thought crime are accepted and encouraged tactics. I’m a closeted conservative in tech, hence the throwaway account. Some of what the manifesto said is overly broad or wrong headed, in particular at least from my perspective generalizing views held by conservatives on climate change and similar issues, but one thing in particular stood out: The left and by extension Google do not tolerate diversity of viewpoint or worldview. Diversity of race or sex is viewed as critical but real diversity, that of the lens through which people view the world is to be stomped out with prejudice. If you don’t agree with the leftist secular view you are a bigot. If you are religious you must apologize for your bigotry and convince others it is only a social activity or something private that won’t affect how you behave or what you believe in other spheres. As a conservative orthodox Catholic and a devotee of Saint Josemariá Escrivá, I feel like I have to hide my faith and my views. If people understood that my devotion to doing my work as perfectly and as generously as I can is driven by my desire to serve God and mankind they would be shocked and disappointed. Even worse, my views on the existence of an absolute unchanging morality would be viewed as bigotry even though I don’t advocate discrimination and am willing to happily work beside those who believe and practice differently. It is not enough that we work side by side and treat each other with respect, I must believe and accept leftist dogma in my heart or I am a bigot and I am unfit to write code, work with others, or function in a management role. From my perspective the exclusion, demonization and intolerance from the left for those who dare to merely believe and live their own lives differently is terrifying. I don’t know how we come back from the current state of things to a liberal, open society where diversity of belief and viewpoint is prized.
  • roguecoder 9y ago
    Why on earth do you think people should be expected to tolerate a "diversity of views" on whether they are inherently less qualified than white men?
• lsh123 9y ago
  When people I manage ask me about career advice, I always start from "Love what you do, do what you love". Over the years I saw a few examples of people who were pushed into mathematics, computer science, etc. by parents or environment but who didn't like it. Some changed their careers (my high school classmate opened a backery after a few years at Google - she absolutely loves it and would never go back to technology. I believe we are all different and this is a good thing. The real hard social issue I think is that not all jobs are considered lucrative by the society (which is also reflected in the pay). In the ideal world, there would be good well paying jobs for everyone to fulfill their dreams.
• zwischenzug 9y ago
  'I’m not going to spend any length of time on (1); if anyone wishes to provide details as to how nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect,¹ and flies directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades, they should go for it. But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else.' Ironic that he confuses gender and sex here, further emphasizing his ignorance. The general point about flying 'directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades' is not only not true, it's absurdly so: https://www.google.com/search?q=autism+extreme+maleness+baron+cohen https://www.google.com/search?q=autism+extreme+maleness+baro... https://iancommunity.org/cs/understanding_research/extreme_male_brain https://iancommunity.org/cs/understanding_research/extreme_m... and this exactly is in the area of 'systematising' and 'empathy' that the original author tries to provoke discussion on. I also find it interesting that the original memo discusses supposed gender differences arising from sex that 'women in tech' discussion frequently puts forward, viz that women are less likely to ask for pay rises.
• boazgo 9y ago
  I'm Boaz from [Team Sabotage]. Our group handled these leaks so I want to address a few points about what we do. Team Sabotage was started in 2015 as an evolution of the Memegen Consensus group. Since then we have successfully leaked the existence of Memegen itself, the Yes At Google mailing list and, more recently, the Anti-diversity manifesto and the official company memo about it. Our reasons to do so are powerful ones: We want everyone to be aware of what Google is really like on the inside: an extension of a college dorm that encourages childish and unprofessional behavior as part of the company's culture. If you think Google execs have a faulty moral compass, you can't imagine how bad it is among many of it's employees. To all the Googlers who started tweeting about this before it was public: What the hell where you thinking? I'm talking to you, Jaana Dogan, who threatened to leave Google if HR didn't fire the person who wrote the manifesto. Well, what are you waiting for? Feel free to downvote this into oblivion and ban this account. At this point Team Sabotage has in excess of 500 members across all of Google's product areas and there's nothing you can do to stop us.
• andy_ppp 9y ago
  Ugh... having staff is going to be a pain the the arse isn't it :-/ I'm guessing if this guy knew everyone he worked with, say ~ 50 people, he would not dare to write something like this. And yes I'm talking about both of these manifestos.
• gnl 9y ago
  Something just occurred to me, which isn't directly related to the original article, but is I believe relevant to the debate that ensued around it. Apart from any ethical, social and economical considerations, one of the easiest arguments to make against sexism is that even from the point of view of pure self-interest it is plain stupid. Passing on a perfectly qualified candidate because of what's between their legs (assuming that's not directly relevant to the position in question) is completely irrational and self-sabotaging. While there may be high quality studies proving a preferable distribution of certain relevant traits in men or women, that information gives you at best some minimally higher chance that if you were to pick someone at random from the group with the better distribution they might be slightly more capable in that one particular way, maybe, which may or may not result in a higher qualification for the position depending on countless other factors and their combination or interaction with the trait in question. In other words it's completely worthless compared to the much more precise and specific information that you can gather from directly evaluating the individual in front of you. Here's a thought experiment on the topic of enforced diversity. Disclaimer - I'm pulling the numbers out of the air and they aren't relevant. The example is also a little contrived for the sake of argument, I'm just trying to illustrate a principle. Let's say we have a medical university that admits 100 candidates. The admission tests are administered and evaluated blindly, the professionals responsible for the evaluation aren't aware of anyone's gender, ethnicity, age, looks, they don't have any information beyond the content of the tests. They have also undergone bias awareness training, just in case, because why not. The 500 candidates who apply are ranked according to their test results. In addition to these anti-bias measures, the university has a diversity goal of admitting 50% women (medicine is probably not the best example for this, but bear with me here). Now whether the enforcement of those goals is written in stone or strongly recommended with whatever pressure/incentives behind it, the result is quotas. As it happens, for whatever mix of reasons, genetical, prenatal, environmental or social, at this particular time in this particular place only 40% of the top 100 happen to be women. The diversity goals however dictate that 50% must be admitted, so 10 men will be refused admission in favor of ten less qualified women. Let's say for the sake of argument that they all graduate successfully. And now let's say I have to undergo a medical procedure and pick a doctor. I know for a fact that all 10 doctors available to me have been to the very same university. Not being an MD myself and not having any recommendations, I am in no position to judge their qualifications, so all I have to rely on is gut feeling and metadata. And I know for a fact that there's a higher chance that a female doctor from that university has been admitted on quotas instead of skill and I'd know that chance is higher even without the information how many women were in the top 100 because of the very possibility which does not exist for men. And now I end up in a position where gender mainstreaming and diversity efforts, in particular quotas, somehow managed to make sexism a reasonable, rational basis for making a decision, which wouldn't have occurred to me in a thousand years. Without quotas, I have no good reason to care about my doctor's genitals or the color of their skin. With them I just might. If that's not shooting yourself in the foot, I don't know what is.
• smithsmith 9y ago
  This point has been already made by Eric Raymond in his article "Women in computing: first, get the problem right" http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2118 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2118
• es2017 9y ago
  I am a female engineer and I partially agreed with the original manifesto. To be pragmatic, I rather work with a qualified SWE than someone hired by lowering the hiring bar due to political correctness. I am also fed up with the empty assumption that diversity will bring positive productivity. What is the problem with meritocracy? I think any competitive SWE (regardless of the gender) will not be intimidated by such manifesto.
• elevenfist 9y ago
  Wow, I can't believe these comments. I give. HN is stupid. Programmers are by and large stupid, we just have a set of specialized skills. I'm starting to understand now why so much code is documented so poorly. And yet, there's smart posts like these that give me some glimmer of hope. Thanks for stemming the tide. I hope those of us not totally brain dead can figure something out.