8 ms·
Why it may be illegal for Google to punish that engineer over his now viral memo
- jackvalentine 9y agoI read his memo (There is a copy on Gizmodo) and while I saw a lot of what I could educatedly guess looked like flaws in logic or even flaws in his reading of the research I've been unable to find someone who has put the effort in to debunk it thoroughly. Rather all I've been able to find is the equivalent of how dare he say these things. Does anyone have a link to a good debunking of the whole thesis?
- saghm 9y agoWhat was strange to me is that it didn't seem to actually cite any sources. When I scrolled down to the bottom to read the footnotes, I expected links to purported studies, but instead, they were just more rambling. I'd think the burden of proof should be on the author for the dubious claims within. EDIT: I looked at a link to the document on a separate comment on this thread, which appears to have links on some of the text that was missing from the Gizmodo article. Unfortunately, they aren't clickable, so I guess the most I can actually say about the citations is that they are rather informal.
- ggreer 9y agoFrom Gizmodo's summary[1]: > Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted. It's unclear whether Gizmodo removed the links or whether the leaker did. Either way, I bet some of those links were to research or summaries of research. 1. https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320/amp https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...
- jimrandomh 9y agoThe links are clickable if you get the original PDF, rather than using DocumentCloud's PDF viewer. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
- kevinburke 9y agoThere are a few, and I'd suggest you look further, for starters scroll up here: https://twitter.com/GlennF https://twitter.com/GlennF. Arguments about gender differences in CS should address the large decline in women's participation around 1984, the relatively better gender balance in other engineering/science majors, or the better gender balance for CS degrees granted in other countries. Annie Lowrey and others argued institutional effects far outweigh biological or IQ effects; basically, there's a much larger environment of harassment and bias, and Google has so many other levers in its control that the arguments advanced in the paper aren't really salient or important to the situation at Google. Other folks have argued the vast majority of engineers at Google are doing the equivalent of string concatenation; it's not exactly a difficult or demanding job. I think one reason people have been so angry about this is that women in the tech industry generally deal with much more harassment and bias than men do, see for example elephantinthevalley.com. To argue these are the biggest issues requires looking past everything in that survey, and implicitly declaring it not that important or salient. Imagine going to Flint, Michigan and arguing that a lack of charter schools are the community's biggest problem; you're going to get some bad reactions. People also tend not to like it when you suggest they're dumb or inferior.
- lisper 9y agoI think it is telling that the only actual reference you provided was to a live Twitter feed. Twitter is not the right venue for any kind of substantive debate about anything, let alone one where the opening salvo is a ten-page document.
- RodericDay 9y agoTwitter is an excellent venue for discussion. It's one thing to complain that you don't like it, and another to pretend it's widely agreed upon as an invalid source.
- lisper 9y ago> Twitter is an excellent venue for discussion. I didn't say it wasn't. Is said it was a bad venue for substantive debate. It's a fine venue for banal chitchat and voicing unsubstantiated opinions, which is what makes it so popular because that's a lot easier and more fun than actually diving into the depths of an issue.
- lisper 9y ago> Rather all I've been able to find is the equivalent of how dare he say these things. I completely agree. The original memo may be wrong, but it was a cogently and constructively stated position (if a bit thin on references) and it deserves to be at worst ignored, more likely respectfully rebutted, and (dare I even say this?) perhaps taken seriously. Because I think one of the reasons people are so up in arms about it is that they are afraid that if they start to try to rebut the argument they will find that it is not so easy to do, and possibly even that parts of the argument might even be correct.
- dudul 9y ago> a bit thin on references I've seen mentions of the fact that the Gizmodo version removed most of the links/references/graphs that were included in the original.
- jackvalentine 9y agoOh dear. If that's the case then I'm very confused.
- scruple 9y agoThat what, Gizmodo might mislead people for clicks?
- lisper 9y agoThe original is here: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I... At least I'm pretty sure that is the original. It has the author's name on it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dilap 9y agoWow, you're right, per the lisper link. That is extremely shady of Gizmodo.
- adjkant 9y agoI've only seen it in comments thus far, but here's a good example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14951042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14951042 A quick Google, have not read the below: https://www.fastcompany.com/40449844/5-debunked-gender-myths-in-that-google-anti-diversity-rant https://www.fastcompany.com/40449844/5-debunked-gender-myths... Of course, internet comments will be reactionary. Pretending that is proving the point of the author is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not saying you are inherently saying that, but I am sure many others will see it that way, as they already have commented in many of the threads about this.
- pcurve 9y ago+1 for the attempt, but the Fastcompany article is very weak at best, and doesn't even cite relevant studies to debunk the 5 points. It even manages to misquotes its own sources.
- Edmond 9y agoNot sure anyone has written a "debunking" piece but that could simply be because so much of what he wrote is standard trope for people with his views...if you read it naively it sounds like he has a point but if you're familiar with such attitudes then you'll quickly see through the pseudo-intellectual veneer of his argument. I supposed one could take the time to rebut everything he wrote but there will probably be someone new with similar arguments next week. What's important is that Google or any other organization striving for fairness (that is what diversity is partly about) isn't derailed by such sentiment.
- graphememes 9y agoThat is poor reasoning and only adds fuel to the assertion that there is an echo chamber / shaming culture given the response to the assertions.
- jackvalentine 9y ago> "if you read it naively it sounds like he has a point but if you're familiar with such attitudes then you'll quickly see through the pseudo-intellectual veneer of his argument." Well I suppose that's my point isn't it? Expecting everyone who reads it to be "familiar with such attitudes" in order to come away with the "right" opinion is an awfully high bar to entry.
- Edmond 9y agoNo, that is not my expectation and I doubt it is the expectation of people who don't agree with his opinion. There is just a long history of his type of argument deployed in favor of his type of view. Frankly, rebutting such arguments can get exhausting especially for those who are the target of his post.
- jackvalentine 9y agoHow would you propose that this kind of blow-up be handled then in the future? It's going to happen again and in the absence of opposition that's just ceding ground without resistance to the kind of attitudes in the memo. I'm thinking if you're going to report on it, you need to either pull it apart with rigour or accept that you're just increasing the reach of it without opposition.
- dudul 9y agoWhat I find most surprising in regards to the reactions to this post, is that they are focused around the "how dare he call women stupid!" theme, instead of Google's alleged discriminatory practices. Ignoring the whole "is one gender really better at CS than the other?" thing, is it ok for Google to consciously lower the bar when hiring female candidates? From a legal point of view I mean. Same question for their classes/programs only open to women. I'm not a lawyer, so genuinely wondering :)
- joshuamorton 9y agoYou're assuming that the claim is true. Why?
- dudul 9y agoNote that I say "alleged". It's worth verifying imo. And for the classes and training programs it should be easy.
- warbaker 9y agoThey don't lower the bar for women.
- mnm1 9y agoShouldn't it be up to the author to prove his claims rather than someone else to disprove them? I see no evidence provided for his stereotypes of women, for example. Something this unsubstantiated doesn't need debunking. It's simply one man's unsubstantiated opinion, nothing more or less.
- maxxxxx 9y ago"It's simply one man's unsubstantiated opinion, nothing more or less." That's how it should be treated. Nothing more. A lot of the pro-diversity arguments are pretty flimsy too so they should be treated the same way too.
- jackvalentine 9y ago> Shouldn't it be up to the author to prove his claims rather than someone else to disprove them? Look, yes. It should be. But the author has made his best 10 page effort to do so and now I'm looking for someone who has the necessary background to critically question his claims. That the manifesto has taken on a life of its own and spread as far as it has is only more reason for it to be succinctly and academically critiqued.
- wsargent 9y agoI don't know that there's a debunking of the thesis, because there's nothing very original in there -- it's repeats and retreads of other things that have been debunked over and over, so it all merges into a mashed up mess of points and rebuttals like a badly maintained wiki. There are a couple of books which I can recommend that talk about why you see so few women in computing (as opposed to biology, math, etc) and also why you see so few black men and women: * Unlocking the Clubhouse: http://a.co/8oXDROX * Stuck in the Shallow End: http://a.co/9HXgvKW These are not only well written, but they're also well researched and well thought out. They're worth reading on their own merits, but you may find them a useful debunking to the memo.
- jackvalentine 9y agoTBH I'm not really interested in the wider issue at all. For starters I'm not even in America and we have our own issues here. But this memo has dominated a lot of the internet that I use and figured surely someone has done the work to pull it apart. I'm not going to read two books just to figure out some google guy's 10 page memo - call me lazy but perhaps nobody is going to read two books just for that purpose.
- wsargent 9y ago> I'm not going to read two books just to figure out some google guy's 10 page memo - call me lazy but perhaps nobody is going to read two books just for that purpose. Well, if it's any consolation, I wouldn't read it for that either. The blog posts and memos do accumulate, though, and at some point it's worth it just to have the sources to refer back to.
- jackvalentine 9y agoGood point.
- wsargent 9y agoAlso, the larger problem with debunking is that it just doesn't work all that well. It's like arguing with an antivaxxer -- they may ask for logical discussion but it has no effect. Ultimately, what convinces them is social pressure or a sudden intrusion of reality i.e. their child gets sick, they have a female friend who encounters discrimination etc.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kenjackson 9y agoIt's a long document, but reading his tldr he makes claims that I've rarely heard reasonable people make. Notably: The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology. ○ Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression ○ Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression I've never heard that all disparities are due to oppression before. I think the problem is that we don't know how much of the gap is due to oppression. There are studies that indicate that there are factors in our society that do oppress the achievement of girls in math/science. How do we figure out how to clear up these issues? And honestly, as someone who works in tech, I can honestly say that anecdotally I've encountered a LOT of sexist men in the field. I can't say it is the majority, but it is not a small minority. While I can't say with any certainty how much their biases impact the achievement of women in the field, I think most people outside of tech would be surprised at how much bias there is (because it is viewed as so much of a meritocracy). And then his other point about discriminating to fix the oppression simply is naïve and ignores the day to day discrimination that happens against most oppressed groups on a daily basis. I get that a better solution would be for there to be no more discrimination across the board -- we are all born into a world where discrimination is gone (and past fruits of discrimination disappear too), but that isn't going to happen. Sometimes the choices we have in front of us are the lesser of two evils -- and yes, looking at an evil always looks bad -- but I guarantee you that the author of this article would never trade his life in for the roll of the dice of being born a black female.
- lisper 9y agoLink to the original memo: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
- PrimalDual 9y agoReading the manifesto felt like going through a less eloquent regurgitation of Jordan Peterson's content. So far I have been unable to disprove Peterson's points and his thoughts process is a very robust way to vet ideas. I a very curious to see if anyone can seriously debunk him. Edit: Clarified that I meant peterson's points and not the manifesto.
- adjkant 9y agoIt should be noted that for many of his scientific claims, not being able to disprove them says nothing. Being able to prove them is the standard of science. If you take a look at a significant number of peer reviewed studies, I think you will struggle to find any version of his points backed up. As for his thought process, it seems to be well agreed that his argument very strongly lacks a tight argument and seemed to base itself mostly off of creating stereotypes around gender and political opinions and then proceeding to use those to loosely reason for his points. Neither the stereotypes or his reasoning are very sound.
- PrimalDual 9y agoI was talking about Jordan Peterson's content not the manifesto itself. I see now how it would be confusing though.
- DidISayTooMuch 9y agoIf you're looking for a more scientifically inclined video about this topic, take a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw (The Truth Cannot be Sexist - Steven Pinker on the biology of sex differences)
- marcoperaza 9y agoThe author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group." Wow, what a monster. The reaction to the memo is really the most damning thing about the whole affair. Everyone is just rushing to virtue signal, to demonstrate their own purity of thought. They've just proved the author's point. A particular brand of liberalism has reached the point of being a religion, and the establishment is running an inquisition against any who dare to question its points of dogma.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- futun 9y agoMod parent up * 10^6
- jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago> Everyone is just rushing to virtue signal, to demonstrate their own purity of thought. They've just proved the author's point. Can you support this beyond being your own judgemental assumption? Assuming everyone that disagrees with you is acting in bad faith isn't reasonable.
- marcoperaza 9y agoIt is my social commentary, based on the fact-free and argument-free disavowals of the author's memo, not as wrong but as morally intolerable. CNN.com's headline article yesterday was something about him having said "women are biologically unfit for technology jobs" which is a malicious and willful misreading meant to give basis for the moral panic around the memo.
- onli 9y agoI got people in my circle that seriously called for him to be fired. People I know as being intelligent, even a university professor. Either those people are more warped than I have ever known, and you are right about the dogma. Or they did not read the memo. It is really shocking to see the misrepresentation of the intent of the memo. I normally stay out of discussion about those topics, it's too dangerous - but that development is just unacceptable.
- hkmurakami 9y agoPunishment will happen through less overt means, most likely through (1) slower (or lack of) raises and promotions than the person otherwise would have received, or (2) undesirable team placements.
- frozenport 9y agoProbably much more direct, including personal threats.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mrbonner 9y agoWhat if he wrote this piece to avoid being fired for something else in the first place? Like incompetence for example. Looks like they cannot fire him for any pre-existing reasons now.
- yuhong 9y agoIt is probably worth mentioning that I dislike anti-discrimination laws. A good compromise is to probably limit them to manual labor and the like.
- snotrockets 9y agoBut allowing it, in the first place, is also no legally sound: https://medium.com/@scurphey/googles-response-to-employee-s-anti-diversity-manifesto-ignores-workplace-discrimination-law-97c7c729cf86 https://medium.com/@scurphey/googles-response-to-employee-s-...
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoClearly, Google must neither fire nor not fire the employee.
- snotrockets 9y agoNo, they must fire him. As long as Google don't act, they are complicit; very few would believe their recruiters when they'll talk about D&I, yet keep such bigots on the payroll. It's just going to cost them more to fire him now that the trashfire is blowing full. They have nobody to blame but their own selves.
- bassman9000 9y agoComplicit of what? Wrongthink?
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoComplicit in creating a toxic work environment where women feel their abilities are under constant suspicion and they are not valued as team members.
- snotrockets 9y agoIf there's anything he can't be blamed for is thinking. If he did more of that, he wouldn't be where he is.
- notreallythough 9y agoCalifornia is an at-will state, so they could also just fire him for any or no reason. Someone spreading 10-page manifestos internally is generally toxic no matter which opinion they share. It essentially screams "I know better than any manager I could have possibly discussed this with privately." To boot, this manifesto isn't even tactical.
- pcurve 9y agoThere is no way Google will fire him at this point. His career will stagnate, but somehow I doubt he cares. There is no way he would've sent this out if he felt that he was a tiny minority with this view.
- notreallythough 9y agoI'd wait a few months and tell him to go pound sand. I don't care what his opinion is, he picked a shitty way to express it that's intentionally meant to undermine.
- ameister14 9y agoHe just got fired
- pcurve 9y agoI have a feeling even many of his detractors will be disturbed by this. Google made a mistake firing him so quickly. This really changed my view of Google to much worse.
- stale2002 9y ago"so they could also just fire him for any or no reason." Not really. There are tons of things that it would be illegal to fire someone for. For example, you can't fire someone for trying to start a union. You can't fire someone because of their race. You can't fire someone because they have workplace complaints. The crux of the argument is that Google may have "punish an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions", which is illegal. Also, "California law prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action." Furthermore, "It is unlawful for an employer to discipline an employee for challenging conduct that the employee reasonably believed to be discriminatory, even when a court later determines the conduct was not actually prohibited by the discrimination laws". These are some interesting argument that I hadn't heard until now. It will be for the courts to decide who is right. But it certainly is not as clear cut as you make it seem.
- omot 9y agoI'm going to invoke Occam's razor here. Let's simplify diversity and just look at height. Let's assume men that are short and men that are tall are biologically equivalent, meaning biological trait that might surface are evenly distributed. Now let's inject 100 men with varying height into the general population, and... Uh oh there's a skew in leadership position and income. Taller men have better positions and have higher income. People who are taller all have tall coworkers. They work for a boss that's a little bit taller than them. Some of them start thinking that you know this is probably just natural, men who are shorter are just biologically unsuited to be a leader. They aren't aggresive enough and they just don't have as much drive, it's probably just written in their DNA. The short men no matter how much they perform or how brilliant they are always seem to be sidelined for promotion. Some of them make it pretty far but they're performing 50x compared to their peers, and theyre always sidelined when it comes to executive promotions. Other executives think: "this guy is brilliant but what would people think about us... We better promote the other less brilliant tall guy. We could retain investor confidence." Some of them break out and try to start a company. They can't get any funding, and no one wants to join their company. People think its a company run by a short guy, this guy is brilliant but he's not going to do well in the long term, so they end up joining start ups that have tall guys. This network effects over a million times. Now let's take people's perception, and assume people perceive men and women exactly the same. The catch here is that women are one standard deviation shorter than men. Just from height you'll see a discrepancy between men and women representation in leadership positions. Let's end height discrimination first. I believe this is a simpler explanation of the discrepancies in representation.
- nibstwo 9y agoIt is interesting how aggressively people cite science to back their politics (on both "sides"). IQ distribution by gender is inconclusive. There is structurally valid and statistically significant science backing a higher beta normal distribution for male IQ than female IQ. There are similar studies attempting and failing to reproduce this. I think this is an issue like whether caffiene is healthy (or does it cause cancer? both?). Confounding is strong here (men do more school? are smarter? hormones? DNA? patriarchy? all of them?). I support this because it challenges the irrational tone on diversity of genetics. Why is that better? Isn't diversity of thought better? Are our thoughts simply a product of our skin colour and gender? What does that say about free will or moral development? About progress itself? Don't discriminate, don't hire based on gender or skin colour, do understand the science, don't take anything considered progress at face value, do question everything, don't allow people to bully you for your opinion, do assume that people will judge your actions instead of your intentions, do risk being fired for what you believe, don't be surprised when you get fired.
- elialbert 9y agoscott alexander at slate star codex absolutely kills it with a statistical analysis that supports the memo writer's opinion. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... he's also very balanced about his conclusions imho.