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> this employee stated, bluntly, that they don't believe many of their colleagues should be there because of their sex Did you read the essay? He certainly di
by throwgoog452 9y ago
> this employee stated, bluntly, that they don't believe many of their colleagues should be there because of their sex
Did you read the essay? He certainly did not make that claim. Population averages are not statements about individuals. This is pure censorship.
- Sleeep 9y agoUm, so? I censor myself at work every single day. If I routinely said some of the not so polite things that I sometimes think about my colleagues and (especially) customers I'd be fired. This is called "playing nice with others" and I learned it as a child. I also sometimes think about topics that would be inappropriate in an office environment (such as sex) and I censor myself by not saying what I am thinking. We even have an Internetism for that concept - NSFW. None of this is new - we are expected to conduct ourselves appropriately for the current situation. It's just how society works. I didn't even read the document in question, I just have a very hard time with people getting riled up about being "censored" at work. It's work, what exactly do you expect?
- microwavecamera 9y agoI agree. It's a job, you're there to work. A workplace isn't a venue to stand on your personal soapbox and air your opinions, be disruptive and waste company time.
- weberc2 9y agoI swear I read exactly that in a job posting for diversity director...
- smt88 9y agoDiversity is good for companies. Diverse companies are more profitable. Regardless, your clever analogy doesn't apply. Companies are welcome to be political in their own environment. They own it. Employees are not. They're employed at-will.
- weberc2 9y agoMaybe, but that doesn't immunize them from criticism, especially when they purport to value diversity and free speech but silence critics. Anyway, the financial benefits of diversity are almost certainly overstated. I don't know why we can't just say, "we're hiring diverse people because we think it's the right thing to do".
- dnh44 9y agoIn a thousand years archaeologists will write papers on our civilisation and the god we worshipped called Market. About how we obeyed the laws of Market, appeased the Market when it was unhappy, and how we had faith that Market could solve all problems. As a society we've been trained or perhaps tricked to suppress our sense of justice and fairness In Gabor of money.
- weberc2 9y agoSeriously, what does this have to do with anything?
- dnh44 9y agoPeople are hesitant to publicly say that the right thing to do is the thing that should be done so they bring financial arguments into it. Hence the studies promoting the idea that diverse companies are more profitable, as if that should make any difference. It's a sick obsession with viewing just about everything through a financial lens even when money shouldn't come into it.
- cm2187 9y agoI agree. It is a venue for the personal soapbox and airing of opinions of the CEO.
- confounded 9y agoCorporations are people, too.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoI agree. However, I sympathize with younger people because it's a double-edged sword at places like Google, where your work and your life are very intentionally blurred. You eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at work. You go out and socialize with your friends from work. You do laundry at work (I'm not sure if Google still does this or not). It's not like the 1980s where people check in at 9am and leave at 5pm.
- amazingman 9y ago>I didn't even read the document in question Then why are you assuming you know what it said?
- Sleeep 9y agoI am not. I am replying strictly to "this is pure censorship." So fucking what? At work we are absolutely expected and required to censor ourselves, that's practically the definition of "work." --- I did skim it and it seemed like the pseudo intellectual mumbo jumbo people who think they are being really smart but really are just being obnoxious write; since I read way to much of that sort of thing already I didn't care to read further.
- amazingman 9y agoSo you still haven't read it, then? And you still think it prudent to label it dismissively? This is the kind of behavior that woke me up (in my early teens) to the dangers of adopting my values from my religious background/peers. I never thought I'd have to deal with witch hunts for wrongthink in tech.
- Sleeep 9y agoI am not dismissing it because it is "wrongthink" I am dismissing it because it's incredibly boring, uninteresting, and extremely tiring. I went into it expecting to read something worth reading but stopped when I realized it simply wasn't worth my time.
- refulgentis 9y agoHe's implicitly claiming some of them shouldn't be there, or he believes that miraculously every single women at Google clears the bar for desirable traits in a programming without affirmative action. Come on now, which one do you think he believes? He made it pretty clear, clear enough that pretty much no one would want to work with the dude.
- davemp 9y agoI'm sorry, you can't just say the man is "implicitly claiming" anything. Espectially when his career was so negatively effected. Support your claims with direct quotes or keep your slander to yourself.
- halostatue 9y agoThe man in question claimed that some large portion of folks are hired under diversity programs which supposedly “lower the bar”. That is, those people don’t deserve to be at Google, and he doesn’t believe that they are qualified. That’s in his own words, and I would have fired him a hell of a lot faster than Google did, because I will not have my team disrupted by a prima donna.
- manfredo 9y agoThis is not what the document stated. Here is the quote about "lowering the bar" in its original form: > Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate The author deliberately narrows the scope of this sentence stating that the hiring practices decrease the false negative rate, not increasing the false positive rate. Stating that the false negative rate is lowered for diverse candidates is to say that qualified, non-diverse, candidates are rejected at a greater rate than qualified and diverse candidates. It is not stating that unqualified, diverse, candidates are accepted at a greater rate.
- celtain 9y agoHe literally says that those hiring practices can effectively lower the bar. Sure, maybe he's saying that the bar for white/Asian men is higher than intended rather than that the bar for women and minorities is lower than intended, but you can't honestly argue that he isn't saying that women and minorities could be clearing a lower bar than white/Asian men.
- jetpks 9y ago> The harm of Google’s biases > I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices: > * A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates > * Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate ^ Isn't that exactly what the author is saying?
- blusterXY 9y agoHe's criticizing discrimination on the basis of race (and gender), not advocating it.
- evolve2017 9y agoI think you're doing contortions here. He says that Google 'has created' (past tense) a discriminatory hiring practice. Presumably his coworkers were hired in the past and not the present or future. Thus, the hiring practices that prevailed when his coworkers were hired were discriminatory, per the author.
- blusterXY 9y agoThere is no question that Google has discriminatory hiring practices. The only question is whether you think discrimination is a good thing. Apparently you do.
- evolve2017 9y agoThere's a lot to be said about the current trend of privileged (read Western, perhaps wealthy, perhaps white, perhaps male) people to bemoan whatever concessions are made to the minority group but I'll leave that aside. I believe that everyone should have a fair shot at a good career. I can't even begin to talk about how that is not the case in America - if we disagree here, I'm not sure we'll ever come to agreement. It's not clear that the workers favored in this alternate pipeline are incompetent (which is really the implication that everyone is making). What is clear is that people with their perspectives are not as prevalent in the technology field. Perhaps companies are recognizing a) the value of multiple perspectives or b) the structural difficulties that deny some people the same 'fair shot' we all have. I'll leave you with this. The SAT should be a test of one's aptitude, perhaps readiness for college. If some individuals receive years of tutoring, but others have to go to the library to get test preparation, is our metric for college readiness fair? Maybe you'll say yes, but if we were talking about any other thing (cars, experimental models, you name it) we would clearly recognize these two groups had different pre-test levels of preparedness.
- cthulha 9y ago> This is pure censorship No, it is not censorship. He can say those things. He just can't pretend to be an effective team member if this is what he believes about his coworkers and he is unwilling to learn from others.
- eej71 9y agoI'll half agree in that you are right, it is not censorship. But I think the caustic judgement of him and his words don't seem to match up with the text that I've read.
- smt88 9y agoA lot of people seem to think the reaction to his words was too strong. But that's the point of being more cautious at work than you are in your personal life. You don't know how people will react. Most people are uncomfortable even identifying their choice of political party at work.
- zzalpha 9y agoWhich demonstrates something interesting, here: It's clear this essay is a Rorschach test. For some, it's simply a critique of ineffective hiring practices. For others, it's veiled sexism dressed up with statistics to lend it an air of legitimacy. Seen that way, this is a pretty interesting social science experiment, albeit at the expense of his job (if not his career)...
- weberc2 9y agoTo be clear, he said nothing of the sort.
- cthulha 9y agoYou are looking only at the words in document. What about the behaviour before / during / after publishing it?
- throwgoog452 9y ago