15 ms·

I'm sorry, he did not tell his teammates they were hired because Google lowered the bar. Again, he's talking about on average differences and noting that the go

I'm sorry, he did not tell his teammates they were hired because Google lowered the bar. Again, he's talking about on average differences and noting that the goal (50/50 representation) might not only be misguided but actively harmful. Why is this so controversial? He's talking about a process not individuals on his team or anywhere else at Google.

danso 9y ago
At the risk of repeating myself, the memo's author did in fact say that "Google has created several discriminatory practices", which include "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates". What else are we supposed to infer from the author's assertions if not that at least some of Google's diversity candidates have been let in because of weakened standards? Is he talking about a hypothetical, alternate-universe Google? It doesn't seem so, despite the passive tone of the memo. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.html#document/p6 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...
- DalaiObama 9y ago
  By that logic anyone criticizing a company's hiring practices must be fired. If someone claims their employer discriminates against black candidates, you must equally infer they think some of their white coworkers have been let in because of weakened standards, and out they go... I mean, I'll admit there is a small core of logic there, but I think it's pushed absurdly far. Wouldn't it make more sense if hiring standards could be discussed without firing anyone who wants to change them?
  - makomk 9y ago
    I have in fact occasionally seen similar arguments used by right-wingers when someone complains there aren't enough black people, women, etc somewhere. It struck me as a nasty and cynical rhetorical trick when they did it too - and they didn't even go as far as demanding anyone be fired.
- peacetreefrog 9y ago
  Doesn't he mention it in the context of an explicit 50/50 men/women goal? Maybe it's achieving that scenario which could lower the bar, without saying anything about the current women working at Google?
  - rustynails77 9y ago
    This is an amazing discussion and it really needs to occur. What scares me is how much this conversation is being ruled by an angry emotive mob, at the expense of democracy and free speech. There is almost no fact in any of these comments. Why MUST we have 50% of male and female in any industry? Have you noticed how almost every media outlet ignores female dominated industries (such as veterinary science) [0], where over 85% of vets in the western world are female? The strongest argument in this thread appears to be that there must be equal numbers for equality, but it's only EVER applied to male dominated industries (Google it if you doubt me). However, not only is this argument unjustified, it's continually selectively applied by most mainstream media outlets, again and again. There is no challenge or balance to any of these arguments from the mainstream media. I am disappointed that Google sacked this engineer. To understand this mindset, you really need to watch this video on Yale. People being shut down from talking because they're male or white [1] or because angry mobs don't like what they have to say. People in this thread talk about sexism and yet they struggle to provide any evidence (while I can point at truck loads of evidence of misandry, eg. domestic violence, veterinary science, etc). This Yale video talks about this exact problem i'm describing. We have a society where you are no longer allowed to express selective views (even with evidence). Google have confirmed this with their dismissal of this engineer. What we've become concerns me deeply. To all of the people who have stood up for free speech (and you're in the clear minority in this thread), I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you want to be able to sort out the media that's worth listening to, watch reporting on this topic closely over the next few days. Look for extreme prejudice and emotive language from the media. To quote an excellent quote from the Yale video, "these are moves of power, not reason" (3 minutes in, [1]). So where are the rational arguments? What about the percentage of female university graduates with relevant skills? What about Dr Simon Baran Cohen's findings on very young children and trends to their thinking patterns? Where are the facts? Why are most people side-stepping facts? Now please re-read this entire thread and ask yourself about freedom of speech. Ask yourself about democracy. Ask yourself about how many people have presented facts. There is something seriously wrong. You should be deeply concerned about the lack of debate, the lack of evidence, the number of emotive arguments and the message Google has sent to anyone who doesn't toe the politically correct line. [0] http://career-advice.careerone.com.au/career-development/professional-development/girls-just-wanna-be-vets/article.aspx http://career-advice.careerone.com.au/career-development/pro... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4MBzp5YwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4MBzp5YwM
- lhnz 9y ago
  The effects of positive discrimination already do disempower women. His argument is that you should improve the environment for groups of people as an incentive rather than doing anything which can be seen as 'lowering the bar'. The point is to treat people with respect by building an environment where they can be their best (whatever individual skillset they have), instead of insulting them with offers of extra help or illegally discriminating against other groups.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago
    > illegally discriminating against other groups. Affirmative action is legal in the United States.
    - lhnz 9y ago
      I'm referring to his comment "discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done)".
      - jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago
        Again, affirmative action towards historically marginalized group is legal and is not a violation of protected status laws. It strains credibility to imagine the author is talking about discrimination against historically marginalized groups given the rest of their manifesto.
    - aliston 9y ago
      Some forms of affirmative action are legal in the US. Others have been struck down by the courts or have been made illegal by referendum. I work at a large SV tech company and was recently privy to an affirmative action policy that was almost certainly illegal. The wording of the policy was quickly changed after a couple folks spoke up so as to make it conform with the law. If the policy had made it to a news outlet, I guarantee you it would have been on the front page of the NYT the next day. In short, quotas are illegal. With some exceptions, hiring based on race is illegal. However, taking race into account among many factors is legal. The on-the-ground reality of these policies is exceedingly grey.
- aianus 9y ago
  By that logic how is anyone supposed to criticize any hiring process? Of course hinting that the process is flawed will imply that some of his colleagues shouldn't have made it through.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - sgustard 9y ago
    A hiring process can be flawed by excluding a pool of qualified candidates from consideration, even if the ones you hire are capable of performing their jobs.
    - aianus 9y ago
      Yes, and in fact this is what the original author was claiming (that non-diverse candidates had a higher false-negative rate) However, if the number of hires is kept constant, and a given process is claimed to be flawed, then you are implicitly stating that one or more offers should have gone to what was a non-hire instead of what was a hire.
      - tomkarlo 9y ago
        "If the number of hires is kept constant" is a huge IF that just doesn't hold up. If Google (or FB, or Apple) could find more candidates that met their hiring bar, they'd hire them as well. It's not a zero-sum game - these companies are constantly short on qualified engineers. [my opinion, not my employer's.]
- eej71 9y ago
  But at the same time, aren't you therefore implying that such diversity programs are inherently above reproach? To be fair to you, I don't think you actually think that. But it's almost like the author of the diversity memo touched a third rail by suggesting that perhaps "lowered standards" could be an outcome from such diversity efforts. Is that a fair consideration to raise or is that beyond the pale now?
  - danso 9y ago
    I don't think it has to be an either-or. In fact, because of this imperfect world, these programs are likely to be imperfect. But if I wanted to discuss that, I wouldn't do so using the argument that women/minorities are biologically-less suited for Google's leadership/engineering roles.
    - eej71 9y ago
      I don't think he made that argument either.
    - qu4z-2 9y ago
      Do you believe you would get the privilege of choosing what the media reports your argument as?
      - danso 9y ago
        You don't think there's another way for the memo author to criticize diversity programs other than a 10-page memo of broad, sprawling arguments? Why should the author get to privilege of asserting his worldview on top of his critique of diversity programs without his worldview getting challenged?
- manfredo 9y ago
  > At the risk of repeating myself, the memo's author did in fact say that "Google has created several discriminatory practices", which include "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates". Please take care not to deceptively quote the author in question. This is the full sentence: > Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate. The author deliberately crafted this statement to make it clear that he is referring to qualified, non-diverse, candidates being rejected at greater rates than qualified and diverse candidates - not that unqualified diverse candidates are accepted at a higher rate.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - notyourday 9y ago
    The author is either a total idiot or he just retired with a cool 10-30MM he would be paid by Google to be fired. I'm going to guess it is the later: Lawsuit from him would cause discovery. Unlike other government lawsuit, he would actually be able to say who at Google has access to the needed paperwork/email/etc to demonstrate that he is correct in his assertion. The government would love to piggy back on him. So I'm guessing Google is cutting a very large check now.
    - jjirsa 9y ago
      Cutting a check for 3-6 months severance as a sign of good faith, wrapped up in an NDA. There's no cause for anything more than that.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        Leverage. Government lawsuit against Google right now means that he has the leverage. The odds are the same people who are tasked with the programs to promote whatever the author carefully worded in his post are the people who received/sent emails/edited internal presentations that mentioned something that a good lawyer would be able to twist into a Google's managers admitting that Google does in fact systematically pays women less than men to do the same job. Google has a lot more to lose from that lawsuit than from the author of the memo. [Edit: typos/clarity]
- gdix 9y ago
  If I say something like "our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back". The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job. I'm inherently saying some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired. Edit: just to be clear, my point is that Google has, to my knowledge, expressed this sentiment and made changes to their interview process to rely less on brainteasers. They did so without controversy. No one said "hey Google is saying some of its employees shouldn't have been hired by changing their hiring process".
  - josteink 9y ago
    With reasoning like that suggesting any change is guaranteed to offend someone and therefore would be for bidden. And then what happens to freedom of speech? To me this sounds like a totalerian regime.
    - gdix 9y ago
      That's generally my point.
  - wwalser 9y ago
    I'm not sure if you're being facetious? If you are, I apologize as it's gone over my head. I don't have a dog in the Google controversy. But I will put my hand up briefly and say that you've you just said, doesn't follow for me. From your quote: > Our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back. I would not infer that you meant: The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job. The most likely case is that someone saying the above quote would be a co-worker of mine. Someone I'm cooperating with in a common endeavor. I would assume they are trying to help us achieve our goals more readily. I would have heard something like: We're turning down highly qualified candidates for software engineering roles because of their failure to answer non-software-engineering questions. Is there any evidence that these non-software-engineering questions contribute meaningfully to our assessment of candidates? If not, we should drop the questions. Turning down qualified candidates makes it harder for to hire the great people that coming through our pipeline. To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made.
- mc32 9y ago
  I've spoken to and overheard recruiters for Google who have quotas for women as well as minorities. In other words, the corp pressures them to hire non male, non-Asian, non-white, and to seek across the country for alternative hires. I'm actually okay with Google seeking women across the country (when they could find a local candidate), but we should not pretend that they don't have internal targets their recruiters need to meet.
- ng12 9y ago
  Why is that a bad thing to point out? A startup I once worked for sent out a memo asking that HR be involved before rejecting a "borderline" female candidate. As a generally apolitical junior employee this seemed really concerning -- we had pretty strict hiring standards and from that point on I wondered if each new female employee would have made it if they were born male. I can't say if Google's practices are discriminatory (I don't really know what they are) but it's a very important thing to have open, honest discussion about. At the time, I kept my mouth shut because I was pretty low on the totem pole. If I were an employee at Google I would now know to do the same.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? Bias is real. The exact same resume is, on average, considered more qualified if there's a typically male name at the top versus a female name. Did you ever wonder how many of your male colleagues unfairly benefitted from that sort of thing?
    - ng12 9y ago
      > Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? No, I didn't consider it about anyone until they gave me a reason to. Prior to that email I had no reason to think that anyone working there was anything other than the best of the best. Well-intentioned policies can have resounding negative effects. To your second point -- I'm not saying bias isn't real. I'm saying certain methods of counteracting bias have a strong potential for collateral damage.
    - rmartelli 9y ago
      At least for phone interviews, the bias doesn't exist or goes the other way: From http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas... : After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Aunche 9y ago
  You can't take a critique on hiring personally. For example, Google skips for phone screen interview for new grads of elite schools like Stanford and MIT. If somebody claims that this is a discriminatory practice that lowers the bar for MIT candidates, no MIT grad is going to get offended.
gizmo 9y ago
He didn't just argue that there was a difference in the distribution but that the underlying cause was biological. Companies like google hire people who excell at certain skills and are therefore at the tail end of the corresponding distribution where the differences in likelihood occurence are largest. If he believes that for engineering there are 10 men for every woman at both tail ends of the distribution then the "natural" gender ratio in engineering teams must be 10:1 or standards are lowered in the name of diversity. The implications of that worldview are totally toxic.
- qu4z-2 9y ago
  > The implications [...] are toxic. And therefore it is false?
  - gizmo 9y ago
    It is false because the science is bunk. Social conditioning likely explains all (and definitely explains most) of the measured differences, not biology. The author has a popular science level understanding of gender differences. Based on that he concludes women are unsuited to be engineers compared to men.
    - qu4z-2 9y ago
      > It is false because the science is bunk. Well, then make that argument.
- remarkEon 9y ago
  Which is, of course, not what he said.
- JSONwebtoken 9y ago
  Why did you present it as if this is just something that the guy "believes?" I thought that was the strongest argument of his memo and the perhaps the point with the biggest scientific backing. If you wanted to pick out any argument out of those 10 pages to disassemble, you could have chosen any one of his arguments that haven't been corroborated by hundreds of years of scientific consensus.
budde 9y ago
He may have not told his direct teammates they lowered the bar but he certainly implied that women and underrepresented groups have at a whole at Google: > The Harm of Google’s biases: ... > - 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. Do you really not see the concerns this engineer has introduced for Google over his ability to objectively judge his peers who are women or members of an underrepresented group or at least how such coworkers might now have these concerns if they find themselves working with him? Do you not see how the long-term detriment and risk to Google could be (substantially) greater than the value the engineer brings to the company? Even if you remove the high-mindedness and virtues that tech companies like to project in their PR, do you not see how this is the only rational business choice for a Fortune 50 company?
- weberc2 9y ago
  Seems like Google introduced the problems, he merely exposed them.
- bostik 9y ago
  There is something I don't understand. The third quoted line should raise an entirely different question. You are in the position where you want to constantly hire a lot of qualified candidates. If you have discovered a way to decrease false negative rate, why would you not apply that across the board? It's like you have learned how to fix hiring but then carry it out only with some arbitrary cohorts. Sounds irrational to me.
  - panda88888 9y ago
    My guess is maybe because it cost too much to implement it across the board, and the side effect that focused application results in more minority/women hires.
RA_Fisher 9y ago
The paper confused sex and gender badly. E.g. Man and male are not nearly equivalent groups. How could someone who thought so deeply about the subject miss that?
- odessacubbage 9y ago
  how is the distinction relevant for an engineering candidate? unless you're implying that google has a pilot child labor project in the works it strikes me as highly superfluous
- remarkEon 9y ago
  I don't think it wise to mix two controversial topics, especially since on their face they seem kind of contradictory. Gender identity discussions and biological dimorphism are both hugely emotional topics, and mixing them here would lead us down a discussion path we don't want to go.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > The paper confused sex and gender badly. E.g. Man and male are not nearly equivalent groups. How could someone who thought so deeply about the subject miss that? Ok, but how do you propose the paper to be rewritten taking those into consideration. Or do you suggest that Google force every employee go through a medical exam to determine their sex and make sure no one chooses to identify as a different gender to pass through the hiring process easier... Sorry, I don't quite see what you're getting at there basically, it can interpreted in a few ways.
- axaxs 9y ago
  For 99% of the world, these terms are interchangeable. How does this argument relate to the article?
  - RA_Fisher 9y ago
    For example there are both transsexual people and transgender people but they're different in kind.
bobdole1234 9y ago
I'd suggest you don't write any manifestos at work, obviously you'll be caught unaware by how people read your text.
- oceanplexian 9y ago
  I am pretty sure the author didn't call it a manifesto. The label was retroactively applied by those covering the story. It's a great, real-time example of language being subtly manipulated to shape public opinion.
  - rtx 9y ago
    Maybe to relate it to that bombers manifesto, since there is a show about it on TV.

danso 9y ago

At the risk of repeating myself, the memo's author did in fact say that "Google has created several discriminatory practices", which include "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates". What else are we supposed to infer from the author's assertions if not that at least some of Google's diversity candidates have been let in because of weakened standards? Is he talking about a hypothetical, alternate-universe Google? It doesn't seem so, despite the passive tone of the memo. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.html#document/p6 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...

DalaiObama 9y ago
By that logic anyone criticizing a company's hiring practices must be fired. If someone claims their employer discriminates against black candidates, you must equally infer they think some of their white coworkers have been let in because of weakened standards, and out they go... I mean, I'll admit there is a small core of logic there, but I think it's pushed absurdly far. Wouldn't it make more sense if hiring standards could be discussed without firing anyone who wants to change them?
- makomk 9y ago
  I have in fact occasionally seen similar arguments used by right-wingers when someone complains there aren't enough black people, women, etc somewhere. It struck me as a nasty and cynical rhetorical trick when they did it too - and they didn't even go as far as demanding anyone be fired.
peacetreefrog 9y ago
Doesn't he mention it in the context of an explicit 50/50 men/women goal? Maybe it's achieving that scenario which could lower the bar, without saying anything about the current women working at Google?
- rustynails77 9y ago
  This is an amazing discussion and it really needs to occur. What scares me is how much this conversation is being ruled by an angry emotive mob, at the expense of democracy and free speech. There is almost no fact in any of these comments. Why MUST we have 50% of male and female in any industry? Have you noticed how almost every media outlet ignores female dominated industries (such as veterinary science) [0], where over 85% of vets in the western world are female? The strongest argument in this thread appears to be that there must be equal numbers for equality, but it's only EVER applied to male dominated industries (Google it if you doubt me). However, not only is this argument unjustified, it's continually selectively applied by most mainstream media outlets, again and again. There is no challenge or balance to any of these arguments from the mainstream media. I am disappointed that Google sacked this engineer. To understand this mindset, you really need to watch this video on Yale. People being shut down from talking because they're male or white [1] or because angry mobs don't like what they have to say. People in this thread talk about sexism and yet they struggle to provide any evidence (while I can point at truck loads of evidence of misandry, eg. domestic violence, veterinary science, etc). This Yale video talks about this exact problem i'm describing. We have a society where you are no longer allowed to express selective views (even with evidence). Google have confirmed this with their dismissal of this engineer. What we've become concerns me deeply. To all of the people who have stood up for free speech (and you're in the clear minority in this thread), I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you want to be able to sort out the media that's worth listening to, watch reporting on this topic closely over the next few days. Look for extreme prejudice and emotive language from the media. To quote an excellent quote from the Yale video, "these are moves of power, not reason" (3 minutes in, [1]). So where are the rational arguments? What about the percentage of female university graduates with relevant skills? What about Dr Simon Baran Cohen's findings on very young children and trends to their thinking patterns? Where are the facts? Why are most people side-stepping facts? Now please re-read this entire thread and ask yourself about freedom of speech. Ask yourself about democracy. Ask yourself about how many people have presented facts. There is something seriously wrong. You should be deeply concerned about the lack of debate, the lack of evidence, the number of emotive arguments and the message Google has sent to anyone who doesn't toe the politically correct line. [0] http://career-advice.careerone.com.au/career-development/professional-development/girls-just-wanna-be-vets/article.aspx http://career-advice.careerone.com.au/career-development/pro... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4MBzp5YwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4MBzp5YwM
lhnz 9y ago
The effects of positive discrimination already do disempower women. His argument is that you should improve the environment for groups of people as an incentive rather than doing anything which can be seen as 'lowering the bar'. The point is to treat people with respect by building an environment where they can be their best (whatever individual skillset they have), instead of insulting them with offers of extra help or illegally discriminating against other groups.
- jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago
  > illegally discriminating against other groups. Affirmative action is legal in the United States.
  - lhnz 9y ago
    I'm referring to his comment "discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done)".
    - jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago
      Again, affirmative action towards historically marginalized group is legal and is not a violation of protected status laws. It strains credibility to imagine the author is talking about discrimination against historically marginalized groups given the rest of their manifesto.
  - aliston 9y ago
    Some forms of affirmative action are legal in the US. Others have been struck down by the courts or have been made illegal by referendum. I work at a large SV tech company and was recently privy to an affirmative action policy that was almost certainly illegal. The wording of the policy was quickly changed after a couple folks spoke up so as to make it conform with the law. If the policy had made it to a news outlet, I guarantee you it would have been on the front page of the NYT the next day. In short, quotas are illegal. With some exceptions, hiring based on race is illegal. However, taking race into account among many factors is legal. The on-the-ground reality of these policies is exceedingly grey.
aianus 9y ago
By that logic how is anyone supposed to criticize any hiring process? Of course hinting that the process is flawed will imply that some of his colleagues shouldn't have made it through.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sgustard 9y ago
  A hiring process can be flawed by excluding a pool of qualified candidates from consideration, even if the ones you hire are capable of performing their jobs.
  - aianus 9y ago
    Yes, and in fact this is what the original author was claiming (that non-diverse candidates had a higher false-negative rate) However, if the number of hires is kept constant, and a given process is claimed to be flawed, then you are implicitly stating that one or more offers should have gone to what was a non-hire instead of what was a hire.
    - tomkarlo 9y ago
      "If the number of hires is kept constant" is a huge IF that just doesn't hold up. If Google (or FB, or Apple) could find more candidates that met their hiring bar, they'd hire them as well. It's not a zero-sum game - these companies are constantly short on qualified engineers. [my opinion, not my employer's.]
eej71 9y ago
But at the same time, aren't you therefore implying that such diversity programs are inherently above reproach? To be fair to you, I don't think you actually think that. But it's almost like the author of the diversity memo touched a third rail by suggesting that perhaps "lowered standards" could be an outcome from such diversity efforts. Is that a fair consideration to raise or is that beyond the pale now?
- danso 9y ago
  I don't think it has to be an either-or. In fact, because of this imperfect world, these programs are likely to be imperfect. But if I wanted to discuss that, I wouldn't do so using the argument that women/minorities are biologically-less suited for Google's leadership/engineering roles.
  - eej71 9y ago
    I don't think he made that argument either.
  - qu4z-2 9y ago
    Do you believe you would get the privilege of choosing what the media reports your argument as?
    - danso 9y ago
      You don't think there's another way for the memo author to criticize diversity programs other than a 10-page memo of broad, sprawling arguments? Why should the author get to privilege of asserting his worldview on top of his critique of diversity programs without his worldview getting challenged?
manfredo 9y ago
> At the risk of repeating myself, the memo's author did in fact say that "Google has created several discriminatory practices", which include "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates". Please take care not to deceptively quote the author in question. This is the full sentence: > Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate. The author deliberately crafted this statement to make it clear that he is referring to qualified, non-diverse, candidates being rejected at greater rates than qualified and diverse candidates - not that unqualified diverse candidates are accepted at a higher rate.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- notyourday 9y ago
  The author is either a total idiot or he just retired with a cool 10-30MM he would be paid by Google to be fired. I'm going to guess it is the later: Lawsuit from him would cause discovery. Unlike other government lawsuit, he would actually be able to say who at Google has access to the needed paperwork/email/etc to demonstrate that he is correct in his assertion. The government would love to piggy back on him. So I'm guessing Google is cutting a very large check now.
  - jjirsa 9y ago
    Cutting a check for 3-6 months severance as a sign of good faith, wrapped up in an NDA. There's no cause for anything more than that.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      Leverage. Government lawsuit against Google right now means that he has the leverage. The odds are the same people who are tasked with the programs to promote whatever the author carefully worded in his post are the people who received/sent emails/edited internal presentations that mentioned something that a good lawyer would be able to twist into a Google's managers admitting that Google does in fact systematically pays women less than men to do the same job. Google has a lot more to lose from that lawsuit than from the author of the memo. [Edit: typos/clarity]
gdix 9y ago
If I say something like "our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back". The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job. I'm inherently saying some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired. Edit: just to be clear, my point is that Google has, to my knowledge, expressed this sentiment and made changes to their interview process to rely less on brainteasers. They did so without controversy. No one said "hey Google is saying some of its employees shouldn't have been hired by changing their hiring process".
- josteink 9y ago
  With reasoning like that suggesting any change is guaranteed to offend someone and therefore would be for bidden. And then what happens to freedom of speech? To me this sounds like a totalerian regime.
  - gdix 9y ago
    That's generally my point.
- wwalser 9y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being facetious? If you are, I apologize as it's gone over my head. I don't have a dog in the Google controversy. But I will put my hand up briefly and say that you've you just said, doesn't follow for me. From your quote: > Our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back. I would not infer that you meant: The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job. The most likely case is that someone saying the above quote would be a co-worker of mine. Someone I'm cooperating with in a common endeavor. I would assume they are trying to help us achieve our goals more readily. I would have heard something like: We're turning down highly qualified candidates for software engineering roles because of their failure to answer non-software-engineering questions. Is there any evidence that these non-software-engineering questions contribute meaningfully to our assessment of candidates? If not, we should drop the questions. Turning down qualified candidates makes it harder for to hire the great people that coming through our pipeline. To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made.
mc32 9y ago
I've spoken to and overheard recruiters for Google who have quotas for women as well as minorities. In other words, the corp pressures them to hire non male, non-Asian, non-white, and to seek across the country for alternative hires. I'm actually okay with Google seeking women across the country (when they could find a local candidate), but we should not pretend that they don't have internal targets their recruiters need to meet.
ng12 9y ago
Why is that a bad thing to point out? A startup I once worked for sent out a memo asking that HR be involved before rejecting a "borderline" female candidate. As a generally apolitical junior employee this seemed really concerning -- we had pretty strict hiring standards and from that point on I wondered if each new female employee would have made it if they were born male. I can't say if Google's practices are discriminatory (I don't really know what they are) but it's a very important thing to have open, honest discussion about. At the time, I kept my mouth shut because I was pretty low on the totem pole. If I were an employee at Google I would now know to do the same.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? Bias is real. The exact same resume is, on average, considered more qualified if there's a typically male name at the top versus a female name. Did you ever wonder how many of your male colleagues unfairly benefitted from that sort of thing?
  - ng12 9y ago
    > Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? No, I didn't consider it about anyone until they gave me a reason to. Prior to that email I had no reason to think that anyone working there was anything other than the best of the best. Well-intentioned policies can have resounding negative effects. To your second point -- I'm not saying bias isn't real. I'm saying certain methods of counteracting bias have a strong potential for collateral damage.
  - rmartelli 9y ago
    At least for phone interviews, the bias doesn't exist or goes the other way: From http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas... : After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Aunche 9y ago
You can't take a critique on hiring personally. For example, Google skips for phone screen interview for new grads of elite schools like Stanford and MIT. If somebody claims that this is a discriminatory practice that lowers the bar for MIT candidates, no MIT grad is going to get offended.

gizmo 9y ago

He didn't just argue that there was a difference in the distribution but that the underlying cause was biological. Companies like google hire people who excell at certain skills and are therefore at the tail end of the corresponding distribution where the differences in likelihood occurence are largest. If he believes that for engineering there are 10 men for every woman at both tail ends of the distribution then the "natural" gender ratio in engineering teams must be 10:1 or standards are lowered in the name of diversity. The implications of that worldview are totally toxic.

qu4z-2 9y ago
> The implications [...] are toxic. And therefore it is false?
- gizmo 9y ago
  It is false because the science is bunk. Social conditioning likely explains all (and definitely explains most) of the measured differences, not biology. The author has a popular science level understanding of gender differences. Based on that he concludes women are unsuited to be engineers compared to men.
  - qu4z-2 9y ago
    > It is false because the science is bunk. Well, then make that argument.
remarkEon 9y ago
Which is, of course, not what he said.
JSONwebtoken 9y ago
Why did you present it as if this is just something that the guy "believes?" I thought that was the strongest argument of his memo and the perhaps the point with the biggest scientific backing. If you wanted to pick out any argument out of those 10 pages to disassemble, you could have chosen any one of his arguments that haven't been corroborated by hundreds of years of scientific consensus.

budde 9y ago

He may have not told his direct teammates they lowered the bar but he certainly implied that women and underrepresented groups have at a whole at Google: > The Harm of Google’s biases: ... > - 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. Do you really not see the concerns this engineer has introduced for Google over his ability to objectively judge his peers who are women or members of an underrepresented group or at least how such coworkers might now have these concerns if they find themselves working with him? Do you not see how the long-term detriment and risk to Google could be (substantially) greater than the value the engineer brings to the company? Even if you remove the high-mindedness and virtues that tech companies like to project in their PR, do you not see how this is the only rational business choice for a Fortune 50 company?

weberc2 9y ago
Seems like Google introduced the problems, he merely exposed them.
bostik 9y ago
There is something I don't understand. The third quoted line should raise an entirely different question. You are in the position where you want to constantly hire a lot of qualified candidates. If you have discovered a way to decrease false negative rate, why would you not apply that across the board? It's like you have learned how to fix hiring but then carry it out only with some arbitrary cohorts. Sounds irrational to me.
- panda88888 9y ago
  My guess is maybe because it cost too much to implement it across the board, and the side effect that focused application results in more minority/women hires.

RA_Fisher 9y ago

The paper confused sex and gender badly. E.g. Man and male are not nearly equivalent groups. How could someone who thought so deeply about the subject miss that?

odessacubbage 9y ago
how is the distinction relevant for an engineering candidate? unless you're implying that google has a pilot child labor project in the works it strikes me as highly superfluous
remarkEon 9y ago
I don't think it wise to mix two controversial topics, especially since on their face they seem kind of contradictory. Gender identity discussions and biological dimorphism are both hugely emotional topics, and mixing them here would lead us down a discussion path we don't want to go.
rdtsc 9y ago
> The paper confused sex and gender badly. E.g. Man and male are not nearly equivalent groups. How could someone who thought so deeply about the subject miss that? Ok, but how do you propose the paper to be rewritten taking those into consideration. Or do you suggest that Google force every employee go through a medical exam to determine their sex and make sure no one chooses to identify as a different gender to pass through the hiring process easier... Sorry, I don't quite see what you're getting at there basically, it can interpreted in a few ways.
axaxs 9y ago
For 99% of the world, these terms are interchangeable. How does this argument relate to the article?
- RA_Fisher 9y ago
  For example there are both transsexual people and transgender people but they're different in kind.

bobdole1234 9y ago

I'd suggest you don't write any manifestos at work, obviously you'll be caught unaware by how people read your text.

oceanplexian 9y ago
I am pretty sure the author didn't call it a manifesto. The label was retroactively applied by those covering the story. It's a great, real-time example of language being subtly manipulated to shape public opinion.
- rtx 9y ago
  Maybe to relate it to that bombers manifesto, since there is a show about it on TV.