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Also from the memo: > However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Ou

Also from the memo: > However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination. He made his continued employment both a social and legal liability. This is a fireable offense even if he was "right". Also consider this. As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. In short, Google feels these programs are scientifically valid. The author claims they aren't, but casually dismisses Google's position without really addressing it. Instead we get an evo-psych Chewbacca defense, phrased in a way that's sure to offend a large number of people. Even if he did that in good faith, it's a colossal mistake at best.

pyroinferno 9y ago
>which he wasn't. I'm sure you have sources that disprove his sources. How about you post them.
- intern4tional 9y ago
  He's most likely referencing his next two lines down, "As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. Google has a line which they feel is backed by research..." so he can't post that data publicly as it is Google's private research. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist though, just that we won't get access to it.
  - elevenfist 9y ago
    > "... that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance." This is a well-known, well-researched fact of organizational psychology. Are you guys really this stupid? Think about it from a problem-solving perspective, in terms of the solutions individuals and groups will come up with. Sexism, racism, and discrimination in general doesn't benefit anyone but the wealthiest few, and only if they're really, really stupid.
    - beaconstudios 9y ago
      then you're arguing for diversity of opinion or viewpoint, rather than gender or skin colour? Because that's the opposite of the approach google is taking here.
      - elevenfist 9y ago
        I'm arguing for diversity of gender, skin color, cultural or sub-cultural background and identity. Diversity of viewpoint should already be a given. In order to promote tolerance you have to shut down and remove the people who support intolerance. Firing this guy is clearly in line with that mission and improving productivity. We learn this in grade school, are you all foreigners or something? Or has American education really been gutted...
        beaconstudios 9y ago
        well for one thing I'm British. I agree that it's fair game for companies to seek to remove people who are actively hostile to other employees but from what I've read about this memo (admittedly I haven't read the original itself) it seems like he wasn't saying "quick, fire all the female engineers!" but more like "Google's diversity initiative to get equal representation amongst male/female engineers is nonsensical because women are on average less likely to become engineers due to natural temperament differences in men/women". Maybe I haven't bought into the ideological argument but nothing there seems particularly contentious, nor does it seem like he's saying women shouldn't or can't be engineers.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance That would be interesting research to review publicly. But it also reframes the picture, changing it from "some groups are discriminated against and therefore we need diversity focus" to "we need to start discriminating in order to increase diversity, because this leads to better-performing teams".
trosi 9y ago
You may be right, but later in the note Pichai himself writes: > ...we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct As if admitting that currently there are no avenues for open discussion on highly controversial topics such as this one or at least none that do not clash with the Code of Conduct.
- orbitur 9y ago
  You can say "the diversity program is harmful and should be stopped" without advancing gender stereotypes (which is what the guy did in his memo). All you need to do is back up that "it's harmful" with evidence. It's pretty damn simple.
  - josteink 9y ago
    He had sources from here to the moon. Have you actually read the memo you are criticizing?
    - justinjlynn 9y ago
      I had to look through four or so articles to find an edited and incomplete copy of the controversial text. Fortunately there are complete copies of it as it was originally posted linked elsewhere in the thread. It's possible that they haven't read it (in its unedited form including the references as intended by its author) because reporters have, for some reason, made it hard to find.
      - josteink 9y ago
        Try this one then: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - 9y ago
chappi42 9y ago
Would be helpful to know WHICH Code of Conduct he is supposed to have violated. From glancing over the memo I perceive that: women/man are different and men prefer working in engineering. No need to artificially increase percentage of women engineers with incentives. I did not notice any inferior/superior claims. Being fired for this polite memo? And being characterized as a kind of toxic outcast? - I'm sorry, what have our society and companies become? Googlers seem to be allowed to do his/her utmost only within a narrow cage of accepted/mainstream borders.
- soundwave106 9y ago
  I think the memo made two mistakes here. The first, from my perspective, is that it crossed a line that you really have to tread with care when it started talking about "biological IQ". Anyone familiar with the sordid history of eugenics knows that you tread that line really carefully, both because of the sordid history of policy on that sort of thing, the extreme difficulty of separating biological vs. environmental constructs for IQ, and the difficulty of creating a single "IQ test" that measures every single aspect of human intelligence. The quote about "IQ and sex differences" (being something the left ignored) was only supported by a link to conservative think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (which said some things about bias in science grants, but didn't really have anything to say about IQ and sex differences). This is the point where, to me, the memo went downhill. I am not sure it is the intention (possibly the emphasis was intended to be more the politic), but it is very easy to infer inferior / superior claims at this point, because the whole "IQ and sex differences" thing sort of came out of nowhere. The other reason it went downhill fast, and unnecessarily so, was because the paper brought in "liberal" vs "conservative" American political dynamics elements. BIG mistake. Any discussion along this line needs to be as apolitical as possible, lest it descend rapidly into toxic left-wing vs. right-wing tribalism territory (as, well, happened). Instead of attempting to skirt around politics, loaded phrases were used, particularly at the end of the memo, like "PC authoritarian", and sourced links typically were op-ed, often with strong bias. I agree that a lot of the memo is more some of the tribal / "role" paradigms and elements that have been discussed in many sources over time, and there's actually some interesting food for thought in it. I'm not terribly comfortable that what I see as poor communication skills led to the firing. I would not characterize this memo as "polite" though, for the above reasons.
bostik 9y ago
> In particular, as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. Are these numbers available to public somewhere? I'm asking because I would dearly want to find comprehensive data. When I've done some of my own research, I have run into sets of studies, which all agree on one thing: more diverse groups get better results. The snag is that these studies disagree - wildly - with the magnitude of the effect. Some claim maybe 2% improvement. Some others claim up to ~30%. Yet others somewhere inbetween. The figures also fluctuate quite a bit over time. Study from 2008/2009 shows numbers that are almost entirely unrelated to a study from 2014/2015. Some studies claim that gender diversity alone bears very little benefit[ß], and other studies from the same time come out with results that sort of imply you will need cultural diversity for notable results. But by far the worst piece of news is that the measured and/or recorded numbers appear to be geographically distinct. Results from US studies are different from those in UK, which in turn differ from mainland Europe studies. That only raises more questions. Such as... - are the numbers consistently different across regions? - ... across continents? - ... across cultures? - what is the measured effect between "just" gender diverse and culturally diverse groups? - do age groups matter? ... and so on. I genuinely would like to know. (For the record, and you can check this from my earlier posts as well: I am firmly in the camp who believe that diversity is beneficial.) N.B. The most recent study I know of is the McKinsey report from 2015.[0] --- ß: I can dig out the research articles if there's interest. I have some of them sort of easily accessible. 0: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...
- gurkendoktor 9y ago
  Are you aware of a study that is focused on (software) engineers? The McKinsey study looks at companies' top management for its diversity metrics, but I don't really trust studies across professions. Most anecdotes I've read about the benefits of diversity boil down to "if only we'd had a <minority> on the team, we would have noticed <problem affecting minority>". But as a developer, my requirements are set by project managers (50% women in my experience), the design and marketing is done by a diverse team, testing is done by other people (or end-users, sigh); so developers are "only" concerned with the actual implementation. Consequently, I don't find it intuitive that more diversity (of gender/ethnicity) would help my team. Do developers in other companies or countries (Germany here) have wider responsibilities, and thus, diversity is more important? Can engineers at Facebook or Google write user-facing features on a whim? (The terrible mic drop Gmail gimmick comes to mind...) Could that explain the difference in how much teams benefit from diversity?
xiaosun 9y ago
What about the google employees who publicly called for the author to be fired (e.g. on twitter/social media)? Shouldn't these actions also be considered in violation of their Code of Conduct - those actions seem to fit the description of "harassment" and "intimidation".
- andrewprock 9y ago
  It appears we have a spectrum: * harassment and intimidation * calling for harasser to be fired * firing harasser All three behaviors fall under the broad umbrella of harassment and intimidation. Clearly the first is a fireable behavior, and the last is not a fireable behavior. The middle one certainly stands somewhere between. I suppose it's possible that if the author was exonerated, the middle group may be deemed as having participated in a firing offense?
Aunche 9y ago
Even if what the author stated was wrong, it's absurd to suggest that misrepresenting a few studies about gender differences is equivalent to harassment. Humans aren't so fragile that they can't ignore the politically incorrect opinions of a coworker.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
imron 9y ago
> one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance Consider this, if diversity hiring yields better individual and group performance then this implies that different races and genders perform better at certain skills, and that taken in aggregate, this leads to measurable performance increases overall at the individual and group level. After all, if there was no difference across gender or race, then it would make no difference whether you had 100% white male or 100% asian female, or any other combination of different demographics.

pyroinferno 9y ago

>which he wasn't. I'm sure you have sources that disprove his sources. How about you post them.

intern4tional 9y ago
He's most likely referencing his next two lines down, "As part of Google's mandatory diversity training, one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. Google has a line which they feel is backed by research..." so he can't post that data publicly as it is Google's private research. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist though, just that we won't get access to it.
- elevenfist 9y ago
  > "... that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance." This is a well-known, well-researched fact of organizational psychology. Are you guys really this stupid? Think about it from a problem-solving perspective, in terms of the solutions individuals and groups will come up with. Sexism, racism, and discrimination in general doesn't benefit anyone but the wealthiest few, and only if they're really, really stupid.
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    then you're arguing for diversity of opinion or viewpoint, rather than gender or skin colour? Because that's the opposite of the approach google is taking here.
    - elevenfist 9y ago
      I'm arguing for diversity of gender, skin color, cultural or sub-cultural background and identity. Diversity of viewpoint should already be a given. In order to promote tolerance you have to shut down and remove the people who support intolerance. Firing this guy is clearly in line with that mission and improving productivity. We learn this in grade school, are you all foreigners or something? Or has American education really been gutted...
      - beaconstudios 9y ago
        well for one thing I'm British. I agree that it's fair game for companies to seek to remove people who are actively hostile to other employees but from what I've read about this memo (admittedly I haven't read the original itself) it seems like he wasn't saying "quick, fire all the female engineers!" but more like "Google's diversity initiative to get equal representation amongst male/female engineers is nonsensical because women are on average less likely to become engineers due to natural temperament differences in men/women". Maybe I haven't bought into the ideological argument but nothing there seems particularly contentious, nor does it seem like he's saying women shouldn't or can't be engineers.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance That would be interesting research to review publicly. But it also reframes the picture, changing it from "some groups are discriminated against and therefore we need diversity focus" to "we need to start discriminating in order to increase diversity, because this leads to better-performing teams".

trosi 9y ago

You may be right, but later in the note Pichai himself writes: > ...we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct As if admitting that currently there are no avenues for open discussion on highly controversial topics such as this one or at least none that do not clash with the Code of Conduct.

orbitur 9y ago
You can say "the diversity program is harmful and should be stopped" without advancing gender stereotypes (which is what the guy did in his memo). All you need to do is back up that "it's harmful" with evidence. It's pretty damn simple.
- josteink 9y ago
  He had sources from here to the moon. Have you actually read the memo you are criticizing?
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    I had to look through four or so articles to find an edited and incomplete copy of the controversial text. Fortunately there are complete copies of it as it was originally posted linked elsewhere in the thread. It's possible that they haven't read it (in its unedited form including the references as intended by its author) because reporters have, for some reason, made it hard to find.
    - josteink 9y ago
      Try this one then: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - 9y ago

chappi42 9y ago

Would be helpful to know WHICH Code of Conduct he is supposed to have violated. From glancing over the memo I perceive that: women/man are different and men prefer working in engineering. No need to artificially increase percentage of women engineers with incentives. I did not notice any inferior/superior claims. Being fired for this polite memo? And being characterized as a kind of toxic outcast? - I'm sorry, what have our society and companies become? Googlers seem to be allowed to do his/her utmost only within a narrow cage of accepted/mainstream borders.

soundwave106 9y ago
I think the memo made two mistakes here. The first, from my perspective, is that it crossed a line that you really have to tread with care when it started talking about "biological IQ". Anyone familiar with the sordid history of eugenics knows that you tread that line really carefully, both because of the sordid history of policy on that sort of thing, the extreme difficulty of separating biological vs. environmental constructs for IQ, and the difficulty of creating a single "IQ test" that measures every single aspect of human intelligence. The quote about "IQ and sex differences" (being something the left ignored) was only supported by a link to conservative think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (which said some things about bias in science grants, but didn't really have anything to say about IQ and sex differences). This is the point where, to me, the memo went downhill. I am not sure it is the intention (possibly the emphasis was intended to be more the politic), but it is very easy to infer inferior / superior claims at this point, because the whole "IQ and sex differences" thing sort of came out of nowhere. The other reason it went downhill fast, and unnecessarily so, was because the paper brought in "liberal" vs "conservative" American political dynamics elements. BIG mistake. Any discussion along this line needs to be as apolitical as possible, lest it descend rapidly into toxic left-wing vs. right-wing tribalism territory (as, well, happened). Instead of attempting to skirt around politics, loaded phrases were used, particularly at the end of the memo, like "PC authoritarian", and sourced links typically were op-ed, often with strong bias. I agree that a lot of the memo is more some of the tribal / "role" paradigms and elements that have been discussed in many sources over time, and there's actually some interesting food for thought in it. I'm not terribly comfortable that what I see as poor communication skills led to the firing. I would not characterize this memo as "polite" though, for the above reasons.

bostik 9y ago

> In particular, as part of Google's mandatory diversity training, you're presented with Google's internal research showing that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance. Are these numbers available to public somewhere? I'm asking because I would dearly want to find comprehensive data. When I've done some of my own research, I have run into sets of studies, which all agree on one thing: more diverse groups get better results. The snag is that these studies disagree - wildly - with the magnitude of the effect. Some claim maybe 2% improvement. Some others claim up to ~30%. Yet others somewhere inbetween. The figures also fluctuate quite a bit over time. Study from 2008/2009 shows numbers that are almost entirely unrelated to a study from 2014/2015. Some studies claim that gender diversity alone bears very little benefit[ß], and other studies from the same time come out with results that sort of imply you will need cultural diversity for notable results. But by far the worst piece of news is that the measured and/or recorded numbers appear to be geographically distinct. Results from US studies are different from those in UK, which in turn differ from mainland Europe studies. That only raises more questions. Such as... - are the numbers consistently different across regions? - ... across continents? - ... across cultures? - what is the measured effect between "just" gender diverse and culturally diverse groups? - do age groups matter? ... and so on. I genuinely would like to know. (For the record, and you can check this from my earlier posts as well: I am firmly in the camp who believe that diversity is beneficial.) N.B. The most recent study I know of is the McKinsey report from 2015.[0] --- ß: I can dig out the research articles if there's interest. I have some of them sort of easily accessible. 0: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...

gurkendoktor 9y ago
Are you aware of a study that is focused on (software) engineers? The McKinsey study looks at companies' top management for its diversity metrics, but I don't really trust studies across professions. Most anecdotes I've read about the benefits of diversity boil down to "if only we'd had a <minority> on the team, we would have noticed <problem affecting minority>". But as a developer, my requirements are set by project managers (50% women in my experience), the design and marketing is done by a diverse team, testing is done by other people (or end-users, sigh); so developers are "only" concerned with the actual implementation. Consequently, I don't find it intuitive that more diversity (of gender/ethnicity) would help my team. Do developers in other companies or countries (Germany here) have wider responsibilities, and thus, diversity is more important? Can engineers at Facebook or Google write user-facing features on a whim? (The terrible mic drop Gmail gimmick comes to mind...) Could that explain the difference in how much teams benefit from diversity?

xiaosun 9y ago

What about the google employees who publicly called for the author to be fired (e.g. on twitter/social media)? Shouldn't these actions also be considered in violation of their Code of Conduct - those actions seem to fit the description of "harassment" and "intimidation".

andrewprock 9y ago
It appears we have a spectrum: * harassment and intimidation * calling for harasser to be fired * firing harasser All three behaviors fall under the broad umbrella of harassment and intimidation. Clearly the first is a fireable behavior, and the last is not a fireable behavior. The middle one certainly stands somewhere between. I suppose it's possible that if the author was exonerated, the middle group may be deemed as having participated in a firing offense?

Aunche 9y ago

Even if what the author stated was wrong, it's absurd to suggest that misrepresenting a few studies about gender differences is equivalent to harassment. Humans aren't so fragile that they can't ignore the politically incorrect opinions of a coworker.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

imron 9y ago

> one is presented with Google's internal research claiming that unconscious bias is real and measurable, and that diversity hiring yields both better individual and group performance Consider this, if diversity hiring yields better individual and group performance then this implies that different races and genders perform better at certain skills, and that taken in aggregate, this leads to measurable performance increases overall at the individual and group level. After all, if there was no difference across gender or race, then it would make no difference whether you had 100% white male or 100% asian female, or any other combination of different demographics.