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> "Companies don’t have viewpoints." They do. Not reacting would have been an endorsement. Many would want to think that these issues are apolitical, or scient

> "Companies don’t have viewpoints." They do. Not reacting would have been an endorsement. Many would want to think that these issues are apolitical, or scientific, or anything "neutral". They are not. Make no mistake. This is a fight. A struggle between two visions of the world, maybe more. Such conflicts are not won over peaceful arguments. Sooner or later, one must take a stand, which is exactly what Google executives just did.

fwn 9y ago
> Such conflicts are not won over peaceful arguments. They are. At least that's how civilised societies would handle it. It could be a textbook example of a decision a civil discourse could approach.
- azinman2 9y ago
  But it’s not civil when you suggest there’s inherently biological reasons for your coworkers to be inferior to you.
  - nxsynonym 9y ago
    But it is. Just because he holds one opinion does not mean that he will act on it, expect google to act on it, or cause harm because of it. Ideas don't hurt people. People with no way to voice their ideas and opinions become angry, and then hurt other people.
    - nxsynonym 9y ago
      Downvotes just prove my point, by the way. Make a valid counter-argument or bug off. Downvoting opinions you don't agree with is reddit-level hive mind. Make a stance and don't hide behind your ability to downvote.
    - azinman2 9y ago
      Guessing you’re not a minority in anyway. When others who aren’t a member of your class tell you anything that’s inherent to your class DOES hurt people... such ideas are often used to restrict what you can do or set you up for failure in society in a particular way because ideas spread. They also do a lot of internal self-harm just from being expressed by others. It’s bad enough to get that in life in general, but then to get it at work as well....
      - nxsynonym 9y ago
        You know what they say about assuming things... I get this is a sensitive topic, but don't try to discount my opinion by claiming I don't have the necessary experience or vantage point. You know nothing about me.
        azinman2 9y ago
        You asked for a substantive reply given the downvotes by others, and I gave you one. Are you going to reply to it or focus on the guess (which I called out as a guess... hardly an assumption).
    - Const-me 9y ago
      Some ideas do. For example, Nazi’s master race idea hurt badly. However, I don’t see how that’s relevant. The author of that memo didn’t wrote about male superiority of anything similar. He talked about statistically significant differences, and proposed ideas for google to attract more female employees without discriminating against males.
  - whytaka 9y ago
    That's really not what was said. Surely you are familiar with statistics and distributions over population. I agree it wasn't a smart thing to say, but I don't think it furthers the discussion to misrepresent it.
  - StanislavPetrov 9y ago
    Those who keep misusing the word "inferior" instead of "different" expose themselves for either having not read, or not understood, what was written.
    - azinman2 9y ago
      I admit that I read everything surrounding it and not the original document before commenting here. That’s a rare moment for me as I usually RTFA before commenting. I’ve now read it, thank you for calling me out on that. That said, I don’t think it’s a textbook example of civil discourse to be circulating this within your own organization. When one side suggests “distributions of differences” are root causes (without diving into them and first principals), it takes all the oxygen out of the room. It makes for a very uncivil situation for colleagues to have to defend their own gender. Cloaking false information inside of distributions and using the word “different” doesn’t mean somehow that the expressed opinions are fair, unbiased, or rooted in some truth. It clearly implied that we shouldn’t expect an equal distribution of men and women in tech because women “on average” aren’t as well suited for the job. Bullshit. I’ve seen myself male dominated teams that create their own monoculture that makes it hard for an outsider to enter. I’ve been part of such teams at Google! It’s not necessarily the fault of the people on the team, and for the most part people seemed to want to accept others. But I did encounter moments of racism, sexism, and homophobia that were quite shocking to me. And I’m a white male, so presumably people felt “comfortable” with me there enough to express it. Can you imagine being be a woman of color and trying to feel welcome? And this was a less bro-y team. Being gay I felt very uncomfortable with it, but at least they automatically gave me an intellectual pass due to the “distributions” I come from. We need to look at individuals and not distributions to bring a class up. Over time societal forces change, which will affect such “averages.” It used to be that on average, women didn’t work outside the come. That’s no longer true. It used to be that on average, women made far far less than men. That’s no longer true (but still not equal.) Things are dynamic, so by trying to hide under statistics we ignore the potential (and necessity) for change. This article _implies_ that females inherently inferior for high-level Google/tech jobs (or things that deal with “ideas”... so insulting)... and that’s just plain wrong.
    - adrienne 9y ago
  - rocky1138 9y ago
    Did you read the document?
- ebola1717 9y ago
  In the textbooks, you'll see firehoses turned on protesters, bus boycotts, marches on Selma and Washington, not to mention all the bloody resistance required in South Africa, India, Algeria...
- gobugat 9y ago
  It is not how the US handled the Civil Rights Movement: MLK was called a terrorist. Neither is it how the apartheid was taken on in South Africa. Or any major social improvement: strikes, demonstrations and struggles were necessary. Playing the passivity card is, at least, dragging down the struggle.
  - brighteyes 9y ago
    Strikes, demonstrations, etc. are useful tools. Blacklists and firing people for political opinions are not, they often cause more harm than help.
tracker1 9y ago
Yeah... nothing to debate, no points of contention, nothing to see here... it's how I see it, and if you don't agree, I'll shut you down. Sounds open to new ideas and diverse opinions to me.
- gjulianm 9y ago
  I wonder if there would be the same controversy if the memo had gone viral but being about any other issue, say, about what the guy thinks Google is doing wrong with Google+. I assume that the guy would be fired also, but I'm not sure. In other words, I'm not sure whether the firing is to supress opinions or to punish putting the company in a bad spot.
- Latty 9y ago
  I keep seeing this kind of thing get said, but I'm not sure what the point is - are people really expecting people who espouse diversity to literally accept any opinion? Am I meant to work alongside a person who has literally said he wants me to die, completely seriously? So at some point, there is a line - I feel the more interesting discussion is why you feel this isn't beyond the line - presumably it comes down to a matter you not believing there was harm caused? For me, I think the obvious justification for the firing here is that this guy had hiring as a part of his responsibility, and this document is a statement he isn't going to be able to fulfil that. If I'm a developer and I write a manifesto about how we should be writing code to optimise for the worst maintainability to keep job security, am I fair game to fire? If I'm literally coming out with a manifesto that says I'm not going to do the job I was hired to do (of part thereof), is it unreasonable to fire me?
  - tracker1 9y ago
    The issue is that time and time again the reaction to dissenting opinion isn't to discuss the merit of such opinion but to shut down the conversation and drown it out. Also, I haven't seen the original memo, my understanding is that it wasn't intended as a manifesto. Beyond this, I don't know that it called for anyone to die. Maybe you can point out some things in the memo that you feel warrants someone's ability to make a living be taken away. --- Edit: I would expect for people who preach in the name of diversity to be more open to criticism and opinions that don't match their own. I've said of myself repeatedly that I'd much rather have more politicians I can respect than those that I agree with. It's somewhat hypocritical of someone to espouse diversity, while simultaneously shutting out differing opinions.
nxsynonym 9y ago
Companies can and should have view points. However, firing anyone who disagrees with those viewpoints is a knee-jerk reaction to avoid any negative press. They could have reacted with a "Google does not support or endorse the views expressed", and let the rest happen naturally. This is censorship. Yes, it's within a privately owned company, but it is very clearly a suppression of intellectual debate. Why not encourage this debate to happen? This black-and-white, all-or-nothing trend in public speech in general is very concerning. Debate and discourse no longer exist, it's simply one side flaming the other.
- gobugat 9y ago
  Here is an "intellectual debate" for you: hairdressers are a danger to society and should be exterminated. Why don't you want to have it? Why censoring a potentially valid viewpoint?
  - nxsynonym 9y ago
    I'm not following. I will gladly debate this with you. Don't assume I don't want to engage, or that I would attempt to censor your view.
    - gjulianm 9y ago
      The point I think the parent is trying to make is that some times debating certain ideas is validating them a little bit. It's as if someone asked me to jump off a bridge: discussing whether he should jump or not would be like saying "there is some possibility that you convince me and I jump off the bridge". Indeed, you should enter a debate with the idea that the other might convince you, right? If you are not going to change it it's not a debate.
      - gobugat 9y ago
        On point, thanks.
- MBCook 9y ago
whytaka 9y ago
> Not reacting would have been an endorsement. Some have said, "Reacting to it would dignify it". Is that an endorsement? > They are not. Are you saying we can't use science to determine whether differences between the sexes exist? > Such conflicts are not won over peaceful arguments. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. PS. Why is your username green?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Green usernames are new accounts.
- dozzie 9y ago
  > PS. Why is your username green? An account created just a few days ago. After some time it will become grey.
moduspol 9y ago
> Make no mistake. This is a fight. A struggle between two visions of the world, maybe more. Such conflicts are not won over peaceful arguments. Sooner or later, one must take a stand Is this view not pretty clearly authoritarian? It literally comes across like a comic book villain speech. Is it not possible that there simply are intelligent people who disagree with you validly, and that shaming them into silence isn't the best solution?
- gobugat 9y ago
  He wasn't shamed into silence, he was invited to blurt out his poison on non-Google territory. He wasn't chastised, or sued, or anything else. Unlike all the people victim of the kind of discriminations he endorses.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
IMTDb 9y ago
> Sooner or later, one must take a stand, which is exactly what Google executives just did. Exactly but then in the statement, don't pretend people should have the ability to speak their mind freely. By firing the guy they basically closed that door entirely, they choose to inflict the maximum penalty they legally could on a guy that wrote an internal memo. Google executives basically just said: "Anyone expressing any other view other than our official politically correct position will be excommunicated (fired) on the spot" then goes on saying "but hey, we like free speech you know ;-)". They are not fooling anyone. You may agree with the manifesto author or not, but his thought were articulate. He provided evidence for his theories and at no point was he needlessly insulting to anyone. I feel a better response form the Google team would have been to issue a statement defending and justifying their position: "Google executive team does not agree with those theories for reasons X Y and Z, and our internal measurements have shown that mixed gender teams perform on average better for X Y and Z reasons as shown by report foo and bar. We however agree with the author that gender equality is a difficult issue to tackle bla bla bla". The discussion would have moved to the manifesto evidence vs Google evidence and we would have actually had something to talk about regarding gender equality. Now it's just about Google inability to cope with free speech inside the company, as shown by the Bloomberg article.
- gobugat 9y ago
  > "You may agree with the manifesto author or not, but his thought were articulate. He provided evidence for his theories and at no point was he needlessly insulting to anyone. " No, no, and no. Asserting that half of humanity is incapable of taking on pressure and responsibility is insulting, and suggesting that his rant was articulate or evidenced shows a serious lack of basic humanity. Strong words, but as I said, this is not a TV debate. This is a struggle. We won't convince each other here.
  - ticviking 9y ago
    > Asserting that half of humanity is incapable of taking on pressure and responsibility is insulting Where in his manifesto did he say that? I've read it through a few times, and nowhere does he say that.

fwn 9y ago

> Such conflicts are not won over peaceful arguments. They are. At least that's how civilised societies would handle it. It could be a textbook example of a decision a civil discourse could approach.

azinman2 9y ago
But it’s not civil when you suggest there’s inherently biological reasons for your coworkers to be inferior to you.
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  But it is. Just because he holds one opinion does not mean that he will act on it, expect google to act on it, or cause harm because of it. Ideas don't hurt people. People with no way to voice their ideas and opinions become angry, and then hurt other people.
  - nxsynonym 9y ago
    Downvotes just prove my point, by the way. Make a valid counter-argument or bug off. Downvoting opinions you don't agree with is reddit-level hive mind. Make a stance and don't hide behind your ability to downvote.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    Guessing you’re not a minority in anyway. When others who aren’t a member of your class tell you anything that’s inherent to your class DOES hurt people... such ideas are often used to restrict what you can do or set you up for failure in society in a particular way because ideas spread. They also do a lot of internal self-harm just from being expressed by others. It’s bad enough to get that in life in general, but then to get it at work as well....
    - nxsynonym 9y ago
      You know what they say about assuming things... I get this is a sensitive topic, but don't try to discount my opinion by claiming I don't have the necessary experience or vantage point. You know nothing about me.
      - azinman2 9y ago
        You asked for a substantive reply given the downvotes by others, and I gave you one. Are you going to reply to it or focus on the guess (which I called out as a guess... hardly an assumption).
  - Const-me 9y ago
    Some ideas do. For example, Nazi’s master race idea hurt badly. However, I don’t see how that’s relevant. The author of that memo didn’t wrote about male superiority of anything similar. He talked about statistically significant differences, and proposed ideas for google to attract more female employees without discriminating against males.
- whytaka 9y ago
  That's really not what was said. Surely you are familiar with statistics and distributions over population. I agree it wasn't a smart thing to say, but I don't think it furthers the discussion to misrepresent it.
- StanislavPetrov 9y ago
  Those who keep misusing the word "inferior" instead of "different" expose themselves for either having not read, or not understood, what was written.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    I admit that I read everything surrounding it and not the original document before commenting here. That’s a rare moment for me as I usually RTFA before commenting. I’ve now read it, thank you for calling me out on that. That said, I don’t think it’s a textbook example of civil discourse to be circulating this within your own organization. When one side suggests “distributions of differences” are root causes (without diving into them and first principals), it takes all the oxygen out of the room. It makes for a very uncivil situation for colleagues to have to defend their own gender. Cloaking false information inside of distributions and using the word “different” doesn’t mean somehow that the expressed opinions are fair, unbiased, or rooted in some truth. It clearly implied that we shouldn’t expect an equal distribution of men and women in tech because women “on average” aren’t as well suited for the job. Bullshit. I’ve seen myself male dominated teams that create their own monoculture that makes it hard for an outsider to enter. I’ve been part of such teams at Google! It’s not necessarily the fault of the people on the team, and for the most part people seemed to want to accept others. But I did encounter moments of racism, sexism, and homophobia that were quite shocking to me. And I’m a white male, so presumably people felt “comfortable” with me there enough to express it. Can you imagine being be a woman of color and trying to feel welcome? And this was a less bro-y team. Being gay I felt very uncomfortable with it, but at least they automatically gave me an intellectual pass due to the “distributions” I come from. We need to look at individuals and not distributions to bring a class up. Over time societal forces change, which will affect such “averages.” It used to be that on average, women didn’t work outside the come. That’s no longer true. It used to be that on average, women made far far less than men. That’s no longer true (but still not equal.) Things are dynamic, so by trying to hide under statistics we ignore the potential (and necessity) for change. This article _implies_ that females inherently inferior for high-level Google/tech jobs (or things that deal with “ideas”... so insulting)... and that’s just plain wrong.
  - adrienne 9y ago
- rocky1138 9y ago
  Did you read the document?
ebola1717 9y ago
In the textbooks, you'll see firehoses turned on protesters, bus boycotts, marches on Selma and Washington, not to mention all the bloody resistance required in South Africa, India, Algeria...
gobugat 9y ago
It is not how the US handled the Civil Rights Movement: MLK was called a terrorist. Neither is it how the apartheid was taken on in South Africa. Or any major social improvement: strikes, demonstrations and struggles were necessary. Playing the passivity card is, at least, dragging down the struggle.
- brighteyes 9y ago
  Strikes, demonstrations, etc. are useful tools. Blacklists and firing people for political opinions are not, they often cause more harm than help.

tracker1 9y ago

Yeah... nothing to debate, no points of contention, nothing to see here... it's how I see it, and if you don't agree, I'll shut you down. Sounds open to new ideas and diverse opinions to me.

gjulianm 9y ago
I wonder if there would be the same controversy if the memo had gone viral but being about any other issue, say, about what the guy thinks Google is doing wrong with Google+. I assume that the guy would be fired also, but I'm not sure. In other words, I'm not sure whether the firing is to supress opinions or to punish putting the company in a bad spot.
Latty 9y ago
I keep seeing this kind of thing get said, but I'm not sure what the point is - are people really expecting people who espouse diversity to literally accept any opinion? Am I meant to work alongside a person who has literally said he wants me to die, completely seriously? So at some point, there is a line - I feel the more interesting discussion is why you feel this isn't beyond the line - presumably it comes down to a matter you not believing there was harm caused? For me, I think the obvious justification for the firing here is that this guy had hiring as a part of his responsibility, and this document is a statement he isn't going to be able to fulfil that. If I'm a developer and I write a manifesto about how we should be writing code to optimise for the worst maintainability to keep job security, am I fair game to fire? If I'm literally coming out with a manifesto that says I'm not going to do the job I was hired to do (of part thereof), is it unreasonable to fire me?
- tracker1 9y ago
  The issue is that time and time again the reaction to dissenting opinion isn't to discuss the merit of such opinion but to shut down the conversation and drown it out. Also, I haven't seen the original memo, my understanding is that it wasn't intended as a manifesto. Beyond this, I don't know that it called for anyone to die. Maybe you can point out some things in the memo that you feel warrants someone's ability to make a living be taken away. --- Edit: I would expect for people who preach in the name of diversity to be more open to criticism and opinions that don't match their own. I've said of myself repeatedly that I'd much rather have more politicians I can respect than those that I agree with. It's somewhat hypocritical of someone to espouse diversity, while simultaneously shutting out differing opinions.

nxsynonym 9y ago

Companies can and should have view points. However, firing anyone who disagrees with those viewpoints is a knee-jerk reaction to avoid any negative press. They could have reacted with a "Google does not support or endorse the views expressed", and let the rest happen naturally. This is censorship. Yes, it's within a privately owned company, but it is very clearly a suppression of intellectual debate. Why not encourage this debate to happen? This black-and-white, all-or-nothing trend in public speech in general is very concerning. Debate and discourse no longer exist, it's simply one side flaming the other.

gobugat 9y ago
Here is an "intellectual debate" for you: hairdressers are a danger to society and should be exterminated. Why don't you want to have it? Why censoring a potentially valid viewpoint?
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  I'm not following. I will gladly debate this with you. Don't assume I don't want to engage, or that I would attempt to censor your view.
  - gjulianm 9y ago
    The point I think the parent is trying to make is that some times debating certain ideas is validating them a little bit. It's as if someone asked me to jump off a bridge: discussing whether he should jump or not would be like saying "there is some possibility that you convince me and I jump off the bridge". Indeed, you should enter a debate with the idea that the other might convince you, right? If you are not going to change it it's not a debate.
    - gobugat 9y ago
      On point, thanks.
MBCook 9y ago

whytaka 9y ago

> Not reacting would have been an endorsement. Some have said, "Reacting to it would dignify it". Is that an endorsement? > They are not. Are you saying we can't use science to determine whether differences between the sexes exist? > Such conflicts are not won over peaceful arguments. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. PS. Why is your username green?

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Green usernames are new accounts.
dozzie 9y ago
> PS. Why is your username green? An account created just a few days ago. After some time it will become grey.

moduspol 9y ago

> Make no mistake. This is a fight. A struggle between two visions of the world, maybe more. Such conflicts are not won over peaceful arguments. Sooner or later, one must take a stand Is this view not pretty clearly authoritarian? It literally comes across like a comic book villain speech. Is it not possible that there simply are intelligent people who disagree with you validly, and that shaming them into silence isn't the best solution?

gobugat 9y ago
He wasn't shamed into silence, he was invited to blurt out his poison on non-Google territory. He wasn't chastised, or sued, or anything else. Unlike all the people victim of the kind of discriminations he endorses.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

IMTDb 9y ago

> Sooner or later, one must take a stand, which is exactly what Google executives just did. Exactly but then in the statement, don't pretend people should have the ability to speak their mind freely. By firing the guy they basically closed that door entirely, they choose to inflict the maximum penalty they legally could on a guy that wrote an internal memo. Google executives basically just said: "Anyone expressing any other view other than our official politically correct position will be excommunicated (fired) on the spot" then goes on saying "but hey, we like free speech you know ;-)". They are not fooling anyone. You may agree with the manifesto author or not, but his thought were articulate. He provided evidence for his theories and at no point was he needlessly insulting to anyone. I feel a better response form the Google team would have been to issue a statement defending and justifying their position: "Google executive team does not agree with those theories for reasons X Y and Z, and our internal measurements have shown that mixed gender teams perform on average better for X Y and Z reasons as shown by report foo and bar. We however agree with the author that gender equality is a difficult issue to tackle bla bla bla". The discussion would have moved to the manifesto evidence vs Google evidence and we would have actually had something to talk about regarding gender equality. Now it's just about Google inability to cope with free speech inside the company, as shown by the Bloomberg article.

gobugat 9y ago
> "You may agree with the manifesto author or not, but his thought were articulate. He provided evidence for his theories and at no point was he needlessly insulting to anyone. " No, no, and no. Asserting that half of humanity is incapable of taking on pressure and responsibility is insulting, and suggesting that his rant was articulate or evidenced shows a serious lack of basic humanity. Strong words, but as I said, this is not a TV debate. This is a struggle. We won't convince each other here.
- ticviking 9y ago
  > Asserting that half of humanity is incapable of taking on pressure and responsibility is insulting Where in his manifesto did he say that? I've read it through a few times, and nowhere does he say that.