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Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O
- throwaway4444__ 9y agoGoogle has become anti-science and has joined fake-news/facts movement in it's messaging about this issue. This is a new low, I would not have expected. Opinion.
- pgodzin 9y agoThere are 2 sentences in the entire article about Sundar, essentially saying he should have handled this better. There is no great way to handle this. If he hadn't fired him there would be 10x more articles demanding his resignation as many outraged employees would leave and diversity efforts set back.
- taysic 9y ago"He could have wrestled with the tension between population-level research and individual experience. He could have stood up for the free flow of information." Honestly I don't agree. It's his job to facilitate an enjoyable work environment not be a champion of free speech. Free speech is plentiful outside the workplace. If you want to contact HR go for it. But the person who wrote the memo opened a can of worms implying that his perspective was super valuable to the discussion rather than the many female employees who work there. There are a myriad of debatable perpestives but this was not the appropriate channel to vent them. Women want to be respected by their coworkers and arguments like "biologically we've hit the max amount of women who are interested in this field" don't align with our experience.
- peoplewindow 9y ago> It's his job to facilitate an enjoyable work environment not be a champion of free speech Obviously he hasn't been doing that. Lots of Googlers apparently feel like they can't speak out on topics that might offend hard-left sensibilities. > Women want to be respected by their coworkers and arguments like "biologically we've hit the max amount of women who are interested in this field" don't align with our experience. Align with your experience? How would that be a valid way to measure anything? The reason this thesis has weight is because it aligns with hiring data. Despite huge efforts software is not 50/50 balanced. This is because there's not 50/50 male/female graduation rates, and that in turn is because there's not 50/50 male/females studying CS to begin with. Obviously there's some cause for this. If you rule out biological causes then you're left with unconscious bias and other evidence-free theories. Biological explanations have actual scientific studies behind them.
- taysic 9y agoSo just because theories are "evidence-free" or too hard to make studies around, they are untrue? My experience should count for something because I am actually a woman in tech, who loves to code, who started my own successful tech business. People like me should be a vocal part of the discussion because we're a minority who has some first hand insight. Studies have been shown time and time again to sometimes create conclusions from biased premises, to make the wrong conclusions, or simply be contradictory to a dozen other studies. Not to say they are always wrong. I have no reason to believe biology plays no role but I personally don't believe it plays a significant role.
- Torai 9y ago> There are many actors in the whole Google/diversity drama Says the guy who has just claimed its CEO should resign.
- mrlinx 9y agoHow's that relevant to the point of the article?
- Torai 9y agoWith his article on the NYT, he has become one the principal actors and is contributing to make the drama bigger.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoso how's that relevant to your comment? Does this change anything about there being multiple actors in this drama?
- Torai 9y agoIn the article: > There are many actors in the whole Google/diversity drama, but I’d say the one who’s behaved the worst is the C.E.O., Sundar Pichai. He is implicitly criticizing the whole drama thing. And when saying Pichai behaved worst, I understand he is saying Pichai was who contributed most to make the drama bigger. I think Brooks is contributing a lot to make the drama bigger. That's my point.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoSo is your point that this journalist guy should just not write about it? That's his job. It's different from a CEO making a bad decision.
- Torai 9y agoNo. I only have criticized the hypocrisy of the sentence I've quoted.
- visarga 9y agoI read that as "Sundar Pichai Resigns as Google’s C.E.O" and was shocked for a second. I think he made a moral mistake by firing the memo guy, but he has to worry about potential legal ramifications, should an employee sue for "condoning discrimination" or something. Too bad for diversity of opinion, can't have that under threat of lawsuit.
- tootie 9y agoI think that's even more nuts than the media response to the actual incident. Pichai is a product guy who made handled a personnel issue poorly. I think this is still a minor issue and one where he has hopefully learned some lessons and we can move on.
- jalayir 9y agoThe big assumption in David Brooks' piece is that the so-called "manifesto" was Damore's one and only "transgression". Were there other, previous internal complaints about him, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back?
- greekyogurt21 9y agoI love how you're getting down voted for asking a reasonable question.
- daughart 9y agoEspecially given the reporting about him offending his classmates at Harvard.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Shank 9y agoHonestly, I think he made the right move just from a PR perspective. His firing makes sense: the CEO and HR are both acting to protect the company. The author of the manifesto caused Google a PR disaster and created a huge state of internal conflict, valid or not. The shareholders are probably really happy that their CEO removed a person who managed to get Google so much bad press in so little time. This is the reality of business. One does not simply create a PR disaster for the company, with no positive return, and still maintain their job.
- endtime 9y agoThe leakers caused the bad press, not Damore. (Unless he was the leaker, of course...)
- thomasahle 9y agoIt was all over the media before the leak. Before it was just based on rumors of "some internal viral memo". Leaking it might even have helped calm the waters.
- otterley 9y agoIt's my experience that time calms waters far more effectively than adding more ships.
- votepaunchy 9y agoThose "rumors" are still a leak.
- malandrew 9y agoNo, those that were most outraged about the leak internally and turned to public shaming outside Google's walls are the actual problem. Why has the CEO not publicly reprimanded these individuals as well? I'm sure many in the company see the leakers as heroes. This attitude sets your company up for a culture of leaking. You have to reprimand both leftist and rightist leaker and try to get the conversation back to being civil. Furthermore, his memo canceling the town hall made things worse when he declared the majority agreed and that some wish he had done more. He didn't acknowledge any of the people internally that disagreed with the firing. He's probably not even aware that he's set himself up to only hear opinions that agree with the firing because others will be too afraid to question it. Honestly, I want Google to have a third-party set up a truly anonymous poll of all employees and measure how people really feel instead of speculate on how many agree or disagree with the firing. This is a company with expertise in analytics after all.
- hliyan 9y agoIsn't this author's reaction to the firing the same as Google's reaction to the memo -- over-outrage?
- where_do_i_live 9y agoArguing someone should be fired from their job for doing a bad job doesn't seem to be over-outrage... seems applicable. Maybe you disagree with his arguments, but seems normal to me.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- EduardoBautista 9y agoConvincing women to focus on a career in STEM is telling them that their choices for careers in nursing, teaching, and any other career dominated by women are wrong choices. I don't believe that, they are essential to our society and are arguably more important than helping create better ads at Google and Facebook.
- whowouldathunk 9y agoThere is a lot of technology involved in healthcare and teaching.
- FLUX-YOU 9y agoIn fact, healthcare technology, specifically user interfaces, needs all of the brilliant people it can get.
- olewhalehunter 9y agoAs a former medical tech developer, the problems in healthcare are almost entirely social/political and the healthcare tech business is making things worse in most respects.
- whowouldathunk 9y agoNew drugs are making things worse? Tell that to my oncologist friends. STEM is more than CRUD apps.
- olewhalehunter 9y agoFetanyl was a new drug at some point. Pharmaceuticals are over prescribed, healthcare businesses are a leech on the infrastructure, American lifestyles are inherently unhealthy, and no amount of new drug patents are going to fix those problems. Your oncologist friends might have new drugs to prescribe but that doesn't change the core problem of soaring cancer rates due to lifestyle and environmental issues.
- mankash666 9y agoThis is a surprisingly accurate, well written, neutral article, save the click baity headline. Everyone here should treat suggestions of resigning with a grain of salt, the author just wants your attention
- aaron-lebo 9y agolol what a clickbait obnoxious headline. What was he supposed to do? He's got a workforce of tens of thousands, lots of who were offended rightly or not. To keep the guy around would've been just as bad. You publish something like that you accept the consequences. You make yourself obnoxious to your bosses who expect you to be a quiet cog in the machine, that's what happens. Duh. It's kind of funny that Damore dropped out of Harvard to work at Google and he's now been fired from there. Kind of throwing away his advantages.
- greekyogurt21 9y agoI love how he's got his own twitter account posing with a t/shirt that says "Goolag". Yeah buddy, full health, vision, dental benefits with a high salary == Russian death camp.
- sounds 9y agoPlease be aware this is an opinion piece by David Brooks. This does not represent a majority opinion of the New York Times shareholders.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoNevertheless, to see such a balanced presentation of the case in mainstream media is uplifting.
- chrismarlow9 9y agoHah, love the meta here.
- petraeus 9y agoBut the question is, why would he do that? He made the best possible choice out of many bad choices forced by the anti-diversity memo guy himself.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoIt's not an "anti-diversity" memo.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoWow, I'd never imagine to read this piece in NY Times.
- otterley 9y agoWhy is that? David Brooks has been a conservative editorial commentator for a long time there.
- ebola1717 9y agoYeah, like, there's a climate change denier in the NYT op-ed section. NYT isn't DemocracyNow - it's editorial team has range.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoWell, because Damore touched an extremely delicate subject, that is the relation between biology (sex/race) and behavior, and the progressive view is that the latter is influenced mostly by cultural factors, with the former playing only a marginal role. The NYT team, as a whole, is likely to hold and profess the progressive view, so defending the opposite view is something I wouldn't expect to be published, even as an opinion piece.
- guelo 9y agoMaybe you have unfounded biases against the NYT based on the propaganda outlets you get your information from.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoI agree with parent based on my own experience, and I'm sure parent bases his/her comment based on experience too. I have been a NYTimes reader for a while and still read some of their less political articles, but when it comes to political pieces I stay away from them because I get nothing new, most of their articles are obviously left biased (For the record, I am NOT right wing. I just appreciate unbiased journalism and NYT has been failing me) If you think NYT being left is based on some untrue propaganda by right tilting media websites, then you're the one who's mistaken, because as I said, I'm not right wing and I don't even read any right wing media.
- alexashka 9y agoIf we had CEOs resigning over every hissy fit an employee throws - we'd have no CEOs left.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoThis is not the reason the author gives in the article.
- drakenot 9y agoIt isn't about the "hissy fit" an employee threw. The resignation would be because of Sundar's intellectually dishonest characterization of the memo, and his subsequent handling of the situation. I don't know if he should resign, but I do think he fucked up in his handling of this situation.
- systems 9y agoI dont understand, why did this google employee send a memo, why didnt he just write a blog about .. like normal people do I honestly think this is his biggest mistake (the google employee not the ceo) .. he didnt understand boundaries It is sad, that someone gets fired for his opinion, even if this opinion is offensive ... i do believe in ones right to be offensive But I think the medium used to express his opinion , and the boundaries where choose to do so .. is erratic
- Klockan 9y agoIt was a google doc that he posted on an internal discussion board, it wasn't a company or even team wide memo.
- Afton 9y agoThere are lots of opinions that I might hold that would open my company up to lawsuits. In this case, he posted something that dramatically increases the likelyhood that some percentage of people fired will file suit, and this memo and the failure to reprimand/fire him will be part of the legal arsenal used against the company. Firing him is a simple mitigation strategy against this attack vector. ANY company that cares about lawsuits would have to make this move completely independently of the possible merits of his article. If it hadn't been leaked, he might not have needed to be fired. But once it was public news there was no sensible choice that Google could make. Again, I'm not trying to weigh in on his paper's content here, but as a simple legal precaution he needed to be fired. Note that this isn't just about sexism, but lots of protected class opinions could fall into this category of 'express this openly and you'll be fired'. No company of any size would be able to tolerate it.
- jamesrcole 9y agoIt was about an internal Google matter. It wouldn't have been appropriate to publicly post it
- jp_sc 9y agoAs I understand it, he posted on an internal forum designed for posting thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Then somebody decided to "leaked" to the world.
- zellyn 9y agoIt seems disingenuous not to mention the many debunkings of the memo's Science by Scientists. For example: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
- nzjrs 9y agoBy my estimation there is about 7 layers of recursive debunkings so far. How many times you recurse before breaking out seems to depend most strongly on your initial starting biases.
- zellyn 9y agoYes. Exactly. The editorial mentions only agreement from Scientists.
- thomasahle 9y agoIf the refutals are serious, you should be able to eventually find some underlying, simpler disagreement, or some experiment that needs to be done. If we give up, and break the recursion early, we get tribalism.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoI've also read several supporting takes by scientists in related fields as well. The statements Damore made are indeed supported by some studies, and science being science, there are studies which conflict it as well. Pretending 'science' supports one political view or another is the sort of thing that got us in this mess in the first place. I think if we're going to avoid being disingenuous, we need to recognize that there is not a widely accepted consensus on this topic.
- jamesrcole 9y agoI tend to take "supported by" to mean "there is support for it" not "everything supports it". I would use "confirmed" to describe the latter. (and yes, nothing is ever absolutely confirmed, bit were talking about everyday language here)
- lisper 9y agoThe primary thesis of Damore's memo [1] was not that women are biologically unsuited to STEM careers. The primary thesis was that, at Google, you cannot even advance the hypothesis that biology might be a factor without putting your career at risk. Ironically, by firing Damore, Pichai proved him correct. EDIT: if you doubt this, just look at the document's title and TL;DR section. [1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
- greendesk 9y agoI read James' document. I did not have the impression that this is his thesis.
- rednerrus 9y agoWhat was your impression?
- bhouston 9y agoDocuments filled with political hot buttons screw up people's emotions and they can not process such documents rationally or in a balanced fashion, many people see only what offends them or what they want to defend. It is just screwed up...
- bduerst 9y agoYep, it even rambles about the failure of Marxist communism at one point. It's a rant with cherry picked evidence, but people find something it in to confirm their beliefs and try to defend/attack it.
- greendesk 9y agoA country I used to live in had political steps as a prerequisite for professional life. To me, it does seem like an important point...
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- xrd 9y agoThis is comment in the memo that changed the consequences: "Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races." He's advocating restricting programs that reduce the massive gap in distributions. If he had left his arguments and asked people to make their own conclusions, he might still have a job. Brooks is wrong here.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoAre we reading the same text? He says: Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races. These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined. How is this "advocating restricting programs that reduce the massive gap in distributions"?
- xrd 9y agoI guess we will have to agree to disagree that these programs he allocated cutting mitigate this gap. Isn't down voting my opinions evidence that Hacker News doesn't tolerate diverse opinions? Where is the outrage at that?
- anonymous_tiger 9y agoIt's a mess because people actually want it to be a big mess. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
- nikolay 9y agoI've never found him fit for this role anyway.
- hugh4life 9y agoCompletely nuts... and I generally agree with the guy who was fired. First, this issue has little to do with the end product of the corporation. Second, CEOs have less control of the socio-political environment they find themselves in than say the "Newspaper of Record".
- j45 9y agoI can't seem to locate articles by Mr. Brooks calling for the resignation on other CEO's who have recently had worse issues. Happy to read anything from NYTimes or this opinion writer on other tech CEO's.
- j45 9y agoHaven't been downvoted in a while!
- samfisher83 9y agoWhether he resigned would it really make that much of a difference in grand scheme of things? He got 200 mil he can do whatever he wants and he doesn't worry about what his next job is.
- wudangmonk 9y agoGoing by this piece from the NYTimes no less it seems like the US university social justice warriors are starting to spill out into the mainstream population.
- peoplewindow 9y agoI am minded to agree. And that's a shame, because Pichai has done good things for Chrome and Android when he was leading those. The article doesn't really touch on Pichai's biggest mistakes here. Mistake one: Damore's memo alleged discrimination, both against men and conservatives. Gender and political affiliation are both protected classes in California and they just fired him for whistleblowing. He has now filed a complaint with the NLRB. This seems like a legal headache that a better CEO could have avoided by not firing the guy. Put him on the roof or something, wait for things to blow over, find some other solution but the moment they fired him, they set themselves up for this. Mistake two: Google shareholders asked at the last shareholder meeting if it was true that Google was a hostile work environment for conservatives (or words to that effect). They assured shareholders that this wasn't true. Clearly that answer has problems. Employees are leaking like crazy to Breitbart of all places that Google is extremely hostile to conservatives. I don't know what happens if leadership misleads shareholders in these sorts of questions, maybe nothing. But it can't be good. Mistake three: Google managers have been publicly announcing within the firm that they are blacklisting employees for not being sufficiently pro-feminist or even for just questioning the policies or the mob reaction to it. There are screenshots of this along with interviews, again, on Breitbart. This seems like a fantastically unhealthy culture that Pichai has allowed to grow on his watch. I have heard from other Googlers that in one incident, a manager claimed he'd blacklist anyone who was subscribed to an internal mailing list for discussion of conservative viewpoints, and then when people objected, that he'd blacklist them too (so they couldn't transfer to his team). Again this seems like a cut/dried case of discrimination against people of certain political affiliations. Mistake four: this debate is happening because Googlers are furiously attacking each other through leaks to the press. This is happening in both directions: the original leak was clearly intended to get Damore fired and publicly shamed, now others are leaking screenshots of internal communications and Pichai's emails. Pichai has quite clearly lost control of his own workforce to a staggering degree. How much more of Google's guts spilling out onto the street will shareholders tolerate?
- Overtonwindow 9y agoThis. An excellent deconstruction of the issue. A culture of silencing views a minority does not agree with for the sake of avoiding a mob has created a mob of its own against all reason.
- onebot 9y agoI also believe it was the correct move. But not because he wrote it, but because what he actually said in it. He made many generalizations that contribute to gender inequality and never backed any of those statements up with any scientific data. Thus, it could be reasoned that he clearly displayed his own biases and showed that he is a contributor to gender inequality. Furthermore, the PR backlash against his firing is far more news worthy if it was "wrongful" and he has gone on a media tour acting as the "victim". I am not sure news outlets would approach the firing objectively.
- ynniv 9y agoI must have read a different memo than everyone else. The one I read said that the massive gender imbalance in software could be due to genetics, and because of that we shouldn't try to fix it with policy. But the reality is that there is a gender imbalance in software because of the way women are treated, and the best way to correct that is through policies that treat them better. It shouldn't be a stretch to see that arguing against treating people respectfully is offensive.
- usaphp 9y agoYou must have read a different memo. The one he wrote can be described by the second part of your comment.
- vibrato 9y agoWho is arguing against treating people respectfully? For the sake of argument, if a group is less inclined towards a given profession, isn't it disrespectful to push them into it?
- ynniv 9y agoThe goal of affirmative action in general is to make a more welcoming environment. When the status quo is disrespectful, making the argument to perpetuate the status quo is making the argument to disrespect.
- vibrato 9y agosure, of course I agree that if cultural impacts or discrimination are the cause of these discrepancies, then perpetuating that is disrespectful. However, if biological differences cause them then affirmative action is disrespectful of those differences.
- thrill 9y agoActually the Board should make this decision for him, but looking at who the members are and who have positioned the company exactly where it sits, I don't expect any displays of leadership in this matter.
- moneytalks 9y agoLet's take bets on how long this survives on the front page. I'm going with 15-20 minutes from now. Who wants the over/under? edit: Already down from 3rd to 6th while points went from 130 to 170. 7 minutes in. edit: now 7th
- revelation 9y agoIt sinks like a stone because it has attracted 160+ comments in a mere hour.
- moneytalks 9y agoDidn't realize that too-high engagement counted against rank. Interesting approach.
- igravious 9y agoI think roughly 55 minutes is what it took, so I think about 30-35 minutes after you posted. I can't be exactly sure
- noarchy 9y agoWeird, the post was flagged/dead at one point, and now it isn't. Of course it has since sunk off the first page, too.
- codegeek 9y agoRegardless of who is right or wrong here, I don't get what the point of that Memo was ? I mean there are other ways of voicing your opinions on controversial topics like these. If I work for a large organization and I send a memo that discusses a sensitive and controversial topic, I am really creating trouble. I am not supporting his firing on this but he could have just avoided doing this. Companies exist only for 1 reason: profit for their shareholders. That is the hard fact, whether we like it or not. If a company gets bad PR because of one employee, they will fire the employee. Even if there was some merit in his argument, he could have chosen to do it differently. Bad choice which blew up pretty fast.
- plinkplonk 9y agoSundar Pichai does seem to be a little off balance and a bit out of his depth. That said, why should he resign? In the overall scheme of things, this isn't much of a crisis. If this were the standard to fire CEOs by not many companies would have CEOs left.
- jamesrcole 9y agoI think that firing sets a very dangerous precedent. I think it was wrong and it's important that there are consequences to disincentivise such behaviour in the future. (Obviously, there's lots of differing opinions on this) I'm not sure whether I think that means he should resign, though.
- kkhire 9y agoIt'd be funny if Pichai was like "okay damore supporters, what are you going to do? use bing? good luck avoiding google products on the internet LOL"
- Overtonwindow 9y agoHow would this have played in other countries? Is there someone from the U.K. or broader EU that could weigh in? I seem to recall that other countries have greater protections for speaking ones mind like this, which would have protected the author from termination.
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- GreaterFool 9y agoThis is the first fair and balanced article on this topic I've seen. > In his memo, Damore cites a series of studies, making the case, for example, that men tend to be more interested in things and women more interested in people. (Interest is not the same as ability.) I've been trying to hammer this point to all my colleagues (in private of course, I wouldn't dare to post it on public channel due to high probability of getting decapitated!): interests/preferences not abilities. Every time someone says the memo is denigrating women by telling them they are unfit or incapable of working in tech it makes me want to scream! It is not about any individual's ability but about preferences of a group. It might as well be that the arguments don't support the conclusion. But I haven't seen anyone offering a reasonable rebuttal that doesn't involve name-calling and blanket statements like "the author clearly doesn't understand gender".
- GreaterFool 9y agoMeanwhile there's been an ongoing campaign to discredit Stephen Miller based on his looks. I found this portrayal shocking: https://youtu.be/ej_5vyDkZgU?t=280 https://youtu.be/ej_5vyDkZgU?t=280 He's been labeled "a creep" for no reason by those who claim to be righteous and politically correct and fighting for the marginalized.
- where_do_i_live 9y agoThere are plenty of reasons to discredit Stephen Miller on the things he says. That other people make fun of him for his looks is pretty boring and I'll leave them to their antics - hardly like this type of behavior doesn't happen with _any_ large group.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoHe's already a creep for his views (Muslim ban, opposition to Hart-Cellar). His looks (and prior statements) just don't help.
- humanrebar 9y ago> Interest is not the same as ability. I'll make a subtle point in a discussion that clearly can't handle the subtleties it already has. Interest is not the same thing as ability, but interest is a great indicator of ability in technology, especially fast moving technology. In fact, I know plenty of people who are underemployed or underpaid that I say, "You, know, with your skills, you'd be great at writing software. Maybe you should develop an interest in coding." Similarly, people ask me, "How do I get a job in software?" and I suggest something very basic (tryruby.org, say) as a way for them to quickly figure out if they are interested. If they don't like problem solving and coding, they might be able to force themselves into qualifying for a job, but I'm not sure that's a good career strategy. Point being, to some degree, interest is one key component of ability in software and some other kinds of technology work.
- arihant 9y agoNo he should not. That letter was a disaster. While some of the points in that letter could have sparked valuable debate, one simply can't get away with a written claim that his coworkers are biologically incompetant to do their jobs.
- mwytock 9y agoA lot of people on "our side" did a bad job of simply refuting the argument presented. Its straightforward to do in one sentence: "While there may be scientific evidence of differences between men and women, using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts." Then you can go on and explain why for historical and societal reasons putting forth this weak theory is highly offensive and damaging to a large group of people. Of course, many feel that you shouldn't _have_ to explain this to people, but unfortunately in todays environment, you do!
- lobotryas 9y agoYou start by saying something is not "supported by the facts" and then go on by talking about how it's "highly offensive" (i.e.: hurts your feelings). I just want you to meditate on this for a bit.
- mwytock 9y agoI'm not sure what the contradiction is here? Also, I wasn't making any claim about my own feelings, the massive response shows that the memo was highly offensive to many people.
- LunaSea 9y agoSomething being offensive doesn't mean it's wrong or that it shouldn't be debated.
- mwytock 9y agoWell, saying things that are clearly wrong and offensive to large numbers of people is typically looked down upon amongst educated people and highly discouraged at the workplace. For example, think of other stereotypes about other groups (blacks, hispanics, jews) and think about what the response would be if an employee was publishing 10 page manifestos with loosely connected scientific arguments in support of these views.
- KirinDave 9y agoAnd once again, the characterization of "allowing the debate" means one thing for James (why, he "cited studies") and another for everyone else (they are an angry mob). The most telling bias in this piece is that characterization. Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" fixes, etc) he would not have cast quite so much doubt over his intent. What's also lost in this summary is one of the most important points: long term exposure to stereotypes has a powerful influence on people (many references of varying quality here: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/women-mathematics-stereotypes-identity-achievement https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/women-m...). By embracing them, we actually create self-fulfilling prophecies. These prophecies may be based on a statistical mean, but what's lost in that simple numerical distillation is what harm befalls even modest outliers to the distribution. Stereotypes which may seem obvious and unimportant to 3/4 of a population may be a crushing burden and source of relentless stress to the remaining quarter. It's interesting how many of my peers fought to liberate themselves from stereotypes of "weakness" and "inferiority" that were tied around them as smart teenagers. But when it comes time to recognize the harm in these stereotypes to outliers in a other group, they appeal to the same logic that oppressed them. One might argue that these traits are adopted defense mechanisms well-impressed by abuse. I'm not sure that justifies them, though.
- Danihan 9y ago>Stereotypes which may seem obvious and unimportant to 3/4 of a population may be a crushing burden and source of relentless stress to the remaining quarter. What an excellent quote. As a politically right-leaning gay person, I feel this way basically all the time, except I'm more like the 5% or 10%. Being a minority of a minority sucks, you don't fit in anywhere.
- KirinDave 9y agoTry being non-binary. The men who've tried to wake my gay post my public coming out are still talking shit about me. Which is to say: I appreciate your status and it's difficulty even if I don't agree with your politics.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago>In general the evolutionary psychologists have been winning this debate. Yes they are, by getting people fired who disagree with them.
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- daenz 9y agoAn excellent and relevant video to this discussion is an episode of Brainwash called "The Gender Equality Paradox." It covers the paradox of why, in more gender-equal societies, we see more separation between what men and women choose to do, and in less gender-equal societies, we see less separation between the interests. The host talks to scientists on both sides and goes back and forth relaying information and starting debate. It is fantastic. https://vimeo.com/19707588 https://vimeo.com/19707588
- 198123193891 9y agoSeems that Googlers are successfully killing this with their censorship.
- senthil_rajasek 9y ago", is not capable of handling complex data flows" What ? he is the CEO of Google. These silly opinion making pundits.
- teton_ferb 9y agoSteve jobs would have fired an Apple employee for staring at him for too long in the elevator and the press would have written fawning articles about how decisive Steve is, how secretive Apple is, and how much Apple employees fear Steve. Take any other industry: A friend of mine working for a management consulting firm was fired for losing a presentation and making a partner look bad because the company supplied laptop had a hard disk crash. People have been fired for less. But Sundar Pichai should take personal responsibility for firing an employee who wrote a jackass memo and caused Google PR harm. If the fellow was not fired, we'd have more articles calling for Sundar Pichai's resignation for making Google a hostile place for women and adding to gender imbalance in the industry. There's no winning strategy here. Now, if someone is calling for Google CEO's resignation for killing reader, I wholeheartedly agree :-) Edit: A CEO's job and responsibilities are to his/her shareholders, users and employees. Not to make decisions consistent with their personality traits.
- Danihan 9y agoSteve Jobs didn't pretend to be a nice guy / white knight, so it wasn't hypocritical.
- voidhorse 9y agoAs with any issue worth talking about, Damore's memo isn't outright sexist or discriminatory--but it isn't the well reasoned call to arms for an individualistic approach to diversity or a reconsideration of biology that he might've hoped for it to be. Some of Damore's footnotes reveal he lacks a certain subtly and researcher's tact and has quite a hefty number of biases of his own: "Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.” -- Damore, note 7. This is a polluted conceptualization of the issue and outright mythology. You can tell from his phrasing he's fallen prey to the us v. them mentality that plagues many of those who rail against the 'sjws'--linking identity politics directly to marxism and its development is patently ridiculous, a bleeding of domains, and shows that he can't help letting his own biases color his reading of contemporary situations and narratives. Sure, there are offshoots and links between these struggles but--I mean seriously--does he really believe there's some cohort of marxists who collectively decided, 'man we got to overthrow capitalism somehow but the proletariat didn't do it so lets try to level gender and race inequalities' what? Are we in fairytale land? There are people who research and write about identity politics that may draw upon marxist thought in some of their critiques, but it isn't some legion of people who just want to consistently uphold an 'opressor-opressed' dynamic regardless of the participants. There are plenty of marxists who also find identity politics to be total hogwash. For a memo that tries to "advocat[e] for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).", it fails spectacularly at its mission in this footnote. Damore's document is not a sexist screed by any means, but it isn't some lucid reconsideration of diversity either--plenty of his word choices and preemptive defensive measures (see the several instances where he reiterates that he definitely not a sexist and definitely supports diversity) show that, even if he was making an honest effort to step back, he is still victim to particular ideologies. We should ask ourselves why Damore would write such an memo in the first place. He makes no direct mention of an incident that prompted this call to arms. No quantitative predictive analysis into how a change in Google's diversity program would improve it and foster greater diversity and make it 'psychologically safe'. This makes one think his primary motivation was more likely a personal sense of injustice, or fueled by adherence to an ideology (his conservatism). It sounds like the result of a personal incident in which Damore's ideas were challenged, and he felt the instance was the result of company wide systemic practices and not an individual issue. I can't say whether or not the firing was justified, but Damore definitely isn't the scientific, neutral paragon Brooks reads him to be. The memo is loaded with ideology. It is not a scientific paper--nor does it claim to be. It is a political argument that tries to mask how politicized it is under the protective badge of 'but I have science on my side'. There's some ridiculous idea that, so long as science is on your team you're in the right. People forget that science only describes the world. What we argue for using science and how we interpret it still point inevitably to our own values. Just because you can leverage scientific fact to push your agenda does not make it 'correct' or 'objective'. Yes, science tells us the world is getting really hot and we should probably stop that if we want to avoid major climactic shifts--but science doesn't tell us we should act to save the world--that's up to us. Hell, the universe might be better off if the world does go to ash. There's no way to know. you make a value judgement and you act, scientific or otherwise. Even Damore's urging that we de-moralize, and de-empathize and generally act more like inhuman robots when it comes to diversity to depoliticize it is a major value judgement (that it's valuable to be neutral and objective and science guided as possible) and is thus both moral and political.
- akras14 9y agoI think he should resign, but mainly because he is a shitty CEO. Google can really use their version of Nadella.
- dahart 9y ago> When it comes to the genetic differences between male and female brains, I’d say the mainstream view is that male and female abilities are the same across the vast majority of domains — I.Q., the ability to do math, etc. It's weird that Brooks paints the memo as largely factually correct, but clearly doesn't believe what is the main thrust of the memo. The problem with the memo is not with any claims that are stated as fact, the problem is the FUD he's spreading by suggesting that the small and likely irrelevant biological differences we do know about might be responsible for the large differences in today's gender distribution in tech. There is plenty of evidence that there are much, much larger factors in the distribution discrepancy today than any possible difference of ability, but Damore is casting doubt on that and suggesting that the current distribution might be the natural fixed point, that it could be at steady state already due to the biological differences. Okay sure, he doesn't propose that as fact, he uses weasel words and doubt-casting to say it might be true, and that's the most damaging part. Getting people to believe it's possible is worse than any easily provable lie. People like Brooks defending the memo's factual accuracy are hiding behind this idea that only things claimed as fact might be damaging. Not true, the things claimed as possibility are more damaging. The obvious problem with suggesting that the current distribution might have settled to it's natural steady state is that it encourages turning a blind eye to the cultural sexism that we already know exists. It perpetuates sexism if we don't fix it first.
- humanrebar 9y ago> ...the problem is the FUD he's spreading... He seems earnest to me. If he's earnestly voicing ideas that result in fear, uncertainty, or doubt, is it his fault? What is the appropriate way to broach the subject publicly? Or are certain thoughts inherently unspeakable? If Damore bears significant blame, what is an appropriate response for a boss to have to that situation? Why is Damore the only person in trouble if controversial discussions themselves are against the rules?
- dahart 9y agoI believe he's earnest, that makes his being wrong all the worse, he doesn't know he's wrong and he's not trying to be wrong. It's more convincing, and thus more damaging, that he sounds earnest. I don't think it makes sense to assign blame, I don't care who's fault it is, and I believe he's free to share his thoughts. I hope you're not suggesting that being fired from a company is somehow censorship. What I care about is that his ideas are regressive and unintentionally sexist. He is using specious scientific sounding arguments to say we should turn a blind eye to cultural sexism. By ignoring it, we perpetuate cultural sexism.
- pow_pp_-1_v 9y agoWhat good would it do if Sundar resigns? If an employee, by his actions, sour the working environment in a company, I would think it's management's duty to get rid of the employee in no time. I am not commenting about the content of the stuff Damore wrote. But why did he write it in a way that would cause harm to his workplace? If he wanted change in the organization he should have probably found less public means of doing it.
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- v1n337 9y ago> The fourth actor is the media. The coverage of the memo has been atrocious. The irony.
- jblow 9y agoThis topic, a link to an NYT editorial, has been flagged. This seems highly problematic to me. Discussion here was pretty reasonable last I checked.
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- thegayngler 9y agoNote to engineers. If you put your employer in a damned if you do damned if you don't legal situation, you will be fired and should be fired. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand? David Brooks should know this as he has worked at a big company for awhile now. No matter what Google did there would be people who were angry.
- maplesirupfan 9y agoGoogle should hire OBAMA!
- EugeneOZ 9y agothis journalist should resign. Sundar is right.
- danso 9y agoPolitical debates aside (which I know is difficult to set aside since the memo is literally about politics), what is the actual threat to Google's bottom line, or its ongoing operations. Obviously, if Damore's lawsuit succeed, Google will pay a penalty. But what other impacts will there be? This incident doesn't seem to have the same snowball potential of Susan Fowler's Uber essay, because Fowler wrote about sexual harassment, which put Uber in greater legal jeopardy than Damore has with Google (as far as we can tell, as Damore's complaint moves through the system). #DeleteUber was a big thing on Twitter, did it have a noticeable impact on Uber's bottom line? I know Damore supporters have called for a Google boycott, but quitting Uber for Lyft seems easier than quitting Google for Bing, GMail for Yahoo, and YouTube for Vimeo/Twitch. Damore's firing likely pissed off his like-minded colleagues. But based on what Damore claimed, non-liberal Googlers were already rare. So what upcoming challenges/attacks would Google CEO's resignation head off?
- untangle 9y ago> Some people embrace moral absolutism in a desperate effort to find solid ground. They feel a rare and comforting sense of moral certainty when they are purging an evil person who has violated one of their sacred taboos. I find this observation on-point and profound. I expect this level of moral reasoning in my teenager. But I was shocked at its embrace by much of Google. It seems unlikely to me that CEO Pichai would be caught up directly in this stream of moral certitude and virtue signaling. Far more likely that influencers carried the torch. But while I disagree with Pichai's decision, I think that firing him would be an inappropriate remedy that would represent a form of counter-extremism. I do suggest that Pichai surround himself with more able counsel (and not just legal). And that this episode be discussed at the Board level within the context of Google's culture.
- alixaxel 9y agoFlagged, huh? Censor everything!!!