4 ms·

No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. He broke clear company rules and made the working environment hostile for others. That's not accept

No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. He broke clear company rules and made the working environment hostile for others. That's not acceptable over here the same was as it's not in the US. However, had he written this out on a personal blog, or just has an adult conversation with HR I believe he'd had been safe on both sides of the pond. People don't just get fired for not doing their jobs. If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's worked in a professional environment for any amount of time (or heck, even a fresh graduate who bothered to read the company handbook!).

juicyfroot 9y ago
How is it a hostile work environment to discuss peer reviewed research on bio differences between the sexes?
justAnotherNET 9y ago
If you actually read the lawsuit, you’ll see Google cultivated an openly hostile workplace towards a significant portion of their employees and insulated the attackers from HR reprimands.
gowld 9y ago
Citation for rules and hostility?
GuiA 9y ago
> No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. That's an extremely strong claim that does not match my experience and will highly depend on the company, which country in Europe, etc. For instance I've seen explicitly sexist things happening in French companies, and have had many more related to me by friends and family. My mother works for a large European oil company, and has witnessed execs telling women in meetings to shut up and go back to being secretaries. None of these examples resulted in firing. And honestly, while Europe is indeed socialist in many ways policy wise, in many places it is far from as progressive as the coastal US. I'd much rather be LGBTQ in San Francisco or New York than Paris or Barcelona. Hell, I have several European female coworkers who have explicitly told me that they do not intend on ever working there ever again because the culture is significantly more sexist than SF/LA/Seattle/NYC. But again, Europe is big. Paris or Madrid are much more hostile than Berlin or Stockholm in these ways.
5F36B5F62640 9y ago
> If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk. He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise). He said that there are differences not related to capability, and that the current environment in tech is such that the work environment is more acceptable to people on the "male" side of those differences, which makes capable women less likely to go into or stay in tech. To increase diversity he suggested that we need to make the tech environment more friendly to women. For example, he said that men on average are more competitive, and women more cooperative, and that women tend to value work-life balance more then men, and men tend to value status more. There's a fair bit of scientific literature supporting those claims. (To what extent these differences are biological rather than learned is less clear--but does it actually matter?) Currently tech tends to favor competitive status seekers who will make their career the focus of their life (especially for management and leadership positions). Cooperative people who want a good work-life balance get left behind. He suggested Google move toward more pair programming and other cooperative ways of doing things, and make it so that it is easier for employees to balance their outside life with work. That should get more women coming into tech and increase the retention rate. It is worth reading the actual memo if you have not. A very large amount of the discussion of it has been based on what people imagined it said, not what it actually said.
- bduerst 9y ago
  >He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise). Did you read the memo? >>I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
  - aianus 9y ago
    That says nothing about the abilities of his female coworkers who are already working at Google and who are already in the minority there. He's saying that going full steam ahead trying anything and everything to get to 50/50 may be impossible without lowering the bar for women which is bad for everyone.

juicyfroot 9y ago

How is it a hostile work environment to discuss peer reviewed research on bio differences between the sexes?

justAnotherNET 9y ago

If you actually read the lawsuit, you’ll see Google cultivated an openly hostile workplace towards a significant portion of their employees and insulated the attackers from HR reprimands.

gowld 9y ago

Citation for rules and hostility?

GuiA 9y ago

> No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. That's an extremely strong claim that does not match my experience and will highly depend on the company, which country in Europe, etc. For instance I've seen explicitly sexist things happening in French companies, and have had many more related to me by friends and family. My mother works for a large European oil company, and has witnessed execs telling women in meetings to shut up and go back to being secretaries. None of these examples resulted in firing. And honestly, while Europe is indeed socialist in many ways policy wise, in many places it is far from as progressive as the coastal US. I'd much rather be LGBTQ in San Francisco or New York than Paris or Barcelona. Hell, I have several European female coworkers who have explicitly told me that they do not intend on ever working there ever again because the culture is significantly more sexist than SF/LA/Seattle/NYC. But again, Europe is big. Paris or Madrid are much more hostile than Berlin or Stockholm in these ways.

5F36B5F62640 9y ago

> If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk. He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise). He said that there are differences not related to capability, and that the current environment in tech is such that the work environment is more acceptable to people on the "male" side of those differences, which makes capable women less likely to go into or stay in tech. To increase diversity he suggested that we need to make the tech environment more friendly to women. For example, he said that men on average are more competitive, and women more cooperative, and that women tend to value work-life balance more then men, and men tend to value status more. There's a fair bit of scientific literature supporting those claims. (To what extent these differences are biological rather than learned is less clear--but does it actually matter?) Currently tech tends to favor competitive status seekers who will make their career the focus of their life (especially for management and leadership positions). Cooperative people who want a good work-life balance get left behind. He suggested Google move toward more pair programming and other cooperative ways of doing things, and make it so that it is easier for employees to balance their outside life with work. That should get more women coming into tech and increase the retention rate. It is worth reading the actual memo if you have not. A very large amount of the discussion of it has been based on what people imagined it said, not what it actually said.

bduerst 9y ago
>He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise). Did you read the memo? >>I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
- aianus 9y ago
  That says nothing about the abilities of his female coworkers who are already working at Google and who are already in the minority there. He's saying that going full steam ahead trying anything and everything to get to 50/50 may be impossible without lowering the bar for women which is bad for everyone.