8 ms·

Google Is Pushed to Tie Executive Pay to Progress on Diversity

62 points by cwperkins 8y ago

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
One thing that is interesting/potentially missed in this article is that Liz Fong-Jones has actually publicly stated her intent to leave Google as of last week. She stated that she was looking for offers just after the emails about the drone program leaked out to the press last Thursday, shortly before Google announced their intention to withdraw from the program. She stated there was some line to her leaving, but didn't detail what that was. It could've been over the drone program, due to the timing, but it could've just as well been related to her activism in diversity. I'm not sure if this comment has a particular point, to be honest, just felt like a missing piece that the only Google employee they quoted is already a soon-to-be-former employee.
- rspeer 8y ago
  Looking for offers doesn't mean you're guaranteed to leave.
  - prepend 8y ago
    But stating it on company boards means you are.
- grillvogel 8y ago
  it's amusing to me that projects related to national defense are considered evil to these people but google's core business of mining and selling user data for advertisements isn't.
  - teachrdan 8y ago
    This seems like a false equivalence to me. While ad tech may be morally bad, by many people's standards (including mine) helping the US government kill people by remote control is far worse. According to US military doctrine adopted under GW Bush and continued under Obama and Trump, the entire world--including allied countries with extradition treates!--is a battlefield[0]. The US has literally given itself license to attack and kill anyone we consider a threat anywhere on planet Earth without due process. That is reason enough to not contribute to a project making drone killing easier. 0. https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Wars-Battlefield-Jeremy-Scahill/dp/156858671X https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Wars-Battlefield-Jeremy-Scahill...
    - grillvogel 8y ago
      what if your contributions to the project reduced collateral damage and increased the odds of hitting the right target? or are you making the argument that all military action is wrong?
  - prepend 8y ago
    This is interesting to me as well. I’m not sure where these people draw their ideological lines. Letting sugar sell to kids and overweight people is ok, when sugar kills people.[0] Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1] It’s usually possible to dislike multiple things and support or protest multiple causes. But if you are quitting or trying to change corporate governance, those are exclusive decisions. So it’s hard to tell the reasoning behind these people’s morals. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493081/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493081/ [1] https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-others-millions-1188615332 https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-othe...
    - lern_too_spel 8y ago
      > Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1] That's a strange way of putting it. If the government compels you to comply with a non-trivial request, you are entitled to compensation to cover your costs.
      - prepend 8y ago
        Or you can refuse compensation out of principle. This is kind of my point though, Google is entitled to compete for and win defense contracts. I’m not arguing that and I agree that Google is entitled to payment for their costs. But is that more important than end-state diversity? To these protesters, yes. But I don’t understand their priorities or at least the rationale behind them. This is a very important issue to them, and it seems odd.
    - pteredactyl 8y ago
      Most draw their lines based on what the media/state tells them.
  - skj 8y ago
    Without necessarily agreeing, the line between designing machines that kill people and designing ad placement algorithms is pretty bright.
vannevar 8y ago
Well, it would be nice if executive pay were tied to something. Studies show it certainly isn't correlated with financial performance: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/27/negligible-link-between-executive-pay-and-firms-performance-says-study https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/27/negligible-... The massive rise in executive pay over the past 30 years amounts pretty much to a giant consumer-funded welfare program for corporate management.
- cabalamat 8y ago
  > Well, it would be nice if executive pay were tied to something. Maybe it could be tied to user satisfaction? If it was, maybe they wouldn't have scrapped Google Reader.
  - simonsarris 8y ago
    That would be a neat way to drive most companies into the ground.
- stanfordkid 8y ago
  Warren Buffett has the best thoughts on this. Highly recommend reading his essays. Companies should be run by boards with experience. These boards have a duty to understand the company holistically. Unfortunately diversity police and compensation consulting committees seem to be the future of executive pay -- what a sad state of affairs.
  - vannevar 8y ago
    These boards have a duty to understand the company holistically. Agreed. This is a good argument for limiting participation on multiple boards. 'One director, one board' would encourage more board focus on the companies they direct, and also open up more board seats generally for greater diversity in corporate governance.
- weberc2 8y ago
  Inflated executive pay is a problem. Tieing executive pay to diversity goals is two problems. Diversity is great, but I get the feeling that most corporate diversity initiatives willfully or inadvertently combat heterdox perspectives. And the irony isn't lost on me that the principal stated benefit of race and gender diversity is that it proxies for viewpoint diversity. But this is just my opinion--I'm happy to entertain any data that confirms or refutes this sentiment.
sqdbps 8y ago
It would be nice if Google employees just did their jobs instead of trying to sabotage their employer every other week.
- sergiotapia 8y ago
  They made their bed now they get to lie in it. "Cria cuervos y te sacaran los ojos."
  - sqdbps 8y ago
    I wouldn't call them "crows" exactly, some of it is well meaning, but they are definitely being selfish about promoting their causes with disregard to the damage they might do to their employer.
    - kolpa 8y ago
      What's it called when an employer promotes their cause with disregard to the damage they might cause to their employees (and users too)?
      - sqdbps 8y ago
        What's an example of that?
- Barrin92 8y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but I think employees in a free market are allowed to negotiate their working conditions based on whatever they think is important to them and they are also constitutionally protected in their ability to organise. Are you suggesting they somehow are obligated to work for Google or should not be able to negotiate however they see fit, or not voice their grievances?
  - md224 8y ago
    I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'd like to suggest that "People shouldn't do X" should not automatically be interpreted as "People shouldn't be allowed to do X". We could save ourselves so much grief if high schools offered courses on the Hermeneutics of Online Discourse. People are so bad at interpreting each other.
crb002 8y ago
Damore and company are ardent about policing what is mostly discrimination to Asian hires. Google would be wiser to fix holes in the talent pipeline going back to middle school than punish a generation for the shortcomings of their parents.
bfors 8y ago
Does this mean that candidates will now have their race and sex submitted to the hiring and executive committees as part of the hiring process?
- anon12345690 8y ago
  they already do look at that, they have diversity quotas that are considered more important than technical skill
  - ryan-allen 8y ago
    This is good news for the competitors of Google who hire on suitability for the role.
  - sorenjan 8y ago
    What do they consider diverse? I'm not American, am I more diverse than a black American woman?
    - gizmo686 8y ago
      According the Damore's complaint, they consider diversity to be non-white and non-Asian, or non-male
    - kolpa 8y ago
      Google has far higher proportion of non-Americans than black people (let alone limiting to American and women). It's not even a close comparison. This sort of extreme ignorance is the sort of problem that D&I initiatives are struggling against.
      - Rapzid 8y ago
        What sort of extreme ignorance?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
shrewduser 8y ago
Another nail in the coffin of meritocracy
- rdndlkciw3829 8y ago
  Are you sure about that? Perhaps it's a tool to help overcome implicit bias against women and people of color -- bias that makes the current system less meritocratic, insofar as hiring managers may mistakenly (and perhaps even unintentionally) think such candidates are less qualified than they actually are.
- paulcole 8y ago
  The real trick was making us think it was a meritocracy until now.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  One of the most important principles at the executive level is seniority, not meritocracy. McKinsey research (among others) has repeatedly shown that higher diversity correlates with higher performance. This is not surprising. If roles up the corporate ladder are filled based on status and networks, talented people from disadvantaged or novel backgrounds lose out. In this case increasing diversity disrupts old networks and has a corrective function.
  - tomp 8y ago
    So you're saying that meritocracy is good but neglected, and diversity often has more meritocracy as a consequence... Why not focus directly on meritocracy in the first place? In particular, the conversation in IT, which is probably among the most meritocratic fields (no certifications required, most learning material available for free online), is focused on employees, not executives, so I'd say it possible that focusing on diversity has no, or even negative, effect on meritocracy.
    - Barrin92 8y ago
      >Why not focus directly on meritocracy in the first place? Because it's not clear how you 'access' meritocracy directly. For example, if many talented people have not great access to the software industry because the barrier to entry is relatively high (which is still I think a reasonable assumption), then you'll need to find a way to improve the discovery of those people. And I also don't agree that the industry is very meritocratic, especially in the valley. There's lots of insider networking going on, the big companies hire overwhelmingly out of established institutions (I'd be surprised if Google has many employees without certifications) etc.. It's very good at marketing itself as meritocratic, hip and young, but it's rarely been my own experience at least.
anon12345690 8y ago
""Those concerns came to the fore after another engineer, James Damore, wrote a 3,000-word memo assailing the firm’s affirmative action policies and suggesting women are biologically less-qualified than men for tech jobs."" he didnt suggest that at all, badly written articles like this are why this problem even happens
- ironjunkie 8y ago
  exactly. The issue is that if you try to objectively voice your opinion on this saying that medias are misrepresenting the Memo in order to fit a narrative, you are automatically seen as anti-progress anti-women-in-tech.
  - taborj 8y ago
    This is not just limited to this case. Try to bring a rational, pro-gun opinion to a debate? You're a monster who wants to shoot kids. Try to bring a rational, anti-gun opinion to an opposite debate? You're a gun grabber. Opposing view on homosexuality? Abortion? Religion? Get out of here, you don't fit the status quo. I've found that the most 'tolerant' people are in fact quite the opposite, and the echo chamber that is the current state of affairs isn't helping. Nobody wants to hear the opposing viewpoint, they all just want their views confirmed, and to be seen doing "the right thing" by a specific group of people.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > badly written articles like this are why this problem even happens When you have a narrative to push, you keep telling lies. Not surprising to see this repeated over and over again. Instead, they could just link to Damore's memo: https://www.quotev.com/story/9922506/James-Damores-Diversity-Memo/1 https://www.quotev.com/story/9922506/James-Damores-Diversity...
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Any time there is a "right at all costs" ideology, I assure you, mistakes like these will grow to seem utterly insignificant at an astonishing pace. Now the demand to tie financial compensation directly to the ideology. Selective hiring to ideology AND gender. That IS bad. Elsewhere on the internet you find that using outright violence against individuals is acceptable in service of this ideology (or you know, just search "antifa" on youtube, to see that whatever these people are, they have zero interest in bringing us a more peaceful planet). I assure you, this will get worse, far worse, before it gets better. And the irony is, that the base instinct that causes racism is the same as the instinct that drives these efforts. People wanting to feel better about themselves, without, of course, actually doing anything for it. "Action", by attacking others, nothing else. The ideologies always start with a core of people that are actually admirable. But at some point they decide to grow their movement, and feel the need to include every brutish idiot moron they can to achieve their aims. From that point forward, however, their aims are nothing more than entertaining brutish morons. Worse than that, this forces their opponents to do the same, or face getting beaten up or worse.
sheepmullet 8y ago
Let's link it to political diversity - Google clearly has a far stronger bias against conservatives than it does women or African Americans or the transgendered.
- ryan-allen 8y ago
  Not a bad idea, 50/50 democrat and republican seems like a fair quota in the name of diversity.
  - 6nf 8y ago
    Better add some religious quotas too: 70% Christian, 25% Atheists / non-regligious, 2% Jewish, 1% Islam, 1% Buddhists, 1% Hindus
- krapp 8y ago
  Being a woman, being African American or being transgendered aren't political ideologies, nor are they mutually opposed to conservative beliefs.
  - PKop 8y ago
    Political demographics data would dispute that statement. Those groups you listed, especially in combination, are highly correlated with liberal voting. Is that something we should ignore? If white males correlate highly with conservative voting, relative to these other groups.. then, oh look, now we have hiring quotas that, in practice, divides strongly along political ideology whether you look at that way or not. Why do you think they call it "identity politics"? Because effectively aligning groups you've defined towards a political side, then applying all sorts of rules and policies in terms of those groups leads to... political power.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    I don't think the person you were responding to was saying that those categories are political ideologies.
EGreg 8y ago
These articles twist words. How come teams composed entirely of women on them are called "diverse"? I do not think this word means what they think it means. Liberals have fought for decades to make race and sex a non-issue. They won: today's conservatives are decidedly liberal when we compare them to the thinking of conservatives from the 40s and 50s. No one can dare to say in public the kind of stuff that was regularly said. Few even think it. Mixed beaches. Interracial marriages. Women go to college and graduate at greater rates than men. But now the pendulum has swung in a direction that makes many liberals uneasy (including Bill Maher, Sam Harris, David Pakman and so on). Now, we can unironically say things like an all-women team is "diverse", that failing to mention race is racist, that it's impossible to be sexist against men or racist against whites, that ignoring the effect of race based quota policies on asians is not racist, that men should shut up in the #MeToo movement, and white people should be in the back in the BLM movement. Things usually start far earlier in life. Little boys are funneled more towards maths and programming, little girls are not. So by the time it comes to Google hiring, trying to solve the problem with quotas is only going to make things worse. Take it from a female ex-googler who did the hiring: https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999 https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-le... But beyond this, liberals need to speak up and keep fighting the left for what they've been fighting for all this time: judging people by their character and ability, not the sex or the color of their skin. Standing up for facts and reality. If we don't stand up for truth and reason and policies that lift all boats, we are going to go into a world where reason and rationality goes out the window. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of issues on the right (evolution is a myth, global warming is a hoax, hillary clinton has a body double, michelle obama is a man, and other irredeemable stuff). But on the left we have a growing brand of arbitrary political craziness we should keep in check too.
Crontab 8y ago
I don't feel the diversity should be sought for its own sake. The best applicant should be hired every single time - although I do feel that it is okay to consider diversity as a tie-breaker when choosing between equally qualified candidates. On the opposite side: people not hiring the best candidate, in order to prevent diversity, should be fired. Just hire the best person.
- grigjd3 8y ago
  It is really hard to measure why people are or aren't hired. Why do I have product managers that can't write a complete sentence or even use a consistent vocabulary? Were they the best choices? I don't think so, but there is a lot of factors that go into e decision.
- kolpa 8y ago
  Team projects are not individual activities; therefore candidates cannot be evaluated in a vacuum.
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  How does one define “best person?” Is a female candidate of the age and life situation that she’s likely to become pregnant soon less suitable? After all, she might be about to take extended maternity leave! Better not risk it. Is the candidate with a strong foreign accent less suitable? Maybe the project managers will struggle to communicate as effectively. Not worth the bother. Is the candidate who lacks a degree worse? They seemed good in the interviews, but maybe there are holes in their knowledge. Why bother? That gay guy was a bit flamboyant. The sales bros might not be into it. Pass. That view rapidly invites monoculture. It’s easier to hire people who are similar to yourself. In reality, diversity is in itself a desirable attribute for a team to have. Teams with a variety of backgrounds have different experience that contributes to solving problems in different ways. They will know things that you don’t, and your products will be better for that contribution.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    The best person is defined as the one that has the best capability to contribute. None of the items you mentioned affects this factor (aside from the first, but making a decision based on that is illegal).
qaq 8y ago
Atlas Shrugged should be required reading for employees
manigandham 8y ago
Nobody bothers to define what "diversity" even is. Skin color and gender? Is that it? After civil wars and decades of social unrest to prove that your appearance has nothing to do with your skills, talents, motivations, and competence; are we really back to saying we need a certain quota of each group? This madness needs to stop.
- ironjunkie 8y ago
  Diversity needs to be a visible attribute (the more visible the better), and as far away as possible from "white", "straight" and "men". (I'm sarcastic in case this needs to be said). In an ideal world, diversity would be about diversity of thought more than visible diversity. But that doesn't seem to matter at all nowadays. To the contrary, if you don't agree with the dominant thoughts of the day you will be fired for "Cultural unfitness".
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > In an ideal world, diversity would be about diversity of thought more than visible diversity. ... I agree, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, the world in which we live and in which Google operates discriminates based on visible attributes. There's no real genetic basis to the idea of 'black'; consider that a child of a black and white parent considered 'black' because of a visible property, their skin color. Consider that people from a wide range of geographical locations and backgrounds are all lumped together as 'black' with nothing else in common but a visible attribute (and it's a poorly defined attribute, covering a wide range of hues). If we want a meritocracy and opportunity for all, and if we want to maximize talent in our workplaces, we need to counteract the discrimination that's actually happening and not act as if we are in another world.
    - throwaway894345 8y ago
      > If we want a meritocracy and opportunity for all, and if we want to maximize talent in our workplaces, we need to counteract the discrimination that's actually happening and not act as if we are in another world. This is at odds with history. Our society has been trending toward equality since before the civil rights era, and the philosophy that drove the change was individualism--a _rejection_ of identity politics. It's the only philosophy that has ever effectively reduced racism. "Fighting racism with racism" has only ever triggered tribalistic reflexes which increase racism (hence the uptick in right-wing identity politics following the mainstreaming of left-wing identity politics). Racism in any form for any reason is deplorable, and it isn't an effective way to reduce anti-minority racism.
EGreg 8y ago
I want to make a separate comment on this topic: All this argument about "women in tech" actually gives cover to the underlying exploitative premise: that you have bust your butt in college and then go work for corporate America. I say, our society by and large expects women to be primary caregivers to children, and it expects men to be working longer hours. If you doubt this, try doing the reverse and see how the stay-at-home dad and the career mom of a toddler is treated by people. This is the actual root of the issue. If you want to solve it, get the courts to give equal custody to men in divorces, for instance. Dads who leave and don't stick around contribute to the issue. http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286&from=hn http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286&from=hn And yes, I'm serious. Men were historically treated as far more expendable by society than women. They were shipped off to wars, went on adventures, they took risks and became homeless or dead. It makes evolutionary sense: women can have children with one man at a time, but a few men can repopulate the whole next generation. Why are we automatically assuming that the goal should be for more women to join corporate America and work long hours? For that matter, why should people not be criticized for sticking their kids in a public school and their parents in a nursing home instead of taking care of them?
subpixel 8y ago
I'm reminded of this plan from NYC mayor De Blasio that factors in the race of an arts organization's employees and board members when considering funding requests: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/design/new-york-cultural-plan-museums.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/design/new-york-cult... I probably don't need to point out what bad things can happen when political thought is denuded to the idea that 'anything against the status-quo is seen as a step in the right direction'.
johng 8y ago
And so it starts. No longer will jobs pay based on your skills, what you offer the company.... we've moved past that onto more "politically correct things". Let's start paying people based on need instead, how could that go wrong?
mrnobody_67 8y ago
I wonder why the push to diversity hasn't affected other sectors of the economy that have equally huge gaps in 'diversity'? - Airline pilots are 90% white men - Airline stewards tend to be predominantly female. Maybe Jetblue should publish a diversity report on its cabin crews? - Nursing seems to attract mostly attract individuals with XX Chromosomes. Why isn't Stanford Hospital pushing for executive compensation to be tied to diversity among its nursing staff? - Traders at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are predominantly male -- unlikely to change in the next 10 years no matter what programs are launched or how much money is spent etc. etc. etc. Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard, despite decades of failed experiments: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail ... Google spent $265m on diversity, Intel pledged $300m in 2015, Yale pledged $50m to diversify its faculty - Columbia, not to be outdone is spending $100m. All these programs and many more like them going back to the 80's have been spectacular failures... it seems this media fueled social justice movement only makes money for diversity consultants and the new field of "DE&I Program Leaders" which have emerged out of nowhere...
- kolpa 8y ago
  I suspect it's because techies are better at Internet publicity than non-techies, so tech industry gets the most Internet-driven pressure, and Internet is taking about the world. https://skift.com/2018/04/20/airlines-need-to-work-harder-to-recruit-more-female-pilots/ https://skift.com/2018/04/20/airlines-need-to-work-harder-to... http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/transportation/218401-the-company-isnt-going-to-hire-black-pilots-anymore http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/transportation/218401-... https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/mar/06/inequality-30000-feet-qantas-aviation-least-progressive-industry https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/mar/06/ineq... > Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard, despite decades of failed experiments: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail ... Please read the article you linked. You'll learn a lot. It talks a lot about how entrenched racism and sexism has resisted traditional diversity efforts, and recommends more-successful approaches for the future. Example: > Five years after a company implements a college recruitment program targeting female employees, the share of white women, black women, Hispanic women, and Asian-American women in its management rises by about 10%, on average. A program focused on minority recruitment increases the proportion of black male managers by 8% and black female managers by 9%.
ENTP 8y ago
So if someone loses out on a position because of their gender or race (due to quotas) then isn't that indistinguishable from prejudice?

62 points by cwperkins 8y ago

One thing that is interesting/potentially missed in this article is that Liz Fong-Jones has actually publicly stated her intent to leave Google as of last week. She stated that she was looking for offers just after the emails about the drone program leaked out to the press last Thursday, shortly before Google announced their intention to withdraw from the program. She stated there was some line to her leaving, but didn't detail what that was. It could've been over the drone program, due to the timing, but it could've just as well been related to her activism in diversity. I'm not sure if this comment has a particular point, to be honest, just felt like a missing piece that the only Google employee they quoted is already a soon-to-be-former employee.

rspeer 8y ago
Looking for offers doesn't mean you're guaranteed to leave.
- prepend 8y ago
  But stating it on company boards means you are.
grillvogel 8y ago
it's amusing to me that projects related to national defense are considered evil to these people but google's core business of mining and selling user data for advertisements isn't.
- teachrdan 8y ago
  This seems like a false equivalence to me. While ad tech may be morally bad, by many people's standards (including mine) helping the US government kill people by remote control is far worse. According to US military doctrine adopted under GW Bush and continued under Obama and Trump, the entire world--including allied countries with extradition treates!--is a battlefield[0]. The US has literally given itself license to attack and kill anyone we consider a threat anywhere on planet Earth without due process. That is reason enough to not contribute to a project making drone killing easier. 0. https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Wars-Battlefield-Jeremy-Scahill/dp/156858671X https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Wars-Battlefield-Jeremy-Scahill...
  - grillvogel 8y ago
    what if your contributions to the project reduced collateral damage and increased the odds of hitting the right target? or are you making the argument that all military action is wrong?
- prepend 8y ago
  This is interesting to me as well. I’m not sure where these people draw their ideological lines. Letting sugar sell to kids and overweight people is ok, when sugar kills people.[0] Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1] It’s usually possible to dislike multiple things and support or protest multiple causes. But if you are quitting or trying to change corporate governance, those are exclusive decisions. So it’s hard to tell the reasoning behind these people’s morals. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493081/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493081/ [1] https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-others-millions-1188615332 https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-othe...
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    > Or that google sells data to the NSA and other governments. [1] That's a strange way of putting it. If the government compels you to comply with a non-trivial request, you are entitled to compensation to cover your costs.
    - prepend 8y ago
      Or you can refuse compensation out of principle. This is kind of my point though, Google is entitled to compete for and win defense contracts. I’m not arguing that and I agree that Google is entitled to payment for their costs. But is that more important than end-state diversity? To these protesters, yes. But I don’t understand their priorities or at least the rationale behind them. This is a very important issue to them, and it seems odd.
  - pteredactyl 8y ago
    Most draw their lines based on what the media/state tells them.
- skj 8y ago
  Without necessarily agreeing, the line between designing machines that kill people and designing ad placement algorithms is pretty bright.

vannevar 8y ago

Well, it would be nice if executive pay were tied to something. Studies show it certainly isn't correlated with financial performance: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/27/negligible-link-between-executive-pay-and-firms-performance-says-study https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/27/negligible-... The massive rise in executive pay over the past 30 years amounts pretty much to a giant consumer-funded welfare program for corporate management.

cabalamat 8y ago
> Well, it would be nice if executive pay were tied to something. Maybe it could be tied to user satisfaction? If it was, maybe they wouldn't have scrapped Google Reader.
- simonsarris 8y ago
  That would be a neat way to drive most companies into the ground.
stanfordkid 8y ago
Warren Buffett has the best thoughts on this. Highly recommend reading his essays. Companies should be run by boards with experience. These boards have a duty to understand the company holistically. Unfortunately diversity police and compensation consulting committees seem to be the future of executive pay -- what a sad state of affairs.
- vannevar 8y ago
  These boards have a duty to understand the company holistically. Agreed. This is a good argument for limiting participation on multiple boards. 'One director, one board' would encourage more board focus on the companies they direct, and also open up more board seats generally for greater diversity in corporate governance.
weberc2 8y ago
Inflated executive pay is a problem. Tieing executive pay to diversity goals is two problems. Diversity is great, but I get the feeling that most corporate diversity initiatives willfully or inadvertently combat heterdox perspectives. And the irony isn't lost on me that the principal stated benefit of race and gender diversity is that it proxies for viewpoint diversity. But this is just my opinion--I'm happy to entertain any data that confirms or refutes this sentiment.

sqdbps 8y ago

It would be nice if Google employees just did their jobs instead of trying to sabotage their employer every other week.

sergiotapia 8y ago
They made their bed now they get to lie in it. "Cria cuervos y te sacaran los ojos."
- sqdbps 8y ago
  I wouldn't call them "crows" exactly, some of it is well meaning, but they are definitely being selfish about promoting their causes with disregard to the damage they might do to their employer.
  - kolpa 8y ago
    What's it called when an employer promotes their cause with disregard to the damage they might cause to their employees (and users too)?
    - sqdbps 8y ago
      What's an example of that?
Barrin92 8y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think employees in a free market are allowed to negotiate their working conditions based on whatever they think is important to them and they are also constitutionally protected in their ability to organise. Are you suggesting they somehow are obligated to work for Google or should not be able to negotiate however they see fit, or not voice their grievances?
- md224 8y ago
  I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'd like to suggest that "People shouldn't do X" should not automatically be interpreted as "People shouldn't be allowed to do X". We could save ourselves so much grief if high schools offered courses on the Hermeneutics of Online Discourse. People are so bad at interpreting each other.

crb002 8y ago

Damore and company are ardent about policing what is mostly discrimination to Asian hires. Google would be wiser to fix holes in the talent pipeline going back to middle school than punish a generation for the shortcomings of their parents.

bfors 8y ago

Does this mean that candidates will now have their race and sex submitted to the hiring and executive committees as part of the hiring process?

anon12345690 8y ago
they already do look at that, they have diversity quotas that are considered more important than technical skill
- ryan-allen 8y ago
  This is good news for the competitors of Google who hire on suitability for the role.
- sorenjan 8y ago
  What do they consider diverse? I'm not American, am I more diverse than a black American woman?
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    According the Damore's complaint, they consider diversity to be non-white and non-Asian, or non-male
  - kolpa 8y ago
    Google has far higher proportion of non-Americans than black people (let alone limiting to American and women). It's not even a close comparison. This sort of extreme ignorance is the sort of problem that D&I initiatives are struggling against.
    - Rapzid 8y ago
      What sort of extreme ignorance?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

shrewduser 8y ago

Another nail in the coffin of meritocracy

rdndlkciw3829 8y ago
Are you sure about that? Perhaps it's a tool to help overcome implicit bias against women and people of color -- bias that makes the current system less meritocratic, insofar as hiring managers may mistakenly (and perhaps even unintentionally) think such candidates are less qualified than they actually are.
paulcole 8y ago
The real trick was making us think it was a meritocracy until now.
Barrin92 8y ago
One of the most important principles at the executive level is seniority, not meritocracy. McKinsey research (among others) has repeatedly shown that higher diversity correlates with higher performance. This is not surprising. If roles up the corporate ladder are filled based on status and networks, talented people from disadvantaged or novel backgrounds lose out. In this case increasing diversity disrupts old networks and has a corrective function.
- tomp 8y ago
  So you're saying that meritocracy is good but neglected, and diversity often has more meritocracy as a consequence... Why not focus directly on meritocracy in the first place? In particular, the conversation in IT, which is probably among the most meritocratic fields (no certifications required, most learning material available for free online), is focused on employees, not executives, so I'd say it possible that focusing on diversity has no, or even negative, effect on meritocracy.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    >Why not focus directly on meritocracy in the first place? Because it's not clear how you 'access' meritocracy directly. For example, if many talented people have not great access to the software industry because the barrier to entry is relatively high (which is still I think a reasonable assumption), then you'll need to find a way to improve the discovery of those people. And I also don't agree that the industry is very meritocratic, especially in the valley. There's lots of insider networking going on, the big companies hire overwhelmingly out of established institutions (I'd be surprised if Google has many employees without certifications) etc.. It's very good at marketing itself as meritocratic, hip and young, but it's rarely been my own experience at least.

anon12345690 8y ago

""Those concerns came to the fore after another engineer, James Damore, wrote a 3,000-word memo assailing the firm’s affirmative action policies and suggesting women are biologically less-qualified than men for tech jobs."" he didnt suggest that at all, badly written articles like this are why this problem even happens

ironjunkie 8y ago
exactly. The issue is that if you try to objectively voice your opinion on this saying that medias are misrepresenting the Memo in order to fit a narrative, you are automatically seen as anti-progress anti-women-in-tech.
- taborj 8y ago
  This is not just limited to this case. Try to bring a rational, pro-gun opinion to a debate? You're a monster who wants to shoot kids. Try to bring a rational, anti-gun opinion to an opposite debate? You're a gun grabber. Opposing view on homosexuality? Abortion? Religion? Get out of here, you don't fit the status quo. I've found that the most 'tolerant' people are in fact quite the opposite, and the echo chamber that is the current state of affairs isn't helping. Nobody wants to hear the opposing viewpoint, they all just want their views confirmed, and to be seen doing "the right thing" by a specific group of people.
ekianjo 8y ago
> badly written articles like this are why this problem even happens When you have a narrative to push, you keep telling lies. Not surprising to see this repeated over and over again. Instead, they could just link to Damore's memo: https://www.quotev.com/story/9922506/James-Damores-Diversity-Memo/1 https://www.quotev.com/story/9922506/James-Damores-Diversity...
- candiodari 8y ago
  Any time there is a "right at all costs" ideology, I assure you, mistakes like these will grow to seem utterly insignificant at an astonishing pace. Now the demand to tie financial compensation directly to the ideology. Selective hiring to ideology AND gender. That IS bad. Elsewhere on the internet you find that using outright violence against individuals is acceptable in service of this ideology (or you know, just search "antifa" on youtube, to see that whatever these people are, they have zero interest in bringing us a more peaceful planet). I assure you, this will get worse, far worse, before it gets better. And the irony is, that the base instinct that causes racism is the same as the instinct that drives these efforts. People wanting to feel better about themselves, without, of course, actually doing anything for it. "Action", by attacking others, nothing else. The ideologies always start with a core of people that are actually admirable. But at some point they decide to grow their movement, and feel the need to include every brutish idiot moron they can to achieve their aims. From that point forward, however, their aims are nothing more than entertaining brutish morons. Worse than that, this forces their opponents to do the same, or face getting beaten up or worse.

sheepmullet 8y ago

Let's link it to political diversity - Google clearly has a far stronger bias against conservatives than it does women or African Americans or the transgendered.

ryan-allen 8y ago
Not a bad idea, 50/50 democrat and republican seems like a fair quota in the name of diversity.
- 6nf 8y ago
  Better add some religious quotas too: 70% Christian, 25% Atheists / non-regligious, 2% Jewish, 1% Islam, 1% Buddhists, 1% Hindus
krapp 8y ago
Being a woman, being African American or being transgendered aren't political ideologies, nor are they mutually opposed to conservative beliefs.
- PKop 8y ago
  Political demographics data would dispute that statement. Those groups you listed, especially in combination, are highly correlated with liberal voting. Is that something we should ignore? If white males correlate highly with conservative voting, relative to these other groups.. then, oh look, now we have hiring quotas that, in practice, divides strongly along political ideology whether you look at that way or not. Why do you think they call it "identity politics"? Because effectively aligning groups you've defined towards a political side, then applying all sorts of rules and policies in terms of those groups leads to... political power.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  I don't think the person you were responding to was saying that those categories are political ideologies.

EGreg 8y ago

These articles twist words. How come teams composed entirely of women on them are called "diverse"? I do not think this word means what they think it means. Liberals have fought for decades to make race and sex a non-issue. They won: today's conservatives are decidedly liberal when we compare them to the thinking of conservatives from the 40s and 50s. No one can dare to say in public the kind of stuff that was regularly said. Few even think it. Mixed beaches. Interracial marriages. Women go to college and graduate at greater rates than men. But now the pendulum has swung in a direction that makes many liberals uneasy (including Bill Maher, Sam Harris, David Pakman and so on). Now, we can unironically say things like an all-women team is "diverse", that failing to mention race is racist, that it's impossible to be sexist against men or racist against whites, that ignoring the effect of race based quota policies on asians is not racist, that men should shut up in the #MeToo movement, and white people should be in the back in the BLM movement. Things usually start far earlier in life. Little boys are funneled more towards maths and programming, little girls are not. So by the time it comes to Google hiring, trying to solve the problem with quotas is only going to make things worse. Take it from a female ex-googler who did the hiring: https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999 https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-le... But beyond this, liberals need to speak up and keep fighting the left for what they've been fighting for all this time: judging people by their character and ability, not the sex or the color of their skin. Standing up for facts and reality. If we don't stand up for truth and reason and policies that lift all boats, we are going to go into a world where reason and rationality goes out the window. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of issues on the right (evolution is a myth, global warming is a hoax, hillary clinton has a body double, michelle obama is a man, and other irredeemable stuff). But on the left we have a growing brand of arbitrary political craziness we should keep in check too.

Crontab 8y ago

I don't feel the diversity should be sought for its own sake. The best applicant should be hired every single time - although I do feel that it is okay to consider diversity as a tie-breaker when choosing between equally qualified candidates. On the opposite side: people not hiring the best candidate, in order to prevent diversity, should be fired. Just hire the best person.

grigjd3 8y ago
It is really hard to measure why people are or aren't hired. Why do I have product managers that can't write a complete sentence or even use a consistent vocabulary? Were they the best choices? I don't think so, but there is a lot of factors that go into e decision.
kolpa 8y ago
Team projects are not individual activities; therefore candidates cannot be evaluated in a vacuum.
matthewmacleod 8y ago
How does one define “best person?” Is a female candidate of the age and life situation that she’s likely to become pregnant soon less suitable? After all, she might be about to take extended maternity leave! Better not risk it. Is the candidate with a strong foreign accent less suitable? Maybe the project managers will struggle to communicate as effectively. Not worth the bother. Is the candidate who lacks a degree worse? They seemed good in the interviews, but maybe there are holes in their knowledge. Why bother? That gay guy was a bit flamboyant. The sales bros might not be into it. Pass. That view rapidly invites monoculture. It’s easier to hire people who are similar to yourself. In reality, diversity is in itself a desirable attribute for a team to have. Teams with a variety of backgrounds have different experience that contributes to solving problems in different ways. They will know things that you don’t, and your products will be better for that contribution.
- manfredo 8y ago
  The best person is defined as the one that has the best capability to contribute. None of the items you mentioned affects this factor (aside from the first, but making a decision based on that is illegal).

qaq 8y ago

Atlas Shrugged should be required reading for employees

manigandham 8y ago

Nobody bothers to define what "diversity" even is. Skin color and gender? Is that it? After civil wars and decades of social unrest to prove that your appearance has nothing to do with your skills, talents, motivations, and competence; are we really back to saying we need a certain quota of each group? This madness needs to stop.

ironjunkie 8y ago
Diversity needs to be a visible attribute (the more visible the better), and as far away as possible from "white", "straight" and "men". (I'm sarcastic in case this needs to be said). In an ideal world, diversity would be about diversity of thought more than visible diversity. But that doesn't seem to matter at all nowadays. To the contrary, if you don't agree with the dominant thoughts of the day you will be fired for "Cultural unfitness".
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > In an ideal world, diversity would be about diversity of thought more than visible diversity. ... I agree, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, the world in which we live and in which Google operates discriminates based on visible attributes. There's no real genetic basis to the idea of 'black'; consider that a child of a black and white parent considered 'black' because of a visible property, their skin color. Consider that people from a wide range of geographical locations and backgrounds are all lumped together as 'black' with nothing else in common but a visible attribute (and it's a poorly defined attribute, covering a wide range of hues). If we want a meritocracy and opportunity for all, and if we want to maximize talent in our workplaces, we need to counteract the discrimination that's actually happening and not act as if we are in another world.
  - throwaway894345 8y ago
    > If we want a meritocracy and opportunity for all, and if we want to maximize talent in our workplaces, we need to counteract the discrimination that's actually happening and not act as if we are in another world. This is at odds with history. Our society has been trending toward equality since before the civil rights era, and the philosophy that drove the change was individualism--a _rejection_ of identity politics. It's the only philosophy that has ever effectively reduced racism. "Fighting racism with racism" has only ever triggered tribalistic reflexes which increase racism (hence the uptick in right-wing identity politics following the mainstreaming of left-wing identity politics). Racism in any form for any reason is deplorable, and it isn't an effective way to reduce anti-minority racism.

EGreg 8y ago

I want to make a separate comment on this topic: All this argument about "women in tech" actually gives cover to the underlying exploitative premise: that you have bust your butt in college and then go work for corporate America. I say, our society by and large expects women to be primary caregivers to children, and it expects men to be working longer hours. If you doubt this, try doing the reverse and see how the stay-at-home dad and the career mom of a toddler is treated by people. This is the actual root of the issue. If you want to solve it, get the courts to give equal custody to men in divorces, for instance. Dads who leave and don't stick around contribute to the issue. http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286&from=hn http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286&from=hn And yes, I'm serious. Men were historically treated as far more expendable by society than women. They were shipped off to wars, went on adventures, they took risks and became homeless or dead. It makes evolutionary sense: women can have children with one man at a time, but a few men can repopulate the whole next generation. Why are we automatically assuming that the goal should be for more women to join corporate America and work long hours? For that matter, why should people not be criticized for sticking their kids in a public school and their parents in a nursing home instead of taking care of them?

subpixel 8y ago

I'm reminded of this plan from NYC mayor De Blasio that factors in the race of an arts organization's employees and board members when considering funding requests: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/design/new-york-cultural-plan-museums.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/design/new-york-cult... I probably don't need to point out what bad things can happen when political thought is denuded to the idea that 'anything against the status-quo is seen as a step in the right direction'.

johng 8y ago

And so it starts. No longer will jobs pay based on your skills, what you offer the company.... we've moved past that onto more "politically correct things". Let's start paying people based on need instead, how could that go wrong?

mrnobody_67 8y ago

I wonder why the push to diversity hasn't affected other sectors of the economy that have equally huge gaps in 'diversity'? - Airline pilots are 90% white men - Airline stewards tend to be predominantly female. Maybe Jetblue should publish a diversity report on its cabin crews? - Nursing seems to attract mostly attract individuals with XX Chromosomes. Why isn't Stanford Hospital pushing for executive compensation to be tied to diversity among its nursing staff? - Traders at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are predominantly male -- unlikely to change in the next 10 years no matter what programs are launched or how much money is spent etc. etc. etc. Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard, despite decades of failed experiments: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail ... Google spent $265m on diversity, Intel pledged $300m in 2015, Yale pledged $50m to diversify its faculty - Columbia, not to be outdone is spending $100m. All these programs and many more like them going back to the 80's have been spectacular failures... it seems this media fueled social justice movement only makes money for diversity consultants and the new field of "DE&I Program Leaders" which have emerged out of nowhere...

kolpa 8y ago
I suspect it's because techies are better at Internet publicity than non-techies, so tech industry gets the most Internet-driven pressure, and Internet is taking about the world. https://skift.com/2018/04/20/airlines-need-to-work-harder-to-recruit-more-female-pilots/ https://skift.com/2018/04/20/airlines-need-to-work-harder-to... http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/transportation/218401-the-company-isnt-going-to-hire-black-pilots-anymore http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/transportation/218401-... https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/mar/06/inequality-30000-feet-qantas-aviation-least-progressive-industry https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/mar/06/ineq... > Silicon Valley seems unique in its headline grabbing push in this regard, despite decades of failed experiments: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail ... Please read the article you linked. You'll learn a lot. It talks a lot about how entrenched racism and sexism has resisted traditional diversity efforts, and recommends more-successful approaches for the future. Example: > Five years after a company implements a college recruitment program targeting female employees, the share of white women, black women, Hispanic women, and Asian-American women in its management rises by about 10%, on average. A program focused on minority recruitment increases the proportion of black male managers by 8% and black female managers by 9%.

ENTP 8y ago

So if someone loses out on a position because of their gender or race (due to quotas) then isn't that indistinguishable from prejudice?