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You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media

You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. We are talking of the company that was advocating do not evil. This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China?

kortilla 7y ago
> You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. Yes, when they stopped caring about engineering skills and starting caring about diversity checkboxes, their overall engineering capabilities declined. Google has done relatively little of note over the last 5 years given their size, and part of it is that they have an incompetence cancer and engineering teams cannot trust other teams (or even coworkers in larger teams). Do you realize how harmful it is to an organization when you can’t tell if a coworker you are depending on is competent or if they were hired because of their genes? > This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China? Which stand? Because they flip-flop all of the time.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  It doesn't take more than a handful of interactions to determine if a coworker is competent. The reason they were hired is irrelevant; software engineering at Google is very fast-paced, and it tends to interpret incompetence as damage and route around it.
- googlerx 7y ago
  I'm an engineer at google and this bit about hiring someone because of their genes is false. All candidates must past the same hiring bar, no one gets extra points for "diversity". So no, I never wonder why a coworker was hired.
  - username90 7y ago
    Right, there is a lot of talk about things but ultimately the strongest political side at Google are still the ones clamoring for meritocracy.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      It's less "meritocracy vs. diversity" and more "meritocracy factors in diversity." They aren't opposed goals; an organization with a meritocracy that over-optimizes on too few metrics is fragile and collapses in a dynamic market.
      - kortilla 7y ago
        Which organization has collapsed that focused only on technical skills?
  - thu2111 7y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but that's not true. Yes, the company tells you that's how it works. But I was also a Google engineer, I did hundreds of interviews during a time when it was way less into diversity than it is today. And absolutely Google bent its policies to try and hire more women. Constantly. Some tricks I saw used: 1. Assigning the best/most reliable interviewers to women. Recruiters confirmed to me that they did this. 2. Allowing women who failed the phone screens to proceed to on-sites anyway. 3. Organising recruiting events which banned men, e.g. there was since early years Google CodeJam, a coding competition that was pretty openly used as a way to find candidates. But the men crushed the women, repeatedly. I think there was a female finalist once in 13 years. So they set up a second CodeJam with large cash prizes, but banned men from it. In recent times there was the recruiter who quit and claims he was told to not hire non-diverse candidates. I believe that. I was told about recruitment's diversity goals by recruiters themselves. But still, there was a lot of resistance to bending the hiring pipeline in more extreme ways. That culture carried over to Facebook. I've been told that at Facebook recruiters were incentivised with cash to hire more women, but they gave up pretty fast because stuffing the pipeline with weaker candidates didn't work: they got flushed out by the hiring committees. By the way you're blind to a much more important trick Google uses. Eng hiring was, during my time, at least somewhat well defended against diversity abuse. But firing was totally controlled by HR. And it is an open secret that at Google it's nearly impossible for women to be fired, regardless of how low their performance is. Instead they get moved around between teams. Men, on the other hand, can be and are let go for merely not exceeding expectations. Obviously that's one way to get less male workforce, if you're patient!

kortilla 7y ago

> You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. Yes, when they stopped caring about engineering skills and starting caring about diversity checkboxes, their overall engineering capabilities declined. Google has done relatively little of note over the last 5 years given their size, and part of it is that they have an incompetence cancer and engineering teams cannot trust other teams (or even coworkers in larger teams). Do you realize how harmful it is to an organization when you can’t tell if a coworker you are depending on is competent or if they were hired because of their genes? > This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China? Which stand? Because they flip-flop all of the time.

shadowgovt 7y ago
It doesn't take more than a handful of interactions to determine if a coworker is competent. The reason they were hired is irrelevant; software engineering at Google is very fast-paced, and it tends to interpret incompetence as damage and route around it.
googlerx 7y ago
I'm an engineer at google and this bit about hiring someone because of their genes is false. All candidates must past the same hiring bar, no one gets extra points for "diversity". So no, I never wonder why a coworker was hired.
- username90 7y ago
  Right, there is a lot of talk about things but ultimately the strongest political side at Google are still the ones clamoring for meritocracy.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    It's less "meritocracy vs. diversity" and more "meritocracy factors in diversity." They aren't opposed goals; an organization with a meritocracy that over-optimizes on too few metrics is fragile and collapses in a dynamic market.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      Which organization has collapsed that focused only on technical skills?
- thu2111 7y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but that's not true. Yes, the company tells you that's how it works. But I was also a Google engineer, I did hundreds of interviews during a time when it was way less into diversity than it is today. And absolutely Google bent its policies to try and hire more women. Constantly. Some tricks I saw used: 1. Assigning the best/most reliable interviewers to women. Recruiters confirmed to me that they did this. 2. Allowing women who failed the phone screens to proceed to on-sites anyway. 3. Organising recruiting events which banned men, e.g. there was since early years Google CodeJam, a coding competition that was pretty openly used as a way to find candidates. But the men crushed the women, repeatedly. I think there was a female finalist once in 13 years. So they set up a second CodeJam with large cash prizes, but banned men from it. In recent times there was the recruiter who quit and claims he was told to not hire non-diverse candidates. I believe that. I was told about recruitment's diversity goals by recruiters themselves. But still, there was a lot of resistance to bending the hiring pipeline in more extreme ways. That culture carried over to Facebook. I've been told that at Facebook recruiters were incentivised with cash to hire more women, but they gave up pretty fast because stuffing the pipeline with weaker candidates didn't work: they got flushed out by the hiring committees. By the way you're blind to a much more important trick Google uses. Eng hiring was, during my time, at least somewhat well defended against diversity abuse. But firing was totally controlled by HR. And it is an open secret that at Google it's nearly impossible for women to be fired, regardless of how low their performance is. Instead they get moved around between teams. Men, on the other hand, can be and are let go for merely not exceeding expectations. Obviously that's one way to get less male workforce, if you're patient!