Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
But in reality, dude went full /r/TheRedPill and The_Donald on this. I think the best description I heard of the doc was 'right diagnosis, but overall lazy'. The doc called for reinforcement of stereotypes and removal of mandatory bias training. I can see how someone can see the surface and identify potential problems with it, but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so -- psychologists, analysts, people who look at data and key results, both empirically and academically. To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think.
There have been some ridiculous, over the top reactions to the doc, but I think it was mostly a case of someone of privilege not understanding why diversity programs are in place and feeling empowered to shit on people without any because they scratched the surface of problems. Again, /r/TheRedPill style content.
It did spark discussion, and I think the consensus is that while there are some valid points about the left-leaning employee base, the overall doc fails to adequately dig into the matter, and does so in a hostile way while decrying anyone who disagreed with OP.
opinions my own.
When people are not comfortable with an oppressive regime they keep their moderate opinions to themselves. Voicing any opinion contrary to the Party line is dangerous no matter how extreme or moderate it is. So all dissenting opinions you are going to hear in public will be coming from extremists (e.g. "Have a Nuremberg-type tribunal for the Party's chiefs, lustrate the rest and their progeny for 7 generations!") because only the people who hold these opinions will be fed up enough to disregard consequences of their dissent. And there won't be many of them, since it's the definition of extremism to be in small minority.
However, for every single dissident there were tens or hundreds of thousands of silent supporters who would openly express their disgust and outrage over such horrific person but, when talking with their buddies in private, repeat and spread these ideas thus radicalizing themselves. Eventually everybody but a minority of "true believers" shifted from "well, life kinda sucks right now but at least there is no war" to "burn it down and salt the earth!". When this happened the whole mighty Communist empire collapsed within a year.
tl;dr When you see steam breaking through the seals you are about to experience the whole boiler's explosion. The steam that gets out first is weak but it's the sign of mounting pressure inside.
> In short, average people behave the way they think they ought to, even though that behavior might not reflect their own personal feelings. Given a sufficient "A-HA!" moment when they discover that their personal feelings are shared by a large portion of the population their behavior may change dramatically. An example of this is the British colonists before and after publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. A year before the Declaration of Independence, America was full of patriotic British convinced that things could be worked out with King George, but on July 4, 1776 the colonies were full of Americans determined that they needed independence. Another is the relatively recent "Arab Spring."
As a white male who agrees with the general themes of the manifesto (even though it lacks nuance an depth) I refuse to work in the "valley" precisely because I will be an ideological minority; and therefore likely to be ostracized for my views.
Also, about "but ultimately bias training is created by people with real credentials to be doing so": That seems to be questionable. I know from a professional psychologist that diagnosis of unconscious bias and especially bias training are standing on extremely thin ice scientifically. The hypothesis that the whole bias training industry is a mix of financial exploitation of idologically overhyped and misinterpreted weak scientific results and well meaning but misguided do-goodism can be argued for quite confidently at this point.
I'd like to know your opinion about the neuroticism comment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicid...
Or maybe women are more neurotic because they need to put up with this kind of shit at the workplace.
After all, even if the statistical female population does have a higher baseline for neuroticism, would that fact actually weaken the argument for gender diversity?
How would it be any different from the fact that men on average are taller?
Nobody argued against diversity, the document in question only stated that our current diversity efforts aren't really working and that we should consider measurable gender differences such as prevalence of neuroticism if we want to really move the needle.
Anyways, one study about women age 65-98 does not result in overwhelming evidence.
Furthermore, even if it was, neuroticism and high anxiety could be a result of dealing with thousands of years of being disparaged of independence and socioeconomic venues for freedom. One thing I hope we can all agree on is evolution, and I think to state that women are in general more neurotic and attributing it to their chemistry as individuals and not the way theyve been treated for thousands and thousands of years is possibly a bit of an oversight.
Furthermore, I find it funny the author of the article (the google internal document) uses averages for women to describe his experience working at Google where everyone is generally agreed to be above average, which is why not anyone can roll in and get a job working there.
Undoubtedly, as the gender ratio is still off there, and in many places including, the standards are maintained to some arguable degree, and any woman working at google is probably far above the average woman, but of course the author has no problem applying general averages to the woman of a company who is strictly comprised of top notch and in general outlier performers.
It is honestly an insult to any women regardless of their performance once they get there, who has been offered a job or worked at google to be described by general averages by a male peer and then an argument is made on their biological limitations "with averages in mind of course"
Well, with averages in mind bro, you don't have any averages at google because none of your are average, so you kind of stumped your own point there.
Finally, if men think women are neurotic, this is an average characteristic described by a male gender of which has engaged in mass murder and until less than 100 years ago RAPING and pillaging as common means of procuring land and building societies. To pass off women as simply neurotic without considering how male behavior could have contributed to elongated stress and anxiety levels in women as the majority of their existence in the human species has been one of pure objectification with barely 100 years of voting rights to show for the progression of it, in the most sought after democracy in the world, is neurotic to me. Maybe that makes me neurotic.
This is very similiar to the concept of enslaving a people when it is well known it takes any family of any ethnicity in any country an average of five generations of consistent efforts to get out of poverty, and also encompassing enough cognitive dissonance to blaming an entire ethnicity previously enslaved as being "lazy" for not having achieved the same status as the wealthy elite who enslaved them.
Is there any point where the group of people who are so convinced women are plain and simply neurotic as a form of natural brain chemistry can stop and remember the nature vs. nurture argument? Biology day two, maybe day three?
We are still trying to get basic human rights for women in countries around the world who do billions in business with the U.S. every year. All American politics aside, it is a fact that when Donald Trump was filming a tv show where apparently all women flirt with him whether they mean to or not (they are just women, they don't even know what they are thinking. It's up for me to determine their emotions, not them. That would make them independent human beings who can define their own emotions and behavior and I need control of that) Hillary declared womens rights as human rights and got China to formally acknowledge that in the UN for the first time.
This is not a joke. We live in a world where we are still trying overhaul womens rights, and thats in a relatively globalized country, not to speak of womens rights elsewhere.
To be so confident that a few studies on wikipedia with less than 1000 participants overall provides an undisputable basis for women being more neurotic and agreaeable and furthermore not enabling that characteristic more to sit their job roles as the reason for the gender gap in tech, is nothing short of a blatant inability to see the big picture, and thinking of how global politics plays into a company that has offices in countries all over the world.
I don't even disagree with this guys right to have his own opinion, or his thoughtful attempt at alternative solutions because as a female in tech, and i know many other females in tech who agree, there are some good intentions gone wrong trying to make females feel more comfortable, but none of us have ever said "its actually because were neurotic and we need more people oriented roles for us", i disagree with his noncholant attribution to the "biological differences" in women (on average of course, of which doesnt apply to any google employee, on average) as an indisputable basis for which to base alternative solutions on.
Do you mean this comment: "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."?
It seems the premise (different average levels of neuroticism between males and females) passes the 10-minutes-of-scanning-google-results-test. But I am not sure that higher neuroticism necessarily causes lower tolerance to stress, although a connection is suggested by [1]. That is, if we agree to use the word "neuroticism" as defined by the big-five scale.
The conclusion is carefully worded ("may contribute to"), and not obviously implausible, so it might at least be a valid starting point for a dialogue.
Having said this much, I must add that I find the document to not be very well balanced.
Just for example: Women also tend to score higher on extraversion than men. The same study I cited before [1] links low extraversion to social phobia and (tentatively to) anxiety disorders. Shouldn't that have been on that list as well, then? Also women tend to score higher on agreeableness, so I guess I could claim that'd make them better team players, no?
So my conclusion about the document is that while it seems to me to list some arguably valid concerns, it does not play entirely fair. But that is a weakness primarily of what is omitted by the text, not by what's in it.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3690955/
{Ed. I am aware the text mentions extraversion and agreeableness as well, but only in the context of their disadvantages, not of their advantages.}
I don't want to do programmers a disservice by making the comparison to wallstreet, but I only make the comparison in that stakes are high maybe not with life or death situations (but it could be, because software applies to many things, including technology equipment in healthcare and military or otherwise where peoples well being depends in some way on it) but in general, there is a lot of work to be done, with hard deadlines, and alot of money to be lost or made depending on the rollout, and quality of the code.
Furthermore when the money is good (the ability for the next "unicorn" to make billions or say google to roll out a feature that engages literally billions of users and make money off of that) the pressure it high. You don't want to mess things up. Furthermore, when the money is good, as in potential to make lots of money or otherwise have a huge impact on a lot of people or both, there is alot of competition. You may if you are not in tech think of programmers as esoteric nerdy elites, but in general, getting a job at google say, is not a walk in the park. Many people apply, few are given offers to put it short. The level of rigor is high, and its generally expected that you will put in the hours you need to to get the job done, because theres probably someone more or equally qualified than you that would love to have your position in the next round of tends of thousands of applicants places like Google gets annually.
You do what you need to do to get the job done, meaning nights or weekends, and you are compensated well, treated well, have access to good healthcare food etc. The goal is to alleviate stress caused by financial strein in other areas of your life, so you can focus on work.
In the same way, there is a lot of freedom. If you excel and get the job done in 8 hours a day good for you, but with that level of rigor its also expected that you are probably motivated to do even more outside your job role, which is why Google has 20% time, where employees work on their own projects or projects with other people, and alot of google most successful rollouts to the public and probably internally as well, are a result of employees taking their own initiative outside of their explicit job roles to build and contribute.
These things are all possible I'm sure with nurses and teachers, but those jobs are highly regulated, and in general those jobs allow you to leave at certain times everyday. Being a nurse, as some of my family members are nurses I know is alot of work in school and on the job, but you are on shift, and you can leave when shift is over. This is not the case for a programmer.
You are given work, expected to get it done in your own way, however much time that takes for you, as long as its done on time and it works and has the expected or above quality, and then contribute even more typically and consistently show initiative beyond your job role.
Many programmers work on live components like the internet. An example is when someone at a big tech company last year or maybe earlier this year, entered a typo in a command line while executing a script/small computer program that brought down servers hosting roughly 1/3 of the internet websites hosted in the Unites States, think of the impact.
The same goes for software running wallstreet and otherwise. If the software were to crash, the consequences are dire whether in terms of money, global telecommunications and the busineses that utilize them or in some cases software directly related to human health etc.
Hope that answers some of your question.
The list of things you point out consists of mostly external factors. I know where they come from and that they seem essential since those are the conditions that all of us are familiar with, but to a large degree, they are ultimately historical impositions: that is how the job has come to be practiced. (There are of course practical concerns that shape how this came to be; namely, the difficulty of getting all the pertinant information necessary to make any changes on a piece of software or debug it).
So there is definitely a cultural aspect of it, but much of the culture may not be strictly necessary to the product. Consider for example Torvalds' rather blunt manner. I am fond of being blunt and I enjoy being a bit combative and adversarial when it comes to advocating ideas. I've seen this attitude commonly in various academic/industry/scientific. To an extent it's useful. But it can become a sport unto itself and mean-spirited easily, especially in unskilled hands. I suspect a great many people would not like to work in such an environment.
My own suspicion is that technical fields tend to attract a lot of people who have trouble reading/relating to emotions and males who've had little contact with women, a lot of contact with bullies, fragile egos, and a need to fit in. It gets ugly fast.
Yes it is, but I am afraid not by the people you say later on...
> To assume that a privileged engineer would know better than this hardworking team is pretty insulting, I think.
You assume he is privileged?
Psychology knows about cognitive biases not "unconscious biases" which people are "trained" for and being tested on today.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sylvana-storey/unconscious-bia...
Also, for some reason "unconscious biases" test are mostly used to "measure racism and sexism" which is not what these types of tests are originally designed for.
Most of the views in his document are actually supported by psychological research.
Not all experts agree that they work though:
"Neuroticism: higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance".
Of course, women are neurotic, so that explains alot of why women in comparable roles just arent doing as well.
"Harder time negociating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. These are just average differences, but this is seen as soley a womens issue"
Well thank you for clearing that up. There is aboslutely nothing that causes these differences in women and it is entirely based on their faulty self perception that is there for a reason which must exist because....well you know the answer, which brings me to my next point...
"Women are more agreeable." The only mental response I had to this statement was "are you sure women are more agreeable, or do you just perceive that they agree with you and have no real comprehension of how much they disagree with you?"
"Men's higher drive for status."
Someone please correct me if there is another response I'm supposed to have other than only being able to utilize blatant sarcasm to try to enter into the mindset of the author of this article, and me trying to be agreeable to it:
Well, thank you for pointing out these fundamental permanent underlying unique biological traits holding women back from progress that Google has taken an unhealthy and self destructive burden on by trying to correct.
If women could just...stop living in denial about how neurotic they are, how they are more agreeable, and overall just, not as motivated to reach high status positions, along with the obvious fact that they are more into social things than code, and that women like people and men like things, then maybe women could start coming to terms with why they are less successful, and we could have more pyschological safety in the work place if more men in the office could be open about these things and not feel scared to propogate them as undisputable truth.
Perhaps some cooperation and pair programming would help, but I'm not necessarily Google should arbitrarily engage in doing that "just" to make it more appealing to women, instead Google should "be more open about the science of human nature". The sooner we can all just acknowledge women are neurotic agreeable socialites that eventually want to work part time and aren't driven by status, the sooner we can close the gender gap here at Google.
Thank you, thank you so much for all the other people just like me at Google who agree with me but are too scared to say it because...well once you say it, it sounds so pathetically incorrect I'm the only one who is so drenched in my own understanding of reality that everyone else is clearly in denial about, who had the courage to say it.
Thank you, thank you again for your time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge...
The ratios of each trait combined together is what gives you your personality.
"A plausible explanation for this is that acts by women in individualistic, egalitarian countries are more likely to be attributed to their personality, rather than being attributed to ascribed gender roles within collectivist, traditional countries.[109] "
I wonder if anxiety and neuroticism reports by women are results of historically not being equal or having equal opportunities for venues for independence. I Wonder how living in collectivist traditional countries or working in environments with traditionalist roles about what females roles should be would cause a women anxiety if she didnt really fit those roles.
I wonder if its ever wondered if women are just a certain way or rather is anxiety and "neuroticism" reports are due to the world they live in.
I wonder if we could change that world.
nah...its probably just their personality...
You are saying women do not experience anxiety more than men? Do men not strive for status more than women? Women are not more people-oriented than men?
The author did not seem to me to be arguing for a biological cause, though I only read the manifesto once and may easily have missed this.
There are genuine sociological reasons for Women, who are on average much shorter and weaker than Men, who have historically raped and murdered in far greater numbers than Women, to have higher agreeableness and higher neuroticism scores on average in any society, much less modern society.
Unfortunately, like most social programs and surveys, these generalities miss the specifics and outliers. But they still statistically generalize.
This is a tendentious statement, so I will relate my own experience. Once upon a time I was working in California, at a tiny startup, and was reading some election results from "back home" in North Carolina, which had just passed Amendment One by about a 3:2 margin. Observing the results thoughtfully, my coworker casually remarked "wow, 60% of North Carolina is literally horrible, terrible people."
I just quietly sat back and thought "why, how nice of you, sir, to refer to some unknown fraction of my family and the friends I had growing up in such a lovely manner."
At one point my girlfriend (now an ex-girlfriend) attended a party that he was hosting. She had just left Missouri out of disgust for its Missouri-ness, and was very much in love with San Francisco and its people – yet left the party modestly offended – not for saying anyone in particular was bad this time, but just with all the best of intentions saying it was inevitable that they'd all come around to the modern views on things like gay marriage (and, in the process, utterly trivializing their religion, values, and world-views).
I do not seek to cast him as a bad person for this remark. This is a man who, if anything, is one of the nicest people I know, easily far above the average, and a quitessential San Franciscan (well above and beyond your typical tech hipster). But he is immersed in a culture which specifically and explicitly denies human dignity of people who are not alike and do not think alike.
This is very sad. You would think if there is one lesson we could take from the history of the US, religious tolerance in the colonies, slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, our wars with Native Americans, the likes of the Japanese Internment, women's suffrage, everything ... if there's one resounding strain here, it's that you don't un-people people.
(but it's okay to un-people these people, because they're bad people!)
In conclusion:
I sympathize with this guy who wrote this manifesto. It is also unfortunate that, from what I hear and understand of the matter, this guy is factually in error, probably sexist, and almost certainly undermining his cause.
But without trying to devolve into the actual politics of it, a large portion of Americans (I'd wager it's the majority) believe that it's okay to exclude people for one reason or another. Americans have voted since Pres. GW Bush on protectionist principles, even President Obama was barely for extending rights until he was forced into it by VP Biden. America is in the middle of a massive demographic shift from the Baby Boomers who have ruined the economy, created massive public debt, destroyed worker protections, and shifted the political power from those in the middle to those at the very top. They did this by unpeopling people. This was an intentional thing done by the religious right starting in the late 70s and really gaining steam in the 80s. Their brand of us vs them found a receptive audience in America, because the Baby Boomers are afraid that what they've created will change, and for the moment there's more of them than other voting populations. Of course this is the natural outcome. Look at how many centrist politicians have left. So yes I personally disagree with what this guy said, but in a public sphere he has every right to say it. Inside of Google however they have the right to fire him for any reason, because there are no worker protections for free speech.
That's my take too, having read the doc. Reminds me of The_Donald -- sometimes correctly identifies an issue, but misses the point entirely on so many levels and does more harm than good to whatever the author's goal was.
>you don't un-people people
And that's exactly how the doc started from the get-go. It decried anyone who dared disagree with it as shunning communication. That's really not the case -- people discussed it, and disagreed with it. It reminds me of those religious freedom laws, that guarantee people's freedom to discriminate to protect their own beliefs. The more layers you follow down, the more of a contradiction the laws become.
What's your sense of scale here? What does ideological plurality mean to you? What does North Carolina secularism look like? Does North Carolina have a cultural embrace of secularism? Is the bathroom bill a good thermostat for what issues have play in North Carolina?
I would argue that the Bay Area is very fertile ground for diversity. The Bay Area Christians build enclaves of high quality here, bastions of middle-to-high SES wealth, aspirations, and sensibilities. They stand as quality in contrast to the community right outside their legally protected walls.
I would say that the Bay Area is a cutting-edge experiment of secularism and plurality that the world is watching.
I am discussing vice versa by asking mere questions.
It might enrich the discussion to say that it's still illegal for men to have sex with men in North Carolina, it's just unenforceable. North Carolina is also working to say that sodomy laws are not unconstitutional.
The Christians I know around the Bay Area are under no such threat. If anything, churches are enclaves of extreme quality in the Bay Area. It goes to show what a fertile ground this is for diversity.
Since you bring it up, I will observe that I found New York to be a lot more tolerant in practice. Statistically, the political leanings are pretty comparable, but somehow people are less strident in practice, even during my tenure at a company with an explicit institutional commitment to social justice causes.
Among other things, I suspect it may simply be that a lot of people come to New York from a lot of places for a lot more reasons than they do San Francisco. But at the end of the day, it's not even really that Bay Area culture is stridently anti-Christian per se. It's just strident about everything. San Francisco is the sort of place where people scrawl anti-parenting graffiti on the changing tables in the restrooms at Whole Foods to shame new parents for their crimes against the planet.
(My circle of acquaintances in London is still quite small, so I hesitate to generalise, but at least in the tech scene, everything is very international.)
> The Christians I know around the Bay Area are under no such threat. If anything, churches are enclaves of extreme quality in the Bay Area. It goes to show what a fertile ground this is for diversity.
1. There's something about describing religion merely in terms of "churches" and "enclaves" as if there's a box around the realm of acceptable religious activity. Telling people that they are permitted to meet in a consecrated building weekly is the start of religious tolerance, vaguely akin to not prosecuting people under sodomy laws.
2. If you don't know someone with a strong negative opinion of AB 569, you're not really in touch with that diversity.
Was there a thought even slightly in your mind that this was even mildly in tension? Like there will be laws on the books striking people from meeting in a Christian church? Like a political momentum is coming?
That churches are allows to operate tax-free, that Churches often operate businesses flagrantly in view of the community but nobody cares (education), and that there isn't any political force close to bringing tension on this matter, shows that churches are not merely tolerated... they are politically privileged.
? Can you think of any other group with this much power?
And in the Bay Area, I think that's clearer. Churches are bastions of middle-to-high SES wealth, revenue, sensibilities, and aspirations. They are places where parents can aspire for their children to be lawyers, doctors, or engineers. Black churches in other areas work differently; worse. I wonder if a lot of Bay Area Christians never attend even one black church.
I cannot believe it when Christians talk about persecution in California inside their churches. It blows my mind. Will there be a Proposition 8 for Muslims? If you're talking about religious diversity, then I understand. I'm promoting secularism, not religion.
Try to think of any group that has this much political privilege, while simultaneously talking about religious oppression, as if they stand for churches as well as mosques.
2. Why are you talking about whether I'm in touch with diversity?
Not in any practical sense, but that's a pretty low bar, isn't it? The point is that even your own comments are loaded with views about how
> Churches often operate businesses flagrantly in view of the community but nobody cares (education)
Look at the world-view implicit there. This is what I am pointing at. You seem to propose that a church doing things outside "be a place for crazy-people to gather" is something like fundamentally overstepping boundaries.
They have a parable for that. "You do not light a lamp, only to place it under a bushel basket."
> I cannot believe it when Christians talk about persecution in California inside their churches.
Imagine that you are working in California and hold what is an altogether-common Christian view: that "the legal vehicle of marriage should be offered only to man-woman couples with the general idea of founding a family."
Now imagine you donate, in secret, to a cause which supports that view (e.g. Proposition 8) — whilst being sensitive of the fact that many people would find this to imply that they are invalid as people, and so you make a point of not breathing a word of it, instead making it a special point in your daily life to treat any person who would be affected by this with respect. Suppose all of your colleagues and all those who interact with you will rush to your defence if you are accused of any impropriety in this regard.
There is a credible case that you should live in fear of being found out, being decried a hateful bigot in public forums, and losing your job. It has been amply demonstrated.
> Black churches in other areas work differently; worse... Will there be a Proposition 8 for Muslims?
The problems faced by black churches or Muslims may be more acutely serious in a variety of cases, and more serious overall as well, but of course this fails to justify any mistreatment of anyone.
One of my friends is fairly liberal-oriented and she openly says that the "hateful" right doesn't deserve rights or free speech. Her and her friends motto is "tolerance of the intolerant is an oxymoron". For all her talk of love of humans, animals ( she's a vegan ), etc, she has a terrible anger inside her.
I don't know how we fight against our ugly impulses other than adhering to our principles of equality, free speech and individual rights.
It is a difficult and worrying time we live in because neither side is interested in dialogue and each side accuses the other of be hateful and sequesters themselves in their respective echo chambers which radicalizes them even further.
The worst thing here is the suggestion that there was 100% turnout, instead it was closer to 30%, so only about 20% voted for it. The amendment was found unconstitutional a short time afterwards anyway, finding that marriage is a fundamental right for everyone.
The worst thing?
Suppose there is a referendum in, I don't know, Venezuela or something; that's adequately hypothetical. Imagine they put a referendum banning gay marriage on the ballots in Venezuela, and it passes with similar levels of turnout and support. There's a guy in your office from Venezuela who's reading about it, a little bit troubled by the news, and you say, "wow, I guess 60% of Venezuelans are literally horrible terrible people."
Do you think that he is going to be most upset with the precision and accuracy present in the percentage you used, and not, say, the idea that you just casually pass judgement on what might easily be 60% of his family, extended family, friends, former co-workers, schoolmates, acquaintances, and the like? Not with the way you dismiss entirely their value as moral actors, without any further attempts to seek understanding of them as human beings, pre-emptively closing the door on learning about their culture and their values, not even pretending that you've an interest in understanding their lives as flawed, imperfect human beings, implicitly disclaiming all need to sympathize with their troubles? Not with the way that you, hailing from a background of substantial privilege in the San Francisco Bay Area, college-educated, and now happily earning six figures in a software job, feel that it's right and just to look down on these people, some of whom are fighting to live somewhere better than a shack in the woods?
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...
She writes: "Motherboard has not viewed the full document, but a screenshot we reviewed."... That's all!
The article then follows is a kind of social media reaction recap. Possibly reactions by some people who also have not read the actual primary source, perhaps? (How can we tell?)
Shoddy journalism if that is the case. I mean the whole thing sure sounds like it's pretty bad, but sounds like is literally hearsay and not good journalism.
Edits - perhaps the author of the article has reasons for not publishing the screenshot they are basing their reporting on? Could it be copyright / permission from the document author, or the screenshot maker?
Journalism is entertainment, don't expect something more. If you want to be informed, do your own investigation, or read a book written by someone who knows the stuff.
By the way, I think that being really open means listening to opinions without "rage quitting" for holding an unpopular opinion, or calling him a "racist" or "white male supremacy supporter", which is a way to turn down an argument whatever its merit is.
Is the document's author a jerk? Let's explain that to him, and maybe shame him on a data-driven basis.
Has the author some valid point, but went too far with speculations? Maybe he/she doesn't deserve all this uproar.
The perfect example is Milo. Every time he gets kicked out of a campus, his point gets proven. But almost every time I've seen someone sit down with him and debate his flawed arguments, he got pretty much proven wrong on most of them.
Personally I think for most companies you're better off with a diverse crowd regardless, lest you end up with a bunch of out of touch yuppie guys trying to "change the world" by building an IOT coffee machine. That is to say, all types of diversity be it race, socioeconomic status, gender, etc. will inevitably contribute to your company's collective wisdom, which is probably generally has a larger impact than ensuring everyone you hire has all the sorting algorithms memorized.
Of course, it depends on what you mean by "best". If "best" means "like me", you're at risk of creating a monoculture.
Personally, I think that we should stop looking for "the best" at all times and enormously rewarding them, because this is creating a lot of disparity, and maybe "the best" sometimes carry with them some large drawback (possibly "the best" engineer spends 10 hour working, and 6 more hours a day studying in order to improve; but, then, his social life and his human skills may be... lacking). If we pick all the best in this sense, we may end up with a lot of similar, great people with a lot of drawbacks.
What if we ask "is this candidate good" or "is this candidate really good"? We should try to identify a bar, then pick people (maybe randomly, maybe with a diversity target) that go beyond that bar without looking at finding "the best".
A study recently came out about diversity in communities (not workplaces). Diversity and civic engagement are inversely related. The more diverse a neighborhood fewer people vote, fewer people volunteer, they give less to charity, etc. I can't imagine there aren't similar impacts in the workplace.
http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
Basically the only real assertion that could be made is that Americans are more scared of diversity than other countries.
As to monocultures being bad, if we are looking at the rest of nature, then it's bad in the sense that it leaves massive vulnerabilities to being wiped out in one go. For example the potato blight, black death, bananas and so on, which arguably isn't the same thing as culture is far more adaptable. No one says monocultures are bad, they say they are risky. The reason everyone loves McDonalds french fries is because they are the same anywhere you get them, but if that particular potato has a bad year everyone will notice.
The problem with monoculture, by the way, is that you might end up discarding somebody for "wrong culture fit" rather than actual skills. And that's something I'd like to avoid.
What makes you say this? The economy is at full employment right now. A lot of businesses are having a hard time finding employees with applicable skills. In the tech industry this is certainly true.
No, it's a problem to the discarded person, too, and potentially any future colleagues they might have worked with (or even hired/fired). Hiring and firing are not zero-sum games, they impact more than the just immediate individuals concerned.
"If monoculture improves team effectiveness"
This is a big "IF" in my eyes. Everyone going to the same bar to have a good time may be great fun, but isn't it nice to have some people who prefer other work hours who can start or finish something up for a team member in odd hours? Conversely isn't it nice for the odd-hour or solitary team member to have a more group-oriented colleague who can bring things to/from the solitary person to the group session? Etc... to other specifics.
Sometimes you need the whiz kid who can rewrite Torch from scratch in a weekend. It's OK if they eat the gunk between their toes.
Sometimes you need the gregarious former athlete. It's OK if they got an A- in real analysis.
I think you're jumping to conclusions without assessing facts first; that's exactly the issue I'm talking about. As soon as somebody says something about "politically correct" practices, he must fear retaliation.
Maybe he/she is saying that such diversity practices don't work as intended, and that diversity should be achieved in a different way. Maybe he/she is saying that such diversity practices led to hiring women or other minorities, but that the mindset is not growing different enough. Have you ever considered such possibilities?
I did not addressed specific point you raised "is the author jerk", because I find his jerk-status irrelevant. There are plenty of charizmatic sexists and plenty of jerks that are not sexist.
I can tell you, in Belgium, in my experience and what I hear, this is not an issue whatsoever. Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men.
Do you really care so much whether the person you work with is male, female, black, white, comes from a different background, etc? I just want to work with people that I like and who can handle the job.
Have you considered survival bias?
The women that were bothered would have left those conditions in greater numbers.
The problem in not caring about this statistical filtering is that it creates a blind spot for your company. It is harder to empathize with the unknown.
When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger.
Sorry, but that is just bullshit. I'm currently making a tool to create RPGs. I'm the sole male developer.
To my surprise, I have more women creating games in it than men. It seems that they really love the whole storytelling aspect of it.
So to say that you can only build something that is only useful to people similar to yourself, is just plain wrong. I'm a programmer building something for non-programmers.
If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them, see how they use your product, look at their interests etc. Is it really mandatory to hire the same demographic as a product manager???
That is absolutely good advice. Note that I only said it was harder to empathize with the unknown.
However, an obvious result of the Two Generals' Problem is that you can only communicate through common knowledge. Getting it takes more work than having it.
For instance, it is likely that when you first built the tool, you made its UI use a language you understand. Let's say there is suddenly a large amount of interest in having that tool from a country with a language and culture you do not know.
Learning the specifics of that culture takes more work than having someone with that knowledge in your company. They may know what keyboard those people have, how they expect their right-to-left language to be input, how they react to specific UIs.
A company that has this knowledge in-house is more likely to get that market than one which relies on surveys. For companies that target a large number of markets with shifting needs, it makes diversity a business requirement to outpace competitors.
It's not impossible for men to write good female characters, of course, it's just something that a man is less likely to be able to pull off, or to focus on.
I see this implicit assumption everywhere that diversity comes up, yet at best I've only seen studies indicating better workplace environment or higher productivity on mixed teams. But never anything in detail.
And why does diversity fail so hard when it comes to physical activities?
Off the top of my head, spelunking would likely be a pretty diverse physical activity.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/homo-naledi-...
I do this, regularly, in the UK. I really, really don't want to be the sole target of the one bigot in the room who none of the other men think is a problem (or at least not enough to speak to) - I'm meeting people to enjoy myself, and navigating the social complexities involved in accommodating people who attack me based on gender (plus other visible things I can't do much about) is not fun. Having another woman present tends to result in such behaviour being dialed down a tonne, or at least the ability to step out with her for a few minutes.
As do other people. People just want to do work in an industry they want to work in with people they want to work with and don't want people to use use their gender, sex, racial or cultural background to prevent them doing it.
I'm not sure whether an elaboration by them would indicate that they experience more sexism by men, or that overall its more of a topic brought up by women, but they did say there were more issues with men here.
I think alot of the issues with women in the U.S. vs Europe are due to the fact that Europe is more urbanized and concentrated. Women and men live and work in closer quarters with more socialized economics where women are overall more educated, urbanized, financially independent, and the sexual and in general culture is more liberally progressive.
In the U.S., we are way behind when it comes to womens socioeconomic equality, and education quality in general. Concurrently, there are large number of men live suburban lives, with housewives who are to some degree financially dependent on them, and the idea of an a women who doesn't fit the housewife/trophy wife/soccer mom/etc etc whateve that American culture props up as a way of life for women to idolize, causes more cultural friction and results in more emotional isolation for women working in male dominated work forces.
Not all of it is intentional. Most guys I work with are fine, but older than me, married. I'm 27 single and don't intend to settle down anytime soon, maybe travel more if anything. So every company I've worked for, is filled with men who golf together or do other things. I'm not explicitly excluded anymore than I'm not interested in doing those things and they know that. If I was invited, I wouldnt go.
This is overall pretty a pretty trivial example, but I am trying to emphasize how the undercurrent of culture in America is a large contributer to this, and not necessarily any one persons fault or a mans conscious decision to come across as exclusionary.
Regardless, the document this article refers to goes far beyond that, and I have to say, as an INTJ female, this biology crap is ridiculous. I am introvert and would prefer any day to stay inside and read, code, play video games than go out and "socialize".
In my experience, as an educated female introvert, I am demonized for NOT being a social butterfly, I have been called a bitch for not smiling when I say something in a meeting, because there is a subconscious expectation that girls are supposed to be adorably cute in everything that they do, or ease poltiical or social tension and are viewed as "out of line" for being the source of it, and men are rewarded for agressive aberrhant behavior and lauded as the leader of the group for equally outlier behavior. If a man is confident in his capabilities, I've found him to be considered respected, but if a women is confident in her opinion in a meeting or her belief in her own capabilities, I've often been told I'm a know it all, and am reminded immediately why I need to be "knocked" down a peg to be reminded how I'm not as great as I think I am. It can be a little confusing to work in male dominated environment and be punished for the same behavior that men are rewarded for. This does not happen to me as much at my current job, or on my team or my department, but you have to wonder how much day to day life in the long term impacts what paths women take in their lives and careers based on the rewards and punishments they receive and their economic incentive to act and perform like a man, which is all subject to current socioeconomics and politics, moreso than a woman's "biology"
This document serves one purpose and on purpose only, to perpetuate stereotypes that many women do not meet, and recategorize all actions and behaviors they have that women DO meet the "White male" stereotype and according to this document I mean "objectively qualified software engineer with an open mind and idealogical diversity" as non lady like.
Furthermore, the fact that this document is even being considered as potentially accurate to some degree by any "intelligent" software engineer is more of a testament to how they probably should supplement some of their tech education with history.
The last time I checked:
The very first compiler: Grace Hopper
Nuclear Power: Lise Mitner
Code that got us to the moon: Margaret Hamilton
Spread Spectrum Technology/Wireless Communication: Hedy Lamar
Inventor of Acorn Computer and ARM Processor: Sophie Wilson
Current CEO of AMD: Lisa Su
Those are just off the top of my head and by the top of my head I mean
Nuclear power, which is the most abundant clean energy source on the planet right now,
First flight to the moon, the precedents for Wifi
etc etc, I'm probably missing some awesome women, there is no proof whatsoever that a females biology makes her less capable of being an equally qualified software engineer.
This general argument has been used for thousands of years in various flavors to justify a lack of womens rights or capabilities and they have never in retrospect sounded anything less than ridiculous, with their conclusions implying nothing less than the ONE thing ANY software engineer, and anyone who listened to day 1 of Intro to Science in the 5th grade should know, and that is correlation is not causation.
Women used to suck at math before they were allowed to go to school.
In the same way, technology is a new industry, and women are already a minority status in so many other industries its bound to reflect here as well, but the existence of a gap is a correlation to biology, as well as the many contributing factors to the cultural differences that influence the mass aggregation of how far women go when it comes to being socioeconomically independent individuals with advanced careers.
less than 50 years ago it was argued women shouldnt have careers because how can we procreate our species if women are working passed when the can have kids.
Well now we have technology and better healthcare to enable women to be healthier live longer and have kids much later in life.
Every excuse about biology as an objectively and permanently limiting factor to womens capabilities is a blatant lie that has shown itself to be one time and time again throughout history .
And to answer your last question, I personally really don't care about the diversity of my team if they are all good people who can work well, but I WOULD care if a coworker propogated a document saying I'm inferior to them because of my biology as a female.
On a very similiar note, to further this argument with studies and words that are not mine, by some of the mst lauded Economists of our time, I recommend the book "Why Nations Fail" which goes through many countries and places in history showing that the socioeconomic advancement of a people or a country, despite many arguments about certain countries or ethnicities being "less evolved over time" which was and in some places still is an argument and justification to why so many countries and millions of people persist in poverty, and actually that the ability for a country and a people to advocate for themselves is very much a result of the soecioeconomic system they live in, supplementing studies of groups of people an entire cities with the same biology and ethnic evolution and history who live in prosperous countries or not, entirely based on the political structure of that country incentivizing venues for massive growth in healthcare, education, human rights etc.
I would argue the existence of highly educated competitive female software engineers is just like most of history and people in the world upon objective studies, based on a complex structure of what incentivizes people and how much their culture allows/encourages/or punishes the advancement of womens education and independence, and this is a snapshot in time of which it would be irresponsible for us to make permanent conclusions about the mental capabilities of women due to their "biology" without efforts to extracate and analyze nature vs nurture in mass.
You wouldn't if you were working in Europe.
If this would happen here, all colleagues would have a great laugh out of this document, sharing it with others to show "What crazy John has done this time, making a whole document about his retarded idea."
If this guy is the asocial hunchback working in his office all day, avoiding others, but none the less doing great work, the company probably would keep him. Because everyone already knows what kind of a nutcase he is.
If he is working with other colleagues, this is probably a reason to fire him. First of all because this is not professional whatsoever, and because this obviously shows that he is not able to work with other people.
It this is a manager or HR person, he would be fired on the spot. Everyone would agree with that. If not what would raise some eyebrows too.
I fully understand that in US, you would care, but this is also the reason why the whole situation in US so surreal to me. I read that some coworkers even agree with them. And that makes it a problem indeed. It is just strange that US and EU cultures are so alike, but still have such a big difference in how female colleagues are treated at the workplace.
That's an interesting way to put it. The estimates I've seen (e.g. [1], [2]) have the frequency of INTJs among men significantly higher than the frequency of INTJs among women. If INTJs are more likely to become engineers, then those frequencies predict that there will be more male engineers than female engineers.
[1] https://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/estimated-frequencies.h...
[2] https://mypersonality.info/personality-types/population-gend...
I don't remember the study, but apparently in former communist countries, while gender roles are very strong, women were expected to work in factories along side men for a very long time.
Which is probably why you have a relatively more balanced tech workforce there today vs the West.
However, if you read the document, the author basis the premise of his perception of faulty and "good intentions gone wrong" programs to correct for gender pay gap disparity as due to the "underlying biologicial differences" between men and women.
Women are far less likely to be INTJs, but most female Engineers I know are not INTJs, and furthermore, if you are using the idea that INTJ is an indicator of someone being more likely to be an engineer or STEM I guess we can say in this case, and that somehow there is a biologicial difference (plausible, were not advanced enough in biology and sciences, psychology and neurobiology to be able to atribute personality genres to unique biologicial differences that can correctly an consistently identify a Meyers Brigg personality type, maybe its possible in the future, maybe not, maybe thats not the underlying relationship, who knows yet), then the entire premise of the author is debunked.
If my personality type whether as a male or female, is going to kick me in a direction more likely to end up in STEM (interest in math and sciences) then youre statement reconcludes there is no "underlying biological differences" that exist for all women that never occur with men.
The idea that personality traits contribute to biological nuances that can occur in men and women, then the author loses his point.
I'm also not aware of any Meyers Briggs personality type that comes with the term "neurotic" but according to the author, all women are, and this is not even up for debate.
I'm also leaving out the entire obvious consideration that I would assume is a given in all these conversations, but seem not to be addressed in any way whatsoever by the authors 10 page document, that even if we could attribute say INTJ or similiar MBriggs personality types to highly correlating with females in STEM, and then showing less women are likely to have those personality types, we still don't know what causes personality types, or have biologicial blueprints for them, so we can not assume "underlying biological differences between sexes" especially considering MBs are not sexually based.
Furthermore, we are leaving out the fact that humans are an evolving species and we experience a microcosm of our own societal influences that influence how people think, act, perceive, spend, procreate, educate, eat etc based on our socioeconomic construct. To throw aside the mere idea that being surrounded by men who actually write off most of your actions as neurotic and believe this as truth, could not have some lng term damaging effect on your ability to be taken seriously or perceived as successful or result in an imposed biased with a positive feedback loop on how the gender who is not in an economic majority of empowerment may be held back, is just about as childish and ignorant as missing the point of a first science experiment where you failed miserably because you didn't have controls for your experiment, or consider that different contributing factors could result in different outcomes and calibrate for them.
No, from this authors perspective, women are neurotic. This is a fact:
"Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...
It's also true that there seem to be population-level differences that are connected to aptitude for engineering. If we're trying to answer the question "to what extent is sexism excluding women from engineering?" then these differences become important. If there are no population-level differences then any deviation from a 50/50 sex ratio among engineers is probably due to some kind of sex discrimination. But if there are real population-level differences then it would be a mistake to insist on a 50/50 sex ratio, and a mistake to assume that sexism is the problem if the ratio is not 50/50. (Of course, there might still be sexism, even if there are also population-level differences.)
The problem comes when people try to apply population-level sex differences at an individual level. Even if fewer women have an aptitude for engineering, that says nothing at all about any individual female engineer. The right way to assess an the ability of an engineer, whether male or female, is by looking at the information about what they've done -- they've achieved X qualification, won Y award, built Z product etc. -- not by assuming gender differences that can only be observed at the population level. Unfortunately, both negative and positive discrimination muddy the waters here, making these signals less useful.
Re: Eastern Europe.
You can thank communist regimes for more female workers in technology.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/women-in-tech-why-bulgaria-and-...
Yes, for various reasons.
1. There is less diversity of experience/thought.
2. Programming/engineering fields are generally good for society (and hence highly rewarded). There is a lot of unfulfilled demand for more engineers. If we can increase the number of people available for these jobs, that's good for society, and if we are for some reason "excluding" or "depressing" some people from entering, that's bad.
3. Not sure about this, but I think the incidence of sexual harassment or similarly bad things goes way up when there are fewer women.
None of this is to say we should be forcing anyone to work in something they don't want to. But as I heard it, it seems like there are societal reasons why women tend to be less interested in technology than men, and these are not biological. Again, not clear on the science here, but I'm just answering your main objection, which is "should we even care" assuming it is a cultural problem and not something biological. (For what it's worth, it seems clear to me that it's at least partly societal).
If this is because they have been systematically discriminated against in tech and primed at a young age with BS like "cars are for boys and dolls are for girls" then yes, absolutely this is a huge deal. If it just so happened that they were not interested because they don't have the "technology gene" then this would not be a big deal, but that is nonsense and all the evidence points to the former.
That is patently false, and you should not make factual claims under these circumstances. These claims add to the noise, not the signal.
The scientific evidence for innate psychological differences between girls and boys is overwhelming. There is a clear scientific consensus on this. I cannot fathom how this can still be controversial.
Specifically about your "cars vs dolls" example, I'll give you two quotations right of the bat:
- Shown two pictures, one of a mobile (physical-mechanical object) and one of a face (social object), there is a clear gender difference how much a child will look at the mobile vs face. (Yes, boy likes mobile, girl likes face.) In newborns btw. so that is hardly an artifact of human societal norms. [1]
- Offered a choice between a toy truck and a doll, there is a clear gender difference how much an adolescent will play with the truck vs doll. (Yes, boy likes truck, girl likes doll.) In monkeys btw, so that is hardly an artifact of human societal norms. [2]
[1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.627...
[2] https://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-truck...
{Ed. spelling}
However, your claim that there is a "overwhelming", "clear scientific consensus" is lacking in citations, your one broken link to what I assume was supposed a scientific study and one link to a pop science blogpost (which links only to other posts on the same blog and not any actual scientific papers) notwithstanding.
In fact the overwhelming scientific consensus is that the opposite is true. Check out this blogpost with working links to 22 different peer-reviewed scientific papers on how social priming can differentially affect how men and women, or white students and black students, etc perform at various academic and cognitive tasks (there are actually 27 links to such papers but 5 are broken; there are also links to 9 more scientific papers besides, just to flesh out the argument): http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s...
I challenge you to find working links to 22 different peer-reviewed scientific papers arguing that women's underrepresentation in STEM is not due to systemic discrimination but is explained wholly by other factors such as innate psychological differences.
In fact, I'll give you a head start. The blogpost I linked to already links to 6 such papers, so if you can find 16 more, I'll concede that maybe there isn't the scientific consensus I thought there was.
That notwithstanding, I wouldn't think of claiming that societal norms do not at all affect outcomes. Because it would be next to impossible to prove, and I'd give it a rather low a priori probability. Just what these effects really are and how big they are is a matter of ongoing debate. C.f. "The Norway Paradox".
So I guess we're roughly on the same page then, that the observable variation in outcome is caused by a mix of innate and societal factors, and the real discussion to be had is about how to tease them apart and quantify their respective contributions?
There is an interesting documentary called "The Norway Paradox"[1] that explores why do we see a much higher rate of gender segregation in developed countries. The thesis the documentary advances is that there are indeed innate differences between the sexes, and with higher freedom that can be found in advanced societies, the people are freer to choose a job that fits their innate tendencies rather than be forced into something else by economic or social circumstances.
First of all, what evidence? And secondly, does it? (Like the horrific experiment on David Reimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer)
I have 1 son and 2 daughters, and I have plenty of nieces and cousins. The personality of each child has a bigger impact on how they behave than I had imagined. And also, boys are way different than girls. They are equal, but they are different none the less.
So instead of trying to throw them all in one pile and expect to have a 50-50 men-women working in technology, accept the difference, and let any person decide what they want to do in their lives.
Boys are different than girls. They are equal, but different. If you can't accept this, then I can imagine you have all kinds of diversity problems where you expect that everyone is the same, likes to do the same things, etc.
I recall a funny answer when one of my computer science professors asked "What can we do so that more girls sign up of Master in Computer Science". One smart guy answered: "Make sure it has less to do with computers". (In US you would probably get kicked out of the university because someone felt offended, or that it's a sexist remark)
Women are very welcome in technology, I worked with a lot of very nice and smart women, and had one of the best managers that was a woman and mother of 2 kids. But why do you expect that the average woman will have as much interest in technology as the average man?
You might be interested in this blogpost which cites 27 different peer-reviewed scientific papers supporting an argument that social priming can explain much of observed gender gaps in STEM (and another 9 more scientific papers just to flesh out the argument): http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s...
> "Make sure it has less to do with computers" > someone felt that it's a sexist remark
Ignoring for a moment whether that's "sexist", can we agree that if those 27 scientific papers are to be believed, such remarks directly hurt women in computer science who would otherwise be do better?
Edit: two paragraphs in and it's making lots of well reasoned points. Why the outrage? And why the outrage before the majority of people actually read the thing?
Serves to prove the authors point.
>Edit: two paragraphs in and it's making lots of well reasoned points. Why the outrage? And why the outrage before the majority of people actually read the thing?
Ironic... did you actually read the thing? Past the first "two paragraphs," anyway?
There's definitely assumptions in the article e.g. Men (may) prefer coding due to the average innate preference of things vs people (and then vice versa for women)and the belief programs exclusive to minorities due more harm than good, but outside of those this seems like a fairly well researched document that, for better or worse, has a dissenting opinion from the group.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826203/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compass...
They seem to me like they're saying they don't want to work somewhere their teammates think they're biologically inferior, but they're hoping that HR will ensure that people who think so don't stay on the team.
It was quoted in the main story.
The tweets she put out today come off as combative and hammy.
>It actually gives me motivation to leave Google for the first time in years; the only reason why I enjoy Google is our unified networking.
>Fact: White men are not marginalized like me in tech. White man: You are racist, my grandpa was a great man. You are this relevant.
>Dear white men who thinks they are marginalized, my single eye lash is more marginalized in tech than all of you.
There are proper ways to voice one's concern, but violence against others is not one of them.
So it's only ok for women to be frustrated by systemic stereotyping and marginalization, if-and-only-if she acts like a traditionally oppressed woman in public? Women should just stay in the closet instead of pointing out porblems in the workplace?
> violence against others is not one of them.
What "violence"? What kind of framing or mental gymnastics are you using to interpret any of those posts as "combative" or interpreted as "violence against others"?
The same violence you are imposing upon on me with your words. Albeit these are in the realm of microagressions, it is violence nonetheless. A more modern violence.
Throwing pejoratives at people is verbal violence: What kind of framing or mental gymnastics...
As is responding with loaded questions, like: Women should just stay in the closet instead of pointing out problems in the workplace? This is intellectually dishonest and does more to insight altercation than have an informed and open discussion.
Coincidentally, these are not too far off from the author's comments.
Maybe I'm missing something but since when did HR become the Thought Police? Do people actually believe that if you intimidate someone into silence they will stop having these thoughts? Last I checked the psychological research in this area suggested that people rebelled against it and doubled down, even if in private.
And the threat itself - suppose she does leave the company and then what?
A person that's ready to throw both a tantrum on social media and your company's reputation under the bus the moment she hears a colleague voice an unpopular opinion does not sound like a smash hit with hiring managers, more like a risk and a liability.
Maybe she's saying she doesn't want to work somewhere her teammates think she's biologically inferior, but she's hoping that HR will ensure that person doesn't stay on the team?
How can you write an article about a document you have never read? It is a disgrace this Vice/Motherboard article is the first result on Google. This is not a news article, but a biased blog with a blatant political agenda.
I somehow think that if one aims for "ideological diversity" then "gender/race/minority diversity" will come for free.
But the question is how to you target "ideological diversity" when hiring.
Also, extrapolating anything from a text we cannot see rapidly brings us in strawman arguments territory.
It depends what the company wants to achieve. Some smarter R&D/focus group/more intelligent way of integrating diverse populations into the company's DNA, not just blunt diversity employee policies in some PR-friendly reactionary manner.
https://vimeo.com/9270320#t=1525s
And the book recommendation: "Why Aren't More Women in Science?: Top Researchers Debate the Evidence". (researchers from either side of the arguments debate each other in the same book.)
The conclusion is to get the right person for the job. The gender shouldn't be considered because the reality is not black and white.
Base on this reasoning, complains about imbalance of gender quota or salaries are not acceptable. The salary is/should be attached to the job and performance, not the gender.
In France we have a similar issue with the porportion of black football players in the national team. People who complain about that don't understand that they just picked the best players. This gender debate is the same problem.
The story link is to some opinionated article that seems to hate it.
Let me start by saying that diversity is always important. Without diversity you tend to end up with an echo chamber that produces things that are only worthwhile for the subset of people represented within the group.
However, it is important to think about the cost that diversity targets can have on both the under-represented and over-represented groups within a company. Diversity targets for hiring or promotion will mean the over-represented group(s) will tend to view those who are hired or promoted with disdain. Meanwhile the under-represented group(s) may well doubt their position within the company, worrying that they are in their position only due to belonging to the flavour of the month diversity target. The other part is that members of the under-represented group who were previously employed on their own merits are likely to hold a similar position to that of the majority group(s), for similar reasons.
Now it's time for an anecdote... My girlfriend works as an engineer in an oil and gas company. Her company is fully on board with the current gender diversity push, and has created several new positions at a fairly high level specifically to meet their diversity targets. These are high level positions with no one reporting to them in the current structure (which was defined by the massive restructure following the fall in oil prices). Her issues with the positions and their seniority boils down to education and time in the industry. If they were being filled by candidates based on skill, a large proportion of them would be male (and probably white). This would be because the vast majority of the people with the relevant experience are white males. By pushing the female agenda, she fears that not only will these roles be filled by poor candidates, it will also promote the stereotype that women are unsuitable for the job.
There is room for diversity targets, but they must be mindful of the talent pool available for the specific job. Whilst it hurts at this point, the most reasonable course is to promote equality in education. If your company is hiring on skill, then the equality issues will resolve in time, without making anyone resentful of the first year grad who got promoted to team leader because the company needed to meet a quota.
To derail myself slightly following the above wall of text. Would the current white, male disgruntlement be as bad had there not been the GFC etc, and the subsequent (and continuing layoffs/stagnation of wages?
He did not shit on leftist values. That can't even be a misunderstanding, that was just a lie (plain and simple). He simply pointed out that society uses a mix of leftist and rightist values, and neither side is 100% right.
Google has people openly say that "if you are republican then you should be fired" (and much much worse).
Nobody will criticize these lies, because this is a witch hunt, and one where this guy must be publicly shamed and destroyed, and anyone who speaks up against it must also be destroyed.
I hope many Googlers take notes and screenshots, because this is a clear discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen. I know some Google employees who are adding to their lists of future discrimination lawsuits. Harassment for political opinions.
This is what happens if you express an opinion against the dogma that is "There is ZERO difference between genders, it's ALL societal, NOTHING innate".
The guy started with a whole section about how you cannot use averages to judge individuals (he even had graphs showing exactly how you cannot), but that a 50/50 equal men/women engineering pool is not a realistic goal nor helpful because there are innate differences between men and women.
He then sprinkled it with some cherry-picked and possibly incorrect research, but is the basic premise wrong? No.
If I say "There are clear differences between the performance of black and white people on various cognitive tasks." That's a true statement. If I follow it up with "and that's due to the biological inferiority of the black race", I'm probably a racist, even though my basic premise is not wrong.
The arguments one uses to support a conclusion are as important as the premises one started with.