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Diversity is about giving people equal opportunity. The core sentiment is that in the work place, in social environments, people should have equal access to show that they can excel to the best of their ability.

Having diversity goals/quotas isn't equal opportunity (see medical admissions being way more strict on Asians than blacks). Plus, as the original doc points out, it's one sided. Underrepresentation of whites/males is fine. No one says hey, there's too many minorities. Just like no one cares that police almost exclusively kill men, with only a handful of women.

Why do they aim for a 50/50 gender balance? What if women are actually better in some roles, and it should be 40/60? Why can't this even be questioned?

The funny thing is, I dunno if I believe the original doc author, but I find the response so abhorrent I end up against it.

Google's response should have been "good but flawed questions. Here are studies, here's how we're going about determining diversity's impact etc".

Instead we get people who are gonna quit if he isn't fired, think he should be escorted off premise immediately, write pages misconstruing what was written, and are physically "shaking" at the thought someone might question their beliefs.

It sucks because there are systemic issues, and the current diversity nonsense does nothing about it and won't even try to make it's main case.

I'm hoping some groups will publish serious research on the issue. (Rust has a huge diversity push, iirc. They should also run some non diverse programs then compare results.)

Diversity quotas are not the same thing as promoting diversity.

I support promoting equal opportunity for all races and genders, not race based quotas.

There is a huge difference between the two things.

> Yet all of a sudden when it comes to mental pursuits (which are physically based in the brain and supporting chemicals), somehow then we're all equally capable and the huge biases that exist when using other organs don't exist. And not only don't exist, but so obviously don't exist that anyone suggesting so is met with "I'm literally shaking".

It's not "mental pursuits," it is that our society rewards men the most for excelling in fields which are created and controlled by men. When the majority of CEOs, leadership and top government positions are taken by men, it's going to be easier for men to keep gaining and holding those positions. Women will and do face more discrimination trying to enter these fields purely because they are women.

By creating a space for women to excel, by trying to fight the pay gap, and by trying to get women into leadership, we are not discriminating against men.

I'm not saying that our society, as it stands, should reflect the population perfectly. I am saying that our society needs to change to treat its population equally. And in doing so our tech companies, governments and other industries will change too. For the better.

> Same for pointing out if you're hiring for diversity and lowering standards for "diverse" hires, you're making it worse for everyone.

No one is "lowering standards" for diverse hires. No one. Why are you even implying this?

> And as he mentions, this diversity usually isn't. Hiring a bunch of people with the same views but making sure their skin tones or gender identity fill up a big list... Doesn't give you any useful diversity of thought at all.

All I got from his manifesto on this was he wants more people who think like him. His manifesto argues for less diversity, if anything.

> Being intellectually dishonest and acting existentially offended when someone points out the obvious is why the left is losing out

It's not taking offence, it is surprise that so many people are still willing to argue for inequality and are blind to the extreme imbalances of our society.

>No one is "lowering standards" for diverse hires.

Google fast-tracks diversity candidates simply because they are diversity candidates. Other candidates must reach a higher standard to be fast-tracked.

That is not "lowering standards" for diversity candidates. It is giving them more opportunities to be measured up to Google's high standards.

It is lowering the standard for a certain kind of treatment. Whether or not that is justified or relevant to the hiring decision is a separate discussion. A standard is lowered. Full stop.

You are changing the argument.

The original use of the phrase "lowering standards" implied that Google would forgo hiring someone of high skill to hire a lower skilled but more diverse candidate. This is not happening.

Diverse candidates are given more opportunities to have their skill tested, but they must meet the same requirements as anyone else.

>No one is "lowering standards" for diverse hires. No one. Why are you even implying this?

Without wading into the general content of the manifesto, I haven't had the time to read it, and while not directly regarding hiring, there is at least one good example where the quest for a more diverse pool has lead to differing standards being applied, namely university entrance. From the stats I've seen, Asians in the US are fairly strongly penalized with regards to the grades and test scores they need to achieve in order to gain entrance to top universities when compared to their White, African American, or Hispanic counterparts. It certainly seems to me that the standards have been lowered for non-Asians in this area, and while I make no claim of this also occurring in the hiring process, I also don't think it's an unfair question to ask seeing as it seems quite widespread in university admittance.

Exactly. Here's acceptance data[1]. Blacks with a GPA of 3.4+ and MCAT of 36+ have an acceptance rate near 100%. For Asians, the acceptance rate is far lower. Just open the two races' PDFs and tab between them. I'm sorta surprised they even publish this, considering how bad it looks.

But maybe there's an alternative explanation, like smaller sample size, or Asians being less likely to be well rounded candidates, or maybe it's flat-out race quotas.

1: https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/...

The article isn't saying there is no discrimination though. It's just saying we shouldn't assume discrimination is the only factor we don't have 50% 50% representation in engineering. The author very much believes that we have cultural issues going on as well. This fact seems to be either misunderstood or deliberately ignored by a lot of people. But I can understand why.

One of the demons hiding in this issue is the is/ought fallacy. People go from is to ought quite readily in these areas.

Let's say blacks really are on average better at basketball. Does it then follow that whites and asians ought not play basketball?

Nobody argues that because it's silly. (Or do they? I'm not in pro ball.)

People do argue that women should not be in tech. Women in tech regardless of ability get creeped on and treated like they don't know anything. I've met more than one with a fake male avatar on programming sites to ask questions, etc.

People are agitating for diversity in certain fields like tech, government, business, etc. because they are trying to reform fields with discriminatory cultures. If basketball had a culture that actively looked down on, excluded, and hazed whites then I would advocate doing something to challenge that.

I agree that trying to argue for a level of phenotypic equality that does not exist is a losing strategy but I get the motivation. I also have trouble thinking of another way to challenge these issues that doesn't involve taking a battering ram to a culture.

The original doc doesn't argue women shouldn't be in tech, so it is irrelevant what some people suggest. It argues a 50/50 parity might not exist in part due to biology.

What if it turns out that one gender is on avg smarter but with less range of intelligence (with some magically perfect measurement of intelligence, to avoid claims of test bias). So if that was true, would we THEN be OK with other than 50/50 split in higher-intelligence games? I think to the people getting upset here, the very thought that this is even possible to examine is heresy.

All that Google would have to do is admit 50/50 isn't based on anything hard, and commit to finding out what the real number should be. They won't do that though because the thought offends them. And so they'll shriek racist/sexist/etc. and it'll be just as effective as it was at stopping Brexit and Trump.

You are correct that the doc does not argue this. I'm arguing that the doc's author fails to understand the purpose of diversity measures. They are not to make people equal but to challenge culture. Only CRISPR/CAS9 or similar could actually alter biologically based inequality.

That being said I'm very skeptical of an innate gender disadvantage in coding. Some of the earliest coders were women back when it was considered a "secretarial" pursuit, then the field flipped to nearly all male. I also agree that this field's culture is very, very misogynistic. I've seen it. An attractive woman in tech gets ignored intellectually and then covered with creeper drool.

I am personally on the fence about these types of diversity measures, not because I don't think culture should be challenged but because I am not convinced they work. Trouble is I can't think of any other ways. Culture is generally impervious to reason.

If the various diversity initiatives were about culture... but they aren't. How culturally diverse is a 50/50 gender split along with a great match to general population racial percentages? I'd say you can't tell. Culture is more than gender and race.

I think out of all the comments in this thread, this, so far, is the one that speaks differently.

Diversity in Tech is indeed about changing the culture. That should be the central reply to this manifesto. Both the manifesto and the negative responses to it are missing this central point - they are focusing it as being about employment hiring about aptitude and worthiness of the job. It's why a call for meritocracy is not an adequate response to a call for diversity. Perhaps this element of culture needs to be explained more by people talking about it, on both sides.

When you look at it from that angle it's more understandable that the common response is that "you're part of the problem" when someone attempts to discuss these issues because it's erroneously seen as being part of the culture that they are seeking to remove. It's been seen as an attempt to negate the errors in the culture.

To reply to a response about being sexist when you wish to discuss diversity would be to focus on the ability that it is possible to talk about gender etc whilst also being a good respectful employee. That it's possible not be a "douche" and work with women and also be an out of the closet Republican or a devout Christian at the same time. That it's acknowledged that many women have a hard time in tech and that the culture can be changed for the better of everyone, and that discussion how it can be changed is a discussion open to everyone.

> All that Google would have to do is admit 50/50 isn't based on anything hard, and commit to finding out what the real number should be.

It is based on something hard—the gender distribution in the population.

But not the gender distribution of people who are qualified to work in the field. If we want gender parity in employment, we need gender parity in graduating classes. Trying to have one without the other is a ridiculous endeavor.

Not to mention, gender parity in willingness to immigrate or move across the country.

> People do argue that women should not be in tech

At least pretend that you don't have a completely blinkered view of the world.

Really? I've read several screeds arguing against women in the workforce in the past few years.