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Comment by chrissnell | Hacker News Reader

Well said. I do think the tech world needs more diversity, absolutely. It's just that I fundamentally disagree with the way it's being managed. I believe that tech companies need to be working with minorities and women at an earlier age (high schoolers, college freshmen) to groom them and steer them towards STEM careers. What I don't agree with is quota systems and affirmative action programs. I also strongly object to those who criticize these practices being labeled as bigots and mysogynists.

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That is generally where I am on these issues as well. It's very frustrating that even if you were much more reasonable in trying to discuss these issues than this Googler was, you'd likely be fired for it anyways. As someone from a poor background who also suffers from mental illness, it's frustrating that all of that is totally ignored, and that I'm expected to be enthusiastic about a policy that advocates for giving preferential treatment to a wealthy white woman over me in hiring or promotion. And I don't think my circumstances should just be taken into account under this system, I just don't think positive discrimination belongs in the work place.

> working with minorities and women at an earlier age (high schoolers, college freshmen) to groom them and steer them towards STEM careers

Working with a specific class of students (based on gender/race) is highly discriminatory, IMO. I think it is unfair to the people not included in the group you want to encourage, specially when it is children we're talking about. Why not have STEM grooming programs for any student who wants to join? Why exclude some? I live in India. We have a history of casteism. Measures like this were instituted 70 years ago to help the downtrodden. Now it prevents people like me from getting a place in the country's most prestigious colleges while other less-deserving people are admitted because of their lower caste. I was born in the 90s. I did not even once witness an incident of casteism in my life. Except the one perpetrated against me. Your suggestion seems to me like a similar measure. It isn't much different from a quota system.

Targeted outreach is not remotely close to supporting a caste-based system of employment. I'd even argue that it's aiding people break out of the social and gender expectations, which can be viewed as an informal caste. I realize I might be making a massive generalization of South Asian history by comparing gender & racial roles with the caste system, but the point I'm trying to make is that it's enabling people to overcome social expectation.

I do agree that there are ways to implement this incorrectly, and my support is contingent on the following:

* Working with minorities in a field does not mean refusing to work with the majority. To ground this in the world of tech, reaching out to girls and underrepresented minorities does not mean turning away Asian & white boys.

* Steering them towards STEM should leave the agency in their hands. Even in the absence of all social and cultural pressure, it's a stretch to assume that we'll have gender parity in all fields. I'm confident in saying that software development(I specifically point out software development since some STEM fields have parity or even a slight majority representation of women) would have a greater representation than it does now, but I don't think it's 50%. If diversity initiatives end up pressuring people into fields they don't want to be in, then that's a failure in and of itself.

My pet theory is that it's not that we don't want to hire women, it's that they don't want to work here. I've seen one woman's resume and dozens of men's. We hired her. And she is miserable. But so is everyone. But she seems to think that things could be better while lots of men seem to just accept it sucks and don't mind making things worse. Is there a biological reason for the difference? Who cares?

How about we focus on retaining the women who are already in tech, and who are dealing with harassment and disparagement like this on a regular basis?

That's definitely something we need to do a better job at, and that's not just the companies responsibility. We all have a role to play in that. But I actually think affirmative action policies could work against this goal. It creates some amount of tension that wouldn't otherwise exist.

If you really think those programs are ineffective, you need to roll out a superior solution before you suggest throwing them all away. Otherwise you're just pulling the rope up behind you because you're already in the treehouse, and you can sit there and continue to wring your hands over the poor state of things.

I respectfully disagree with you here. Why do I have to "own" inclusion and equality just because I disagree with the specific implementation? Why can't it be the responsibility of the VP of Inclusion to figure this out in a way that doesn't blatantly favor one class of people over another?

...because the 'VP of Inclusion' came up with the current plan, that you don't like.

So how do you propose to move forward?

If you leave to them, they're going to do nothing, and leave it as is, because objectively, by the metric, it's working, and increasing the relevant ratios.

So you're basically advocating to someone that a) does not agree with you, and b) can demonstrate that their KPIs are excellent, to change their behaviour.

Why would they?

The only meaningful way to move forward to come up with a different solution, if you feel this one isn't working, because if since it seems to be working, just complaining won't change anything.

You don't get change by just complaining and making sad faces; change happens by meaningful engagement with the problem; if you're not prepared to do that, face the facts; there won't be any change.

(...and meaningful engagement obviously does not include distributing internal manifestos)

> You don't get change by just complaining and making sad faces; change happens by meaningful engagement with the problem; if you're not prepared to do that, face the facts; there won't be any change.

> (...and meaningful engagement obviously does not include distributing internal manifestos)

I agree that change happens with meaningful engagement. The first step to meaningful engagement on complex issues is usually a discussion. Setting aside that it's incorrect to refer to the memo as a "manifesto", it is very much not obvious to me that this doesn't count as meaningful engagement.

While I disagree personally with much of what was written in the memo, I find the response equally disheartening if not more-so. The backlash clearly displays that so many of those claiming to want meaningful engagement are interested in no such thing.

> it is very much not obvious to me that this doesn't count as meaningful engagement.

Unfortunately you can't call posting a document full of your opinions and conclusions meaningful engagement.

That's just meaningful self indulgence.

To be fair, perhaps he thought it was, and was trying to do the right thing, and did it wrong? I'm prepared to go as far as giving him the benefit of the doubt on that front.

...but it was wrong. For all the reasons that have been posted extensively on this topic; but, specifically: engaging meaningfully with a topic means discussion; and although we're having a discussion now, that's because this forum allows it, which is not something that that internal memo allowed.

Basically, tldr: Posting documents != meaningful engagement. Meaningful engagement means actually talking to people, organizing people into groups and delivering your message to the right people. All of that project managery stuff that people don't want to do.

I get it. ...but you gotta do it. That's life. You don't just get to sit in a cave and pontificate and call it engagement.

From the memo:

Feel free to comment (they aren’t disabled, the doc may just be overloaded). For longer form discussions see g/pc-harmful-discuss

Apparently he posted the document in a way that did allow internal discussion.

You're talking about taking programs that work - at least to some degree - and removing them without advocating a replacement. Apply this same logic to any other workplace context and it should be obvious how unproductive it is. How far would you get in your day-to-day work if the only thing all your coworkers did is say "no"?

Should the ACA - or health insurance in general - simply be abolished due to defects that you dislike, without a replacement? If the VP of inclusion isn't doing a good job up to your standards, should they just be fired? When Mr. Damore advocated for the removal of all these programs without providing concrete suggestions on how to replace them with better programs, he committed a similar error. (This is aside from the reasoning he used to try to justify it, which is another set of issues)

>You're talking about taking programs that work - at least to some degree

Can you justify this with data?

Google's data suggests a modest increase this year over last year (a 1% shift in overall tech gender roles) with better improvements in leadership. They publish the data, so you can see.

So evidently Google can demonstrate modest improvement. And it sure seems like the Guy Who Got Fired felt like he was seeing the undeserving and huddled masses approaching his ivory tower.

But I'm not sure exactly what you'd like. On the one hand, "Someone needs to do something" and on the other "this blatantly favors one class of people." But I'm not entirely sure that last part is true. Google has quietly improved a lot of feminist hot-button issues that benefit men disproportionately in the last 3 years as well.

For example, Google increased its paternity leave policy. I know because one of the folks I met while interviewing there was ecstatic about it. They've also taken a lot of steps to improve life for families. I know because while interviewing I toured the day care facilities. Hell, Google quietly helps employee kids get into nearby schools and funds (and even runs) after school activities. You don't even need a woman involved to trigger them, Google offers its -ternity leave to adopters as well.

These things disproportionately benefit men by the simple fact that there are many more men in the workforce at Google, so any family related benefits or policies (and these are important, real issues that deserve to be solved) are really a massive win for men who want offspring.

So this whole angle about biases towards "specific groups" is really just a terrible prism. While I'm not saying this is your angle, it's all too often used as a way to shut down any sort of concessions for minorities with unique challenges.

And the business value is really, really clear: a larger workforce means more supply and less demand. From a large business's perspective, the 5 year operating costs of these programs is tiny compared to the savings a 5% reduction in minimum hiring costs would be.

As the OP, I ask this in good faith, can you link me the data?

https://www.google.com/diversity/

But you can google search for articles from previous years (google controls the comparisons so you can't free query the data).

Thank you.

It looks like there's been a steady up trend for gender diversity (starting from 2014), even if women to men in tech positions are 2:8.

Although, the racial diversity is abysmal.

It's a startling deviation from the general population statistics. That fact is why I grant a lot of plausibility to unconscious bias arguments. When you render the numbers, they are very striking.

And once you normalize that kind of environment as "balanced", an attempts to correct it are going to appear to be a new bias. With few exceptions, this is something like a Mystery Spot illusion where you're normalized to such a skewed perception that even balanced and fair ideas can appear to be unfair.

Do you really need internal statistics to prove that diversity programs increase the number of employees from the relevant demographics?

Come on. It's self evident that it's working.

Whether that results in effective outcomes for the business is a different matter; but if your KPI is just 'ratio of XXX in employees' there's no question its doing what it's literally designed to do.

While you're not doing this at all, I think there's sort of a conflation between diversity policies at specific companies and diversity in the industry when in reality they're totally unrelated. So I'm my opinion there's a lot of misplaced support for corporate diversity policies which are designed to benefit he corporation, not women or minorities. And the people being discriminated against under thes policies can't openly oppose them or they'll be accused of bigotry and probably fired.

I won't dispute the possibility of the scenario you describe, but the memo being discussed doesn't really fit this at all. The policies and programs he objected to are largely (if not entirely) things like mentoring programs and techniques for making the hiring pool more diverse.

There can certainly be a blurry line in some places that makes it difficult to identify whether a given program has an (unintentional or otherwise) discriminatory effect but a lot of the stuff he objected to is very clearly positive assistance for people who need it, and not anything that harms men in his position.

> Whether that results in effective outcomes for the business is a different matter

No, this is the topic that is being debated in this chain and "It's self evident that it's working" is not sufficient to refute the point.

The policies he mentioned only even apply to people that are already in the treehouse, using that metaphor. He's saying we should stop pushing each other around up there and help other people climb up.

Edit: Positive discrimination in hiring policies doesn't do much to make tech more diverse, it can only shift the diversity within individual companies. Once someone is already a software engineer, they're almost certainly going to be hired somewhere if they're any good. Giving them preferential treatment does next to nothing for all of the members of their demographic group who aren't software engineers.

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