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Comment by engi_nerd | Hacker News Reader

You're not giving that a remotely fair reading. He literally calls for people to be treated as individuals while acknowledging and calling attention to traits that populations (read: large numbers of people) exhibit.

I'm really having trouble finding anything to be upset about in his "manifesto". He's literally being fired for trying to start a serious conversation about a delicate issue.

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The problem with the argument that "people should be treated equally regardless of other factors" is that we have a long. deep history of that not being the case.

We have numerous studies which how simple biasing factors, such as a person's name, can dramatically decrease interview rates.

Arguing against diversity policies can be coached in the language of equality, but the objective results show that the outcomes would not be.

The outrage, fairly or unfairly (it is impossible to know what's in a person's heart) comes from many readers believing that the person is not arguing for equality, but coaching an argument against it's outcome in language that assumes that goal.

For many people, they see a cheap rhetorical trick made in bad faith.

What do you mean by a cheap rhetorical trick? It didn't seem that way to me at all. Did I miss something?

The trick is using the language of equality to argue in favor of an approach which will decrease it.

It's a fairly common tactic inside of the RedPill community, and within White Power/Pride groups. Arguing that by fighting sexism/racism you are being sexist/racist.

Arguing that unproven methods of fighting sexism/racism aren't as effective as everyone claims they are and that said methods are potentially harmful isn't the same as being sexist/racist. I feel like the author is attempting to make the point that such practices aren't really in anyone's interest except the outward appearance of the company.

No, the author is attempting to argue that the practices are irrelevant or ineffective because the default state, without them, is the natural one.

He very explicitly is arguing that policies designed to correct the natural state are sexist/racist on their own, and have to be discarded.

He then hints at having a strong bias towards believing sexist/racist conclusions from a limited reading of a limited amount of information.

And for this he should be fired? Also I think you are being too generous in attributing people's outrage to them reading malice into his motives. People overwhelmingly are reacting to his words because he has violated sacred PC orthodoxy in one of the great temples of PC orthodoxy (Google and Bay Area in general). This has been a vicious mob attack on the guy who mostly appears to just have tried to civilly and rationally express his views without realizing how he suffers from unconscious biases.

At worst, if you can read his mind, it was cover for his conscious motive to discriminate against women but I really don't believe he knows it.

I'm not sure anyone deserves to be fired for being an idiot, but I'd argue that no one should be forced to work with one either.

It would be great if you could point to documents proving all your assumptions on bias. People have been so vehement about their beliefs. But there has never been a succint summarization of the proof. If it's so self evident, someone with decent writing skills would have whipped up a document like the manifesto for the general arguments with proof of bias right?

The thing is, if you don't believe those assumptions, you will view the the unconscious bias and diversity programs as discriminatory. And many people don't believe those assumptions. They see companies discriminating against them and they don't like it.

There are a simply insane number of succinct summaries, opinions, studies, court cases, historical texts etc. which show that bias, especially ones based on race and gender, are prevalent at multiple tiers of society.

There are not "assumptions" at this point. They are a factual reality.

I think he's being fired more for the severe PR fallout that resulted in the way he tried to start the conversation, than for the content of the manifesto.

this is almost certainly the reason.

he'd have been better off if he said

> "we should expect to see people with certain characteristics in tech, in the same way we see people with certain characteristics in race-car driving. that's no reason to discriminate positively or negatively against race car driver candidates."

I think he did make a point similar to that. Unfortunately he stirred the hornets nest (most, I think) by pointing to the gender-wage relationship.

And you just (mostly) summarized it with a single sentence. The fact that such a screed was written at all is a problem. These kinds of arguments require very precise language in order to minimize misunderstandings and deflections.

Interesting. I had not thought of that. You're likely right.

I'd go one step further and say that he's being fired for completely misunderstanding the nature of Google's diversity efforts. He's responding to an attempt to create an equitable work environment. Google is more interested in creating a PR narrative.

These are complex issues that will take decades to fix starting with programs at the elementary school level and fundamental shifts in the messaging and feedback our society gives to children, young adults and all the way up to college students. And yet people are expecting Google to make significant progress on the issue within a couple of years. It's not really a realistic expectation to have of Google, but there are real market consequences for Google if they're seen not to care enough.

Google can make it look like they truly care about it and are solving it, but only if people don't look too closely or start pointing out flaws. This manifesto is an exercise in looking too closely and pointing out flaws. Whether his points, themselves, are flawed or whether they have merit is entirely beside the point.

He wrote an internal document. I'm going to guess that the people who leaked it to the press did not agree with it.

It could have been a forwarded email instead of a Google Doc. Who cares? Same difference.

I think everyone is looking for the offense in the wrong places. The reason he got so many angry responses is because he didn't explicitly celebrate the left wing tenants of equity. He questioned the tenants in very reasonable places and that was all that it took. Scary times, these.

> he didn't explicitly celebrate the left wing tenants of equity

in fact he pointed directly to the flawed logic that supports them.

poor guy had no idea what was coming.

That leads to my point, questioning one is tantamount to questioning it all, which is unforgivable and intolerable. You can see this by how many have hallucinated stances that the writer didn't even make.

Maybe he did.

That guy seems smart. I bet he did know. He probably decided that he could either quit quietly or get himself fired. The latter opens up the possibility of lawsuits (and unemployment benefits, which he is unlikely to need, but if he finds it hard to get hired again quickly it may be helpful).

I think that you meant "tenets" instead of "tenants".

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