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Comment by anewhnaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

> But for the right, it became a potent symbol of the tech industry’s intolerance of ideological diversity.

To me, totally missing the point. Not just "for the right". To many who would consider themselves mostly aligned with left wing politics, myself included, this is just the latest in a long line of media (social and news) driven forced punishment for people guilty of expressing a viewpoint or just generally doing something a bit poor taste in public. It doesn't really matter if they've done wrong. It's not a considered or proportional type of response.

Sure, there are far bigger injustices in the world than someone losing their job, but this sort of thing is wrong because it's for the wrong reason. It's headlines driven HR.

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I'm sorry, if you spend your time at work writing manifestos that ignite culture wars instead of working - you should be fired. Wanna write a manifesto? Create a blog post. I would be fired if I wrote a manifesto like this at my job - without any publicity

Not that I agree with the statement, but it could easily be the case he wrote it on his own time and shared it at work on their internal Google+. Unless you have a source for your accusation, in which case I stand corrected.

Even if you wrote it on your own time, sharing it with internally with your coworkers is toxic.

Serious: do you see that your response is exactly what the memo was about? He's claiming that the pre-judgment that the topic is toxic is harmful. To argue against him by re-asserting that which he questions will not be persuasive.

Are you saying my argument - that sharing a 10 page personal essay, or whatever to all your coworkers is toxic - is invalid, because in it, he asks not to be prejudged?

That's ludicrous. You don't do things that make potentially thousands of your coworkers uncomfortable internally just because you want to make a point. Human Resources is a thing for a reason.

Put it on medium and be done with it.

I think you may have raised a good point - was this the appropriate forum/channel/whatever to offer his observations, questions, and criticisms?

He suggests that Google has a culture of sharing pretty openly and of offering criticism and even commentary on important issues. It would be good to have additional evidence of this to evaluate whether his statement was indeed matched to the appropriate environment.

(I am not and have not been a Google employee, so IDK for sure. I know that at my company, there are indeed particular fora in which this sort of thing could be raised. I can imagine at some companies this would not be possible, so you raise a great question. Thanks!)

It was a memo about a matter that's internal to Google, so I don't think publicly publishing it would have been appropriate. And doing so would have surely created an even larger furore.

He shared it on the forum specifically for talking about diversity and gender politics?

Sundar Pichai tweeted in support of allowing transgenders in the military, on work time. Would you say that, too, is "toxic"? it's politics on work time, right?

Sundar Pichai is the CEO. He decides how to run the company. If you are a 28 year old software engineer, you should focus on software engineering. By all means, grow to be a C level executive and change the culture. But google is a private company and those who own it and run it are perfectly entitled to want to not have junior software engineers stir up culture wars inside the company If investors who own google don't like the culture Sundar is supporting inside their company - they can fire him and if they do, it's their business.

So you were fine with Brendan Eich being against gay marriage because he was CEO? Because he's CEO do you think everyone at mozilla should have been prevented from supporting gay marriage?

Jeez. No. But when Brendan Eich was CEO, it would have been totally fine for him to fire people who distribute internal memos arguing for gay marriage. See the difference ? You can be for or against whatever you want, work is for work though

Why is it toxic?

He wrote it on a plane ride to China.

I'm not commenting on this specific case, but if you've spent any amount of time in NameABigCorp lately, you've surely realized that various points of left-wing politics are pursued as official points of dogma. So it's not as if politics are being kept out of work in the first place.

I'm all for keeping politics out of the workplace, except for verbal conversations between colleagues. But that's just not the case right now.

NsmeABigCorp is owned by investors, yes? Those investors hired management to run it a certain way, yes? Don't like it? Start your own and run it the way you want

When the corporation in question controls a major part of the spaces that have replaced the institution of the public square, so central to the functioning of a republic, their political actions deserve scrutiny. If they claim to be open to diverse opinions, yet behave in a manner that suggests otherwise, then citizens need to start paying attention.

I agree, I'm merely pointing out that suftware engineers who aren't focused enough on their immediate duties and instead stir up culture wars by writing manifestos would be fired by most companies not just google

Do you think an employee at a tech company would be fired for sending out a 10-page memo about why trans people should be allowed in the military? How about a 10-page memo about why they shouldn't?

Both are obviously incredibly unprofessional, but only one would probably face life-changing punishment in reality. Ideally you set the tone that both are unacceptable, that the only political discussion acceptable beyond interpersonal conversation is the politics of the company's self-interest. Both starting an internal political battle, as as well tweeting externally about an already-started one, should get you fired. But that's only fair if you set that tone and expectation.

My guess is if you start spending your time writing 10 page political memos and distributing them inside companies, your career won't advance very far, regardless of content. But, in this case, literally most women at google were upset and that's incredibly disruptive and stupid - hence he was fired and should have been

The guy who wrote the memo apparently received glowing reviews and was promoted twice at Google. Doesn't seem like your typical slacker.

Yes, typical slackers don't write stupid manifestos, you are correct

So you are saying that ideological intolerance is a problem throughout the industry?

Did they write it on work time? I don't know, myself.

Why do you assume he did it at work?

Maybe you are unfamiliar with Google's culture. Employees are encouraged to engage in conversations about the culture and values of the company, using mediums like this. Google is not rigid about "work time", preferring that you are productive.

"Expressing a viewpoint" is a disingenuous reduction. Viewpoints, and their expression, can cause extensive harm to others, as was the case here.

What harm did this viewpoint cause to others?

This is wrong. He was fired because he can't reliably review his peers if he thinks they are genetically inferior to him.

Also, 10 page manifestos to your company are never good ideas.

has everyone forgotten Jerry McGuire?

2 Things.

1) He never insinuated that anyone was biologically inferior just that there is marginal statistical proof that -on average- women prefer to work less hours, and more flexible hours; his "idea" was to promote a culture that adopted this, rather than using hiring quotas, in order to achieve the diversity goal which he also claims to wish for.

That you claim he was calling people "inferior" only shows your own bias.

2) It's not a "Manifesto" that's what gizmodo called it but it was, at best, a memo, at worst, the first post on an internal forum thread hoping to discuss this matter.

How is a 10 page treatise on something not a manifesto?

I think the point is that "manifesto" is a term that is a bit loaded, as it conjures up images of things like the uni-bomber or serial killers, or some kinds of ideological militants, for a lot of people.

Priming your audience with terms like "Anti-diversity screed" and "manifesto" all but guarantee a sizable portion of people will read the document with major prejudice and bias. And that's the kind of thing those of us who value diversity ought to loathe.

We certainly need a whole lot more charity in our conversations on sensitive issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

> think the point is that "manifesto" is a term that is a bit loaded

[[Citation Needed]]

So all treatises are manifestos? How about we call it an essay?

Except he said multiple times in it that any genetic differences are population level trends that do not apply to individuals.

>He was fired because he can't reliably review his peers if he thinks they are genetically inferior to him.

He literally said the exact opposite of this.

Why are you purposefully misrepresenting his views? And if not purposefully, why are you then commenting on a story whose main source (the document) you haven't read?

Wait. I'm sorry. Are you saying someone who would write and share this can be trusted to control his own bias, because he said he could?

He wrote the memo poorly but he tried to make it clear that he wasn't talking about individuals.

He was offering a different explanation, based on group averages, of why the industry is unable to reach a 50/50 ratio of male/female engineers. And most of his arguments were based on interests, not abilities.

That's very different from the way it's been mischaracterized as an argument that women are inferior.

Suppose I think my female colleagues can't be trusted to review and respond to my work, because their explanation for demographic imbalances among engineers is that white heterosexual men are racist, sexist, and homophobic. How can I trust someone who suspects me of being every kind of bigot will treat me fairly?

And minorities never have to worry about biases when they come in for a review, interview, etc.

Didn't github actually hire some diversity training people who projected a slide attacking white women?

>why are you then commenting on a story whose main source (the document) you haven't read?

Because they're outraged by what they've heard about it and demand that someone (almost without question) facilitate that outrage, correct or not.

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