Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This is the reality of business. One does not simply create a PR disaster for the company, with no positive return, and still maintain their job.
By firing him they made him a hero to enormous groups, and doubled down on this discussion. By doing it in an anti-science, anti-evidence way they legitimized almost everything he said, and it makes them look reactionary.
They could have simply said that they were taking punitive actions and kept him in the fold.
To a small, vocal group.
> By doing it in an anti-science, anti-evidence way
There were good reasons for doing it that had nothing to do with science or evidence.
There are women working at Google who do not need to be reminded of the genetic and biologic differences they have from their cishet male counterparts.
If Damon had issues with the policies at Google there were many other channels open to him that didn't involve circulating a manifesto. He brought it upon himself. Once word of that memo leaked there was nothing for Google to do but fire him.
I'm a white male. I know that the average Asian has a higher IQ than the average white man. This means positively nothing when comparing me with a given Asian, however.
That is the root of this discussion that so many so profoundly miss. The average Google male is not the average male. The average Google female is not the average female. He was not saying that women who work at Google are at a biological disadvantage, in any way, and that is a perverse misreading. He was saying that on the whole there's a biological reason when you roll the dice enough that more males are suitable for that work. In the scientific community this is utterly indisputable, in the same way that there are far more exceptional males (and autistic males), just as there are far more mentally handicapped males. That doesn't preclude handicapped or exceptional females, it's just less common.
Was that necessary? A) The women working at Google are predominantly also cishet and B) gay guys can be misogynistic too (sometimes even more, as they dont need women in any way).
Anti-science way? Do you realize how subjective this is and how impossible it is to prove that today there are no other influences at play than biology? And that we've maxed on the number of woman in this field and we're now at an equilibrium determined by biology?
I would have been far more convinced if he noted a dwindling amount of harassment and reported bias using studies.
>Do you realize how subjective this is and how impossible it is to prove that today there are no other influences at play than biology
He never claims there are no other influences at play -
From the memo; note the works "in part" and "may explain" - Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
> And that we've maxed on the number of woman in this field and we're now at an equilibrium determined by biology?
There is no such claim of this whatsoever. Your comment is a great example of the problems with this debate.
First of all, the original memo said nothing of the sort.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure GP is not saying the reaction to this memo is anti-science merely because it opposes the position taken in the memo. Rather, it's anti-science because they threw all rational debate out the window and fired the guy without even trying to address the points he made.
Almost everyone I know/interacted with believes that Damore is wrong though, if not for the viewpoint, then for his approach to trying to create a dialogue in a suboptimal fashion & its negative effects on his former colleagues.
Very few had the courage to talk against that trend, one of them was Michael Moore and check how accurate he was when compared to "mainstream": https://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
In the sense that it's an argument both sides want to have. The left want to argue for better workplace treatment of women, while the right want to argue for speech without social repercussions.
Instead, Google's leadership decided to take an ideological stance with relatively little regard to immediate PR. The result is further churning and an intensified reaction of the public and media.
This is either a good or a bad thing, depending on a person's perspective. But surely it's a reaction which will perpetuate the intensity of drama.
But they didn't. That man's argument was not science. It wasn't. There was absolutely no scientific evidence behind his argument. He misrepresented studied, and he cherry picked what he wanted. For more on that, check here: http://blog.goldieblox.com/2017/08/open-letter-james-damore-... It's an article from a female engineer who read the manifesto, and takes issue with the conclusions drawn from the studies.
The ones claiming that his manifesto was "scientifically sound" are those who are anti-science and anti-evidence.
"They could have simply said that they were taking punitive actions and kept him in the fold."
No, they couldn't. By keeping him, they would be legitimizing his views. And by doing that, they would be further alienating all of their female employees, and a lot of others, both current and future. Just about no woman would want to work there, knowing that they endorse those viewpoints.
I want to follow up on this, can you give an example? From what little I know, it's essentially settled science that men and women have statistically different interests, and those interests exist across all cultures (implying a biological cause).
Everyone wants to be a victim. Damore isn't a victim of anything but bad judgment. If he's hero of the mob, so what.
By and large the people outraged about this are...people we don't like, whose opinions don't matter, and who I think should be marginalized anyways.
If he's the hero of people we don't like, so what.
If you so blindly believe in the diversity of skin color or gender while neglecting the diversity of ideas, I am rather sure that says a whole lot about you as a person and as a company. That, in my opinion, is the only PR they deserve.
His essay is not scientific, or evidence-based. It's ten pages of micro-facts, followed by his biases or misunderstands, followed by enormous leaps of logic to macro-conclusions. It wouldn't pass as a bloody undergrad essay. [2]
(It is a poster child of a techie looking at a complicated problem that they don't understand, and saying 'I'm smart! This is easy! You guys are all wrong!')
[1] https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/895071933666017280
[2] https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
At least a few psychology professors [seem to disagree with that assessment][1]:
> Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences.
I'm sure you can probably find lot of opinions on both sides of the debate though, and that's fine. As the memo stated:
> Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In terms of political biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason. I'd be very happy to discuss any of the document further and provide more citations
Instead of "discussing the document further" though, they fired him.
[1]: http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
> argues that cognitive sex differences influence performance in software engineering, but presents no supporting evidence
This is completely made up
The person who posted their thoughts did so in a _closed_ mailing list that was intentionally setup to discuss all this. The document was leaked. At best, he deserved a reprimand. Firing him makes it clear that there is no room for alternate thoughts in Google other than the ultra-progressive view point.
Whether you think it should have been controversial doesn't change what you do when something goes viral; the first thing is to stop the damage.
But since then, there's some evidence that he wanted the controversy - look where he's giving interviews now.
No. His firing confirmed part of Demore's thesis; that Google has monoculture issues and sits in some sort of bubble.
> This is the reality of business.
Is it? If that's true, we need to be much more aggressive about corporate consolidation because the only way to make room for diversity of opinion is to make sure that there's diversity of opinion at the corporate level.
If you quit Google because it's too (insert culture war concern here), which big tech employer is substantially different?
We're missing a large component of the discussion when we pretend that the content of the letter is the principal issue here. The thing the C-levels are thinking about is liability, because that represents the most direct threat to the company.
Allowing Damore to remain on payroll could be interpreted as a tacit endorsement of his letter, which means in a lawsuit, a complainant can claim that Google has already proven itself to accept illegal anti-woman hiring practices by allowing an employee who espouses these things on company time and with company resources to stick around.
It can further be argued that their failure to address this bias constitutes a hostile workplace, and will greatly strengthen any potential argument that a female Googler was intentionally and/or actively discriminated against either now or in the past.
On the other hand, the consequences of terminating Damore are, essentially, limited to bad press, which is not really a large cost in itself. Google can counteract Damore's complaints with the relevant labor boards by pointing out that they are merely attempting to comply with the law that compels them to create a non-hostile work environment for women.
So why are so many CEOs so quick to jump on these diversity/inclusion bandwagons? Because a lawsuit will cost the company millions of dollars in lawyer time alone, and if they lose, potentially many millions of dollars in damages, especially if it's class action.
The factual validity of Damore's memo is immaterial. All that matters is that Google risks much more money, more aggressive regulatory oversight, and puts itself in peril of other onerous legal sanctions by keeping Damore on board, and by terminating him, they don't.
Anyone who is upset about this should look at the root cause, which is not only the set of laws that may compel such specific behaviors, but also the arcane configuration of the legal system as a whole. It is frequently wielded as a weapon, and that should not be a thing.
IANAL
Then why didn't Pichai predict the blowback from firing Damore?
> People get fired for dumber reasons.
Is that a defense of Pichai and tech monoculture? People get fired for dumber reasons?
Compared to employees and consumers? Yes. There aren't enough options out there to let competition correct for these kinds of cultural problems.
Of course, this might be a problem that solves itself. As expectations for fair compensation trickles through the rest of the job market, maybe transferring to an equivalent job in a medium sized company in Denver would generally be a lateral move.
Google had to decide which they value more: Demore's manifesto, or the contributions of a third of their workforce.
False dichotomy...
Google had to decide which they value more: Damore's memo, or their legal defense against inevitable discrimination suits.
---
nb. Large companies are a constant target for litigants of all stripes. There are suits of all types filed against them regularly. They must be careful or, under current law, a bitter employee who was not in actuality discriminated against can successfully claim discrimination and pilfer millions of dollars from the company, inviting follow-on after follow-on. Because the current law is based upon reading in/assuming specific motives to otherwise-valid actions, companies are forced to assume a defensive legal position, such that the other side's lawyer will have a large amount of difficulty convincing a judge and/or jury that such motives were allowed or tolerated.
I can see not doing that when you are cash poor but Google is paying engineers as much as $600K/year in total comp, they could have landed $10M on Damore and never noticed it.
My personal opinion is much like Brook's - Pichai was pandering to the mob. That's not true leadership in my opinion.
Edit: don't understand the downvote, this is HR 101. Companies don't want this sort of attention and they'll pay to avoid it. I'm very surprised that a cash rich company like google didn't take that route. Are you suggesting with your down vote that it is better for google to be in the news cycle for months/years while this works its way through the courts?
Whoever runs the diversity team should absolutely lose their job for letting this get to this point. Following that whoever decided that flying the CEO back to publicly fire someone and denigrate them was a good idea and the best way to proceed. A CEO of one of the worlds most powerful companies publicly firing and shaming an employee who simply presented an opinion through proper channels is just not a well thought out move.
Staggering amount of poor judgement all around.
Word would get around. Followed by many manifestos worth $10M.
So far as I know, the NDA's mostly work.
If what I'm suggesting seems weird I'd encourage conversations with HR people at large companies. This is part of what a good HR person does, sadly.
It also wouldn't surprise me, given bureaucracy.
They are now publicly vilifying him for expressing opinions that are now being publicly supported by scientists. They have essentially publicly attempted to silence him because they don't like his opinion, validating his initial complaints.
I don't know if Pichai should be fired but a lot of people dropped the ball on this and they have escalated a story that could have been quietly handled in house via a few conversations months ago.
I have no idea if Damore's arguments for biological differences are valid or not, some scientists have stated they are (mileage may vary) but I don't feel that anything he said was stated with malice of with the intent to denigrate anyone. He may not have had the best communication skills but he was trying to start a conversation not a war. Google for some reason responded to his inquiry with the equivalent of scorched earth and are now realizing that perhaps they overreacted.
James' memo created a hostile work environment. And legally, that's all it takes to support terminating his employment for cause.
1) He claimed that biological differences were responsible for the behavior of his female co-workers. Yes, he actually says that in the section "non-bias causes of gender gap in tech." If you can't see why that's offensive, try replacing that sentence with "Biological differences are responsible for the behavior of blacks. Or latinos." Legally, this single section, by itself, disseminated on an internal company board, was enough to create a hostile work environment for his female co-workers.
2) Then he goes on to say that "diversity" candidates get special treatment. They get a lowered bar. His words, not mine. So now he's implying that many of the "diversity" candidates only work at Google because they weren't held to the same standards. And unlike his earlier statements about biological differences not applying to any specific individual women, he doesn't qualify this statement--so he's lumping all of his female and non-white co-workers together. This section, on its own, would also be enough to create a hostile work environment for all of his female and non-white co-workers.
3) Then he goes and says the Left denies science on IQ and sex. And that their behavior has created a "psychologically unsafe environment." This, by itself, would also be enough to create a hostile work environment for all of his co-workers that would define themselves as liberals. (Note: there's a reason that most companies don't allow overtly political activities or expression like this in the workolace--it's to prevent political hostilities from dividing the workplace.)
That's 3 things he said that legally would have justified firing him. It doesn't matter whether science supports the broad statements or not. It doesn't matter whether his suggestions at the end or good or not. It doesn't matter whether Google leans left or oppresses conservative expression. What matters is that he created a hostile work environment for large swaths of his co-workers with these 3 statements.
Instead, Sundar found it necessary to lie in his official statement about what Damore had said. He defamed him by saying that his memo contained things that are contrary to what the memo actually says and that Damore himself would certainly denounce if asked. Because, presumably, Sundar felt it was preferable to appease a mob by acquiescing in their villification of a Google employee.
That is what is this particular post claims makes Sundar a bad CEO. I don't know if that's true - that is, whether it makes him an ineffective CEO, whether his actions were good for Google in the long run; that remains to be seen. But the author of this piece feels that it was a morally wrong action (and I agree).
It could be a lie? It seems more logical that it's a misunderstanding. Neither make Pichai look good, especially since he had no discussions with Damore (according to Damore) to clear up any misunderstandings.
Furthermore, his memo canceling the town hall made things worse when he declared the majority agreed and that some wish he had done more. He didn't acknowledge any of the people internally that disagreed with the firing. He's probably not even aware that he's set himself up to only hear opinions that agree with the firing because others will be too afraid to question it.
Honestly, I want Google to have a third-party set up a truly anonymous poll of all employees and measure how people really feel instead of speculate on how many agree or disagree with the firing. This is a company with expertise in analytics after all.
The memo wasn't a PR disaster; the firing was.
Data point of one: Google has lost, just from my personal accounts alone, $40/mo in G Suite/YouTube Red revenue, and $620/mo in GCE Compute instance revenue.
Not because of the memo; because of the firing. Absolutely disgusting and unconscionable.
By firing an employee just for reiterating the stuff that every undergrad is taught in CogDev 101 and wildly misrepresenting his position?
That's not protecting the company.
EDIT: I forgot to add that from the coverage I've seen, there are also claims that Google management is illegally sharing hiring blacklists (based on a person's perceived political views) with other companies. That would also be very serious.
And let me tell you, while you may not feel that this memo has created a hostile working environment, a lot of other people do. Google would drown in lawsuits if they let him stay on.
I don't see how you can argue that a single guy who isn't in management writing a memo creates a "hostile work environment". Most of the people complaining wouldn't even be working with him at all. They can file lawsuits but would they hold water? After all, management could just tell the lawsuit filers to be more tolerant of others: it's not like Damore was attacking individuals.
So I don't see where Google's obligation to fire him comes from. Unpopularity with other employees does not make a legal obligation.
On the other hand, firing someone who is trying to raise possibly illegal conduct with management does have legal implications.
Debatable, the shareholders might not be happy that Google might now become a political target for oppressing views.
However, I agree that given potential liability issues from hostile workplace lawsuits almost forced his hand, which is very unfortunate.
The person who leaked the internal memo to the public caused the PR disaster.
The backlash is mostly about the firing decision itself rather than the person having been fired.
They washed their hands of the uncouth worker. They should be in the clear if that was the source of the outrage.
The disbelief is not that people have strange anti social views (we all have them to one degree or other) it's that a company feels so threatened by dissent that they swiftly want to leave themselves and absolve themselves to present themselves as pristine, unspoiled humanity.
I guess a NYT columnist can say this because click-bait-y titles always help for revenue and Google does not stop giving the ad revenue when news articles are critical of its CEO. This looks like both parties doing their roles well enough.
Google does not come close to that level. If someone needs to be sacked for the diversity memo, it needs to be the author in question. At maximum, you could argue that a VP of HR could be sacked, as to 'shake up' the hiring processes and address any issues in it.
This does not go to the CEO. More damage would be done by his leaving than him staying. He reports to the shareholders, not to the moralists.
They aren't doing that and it's creating a perception of unfairness.
They have already been doing this...after the election a lot of my conservative co-workers at Google admitted to feeling "harassed" and "targeted." The memes posted on Memegen, the discussions on eng-misc, as well as the terrible TGIF (where the message VPs sent was basically that "Google" supported Hillary and "We" lost and it was going to be "Okay"). The unfairness is already there, this just highlights it even more.
TLDR:
1. Guy has conservative opinion against the current norms = Fired.
2. Numerous posts on Memegen/eng-misc/internal message boards hostile towards conservatives (including posts made by managers) = no action
You don’t make your boss look bad. That’s it. California is an at-will employment state.
EDIT: if you doubt this, just look at the document's title and TL;DR section.
[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
"Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety. This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed."
...firing him, at least the way they did it, confirmed that position.
Anyone could read Google's code of conduct and know that Google would fire/reprimand someone for being toxic to their coworkers. Employees are free to debate and cherry pick evidence about their opinions on the world being flat, 9/11 being an inside job, even a fake moon landing.
James decided he wanted to debate about his opinion on his workers being biologically inferior (among other opinions). He had a chance to receive feedback on this from coworkers and change his position, the problem was he didn't and continued to broadcast his opinion which was toxic to his coworkers.
It's a strange hill to pick to die on because nothing is surprising about how this played out, other than how the media is still talking about it.
Maybe it is that I have lived in a country where carrying party cards to work was a step in professional life. But the point that stuck to me was painting the situation along political spectrum.
For example, a host on certain news channel might say, "Is Obama secretly a Muslim? I'm not saying that he is, but why can't we ask the question?"
It's easy to see why people would get upset by that comment (for multiple reasons). The fact that he says he isn't saying that doesn't matter, because he effectively just did.
If he had just limited the paper to inclusiveness as a conservative in a left leaning culture, without dragging the whole women inequality thing into the matter, it probably wouldn't have been meet with such a backlash.
However, the author appears to be completely tone deaf and extremely socially awkward - he has very poor communication skills. And lacking the understanding that there is a current culture war going on - to allow himself to be taken as a champion of some of those groups seems to show he is oblivious to the greater social/political discussion out there.
It does not help his argument to be the white knight for the _actual_ misogynists and racists.
Which part of the parent's comment do you believe he "confirmed" by allowing himself to be interviewed by SM?
Verbatim, from the manifesto:
"For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation."
The way he explains it with biology is that he rattles off a bunch of micro-facts, and then uses 'logic' with a big sprinkling of bias, to reach amazing macro-conclusions.
That's not his thesis; that's an example he's chosen to support his thesis.
> In his memo, Damore cites a series of studies, making the case, for example, that men tend to be more interested in things and women more interested in people. (Interest is not the same as ability.)
I've been trying to hammer this point to all my colleagues (in private of course, I wouldn't dare to post it on public channel due to high probability of getting decapitated!): interests/preferences not abilities.
Every time someone says the memo is denigrating women by telling them they are unfit or incapable of working in tech it makes me want to scream! It is not about any individual's ability but about preferences of a group. It might as well be that the arguments don't support the conclusion. But I haven't seen anyone offering a reasonable rebuttal that doesn't involve name-calling and blanket statements like "the author clearly doesn't understand gender".
I think, if we step back from the actual words on the paper and examine the author's intent, his choice of evidence, and the mere fact that he chose to write this, we can learn just as much as from trying to decide whether or not he was talking about a population effect when talked about women before mentioning Google employees.
This is totally different from wondering about the biology. As a biologist, I think it's preposterous to start to infer biological bases to the types of psychology experiments cited. I do, however, think this could be open to debate. I feel that the undertone to the author's message is likely less unclear.
That's tricky.
Do we take the author at face value when they make claims about their intent?
Many critics seem to think they can see the author's "true intent", and when they can't substantiate their claim, blame others for failing to see what they see.
I happen to think there's a lot about the author's time/mental state/life circumstances that one can find in the words themselves.
A much more light-hearted example is Quentin Tarrantino's insistence that he hasn't watched the Truffaut film 'And the bride wore black' - even though Kill Bill is an eerily similar remake.
Should I believe the author's product or his rationalization?
I'll make a subtle point in a discussion that clearly can't handle the subtleties it already has.
Interest is not the same thing as ability, but interest is a great indicator of ability in technology, especially fast moving technology. In fact, I know plenty of people who are underemployed or underpaid that I say, "You, know, with your skills, you'd be great at writing software. Maybe you should develop an interest in coding." Similarly, people ask me, "How do I get a job in software?" and I suggest something very basic (tryruby.org, say) as a way for them to quickly figure out if they are interested. If they don't like problem solving and coding, they might be able to force themselves into qualifying for a job, but I'm not sure that's a good career strategy.
Point being, to some degree, interest is one key component of ability in software and some other kinds of technology work.
And for the general population skew in interests/preferences to make any difference whatsoever to the makeup of Google's technical and leadership staff the argument would have to be that the population that makes up the part of the interest curve on the 'high interest' part of the graph for the underrepresented groups is completely exhausted or would be completely exhausted before parity is reached.
I'd bet big that Google could completely fill their entire company with underrepresented people that rank very high on the interest/preference curve and never make a dent in that population. There are over 7 billion people in the world. That's a big pool. Even the thinner parts of the graph represent huge numbers of people. And Google completely controls their hiring so they can pick and choose -- they are not pulling people at random from that general population. They can easily pick people that compare very favorably with any other colleague on the interest/preference scale.
I don't believe that the fact that a commentator is conservative means they are spewing propaganda as Fox News is. Fox News is conservative, and Fox News is unfair and unbalanced. The conservative nature of Fox News is not why it is unfair and unbalanced.
Totally agree on the second part, though. Huge pool of candidates, honestly ridiculous to think that this would explain the imbalance at Google.
Isn't this attitude more or less what Damore was concerned about in his memo?
If Google were to announce that they will hire 50% women wouldn't that be illegal under Title VII? That would amount to affirmative action which is only allowed in certain limited situations (race can be taken into consideration for university admissions).
I don't think announcing a policy of hiring 50% women is necessary. Like you said, it is 'almost certainly skewed due to gender biases' so the obvious way forward is to try to track down those biases and remove them from the process.
There is also some questions about how to make the workplace more attractive to certain employees and applicants. Putting policies and services in place to cater to those employees goes a bit beyond mere removal of bias but could help as well.
I found this portrayal shocking: https://youtu.be/ej_5vyDkZgU?t=280
He's been labeled "a creep" for no reason by those who claim to be righteous and politically correct and fighting for the marginalized.
That other people make fun of him for his looks is pretty boring and I'll leave them to their antics - hardly like this type of behavior doesn't happen with _any_ large group.
His looks (and prior statements) just don't help.
The article doesn't really touch on Pichai's biggest mistakes here.
Mistake one: Damore's memo alleged discrimination, both against men and conservatives. Gender and political affiliation are both protected classes in California and they just fired him for whistleblowing. He has now filed a complaint with the NLRB. This seems like a legal headache that a better CEO could have avoided by not firing the guy. Put him on the roof or something, wait for things to blow over, find some other solution but the moment they fired him, they set themselves up for this.
Mistake two: Google shareholders asked at the last shareholder meeting if it was true that Google was a hostile work environment for conservatives (or words to that effect). They assured shareholders that this wasn't true. Clearly that answer has problems. Employees are leaking like crazy to Breitbart of all places that Google is extremely hostile to conservatives. I don't know what happens if leadership misleads shareholders in these sorts of questions, maybe nothing. But it can't be good.
Mistake three: Google managers have been publicly announcing within the firm that they are blacklisting employees for not being sufficiently pro-feminist or even for just questioning the policies or the mob reaction to it. There are screenshots of this along with interviews, again, on Breitbart. This seems like a fantastically unhealthy culture that Pichai has allowed to grow on his watch. I have heard from other Googlers that in one incident, a manager claimed he'd blacklist anyone who was subscribed to an internal mailing list for discussion of conservative viewpoints, and then when people objected, that he'd blacklist them too (so they couldn't transfer to his team). Again this seems like a cut/dried case of discrimination against people of certain political affiliations.
Mistake four: this debate is happening because Googlers are furiously attacking each other through leaks to the press. This is happening in both directions: the original leak was clearly intended to get Damore fired and publicly shamed, now others are leaking screenshots of internal communications and Pichai's emails. Pichai has quite clearly lost control of his own workforce to a staggering degree.
How much more of Google's guts spilling out onto the street will shareholders tolerate?
(Despite all this I don't think these mistakes are enough to cost him his job, given excellent leadership of Android and Chrome)
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/i-confronted-go...
At the meeting, I asked Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt about the company's actual commitment to diversity and inclusion in light of the company's public policy positions, not to mention the views of top management, that all skew to the extreme political left. I noted conservatives may not feel welcome in such an environment, let alone feel free to express their beliefs. Schmidt and other company executives dismissed my entire question by claiming everyone at the company — and in the tech industry as a whole — was in agreement with them.
After that confrontation, a strange thing happened. I started receiving messages from Google employees thanking me for challenging Alphabet's leadership. Without realizing it, I was apparently speaking for a closeted segment of Google employees with conservative beliefs.
One email read, "I'm working with a few other Googlers to fix the company's political discrimination problem. Really appreciate you shining a light on the matter."
Another said she was working closely with a group of conservatives at Google, and noted, "(t)hey're all very appreciative that you were standing up for their interests at the shareholder's (sic) meeting. The shareholder resolution your organization filed also made a lot of people happy."
Perhaps is James had not hamfistedly "cited" population research (as Brooks suggests) but then given very specific personal-level fixes (e.g., pair programming , suggestions of "pipeline" fixes, etc) he would not have cast quite so much doubt over his intent.
What's also lost in this summary is one of the most important points: long term exposure to stereotypes has a powerful influence on people (many references of varying quality here: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/women-m...). By embracing them, we actually create self-fulfilling prophecies.
These prophecies may be based on a statistical mean, but what's lost in that simple numerical distillation is what harm befalls even modest outliers to the distribution. Stereotypes which may seem obvious and unimportant to 3/4 of a population may be a crushing burden and source of relentless stress to the remaining quarter.
It's interesting how many of my peers fought to liberate themselves from stereotypes of "weakness" and "inferiority" that were tied around them as smart teenagers. But when it comes time to recognize the harm in these stereotypes to outliers in a other group, they appeal to the same logic that oppressed them. One might argue that these traits are adopted defense mechanisms well-impressed by abuse. I'm not sure that justifies them, though.
James fundamentally misinterpreted much of the research he cited in ways that are overly summative to make a point he wanted to make. He sought research to give his biases the veneer of science without understanding what the authors of the underlying research meant.
This whole incident, from the very beginning, represents one of the major problems with public understanding of science. There are basic ontological misconceptions about the relationship of researchers and research, about the generalizability of most scientific research, AND about how scientists within a field interpret and infer from results...and how future scientists build on that work. Because so much of that thinking work is invisible to the naked eye or is lost in media depictions, people think they have a greater understanding of how science constructs knowledge and they feel excessively qualified to infer and extrapolate research beyond what original authors had intended.
As you note, when science is discussed through means, when people attempt to decontextualize science, and try and simply apply science as a post-hoc rationalization for their fears and biases they are the problem not the science and not those who call BS on bad uses of science.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manif...
What an excellent quote. As a politically right-leaning gay person, I feel this way basically all the time, except I'm more like the 5% or 10%. Being a minority of a minority sucks, you don't fit in anywhere.
Which is to say: I appreciate your status and it's difficulty even if I don't agree with your politics.
I haven't heard this point before and I'd like to understand it. What's the problem here?
The larger body of feminist and even more centrist discourse has concluded that problem is not, in principle, what Google needs to address (other than at the very outermost edge of it's recruiting funnel, ensuring that recruiting engaged with organizations that support specific demographics). The internal problems with unfair treatment, unfair pay, and unequal opportunity need to be addressed first. James conveniently pretends these don't exist and suggests women aren't entering the field.
We can tackle the problems there in other ways, but young women are not uninformed by their predecessors or the news. They see a constant drumbeat of credible stories about how the boys world of tech both abuses women and does not reward them equally.
James's suggestion that it's merely a lack of social elements to keep women out of tech is somewhat offensive in this light, pushing the decision way from "self-defense and self-interest" to "biological predilection.'
Blockers such as this guy.
Anyway, the real position being pushed by Women in Tech/STEM movements is that anyone can/should be free to work in any career and not expect e.g. pay differences and biases against them solely because of gender. Male nurses are an example in the reverse direction.
Since they tend to pursue what they prefer.
I'm all for having no blockers for people choosing what careers they want. However people will move towards there preferences, and there preferences will be set either by nature or culture.
Yeah, just calling a Scandinavian nation "free" says absolutely nothing about its particular societal pressures. Societal pressures which effect everyone whether they are egosyntonic or distonic to the individuals caught up in the society.
More evidence is needed to support this hypothesis.
Culture is something that hiring practices can change.
Please elaborate on this. How is he blocking anyone?
We all have our opinions, but money is society’s way of prioritizing activities. And these jobs as essential as they should be, also get shittier shittier in average , as time goes on, which doesn’t help.
So no, it's not only the "less well-paid" jobs. And even if it were, a lot of the lowest paid jobs are almost entirely men, like garbage collectors and construction workers.
https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/07/20/the-b...
- general physician: 60% women, 137k in average
- pediatricians: 80% women, 144k in average
- obstetricians/gynecologists: 70% women, 205k in average
- radiologist: 20% women, 300k in average
Basically, in the doctors field pediatrician or gynecologist are middle range salary. Nothing to sneeze at, but the more lucrative areas pay way more and are dominated by men. And honestly I don’t think the requirements for radiologist is so much harder than gynecologists, or is it ? (I am no radiologist, that’s just my impression)
Then they should be more respected and be paid more. Until they are, asking people to go into them when better, easier jobs exist is patronizing.
And speaking for the OP, I would imagine 'easy' in this context likely includes many elements but is strongly influenced by physical demand of these activities.
Look at the output of ones work. If the output of ones work is positive, then it doesn't really matter how they got there or what they do.
The elephant wrt to "women are under-represented in stem careers" is that education is not universally applied/available.
Gender should not matter.
Provide universal education from birth to all minds and let those minds "mind their own business" as it were...
If people land in places due to their own thought, that is a true democracy of thought and freedom - but poor choices only ever occur based on poor information.
Hell, no one's worried that we have too few female oil rig workers and these ARE (in my understanding) high paying jobs.
But STEM? That's somehow different.
It's weird that Brooks paints the memo as largely factually correct, but clearly doesn't believe what is the main thrust of the memo.
The problem with the memo is not with any claims that are stated as fact, the problem is the FUD he's spreading by suggesting that the small and likely irrelevant biological differences we do know about might be responsible for the large differences in today's gender distribution in tech.
There is plenty of evidence that there are much, much larger factors in the distribution discrepancy today than any possible difference of ability, but Damore is casting doubt on that and suggesting that the current distribution might be the natural fixed point, that it could be at steady state already due to the biological differences.
Okay sure, he doesn't propose that as fact, he uses weasel words and doubt-casting to say it might be true, and that's the most damaging part. Getting people to believe it's possible is worse than any easily provable lie.
People like Brooks defending the memo's factual accuracy are hiding behind this idea that only things claimed as fact might be damaging. Not true, the things claimed as possibility are more damaging.
The obvious problem with suggesting that the current distribution might have settled to it's natural steady state is that it encourages turning a blind eye to the cultural sexism that we already know exists. It perpetuates sexism if we don't fix it first.
He seems earnest to me. If he's earnestly voicing ideas that result in fear, uncertainty, or doubt, is it his fault? What is the appropriate way to broach the subject publicly? Or are certain thoughts inherently unspeakable?
If Damore bears significant blame, what is an appropriate response for a boss to have to that situation? Why is Damore the only person in trouble if controversial discussions themselves are against the rules?
I don't think it makes sense to assign blame, I don't care who's fault it is, and I believe he's free to share his thoughts. I hope you're not suggesting that being fired from a company is somehow censorship.
What I care about is that his ideas are regressive and unintentionally sexist. He is using specious scientific sounding arguments to say we should turn a blind eye to cultural sexism. By ignoring it, we perpetuate cultural sexism.
It is censorship. Read the first sentence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
The defense of the firing is that the censorship is justified, not that it isn't censorship.
> What I care about is that his ideas are regressive and unintentionally sexist.
It's not his fault, but he's fired anyway? That doesn't seem fair.
Take any other industry: A friend of mine working for a management consulting firm was fired for losing a presentation and making a partner look bad because the company supplied laptop had a hard disk crash. People have been fired for less.
But Sundar Pichai should take personal responsibility for firing an employee who wrote a jackass memo and caused Google PR harm. If the fellow was not fired, we'd have more articles calling for Sundar Pichai's resignation for making Google a hostile place for women and adding to gender imbalance in the industry. There's no winning strategy here.
Now, if someone is calling for Google CEO's resignation for killing reader, I wholeheartedly agree :-)
Edit: A CEO's job and responsibilities are to his/her shareholders, users and employees. Not to make decisions consistent with their personality traits.
Says the guy who has just claimed its CEO should resign.
Here is the only intelligent thing I've read about this debacle:
To me, if you read it and are completely outraged or uniformly in favor, then you are part of the problem.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/07/opinions/google-employee-manif...
It really doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with facts... they are still reality, regardless. And I see very, very few people arguing against the facts that Damore presented in any sort of cogent manner.
Damore's only real policy suggestion was to (gasp) treat everyone as individuals, rather than as stereotypical tribal members. And I'm personally very confused as to how anyone isn't wholly in favor of that. We are all more than our skin color or gender.
When deciding how to act in the world, you have to use your judgement. When planning your diet, do you read a bunch of nutrition papers and decide what to eat 100% on what they say, or did you apply some cultural knowledge?
Second, "facts that are completely true" does not gibe with most cognitive scientists seem to agree.
Which is it? Did you check every fact yourself, or did you just accept what he had to say uncritically?
From the article: Similarly, if you can read this guy's entire memo and find yourself blindly nodding, then you probably aren't using your brain either.
The phrase facts that are completely true sounds young and naive. Just like the left can cite studies about unconscious bias, the right can cite studies about biological differences. That doesn't mean they're all true.
Even if you accept that "scientific facts" are the way to decide the workplace policy, his article isn't complete. Where is the scientific fact that says how much discrimination against women there is? He said "I'm not denying discrimination exists" but didn't address it further.
BTW I largely defended Damore, because many people I talked with have extreme "left wing" views. His points were completely mischaracterized in the media. It became a political circus. But I will also argue against extreme "right wing" views. That was the point of the quote.
FWIW I worked at Google for 11 years, and both my parents and sister have Ph.D.'s and are in the sciences, two in biological sciences. I know how "studies" work. Both people on the left and right (at least in this debate) have a naive view of science.
Some have argued that treating others as individuals is what's already happening, resulting in people hiring people like them?
Damore spoke more about gender, than skin color as well. This part of the conversation isn't getting enough review too.
Diversity isn't just gender diversity. Gender diversity may just be the diversity that the majority can relate to.
With that being said, Many types of diversity require many types of approaches.
The lean startup conference has some laudable dialogue and track record hurling themselves into all sorts of diversity innovation discomfort: https://hbr.org/2014/01/theres-no-excuse-for-all-white-male-...
Unforunately it takes years for a person to really known another person as an individual. And even then the preferences inherent in the first person will bias what they do with the knowledge they have of the other individual. Thus this isn't a solution.
"While there may be scientific evidence of differences between men and women, using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts."
Then you can go on and explain why for historical and societal reasons putting forth this weak theory is highly offensive and damaging to a large group of people.
Of course, many feel that you shouldn't _have_ to explain this to people, but unfortunately in todays environment, you do!
That is not true. The facts support the exact opposite conclusion: that prenatal exposure to androgens orients a person toward things/systems rather than people. [0]
Also, I wasn't making any claim about my own feelings, the massive response shows that the memo was highly offensive to many people.
My twitter feed has tons of very thoughtful pieces responding to the memo. They just never breach the front page of Hacker News.
That said, why should he resign? In the overall scheme of things, this isn't much of a crisis. If this were the standard to fire CEOs by not many companies would have CEOs left.
I'm not sure whether I think that means he should resign, though.
Honestly I don't agree. It's his job to facilitate an enjoyable work environment not be a champion of free speech. Free speech is plentiful outside the workplace. If you want to contact HR go for it.
But the person who wrote the memo opened a can of worms implying that his perspective was super valuable to the discussion rather than the many female employees who work there. There are a myriad of debatable perpestives but this was not the appropriate channel to vent them.
Women want to be respected by their coworkers and arguments like "biologically we've hit the max amount of women who are interested in this field" don't align with our experience.
Obviously he hasn't been doing that. Lots of Googlers apparently feel like they can't speak out on topics that might offend hard-left sensibilities.
> Women want to be respected by their coworkers and arguments like "biologically we've hit the max amount of women who are interested in this field" don't align with our experience.
Align with your experience? How would that be a valid way to measure anything?
The reason this thesis has weight is because it aligns with hiring data. Despite huge efforts software is not 50/50 balanced. This is because there's not 50/50 male/female graduation rates, and that in turn is because there's not 50/50 male/females studying CS to begin with.
Obviously there's some cause for this. If you rule out biological causes then you're left with unconscious bias and other evidence-free theories. Biological explanations have actual scientific studies behind them.
My experience should count for something because I am actually a woman in tech, who loves to code, who started my own successful tech business. People like me should be a vocal part of the discussion because we're a minority who has some first hand insight. Studies have been shown time and time again to sometimes create conclusions from biased premises, to make the wrong conclusions, or simply be contradictory to a dozen other studies.
Not to say they are always wrong. I have no reason to believe biology plays no role but I personally don't believe it plays a significant role.
Furthermore, the PR backlash against his firing is far more news worthy if it was "wrongful" and he has gone on a media tour acting as the "victim". I am not sure news outlets would approach the firing objectively.
Obviously, if Damore's lawsuit succeed, Google will pay a penalty. But what other impacts will there be? This incident doesn't seem to have the same snowball potential of Susan Fowler's Uber essay, because Fowler wrote about sexual harassment, which put Uber in greater legal jeopardy than Damore has with Google (as far as we can tell, as Damore's complaint moves through the system).
#DeleteUber was a big thing on Twitter, did it have a noticeable impact on Uber's bottom line? I know Damore supporters have called for a Google boycott, but quitting Uber for Lyft seems easier than quitting Google for Bing, GMail for Yahoo, and YouTube for Vimeo/Twitch.
Damore's firing likely pissed off his like-minded colleagues. But based on what Damore claimed, non-liberal Googlers were already rare.
So what upcoming challenges/attacks would Google CEO's resignation head off?
I find this observation on-point and profound.
I expect this level of moral reasoning in my teenager. But I was shocked at its embrace by much of Google. It seems unlikely to me that CEO Pichai would be caught up directly in this stream of moral certitude and virtue signaling. Far more likely that influencers carried the torch.
But while I disagree with Pichai's decision, I think that firing him would be an inappropriate remedy that would represent a form of counter-extremism. I do suggest that Pichai surround himself with more able counsel (and not just legal). And that this episode be discussed at the Board level within the context of Google's culture.
For example: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
Pretending 'science' supports one political view or another is the sort of thing that got us in this mess in the first place. I think if we're going to avoid being disingenuous, we need to recognize that there is not a widely accepted consensus on this topic.
I agree. That's my point. The editorial mentions only Scientists who agree with Damore's Science, which paints an inaccurate picture.
EDIT: (As a note, I love clarifying comments, and wish rate limiting on HN didn't force me to pick and choose where I do so. I definitely misread the original, and downvoted it, but after seeing the clarification, and re-reading, I changed my vote on the original to an upvote, as well as upvoting the clarifying comment. Sometimes I feel like the HN lean against an extended discussion between two parties can be a detriment.)
I fear some people in the left and center don't want to honor the memo with a serious reply, and that this gets picked up by the right as inability to do so.
> The article perniciously misrepresents the nature and significance of known sex differences to advance what appears to be a covert alt-right agenda.
He must be a sneaky alt-righter! How else could he disagree with me?
I think he made a moral mistake by firing the memo guy, but he has to worry about potential legal ramifications, should an employee sue for "condoning discrimination" or something. Too bad for diversity of opinion, can't have that under threat of lawsuit.
Even if there was some merit in his argument, he could have chosen to do it differently. Bad choice which blew up pretty fast.
What ? he is the CEO of Google.
These silly opinion making pundits.
Some of Damore's footnotes reveal he lacks a certain subtly and researcher's tact and has quite a hefty number of biases of his own:
"Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.” -- Damore, note 7.
This is a polluted conceptualization of the issue and outright mythology. You can tell from his phrasing he's fallen prey to the us v. them mentality that plagues many of those who rail against the 'sjws'--linking identity politics directly to marxism and its development is patently ridiculous, a bleeding of domains, and shows that he can't help letting his own biases color his reading of contemporary situations and narratives. Sure, there are offshoots and links between these struggles but--I mean seriously--does he really believe there's some cohort of marxists who collectively decided, 'man we got to overthrow capitalism somehow but the proletariat didn't do it so lets try to level gender and race inequalities' what? Are we in fairytale land? There are people who research and write about identity politics that may draw upon marxist thought in some of their critiques, but it isn't some legion of people who just want to consistently uphold an 'opressor-opressed' dynamic regardless of the participants. There are plenty of marxists who also find identity politics to be total hogwash. For a memo that tries to "advocat[e] for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).", it fails spectacularly at its mission in this footnote.
Damore's document is not a sexist screed by any means, but it isn't some lucid reconsideration of diversity either--plenty of his word choices and preemptive defensive measures (see the several instances where he reiterates that he definitely not a sexist and definitely supports diversity) show that, even if he was making an honest effort to step back, he is still victim to particular ideologies.
We should ask ourselves why Damore would write such an memo in the first place. He makes no direct mention of an incident that prompted this call to arms. No quantitative predictive analysis into how a change in Google's diversity program would improve it and foster greater diversity and make it 'psychologically safe'. This makes one think his primary motivation was more likely a personal sense of injustice, or fueled by adherence to an ideology (his conservatism). It sounds like the result of a personal incident in which Damore's ideas were challenged, and he felt the instance was the result of company wide systemic practices and not an individual issue.
I can't say whether or not the firing was justified, but Damore definitely isn't the scientific, neutral paragon Brooks reads him to be. The memo is loaded with ideology. It is not a scientific paper--nor does it claim to be. It is a political argument that tries to mask how politicized it is under the protective badge of 'but I have science on my side'. There's some ridiculous idea that, so long as science is on your team you're in the right. People forget that science only describes the world. What we argue for using science and how we interpret it still point inevitably to our own values. Just because you can leverage scientific fact to push your agenda does not make it 'correct' or 'objective'. Yes, science tells us the world is getting really hot and we should probably stop that if we want to avoid major climactic shifts--but science doesn't tell us we should act to save the world--that's up to us. Hell, the universe might be better off if the world does go to ash. There's no way to know. you make a value judgement and you act, scientific or otherwise. Even Damore's urging that we de-moralize, and de-empathize and generally act more like inhuman robots when it comes to diversity to depoliticize it is a major value judgement (that it's valuable to be neutral and objective and science guided as possible) and is thus both moral and political.
The irony.
Everyone here should treat suggestions of resigning with a grain of salt, the author just wants your attention
I'm going with 15-20 minutes from now.
Who wants the over/under?
edit: Already down from 3rd to 6th while points went from 130 to 170. 7 minutes in.
edit: now 7th
I have been a NYTimes reader for a while and still read some of their less political articles, but when it comes to political pieces I stay away from them because I get nothing new, most of their articles are obviously left biased (For the record, I am NOT right wing. I just appreciate unbiased journalism and NYT has been failing me)
If you think NYT being left is based on some untrue propaganda by right tilting media websites, then you're the one who's mistaken, because as I said, I'm not right wing and I don't even read any right wing media.
When James Damore, a Google engineer, was fired this week for writing a 10-page manifesto spelling out his grievances with the company’s progressive values and positing that biological differences explained the tech industry’s gender gap, it might have seemed like the end of a bizarre, short-lived morality tale.
The current article uses a completely different language, it really surprised me.
The resignation would be because of Sundar's intellectually dishonest characterization of the memo, and his subsequent handling of the situation.
I don't know if he should resign, but I do think he fucked up in his handling of this situation.
Yes they are, by getting people fired who disagree with them.
What was he supposed to do? He's got a workforce of tens of thousands, lots of who were offended rightly or not. To keep the guy around would've been just as bad. You publish something like that you accept the consequences. You make yourself obnoxious to your bosses who expect you to be a quiet cog in the machine, that's what happens. Duh.
It's kind of funny that Damore dropped out of Harvard to work at Google and he's now been fired from there. Kind of throwing away his advantages.
Happy to read anything from NYTimes or this opinion writer on other tech CEO's.
I honestly think this is his biggest mistake (the google employee not the ceo) .. he didnt understand boundaries
It is sad, that someone gets fired for his opinion, even if this opinion is offensive ... i do believe in ones right to be offensive
But I think the medium used to express his opinion , and the boundaries where choose to do so .. is erratic
Note that this isn't just about sexism, but lots of protected class opinions could fall into this category of 'express this openly and you'll be fired'. No company of any size would be able to tolerate it.
Then somebody decided to "leaked" to the world.
How is this "advocating restricting programs that reduce the massive gap in distributions"?
Isn't down voting my opinions evidence that Hacker News doesn't tolerate diverse opinions? Where is the outrage at that?
It shouldn't be a stretch to see that arguing against treating people respectfully is offensive.