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Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

> They could've had a spine and supported intelligent discourse. Seems like a leadership problem.

But that's not the job of the people involved, or if you believe it is their job, only tangentially and in a way that might help in the long run.

When you have a major PR problem on your hands and you're a public company, you make it go away before it can adversely affect the stock. That's the the job of the highest executives, and that's what will be delegated to those responsible for fixing it. Would we all be better off with reasoned discourse? Probably. Would Google benefit from being the company to push it? Possibly, but I give that slim odds. The responsible thing to do for your job is to fix the problem that is immediately threatening the company.

Google isn't the martyr you've been looking for.

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>The responsible thing to do for your job is to fix the problem that is immediately threatening the company.

The problem is double talk. They pretend that they want open discussion and provide an internal forum for it, but when someone like Damore takes them up on it they see it as a problem. If you don't want controversy don't pretend that you do.

Do you think firing him made the problem go away? It looks like it made things worse.

They would have faced backlash either way, it is hard to say.

I hope they're willing to fire LGBTQ workers (or workers who are pro choice, or any other political third rail) when the right rages just as hard, if they're not a martyr and simply a business with no moral compass. If they're not prepared to perform those actions, they're picking sides, and should be prepared for the consequences.

Are you familiar with the phrase, "false equivalency"?

I'm amiable enough to be polite and say "you're entitled to your opinion".

LGBTQ is a status, not a political stance. There are LGBTQ people of all political stripes

> not a political stance

Let the identification and firing of radical progressives (or even moderate progressives!) begin. Things must get worse before they will get better; otherwise, everyone will continue to seek out ways to forward their agenda in legal yet immoral ways.

If proponents of the firing encourage the use of at-will employment for the firing, I'll support its use against other activists with opposite leanings. Otherwise, this silicon valley witch hunt routine will never end.

Well, the government already said you can be fired for being queer: https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/08/f.... I feel like outrage from the right for firing someone for something they can actually choose (political ideology) would be intensely hypocritical.

> I hope they're willing to fire LGBTQ workers

This isn't about firing people with specific attributes, it's about firing people that have become associated with a particular cause publicly and drawn the company into that same discussion, whether purposefully or on accident. If enough of their workforce and enough of the public shared the opinion that LGBTQ workers should not be hired, and the company policy followed that, and someone became prominent in that discussion, I expect they would do the same.

I'm not saying I think this is how the world should work and it's the best situation, I'm saying our current mix social, political and economic systems make this the likely (but not required) outcome. It often takes a martyr to change that. We venerate those who make that sacrifice, but let's not pretend it's easy for them, or that everyone should make that choice all the time (depending on how egregious the offense being protested is).

> if they're not a martyr and simply a business with no moral compass.

There's a difference between no moral compass and picking your battles. Winning a war doesn't always require rushing the enemy with whatever is in hand immediately when sighted. You can call a strategic retreat cowardly all you want, but if it's part of a larger strategy it may not be indicative of the competency of the people involved or the future (not that Google's actions necessarily should be viewed in that light, I'm just pointing out that this is but one action and should not define them entirely).

If an LGBTQ employee publishes a 10-page diatribe about how straights are biologically less suited to working at Google, they'd have been fired too.

He wasn't fired because he was a conservative, and he wasn't fired because of his opinions. He was fired because he made hostile remarks about the majority of his co-workers that legally resulted in a hostile work environment under US law.

Except he didn't; what you describe is the media misrepresentation of the original memo.

What in your opinion, is a proper interpretation or representation of the original memo?

That the ratio of women:men in tech may never reach 1:1 even if historical biases against women are resolved (he lists some possible reasons). Therefore efforts by Google and others to improve this ratio to 1:1 at all costs can be counterproductive and discriminatory in and of themselves and should be re-examined.

That was my interpretation at least.

No, it's how I and more than a dozen other people I talked to who read the memo, from front to back, in great detail, all interpreted it.

That's the thing about words: if you're not precise, they can be interpreted differently from how you intended them.

> dozen other people I talked to

That's just like the Pauline Kael apprx-quote about how "no one she knew voted Nixon - how could he possibly win?". IOW, you are already in an echo chamber.

He didn't though. He didn't say that at all. He simply said that LESS women are interested in this field than men. He didn't say NO women were qualified, or anything close to it. He said aiming for 50/50 might not be the best idea, because there simply might not be that many women interested.

As the other person said, that's a false equivalency. This memo directly affected the workplace environment by saying one group of people had less aptitude for working there. The examples you give are just groups who are seeking certain rights or equality in society have nothing to do with the workplace.

AFAIK, he didn't claim one group of people had less aptitude for working there. Could you cite where exactly he said that?

No he didn't. He said that one group of people had less desire to work there, and trying for 50/50 might not make sense. I went to a relatively small school, but there were 0 women who majored in computer science in the 4 years I was there. We certainly didn't reject anyone, there just wasn't 1 single person interested in making that their major. It's not unreasonable to suggest that computer science is a field that may not be exactly 50/50 in the type of people who want to do it.

Coal miners, fire(persons?), nurses, elementary school teachers and many many other fields are nowhere near 50/50. There are clear differences in genders and what they want out of life. He didn't in any way say the there are no women that can be good at this job. He simply pointed out that it's possible it might not be 50/50. maybe it's 60/40 or 70/30 and if you just try to hit a certain number you might not always be getting the best candidate for the position.

As a whole, if the tech industry was forced to be 50/50 tomorrow, we'd have to fire like 80% of the workforce. There simply aren't enough women interested in the field and qualified to do it right now. If you want to work towards having more women in tech, you have to start much sooner, at say the elementary and junior high age. Promote STEM more to them at those ages and maybe in 20-30 years we can be closer to 50/50. But it isn't happening tomorrow just because people want to change hiring practices. I hope that my daughter is interested in it when she grows up, and I certainly don't want her to be discriminated against, but saying it might not be 50/50 because different genders enjoy different things isn't in fact discrimination.

Then I'd ask: why do women not enjoy tech? Why did your college have zero women? Do you think it's biological? Cultural?

Ask average women - those not in tech.

What side is Google picking again?

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