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Comment by ramblerman | Hacker News Reader

She just retweeted: "They (tech companies) stay coming after black women." https://twitter.com/chenaichair/status/1334384579596197889

The casualness to make this now about race/gender as well when that wasn't even her inital argument.

I can't imagine working in this kind of environment. It must be exhausting, always having to tread on eggshells or end up on a twitter firing squad. Not being able to argue points, without it ending up being about race/gender.

Do we really have to pretend that someone blessed to be working on AI at google with the greatest minds on something so exciting is disadvantaged compared to the rest of us?

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I remember reading on her twitter around the Yann LeCun scandal time, she acknowledged her privilege while calling Yann on his. I didn't like how a man's output was seen as the result of privilege instead of hard work.

Why is it an either/or?

I don't see how people can deny that people take you more seriously on tech stuff if you're a man. It's pretty obvious to me, honestly.

Equally obvious, you're not going to become a top AI researcher without being immensely talented.

[Redacted, since I don't want to fuel speculation]

It always was (also) about race/gender!

That said, I don't know Timnit, and I don't know her specific circumstances... I believe that Google is full of people who wants to solve these problems, but somehow leadership fails to capitalize on that. It might only be a few bad apples in the leadership, but each one wields a huge amount of power (hiring and firing people)...

I mean, I don't know what "dared" has to do with it. It's unfortunate that we're working off incomplete information here, but that's not our fault - unless there's a recent leak I haven't seen, nobody's made the email available to read.

> diversity OKRs

These really exist? How do you know when you've reached perfect diversity? I'm honestly curious.

Is it based on population distributions? What would be an example diversity OKR

Typically they're numeric diversity hiring goals, something like "40% of our new hires should be women" or "10% of our new hires should be black". You sometimes see more recruiting-targeted ones (like Gitlab's pledge that 95% of its reachouts would be to underrepresented groups), or less numeric things like efforts to build employee affinity groups.

I haven't paid attention to those (after all, I'm not in the position to positively influence them much), but another example are attrition metrics:

https://www.blog.google/perspectives/melonie-parker/how-rete...

Oh, I'd never heard this before, but that's a pretty neat idea. Thanks for the link.

Diversity requirements are a common practice for large law firms.

Many Amlaw 500 firms have agreed to the Mansfield rule[0].

> Now in its third iteration, the Mansfield Rule Certification measures whether law firms have affirmatively considered at least 30 percent women, attorneys of color, LGBTQ+ and lawyers with disabilities for leadership and governance roles, equity partner promotions, formal client pitch opportunities, and senior lateral positions.

Mansfield rule certification is independently audited on a biannual basis.

It's also common for clients to have their own diversity requirements[1].

[0] https://www.diversitylab.com/pilot-projects/mansfield-rule-3...

[1] https://www.diversitylab.com/knowledge-sharing/clients-push-...

She was in a position of privilege to hire people. Did she hire any black women or men to help with the lack of diversity she refers to?

That's mostly true, and I'm not aware of which specific hiring efforts she was involved with...

The VP that fired her/"accepted resignation" wrote to her reports about it:

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexhanna/status/1334348137616568...

It's frustrating to realize, but unsurprising: the people higher up in the hierarchy will always have more power than those below.

I actually find it quite unethical and potentially rather manipulative to share with your future employees that you fought tooth and nail for them. Essentially implying that they wouldn't be there if it weren't for you and immediately setting it up so that they feel indebted to you... it's chilling to see that tweet tbh

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