throwaway12124

People won't generally admit to these sorts of uncomfortable estimations, but pretty much everyone makes them internally.

If it makes you feel any better, as a rule I give diversity people higher ratings for similar performances.

Among other things, he wrote this:

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/magazine/the-singer-soluti...

Sure. Again, costs nothing.

The author of the memo indicated that special steps were taken that would/might lower the false negative rate. Unfortunately the reference points to an internal document, but this would seem to indicate that the bar is lowered.

Well, or the suspicion is confirmed. But in any case, "a few years" is a long time to labor under a cloud, esp in an industry where switching jobs every couple of years is common. For myself, I'd prefer to face exactly the same standard as everyone else.

Re the "fatigue", that sucks. But unfortunately, it's a rational reaction to AA, etc.

I recall running into women in CS in the 80s, far before the days of diversity hires. It was instant respect, as you knew that that person was not only legit, but had probably overcome extra obstacles to get where they were.

These days, anyone who could have been a diversity hire is guilty until proven innocent.

If Peter Singer thinks it was wrong, you've got a tough road ahead of you justifying what you've done.

(Full disclosure: Singer is one of my personal heroes.)

Google could easily have blacklisted him from any future management positions. This would have been essentially cost-free to them.

This fear would be a little more credible if we hadn't already read that the original memo caused widespread "terror" in a number of employees.

Actually, rhetorical forms are fallacies if they are not universally true. That they may be true in particular instances is not important.

Is there a name for this rhetorical form? If X was a true Y, they would do what I say all Ys should do.

It does seem like a pretext. My guess is that the execs realized that they have a bigger sh*tstorm--both internally and externally--than they realized on their hands, and want some more time to think and to let things die down. Probably smart, actually.

It'll be interesting to see whether any of the leakers that caused that bad PR are actually fired. Seems doubtful.

"they won't start a hissy fit"?

That's not what their comments (in the leaked screenshots) would seem to indicate. On the contrary, they seem ready to go to great lengths, lengths harmful to their employer, to carry out their stated personal policies.

At virtually any ordinary company, they'd be fired for this.

It's not the augmentation method that's the problem. It's the apparent fact that managers/etc at Google are apparently building secret lists of people they won't work with because of ideological reasons. That's both morally awful and quite insubordinate.

What should they be doing instead? (1) STFU. (2) Do their jobs.

It's called being professional.

I've worked successfully with a number of people whose opinions on many subjects were radically different than my own. It's called being a professional.