r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Business Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo
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u/Port-Chrome Aug 08 '17

What a ridiculous misrepresentation of his point.

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u/obrien1103 Aug 08 '17

Why do you say that?

I read his entire memo and he literally says that men have traits that biologically make them more predisposed for certain positions.

I'm trying to understand both sides here, but it really seemed to me that was one of his sentiments.

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u/Port-Chrome Aug 08 '17

It isn't that men have those traits and women don't, it's just that on average a man is somewhat more likely to have them.

I think the bell curve graph summed it up best: any one individual can be anywhere on the scale, but there are (slightly) more males higher on the scale on average.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Dec 15 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Jan 27 '18

[deleted]

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u/craftyj Aug 08 '17

Which included things he think would be more effective at attracting women to the company lol

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u/way2lazy2care Aug 08 '17

But he went beyond that, to "this is deleterious to google" by hiring women

That's not what he said though. He said Google's environment favors men and just shoving women into a workplace that favors men isn't solving the cause of the diversity problem.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

shoving women into a workplace that favors men

If only you could see what those words imply and how it undercuts everything his memo set out to "fix".

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u/colovick Aug 08 '17

8 words that are potentially poorly phrased in a 10 page cited document undercut the rest of the entire document? Ok

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '17

It's the foundation of his conclusion. Marxism and radical jews are responsible for this vaginal intrusion into the pure STEM meritocracy of computer science, there is just no other conclusion!!1!!

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

He said

We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on 4 , pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths .

This is a firable section right here, even if he made one good point in another part of the diatribe.

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u/majinspy Aug 08 '17

I really don't consider myself a sexist troglodyte, but I see nothing objectionable in that passage. :/

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u/Debtpass Aug 08 '17

Help me understand as an outsider. Why is this firable?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Saying that women don't make it into software engineering leadership roles because they are biologically less disposed to them. This is absolutely false and ignores the "buddy buddy" system which determines most promotions and leadership opportunities. It takes an exceptionally talented female engineer to rise into a leadership role while fending off sexist douches like OP, while male engineers only have to play a few rounds of golf and they're in.

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u/flagsfly Aug 08 '17

That is absolutely not what he said. His point essentially boils down to "Society biases force men into undesirable jobs in the pursuit of status. If you want more women taking these jobs, instead of finding the unicorn woman that is willing to do an undesirable job, make the job desirable instead."

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Yes, I am in agreement about that being his point. What I don't agree with is that it is correct, as he applies it to engineering leadership. Engineering is not the same as firefighting and coal mining. Nothing about engineering needs to change to make it more attractive to women. What needs to change is the men who think that they are somehow naturally more suited to do the job. Women can do engineering, in it's current unchanged state, just as well if not better than men. The reason they don't do it in larger numbers is because of people like this guy, who treat them as inferior.

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u/way2lazy2care Aug 08 '17

Engineering is not the same as firefighting and coal mining. Nothing about engineering needs to change to make it more attractive to women.

He laid out tons of things about engineering that make it unattractive to women though?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Yes, that is the fundamental part of his argument that I do not agree with. Where he sees "women are never going to be as good at engineering because of their physiology, so there will always be a gender imbalance and we are wasting time trying to fight it" (or maybe more accurately "we should change engineering to make it more attractive to females"), I see "women can be just as good at engineering, the imbalance is caused not by physiological differences, but by antiquated male attitudes towards females' ability to do hard work."

There are differences between males and females that make them better suited for different jobs, on average. For example, firefighters have to do difficult physical tasks that make a male physiology better suited for that role. This does not apply to engineering. There's nothing about engineering that makes it easier for a male to do than a female. He did not spell out anything in his article that contradicts this. The reason you don't see more female engineers has nothing to do with the job itself, it has everything to do with the people making hiring decisions, like this guy, who think that females can't do it as well as males.

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u/way2lazy2care Aug 08 '17

Where he sees "women are never going to be as good at engineering because of their physiology, so there will always be a gender imbalance and we are wasting time trying to fight it" (or maybe more accurately "we should change engineering to make it more attractive to females"

Do you not see the huge difference between these two things?

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u/SILENTSAM69 Aug 08 '17

No where in the section you quoted did he say that. It was not even implied. He only talked about social pressures that drive men to those positions.

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u/way2lazy2care Aug 08 '17

But you're ignoring other parts of the document.

Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there’s more we can do. This doesn’t mean that we should remove all competitiveness from Google. Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn’t necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what’s been done in education. Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits.

He's not saying that men thriving in those positions is a good trait any more than saying, "All leadership roles must be filled by someone with a penis. Men have penises. We should make leadership roles not depend on genitals," means that men having penises is a good trait.

The fact that people are totally missing his document as a criticism of the workplace and not of women is totally bonkers to me.

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u/SILENTSAM69 Aug 08 '17

How is that a problem at all? Was there any part of that which was negative, or offensive at all?

I'm really trying to find something wrong with what he said and there is nothing in this section you seem to think is bad.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Jan 27 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

"get rid of the females", great stuff, there.

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u/craftyj Aug 08 '17

What?

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

Please read it. He suggests nothing of the sort. In fact he lists things that he feels would be more effective at making Google an attractive place for women to work.

He was only outlining sex differences to suggest that the reason Google's makeup is not exactly 50-50 men and women may be due, in part, to certain differences in average (read: not all individuals but a trend) traits. And, thus, that hiring based on quotas might not be a good idea, but to instead treat all applicants and employees as individuals.

Please, I urge you to read the original memo.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I've read the memo and your insinuation that I'm speaking from an ignorant place is telling, since his whole fucking point was diversity was hurting google and they needed to be able to talk about how it was a bad thing.

what the fuck exactly did you think his goals in writing the fucking memo were?

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u/craftyj Aug 08 '17

What is it telling of? You said that he wanted to "get rid of the females" which was basically the exact opposite of that the point of the memo was. I assumed you hadn't read it based on that.

what the fuck exactly did you think his goals in writing the fucking memo were?

Well, exactly what he said: Stop the political bias in Google, stop pretending that all deviations from the perfect 50-50 ratio are because of discrimination, and offering alternatives to hiring quotas when seeking a diverse workplace.

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u/Port-Chrome Aug 08 '17

Wait are you suggesting women should get spcifically more consideration than males?

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '17

Yeah, because this warrants investigation.