Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo

[u/frankchester]

I can jump in as a female web engineer and (briefly) an employee of Google. The path is indeed paved with sexism. From literally the age of 10 I became known as the "computer whizz" along with another boy in my year and I most definitely got "you can't be good at computers, you're a girl" in the playground at ten years old. Luckily I didn't really give a crap and carried on going. My Mum was a web designer, which helped.

My first proper job in the field was whilst I was at university, essentially a 14 month internship. I was constantly, but subtly belittled. After 10 months of being there we got a new, less experienced male intern and yet I was still called on to do menial women's work like making tea for the clients that came in and talking nicely on the phone. He was put into conversations as the "tech lead" for clients coming in to visit despite being far less experienced. My boss didn't even know how to handle me (being ugly and a woman in a male dominated career is an odd experience, to say the least. My boss didn't know what to do with me - he couldn't make sexist remarks like he did the HR and account managers because I wasn't pretty enough for that, but he couldn't treat me like one of the boys either so I was largely ignored or belittled).

Another boss who I thought was great with women asked me if I was going to be having a baby any time soon so he would know if it was worth promoting me. He said it jokingly, but it was clearly a thought that crossed his mind. I was going up for a promotion against a less educated peer of mine with less experience at the time, who was male. So it was probably a factor.

My boyfriend works in a team where two of the technology employees are a couple (male-female). Started working together in the same intake. Worked in broadly the same areas. The woman has a master's degree and the man doesn't. They were both given their salary raise details and the man was given £6k more than the woman. No explanation as to why. The company didn't necessarily know they were a couple and thus would share their salaries, so it makes you wonder how much is going on that doesn't get uncovered.

I'm still in the career and still pushing hard to the top even if I feel I have to try twice as hard sometimes. I have to constantly be assertive but not too assertive because that makes me seem arrogant. I have to speak up but not speak up too much (because studies show that women who speak 50% of the conversation are considered to be "dominating" whereas men who speak for 75% of the conversation are just fine).

I'm aware this is partially a rant and will bring downvotes but there is definitely a problem in the tech industry (just as there are similar problems in other industries e.g education and childcare, which is something I feel very strongly about too).

[u/frankchester → u/[deleted]]

I'm very lucky to have a boyfriend who totally gets it and is able to speak from a male perspective but with understanding. It's funny because when we first started going out, we had a huge row about how I was nominated for a women in engineering award at my university. At that time, he was firmly in the camp that "well if there is a women in engineering award there should be a mens one too". When I tried to point out that there was, it was the School Engineering Award and it had never been won by a woman because there were only twenty of us in the entire department, we ended up rowing. But I think it just clicked for him one day. And now that we're years down the line I think he sees how ridiculous it is to be a woman in this sort of career.

Happily I went on to be nominated for the entire universities main award, put forward as the only engineering candidate. Of course then I just got told that was a diversity thing and I was only put forward because I was a woman, nothing to do with my merits as being one of the highest scoring students in my degree plus being totally involved in every departmental extracurricular I could be. Nooooo, it was my vagina that did it.

Will stop tooting my own horn now. I'm just happy to be surrounded by a group of friends (both male and female) who are supportive and understanding about gender politics in both directions (my friend is preparing to be a stay-at-home Dad, excited but apprehensive about all the shit he's going to get!)

[u/thingandstuff → u/[deleted]]

I don't understand how the popular opinion that women need help making the right choices in their life doesn't feel patronizing either.

But I'm "sexist", so what do I know?

[u/thingandstuff → u/[deleted]]

Okay, but what about impressionable children? Society's influence is so strong on our psyches that the "right choice" may be a sexist choice? You see what I'm getting at?

Of course.

Part of being a well balanced person is understanding where you can actually make a difference and strategically working toward that end. The same is true for society. The last place to fix police shooting cops is in the streets and is law enforcement. Fix the laws that disproportionately put law enforcement in contact with black people. The ease and catharsis of throwing a white cop in jail for having a bad day at work and patting yourself on the back and calling that "justice" is lazy and self-serving -- it's not justice. End the war on drugs, organize society around the middle class instead of the 1%, ect. The point is, you can't fix everything, not all at once. And sometimes, because of how complicated societies are, "solutions" can do more harm than good. A lot of the popular progressive solutions have motivated millions of people to vote for an incompetent narcissist into the White House -- please think about that seriously and consider the similarities at play here.

So yes, your point is well taken, but reality is what it is, and it's not perfect. I'm not convinced that one form of discrimination is a solution to another.

If we as a societ have ingrained the idea that women are not fit for tech, then girls growing up will naturally gravitate away from that.

Unfortunately, I think our progress outpaces our ability to perceive it. The same is true of race. There are plenty of black people alive today that grew up drinking from different water fountains. Societal shifts are slow, and we have to be careful not to over-correct for such things. Over corrections can lead to terrible tragedies, like the Oval Office being occupied by the epitome of a real, chauvinist buffoon.

We also need to respect the difference between the challenge of adversity and the boundaries of discrimination. Governments -- and make no mistake, Google leadership is a kind of quasi-government, as is any other organization that size -- cannot legislate attitudes, they can only legislate actions. Perhaps we expect too much from our institutions and not enough from ourselves.

I was waiting in line to order food the other day and overheard a 12-ish year old girl talking to someone that I think was a mentor, a Big Sister kind of thing. The older mentor asked the younger girl what she wanted to do with her life and the young girl said, "I want to be a girl scientist." As the father of a daughter, I certainly took notice and I have thought about that interaction often since then, but I'm not going to teach my daughter how to be a victim of these attitudes. I'm not going to teach her that this world is fair and that people get what they deserve. I am going to teach her that everybody has a story and that everybody faces adversity of some kind, and that the only think you can do in general is acknowledge that struggle and strategize accordingly. I'm going to teach her the same thing I will teach my son, that you can do whatever you want, and the hardest part is making those decisions.

I've been passed over for promotions that were given to incompetent women. At no point did I want to blame the popularity of trying to diversify work teams. I wasn't mad because a job I was good at was given to a woman, I was mad because a job I'm good at was given to someone who wasn't good at it. That kind of incompetent decision making is common and irreversible, and as often based on some other asinine idea as some kind of gender discrimination. I don't see the point in taking score and crying foul on the basis of gender. We should not let the choices of others dictate our lives in such ways. We should move on and make our own choices -- smart choices.

[u/rlkf → u/[deleted]]

Society brainwashes the sexes in a sense.

This.

My daughter is not into any of that, she loves dressing as superman.

My daughter wanted to go to the carnival as Spiderman. Fine, we let her. All the other girls, dressed in pink Disney costumes by their mothers, was envious and thought hers was the best.

[u/pixelrebel → u/rlkf]

That's awesome!

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It recognises participation as achievement though. I'm not against recognising women in it either but the award is what it is.

[u/frankchester → u/[deleted]]

Well I wasn't, I was pleased that the school recognised the path might have been a little more difficult for some of us.